Ep. 1885 - Hammer Wielding Trans Leftist ARRESTED Trying To Break Into JD Vance’s House
President Trump brings back 30 to 50 million dollars worth of oil from Venezuela, an infamous porn lady publicizes her re-baptism, and a trans-identifying leftist tries to break into JD Vance's house.
Ep. 1885
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President Trump brings back $30 to $50 million worth of oil as war booty from Venezuela.
And the funniest part of it all is that despite his messaging, this military action actually wasn't really about oil.
We'll get to what it was really about.
Then speaking of booty, an infamous porn lady publicizes an apparent religious conversion and no one knows how to react.
And finally, speaking of weird sex stuff, you're going to be shocked.
Sit down if you're standing up.
Pull over if you're driving.
The person who tried to break into Vice President JD Vance's house with a hammer was exactly the person you expect.
I'm Michael Knowles.
This is The Michael Knowles Show.
Welcome back to the show.
Zorhan Mamdani has been on the job in New York for like five minutes now, and he is already taken big fat L's and just had to make a very embarrassing admission to the public.
We'll get to that momentarily.
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Let's start with the least surprising story of the day.
The guy who tried to break into JD Vance's house, his house in Ohio, not the Naval Observatory.
It would be even harder to break into the Naval Observatory, but JD Vance's home in Ohio.
It's funny, there's so much going on in the news, strikes on Venezuela, massive Somali fraud, all in between, that a guy, a deranged, violent person trying to break into the home of the Vice President of the United States is like the fifth most important story.
That one gets delayed by a day or two.
But anyway, we have to get to it because the guy who did it, allegedly, is a transvestite, reportedly.
Reportedly, allegedly, reportedly, allegedly.
The guy's name is William DeFore, but he apparently goes by the name Julia.
We have his mugshot.
He's very much a guy, but certainly a confused guy.
His parents are reportedly doctors.
His father is reportedly a Harvard graduate.
The guy reportedly grew up in a very affluent neighborhood of Cincinnati, Hyde Park, in a $1.3 million house, and his parents reportedly gave a bunch of money to Democrats.
If you told a room of 100 people, 100 people who are reasonable, who are pretty attached to reality, if you said, hey, close your eyes, a guy tried to smash his way into JD Vance's home with a hammer.
Describe that person.
Every single person in the room would describe exactly what I just read to you.
Probably like kind of a rich kid with like Democrat yuppie parents who probably went to an elite school and he's probably got sexual identity issues and you would be exactly right.
I don't even want to say it.
I don't even want to say it because I have to say it on the show every single day.
But it's so contrary to the spirit and supposed wisdom of the age.
But you know what?
I'm going to say it anyway.
It's always the ones you most expect.
It's always the ones you most expect.
However, on this issue, where we just, we know, hey, violence was committed against a conservative, especially in the wake of the horrific murder of Charlie Kirk.
But even before that, hey, violence was committed against a conservative on campus in the public square, in their home.
You just know it's going to be some deranged leftist, probably from pretty cushy circumstances, who thinks he's the opposite sex.
You just know it because that's just what always happens.
However, now that that has become cliche, now that we just, now even the left seems to expect this, I think we've turned a corner.
The left realizes, the Democrats realize that they lost the last election largely because of the transgender issue, not because everyone's so hung up on sex all the time, but because that is an easy way to recognize that someone has poor judgment.
If someone can't tell the difference between men and women, they probably can't tell much of anything about the world.
They probably have very poor judgment.
And some Democrats are tuning into this, including the frontrunner for the 2028 Democrat presidential nomination, Gavin Newsom, who just yesterday had his press team make an anti-gay joke about a conservative commentator, journalist, broadcaster.
Nasty joke, you know, totally, but it useful in as much as it shows you that even the left is making gay jokes again.
Nature is healing.
We're returning.
And the joke was, it was about Benny Johnson, who's a very nice guy, and he's maligned as being a homosexual.
He's got a beautiful wife, nice family, kids, but he's maligned as being a homosexual.
And it's one thing when it's his enemies on the right that do that.
The fact that it's a Democrat, a Democrat governor who's doing that, it was some joke about how he's on Grindr or something like that.
This is coming from a Gavin Newsom account.
It actually makes me think, one, you know, it's unfortunate, it's very nasty for Benny, but it's actually probably good for the political ecosystem that the frontrunner for the Democrat nomination for president realizes that the LGBT radical sexual revolution issues are so toxic that he's going to start making like early 2000s middle school gay jokes.
You're just waiting for Gavin Newsom in a press conference to just, you know, point at some Republican and go, gay?
You know, you think, wow, man, that's crazy.
You would have been called, you would have accused everyone else of being a phobe or intolerant or this or that for years.
Now that's shifting.
But of course, they're not going to admit it because Gavin Newsom is completely on board with all of the LGBT LMNOP stuff.
Gavin Newsom was officiating so-called gay marriages over 10 years before Obergefell redefined marriage at the federal level.
Gavin Newsom is a radical sexual revolutionary.
Gavin Newsom came out just the other day and said, I want to see more trans kids.
One of the creepiest, groomiest, most psychotic statements I've ever heard out of an American politician.
That statement alone should be disqualifying for president.
But Gavin Newsom's whole political campaign is schizophrenic because on the one hand, he realizes he can't be a woke leftist.
He's got to seem moderate.
He's got to make friends with Charlie Kirk and with Steve Bannon on his podcast.
But on the other hand, he realizes he'll never get the nomination that way.
And I think he's a true progressive.
I think he's a true believer.
He was raised in radical leftist circumstances.
I think this is all public reporting, so I'm not telling tales out of school.
His mother asked him to help her kill herself.
I mean, like, I actually feel pretty bad for Gavin Newsome.
He's got a, he's messed up, man.
That guy is really messed up.
But getting back to the political examination here, what this means is that the Democrats broadly are caught.
They don't, they don't really, they realize that it's a bad look that they are now being defined as a party by a bunch of psycho tranny killers, you know, the subject of basically every horror movie ever, psycho, silence of the lambs, you know, these guys who have weird sexual identity issues.
So they don't want to be defined by that.
They want to seem like the party of normal.
They want to be the party that has a hold of the common sense, which is an important part of any political program, but they're still divorced from reality themselves.
So they don't know what to do.
The way they're going to try to reconcile this is say, well, it's okay to make anti-gay jokes at conservatives or whatever.
It's okay to make jokes, the implication of which is that it's bad to be gay, because really what we're saying is bad is just the hypocrisy.
That's what they'll say.
What's really bad is to not support the LGBT movement.
So we're going to, we'll call you gay or trans or whatever, and that'll be the punchline of our joke.
But really, we're not, it would be fine if you were gay.
You know, not that there's anything wrong with that, like Seinfeld joke.
That would be fine.
The real problem is the hypocrisy.
That's how they're going to try to thread it.
But it's not working.
This remains.
This issue remains a massive liability for the Democrats.
Full stop.
As long as the weird LGBT LMNOP psychos are trying to commit violence against politicians and political figures and even try to break into the home of the vice president.
This is a live issue.
Okay.
Speaking of weird sex stuff, as I mentioned, the news has been so wild.
We're taking over Venezuela.
Maybe we'll take over Greenland that there's a story I've been meaning to get to for days and we just haven't had time to, but I think it's culturally relevant, which is that one of the porn ladies who slept with a thousand guys in one day has just apparently had a religious conversion.
There were two porn ladies who slept with a thousand guys in one day in the last few months, but one of them seems totally unrepentant.
One of them might be repentant, but people don't know how to react to this apparent religious conversion.
We'll get to that momentarily first, though.
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So this gal is Lily Phillips.
I don't know if that's her real name or if that's a stage name, nome de plume, as it were, but she's the one who has apparently had a religious conversion.
The other one who slept with over a thousand guys in a day, Bonnie Blue, does not appear to be terribly repentant.
But the question is, is Lily Phillips' conversion sincere?
And I actually think the broader question, even beyond is her conversion sincere, is how should Christians react to this?
Here's the video that Lily Phillips posted.
This is a day to remember.
It's got that nice Kanye pop gospel song behind it.
And she's in some kind of church, maybe Anglican or Episcopalian or something.
And it's a full immersion baptism in a bathtub, which maybe then it isn't Anglican.
You'd expect a little more formality to the Anglican or Episcopalian baptism.
Maybe it's a, I don't know.
Maybe it's more of an evangelical type church.
I don't know what it is.
We don't really know.
However, she says it's a day to remember.
And then she did an interview about it.
And she says, I think for a while I'd kind of deviated from religion and I think I was kind of in denial for a lot of it.
You think?
I don't mean to make jokes.
Well, I do mean to make jokes, but not to attack this girl.
Because she goes on.
Quite a big thing happened more in my personal life where I kind of felt the need to start speaking to God again.
I hadn't really practiced faith for a while.
I just wanted to get re-baptized to kind of reinstate my relationship with God.
Okay.
So right off the bat here, there's a major problem.
And the problem is you can't get re-baptized.
Baptism happens once.
We actually say this in the creed.
All of the flavors of Christianity, even ones that are a little far-flung from orthodoxy, but any of the flavors of Christianity that at the very least recognize the creed say, I confess one baptism for the forgiveness of sins.
One baptism, not two baptisms.
The reason that you're only baptized once is that baptism is not a personal action of yours.
Baptism is an action of God, the Holy Spirit.
It's the grace of God coming down.
And God doesn't make mistakes.
God doesn't screw up.
God doesn't act insufficiently.
It works.
When God acts on you, when you are baptized, that leaves an indelible mark on your soul.
You don't have to be re-baptized.
And yet I know people who have been re-baptized.
You can't.
It's like gay marriage.
You know, you can't.
The sacrament works.
But we, in our fallen, broken human life, we just feel like, I don't know, we need to do something more sometimes and we get it wrong.
So I get why people do it.
What she's saying is, I felt a calling to God.
And she reacted to that in a way that is silly at best and, you know, like contrary to the religion at worst.
But I think it comes from a good place.
And I know other people who have done it.
She goes on.
She says, there are a lot of Christian girls who are in this industry, pornography.
People might not know it and they might not feel comfortable talking about it because of the judgment.
I totally believe that.
I totally believe that there are a lot of girls who are baptized Christians, who feel a pull toward Christianity, toward God, who work in pornography and all sorts of disreputable fields, whether we're talking about prostitution or whether we're talking about law and finance.
I'm sure there are all sorts of people who feel a tension between the work that they do and religious truth.
However, here's where it gets a little dicey.
And I think this is why some people are attacking Lily Phillips.
She says, I'm definitely not claiming to be a traditional Christian at all.
Obviously, I'm not against gay marriage.
I'm also pro-choice in favor of abortion.
So I definitely don't have necessarily traditional values.
But that doesn't mean to say that I can't be Christian.
Okay.
I would just hope that the Christian community welcomes me because I guess everyone's relationship with God is bespoke to them.
Okay.
I think there are a lot of people who feel this way, at least in the early stages of their conversion.
But we have to clear a few things up.
Christianity does not permit so-called gay marriage.
That is contrary to the Christian faith.
The weird sex stuff broadly is contrary to the Christian faith.
And even beyond questions of religious revelation, just down to basic logic, two opposing things cannot be simultaneously true in the same respect.
That's the law of non-contradiction.
So, no, in as much as you believe these things of the world, you are opposing the Christian faith.
I am pro-abortion.
The church, since the very beginning, has opposed abortion.
You can see proscriptions against abortion in the D-Dache, the very first catechism of the church, all the way back in antiquity, just after the apostolic age.
You can't do it.
You can say that you're Christian, and you can say that you support killing babies, but those things are diametrically opposed.
They're totally in conflict with each other.
She says, so I definitely don't have traditional values.
Okay.
What do we mean traditional values?
Are we talking about the traditions of China?
No.
Are we talking about those?
China has some different values than we do here.
Are we talking about the traditions of Islam, the caliphate?
No.
When we talk about traditional values in the English language, generally speaking, we're talking about the Christian tradition that built our civilization.
So if you say, I'm Christian, but I don't have Christian values, that's confusing.
You see how those things are opposed.
But that doesn't mean I can't be Christian.
That's literally true in the sense that God acts.
God acts in the sacrament.
And St. Peter tells us baptism now saves you.
So it is true that what delineates you, what demarcates you as a Christian is your baptism.
And you can be a baptized Christian and apostasize.
And you would still be baptized.
You would still leave an indelible mark on your soul.
That's why you don't have to be rebaptized.
But you do have free will.
God gives you free will and you can turn away from him.
And to turn away from the faith and to oppose the faith is to oppose him.
Because the faith is what he's telling you to do.
It's the living institution that he gives you with the Holy Spirit that won't leave you.
So you have the free will to turn away.
And I just hope the Christian community welcomes me.
Well, we will welcome you.
I will welcome you at least, but you, not on your terms.
We'll welcome you, but you got to, and we're not going to force you to just do something that is maybe extremely difficult or impossible for you to do.
We're not expecting you to radically transform everything about your life all at once.
But if you want us to welcome you, that means you have to come here to the church, which means you have to give your assent to the church, which means if two things are going to, there are two things here that are not like each other.
And if they're going to join together, one of them has to change.
The thing that's going to change is not going to be the church.
It's going to have to be you, which is true for all of us.
It's true for all of us every time we go into church, every time we go into confession, every time we go to receive the blessed sacrament, every time we go to mass, every time we go into a chapel to pray, we are imperfect, all of us.
And when we go there, we are saying, I want to be transformed by you, Lord.
I don't want you and your holy institution to be transformed into my sin.
Okay.
She says, I guess everyone's relationship with God is bespoke to them.
It's true, but God is the same for everyone.
Everyone's relationship with God is bespoke.
It's not off the rack.
It's not just one size fits all.
You're right about that, but God is the same for everyone because God is objectively real.
He's the real God.
That's why you believe in him in the first place.
And a lot of people want to make false gods for themselves.
Not going to work.
Now, why do I think she's sincere?
She goes on to say, I'm going to take more of a backseat in work and stuff like that just to really prioritize this.
Okay, well, hold on.
By work, she means prostitution.
She means pornography.
I'm going to take more of a back seat than that.
I'm going to deprior.
She's not going to give it up entirely yet, apparently.
Too bad.
But she says, I'm going to deprioritize that to prioritize religion.
Good.
Love that.
Even though I travel so much, I don't necessarily go to church a lot because I'm traveling.
But it doesn't mean I can't pray and I can't practice my religion outside of church.
So I'd definitely be doing that and taking that forward.
Good.
You have an obligation to go to church on Sunday.
You have an obligation to do that, even if you don't want to, even if you're not feeling it.
You have an obligation to at least do that.
You have other obligations too.
But you're right.
You can pray outside of church and you should.
You have to.
And you can live your faith and you must live your faith all of the other days of the week too.
That's true.
I'm glad to see she's taking a step in the right direction.
She says her family's always been religious, but they don't practice that much or anything like that.
We were always quite close to God growing up and stuff like that.
They were delighted that I'm converting.
My family was always religious, but we didn't really go to church.
And they weren't religious.
And they weren't religious.
No, we were always really close to God, were you?
God was always close to you.
God was always close to you.
He was always moving close to you.
He was always calling you.
But were you moving closer to God?
Or were you turning away from God?
When you don't go to church, when you don't practice your faith, when you sanction these kinds of awful things that are so, so harmful to people, you are making a choice to move away from God.
And so I see she's obviously so confused.
She's clearly been scandalized by her family too.
And she's scandalizing herself by her own actions.
What should we do about the Lily Phillips conversion?
Should we make her the Archbishopress of Canterbury right away?
Probably not.
Should we put her on the podcast circuit?
Probably not.
In this case, I would say probably not just yet.
Maybe it's going to take a little while.
Should we say you don't have to change anything about yourself or what you believe to be a real practicing Christian?
No.
No, she's got to change her.
But I think we should encourage her.
This is my message.
Send this.
Whoever knows Lily Phillips out there listening, send this to Lily Phillips.
This is really good stuff.
This is great.
Wonderful.
I love it.
I love to hear that this is happening for you, but you got to keep going.
This is great.
You got to keep going.
I'm happy to help.
The many people who are watching and listening and commenting on this right now would be happy to help.
Your priests and your bishops and all this would be happy to help.
Maybe if they're Anglican, they're not happy.
Maybe they won't help you, but they're good Catholic priests and bishops who would be happy to help.
I don't think this is cynical.
People are accusing her of being cynical.
First of all, even if she is, I would always like to err on the side of credulity when it comes to these matters.
Not to the point of absurdity, but I always want to err on the side of grace when it comes to these things.
But she does not sound cynical to me.
She sounds confused by the twin darkness into which we are born, which is ignorance and sin.
And we're all born into that to some degree, and then we fall further and further into that to varying degrees.
That's what it sounds like is happening.
Keep going.
Keep going, lady.
This is good stuff.
You're in a very, very bad place.
You were, I should say, in a very, bad place.
You have taken a step, apparently, to get out of that place by God's grace.
Keep going.
It's going to be a long way, but God will be with you the whole way.
So keep going.
Keep going.
Okay.
Speaking of Christianity, I have to answer a question that people have.
I have to answer a very, very important question that people have personally of me.
We'll get to that momentarily.
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I'll address it.
Okay.
My set has Christmas decorations up.
Now, for those of you who are in the Chimdilachem, you understand why that is.
Those of you who are daily viewers and listeners to this show, you know why my Christmas decorations are up.
Because Christmas is not just a day of December 25th.
First of all, all these other people, all these other podcasters, broadcasters, they put their Christmas decorations up in early December, late November in some cases.
It's not Christmas.
I don't know why you would put Christmas decorations up when it's not for Thanksgiving, for Advent.
I don't know why you would do that.
Worse, they took them down after the Feast of the Nativity.
Christmas is 12 days long, isn't it?
We don't say on the only day of Christmas my true love gave to me just one thing because Christmas is only one day.
We don't sing that.
We say the 12 days of Christmas.
But yesterday was a very important feast, not just the commemoration of the Capitol insurrection, but it was the Feast of the Epiphany, which is the end of the 12 days of Christmas.
So you say, Michael, why are your Christmas decorations still up?
Let me tell you why.
Because traditionally, even after the octave of Easter, even after technically the liturgical season of Christmas, we in the Christian West keep our decorations up until Candlemas, which is February 2nd.
Okay.
And I hope that you are doing that as well.
My wife, sweet little Lisa, beautiful, saintly, sweet little Lisa, even she wants me to clear off some of my Christmas decorations from one of our tables in the hallway so she can put something else up there.
And even she, so I know the struggle.
Well, you want to take the Christmas decorate.
No.
No.
You have to keep them up until February 2nd.
At least I will.
I want that to become a dogma of the church.
Well, they probably won't listen to me on that.
Speaking of moral and sexual issues, actually, President Trump catching flag from Republicans because Trump, addressing legislators, suggested that Republicans need to go a little soft on an important aspect of abortion, namely prohibiting federal dollars from going to subsidize abortion.
Let the money go in the healthcare account or however you do it.
Let the money go directly to the people.
Now, you have to be a little flexible on Hyde.
You know that.
You got to be a little flexible.
You got to work something.
You got to use ingenuity.
You got to work.
We're all big fans of everything, but you got to be flexible.
You have to have flexibility.
Okay, he says you got to be flexible on Hyde.
What is he talking about?
He's talking about the Hyde Amendment, which for decades has prohibited federal dollars from going to fund abortion.
This is a very, very important issue for the pro-life movement.
And so immediately, pro-lifers say, we're not being flexible at all on that.
No chance that's a line in the sand, which is my reaction too.
However, I want to give Trump a little credit here because Trump says, look, we got to be flexible.
It's tough.
It's this.
It's that.
At a base level, the Hyde Amendment does not actually prevent federal dollars from funding abortion.
It doesn't actually do that.
It's never done that.
The reason why is money is fungible.
So in as much as the federal government is giving money to state agencies that in turn fund abortion, the federal government is giving money to fund abortion.
Even if you say, no, no, no, here, this pile of money that the federal government gave us, this is only going to go to, I don't know, breast cancer exams.
But this pile of money over here on the other side of the room in the state agency, that's the one that's going to go to kill babies.
It doesn't work that way.
Money is fungible.
This is why if the federal government gives any money to Planned Parenthood, they're funding abortion.
Because even if Planned Parenthood says, well, we're only using the federal funds to keep the lights on and to mop the floors.
Well, no, because you're getting federal money for that, you don't need to spend your own money on that, which means you can spend your own money on abortion, which means the federal government's funding abortion.
So I think Trump is right that the Hyde Amendment is a little less clear-cut than some of us wish it were.
Money is fungible.
There's no doubt.
There's another tension here.
The other tension is this.
Republicans want to have it two ways that are in conflict with each other.
Republicans realize, and Trump realizes why he's so exercised about this, healthcare is the only issue that Democrats have on their side.
It's the only big issue that Democrats generally win on over Republicans.
We're winning on the economy, on immigration, on law and order, on foreign policy.
We're winning on everything, which is nice.
It's a refreshing change for Republicans in recent decades.
But the one issue we're still losing on is healthcare.
And we shouldn't be losing on healthcare.
Democrats have ruined healthcare every step of the way.
Every aspect of our modern healthcare system that is bad was given to us by Democrats.
The fact that it's tied to our employers was given to us by FDR.
The fact that it's extremely inefficient and expensive and rife with fraud was given to us by LBJ.
The fact that our choice was taken away and premiums went up was given to us by Barack Obama.
Every step of the way it was Democrats who did this, but it's a problem.
And the Democrats are seen as at least doing something, whereas Republicans are said to not have a healthcare policy.
Inasmuch as Republicans have a healthcare policy, the policy is give people more transparency on prices.
Why is it that you go to the hospital and no one knows what anything costs and you end up paying $55 for an aspirin tablet?
Why is every other store, every other part of the economy, prices are relatively transparent?
Okay, we need more transparency.
We need more accountability.
We need more choice.
We need more choice in how consumers purchase healthcare when it comes to the money.
But Republicans also say we need less choice when it comes to the procedures.
We need more choice when it comes to what insurance companies you can use and even how insurance is regulated and what you're going to buy at the hospital and what you're going to see and what you're going to know.
You need total financial choice, but you should not be able to kill babies through abortion.
You should not be able to change your gender, supposedly, you know, castrate little kids or do any of these other heinous medical procedures that the Democrats insist on.
Now, both of those things are good.
I'm in favor.
I'm not saying this is hypocritical.
I'm not saying that we should give up one of those or the other.
I'm totally for it, but there is a tension there because you have to make that clearer argument that, yes, we want choice in certain areas, but less choice in other areas.
We're not making an idol out of choice, as ideologues do.
We want good things.
And in as much as we are encouraging greater choice, we are doing so only instrumentally so that it will conduce to a substantive good.
And we're making this argument elsewhere too.
We're making this argument even when it comes to immigration.
Previously, we made an idol out of the procedure of legal immigration.
But the real issue with immigration was whether or not you check a box and fill out some forms.
No, that's not true.
The substantive good is, I think, reducing all immigration, but having a functioning immigration regime.
That's the substantive good.
And so the procedure has to be subservient to the good, which means that if we can change the procedures in such a way that this group gets in and this group doesn't get in and reduces these numbers and this and that, wonderful.
But we got to keep our eyes on the prize.
So that applies to healthcare too.
That's what we have to say.
Now, just bringing it right back down to earth on a real nuts and bolts thing, Republicans are not going to give up on the Hyde Amendment.
Imperfect as it is, we'll try to improve it.
We could actually use this to our advantage to try to say, as Republicans reform healthcare, we're going to tighten up even more on how federal dollars are used in service of abortion.
I think that would be a great thing, but it's a complete non-starter.
The pro-life movement, which it's small, but it's mighty.
The pro-life movement won't tolerate that.
So I agree with Trump.
We need ingenuity.
We need to be creative.
We need to see the situation for, I totally agree.
But we're going to have to have ingenuity given that premise.
The Hyde Amendment is going nowhere.
Okay.
Speaking of Trump policies, Trump just secured us 30 to 50 million barrels of oil.
This is feeding the Democrat narrative that this was a war for oil, a very brief war, an 88-minute war for oil.
And some Republicans are making the argument that it was a war for oil.
Funny thing is it actually wasn't a war for oil.
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My favorite comment yesterday is from stray 1239, who says, oh, now hold on.
I want to be clear.
I didn't pick the comment today.
I didn't.
I didn't pick the comment because I don't know, I got distracted.
I was chatting with my friends in the makeup room I was admiring the hairdo they were giving me in the.
I don't know, I didn't pick the comment.
So if it's a bad comment, blame the producers.
Stray 1239 says, mr Shirley, tear down that walls.
All right, it's fine.
I don't know.
I don't know if I was the best comment, but i'll take it.
That's fine, I don't mind.
President Trump posts to truth social.
I'm pleased to announce that the interim authorities in Venezuela will be turning over between 30 and 50 million barrels of high quality sanctioned oil to the United States Of America.
Little history lesson here.
Venezuela stole our oil and oil products and Hugo Chavez comes to power 25, 26 years ago and starts expropriating things and nationalizing things and it's really annoying.
And they owe us a bunch of money.
And this is the reason that in the lead up to the Venezuela strike, Trump grabbed an oil tanker.
He said, they got our oil, we're taking that oil, that's our oil.
So Trump says, i'm getting the oil back.
He says this oil will be sold at its market price and that money will be controlled by me as president of the United States Of America, to ensure it is used to the benefit of the people of Venezuela and the United States, not just the people of Venezuela.
This isn't the ideological Neocon kind of intervention of Bush.
Or we're not going to take the oil in Iraq.
Trump's criticism of the Iraq war was that we didn't take the oil.
This exact criticism.
It's not just that it's all going to Venezuela because they owe us some some of the profit here, but we are going to help benefit the people of Venezuela and the United States.
It's a win-win.
We work together in the Western Hemisphere, says.
I've asked energy secretary Chris Wright to execute this plan immediately.
It will be taken by storage ships and brought directly to unloading docks in the United States.
Thank you for your attention this matter.
Donald J Trump, president of the United States Of America.
It's great.
The irony though, is this was not a war for oil, and some of the evidence of this is, we have wanted regime change in Venezuela for over 25 years.
Since Hugo Chavez came to power.
We've wanted and we have been working toward regime change in Venezuela across party lines.
Don't forget, even though Kamala Harris now is saying that it was illegal to go, go in and arrest Maduro, Kamala Harris's own administration called for this exact policy within the last year.
And actually her Secretary of State, Biden and Kamala Harris's Secretary of State, offered a $25 million reward for anyone who could give information leading to the implementation of the exact policy Trump carried out.
The only difference between the two administrations on this point is that Biden and Harris couldn't do it.
They couldn't do it.
They weren't willing to do it.
They were too cowardly to do it.
And Trump was able to do it.
He had the Cajones to do it, the Guilluns, and he did it very effectively, as effectively as it could possibly be done.
It was just a masterclass, even if you hate the intervention.
It was just a masterclass in foreign intervention.
So why have we wanted regime change in Venezuela for all this time?
Sure, in part, it's that they took some property of ours.
Also, it's because they're socialists.
Also, it's because of the same reason that we've intervened dozens and dozens of times in Latin America during the Cold War and afterward, because our geopolitical adversaries use hostile regimes in Latin America to get a foothold against us.
So kicking out or going in and kicking out Maduro also redounds to kicking out China.
Chinese diplomats were there the day before the strike to go meet with Maduro.
They're still waiting to have the meeting, and Maduro is not going to show up.
They're going to kick out Iran.
They're going to kick out Russia.
They're going to kick out Cuba, which was a, Cuba is probably going to fall because Maduro was taken out of Venezuela.
There's a downstream geopolitical benefit, and this ties in with the material benefit.
And this is the key.
You can't divorce the two.
The resources, the materials, the booty, the plunder, the loot, and the abstract geopolitical chessboard and even the higher ideals.
You can't divorce those two sets of things because when Trump takes that oil from Venezuela, that means that oil is not going to China.
That means that oil is not, well, it's not going to Cuba.
That means that oil is weakening our geopolitical adversaries.
When we get that oil, that means that Iran's position, Russia's position as oil producers diminishes on the world stage.
What's so brilliant, I think, about this play in Venezuela, especially that it seems to have worked, is that it achieves many of the purported goals of the neocons, of the interventionists who want to go in and bomb every country around the world, while throwing away their stupid abstract ideology and while taking away the risks of going to the opposite side of the earth and ignoring the problems closer to home.
It actually marries the interests of the foreign policy realists, the paleocons, the restraint people, and some of the neocons.
It's just prudent.
It's just smart.
But it is very, very funny that Trump, in order to sell this intervention, is appealing to really base material interests, saying, yeah, it is a war for oil.
Yeah, we're getting that oil.
No, he's saying other things too.
But he's appealing to that because that's what many of the American people want to hear after years and years of these abstract ideological regime change wars.
But the funny thing is, there actually are many higher ideals involved in this regime change.
And there is a much more sober, serious geopolitical calculation being taken here beyond just we like the oil that makes our cars go.
Okay, speaking of Venezuela, there's a question on a lot of people's mind last few days, which is after the Venezuela strike, the recently inaugurated mayor of New York, Zorhan Mamdani, came out and he said, hey, I've been briefed on the strike in Venezuela.
I'm monitoring the situation.
Have no fear, Americans.
I, Zorhan Mamdani, am monitoring the situation because I have been briefed on the striking, the strike of Venezuela.
He was just asked that, I said, well, what do you mean you were briefed?
You don't work for the federal government.
You don't have a security clearance.
You don't have anything to do with this.
Your job is to try to make sure that like MTA bus drivers aren't being beheaded by homeless lunatics and you're going to fail at that.
So why?
What did you mean you're being briefed on Venezuela?
Clearance, yes.
And has anyone from a federal agency reached out to you or members of your team to begin the betting to get federal security clearance?
That briefing, yes, was conducted by my team.
And the question of federal security clearance is one that's on call.
So do you have it?
No, not as yet.
It's so embarrassing.
He just, the thing that happened after the Venezuela strike was that every man in America who is in any way interested in politics just refreshed his Twitter like all day long.
Me too.
I'm not above it.
All of us.
We're all refreshing our Twitter.
And our wives would say, what are you doing?
Hey, why are you on your phone?
And say, oh, I'm just, I'm monitoring the situation.
I'm just, I just, I gotta, I gotta, what are we gonna do?
I gotta monitor the situation.
And we were getting information that was as good, if not better, as the mayor of New York.
The only way in which Zorhan Mamdani was briefed on the, was, was like checking Twitter or sorry, having one of his lunatic staff members check Twitter and then tell him about it.
Anybody with a Twitter account was precisely as well briefed.
And then he tries to get out of it too, you know, and he tries to, he says, well, no, and the question of the security clearance is it's an ongoing one.
Excuse me, what kind of jargon is that?
The question of a security clearance, what does that mean?
Do you have it?
No.
And this reminds us of a teaching of our Lord in the Gospels, which is, you know, our Lord tells us very, very practical advice.
It also has divine significance or eternal significance, but it's good practical advice too.
He says, hey, when you go to the banquet, don't sit in the place of honor.
Don't try to get all the honors and accolades for yourself.
Because you know what's going to happen then?
Best case scenario, they let you sit there.
Worst case scenario, maybe more likely scenario, the host is going to come up and say, hey, what are you doing in the place of honor?
Get out of here.
Go back to your own lower level.
And then you're going to be humiliated.
What is better for you to do is when you show up to the banquet, sit in the lower place.
Have a little humility.
Don't try to puff yourself up and make yourself bigger than you are.
Because then what might happen, look, maybe you just stay there.
Maybe, you know, what might happen is the host comes up and says, hey, you know what, you should be in a place of higher honor.
Zoron just showed us a real practical example of that and the political effects, consequences of ignoring that advice.
Yes, don't worry.
Hi, I'm here.
I'm the dog walker from Paluccaville and I've been, I have been briefed on the invasion of Moscow.
I've been briefed on it.
Don't worry.
I'm monitoring the situation.
Who are you?
Is any of that true?
No.
But I did have cable news on, so I was listening to, okay, pretty, pretty sad.
All right.
There's so much more I want to get to.
There's so much more I want to get to.
Tim Walz, completely imploding.
I say I'm going to get to Mamdani's new lesbian fire chief.
I keep missing that.
And migrants on welfare.
There's a lot I want to get to, but I don't have time.
There's too much going on.
And I'm very excited to get to talk about, and this I guess pertains to our Lily Phillips discussion, at least touches on it, whether or not Christians can be feminists.
Sometimes you hear there's a spirit, even among self-styled Christians and, I don't know, pastors and pastorists and influencers.
Is this since that?
You know, we can be real feminists.
Can you?
Can you really?
Well, I'm going to interview Dr. Carrie Gress in this.
It's Wednesday.
It's not theology Thursday.
It's why are feminists pretending to be Christian Wednesday?
I don't know.
I don't know.
The rest of the show continues now.
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Oh, this is an illusion.
An echo of a voice that has died.
and soon that echo will cease they say that merlin is mad They say he was a king in David.
The son of a princess of lost Atlantis.
They say the future and the past are known to him.
That the fire and the wind tell him their secrets.
That the magic of the hillfolk and druids come forth at his easy command.
They say he slew hundreds.
Hundreds, do you hear?
That the world burned and trembled at his wrath.
The Merlin died long before you and I were born.
Merlin Emirus has returned to the land of the living.
Vortigen is gone.
Rome is gone.
The Saxon is here.
Saxon Hengist has assembled the greatest war host ever seen in the island of the mighty.
And before the summer is through, he means to take the throne.
And he will have it.
If we are too busy squabbling amongst ourselves to take up arms against him, here is your hope: a king will arise to hold all Britain in his hand.
A high king who will be the wonder of the world.
You to a future of peace.
There'll be no peace in these lands till we are all dust.
Men of the island of the mighty, you stand together.
You stand as Britons.
You stand as one.
Great darkness is falling upon this land.
These brothers are our only hope to stand against it.