The Michael Knowles Show - Ep. 1878 - War In Venezuela? Trump Addresses The Nation

Episode Date: December 18, 2025

President Trump addresses the nation, Dan Bongino is leaving the FBI, and Jasmine Crockett gives the real reason they want mass migration. Ep.1878 - - - Click here to join the member-exclusive portion of my show: https://bit.ly/4biDlri - - - Today's Sponsors: Equip Foods - Equip’s Prime Bar is a real food protein bar with nothing to hide: just 11 ingredients and 20g of clean protein - made from ingredients you can pronounce like collagen, beef tallow, colostrum, cocoa butter - and sweetened naturally with just date and honey. Michael Knowles listeners will get 25% off one-time purchases, or 40% off first subscription orders for a limited time by heading to https://equipfoods.com/michaelknowles and using code MICHAELKNOWLES at checkout. Policygenius - Head to https://policygenius.com/KNOWLES to compare life insurance quotes from top companies and see how much you could save. StopBox USA - Not only do you get 10% Off your entire order when you use code MICHAELKNOWLES at https://stopboxusa.com/MICHAELKNOWLES, but they are also giving you Buy One Get One Free for their StopBox Pro. #stopboxpod #ad - - - DailyWire+: 🎄✨ DAILY WIRE CHRISTMAS SALE IS HERE! ✨🎄 🎁 https://www.dailywire.com/subscribe ⭐️ 40% Off DailyWire+ New Annual Memberships ⭐️ 50% Off DailyWire+ Annual Upgrade Memberships ⭐️ 50% Off DailyWire+ Annual Gift Memberships Finally, Friendly Fire is here! No moderator, no safe words. Now available at https://www.dailywire.com/show/friendly-fire Buy my book "Speechless" here: https://amzn.to/3L1L44V GET THE ALL-NEW YES OR NO EXPANSION PACK TODAY: https://bit.ly/41gsZ8Q - - - 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 - - - Privacy Policy: https://www.dailywire.com/privacy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

USAA knows dynamic duos can save the day, like superheroes and sidekicks or auto and home insurance. With USAA, you can bundle your auto and home and save up to 10%. Tap the banner to learn more and get a quote at usaa.com slash bundle. Restrictions apply. American warships off the coast of Venezuela, blowing up Venezuelan drugboats, demands that dictator Nicholas Maduro leave the country. And amid all the tensions, the threat of, war with Venezuela, President Trump calls a White House address on all the networks in prime time.

We were all waiting for the declaration of war. And President Trump, as always, subverted our expectations. We'll get into exactly what he said. I'm Michael Knowles. This is the Michael Knowles show. Welcome back to the show. Our pal Vivek Ramoswamy has an essay in the New York Times. We'll forgive him for the New York Times, called What is an American in which he weighs in on the right-wing civil war, all these questions about American identity, and he makes a lot of good points, but he leaves out some good points too. We'll get into exactly his view where it fits in with this brutal, bare-knuckle brawl on the right of what the future of America is. First, I want to tell you about equip foods. Go to equipfoods.com slash Michael Knowles, all one word. Use code Michael Knowles, all one word.

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I absolutely love the equip Prime Bar. Go check it out right now if you want to try the cleanest protein bar on the market. I already sold out once. Foods.com slash Michael Knowles. Use code Michael Knowles at checkout to get 25% off one-time purchases or 40% off your first subscription order for a limited time. EQUIP Foods.com slash Michael Knowles. M-I-C-H-A-E-L-A-W-L-A-S was trying to do fast. Use code Michael Knowles, M-I-C-H-A-E-L-A-K-NWL-L-A at checkout. All the news networks, they all cover President Trump's major announcement.

It's all being reported in the liberal media, amid tensions with Venezuela, a major announcement from the president. And he walks up there and you know what he does? He totally punks him. There's no war. Hey, spoiler alert. Sorry, I should have maybe said this at the top. We're not at war with Venezuela.

He goes in and he just talks about all of his biggest wins from the first year. Everything on the economy, on migration, on everything, all the good stuff that's coming. It was just a recap of all the great stuff that he did. all from this cozy looking room in the White House with all the Christmas decorations up. He ends it with Merry Christmas. He pulled the old War with Venezuela fakeout to make all of his enemies at the news networks cover all of his successes in prime time. A lot of people still watch primetime TV, even though everything is online.

It makes all of the, even the digital media pay attention to him. Even I usually, I catch up on the news later. I'm usually not watching it real time because I'm doing something else. this. I stopped what I was doing. I was going to get my Christmas tree off my car and I stopped and eventually I just took the phone out with me as it's going. I'd take the Christmas tree off my car. It was a total punking. Whether you love him, whether you hate him, it is beyond dispute at this point. President Trump is the greatest media manipulator ever to hold that office. I thought it was really good. And it was important. It served really important political purposes because the Democrats right now have

historically low approval ratings. The Democrats are in a really, really bad spot. They have no leading candidate for president for the first time in 25 years. They're in a really bad spot, but President Trump's approval ratings have lagged a little bit in certain areas, especially on the economy. And this is frustrating for the White House because the White House has really good at economic numbers this year. The White House has outperformed on GDP, on jobs, that we were all told the tariffs were going to destroy the country. They didn't. The tariffs have worked. The stock market hit record highs. The economy has done very, very well under Trump. Inflation has come way down. And yet, real wage growth has gone up. I mean, the numbers go on and on. And yet, people still feel

the pinch in this economy. And they're right to do so. But the point that Trump is making is they feel the pinch because eggs cost two bucks a carton five years ago. Then Biden sped up inflation to over 9%, and then eggs cost $10 a carton, and now eggs might be down to $6 a carton or something like that. But everyone's remembering the Halcyon days when they were $2 a carton. Never mind that Trump has reduced costs on a whole host of things. Because don't forget, Biden oversaw this massive spike in inflation, and he blamed it all on COVID, but it wasn't just COVID. It was also his massive spending. It was also the so-called inflation reduction act, which even Bernie Sanders admitted didn't reduce inflation. It was also the big infrastructure,

that ballooned government spending. It was also Biden destroying the energy sector and killing the keystone pipeline, energy which causes inflation throughout the economy. Biden really was responsible for a lot of the inflation. And so Trump needed to take this opportunity to set the record straight to control the narrative. He even rolled out new things. Here's so fitting, given the setting, given the time, we're right before Christmas. Here's a new little bonus that President Trump gets.

that he is offering to some of our most deserving citizens. Because of tariffs, along with the just passed one big beautiful bill, tonight I am also proud to announce that more than 1,450,000, think of this, 1,450,000 military service members will receive a special, we call Warrior Dividend before Christmas, a warrior dividend, in honor of our nation's founding in 1776, we are sending every soldier $1,776. Think of that, and the checks are already on the way. Nobody understood that one until about 30 minutes ago.

We made a lot more money than anybody thought because of tariffs, and the bill helped us along. Nobody deserves it more than our military, and I say congratulations to everybody. And by the way, we now have record enlistment in our military. And last year we had among the worst recruitment numbers in our military's history. What a difference a year makes.

Bonuses for the vets in the amount of $1776, I dare a Democrat to oppose them. Democrats never met federal spending they didn't love. I dare the Democrats to oppose a bonus for the vets for $1,776. The year our country was founded on the 250th anniversary of our country, it was brilliant. And it's not just pandering to a very sympathetic and very revered group of Americans. Trump is also looking down the line at the Supreme Court, which potentially could overrule his tariffs, tariffs which are key to his economic agenda.

And so what does Trump do? He comes out and he says, the tariffs have worked. they brought in a lot of money for this country and we're going to give some of that money out. We're not just going to hoard it for ourselves. We're not even going to use it just to pay down our debt. We're going to give it to some of our most deserving Americans who are often overlooked.

Okay, Supreme Court, I dare you to get rid of my tariffs now. You want to take money out of the hands of hardworking veterans who've sacrificed for this country. Be my guest. Trump then pointed out that not only are his jobs numbers good this year, They're actually much, much better. Some would say almost infinitely better than Biden's job numbers, job numbers we've seen in recent years, really even recent decades, because the jobs under Trump have gone to actual Americans. For the first time in 50 years, we are now seeing reverse migration as migrants go back home, leaving more housing and more jobs for Americans.

In the year before my election, all net creation of jobs. was going to foreign migrants. Since I took office, 100% of all net job creation has gone to American-born citizens, 100%. In the end, government either serves the productive, patriotic hardworking American citizen, or it serves those who break the laws, cheat the system, and seek power and profit at the expense of our nation.

There's a little known fact that the job growth in recent years has largely been illusory as those jobs are going to foreign-born workers. So real Americans don't really benefit. This year, because of the Trump immigration policy, because he closed off the border, so he stopped another one to three million illegals from coming into the country, because he formally deported over half a million of them, and because he caused at least 1.6 million, probably significantly more, to self-deport. you see all the jobs going to actual Americans.

Big, big win. How does he end it? Merry Christmas. When the world looks at us next year, let them see a nation that is loyal to its citizens, faithful to its workers, confident to its identity, certain to its destiny,

and the envy of the entire globe. We are respected again like we have never been respected before, To each and every one of you, have a Merry Christmas and a happy new year. God bless you all. Beautiful. Couldn't have said it better myself. Beautiful, beautiful stuff. I loved, there was one person responded when I tweeted out. I knew exactly what he was doing. The minute he opened his mouth, I said, ah, that's what he did. He tricked all the networks. None of them want to give him good coverage. He's going to give a year-end roundup right before Christmas, great optics, great numbers,

sets the record straight. And one person responded said, I've been had. So that's true. We've all been had. But we had fun. It was good. And we're not going to war. This is the other thing.

All these panic hands. So we're going to war. We're going to war. I don't know. I don't freak out about Trump, especially when it comes to foreign policy. And it's not just because I blindly follow a leader or something like that. It's just based on reason.

Looking at precedent, we now have 10 years of precedent with Trump. The guy has been the best foreign policy president in my lifetime, probably including George H. H.W. Bush, who was good in his own right. So he just has earned a little grace with me when it comes, especially to foreign policy. Now, Major Shakeup also was announced yesterday. Another one that's been a media rumor for months now, Dan Bongino, our pal Dan Bonjino, is leaving the FBI. Dan, you know, had a very, very successful podcast business, news aggregator business. He's a great guy, Dan Bonino, and he's obviously a great broadcaster and a businessman.

Dan was doing very, very well. I don't have the exact numbers of how much money he was bringing in through his business empire, his media empire. He was doing very, very well. And he gave it all up to take the job as deputy FBI director to serve the country. And I'm sure that's a very frustrating thing, especially when you're in the deputy position. You're not even in the director position. You're not the attorney general, for instance. And so he did it. He did it for a year. He gave up a lot. He sacrificed for his country. He's done a great job. President Trump has con confirmed this rumor. Dan did a great job. I think he wants to go back to his show. Yeah, I do. I like the way Trump is leaving this too. You know, Trump and Dan have gotten along for a long time. He says, yes, Dan did a great job.

He did it. He put in his year, put in a solid year. And some jobs in a presidential administration, that's a lifetime. He says, now I think Dan probably wants to go back to his show, which I think will be great. I think it's very honorable at what he did. He gave up a lot. He actually did sacrifice for his country. And now I'm excited that he's going to have a show again.

I assume he's going back to his show. In any case, notice something. This is the first quasi-major shake-up in the admin. From the beginning, President Trump has had the media gunning for a lot of his top appointees, especially Pete Heggseth. Notice, the media have been trying to, not just the media, the Democrats, the activists, have been trying to get rid of Hegson. since before he was confirmed, they really tried to torpedoes confirmation. They've been going after him ever since. Every three days, it seems there's some rumor. Hegseth's getting pushed out of the Pentagon, and yet it never happens. Oh, there's a big rumor. Christy Noam's getting pushed out.

Christy Noem. Trump's, what are you talking about? Christy Noam's great. Notice that Dan, deputy FBI director, is the first one to leave, and he's leaving on good terms, and he's leaving of his own accord. Big difference between. that and the first administration, when the Secretary of State finds out he's getting fired via tweet. And there's a lot of turnover in the first admin. And this to me is something that Trump didn't mention. It wouldn't have been fitting for this speech. But I think it's important to note we're going around here at the Daily Wire the other day to talk about what are the biggest wins and losses for Trump in the first year. To meet really the biggest win was

the personnel. Trump, he was totally new to it in the first term. that little interregnum period, I think, actually probably helped him focus a little bit, figure out who the friends are, separate the wheat from the chaff. The second term notice is there's basically no turnover. Very, very good people in these positions, for the most part. There are a couple of people who are not quite as good as the others, but for the most part, very, very good people in these positions, and they're lasting and they're surviving.

They're getting stuff done. It was a very, very impressive year. All right, we have a lot more soaring political rhetoric to get to this time, not from the president of the United States, but rather from Jasmine Crockett. We'll get to that momentarily first, though, I want to tell you about policy genius. Go to policygenius.com slash Knowles, this Christmas season, you probably want a gift that lasts forever instead of just junk that falls apart in six months. Well, with our show sponsor, Policy Genius, you can give your family a gift that endures the security of life insurance and lasting peace of mind. Nearly half of American adults would face financial hardship within six months if they lost their primary income.

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Jasmine Crockett, the gift that keeps ungiven, apparently trolled into running for Senate by the Republican Senate Committee, inserted her name in a poll, now it actually gets her to run, the gamble being that it'll screw it up for Democrats in Texas. Jasmine Crockett laying out her immigration plan, the reason why the Democrats support mass migration and open border, all these illegals pouring into the country,

Democrats for years have told us it's because of humanitarian reasons. Because we care so much about the oppressed people on the other side of the border. The refugees, Jasmine Crockett says, nah, that's BS. We were lying the whole time. The reason we need them is because I don't want to pick any more cotton. So I had to go around the country and educate people about what immigrants do for this country or the fact that we are a country of immigrants. Right, right.

The fact is, ain't none of y'all trying to go and farm right now. Okay, so I'm lying. Raise your hands. You're not. You're not. We're done picking cotton. You can't pay us enough to find a plantation. We need to import third world peasants because we want a new slave class.

Why aren't you all applauding? So for years, I love her. For years, the Republicans have pointed out, the Democrats support mass migration from the third world, especially illegal immigration, but even some legal immigration. The whole reason that the Democrats wanted it is, one, to cynically give them a permanent electoral majority by fundamentally changing the demographics of the country, and two, because they're in cahoots with big business because they want cheap labor. They want to commit one of the sins that cries out to heaven for vengeance, namely defrauding.

the poor, oppressing the poor, the workers, giving them substandard wages. And then Jasmine Croc comes out and she goes, you're totally right. Dino-Mite. That was Jasmine Crockett putting on her like 1970s jive voice. Of course, she engages in interviews where she sounds like a perfectly normal person. But I guess whichever group she was talking to there, she thought she had to dial it up, dial up the black exploitation talk. You know, I said, listen here, man, we done picking that cut. So what does it mean? What it means is we are bringing these people in to treat them like slaves. So thank you, Jasmine. You have totally admitted the Republicans were right the whole time. That was the justification for it. Amazing, too, that this

clip is going viral right after you had this very sorry display in the U.S. Capitol where even Republicans went along with it. They tore down a statue of Robert E. Lee. They said Robert E. Lee, one of the greatest Americans ever to live. A man who said he rejoiced at the end of slavery, even though he was the general defending his homeland in the Civil War. He said he rejoiced that slavery would end. He called slavery, quote, a moral and political evil in any country. He was so happy that it was abolished.

They tear down the statue of Robert E. Lee. They put up some lady no one's ever heard of. They feel so good about themselves. General Lee was a much, much better person, a much more moral person than any of the people tearing his statue down. General Lee was a much more moral person than Jasmine Crockett and had a much more moral political vision. General Lee, on the one hand, saying, look, I have to defend my home, my countrymen, my community. I have to defend them.

But I hate slavery. Slavery is a moral evil, not only in America anywhere. I'm so happy slavery is abolished. That's the guy they're tearing down. And the one that the Democrats are going to run for Senate in Texas is saying, we need a new slave class. Yeah, we abolished slavery. That's good for me, I guess. Now let's import a bunch of Guatemalans. Have them pick the cotton for no money. Am I right? Am I? Can I get an amen? You tear down the ancestors, the forebears, the people who built our country, the giants on whose shoulders we stand and we think that we're flying. You tear them down because of some moral failings that they had real or imagined. And who do we put in their place? We put Jasmine Crockett in her place. We put the modern Democrat, party and the squish collaborators in the Republican Party, much less moral, much less dignified people in every single way. So what is American identity? My friend Vivek Ramoswamy published a

very thoughtful essay on this in the New York Times. We can overlook that. We can forgive him for publishing in the New York Times on what is an American? I really encourage you to check out this essay because Vivek makes an important point, but I think he misses an important point too. opens up, he says, there are two competing visions now emerging on the American right, and they are incompatible. One vision of American identity is based on lineage, blood and soil, inherited attributes matter most. The purest form of an American is a so-called heritage American, one whose ancestry traces back to the founding of the United States, or earlier, even earlier, I guess referring to the Mayflower, which is a great cigar brand. It says, this view is now popularized by the Groyper Wright, a rapidly

ascend an online movement that argues for the creation of a white-centric identity. This is a predictable response when I anticipated in my book to anti-white discrimination over the last half-decade. It is no longer just a fringe viewpoint. The alternative, the vague proposes, and in my view, the correct vision of American identity, is based on ideals. Americanness is not a scalar quality that varies based on your ancestry. It's binary. Either you are an American or you're not. You are an American if you believe in the rule of law, in freedom of conscience, and freedom of expression. in colorblind meritocracy in the U.S. Constitution in the American dream, and if you are a citizen who swears exclusive allegiance to our nation.

So Vivek is saying that he fully endorses what is called the creedal view of America. If you believe in the ideals of America and if you check a box, you become naturalized as a citizen, then you are an American. It has nothing to do with heritage, the people you come from, your family's history here, Look, there's obviously a creedal aspect to the country. So he's getting at something that is partially true. But I think he's missing a point. Here's the problem for Vivek's argument is what about the guy who lives in West Virginia?

What about the guy who lives anywhere in the middle of America whose family's been here forever? Maybe they were on the Mayflower. Maybe they came around the revolution. Maybe they came in the Civil War. Maybe they came 100 years ago. They've been Americans for many, many generations. guy loves his American flag. He eats hot dogs on the 4th of July. His kids are all American. He loves his country. But maybe he doesn't believe in absolute freedom of expression or something like that, which, as I argue in my book, Speechless, is not really part of the American's free speech tradition. Oh, thank you very much. I actually forgot about my bell, yes. That, you know, this belief in total freedom of expression, that that's not. not really the American free speech tradition.

We outlaw all sorts of speech. Obviously, fraud, direct threats, obscenity. Now we've weakened that over time. There were blasphemy laws on the books for much of American history that still are on the books in some places. What if he doesn't believe in that? Does that mean that he's not an American? The notion of colorblind meritocracy, even take the colorblind part out for a second, just focus on meritocracy.

The notion of meritocracy is, in its most extreme form, is a very modern. innovation in America. If we believe in pure meritocracy, whatever that means, does that mean that we have to oppose legacy admissions in universities? Does this mean that people can't give some preference in hiring, say, in their family business? You know, they have a mom and pop family business that's been in the family for generations. You can't pass that business along to your kids or your grandkids. You can't favor hiring your grandkids over, I don't know, some random person on the street who maybe scored higher on the SAT. Taking to its fullest extreme, does that mean that we have to support totally free and open trade,

where we're competing against not just our countrymen, but the whole rest of the world for spots in schools, for jobs, for, I don't know, that's not really part of the American tradition. And I think there are plenty of people in America who don't totally go along with those ideas, who are nonetheless, I think, still American. There's someone from Tibet who comes over to America, let's say, last week, and he gets naturalized as a citizen by hook or by crook.

He has no experience in America. He doesn't have any of the learned traditions that come about, not just through a lifetime, but through the generations. He doesn't really know about hot dogs on the 4th of July. He doesn't really know about fireworks. He passed a civics test, but he doesn't, he's not really part of the community. You're telling me that guy, because he has memorized some portion of the Declaration of Independence, that guy is American.

But the guy who, I don't know, maybe he hasn't memorized every line of the Federalist papers. Nevertheless, his family's been here for 300 years. That guy's not in America? I don't think that holds. I don't think that really makes a lot of sense. I see what Vivek is looking at. But I think it's a false dichotomy. I don't think the only two choices are blood and soil nationalism where heritage is all that matters.

Or this creedal conception where belief in what is imagined to be the American idea, which in many ways was a construction of the 20th century, that that's all that's American. I think there's something more to it. I don't think that the view that, you know, having rootedness in America is purely the domain of some fringe or unseemly or bigoted online right-wing. I don't think that's true at all.

The vague goes on. He points out that anti-Semitic statements are now normalized online. That's true. Now, in fairness, all sorts of nasty, ugly things are normalized online. That's kind of what the Internet's for. the internet's for porn and racism. You know, we tried to, actually, we tried to circumscribe that in the 1990s with the Communications Decency Act and the Child Online Protection Act. And it passed with Republican and Democrat support.

And then unfortunately, judges gutted it because judges had a very, very liberal view of the American free speech tradition that wasn't really historical. But yeah, look, it bothers me. I don't like that. I hate anti-Semitism. I hate nasty, cruel, racism and misogyny and all the rest of that. But it's normalized online. Online is not, you know, the internet is not the same. same as real life. There's overlap, but it's not the same thing. He goes on. He says, this pattern

eerily mirrors the hesitance of prominent Democrats to criticize woke excesses in the run-up to 2024. So in other words, if the right does not excise the nasty fringes of its movement, it's going to end up in the same electoral quagmire that the Democrats ran into because they adopted all the pro-trans, radical, woke stuff that killed them in 2024. Yeah, okay, that's fair. Any political movement has to circumscribe itself. Just as a nation is known by its borders, that's what distinguishes it from other nations. So too with political movements. You got to invite as many people in as you can in a way that is just and successful, while also keeping some people out. Totally agree with, I totally agree with that. However, I just think the premise is a little bit

wrong. No, you don't, I don't think that you need to ascribe perfectly to the present day's understanding of what America means as a creed. I don't think America is just an idea. I think it's a country. I think it's a real country. And countries are made up of people, made up of geography, made up of actions and traditions and sacrifices, and made up of creedal beliefs, of course. So it seems to me that there is a synthesis of some of these ideas. I alluded to this the other day when I talked about the book of Ruth. I think the book of Ruth is really instructive on what it means to be part of a political community. I think actually it provides the type of what a political community is because Ruth is a moabite,

but she assimilates and joins into the Israelites. And how does she do it? She does it in three ways. We'll get to what that is. And we'll get to really the heart of this question that we're going to be debating for a year. What is an American? First, though, I want to tell you about Stopbox USA. Go to stopbox.usa.com.

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L-K-N-O-W-L-E-S at StopboxUSA.com. Yes, there's a creedal aspect to American identity, but there are two other aspects. There's sacrifice, there's contribution. One way that people have been Americanized in the course of history is when they fight in wars. Or when they contribute something really great. You know, they're beneficent. They contribute to our economy. They contribute to our political community.

Elon Musk is a good example of this. He's an immigrant, and he's generated a lot of prosperity. for people. He sacrificed him of his private interest to help the good of the country, even working in government. That would be one way. And then the third part is the people, the people matter. Just a simple thought experiment. If you took all the people in America today, 330 some odd million people, and you swapped them out, and you filled up the country with 330 million other people. And they all had memorized the Declaration of Independence. They all had memorized whatever the current conception of the American creed is, would you still have the same country?

Manifestly, you would not. It would be a different kind of country. In Ruth, Ruth says, three things importantly. She says, I'm going to leave them all by someone to become an Israelite. Israel, which is the particular nation that is the type of all the nations. It says, your people will be my people. I will marry and I will have children. children that go down into the line of David and into the lineage of Christ. So assimilation is possible. You got to kind of marry in. You got to intermingle with these people.

Where you go, I will go, where you die, I will die. You got it. You're giving something up. I'm giving up the Moabites. I'm given up Tibet. I'm giving up the third world. I'm coming. I'm part of this.

Your God will be my God. It's a creedal aspect. And when she marries her second husband, Boaz, after her first husband dies, she says, why are you accepting me? And he says, everything you've done for your mother and law, everything you've done for us, for our tribe, for our nation, that's been told to me, the sacrifice part. That's what the three of them are. And so there is a founding stock of America. That's been radically changed over the centuries. We've had periods of no immigration. We've

had periods of a lot of immigration. And then since 1967, we've had this mass influx of immigration and demographic change. But there is a founding stock. There really is. There's a people. And you can kind of marry into that. I mean, for me, use the example of the Mayflower. I'm only a quarter English. And even of the quarter English, the Knowles has got here in 1660, and they married into the Mayflower line, they got here in 1620. So even of that, you know, I'm pretty swarthy. I'm pretty Sicilian. But there's still, there was intermarriage. There was a period of, a long period of assimilation over the generations.

You can't totally lose that. That's the icky part. That's the part that no one wants to talk about in our totally abstract modern life that tells us, modern liberalism that tells us that America is not a real country. It's not a real people. It's just an idea. No, there's a people. And there's a creed, but what's the creed? Is the creed 20th century liberalism, 21st century liberalism, or is the creed Christianity? John Adams says that the principles of the Christian religion or the general principles on which independence was won.

We're kind of a Christian country, aren't we? John Jay writes about this in Federalist No. 2. And there's an American conception of liberty. And so there's a civic belief and there's a religious belief, which is grounded in Christianity. And there's contribution. Right now in American identity, we have none of the three. You don't have to be part of the people. You don't have to assimilate. You don't have to do anything. You don't have to believe anything. You can be a Muslim communist. It's fine. It has nothing, no bearing on it. And you don't have to sacrifice. You actually, you're going to commit welfare fraud and you're going to take all the money from the tax force. So we're this really big problem. But going all the way back to classical political philosophy, classical civilizations, ancient Rome, which men have to think about three times a day,

all the way up to the present, you need all three. And to divorce one or the other states, only creed or it's only stock or even that it's only sacrifice, I think misses the point. So I think Vivek touches on a good point, but it's not complete. It's a partial truth. And it will be insufficient to persuade Americans now who are seeing the real results of demographic change, massive demographic change, contrived demographic change without any kind of assimilation. The partial truth will not persuade. You need the whole truth. Talking about the New York Times. I'm quoting the Washington Post today. something's gone very, very wrong, but the Washington Post has a very important report out.

The report is on Charlie Kirk's alleged killer. You see this news with Charlie Kirk's alleged killer told friends after the attack. This is Tyler Robinson, a patchwork of social interactions and a trail of online posts provide a view into Tyler Robinson's life and his beliefs. Really, really long piece, but important reporting. He says 55 minutes before he allegedly shot and killed right-wing political activist Charlie Kirk. Robinson was bragging about his success playing the online puzzle game Wordle. So he was bragging about committing the crime according to Wordle. He's got all of these other exchanges on different social media servers. Some of his friends, people referring to family interactions. His mother

told police he'd become more, quote, pro-gay and trans rights oriented, had started dating a roommate who was undergoing a gender transition. Friends confirmed the pair's romantic involvement, says the roommate was distressed about anti-trans sentiment. Robinson sent the roommate a confession, said, I've had enough of his hatred. Some hate can't be negotiated out. He wrote that in a message, reportedly hours after the killing.

The post reached out to all of these other people, and it's a very long article. I encourage all of you to read it. maybe read it on a, read it on a gift article. Don't give the Washington Post too much money. But it's important reporting. And this is the kind of stuff that's all going to come out in the prosecution. It's good to get a little bit of this now.

I mention all of it because some people have asked why I have not joined in on the personal side of the right-wing civil war. There's always a right-wing civil war, but sometimes it gets hotter than at other points. And now it's particularly hot. I gave a speech on this at Belmont Abbey. and I outlined some of my reasons for not getting so involved there. Beyond the virtue of loyalty, beyond any personal affections or personal hostilities or anything in the mix, there's a practical aspect as well. As I've made perfectly clear when speaking about the issue, I have had no confusion whatsoever

since the moment that this guy murdered Charlie, allegedly, to the present, that he did it. I do wonder how many more of these friends and transferey boyfriends and other people were involved, had advanced knowledge, were at least told after the fact. But I've had no doubt that he did it. And the reason for that is it's always the ones you most expect. And the reason for that is that, well, he's allegedly confessed to it. His fingerprints were on the rifle and all the rest of it. But also because this is the kind of guy who does this kind of thing repeatedly.

We've seen this consistently for years. And even in one case, a speech that I was giving at the University of Pittsburgh. And so given that this was all pretty clear, and we're going to get much, much more of this in the prosecution and in the courts, I'm sure, there's a practical aspect here, which is that when things become really personal and really gossipy and really focused on. reviling and detracting and defamation in some cases, but in detraction and other cases. When it gets all really personal, it distracts from the issue. And some people love that. A lot of people love that in politics and media. I think that's very counterproductive.

And the chief lesson that I took from Charlie in his public life, not in our personal friendship, but in his public life, the chief lesson I took from him is you've got to kind to tune out the noise and you have to keep your eyes on the prize and you have to focus on the issues and you have to keep the team together and you have to advance and you have to move and you have to win the elections and you win the elections by forming coalitions and you move on and in some cases you have to confront the noise head on in some cases the facts of the matter are so apparent that they're going to come to light over the course of weeks or months or maybe a year but they're going to come to light and you can't allow yourself to get distracted now we're

heading into America Fest, which is the last event that Charlie gave us. He planned this event. He invited people to this event. You can't get a hotel room in the city of Phoenix. Everybody is showing up to this thing. This is the group that he invited. This is the team looking ahead at the midterms, looking ahead at 2028. Charlie was very, very practical. And Charlie was a winner. He was a winner. He knew how to win. A lot of people have opinions. A lot of people like to blab. Charlie liked to in. And I think the truth is obviously coming out very clearly. Most people never really doubted it in the first place. But it's going to come out much more clearly. The common enemy, the radical left, is once again going to be pronounced. It's going to come out very, very clearly. The stakes of losing

when you have an enemy that not only is willing to commit these kinds of crimes, but justifies it, excuses it, celebrates it. The stakes of losing and giving power back over to those people, I think those are going to come into the fore and and i hope that the legacy of of the last event that charlie puts on albeit posthumously is uh a revitalization of putting away of personal animosities and gossip and whatever and focusing keeping the eyes on the prize winning moving together with uh some unity with with a clear vision with practical steps to move forward to win to achieve results because the winners go to washington and make laws and the losers go home a very very very important lesson and probably the only time in my life that I will encourage people to read

the Washington Post. In one week on Christmas Day, episodes one and two of the Penn Dragon cycle, Rise of the Merlin, start streaming on DailyWare Plus for all access members. Here is the truth. No one else was ever going to make this. No one was going to bring this legend to life at this scale with the conviction it deserves. Too big, too demanding, too risky. We built a company that could do it. So on Christmas Day, all access members are going to get episodes one and two before anyone else. January 22nd, the seven-part epic launches for all members. The weight is almost over the moment, Rise of the Merlin hits your screen, you will get exactly why we went this big. Become a DailyWire Plus member right now. Get 40% off new annual memberships. DailyWire.com

slash subscribe. Very important interview to get to. Speaking of winning, speaking of making policy, I'm so honored to have on the show, Admiral Brian Christine, who is the assistant secretary for health at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, major announcement, big press conference coming out of HHS today. Obviously, we've covered a lot of the big changes to the vaccine schedule to how public health is treated after the massive scandals of public health during the Biden administration. One of the scandals actually pertaining to the very position that Admiral Christine holds. So Admiral, thank you so much for coming on the show. No, Michael, thank you for having me on the show. I love what you do. I love your online presence,

and I'm really pleased to be here today. Well, thank you so much. A pleasure's all mine. I can't help but notice, Admiral. You are the Assistant Secretary for Health, and you are wearing a men's uniform. And I believe your predecessor in that very position, though a man, wore a woman's uniform. That's exactly right. No, my predecessor, Admiral Levine, wore a woman's uniform. No, I'm a man wearing a man's uniform. That speaks to the truth that boys are boys and girls are girls, and you can't change that.

That alone, Admiral, I think goes a long way to restoring some faith that are. health department has a sane conception of what health even is. There's been so much. It's like a fire hose of information coming out of HHS. Can you tell us a little bit about what the department is announcing today? Yes. Well, so you know that we have an issue in this country, the explosion of children who are being, who have gendered dysphoria, who are being treated with castrating chemicals and surgeries that really do not address the problem. And so we've seen an explosion of this. We certainly saw that under the last administration in my predecessor. And I want to thank President Trump and Secretary Kennedy for saying, no, we are going to be led by gold level science.

We're going to be led by what's right. We're going to be transparent. And we're actually going to speak to parents, speak to these children, and give them treatment that actually works. And treatment that actually works is not chemicals, puberty blockers, and surgeries, but rather address this as you would any other mental health issue and give them compassionate, supportive, expert mental health counseling. That's the way forward with these kids, not surgeries or chemicals. The Biden HHS was transgender. The Trump HHS is transparent. I think that's a big, big improvement. This was an issue that I think scandalized a lot of voters. I think it is actually a big part of the reason

why Republicans and President Trump won in 2024. Voters looked at that issue in particular. They said, this is such a travesty that is being done, especially to children. It's scandalous. It's destroying lives. It's not helping in any way. It's really making the problem worse.

It represents such a total failure of judgment on the part of the previous administration and Democrats. These guys, they don't have the judgment to be the dog catcher in Palookaville. much less run a country. So can you just give us a little bit of a sense at the federal level of what the Biden trans kids policy had been and how today's actions are changing that? Right. I think they were driven more by a warped social and political agenda. Let's just say it for what it is. That was the driver in the last administration. The driver in this administration,

under President Trump and Secretary Kennedy and myself, is that we are going to look at science. We are going to let science guide us how we treat these vulnerable children. And understand, gender dysphoria is a real entity. Gender dysphoria does occur, but you don't treat it with chemicals and surgery. You treat it with counseling. And so we looked at this. We've brought together the best scientist to look and to make recommendations. We've looked at the science. And simply, the science does not support the use of castrating chemicals and mutilating surgeries to treat this children. What science does support is, again, And compassionate care, compassionate counseling. If parents want to loop in pastoral support, I think that's entirely reasonable and I think that's appropriate.

As for any other disease process. But the important thing is that surgeries and chemicals are not the way forward. That is what was being pushed in the last administration. And what we are saying is no, that's not correct. Science doesn't support this. What science does support is handling these children with care and with love and with counseling. I'm glad you mentioned, too, not just the scientific experts, but also the parents, the pastors, all these other social supports. I was given a speech at some school a couple years ago, and a young gal walked up to the microphone and said,

hey, Michael, I just want to thank you for speaking out on the trans issue because I suffered from gender dysphoria, and I thought I was the opposite sex, and I really wanted to go through the procedures and the hormones and the surgeries. And luckily, I had good supportive parents, and I had a good doctor who wasn't just guiding me down that path. a path that's very difficult to come back from, if possible at all. And I had a good priest, and I had, you know, I had all of this social support. And what she said was that she had undiagnosed autism. She was on the autism spectrum. And when the scientists, when the doctors started treating that issue, and there are a whole host of issues that can contribute to the gender dysphoria, she said, my gender dysphoria greatly abated. I'm in a much better place now, and I'm just so

thankful that I wasn't misled in the way that all of the experts were telling us to. So I think it's a, magnificent approach, nuts and bolts, what can medical providers, what can states, what can parents who maybe whose kids are dealing with this, what can they expect from the policy change? I think what they can expect is, is that we are offering hope. In this administration and this Department of Health and Human Services, we are offering hope to these parents and we're offering the right treatment, trying to guide them toward the correct treatment for their children. One of the things that you brought up is other co-occurring issues that can occur in these kids. you mentioned the autism with this one individual.

You have to treat all of these things. Again, you just simply don't jump to a knife or to a syringe of chemicals to treat these kids. You treat the underlying issues, the mental health issues. You treat what else might be going on, whether it be autism or something else. We know that these kids, if you give them this kind of support, the vast, vast, vast majority by the time they get into their middle or late teens

will be very comfortable in their skin. So the wrong thing is to go in and jump in with, surgeries that castrate, make infertile chemicals that do the same thing, that do irreversible, irreparable, and horrible harm to these kids. We're offering hope. The most important thing is, I think, Michael, is that we're offering this approach backed by science. We are being very transparent about this. We are united about this. This is critically important for President Trump and Secretary Kennedy to protect these vulnerable children. We don't look at them as pawns for some warped social and political agenda. We look at them as our children, as our patients, as people who matter. We want to

do the right thing. And we believe, and we know, because science backs us up, the right thing is to approach treatment the way we suggest, not operate on them, not give them chemicals. Of course. If a kid comes to a parent or to a doctor and says, you know, I think deep down, I'm really an F-150, you wouldn't have the doctor say, okay, well, we're going to get you into the operating room and put a catalytic converter in you. That would be absurd. And yet that's the exact kind of treatment, treatment so-called, that the experts under the Biden administration were pursuing. And as you point out, it's still very ideologically hot on the left. Do you, and does HHS expect pushback from the courts, any other bureaucrats, any of the usual

suspects, or is the administration confident that they won't have many impediments to restoring some sanity to health? Well, we are absolutely confident that what we are saying is right. We are absolutely confident that what we are suggesting for the best treatment for these kids is the right treatment. We have absolute confidence in that. Yes, I'm sure there are going to be detractors from the left or detractors who have their own social agenda. We're not worried about that. What we're here to do is to evangelize parents to tell them that the best way to treat their kids is with this compassionate care.

So we're going to march forward and do that because it's the right thing for our kids. It's the right thing for our country. It's the right thing for President Trump and Secretary Kennedy and for the rest of us at the Department of Health and Human Services. Admiral, it's great. And I think for a lot of people, you know, they'll say, my goodness, you know, this is how medicine was practiced for approximately all of human history until, I don't know, 20 to 20 or something. And so they say it's just unbelievable that we've gotten to a place as a society where this kind of thing needs to be said and done. shows you how far we had degraded. The course correction is greatly welcomed. I really appreciate your efforts on this, the efforts of the entire Trump HHS. And I'm sure a lot of people are going to be

tuning in to that press conference and, you know, hearing even more details about it. Admiral, thank you so much for coming on the show. Thank you, Michael. Bless you and have a very blessed Advent and Christmas. Thank you. You as well, sir. And thank you to all of you. Same message, actually, to all of you. I'm Michael Knowles. This is the Michael Knowles show. I'll see you tomorrow. All of this is an illusion, an echo of a voice that has died, and soon that echo will cease. They say that Merlin is mad. They say he was a king in Dovered,

the son of a princess of lost Atlantis. They say the future and the past are known to him. That the fire and the wind tell him their secrets. The magic of the hill folk and druids come forth at his easy, command. They say he slew hundreds. Hundreds do you hear that the world burned and trembled at his wrath and died long before you and I were born. Merlin Emress has returned to the land of the living. Fortigan is gone. Rome is gone. The Saxon is here. Saxon Hengist has assembled the greatest war host ever seen in the island of the mighty.

And before the summer is through, he means to take the throne. And he will have it. If we are too busy, swobbling amongst ourselves to take up arms against him, here is your hope. A king will arise to hold all Britain in his hand. A high king, it will be the wonder of the world. You... To a future of peace.

There'll be no peace in these lands till we are all dust. We are all dust. Men of the island of the mighty. You stand together. You stand as Britons. You stand as worn. Great darkness is forming upon this land. These brothers are our only hope to stand against it.

Not our only hope. S.A. Murden slew 70 men with his own hands. And could say he slew 500. No man escaped of such a thing. such a thing. The immortal man.