Ep. 1711 - Trump Slams China with 104% Tariffs

President Trump's tariffs fully went into effect at midnight last night, including a 104% tariff on China. China has responded with an 84% tariff on the United States.
The markets are not loving this exactly. The Dow has fallen.
Dow futures are down 400 points, S&P down, NASDAQ down. Meanwhile, speaking of China, Chinese troops have reportedly entered

the war in Ukraine. America has executed the largest deployment of B-2 bombers in history

to scare off Iran, a soon-to-be nuclear nation with which we might soon go to war,

all of which is causing some people to stop asking if we are on the brink of World War III

and to start asking if we're not already brink of World War III and to start asking

if we're not already in it. I'm Michael Knowles.
This is The Michael Knowles Show.

welcome back to the show.

On the bright side, an extinct wolf is back.

The dire wolf is back from... Is that good?

I don't know.

Isn't there a movie about bringing extinct dangerous species back to life?

I don't...

I don't know.

We don't remember any of the lessons of the past, so who knows? I guess. Best case scenario, we're in World War III.
Worst case scenario, we're in Jurassic Park. Before we get to any of those problems, go to showallegiance.com.
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Start showing your allegiance to the greatest country on God's green earth. I know that everyone always makes the historical comparison to the 1930s and just before World War II and compares everything to Hitler.
However, there do seem to be some uncanny parallels at the moment. You got got this massive tariff regime went in.
Actually, Trump's tariffs are more expansive even than the Smoot-Hawley tariffs of 1930. And you've got this rise of global conflict.
You've got multiple touch points for a potential global conflict in Ukraine and in Israel and Gaza. you've got, I don't know, you've got Hitler edits going around social media, especially on X.
People just very pro-Hitler again. I don't know.
It's weird, man. It's weird.
History does not repeat, but it does rhyme. Especially the tariff.
Forget even about the wars breaking out. Forget even about the pro--hitler stuff on social media it's just the tariffs that is pretty wild they took effect shortly after midnight china responded said that it refuses to bow to blackmail and will fight to the end the trump administration has already scheduled talks with south korea and Italy to try to reduce these trade barriers and then lower tariffs, even on our side.
And then we'll have more trade with all those other countries. The White House was asked if it will prioritize talks with China.
Obviously, trade with China, much, much more important than trade with Japan, say, or trade with Italy. and Kevin Hassett, the head of the National Economic Council,

says right now we've received the instruction to prioritize our allies and our trading partners like Japan and Korea and others. So no, we're not going to prioritize China.
China can go pound sand. Now, the markets are reacting.
They hate it. Everyone's portfolio is down again.
Well, maybe not everyone's. Some people who saw this coming, maybe it's not so bad.
Some people are going to look at the market turning down and saying this is actually a great opportunity because it means that stocks are on sale, so they're going to start buying. But regardless of how you're reacting, there are a lot of panikins out there.
We talked about the panikins yesterday, the new political party identified by President Trump of weak and stupid people, as he says.

Regardless of what you think, and if you're getting cold feet and you're getting a little shaky this morning because of the market downturn, because we're now apparently in a trade war with China.

Just remember, politicians of both parties have been demanding that we do something about China's unfair trade practices for at least 15 years. Probably longer in some cases.
Because China has been cheating. China has manipulated its currency.
China has illegally subsidized steel and aluminum. China has been guilty of dumping.
China has stolen our intellectual property. China has, since the moment that we stupidly let China into the World Trade Organization, thank you, Bill Clinton, since that moment, China has been cheating.
And so Democrats and Republicans for many, many years at this point, we have to do something about China's unfair trade practices. The only difference between all of those politicians, Republicans and Democrats, and Donald Trump, is that Donald Trump actually followed through on his promise.
Trump actually did what all the other politicians said that they would do. So what does this mean? I mean, this is kind of great.
104% tariff on China. then they respond with an 84% tariff on the United States.
Yikes, how are we going to survive this? Well, Scott Besson, Treasury Secretary, makes the point that China probably just made a big mistake. I think it was a big mistake, this Chinese escalation, because they're playing with a pair of twos.
Traditionally, if you look at the history of the trade negotiations, we are the deficit country. So what do we lose by the Chinese raising tariffs on us? We export one-fifth to them of what they export to us.
So that is a losing hand for them. We export one-fifth to them what they export to us.
China needs our market much, much more than we need access to China's market. Now, we do need access to Chinese-made goods because we've outsourced all of our manufacturing to them.
But in terms of these tariffs, because we're the country with the trade deficit, we actually have a stronger hand. That's the argument made by Besant.
And don't forget, Besant is a very serious guy. I'm not saying that there aren't certain people around President Trump or around other Republicans who are kind of shooting from the hip who don't know what they're talking about.
Scott Besant is an extremely successful hedge fund guy. Scott Besant has been an Ivy League economics professor, which I guess that could go either way, but he's a good one.
He's a smart one. He knows what he's talking about.
And he is totally backing the administration's policy here. Now, Besant made another really interesting comment in this interview.
Beyond saying, look, we're not backing down with China. China can go pound sand.
We're going to fix this problem right now. He also hinted, gave us a little bit more of a clue of what the goal of these tariffs is.
If we put up a tariff wall, the ultimate goal would be to bring jobs back to the U.S., but in the meantime, we will be collecting substantial tariffs. As I've said, I believe on this show that if we're successful, tariffs would be a melting ice cube in a way because you're taking in the revenues as the manufacturing facilities are built in the U.S.
and there should be some level of symmetry between the taxes we begin taking in with the new industry from the payroll taxes as the tariffs decline. Okay, this is a fascinating point that Besant is making and I think it's going to go over a lot of people's heads, not because it's so complicated from the standpoint of economics, but because it's so subtle in its political language.

So yesterday, I said on the show, also following a comment by the Treasury Secretary,

that it seems to me the goal of the tariffs is more trade.

Three possible goals of the tariffs.

Reduce trade barriers, you have more free trade.

Increase jobs. to me the goal of the tariffs is more trade.
Three possible goals of the tariffs. Reduce trade barriers so you have more free trade, increase jobs, reshore American manufacturing, or raise revenue from the tariffs because the other countries have to pay to get access to our market.
Those are the three goals, and they're in conflict with each other. I said yesterday, when Besson is talking about how we're negotiating with Japan so that we can have a new golden age of trade, it seems like the chief goal of the tariffs is reducing trade barriers and having more free trade.
So not so much the jobs, not so much the revenue. But then here, Besson comes out and he says, well, actually, the long-term goal of the tariffs would be increasing jobs.
So it's not increasing free trade, and it's not the revenue, as he points out. He says, look, in the meantime, we're going to get revenue, but the long-term goal is jobs, which is going to reduce the revenue.
But he says, but it's kind of like a melting ice cube. It's fine.
It's all going to even out with the water because as the domestic manufacturing comes back, you're going to get taxes from the manufacturing. So even as you lose the revenue from the tariffs, you're going to get more taxes from the manufacturing.
It's going to level out. And where does that leave trade? That's not a top priority.
But then if you're paying very close attention to what he's saying, notice the mode of language he used. He said the long-term goal of tariffs would be.
He didn't say the long-term goal of tariffs is. He didn't use the present indicative tense.
He used the conditional. He said would be.
So now, look, maybe I'm really trying to read the tea leaves here. I mean, this administration is basically inscrutable.
Every time you think you've got them pinned down on what they're doing with the tariff policy, they pull the rug out from under you, which is why the markets are reacting with such volatility. But even Besant here saying the long-term goal of tariffs would be is leaving himself an open.
He's saying, yeah, if we do have tariffs in the long term, the goal would be the reshoring of manufacturing, which means that we would lose the revenue long term, but we'd make it up in the taxes. But maybe, maybe the goal is not tariffs in the long term.
You see what I'm saying? Maybe the goal is just reducing the trade barriers and having more trade and having a golden age of trade. But if we stick with these tariffs, the long term goal would be the reshoring of the jobs.
So it's this complete poker face. If you are China right now, you have no idea what Trump is doing.
The way I know that's the case is because if you're an American right now, you have no idea what Trump is doing. And the way I know that it's the case is because even top administration officials don't seem willing to put their chips down one way or the other on what Trump is doing.
As of now, though, if you're an investor, if you are an adversary, if you're a trading partner, especially if you're China, which is all three of those things, you've got to think, darn, they might not be kidding. He might not be bluffing.
They really might not pause the tariffs. They really might not back down.
They might really be in this for the long haul. Shoot, I need the American market.
The only reason that China is a rising power is because 25 years ago, it got access to the American market and joined the World Trade Organization. Not that it for the first time ever got access to the American market, but it really entered global trade on a mass scale.
So if you're China, your growth as a potential global hegemon is entirely contingent on the trade practices of the last 25 years. Yikes.
Yikes, man. So what does that mean within the administration? Are they serious about the tariffs? Are they only using the tariffs for leverage? Top administration officials are fighting with each other in public over that very question.
Notably, Peter Navarro, very pro-tariff, and Elon Musk, only in favor of tariffs for leverage, but very anti-tariff long-term. We'll get to that in one moment.
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Pro-tariff Navarro, anti-tariff Elon Musk are fighting in public. Peter Navarro, a top trade advisor, economic advisor to President Trump, there from the first term, even went to jail for President Trump.
President Trump. He's got real bona fides.
And then Elon Musk, who helped to fund Trump's campaign, who campaigned with him, who really helped turn the tide in this election, and who remains a top advisor to him in this term. Navarro kind of started the fight.
There have been tensions rising for a while, but he's kind of started the fight when he goes on CNBC and he says, yeah, yeah, the reason Elon Musk is opposed to the tariffs is because he's a car manufacturer and the tariffs are going to hurt him personally. When it comes to tariffs and trade, we all understand in the White House and the American people understand that Elon's a car manufacturer, but he's not a car manufacturer.

He's a car assembler in many cases. If you go to his Texas plant, a good part of the engines that he gets, which in the EV case, is the batteries come from Japan and come from China.
The electronics come from Taiwan. The tires come.
What we want, and the difference is in our thinking and Elon's on this, is that we want the tires made in Akron. We want the transmissions made in Indianapolis.
We want the engines made in Flint and Saginaw. And we want the cars manufactured here.
With Elon, it's fine. He's a car man.
He's a car person. That's what he does.
And he wants the cheap foreign parts, and we understand that. But we want him home.
We want him home for our national security and economic security, and everything's good with Elon. Now, that's pretty brutal.
Even though you hear, look, everything's good with Elon. Look, no, we're cool, man.
No, Elon, he's great, man. I mean, he's just a greedy, selfish car manufacturer, you know, who's prioritizing his own private gain over the common good of the United States.
But it's cool, man. You get it, you know? That, even though it sounds kind of nice and polite, that was a brutal hit at another top administration official on television.
So that starts the battle. Elon escalates it significantly.
Elon goes on X, the platform that he owns, and says, Navarro is truly a moron. What he says here is demonstrably false.
Then he just keeps going. He's been going after Navarro for days now.
What I find interesting about this is not just the gossip and the, ooh, he said this, and ooh, what a zinger, and oh, man, let's go. Give me the tea, man.
I want this fight in public. The thing that is politically interesting about this fight to me is both Elon and Navarro can support tariffs in principle for totally different reasons.
Navarro can support tariffs because he wants to reshore american manufacturing and he doesn't care that much about growth uh at least in terms of international trade he really wants america to make stuff and to have greater self-reliance and to help the american worker and forget about free trade and elon can can support the tariffs in principle because the tariffs are a good tool for leverage in getting better trade deals because we've had bad trade deals with a lot of our supposed allies for many years. And they can both support Trump's tariff policy to some degree for opposite reasons.
This is a particular Trump gift. He did this very, very well in the campaign.
I remember I was at the MSG rally right before the election, and I look out and I see people in yarmulkes with big Israel flags. And then, I don't know, 50 feet from them, I see a woman in a hijab, if not like a full-on burqa.
Okay, and I thought, wait, what, and you saw this play out just in the electorate.

Trump did very, very well among Jews, better than usual.

And he did quite well among Muslims, better than usual.

However, even though one of the biggest issues in the campaign was the Israel-Gaza war,

you would think that those two parties would be on opposite sides.

They're not.

They coalesced around one candidate.

Why?

Because the pro-Israel side said, all right, Trump, he's more pro-Israel than Kamala is.

He's going to have our back.

There's a town in Israel named after him.

Okay, that's great. And the Muslim side, which is often anti-Israel, looked at it and said, well, under Trump, we didn't have this war in the Middle East.
Under Trump, Gazans weren't getting absolutely pummeled by bombs. Under Trump, we had a foreign policy that was more favorable to us.
So even if he's pro-Israel, he's also pro-peace. And so we're going to vote for him for that reason.
Trump can bring in people who are agreeing with him and with his policies for opposite reasons. You even see this with serious social conservatives and social libertines and libertarians coming and supporting Trump for the same reason.
On the one hand, Trump is the most socially conservative candidate that we've seen run for president since Pat Buchanan, certainly. On the other hand, he's the guy who waves the rainbow flag upside down at one of his rallies.
So even the social conservatives would say he doesn't really care about the rainbow flag. He doesn't even know which way it goes.
But the pro-socially liberal sexual revolution kind of crowd can say, no, Trump's cool with gay marriage. Trump's cool with some kinds of transgenderism.
Trump's cool. And it's just a gift.
It's the art of inclusion. It's the art of the possible.
Trump can just bring these opposites together. And I think that's what's happening with the tariffs.
Now, speaking of tariffs and the state of Israel, for that matter, Trump was sitting with Bibi Netanyahu. The question of tariffs on Israel came up because Israel preemptively, before Trump's tariffs went into effect, they said, we're going to reduce all of the tariffs that we have on American goods.
And Trump said, okay,

that's nice. Well, I'm still slapping some tariffs

on Israeli goods. So Netanyahu

flies to the White House to

plead with Trump to reduce the tariffs

on Israel. And Trump's sitting there right in the

room with him, right in the Oval Office. And he says,

yeah, no, I don't think so.

Do you plan to reduce the tariffs that

your government put on Israeli goods,

17%? On where? On Israeli goods,

the 17%.

Well, we're talking about a whole new trade. Maybe not.
Maybe not. Don't forget, we help Israel a lot.
You know, we give Israel $4 billion a year. That's a lot.
Congratulations, by the way. But we give Israel billions of dollars a year.
Billions. This is precisely my view of the state of Israel.
Some people, they just, they love Israel so much. They treat it like it's the 51st state.
They think it's the greatest government ever in the history of politics. Some people hate the state of Israel so much, they think it is just this demonic entity that is the cause of every problem in the world.
You wake up, you stub your toe in the morning, it was actually Netanyahu somehow, and that's not my view. My view is exactly the view that Trump has just expressed and embodied.
Sitting there, recognizing, you know, the state of Israel, we're allies with the state of Israel. We like the state of Israel.
We prefer the state of Israel to the alternative that you could see in that region. No question about it.
We get along and we can help each other and that's great. But it ain't the 51st state, okay? And if we're going to slap tariffs on every country in the world, we're slapping some tariffs on Israel.
And I don't want to hear a sob story about how we don't help Israel enough. We give Israel a lot of money, okay? And he's even sitting there, $4 billion, that's a lot, huh? Congratulations.
As if to say, I wouldn't have given you that deal. There's a town in Israel named after Trump, okay? You cannot accuse this guy of being anti-Israel, anything like that.
But he's saying, look, it's to a point, okay? We are allies when our our interests overlap, we work really, really well together. We're willing to help you out.
We've got this kind of longstanding national friendship, but don't push it. Okay, $4 billion is enough.
We're doing something here with the tariffs. And so, sorry, the 17% tariff or whatever it is that we slapped on Israel.
For the time being, that's going to stay. And we can negotiate over time.
That is called a moderate position. And moderation, look, moderation between good and evil is no good.
That's not the kind of moderation you want. But moderation between two extremes, both of which contend toward vice, that is virtue.
That's actually how Aristotle defines virtue. It's great.
This is also to the point I was just making about Trump, how he can bring in people for different reasons. Some people will support Trump because they think he is the most extreme, hardcore, right-wing guy that's run for president in a very long time.
Some people will support Trump. We're talking moderate Democrats, guys like Kennedy, Tulsi Gabbard, the moderate kind of Wall Street types, yuppies, because he seems moderate.
That's an amazing political gift. There's so much more to say.
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netsuite.com slash Knowles. Folks, some of you want to submit voicemail bags to the show.
I know this. You'll even email me through my personal website.
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Some of you, you don't believe me when I say that. You send me your life story.
You send me the audiobook of your memoir. I can't do anything with that.
I can't play that. Keep it to under a minute, ideally under 30 seconds.
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You can submit your fake headlines for Fake Headline Friday, all through that mailbag button. Speaking of Trump spending money, the New York Times is reporting that President Trump will spend $45 billion over the next two years expanding illegal alien detention centers.
And this has elicited calls of hypocrisy from the left. They say Trump is so concerned about federal spending.
He's got Elon in there just gutting all these bureaucrats who are, they're not even pushing paper around. Most of them are not even showing up to the office.
He's cutting all these federal workers. Then meanwhile, he goes and wants to spend $45 billion on illegal alien detention centers.
He wants to spend billions and millions more dollars on the US military. So he doesn't really want to cut government spending.
He's a hypocrite about that. I guess there was a misunderstanding.
Let me clear up the misunderstanding. We want to cut spending from places where we shouldn't be spending money, and we want to increase spending in areas where we should be spending more money.
That's what we want to do. It's not about shrinking the government down so small that you can fit it inside your pocket.
We're not anarchists. We don't want to abolish the government.
Far from it. The government is good, can be good.
The civil authority is there for our own good. We just want it to actually advance the common good.
So we are, you got us, dead to rights. We are going to reduce USAID funding for lesbian ballet performances in Djibouti for sure.
We are going to increase spending on deporting face-tattooed Satan worshiping Venezuelan gangsters. That's all good.
Trump did not run for president to just save money. He's not some arch libertarian.
He ran for president to reallocate money. He wants America to be richer, and he wants the government to be the appropriate size, not nothing, not overextended, to be the appropriate size, to do appropriate things.
In other words, he wants to reallocate resources. This is an important lesson of the Trump era.
Before the Trump era, in the Tea Party era, a lot of people said, we just need to bleed the government. We need to starve the beast, to use the language of Ronald Reagan.
So we just want to shrink the government. But the thing is, if you just give away power, if you say, we don't want this power anymore, we're going to give it away, then that power is going to flow to other places.
And that power is going to often be used by your enemies. So we say, we don't, we conservatives, we don't want the government involved in regulating the public square, say.
We're going to deregulate. Okay, well then that power is going to flow to a handful of big tech companies who now control the public square.
And by the way, before Elon bought Twitter, it was all leftists, and they were going to squeeze conservatives out of the public square. Then they were going to spend hundreds of millions of dollars directly on campaigns to stop Republicans from getting elected.
You just gave away your power. That's not what Trump wants to do.
Trump wants to use the power in a just way.

Some places he's going to dramatically shrink the government. Some places he's going to grow

the government because the government had atrophied. The government was not doing its

basic jobs like deporting face-tattooed gangsters. That's what we want.
We don't want big government.

We don't want small government. We want appropriate government.
We want government that exists within its own limits, but that does its job effectively within those limits. Speaking of illegal immigration in particular, Jasmine Crockett, the new AOC, AOC without the wisdom.
Jasmine Crockett, this Democrat House member who makes a big show of herself just about every day. She has come out and claimed that we need illegal immigration because we Americans ain't going to pick that cotton no more.

So I had to go around the country and educate people about what immigrants do for this country or the fact that we are a country of immigrants.

Right, right.

The fact is, ain't none of y'all trying to go and farm right now. Okay, so I'm lying.
Raise your hands. You're not, you're not.
We done picking cotton. We are, you can't pay us enough to find a plantation.
This woman's pretty talented. I don't know how she would do on the SAT.
You know, I'm not saying that she's the brightest bulb in the pack, but she does have a kind of political gift. She does have a kind of showmanship.
Though she did just step on a political rake and entertaining though it was. She comes at, she goes, you know, we're not farmers anymore.
She's just repeating the same Democrat line on illegal immigration we've heard for decades. Namely, we need illegal aliens because they'll do jobs Americans won't do.
Yeah, yeah, well, you're not becoming farmers. But then she takes it one step too far.
She says, yeah, yeah, we're done picking cotton. We're done picking cotton means we're done being slaves.
She's not talking about people who pick cotton for a fair wage and an open marketplace. No, she's talking about picking cotton.
Picking cotton is a reference to chattel slavery. She says, we are done picking cotton.
We're not going to be slaves anymore. we need other people to be our slaves which is the actual democrat argument for illegal immigration one democrat argument is we just need people to come and have their kids vote democrats and statistically illegal aliens are more likely to do that but the economic argument they make is these are there are jobs that americans won't do and they won't do them for the wages that the illegal aliens will do them for.
Implicit in that argument is, we're importing Venezuelan peasants because they'll work as a serf or slave class for us. And Jasmine Crockett just comes out and says the implicit part explicitly.
He goes, yeah, we need these Venezuelans to be our slaves. I ain't picking cotton anymore.
I need some Guatemalan to pick cotton for me. They're going to be our slaves.
And they were in the room like, uh, mm. It's got shh.
I mean, yeah, but shh, we're not supposed to say that. The explicit endorsement of the Democrats' longstanding implicit argument, we need immigrants because we can't oppress Americans.
There are four sins understood traditionally in Christianity. There are four sins that cry out to heaven for vengeance.
Does anyone know what they are? Does anyone remember your good catechism? Willful murder, sodomy, oppression of the poor, and defrauding the servants of their wages. Those are the four sins.
Hey, you have a problem with that? Don't go after me. That's traditionally understood in Christianity.
The Democrats in this clip are openly advocating two of those things. They're actually advocating all four of them because a willful murder, obviously they've made abortion into a sacrament, a sodomy, you know, can you go into a Democrat office now without the flag, but putting those aside for a second, oppression of the poor and defrauding worker over their wages.
The argument is we're not, we don't want to pay a fair wage to the illegal aliens. We're going to, if we, if we had to hire Americans to do these jobs, we'd have to pay them a fair wage.
So we're going to import third world peasants and then they'll do it for cheap and we can oppress them. That's very ugly.
And I do think that has led in part to the political shift you've seen. The fact that Democrats now are so openly advocating for mass migration in these kinds of terms, mass migration, which remains a top campaign issue for many people, not just because of the crime it brings and the social upheaval, but also it's just very ugly to say that.
Yeah, yeah, we're going to oppress these people. We're going to defraud them of their wages, and that way we can be richer and we can buy more stuff.
Yeah, and they'll be our slaves and they'll pick our cotton now. That's very, very ugly.
And you can see how moderate Democrats, center-left people would say, yikes, man. Okay, that's too far.
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My favorite comment yesterday is from Jeanette's Journey 9147 who says, and now this was picked by our producer, so I want to see

if this actually truly is my favorite comment. I could not agree more.
Our nation seems to have

lost, by and large, the art of living within your means. That's true.
It's not the spiciest comment,

but that's good advice. Live within your means.
That's very good advice. Okay, moving on to a much

more important story than anything we've been talking about today. The dire wolf is back.
What is the dire wolf? It's a wolf that supposedly went extinct 13,000 years ago. This is now the cover of Time Magazine.
It's this cool looking wolf. His name is Remus.
There's another one named Romulus. They named another one after Game of Thrones.
The sister is Khaleesi. The first dire wolf to exist in over 10,000 years.
How was the wolf brought back? By a team of researchers at Colossal Biosciences. The Colossal CEO, Ben Lamb, told the New York Post, Our team took DNA from a 13,000-year-old tooth and a 72,000-year-old skull and made the healthy dire wolf puppies.
It was once said any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. Today, our team gets to unveil some of the magic they're working on and its broader impact on conservation.
This is pretty amazing stuff. I'm often not all that impressed by technological advances.
Doesn't do a ton for me. I'm not that easily dazzled.
This is pretty impressive. Colossal also got some headlines last month when they engineered a woolly mouse.
That's a mouse crossed with a woolly mammoth. Didn't have the silly tusks, but did have the fur.
They want to bring the woolly mammoth back from extinction by 2028. We've heard this for years.
Since I was a kid, people have been talking about bringing back the woolly mammoth with all the breakthroughs in genetics that we could maybe take some of the DNA of the woolly mammoth and put it in a, I don't know, put it in an elephant or something and make a woolly mammoth. All good.
However, there is one question for the poor dire wolves and for maybe the woolly mammoth and all the rest. How is it going to learn to be a dire wolf? How is the woolly mammoth going to learn to be a woolly mammoth? I'm not the first or only person to raise this question.
There's a very good essay on this a year or so ago. I forget who wrote it, so apologies.
But it was making the rounds a bit too. To be a creature involves not just our DNA, but also our education, also learning things from our parents.
That's certainly true for rational creatures like us, human beings who can think abstractly about mathematics and justice and all the rest of it. But it's also true for certain animals, not even every animal.
Some animals are abandoned by their parents the moment that they're born, and they have instinct, and they have appetite, and that's all they need. It's not like they have abstract reason and a rational

will. But for these wolves, it's got to be kind of weird because even a lot of brute animals

learn things from their parents. And these wolves don't have parents.
They are orphans.

And sometimes animals start to act a little bit weird when they're orphans. And there's

an important political lesson here, which is the confidence that colossal sciences has, that these real techno-futurist types have. They say, we can bring back the woolly mammoth.
Who knows? Maybe we'll bring back dinosaurs. The confidence they have that they can just plug something into their computers and pop out this creature and have the creature work just perfectly well, is the confidence of a computer scientist.
People who are confident in coding and predetermined outcomes and their own ability to control unforeseen consequences. But it's not the view of a conservative.
Because a conservative recognizes that life is about more than just the design, that life is not really just totally predetermined, that actually there is such a thing as free will, that actually our own human reason is relatively limited, that we can't account for all of the potential outcomes of something, and really not even most of them, that we need to proceed with a little bit of caution and a little bit of humility,

and crucially, that tradition matters. Passing down the wisdom of the ages, sometimes in

inarticulable ways, is important, and it's how we grow. And it's not just true for us,

it's true actually even of elephants to a certain degree, maybe even of wolves. Who's going to teach the dire wolf how to be a wolf? And even if you have the most amazing technology and infinite financial resources, is it really possible to bring something back from extinction and have it be the same thing that went extinct? I'm skeptical.
I don't think that that's true in biology. I don't think that's true in culture and civilization.
A lot of us, and this is where it really rings home for me. A lot of us, we treat our civilization carelessly.
We say, oh, you know, whatever. We're going to get rid of the religion that animated our civilization.
We're going to knock down some statues. We're going to forget the historical figures.
We're going to spit on the, we're going to throw tomato sauce on the art, you know, to protest climate change or whatever. And we're going to, we're just going to trash the civilization.
And don't worry about it. If we ever really want it again, we can just bring it back from the dead.
I don't think that's how it works. I think you actually can definitively lose things.
And even if you can bring back some kind of version of it or some approximation, it's not the same thing that you lost. And we ought to be more conservative, care more about conserving, that is, that which we have.
We should cherish our homes, our civilizations, our families, our various creatures more than we do. Don't be so flippant.
Don't be so confident that you can bring it back from the dead. Even if you can bring something back from the dead or an approximation of it, it's probably not going to be the exact same thing you lost.
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Speaking of wacky science, RFK Jr., baby. I got a lot of chatter about RFK Jr.
because RFK has for his entire life, his entire adult life, campaigned against vaccines. I first became aware of RFK Jr.
20 years ago or more when I was watching The Daily Show as a kid. And he went on there and he was talking about how thimerosal in vaccines causes autism.
And back then, the libs agreed with that and the conservatives disagreed with that. Now it's kind of flipped and the libs disagree with that and the libs do whatever Big Pharma tells them to do.
And the conservatives are skeptical of vaccines. In any case, now that Bobby Kennedy is the HHS secretary, he seems to have changed his tune.
I have the tweet right here. He says, I came to Gaines County, Texas today to comfort the Hildebrand family after the loss of their eight-year-old daughter, Daisy.
This is an eight-year-old girl who died from the measles. I am here to support health officials and to learn how our HHS agencies can better partner with them to control the measles outbreak.
The most effective way to prevent the spread of measles is the MMR vaccine. I've spoken to Governor Abbott, and I've offered HHS's continued support at his request.
We will redeploy. We have redeployed CDC teams to Texas.
Goes on. Hold on.
Bobby Kennedy, the most effective way to prevent the spread of measles is the MMR vaccine. What's going on? Is this man compromised? Some have suggested, including friends of mine, have suggested that Kennedy's being blackmailed or something by big pharma or by, you know, the hidden shadowy deep state or something like that.
I don't think that that is the easiest explanation. First of all, what Bobby Kennedy said about MMR vaccines is indisputably true.
And it doesn't compromise the arguments that he's been making for decades. When he says the most effective way to control the spread of measles is the MMR vaccine, that's just obviously true.
That doesn't mean that measles is particularly deadly. That doesn't mean that the measles vaccine is safe.
That doesn't mean that there's no link between vaccines and autism. RFK didn't say any of that.
He chose his words very, very carefully. He said, the vaccine is the most effective way to stop the spread of measles, and no one disagrees with that.
Not one person disagree. Even the most ardent anti-vaccine person doesn't disagree with that.
So he said a thing that is true to what end? Is it because big pharma has dirt on him? I don't think so. He's a Kennedy.
He's had a lot of public dirt for decades. What is going to come, especially RFK Jr., respectfully, what is going to come out about Bobby Kennedy that is so shocking? The Kennedys have a colorful personal life, okay? And everyone knows about it.
So I don't, even if there were, there's a sex scandal involving, oh, really? Which one? Number 552? There was a sex scandal about Bobby Kennedy that came out during his presidential campaign this past year.

Okay, that's not going to move the needle.

I think what's going on is a little bit deeper here, which is that when Bobby Kennedy was a private lawyer and he was kind of a pundit on these issues, he could mouth off and it was no big deal.

Now that he's in office, he maybe wants to hedge his bets a little bit. This is what happened to Trump during COVID.
And I didn't beat up on Trump during COVID for going along with the lockdowns for a little bit, for pushing the vaccine. Not mandatorily, but still encouraging it.
Even though for most people, they didn't really need the COVID vaccine. I didn't beat up on him for it because put yourself in Trump's position.
You've got all these top advisors coming to you, including people you've picked, saying if you don't do this, millions of people will die. I don't care how tough you think you are because you're a really good tweeter or you're a really good pundit or you're a really good activist.
if you have that responsibility, if you're going to bear the deaths of millions of people potentially, you're at the very least going to hedge your bets. And I think that's what Kennedy's doing now because he's in a position of real responsibility.
I think this is always what happens to people when they actually get responsibility in politics. They always have to moderate their rhetoric.
They always have to hedge their bets. And they have to speak in this kind of way.
If they're good at it, they can do so as Kennedy is doing without actually

contradicting anything he's said or advocated over the years, but just giving himself an out.

I don't, I'm not just like I didn't blame Trump really during COVID. I'm not even blaming Bobby

Kennedy for it. I'm, I'm more marveling at the fact that political realities are undefeated.

And so you get whether you love the vax or you hate the vax, whatever you think.

You can be really angry at Kennedy for what he's doing.

That's just political reality, baby.

That's just how it works.

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