Ep. 1953 - JD Vance Speaks At TPUSA Amid Attacks On Erika Kirk
Michael Knowles analyzes shifting GOP sentiment toward Israel and the strategic necessity of confronting Iran's nuclear ambitions amidst a double blockade. He critiques left-wing historian Hassan Piker's revisionist views on the Soviet Union while condemning threats against Erika Kirk, urging federal arrests for credible dangers. The host praises Treasury Secretary Scott Besson's plan to force banks to collect citizenship data for mass deportations and rebuts Joy Behar's false claims about Jesus's divinity. Ultimately, Knowles argues that conservative political power must neutralize violence and that creative executive actions are essential for national security and immigration enforcement. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: CohereLabs/cohere-transcribe-03-2026, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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Religion and Good Ranchers00:03:30
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Mainstream Democrats favorite live streamer calls the fall of the Soviet Union one of the greatest catastrophes of the 20th century.
We'll see how that plays on the campaign trail.
Meanwhile, support for Israel in the United States collapses even among Republicans.
This might be the biggest shift in public opinion on an issue I have ever seen In my life.
And it has all sorts of implications for U.S. foreign policy, for the Republican Party, and all of this as the U.S. blockades the Iranian blockade.
It's a double blockade, it's a reverse Unocard blockade around the Strait of Hormuz as the Iran war enters its, sorry, is in the middle of its sixth week.
I'm Michael Knowles, this is the Michael Knowles Show.
Welcome back to the show.
Pardon the shoddy setup if you're watching today and not just listening.
I am in a hotel room in Philadelphia because I was at Villanova University last night.
That's the Pope's alma mater.
I agreed to this event last year providentially.
I was asked to speak at the Pope's alma mater on the topic of religion and America.
And the event happens to be 48 hours after President Trump gets into this war of words with the Pope.
Meanwhile, Joy Behar and the ladies at The View are claiming that Jesus never said he was the Messiah.
All politics, always coming back to religion.
This week, in a very overt way, we'll get to the ladies of the view pontificating on their curious theology.
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Iran Nuclear Options Explained00:15:39
It's all about religion.
It all comes back to the Holy Land.
It all comes back to religion.
All human conflict ultimately is theological, as Cardinal Manning tells us.
I've got to start with Israel.
This is crazy.
Turning to Harry Enton over at CNN, who is the most interesting pollster on TV.
Harry Enton has New poll numbers coming out of Gallup on a massive shift in public opinion over support of Israel.
The net favorability of Israel among Republicans under the age of 50.
You need to go back to 2022.
Two thumbs up.
Two thumbs up for Israel amongst young Republicans.
But by 2025, look at this.
Already a 30 point shift away.
Their net favorability down to minus two.
Today, look at this.
Minus 16 points.
That's an over 40 point shift.
The net favorability of Israel with moderate liberal Republicans.
Back in 2022, at plus 26 points.
Today, again, negative territory, minus nine points.
That's a 35 point shift in just four years' time with moderate liberal Republicans shifting away from Israel.
Net favorability of Israel amongst non liberal Democrats, that is, those who identify as either moderate or conservative.
Back in 2022, Israel was on the plus side of the ledger.
I'll give it one thumbs up at plus three points.
Look at this.
Democrats, the net favor of Israel, down into the Sea of Galilee at minus 55 points.
Minus 55 points among moderate, not liberal Democrats.
Are there any moderate Democrats?
Are there any non liberal Democrats?
For the three that there are, I don't know, maybe this is a poll of Joe Manchin and Fetterman.
Regardless, massive shift.
Creates a big problem for the state of Israel and a big problem for the GOP in the United States.
These numbers are just unbelievable.
This is not a poll of Twitter.
This is not a poll of the podcasters or the podcast audiences.
This is not a poll of 4chan.
This is a poll of moderate American voters.
So the state of Israel really began to lose the left 15 years ago.
This is when Israel really doubled down on its alignment with the American right, with the GOP and the conservative movement.
The conservatives were the last defenders of the state of Israel.
After the October 7th attacks and crucially the war in Gaza, that public opinion started to.
Crater, cratering among the moderates, cratering among the people who aren't all that ideological, and especially among young people.
It's crazy.
But here's the problem.
What this means is that the interests of the state of Israel and the United States are diverging.
They've always been distinct.
They're not totally distinct.
There is overlap.
There are areas where the United States and Israel's interests are aligned, but they're beginning to diverge.
Looking at those numbers, I have to think if I were the prime minister of Israel, I would do everything that I could do right now to take out the Iranian regime.
We talk about the Iran problem as losing our ability to stop their nuclear program.
You know, time is running out.
If we wait a day longer, Then they're going to reach a point of immunity such that our missiles can't hit them anymore, such that even if they don't have a nuclear weapon today, they're going to get one in a year because we're not able to stop the program.
We talk about that.
The window is closing.
The same fact applies to Iran for the state of Israel.
The window is closing because the United States is Israel's backer on the international stage.
The state of Israel doesn't really have that many friends internationally, and the United States is the global hegemon, so they're the ones who back Israel.
Now, the U.S. has an interest in stopping Iran's nuclear program.
I know some people deny that Iran wants a nuclear weapon.
I think that's ridiculous.
Iran has been pretty open about wanting a nuclear program for 50 years, a nuclear bomb.
But the United States' interest here is in preventing Iran from becoming a regional hegemon, from attacking Israel, which is an ally of the United States, from destabilizing the world further because they have one foot in, one foot out of the international order.
It's a broader kind of threat.
For the state of Israel, though, Iran is an existential threat.
Iran is much more of a threat to the state of Israel than it is to the United States, certainly much more of a threat imminently.
And previously, the state of Israel could have counted on bipartisan support and then, at the very least, overwhelming GOP support.
Now, the last backers of Israel in the United States are gone and the trend lines are all in the wrong direction.
So, if I'm a rational actor as the prime minister of Israel, I need to go all in on this Iran war.
The problem is, the United States doesn't necessarily want to go all in on this Iran war.
But for the state of Israel, it's kind of like the last chance.
And now we're in the middle of the sixth week.
Don't forget, President Trump said that the operation would take four to six weeks.
And so when everyone was freaking out and losing their heads over Trump, I said, look, I would have argued against the war.
I did argue against the war on prudential grounds, but Trump has an excellent record on foreign policy.
So I'll get concerned in week six.
That's when I'm going to start getting concerned.
I think many people, many normal people, maybe not in the media or the political class, but many normal people had that same opinion.
But now we're in week six.
President Trump clearly wants an off ramp here.
Israel cannot take an off ramp here.
Even if the numbers for favorability were really good in the United States, Israel probably wouldn't want to take the off ramp, but now it's existential.
So now you have this even thornier problem.
What, where does this war go?
President Trump just provided an update.
So the, the chief problem, the greatest leverage that Iran has right now is that they blocked the Strait of Hormuz.
And there are some people who are trying to say, well, actually, this is 15 degree chess because actually what's going to happen now is the United States is just going to supply all the oil to the world.
But that isn't going to happen.
We don't have sufficient capacity to make up for the oil that's being lost, not going through the Strait of Hormuz.
And oil is a global commodity.
So the oil prices are being set globally.
It means gas prices are going to go up in the United States, even if we start exporting a ton of oil.
So we have to open the Strait of Hormuz, but we can't do so in a way that allows Iran to hold this massive leverage whereby they can just close the Strait whenever they want to.
If that is the case, we will have given them a more powerful political weapon than a nuclear bomb.
Because the thing about a nuclear bomb is you can't really use it.
You know, I mean, we've used the nuclear bomb when we invented it 80 years ago.
But since then, happily, no one has used a nuclear weapon.
So weirdly, the ability to close the Strait of Hormuz And to paralyze the global hegemon is a stronger weapon, even than a nuclear bomb.
So, President Trump has done something that I think is very wise here.
He says, Okay, well, I can't really get these guys to negotiate.
They're not honest negotiators.
I can't get them to give up their nuclear program.
Okay, I'll tell you what I'll do.
You're going to choke off the global oil supply and petrochemicals and fertilizer and all these other goods that pass through the Strait of Hormuz.
You're going to try to squeeze the Gulf states.
You're going to do that, Iran?
Okay.
Well, I see your blockade and I raise you a blockade.
So now I'm going to blockade your blockade.
So that's fine.
All right.
I guess the oil's not going through the strait.
But guess what?
Nothing's getting into or out of Iran now either.
What are you going to do about that?
Iran is threatening to keep firing on the United States.
Iran is now threatening to block shipping from the Persian Gulf, the Sea of Oman, the Red Sea, if the U.S. continues the double blockade, such that now you have the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, Mohammed bin Salman, who was, according to reports, advocating for the strikes on Iran.
According to the reports, Mohammed bin Salman says, Hey, we need the off ramp in this war here because we cannot allow Iran to block the Red Sea.
Meanwhile, China is threatening to arm the Iranians.
That would be very bad for the United States.
I think President Trump has headed that off.
President Trump has now said to Xi Jinping, he wrote him a letter, he said, Don't you arm the Iranians because then we're going to take action against you.
And Xi Jinping for now said, I don't intend to arm the Iranians.
It's a terrible position.
And so it was always a terrible position.
Trump was always in an impossible spot.
That was true last year, right before the Ford O bombings.
That was true six years ago, seven years ago.
This has been building for many decades.
But right now, I see only two options on Iran, both of them terrible.
And we'll get to what those are in a second.
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I see two options on Iran right now.
The one is to hand over massive leverage.
If we wind this thing down with a bad deal and say, okay, Iran, all right, you'll give us some guarantees that you won't pursue your nuclear weapon for another five years or ten years, but you'll get to keep your enriched uranium, which we've buried underground because of the very effective American military action, but we're going to lift some sanctions.
Maybe we'll give you a little bit of money.
And We're going to recognize that you can play this card again whenever you want.
You can block the Strait of Hormuz whenever you want.
That's one option.
Not great.
Or we invade Iran.
Or there's a ground invasion.
There are boots on the ground.
Something that would take power away from Iran.
We would be saying, This Strait is ours now.
You're not going to shut us down.
We're the global hegemon.
Get back in line.
But it's something for which there is no appetite in the United States, not on the left.
Not on the right, not among the MAGA voters, not Americans generally who are traumatized by the experience in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Nobody really wants that.
But what are you going to do?
So then it's very tempting to say, well, Trump just put himself in a pickle.
He shouldn't have done this.
He played this wrong.
But this problem didn't begin six weeks ago.
This problem was clear eight months ago.
I did a very scientific Twitter poll eight months ago, before the Fordow bombings.
And I said, do you think that the United States should permit Iran to develop a nuclear weapon?
And in my very highly scientific Twitter poll, it was 90-10.
No.
Right afterward, I said, okay, do you think the United States should go to war with Iran?
Precisely the same numbers.
90-10, no.
So if you're the president, you're in an impossible situation.
And this is how it works at presidential politics.
I spoke to, many years ago, I spoke to a top advisor to President Bush.
And he made the point that by the time a decision gets up to the presidential level, by the time it's not being taken by the underlings, it's impossible.
Just by definition.
When it gets up to the level of the president, there are no good options.
There are a ton of risks.
This is what I said at the top of the Iran strikes, the most recent Iran strikes.
Everybody was celebrating in certain quarters.
Everybody was saying, This is great.
Finally, freedom for Iran.
The wonderful Persians can now be Western liberal Democrats.
And isn't that going to be wonderful?
We're going to bring in the crown prince Reza Pahlavi.
They're going to be pro Western.
It's going to be awesome.
I said, Ah, not so fast.
I think this regime is a little more durable than all that.
Let's not forget, the last time the CIA helped to install a regime in Iran, it lasted 26 years.
The Islamic Revolution, the mullahs, had lasted twice as long.
They're clearly durable.
The Iranians are not all, as we see in lots of propaganda and on social media, They're not all just like hot Persian women smoking long cigarettes, okay, ripping off their hijabs.
There is substantial support for a radical Islamic regime.
It might not be the majority of Iranians, but it's real.
And the Iranian regime is brutal, ruthless.
They have a billion contingency plans.
I don't think that you can really oust them.
You can keep killing a lot of them, but I don't think you can oust the regime.
So you had the people that were cheering it on the one hand, saying, this is awesome, no downside.
I interviewed someone with Cabot on Wired in Live the day the Iran strike began.
It was some woman, I think she'd worked in the State Department.
She was Persian by ethnicity.
And she said, This is great.
I don't see any downsides.
I said, You don't see any potential.
Hold on.
I think I could name one or two.
So that was one side of it.
And then you had the other side saying, This is terrible.
And Iran's a fine regime.
And they don't want a nuclear weapon.
And they're not at all a threat to the United States.
I said, That's ridiculous, too.
The real take on this is if it works, this is the greatest stroke of foreign policy genius since the fall of the Berlin Wall.
If it doesn't work, this could be a brutal blow to American power.
Forget about the administration, forget about the conservative coalition.
It would just be a major blow to American power on the world stage.
So the stakes are very high.
Got to give credit.
The guy's got guts like we've rarely seen in the United States.
But it's a brutal, brutal situation.
I'm reminded of Thucydides.
I go back to Thucydides, one of the three references that anyone ever makes when it comes to war.
The World War II, the fall of Rome, and Thucydides.
Thucydides writing in the history of the Peloponnesian War that there are three reasons that people go to war fear, interest, and honor.
And no one ever takes honor seriously.
But fear, obviously, we fear.
We don't want Iran to get a nuclear weapon.
Interest, it would be good to have this crucial country in the world be more pro Western as it was 50 years ago.
And honor, too.
Honor, meaning that we're the global hegemon.
We cannot be pushed around by this two bit terrorist regime in Iran.
And all of its backers in Russia, in China, and this leads to what is sometimes called the Thucydides trap, which is that when a major power, like Athenian imperial democracy or the United States, is challenged by a rising power, in this case China, war becomes very likely.
Those dynamics were all in play eight months ago, two years ago, 10 years ago.
They're very clear right now.
Very dangerous situation.
Trump Aligns with the Pope00:04:53
I don't envy the president.
He had no good options.
He today has no good options.
I hope he can pull a rabbit out of a hat.
One thing I always tell my friends in politics or in investing or anywhere is don't bet against Trump.
The guy has managed to pull a lot of rabbits out of the hat.
However, this is a very difficult one.
If he can pull a rabbit out of the hat on this, Abolish term limits, leave him in power until he's 150 years old.
Brutal situation.
Coupled with the major shift in domestic political opinion, especially on the Middle East, especially on Israel, it's just a perfect storm.
Okay, speaking of the president and religion, it always comes back to religion.
It's not just because I care a lot about religion, you care a lot about religion, politics is about religion, ultimately.
The president has another message for the Pope.
President posted on Truth Social.
I said, Oh no, oh no, I'm white knuckling here.
What did he say to the Pope this time?
And he said, Will someone please tell Pope Leo that Iran has killed at least 42,000 innocent, completely unarmed protesters in the last two months and that for Iran to have a nuclear bomb is absolutely unacceptable?
Can I say something?
Can I say something?
Look, I was very blunt about how I did not like the President's last tweet about the Pope, where he called him weak and terrible and he said he doesn't like him and all that.
I said, I don't like him.
It's not that you can't criticize the Pope, but I don't love the tone about this.
I gave a whole speech last night, which you can catch on.
I think it's on my YouTube channel.
It's certainly on Yaf's YouTube channel at Villanova, the Pope's alma mater, on this dynamic the Pope versus the President.
I said a lot of it is the tone.
You can disagree, but there should be a more respectful tone.
Not just to be nice, not just to be polite, but because the temporal power has to work with the spiritual power.
This is a dynamic that's existed since the fifth century, or earlier, the fourth century, actually.
They have to work together.
You don't want them at war.
In the Middle Ages, they would literally go to war sometimes.
It was not good.
And there are so many dark forces arrayed against us.
We cannot have Catholics fighting Protestants, Christians fighting Jews in the United States.
And you cannot have the temporal ruler of the global hegemon, the United States, the president of the United States, being more powerful than any Roman emperor ever fighting the spiritual authority.
Don't want to have it.
So, can I say something?
This post from President Trump to the Pope, I think he heard us.
I think this is actually a major improvement.
It's Trumpy, so it's not the most polite ever, but look what he's saying.
He's not saying, this guy's a big dummy and he's a hippie and he's a commie and he wears a hat and I don't like him.
He's not saying that.
What is he?
He says, will someone please tell the Pope?
He even uses the word please.
That's nice.
Will someone please tell the Pope that Iran has done a lot of bad things?
The Pope was saying that he's skeptical that the war in Iran is justified.
There are just wars.
But he's saying, I don't think this war is justified.
And Trump is saying, No, will someone please tell the Pope, here is the evidence for why the war might be justified.
So he's actually working within the same framework as the Pope in this one.
It's not just accusations.
It's not just insults.
He's attempting to persuade in his idiosyncratic way.
He is aligning his interest with the Pope's interest.
They're aiming toward a common good.
Hey, Pope, you want to protect innocence.
Well, I just think you're wrong about how I am protecting innocence, because I really am protecting innocence.
And you're going to light on the Iranian regime.
And actually, I'm justified in taking action against the Iranian regime on the same moral bases that you're thinking about.
You even get a please in there.
I'll take it, guys.
I know, you know, people say, well, no, I want him to say it this way.
I want him to use this word.
I don't like that.
That's not good enough.
It's not just deleting a post isn't enough.
You know, there's a million things to complain about.
But in my view of politics, politics is not the art of the perfect, politics is the art of the possible, politics is the art of the second best.
And so I'm very happy.
I'm very gratified to see President Trump posted that picture that offended a lot of people a few days ago.
And then he took it down.
That's a win.
A lot of the other stuff about that, some of the explanations, justifications, to me, a lot of that is just noise.
We asked him to take the picture down and he did.
That's a good thing.
We should be happy about that.
In this case, Catholics in particular said it would, we would like it if the Pope's, if the President spoke in a more respectful tone about the Pope.
He did that.
I'm not saying this is the way you would speak to someone at high table at an Oxford dinner.
You know, I'm not saying this is language totally fit for the Queen, but it is more respectful.
He is actually moving in that direction.
I'll take it.
I think one step in the right direction, two steps or three steps in the right direction, I'll take it.
Cleaning Up Protein Powder00:03:33
Now, speaking of terrible regimes, Hassan Piker, a left wing streamer who has repeatedly, consistently called for violence against conservatives, threatened conservatives.
He spoke at my alma mater, Yale, last night, and he claimed that the fall of the Soviet Union is one of the great catastrophes of the 20th century.
Normal Americans, patriotic Americans, Americans consider the fall of the Soviet Union to be one of the great victories of the 20th century.
One of the great victories in the history of the United States.
The end of the evil empire.
The rise of America as the undisputed leader of the world.
For Hassan Piker, it's one of the great tragedies.
And Hassan Piker is not just some guy mouthing off on a live stream.
Hassan Piker is the most prominent left-wing live streamer who is now campaigning with Democrat candidates in the fall.
We'll get to what that means.
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Hassan Piker at Dear Old Yale.
You know, Yale was liberal when I was there, and boy, oh boy, take it away.
The fall of the USSR was one of the greatest catastrophes of the 20th century.
Just wait, listen, maybe you'll agree.
Not only was there incalculable harm done to every single country under its banner, Child prostitution, skyrocketing suicide rates, life expectancy plummeting.
But America was no longer contested around the globe.
And it is precisely because of the end to that multipolarity that we saw accelerated neoliberalism that is devastating every Western nation right now.
Unlimited and unchecked greed.
Our successes are leading to our own demise and the demise and collapse of the liberal system.
The U.S. has produced disaster after disaster after disaster.
Making the Left Toxic00:15:11
On and on and on, blame America.
You know, this is the guy who said America deserved 9 11.
This is the guy who said that Tom Cotton, the senator, should be assassinated.
This is the guy who said that liberals should assassinate Rick Scott, another Republican senator.
This is the guy who said that the streets should run red in the blood of capitalists.
He's very, very much in favor of political violence against conservatives.
He obviously hates America.
If we had anything resembling a serious political system anymore, he would have been deported long ago, maybe sent to Guantanamo Bay.
The line in question here, the point he's making that the fall of the Soviet Union was this catastrophe, that is a line directly out of Putin.
That's one of Putin's observations.
He says it's one of the great, if not the greatest tragedy.
Of the 20th century.
So you say, okay, well, who cares about some guy mouthing off on his live stream or at this super liberal school to the pats and cheers of some deluded undergraduates?
Piker is not just some radical.
We have fringe, wacky people on the right who say they love Hitler, who are like real edgy.
They're real special, edgy boys, you know.
But the mainstream of the conservative movement and certainly of Republican candidates, but even just the activist side of the conservative movement has kept those people out.
Totally excluded those people.
For Hassan Piker, they bring him in.
They campaign with him.
Two days ago, Ezra Klein, moderate, moderate milquetoast, reasonable lib Ezra Klein in the New York Times, the liberal establishment outlet par excellence, ran the headline Hassan Piker is not the enemy.
We're talking about major shifts in public opinion, huge shifts to the political order.
This Is the scariest one to me.
Not Hassan Piker.
He's kind of a doofus.
He laments neoliberal decadence as he's wearing his Cartier sunglasses.
He's a multi millionaire speaking at Yale.
He's obviously a rank hypocrite and he's pretty goofy.
The problem is, even if he doesn't have political power, the people who do have real political power are exalting him, bringing him in, campaigning with him.
And they're doing so because they realize that their base, their normie base, their moderates, Like that guy.
And they like political violence against conservatives.
And they want to kill Rick Scott and they want to kill Tom Cotton.
And they celebrated when they assassinated Charlie Kirk and they want to kill you too.
Very scary shift in public opinion.
How does one counter that?
You saw a good example of this last night.
So, while I was doing my speech at Villanova, Pope's alma mater, there was a TPUSA event.
And they're continuing Charlie's TPUSA tour.
I'm very honored.
Erica texted me, invited me to do one of the events.
I forget the exact date.
I think we're doing it in Idaho.
But I think it's very important to support TPUSA and to keep the tour going and not allow the left to win in what they did, which is assassinating Charlie.
And I think any way we can support Erica, we absolutely should, obviously.
The vice president agrees.
No less a figure than the vice president agrees.
And so he was going to show up and do this event with Erica Kirk.
But Erica couldn't make it because there were too many credible death threats against her.
And right off the bat, you would say, well, hold on, how could there be a credible threat against her at an event with the vice president?
Surely he has a lot of threats against him.
He has Secret Service protection.
How could the vice president show up and not Erica Kirk?
And it's simple enough.
There were no threats to Erica Kirk.
In the room after the vice president got there with the secret service locking down the venue.
The problem is the reporting is that she was being doxxed and harassed and threatened on the way there.
The vice president travels in Air Force Two flanked by an army of secret service agents.
Erica Kirk doesn't.
TPUSA is a great big powerful organization.
Erica Kirk is a widow and she's the last parent that her kids have left.
And so she has to take those threats very, very seriously.
Here's the vice president discussing this horrific situation with Andrew Colvatt, one of Charlie's right hand men.
I was just on his show, Charlie's show, a couple of weeks ago, who filled in at the last minute.
Here's the situation.
So, for those of you wondering why I don't have really flowing long blonde hair right now, so I'm going to address it right at the front.
Mr. Vice President, I'm on stage here instead of our friend Erica Kirk.
That's right.
Because unfortunately, she has received some very serious threats in her direction, which is terrible.
It's a terrible reflection on the state of reality and the state of the country.
But it underscores a larger point that she has received a lot of attacks from surprising places, perhaps.
Tell us what you think about that, some of the people that have made part time jobs out of attacking Erica, and this is the net result.
Sure.
Well, first of all, I love Erica, and I know that she did get some threats.
And, you know, about two hours ago, as you know, Andrew, I was a little worried that we were going to have to cancel the event because Erica was not going to come, and she was very worried about it.
And I talked to the Secret Service, and obviously these guys do a very good job.
And I said, you know what?
Let's let Erica do what she needs to do for herself and her family.
I'm sure Andrew will fill in, and let's go and make this an amazing event with the Georgia Bulldogs in Athens, Georgia.
So, absolutely, we're going to do this thing.
Very courageous, really good on.
Andrew for stepping up and obviously on the vice president, who's a very busy guy who's just in Pakistan negotiating, who's, uh, you know, been all over the world and is spinning a lot of plates.
Very good on him.
I mean, that's the right thing to do.
Uh, JD was good friends with Charlie and he's one of the few figures, I think, who could unify the young right.
So it's good that they showed up, but it's horrific that Andrew had to sub in here because of the threats on Erica.
So right off the bat, there's this question, where are the threats coming from?
Because a year ago, you would have said all the threats are coming from the left.
Now clearly Andrew here is referring to Candace.
Because Candace has been doing these shows going after Erica Kirk.
And he didn't, he didn't want to mention her name, nor did the vice president, uh, for reasons I totally understand and I agree with, which is you don't, you don't want to give air to, uh, the kinds of accusations that are causing all of these problems.
I get that, especially when it's a ratings game.
I get all of that.
But then you have this question, what do we do?
What do we do about it?
Getting right to the point that Andrew is clearly alluding to here.
There's this, this media point, this, this moral point where we, we should say what we believe, which is we, we've all done it ad nauseum.
We say, uh, this is wrong.
I think this is really wrong to go after Erica.
I think we really need to support Erica.
I think she's a hero in the way that she has suffered publicly and done so with a lot of grace.
And people should stop hitting her.
I wish Candace wouldn't do that show.
I wish, I wish people would, would lay off Erica and not just lay off her, but support her because of what she's doing.
So we can all say that till we're blue in the face.
But I've said from the beginning of all of this, I don't think that's going to be sufficient.
In fact, I don't think that's going to really work much at all.
We should state the truth, but that alone is not a strategy.
And I think that's clearly proven out.
Obviously, just talking about it a lot hasn't done anything, has not worked.
Erica could not show up to this event last night, despite all the people talking and talking and talking.
So, what can be done?
What can be done broadly?
This relates to the Hassan Piker story at Yale, the left exalting this guy.
Who is calling for political violence against conservatives.
The clearest example of political violence against conservatives being the assassination of Charlie Kirk by a radical leftist dating a tranny.
What is to be done?
There are some people who say, well, if we just talk about it enough, that's it.
You know, we'll just debate.
And the answer to bad ideas is more speech.
And after Charlie was assassinated, I wrote a piece, wrote a column and talked a fair bit about how I thought that was the wrong approach.
You can't just double down on the free marketplace of ideas because you can't have a marketplace of any kind of ideas or commodities when bandits keep coming in, shooting up the marketplace.
So, you need more than just talk.
You need more than just debate and podcasts and speeches.
A point I make a lot on this show is politics is not just debate club.
There's debate.
Politics has to do with debate, but it's not just debate club.
You have to wield power.
And so, in this case, when we're talking about specific credible threats against Erica, doxing her, threatening her on the way to this venue, the government needs to go in and find the people who were making those threats, whether they were online, whether they were.
By mail, by phone, whoever those people were, we live in the greatest surveillance state that's ever existed.
Maybe other than China, but we, we can find these people.
The government needs to go find them and arrest them and then prosecute them to the fullest extent of the law.
And then it needs to enhance their charges with civil rights enhancements, for instance.
And we need to put those people in prison for a very, very, very long time.
That's the only way this works.
I have personal experience of this.
Antifa used to show up to my speaking events.
The left broadly has been threatening us, committing acts of violence, not just at TPSA events or YAF events or my events, but at all of the conservative events around the country for years.
You know what?
Antifa doesn't show up to my events anymore.
And the reason is because a couple of years ago, when one of them showed up, two of them showed up and threw an explosive and seriously injured a cop, that guy went to prison and he didn't go to prison for nearly long enough, but there, there was a federal case brought and there were There were real consequences, and I'm just speaking to my personal experience.
They started to lay off.
So that's the legal aspect.
You have to go, it's not enough just to talk about what a shame it all is and how it'd be great if we could all sing kumbaya and be nice again.
You have to bring the government in to find the people who are committing the real crimes, not even just kind of talking or opining, but the people who are going and saying, I'm threatening you, I'm going to dox you, I'm going to come after your family.
To Erica Kirk, this woman who should be an exemplar of grace, go after those people and arrest them.
But that's not even the end of the story because it's not even enough just to arrest these people.
You then need to bring in the political component, which is you need to make the mainstream left toxic.
If the mainstream left is going to play around with these people who call for and promote political violence, guys like Hassan Piker, you need to make it toxic for them to do so.
You need to punish them at the ballot box.
Maybe you need to punish them through the law.
You need to investigate them.
You need to subpoena them.
You need to humiliate them in public.
You need to make it brutal for them to have.
Public lives in government.
That's the only way it's going to work.
The right is pretty good at media, not even establishment media.
We're just pretty good at like kind of wacky media that is subversive to the mainstream.
So we were good at talk radio when talk radio was kind of nothing.
We're good at cable news when the networks were still dominating.
We're good at podcasts and we dominated podcasts in the early days of podcasts.
Now I guess we're good at live streaming and tweeting and TikTok.
I don't know, whatever.
But Too many people on the right are just content leaving it with media.
When we actually get political power, we don't know how to wield it.
We're not comfortable wielding it.
I think the Trump administration has done a very good job on this generally.
But to me, this is the issue.
You want to talk about all the issues that I'm thinking of heading into November?
The immigration issue, Trump's actually done a good job on it.
He doesn't get credit for it.
Over 700,000 formal deportations last year, well over a million self-deportations.
It's a start.
It's not 20 million, but it's 2 million.
That's pretty, that's a start.
They could ramp it up.
That's great, but they've done a great job.
And they cut off the 3 million who are coming every year at the border.
The admin is not getting nearly enough credit for the mass deportations.
That's one issue in my mind.
The other issue in my mind, obviously the Iran war, which is very, very high stakes.
I said it from the minute it kicked off, but it, it's either going to be Great, or it's going to be a quagmire.
And there's actually very little that we can do now because the die is cast.
But one issue that we can fight on that is politically unifying, that is crucial as a matter of justice, and that is existential from a political standpoint is we have to prosecute the left.
And not just the left, I mean, I guess the eccentric people all over, because we're in this major shift of public opinion where you don't even know if someone's on the left or the right.
Regardless, we need to wield the law, guys.
I don't mean to sound like Mussolini here banging the table, but you have to wield the law.
Because when these guys get back into power, it's not going to be Joe Biden.
You're going to be longing for the days of Joe Biden, who also wielded the law to arrest pro life grannies.
Joe Biden, who also sued nuns in the Obama administration.
Joe Biden, who's dreadful.
And you're going to be longing for the days of Joe Biden.
Because the Democrats who are coming into power, they're a bunch of Hassan Pikers.
And the threats and the violence and the doxing and the suppression, the violence, it's only going to go up.
And if we don't, if we can't get our act together, we don't want to take those steps to really wield power.
We, I said this yesterday, we have no one but ourselves to blame.
Okay.
Now, speaking of political power, the Trump administration is doing something excellent with wielding political power on the immigration issue.
This, no one really seems to be talking about it.
It's coming from the Treasury Secretary, Scott Besson.
Yesterday, our investigative team uncovered a story that should have been impossible to ignore.
New emails show the Biden administration coordinated with radical pro abortion groups to help track and prosecute peaceful pro life activists.
So the question is simple why did the legacy media?
Not want you to see it.
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My favorite comment yesterday is from Frosted Ice Pharaoh 7723, who says, The Arabic yodeling is called ululating.
It is a horrible, terrifying noise.
I have Professor Jacob, my Levant expert, over in the corner there.
Did I pronounce that correctly, Professor?
Ululating?
He says it's Allahu Akbar.
It's Allah.
But it's the one where they go, Allah, Allah, Allah.
They did it at the Sabrina Carpenter concert when Sabrina Carpenter just had this immediate, impossible to suppress look of disgust.
She goes, Ugh, what's that?
She said, It's my culture.
I really love you.
He goes, That's your culture.
So, ululating.
I like that.
I learned a new word today.
Scott Besant, Treasury Secretary, whom I admire greatly.
I've interviewed him a couple of times.
Really sharp guy in the Trump administration.
Joy Behar's Theological Claim00:05:55
Besson just came out and he said the president is considering an executive order to force banks to collect citizenship information on the customers.
I love this.
I love this so much.
This is what I mean when I talk about how the Trump admin is not getting enough credit for the deportations.
The deportations are not going to be rounding up Venezuelans and putting them on a bunch of boxcars down to Bukele's torture camp.
That's not how it's going to work.
There will be a little bit of airplanes and plane trains and automobiles, but to deal with a problem like 20 million illegal aliens, you can't just send in the police.
You have to be creative in how you're going to do it.
Forcing banks to collect citizenship information.
Which is then reported to the government, which then allows the government to deport people, is one of the strongest mechanisms I've seen yet to get these people out of the country.
You're not going in, you're not throwing a gun in their face, you're not invading Minnesota and giving Tim Walz the opportunity to launch an insurrection and a psyop.
You're just taking them out of the economy, you're debanking them.
This is a tool that the left has wielded against the right, you will recall.
This is a tool the left wielded against Trump specifically.
And it works.
And that's just against one or two people, most powerful people in the world.
When you just debank 20 million people, they're probably going to go home because they're being shut out of the economy.
I love this.
I love this.
That's power.
That's politics.
This is the show.
When the Democrats launched their great campaign to throw Swalwell under the bus, but at the same time, improve their chances in California, uh, Maintain their power in Congress, avoid shaming their fellow Democrat constituents or members in Congress by not putting them on the record to expel them.
I said, game, game, recognize game.
You got to give it to them.
They're really good at politics.
That's power.
That's the kind of thing we're seeing here.
I love this.
I hope the executive order does come out.
I hope it has teeth.
Okay.
Speaking of power, we return to eternal power.
Joy Behar on The View has just made a strange theological claim.
You know, in this age of debates between the Pope and the president, In age of lady bishops going on CNN to opine about religion as if such a thing were even possible, uh, Joy Behar goes to the heart of the matter and says that Jesus never claimed to be Jesus.
Jesus himself did not run around saying, I'm the Messiah.
I'm the Messiah.
This guy, you're supposed to have a little bit of hearing.
That's exactly what Jesus said.
I am the Messiah.
You know what?
No, he did not.
Jesus was long-suffering.
The Pope's got him.
He's got God in mind.
Jesus said, I knew Jesus.
Jesus was not narcissistic like this guy.
But when you are the Messiah, it's not narcissism to say it.
Yes, it is.
When you are the Messiah, it's not.
I'm going to move this along because this is like, it's too much for me.
The Pope has God with him.
Yes.
Okay, so Whoopi, even Whoopi, realizes this is not going very well.
Joy Bayer comes to you.
He never claimed to be the Messiah.
You say, well, he did.
Not only that, he claimed to be God.
He said, before Abraham was, I am.
He says, I saw Satan fall like lightning.
He says, I am the way, the truth, and the life.
He says, whoever has seen me has seen the Father.
He says, there's no way to the Father except through the Son.
He Conquers death and is resurrected and ascends into heaven.
He rides into Jerusalem on an ass heralded by palm fronds.
He's, he, he like only claims to be the Messiah.
That's like the thing he does.
And God, not just a Messiah in the literal temporal sense, but also in the spiritual sense, in the eternal sense.
And I don't need to tell you this.
You obviously all know that.
But what delights me about this clip.
Is the confidence.
How many people do you have in your life?
You know, that liberal cousin, that person in class, that co worker who doesn't know anything about anything and just speaks so confidently.
It's actually become a meme.
Say, well, you know, look, I'm a liberal and I don't believe your stupid religion, you dumb Christian rube.
But let me tell you why I'm actually a better Christian than you.
I actually think all your views are completely bogus.
And no, I've never read the Bible.
Of course not.
But let me tell you why I actually know everything about Christianity.
And they just, they're so confident.
This is what Reagan talked about when he said the problem with our liberal friends is not that they're ignorant, it's that they know so much that isn't so.
It's Joy Behar.
And what's so amazing is now one regular viewer of Joy Behar's view will come away from that and say, huh, maybe I shouldn't trust what they say on other things.
If Joy Behar can say so confidently something that is so manifestly false, You would have to assume she doesn't know anything about anything, but no.
But no.
They'll just move on.
Okay, I really want to get to a viral question.
I really want to, oh, I want to get to it so badly, which is it went viral.
It was this question posed to Reddit that went viral on social media Why do conservative men seem to date liberal women?
Why do they do?
And I think that's true.
One person just tried to answer it very quickly and said, because they're easy.
That might, okay, that's fine.
We'll put that one aside for a second.
But I think there are other reasons too.
But we don't have time to get to it.
So the love doctor is going to have to tease that for tomorrow.
New Show Behind the Wire00:00:46
Come tune back in tomorrow.
The love doctor will give you your prescription, your diagnosis.
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