Ep. 1994 - "Michelle Obama Is A MAN!" UFC Night Delivers As Iran Submits To Trump

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As if scripted by Hollywood precisely as fighting was set to begin at UFC Freedom 250th White House, fighting stopped in the Iran War. Infuriating cultural elitists and belligerent neocons, a lot of overlap in that Venn diagram, the events of this weekend produced some of the most iconic political images of my lifetime with the help of the heavens themselves. We will get to the most consequential 24 hours of the past 107 days since the Iran War began. Also, Elon Musk became the world's first trillionaire. I'm Michael Knowles, this is the Michael Knowles Show. Welcome back to the show. Also, speaking of extreme sports and violence and danger, really, really sad video. A 21-year-old woman bungee jumps off a bridge in Brazil, but the company that had her doing it, the thrower off the bridge, never put the cord on her. So, they just threw her off the bridge. Really sad personal story. Also, there is political import. I think that's why it's going viral. We'll get to that momentarily. First though, fight night, baby, absolutely crazy at the White House. So, the images alone were worth whatever this thing cost. And because it's President Trump, he was able to do this for basically nothing in terms of the actual cost. I think UFC was paying for the actual event itself, then this amazing military flyover, which is part of military training, but it just looks crazy. It was military jets flying over the White House with this crazy arena that they built that's bigger than the White House itself, with this gladiatorial combat in the center, 5,000 people all around. This image looks like those memes that were going around in 2016. Do you remember this? In the first Trump campaign, there were all these these memes that an artist actually drew. This was pre-AI. And it was Trump, you know, riding on an elephant, crossing the Delaware with George Washington on a tank, playing electric guitar or whatever. It was these crazy images of we're back, baby, we're America, more America than ever. And the only difference is this photo is real. This is the meme turned reality. This actually happened on the South Lawn of the White House. And even earlier in the day, what is most astounding about all of this is earlier in the day, you had this image taken from, I guess it was from the Lincoln Memorial. And it was this image looking down past the reflecting pool down at the Washington Monument. And you can see this giant rainbow in the sky with a zap of lightning coming out too. Lightning that seems to connect almost the rainbow to the Washington Monument. It's just this jarring image that in centuries past would have been an omen. It would have been considered an omen, you know, a sign and a wonder. In pagan antiquity, this would have been a sign of the favor of the gods. And what strikes me, I mean, there's too many images, our whole show would just be looking at these images and the significance of these images. But what really strikes me is when you look at the White House image with the flyover and the UFC tent, you say, okay, well, look, that image cost money to make. The White House knew what it was doing here. He knew it was going to get that picture. And man, is that that picture is worth a thousand political campaign speeches. That picture is worth a lot more than a thousand dollars or a thousand words. But then you look at that image of the rainbow with the lightning and the Washington Monument over the new reflecting pool. And you say, wow, man, Trump got that image for free. You get that one. That one didn't cost up penny. And you have the rainbow during what the liberals have dubbed Pride Month, but it's really a month dedicated to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. That's what it's supposed to be in June. And you say, wow, in this Pride Month, at an event that in a White House that has totally gotten rid of all the pride stuff, now you get a rainbow not made by man, not being pushed by political activists, not an artificial rainbow. You get a real rainbow appearing in heaven with this beautiful pastel colored sky with lightning coming down right before this UFC fight. As peace is being signed between the Imperial Hegemon and Persia, on the president's birthday, the president, who is this cesarean figure, you've got Trump there on his during his birthday feasts with his gladiatorial games, signing peace treaties with the Persian Empire. And you've got Baron Octavian Augustus Trump sitting behind him, stone cold. He's like seven foot 15 inches tall. And it just, man, classical politics is back, okay? Whatever technocratic liberal nonsense we thought we had constructed in modernity, that's all gone, baby. We're back to the politics of lightning and rainbows and gladiators and the Western Empire signing treaties with the Persian Empire. It is, the gods of the copy book headings have returned and this was crazy. Now, amid all of this, I can't even get to all the events earlier in the day. The events earlier in the day where you have like dirt bikes flying, doing flips in the air over the White House, where you have bald eagles flying in. I mean, this is populist entertainment. Some people are saying, well, this is degrading the White House. This is degrading to the dignity and stature of the White House. I say, okay, first of all, there is precedent for this. Teddy Roosevelt hosted boxing matches at the White House. And not only did Teddy Roosevelt, this is 100 years ago, very serious president of ours, and a good parallel to Trump, not only did he host boxing matches at the White House, he participated in them and he only stopped participating in them after he was partially permanently blinded in one eye during a boxing match. So there's precedent here. Teddy Roosevelt hosted a sumo wrestling match in the White House. There is a precedent, even beyond America, for great leaders hosting games. But then, of course, you want to talk about the dignity of the White House. Let's not forget that during the Biden administration, you had topless trannies showing up with artificial rainbows, not real rainbows from the heavens, artificial rainbows in the White House portico. You had these topless trannies flashing themselves at the White House. I think far more degrading than a bald eagle flying in and some dirt bikes doing flips in the air. And I think it's not that the left is above bread and circuses, bread and circuses, which describe great and slightly decadent empires. It's that they're just bad at them now. I mean, if my question is the question of Russell Crowe and the Gladiator, are you not entertained? Is this not why you have come? If we're going to be a decadent late-stage empire, I would much rather be the Gladiator kind of empire than the Gay Orgy kind of empire, wouldn't you? I think so. I mean, this was a wild night. Do we have the clip? One of the fighters at one point gets up and he calls Michelle Obama a man. Hey, shout out to Trump for having the balls to put something like this on. And if I'm going to say anything, there's only one person more incredible than the incredible Hulk, and that's my lord and savior, Jesus Christ. Now listen, Alex Pereira, I want a shama on your mama. Don't even know what that refers to. Don't even. And lastly, Michelle Obama is a man. Am I right, America? Ladies and gentlemen, Josh Hulkin. All right, moving on here, folks. Can I, I know this is going to be an unpopular opinion. I actually don't like the Michelle Obama's a man jokes. Can I, I know I'm not allowed to say that. Can I say that I don't like, the reason I don't like the Michelle Obama's a man jokes. One, I don't think she's actually a man, but two, I just don't like mocking women's appearances. However, I don't like it. I don't think it's gentlemanly. I don't, I don't love it. Okay. However, if that's the only mild criticism you could make of this event, the Libs have nothing. I mean, people were posting all their social media saying, the left will never recover from this. They're the leftists on life support because it was just, it was the jets and the fighting. And it was such popular entertainment. It was such popular entertainment. And it just seems so visceral and it seems so real. It really was the difference between the artificial rainbow flag and the actual rainbow in the sky. A friend of mine, Father George Rutler, makes this great point. He says, it is a wicked generation that seeks a sign and wonder, and I'm not the first to observe it, but it's a stupid generation that ignores a sign and wonder. And just everything, the circumstances surrounding this event, not the least of which is the peace deal with Iran, which we'll get to momentarily, the fact that it's on Trump's birthday, the signs from the heavens. I mean, every aspect of this was so real, so visceral. Even part of the reason, like 95% of that, that fighter's comments were really great. He's, he's talking about our Lord and Savior. That's great. The cultural elites hate that stuff, but America loves that and they should love that because we're invoking God and we're giving gratitude to God. And it's okay to say the name of Jesus and it's okay to have earnest faith. And it's okay. That's, that's actually what people want. If you're going to have popular entertainment, if you're going to have slightly decadent shows, we want the dirt bikes and the eagles and the fighting. We don't want the topless trannies. It just felt so visceral and so real. And the left tried to put on its own response to this. And it was so hilariously out of touch. We'll get to that momentarily first. I want to tell you about Pepperdine. Go to go.pepperdine.edu slash dailywire. The people running the country had to go somewhere. The people writing legislation, staffing administrations, advising presidents, running agencies, sharing public opinion, influencing major institutions did not simply appear out of thin air. They were educated somewhere, which raises an obvious question. Where are tomorrow's leaders being formed today? 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The locations themselves are pretty great too, by the way. Part of this experience takes place in Malibu, which is pretty sweet. If that sounds like something worth exploring, go to go.pepperdine.edu slash dailywire. That is go.pepperdine.edu slash dailywire. The LibResponse comes from the Committee for the First Amendment, which put on its own show to counter program UFC Freedom 250. This show was called Rise Up, Sing Out. Not this time. No one is getting left behind this time. How do we get there? Together or never? Get there at all. Perfect. Absolutely perfect. The left is not above bread and circuses. The left is just somehow now terrible at them. It is the right that is better at putting on culturally significant national games and entertainment and displays. And all the left can do is get a bunch of aging hippies out there to sing out of tune. Say, oh, we're really mad. We're mad. Drum circle, take it. We're mad. We're really angry and sad. Then Robert De Niro gets up there. I didn't even pull the clip. Robert De Niro gets up there. He says he can't love America. This is the left's response to the most in-your-face, hyper-saturated, red, white, and blue, Ra, Ra, Ra, USA. The best they can get is you get this aging movie star. Get up there and go, I don't even love America anymore. Back to the drum circle. I'm mad and sad. And you just think, bro, are they going to ever win elections? What's the point of elections at this point, by the way? Because we have Julius Donald Caesar Trump sitting on the throne for his birthday games and feasts. Augustus sitting behind him. It's just incredible. All of this after signing a peace deal with the Persians. And this is really important. This actually interests me more than the USC fight. We got the peace deal. And this is going to, you're going to see a big flip again. You saw, when the war in Iran kicked off, you saw a ton of people who were never Trumpers. All of a sudden, they were the biggest fans of Trump in the world. And you saw a lot of people who have been with Trump since 2016 who said, I don't know, you saw some people really panic and totally turn on Trump. But then you saw some people like me, who I've been with Trump since 16. I voted for the guy three times. I love the guy. He's the best president of my lifetime. And I thought, you know, had I been on the NSC, I probably would have argued against the strikes in Iran. It's not because the Iranians don't deserve it. It's not because they haven't done a lot of horrible things. I just, I don't think we're going to get regime change. I don't think that there's a reasonable probability of success. I don't think that it's proportional necessarily. And so I definitely want to set back their nuclear ambitions, but I don't know that the juice is going to be worth a squeeze here. I would be a little more skeptical and restrained about the war. And then this war has gone on and on and on. The United States has achieved its stated objectives. Don't forget, the stated objectives were, stop Iran from getting a nuclear weapon, weaken the regime, make sure it doesn't get past the breakout point where their ballistic missile programs are so good that we can't stop them from acquiring a nuclear weapon. It was really narrowly tailored. There were all sorts of little other options that could have occurred. It could have been regime change, I guess. We could have brought the Shah back in, but the actual goal here for the United States was to stop or severely set back Iran's nuclear ambitions. We did achieve that. We got that. We got exactly what we wanted. And then you saw some people banging the word room saying, no, we need to push further. We need regime change. This is going to be awesome. And us on the restraint side, we said, no, you're probably not going to get that. Wouldn't it be great if we could get regime change in Iran, but you're not going to get it? The juice is not going to be worth the squeeze. There's absolutely no appetite in America for another regime change war boots on the ground, 10-year occupation. We don't know that the regime that replaces the Mullahs is going to be any better. I really know evidence of that anyway. We don't know that there's actually some deep appetite among the Iranian people for this. We know there's a lot of propaganda around that, but they never seem to successfully rise up. So I want the deal. I want the deal. And you're going to see a lot of people today who were never Trump, then they flipped and they were the most pro-Trump. And you're going to see them flip. They're going to become anti-Trump again. Here's what Trump had to say. He said, Barak Hussein Obama's deal with Iran, the JCPOA, was an easy, beautiful, smooth road to a nuclear weapon, which Iran would have had six years ago and would have used long before now. My agreement with Iran is the exact opposite. A wall to no nuclear weapon. In fact, they no longer want a nuclear weapon. Okay, that part I don't believe, nor will they have one either through purchase, development, or any other form of procurement. That could be true. The deal is scheduled to get signed tomorrow and immediately after it is signed, the Hormuz Strait is open to all. This is the key because the toughest weapon that the Iranians have is not a potential nuclear weapon. The toughest weapon is closing the Strait of Hormuz, choking off 20% of the world's oil supply, not to mention gas, not to mention petrochemicals, not to mention fertilizer, not to mention a bunch of other stuff. So he's saying the Hormuz Strait will be open to all. Our relationship with Iran is a much different, better one than previous administrations have had, unlike Obama's hundreds of billions of dollars in payments to them, including $1.7 billion in green cold cash. No money will exchange hands. The appropriate time when all is calm will go in and get the nuclear dust. This was a key here because we wanted their highly enriched materials. We weren't going to just let Iran have it, even though the Ford Obamings last year buried a lot of that enriched material way deep underground. We don't want to let them have it so they can dig it up and use it again. We want to get the nuclear dust. He says this deal is going to get us the nuclear dust. Thanks for our beautiful B2 bombers and their brilliant pilots. We're going to downblend and destroy it, whether in Iran or in the United States. We look forward to working with Iran in the entire Middle East, long into the future. Hopefully this process will all work out quickly, easily, and smoothly. If it doesn't, we have the ultimate alternative. We still got those B2s, you know. Hopefully never to be used again. In fact, one way to read that sentence is we have the ultimate alternative, we have the nuclear weapons. Hopefully never to be used again after we used them the last time in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It depends on how hardcore you want to read that sentence. Thank you for your attention to this matter, President Donald J. Trump. So what are the details here? We've got Israel not thrilled about this. We've got Iran, I guess, signing on to this. We've got the US signing on and we've got Pakistan, which mediated this. According to Pakistan, the Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Senator Mohammed Ishak Dar, something or other, held a phone call between the Foreign Minister of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Prince Fazal bin Farhan. They welcomed the US-Iran negotiations into their final stage. There will be an electronic signing ceremony. The Saudi Foreign Minister appreciated Pakistan's consistent sustained efforts and supportive mediation. Both sides discussed the forthcoming regional foreign ministers meeting scheduled, blah, blah, blah. Don't forget, this doesn't just involve US and Israel and Iran. This also involves Saudi Arabia and Qatar and Kuwait and Bahrain and Oman and all the Gulf States. I think this is pretty good. So what does Israel say? Israel says, the Israeli Defense Minister, Israel Katz, says Friday that Trump is pursuing a deal based on his assessment of American interests, but Israel expected him to uphold shared principles around Iran's nuclear program, missiles and terrorist proxy. So the way to read this is, hold on. Israel wanted the US to go further because if I were the Prime Minister of Israel, that's what I would want to, because this is a point at which the US interest and the Israeli interest have diverged. There's a lot of overlap, but sometimes it diverges. And they have a shared interest in stopping Iran from getting a nuclear weapon. But they diverge in that for the United States, it doesn't really matter if the Iranian regime switches over. It could be better. It could be worse, but it's not an existential threat. For the Israelis, this Iranian regime does pose an existential threat. And because support for Israel in the United States has collapsed, including among Republicans, I think the Israelis view this as maybe their last chance to get the global hegemon to really back them into regime change in Iran. So this is an area where they've diverged. And Israel is acknowledging this. They're saying, yeah, okay, Trump is doing this because that's what's in the American interest. But we expected him to uphold shared principles. So not to just follow the American interest, but to hold to some abstract principle. What's the abstract principle? I guess the abstract principle is regime change. Is it it's not just stopping the terrorist proxies? Iran ostensibly is going to stop funding the terrorist proxies in this deal. I guess no one believes the Iranians, but the United States cannot be expected to wage a war for some abstract principle, especially an abstract principle that really just redounds to the benefit of another nation. The American people are simply not going to go for that, nor do I think they should go for that. So then the Israeli Defense Minister says, oh, sorry, a senior US official says, in response to the Israeli Defense Minister, I understand the Israeli skepticism, Hezbollah killed a lot of innocent Israelis, especially Israeli civilians. So we don't expect any country to give up their right of self-defense. What we do expect is that if we're able to have everyone participate in the peace process, that everyone else will do the same. In other words, Israel stop launching these attacks to gum up the peace process. This is the right move for President Trump. It's the right move for the United States. State of Israel hates it. I get why the State of Israel hates it. If I were an Israeli politician, I would probably hate it too. But here are the rubberers meeting the road. Trump has hated the Iranian regime for many decades now. He has been very clear. He will not let Iran get a nuclear weapon. He has followed through on all of those promises. He has not changed his position one little bit. But for the United States, the goal here is to stop the Iranian nuclear program or set it back considerably and to reopen the Strait of Hormuz. And Trump is not going to give up the midterm elections. He's not going to give up America's stature in the world. He's not going to give up high gas prices. He's not going to give up the mandate that he was given by the American people. He's not going to give up his objectives for some broader objective that could overthrow his whole legacy if he gets bogged down in a regime change quagmire in Iran. There's just a divergence here. And so not only does President Trump have to balance Iranian aggression and perfidy, he's also got to restrain to some degree the Israelis. He's also got to balance the interests of all the other Gulf States. He is doing a very, very difficult task and he seems to have landed the plane right before the birthday celebrations and the gladiatorial combat. And the various signs in the skies. What a day. What a day. And speaking of good deals, Elon Musk just became a trillionaire. We'll get to that momentarily first though. I'm very, very excited to tell you about Mac Weldon. Go to macweldon.com. Use promo code Michael M I C H A E L. Folks, I love Mac Weldon. When I discovered Mac Weldon, it was as and a revelation. And I don't want to paint too many pictures or be too evocative. I'll just tell you everything about Mac Weldon is great from their shirts and their outerwear right down to their boxer shirts. Okay. It's all really, really good stuff. And my favorite thing they have right now is the terry cloth, short sleeve collared button down. It's made of terry cloth. It's like a nice, it's like a bath towel, but it's for summer and it is such prime mid century American male tailoring. It's great, man. I just love it. All their stuff is terrific. They've got the stretch twill chinos. They got anything you want from your pants to your shirt at down to the aforementioned boxer shorts. This stuff is really, really great. Get moving with Mac Weldon comfortable anywhere. Go to macweldon.com. Get 20% off your first order of $125 or more with promo code Michael. Hey there. It's Wayfair here, where delivery and set up are as easy as a few taps on your phone. You're relaxing in an old hammock, scrolling Wayfair's app when you spot it, a brand new patio set. Next thing you know, Wayfair delivers it right to your patio and sets it up. Oh, you need a new grill too. All right. Wayfair's got you covered with Wayfair's room of choice delivery and fast expert set up on qualifying orders. Life gets a little easier. Visit Wayfair.com or the Wayfair app. Elon Musk is the world's first trillionaire. This with the IPO of SpaceX and people are so furious about this. Zoran Mamdani tweets out reason number one trillion why we should tax the rich. Don't forget it. Zoran Mamdani was born with a silver spoon. Zoran Mamdani was raised outside of the United States. He lived in Uganda and he was born pretty rich and he's never really successfully run anything in his life other than running New York City into the ground thus far. But he says we need to take Elon Musk's money. Graham Platner, the neo-nazi slash sort of dirtbag leftist, hick lib running for Senate in Vermont, sorry in Maine, he said Elon Musk just became the world's first trillionaire. Let's make sure he's also the last. This is just pure envy. There's not even really an argument that they're making for how Musk's money could be used in a better way. They have presented no plan, certainly no plausible plan to use that money in a way that would actually help people. It's just envy. And envy, Dante tells us in the divine comedy, envy is the cause of the evils in the city. Envy is a particularly damaging vice for politics. It can really destroy a political community and what the left is pushing out here when they see Elon become a trillionaire is pure envy. Now you have the total laissez-faire classical liberal libertarian capitalist types who go way too far in the other direction and they say it's Elon Musk's money here and all of it and it's entirely his to do with. He has no responsibilities for that money whatsoever. There's no such thing as universal destination of goods and it's his and it's his to do with as he chooses. There is a middle ground here though. I would say before you start raising your eyebrow at how Elon Musk made a trillion dollars. I would start raising your eyebrow at how Nancy Pelosi made all of her money. Nancy Pelosi started her political career in 1987 with a net worth of around $600,000. Today her estimates put her wealth at hundreds of millions of dollars. Had she managed that one, we know that Nancy Pelosi, she's a pretty active stock trader, she and her husband. How did she get her money? I know how Elon Musk made his money because Elon Musk is one of the most successful business leaders of our day. He revolutionized the electric car, he revolutionized space travel, he wants to send men to Mars, he built PayPal and he's been involved in so many other major businesses. I know exactly how Elon made his money. How did Nancy Pelosi make her money? Josh Gottheimer, Democrat from New Jersey. He's multiplied his net worth considerably. He makes hundreds of individual stock trades each year. How do you do it? I see corruption in the way that those guys made their money. I don't see a ton of corruption in the way Elon made his money. So what's the VMA to here between the absolute envy of the socialists and the communists on the left and the hardcore laissez-faire capitalist view of the libertarians and the classical liberals? The VMA is Elon made his money, private property is in fact a right and it's an efficient way to allocate resources and it brings with it moral obligations. It does. With great power comes great responsibility and Elon Musk is the world's first trillionaire and he does have moral and social obligations. Worth pointing out when it comes to Elon, he is living up to them. Elon Musk actually is a public-minded, civic-minded person. Let's not forget, he put his companies on hold, his multiple companies that he's running, very successful companies, to go work for free for the White House to clean up the federal government with Doge. Whether you like Doge, whether I don't know why anyone would hate Doge. In fact, even the Libs who pretend to hate Doge, they're copying Doge. Zoran Mamdani copied Doge. He has a New York City version of Doge now that he's totally aping from Elon Musk. It'll be much less successful. But Elon gave up his private interest to serve the common good. Think about what he did just with Twitter. When he put his money where our mouth is, when he put up $44 billion to preserve the public square, it was a civic-minded activity. Elon Musk is not going to make most of his money on Twitter if he makes any money on Twitter. He put that up there because the public square was being abused by the left and it was being contorted and in a self-government such as ours in a republic. If you control the public square, you control the whole politics. It was being run by a bunch of oligarchs who were kicking ordinary conservatives out of it, who were deplatforming the sitting president of the United States. And Elon Musk took his money and actually served the public good with that by buying Twitter. So yes, Elon has plenty of moral obligations and as does anyone with means. But he's actually living up to it to a considerable degree. A lot more than Zoran Mamdani or Josh Gottheimer or Nancy Pelosi or any of those people. Okay, speaking of moral obligations, this is a really disturbing video. You probably saw this going around. We've made sure that the really gruesome parts are censored out. This was going viral all over the weekend. A 21-year-old woman is in Brazil. She decides to go bungee jumping. So she's got a company here that she hires. She's in some suit. You can see the rope down there at the bottom. And the company picks her up and launches her into her bungee jump. And then you see in the video, so they pick her up, they lift her over their heads, they throw her off the bridge, and then the camera pans down. The rope is not connected to her. Very gruesome. So they just throw her off the bridge. They just throw this woman without any rope off the bridge. And you can see the video goes on. We're not going to show the rest of it. They just throw it. It's really, really horrifying. According to Yahoo News, this woman's fiancé was there. He immediately received medical attention. He became ill. I guess he passed out when he saw that she had died. Some organizers then ran from the scene after she fell. Authorities later located two of them who ran away with the aid of a police helicopter. They arrested them. And it's really, really horrifying. Because you can see it, obviously. You have the perspective to see, wait, the rope is down there. How is everyone involved in this? Not just the woman who maybe she had her mind on something else. She trusted this company. But all these workers, they just throw her off the bridge without any thought in the world. And what's dazzling about this is the incompetence and the obliviousness. What's dazzling? You say, how could someone, when the stakes are this high, how could people be this oblivious, not to tie the rope to the woman as they throw her off the bridge? Is there political import here? Is this just a sad personal story? Or is there some political lesson that we can take from this? And I think part of the reason why this is going so viral is there is a political lesson. Each of us sees something in this video. This touches on some fear that we all have. And the fear is maybe our political leaders are sometimes as oblivious and reckless and careless and self-interested as the people who are running this bungee jump company. That's the political import to me. It actually makes me think about the Iran war. Because what we tell ourselves, especially when we live in a modern decadent society where we just, we trust the experts to run everything, we trust that they will run everything properly. And so we don't have to think about it. We don't have to have a stake in our political community anymore. We don't need to actually live up to our obligations as citizens because we just trust the experts to run everything. And especially six years ago, we realized that the experts don't know anything much of the time. So six years ago, when the woof-loo hits, and our experts say, you got to stand six feet away and put a hanky on your face, and that'll stop you from getting the virus. And then that didn't work, that none of that happened. And you get, we're going to take away all your rights and we're going to make your parents die alone. And we're going to stop kids from going to school. And we're going to do that until you get the vaccine that's going to stop you from getting the virus. And then it doesn't stop you. And they say, no, just joking, just joking. This vaccine is going to stop you from transmitting the virus. And then that doesn't happen. And they say, no, just joking. Anyway, it would have been a lot worse if you hadn't had the vaccine, which is totally safe, by the way. Then people start dying from the vaccine, even as the public health authorities eventually admit it. And you realize, oh, shoot, man, maybe our elites don't always have it all together. Maybe, maybe we need to take some matters into our own hands. Maybe we need a little bit more restraint. That is how I feel the Iran work would have turned out. It's part of why I'm so, so relieved to see that the Trump administration is pursuing this peace deal. That it's not going for the utopian and nation building neocon ideology that typified the Bush administration. No, don't worry. We just need to drop a few more moms. We need to send 50,000 Marines in. We need to topple the regime in Tehran. Then we're going to have Madisonian democracy spread out. And it will be a springtime for the Middle East. I don't really buy that, man. I don't, I don't, I think actually the downside is much, much worse. I think that could really seriously damage the United States, not just the Republican Party, not just destroy Trump's legacy. I think it could really damage the United States. I think the region could be worse off than it was before, as we saw with the Iraq war, as we saw with Libya, as Afghanistan dragged on and on and on. There was really no benefit from that at all. We just gave the country right back to the people we took it away from 20 years prior. I think things really could have spun out of control. In fact, I think some of the more belligerent voices on the Iran war, I think some of them were very much like the, the bungee company that threw this woman off without ever checking to see if there was a rope on her. And so it's, it's encouraging to see the administration recognize shoot man. You know what? We're, we're in a much more perilous and degraded position than a lot of us thought we were. And we're going to take the gains that we can get, especially with the Iran war. We've achieved our, our objective. We've either stopped or seriously set back Iran's nuclear ambitions. We've, we've smacked them really, really hard. We took out a lot of their top officials, but we haven't totally destroyed the regime. We're going to get their nuclear dust. Hopefully, hopefully that works out. We're going to reopen the Strait of Hormuz. We're going to, we're going to take the wins that we got and we're going to move on to other areas because there's so many areas in the country that we need to fix. Don't forget, it was just what three, four years ago that you had trannies flashing people on, on the White House lawn. Okay. We have a lot of problems on immigration, on social issues, on the economy, economic problems that were exacerbated by the Iran war could have gotten a lot, a lot worse on foreign policy in Ukraine, in South China, in Africa, elsewhere. We have a lot of problems to deal with. We're going to take the wins that we can get and we're going to rebuild and we're going to keep building. We're going to keep building. That's the only way you get to that golden age. There's a lesson. There's a lesson in all sorts of these little, these little issues. It's in those little things that the rot begins. Okay. Ready to launch your business? Get started with the commerce platform made for entrepreneurs. Shopify is specially designed to help you start, run, and grow your business with easy customizable themes that let you build your brand, marketing tools that get your products out there, integrated shipping solutions that actually save you time from startups to scale ups online, in person, and on the go. Shopify is made for entrepreneurs like you. Sign up for your $1 a month trial at Shopify.com slash setup. America is hosting the World Cup and let's be honest, it's not quite the same. The goalie has just been ejected and given away a PK that could send it to overtime. What's this guy on about? But one thing that's universally understood is free. Have a completely free shot at cash prices every day of the tournament with Paddy Power's new free to play game cash cup, 750K to be won across the tournament. Nobody does football better than us. Paddy Power win at the game, receive a selection. If the selection wins, you win a share of the daily cash prize, only one entry per round, eligibility restrictions, and further T's and C's apply. 18 plus Gamble Wear dot org. Speaking of reckless, dangerous activities, another video that went viral over the weekend is Ellen Page. Now goes by Elliot, trans identifying actress who gave her definition on some podcast of healthy masculinity. Healthy masculinity to me is, or even just something I've felt as like transitioning is like leaning away from whenever there is some sort of impulse expectation you've put on yourself to shut down or conform in a way that usually feels like this. I am closing off. I remember kind of being like, oh, Elliot, maybe you should talk with your hands a little less or maybe in pictures. Because ever since transitioning, now I'm like, Johnny, I'm smiling. I am smiling in those photos. Whereas I used to be so I could barely look at a photo myself. I was always like, you know, and now, and I'll be taking it to say it, dude's like, hey, are you are you Victor from a Brawl Academy? You know, and we're doing a photo together. He's very angry. Yeah. And like having that moment where I'm like, oh, should I also not? Like, should I also be close? It's just like, what the hell Elliot? What are you? What are you talking about? Like, oh, honey, you're the part of the problem. Okay. So obviously, off the top, this is a very severely mentally ill woman. And the things she's saying about herself just aren't true. Like she says, I used to be so sad and down all the time, but now I'm just always smiles. And you say, are you, I don't know, I'm looking at you in this interview, and you look sick and sad, and you're not smiling, except when you performatively do so as you're explaining your smile. But if you look at pictures of Ellen Page, back when she acknowledged that she was a woman, she actually did look healthy and she was smiling and she looked, and now she always looks really sick and frail and really sad. So I don't, I just don't believe her own self perception. Obviously, obviously she has a problem with self perception. She thinks she's the opposite sex, but, but what's more interesting than that is what she says about masculinity, because it's perfectly wrong. She says, to me, what a healthy masculinity is, is when you want to restrain yourself, when you feel an impulse to restrain yourself, or I guess that's the common theme of the show today is restraint. When you want to restrain yourself, when you want to sort of discipline yourself, put someone else before you and you know, you take a backseat, you just don't do that, and you just push beyond the limits and you make it all about you. And I think that's coming from a man, a card carrying man here, carrying a few other things that make me a man. That's actually the opposite of what masculinity is. There are plenty of times that I would like to indulge just my private pleasures and my personal delights and whatever, but I don't get to do that because I'm the man, I'm the head of the household, I'm the husband, I'm the father. I have to put other needs first. I have to put the needs of my wife first a lot of the time. I have to put the needs of my kids first a lot of the time. I have to put the needs of my community or my company first a lot of the time, because I'm the man. I'm the one who goes out to the office to work. And sometimes I have a great job. I have like kind of a fake job. I'm not in any way complaining about my job, but whatever job you work, you got to do things you don't want to do sometimes. You got to do a little of the drudgery. You got to listen to your boss. One of the key aspects of healthy masculinity is not putting yourself first, not allowing yourself to be unbounded. And it reminds me of how the trans women, the men who think that they're women, the inverse of Ellen Page, it's how they describe femininity. What do they say? The trans woman view of femininity is just being a big slut, basically, for lack of a better term. The trans woman view of femininity is high heels and stilettos and big fake breasts and drag queens. But that's not femininity either. Notice both the Ellen Page definition of healthy masculinity and the trans woman version of femininity. They're basically the same. And it's all about just blasting past boundaries, eliminating limits, which is, of course, the motivating spirit of all of liberalism. The whole idea of liberalism is to transgress limits, political limits, social limits, sexual limits, religious, moral limits, all of these limits. That's what liberalism is, is blasting past limits to try to recreate reality, to make yourself into a god. That's what it's about. So Ellen Page says real healthy masculinity is just being a jerk, not putting anyone else first and just thinking about yourself and being a jerk. And the trans woman version of femininity is just being a slut, not putting anybody else first, not recognizing limits and being modest. And no, no, no, it ain't, you notice there are no modest trans women. Have you noticed that? Yeah, it's the same thing. And so what they're getting wrong is not just what makes up the opposite sex. They're obviously quite wrong about that. But really more fundamentally, what they're getting wrong, it's the same error. And it's about human nature as such. We as humans are bound by limits. We have flesh. We're not, we're going to be a certain height. Maybe we want to be taller, but we're a certain height. We're going to be a certain weight. Maybe we want to be thinner. We're a certain weight. We're going to age. We're going to die. We live in the time. We don't get to pick the time we live in. Probably, hopefully we don't pick the time we leave. We're limited. And so the animating factor of all of these offshoots of liberalism, including transgenderism, is just trying to get past those limits. And ironically, there is a way to transcend those limits that God himself offers to us, which is in the incarnation and the crucifixion, the resurrection of his son, who says, whoever believes in me might not perish, but might have everlasting life. And here's how you do it. You eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, and you will have life in you. If you don't do that, you will have no life in you. You need to repent and believe in the gospel. You need to follow me. You need to take up your cross, put my yoke upon you. My yoke is easy and my burden is light. But I would say, you have to follow me. Here's how you do it. And we want to do it for ourselves. And we fail, like Ellen Page fails. Okay. Speaking of rebrands, before we go, the Democrats realized to the point, I think Jack Posobick was making it last night, Benny Johnson, a lot of right-wing figures were making this point. They said, the left is never going to recover from this UFC thing. It's just so America is so powerfully America, the Libs are never going to recover. The Libs know they have a problem. They know they're really out of touch. And so they're attempting a rebrand. Here you have a Rahm Emanuel, former hatchet man for Bill Clinton, then he was chief of staff to Barack Obama, long times, a mayor of Chicago, long time political figure. He says the Dems need to seriously rebrand for 2028 as Rahm himself is eyeing a bid for the presidency. Polls show Democrats aren't doing that well. We got the voters right where we want them. You know, why do you think people feel so negatively about the Democratic Party? Because we earned their disrespect the hard way. Look, when you're backs against the wall, you can't make a mortgage payment. You can't make, you can't go to the doctor's visit because you can't afford it or you're stealing money out of your 401k that you know is for your retirement, but you're doing it to pay your bills today. Do you expect the Democratic Party to show up? Two things. We told you, oh, things are great. You just don't know it yet. And B, we're running around closed schools for two years when you didn't have to. And then when we opened and we blow open the bathroom door in the locker room and we didn't actually worry about the classroom, we earned their anger because they explain they're holding on to that window sill with everything they got there digging their nails into the concrete on the windows or the wood, they want us to help them. And we either told them they were wrong or B, we got ourselves wrapped around what I call a cultural cul-de-sac and kept going around in circle talking to ourselves. This isn't that hard. This isn't that hard. And that's why, look, I'm going to run against my party. That's what you say. I'm going to run against my party because the party's gone too woke. It's gone too radical. Rom is famously one of the more practical-minded, tough-minded Democrats. So in a different age, he could probably make a pretty serious run for the presidency. He's a much more serious person than virtually anybody else in the party right now. And it's smart in a presidential election to run against your party. People who run against their own parties tend to do pretty well. Look at Trump. Trump famously ran against his party in 2016, totally took over the party. Bill Clinton ran against his party substantially in the 90s. Ronald Reagan ran against his party, ran against Jerry Ford. So you say that's not a bad idea. The problem is it's not going to work. It's not going to work for Rom in part because he is a pro-Israel Jew and the Dems hate the Jews now, even though most Jews are Democrats. But the Democrat party has taken a real hard turn and hates the Jews. Whatever you want to say about anti-Semitism growing in some quarters of the right, it's much more pronounced on the left. And especially when you couple that with pro-Israel advocacy. There are distinct issues. There's obviously a substantial overlap. Both of them are a problem in the modern Democrat party. But when you factor in that that Ram is a more pro-Israel figure, he's toast. He's not going to go anywhere. He's actually tried to moderate his support of Israel. You'll notice this. If you follow some of his comments for the past six months or so, he's tried to moderate it to appeal to that anti-Israel wing of the party. It's not enough. It's too little, too late. And anyway, they won't forgive him for being a Jew. So it's just a fact. It's like a sad statement on the Democrat party, but I don't see this working. Same goes for Josh Shapiro. Same problem. Josh Shapiro should be, you know, he's not that tall. So that's actually going to hurt him in any presidential election. But still, Pennsylvania, it's an important state to win. Decently successful governor. He should be a leading candidate, but it's not going to work. They've got all these things working against them. You have the prejudices of the Democrat party, the increasing animus toward Jews, the distinct but related animus toward the state of Israel, and no appetite for moderation among the base. That's the problem for the Democrats. There is no appetite at all. They want to bring the trannies back to the South lawn of the White House. The base of the Democrat party has learned absolutely nothing. They have not given up woke. They are Abigail Spanberger. They might lie about it, but the minute they get into power, they're going to push the most radical left agenda you can imagine. They're James Talarico, who invokes the Blessed Mother to try to defend abortion, and who says God is non-binary. They have not learned a thing. Devastate. Devastating for the Democrats. Maybe even more demonstrating than the extremely patriotic display at the White House last night. Rest of the show continues now. You do not want to miss it. 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