Ep. 1707 - NO ONE EXPECTED THIS! Trump Tariffs BREAKDOWN

President Trump announced his Liberation Day tariffs yesterday, and no one, I mean no one, expected the magnitude of tariffs that we saw. You are going to hear a lot of puffed-up financial analysts and political pundits tell you that they know exactly what the tariffs mean today, and they are full of it.
And the way you know they're full of it is that none of them predicted this. And the stock market tanked when President Trump announced it.
In fact, the only prediction that came true, and you know how much I hate to say I told you so, the only prediction that came true, as far as I could tell, was my prediction that the tariffs would be totally unpredictable, which is not a proper prediction in itself. So I get it,

but I think that gets me half credit. Now that we have more information, now we can start to try at

least to read some of the tea leaves to figure out if we are headed for a new golden age or

another great depression. I'm Michael Knowles.
This is The Michael Knowles Show. Welcome back to the show.
With President Trump defunding Planned Parenthood. There are the usual suspects coming out arguing that actually the Bible is pro-abortion.
So we will have on this Theology Thursday a pulpit in politics debate coming up at the end of the show. There's so much more to say.
First, though, go to shopbeam.com slash Knowles. If you want great sleep, you got to check out Beam.
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Start getting a great night's sleep. These tariffs were wild, man.
I don't know who else to put it. I know I'm supposed to sit here and say, well, I knew this is exactly what would happen.
And this is, but first of all, and I did, I did in that I said, the only thing that we know about the tariffs is that President Trump is using them as part of his kind of madman, unpredictable strategy in office. And that the strategy has served him very well.
But that even senior administration officials, I'm talking like the very upper crust of the cabinet, did not really know what the tariffs were going to look like, which countries were going to have tariffs on them, how intense the tariffs were going to be, and what primary purpose the tariffs were going to serve. To put this in historical perspective, the effective tariff on imports has now hit a 131-year high in the United States.
So the economists over at Capital Economics, because what do I don't know anything about these calculations, but these actual economists come out, they say that we now have an import weighted average tariff of 19.1%. But when you put that on top of the earlier tariffs that President Trump already installed, and product specific tariffs, so not just Trump saying, you know, weeks ago, okay, we're going to put tariffs on China, or not just saying, all right, we're going to put tariffs on steel and aluminum and autos more recently.
The effective tariff rate on all imports would rise to about 26%, which is the 131-year high. That is up from 2.3% last year.
So we're talking about a massive tariff hike. Here is President Trump announcing Liberation Day.
From 1789 to 1913, we were a tariff-backed nation, and the United States was proportionately the wealthiest it has ever been. So wealthy, in fact, that in the 1880s, they established a commission to decide what they were going to do with the vast sums of money they were collecting.
We were collecting so much money so fast, we didn't know what to do with it. Isn't that a nice problem to have? What do you think, Marco? Good problem? Marco would love that problem.
But we don't have that problem anymore, but we're not going to have it very much longer, I will tell you. But they collected so much money, they actually formed a commission to determine what they were going to do with the money, who they were going to give it to, and how much.
Then in 1913, for reasons unknown to mankind, they established the income tax so that citizens, than foreign countries would start paying the money necessary to run our government. Then in 1929, it all came to a very abrupt end with the Great Depression, and it would have never happened if they had stayed with the tariff policy.
It would have been a much different story. They tried to bring back tariffs to save our country, but it was gone.
It was gone. It was too late.

Okay, so there you have it. President Trump not merely announcing these massive tariffs, and he had a big board of the tariffs that other countries are levying on our goods compared to what Trump was presenting as the much more lenient and generous tariff rate that we were levying on the other countries.
And the numbers were a little bit confusing because we couldn't quite tell, all right, how did the White House arrive at this effective tariff rate from the other countries? It's not like you just Google it and there's a number. We're talking about multiple tariffs on lots of different products and with lots of different volume.
And so how did they arrive at that? And President Trump made clear that he was including not only the tariffs, but other non-tariff trade barriers, currency manipulation, subsidies of industries, and so forth. People couldn't quite figure out where exactly these numbers came from.
How did the White House arrive at some of the extraordinarily high tariff rates that we were levying on some countries? An ex-account named OrthoNormalist seems to have struck on it, which is, he said the number was arrived at by taking the U.S. trade deficit with any given nation and dividing it by that nation's exports to us with a baseline 10% tariff for all countries.
So even countries that run a trade deficit with us, we're just going to start out with a baseline 10% tariff, and then that's how you arrive at the number. And the White House, some staff members at the White House tried to push back on this a little bit and point out that, no, there was a really sophisticated economic calculation here.
And that may well be the case, but even when you factor in the White House's explanation, I think ortho-normalists' simple description of it seems to hold pretty well. It seems pretty accurate.
It's the US trade deficit with that nation divided by the nation's exports to us with a baseline of 10% tariffs. So that means that there were 10% tariffs against places that not only don't export goods to us, but don't even have people in them.
And this is something that the libs were having a lot of fun with. I actually, I was having fun with it too.
I know the libs are like libs are like pulling their hair out over this. I don't, I just find it quite entertaining.
Wow, something is actually changing in politics. Wow, President Trump is making good on his promise.
You know, Trump has made good on a lot of his promises, but most politicians don't make good on their promises. So one of the funny aspects of this policy is there's apparently a 10% tariff against the herd in McDonald Islands, which are inhabited only by penguins.
So that's right. You take that, you penguins.
I don't know. I don't know what penguins export.
In fact, I don't even know enough about penguins to make a joke about what they could export. But anyway, whatever it is they export, they're going to have to pay a 10% tariff on that.
Big question that everyone has right now. What does Trump want with these tariffs? You got the libs freaking out, of course.
You have many on the right freaking out, of course, because they're saying that these tariffs are so extreme. No one was predicting this.
The market is tanking. Surely he doesn't want to keep these in permanently.
And there's some sign that maybe he doesn't want these to be permanent. But the question is, does he want revenue, jobs, or concessions from other countries when it comes to trade? When you see a 10% tariff levied on a nation inhabited only by penguins, you think, well, it can't just be the concessions.
When you see, to use a less kind of funny example, when you see a 10% tariff slapped on countries that run a trade deficit with us, then that makes you think, well, it can't be that he's just trying to get concessions. What concessions do those places have to give? Is it jobs? Is he trying to reshore American manufacturing? Maybe.
That was one of the big arguments during the campaign, is we need to reshore American manufacturing. Globalist, liberal free trade has gutted the American middle class.
It's destroyed a lot of towns in middle America where now the people who are unemployed are just killing themselves with fentanyl and dying deaths of despair. Okay, could be that.
But from the way President Trump is talking about it in his announcement of Liberation Day, it probably isn't the jobs because Trump is talking about it from the perspective of revenue. Meaning we're going to continue to import a lot of these goods.
We're just going to collect a lot of revenue at the ports when the goods come in. If the tariff policy were primarily about creating jobs, American manufacturing jobs, then you wouldn't get the revenue because people would just be buying the goods here in America.
Now, there is a middle ground, of course, which is that the tariffs are levied. People are more inclined to buy American.
And maybe Trump does exact trade concessions so that American industries are able to export more overseas. Obviously, it's not only one or the other or the other, but these three things are in conflict with each other.
Jobs, revenue, concessions. So which one does he want? I think there's a little bit of a clue.
There's so much more to say. First, though, go to goodranchers.com slash Knowles.
We spend so much time searching for the truth in headlines and in conversations. How often do we stop and ask about what's on our plate? Once you start digging, you're going to find out most store-bought meat is shipped in from overseas, even if it says product of USA.
That is one of the reasons I made the switch to Good Ranchers. You want to know the top reason that I made the switch to Good Ranchers,? Obviously, I was introduced to them through my show.
I said, oh, this is interesting. Let me try out the product.
I take my meat very seriously. And the quality, just the taste is so outrageously good.
Then on top of that, you know me, I'm a little bit of a cheapskate. The prices cannot be beat.
And then I'm also an American Patriot I love that it's American meat, but it's so good. The other night I came home, the boys and Elisa had already eaten their food.
And then sweet little Lisa made me a nice New York strip steak. And I'm sitting there and I'm about to, and I dig in and it's so good.
I won't put any sauce or anything on it. It's just, I just want the meat as it is.
And then my little toddler comes up and goes, hey, Dada, I want your steak. Give meake.
And of course, I understand it. I don't begrudge him.
It's part of their spring into action special right now. When you subscribe to any Good Ranchers box, you get free bacon, ground beef, chicken nuggets, or salmon in every box for a year, plus $40 off with code Knolls.
GoodRanchers.com slash Knolls, Good Ranchers, American Meat Delivered. Here's the little bit of clue about what Trump wants.
The tariffs did not go into effect immediately. However, they are going into effect pretty soon.
Senior White House officials told reporters that the new baseline tariff of 10% will go into effect Saturday at 12.01 a.m. Friday night, you're going to get the baseline 10% tariff on everyone.
Then the reciprocal levies will go into effect in a week, April 9th at 12.01 a.m. Notice here, this is the other little clue.
Trump is presenting these tariffs as reciprocal tariffs. He's not saying that these aren't just revenue-raising tariffs.
These aren't just reshore manufacturing, American manufacturing tariffs. These are reciprocal tariffs.
You tariff us, we're going to tariff you. Even if you don't have tariffs on us, you have bad trade practices that harm Americans.
All right, we're going to put tariffs on you. So by last night, the Dow futures was down 900 points.
NASDAQ futures was down about 800 points. S&P 500 futures is down 180 points.
This was a massive, massive shockwave. If I were a gambling man, and I don't really make predictions, especially on this issue when it comes to Trump, because he could be totally bluffing, as he sometimes does, or he could be dead serious and he wants to bring us back to the McKinley era and he wants to abolish the income tax.
And it could be either of those because if he's bluffing, then he needs to behave as though he wants to take us back to the McKinley era. And if he wants to take us back to the McKinley era, he's going to talk like he wants to take us back to the McKinley era.
And he's really good. He's just really good at negotiating and he's a good showbiz guy.
So you can't actually tell. My gut tells me this is still a negotiating tactic because it's presented as reciprocal and because he's delaying the implementation.
He's not delaying it very much. I mean, it's hard to imagine some kind of deal gets struck with any of these countries by Saturday or even a week from now, six days from now.
How are you going to strike a deal with hundreds of countries? I mean, I don't know. Maybe the penguins don't really care.
They're going to have an internal economy and they don't care about US trade. But these other countries, how are you going to strike a deal with all of them in a week? I don't know.
That's the mark against my theory. But I still, it is a negotiating tactic, right? Right? I don't know.
But we can judge a little bit the international response. Ontario Premier from America's Evil Top Hat, Doug Ford, he came out the minute these tariffs were announced and everyone picked their jaws up off the floor.
He said, hey, hey, hey, all right, we'll give up all of our tariffs. Just cut it out.
What are you doing? Let's sit down and discuss this because it's just going to hurt American jobs. I can't stress it enough.
And, you know, again, he believes he's supporting Americans. He said he was going to create jobs, create wealth, reduce inflation.
It's worked the total opposite. But do you think it's fair that you have tariffs on a whole number of products? That's right.
And we'd be willing to take those off tomorrow if he took all the tariffs off. We are not the problem.
Andrew, do you know what the problem is? China's the problem. Okay.
Oh, there we go. Look, we'd be willing to take all those tariffs off.
Because, you know, in defense of the tariff policy, all these other countries have tariffs on us. So he says, look, we'd be willing to lose every tariff we have on the United States if you please just lighten up on these tariffs.
So that makes it seem like, all right, this is just a negotiating tactic. We are going to reduce trade barriers all around the world.
We're going to get even more free trade.

However, when you look at all the countries that have tariffs levied on them, you begin to wonder, because it's not just China. It's not just Canada.
It's not just Mexico. It's not just, it's Senegal.
What trade concessions does the White House want to get from Senegal? I don't, what trade concessions do we want to get from the herd in McDonald's Island? What that makes it look like, the fact that these are so broad and there's a 10% baseline tariff makes it seem like it's not a negotiating tactic, but rather a revenue thing. We just want to collect the revenue, which is how President Trump presented it.
We're just going to make so much money, we're not going to know what to do with the money. But also, it's reciprocal tariffs.
So also, it's kind of a negotiating tactic. So I'm going to tell you the only totally honest thing that you are going to hear from any financial analyst or political pundit today about these world order shaking tariffs.
I don't know. I don't know.
And I know that that doesn't play and you're supposed to hear, well, this is exactly what it is. Nobody knows what this means.
The proof is the market tanked. So even all the super duper geniuses on Wall Street who are paid to know what fiscal policy is and who are paid to know what the White House is going to do when it comes to trade and who are paid to know all these things and they're all the greatest super geniuses in the world who dedicate their lives to this, they had no idea.
No clue. Now, there is a super genius from Wall Street who is now sitting in the Trump administration.
He's the secretary of the Treasury. That is Scott Besson.
Scott Besson was asked about the market reaction to the tariffs. And this guy stayed cool as a cucumber.
This kind of market downdraft so far this year is not concerning you. Well, look, in my old business, I was very concerned about market movements, and I'm trying to be Secretary of Treasury, not a market commentator.
What I would point out is that especially the NASDAQ peaked on Deep Seat Day. So that's a MAG-7 problem, not a MAGA problem? Okay.
This is a great line.

This is a killer line that's probably going to go over the heads of a lot of people.

When he says MAG-7, he's referring to the magnificent seven companies, tech companies, Amazon, NVIDIA,

all these companies that have just vastly outperformed the market.

And he says, yeah, the market downturn, that's a MAG-7 problem. That's not a MAGA problem.

I'm not a market commentator. I'm not a hedge fund manager anymore.
I'm the Secretary of the Treasury. Don't worry about it.
So what's my takeaway? All of that to say, it was a very long survey of these world-shaking tariffs. I'm not freaking out.
I'm not freaking out, man, okay? Scott Besson's not freaking out. I'm not freaking out.
the market's freaking out, but I'm not freaking out. I'm not freaking out, man.
Okay. Scott Besson's not freaking out.
I'm not freaking out. The market's freaking out, but I'm not freaking out because I've been through this before.
It seems to me I've heard this song before where Trump says something and everyone loses their minds. And then three days later, it's not what everyone feared it would be.
And then a week later, it actually worked very well. So I'm willing to take the 24-hour President Trump deep breath here, okay?

However, I want to caution people, including people on the right,

especially people on the right.

The stakes are very, very high here.

This is not just some random executive order that angers people, but two weeks later, no one really cares. The stakes are very, very high.
President Trump plays for keeps. He wants to be an historic president.
He is a world historic figure. He just is that.
He is one of the most significant figures we've ever had, certainly in American history. And he will go down.
He will be remembered for centuries to come. And he knows that.
He plays high stakes and he plays for keeps. If this tariff policy doesn't work, we will get obliterated in the midterms.
There will not be a Republican who can show his face in Washington, D.C. or at any town hall.
We will get destroyed. And J.D.
Vance and whoever else runs for president in 2828 will get destroyed. The GOP will be on its gasping last breath if this doesn't work out.
And on the flip side, if this does work out, Trump truly will be the transformative president that he promised himself to be. He will have ended the era of globalization, free trade, the kind of liberal post-Cold War consensus, following the liberal World War II consensus, certainly the liberal post-Cold War consensus that says the world is flat and we're just going to erase our borders.

And we're going to start out erasing our economic borders.

But when you erase the economic borders, pretty soon you're going to have to erase the political borders too.

Because you're going to have to have your government done by international institutions that are going to take more and more power away from sovereign nations. And you're going to have mass migration and the world is flat.

And history is over.

And Trump will have ended that. Basically with one declaration.
With two, and some would argue three, presidential election wins. But this is a major, major move.
So I'm going to keep my heart rate down. We're going to see how it works out.
But you know the old Chinese curse. May you live in interesting times.
It is upon us. The first Chinese curse of recent years was Wuhan, was COVID.
This is the second one, and probably it is more significant. There's so much more to say.
First, though, go to preborn.com slash Knowles. Did you hear about the recent studies showing that about 20% of women who have medical abortions experience complications? There have even been some tragic deaths.
What is concerning is that the Biden administration relaxed the reporting requirements, so the NIH doesn't have to track injuries related to those medications anymore. These pills now account for the majority of abortions, over 60%.
Many women do not fully understand the risks. At pre-borns clinics, they see women every day who are struggling after taking abortion pills, and some even come in not knowing what to do with their pregnancy remains.
At Preborn, they welcome these women with compassion and support. They can even offer abortion pill reversal treatment if they come to them early enough.
By sponsoring an ultrasound for a woman facing an unplanned pregnancy, you're helping provide real choices and important information. Just 28 bucks covers one ultrasound.
$140 helps five women see their children. Right now, if you want to support this group, I personally support this organization.
I encourage you to as well. Dial pound 250, say keyword baby, or go to preborn.com slash Knowles.
Give what you can, preborn.com slash Knowles. I will be going to University of Pittsburgh.
You might remember a year, what was it, a year, two years ago? I visited the University of Pittsburgh. I was invited by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute to give a talk.
It ended up being a debate, actually, on transgenderism. And when I got there, the libs lit the street on fire, burned me in effigy.
And then as I was walking on stage, threw an explosive at the building. So we had to turn around, go back into the wings.
A female police officer was very seriously injured. The people who threw the explosives were not just a couple of kids who got out of control.
They were hardcore anarchist terrorists. Happily, they were prosecuted, though they were really only given a slap on the wrist.
But one of those guys is in federal prison right now. His wife should be in prison, but she's not.
She got off with probation or something like that. In any case, I'm going back on the anniversary, near the anniversary.
And my welcome committee is apparently preparing. I was alerted of this by my team yesterday.
Steel City Anti-Fascist League has posted that the infamous far-right loser, Michael Knowles, returns to Pitt's campus on Monday, April 7th. Now, hold on, just a point here.
Can one really be an infamous loser? I guess so, but doesn't fame or even infamy imply that one has won at least something, has won attention, has won applause, has won pride.

I'm confused by that. I think Antifa is pretty confused too.
I guess one can be an infamous loser. We plan to make sure he knows he's not welcome, doubly so.
We plan to make sure anyone who supports him knows they're not welcome. Transphobia will not be tolerated.
Transphobes will not be tolerated. Michael Knowles will not be tolerated.
Okay. And then here's the picture.
And it's an anarchist symbol with a rifle. It looks like an AR-15 here.
Or is that an AK-47? And then it's hard to tell if the mag is bent. Anyway, then it's me with three arrows going through my head.
So they're not the subtlest Antifa, the left-wing terrorists. And so they're threatening to kill me and apparently anyone who comes out to support me.
So anyway, I'm going to go anyway. And I encourage you to go anyway.
Obviously, take precautions. Make sure everyone stays safe.
We're going to have a robust security presence. But my welcoming committee is back.
Should be a fun event. If you're in the Pittsburgh area, I'll see you April 7th.
Speaking of transgenderism, a female fencer has gone viral because she was expelled from USA fencing after refusing to fence with a man who says that he's a woman. You can see a lady is getting ready to fence, this big, big fella there.
And eventually, eventually she just takes a knee. And okay, takes a knee because you can't fence a dude if you're a lady.
You know, you're not going to have a... I know Disney movies have confused us.
I know Snow White has probably confused us and Star Wars and all the rest of it. But women can't actually win sword fights with men.
It's not possible, ever. It's never once happened, ever, in the history of swords.
So this is going viral among the conservatives. And the conservatives are saying, this is outrageous.
You know, we need to defend women's fencing. And we need to defend, I don't know, we need to defend the WNBA, basically.
And that's all good. It's a winning issue, the trans sports thing.
It's a major winning issue for conservatives. I encourage Republicans to run on it.
It's an issue that clues people in as to the absurdity of the sexual ideology of the left and can help hopefully, I think, lead them to reconsider things like same-sex marriage, certainly transing the kids, transing the adults, radical feminism, all the rest of it. But just among us gals, we need to be honest with ourselves.
We don't really care about women's fencing. Can we just among us, we're all, you know,

this is a private safe space. Is it private? I guess it's public.
I'll speak for myself. I don't care.
I don't care about women's fencing. I don't care about women's basketball.
I don't care about

women's soccer. I don't care about soccer at all.
It's not that we conservatives care about women's sports per se. We care about justice.
The reason that it bothers us when some husky dude plays women's volleyball is because he's going to give a woman a concussion. He's going to give her permanent brain injuries, as has happened.
Or at the very least, he's going to take away trophies and university scholarships and all sorts of things that women are entitled to in these sports leagues. The issue is the justice.
But sometimes we get carried away, high on our own supply. We believe our own press releases.
And so before you know it, we look up and conservatives are the party of the WNBA. No, we're not.
I am not the party of the WNBA. I do wish to be the party of justice.
That is of giving to people that which they deserve. And it is unjust for a fella to come in and invade the women's sports leagues.
But that's the issue, okay? You can run with it in all sorts of innovative ways in political campaigns, but let's not lose sight of it. We don't actually care about the WNBA.
It is justice that we care about. Now, speaking of justice and transitioning, Elon Musk has just declared, and gone viral for it, that humanity is but a biological bootloader for digital superintelligence.
What did he say exactly? This post has 50 million views last I looked at it. As I mentioned several years ago, it increasingly appears that humanity is a biological bootloader for digital superintelligence.
A bootloader, for those of you who are not as tech savvy as I am, I had to Google it too, is a program that loads an operating system. So, humanity, all of history, all of our loves, our dreams, our desires, our rational thoughts, all of our developments, all of our achievements, really, all of that was nothing but a bootloader for a digital superintelligence so that we could create Grok or chat GPT.
That's what it was all leading to. All of our paintings, all of our cathedrals, all of our nations, all of the wars, all of the romances, all of the everything.
It was to create Grok. I don't love that.
I don't believe that, but I don't love it either. This is, to me, liberal eschatology.
Liberal even meaning classical liberal. The modern liberal age which views all of humanity with skepticism, all of the things that we once knew to be true with a lot of skepticism that focuses merely in the final count on the satisfaction of individual desires.
The maximization of individual pleasure, the minimization of individual suffering, all our old high-minded ideas about God and justice and morality and telos and all that, that kind of goes by the wayside.

And in this disenchanted world, in the world where man is no longer made in the image and likeness of God, the one true God, we just become gods.

And we understand God as being nothing but a figment of our imaginations made in the image and likeness of us. And so this is the end of the world theory for the liberals.
It's not that there will be four horsemen and chariots and trumpets. No, no, no, it's not that.
It's just that we will, we're going to create a digital supercomputer that's going to make mankind obsolete. Or we're going to abolish Homo sapiens to create Homo Deus, man truly as God.
That's the view of Yuval Harari, left-wing writer on this subject. I'm not knocking Elon here.
Elon might think at least he's speaking in a merely descriptive way, not a prescriptive way, but a descriptive way to say, look, I'm not saying it's a good thing that humanity is becoming a bootloader for a digital superintelligence, but that's just what's happening. You look around, people do seem to be worshipping the dumb idols of Grok and ChetGPT.
I'm tempted to do it myself. So I'm not knocking Elon.
This might be the way the world ends, not with a bang, but a whimper. However, this is a nightmare view of the future.
And it is a nightmare view of the future, not because Grok isn't impressive, not because the little Ghibli images aren't funny. They are.
But because it diminishes human beings to be mere instruments of robots, the robots who now become the stars of the show. So in the classical Christian, true understanding of the world, God is the star of the show.
And we are made in the image and likeness of God. And we screw everything up.
And God, since his only begotten son, God himself becomes incarnate to redeem us. He is the star of the show.
And we are redeemed by him, which makes us feel real good about ourselves. I don't want to diminish humanity.
The fact that God would send his only begotten son to save us, that God would take on flesh, take on a human nature, tells us that being human is a really special thing. And we human beings in turn make artifacts.
We have our own little artifacts, our paintings, our computers, our leftist-tears tumblers, our cigars. We make those things.
And this view, this liberal eschatological view, the view articulated by Elon here, totally flips that. So that the most important thing, the telos that we've all been aiming toward, that in the service of which we are but mere instruments is the artifact.
It's the computer. It's the program.
It's the grok. And we serve that intelligence.
And God doesn't really factor into the picture at all. Not only at that point have we made ourselves gods, we've actually made our own gods, our own dumb idols that we're worshiping, which is not a very new idea.
That's actually a very old idea. And it's amazing how the ancient false gods rear their ugly heads again.
Many people who agree with Elon's take here and his take as mere description might be totally right.

Now, speaking of religion, we have a religious panel coming up on this show. That will be

the politics and pulpit panel on abortion. But before we get to that, one last big issue

that has really dominated a lot of the discourse, especially since President Trump picked Bobby

Thank you. abortion.
But before we get to that, one last big issue that has really dominated a lot of the discourse, especially since President Trump picked Bobby Kennedy to be his Secretary of Health and Human Services. The Jubilee Show, which I was on a few months ago, got zillions of views, worth checking out.
It was me versus LGBT LMNOP activists. This after Charlie Kirk, I think, was the inaugural episode of that show,

where one conservative surrounded by a ton of libs. And that is the first episode during the height of the campaign.
That got, I think it was like 25 million views or something totally crazy.

Ben went on the show. Lila went on the show.
It's often one conservative versus a ton of libs.

Jubilee flipped the format a little bit. Just had one, well, now it's even hard to say where conservatives and libs fall on this issue because the political ground is shaken so much.
But it was one seemingly kind of liberal pro vaccine voice against a bunch of vaccine skeptics. Here's how it went.
We are trying to do our best to make sure that we help children and adults when they are due for a vaccine. Okay, so you just, at the end you said, it pretty much sounds like you have to have a good intention.
For example, we're not in the labs actually seeing the vaccine process or the clinical trials, so we have to just take the experts' word. Well, when you fly in a plane, you're not in the cockpit.
Right, So we put our faith in that. So you would say that

we just have to put our faith in the experts, correct? Correct. Okay.
So this would require, number one, a good intention. So they have a good intention to help people to make their lives better.
And also they have to be ethical. Is that correct? Those are reasonable things.
Yeah. Okay.
So if they fall outside of the privy of those two criteria, would you say it is reasonable for us to be skeptical? I think it's reasonable to be skeptical at any moment. But taking those two things, if they violate either of those two, would it give someone else more justification to be against it? Sure.
Okay. So when we look at the biggest developers and distributors and sellers of the vaccines, Pfizer, Johnson and Johnson, all these big pharmaceutical companies, when we look at their track record, we see they have been deceptive.
They've had big settlements, billions and billions of dollars, fraud, misleading the public, concealing clinical trials that were against their favor. When we have to put our whole faith and trust in these people that have been through huge billions of dollars of settlements, and they have proven that they have been unethical, they have made more profit through the COVID times than ever before as well.
Why should we trust them so lightly? It's not a blind trust. Who you're trusting is the independent reviewers that review the data that they put forward.
Okay. So I think that response was very, very weak.
You know, no, no, you're not trusting the experts. You're not trusting the COVID or the vaccine experts.
You're trusting the expert experts. You're trusting the experts who review the experts.
Yeah, but those guys seem kind of bogus too. Because all those independent fact checkers totally betrayed us during COVID.
Where were they? Where were they when the scientists and the public health officials told us that the COVID vaccine was totally safe and totally effective. And then a bunch of people died from it.
No, he's admitting, yes, sometimes the scientists and the public health officials get things wrong, but that's why we have the independent reviewers. Yeah, but where were they? Where were they during COVID? Where were they when we were told during COVID that the vaccine would stop you from catching the virus? And then when that turned out to be false, when they told us that they would stop you from transmitting the virus.
And then when that turned out to be false, they told us, well, the virus would have been a lot worse if you didn't have the vaccine, which is unfalsifiable, really. Where were they? So I totally sympathize with the questioning of the vaccines and the vaccine experts and of everything.
Our elites have lied to us and they have been corrupt, not just on a vaccine thing, but on every score in politics in recent years and decades. They have lied to us.
They've been corrupt. They have been stupid.
They have been incompetent. And that's why people question them.
And that's why we elected President Trump. Because the ossified liberal elite failed.
However, there is still truth. So this is the issue.
You say, okay, I don't believe the experts anymore. But then you turn to some of the real anti-vax voices.
And some of them are kind of persuasive sometimes, and some of them are obviously kooks who say things that are demonstrably false. Like when they tell you, you know, there have never been studies that have, you know, pursued the link between vaccines and certain injuries, or vaccines and autism, or whatever, and they've never, and you can look, and and there are some studies and they do show generally that vaccines are generally safe.
And they do, so you could say, well, I don't believe those studies anymore. Okay.
But I just, the problem is people used to blindly believe the public health experts and write off all of the anti-vaxxers as kooks and cranks. Now it's totally flipped because the public health experts have beclowned themselves.

Now they totally disregard the public health experts and they exalt the anti-vaxxers as

this great voice of truth that's unfalsifiable.

But those guys are often wrong too.

I guess I just have a lower view of all of it, which is I know that some of those guys

are kooks and cranks and weirdos.

And now I know that some of the other guys are kooks and cranks and weirdos and corrupt on top of it. Which is, I know that some of those guys are kooks and cranks and weirdos.
And now I know that some of the other guys are kooks and cranks and weirdos and corrupt on top of it. So where

are we left? I don't know. I don't know.
And I know that those are the three words you're never

supposed to say in public life. Certainly not as a commentator, an analyst, a pundit.
Certainly

not as a politician.

You're never supposed to say, I don't know. But that's the honest answer here.

That is the honest answer. And the people are retelling you with such confidence,

total confidence and often blithe ignorance. They're going to tell you, no, I know exactly.

They don't. That is what makes this moment so politically interesting.
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That is what makes this moment so politically interesting. We have not, forget about from the vaccines to the makeup of the government, to even the massive deregulation and pruning of the federal government, which has some precedent but is now being done at an extraordinary scale and extraordinary way, all the way to the tariffs and the shakeup of global trade.
We don't know. We're not exactly able to predict the future.
That is what's leaving people unmoored. It is why you've got massive libs who have come over to support Trump, a complete rewriting of the political coalitions.
It's chaos that people can't totally predict out because our stores of reason are just not sufficient for it. And chaos breeds opportunity.
But how that's going to play out in the midterms in the next election for the whole future of maybe America's golden age, totally unknown. Are you looking for a better quality meat? Good Ranchers delivers 100% American beef, chicken, and wild-caught seafood straight to your door.
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The media want you to believe that the Trump administration is faltering. They want you to believe that Elon Musk is a crook.
They want you to believe that the world is spiraling into absolute chaos with no end remediable at all. But we are winning, you know? The Libs' lies have unraveled.
Their narrative is crumbling. Their power is totally gone at the moment.
That's why the Daily Wire is here, to cut through the noise and bring you the facts that others won't. Uncensored, ad-free daily shows, investigative journalism, live chats with our producers, breaking news first, no filter, no nonsense.
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My favorite comment yesterday is from the Drummer's Workshop, Norm's Music. He says, it's amazing how many times I picked the Drummer's Workshop, Norm's Music.
I'm not even at his name says today on the Michael Knowles show Cory Booker's speech explained in 25 hours oh yeah that would have been a good one oh man I totally should have okay so we were supposed to have a very full panel today a panel where I was going to be joined by a Protestant Pastor Darren Tyler where I was going to be joined by a Protestant, Pastor Darren Tyler, where I was going to be joined by a fellow mackerel-snapping papist, Father Gerald Murray, and where I was going to be joined, once again, by a progressive pastor, Brandon Robertson, pastor of Sunnyside Reform Church in New York City. And the conservative Protestant, his tech didn't work.
And my fellow Catholic, Father Murray, his tech didn't work. And I don't know if this is a machination of the devil or if this is all proper within providence or, well, you know, all things work ultimately towards God's end, at least passive, if not active will.

I am joined, and I'm very happy to be joined by Pastor Brandon Robertson, pastor of Sunnyside

Reform Church in New York City, to discuss the question that we were going to talk about off the

top, because President Trump is defunding Planned Parenthood, the pro-lifers are on the move.

Is abortion biblical? Can Christians support abortion? Pastor Robertson, Brandon, thank you so much for coming on the show again. It's so good to be here, and I'm grateful in God's sovereignty that it's me and you having a good conversation.
It's wonderful to have you. We're going to, just for those who are watching now, we're going to chat for a few minutes, and then for know, for the hoi polloi who don't subscribe to the Daily Wire, they're going to have to go over to dailywire.com to finish the conversation.
Defunding Planned Parenthood is nothing new. Republicans have tried to do this a number of times.
President Trump, despite his sometimes ambiguous statements on abortion, has been the most pro-life president we've ever had. He appointed the justices who overruled Roe v.
Wade. He's the first sitting president to show up to the March for Life.
He is going to defund Planned Parenthood. So I think his pro-life bona fides are pretty good.
Many Christians, most Christians, it seems to me, are celebrating that. You are not because you think that a Christian can support abortion.
I do think Christians can support abortion, but I do want to say also that it is just concerning the way Trump is going about defunding Planned Parenthood this broad use of executive power I think should be concerning to anybody who cares about democracy because especially for your side what happens when liberals get in and use the same executive powers to go after Planned Parenthood but no Brandon on that point, were you concerned when Mr. Obama

said, forget about the legislature, I've got a pen

and a phone.

Look, I didn't like that at the time, but

your point on the hypothetical future use of power

by liberals, sure, that's bad, but I don't need

to worry about the hypothetical because they're already doing it.

So from my perspective, at least, I think, look,

would I like this stuff codified in law? Yes.

But I'll take it. However Trump can do it.

I'm in. I'm all for

executive defunding of Planned Parenthood.

But the way he's doing it is so interesting

Thank you. I like this stuff codified in law, yes, but I'll take it.
However Trump can do it, I'm in. I'm all for executive defunding of Planned Parenthood.
But the way he's doing it is so interesting. He's defunding nine Planned Parenthoods from a 55-year-old program because they support DEI and supposedly stand for immigration.
It's a very backwards way to try to defund some Planned Parenthoods and not all of them. And it's just bizarre from where I sit from a political standpoint.
Well, sometimes I think, you know, President Trump is wise as a serpent, innocent as a dove. He certainly aspires to that.
And I think he achieves it quite frequently. And so anyway, anyway, if you could defund Planned Parenthood because the Planned Parenthood lunch kitchen failed the health inspection because they had one mouse in there.
I'm all for it. You know, obviously, the real reason to defund it is because they're killing babies.
But beyond that, however you got to do it, if it's because there's a crack in their roof and, you know, it's not safe to inhabit, fine by me. What is the argument? I mean, what is the basic argument? You know, I'm a macro-snapping papist, as I've mentioned once or twice, even in this very segment.
And the Catholic Church has been consistent for 2,000 years that abortion is not to be permitted, going back to the didache, going back to the earliest catechism that we have. Well, to that point, I actually, I mean, my position, I would say, actually leans on a lot of some of the early Catholic saints and theologians.
You know this argument. There has been a large degree of diversity in Christian theology about when exactly life begins.
You have Augustine and Thomas Aquinas having this belief that sometime after conception, and there's varying degrees of dates and times when that happens, that they believe life actually begins. And I do think, to be very honest, that that is a question that's beyond all of our pay grade, including the Magisterium of the Catholic Church's pay grade, to actually know the precise moment of when life begins.
But it does seem to me, from where I sit, understanding the science and with my theological perspective, that life does not begin at conception. Conception is a potential life and that there are a number of reasons that a woman might need to have an abortion and I don't think that should be outlawed or illegal.
And I think most Christians in the modern era have agreed with that. In fact, you'll know Christianity Today back in the 1960s published a whole entire articles that was pro-choice and advocating for abortion.
So it's a relatively recent move that we've seen conservative Christianity really hamper down and say that abortion is this mortal sin that we must all avoid. Well, it's certainly true on the Protestant side.
And so, you know, worth pointing out here for the, you know, we have our own liberals in the Catholic Church too, and we call them Jesuits. But, you know, even they, even the liberals in the Catholic Church tend to be ardently pro-life.
I mean, some of the most, I think of one Jesuit in particular, Father James Martin, who's- My good friend. Exactly.
I'm not surprised to hear that. But even he is ardently pro-life.
Christianity Today is a Protestant magazine. And I like that the evangelicals kind of came over on the pro-life side.
To your point on Thomas Aquinas, for instance, because this is a great observation

that St. Thomas Aquinas, it's a little unclear, especially if you're not totally immersed in his

thought, does Thomas Aquinas endorse abortion? Because he says that at a certain point, you have the ensoulment of the baby, maybe around quickening or something. The reason for that, however, is based on a faulty understanding of how gestation works.
And it's no knock on St. Thomas Aquinas.
He didn't have sonograms at the time. But the belief coming from Aristotle's understanding of biology was that the only active principle in conception was the sperm, and that the sperm acted on the blood of the woman.
So, there was no conception really of an egg, that the sperm was acting on the blood, and it was in a vegetative soul for some period of time until quickening, say, until you could feel the baby. And now, not because of any theological developments, but because we have sonograms and things like that, and because we have modern genetics, and because we have microscopes and things, we can actually see that that's not when life begins, that the new human person with the full independent genome and the principles of life, growth and metabolism and all the rest of it, they all begin at conception.
Conception meaning the very beginning. So, vanquishing the St.
Thomas Aquinas part, you say that there are moments that women might need an abortion and that in Christian charity, we have to accept that. I want you to explain that to me.
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A single heartbeat can echo

across generations. But I want you to do it in the membrum segmentum and get all the hoi polloi out

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