A new report suggests USAID involvement in COVID, cancel culture returns on "Love Island," and the new "Superman" is apparently even worse than we feared.
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While Americans are still fuming that we're apparently never getting the full story on Jeffrey Epstein, months after fuming that we're apparently never getting the full story on JFK's assassination, I've got another doozy for you based on a shocking new report about USAID's involvement with the Wuhan Institute of Virology, which is that we're never going to get the whole story on COVID either.
And I will tell you exactly why.
I'm Michael Knowles.
This is The Michael Knowles Show.
Thank you.
Welcome back to the show.
A woman has gone viral for celebrating the fact that her mother-in-law is carrying her baby as a surrogate.
So the grandma is carrying the baby.
And this is supposed to be a good thing.
And we'll get into what it all means.
I have much more to say first, though.
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Did USAID, the much maligned, rightly maligned USAID, the Agency for International Development, which Elon and Rubio and ultimately Trump slashed, did it?
Did it cause COVID?
The Daily Caller has an exclusive report out, really good report, Emily Kopp, about how the U.S. Agency for International Development shipped thousands of viral samples to a lab in Wuhan over the course of a 10-year program, even though it had no formal agreement with the lab in place.
This, according to previously unreported documents.
USAID funded the exportation of 11,000 samples from Yunnan province, Yunnan province where some of the closest relatives of COVID-19 circulate, to Wuhan, where COVID-19 began, with no apparent plan for ensuring the samples were not misdirected to bioweapons and remained accessible to the U.S. government.
This was a $210 million USAID public health program.
Kind of funny.
It's public health.
And as with so many of these liberal programs, it undermined the thing that it was ostensibly after.
It goes on.
It's good report.
You should read it.
So this on the heels of Epstein, where there's this preposterous line coming out now that actually Jeffrey Epstein, there was no client list.
Okay.
Maybe there's not a formal list.
There are clients, though, right?
No, there are no clients.
So Gheelane Maxwell is in prison for trafficking underage girls to no one?
Can we free Ghylaine?
Free Ghilaine.
What?
She's in prison for no reason.
All those really rich, powerful guys that were palling around with Jeffrey Epstein dozens of times, prime ministers, royalty, billionaires.
They were just, it was just a coincidence, big, crazy coincidence.
So right on the heels of the Epstein line, the Epstein conclusion, the Epstein stop asking questions, move along, move along, nothing to see here.
After the decades delayed release of the JFK documents, which reveals no further information whatsoever about the assassination of JFK, now we got another one, which is that USAID, we already knew that NIH was associated with the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
We already knew that Dr. Fauci, in fact, was associated with the Wuhan Institute of Virology through grant programs, including on gain of function research.
But now we're seeing USAID directly was shipping over 10,000 virus samples from the place that has similar viruses to COVID to the place where COVID started.
And it raises questions.
Even more, is there more to this story?
How involved were we?
What did we know?
When did we know it?
And once again, I hate to be the bearer of, I won't call it bad news.
I won't call it good news.
It's just facts, which is you're never going to get the whole story.
You are never going to get the full story on COVID.
And part of the reason is that the story certainly involves us.
I'm not saying it's our fault.
I don't think it's our fault, COVID.
I don't think Epstein Island is our fault.
I don't think the JFK assassination is our fault.
But we, we, the United States, the U.S. government, the U.S. political order, is involved in all these things.
And the reason that the U.S. is involved is that we are the global empire.
We're the global empire.
We're involved in everything.
We're involved in everything.
We have knowledge.
We have at least a little bit of knowledge of basically everything in the world.
We have people.
We have operatives all over the world.
We have interests all over the world.
And so we're implicated in basically everything that happens all over the world.
That's why.
The best explanation I've heard as to why the government, neither the Biden administration nor the Trump administration are releasing all the juicy details about the Epstein Sex Island is because it would unravel the world order.
Because it does seem like a blackmail ring ensnaring many of the most important people in the world.
And so if you tugged on that thread, wars could break out.
Alliances would be shattered.
The global order would fall apart.
That's the most persuasive argument that I've heard.
That Epstein Island really is the thing that we all kind of thought it was.
And as a result, you're not going to get the information.
And it doesn't mean that we did it.
It doesn't mean that we were the ones who were behind the whole thing, but we probably kind of knew about it.
How did Epstein get that sweetheart deal 20 years ago?
They had him dead to rights on underage girls.
And then he gets this sweetheart deal at Palm Beach, Palm Beach Vacation Penitentiary where he gets to come and go as he pleases, basically.
Come on, give me a break.
He's still meeting with prime ministers and royalty after he was convicted of sex offenses.
Come on.
Give me a break.
But maybe Alex Acosta is right.
What Alex Acosta, the U.S. attorney who was up for labor secretary, reportedly said, which is that, well, he belonged to intelligence or he had some intelligence.
Yeah.
And maybe we knew something about the Wuhan laboratory.
And maybe we were somehow involved.
Yeah, right, because we're the global empire and we're involved in everything.
And it's why we're not going to be totally transparent.
And it's why we're not going to just nix alliances willy-nilly.
And it's why we're not going to retreat and only look at ourselves.
And it's why the phrase America first cannot mean what some people want it to mean, which is that we ignore the rest of the world.
That's not what Trump thinks America first means.
That's never been what he thinks America first means.
Trump has an imperial political vision.
So for him, America first means we're going to put our interests first.
We're going to lead the world in a way that is more conducive to our flourishing.
But so long as we're the global empire, we're going to be involved in everything, and you're not going to get the full story on very much.
Now, speaking of the Chinese, a much more important story.
Sierra Ortega has been kicked off of Love Island.
Don't know what Love Island is?
I didn't either until last night when I Googled it.
Love Island is some reality TV show where people get together, they shack up in a villa, and they have to have a couple, and they try to stay on the island, and they can break up, and they can, you know, do like weird stuff.
But it's trash TV, just absolute garbage.
But it's very popular.
And one of the stars of Love Island, Sierra Ortega, has been kicked off.
She's been canceled for a horrible, horrible transgression.
She said things in unearthed social media posts that demand that her life be over.
She issued a groveling apology for these terrible things that she did.
Here's the apology.
I know a lot of people have been waiting for me to speak up about the news that's come to light recently.
And now that I've been back in the U.S. for about 48 hours and I've had the chance to process, I now feel like I'm at a space where I can speak about this without being highly emotional because I am not the victim in this situation.
While I was in the villa, there were some posts that resurfaced from my past where I was very naively using an incredibly offensive and derogatory term.
And before I get into the details, I want to first start by addressing not just anyone that I have hurt or deeply offended, but most importantly, the entire Asian community.
I am deeply, truly, honestly so sorry.
I had no idea that the word held as much pain, as much harm, and came with the history that it did, or I never would have used it.
What did this woman say?
I just want, I have to issue a public apology.
The horrific, terrible things I've done are worse than genocide, really.
I could not have ever committed a more grievous sin.
I am beyond redemption.
And I hope that an executioner will come with a giant axe and lop my head off for my grievous offenses.
What did she say?
Apparently, in some old social media post, she joked that her face looks a little chinky.
Because I don't know, her eyes are kind of small or something.
Chinky.
That was it.
That was the line.
That her life is over for now, that she's issuing a groveling apology to the masses.
Because she said she looks chinky, a little bit like Chinese.
The word comes from China.
China, chinky.
That's the worst you got?
The worst you got is...
I don't know.
I wouldn't go around yelling at the rooftops, but that what?
This woman is joking that she looks kind of Chinese.
This woman who does in fact look a little bit Chinese.
What is she?
She's Hispanic, which means she probably has a fair bit of indigenous admixture.
The indigenous admixture, which does look kind of East Asian sometimes, you know, from the right angle.
And that's it?
I instantly thought of one of my favorite movies from the 2000s, Gran Torino.
You remember Gran Torino with Clint Eastwood?
He plays this grizzled old guy who for the entire movie uses all sorts of offensive terms for Asians in particular, but also for black people and the Irish and just about everybody.
Just compare Sierra Ortega on saying, oh, my face looks a little chinky, tee, hee, hee.
To compare that, for which her life is now over, to one of the most celebrated movies of the 2000s.
Have some respect, Sebrahead.
Get off my lawn.
Used to stack f ⁇ like you five feet high in Korea.
Use you for sandbags.
I kept a bunch of jabbering gooks off of my lawn.
When we were in Korea and a thousand screaming gooks came across our line, we didn't call the police.
What are all you fishheads looking at anyway?
I've got more in common with these gooks than I do my own spoilt rotten family.
Happy birthday.
Why don't we go down and get some of the good gook foods?
You know, I'm starving.
You're wrong, Egg Roll.
I know exactly what I'm talking about.
You're letting click-clack ding-dong and Charlie Chan just walk out with Miss What'serface.
Get me another beer, Dragon Lady.
Here you get the wrong one.
He's going to blow your gook head right off.
All right, come on, zipperhead.
We'll let the mix stay here and what, kill that cousin of yours and the rest of those zips okay so it goes on i actually don't even think that's all of them but it goes on was clint eastwood canceled for that movie no more importantly was the character was he the villain this is what really matters because you say well clinic's playing a character right was the character the villain or the hero that character who used all sorts of naughty words much worse words for the same group of people than chinky he
is the hero?
Why?
Why?
Why is this woman, Sierra Ortega, so wrong to apologize?
Because she wasn't using the phrase in a contemptuous way.
That's why Clint Eastwood is the hero in the movie, because he uses all these naughty words.
But then you see what he says there, one of the great lines right in the middle of that clip.
He goes, I got more in common with these gooks than with my own spoiled relatives.
He's saying, I use all these words for the Irish, for the blacks, for the Asians, for the this.
But I don't hate them.
And in fact, I love them.
And in fact, spoiler alert on the movie, he sacrifices his life to help them.
That's the key here.
Had Sierra Ortega used this term in a contemptuous, antagonistic kind of way, then you'd say, okay, maybe we should cancel people for that.
But to just use it as a kind of funny word, if I come into the office and I see our AD, Pavel, and I call him a giant Polak, and then Pavel turns to me and he calls me a greasy Guido or something, and then Pavel and I turn to Professor Jacob and call him Shylock, no one would bat an eyelash.
Not one of us would bat an eyelash, because none of those words would be used in contempt or hostility.
Because these kinds of words can be used in a way that is actually affectionate and familiar.
That's something that we've completely missed in our culture.
Often we discuss the crisis of meaning we have.
This is a great example of it.
Because we are trapped in modernity by the literal and the carnal.
We just deny that anything has meaning.
We deny that our bodies mean something.
We deny even that our words can have meaning, meaning, objective meaning outside of themselves, signs and symbols.
But it's so disingenuous to cancel this girl, this reality TV girl, because she used a racially kind of edgy word in a way that was perfectly affectionate.
She says, I look this way.
I look like these people.
Does she hate herself?
No.
She's just being kind of funny.
And we all have to pretend that she's bringing back Jim Crow or something.
It's so ridiculous.
And it just gets to this modern problem, which is we focus entirely on the literal, on the carnal.
We totally ignore the spiritual.
We totally ignore the meaning, the thing that which is signified.
It gets us back us back to what st. Paul harps on quite a lot which is that if you don't have charity, you've got nothing.
You have nothing if you don't have charity.
And that's really what this is all about.
It's all about the charity.
Clint Eastwood and Grant Torino is the hero because he has charity.
He has love for these people.
I don't think Sierra Ortega was without charity in that line.
But no, we as a culture have to take the least charitable view of everyone and everything.
Great, great.
See where that leads you.
Now, speaking of naughty words and obviously missing the meaning, President Trump is in big trouble.
This is a story that happened while I was away, but it totally relates to what is going on on Love Island, which is that Donald Trump used a naughty word that refers to Jews, and now he's being called Hitler.
Hold on one second.
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President Trump is in trouble now.
He is in trouble.
You know why?
Because he used a very naughty word that is sometimes used to refer to Jews.
But if you love them or if you love somebody that you're leaving it to, think of that.
No death tax, no estate tax, no going to the banks and borrowing from, in some cases, a fine banker.
And in some cases, shylocks and bad people.
Okay.
So you got to go.
He's promoting his new policies.
He says, you got to go.
Sometimes you go.
Look, not all bankers are bad.
Sometimes you go to a good banker.
Sometimes you go to a shylock.
Shylock?
That's an anti-Semitic word.
Trump was asked about this.
Here's his response.
I wanted to ask you about one of the words you use for your speech, shylocks.
That's widely viewed as an anti-Semitic phrase.
Do you intend for that word to be used?
No, I've never heard it that way.
To me, a shylock is somebody that's a money lender at high rates.
I've never heard it that way.
You view it differently than me.
I've never heard that.
But anything else?
No, sorry.
Sorry.
That's not what I mean.
I never heard that.
Whatever.
Moving on.
And he gets away with it.
And do you know what?
He should get away with it.
Shylock is, it actually is a term that refers to Jews because it comes from the merchant of Venice where the Jewish character is Shylock.
Great play, marvelous play.
But he's the Shylock.
He's the guy who's lending money in an immoral way.
And they say, you used this anti-Semitic word.
He said, nah, I didn't.
And he's going to get away with it.
And you know why he's going to get away with it?
Not because the term Shylock cannot be offensive to Jews.
It certainly can be offensive to Jews.
It can be used with hostility.
It can be used with cruelty.
It can be used in a way that is immoral.
But Trump's going to get away with it because no one thinks Trump hates the Jews.
Does anyone think Trump hates?
The guy has a town in Israel named after him.
The man has Jewish grandchildren.
You kidding?
You think you're going to convince us that Trump hates the Jews?
No, he gets to use the word Shylock because he has charity for these people.
That's really what it comes down to.
And it's too bad that the Love Island girl didn't watch this clip of Trump before she issued her groveling and ridiculous apology.
Because you should say, nah, I don't mean it in a bad way.
Shut up.
I didn't mean it in a bad way.
No one thinks I meant it in a bad way.
Give me a break.
You know, for Trump to use the word Shylock in this way, it'd be like calling an Italian, it'd be like calling a thug a Goomba.
You say, Goomba, a Goomba, that's an offensive word for Italians.
You say, yeah, but I'm not referring to all Italians.
And I might even use the phrase to refer to someone who is not Italian.
And anyway, I'm Italian, and it doesn't, I'm obviously, I have charity for these people.
So give me a break.
It's not, it's ridiculous.
All stereotypes are true.
We can joke about them.
It doesn't mean we have to have hostility and cruelty for all sorts of people.
Give me a break.
The funny thing about the Jewish banker stereotype, I was just in Italy, is the most prominent banking family in the history of the world was the Medici.
It's an Italian family, followed by, I don't know, the Bonsignori or something, Monte de Paschi de Siena.
But even still, it doesn't, it's ridiculous.
You don't need to go all the way down that rabbit hole.
Oh, I'm sorry.
I'm sorry, reporter.
I shouldn't have referred to the merchant of Venice.
Please, I'll leave Love Island.
Please, no, give me a break.
You don't need that.
If you have charity, you can go about your life in a confident way and you don't need to grovel to these disingenuous mobs.
Okay, speaking of rich people, Elon Musk is back in the news.
His relationship with the White House is back in the news because the White House chief of staff, Susie Wiles, just went on pod force one, a political show, to spill the tea on what really happened with the Elon Trump breakup.
Similar.
The president was very, very kind to him.
And Elon had so much to offer us.
He knew things we didn't know.
He knew people and technologies that we didn't know.
It was a great thing when it was a great thing.
And had a very, I think, a very troublesome ending.
Why do you think that happened?
I don't know.
I don't understand it.
I don't know.
I know that what has been said doesn't ring accurate to me, but I don't know.
I enjoyed working with Elon.
I think he's a fascinating person and sees the world differently.
And I think that's probably what the president saw too, just a little bit different than the average Joe.
But certainly came to not a good ending.
Yeah, the president seemed to be very interested in him.
and he would spend a long time, you know, at dinners and things, talking to him closely.
Obviously there was something there, but...
He's the world's richest man.
He might be the world's smartest man.
He sees the world differently.
He was great for us.
We love him.
I enjoyed my time with him, but it came to a bad ending.
I was on TMZ yesterday, and I think it was Harvey pointed out, he said, you know, this doesn't sound trumpy.
This is usually when Trump breaks up with someone, they're attacking each other, and he's a loser, and he's an idiot.
And so why is the White House being so nice to Elon here?
Simple.
No one on the right benefits from a Trump-Musk fight.
None of us benefit.
The Libs have been trying to instigate the Trump-Musk fight from the beginning of their relationship, but no one on the right benefits from that.
Elon's great.
I love Elon Musk.
Elon Musk bought us Twitter so that the right could have at least one social media platform where we weren't being silenced.
Elon Musk donated hundreds of millions of dollars to the Trump campaign.
And it was one of the reasons that Trump won reelection.
Elon Musk brought in new fresh ideas.
Elon Musk brought in Doge and all these cool young kids who are going in and streamlining government.
Elon's great.
Trump's the president.
Elon's not the president.
Trump's the president.
And Trump calls the shots.
And they had some disagreements on things.
And people are going to side with Trump more than they're going to side with Elon.
But we don't want a Trump-Elon fight.
Very, very smart of the White House.
Susie Wiles played that perfectly, I thought.
President Trump has been basically pitch perfect on handling the Elon thing.
Elon walked back some of his intense accusations.
And hopefully they just move on.
Maybe they go their separate ways.
Maybe they join forces again in some way.
But we don't need the Trump-Musk fight.
Sometimes the drama plays really well.
Sometimes the drama does not play well.
This would be an example of where it would not play well.
Good.
We move along.
Now, speaking of prolific procreators, a woman has gone viral for celebrating the fact that her mother-in-law is carrying her own baby, carrying the baby of her son and the younger woman's husband.
And it's supposed to be a good thing.
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There's a video that has gone viral that is at once horrifying and sad.
Sad because you do have sympathy for the woman in the video who is unknowingly expressing horrifying things.
It says, girl who lost her uterus to cancer.
Guy, boy whose mom is willing to carry a baby.
Is this illegal?
It feels illegal.
Yeah, for sure.
And they're doing it anyway, I guess.
So right off the bat, people are nauseated by the thought of this.
A guy's mother carrying his baby, even though it's his baby that he made with another woman.
And then you feel kind of bad because you think, well, this poor woman, you know, lost her womb to cancer.
But do difficult circumstances justify something this gross at least or really immoral, I think, when you think of the process involved in creating the baby?
Because to create the baby, you're going to have to have a guy commit a shameful and disgusting act alone.
And then you're going to have to have a scientist, a doctor go in and create embryos in a way that violates the rights of children.
And then most likely you're going to kill most of those embryos or freeze them indefinitely.
Then you're going to implant them in this older woman who's not the mother.
Then you're going to take the kid away from the woman.
And yet, what's amazing about this story, as people are trying to hold in their breakfast or lunch listening to it, this is probably the best version of IVF and surrogacy that there is.
That's not to defend the mother-in-law having the son's kid or whatever.
That's to show you how morally suspect IVF and surrogacy are.
This is the best version of it.
Because you got a husband and a wife making the baby.
You have the surrogate, the woman in whom the baby will be gestated, the nearest thing to a mother the baby will have ever known, will still be involved in their lives.
So he won't just be totally ripped away from the person who seems like his mother to him.
This is the best version of IVF and surrogacy.
And it's ghastly.
And we all know it's wrong.
And you just have a feeling deep down that it's wrong.
It is immediately repulsive.
And you should listen to that sometimes.
It's what the bioethicist Leon Cass calls the wisdom of repugnance.
When things are immediately repugnant to you, you should take that seriously.
That's not always going to be right, but you should take it seriously.
You should take prejudice seriously.
We all have to engage according to prejudgments.
Otherwise, you couldn't get out of bed in the morning.
And so you don't want to be irrational, but you got to listen sometime.
You got to at least take those things seriously.
And so much of modernity, so much of modernity is saying, no, don't believe that.
Don't believe the wisdom of repugnance.
Don't follow your gut.
No, no, your gut's wrong.
We know, even if you feel terrible for this woman because she had cancer and couldn't conceive on her own, and even if you kind of have sympathy or even if you try to work it out in your head that it's okay for the mother to have the son's kid with the wife or you know this is not the way things are supposed to be.
You know that.
We all know that.
Those people know that.
And yet, bringing it back to modernity, what modernity, so much of modernity is denying that there is a way that things are supposed to be.
So much of modernity, going back to the Enlightenment and especially to the scientific revolution, especially to the march of materialism, it's people saying, no, no, no.
In classical philosophy, in medieval philosophy, they all thought that there's a way things are supposed to be.
But we enlightened moderns know that there's no way things are supposed to be.
We can just make the world however we want it to be.
We decide how things are supposed to be.
And then you see something like that and your lunch starts to come up.
You say, oh, I got to push that lunch down because that doesn't matter.
There's no way things are supposed to be.
There's no reason that shouldn't happen.
There's no, push that down.
Something in my gut is telling me, and it's called your conscience.
Somebody that says this isn't the way things are supposed to be, but modernity says, no, no, no, there's no way things are supposed to be.
Men and women, they're not supposed to go together.
Nah, man.
That's just, no, that's just an old prejudice.
Now, people aren't supposed to honor their mother and father.
Nah, man, whatever.
Forget about your mother and father.
No, we're not supposed.
It is not sweet and fitting to die for one's country.
Patriotism, you're not supposed to love your country.
Nah, man, whatever.
But we know.
We all know.
And we shouldn't do that.
It can be tempting to do that, to do stuff like that, to transgress.
But we know we shouldn't.
So let's just, how about, here's my radical proposal to fix all the problems that have been wrought in modernity.
What if we just do the things we know we should do?
We know that the natural law that's inscribed on every human heart.
We know that the law is revealed to the Israelites.
We know there's revelation there.
But we also know that the Gentiles, they know too.
They follow the law without even knowing it because the natural law is inscribed on every human heart.
So what if we just do the things we know we should do?
That's my idea.
And it's not like really fancy.
It's not the sort of thing that a college professor says, but it's true.
Speaking of norms, President Trump got in big trouble yesterday because of this funny exchange that he had with the president of Liberia that has all of Trump's enemies calling him ignorant and racist and blah, blah, blah.
And the funniest thing about the exchange, I've seen no one else talking about this, is it maybe I said, was I talking about, I wasn't talking about this with anyone yesterday, maybe a little, bubbling up a little bit, people insinuating, but there's a real conclusion that you can draw from this that is not great for the liberals.
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My favorite comment yesterday is from Udirex.
Thanks for highlighting this issue.
Do you get it?
It was talking about Grok becoming a Nazi.
Thanks for highlighting.
Do you get it?
Do you get it?
President Trump, according to the media, had this terrible gaff yesterday while talking to the president of Liberia.
Well, thank you.
It's such good English.
Such beautiful.
Where did you learn to speak so beautifully?
Were you educated where?
In Liberia.
Well, that's very interesting.
It's beautiful English.
I have people at this table who can't speak nearly as well.
So he's talking to the president of Liberia.
He says, wow, you speak beautiful English.
Where did you learn to speak that well?
Where did you study?
And the guy says, oh, Liberia.
Liberia, that's really interesting.
Well, and all the libs started attacking Trump and mocking him because, you know, that Trump didn't even know that the official language of Liberia in Africa is English.
He didn't even know that, that ignorant man, that racist, that did you know that the official language of Liberia is English?
Maybe some of you did because maybe you know a little bit about the history of Liberia.
Most people do not know that.
But the fact that that's true actually, I think, really undercuts many of the liberal arguments.
And I think actually defends President Trump's political vision because Liberia was established in 1847.
Liberia was established as a place to send freed blacks from America.
There's this debate, not just among the terrible, evil racist whites, but even among free black people, which is, okay, what are we going to do?
We were brought here as slaves.
We're not really part of the political order.
And now some of us are being freed.
So what do we do?
Do we just live as free men in America?
Are we going to be allowed to do that?
Is that possible?
Is that desirable?
No, maybe we can go back to Africa.
Okay, we're going to go back to Africa.
And there's the American colonial society, or colonization society rather, is going to found this country, Liberia.
And that means that Liberia's official language is English.
It means that Liberia has a Declaration of Independence that is quite similar to the American Declaration of Independence.
We hold these truths to be self-evident.
And Liberia has a constitution that is basically a copy of the American Constitution.
The reason that that history is all very interesting and the libs are all kind of mocking Trump for not knowing every ounce of that history, the reason that's really interesting is it totally undercuts the arguments liberals make and it defends the arguments Trump and the MAGA movement have made about what a country is.
Liberia has the same language as America.
Liberia has a very similar Declaration of Independence and it has basically the same constitution.
And yet, Liberia is not America.
Because a country is more than an idea.
From my whole life, practically, I was told America's an idea.
It's just an idea.
America's an idea.
It's not a place.
It's a placeholder for an idea.
It's an idea.
Countries aren't ideas.
Countries are more than ideas.
And you can have some people who don't like black people.
They're going to say, yeah, well, the reason Liberia is not as good as America is full of black people.
That's not it.
Countries are more than race, too.
Countries are more than ideas.
They're more than language.
They're more than race.
They're more than any of these single factors.
Countries are societies with history, with shared bonds of kinship, with traditions, with a development that makes them what they are, that is not reducible to one line on the back of a napkin, that is not reducible to a log line like you're pitching a TV show in Hollywood.
Countries are more than that.
Countries are geography.
Countries are shared history and suffering.
Countries are the different ethnic and racial groups that make it up.
Countries are the languages people speak.
Countries are the idioms that people use within those languages.
Countries are the ideas that have developed out of those peoples.
Countries are all the countries are the music that they listen to.
Countries are the TV shows they watch.
Countries are all of that.
And you can't reduce that into an ideology.
And that's what Trump is saying.
So when Trump says, make America great again, he irritated the leftists who hate America per se, and he irritated the ideologues on the right who want to reduce America to just some abstract idea.
You're violating the idea of America.
No, no, no.
He wants to defend America.
That's what I'm about.
That's what I'm about too.
That's one of the reasons I love Trump so much and I like the Trump movement is because the thing that I want to defend in America is not freedom.
Oh yes, I'm an American patriot because I love freedom.
No, I mean I like freedom properly understood, but I don't.
America's more than freedom.
Jake, equality.
Yeah, I mean, what do you mean by equality?
Even values, this drives me nuts when conservatives talk about values all the time.
What are values, values?
I like virtue.
Virtue is important.
That's not even the whole story, but that's important.
But values?
It's this abstract divorce.
No, you know what I want to defend?
You know why I'm an American patriot?
Because I love America and I want to preserve America and the American way of life and the American people.
That's what I want to preserve.
And if there are some abstractions that can be derived from that, fine.
But let's not put the cart before the horse.
Libs are going to play this clip at their own peril.
I think they're going to be hoisted with their own petard.
Speaking of supposed Trump gaffes, I've got the anatomy of a fake news story for you.
So this clip started going around yesterday, followed by breathless headlines from the liberal media.
And here's this clip in which President Trump supposedly threatened this wild maniac who's going to send us to World War III.
Remember when the people on the left and some of the neurotic people on the right were saying two weeks ago, we're on the brink of World War III.
Trump's going to send us to World War III, a 20-year-fore war.
And then none of that happened.
Well, here's the next shot at that.
Trump is going to bomb Moscow.
Putin said, if you go in to Ukraine, they're going to bomb this shit out of Moscow.
I'm telling you, I have to choose the public voice.
Republic.
Republic.
So he does think, I don't believe you.
I said, if you said no way, and I said, wait.
And then he goes like, I don't believe you.
But the truth is, he believed me 10%.
I saw you do this.
He believed that.
Well, I'm like President Xi of China.
But I said the same thing to them.
I said, you know, if you go into Taiwan, I'm going to bomb the shit out of Beijing.
He said, that's crazy.
He said, hey, yay!
You still got a bomb base.
I said, I have no choice.
I got a problem.
We're going to bombay.
And he's going to be either except 10%.
And 10% is all you need.
In fact, 5% would have been okay.
And we would have had a problem.
We would have never had a problem.
So shocking.
Here's the headline.
Where is it?
CNN.
Trump said he threatened to bomb Moscow if Putin attacked Ukraine.
2024 fundraiser tape show.
This came out yesterday or Tuesday, July 8th.
Shocking, breathless headline.
And I remember thinking, wait, hold on.
I've heard this story for years.
And I did.
Here's one.
2024.
Trump suggested he would have bombed Moscow for invading Ukraine.
Washington Post reports.
Then I got this one from 2022.
Trump told golfer John Daly that he threatened Putin with hitting Moscow.
I've seen a bunch of headlines like that.
How is this news?
What is newsy about this?
There's nothing new about it.
You can hear a little bit of one of the audio clips.
But what is newsy about that?
There is nothing new about that.
It is simply a way to attack Trump.
As Trump confounded his critics on the left and some of them on the right by avoiding World War III with the Iran bombing, say, or in the war in Ukraine, this is a way to attack him and say, well, look, this crazy man, he's going to bomb Moscow.
He's going to bomb Beijing.
I've heard about this for years.
Why is that?
Can CNN explain to me why they're reporting that?
Can you give me any journalistic reason to report that story that has been reported many times over the last three years?
The only reason to do it is to attack Trump.
And this, to me, is good news for the administration because it shows things are working out well.
Despite the constant, incessant screams and crying of the critics on the left and a handful of malcontents on the right, Trump's doing some pretty good stuff.
If they had the ability to really hit him with a cudgel, these are the people who tried to put him in jail four times and kill him.
If they had the ability to really hit him, they would, and they can't.
They got to dig up three-year-old news stories that make Trump look good.
Give me a break.
Now, before we get to Theology Thursday in the Membrane Segmentum, there's one story.
It's really, I'm just going to alert you to this.
Apparently, David Corinsweat, whoever that is, is some Hollywood person who's affiliated with a new Superman movie.
He is swapping out Superman's catchphrase, truth, justice, and the American way, for something else.
What is it?
Truth, justice, and good things?
Is it true?
Someone's reporting it's truth, justice, and the human way?
What happened?
And so that scene, I think, is the crux of that character that we see.
And the reality is that when he doesn't have to be Superman, when he doesn't have to be this calm, reassuring presence to the public, when he doesn't have to symbolize safety and security and truth and justice and all those good things.
And all those good things.
So this has been going on for years.
You know, back in, what was it, 93?
In the early 90s, they had that Superman show where they just said he stood for truth and justice.
They just took it out.
And then I remember I saw that really awful Batman in 2000, not Batman, Superman in 2006.
And they changed it to Truth, Justice, and all that other stuff.
Truth, justice, the American Way swapped out for that other stuff.
And then you get this one, truth, justice, and according to Ben Owen, the line is truth, justice, and the human way.
This is the craziest one of all of them.
Superman stands for truth, justice, and the human way.
If he stands for the human way, that means he stands for murdering his own brother, the human way.
If he stands for the human way, that means he stands for concupiscence and wrath and envy and pride and rape and murder.
The human way.
This is the apotheosis of secular humanism, devoid of any other even remotely attendant virtue.
The human way.
Talk about pride.
At least in that terrible 2006 movie, at least they still made Superman at Christ figure.
Now they want to forget about Christ entirely, or at least Christ's divine nature.
Now, as the human way, we are gods.
We don't need to aspire to anything higher.
We are gods.
What is the human way?
At least by the comparison around the world, the American way is pretty good.
You know, compared to the Iranian way, compared to the Korean way, the North Korean way, compared to the Russian way, the American way is pretty good, I think.
But no, it's the human way now.
I'm going to try to see this movie.
I'm going to do my best to see this movie because it is going to, I am now convinced.
You know, I'm very fair to movies that are maligned as liberal.
Barbie was a fabulous movie.
There are a number of movies like this that I think are pretty good.
This movie, I'm quite confident, is going to be just horrible.
