Ep. 1786 - Americans DENIED Federal Aid If They Don’t Support Israel?
States are told to support Israel if they want disaster relief, the U.S. announces a nuclear reactor on the moon, and President Trump weighs in on Sydney Sweeney.
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Ep.1786
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These are questions that take cultures thousands of years to answer.
During Answer the Call, I take questions from people just like you about their problems, opportunities, challenges, or when they simply need advice.
How do I balance all of this grief, responsibility?
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My daughter, Mikaela, guides the conversations as we hopefully help people navigate their lives.
Everyone has their own destiny.
everyone.
Is FEMA now denying disaster relief to US states that refuse to do business with the State of Israel?
Is NASA Administrator Sean Duffy building a nuclear reactor on the moon?
Most important of all, does President Trump like Sidney Sweeney's Jeans ad?
The answer to all those questions and more.
I'm Michael Knowles.
This is The Michael Knowles Show.
Welcome back to the show.
Billy Eilish.
is being accused of racism.
Why?
Because she says she likes Ireland.
Why is that racist?
Because the people in Ireland look like her.
Is it okay to like being around people who look like you?
We will get to that very important question that has confused people in recent years.
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Starting off with a major tempest in a teapot.
It's a tempest in a teapot, but it was a major tempest in a teapot.
Yesterday, it was reported that the federal government would.
would deny disaster relief to states that didn't do business with Israel.
And this raised a lot of eyebrows, not only on the left, but even in certain corners of the right.
You say a hurricane comes through your state, major flooding, I don't know, a tornado, an earthquake, and the state is not going to get disaster relief from the federal government if that state doesn't have a good business relationship.
with a Middle Eastern country, with the state of Israel.
How does that make sense?
There's a little bit of logic to it, which we'll get to in a second that a lot of people are missing.
But the notice that came from the Department of Homeland Security.
security in April was that recipients of federal disaster relief must comply with all applicable federal anti-discrimination laws material to the government's payment decisions.
Times of Israel's reporting that FEMA, Federal Emergency Management Agency, said in grant notices posted Friday that states must follow certain terms and conditions.
Those conditions require that they certify that they will never sever, quote, commercial relations specifically with Israeli companies.
A little bit weird.
So what does that requirement mean?
It means that one..9 billion in federal funding is on the line.
That's $1.9 billion for search and rescue equipment, emergency manager salaries, backup power systems, a whole lot of disaster relief.
Now, I say it's a tempest in a teapot in part because this policy has already been updated or clarified.
Probably the administration would say it's been clarified.
It's being reported that it's been updated in any case.
It will not cut off American states if they don't want to do business with Israel.
Also, on top of that, the terms and conditions also cut off disaster relief to states that would promote DEI, to states that would express a kind of racial antipathy against other people, against white people, against other people, against states that undermined immigration law.
So there was a lot of other stuff in here, a lot of other requirements to get the disaster relief.
But the part that's sticking in people's craw is the doing business with Israel part.
And I think there is a coherent way to defend this.
Although clearly the administration doesn't think the Jews is worth the squeeze because they've already backed off the terms and conditions.
Oh, this was some confusion, some mistake.
We're going to clear this up.
But the coherent way to defendend this is on federalist grounds.
The coherent way to defend it is to say, the national government conducts foreign policy.
The state governments do not conduct foreign policy.
So if you have a state government or multiple state governments, probably Democrat governments, probably left-wing governments that band together and say we're going to boycott any country, in this case though, let's say it's the state of Israel.
then you have the states undermining U.S. foreign policy, especially a country that is ostensibly a major U.S. ally.
That's an unsustainable situation.
And there are going to be people who say, well, the way this country was founded, Michael, it was supposed to be a confederation of states.
The states were supposed to have most of the power.
Yeah, maybe.
That hasn't been true in at least 170 years.
We have a system.
And that also, by the way, presumes that it was even true at the beginning.
In any case, we have a federal system where some rights and privileges belong to the local governments, the townships, the county.
Foreign policy belongs to the federal government.
And so the federal government has the right to beat the states back into line if they're taking some of the power that properly belongs to the national government.
That said, I agree.
It's not worth it here.
It's just the policy looks too confusing.
It raises too many eyebrows.
So they've backed off it.
Tempest in a teapot.
Moving on, moving on.
Panicans, once again, discredited.
Plan Trusters, once again, vindicated.
It doesn't end up being a big deal.
But it does show that.
This Israel issue, which used to really only be an issue on the left, the left was at each other's throats over Israel.
The base hated Israel.
The elites liked Israel.
The right was basically in favor of Israel.
That is beginning to fray.
And the reason it's beginning to fray is not just because some kind of fever has overtaken the American right.
The immediate cause of why it's beginning to fray is because Israel has been involved in a very long war beginning on October 7th when Hamas came over and massacred a bunch of Israelis.
But that's been going on now for two years and people have war fatigue.
That's really what's going on.
That's what's driving this, I think.
Now, to show you some of the...
He spent some time with Israeli settlers in the West Bank, reportedly., but then he also prayed at the whaling wall.
Here's what Mike Johnson had to say.
Mike Johnson, the 56th Speaker of the House of Representatives in America.
We're here with a delegation of members of the House.
We're so grateful to be in Israel, particularly on this day, recognizing the destruction of the two temples and two times in history.
But it is such a moving time for us to be here, to be here at the whaling wall.
We've offered our prayers.
We put our notes into the wall, as is traditional.
And we're so moved by the hospitality of the people and the great love of Israel.
Our prayer is that America will always stand with Israel and that we will, we, That's what scripture tells us to do.
It's a matter of faith for us and a commitment that we have.
God bless you.
Okay, so this has raised a lot of questions among some people who I guess have only recently started paying attention to politics because there are a lot of pictures of U.S. politicians, presidential candidates, presidents praying at the wailing wall.
Some people, I've heard people ask this.
They say, hey, what's that wall you have to touch to become president?
Where do I do that?
This is pretty odd.
You're telling me the deal is all I got to do is go to the Middle East, touch a wall, and then I can become president.
It doesn't always quite work out that way.
But a lot of American politicians, presidents, vice presidents, senators go and they touch this wall and they pray.
They put little slips of paper sometimes in the wall.
And some people don't know what the wall is.
The wall, ostensibly, is a ruin, a remnant of a wall that surrounded the old temple, a retaining wall.
Now, some people, some...
It's actually just a ruin from a Roman fort, Fort Antonia.
I'm not really persuaded by that, but I don't know, you know, tastes vary.
It's been a long time.
Opinions change.
And actually, the fact that there is any uncertainty whatsoever about what this wall is shows you how strange it is that the wall has taken on this significance in American politics in recent years.
It's a very important site for Jews, but it's not a traditionally Christian ritual to go pray at the Wailing Wall.
In fact, from right around the year, I don't know, 30 AD, when Christianity begins, you don't really see Christians care that much about this wall.
In fact, our Lord in his ministry says that the temple will be destroyed.
He will raise it again in three days.
And he does because he raises his body, which is the real temple.
And so we can experience God not merely in this temple in Jerusalem, which would go on to be destroyed, but any day that we like in tabernacles all around the world.
However, for Jews, They still have this memory of the temple and the temple goes on to be destroyed in 70 AD by the Romans and there's this desire to build the third temple.
Christians, of course, believe that the third temple has already been raised and the third temple is Christ.
But anyway, that's the view of the Jews.
So why would Christians pray at this wall?
A few reasons.
One, because Christians pray everywhere.
We're told to pray continually everywhere.
So there's no bad place to pray.
But two, because of the evangelical Protestantism, basically.
So it's not, this has never been the sort of thing that.
Catholics have made a habit of doing or Eastern Orthodox or even really high church Anglican.
Sometimes maybe in antiquity and throughout the Middle Ages, people would go visit the wall as a historical curiosity, but they were much more likely to pray at, say, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, which is where Christ was entombed.
Now the tomb is empty.
They would be much more likely to pray at any of the other holy sites in Jerusalem.
So why the wall?
Well, I think it's pretty easily explained.
This ritual has become popular.
You can't even really say in recent centuries.
It's really only become popular since 1967 when the State of Israel retook control of the wall from Jordan.
And so it's in recent decades that people have gone to pray there.
But it gets to something even deeper, I think than sectarian conflict or distinctions between Jews and Christians or whatever.
I think what it gets to is man needs a physical aspect to religion.
And especially in our religion, Christianity, it's an incarnational faith.
So we believe that God becomes a man and dies on a cross in a real place.
and raises from the dead and has a bodily resurrection, a glorified body, and that we will have a bodily resurrection.
And he leaves us a church and we got it.
It's a physical religion.
We have to be able to touch stuff.
And for certain flavors of Chr Protestantism, but certain flavors.
there isn't that physical tangible aspect.
A lot of it, which focuses on theological notions of faith alone, of not having big, big, beautiful cathedrals, of not recognizing even the tomb of the Holy Sepulchre, church of the Holy Sepulchre.
You need a physical aspect.
And so I think the Wailing Wall just provides a kind of novel way to do that, depending on your theological views.
I think this also helps to explain the...
And so if you're not going to recognize, say, the Catholic Church, the Pope, the Church of Rome, if you're not going to recognize, I don't know if you're Anglican, the Archbishop of Canterbury or the King of England, then you need some physical representation.
And the modern nation state of Israel, I guess, is just as good as any other that you might choose from those options.
So I think that's a big part of it.
What it ties into is the fact that we are bodies.
We're not just.
We're not just intellect floating in outer space.
And so we need a physical representation.
And a lot of people, they attribute all sorts of nefarious motives to politicians going and touching the wall.
I think it's pretty straightforward and simple.
Evangelical Protestantism is a very important political force in America, especially on the right, but a little bit on the left too, to win voters in the middle.
And so politicians will go and do the sorts of things that they do.
I don't know.
To me, that's not all that nefarious.
It's not traditionally Christian.
It's not the sort of thing that happened for the first millennium and for, I don't know, first 1800, 1900 years of the history of the church, but.
It's pretty explainable by basic politics.
One can dispute the matters of theology and the reality of that, but I don't know.
It is the sort of thing to be expected.
Now, if Alexei de Tocqueville is right, and if that flavor of Christianity will ultimately decline, and if the two forces that will then rise, as Tocqueville predicts in democracy in America, are Catholicism and atheism, then I think you'll see some of those rituals change.
In the meantime, speaking of traveling to different countries, Billie Eilish is in trouble for saying she likes Ireland.
Why?
Why is that racist?
We'll get to that in one moment.
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Billie Eilish, this horrid racist, had this to say.
As you guys know, I'm Irish, so it's really cool to come somewhere and like everybody looks exactly like you.
Is that racist?
Is that racist to say, you can understand why some people are accusing her of it.
She says, hey, I'm Irish.
I know my name's Eilish, but I'm Irish and I'm American, so I'm not from here, but I come here and it's really cool to be here because everyone looks exactly like me.
And that is kind of cool, right?
Are you allowed to say that?
That's kind of racist, isn't it?
It's kind of racist, but it's also something everyone believes in.
It's kind of fun.
Is it racist?
Well, this will get all of us in trouble.
It's not.
It's racially aware.
It involves race.
It makes claims about race that are not politically correct.
But is it racist?
Is it wrong?
Is it wrong?
Is it immoral?
Is it no?
It's okay to enjoy being around people who resemble you, whether in behavior, whether in education, whether in culture, or even whether in appearance.
Let me put it more simply.
Do you like going to family reunions?
Some of you probably don't like going to family reunions, but I don't know.
I really like my family.
And so we do hold one or two family reunions every year, my extended family, the uncles and the aunts and the cousins and this and that.
And we all go somewhere and we have a great time.
And a lot of us look like each other.
A lot of the cousins look like each other.
And that's fun.
That's kind of cool.
It's cool to have your own little clan.
Your own little clan.
Then the bedrock unit of society is the family.
Then you have the extended family.
It's kind of like a clan.
Then you're not like the, not like with a K clan, you know, not like they're accusing Billy Eilish of here, but just like a clan, you know, like a group of families.
And then you, I don't know, you've spread it out wide enough.
You get to a tribe.
And you spread that out wide enough.
You get to a nation.
And you spread that out wide enough.
You get to a big political community.
Is that wrong to have an affinity for those people?
I don't think it is.
Doesn't mean that other people can't come into that kind of group.
You know, obviously in-laws come into a family.
Immigrants come into a country.
This is ancient.
This is true even for the most coherent tribe probably that's ever existed, the ancient Israelites.
Ruth comes in, she says, your people will be my people.
Your God will be my God.
So we totally recognize that.
But it's okay to have an affinity for people who look like you.
Is it wrong for a You know, who is the guy in the Hitler Olympics?
I actually forget his name.
He's a very famous athlete.
But anyway, when that guy wins, is it wrong for black people to say like, hey, that's cool.
Our guy will.
Hey, that's cool.
Our guy won.
If Joe DiMaggio becomes a really important baseball player, is it okay for Italians to say, hey, he's our guy.
He kind of looks like us.
That's great.
It seems fine to me.
There are two errors in modern life when it comes to race.
One is thinking that race means everything and one is thinking that race means nothing.
It doesn't, it's...
You want that kind of via media, a proper mean between preposterous extremes.
Yes, it's okay to have a sense of community based on all manner of shared traits, including appearance.
But you don't want to make an idol out of these things to the point that you engage in cruelty or immorality.
There's nothing wrong with it.
It's okay if you're an Irish-American to get a kick out of going to Ireland where everybody looks like you.
Now, speaking of race baiting, a new race baiting euphemism has dropped.
I fear a lot of people miss this, but it's come to us by way of CBS News.
This is, where is it?
Yes.
Aquatic segregation.
Are you familiar with aquatic segregation?
Black swimmers teach others amid history of aquatic segregation.
No one in America should have any barrier to connecting to water.
This is a new one.
Now, the stereotype is not new.
The stereotype is that black people don't swim generally.
And this is reflected in statistics.
Black people, unfortunately, are more likely to drown.
Black people often don't swim.
What's the cause of that?
Well, segregation, racism, systemic oppression.
Black people are in cities.
They're not allowed into the YMCA.
I think they're allowed into the YMCA.
They're not allowed into the public pool.
I think they're allowed into the public pool.
They're not, but they can't go to the ocean that if they're along the coastal regions they're not allowed to they can't go into a lake i don't aquatic segregation it's a perfectly fine thing for for black people to go swimming, but not every quirk of the differences between peoples demands an activist slogan.
Not every quirk demands a claim of oppression and victimhood, and not every quirk needs to be a cause.
Italians are not, they're not the tallest people in the world generally.
This is not based on altitudinal oppression or segregation.
Asians are just stereotypically not the greatest drivers in the world.
This is not based on transmissional oppression.
Black people often don't swim.
It's okay.
It's not to say that an Italian can't play basketball.
It's not to say that an Asian can't drive.
It's not to say that a black person cannot swim.
It's okay to acknowledge that there are just quirks and strengths and weaknesses of all sorts of peoples.
And if the headline is Black people want to swim more, can't you phrase it in a positive way?
This gets back to a story we were talking about yesterday.
Jonathan Capehart, who is with the Washington Post, and he's quitting the Washington Post now because he had demands placed on his editorial coverage.
And he was describing this on MSNBC and he said it was outrageous.
They demanded that we writers be patriotic and say positive things about America.
Can't you just phrase this in a positive way?
Can't you just say, hey, Black people are going to learn how to swim?
Hey, Italian people are going to learn how to, I don't know.
Put down the salami, eat a little healthier.
I don't know what it would be.
But can't you say that?
Can't you put it in a positive way?
I have a thesis.
This is highly scientific.
I have a thesis that if everyone in the country just stopped complaining, just stopped complaining for 36 hours, 94% of our problems would go away, our political problems.
If we just stopped complaining.
This is true in your household.
It's true in your office.
It's true women complain more than men.
It's just a scientific fact.
And if we just stopped, it's kind of funny because I'm i'm not complaining i'm being constructive i'm offering advice i'm offering a suggestion here not everything has to be whiny and negative say hey it's good we're gonna learn how to swim that's great isn't that great i think it's great now speaking of transportation speaking of doing something constructive apparently the trump administration is going to construct a nuclear reactor on the moon We'll get to that first though.
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code knolls kno w les for 25 off your first order vandicrisps.com slash knolls code knolls for 25 off your first order Sean Duffy is the transportation secretary.
But in the Trump administration because Trump is a businessman he's an entrepreneur he expects a lot of people everyone is wearing multiple hats Sean Duffy is also the interim NASA administrator and as NASA administrator he has announced that we're going to build a nuclear reactor on the moon that's pretty good stuff you know if things are going very well for the Trump administration right now but this is the sort of thing that I would reserve for if there was some really bad scandal going on,
like if Trump were about to be impeached, if I don't know, if we'd just been invaded by Mongols or some really bad political scandal, that's when I would play the we're going to build a nuclear reactor on the moon card because that's pretty big news.
Sean Duffy says to properly advance this critical technology to be able to support a future lunar economy, high power energy generation on Mars, and to strengthen our national security in space, it is imperative the agency move quickly.
The reactor will be a 100 kilowatt nuclear reactor.
It's supposed to launch by 2030.
And why are we doing this?
I confess something.
This is going to make me sound very stupid.
I, when I read this, I thought, well, wouldn't it be more efficient to build a nuclear reactor on Earth?
Like, you know, if the point is to power our suburbs, why would, isn'tt it going to be kind of complicated to take all that nuclear energy from the moon and then transport it back to Earth?
But I don't know if anyone else had that stupid thought.
It turns out the nuclear energy is supposed to stay on the moon.
And the point of this is to develop a more permanent human presence on the moon.
Half a century after we first went to the moon, now we want to develop a longer presence there.
There are many people who don't think we went to the moon, but for those of you who do accept the evidence that we went to the moon, we've actually already had a nuclear reactor on the moon, a very small nuclear reactor on the moon in 1969 with Apollo 12.
So now they want to build a really big nuclear reactor on the moon because you need a nuclear reactor if you are going to maintain a human presence on the moon for any any longer period of time after say lunar day lunar day is not 24 hours lunar day is 29 and a half days that's when the sun is there and then you go into darkness and then the astronauts will be very very chilly unless we have power unless we have a way to sustain their presence there so why are we doing this because then you're also going to hear from especially libertarians who say,
who cares about going to the moon?
Who cares about going to Mars?
Who cares about all this stuff?
It's a huge waste of money.
We have a massive national debt.
We have people who are stressed out about paying for groceries.
We have a housing crisis in this country.
Why are we wasting money going to the moon?
And I'll tell you why.
I'll tell you why all of this is happening.
I'll tell you why we're building nukes on the moon.
Because if we don't, China's going to do it first.
That is the explicit reasoning of the Trump administration.
The first country to have a reactor on the moon.
could, according to this directive, declare a keep-out zone, which would significantly inhibit the United States.
And there's potential for a joint Chinese and Russian project.
And geopolitics continues despite domestic disputes.
And this gets to.
a lot of the issues.
We complain about not just the deep state, but specifically the deep foreign policy state.
It seems like you elect Republicans, you elect Democrats, the foreign policy remains the same.
And there are certain aspects of foreign policy I'd really like to tweak.
But we shouldn't be surprised that certain foreign policy initiatives just continue on no matter which party gets elected.
Because they kind of have to.
Because no matter how the ideological winds blow in the United States, Nations continue to have concrete interests in the world.
We need certain precious metals.
We need certain minerals.
We need certain natural resources.
We need oil.
We need gas.
We need microchips.
We need, you know, we need things.
And so even if you get a change of political ideology in the country, and all of a sudden we are more positively inclined toward Russia than we were in decades past, Russia still has ballistic missiles pointed at us.
We still have these firm rivalries, adversarial relationships.
And so we just got to do stuff sometimes.
We have to build a nuclear reactor on the moon.
That transcends partisan squabblinging.
A lot of the reason that there's rancor over Ukraine right now or over the state of Israel right now.
Put the domestic squabbles aside.
I'm intimately involved in the domestic squabbles.
I'm all about it.
But part of that is because from a geopolitical perspective, Israel is seen as being on team United States and Iran is seen as being on team Russia and China.
And the U.S. is fighting a war with Russia right now.
And we're fighting a war with Russia through the proxy of Ukraine.
We don't really care that much about Ukraine.
Nobody really seems to care that much about Ukraine.
But we do care about our interests vis-à-vis great power politics in Russia and China.
That's what it's really about.
It's not that people care all that much about Taiwan qua Taiwan, but we care about the resources that Taiwan has and we care about preventing China from expanding and gaining leverage on the geopolitical stage.
We care about control of Africa.
We care if China is getting involved in Africa.
That's one of the reasons why we keep spending a lot of money in Africa.
And I understand that this is very frustrating to a lot of people who say, hold on, what do I care about some far-flung country?
What do I care?
I don't care about the state of Israel.
I don't care about Taiwan.
don't care about any of these things, but that is how imperial politics plays out.
And to a point that I've made that's deeply unpopular, but it's just a fact, we're an empire.
We're not just merely a nation in a Westphalian system where we all get an equal seat at the UN.
We're an empire.
What we do affects everything around the world.
And that's just a fact.
And we can acknowledge that, or we can bury our head in the sand and deny that.
But that's just how it goes.
So we have to wield power given those political realities, which is deeply conservative.
It's not conservative to deny hardline That is a deeply conservative insight.
Okay.
Now speaking of the administration, going back to domestic squabbles, Bobby Kennedy Jr., Secretary of Health and Human Services.
I think I'm just remembering now.
I think he might have been in my dream last night.
That's weird, probably because I was writing my show right before bed.
What was I dreaming about?
Anyway, there's nothing more interesting than listening to someone's dream.
I'll have to remember what that dream was about.
In any case, Bobby Kennedy Jr. has announced.
that they are going to ban thimerosol, this mercury-based compound, in all vaccines.
Hi, I'm happy to report that last week we closed the final chapter in the long history of thimerosol in the United States.
Thimerosol, of course, is a mercury-based vaccine preservative.
Its main component, ethylmercury, is a known and very potent neurotoxin.
Until we withdrew the recommendation last week, flu shots containing thimerosol, astonishingly, were still being administered to millions of Americans, including pregnant women and children.
Now, I've taken a lot of flack from the vaccine industry and from its allies in the press about my decision to ban it.
So I want to talk a little bit about my reasons.
In early 2001, the director of the FDA Office of Vaccine Research and Review, late William Egan, admitted under oath before Congress that thymerosol safety had never been studied in human beings.
Further, CDC has no existing guidelines for safe exposures to acetylmercury.
Okay, so it goes on, but that's the thrust of the announcement is he's going to ban thymerosol.
Bobby Kennedy has been going off about thymerosol in vaccines for decades at this point.
And some people have claimed that thymerosol is linked to autism.
He's not going that far to make the claim here in this video.
He's just saying it's a neurotoxin and I'm getting it out of the vaccines.
The reason I care about this is a little bit because I'm interested in the vaccine issue.
I did a long Michael and with a vaccine skeptic.
You can check that out on the Michael Knows YouTube channel or on Daily Wire.
But mostly, it's because I'm curious about how the Trump administration is going to behave vis-a-vis its campaign promises.
No administration fulfills all its promises.
Most administrations don't fulfill any of their promises.
For goodness sakes, George W. Bush ran in 2000 against nation building.
Okay.
So sometimes things go really, really scree.
Trump has a good record of making good on his promises.
I mean, for goodness sakes, the guy got Roe v.
Wade overruled.
So he's got a pretty good record here.
But this was an issue that was kind of a weather vein.
Is the administration going to stick to its promises or not?
You're going to pick as your health and human services secretary one of the most outspoken, radical.
health reformers, public health reformers in the country, who happens to be from a different political party, who's been canceled even by that political party, who ran for president.
You got, this is a major lightning rod.
And on his biggest lightning rod issue, he's now making good on the promise.
It tells you that this administration is going to be bold.
This administration, the Kennedy versus Big Pharma fight, the Kennedy versus Big Pharma on vaccines fight was always going to be a big tell.
Is this administration going to do what it said it's going to do?
Or is this administration going to make nice with all the usual powers that be and just kind of moderate their message and go along to get along?
And the answer here is clear as day.
They're doing what they said they were going to do.
Regardless of what you think about vaccines.
To me, vaccines are a secondary issue on this.
The fact that Bobby Kennedy is going to stick it to the vaccine industry like this after decades of being maligned after massive campaigns against him, after effectively switching political parties in order to get anything done.
That's a big tell that this administration is not going to be cowed.
Okay.
Now, Kennedy also making another big announcement on public health.
We'll get to that in one second, and then we'll get to the most important issue of the day.
There's a lot coming to Daily Wire Plus, and it's not inclusive, safe, or moderated by NPR.
You will love it.
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My favorite comment yesterday is from John's 363, who says, Sidney Sweeney is a modern day Rosa Parks.
I don't think any further explanation is necessary.
I think we would all agree with that.
So obvious.
Bobby Kennedy, moving on from vaccines.
is not just banning mercury and thimerosol.
He's also banning Mountain Dew.
Snap, we're spending $405 million a day.
on Snap.
And about 10% is going to sugary drinks.
And between, and if you add candies to that, it's about 13-17%.
And we all believe in free choice.
We live in a democracy.
People can make their own choice about what they're going to buy and what they're not going to buy.
If you want to buy a sugary soda, you ought to be able to do that.
But the U.S. taxpayer should not pay for it.
The U.S. taxpayer should not be paying to feed kids, foods, that are going to give them diabetes.
And then my agency ends up through Medicaid and Medicare paying for those injuries.
We're going to put an end to that.
Okay, so he's not banning your Mountain Dew unless you are on Snap, unless you're on food stamps, in which case he is.
And this has been a debate going back years and decades, really, on the right.
Because you can see strong arguments on both sides.
The one argument is...
And so they don't get that.
They have to drink tap water.
And then there's a related argument, which is, yeah, why am I going to have to pay for their healthcare costs if they're going to just stuff their faces with donuts and Mountain Dew and become big fatties?
And why am I going to have to pay for all their healthcare costs later on?
Bobby Kennedy is making that argument a little bit.
Then there's another argument, also a kind of a libertarian argument, which is, well, hold on.
Why is big government coming in this nanny state and deciding what people can use their snap money on?
You know, look, I'm a libertarian, and I don't think that we should have SNAP anyway.
I don't think we should have food stamps anyway.
But as long as we're going to have food stamps, you should let the people pick whatever they want.
We don't need big nanny government coming in and picking out what kind of soda you're allowed to drink.
Let the people decide what they want.
He who governs least governs best.
And I think the stronger argument actually does not come from those libertarian premises.
Any country, any civilized country is going to have some kind of national policy for the poor, for the poor.
the people who really can't afford to eat.
It's better when those policies are a more local level, but there's going to, any country such as ours is going to have a national policy for the poor.
Okay.
Should we be allowing the poor to have soda?
Are we going to pay for their sodas?
Some people are going to argue they don't deserve these kind of luxury goods.
We should just give them bare sustenance, give them cereal and rice.
And then once they can pull themselves up by their bootstraps, then they can buy luxury goods if they want.
That's not really my argument.
I actually don't mind a national welfare policy that allows for poor people to have some luxuries.
some minor luxuries.
I'm not saying, you know, they're not going to buy them a Rolex, but like some, you know, having a nice drink or something like that.
The reason I think this is a good policy, the reason I think it's good that we should not allow food stamps to pay for soda is actually a little bit more esoteric than all this.
It's that soda isn't actually a luxury good.
My argument is not we shouldn't allow these filthy poor people to have what we, you know, fancy elites get to enjoy.
My argument is the fancy elites don't drink soda.
It's not actually a luxury good.
Do you know of all I know actually I know a lot of people who are a lot richer than I am I know a lot I know a lot of rich people and None of them drink soda with one exception some of them drink diet coke because it's a habit they cultivated over the decades and diet coke is very popular because Trump drinks Diet Coke.
But with the exception of Diet Coke, and even largely including Diet Coke, soda is not like a luxurious fancy thing.
They drink seltzer, you know, like fruity seltzers.
They drink, I don't know, Topo Chico.
They drink some like, they drink kombucha.
I don't know.
They drink all these like stupid bougie drinks, but they don't drink soda.
So it's not, it's actually not, because soda is not good for you.
And it does give you all sorts of problems down the line.
So that's my argument.
I think the, the, the, the robust defense of this decision not to pay for soda through food stamps is to say, oh, it's not good for you.
And this has been a big shift in politics.
We talk about it a lot.
It's not just about rights.
It's not just about liberty.
The liberty to have Mountain Dew, the liberty not to have to pay for Mountain Dew, the liberty for, it's, it's about, well, what's good?
This isn't good for you.
And it's not good really for anyone in society.
And so we shouldn't encourage it.
We're not going to ban it necessarily.
We're going to have a nice, we're going to have a nice mean between extremes here.
between miserliness and prodigality.
We're going to have nice mean between total decadence and indulgence of toxic foods and a total abstinence from anything that's kind of sugary.
We're going to have a nice mean, but we're going to recognize it's not really good for people.
No, we should, if anything, if we're going to inject anything back into the SNAP program, have it be some like fruity millennial seltzer or something.
You know, have it be a genuine luxury good.
Okay.
Before we go, I have to get to the most important story of the day.
President Trump finally weighing in on Sidney Sweeney's jeans ad.
Actress Sidney Sweeney, if you're not the sneaker that's shooting a registered Republican, any thoughts on that?
Is that who was?
Sidney Sweeney, she's a very hot actress right now.
She's a registered Republican.
Oh, now I love her ad.
Is that right?
Is Sidney Sweeney?, you'd be surprised at how many people are Republicans.
That's what I wouldn't have known, but I'm glad you told me that.
If Sydney Sweeney is a registered Republican, I think her ad is fantastic.
Okay, thank you very much, everybody.
I love the shamelessness of it, and I love the little wink.
Huh?
What's this thing that you're asking me to give my opinion on?
Huh?
Oh, this thing that I obviously haven't seen.
Hold on.
Hold on.
Tell me just one question.
Is she on my team or the other team?
Is the person in question before?
Sir, they're on your team.
I love it.
It's great art.
It's brilliant.
This commercial is basically Michelangelo.
If you had told me that the artist is on the other team, I would tell you it's absolute garbage and trash.
I love it.
He's kind of smiling.
Some people will say that's a cynical approach.
No, I don't know.
Politics is a team sport.
And we give a little bit more grace to the people on our side.
And we're nicer to the people on our team.
And we should give a little more grace to our families than we would to other people.
And yeah, this all ties in.
It ties into Billie Eilish.
It ties into the Ordo Amoris that the vice president was talking about not so long ago.
Trump then went to Truth Social.
He says, Sidney Sweeney, a registered Republican, is the hottest ad out there.
It's for American Eagle and the jeans are flying off the shelves.
Go get him, Sidney.
On the other side of the...
the ledger jaguar did a stupid and seriously woke advertisement that is a total disaster all caps The CEO just resigned in disgrace and the company is in absolute turmoil.
Who wants to buy a Jaguar after looking at that disgraceful ad?
Shouldn't they have learned a lesson from Bud Light, which went woke and essentially destroyed in a short campaign the company, the market cap destruction has been unprecedented with billions of dollars so foolishly lost.
Or just look at woke singer Taylor Swift.
Ever since I alerted the world as to what this goes, it's like a novel.
Ever since I alerted the world as to what she was by saying on truth that I can't stand her, parentheses, hate, she was booed out of the Super Bowl and became no longer hot.
She's no longer hot.
Nia Lopestad so declareth Mr. Trump.
The tide has seriously turned.
Being woke is for losers.
Being Republican is what you want to be.
Thank you for your attention to this matter.
You can laugh at this.
I mean, it's beautifully written.
The man has poetic diction.
I've said this ever since he settled on Make America Great Again for his hat all the way back 10 years ago.
He has a way with words.
He really does.
And I'm not being facetious in any way.
That's evocative language.
That's good prose.
We can laugh at this.
We say, this is so funny.
This is so weird.
Show me the lie.
Show me the lie.
I know some people are going to say, oh, no, this is going to be bad for Sydney Sweeney because she's a Hollywood starlet and everyone likes her.
And now she's got Trump supporting her.
And that's going to be bad for her.
This is going to be bad for American Eagle.
Nah, man, the stock price jumped again.
So when American Eagle first released the Sydney Sweeney ad, the most effective ad campaign of the last 20 years at least, the stock price jumped 10% and they gained $200 million in market cap.
Yesterday, after Trump's comments on the True Social Post, the American Eagle saw its stock price jump 23.7%.
It was already up on the ad campaign.
Then it jumped 23.7%.
And the stocks rally was the biggest since it rose 26.5% 25 years ago.
Almost to the day, 25 years ago.
When Trump says all these things, I like Sidney and she's hot and being woke is for losers and I destroyed Taylor Swift.
When he says all these things, these are audacious claims.
He's basically right.
Which American Eagle knew.
That's why American Eagle did the ad campaign.
They knew that there would be backlash.
They knew it was provocative.
It's the sort of thing that Sidney Sweeney knew.
That's why, that's one of the reasons why I suspect she did the ad campaign.
That's one of the reasons why I suspect she hasn't been out there promoting Democrats and Planned Parenthood and doing everything else that every other Hollywood starlet does.
Part of it might be her principles, part of it might be what she really believes, part of it might be, but she's also a very savvy operator in Hollywood.
And the cold, calculating reality here is Trump is hot, his enemies are not.
That's how it is, right?
Maybe it won't always be the case.
Right now, it is.
The numbers don't lie.
Okay, speaking of hotness, there's a story I really, really want to get to this is crazy this will be my tease for tomorrow wired magazine has an amazing article called confessions of a recovering ai porn addict a apparent i should have understood this already but porn has come to ai and apparently this has become something of a phenomenon and it is the the tales that this guy tells are horrifying and they tell you so so
much about technology, about liberalism, about who we are.
It's a major warning.
Anyway, we'll get to that tomorrow because today we need to move to funnier matters because it's Tihihi Tuesday.
