The Michael Knowles Show - Ep. 2000 - Tucker Carlson Leaves The Republican Party

Episode Date: June 23, 2026

Tucker leaves the Republican Party, Whoopi Goldberg wants to send President Trump to jail over the Reflecting Pool, and Chicago declares a Transfemicide State of Emergency. Ep. 2000 - - - Today's Sponsors: Brickhouse Nutrition - Get 20% off when you enter code KNOWLES at https://TakeLean.com LeafFilter - Start protecting your home today with LeafFilter. America's #1 Gutter Protection System. Schedule your free inspection at leaffilter.com/KNOWLES. That's up to 35% off at L-E-A-F filter dot com slash KNOWLES. Minimum purchase required. Restrictions apply. See rep for warranty and promotion details. ExpressVPN - Go to https://expressvpn.com/michaelknowlesshow and find out how you can get up to 4 extra months thanks to our sponsor, ExpressVPN! - - - DailyWire+: Click here to join the member-exclusive portion of my show: https://dailywire.com/subscribe Becoming a Daily Wire member allows you to see all of our content ad-free. 📲 Download the free Daily Wire app today on iPhone, Android, Roku, Apple TV, Samsung, and more. 🕯️🍹 The My Suit & Mai Tai candle is now available! https://thecandleclub.com/collections/michael-knowles/products/knowles-seasonal-candle ☀️🪕🌴 This candle comes with a QR code leading you to the exclusive original My Suit & Mai Tai music video - a true gift from paradise. 🕯️ Get your Michael Knowles candles: https://thecandleclub.com/collections/michael-knowles 📘 My book "Speechless: Controlling Words, Controlling Minds" is available here: https://dwplus.shop/Speechless 👕 Don’t dress like a squish. Shop my merch here: https://dwplus.shop/MichaelKnowlesMerch - - - Socials: YouTube — https://youtube.com/@MichaelKnowles Facebook — https://www.facebook.com/michaelknowlesshow Instagram — https://www.instagram.com/michaeljknowles TikTok — https://www.tiktok.com/@notmichaelknowles X — https://twitter.com/michaeljknowles - - - Privacy Policy: https://www.dailywire.com/privacy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Borrow Better. Tucker leaves the Republican Party. The Pope criticizes the free market, and Chicago declares a transfemicide state of emergency on the 2000th episode of the Michael Knowles show. Welcome back to the show.

It is the 2000th episode. Whoopi Goldberg believes President Trump should go to jail for repainting the reflecting pool. There's a lot going on. But did I mention it's the 2000th episode? I think it is an occasion that demands a Mayflower cigar. It's really two holidays today. It's Junty 3rd, of course, and the 2000th episode. Many people did not think this show would make it that long, including many of my bosses, actually, and a lot of the people, but I don't know, they've continued to tolerate me. Thank you to all of you for being around for

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Not $300.40. It's $3.49. If you use my special link, you get four extra months of service at ExpressVPN.com slash Knowles, E-X-P-R-E-S-S-V-P-N-S-V-P-N-S-V-S for four extra months of service. Chicago has declared a transfemicide state of emergency. This, according to Mayor Brandon Johnson, quote, for too many transgender Chicagoans, the sense of belonging they deserve in their city has been denied by exclusion and barriers to opportunity in spaces that should feel safe and welcoming.

Since declaring a transfemicide state of emergency, our administration has strengthened the city's capacity to support LGBTQ plus Chicagoans. This framework builds on that work by centering the voices and lived experiences of trans-Chicagoans to chart a path to a safer, more connected city. I looked into the numbers on the trans-femicide state of emergency. How many trans-femmes have been homicided? Last year, the number is one. There was one trans-identifying guy in Chicago who was murdered, and he was murdered not by,

a phobic right-wing person. He was murdered by his boyfriend. He was in bed. The boyfriend apparently bludgeoned his skull in with a hammer. Very sad. But that would not seem to be an epidemic of transphemicide. To help me analyze this crucial story, I bring on someone who was around for the Great Chicago Fire, so has a good sense of the second city. That would be, arguably, the founder of this show, Andy Millennial Claven. Drew, thank you for being here. Congratulations. I thought it was your 5,000 show. It just maybe seemed like 5,000 shows.

It just feels like you are the founder of this show because. I am. I'm going to have to answer for that before you form of God. You will. I mean, we can get into your precise views on purgatory, but most theologians would say that will get you 10 billion years in purgatory. I think 10 billion years in purgatory. Yeah, that was that was it. My recognition of Candace Owens' talent and bringing you on my show. You discovered Candace. I did discover Candice. I don't know how I'm going to answer for this. You also discovered Jordan. I discovered, I just, listen, I heard Ben Shapiro on his L.A. radio show and actually texted him and said, you know, you're actually an A-level talent. You should be on without all those people around you. I grew up in radio.

My dad was a big-time radio DJ in New York, and I've always just had this knack for knowing broadcast talent when I saw it. Yeah, and you said, you said, look, Ben is a major talent, Candace is a major media talent, Jordan is a major intellectual talent, and Michael brings me cigars. So you know what, give him a show too. And please get this kid out of my office and give him a show,

so he leaves me alone. That was the... A little bit of lore on this. My actual first appearance on the Daily Wire, I believe, was when you brought me on to talk about a, filthy cartoon with a talking hot dog? Yes. You know, first of all, you came on and did my social media.

It was then Twitter. And you did my Twitter feed. And I said, I was only half joking. I said, your imitation of me was so good that I literally was looking at your imitations to me to find out how I sounded so I could send out a post that sounded like me. I thought that's pretty amazing. So the thing I actually want to talk to you about is not transfemicide. I do want your last little thought on this because when I see this story, you know, look, it's sad that this

sexual aberrant guy, you know, was murdered one, one of them last year by his boyfriend in Chicago. But when I read that headline, I say, man, it's not 2022 anymore. It's not 2022. Why are we still doing this? I thought all that craziness was over and it was behind us. But then I look around at the left-wing politicians, whether you talk about the mayor of Chicago or James Tala Rico or whoever, or even Abigail Spanberger after she ran as a moderate. And you say, no, they're going to keep doing this. The New York Times says on Father's Day, we need to celebrate trans women or whatever, or trans men, I guess, lesbians with beards who say that they're fathers.

And I just think, oh, maybe it hasn't changed. Maybe the woke hasn't gone away. And so I want your perspective on this. And this kind of pertains to the media, too. When this company started and when Ben's show started, then your show started, then mine started later. there was this discreet era. It was right after the Tea Party, the Tea Party which had followed the Bush era. And we were in this era of new media, the conservatives are really coming to their own in new media,

and the big issue was free speech. And that was the issue for like five years. And then the big issue became the weird gay race communism, we call it, you know, the weird kind of identity, especially sexual politics, culture wars, the peak of which was the transgender ideology. That was five or six years ago. Now we're in some new era, I thought at least, but then the weird transfemicide story keeps coming up. So if you're looking at all of these eras, someone with great chronological range, where are we right now and where is the conservative movement and the media going?

Well, you know, they can't change because they're in a very specific situation. And it does have a chronology to it, an important one that unfortunately young people don't remember, which is the fall of the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union was going to be around forever. It was the future. I have seen the future and it works. This was it. They finally brought in all of the Marxism you could possibly want. And not only did it go horrifically bad with tens of millions of people being murdered and countries being conquered.

But it's then collapsed. It collapsed on its own. I mean, we didn't do anything. It just fell apart on its own. I mean, Reagan was smart enough to see it coming and to outspend them. But basically, it doesn't work. it never works it has never worked any place and you know when you listen to bernie sanders we should be like norway you go like bernie norway doesn't have socialism oh well i don't know

anything about norway but that's what you know we should be like and people just follow this because it sounds like a dream so you have a thing that doesn't work not only does it not work but every single problem that america faces that is really troubling america inflation crime Iran it all started with leftist policies inflation is there because of the printing of money to pay for things that we can't afford you know the crime is there because of lax policing and anti-police movements. And Iran is because of Barack Obama. Jimmy Carter. Yeah. And Jimmy Carter. Exactly. Exactly. So it's all of it because of left-wing actions. So what do you got to do? You've got to invent this world in which there are problems that the left can solve.

I mean, transgender murder, this one guy gets murdered. Obviously, every murder is a bad thing. But this is not a real problem. The Jews are not a real problem. This is not a real problem. This is not. something that is going to affect it. But that's what they're running on in New York, these socialist candidates who Zora Mamdani is blessing. These are the ones, that's what they're running on. They're running on the Jews. It's all Israel's. That's your big problem. If you can't afford groceries in America, it's what's happening in Israel. And so all of this is fantasy. And if it weren't for the fact that they have 50 to 60 years of a media willing to echo this fantasy and make it seem like reality by printing it as news, quote unquote news, they wouldn't get away with

I mean, people would just know that they'd be informed enough to know that it's nonsense. But what are they going to do? That's why it's called progressivism. It's progressive like emphysema, you know, like cancer. It's progressive because you have to keep upping the ante of the fantasy because the reality, it just doesn't work. Right, right. So then, I mean, maybe an answer to the right-wing question was there in your take on progressivism. But if I'm seeing these discrete errors correctly, which is, you know, look, we've been at this now for 10 years.

DailyWyer was founded over 11 years ago now. Right. And you think, okay, in, I remember, I came a politics in the Tea Party era. That was when I did my first political campaign and I was doing a bunch of campaigns after that. The Tea Party era was really different from the early Bush era. You know, and if you ran as a Republican politician on Bush era stuff in 2011, you were going to get blown out of the water. It was just so different. And then five years later, it really radically changed again.

At the beginning of the Trump era, if you ran like a Tea Party candidate, you just seemed Passet, the right-wing base, both the media audience and the electoral activist base, they had just moved on to different issues. They even changed their views a little bit on things like immigration, on trade, on foreign policy. Then it seemed to shift again into this, you know, it went from, say, I don't know, immigration was the big issue in 2015, 2016, to the culture war issues. COVID obviously had a lot to do with that. Now we're in the big two-six. What? What? What are the issues? What is the big enemy? What is the, you know, what does the guy who's running in 2026? What do the talkers who are focusing attention? What is it about? It's always about two things. It's about truth and liberty. This is always what the right has as its advantage and always the advantage that they squander. And if we've learned nothing from Donald Trump is that you can speak the truth and win. Now, listen, Trump, Trump is a one-off. I don't think everybody can pull off the kind of belligerence.

and sometimes rudeness that he uses, it was acquired. It was a godsend. It was a godsend to break the chains of niceness censorship. You know, don't say that. It's not nice. You know, you say, well, there's a lot of crime in black neighborhoods. Oh, you're a racist. You know, you say, well, like maybe homosexual marriage is not the best thing for this social, you know, network.

Oh, you know, you're a homopopold. You have to say these things, I think, with complete honesty, with complete fearless honesty. But you also have to say them with, you know, as, you know, as. Paul Simon would have said with a little bit of tenderness in your honesty, I think that this is the thing that we miss. And it hurts us, especially with women voters. And I think that the first thing we have to say is that liberty is a good, and it is the prime mover of the American founding. Individual liberty, your liberty, to say what you want to say, to worship the way you want to to worship, to live the life that you want to live, and to build, not only build the things

that you're capable of building, but to keep the money you make, because money, you know, people talk about money like it's somehow dirty. Money is time. You know, you put in the time, you put in the effort, you get the money, and you create wealth for other people. These are the kind of logical things that I think the Republican Party has been too chicken to say for too long because they believed that the press had more power than it did. I think the blessing of the Daily Wire, with the exclusion of your show, of course, the blessing of the Daily Wire is, and all of the rebel media is that has broken the monopoly

that the left wing, aged left wing press hat, why were they knocking us off the air? You know, you were there for the censorship of the Biden era. That was the worst censorship I've seen in my lifetime, which goes back, as you know, to the Civil War. So it's like, it was really bad. Worse than Woodrow Wilson.

When you had the old-timey Drew show during the Wilson administration. Yeah, that's right. That's right with the coal engine. I had to keep cranking the engine. You know, these are the two things, the two things that the left are silence and fantasy. They have to quiet, they have to silence the truth with bullying and they have to

invent problems that aren't really problems. I mean, transgenderism, let's face it, it's not a problem. You know, don't butcher children, you know, let people live their lives. Nobody was bothering the occasional person who wanted to live, you know, dress up as a girl or whatever. He wasn't going into, you know, men's bathrooms and vice versa. But this, this idea that you have to use a pronoun, You have to change your language to lie. You have to be a liar. That's all they've got. You know, if they cannot fix the world so that every, they really do believe that if everybody lies, the lie will become the truth.

So for us, I think it's the opposite. The truth is our friend. You know, everything that conservatives believe in works. Countries don't become as powerful as America in just 250 years. Don't go from like a bunch of like guys on the clinging to the coast of a continent to this major superpower without freedom. Freedom works every time it's tried. You know, Greece became an empire. Rome became an empire because they started out being free.

The same thing has happened to us. That's the thing we're trying to defend. And you do it. You can't always be playing defense. I think that's the problem. You do have to solve problems, but you solve them in a free way. You know, you solve them in a way that doesn't say, well, the government is going to do this for you,

which means someone's money and freedom is being taken away, you know? I think that this is, if I had to pick two things that I, I think the right could work on. A little less belligerence in telling the truth. You know, tell the truth fearlessly, absolutely fearlessly, but you don't have to be belligerent about it. And the other thing is notice the problems before the left does. The left is really good at this,

of picking up things that kind of bother people and then elevating them. And I think, you know, we actually have the solution to inflation. It's don't print so much money, which means don't spend so much money, you know. And I think that that's the thing that we just, we are not fearless about facing, our politicians. Yeah, it's true. That is the one era where conservatives, I think, prefer fantasy over the left. The left has it 99.9% of the time, but we're a little too rosy, you know, and we, when the left brings up affordability, say, or problems in the health care system,

we just try to dismiss it and minimize it. You say, no, those are real problems. We do have better solutions to those problems, but, you know, they're going to get an optical advantage by by calling attention to it first. And maybe we shouldn't be so quick to dismiss it. Drew, it occurs to me also, before I let you go, this has been going on for so long that when you were coming on my show in the early days, you came on as Andy Millennial. Lauren Chen had heard Nome de Plume was roaming millennial.

Ali Stucky was going by conservative millennials. So you came on as Andy millennial. This has been on so long now that millennials are old. Now is there, when is Andy Zoomer coming on the show to become like a trans, Nazi vaping. I have to say, we, I think we proved beyond a shadow of doubt that you and I have the worst poker faces of any two people, possibly on the planet. We used to, we used to have these hilarious routines, and we get about 20 seconds into

them, and we do them dip, and then fall off. We were shameful. We really were just the worst possible comedy routine in history. But it was, I'll never stop laughing over the tide. Remember those tied? The tied pods. The tide pods. Well, if you can make it to Nashville, I'll let you go.

But if you can make it to Nashville, we are having a delicious Tidepot reception afterward. So we might not make it to episode 2001. Drew, thank you once again for, you know, my career and founding the show and everything. And looking forward to recapping at the 4,000th episode as well. Absolutely. Congratulations, Bob. Thanks. See you.

Okay. Okay. There's a lot more I want to get to. I want to get to, hey, Tucker's leaving the GOP. You want to talk about shifts in conservative media. You have one of the biggest cable news host ever, who was the leading conservative on cable news, has just left the GOP. Also, the Pope is criticizing the free market. Also, Tulsi Gabbard is nailing Anthony Fauci.

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So you can add lean to your healthy diet and exercise plan. Go to takeleen.com. Enter code Knowles, Ken to WLS for your discount. There's promo code Noles, KennawLAS, at takelein.com. Tucker Carlson is leaving the Republican Party. I would not support the Republican Party. There's no chance I would support the Republican Party. I'm not going to support the Democratic Party. I don't know what I'm going to do. But at this point, you know, how could you support, how could I or any American voter support a political party that's not loyal to the United States that puts the interests of a foreign country, above those of its own citizens.

Like that's, that's, you know, it's not possible to vote for people like that, and I'm not going to. And I think I voted Republican my entire life. I worked at Fox News. I've seen, CNN, MSNBC. I've been a consistent defender for 35 years of the Republican Party. I mean, very consistent defender.

But there's no defending this because it's immoral. And it's exactly the opposite of what a political party in a democracy is charged with doing, is representing its own voters, its own citizens, its own nation, and they're not doing that. So no, I'm out. And if I'm out, then I think a lot of other people are at. So Tucker's out of the GOP. He's been one of the leading conservative voices for decades, and he's out of the GOP. And a lot of people are asking, why? Not because the Republican Party is so great, as I frequently say, the Republican Party is the absolute worst party in the United States other than the Democrats. But why is he doing this now? And what changed? And I think the most

obvious answer is that Tucker, in this stage of his public life, is doing a Pat Buchanan thing. Pat Buchanan, who also was one of the leading Republicans who ran to get the GOP nomination for president in 1992 after Reagan, who advised Nixon, who advised Reagan, who ultimately lost the nomination to Bush. And then he left the GOP and ran for president on the Reform Party ticket. And then he was an independent for a few years. Then he came back to be a Republican again. So you could say, all right, maybe he's doing a Pat Buchanan kind of thing. He feels that the Republican Party is not sufficiently conservative or not conservative in the right way. Even here, Tucker says the big issue is the GOP is too pro-Israel. Pat Buchanan also was

skeptical of Israeli influence on American politics and on the GOP. So the analogy, I think, works pretty well. Except that, if the issue, issue is that the GOP is to pro-Israel, the GOP has been pro-Israel for the whole time Tucker's been a Republican. And for well before Tucker was a public Republican, you know, he says it was 35 years here. The GOP has been pro-Israel since at least Richard Nixon. Richard Nixon saved the nation of Israel. The nation of Israel probably would not exist without Richard Nixon's help. So, and even before that, the GOP, you know, from the very founding of the state of Israel, the GOP was favorably inclined toward it. So what changed? If the issue for Tucker is the Iran war, if it's, you know, foreign intervention overseas, specifically the kind of foreign intervention that might help the state of Israel, what changed even with Trump?

Don't forget, Trump ran against the Bush neocon wars of the 2000s, but George W. Bush, sorry, Donald Trump, after George W. Bush, obliterated ISIS. In fact, he ran in 2016 on obliterating ISIS. He struck Syria again to go after Bashar Assad because of Assad's purported use of chemical weapons. He took out the Iranian general during the first term. He killed the top Iranian general, Suleimani. He intervened in Afghanistan, Somalia. Yemen, Africa. He issued the raid killing the ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who died like a dog infamously. What changed? Trump has been super pro-Israel the whole time. They named a town after him in Israel during the first term, not during the second term. He was belligerent against Iran in the

first term, not just during the second term. And then of course, George W. Bush intervened very heavily in the Middle East. Tucker was a Republican the whole time. So what changed? I don't think you could say was the GOP that changed. I don't think you could really say it's Trump that changed. You know, a lot of people say, well, Trump ran against foreign wars. Trump ran, but kind of, but he also throughout his entire presidential career from the first term through the now second term, he has been intervening in the Middle East. He has been dropping the Moab. He has been killing Iranian generals. He has been doing all of that. So I don't think he really changed. And Trump was talking about going after the Iranians since the late 70s. So you could say, well, maybe it's just

Tucker's perspective has changed. Could well be the case. But the other thing to remember here, and Tucker has been open about this, is I don't think Tucker voted for Trump or for anybody in 2016. Tucker told Politico in 2021, quote, I never vote. So that's the truth. I didn't vote this time. I never do. I'm registered with a party that I sincerely despise because I think it's really a force for bad in this country, and it's the Democratic Party, but I'm registered because I live in the district. So he registered as a Dem because he lived in a Dem area, wanted to influence the local elections. He goes to the one party state, and the one election I always vote in is the mayor's race, because it matters. I own property there, I raise for children there. So he initially says, I never vote.

But he says, no, I actually do vote in these local races, but I don't really care about the presidential race. He apparently didn't vote in 2016 or 2020. I don't know. In 2020, then, there was other reporting that he might have written in Kanye West. This was Kanye before he kind of went very extreme when he was doing the birthday party thing. So it's very, very unclear to me. Over the 35 years that Tucker's talking about, Trump hasn't really changed, but in as much as the GOP has changed, it has only changed for the better. The GOP has gotten better on immigration. The GOP has gotten better on trade.

The GOP has gotten better on national identity. The GOP has gotten better on the social identity. has gotten better on the social issues. The GOP, there were Republicans campaigning for partial birth abortion in the 90s. The GOP has gotten better on that. Then when the GOP had a little dalliance embracing gay marriage, they've turned back on that one too. The GOP has gotten better on foreign intervention. So I just, I don't really know what changed about the GOP. I'd be curious, maybe we should have Tucker on to talk about it. Because I don't know, it seems to me the change is more just in his perspective rather than in the GOP or Trump itself. In any case, though,

I'm sympathetic to the view that we want some independence. We don't want to be shills and partisans. Dante is this famous line that his grandfather tells him in Paradise in the Divine Comedy, where he says, si catifia be be a better for you to be a party of yourself, because you're going to be betrayed by all these elements of your party and the other party. And so I'm sympathetic to that. But if you are going to participate in politics, it's a team sport.

So you pick one of the teams and you try to reform that team from within. and you try to beat the other team, crucially, if you take yourself out of that, you're just, you're going to embrace a kind of political quietism that seeds the ground to your opponents. Maybe we should have Tucker on to talk about it. In any case, speaking of political independence,

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You're going to have to be 50. You don't have to be Drew's age pretty soon to have your first cigar. Okay, I want to get to the Pope on the free market and his criticism of the free market. I want to get to Dr. Fauci. But before we get to any of that, I want to bring on Mr. Ben Shapiro with his brilliant Harvard Law School legal knowledge to talk about Whoopi Goldberg's suggestion that President Trump go to jail for repainting the reflection pool in Washington, D.C. Before we bring on Ben, here's Whoopi.

He's claiming that vandals are to blame. He says they illegally place chemicals in the water and left them 300-foot gas. in the pool. Now, five people are said to have been arrested. He says a 10-year prison sentence will be

strictly enforced. Oh. Well, if he's saying he's going to jail for 10 years, I'm going to let him go. Because, I mean, it seems to me that had he not messed with

pool, you know, it would still be a reflecting pool instead of a liquid jungle. Which is what it looks like. I want somebody to sue. Because if a contractor did this at your house, this is what you would do. I think the country needs to say,

we're suing you for doing this without our permission. And we're suing the people who did it, because clearly they didn't know what they were doing. Okay, I think I've got whoopies argument. I think I now, I know, Ben, first of all, thank you for coming on. Well, I mean, first of all, congratulations on making your 2000th episode. I vowed on your 1,000th episode. You would not make your 1,000 and first episode.

And yet here you are, a thousand episodes later and you are still here. So, congrats on, if nothing else, your durability. Well, done. Thank you. I appreciate that. Well, one, thank you for at the very least, the benignixt. neglect to allow this show to continue as you're, you know, focused on other things. I know that, Ben, you went to Harvard Law School. Whoopi, I think, went to Stanford or Yale Law School. I forget

which one. That was after her Rhodes Scholarship. What do you make of her legal argument here that Trump, by repainting the reflecting pool, has committed the very crimes he's accusing the vandals of committing? I mean, it's a brilliant, it's a brilliant argument. I mean, I've rarely heard, side of, you know, Atticus Finch, argumentation, this brilliant. It's really like something that, you know, Justice Scalia might have written, basically. It's always exciting when Whoopi decides to sign into chat with regard to her legal analysis of the situation. Can I just point out that I think actually what's going on with the reflecting pool is the best America 250 thing ever, because the entire country is apparently enthralled with this idiot story about a dumb pool that I

don't care about. That is what happens when you have the richest country in the history of the world that we are all so bored and rich that we can basically afford to sit around and catarwal about amoebas in a pool that exists for most of us thousands of miles away. You know what they're not doing in like Russia or Ukraine or Iran or Saudi today, worrying about a random pool in a place that was possibly refaced not properly and also probably and also might have been vandalized. It's a great signifier that America is doing fine, that we are all deeply worried about the color of a reflecting pool in the middle of the summer when the algae grow.

That is maybe the most hopeful news story, I guess I've heard in weeks. And, you know, Whoopi here, she conflates a couple things. She suggests a criminal charge for Trump based on what he's suggesting. She then says someone should sue because the pool didn't come out precisely to her liking. And it does seem there's a real political story under this, which is that they still really hate this guy and they still actually do want him to go to jail. I mean, maybe whoopee's half joking here, but in every joke, there's a little bit of truth. And I do wonder, as we look, you know, still a little far ahead, but we're looking toward the end of the Trump era, are they going to try to put him in jail again? Are they ever going to get over it?

Oh, absolutely. They will, right? Yes, 100%. And this is why, you know, I heard you talking about the whole Tucker. I'm leaving the Republican Party thing, which, you know, listen, I've been calling for ideological borders for a long time. so I'm also in favor of ideological self-deportation. And so self-deportation is a perfectly fine policy for those who are illegal immigrants into the Republican Party

and take advantage of our culture and values and refuse to assimilate. They can leave. It's okay. But, you know, the thing that you can't remember about all of this. Are you calling to send Tucker to Buckele's prison camp or anything? Can we make news on this show? I mean, I'm not calling for him necessarily to be sent there, but if you wound up, no, we're not doing that.

But if he decides to self-deport to his house in Qatar, that is perfectly fine with me. In any case, when you do that, when you have people in the Republican Party who keep saying that they're going to leave because they're pissed off with the wrong. By the way, I'll point out, I'm not super happy with our current Iran policy.

I'm sticking around and voting for the Republicans because I don't want these schmucks to win in November. And this is, I think, the biggest thing that you've been pointing out for a while, which is, you know, the alternative to whatever is going on, whatever the issues we have with what's going on on any of the sides. The alternative is these people who are literally, standing there protesting in favor of algae and calling for their political opponents to be jailed

on the basis of they just don't like them. And so if you think that everything that we saw under Joe Biden has gone away permanently, whenever people say woke is dead, woke is not dead. Woke is just asleep. And it is perfectly capable of waking up at any second and being significantly worse than it ever was, by the way. If you think that it's going away or that it's moderated or something, that is absolutely untrue. The left unleash will come for revenge, not just on Trump, but on everybody. who just doesn't share their value system, and I think that's what you're seeing there. I totally agree. This is one where I get the impulse to say, well, not everything is going exactly as I want, and, oh, the GOP is imperfect, and, oh, you know, I prefer this policy. I get it, of course.

And I, look, I love cigars and port and tweed and talking about beautiful ideas in the realm of forms. I love, it feels great, light a nice fire and a nice cozy study. Wouldn't that be fun? But as much as I enjoy the purity of that experience, politics is not pure. It's ugly and mucky and messy. And it involves being on teams with people who you don't like or who you don't think are competent or who, you know, and it's, to your point, but you say, I don't like the Iran policy either from the exact opposite direction. But you say, I'm not thrilled with that, but I'm, I'm sticking on the team. I'm going to try to change the team from within to some degree. But we got to focus on who the big threats are.

I totally agree. the impulse to just kind of walk away from politics, I don't have it. Which is why I'm still here at 2,000 episodes. And which is why I'll be clinging to my desk at episode 4,000, as you drag me kicking and screaming, you say, enough, I've had it with the cigars. You're leaving the studio, Michael. I will still be clinging to it because it just seems to me that the political project is something we are called to do.

And to your point, it's a great rejoinder, Ben, which is that in countries that have really explosive civil strife, you don't get to sit around. debating a swimming pool. You don't get to do it. And it's actually a privilege to be able to do so. I think it's exactly right. And again, listen, I'm sympathetic to the idea that there are times when you do have to walk away so that you can walk back in in the future. I mean, that was actually my perspective in 2016 where I didn't actually vote for the presidency. And then by 2020, I realized, like, this is the world that we live in and we have to vote for one of these two parties because one of them is going to win, one of them is going to lose. And I think that your point that you

were making earlier, and I was listening in. By the way, I thought it was brilliant up until the very moment you started quoting Dante in Italian, at which point, I have to say, Michael, that is not, you're probably, if you're looking for like total available market, I feel like that is limiting your total available market, quoting Dante in the original Italian in the medieval Italian on your show. Yeah. Yeah. Yes, the populist, the populist angle to quoting Dante and the original Italian is limited. I mean, I'm just going to put that out there as a tactical matter. But if the, if this sort of idea is that, you know, that you're going to walk away, then you're going to walk back And your point is really well taken, which is that the Republican Party has moved in the direction of a lot of the people who are now complaining about the most over the course of the last 10 years in a lot of different ways.

It's gotten more conservative in a lot of different ways. It's also gotten bigger government in a lot of ways I don't like over the course of the last 10 years. I mean, there have been a lot of changes in the Republican Party. Some of them I like, some of them I don't. But again, when it comes right down to it, in November, one of these parties is going to have a lot more control. and I would prefer that it not be the party that is busily attempting to trans the kids, which again, that will come back.

If you think that's gone away, it's never coming back, nonsense, that absolutely 100% will come back. Yeah, that's right. The party that still wants to trans the kids, which is the craziest ideological policy of the last ever, and the party that wants to jail its opponents, and the party that wants to do violence against us,

and they're pretty open about it. I totally agree. All right, Ben, I'm going to let you go do your show. I'm going to finish my 2000th episode, And we'll see if I make it to 2001. In any case, I appreciate, I appreciate you one for, you know, helping to give me my entire career and letting this show stay on for 2,000 years. And everybody will go watch your show after this.

Thanks, Michael. Thank you. That was a Freudian slip where I said 2000 years. I meant 2,000 episodes. We're looking ahead to 2,000 years of my show. Folks, smash the like button and subscribe. Also check us out on Spotify where you can download full episode audio and video to watch or listen whenever you want without using your digital.

data, do not miss an episode. My favorite comment yesterday from Spotify is from Nope, who says, Michael, you need to run for office. That's very kind of you. I say, you need to run for office. Your platform can be Make America Normal again or Manna with the tagline leading us to the promised land. That is freaking good. That is good. Manna. Manna. Make America normal again. Ooh, that's significant. You might look, you might have convinced me. I'm not eager at moment to run for office because it's a terribly thankless job that these days can land you in prison or dead. And you have to be away from your family a lot. You'll make any money. And it's, it's not the nicest career. But it is public service. And if I can run with a cool tagline like

that, maybe I will. Okay. Speaking of political independence and confounding ideological purity, Pope Leo the 14th has just come out. He's gone viral for criticizing the free market. Is he a woke, globalist, world economic forum, communist pope? What did he say? What did he say? Here's what he said. He said, it is important to resist the commodification of basic human needs. Food, water, and health care cannot be subordinated to market considerations or geopolitical interests. Access to adequate food is a fundamental human right grounded in the dignity every person, meeting this need not only alleviates suffering, but also addresses underlying causes of geopolitical instability. Indeed, food security is an essential component of global and integral security. And cue all of the charges that he's a communist. He's betraying his

conservative predecessors, Benedict the 16th, and John Paul II, the great conqueror of communism. And is this out of step with the Catholic tradition? People say, food costs money. What are you talking about? It can't be a commodity. Food costs money, health care costs money, shelter costs money. What did JP2 say? JP2 wrote an encyclical called Chantasmusanos, 100 years, on the 100 anniversary of Rayrum Navarum, which is the beginning of Catholic social teaching, written by Leo's predecessor, Leo the 13th. And here's what John Paul II said. This is after the fall of communism. He says it would appear that on the level of individual nations and of international relations, the free market is the most efficient instrument for utilizing resources and effectively responding

to needs. Boom, owned. Pope JP. He said, Popolio the 14th, right? Not quite, because JP2 goes on. He says, but this is true only for those needs which are solvent insofar as they are endowed with purchasing power and for those resources which are marketable, not like you can sell them online, but marketable meaning they have a place in the market, insofar as they are capable of obtaining a satisfactory price. But there are many human needs which find no place on the market. It is a strict duty of justice and truth not to allow fundamental human needs to remain unsatisfied. and not to allow those burdened by such needs to perish.

It is also necessary to help these needy people to acquire expertise, to enter the circle of exchange, and to develop their skills in order to make the best use of their capacities and resources. He goes on, but this is crucial. He says the free market is the most efficient way to allocate resources. But we need to recognize that there are some resources that are not solvent, and there are some that are not marketable. Sorry, there are some needs which are not solvent, and there are some resources which are not marketable and don't achieve a satisfactory price. What he's saying, in other words,

is perfectly harmonized with what Pope Leo is saying. He's saying, look, yeah, JP2 is focusing more explicitly on the free market and the goods of the free market, but he's saying, look, some people are destitute. And the arch ideological laissez-faire capitalist would say, too bad, you're on your own. I got mine, and my property is 100% perfectly, absolutely mine, and too bad, I'm not my brother's keeper,

and you can go starve on the street. But what JP2 and Leo are saying is no, no, no, when there are needs that are not solvent, when there are resources that are not marketable that can't obtain a satisfactory price in the market, we have an obligation to intervene because men have dignity, which is prior to market regulations. And so that doesn't necessarily mean that you need some big government, some central planner to step in, though there probably is a role for the government. It could be charity, it could be the role of the church, it could be, corporate philanthropy, but in any case, we actually do have an obligation to the poor people,

to the elderly people, to the people who can't really take care of themselves, to the people who don't really find a place within the free market. We furthermore have an obligation to help try to bring those people into the market so that resources can be allocated efficiently. There is, in other words, a right to property and a universal destination of goods, and man actually does have a dignity that is prior to all of those market considerations, market considerations that nonetheless are important when we're talking about the good of properly allocating resources in a society. There's really no contradiction whatsoever from what Leo is saying. He's not being as explicit in his promotion of the goods of the free market, but there is no contradiction here

between him and JP2, who everybody loves, and the long story of Catholic social teaching. This is really important. I mean, JP2 even goes on and says, in third world contexts, certain objectives stated by Ray Rueh-Nivarum remained valid and in some cases still constitute a goal to be reached. if man's work and his very being are not to be reduced to the level of a mere commodity. That's what this is about. Okay. That's what this is about. We have responsibilities one to another. We are not mere commodities. And we employ the goods that come out of market dynamics for something greater. That's how it works. Totally agree. Sorry, trying to write off the Pope is Akami, not going to work today. Unless you want to do the same thing to John Paul the second. Okay, before we bring on, I have a very, very, very,

wonderful guest who's coming on for the member of segmentum. Before we do that, though, I've got to get to Rand Paul. Sorry, Rand Paul and Congressman Brad Winstrup, totally nailing Anthony Fauci because Tulsi Gabbard, as she is leaving the office of the Director of National Intelligence because her husband is sick with cancer. She goes out, we covered it a couple days ago. She goes out and says, hey, I'm releasing a bunch of documents that show that Fauci misledged you during COVID. He funded the kind of research that led to COVID at the place where COVID broke out, and he lied about it, and he perjured himself. And all of the Fauci defenders, they're going to try to sweep this under the rug, all the liberals who locked down your life, they're going to try to sweep this under the rug.

But they have this guy dead to rights. There are two claims that are being made here by Telsie Gabbard. One is that Fauci perjured himself when he was talking about the funding of gain of function research. This would have happened in 2021 Senate testimony with Rand Paul. Here's the clip. Dr. Fauci, do you still support funding of the NIH funding of the lab in Wuhan? Senator Paul, with all due respect, you are entirely and completely incorrect that the NIH has not ever and does not now fund gain of function research in the Wuhan Institute. Do they fund Dr. Barrack?

We do not fund gain. Do you fund Dr. Barrack's gain of function research? Dr. Barrett does not doing gain of function research. And if it is, it's according to the guidelines. And it is being conducted in North Carolina. You are entirely, Dr. Paul, Senator Paul, you are entirely incorrect. We do not fund gain of function. And then what happened?

What did we find out? We found this out when I did my show, still available on Daily Wire, Fouchy Unmasked. We found out, no, he actually did fund that research. He funded Eco Health Alliance under Peter Dejack, and they funded Gain of Function Research, this kind of research in Wuhan. We've come to find out it was research on bat coronaviruses. So that's perjury, right? Well, the way Fauci's getting out of that is he's relying on a very, very narrow definition of gain of function research that has all of these technical criteria that was instituted in 2017. Gain of function research just means beefing up viruses to make them more

potent. That's the general definition. But there is a very, very narrow regulatory definition that maybe the kind of research that he was funding doesn't quite meet maybe. But this is cheap. I mean, this is real deception. It's like a 24-year-old saying that he's a kid. You say, hey, 24-year-old, are you an adult? And he'll say, no, no, I'm a child. Because there's some research in psychology that shows that the brain doesn't fully develop until age 25. So technically, I'm a child. I'm not an adult. You say, well, look, I mean, maybe. Maybe. there is some really narrow definition by which you can try to make that really tenuous argument. But in plain language, if you were, for instance, speaking to a bunch of senators, you wouldn't be

using that highly debatable and technical language. You would have to answer the question bluntly, and he didn't. He deceived here. But whatever, it's past the statute of limitations for perjury. There was five years. It's now past the five-year mark on the 2021 testimony. So Fauci is going to get away with that. But that's not the only claim against Fauci. Fouchie was then asked, also under oath. Did you ever speak to the intelligence community about this kind of gain of function research regarding COVID? Here's Fauci's answer. Before, during, or after the COVID-19 pandemic, did you speak to the FBI, CIA, DIA, or any U.S. intelligence agency concerning viral research of any kind? What time frame are you talking about, sir? I said before, during,

any time? After. Could you remind me what time, any time? Did you speak to the FBI, CIA, DIA, or any U.S. intelligence agency concerning viral research of any kind? I can't give you the specifics of it, but back in the time of the anthrax attacks, we certainly had a number of briefings.

We talked about anthrax, we're talking about COVID. By agencies that were intelligence agencies, I don't remember who they were. it could have been any of the above that you mentioned. But not as related to, say, COVID-19. Not to my knowledge about COVID-N up. There it is. There is the lie. There is the perjury. Did you ever have conversations with the intelligence community about the origin of COVID-19?

And you know they got him dead to rights here because Fouchy's always got a quick answer. You're totally, completely incorrect. And there he obfuscates. It's like the kid in class who doesn't know the answer or who doesn't want to give the answer. Yes, Johnny, what's your, could you, hold on you, and he'll repeat the question. At what time? Before, during or after COVID. Could you be a little, what, holy, could you repeat that, please?

And he says, not to my knowledge, no. What Tulsi releases is troughs of CIA memoranda, CIA briefings, whistleblower reports, intelligence community documents, showing that Fauci did, in fact, have these conversations about the origin of COVID, and he was trying to cover it up. He was trying to suppress it. Then he perjured himself under oath, And that was in 2024.

So statute of limitations does not run out. The problem is Joe Biden gave him an unprecedented blanket presidential pardon. Every president uses pardons, but what Biden did was unique in that Biden pardoned people, including his criminal son, for 10 years of any federal crimes that might have been committed. In other words, he didn't specify the crime for which he would be pardoned. And this is not probably. the presidential pardon power is too absolute to really question, but this is not found in American history. Even when Jimmy Carter gave these blanket pardons to the draft dodgers, he was giving the

pardons for a specific crime. In the case of Fauci, he just got this blanket, I think dubious presidential pardon. You're not going to overcome it. He's going to get away with it. But he lied. He perjured himself. They've got this guy dead to rights. He misled you. He screwed up your life. He funded the research. He tried to cover up his own crimes. He'll never pay a penny for it. He'll never spend one second in an orange jumpsuit. But he did that. They were entirely in the wrong. They were deceitful. They were liars. And they're going to try to do it again. Keep that in mind next time. Okay. The rest of the show continues now. You do not want to miss it. Become a member use code Noles. Canada W. LAS at checkout for two months free on all annual plans.