The Michael Knowles Show - Ep. 1932 - The Oscars Take A Swing At TPUSA
Aired: 2026-03-16
Duration: 56:22


=== Viral Column on Parenthood Regret (03:24) ===

[00:00:00]  A viral column encourages women not to have children based on a highly scientific survey of Reddit.
[00:00:06]  We will get into the supposed epidemic of parenthood regret.
[00:00:11]  Then, good news and bad news.
[00:00:12]  The bad news is the Iran war and high gas prices will likely drag on for weeks, not just based on layman analysis that's coming from the administration.
[00:00:23]  The good news, after Iran, we are likely taking Cuba and Mayflower will get some new cigar blends.
[00:00:29]  That should be great.
[00:00:31]  Finally, the Oscars apparently happened last night.
[00:00:35]  I did not watch, but I saw the clips.
[00:00:37]  You might have to.
[00:00:38]  If you didn't, Conan O'Brien took the opportunity at the show to invert reality.
[00:00:44]  I'm Michael Knowles.
[00:00:44]  This is The Michael Knowles Show.
[00:01:04]  Welcome back to the show.
[00:01:07]  Is the CIA investigating Tucker Carlson for being an Iranian spy?
[00:01:15]  That's the claim that Tucker is making on his show.
[00:01:18]  It sounds kind of like a right-wing mad lib, you know, a right-wing new media mad lib.
[00:01:23]  Is the blank, is the Mossad surveilling Alex Jones for being a Club of Rome spy?
[00:01:32]  You could fill it in with almost anything, but Tucker is making the claim quite seriously.
[00:01:36]  It doesn't make a lot of sense to me.
[00:01:39]  And I wonder, I'm not saying this is totally made up.
[00:01:43]  I just wonder how many layers of misinformation from how many places in the government, multiple governments, media organizations is coming out in this.
[00:01:54]  We will investigate whether or not the CIA is investigating Ayatollah Carlson momentarily.
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[00:03:21]  Seaside for details.
[00:03:22]  I want to start with the Oscars.

=== Bolin Sheets and Sweet Lisa (06:11) ===

[00:03:24]  I didn't watch it.
[00:03:25]  Did you watch it?
[00:03:26]  The ratings are not out yet.
[00:03:27]  We don't know how many people watch the Oscars.
[00:03:30]  Reflexively, we had gotten used to saying, you know, once again, nobody watched this stupid show.
[00:03:35]  And that had been true all the way up through 2021.
[00:03:39]  From 2015 or even earlier through 2021, the ratings of the Oscars kept declining.
[00:03:45]  You used to have in the 90s, you'd have 50, 55 million people watching the Oscars.
[00:03:49]  Then it dropped down to, I think, 10 million.
[00:03:50]  I think that was the lowest number we ever saw.
[00:03:52]  Then it started to tick back up again.
[00:03:54]  We don't have the ratings yet.
[00:03:55]  I certainly didn't watch it.
[00:03:56]  I didn't watch any of the movies that were nominated.
[00:03:58]  I watched part of the Korean movie because it was recommended to me for the kids.
[00:04:05]  And so I started to watch it.
[00:04:07]  I didn't even finish the Korean movie.
[00:04:08]  What was it called?
[00:04:09]  I'm not even, I'm not, I'm not performing.
[00:04:11]  I just don't remember Demon Hunters, K-pop Demon Hunters.
[00:04:14]  That was the only one that I even watched a part of this year.
[00:04:17]  But in any case, Conan O'Brien took the stage and he riled up the American right with this joke about TPUSA.
[00:04:27]  I should warn you, tonight could get political.
[00:04:30]  Okay.
[00:04:31]  And if that makes you uncomfortable, there's an alternate Oscars being hosted by Kid Rock.
[00:04:37]  Yeah.
[00:04:37]  It's at the David Busters down the street.
[00:04:41]  A lot of tickets for that.
[00:04:43]  Some of the right got upset about this joke.
[00:04:47]  I liked it.
[00:04:48]  I like the joke.
[00:04:49]  I think it's pretty funny.
[00:04:50]  I really liked it.
[00:04:51]  And one of the many frustrating consequences of Charlie's assassination is that everybody is presuming to speak for him.
[00:05:03]  Here's what Charlie would have thought about this.
[00:05:05]  Here's what Charlie would have thought about that.
[00:05:06]  Here's why Charlie Kirk would have supported my precise ideological and political agenda.
[00:05:12]  And I find the whole thing disgusting and I endeavor never to do it, even when I'm quite confident of what Charlie would have thought about this or that.
[00:05:20]  However, when it comes to jokes about TPUSA or about Charlie or about some of what we're doing here on the right, I can't help but remember that when South Park put Charlie in the show as a character, there was the Charlie Kirk Awards and then Cartman became Charlie.
[00:05:40]  Charlie loved it.
[00:05:42]  He took it as a badge of honor.
[00:05:44]  I think I totally agreed with him.
[00:05:46]  I think it was a badge of honor.
[00:05:47]  And so when I see this joke, major, major comedian, major, major talk show host and Oscars host making a joke about TPUSA and TPUSA's cultural impact from the stage of the Oscars, I think that's awesome, man.
[00:06:02]  I love that.
[00:06:03]  That's great.
[00:06:03]  You know, the only thing worse than people talking about you is people not talking about you when it comes to politics.
[00:06:09]  I think it's great.
[00:06:11]  One, it's a clever little joke.
[00:06:13]  And two, the import of that joke is that TPUSA matters.
[00:06:20]  That halftime show, when they put on the alternative halftime show, that mattered.
[00:06:25]  It got everybody talking.
[00:06:26]  It did bonkers ratings, tens of millions of views.
[00:06:30]  It mattered so much that the Oscars is going to make a joke about it.
[00:06:35]  And the joke might be that the alternative halftime show didn't matter, but the very fact that they're talking about it means it did matter.
[00:06:41]  I love that joke.
[00:06:42]  I think it's great.
[00:06:43]  I love that Conan O'Brien made it.
[00:06:44]  I think it's very much, you know, within the standards and norms of these kinds of jokes.
[00:06:49]  And I think it only bodes well for TPUSA and the conservative movement at a time that the conservative movement could use it.
[00:06:56]  Conan made a stupid joke after that.
[00:06:59]  Conan made a joke about elites, pedophiles, and the Brits.
[00:07:07]  And the joke fell flat for a simple reason.
[00:07:10]  Here's the joke.
[00:07:14]  It's the first time since 2012, first time since 2012, that there are no British actors nominated for best actor or best actress.
[00:07:25]  Yeah.
[00:07:26]  British spokesperson said, yeah, well, at least we arrest our pedophiles.
[00:07:31]  So we got that going forward.
[00:07:34]  Okay, so there's a little bit of a good joke in there.
[00:07:37]  There's a little, there's a little bit of razzing Hollywood there.
[00:07:41]  Because you're saying, yeah, the joke is that there are a lot of pedos in Hollywood.
[00:07:46]  That's the surface level of the joke.
[00:07:48]  Now, the way a lot of people are interpreting that, I think, is that it's a joke about Jeffrey Epstein.
[00:07:55]  And Jeffrey Epstein didn't only pall around with guys from Hollywood, but he palled around with elites and politics and business.
[00:08:01]  And the Democrats are using the Epstein scandal, which you will recall was a Democrat scandal over 10 years ago.
[00:08:07]  When it started, they're using that to become a scandal about Donald Trump.
[00:08:10]  And you have a lot of Democrats and libs baselessly, completely without any evidence whatsoever, accusing Trump of being a pedophile.
[00:08:19]  So I think the way it was understood and interpreted was not just a joke about Hollywood.
[00:08:23]  It was a Trump joke.
[00:08:25]  But the reason it's a dumb joke is because the Brits actually don't arrest their pedophiles.
[00:08:32]  They don't.
[00:08:33]  The Brits allowed the grooming gangs in England, the Pakistani grooming gangs, to go on for over 25 years.
[00:08:41]  There were thousands and thousands of victims.
[00:08:45]  It's actually not possible to know how many victims there were because the police and the political authorities turned a blind eye to it, knew about it, turned a blind eye to it for decades, so long that we actually can't know how many thousands of young girls were victimized by specifically migrants.
[00:09:04]  So we can't know.
[00:09:05]  So the reason the joke falls flat, again, I'm way looser on comedians.
[00:09:09]  I don't take it personally when the lib comedians go after the conservatives.
[00:09:14]  But this one falls flat because it's not true.
[00:09:16]  It's not grounded in reality.
[00:09:17]  And for comedy to work, it's got to be grounded in reality.
[00:09:20]  Okay.
[00:09:21]  Now, speaking of foreign affairs, we turn from the Brits to the Iranians.
[00:09:28]  The war is still going on.
[00:09:29]  There's been some misunderstanding.
[00:09:32]  Is the war over?
[00:09:32]  Did we already win?
[00:09:34]  Are we just getting started?

=== Misunderstanding the Iran War Status (14:39) ===

[00:09:36]  The administration was putting out both of those messages simultaneously.
[00:09:40]  And as I pointed out on the show last week, that's not necessarily a contradiction.
[00:09:44]  To say the war is almost over, you know, we've achieved most of what we want to achieve, but also we've only just begun means we want this to wrap up soon, but we have the capacity to go on for months or years.
[00:09:58]  So it's no surprise that the White House is saying one thing, the Department of War is saying another thing.
[00:10:03]  Those actually do harmonize.
[00:10:04]  They're not necessarily in conflict.
[00:10:06]  But we all want the war to be over.
[00:10:09]  I think a lot of that messaging on the war is basically over coming out of the president.
[00:10:14]  I think that's because the war is unpopular.
[00:10:17]  It's the most unpopular war at launch that we've ever had for all sorts of reasons that are really beyond President Trump's control.
[00:10:24]  But nevertheless, even the right wing, even the GOP base is kind of split on this war.
[00:10:29]  And so we want it to be over.
[00:10:31]  We want to win.
[00:10:32]  We recognize that there's a lot of good to come out of getting rid of the Iranian regime, but we want it to be over.
[00:10:37]  The administration coming out now and saying, actually hold your horses.
[00:10:41]  We'll get to what the Energy Secretary Chris Wright said.
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[00:12:01]  How much longer is the Iranian war going to go on?
[00:12:04]  Here is Energy Secretary Chris Wright.
[00:12:07]  How long should Americans expect for gas prices to be high?
[00:12:11]  Are we talking weeks?
[00:12:13]  Are we talking months?
[00:12:14]  Or just don't know at this point.
[00:12:17]  Yeah, I think that this conflict will certainly come to the end in the next few weeks.
[00:12:21]  Could be sooner than that.
[00:12:22]  But the conflict will come to the end in the next few weeks, and we'll see a rebound in supplies and a pushing down of prices after that.
[00:12:31]  But yes, we were very aware, very aware that we would have short-term disruption.
[00:12:38]  We would cause a little bit of increased prices on Americans.
[00:12:41]  Prices today are still far below what they were in the Biden administration, where they were begging, bartering, and bribing Iran to behave better.
[00:12:51]  We had $5 gasoline in the middle of the Biden administration.
[00:12:55]  We hope we don't get there this time, but at least this increase in gasoline prices is for something that's going to change the geopolitical situation in the world forever.
[00:13:06]  Crucial point here.
[00:13:08]  And people, I don't know, they're just, they're stuck in their abstract ideology and they're not seeing the pragmatic effects of all of this.
[00:13:16]  So guess oil prices this morning when I checked right before this show, $96 a barrel.
[00:13:22]  That's up substantially from where they had been even just some days ago.
[00:13:26]  It was 75, then it vacillates to 85.
[00:13:29]  Last week it got up to 115, then it came down sub 100.
[00:13:33]  As of this morning, it was just slightly under 100.
[00:13:36]  But the Strait of Hormuz is closed.
[00:13:38]  There's also conflicting reporting because it's war and there's the fog of war and there's a ton of misinformation.
[00:13:44]  There's conflicting reporting on whether or not the White House anticipated that the Iranians could close the Strait of Hormuz.
[00:13:48]  Because in fairness, they don't usually do this.
[00:13:51]  It's a pretty big move to close off the place that 20% of the world's oil moves through.
[00:13:59]  So the Iranians decide to close the Strait of Hormuz.
[00:14:02]  Now the United States is saying, well, we're going to have U.S. Navy vessels and maybe other NATO vessels escorting oil through so we can get the oil moving again.
[00:14:09]  But just given how long the strait has been closed, probably oil should be higher than it is.
[00:14:14]  I think I'm no financial genius.
[00:14:16]  And even if they were to reopen the strait now, the effects on oil prices would go on for a little bit longer.
[00:14:24]  And so it's a sign, not only that there are going to be some real costs, especially in terms of domestic politics to the war, but it's a sign that the Iranians are viewing this as an existential threat and they're going to play every card that they have.
[00:14:39]  So that's a big worry.
[00:14:41]  The question is, are we going to buckle?
[00:14:45]  Who's going to win this game of chicken?
[00:14:47]  Because what Chris Wright said there at the very end is absolutely right.
[00:14:51]  What Chris Wright said there at the end is, look, we're going to have some short-term pain, but if we can recalibrate the Iranian regime, the payoff in the long term is going to be inestimable.
[00:15:03]  And I think he's totally right about that.
[00:15:05]  There is a reason that the United States has made it a point of grand strategy since 1953 to put a friendly regime into Iran.
[00:15:12]  Iran is the destabilizing force in the Middle East.
[00:15:16]  Iran has one foot in the international order, one foot outside of the international order.
[00:15:20]  Iran is buddies with our enemies, true for many decades at this point.
[00:15:24]  Iran really matters.
[00:15:27]  If you could flip it and you could create an alliance of the Gulf states with Israel, with American interests broadly, you cut off the head of the snake in Iran.
[00:15:39]  This would be great for oil prices.
[00:15:41]  It would be great for stability in the region, investment in the region.
[00:15:44]  We could focus our attention elsewhere onto more serious adversaries.
[00:15:48]  All of that could be great.
[00:15:51]  But what if we don't?
[00:15:53]  If we don't, if the Iranian regime survives and you replace Ayatollah Khomeini with another Ayatollah Khomeini, albeit an Ayatollah Khomeini who's even angrier than the first one because we just killed his dad and most of his friends and family and according to one report, at least blew off one of his legs, that's not great.
[00:16:11]  And if the Iranians can conclude from this war that when they close the Strait of Hormuz, America will back down.
[00:16:20]  Well, now Iran can just do that whenever it wants.
[00:16:23]  Anytime we threaten their ballistics missile program, anytime we threaten their nuclear program, anytime we threaten any of their interests, they can say, all right, we're going to close the strait and you're not going to be in it long enough to force us to reopen it.
[00:16:34]  So it's, as I said from the beginning of this conflict, this is a massive, massive risk.
[00:16:40]  Trump loves risk.
[00:16:41]  He takes a ton of risk, but this is a massive, massive risk.
[00:16:44]  If it works out, it will achieve many American grand strategic goals that we've had for many decades.
[00:16:51]  If it doesn't work out, this will be one of the great blunders.
[00:16:56]  It could tarnish President Trump's legacy to the degree that George Bush's legacy was tarnished.
[00:17:01]  It's a big risk.
[00:17:02]  So if I had been on the NSC, as I've said many times, I would have made the arguments against striking Iran, not because of ideology, not because I'm a pacifist, not because I'm an isolationist, but just because I would have thought the pragmatic effects of it were going to be too tough.
[00:17:17]  Now, I only have public information.
[00:17:18]  Obviously, the government had classified information.
[00:17:20]  However, now that President Trump is in it, now that he made the call, he has a very, very good record on foreign policy, a better record than any president of my lifetime.
[00:17:30]  I trust the president quite broadly, especially when it comes to foreign policy.
[00:17:35]  But also, it's worth pointing out before everyone panics, what Chris Wright said here that I think scared the markets, and I think it's scaring a lot of people in the MAGA coalition, what Chris Wright said is this war is probably going to go on for another few weeks.
[00:17:48]  That is within President Trump's timeline that he gave at the very start of the war.
[00:17:54]  He did not go in and say this is going to be Venezuela and it's going to be over in 88 minutes.
[00:17:57]  He said, yeah, it's going to be about five weeks.
[00:17:59]  We are now slightly over two weeks into it.
[00:18:01]  Chris Wright on Sunday, yesterday, says, yeah, it's going to go on for another few weeks.
[00:18:05]  That is still within Trump's timeline.
[00:18:08]  And so you're hearing this from someone who is quite skeptical of going into Iran.
[00:18:15]  I have said from the beginning, you know, Trump has a plan.
[00:18:18]  I'm not going to freak out even in week five.
[00:18:20]  I'm certainly not going to freak out in week two.
[00:18:21]  I'm not going to freak out in week five.
[00:18:23]  I'm going to wait at least until week six.
[00:18:26]  If you want to freak out in week six, I think you're justified in doing so.
[00:18:29]  But as of now, there really is no contradiction coming out of the administration on Iran.
[00:18:35]  Okay, speaking of Iran, Tucker has just made a startling claim.
[00:18:41]  Tucker came out.
[00:18:42]  I think he posted this yesterday, maybe the day before.
[00:18:46]  He says that the CIA has been surveilling him to build a case against him, to prosecute him as some kind of Iranian spy.
[00:18:58]  So the other day I found out that the CIA is preparing some kind of criminal referral against me, a crime report, the Department of Justice on the basis of a supposed crime I committed.
[00:19:10]  What's that crime?
[00:19:11]  Well, talking to people in Iran before the war, they read my texts.
[00:19:17]  So the crime under consideration apparently would be the Foreign Agent Act or something like that, acting as an agent of a foreign power.
[00:19:25]  Okay, it goes on.
[00:19:27]  I think Tucker gives about a two-minute explanation here, but this is pretty startling.
[00:19:33]  For starters, he is admitting that he was texting the Iranians.
[00:19:37]  Now, before everyone says that he's, you know, he's next in line to be the Ayatollah or something, Tucker makes a good point.
[00:19:43]  He says, look, I'm a journalist.
[00:19:45]  I've been interviewing all sorts of people for many, many years.
[00:19:48]  It used to be the case that American journalists would go and interview Osama bin Laden or go and interview Vladimir Putin, which Tucker did.
[00:19:57]  But Tucker's not the only guy who's interviewed Vladimir Putin or go and interview all sorts of hostile leaders.
[00:20:01]  So there's nothing in itself wrong about a journalist texting the Iranians.
[00:20:06]  I guess it depends on the substance of those text messages.
[00:20:09]  But that part is already established.
[00:20:11]  The question then is, is the CIA investigating Tucker for committing some kind of crime?
[00:20:17]  And I guess when it gets to the substance of the text messages, was Tucker colluding with the Iranians or something?
[00:20:23]  And it doesn't really make sense to me.
[00:20:26]  And here's why it doesn't make sense.
[00:20:27]  You're going to have all sorts of people.
[00:20:28]  There are going to be people who hate Tucker saying he's a foreign agent.
[00:20:31]  He's bought and paid for.
[00:20:33]  And you're going to have people defending Tucker saying he would never do any such thing.
[00:20:36]  You know, he's as patriotic as apple pie.
[00:20:39]  And I just take your personal feelings and affection out of this for a second and just look at the accusations, starting with the accusations from the people who hate Tucker.
[00:20:48]  They say he's bought and paid for by whom?
[00:20:52]  By the Qataris and the Arabs.
[00:20:55]  That's been the claim.
[00:20:56]  That's been the chief line of attack against Tucker for how many months now?
[00:21:01]  He's bought and paid for by the Qataris and by the Arabs.
[00:21:05]  He was just speaking in Saudi Arabia, what, a month and a half ago?
[00:21:11]  Why would a guy who's bought and paid for by not only the Qataris, but even especially the Arabs, why would he be working for the Iranians?
[00:21:20]  It doesn't take a foreign policy genius.
[00:21:22]  It doesn't take Count von Metternich to realize that the Arabs and the Iranians don't like each other.
[00:21:29]  Qatar has this very interesting position in the international order because Qatar has decent relations with just about everybody.
[00:21:38]  Qatar has decent relations with the state of Israel and Hamas and Iran.
[00:21:45]  We've got a kind of pragmatic relationship, but Qatar is a Gulf state.
[00:21:48]  And Qatar has a good relationship with the United States.
[00:21:51]  We have a good military relationship with Qatar.
[00:21:53]  And so, okay, you say Qatar is this very strategic location, works as a kind of buffer, almost neutral state.
[00:22:01]  But then what about the Arabs?
[00:22:04]  How can you explain to me how Tucker would be cozying up to the Saudis, but also working for the Iranians and also he's a Russian spy and also this, that, and the other thing?
[00:22:17]  It doesn't make sense to me.
[00:22:19]  And so I have no doubt that Tucker has heard this from someone.
[00:22:24]  Maybe he got it from high up.
[00:22:25]  Who knows?
[00:22:26]  Tucker knows a ton of people.
[00:22:27]  He's got a ton of access.
[00:22:29]  Maybe that's the case.
[00:22:30]  But then, I don't know, the whole thing seems crazy to me.
[00:22:33]  Could you imagine the DOJ prosecuting Tucker?
[00:22:36]  Maybe.
[00:22:37]  I mean, we've processed, look, the United States government has prosecuted journalists before and there's all sorts of espionage.
[00:22:43]  And I don't know.
[00:22:44]  I mean, I guess it's possible.
[00:22:45]  The story just doesn't make sense to me.
[00:22:46]  To me, it just, I just wonder how many layers of misinformation and disinformation are going on here.
[00:22:55]  We are in the midst of a war, like a real hot war with missiles flying, with Marines being shipped in potentially for ground forces in Iran after a major attack on the Iranian nuclear facilities.
[00:23:09]  And in the fog of war, there is a ton of propaganda.
[00:23:12]  At this point, I think X, Twitter is like 70% foreign and domestic propaganda.
[00:23:21]  I don't know how many organic comments are really there anymore.
[00:23:24]  And so I just suppose with anything, I said this, I said this the minute the war kicked off.
[00:23:29]  I said, needless to say, anything you hear about this war in the next 48 hours should be taken with a grain of salt.
[00:23:34]  Well, you can even extend that.
[00:23:35]  Over the weekend, I found out that Bibi Netanyahu was dead, and then I found out he was alive again.
[00:23:40]  I found out Ali, not Ali, Moj Taba, the son of Ali Khamenei, the new Ayatollah, I heard that he was dead, then he's not dead, but he's missing a leg.
[00:23:50]  And Tucker's an Iranian spy, but he's also a Qatari spy, and he's probably a Saudi spy.
[00:23:55]  And I take all of it with a grain of salt.
[00:24:00]  This goes right back to my general strategy with the Trump administration's view on the Iran war.
[00:24:08]  I have my views, as most of us did, I think, about invading Iran.
[00:24:13]  I had my own views.
[00:24:14]  I had my own preconceptions.

=== Trump's Moves Before Midterms (10:28) ===

[00:24:16]  I had my own priors.
[00:24:17]  Now we've invaded.
[00:24:18]  The war's on.
[00:24:19]  We want to win it.
[00:24:20]  We need to win it.
[00:24:23]  I'm giving it five weeks.
[00:24:24]  I start freaking out on week six.
[00:24:26]  Very strange, though.
[00:24:27]  I mean, some of the claims being made just don't, they just don't make any sense.
[00:24:32]  No surprise.
[00:24:33]  Propaganda flies around in times of war.
[00:24:34]  Okay.
[00:24:35]  Now, another reason that we need to win the war in Iran is so that we can go to Cuba and I can get really good blends for Mayflower cigars.
[00:24:46]  The blends we have are already the best, but I want to make blend four, blend five, blend six.
[00:24:50]  I want some of that sweet Cuban tobacco that the Cubans don't know how to use anymore.
[00:24:54]  And it looks like Cuba is amenable to that for the first time in what, 60 years?
[00:24:59]  The Cubans are seriously considering relations with the United States.
[00:25:06]  First, before we get to that, I want to tell you about Mizin in Maine.
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[00:26:25]  Cuba is on fire, my friends.
[00:26:28]  Ever since Cuba's so on fire, I have to readjust my earpiece so that I can make sure I hear the dulcet Spanish tones of the president of Cuba.
[00:26:37]  Cuba is on fire because they don't have any money and they don't have any oil.
[00:26:42]  And the reason they don't have any money and they don't have any oil is because of President Trump's brilliant military operation in Venezuela, which not only rebuffed Russia and China, but also rebuffed, and Iran, actually, but also rebuffed Cuba, which was heavily reliant on Venezuela.
[00:26:57]  In fact, a lot of the people who were killed in the Venezuela attack were Cubans, were Cuban mercenaries who were sent over there.
[00:27:02]  So Cuba's in real trouble.
[00:27:05]  The Communist Party headquarters in Moron Siego de Avila was burned early on Saturday.
[00:27:13]  There have been 10 consecutive nights of nationwide protests.
[00:27:16]  There have been hundreds of protests around the island.
[00:27:18]  It's broken all recent records.
[00:27:21]  So much so that the president of Cuba had to come out and make a major, how did he put it, a speech, quote, to address matters of national and international significance.
[00:27:36]  Here is what I, you know, we have it, I think, only in Spanish, right?
[00:27:40]  You can at least see the president's mouth moving.
[00:27:42]  There are international factors, says the president, that have facilitated these talks.
[00:27:48]  And the talks with the United States intend to identify the bilateral problems that need a solution, bilateral problems, meaning America wants Cuban cigars, among other things, and Cuba wants to continue to live.
[00:28:04]  Cuba wants to be able to power their homes and feed themselves.
[00:28:08]  And the president says this is a very sensitive process that is being approached with responsibility and great sensitivity.
[00:28:14]  So it looks like we're getting Cuba.
[00:28:17]  Don't you forget, we have already possessed Cuba, I think three times over the last 130 years.
[00:28:23]  So it would not be a great break with American tradition for us to have control of Cuba.
[00:28:29]  Not necessarily as the 51st state, though I would kind of like it because Cubans are pretty conservative.
[00:28:34]  I wouldn't want to acquire all of the Latin American states.
[00:28:36]  Some of them are a little too lib and socialist, but Cuba, the Cuban people are terrific.
[00:28:40]  But maybe you do a Puerto Rico kind of thing, a protectorate, or who knows?
[00:28:44]  Who knows what happens?
[00:28:45]  Maybe you just open up relations and we can blend some new cigars there.
[00:28:50]  But this is very likely to happen.
[00:28:55]  And I'll tell you why it's very likely to happen.
[00:28:57]  Here's my rule of thumb on this.
[00:28:59]  Who's the president of Cuba?
[00:29:01]  Can you tell me right now without looking it up?
[00:29:03]  I'm not, this isn't, I wouldn't have known this necessarily.
[00:29:07]  It would have taken me a long time to remember.
[00:29:08]  Who's the president of Cuba?
[00:29:10]  You don't know.
[00:29:11]  Nobody knows.
[00:29:12]  His name, I do know now.
[00:29:14]  His name is Miguel Diaz-Canal.
[00:29:18]  But he's not a Castro.
[00:29:20]  The regime is just spent.
[00:29:22]  It's not that Trump's action in Venezuela destroyed the Cuban regime.
[00:29:26]  It's that the Cuban regime was on the brink of collapse and Trump, he went like this.
[00:29:30]  He just kind of blew it over and it's falling down.
[00:29:33]  This is like Reagan in the Cold War.
[00:29:35]  Reagan's great insight into the Soviet Union in the Cold War was that they were already weak.
[00:29:40]  And all the foreign policy geniuses who were arguing for a detente and better relations, they didn't really buy that.
[00:29:47]  But Reagan knew they were already weak.
[00:29:49]  And if you just kind of blew hard on them, you just say, you know, like poked them just a little bit, they would collapse.
[00:29:55]  And that is exactly what happened.
[00:29:58]  Once again, for those who are critiquing Trump or think that this is a flight of fancy or a digression from the MAGA movement or whatever, it has been an aspect of U.S. grand strategy to regain control over Cuba, at least friendly relations with Cuba, since 1959.
[00:30:19]  With Iran, you could say it's been our mission since 1979, though really, I think you have to backdate it to 1953 because that was when the CIA coup occurred and we got rid of the socialist Mosaddegh and we strengthened the Shah.
[00:30:32]  But in any case, Trump's foreign policy is fulfilling goals of the United States that we have had since the 1950s that other presidents have not been able to do.
[00:30:45]  That's very impressive.
[00:30:46]  This is not a return to Bushism.
[00:30:49]  This is not a return to Clintonism or Obamaism or even really Reaganism.
[00:30:54]  This is going back to America's golden age.
[00:30:57]  Most people would say America's peak, America's peak of strength and confidence and resilience was probably in the 1950s.
[00:31:05]  Trump is fulfilling goals that we have had from the perspective of grand strategy since the 1950s.
[00:31:13]  He could be a truly transformative president if it works.
[00:31:16]  If it doesn't work, he'll go down in disgrace.
[00:31:19]  But if it does work and he's got a good record, he could be truly transformative.
[00:31:24]  Some people are asking, why is Trump focused so much overseas?
[00:31:27]  Why isn't he focused on more domestic matters?
[00:31:30]  And I think he's doing a lot of good domestically, but I'll tell you why.
[00:31:33]  Because overseas, he doesn't have to deal with federal judges.
[00:31:36]  Overseas, he doesn't have to deal with Democrats because he has a lot more control over what he does overseas.
[00:31:42]  Now, there is a fear that if the Iran operation goes sideways, and there are a hundred different ways, a thousand different ways it could go sideways, that that would really mess up the Republicans for the midterms.
[00:31:55]  And the House Republicans are saying there's a good shot.
[00:31:57]  We're going to expand our majority in the midterms.
[00:31:59]  I just sat down with the speaker of the House last week.
[00:32:02]  He said that.
[00:32:03]  Exclusive interview on the channel and on Daily Wire.
[00:32:07]  The Republicans say, well, look, we've deported a lot of Democrat voters.
[00:32:11]  So actually, we're going to have a decent chance.
[00:32:13]  Look, the Democrats still have low favorable numbers.
[00:32:16]  So maybe the Republicans' numbers have dropped, but the Democrats are still very unfavorable and their candidates are lunatics.
[00:32:20]  So we're actually going to do very well.
[00:32:22]  Okay.
[00:32:23]  There is, though, an alternative theory that one of the reasons that Trump is making all of these bold moves now is that the Republicans have a one-vote majority, effectively, in the House.
[00:32:36]  The party in power always loses the House in the first midterm after the presidential elections.
[00:32:42]  Always, with almost no exception.
[00:32:46]  One vote majority, give me a break.
[00:32:49]  And so there is this alternative theory that the reason President Trump is making these massive moves abroad right now is that he's written off the midterms.
[00:32:58]  I'm not getting that from any inside sources at the White House.
[00:33:01]  That's just pure speculation.
[00:33:04]  But it does kind of make sense because if you're going to lose the House majority by two seats or 20 seats, it doesn't really matter.
[00:33:14]  It's going to mean that the Democrats are going to come into power and they're going to have subpoena power and they're going to create all sorts of stupid investigations.
[00:33:21]  They're probably going to impeach Trump.
[00:33:23]  It's going to, whether it's two seats or whether it's 20.
[00:33:28]  So if you're already going down in the midterms, I'm not saying that's going to happen.
[00:33:31]  I'm not saying even that's what Trump's thinking, but this is one way to make sense of Trump's massive moves overseas, Venezuela, Iran, Cuba, is to say, look, man, if I'm going to have to deal with these crazy Democrats after the midterms anyway, might as well do some real good in the meantime, might as well go down like a legend, might as well achieve some American priorities that we've had for 70 years and get my names even further ensconced in the history books than they already are.
[00:33:59]  Best case scenario, we win in Iran, we take Cuba, we get some new blends of Mayflower cigars, and we win in the midterms.
[00:34:07]  Would that it were so simple.
[00:34:08]  I'd be thrilled and it's possible that it happens.
[00:34:11]  But at the very least, it does make, if you're staring down the barrel of, look, we're going to lose the House anyway, might as well make some big moves.
[00:34:19]  Why not?
[00:34:20]  Why not take some big swings?
[00:34:22]  You're going to have the same consequences either way.
[00:34:24]  Okay.
[00:34:25]  Now, speaking of Latin America, horrific story coming out of New York.
[00:34:29]  And I think this actually, this messaging will help Republicans in the midterms.
[00:34:32]  A Honduran national who was deported four times from the United States has just thrown an elderly Air Force veteran onto subway tracks.

=== Voter Registration and Conservative Attacks (14:04) ===

[00:34:44]  How many stories like this do we need to hear?
[00:34:46]  We'll get to that story in a second.
[00:34:47]  And then Eric Swalwell might not be able to run for governor in California.
[00:34:52]  Eric Swalwell, who is absolutely insufferable, one of the goofiest Democrats there is.
[00:34:58]  He is the frontrunner in the Democrat primary now and therefore in the race for governor.
[00:35:03]  But one weird reason why he might actually be ineligible to run.
[00:35:08]  Folks, if you are not yet a Daily Wire Plus member, you're missing my show, one of my favorite shows, Bar Fight, live from Broadway in Nashville.
[00:35:17]  New episodes every Saturday at 5 p.m. Eastern.
[00:35:20]  Premise is very simple.
[00:35:21]  I debate people who disagree with me in a bar in front of a rowdy audience who can jump on the mic at any time.
[00:35:25]  So you have real debates over real ideas in kind of a casual format.
[00:35:30]  This week, two liberals and I debated whether feminism destroys everything.
[00:35:34]  You do not have to guess how it ended.
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[00:35:58]  I didn't pick my favorite comment yesterday.
[00:36:02]  I told the producers, I said, I was too busy today.
[00:36:04]  I've been juggling a lot of things.
[00:36:05]  I was down at a great cigar show over the weekend, woke up at 3 o'clock in the morning, flew down to the Great Smoke in Florida, had a very, very difficult workday smoking cigars and hanging out with great people.
[00:36:17]  Then my flight was delayed.
[00:36:18]  I got back in midnight.
[00:36:19]  Then I've been working a lot, smoking a lot of cigars.
[00:36:23]  Anyway, I didn't have time to pick the comment today.
[00:36:25]  So what did the producers pick?
[00:36:27]  They say the best comment is from Professor Jacob.
[00:36:31]  Okay.
[00:36:32]  Says, I love it when I tell Michael to pick a comment and he doesn't listen.
[00:36:38]  You know what?
[00:36:40]  I always have to judge the producers' comments.
[00:36:42]  I love that comment because I love that too.
[00:36:45]  And poor Professor Jacob, he's running the show today because Mr. Davies is still on his three-week brokeback ski trip over here.
[00:36:51]  It's unbelievable.
[00:36:53]  I carry this company on my back, one cigar at a time.
[00:36:59]  And everyone else gallivanting about.
[00:37:01]  But I appreciate that Professor Jacob is there and he picked a good comment.
[00:37:05]  A Honduran national deported four times from the United States has just pushed an elderly Air Force vet onto the tracks of the New York City subway.
[00:37:16]  You can read about it in the local news.
[00:37:18]  You're not going to see a lot about it in the national news.
[00:37:20]  This guy was arrested on Tuesday for pushing.
[00:37:24]  He's a 30-year-old man.
[00:37:26]  Oh, no, sorry.
[00:37:27]  He pushed two people, a 30-year-old man and an 83-year-old man onto the tracks.
[00:37:32]  This was unprovoked.
[00:37:33]  This guy is a serial criminal, four-time deportee.
[00:37:37]  According to the deputy assistant secretary of DHS, Lauren Biz, he should never have been able to walk our streets to innocent Americans praying for their families.
[00:37:45]  You know, he's probably get off the hook.
[00:37:48]  He's probably already eating dollar sliced pizza right now, receiving various taxpayer subsidies.
[00:37:53]  He's probably living it up at the Roosevelt Hotel, where the illegal aliens for years have been able to get better accommodations than most actual taxpaying New Yorkers.
[00:38:04]  The reason this story matters is not that it's shocking or surprising.
[00:38:08]  It's not man bites dog.
[00:38:09]  This has been happening for a long time.
[00:38:13]  This is directly attributable to Mayor Zoan Mamdani and Governor Kathy Hochul.
[00:38:20]  Mamdani and Hochul and all the Democrat mayors and governors of sanctuary cities and states are aiding and abetting these crimes.
[00:38:30]  They are actively encouraging these crimes because the sanctuary cities and states refuse to cooperate with federal immigration enforcement and they refuse to turn these criminals over to ICE.
[00:38:44]  According to the current policy in New York City, this guy, if he is sent to prison, if he is, will be allowed to get out and run free in New York afterward.
[00:38:58]  When ICE shows up to say, we want to pick this guy up and deport him for the fifth time, New York will say, no, we will not hand him over to you.
[00:39:07]  We will protect the guy who threw the 83-year-old Air Force vet into the subway tracks, the guy who's got a rap sheet a mile long, who's broken our laws countless times.
[00:39:16]  Only way to stop him from doing it is probably capital punishment at this point.
[00:39:22]  Right now, he wouldn't get back into the country because President Trump closed the border.
[00:39:25]  But the next time you get a Democrat president, he's going to open the border wide open again.
[00:39:28]  This guy's going to walk back in.
[00:39:32]  The mayors and the governors, Mamdani, Hochul, and the rest of them, are actively working with this guy.
[00:39:39]  They have blood on their hands.
[00:39:42]  Every woman that these people light on fire in a subway car in New York, every throat that these people slash, every crime these people commit is on their hands.
[00:39:52]  And that's not hyperbole.
[00:39:55]  I mean, they are very practically, very literally protecting these people from federal immigration enforcement.
[00:40:01]  They're keeping them in the country, holding them tight when federal immigration enforcement tries to enforce the law.
[00:40:09]  But furthermore, we have to recognize about illegal immigration that every single crime that the illegals commit here is needless, is gratuitous, is preventable.
[00:40:21]  Every single one.
[00:40:22]  The libs like to come out and they say, well, actually, the illegal aliens commit much less crime than the nativeborn population.
[00:40:27]  First of all, that isn't true.
[00:40:28]  Then they try to hone in and say, well, actually, the illegal aliens commit much less violent crime than the nativeborn population.
[00:40:33]  You can make some arguments for that, but they're pretty weak arguments.
[00:40:37]  But it's all missing the point.
[00:40:40]  We have to deal with the crime that the nativeborn Americans commit.
[00:40:45]  We have to deal with it.
[00:40:46]  We don't have an option.
[00:40:46]  We can't strip them of citizenship.
[00:40:48]  In some cases, we would like to, but we can.
[00:40:50]  So that's baked in.
[00:40:51]  You're right.
[00:40:52]  That's not preventable.
[00:40:54]  Every single illegal who's here who commits any crime, whether we're talking about rape and murder or whether we're talking about jaywalking and tax evasion, every single one of those crimes was preventable.
[00:41:04]  And therefore, the people who are fighting tooth and nail to keep those illegals in this country, even the convicted criminals, felons, murderers, every single one of those people has blood on their hands.
[00:41:17]  And you got to run against every single dem on this.
[00:41:20]  This is one way to run against Eric Swalwell in California, if he is allowed to run.
[00:41:25]  But it's very unclear if he's allowed to run.
[00:41:27]  Eric Swalwell is apparently not a California resident.
[00:41:33]  This is the claim being made by a conservative activist, Joel Gilbert, who observes that Eric Swalwell is not actually a resident of California.
[00:41:42]  Now, according to the California Constitution, Article 5, Section 2, the governor shall be an elector who has been a citizen of the United States and a resident of this state for five years immediately preceding the governor's election.
[00:41:56]  Swalwell doesn't live in California, reportedly.
[00:41:58]  Swalwell lives in Washington, D.C., because that is where Fang Fang lives.
[00:42:05]  No, that's not fair.
[00:42:07]  There's Fang Fang.
[00:42:08]  We have a picture of Fang Fang.
[00:42:11]  Swalwell is so goofy, and he is certainly been compromised by foreign spies, and he's made a fool of himself on television many times.
[00:42:21]  But that's not the attack here.
[00:42:24]  That's the way conservatives attack him.
[00:42:26]  And Joel Gilbert has levied this attack, but this attack's being backed up by Democrats too.
[00:42:30]  Tom Steyer, who wants to be governor as well, billionaire.
[00:42:33]  He's backing up this attack.
[00:42:35]  This is pretty real.
[00:42:37]  He doesn't live in California, by all appearances.
[00:42:40]  He lives in D.C.
[00:42:41]  And you know what?
[00:42:41]  I'll go further.
[00:42:42]  I'm trying to be very nice to Swalwell here.
[00:42:44]  I like that he doesn't live in D.C.
[00:42:46]  I don't like that congressmen have to maintain residency in their states.
[00:42:52]  I don't really like that because it splits up families.
[00:42:56]  That's actually why.
[00:42:57]  One of the reasons that I don't want to run for Congress, there are a few reasons I don't want to run for Congress.
[00:43:01]  But one of the reasons I don't want to run for Congress is you're away from your family five days a week for much of the year.
[00:43:10]  And then when you're supposed to be back with your family, you usually have to go out and campaign anyway.
[00:43:14]  And then even the times that Congress isn't in session, you got to hit the road, campaign for other candidates.
[00:43:18]  And so you're away from your family most of the time.
[00:43:22]  And one way that this was remedied previously is you'd be elected to Congress and then you would move your family to Washington, D.C.
[00:43:28]  And by the way, when you live in Washington, D.C. and you spend a little time around the other congressmen, it actually is conducive to getting things done.
[00:43:37]  You know, you don't want to become a victim of the swamp, but likewise, you can't actually accomplish anything if you don't speak with people, if you don't spend any time with them.
[00:43:45]  So I like, I actually like that Swalwell moved to D.C., but he can't be governor.
[00:43:50]  He can't be governor if he lives in Washington, D.C.
[00:43:53]  The Constitution is very clear.
[00:43:56]  He is in actual legal trouble right now.
[00:43:58]  Now, they might get around it because if I were Swalwell, the argument I'd be making is, hey, look, 13% of the California population isn't even citizens.
[00:44:08]  Forget about residents.
[00:44:09]  They're not even citizens, 13%.
[00:44:12]  And most of those who will be voting, obviously, will be voting for Eric Swalwell.
[00:44:16]  So you'd say, what does it matter if I live here?
[00:44:18]  13% of these Californians aren't even American.
[00:44:21]  But the Constitution says what it says.
[00:44:24]  We might have a new frontrunner soon, which will be very sad for me because then Eric Swalwell will be out of the news cycles and I'll have less content.
[00:44:32]  Speaking of voting and demographics and elections, the Save America Act, the Save America Act, a new version of the Save Act, is up.
[00:44:44]  The House has passed multiple versions of this.
[00:44:46]  The Senate is holding it up.
[00:44:47]  Now, I thought that Republicans controlled the White House and the House of Representatives and the Senate.
[00:44:53]  So you'd think it'd be easy for us to pass basic conservative legislation.
[00:44:57]  No.
[00:44:58]  The SAVE Act defends voter ID.
[00:45:02]  The SAFE Act says you have to prove that you're eligible to vote if you want to vote.
[00:45:06]  The vast majority of Americans support this.
[00:45:08]  The vast majority of Democrats support voter ID.
[00:45:12]  This is some of the most popular policy in the country.
[00:45:17]  And it will fail because the Republicans don't want to take it up.
[00:45:23]  The Democrat politicians hate voter ID.
[00:45:26]  Democrat voters love voter ID.
[00:45:27]  Democrat politicians hate voter ID.
[00:45:29]  Democrat politicians hate voter ID because voter ID prevents them from rigging elections.
[00:45:35]  That simple as.
[00:45:38]  But now you have the Senate majority leader who says, look, I don't, I can't, I can't bring it because we don't have 60 votes.
[00:45:46]  We have a majority, but we don't have 60 votes.
[00:45:48]  And so the only way to bring it is to either nuke the filibuster, which we don't want to do because it's a big part of the Senate, or we could have a talking filibuster, but then the Democrats could offer all sorts of amendments to the bill.
[00:45:57]  And some of the amendments might be slightly popular and then they're going to bog down this bill and there's going to be all sorts of terrible stuff in it.
[00:46:03]  So it could kill the bill that way.
[00:46:05]  And either way, it's going to bog the Senate down for months.
[00:46:07]  And I get the arguments.
[00:46:10]  But you've got to put yourself in the shoes of the voters.
[00:46:13]  The voters say, look, we elected Republicans to everything in 2024.
[00:46:19]  We elected Republicans to everything in 2024 for a few reasons.
[00:46:24]  For mass deportations, for the economy, but for a renewed sense of government.
[00:46:35]  The Democrats were so manifestly corrupt.
[00:46:38]  A lot of people had questions about the 2020 election.
[00:46:41]  And they proved those suspicions in 2024 when they elected Trump with the popular vote.
[00:46:46]  And then they're going to look at this and they're going to say, Republicans can't even pass legislation that is approved by the overwhelming majority of both parties.
[00:46:56]  What?
[00:46:57]  Why?
[00:46:58]  Why can't they?
[00:46:59]  Listen to Chuck Schumer.
[00:47:00]  Just listen to what Chuck Schumer has to say about the SAVE Act.
[00:47:05]  Yes, but their bill isn't voter ID number one.
[00:47:08]  It is about voter registration.
[00:47:11]  It makes it, it allows ICE to kick tens of billions of people off the rolls, off the rolls, and they don't tell them until election day.
[00:47:23]  And you show them and you say, you're not registered anymore.
[00:47:26]  You're not registered here.
[00:47:28]  You're not on the rolls.
[00:47:31]  What an odd thing to say.
[00:47:35]  Why would voter ID legislation permit ICE to kick all these people off the voter rolls?
[00:47:44]  Was that a little Freudian slip?
[00:47:46]  Was slick little Chuck Schumer losing his touch here?
[00:47:49]  The Republicans say we need the Save America Act in order to stop illegals from voting.
[00:47:57]  The Democrats previously said illegals do not vote.
[00:48:00]  Now, of course, we've caught illegals voting many, many times.
[00:48:02]  We've caught illegals voting for themselves to win public office multiple times just last year.
[00:48:10]  But now Chuck Schumer is saying we can't have the Save America Act because then ICE would kick millions of people off the voter rolls.
[00:48:15]  What an odd thing to say.
[00:48:16]  Almost as if Republicans were right all along, there is a reason why the overwhelming majority of voters in both parties support voter ID.
[00:48:22]  And the only people who don't support it are the crook Democrat politicians who rely on illegals to elect them.
[00:48:28]  You know, the story I want to get to is one of my top stories of the day.
[00:48:31]  It's this viral column.
[00:48:33]  It's my lead story.
[00:48:35]  This viral column.
[00:48:36]  Okay, I will have to get to it.
[00:48:37]  It was my lead.
[00:48:38]  Look, I don't care that I'm running late.
[00:48:39]  Deal with it.
[00:48:40]  Deal with it, Daily Wire producers.
[00:48:43]  We have to get to it.
[00:48:44]  This is really, I'll get to it quickly, though.
[00:48:46]  Very stupid column.

=== Regret Over Having Children (07:33) ===

[00:48:48]  I regret having children.
[00:48:50]  It's in the cut by New York Magazine.
[00:48:52]  It was going bonkers.
[00:48:54]  Here is just the pitch of it, right at the top.
[00:48:56]  Sooner or later, everyone has to decide whether to give up lazy weekends, disposable income, and overall peace of mind to have a baby instead.
[00:49:02]  For many of those on the fence, one anxiety looms large.
[00:49:04]  What if I make the wrong choice?
[00:49:06]  Parent regret is more common than you might think.
[00:49:09]  The Reddit page, the Our Regretful Parents subreddit alone, gets around 70,000 weekly visitors who anonymously commiserate.
[00:49:18]  Though stigma makes it hard to admit in real life, below, three moms of young children talk about why they wish they could go back to their old lives.
[00:49:26]  First off the top, turning to Reddit to find samples of well-balanced, mentally stable people is like going to visit the pygmies to put together a basketball team.
[00:49:39]  You are setting yourself up for failure right off the top.
[00:49:43]  But maybe there are some people who regret having kids.
[00:49:47]  And they found, what, three people to be interviewed for this article?
[00:49:50]  The 34-year-old Rhode Island mother of a six-year-old and a three-year-old.
[00:49:54]  I gave up everything I liked about my life to make children fit into it.
[00:49:59]  When my husband and I were dating, his deal breaker was having kids.
[00:50:02]  I didn't feel the same way, but I didn't see life without children as an option.
[00:50:06]  The whole point of the whole point of marriage is to have children.
[00:50:11]  Some people don't get to have children.
[00:50:12]  Infertility is a cross that some people bear.
[00:50:14]  It's a fallen world.
[00:50:17]  But the purpose of marriage is the procreation and education of children.
[00:50:24]  A good of marriage is the mutual support of the spouses.
[00:50:26]  That's great.
[00:50:27]  That's wonderful too.
[00:50:28]  But the point, the T loss of marriage is having kids.
[00:50:30]  She says, yeah, it's weird.
[00:50:31]  My husband said that the only reason he would want to get married is to have kids.
[00:50:34]  Isn't that so weird?
[00:50:37]  I remember telling my husband, I'm worried.
[00:50:38]  I love our life now.
[00:50:40]  And I'm not sure what it's going to look like with a child.
[00:50:42]  He told me it's going to get better.
[00:50:44]  I was the executive of a nonprofit, which was a stressful but fulfilling job.
[00:50:48]  I was worried about my career, but I thought there are working moms everywhere.
[00:50:52]  People do this.
[00:50:52]  Then I had my first baby.
[00:50:54]  Okay, so right off the bat, I'm not going to get through.
[00:50:56]  I mean, some of these get really dark.
[00:50:58]  But right off the bat, this woman says, look, I was worried because I liked my life and I feared what would happen if I did the next thing in life.
[00:51:06]  This reminds me of C.S. Lewis.
[00:51:08]  I forget which book it was.
[00:51:10]  You know, he has so many great ones, but in it, he said that a child loves chocolate and thinks chocolate is the greatest thing in the world.
[00:51:19]  And if you were to tell this child, you know, there are actually even better things in the world.
[00:51:25]  Or even, let's say it's like a teenager or something.
[00:51:27]  You know, not to make it creepy.
[00:51:28]  I forget C.S. Lewis' exact wording.
[00:51:30]  You said, you know, look, chocolate's great, but you know, there's actually this thing called sex, and it's even better than chocolate.
[00:51:36]  In the mind of the child, the child couldn't fathom that.
[00:51:39]  And the child would actually follow it up and say, well, does sex involve chocolate?
[00:51:44]  Because if it's the greatest thing, it must involve chocolate.
[00:51:46]  And it's really, you just can't make the child understand.
[00:51:49]  He just has to grow up and then he'll understand it.
[00:51:52]  That's like this woman.
[00:51:53]  She said, the greatest thing in life is going to brunch, sleeping in, going to brunch on Saturdays, getting a little too drunk, you know, wasting the rest of the day, eating takeout and going to bed.
[00:52:06]  That's just the best thing in life.
[00:52:08]  And you say, you know, there's actually something better.
[00:52:12]  There's something called having children, having a family, growing a family.
[00:52:16]  And she would say, well, does that involve getting too drunk at brunch?
[00:52:19]  It must, because that's the greatest thing in life.
[00:52:21]  That's the greatest thing in life.
[00:52:22]  This woman, she says, you know, I was running, I was the executive of a nonprofit, a stressful but fulfilling job.
[00:52:28]  And that's the greatest thing in the world is being the stressed out executive of a nonprofit.
[00:52:32]  And you say, actually, there's something better in life.
[00:52:35]  There is something better.
[00:52:37]  Having kids, having a family.
[00:52:38]  You say, well, does having kids, having a family involve being a stressful executive of a nonprofit?
[00:52:43]  It's like, I love podcasting.
[00:52:45]  I love selling cigars.
[00:52:47]  I love doing politics.
[00:52:49]  I love it all.
[00:52:50]  That's not all there is to life.
[00:52:52]  And you can't know until you know.
[00:52:54]  Some of these stories get really, really dark.
[00:52:57]  I mean, one of them involves a mother just saying, yeah, I'm going to leave.
[00:52:59]  I'm leaving my children.
[00:53:00]  I'm divorcing my husband, giving the kids to my husband.
[00:53:04]  I don't, this is The End of a Dollhouse by Henry Gibson.
[00:53:07]  This is sick stuff just saying, yeah, I'm just going to abandon my kids.
[00:53:10]  I don't want, I want to go have, I want to go fornicate and have brunch and go work as a, as a middle manager at the widget factory for Mr. McGillicutti.
[00:53:18]  I want, that's what I want.
[00:53:19]  I want to go back.
[00:53:20]  I want to regress.
[00:53:21]  I don't want this.
[00:53:22]  Sorry, kids.
[00:53:22]  Sorry if I'm traumatizing you.
[00:53:24]  Sorry if I'm breaking my public vows, but you know, I got to go get drunk and sleep around and work in an office.
[00:53:31]  So bye.
[00:53:32]  It's very, very sad, very, very dark.
[00:53:34]  Who is this article for?
[00:53:36]  I'll tell you, and I haven't seen a lot of people talking about this.
[00:53:39]  This article purports to be for the mothers who regret having to, maybe the fathers too, who regret having children.
[00:53:46]  That's not who this article is for.
[00:53:48]  This article is for the growing number of millennial women who never had kids and who are regretting that.
[00:53:58]  They're getting pangs of regret and frustration with that.
[00:54:02]  And this article is copium for them.
[00:54:07]  And I really, really feel for these women, some men too, but especially the women who were told their entire lives, don't date seriously.
[00:54:18]  Don't go sleep around.
[00:54:21]  Go have casual hookups.
[00:54:23]  Make sure you prioritize your career over everything.
[00:54:26]  Don't ever try to have ties of family.
[00:54:29]  Just be independent for your whole life.
[00:54:31]  You're exactly like a man.
[00:54:32]  Behave exactly like a man does.
[00:54:34]  They were told this their whole, all these feminist lies, their whole life.
[00:54:37]  And they woke up roughly around age 30 and realized it sucks.
[00:54:41]  They realize they were lied to.
[00:54:43]  Even if they don't, they're not totally conscious of it.
[00:54:45]  They have certain hints that they were lied to, that things aren't really working out.
[00:54:50]  They freak out, they freeze their eggs.
[00:54:52]  Companies are now passing all these kinds of policies.
[00:54:55]  But it's a deeply ingrained problem.
[00:54:58]  And there are two things you can do here.
[00:55:00]  When you've, everybody screws up and everybody is misled and this, what happens in a fallen world?
[00:55:05]  You can either recognize the problem, say, shoot, that was wrong.
[00:55:11]  Let me do my best to fix it now.
[00:55:13]  Let me at the very least do my best to help other people not fall into the same errors that I've fallen into.
[00:55:17]  We all do this.
[00:55:18]  Whatever the problem is, we all do this to some degree.
[00:55:21]  You can either go that way or you can go the New York Magazine way and you can deny the problem.
[00:55:27]  You can just deny it and say, no, I'm not feeling what I'm feeling.
[00:55:29]  I'm not desiring what I'm desiring.
[00:55:31]  Actually, do you know a lot of women on Reddit actually hate having kids?
[00:55:36]  Having kids probably sucks.
[00:55:38]  And you can just, but ultimately, because we're rational creatures and because there is an objective reality and because the natural law is written on every human heart, that's not going to work.
[00:55:49]  That kind of denial is ultimately not going to work.
[00:55:53]  Very sad cope.
[00:55:55]  I view this article not as the sign, not as a bad omen of an avalanche of worse social outcomes and behaviors.
[00:56:04]  I view this really as the last gasp of a failed ideology of feminism, a recognition that women actually want more.
[00:56:12]  And it's going to take more than a few Reddit comments to convince them otherwise.
[00:56:17]  Okay.
[00:56:17]  I know I ran late, but it's Music Monday.
[00:56:19]  The rest of the show continues now.
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