The Michael Knowles Show - Ep. 1660 - FAFO: Trump Destroys Colombia

Episode Date: January 27, 2025

President Trump destroys Colombia, Vice President JD Vance destroys a lib journalist, and hippie Jews take psychedelics.   Click here to join the member-exclusive portion of my show: https://bit.ly/4biDlri   Ep.1660   - - -   DailyWire+:   Now is the time to join the fight. Watch the hit movies, documentaries, and series reshaping our culture. Go to https://dailywire.com/subscribe today.   "Identity Crisis" tells the stories the mainstream media won’t. Stream the full film now, only on DailyWire+: https://bit.ly/3C61qVU   Order your Mayflower Cigars here: https://bit.ly/3Qwwxx2 (Must be 21+ to purchase. Exclusions may apply)   - - -   Today's Sponsor:   LiveGood Supplements - Go to https://LiveGood.com/MICHAEL to save 10% on your first order.   - - -   Socials:   Follow on Twitter: https://bit.ly/3RwKpq6   Follow on Instagram: https://bit.ly/3BqZLXA   Follow on Facebook: https://bit.ly/3eEmwyg   Subscribe on YouTube: https://bit.ly/3L273Ek Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

How many discounts does USAA auto insurance offer? Too many to say here. Multi-vehicle discount. Safe driver discount. New vehicle discount. Storage discount. How many discounts will you stack up? Tap the banner or visit usa.com slash auto discounts. Restrictions apply. The Colombian government blocked two U.S. deportation flights on Sunday.

Here is how President Trump responded. Quote, I was just informed that two repatriation flights from the United States with a large number of illegal criminals were not allowed to. land in Colombia. This order was given by Colombia's socialist president Gustavo Petro, who is already very unpopular amongst his people. Petro's denial of these flights has jeopardized the national security and public safety of the United States, so I've directed my administration to immediately take the following urgent and decisive retaliatory measures. Emergency, 25% tariffs on all goods coming into the United States. In one week, the 25% tariffs

will be raised to 50%. travel ban, and immediate visa revocations on the Columbia government officials, and all allies and supporters. Visa sanctions on all party members, family members, and supporters of the Colombian government. Enhanced customs and border protection inspections of all Colombian nationals and cargo on national security grounds. I-E-E-E-P-A, Treasury, banking, and financial sanctions to be fully imposed. This is going at the president's money.

Just a little side note here. This is going at the president's money. maybe some money the Colombian elites have stashed in the United States. Who knows? Goes right for the money. Continues. These measures are just the beginning. We will not allow the Colombian government to violate its legal obligations with regard to the acceptance and return of the criminals they forced into the United States.

So Trump sends that out. The libs starts screeching and whining and crying. But then what do you know? One hour later, one hour later, we get this note from El Senor President. de Colombia. Now, my Spanish is not very good, but I can see a really important phrase bolded here. Avion presidential. So from my pigeon Spanish here, it would appear to me that the Colombian president totally caved, immediately, not only said that he would accept the illegals, but in fact sent his presidential airplane to go pick them up. This is pretty good stuff. This serves two purposes,

really. This serves the purpose, the immediate objective of deporting criminals. This also, however, serves the broader strategic objective of telling the world, we mean business. The new strategy has already proven a success. It turns out it really is that easy to deport illegal aliens. The Democrats just don't want to. I've got one question for everybody. One question I've been asking myself over the past week. Doesn't it feel good to have a real competent president again. I'm Michael Knowles. It's the Michael Nulls show. Welcome back to the show. Speaking of Latin American heads of state, Argentinian president, Javier Millet, just traveled to Davos for the World Economic Forum, where he called them all pedos. There's so much more to say,

first though, go to livegood.com slash Michael. I am so excited to tell you about live good. Live good is doing something revolutionary in the supplement industry by offering premium quality products without all the ridiculous markups. Now, what caught my attention, you know me, I'm a quality kind of guy. They have a major commitment to quality. They've got this incredible team of natural health experts creating these formulas. And the best part is, by cutting out the middleman, they're able to offer them at the lowest prices you will find anywhere. I've sometimes been skeptical of health products in my earlier life, but this is the Maha age baby. Okay, this is the age of Bobby Kennedy and crunchy trad moms and President Trump.

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Go to livegood.com slash Michael, M-C-H-A-E-L to save 10% on your first order. That is livegood.com slash Michael. Do not miss out on this opportunity to invest in your health without overspending. You know, the Colombian president, he was trying to save. face, I think. His argument was, well, I'm going to send the presidential jet because I just care about the dignity of these migrants. I don't want them flown here on military aircraft. It's about the dignity. I don't think so. That's not passing the BS test. I think that he called, that he was bluffing, first of all, when he said, we're not going to take these planes.

He obviously doesn't want the Colombian criminals in his country, even though they're Colombian, they're not American and they need to go back to Columbia, he was bluffing, and President Trump called his bluff. Now, the question always is, well, is Trump bluffing, too? That was the question that Vladimir Putin had in Russia when Trump said, allegedly, that he would hit Moscow if Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine. The question is, is he bluffing? Well, maybe he is bluffing, but with Trump, can you take the chance? Now, in this case, Trump obviously was not bluffing. He all, had the tariffs and the sanctions and the visa restrictions and all of it in the works. Once the Colombian president immediately caved and started following the law and allowing the

United States to enforce its own law, then Trump said, okay, look, some of these measures have already gone into practice, and we're going to lift them once we have confirmation that the illegals are on the ground in Colombia. Some of these, like the really heavy tariffs, we're just going to keep them in reserve until next time. We got that Colombian president. President. Comprende, amigo. Yeah, good. All right, good. I'm glad to hear it. Now, while President Trump was dogwalking the Colombian president, Trump's mentee, J.D. Vance, was proving that the Apple doesn't fall far from the tree. He was doing an interview on CBS, Face the Nation, in which he was grilled on immigration, notably the claim that America was founded by immigrants.

Well, this is a country founded by immigrants. Well, this is a country founded by... This is a very unique country, and it was founded by some immigrants and some settlers, but just because we were founded by immigrants doesn't mean that 240 years later that we have to have the dumbest immigration policy in the world. Really good response from JD here, and I'm glad he got this settler word in. Because just at a very literal historical level, America was not founded by immigrants. that's just a lie. The libs say it all the time. They've been especially saying it since the middle of the 20th century onward, but that is just part of the liberal mythos that isn't real. America was founded by

settlers. This isn't ambiguous. We have the records. We know the history. There's a cigar company named after the people who founded America called Mayflower Cigar. It's great cigar company. We also have the Zichor lighter available right now. We have some in stock. If you want it, go get it now. If it sells that, I don't want to hear about it. It's a sidebar. The pilgrims on the Mayflower were not immigrants. They were settlers. Many of the other people who came were settlers. They came to a new land. They settled treaties with some of the people who were still there, even though it was a largely barren land, but there were still some people there. They established treaties. They had alliances. They fought wars. Sometimes wars were launched on them. And ultimately,

they conquered and won. And back in those days, we still had a notion of the right of conquer. The law of conquest, and then now we have a country. There is very, very little similarity between the settlers who came on the Mayflower and some MS-13 gang member who hops the wall on the Rio Grande and comes into America to bring fentanyl. Very, very little in common. Some would say almost nothing in common. Okay, so JD here, he's saying, look, we were founded by immigrants in part, but it's also settlers. So immigrants have played a big role in America.

Half my family came over on the Mayflower. Half my family came over on a sardine boat from Italy. They were immigrants. I'm not knocking that immigrants have contributed to America. But please stop repeating this ridiculous canard that we were founded by immigrants. We were not. Even if we were, that wouldn't mean that we need to take 10 million of them all the time coming over from dubious circumstances, working with dubious criminal organizations.

Nobody needs that. But the interviewer here presses the point, and this is where JD had. And I know this word is overused, but I think you need it here. He had an iconic response. Well, Margaret, I don't agree that all these immigrants or all these refugees have been properly vetted. In fact, we know that there are cases of people who allegedly were properly vetted, and then we're literally planning terrorist attacks on our country. That happened during the campaign, if you may remember.

So clearly not all of these foreign nationals have been properly. people in the pipeline Afghan refugees. But my primary concern as the Vice President, Margaret, is to look after the American people. And now that we know that we have vetting problems with a lot of refugee programs, we absolutely cannot unleash thousands of unvetted people into our country. These people are bad. These people are vetted. Just like the guy who played a terrorist attack in Oklahoma a few months ago,

he was allegedly properly vetted. And many people in the media and the Democratic Party said that he was properly vetted. Clearly he wasn't. I don't want my children to share a neighborhood with people who are not properly vetted. And because I don't want it for my kids, I'm not going to force any other American citizens' kids to do that either. No, and that was a very particular case. It wasn't clear if he was radicalized when he got here or while he was living here. I don't really care, Margaret.

I don't want that person in my country. And I think most Americans agree with me. There it is. There is the mic drop. I really don't care, Margaret. So first of all, J.D. is so good at this. I think this is going to be a big feature of the second Trump administration. Trump is going to send Vance out to do a lot of these shows because Vance is really,

really good at sparring with the journalists. Trump is quite good at it in his own way, but Vance is really, really good at being precise. He knows the party line. He's obviously deeply educated and intelligent and he's articulate. He's just really good at this, okay? I could see this being a huge part of the vice president's role in the second Trump administration. And that's what he grills around here. she says, well, actually, they're vetted immigrants, okay, and they're all vetted.

And he says, yeah, what about the guy who just performed a terrorist attack? That guy was supposedly vetted. Okay, that was a really particular case. And I don't actually, I don't think that really counts because he was wearing a blue t-shirt. And it wasn't like a beige t-shirt. And he just got in a haircut. He was having a rough day. He woke up on the wrong side of the bed.

And he just cuts her up. He says, you know, I really don't care, Margaret. We're not going to let him in. Okay, that's it. That is the response. That needs to be the Republican response to all of these people. Make America Great Again is probably the greatest political slogan of our time. Just below that is, I really don't care, Margaret. Yeah, I really, we're not going to do it. The arguments I've just made are really good, Margaret. And you're being obtuse and you're keeping your head in the sand. And that's fine, I guess that's your prerogative.

But we just won unified government from the American people. And most people don't want some face tattooed criminal, illegal alien in their neighborhood. And look, I don't have to deal with it because I'm like a rich, powerful guy. But I care about my country, unlike the rich, powerful liberals. So if I don't want it for my kids, I'm not going to force other Americans to have it for their kids. And, you know, I just really don't care, Margaret. I love it so much. There was a clip years ago, also on CBS, actually, of Scalia talking to Leslie Stahl.

And Leslie Stahl was asking Scalia to explain how torture was not cruel and unusual punishment. They said, well, it's because it's not punishment. It's a tactic to get information, but it's not punishment. And she couldn't process this. She said, no, but no, you know, it's like you're trying to beat the, you know what out of him. And she's just stammering over her words. And at a certain point, he cuts her off and says, well, anyway, that's my opinion. And it happens to be correct.

And this is the new version of that. Yeah, well, anyway, I really don't care, Margaret. We're deporting them. I'm sorry, I'm sorry that you're so upset that we deport face-tattooed Mexican Satanists and Taliban members. Yeah, I know that upsets you, but I really don't care. Now, I do care what you have to say, which is why I want you to know how to submit voicemail back questions. It's very simple. You go to dailywire.com.

You click the watch. page, you click the Michael Nulls Show, it's all right there, it's all very easy, then you click submit a mailbag question. You can send your written mailback question, just opens up a little email box, you'd send a written mailbag, or if you want to send a voicemail bag. Here's what you do. You record it on your phone, however, you record audio, but I am imploring you. I'm begging you on my knees. Keep these voicemails to less than a minute. Some people want to send me their life story, and I don't have time for that on the show. Less than a minute, ideally less than 30 seconds. Submit, if it's over a minute, it just will not be played on the show. So,

You have to limit it, okay? So you record your voice message, add it to the email, and then send it in. And then I will get to hear your beautiful dulcet tones, your melifluous voice on Friday. Now, speaking of immigration policy, we have the numbers. President Trump's first week, he arrested 538 illegal aliens, and he deported hundreds more. That's according to the White House. It's great, I'm not knocking it. This is a breath of fresh air.

really not going to hear complaints out of me. However, we need to recognize what this is, and that is a good start. This is not the best it's going to be. I hope not. This is not a huge show of force. No, 538 people plus hundreds more. Let's be generous and say that hundreds more takes the total arrested and deported to 1,000. 1,000 per week comes out to 50,000.000 per week comes out to 52,000 per year. 52,000 per year comes out to 208,000 per term. And President Trump's only getting one term.

Unless Andy Ogles' constitutional amendment goes through, which probably will not happen, you're talking about at this rate, deporting 208,000 people. Now, I think we should give President Trump a little break here, okay? He's been a little bit busy this week. He's accomplished an extraordinary amount in the first week. However,

we need to dramatically ramp up the deportations. I'm not even saying by 20% or 50%. I'm talking about by orders of magnitude, you need to radically ramp up the deportations. The conservative estimates say that there are between 11 and 16.8 million illegal aliens in the United States. Some people think the number is much, much higher than that.

But I'm using conservative estimates, 11 to 16.8 million. So that means that right now, if we just deport 2008,000 illegals, per year that we will have deported 1.2% to a little under 2%. It's just not enough. That's not even close. So it has to ramp up dramatically. Now, the political problem is that illegal aliens have families here. So it's going to create a big issue if you start deporting people's like Aunt Gertrude. I guess their names aren't Gertrude, but it'd be like Aunt, you know, Maria or something. So I understand the political problem. But even, even if you're just a lot of Even if you are only deporting the really, really bad ones, you need to ramp that up dramatically,

which I trust will be done. Again, you're not going to hear complaints out of me. This is the first week of a presidential administration in my lifetime. It's all phenomenal. I'm all into it. But just keep these numbers in mind. Just to even have an appreciation for the scale of the problem the President Trump faces, do you know how hard it is to deport 11 to 17 million people or more? It's really hard. Okay, so I'll give them a little grace, but it means we got to ramp things up a little bit. Now, the libs are complaining because President Trump's first deportation flights were expensive, according to them. This is the argument. According to the Mirror UK,

Trump's first deportation flights with average of just 80 migrants cost up to $852,000 per trip. All right, that's expensive. I agree. Just 80. migrants on the flights, and it cost $850,000 per trip. That's, that's, okay, so what, 10 grand per per flight, per seat, rather? Okay, but let's put this into perspective. How much does it cost just to have illegal aliens in the country? By the way, these are the very worst. So these are the ones who are killing people and raping people and committing all sorts of particularly heinous crimes, which you can't really put a dollar number on, but in as much as you can, cost a lot of money. But I'm actually putting that aside.

I'm saying your regular average illegal alien who does not go out and murder people and rob and commit all sorts of other crimes. In the state of California, which is where I am right now, it costs $132,860 to keep a prisoner in California for a year. Okay? That's just what it costs. So if we're just going to arrest the illegal aliens and not deport them, that costs a lot of money. And Trump is only deporting criminal aliens right now. The Federation for American Immigration Reform Fair says that each illegal or U.S.-born child of an illegal alien costs $8,776 annually.

That is not people in prison. That is not people who are committing crimes. That's just your average old illegal alien. Heritage Foundation in 2010 found that each unlawful. immigrant household costs $14,387. That is cost for services offset by the taxes paid. So that's being as generous as we can to the illegal alien households, still costs over 14 grand a year per household. That's an outdated number. That's 2010. The number is certainly much higher now. According to the Center for Immigration Studies, the average household headed by an immigrant, legal or illegal,

costs taxpayers $6,234 in federal welfare benefits. It's not counting state benefits. That is 41% higher than the $4,431 received by the average native household. Native American, I'm not talking about the feathers and the tomahawks, I'm talking about regular old Americans. Okay. So even take out the $132,

$133,000 to keep a prisoner. And these guys are criminals. Just regular old illegal aliens cost a ton of money. This flight is a good deal. Even if you're going to pay $850,000 for a flight of 80 people, which

I assume the costs can come down a little bit, but even if you are. That's a good deal. The libs are walking into a little bit of a trap here from the immigration restrictionists, which is they're saying, look how expensive this is. And the immigration restrictionists, even just the people who want to enforce the law, are saying, yeah, do you have any idea how expensive it is just to have illegal immigrants? Because the libs will say, well, no, but they pay taxes. And, you know, they don't even get social security or whatever.

Yeah, okay. Even the small amount of taxes that they do pay, and they do pay some taxes. When you consider that with the welfare benefits that they receive, not even counting the crimes that they commit, it costs us money to have them. Okay, they're a drag on the economy. So you want to come here with numbers to me? You want to come here so talk about the costs of the planes? All right, let's talk about costs. President Trump, once again, the art of the deal, great negotiator, getting us a really good price. We all know President Trump hit the ground this week running, delivering on key promises, many of which were battles initiated and amplified by. the Daily Wire, I'm happy to say. Our hit comedy film Lady Ballers tackle the absurdity and dangers of men competing in women's sports. We'll get to a story on that momentarily. Conversation now at the forefront of national policy debates, thanks to new executive orders. Am I Racist? The number one documentary of the decade exposed the race hustlers driving DEI initiatives following recent executive orders.

DEI programs have been significantly dismantled at the federal level and scaled back by major corporations. We'll get to the risks. Daily Wire does have some exclusive info. We've got some risks on that coming up, but in the moment, we're winning. Okay, the fight is far from over. So here's the deal. We cannot keep doing this without your support. Every dollar you spend helps fuel the battle for truth and sanity in our country. Now is the time to join the fight.

Watch the hit movies, docs, series shaping our culture. Get access to so much more. Go to DailyWire.com slash subscribe today. Speaking of Latinos, one of my favorite Latinos, Javier Millet, the president of Argentina, just went. to Davos, to the World Economic Forum to call all of those liberal elites pedophiles. Promove the LGBT, promoting that the LGBT

that says that women are men and men are women, only if that is how they perceive themselves. They say nothing when a man disguises himself as a woman and kills his rival in a boxing ring, or when a prisoner claims to be a woman and ends up raping any woman who crosses his path in prison. Without going any further, a few weeks ago, case of two American homosexuals who flying the flag of sexual diversity and were sentenced

to 100 years in prison for abusing and filming, their adopted children for more than two years made headlines around the world. I want to be clear that when I say abuse, it's not a euphemism, in its most extreme versions, gender ideology constitutes plain and simple child abuse. So true. They are pedophiles, therefore I want to know who endorses these behaviors. I want to know who endorses these behaviors because they're pedophiles too.

Javier Miele, coming out swinging, man. You know, I met him a week ago at the Trump inauguration, and I just had to translate what he said because Javier Mulei doesn't speak English, which is why actually in our picture together, I couldn't, I was speaking to him in English, but his security guard was yelling at me because I was holding a martini, and I don't know.

I'm sure that guy's under a ton of threats, and he might have thought that I was going to, you know, throw martini on him or worse. But anyway, in the picture, because he didn't understand a word I was saying, he's looking at me like I'm about to pounce on him or something. But that guy, he's got the right idea over at Wef. It's pretty simple. You know, it's like Orrin McIntyre has that meme that he posts. It says it's not so complicated. These people just want to dittle kids. You know, it doesn't explain the whole ideology, but it does explain some of it. At a certain point, if a group of people, if a group of people, people continues to condone abusive behaviors, just needlessly support ideologies that conduce toward child abuse and that really damage the lives of children and that put vulnerable people in really bad situations. At a certain point, I'm going to stop defending you and saying, well, you might have the best of intentions. At a certain point, you're complicit, okay? That's true,

not just of the gender ideology. That's true on immigration. That's true. I understand why someone might want more immigration or even open borders. But at a certain point when people are getting like murdered and raped and face tattooed Satanists or hopping the border poisoning Americans, at a certain point, you lose my sympathy. Okay. At a certain point, we just have to enforce the law. Now, there's a story that DW has got. We'll have a longer Twitter threat on this later today. But, you know, Trump is succeeding at dismantling DEI, which is really, really great. You're seeing these initiatives across the federal government. You're seeing downstream effects of that. However, we cannot get complacent because the libs in the federal government, at the state level, and at the

local level, are going to try to try to resist this. And they're going to try really hard, and they're going to try immediately. There's one story, which we have from a school district in Colorado, Durango, the school board received a complaint that one of the classrooms was flying a Black Lives Matter and a Pride Progress flag. Pride Progress is the pride flag, but it's got the trans and the BLM and I don't know, it's like the terrorist pride flag.

So we're flying these flags, and a mother said, I want these flags in the classroom. So there was a review by the chief academic officer and the chief academic officer who said, yeah, all right, well, if the teacher's going to fly that, then we need an open forum for all flags. You know, this could be a First Amendment issue.

And the district's lawyers did not want this open for them. Because they feared, and we have documentation of this, the apparatchiks in the school board and the school district feared that this could open the pathway to a straight Lives Matter flag in the classroom. Could you imagine heaven for fend?

We can't have that. So the district, the Durango School District, has decided that what they're going to do is they're going to redefine things like Black Lives Matter, black power, pride, as government speech. Not political speech, but government speech. Now, I don't know the local laws. I don't know exactly how these lawyers are in a Jesuitical way trying to parse the difference. Obviously, government speech is political speech. Political speech does pertain to government speech,

but I guess this is a legal distinction that would allow them to create protections for radical leftist ideology in the classroom, radical leftist indoctrination, but not trigger an open forum for other people to express their far more normal political views. The board is furious about this. They're referring to parents, concerned parents, as outside adults, is adults important to the child. This is giving Biden vibes, you know? This is giving radical extremist parent sorts of connotations.

So they're considering this resolution now. They still want to embrace trans in the classroom. They still want to embrace so-called gender affirming care, which is child abuse, as Javier Malay rightly pointed out at Davos. This district, by the way, should probably be a little careful because one of their teachers was arrested for child pornography. It's allegedly one of the teachers who was flying the pride flag was arrested for possession of child pornography and attempting to entice a child. Okay. So if I were this school district, I would be pretty cautious with the old pride flag. They're not. They're trying to enshrine all of this

radical leftism. Contrary to, the national movement against DEI. Contrary to the national movement against gender ideology. I mean, President Trump won unified government in large part because of these issues. But you're seeing so much pushback. Ways to hide the programs. Ways to legally protect them while not protecting conservative speech. That's going on. So, you know, we like the wins. We're applauding President Trump. We're so happy. You need to dig in at the local level, at the state level, even at the federal level, we're going to have to dig in. Because the leftists are not going to go down without. a fight. Now, speaking of elites, breaking news, pull over your car, sit down if you're standing up.

The New York Times is reporting that the CIA now favors the lab leak theory to explain COVID's origins. That story is from, what, January 25th, 2025. You might recall. I don't know, if you. You might recall during COVID, this New York Times headline, Senator Tom Cotton repeats fringe theory of COVID origins. Scientists have dismissed suggestions that the Chinese government was behind the outbreak, but it's the kind of tale that gains traction among those who see China as a threat. Fringe theory, totally crazy. Oh, actually, the CIA agrees.

So now we, the New York Times are going to admit it five years later. Okay, well, congrats to the New York Times, the paper of record for admitting an obvious fact five years after everyone with two brain cells to rub together knew it. But even this headline is not accurate. This headline is obviously dishonest because it says CIA now favors lab leak theory. That's not true. The CIA doesn't now favor anything. Trump is now the president.

That's what happens. You could change the headline to. Trump is now the president. And so the CIA needs to get in line. Yeah, that Trump was the president back in 2020. When Trump was the president, that time, that time around, the first go-round, the deep state was doing everything it could to cut down this guy's administration. Before he even became president, the FBI and the DOJ were trying to kill his administration. Then they did, they continued that effort through the mull.

investigation. You had the intelligence agencies conspiring against him, lying about him. Chuck Schumer even joked about it. He said, don't make enemies of the intel agencies that get you 20 ways from Sunday. Trump is out of office. Then they try to throw him in prison. They establish the justification to kill him, which almost happened twice. And he comes back in, and they just lost. Okay, the libs seem really demoralized right now. The agencies grudgingly seem to be getting in line. Trump seems to be exerting more power over them. And coincidentally right now, the CIA says, oh, oh, yeah, actually, the Republicans might have been right. We've known this.

We've known this for a long time. Okay? The New York Times, I think, knew this for a long time. The only question to me is not, did the virus originate in a lab leak? That was obvious. That has been for years. The question is, was it intentional or unintentional? That's what I want to know.

And I don't know the answer to that. Did the Chinese government intentionally leak COVID? Because when I look at the ways that people were conspiring against Trump back in 2020, 2019, 2020, I can't help but notice that Trump was waging a successful trade war against China. And Trump was looking like he was going to sail to re-election victory. And COVID was the way to, first of all, for China to stop that trade war. And COVID was also the way to give Democrats the justification to change all the election rules. So I don't know.

I'm not saying that it was intentional. I don't have any evidence that it was intentional. It might not have been intentional. But I could see that as a possibility. At the very least, that's the debate. But the New York Times and the CIA for that matter. I'm sick of it with the CIA. And the administrative government.

These guys are pretending that the real controversy is over a debate that was effectively resolved five years ago. No, let's go. Let's move on, buddy. That's the Trump era. I know you're trying to catch up, but you're going to have to move a little faster. Now, also very exciting news in the Trump era, Pete Hague Seth, has been a confirmed by the skin of his teeth to be the Secretary of Defense. Collins, Murkowski, and good old Mitch McConnell, three Republican senators, voted against

Pete Hegseth. And nevertheless, he overcame. We will get to how that went down. We'll get to another shocking vote that might switch to get RFK through in a moment. First, I'll want to tell you about my favorite comment of the day. That was on Friday. Spider-Man and Jenny says two terms for president. only two terms for Congress as well. No exceptions, because some people love Trump and seem sympathetic. It's either sympathetic or sycophantic. Maybe it's both.

That's a nice new word. It's a nice neologism. Look, I get the point. However, I'll point out Ronald Reagan disagreed with you. Ronald Reagan wanted to repeal the 22nd Amendment. He thought that there are term limits at the ballot box. We have a natural kind of term limit in our American Republic, and that is the voter. at the ballot box.

Now, some people think that incumbency is too hard to overcome. Maybe. I do not favor term limits. Certainly not for the House of Representatives, not really for the Senate. And I'm basically with Reagan, even on the presidency. And, well, Trump actually says he doesn't want to serve a third term. But I'm with Reagan, at least. I don't think there should really be term limits. Because there will be power.

This is the thing. People want term limits because they think that it's going to limit power. But the power just exists. There is just a certain amount of power that is to be wielded in the government. The question is, by whom? Is it going to be wielded by the elected representative? Is it going to be wielded by the staffers and the committee staffers in the House? Is it going to be wielded by lobbyists? Is it going to be wielded by bureaucrats in the administrative state?

That's the only question. But there will not be a reduction in power. So when you limit the power of the elected representatives, it just goes to one of the other guys. It just goes to a staffer or a bureaucrat or a bureaucrat or a, lobbyist, it just goes to one of them. So that's why I get it. You know, I understand the impulse to say, no, we need term limits everywhere. But I think term limits moves power from people who at least constitutionally ought to have the power to people who wield it in much worse ways. So I'm not, I get it, but I wouldn't be so quick about that. Pete Heg-Seth, 5150 confirmed as sect-deff.

On this vote, the yeas are 50 and the nays are 50. The Senate being equal, divided. The vice president votes in the affirmative, and the nomination is confirmed. Not loving your AT&T or T-Mobile bill? Yeah, we've been hearing that a lot. Good news. Bring your AT&T or T-Mobile bill to Verizon, and we'll give you a better deal. So get away from

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U.S. second half 2025, all rights reserved. It must provide a recent consumer mobile bill in the name of the person, regaining the deal. Additional terms, conditions, and restrictions apply. Here we go. The hits keep coming for J.D. Vance. He had to break the tie because he's the president of the Senate as vice president of the United States. So he goes down there. He joked. He said, I thought I was done voting in the Senate. Huh, okay. Well, we'll vote. So Collins and Murkowski, Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, squish senators from Maine and Alaska, respectively.

We kind of expected them not to vote for Pete. they're the squishy ones, they're the moderate ones. That's just, in part, that's how they got elected. Okay. Mitch McConnell, that was unfortunate. Mitch McConnell voted against TegSeth on the DGAF anymore principle. You know, he's not going to run for re-election. He's 150 years old. He's no longer even the Senate majority leader. He's done. He doesn't care. He doesn't like Pete for whatever reason. He doesn't seem to like Trump very much. Okay. He voted against him. So people initially, when I saw Susan Collins and Lisa Maryskaowski post these essays to X explaining why they were going to vote against Pete, my first impulse was, you jerks, we're going to primary you, how dare you, we're not going to forget this. But then I thought, hold on, they're both posting this at the same time, maybe because Pete has the votes. That sometimes happens. Sometimes they'll hold off, they'll say, I don't know who I'm going to vote for. I don't know how I'm going to vote on a certain bill until they know that the other side has the

votes. And then they'll say, okay, now I have cover to vote against this person. Then I can get reelected and I don't need to worry about my constituents. In the case of McConnell, that wasn't a concern. I think McConnell just doesn't like Pete and doesn't like Trump that much. But when I saw those two pop up, my second thought was, oh good, Pete's got it. And he did have it. And I don't care. I don't care if Pete gets confirmed 51 to 50. I don't care if he gets confirmed 99 to 1. whatever. What matters is winning. And this is what President Trump said. President Trump was asked, are you disappointed that McConnell voted no? And he had a cold-as-ice answer. His answer was, no, I didn't even know that. No, I don't know that. I just heard that we won. Winning is what

matters, right? And this is a principle that I quote frequently from cocaine Mitch McConnell. The winners go to Washington and the losers go home. And it doesn't matter if you win by one vote or a hundred votes. Pete won. Trump won. Good start. Now, as I've said from the beginning, they put Pete up as the first confirmation hearing as the Canary in the coal mine. Pete is one of the most controversial nominees, along with Bobby Kennedy Jr. Tulsi Gabbard, Cash Patel. So they threw Pete up there for the first confirmation hearing just as a trial balloon. Then they had a bunch of boring confirmation hearings, people like Marco Rubio, where everyone knew he was going to sail through. It's no question whatsoever. John Ratcliffe. They all knew he was going to get it. And then they were saving Tulsi, RFK, Jr., Cash Patel for

later on. The fact that Pete was able to get through is good news for Tulsi, RFK, and Cash Patel. But RFK has got some more good news, which is the Democrat Senator, Sheldon White House, senator from Rhode Island, reportedly might vote for Bobby Kennedy Jr. That's really weird. Why is that? Because they're college buddies. That's why. That's actually why. According to a political reporter, White House has not ruled out the possibility of voting for Kennedy.

He says, I'm not going to reveal how I'm voting on any nominee. He gave a similar answer to Slate, said there's a bunch of stuff I want from HHS. I'm going to hold my fire on that. I'm going to hold my fire on how I'm going to vote. Turns out these guys have been buddies since law school, and they used to go hiking together and hunting together, and they've been friends for a real long time.

And because of that, it is being reported by swampy Beltway Press. Sheldon White House might vote for Kennedy. And I think that's great. And this shows you yet again the strength of a non-traditional political coalition. Okay, Trump has put together an eclectic political coalition. And there are plenty of Republicans who don't like it. I really like Tulsi Gabbard. There are a lot of Republicans who don't like Tulsi Gabbard.

Okay, I don't really know much about Bobby Kennedy. even though he actually lived in the town over from where I grew up. He lived in the town I was born in, went to church at my grandmother's church for like 60 years. So I've been around him for a long time, but I don't really know much about him. He seems fine, I guess. There are a lot of Republicans who have a much tougher view of Bobby Kennedy than I do. Okay. There are some who just wish we were back in the Mitt Romney era.

And it was all the predictable Republicans wearing all the predictable Brooks Brothers suits, and they all said the predictable things. And that's not Trump. Okay, Trump put together a wacky coalition. But one of the benefits, of the wacky coalition is one, if you as a Republican keep losing elections with the old coalition, the McCain Coalition, the Romney Coalition, if you keep losing elections, it means you've got to mix up your coalition a little bit. So at least gives you a shot to win.

But then, too, once you do win, it helps you get your guys across the line. Because Kennedy is a Kennedy, okay? The Kennedys are the dominant living family in Democrat politics. At least they have been for most of our lifetime. I think they probably are. There's still a huge one. And he's on Trump's side. And they're going to pull over some Democrats. Even Tulsi might be able to pull some Democrats. Now, speaking of Bobby Kennedy Jr. and health supplements, there is a really silly news story out that I have to pull. This was published in CBS, though I like CBS recently, because CBS aired, I felt a very fair piece on why men voted for Trump that I happened to be featured in. So I'm not knocking CBS, but I am knocking this ridiculous idea put forward by a rabbi that psychedelics are an elephant in the room when talking about a sacred Jewish text,

and that psychedelics are actually maybe really important to the Jewish religion. Now, I'm just going to do a quick fact check with my Jewish associate producer here. Professor Jacob, are psychedelics a key part of the Jewish religion? He hasn't taken them. That's good. Could you imagine? Could you imagine how off the wall he'd be if he had taken them? But here's what the piece says. I'll just read a little bit of it. An existential question, many people spend their lifetime seeking an answer to is, where can God be found? Some in the Jewish faith believe they already know the answer to that question and say psychedelics helped them get there. Yes, God, this is a quote. Yes, God's in the tree. and God's in the bush and God's in the plant and God's also within us, and the breath leads us straight back to God within us, explains Meyer K, the co-founder and lead facilitator of Adama, an organization that it says cultivates safe and sacred containers for Jewish men to, quote, discover their true selves and connect in brotherhood, health, masculinity, and

divine connection. Now, this strikes me not as some part of the tradition. Jewish religion. But, well, to quote Norm MacDonald, this strikes me as a bunch of of commie gobbledygook. A bunch of new age commie govoldy cook. The piece goes on, says, a 2023 peer-reviewed study in psychopharmacology found that the percentage of participants who identified as believing in God or a higher power increased from 29% to 59% after psychedelic use. And I could believe that. Rabbi Harry Rosenberg advocates for the use of psychedelics for healing and connection. Rosenberg believes the Torah, Judaism's most sacred text, may describe psychedelic experiences. He believes divinity lives in all of us, and for some psychedelics help access

it. Okay. Okay. The reason I bring this up is not just because it seems a little quirky from the Jewish perspective, but because I have friends who've told me this. I have multiple friends. At this point, I might say many friends who have told me, you know, man, Michael, taken psychedelics really helped me understand, man, peace. And, you know, that this world isn't all there is. I broke through the veil, man, it really brought me closer to the divine. You know what I mean, brother? They didn't all talk quite like that, but it's pretty close.

I've heard this. However, I can't help but notice that people who take psychedelics never come out of their experiences more aware of their own deficiencies. I can't help but notice to really drive the point home for religion. People who take psychedelics never seem to come out of them, more aware of their need for a savior. You notice that? In fact, one friend I was talking to, in fact, I've actually heard this from multiple friends.

They say, yeah, man, you know, took some drugs, and then, you know, I just realized there's no sin. There's no sin, man. I don't need to be hung up all the time on sins and stuff. You think, no, actually, there is sin, and you do need to be hung up on it. And you need to feel bad about it, and you need to confess your sins, and you need to stop doing them. That's at least what God says to do. I don't know whatever drug cooked up in a Mexican bathtub you take, it does, but that's what God says to do. I'd be very wary, very wary of the psychedelic religion, because they're being really mainstreamed right now.

I don't know, man. The devil appears as an angel of light sometimes. You kind of judge the tree by its fruit, don't you? Do you think, like, burned out hippies have the clearest? view of religion and morality? Probably not. Today is Music Monday, okay? The rest of the show continues. Now, you do not want to miss it. Become a member use code NOLS, KNAW-L-A-S, check out for two months free on all annual plans.