Kristi Noem's departure marks the first cabinet firing of the second Trump term, following her unauthorized $220 million deportation ad that implicated the President. Texas Congressman Brandon Gill joins to discuss the Iran conflict, where U.S. and Israeli forces reportedly targeted the supreme leader and sank 24 ships, aiming for a rapid strategic victory unlike Iraq 2.0. The episode also features a heated exchange with James Tallarico regarding trans issues and concludes with Markwayne Muller taking over DHS professionally, signaling a shift toward administrative stability after the initial turbulence. [Automatically generated summary]
Christy Noam is out at the Department of Homeland Security after a bruising House Oversight Committee grilling focused on sex, money, and occasionally deportations.
Noam's departure is the first cabinet firing of the second Trump term, which has been going extraordinarily well.
Though there is another warning sign on the horizon, all of the information out of Iran thus far points to quick and easy victory.
But one sign appeared yesterday that suggests we might be on the brink of the apocalypse.
We'll get into it.
I'm Michael Knowles.
the Michael Knowles Show.
Welcome back to the show.
Are we about to take Cuba?
President Trump keeps talking about it.
You know, the first time you might say, well, it's a joke.
Second time, maybe it's still a joke.
You know, the thing about jokes is they often have an element of truth to them.
Are we going to take Cuba?
Are we going to get some new blends from Mayflower?
We'll get to all of that in a moment first, though.
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Iran War Progress00:10:22
Go through some of the bigger stories because everything that we are getting out of the military, out of CENTCOM, out of the White House, out of reports from the Middle East, suggests that the Iran war is going quite well.
Day one, obviously, the U.S. and Israeli forces took out the supreme leader of Iran.
Then we keep taking out all of their subsequent leaders.
Very, very impressive.
Then you've got the Kurdish forces coming in.
We're sinking the Iranian military, the Navy.
We'll get to all of it.
We just got our first really, really scary warning sign.
The warning sign came by way of CNBC's Jim Kramer.
Before I pull him up, I want to welcome our guest, Texas Congressman Brandon Gill.
Congressman Gill, thank you for being on the show.
Yeah, thanks for having me.
So I just, I have to get your take on this right off the top.
Here we have Jim Kramer making a very, very scary prediction.
The oil market always seems to know everything.
I've seen it time and time again.
We saw the same story play out today, and it was very good for the stock market.
Dow Jones getting 238 points, S ⁇ P climbing 0.78%.
And it has that 41.29%.
Because oil was at last, thank heavens, chill.
We all read the stories about how the genius Iranians were playing the long game with Barrage just beginning, accelerating each day as we ran out of ammo.
Now it looks like the first big day of drone and missile activity, maybe the last big day of drone and missile activity.
Maybe it's the decapitation of the Iranian military, or we've taken out enough of their hardware.
But there seems to be a lessening of the endless wave of projectiles.
More important, like the start of the war in 1991, the oil stocks were for sale.
And those clients, those of the clients told you maybe everything was going to be, yeah, fine.
Uh-oh.
Sure, the oil stocks could be wrong, right?
But right now, they're saying that the Gulf will be reopened, the U.S. will protect the ships, and the price of crude has seen its peak.
You don't get Exxon, Cono, and Halbert and all down 1 or 2% at the Straits of Vermont will be really closed for a long period of time.
It doesn't work like that.
Brandon, Jim Kramer is saying that the war in Iran is almost over and everything's going to be fine.
Are we on the brink of nuclear war?
Well, you know, the two best stock indexes to look at, if you want trading advice, are the Nancy Pelosi Stock Index and the Inverse Kramer.
Those tend to be the best if you want the biggest and the quickest returns.
But I think he may be right here.
You know, what the president's done, and I think this is where American foreign policy should be, is identify a key strategic geopolitical interest and pursue it aggressively with overwhelming force to create a short conflict that achieves their objective and then get out.
And it seems like that's sort of the direction the president has moved our foreign policy to.
To your point, it looks like things are cleaning themselves up in Venezuela.
Things are looking very, very good in Iran.
And we'll see what happens in Cuba.
You know, this is a president that's returning foreign policy to, I think, what is a classically realist, to its classically realist roots, which is what the American people wanted for so long.
There's some people in the GOP who say this is a betrayal of what Trump campaigned on.
And, you know, they didn't vote for this.
And this isn't America first.
And this is just Bush 2.0.
And I understand why some people have come to that conclusion.
I keep reminding them that Trump campaigned on exactly this.
I think the number is 74 times.
He talked about potentially going to war with Iran over the last 10 years, including quite recently.
And, you know, I keep pointing out this is very much within the national security strategy that President Trump released in November.
And anyway, I think that you would have to be ignoring a lot of what Trump said and campaigned on for 10 years and even the way he governed in order to be really surprised by this.
But for the people who fear that this is, look, another preemptive war predicated in part on the threat of weapons of mass destruction in the Middle East, in a country that starts with IRA.
You know, you got three quarters of the same letters there.
How do you assuage people's fears that this is Iraq 2.0?
Well, I think first of all, you know, you're right.
The president has been consistent on this.
He's been very clear that Iran having nuclear weapons, for instance, is not tolerable for the U.S.
We took out their nuclear program.
We know that they didn't change their policy of wanting to pursue a nuclear program, which is part of the reason for the current conflict.
But secondly, the United States has a real geopolitical interest in regional stability in the Middle East.
You know, whenever the United States is the world's preeminent superpower, we do have an interest in regional stability across the globe.
And what we found and what we know is that Iran has been arming ballistic missiles incredibly rapidly, far outpacing the ability for some of our allies in the region to take those out.
And that difference in force got to a point that we believed was intolerable.
So the president came in with our allies, struck Iran, did it rapidly.
And I think that we're going to get out quickly.
You know, Iran has a very different history than Iraq and Afghanistan.
You know, Iraq and Afghanistan are countries that were completely backwards.
They may have similar names, as you pointed out, but they have very different histories.
Iran has a much bigger, much longer history that is a bit more westernized, you might say, than Afghanistan, for instance, which is incredibly tribal, has no history whatsoever of self-government.
The planet is probably more westernized than Afghanistan.
I totally agree with your point.
You can't just lump all of the countries in the Middle East together.
And so it's different and even to the point that the Iranian regime appears to be trying to negotiate.
President Trump had this to say yesterday.
We're destroying more of Haran's missiles and drone capability every single hour, knocking them out like nobody thought was possible.
As soon as they set off a missile within four minutes, the launcher gets hit.
They don't know what's happening.
But we have the greatest military anywhere in the world.
Their navy is gone.
24 ships in three days.
That's a lot of ships.
Anti-aircraft weapons are gone.
So they have no Air Force.
They have no air defense.
All of their airplanes are gone.
Their communications are gone.
Missiles are gone.
Launches are gone.
About 60% and 64%, respectively.
Other than that, they're doing quite well.
I said, what's left?
But they're tough, and they want to fight.
And they're calling.
They're saying, how do we make a deal?
I said, you're being a little bit late.
And we want to fight now more than they do.
So two possibilities here.
I love to, you just can't stop throwing shade, even as he's talking about sinking the Iranian military.
So there are two possibilities.
One is you come from without, you install the Shah, say, you know, the crown prince Reza Pallavi or some other kind of totally new regime in Iran.
Or there's the Venezuela model, which is you kill the Ayatollah, maybe you kill a couple of Ayatollahs beneath him.
But then when the Iranians keep calling to negotiate, eventually you take the call and say, okay, look, we're going to leave some version of this regime in place.
The IRGC, maybe some Islamic guy, but you're going to work with us.
And if you don't work with us, we're going to kill you, just like we threatened to Del Codriguez in Venezuela.
Do you have a sense of which of those two is the most likely outcome here?
You know, it's tough to say right now because it's so early in the process.
There's a lot, a lot of things that have to play out politically, both in Iran and militarily with this conflict.
But what I will say is, going back to your original point, is that Iran does have a recent history of democratic movements.
You have a large population there that has been pushing for democratic self-governance and are ready for it, are ready to start voting in real elections.
And most of them are fairly pro-Western.
I mean, they're pro-American.
And these are people who I think would have a much higher likelihood of being allies with the United States.
So we'll see where that goes.
It's still really early.
But I think the point is that you have a president who's going to pursue key American strategic interests in the recent region.
And it isn't going to turn this into a UN white paper exercise that we're playing for real now.
Yeah, yeah, I agree.
And even on his timeline, you're looking at four or five weeks.
So at day seven, to say this is exactly how everything's going to play out.
Not only would that be irresponsible, but I think it also just would undercut the entire messaging of the administration.
You know, Venezuela can occur over the course of 88 minutes.
Iran is a different country from Venezuela.
And so when people are freaking out over this, this message that Trump was signaling, not just for months, but really for years, for the better part of a decade, I just think, guys, he told you it was going to be five weeks.
I'm going to start panicking at week six or seven.
It's not going to be day six or seven.
So far, Trump is achieving his objectives, including his grand strategic objectives, namely to consolidate the allegiance of the Gulf states and Israel against Iran, which is something he was trying to set up in the first term.
Trump here, to give a little hint, I think, of his idea for the next phase of the Iranian regime, he does point out that he's not going to exactly disband the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps.
And I'm once again calling on all members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, the military, and the police to lay down their arms.
They're only going to be killed.
And now is the time to stand up for the Iranian people and help take back your country.
You're going to have a chance after all these years to take back your country.
Accept immunity.
Call For Peace00:07:36
We'll give you immunity.
And we'll be giving you really the right side of history because that's what it is.
So you'll be perfectly safe with total immunity or you'll face absolutely guaranteed death.
And I don't want to see that.
They don't want to see it either.
We also urge Iranian diplomats around the world to request asylum and to help us shape a new and better Iran.
So even the way he's speaking here, you know, look, we're going to be, we'll give you immunity.
We'll just lay down your weapons right now.
You're in the IRGC.
You're a police.
You're a member of the police.
Just lay down your weapons.
Don't worry.
We'll work it out.
Clearly, Trump learned the lesson that came from debathification in Iraq.
So anyway, I still feel kind of good about this.
Before I let you go, Brandon, I have to get your thoughts on the newest hot Democrat star out of your very own state of Texas.
That would, of course, be James Tallarico, the self-appointed Pope of liberal pseudo-Christianity, maybe soon to be one of your colleagues on Capitol Hill.
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Brandon, James Tallarico.
I can't look away.
It's like a car accident.
And I know I shouldn't play all these clips right now.
I know we should hold them until closer to the election.
Here is James Tallarico.
We've already covered.
He says God is non-binary.
James Tallarico, he says that women need to become men in order to go to heaven.
They need to go trans to go to heaven.
He was quoting the heretical Gnostic gospel of St. Thomas.
Well, here's one.
James Tallarico explaining why we need to get rid of all prisons.
Poverty is violence.
Pollution is violence.
And yes, prison is violence.
Dismantle this system of violence.
Build something new, something better, something rooted in love.
It's hard to imagine a world without prisons, but it was also hard to imagine a world without telegrams and cassette tapes.
Just because it's hard to imagine doesn't mean you shouldn't.
It's, you know, I mean, when you think about it, man.
Hey, hold on.
Poverty is violence.
Lamps are violence.
Microphones are violence.
You know, man.
And it's hard.
I know, but look, prisons, we say it's to put the criminals away.
But imagine all the people living for today.
You.
This guy.
One, I'm being told by all the political geniuses that he's a really, really good candidate.
And I think the only reason they say that is because he's a relatively hygienic white guy.
I actually think that's all they mean by it.
I don't really get the take that he's a great candidate.
They said this about Beto O'Rourke, another white-lib Texan.
They say about all these guys.
And I don't know.
To me, he seems like a bad candidate.
Am I wrong?
No, of course not.
You know, my favorite part about this is that we were all Republicans were worried about Jasmine Crockett.
We were talking about how crazy she was.
And we just kind of ignored Tallarico.
And then the second he gets the nomination and beats Jasmine Crockett, we just unleash this deluge of opposition on him.
You know, he's got a more extensive track record of saying, you know, every idiotic left-wing woke aphorism that was popular in the 20 or early 2020s than probably anybody on the Democrat side.
You know, talking about how, you know, transgenders need abortions.
As you said, God is non-binary.
I mean, this stuff is so far out there.
But, you know, there was a time whenever this stuff was popular on the left, whenever every leftist who was trying to work their way up in academia or in the media or in the storied, respectable left-wing institutions would regurgitate this kind of nonsense.
And the left embraced it.
And now, you know, post-2024, post-the last election cycle, and the American people are just so sick of this kind of nonsense.
They're trying to move away from it.
But we've got so much material on this.
You know, anybody who says this stuff, even whether it's popular, whether it's not, you know, obviously has no business being in any elected office, much less the U.S. Senate.
So, you know, the Democrats talk about they're going to flip Texas blue every single cycle.
They've got some new, you know, pseudo up and coming, up-and-coming rising star that they crown.
And then the American people realize who this up and comer are and reject them handily.
I've been saying now for at least a couple of days since this deluge of Oppo came out.
I said, guys, hold on.
We got to hold some clips for November.
However, seriously, there is a reason to drop a lot of these clips now.
Namely, you want to signal to the Democrats that this guy is not a good bet because you don't want this guy to be able to raise a lot of money.
Because if he raises a lot of money, we can still probably beat him, but then we're going to have to raise a lot of money.
And so there actually is a strategic tactical reason to get some of these clips out there now, but it seems like there's no end to them.
I mean, in a way, I think we could maybe release a new one every single day until the election, maybe until the 2028 presidential election, and we'd still probably be okay.
You're right.
You said it very, very well.
This guy embraced every single woke idiom, turn of phrase, ideological objective for years.
And now he's going to try to run away from that.
The other guy who did that, who's really making an overt effort to reshape his image, is Buttigeg.
Some people have called, you don't need to react to this.
Pete Buttigieg's Political Strategy00:02:45
I know you're in elected office.
You don't need to react to this.
Some have called James Tallarico the gay Pete Buttigeg.
Now, I would never say anything so offensive, but some have said that on the internet.
Pete Buttigeg was this guy.
He was the clean-cut, white guy who, you know, he just talks in a kind of a moderate way.
And, you know, he wears a sensible Oxford button-down shirt.
And he just, you know, wants us all to get together, folks, don't you think?
But he would embrace beneath that facade the most radical aspects of wokeness and liberalism.
And now that that's out of favor, you get the Atlantic.
Pete Buttigieg in the wilderness.
He has a beard, a splitting mall, and a house in Michigan.
Is that enough to convince America that he's a man of the people?
And it's Pete doing his best, white-knuckling his way through sitting at a diner, probably the first time the guy's ever walked into a diner in his life.
One, can he do it?
Can Budigeg have a second act, a third act?
And then also, I know I keep saying before I let you go, before I let you go, I do truly, before I let you go, I have to get your take on Christy Noam being booted from DHS.
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Okay, Brandon, real quick, Pete Buttigieg, is there any shot at a new act or are the Buttigedges and the Tallericos and the Beidos headed for the dustbin of history?
They're done.
America Craves Authenticity00:13:43
You know, the American people are begging, they're begging for authenticity, for people who actually are who they say they are, you know, in front of a camera and behind closed doors.
Whenever you have these guys who, you know, change drastically, do 180 degrees in the course of four years.
I mean, everybody can see through that.
And I think that it reveals sort of a darker reality about whether it's Buttigieg or Tallarico.
I mean, Tallarico is somebody who, you know, you can think of it on a more serious note.
If Beelzebub was a politician, he would talk about politics and about Christ and about abortion the same way Tallarico does.
I mean, these people are people who adhere to truly evil satanic ideologies.
I mean, this is somebody who talked about the Annunciation as evidence that God is pro-abortion.
I mean, this is unbelievably dark.
So, no, I think the American people can see through this stuff and they just want somebody who, again, who is who they say that they are, who isn't going to totally transform and grow a beard or become an entirely new person over the course of just two to four years.
You know, Steve Toth, who another Texan who just upended the race for Crenshaw's seat, and he'll almost certainly be a colleague of yours in the House.
He came out the other day.
He said, this guy, Tallarico, is like demonic.
He's evil.
And I'm always pulling back from these kind of hyperbolic statements.
Here, I don't think it's hyperbole because what he's doing is he's twisting the very gospel.
I mean, he's running basically as a Christian minister, but he's perverting all of these teachings in the exact opposite way from traditional Christian teaching and from what Christ said.
I mean, to use the gospel to justify killing babies and mutilating children.
I mean, this is it's satanic stuff.
There's no other way to put it.
Reminds me, there's that quote from St. Andrews Wooters, St. Andrew Wooters, who said, a fornicator I always was, but a heretic never.
You know, in a way, what this guy is doing is much, much worse than all the sins of the flesh that usually go with politics.
Okay, last question, because I know you actually have a job, a day job.
Christy Noam out at DHS.
Surprised, not surprised, good, bad, to be expected.
Well, you know, everybody knew it was going to come at some point.
We just didn't know when.
What I will say is that Mark Wayne Mullen's going to do a phenomenal job there as head of DHS.
He's hard on illegal immigration.
He's going to run it professionally.
You know, we need somebody who's running the agency in a professional.
I mean, this is a law enforcement operations.
You can see what's been going on in Minneapolis, how well things have been going since Tom Homan cleaned it up.
So I think we need somebody in there who's going to treat it like a law enforcement operation and organization.
I think Mark Wayne Mullen will do a phenomenal job of that.
I certainly agree.
Well, one, yeah, I agree.
Mark Wayne Mullen, you know, probably a good pick.
It was a very quick pick.
So I didn't even have time to play the guessing game.
You know, I mean, it came out very, very quickly.
However, I agree a lot of people, it was a matter of days, I think.
A lot of people were waiting.
It did seem like the first cabinet firing was probably going to be DHS.
Okay, before I get into all the saucy, scintillating details that preceded Christy Noam's firing during the House Oversight Committee hearing, I'm going to let the elected official off the line so that you are not subjected to all of those tawdry details.
Brandon, thank you very much for coming on.
Everybody, by the way, go follow the excellent work that Congressman Brandon Gill is doing.
Very few people do excellent work on Capitol Hill.
So go follow Brandon.
Good to see you, sir.
Thanks, Michael.
I appreciate that.
Okay.
Now we'll get into the saucy details.
Not that I'm, not for gossip or whatever, but this is actually important context from hours before Christy Noam was fired at DHS.
You had this grilling on Capitol Hill, which there were two big moments, I would say, in the hearing.
Lots of little clips going around, but two really big moments.
One is when a Democrat congresslady accuses Christy Noam of a sex scandal.
So, Secretary Noam, at any time during your tenure as director of Department of Homeland Security, have you had sexual relations with Corey Lewandowski?
Mr. Chairman, I am shocked that we're going down and peddling tabloid garbage in this committee today.
Reclaiming Noah.
And ma'am, one thing that I would tell you is that he is a special government employee who works for the White House.
There are thousands of them in the federal government.
So reclaiming is an advisory.
It is okay to be no authority by the question anymore.
It is okay for you to have no authority to make it a question.
But it is also a failed question.
So what I would say is that.
And you should be able to answer what we do at the Department of Homeland Security.
Clearly, every single day.
Every single day is to protect yourself.
If someone is asked to make decisions, you or any federal official is sleeping with their subordinate.
That's the easiest.
You should be wanting to answer that question.
Because it is not about your sex that you have brought up.
It is about your job.
That kind of garbage.
It is about reclaiming my time so that I can hear myself along.
Okay, not a good start.
Now, what the Republicans will say is that Christy Noam did not want to dignify that question, which is certainly a tabloid, scintillating question.
She didn't want to dignify it with a response.
And there's a good bit of reasoning there.
What the Democrats will say is she didn't want to answer it because she was under oath and she would have to tell the truth.
And I don't really care to know the truth of that situation.
It could very well be the case that all those rumors are nonsense and she doesn't want to dignify this with a response.
Regardless, not a good look.
However, this is not why Christy Noam, I think, lost the job at DHS.
The bigger issue that came up was that Christy Noam ran a $220 million campaign ad to promote the deportations, to promote border security.
And it's not even the ad itself.
It's the context around the making of the ad.
So in case you missed it, this is the $220 million ad.
Why do I love these wide open spaces?
They remind me of why our forefathers came here, not just for its beauty, but for the freedom only America provides.
I'm Christy Noam.
From the cowboys who tamed the West to the Titans who built our cities, to the dreamers who chased the impossible, America has always rewarded vision and grit.
Our greatness calls people to us for a chance to prosper, to live how they choose, to become part of something special.
Anyone who searches for freedom can always find a home here.
But that freedom's a precious thing, and we defend it vigorously.
You cross the border illegally, we'll find you.
Break our laws, we'll punish you.
Harm American citizens, there will be consequences.
But if you come here the right way, your American dream can be as big as these endless guys.
From President Trump and me, welcome home.
Okay, so some people objected because it's a little glitzy and glamorous, and it's Christy Noam in a big cowboy hat riding a horse.
And they said, why did you spend $220 million on this?
Now, obviously, they didn't spend $220 million on the ad.
You could make the Titanic.
You know, you could make Avatar for something like that amount of money.
But it's because of how the money was spent.
One, there were questions raised about which companies the money went to to promote the marketing and advertising campaign.
And, you know, those questions always attend to political spending.
But then I think what really got her was she said that she had the approval of Trump to spend that money on the ad.
And Trump said he did not give approval for it.
And I think that's what really brought it home.
I'm just reading the tea leaves.
I'm not getting this directly from the White House, but I think the fact that she was implicating him in it, she was trying to drag him into some of these scandals, I think he said enough.
We've had enough.
Everyone's going to be piling on Christy Noam today.
The one thing I think people should keep in mind in Christy Noam's defense, this was always going to be the hottest, hardest job in the cabinet.
Trump runs on mass deportations.
Democrats rely on mass migration for their entire political strategy.
This was always going to be the flashpoint of the second term.
And whoever was in the DHS position, I think, was always going to be under the gun and very likely was going to be the first one out.
The fact that Christine may have made some missteps along the way adds to it.
Structurally, though, I think DHS, that was always going to be the hot seat.
So now, as Brandon mentioned when he was on the show, Mark Wayne Mullen from Oklahoma, Democrat senator, or sorry, not Democrat senator, Republican senator, is going to take over DHS.
He's only been in the Senate for a couple of years.
He took office in 2023.
It's okay, three years now.
He was in the House for 10 years.
Nevertheless, that's a short little stopover in the Senate before you go back up to the White House.
We'll see how it works out.
Everyone seems to be pretty gung-ho about this.
And obviously, for most Trump voters, and I'll include myself in that, the deportations are right there at the top of the list.
It just has to happen.
We got something like 525,000 formal deportations the first year with an estimated million to a million and a half self-deportations, people who were being processed, who just decided to leave before the process could play out, which is all good too.
As long as the people leave the country, I'm happy.
However, we have, what, 20 million illegal aliens in this country, maybe more.
The numbers have to be higher.
And so we need someone to take over who can get it done.
So much more to talk about.
President Trump floating, putting crews on the Supreme Court.
America maybe taking over Cuba.
Can we at least get to before, I know we got to get to the mailbag, but before that, can we at least get to this comment President Trump just made about Cuba?
The Cuban government is talking with us.
They're in a big scale of trouble, as you know.
They have no money.
They have no anything right now.
But they're talking with us.
And maybe we'll have a friendly takeover of Cuba.
We could very well end up having a friendly takeover of Cuba.
So this was the line.
He made this joke a few days ago.
Look, maybe we'll have a friendly takeover of Cuba.
Then yesterday he brings up Cuba again.
All of a sudden, you see, where's Marco?
He's not around anymore.
I don't see him.
He's doing some job.
And your next one is going to be, we want to do that special.
Cuba, he's waiting, but he says, let's get this one finished first.
We could do them all at the same time, but bad things happen.
If you watch countries over the years, you do them all too fast.
Bad things happen.
We're not going to let anything bad happen to this country.
He says, look, look, look, we're not going to do it right away.
But maybe Marco is going to head on down.
Marco, who's wanted to topple the communist regime in Cuba for his entire life, are we going to do it?
I think Trump is serious about taking Cuba.
I think it makes sense to take Cuba.
I will remind you that this is something that basically everybody agreed on until recently.
Trump's most vocal critic who was on the right, now he's on the left, Bill Kristol.
Bill Kristol, who worked in a Republican White House and was a major thought leader on the right, and then he became a Biden guy and a Kamala guy.
But even Bill Kristol, who hates Donald Trump with the fire of a thousand sons, even he said some years ago, we should take Cuba.
We have already taken Cuba on multiple occasions.
We've controlled Cuba three or four times over the last hundred years.
This is not that weird.
It's 90 miles off the coast of Florida.
The regime is starving right now.
They don't have oil.
They don't have leadership.
Basically, nobody can even name the president of Cuba.
I can because I am particularly interested in the tobacco industry.
And also, it's a nice place, Cuba.
But can you name the leader of Cuba?
No, we remember the Castros.
Then Fidel Castro was out.
His brother Raul took over.
The Castros are dead.
No one remembers.
The place is on the brink of collapse after Trump took Venezuela.
Cuba was really on the brink of collapse.
So, no.
But there does seem to be a method for this.
And after Iran, maybe check in five or six weeks.
Maybe Cuba's next.
Not so bad.
Okay.
Folks, we're very grateful for you because we could not do anything that we do at Daily Wire without your support, especially, I mean, the Hoi Paloy a little bit too, the public viewers, but also especially the Daily Wire Plus members.
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Why God's Existence Matters00:04:56
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My favorite comment yesterday is from the Drummers Workshop, Norms Music, says, you could say the entire country of Iran has cleric tile dysfunction.
Remember, because the CIA said that the Ayatollah's son was impotent, had ED or leaked those medical files.
So you could say the whole country has cleric tile dysfunction.
I'm a sucker for a good pun.
Our mailbag is sponsored by PureTalk.
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Take it away.
Hi, Michael.
I have a question for you about divine hiddenness.
And I'm curious whether you think it's possible for someone to permanently remain in a state of non-resistant non-belief.
Because I hear a lot that people say they'll believe in God if God makes himself known in a way they can understand, but he hasn't done that.
And so they have no reason to believe.
And I wonder if you think that that's strictly a result of pride or if God could ever have a good reason for at least temporarily remaining hidden from some people.
I'm curious to hear your thoughts.
You were very instrumental in my conversion to the Catholic faith, and my baptism is this Easter.
And so I thank you for that.
And I hope one day we can share a piece of toast in heaven, as Andrew Cleveland says.
Thanks.
Oh, that's a great question.
Glad to hear that about your life.
So it's about divine hiddenness.
Why would God hide himself?
Is there a good reason for God to hide himself?
Where does this phrase come from?
It's kind of a modern theological term, but it comes from the Bible.
Oh, God, you truly are a hidden God.
I think Isaiah, maybe?
I don't know.
I don't know.
Anyway, it's from scripture.
And God does hide himself in some ways.
However, this should not be taken to an extreme.
This should not be taken to mean, for instance, that we cannot know whether or not God exists.
This is a crucial fact.
We can know with certainty that God exists.
A lot of modern religion insists that faith and reason are opposed to each other.
Your mileage may vary depending on your preferred flavor of Christianity, but that is not the tradition of the church.
The tradition of the church tells us that we can know with certainty that God exists using human reason.
Now, there is so much more about God that we cannot know without revelation.
So, you know, it's a consequential thing.
It's a crucial thing, but it's not anything close to the whole story that we can know that God exists.
Then we have to go further.
Who is Christ?
Who is the Father?
Well, whoever has seen the Son has seen the Father.
How do we come to know Christ?
How do we come to know God?
What does he want for us?
What does he do?
What is his meaning in history?
All of these questions come through revelation and ultimately come to us from divine grace.
But we can know that God exists through human reason.
And of course, our Lord sends out the Great Commission and says, go make disciples of all nations.
So, you know, there really aren't very many people on planet earth who have never in any way heard about the gospel.
That might have been true 2,000 years ago.
It isn't true today.
For the people today who say, look, I really want to believe.
So many people say, I'm a cultural Christian.
I really want to believe, but I just can't.
Say, well, you could if you wanted to.
I mean, let's just begin from reason.
We can know that God exists.
If we can know that God, and there's much more to say about this, but suffice it to say, there are many ways to know through reason that God exists.
If that is the case, then you need to grapple with what that means for you.
How God has revealed himself, if he has, whether Christ is who he says he is, whether the church is what she says she is.
You have to grapple with that, but you can't just blame God and say, well, but he just hasn't made himself manifest to me.
Yes, he did.
He took on flesh and dwelt among us.
What do you mean he hasn't made himself manifest to you?
He created a visible church that has endured since antiquity.
You can't, you can't say, you might want to blame, because I think a lot of people say that because they either want to excuse their own sin and vice or because their intellects have been darkened by sin and vice.
Cooperating with God's Grace00:05:43
And obviously we're born into the twin ignorance of ignorance and sin, or because they just, they don't want to think too deeply about it because it's kind of scary.
Don't blame God for that.
That's kind of on you.
Okay.
Next question.
Hey, Michael, longtime listener, first time caller.
I'm curious about what kind of cigars that you might recommend that are similar to the Mayflower Dawn.
I'm a big fan and would love to hear some suggestions for something I can try next.
Thanks.
Have a good one.
Great question.
I would recommend the Mayflower Dusk or the Mayflower Dream for that matter, or the Mayflower Compact, which is the small format, Petite Corona format of the Mayflower Dawn.
Now, I know what you're saying.
You're saying, look, those three cigars have different flavor profiles because they have different wrappers and binders and some different blend of filler.
However, it kind of depends on what you mean by similarity.
There's a deep discussion of signs and symbols and semiotics to be had here because things are similar in different respects.
The Mayflower Dawn, Dusk, and Dream are similar in the respect that they're all Mayflower and they're all cigars.
However, you could say that the Mayflower Dawn and the, I don't know, Perdomo, Connecticut and the Oliva, Connecticut are similar in that they use Connecticut shade wrapper.
We're all, there are different ways of similarity, different types.
Like, for instance, Ben Shapiro, Matt Walsh, Andrew Clavin, and I are all similar in that we're all commentators for the Daily Wire.
Rachel Maddow and I are also similar.
Rachel Maddow is similar to those guys in that she's a political commentator, but she's similar to me in that we look the same.
And now, you could say that Mike Johnson and your Uncle Billy and I are all similar, even though we don't necessarily look similar or have similar jobs because we're all conservatives.
Anyway, it's a lengthy way of saying there are different types of similarity.
And what you're searching for here, I think, is buying more Mayflower cigars.
Before we get into the membrane segmentum, I want to get to at least one written mailbag.
This is from Keely.
Hi, Mr. Knowles.
I recently watched your episode of Michael and the Seer, Blake Healy.
I found it almost compelling.
Almost compelling.
Okay.
I expressed to my boyfriend that he might want to check out the video as he is doing his own spiritual study.
When he found out the potential seer was Protestant, he became dismissive, saying that you must be in a state of grace to experience the divine.
I largely agree with his reasoning, but also know that God does not does what he wants, not what we understand.
Am I being unfair or too womanly?
How do I respect his authority while also feeling free to explore my faith intellectually with him?
I will not be leaving the Catholic Church.
I'm convinced of its truth and sovereignty.
I would like to do this with him as he's the smartest, most impressive person I know, and also write about almost everything.
Thank you for your dedication and time.
Okay, so your boyfriend is Catholic, right?
I assume?
Anyway, let's just get to Blake Healy because I did this very interesting interview with him.
And some people believed that he really could see spiritual things and other people did not.
I don't weigh in on this definitively one way or the other.
He felt credible to me, but I'm not making some Nihil Obestad, you know, formal declaration of that one way or the other.
The one thing I can say definitively, though, is your boyfriend is wrong in that the charisms or gratuitous graces that God gives, such as reading souls or seeing otherwise hidden spiritual things, that does not depend upon the sanctity of the person to whom he gives the charism.
That is not a Catholic teaching.
That's not it.
It is important to be in a state of grace.
It's important to avail yourself of the sacraments, especially confession.
All of that is true.
But that would be for kind of ordinary graces.
These gratuitous graces, these special charisms that God gives, he gives to all sorts of people and he kind of gives them as he chooses.
And usually we can't totally understand that.
So that's not true.
I mean, to take it even one step further, you know, Protestants can engage in rites of deliverance, you know, to cast out demons and things like that.
Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.
We were talking to Father Rehill, the Nashville exorcist on the show some time ago, and he pointed out he sometimes gets referrals from Protestant pastors who have tried deliverance rituals and hasn't totally worked.
But sometimes it works.
And so, yeah, you can't really limit God in that way.
And you also have to recognize that, You know, God's gifts and God's graces do not hinge upon the sanctity of the people to whom he gives them.
We do have to cooperate with God's grace, and the world makes a lot more sense when we do that and when we're in a state of grace, but God is not to be limited by those sorts of categories.
This is also why this is another big part of Catholic teaching.
The efficacy of the sacraments does not depend upon the sanctity of the priest who administers them.
So this was an ancient heresy that had to be decided in antiquity.
But no, you can have the worst sinner priest ever, and the priest baptizes you.
The baptism is legit.
It works because God works even through flawed people, even people who are in a state of mortal sin.
So anyway, that's good.
I'm glad your boyfriend's super Catholic, but that would be one area where I think he's misunderstanding Catholic teaching.
Sacraments Beyond Priestly Sanctity00:00:49
Okay, so much more to get to.
First, though, we have to go to the membrane segmentum.
The rest of the show continues.
Now, you do not want to miss it.
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Merlin Emirus has returned to the land of the living.