Ep. 1684 - Did Zelensky Get Thrown Out of the White House on Purpose?

Tomorrow night, Daily Wire backstage returns live for President Donald Trump's address to Congress.

We're going to cover it all.

Do not miss the exclusive pre-show at 8.30 p.m. Eastern,

followed by the full address, completely uninterrupted.

When he is done, we are back with a breakdown of what it all means.

Watch us tomorrow night on Daily Wire+.

Everyone is talking about how Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky

got into a shouting match with President Trump and J.D. Vance in the Oval Office.

Everyone is talking.

I'm going to go ahead and see what's going on. talking about how Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky got into a shouting match with President Trump and J.D.
Vance in the Oval Office. Everyone is talking about how Trump threw Zelensky out of the White House, after which White House staffers ate the Ukrainians lunch.
Everyone is saying that Zelensky completely blew it and made one of the biggest foreign policy blunders of the last century. And no one is pointing out that Zelensky might have gotten exactly what he wanted.

I'm Michael Knowles. This's a lot of talk these days about getting back to basics, whether it's in politics, culture, or even health.
Speaking of getting back to basics, I want to tell you about something fascinating. That's Armra colostrum.
It doesn't get more basic than that. Colostrum is not some newfangled health fat.
It's the first food that all mammals receive in life. It's nature's original superfood containing over 400 bioactive nutrients that your body needs to thrive.
Armra has found a way to harness this incredible substance in its purest, most potent form. What makes Armra different is their proprietary cold chain biopotent pasteurization technology.
Unlike other supplements that lose their potency through processing, Armra preserves all those crucial nutrients in their most bioavailable form. And it's sustainably sourced from grass-fed cows on American family farms.
Many people in our office use Armra colostrum and have noticed remarkable improvements in immune health and energy levels. Best part, not some synthetic compound made up in a laboratory.
It's a natural whole food that works with your body's own system. So right now, I'm so pleased to tell you, you can get 15% off your first order when you go to tryarmra.com slash Knowles, K-N-O-W-L-E-S, and enter code Knowles, K-N-O-W-L-E-S, that is T-R-Y-A-R-M-R-A.com slash K-N-O-W-L-E-S.
Mardi Gras is tomorrow. That's Fat Tuesday for all you uneducated hoi polloi out there don't know the French language.
Mardi Gras. It actually took me a long time to realize that Mardi Gras and Fat Tuesday meant the same thing.
After that, it's Ash Wednesday, which means it's Lent. You need your Smells and Bells candle.
TheCandleClub.com. TheCandleClub.com.
Get your smells and bells back by popular demand, but it probably will sell out, so get yours now.

If you can't get it, don't say it and tell you so.

The biggest story, earth-shaking international news for the past three, four days.

Zelensky and Trump get into a shouting match in the Oval Office.

And most people at this point, I think, have seen that little clip from the very, very end of the press conference.

And so I think they're missing out on a lot of context.

It seems to me virtually every pundit has gotten this wrong because the story is Zelensky totally screws up.

Zelensky screws up.

He blew it. Big mistake.
He allowed himself to get rattled and emotional, and he blew it on U.S. support.
And I don't think that's exactly what's happening. Say what you will about Zelensky.
Say he's corrupt. Say he is annoying.
Say he's ungrateful. We could be here all day.
I have some strong feelings about the Ukrainian regime, which put me on an enemy's list for an NGO associated with Ukraine put me on an enemy's list. We'll get to that in a moment too.
But the one thing you can't say about the guy, I don't think you can say he's stupid. I think he's a clever politician.
The fact that he is still alive this far into this war is impressive. The fact that he's milked the West for this much support so far is impressive.
So I don't think he does a lot by accident. And I think he might have had a strategy going into this meeting.
So the meeting opens up. What does Trump say the purpose of the meeting? What is the purpose of the deal? What does the US want to get out of Russia and Ukraine, Trump tells you.
I think you're going to have to always make compromises. You can't do any deals without compromises.
So certainly he's going to have to make some compromises, but hopefully they won't be as big as some people think you're going to have to make. That's all.
It's all we can do. I'm here as an arbitrator, as a mediator to a certain extent between two parties that have been very hostile.
To put it mildly, they've been very hostile. There's been a vicious war.
There's been a vicious war. You know, it's a very level battlefield.
And those bullets go out. And as I've said many times, we're talking about it with Pete, many times the only thing stopping those bullets is a human body.
And in the case we're talking about generally young human bodies are stopping a lot of bullets. It's dead level.
That's why it's great farmland. It's great land.
It's great farmland. But there's very little protection against the bullets that are being and other things that are being shot.
So all I can do is see if I can get everybody at the table and get an agreement. I think we're going to end up with an agreement.
Otherwise, I wouldn't probably be even here today. So there's Trump.
He says, look, we need compromise. Okay, the only way that you're going to get a deal done is you need concessions from both sides.
If you're Vladimir Zelensky, do you like hearing that? You talk about consent. The Zelensky line is Russia invaded Ukraine.
That's the beginning and end of the story. We will not give up one inch of our territory.
We're going to go return to the pre-2014 borders. We're not conceding anything.
That has been Zelensky's consistent line. So you're Zelensky.
You hear this. Is this the kind of deal that you like? I'm not so sure.
But why does Trump want compromise? Why does he want a deal? Because his objective is to be, in his words, a peacemaker. Your legacy will be the peacemaker and not the president that led this country into another war and ended foreign wars.
And I've got a question. I hope it will.
I mean, I hope I'm going to be remembered as a peacemaker. This would be a great thing if we could do this.
I'm doing this to save lives more than anything else. Second is to save a lot of money, but I consider that to be far less important.
So I hope I'm going to thank you, Brian, for that question. It was a nice question.
I hope I'll be known and recognized as a peacemaker. This would be a great thing to solve.
This is a very dangerous situation. You know, this could lead to a third world war.
This was headed in the wrong direction. I love this answer because everyone focuses on how Trump just wants to save money, you know, and maybe he's being penny wise, pound foolish.
That's the argument from the liberal establishment. NATO is a good investment.
Ukraine's a good investment. You heard this from Mitt Romney.
Ukraine, oh, it's the best investment we've ever had in the military because we just give them money. We don't have to send them any troops.
And then the Ukrainian soldiers, I mean, they're getting slaughtered, but they're going to sacrifice themselves to kill Russian soldiers. And we want to kill Russian soldiers because that'll degrade the Russian military, and we don't really have to lose any people.
So it's a great investment, right? That's been the American grand strategy. The American grand strategy has been, and they've been pretty overt about this, that they want to keep the war going as long as Russia is willing to fight because Russia is just going to throw their sons into a meat grinder.
That's going to kill as many Russians as possible and degrade the Russian military. And Russia does have a lot of ICBMs pointed at the United States, so that's good strategically.
And yeah, the cost of it's going to be that a whole generation of Ukrainian men are going to be slaughtered. They're going to be fed into the meat grinder too.
But look, at least it's not American men. And so these guys are all just going to kill each other and America's going to come out on top.
And by the way, I understand that strategy. That is a sound, albeit somewhat ghastly strategy.
But Trump says, I don't want to continue that grand strategy. I don't like that Biden policy.
I want to make peace. Yes, I want to save money, but that's really unimportant compared to the chief objective, which is to stop all the killing.
And the foreign policy establishment, DC, the worst thing they can say about Trump here is that Trump is naive. He doesn't understand how the world works.
Sometimes you just got to kill a bunch of people. That's the worst thing they can say about him.
But I think he's being quite sincere. He's, I want peace.
Trump is kind of a dove. He occasionally drops the Moab.
He occasionally kills the top Iranian general. But generally speaking, he's kind of a dove.
He's trying to be diplomatic. He doesn't want to be bombing every country all over the world, like the Wilsonians and the neocons.
Now, if you're Zelensky, do you like hearing this? I want peace. Zelensky doesn't want peace, I don't think.
Zelensky wants a total victory over Russia, which means he wants America to keep funding the war, to keep sending the weapons over to the war, so that Zelensky can send out his recruiters to go grab men, even though there have been attacks on Ukrainian draft recruiters, because many Ukrainians do not want to fight in this war. We've all seen the videos of the recruiters coming out, grabbing men.
There have been news reports. This is not even like just looking on Twitter or something.
There have been news reports from supposedly credible outlets that say that there are attacks on draft recruiters because a lot of Ukrainians don't want to fight this war anymore. But Zelensky knows if they don't keep fighting the war, then he's going to lose a good part of his country.
So then the question is, is Trump on Zelensky's side or, as the liberals say, is Trump on Putin's side? And here's Trump's answer. If I didn't align myself with both of them, you'd never have a deal.
You want me to say really terrible things about Putin and then say, hi, Vladimir, how are we doing on the deal? It doesn't work that way. I'm not aligned with Putin.
I'm not aligned with anybody. I'm aligned with the United States of America and for the good of the world.
I'm aligned with the world and I want to get this thing over with. You see the hatred he's got for putin that's very tough for me to make a deal with that kind of hey he's got tremendous hatred and i understand that but i can tell you the other side is exactly in love with you know him either so it's not a question of alignment i have to i'm aligned with the world this is a sophisticated answer they say why won't you say mean things about Putin? You know, Joe Biden, he's a killer.
He's this, he's that, he's this. Well, because all that tough talk might feel good, but it won't actually advance the strategic objective here, which is a peace deal.
And so Trump, he wants the peace deal, one, because he wants to stop the killing, two, because he realizes as long as this war goes on, especially with a nuclear former superpower, you're risking a much larger regional war or potentially a world war. So he says, yeah, okay, look, Zelensky hates Putin.
That makes it really tough. It's understandable, but it makes it tough to make a deal.
The Russians aren't exactly so fond of this guy either, and they've got some good reason for

it, though they began the war with the invasion. And so what am I going to do? I'm going to make a deal, okay? I'm not aligned with Putin or Zelensky.
I'm on the side of America and America's interest. This isn't, as the left would say, isolationism, pulling back away from the world.
This is, in fact, a flexing of America's imperial hegemony.

And it's such a confident flexing of the imperial hegemony, in part because he's not dividing this regional war between us and them. He's saying, look, we're America.
We're going to resolve this regional conflict where I'm going to hear you both out like your little children, and we're going to come to a solution, and we're going to be in charge of this. It's not that we're fighting against Putin.
In fact, in many ways, that would elevate Putin far beyond what he and Russia deserve, given their present strength. This is sophisticated foreign policy thinking, whether or not the swamp wants to believe it.
But then everything explodes

into a shouting match in the Oval Office. There's so much more to say.
First, though,

go to balanceofnature.com, use promo code Knowles. Balance of Nature Fruits and Veggies is the most

convenient way to get whole fruits and vegetables daily, especially if you have focused on creating

a healthier, happier lifestyle. Nature is pretty good at giving us the nutrients we need through

our fruits and vegetables, so Balance of Nature takes fruits and veggies, freeze-dries them,

Thank you. focused on creating a healthier, happier lifestyle.
Nature is pretty good at giving us the nutrients we need through our fruits and vegetables. So balance of nature takes fruits and veggies,

freeze dries them, turns them into a powder, and puts them into a capsule. You take your fruit and veggie capsules every day, and then your body knows what to do with them.
Balance of nature is just one

ingredient of a balanced lifestyle, has no intention to replace a healthy diet, exercise, sleep, or any

other healthy habits. It is intended to be used in concert with other healthy habits.
I love balance

Thank you. Lifestyle has no intention to replace a healthy diet, exercise, sleep, or any other healthy habits.
It is intended to be used in concert with other healthy habits. I love balance of nature, especially for me.
I'm on the road so much that I'm picking up the cheeseburger at the airport. Sometimes I'm not getting that sweet little Elisa beautiful home-cooked healthy meal.
And so when you know you've got balance of nature, you can at least feel confident that you're getting your fruits and veggies. Go to balanceofnature.com, use promo code Knowles, K-N-A-W-L-E-S.
For 35% off your first order as a preferred customer, plus get a free bottle of fiber and spice. That is balanceofnature.com, promo code Knowles.
It was all going great. Last question, the last question of this 50-minute news conference.
And J.D. Vance makes just a suggestion, a response to the question about diplomacy.

Says, you know, I think all he said was,

President Trump's policy of diplomacy has worked better

than Joe Biden's policy of bellicose rhetoric that isn't really backed up.

And it blows up.

He occupied our parts, big parts of ukraine part of east and crimea so he occupied it on 2014 so with respect i think it's disrespectful for you to come into the oval office and try to litigate this in front of the american media right now you guys are going around and forcing conscripts to the front lines because you have manpower problems. You should be thanking the President for trying to bring it into this conflict.
Have you ever been to Ukraine that you say what problems we have? I have been to... And count one.
I have actually watched and seen the stories and I know what happens is you bring people, you bring them on a propaganda mr. president are do you disagree that you've had problems but bringing people in your military have probably do you think that I expect to come to the Oval Office of the United States of America and attack the administration that is trying to trying to prevent the destruction of your country a lot of questions let's start from the beginning sure first of all war, everybody has problems.
Even you, but you have nice ocean and don't feel now, but you will feel it in the future. God bless.
You don't know that. God bless.
God bless. Here, and this is what really sets it off.
So people are blaming JD for starting this fight, but we've just, we've gone through some of the interview. You haven't even gone through all of it.
Zelensky the whole time is needling them. We need security guarantees.
We need this. I can't accept a deal that does this and that and this.
And he's just, this is in front of the press to JD's point. He says, you know, you're coming in here.
You're trying to litigate this in front of the media. Sure, behind closed doors, world leaders are always fighting, and they're giving straight talk.

But you're doing this in front of the media, in the Oval Office, making demands of us like you have any say in this whatsoever.

Meanwhile, you've got major problems, and you're attacking the president for trying to bring an end to your war.

You should be thanking him.

And Zelensky says, where have you been to Ukraine?

To the vice president of the United States. This little pipsqueak shows up to the White House.
Says, have you even been there? You don't even know. Yeah, and you're going to, and this is what set it off.
You have an ocean now and you don't feel it, but you're going to feel it. You're going to feel Putin's aggression.
And then Trump takes it from there. You will feel influence.
You are right now not in a very good position. You have allowed yourself to be in a very bad position.
It happens to be right about. You are not in a good position.
You don't have the cards right now. With us you start having cards.
I am not playing cards. I am very serious, Mr.
President. You are gambling with the lives of millions of people.
You are gambling with World War III. You're gambling with World War III.
And what you're doing is very disrespectful to the country, this country, that's backed you far more than a lot of people said they should have. Have you said thank you once this entire meeting? No, in this entire meeting have you said thank you? You went to Pennsylvania and campaigned for the opposition in October.
Offer some words of appreciation for the United States of America and the president who's trying to save your country. And there you have it.
J.D. pushed it even further there at the end to reveal what Zelensky is doing.
Zelensky hates Trump. Zelensky campaigned with the Biden-Kamala administration to try to get them over the finish line.
Zelensky knows that the Republicans are not hot on the war in Ukraine. I'm not even weighing in on the merits of the war in Ukraine, okay? I don't care for the current Ukrainian regime because I received a letter last year from now Senator Jim Banks informing me that a Ukrainian NGO had put me on an enemies list.
One of these lists that, as Senator Banks pointed out, are frequently used to harass, sometimes dox people they view as enemies. So I ain't so hot on Ukraine at the moment, all right? Now, on the flip side, I totally grant that Vladimir Putin wants to reconstitute something akin to the Soviet Union.
He's been pretty open about that. He says the dissolution of the Soviet Union is the worst tragedy of the 20th century, okay? I also, on top of that, recognize that globalist liberals in the West helped to create the conditions for this war by turning Ukraine from a buffer state into a NATO proxy, which Vladimir Putin recognized as an unacceptable security risk in a really important strategic area that has for over a millennium at many times been part of the Russian empire.
So I recognize all of these things. It's kind of complicated.
Putin's not our friend. The Ukrainian regime is annoying and corrupt.
I get it. But my big takeaway, what it all comes down to is, I don't think Zelensky wants a US brokered peace.
and I think all of this needling from the very beginning no this deal will not work we need security guarantees no this is not enough you're going to feel you're going to feel

the the wrath of Putin. Oh, you don't get it now, but you, JD, have you ever even been to Ukraine? Yeah, duh, duh.
I think all of that was a provocation. Because if this meeting went swimmingly, then the US brokers a deal.
Trump says there are going to be concessions on both sides, and Zelensky is going to go down as the president of Ukraine who gave up a third of his country. He's going to go down as one of the worst presidents in the history of Ukraine.
If, however, the U.S. does not broker a deal, then the war will continue on.
Zelensky will remain in power. He'll have a chance at more of a legacy.
And what will happen? The Europeans, who also hate Trump, might come to Zelensky's rescue. And some of my evidence for this theory is already coming to pass.
The question you have to ask yourself is, and this was JD's point,

he says, why are you trying to litigate this in front of the media? I think he was trying to litigate this in front of the media to create a provocative situation, to look like the victim getting thrown out of the White House so that people like Keir Starmer, the prime minister of the UK, can get up there at his lectern and say exactly what he said two days ago.

First, we will keep the military aid flowing and keep increasing the economic pressure on Russia

to strengthen Ukraine now.

Second, we agreed that any lasting peace

must ensure Ukraine's sovereignty and security.

And Ukraine must be at the table. Third, in the event of a peace deal, we will keep boosting Ukraine's own defensive capabilities to deter any future invasion.
Fourth, we will go further to develop a coalition of the willing to defend a deal in Ukraine and to guarantee the peace. Not every nation will feel able to contribute, but that can't mean that we sit back.
Instead, those willing will intensify planning now with real urgency. The UK is prepared to back this with boots on the ground and planes in the air

together with others europe must do the heavy listing but to support peace in our continent

so then he goes on and he says look we need the u.s to come around too but the u.s is just saying

no we want a peace deal i don't know it seems to me that if i'm just looking at outcomes i'm not

looking come around too. But the U.S.
is just saying, well, no, no, we want a peace deal. I don't know.
It seems to me that if I'm just looking at outcomes, I'm not looking each little moment, and I'm not looking at their blood pressure get up, it seems to me that Zelensky got exactly what he wanted out of this, which is there's now a wedge between the United States and Europe. Europe is saying we will continue this war.
Not that they have a lot of military resources, but they say we're going to give whatever military resources we have to Ukraine to continue this war. There's no peace deal right now being brokered between the United States and Russia.
Looks to me like this foreign policy blunder, worst mistake ever by Vladimir Zelensky, worked out pretty perfectly for him. And it seems to be, as President Trump concluded, that the man does not want this kind of a peace deal.
Simple as. There's so much more to say first, though.
Go to hillsdale.edu slash Knowles. As we enter March, many of us have settled into our routines, but that does not mean the opportunity for fresh starts has passed.
Whether your January goals are still going strong or need a reset, this month offers the perfect moment to embrace learning and growth. This March, I encourage you to spend time exploring something new.
After all, why should January have all the fun when it comes to personal development? That's why I'm excited that Hillsdale College is offering more than 40 free online courses in the most important and enduring subjects. You can learn about C.S.
Lewis, Genesis, the U.S. Constitution, the Roman Republic, and the ancient church.
I personally recommend Marxism, Socialism, and Communism. This brand new online course features Hillsdale professors of history, politics, and economics as they examine Marx's life and writings, the consequences in the Soviet Union, and the spread of cultural Marxism in America.
You will explore how many current political ideas are rooted in Marxism while understanding how they differ from Marx's original thought. It is essential that we understand these ideas and historical figures throughout history so we can better comprehend their implications and prepare ourselves accordingly.
If you are ready to further your personal development with fresh knowledge and a renewed desire to learn, go to hillsdale.edu slash Knowles to start. It's free, and we're talking about one of the preeminent learning institutions in the United States.
You can get it for free, hillsdale.edu slash Knowles, K-N-O-L-E-S, hillsdale.edu slash Knowles. Can human beings really push the limits of aging? Can they live up to 150 years? Would they even want to? I don't know.
Would you want to live to 150?

In this episode of Michael And,

I sit down with two biohackers,

Kayla and Warren Lentz,

to explore the radical world

of longevity science and human optimization.

How's that for a euphemism?

Check out this teaser.

Take me back to the moment

when you said,

I'm going to live to be 150.

Something in the longevity industry that we discuss is the longevity escape velocity with the advent of AI and just the birth of super intelligence that we can actually restore or age backwards. People I've talked to in the radical life extension don't just think they're gonna live to 150 they think they're gonna cure death.
Our views are pretty controversial. We might be doing like these NAD IVs and stem cells and hyperbaric and all this stuff.
It seems that this schedule you have is so rigid, so incredibly tightly controlled. Why? If God is blessing us with these medical interventions, then it's probably okay to use them.
Let's say this all works. You're 125.

And one of you goes. then it's probably okay to use them.
Let's say this all works. You're 125.

And one of you goes.

One of you kicks the bucket.

Would you keep doing it?

Watch a full episode now on the Michael Knowles YouTube channel or catch the uncensored ad-free version exclusively on Daily Wire Plus. One last point on Russia, and then I'll move on.
Hillary Clinton is keeping up this drumbeat that the Trump administration is mollifying Putin. So Pete Hegseth just came out, defense secretary, and he orders the Cyber Command to stop focusing on Russia,

that the big cybersecurity threats are not really coming from Russia. And Hillary says, wouldn't want to hurt Putin's feelings.
And then Pete, on X, lays a haymaker on her by reminding Hillary of this little exchange with the Russian minister in 2009. Today, in anticipation of this important meeting and our time here together, I wanted to present

you with a little gift which represents what President Obama and Vice President Biden and

I have been saying, and that is, we want to reset our relationship.

Let's do it together.

So we will do it together, okay?

Thank you very much.

You are very welcome.

We worked hard to get the right Russian word.

Do you think we got it?

You got it wrong.

I got it wrong.

It should be peresagruzka.

And this says peresagruzka, which means overcharged.

Well, we won't let you do that to us.

I promise.

Okay.

Thank you very much.

Thank you so much.

Very kind of you.

Good be on my desk.

Well, we mean it and we look forward to it.

So pathetic. So unbelievably pathetic the american left has defended and sucked up to russia for over a hundred years the american left defended russian communists for pretty much the entirety of the Cold War and before the Cold War, defended Stalin, denied the Holodomor.
You could not find a more sycophantic political faction in America than the left vis-a-vis Russia. All the way up to 2009, when Hillary Clinton created the Russian reset button and the Russian foreign minister made fun of her in the room, said, you got the word wrong, actually, you stupid idiot Americans.
She goes, ha ha ha, I guess we did. But now, because President Trump is able to achieve results with Putin, because President Trump is the only president on whose watch Putin did not further invade a country in the last 20 years, they say he's a sleeper cell KGB agent.
Give me a break. Not even just Hillary Clinton here.
Bill Clinton, what do you think about Vladimir Putin? Look, Mr. Putin, he's very smart.
You know him better than most people. Yeah, I do.
What was he like behind closed doors, away from know that sort of the public utterances smart and remarkably we had a really good blunt relationship how blunt brutally blunt ever like in a fisticuffs no but I think you know I think the right strategy most of the time is but it's frustrating to people in your line of work. You should be brutally honest with people in private.
And then if you want them to help you, try to avoid embarrassing them in public. Now, sometimes they do things which make it impossible for you to keep quiet.
But by and large, I found all the people I dealt with appreciated it if I told them the truth. How I honestly felt and what our interests were and what our objectives were.
And they also appreciated it when I didn't kick them around in public for as long as I couldn't kick them around. This is almost exactly what Trump said in the Oval Office.
He said, look, I'm trying to get a deal done so I could go out here on the cameras and call Putin Hitler or something, but that's not going to help me get a deal done. That's exactly the advice.
It's exactly the approach, even specifically regarding Putin, that Bill Clinton was advocating not so long ago. The difference is Trump has been successful in that strategy.
And Bill Clinton was personally relatively successful. Hillary Clinton was a complete disaster.
She totally failed in her role as Secretary of State. And the Democrats since up to, and especially Joe Biden, have failed too.
Maybe they're just miffed because Trump is doing the sort of thing that they've been advocating, but he's doing it well. He's doing it effectively.
Now, speaking of aging Democrats, we got a new mayor candidate for New York City. It's a name you might remember.
A blast from the past, maybe the Democrat future. I'm talking about Andrew Cuomo.
The city just feels threatening, out of control, and in crisis. These conditions exist not as an act of God, but rather as an act of our political leaders, or more precisely, the lack of intelligent action by many of our political leaders.
But New Yorkers know the simple answer of what to do when there's a crisis in leadership. You lead, you act, you do.
I had the honor to serve the public in every level of government. In my 20s, with my father when he was governor, with Mayor David Dinkins on homelessness, with President Bill Clinton as Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, where we worked with cities all across the nation, and as New York State Attorney General, and as your governor.
I know government can make a positive difference, because we did. Was it easy? No.
But together, we achieved historic, progressive accomplishments. Now, I want to put a button in that.
That might be true. They might have achieved historic, progressive accomplishments.
Because Cuomo, when he tweets out this video, he says, our city's in crisis. That's why I'm running to be mayor of New York City.
We need government to work. We need effective leadership.
And you have to hand it to him. Andrew Cuomo was very effective at killing elderly people during COVID.
He was very, very effective at that. He sent the elderly people into nursing homes where they all died from COVID.
Not literally all of them, but a lot of them. Now, he was less effective when he tried to cover that up, which was the real reason that he got booted out of office as governor.
The media and the Democrats tried to pretend that Cuomo was booted out of office for a sex scandal, but the sex scandal accusations were actually pretty weak. And the real reason he got booted out of office is because of his horrific mishandling of COVID, the many, many people he killed as a result of his policies, and his feckless attempt to cover it up.
Now, the Democrats couldn't really blame him for that. They couldn't really say, this is the reason we're pushing you out, because that would have implicated a lot of them as well, and they didn't want to go down with the ship.
So they said it was this nonsense sex scandal, but that's really what it was. So he was effective at some of that.
And he has scored major progressive accomplishments in the sense that his two notable accomplishments as governor were legalizing abortion up until the moment of birth, changing the penal code such that if you murdered a pregnant woman, it would only be a single homicide, no longer a double homicide, lighting the Freedom Tower up pink to celebrate how many babies he could kill, and then killing elderly people. So he's very effective at killing really, really young vulnerable people and really, really elderly vulnerable people.
That's it. That's the only thing he was effective at.
The Democrats just feel tired to me. It all feels so tired.
Andrew Cuomo, this guy has been around. I mean, as he says, he's been around since his father was governor.
He's been a fixture in New York politics and federal politics even for like 40 years or more. It's just so tired.
The Democrats just have no new ideas. So it's just, they're recycling the same people.
Biden, the Clintons, the Cuomos. It's the same old nonsense and it just hasn't worked.
A great example of this, a Democrat representative, Joyce Beatty. She's an Ohio Congress lady, former chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus.
She tweets out, 13 years ago today, Trayvon Martin at 17 years old was wrongfully killed in an act of police brutality that shook the nation and brought vital awareness to the racially motivated violence that plagues our country. Did you catch the error there? Well, a couple errors, first of all.
Trayvon Martin was viciously beating the man who ended up killing him too. And we have the pictures to prove it after he's banging his head against the ground.
So there was some argument that the man who killed him could have been acting in self-defense. However, the real issue here is George Zimmerman, the man who killed Trayvon Martin, was not a police officer.
This woman, how many years after his death? 13 years. She still doesn't even know the basic facts of what happened in the killing of Trayvon Martin.
Trayvon Martin became one of their martyrs, one of the secular saints for the pseudo-religion of racialism and grievance. But she didn't even get the basic facts right.
this reminds me of I I remember one time, some lib race hustling lady goes on a radio show by David Webb, and she accuses David Webb of having white privilege. And Webb starts laughing.
It was radio, so she couldn't see his face because David Webb's a black guy. It just seems like the Democrats are a broken record.
It seems like they just keep trying to go back to the hits from the 70s and the 80s, and those hits don't work anymore, okay? We have a new generation of people, and it just does. Sweet Caroline just doesn't hit like it used to, man.
This is a party that has exhausted itself, and I'm not saying they can't come up with any new ideas, but maybe they can. I don't know that they can.
They've followed their ideas to their logical conclusion. The logical conclusion is white people are evil, men are evil, everyone's got to be gay, marriage needs to be abolished, we need to abolish prisons, we need to abolish borders.
It just seems like the leftist project has just so corroded itself. It's just collapsed.
And maybe some new idea on the left will crop up, but I don't see what that is now. The party is still being led by the Bidens and the Clintons and the Cuomos, and they're still saying the same old nonsense they've been saying for decades.
And the only people offering anything new, anything new, love it or hate it, though I generally love it, is the right. Is Trump? New ideas, some fresh air on foreign policy, on domestic policy, on social policy, on economic policy, everywhere.
That's where the new ideas are. They're on the right.
Is it any wonder that Trump has attracted so many people to a new coalition? Have you checked lately to see if your home's title is still in your name? With one forged document, scammers can steal your home's title and its equity. But now you can protect yourself from this crime.
Home Title Lock's million-dollar triple lock protection gives 24-7 title monitoring, urgent alerts to any changes, and if fraud does happen, they'll spend up to a million dollars to fix fraud and restore your title. Get a free title history report and access your personal title expert, a $250 value, when you sign up at hometitlelock.com and use promo code dailywire.
That's hometitlelock.com, promo code dailywire. Okay, folks, this is one you do not want to miss.
Tomorrow night, President Trump is addressing the Congress at 9 p.m. Eastern, laying out his America First vision,

tackling immigration reform,

economic revival, national security.

You know we're not going to sit it out.

Join us for Backstage Live,

8.30 p.m. Eastern,

our pre-show breakdown

with the entire gang.

Then we'll watch the speech together

live on Daily Wire Plus.

And when President Trump is done,

we're back with unfiltered,

no BS reactions.

You will not get anywhere else.

This is the event

shaping America's future. Be there.
Watch it all live. Daily Wire Plus tomorrow night.
Subscribe now at dailywire.com. My favorite comment on Friday is from Old School, who says, respond to an email or you might lose your job is terrifying, but get this untested vaccine or you will lose your job was just fine.
Yeah, that's true. Hold on.
I'm seeing a little bit of a double standard here. A little bit of an inconsistency doesn't make a ton of sense to me.
You know who does make sense to me though? One of my absolute favorite people in Hollywood and actually one of my favorite people in America because he's just a great guy and he's done incredible work both on screen and off screen. And it's so rare because, you know, Hollywood is filled with just decayed narcissists who just live miserable lives of squalor.
And so when you find a good person there, it is, you want to talk about a diamond in a rough, you want to talk about a needle in a haystack. Well, that would be the great Gary Sinise.
Gary, thank you so much for coming on the show. No, it's great to be with you, Michael.
Thank you for that. So Gary, there's so much I want to talk about that you're doing because you're one of the most active guys, not just on screen, not just on stage with the Lieutenant Dan Band, but also in all of your charitable work with the Gary Sinise Foundation, helping American veterans for many, many years.
But you do have a new movie out that kind of ties a lot of those things together, and that would be Brothers After War. The movie, as I understand, is out now, correct? Yeah, it came out Friday.
That's correct. Okay, so it just came out.
I've been traveling a little bit, so unfortunately I haven't made it to the theaters to see it yet. I think we have a trailer.
Mr. Davies, can we get a little teaser for Brothers After War? One of the hardest parts of being a warrior is coming home.
I was angry at everybody. They didn't understand what I understood.
I was this close to taking my own life. I invested so much of myself into the military that it was hard to let go.

I'm doing this documentary right now because I want to see how the guys that I embedded with years ago are doing.

How they're really doing.

We are here.

We are family. And we don't have to fight this fight alone.
You spend so much time out here with them. You almost become brothers, so...
If I fall down, I expect you to fight. My main purpose is to get my guys home safe.
Coming home has always been the hardest part of being a warrior. But if we walk beside them, they can make it all the way home.
I'm moving on. Beautiful.
So, Gary, tell me a little bit about what attracted you to the project. Yeah, so thanks, Michael.
Thanks for playing that. Years ago, probably we launched a movie in 2009 called Brothers at War.
And it's my buddy, Jake Rademacher, had two brothers serving over in Iraq, and he wanted to know what they were doing. And, you know, this was a difficult time back then because there wasn't a lot of great publicity coming out of the Iraq war.
If you recall at the time, the media was covering a lot of negative things. You weren't hearing much good was happening over there.
Yet, and I went over there myself, so I saw it personally. There was a lot of stuff our troops were doing over there that wasn't being covered.
And Jake wanted to sort of embed with some units over there to find out what was going on with his brothers and others who were serving over there. So we ended up making this movie called Brothers at War that It showed active duty life during the height of the Iraq war.

And it did very well for a documentary. It got a theatrical release.
It got a DVD sale. It got a television release on cable.
So it did very well. And years later, I was talking to Jake and I said, what do you think is I know what's happened to brothers, where they are, but what about all the other guys that are in the film, the guys and gals that we meet in the first film? Where are they now? What are they doing? Are they out of the service? Are they in the service? Are they still serving? What's going on with them? Jake knew a couple of them where they were, but others he did not.
So we decided to make a second film and we discovered that many of them are out of the service now. So this movie is very much about the transition from military service, combat veterans transitioning out of the military and the challenges that they face, you know, as they, as they leave the military and go into the civilian community.
And it's a very, very good movie that really helps bridge the gap between the average American who really doesn't have any personal connection with somebody serving in the military and the military itself. And what it's like to serve our country, come home from war, and then move on.
You know, Gary, you've been doing this for so long. The USO tours and the Lieutenant Dan Band and the Gary Sinise Foundation.
And at a time when, what is it? Something like 1% of Americans serve in the military, you know, a, an historically small number of Americans even really know someone or have family members who have served in the military. What drew you to this particular cause? Is it primarily that you played one of the most famous and memorable veterans in the history of cinema? It's been such a longstanding cause of yours.
Well, Michael, I think that's one of the things. Playing Lieutenant lieutenant dan and forrest gump was uh you know it's great great movie great role great role to play and that that really introduced me to the disabled veteran community in a way that i had never engaged before it it was it was shortly after that movie opened that I was contacted by the Disabled American Veterans Organization.
At the time, they were representing probably 1.5 million wounded veterans going back to World War II and all the way up until the Gulf War in the early 90s and Vietnam veterans, Korean War veterans, everything in between. And I felt a lot of compassion for them.
I really, you know, wanted to play that role in the most honest way possible. I wanted to understand them.
I wanted to communicate the struggles of being a wounded Vietnam veteran coming home from war and kind of isolating and all that. And then I met, you know, many, many, many real life Lieutenant Dan's out there.
And that after September 11th, it just, you know, I felt with veterans in my own family, with the veterans that I'd met through other work that I'd done in the 80s, through the Disabled American Veterans Organization in the 90s. I just felt kind of teed up for a new level of action after September 11th when we started deploying to Iraq and Afghanistan.
People started getting hurt. People started getting killed.
Families started losing loved ones. I was going to the hospitals.
I was meeting many, many, many wounded folks that were really banged up and were going to need a lot of help going on with their lives.

And I just kind of jumped in and started. I started volunteering for the USO and going out and visiting troops around the world and supporting lots of military nonprofits out there that were trying to support them.
and that all just you you know, the more I did of that, Michael, the more I wanted to do. And the more I, the more people I met and the more I could see that the impact of what's showing up can do for somebody.
Just walking into a hospital room and seeing somebody missing three limbs or four limbs or traumatic brain injury or severe burns or whatever, their family standing over the hospital bed, hoping that they were going to recover all that. And me showing up and walking in the room could change the whole mood of everything.
And it could have a, and I'd walk out of the room and I would know that I left a positive, you know, I left the room better than when I walked in. Well, having been to a lot of Gary Sinise Foundation events over the years, I can attest personally, that is what happens.
That is very much what happens. And so it's amazing that you've devoted yourself to that.
That's why I mentioned in my introduction, you know, most of my friends that I know in show business, they think about themselves roughly 99.9% of the day. And then 0.1%, they think about lunch or something like that.
And the fact that you have actually, you know, given so much of your time and energy is so beautiful. I can't let you go, though, before I ask.
Speaking of the Lieutenant Dan Band and looking at that beautiful P-Base over there in the corner there. Is there anything on the horizon musically that people can look forward to? Well, yeah, we continue to go out every, you know, on the average every month to military bases and military hospitals around the country.
We have a show coming up in a couple of weeks at Brook Army Medical Center. We do it every year.
We go down there and we do these things at hospitals called Invincible Spirit Festivals. We bring food.
We bring moon bounces for the kids that are, you know, a lot of times at these military hospitals, you have families that are just enduring these long rehabilitations of their loved one there. And so us coming in with music and food and fun and stuff like that can really change the mood.

So we're doing that. We do it every year.
We do it all around these different hospitals. We'll be there in a couple of weeks and we have multiple concerts on military bases throughout the year.
One other music project that I've been working on personally is something for my son, Mac. Mac was diagnosed with a very rare cancer in 2018.
And I think, you know, we lost him in early 2024 after a five and a half year battle. He was a musician, a composer, just a tremendous drummer, just a tremendous guy.
And he, in the final year of his life, he had been fighting cancer. It was taking all his time.
And that final year, which we didn't know was going to be his final year, of course, but early in 2023, he said he wanted to finish a piece of music that he'd written in college that never finished. And he did that.
He ended up going into the studio with an orchestra in the summer of 2023, recording this beautiful piece called Arctic Circles that's at Max and East YouTube. That led to an entire album of music.
He said, I don't want to stop with just this one piece.

And so for the rest of the year, he was working on an album called Resurrection and Revival.

He finished it.

And a week later, he went into the hospital.

And that was his final trip to the hospital.

After he died, I discovered all this other music, Michael, on his laptop, in his Dropbox file, all this stuff that he'd written and tucked away and not wanting to leave it on the laptop. I went to work on a second record for him, Resurrection and Revival Part 2.
All of that, you can read about it at GarySiniseFoundation.org. You can go to Max Sinise YouTube.
You can hear the music. You can order the vinyls.
All the proceeds from the vinyl sales go to Gary Sinise Foundation. Mac worked for the foundation and he wanted the proceeds to help the foundation's mission at the Gary Sinise Foundation.
So you can order the vinyls and you can download the record as well, Resurrection and Revival and Resurrection and Revival Part 2. That's what's primarily taken up a lot of my time this past year, is just trying to accomplish this goal for Mac and bringing his music to life.
I remember when Mac recorded the, there was a song that, maybe it was on YouTube. I don't even know really where I first saw it.
I thought, man, this is really cool with the orchestra and everything. You know, wow, how amazing.
And then to get a whole album out of that. And then this amazing process of a second album.
Because, you know, any musician, professional or amateur, is going to have scratch tracks and little things you're kind of working on. And they're just all, you know, in various states of unfinished.
And to go through all that, it's just so beautiful. So I really encourage everyone, you have a long list of things to do.
Not a long list. You have a solid list of things to do right now.
Go to the Gary Sinise Foundation. Just give money, first of all.
That's the first thing to do. But what you can also do while you've got your checkbook out is get Resurrection and Revival.
Go get the albums. Absolutely amazing, amazing project.
Then, did I mention give money to the Gary Sinise Foundation? That's the next thing to do. And then finally, when you're rounding out your week, go check out Brothers After War.
One, to support one of the best guys in the country. But second of all, because I'm quite confident, especially given the first movie, that it is excellent.
I look forward to seeing it myself. Gary, thank you so much for coming on and taking the time.
Oh, thanks so much for having me, Michael. And thanks for helping to get the word out.
God bless. Absolutely.
Good to see you, Gary. Tax Act knows you probably don't need help filing taxes.
But if you get stuck, we have live experts you can talk to. And who knows, you could hit it off and become long-term tax friends.
Staying up late at night, talking about deductions, refunds, personal exemptions. Heck, you could even fall in love and create a little dependent of your own one day.
Or they could just answer your filing questions. Tax Act.
Let's get them over with.

And I will see all of you in the member block right now. It is Music Monday.
The rest of the

show continues now. You do not want to miss it.
Become a member. Use code Knowles,