Ep. 1802 - I'm Officially The First Podcaster To Attend A Cabinet Meeting

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Speaker 2 I am at the White House, and it has been an historic day. It's been historic on two levels.

Speaker 2 One, I have learned and I'm deeply honored to learn that I am the first podcaster ever invited to attend a cabinet meeting.

Speaker 2 So, we'll get into that because of the second historic fact of the day: namely, that it was the longest cabinet meeting in the history of the presidency. I'm Michael Knowles.

Speaker 2 This is the Michael Knowles Show.

Speaker 2 Welcome back to the show.

Speaker 2 I have so much to tell you. I'm here at the White House.
Now,

Speaker 2 I can sort of say I'm in the Oval Office right now. I'm not in the real Oval Office, but I'm in the fake Oval Office that they built for Joe Biden.

Speaker 2 They've taken down some of the different background now. But this is it.
This was the fake Joe Biden Oval Office.

Speaker 2 So I'm at least as much the President of the United States as Joe Biden was, which I suppose is sort of damning with faint praise. We will get to everything the President talked to.

Speaker 2 He talked about everything from war to Taylor Swift and Travis Kelsey. That's probably the biggest news, frankly.
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Speaker 2 Where to begin? Where to begin? All anyone wants to talk about is Taylor Swift and Travis Kelsey. And the President weighed in on that as well.

Speaker 2 But we should get to slightly weightier matters first, because as I was flying out to D.C.,

Speaker 2 the president was making a lot of waves, in part over

Speaker 2 his decision now to accept 600,000 students from China.

Speaker 2 So do you remember back in May, the Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who I was going to interview, but then this cabinet meeting went on for about four hours and he had other things that he had to do.

Speaker 2 Back in May, the Secretary of State came out and he said that the United States was going to start revoking visas for Chinese students. We just take too many Chinese students in,

Speaker 2 we're going to get rid of it.

Speaker 2 This is going to be part of a broader immigration restriction policy and also not a decoupling from China, but getting a little bit more intentional about our relationship with China.

Speaker 2 Anyway, fast forward to two days ago, and the president comes out and sends Howard Luttnick out, his commerce secretary, onto Cable News, to say that the U.S.

Speaker 2 is going to take 600,000 Chinese students. When asked about the flip at the cabinet meeting, here's what the President had to say.

Speaker 6 Yesterday, you said you want to allow 600,000 Chinese students to study in the United States. Could you and the Secretary clarify what is the policy on Chinese students in the United States?

Speaker 7 Well, we think we're, you know, look, we're getting along very well with China.

Speaker 7 And I'm getting along very well with President Xi.

Speaker 7 I think it's very insulting to say students can't come here because they'll go out and they'll start building schools and they'll be able to survive it. But I like that their students come here.

Speaker 7 I like that other country's students come here. And you know what would happen if they didn't? Our college system would go to hell very quickly.
You'd have, and it wouldn't be the top colleges.

Speaker 7 It would be colleges that struggle on the bottom. And you take out 300,000 or 600,000 students out of the system.

Speaker 7 I like having, and I told this to President Xi, that we're honored to have their students here. Now, with that, we check and we're careful and we see who's there and Marco wants that.

Speaker 7 We spoke, we're in the same position, but we have a tremendous college system, the best in the world. Nobody even close.
That's why China sends them here.

Speaker 2 From the beginning,

Speaker 2 I have assumed that most everything Trump says is part of a negotiation.

Speaker 2 Obviously, what the Chinese students' issue is about is about a trade deal with China.

Speaker 2 It's the whole thing. That's what a lot of the tariffs are about.
That's what a lot of America now starting to kickstart some manufacturing again is about. That's what the

Speaker 2 student issue is about. That's what the Confucius Institutes are about.

Speaker 2 It's all kind of a negotiation. This is why when President Trump says things, you know, he'll say, I'm going to end the war on day one or something.
I don't take that literally.

Speaker 2 He obviously doesn't mean that literally. He's speaking like a New Yorker and he's speaking like a wheeler and dealer and everything's a negotiation.

Speaker 2 And this really is difficult for ideologues to understand.

Speaker 2 Because for ideologues and for people who view politics in a strictly academic abstract way, they just think it's all about five bullet points on the back of a napkin when everything is this act of negotiation.

Speaker 2 This is why, and actually this is another topic Trump touched on,

Speaker 2 when it comes to the war in Ukraine, Ukraine, the libs and the squishes in the Republican Party are constantly going off about how Trump is too nice to Putin.

Speaker 2 And Trump actually, at the cabinet meeting, he said, look, I have a very good relationship with President Putin. In fact, here he is describing just that.

Speaker 7 I had a very good relationship with President Putin. Very, very good.
That's a positive thing again.

Speaker 7 And I think I'm probably the only... Steve Witkoff would tell you I'm the only one that can solve it.
I don't know.

Speaker 7 You told me that a few times, unless he was saying that just to build up my ego, but it's not really. I have no ego when it comes to this stuff.
I just want to see it so

Speaker 7 thousands of young people, mostly young people, are dying every single week.

Speaker 7 If I can save that by doing sanctions or by just being me or by using a very strong tariff system that's very costly to Russia or Ukraine or whoever we have, you know, but I stopped seven wars.

Speaker 2 George W. Bush tried to have a good relationship with Putin.
It didn't work. Then he gets really, really tough.
And where did really, really tough, harsh rhetoric get us?

Speaker 2 Putin invaded Georgia. Then Barack Obama, he was real.
Well, he tried to be nice.

Speaker 2 He tried to do this stupid Russian reset where Hillary Clinton shows up to the foreign minister of Russia and it misspells the word reset in Russian that he couldn't fact check or spell check one word.

Speaker 2 And that didn't work. So then you have Barack Obama talking real tough.
He's a real tough talker. And where did that get us? That got us an invasion of Crimea.

Speaker 2 And then Trump comes in, being accused of being a KJB Russian stooge because of a completely fictitious narrative cooked up between the Democrats and Obama's DOJ. And what does Trump do?

Speaker 2 He speaks a little softer.

Speaker 2 He does what Teddy Roosevelt says. He speaks a little more softly and carries a big stick.

Speaker 2 And he

Speaker 2 tries to have a good relationship with Putin. And you know what happens? Putin does not further invade a country.
Then Biden comes in. Biden's a tough talker.
And Putin goes all the way into Ukraine.

Speaker 2 So on the Ukraine-Russia war, he says, look, I have a pretty good relationship with Putin. And then he threatens him.

Speaker 2 He says, if Putin doesn't give us a deal,

Speaker 2 then

Speaker 2 it's going to be really, really tough. And here is President Trump clarifying what toughness means.

Speaker 7 I'm talking about economic, because when I can get into a world war, I'll tell you what. In my opinion, if I didn't win this race, Ukraine could have ended up in a world war.

Speaker 7 We're not going to end up in a world war anymore, but it would have ended up possibly in a world war. That would have been a, that would have been a, they were ready to trot.

Speaker 2 That was in response to a question,

Speaker 2 which

Speaker 2 was a tough question, and maybe a question that misunderstood the situation. Said, you told us that we were going to get a ceasefire.

Speaker 2 as a precondition of further meetings, and we didn't get the ceasefire. We haven't had this.
So where does it all stand?

Speaker 2 When Trump says, I demand a ceasefire, well, actually, sorry, Trump himself says this when he explains what everybody's doing right now, in this case, specifically Vladimir Putin, when he says we're not going to get a deal.

Speaker 7 Everybody's posturing. It's all bullshit.
Okay? Everybody's posturing.

Speaker 2 I love this because

Speaker 2 I'll wrap up the point on war here.

Speaker 2 All the abstract ideologues, all the neocons, the liberal imperialists, the radical progressives, all these ideologues, they,

Speaker 2 I don't know, they're like automatons. They're like robots.
They think that you live like a white paper coming out of a think tank.

Speaker 2 Trump realizes that in geopolitics and statecraft and foreign policy, you have an end that you're trying to get to.

Speaker 2 And if you have an end that you're trying to get to and you're not transgressing the moral order,

Speaker 2 then everything else is a negotiation. Everything else is up not to ideology, but to prudence.
Everything else, you're just trying to get to the end. And so for Trump, the end is peace.

Speaker 2 He says he wants peace. He talked extensively in what felt quite sincere, quite sincere way, about the 7,000 guys who are dying every day.
And he says, you know, you go out,

Speaker 2 you say mom and dad say goodbye to their son. You know, son goes off to war one week later, he's zapped by a drone, totally new form of warfare.
We can't let that go on. That's not.

Speaker 2 That's not good. He didn't quite say blessed are the peacemakers, but that's what he was getting at.

Speaker 2 This is how Trump approaches all of the issues. It's how he approaches Chinese students and Chinese trade and European trade and the war in Ukraine and the war in Gaza.

Speaker 2 He says, we're trying to wrap it up really soon. This is another one.
A reporter tried to get him on, you said you were going to wrap it up immediately.

Speaker 2 He said, there's no immediately, there's no totally final conclusion to this conflict. It's been going on for thousands of years.

Speaker 2 But we're just going to try to get the best solution for now that we possibly can. And then

Speaker 2 President Trump was asked about what really matters. You know, the question that was actually on everybody's mind.
And that, of course, is

Speaker 2 the engagement between Taylor Swift and Travis Kelsey. We'll get to that in one moment.
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Speaker 2 Most important news broke.

Speaker 2 Even more pop culture than the question that I was trying to ask.

Speaker 2 I was a little miffed. I had a good question.

Speaker 2 But I'm not one of these scrum reporters. I'm a chivalrous guy.
If a lady is speaking, I don't want to shout over her.

Speaker 2 But anyway, my question I was going to ask President Trump was, and who knows, maybe the White House can answer this separately. I was going to say, look, Mr.

Speaker 2 President, you've invested in Intel to build a sovereign wealth fund, and you said you're going to invest in more companies. When are you going to acquire Cracker Barrel? That was what I want to know.

Speaker 2 We need to federalize Cracker Barrel, as I said on the show last week. But there was actually a more meme-y pop culture development while we were in this cabinet meeting.

Speaker 2 And it was finally, at long last, the engagement of Taylor Swift and Travis Kelsey. Here is what President Trump had to say.

Speaker 7 Well, I wish him a lot of luck.

Speaker 7 I think he's a great player. I think he's a great guy.
And I think that she's a terrific person. So I wish them a lot of luck.

Speaker 2 Never let it be said that the man is not disciplined. Trump is, how much has he said?

Speaker 2 Taylor's no longer hot. She's a Democrat.
She voted for Biden. She's dead to me.
I'm hot. She's not.

Speaker 2 But he said, no, we want to make peace. We want to bring people together.
We want to build these nice, strong coalitions. But he's up on it.

Speaker 2 You know, this reminds me of, I think it was Chris Rock was talking about Joan Rivers before Joan Rivers was murdered by the Obamas for revealing the truth about Michelle. I'm joking.
I'm joking.

Speaker 2 I'm joking. That was a joke.

Speaker 2 But

Speaker 2 she was making jokes about Michelle and Beyoncé and whatever. And Chris Rock said, he said, man, you know, Joan Rivers, a woman's like 80 years old, and she's so hip that she can make Beyonce jokes.

Speaker 2 She's so with it.

Speaker 2 That's what you see with Trump, because he's a showbiz

Speaker 2 icon.

Speaker 2 He already made the Cracker Barrel line. I think he posted on Truth Social or something.
He said, you know, Cracker Barrel must change the logo back. Bring back Uncle Herschel.

Speaker 2 Same thing with Taylor and Travis. Well, Cracker Barrel, which is all I really want to talk about today anyway, they've finally responded.

Speaker 2 They've finally responded and I, in my official capacity, this feels very official given where I am right now, but this is in my official capacity as the host of the Michael Knowles Show, I am now calling for a full fatwa.

Speaker 2 on Cracker Barrel. I was previously, I said maybe we can forgive them.

Speaker 2 They fire the glasses lady and they'll go back to Uncle Herschel and they'll bring back the cracker and the barrel and it'll be nice and we can go have our chicken and dumplings and play the good old peg game.

Speaker 2 No,

Speaker 2 Cracker Barrel has not learned its lesson. Cracker Barrel has doubled down.
This is their promise to you.

Speaker 2 In the oh, this, I don't even want to read it. This reads just like the

Speaker 2 40-something glasses wearing, saccharin liberal, probably cold as ice HR lady. Okay, this is...

Speaker 2 If the last few days have shown us anything, it's how deeply people care about Cracker Barrel. We're truly grateful for your heartfelt voices.

Speaker 2 Can you just hear the sarcasm dripping off the sheer contempt for the customer base, for all of us?

Speaker 2 This is a little tangential. I was in the airport.
I was in Nashville Airport two days ago, flying out to D.C.

Speaker 2 And a nice couple of a certain age stopped me and said, well, hello, you know, in the southern, in Tennessee and Alabama. We were just at Cracker Barrel.
Really? Yeah,

Speaker 2 they changed the menu. They're changing

Speaker 2 sheer contempt for these people.

Speaker 2 Yeah. Oh, wow.
You really care?

Speaker 2 Thanks. Thanks for showing how much you care.
Yeah. Now shut up.

Speaker 2 Shut up. We're going to turn this into a Panera.
We're going to take your beloved cultural institution and make it a hospital cafeteria. We are.
But thank you. Thanks for thanks.
They go on.

Speaker 2 I'm never going to get through this at this right. They go on.
You've also shown us that we, sorry.

Speaker 2 You've also shown us that we could have done a better job sharing who we are and who we'll always be.

Speaker 2 What has not changed and what will never change are the values this company was built when Cracker Barrel first opened in 1969. Blah, blah, blah.

Speaker 2 The things people love about our stores aren't going anywhere, rocking chairs, a warm foot blah blah blah

Speaker 2 we love seeing how much you care about our our old-timer that's the cracker the cracker in the barrel and we love them too uncle herschel will still be on the menu welcome back uncle herschel's favorite breakfast bladder and on our road signs and he's not going anywhere he's family haha we've heard you

Speaker 2 shut up now

Speaker 2 while our logo and remodels

Speaker 2 may be making headlines, our bigger focus is still right where it belongs in the kitchen and on your plate, serving generous portions of food you like.

Speaker 2 Okay, again, first of all, I made this point yesterday, and I'm not the only one. You don't go to Cracker Barrel for the food.
I like the food.

Speaker 2 I think the food is pretty good at Cracker Barrel, but it's not, you know, it's not going to get a Michelin star. Okay, it's not, there are better places, mom and pop places, delis, diners.

Speaker 2 It's not for the food. You're going there because it hasn't changed.

Speaker 2 It went, look, they say it right there. When was Cracker Barrel founded? 1969.
1969, after the summer of love,

Speaker 2 radical cultural revolution going on. Cracker Barrel is quite intentionally and overtly founded to say no to that, to be countercultural, to say, you're in this period that fetishizes change.

Speaker 2 We're going to remain frozen in time. You want to take a trip back in time to the old country store where you can buy your kids a Tootsie Roll Pop and play the peg game?

Speaker 2 You come down to us and we're going to have the wood tables and the rocking chairs.

Speaker 2 And then this clueless woman comes in and says, Yeah,

Speaker 2 you know what this is missing? Sterility. You know what this thing, where your only product is not changing.
Your only valuable product is not changing. You say, we're just going to change now.

Speaker 2 Totally misses the point.

Speaker 2 They go on.

Speaker 2 We want to be sure that Cracker Barrel is here for the next generation of families. At the end of the day, our promise is simple.
You always find comfort here.

Speaker 2 Thank you for caring so much and come see for yourself. The country hospitality, love Cracker Barrel.

Speaker 2 No.

Speaker 2 No. The values this company was built on will never change.
They did.

Speaker 2 You don't, Cracker Barrel lady, you don't understand what this

Speaker 2 country was built on. I'm confusing it because the reason I care so much about Cracker Barrel is because what is happening with this private company is being mirrored in the political space.

Speaker 2 I think you see this a lot with President Trump's flag-burning, anti-flag-burning executive order.

Speaker 2 A big reason that people voted for President Trump is because there have been a lot of changes recently and we don't like them. That's it.

Speaker 2 And then we are mocked and derided by the so-called progressives because we don't like their changes. We don't like that they've castrated our children.

Speaker 2 We don't like that they've diminished the strength of our military. We don't like that they've abolished our police departments.
We don't like that they've opened our borders.

Speaker 2 We don't like that stuff. We don't like that they've degraded our curricula.

Speaker 2 We don't like that they've made our kids dumb. We don't like that they're flooding our country with poison that's killing people.

Speaker 2 Yeah, there are a lot of changes and we don't like it. And we want a guy to come back and undo those changes and make our country great again.
That's what it's about.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 the kind of person that that requires

Speaker 2 is

Speaker 2 not an ideologue, is not a radical, is not a revolutionary. It's someone like Trump.
Who was I talking to? I was talking to a reporter

Speaker 2 earlier today

Speaker 2 over coffee. And I said, you know, people call Trump a populist or a thisist or a thatist.

Speaker 2 He really is in many ways a traditionalist, in the vein of Edmund Burke. He doesn't wear a tweed.
He doesn't wear bow ties. He doesn't put on a kind of foppish accent.
But

Speaker 2 he has a gut-level traditionalism.

Speaker 2 He operates on prejudice. And that's going to be clipped and taken out of context, but whatever.
Who cares? I don't know, that's fine. Prejudice in the good sense of the word.

Speaker 2 Not Not unjust prejudice, not prejudice that expresses some irrational animosity toward groups of people.

Speaker 2 The prejudice that is just the prejudgments that we all operate on all day long, that you can't get out of bed without.

Speaker 2 I can't pour a cup of coffee without prejudice.

Speaker 2 I have to, it's not like I'm chemically testing every pot of coffee I have. It's not like I'm measuring out every little bean.
I just kind of go with it. I kind of go with it.
I do things because

Speaker 2 they've worked well before.

Speaker 2 That's what Russell Kirk means. That's what Edmund Burke means.
That's what a kind of conservatism is.

Speaker 2 The opposite of that is rationalism and politics, where you try to scrutinize and subject every single aspect of politics to the most abstract

Speaker 2 examination. You don't want that.

Speaker 2 We love the flag.

Speaker 2 You shouldn't burn the flag. It should be okay if people want to ban burning the flag.

Speaker 2 This doesn't violate the First Amendment.

Speaker 2 We had the opportunity to ban flag burning for all of our nation's history until 1989, and we did ban burning the flag at various times in 48 out of 50 states and with two federal laws for over 100 years.

Speaker 2 It's not a problem. There's nothing wrong with that.
And we went in yesterday onto all of the reasons why it's perfectly fine to burn a flag.

Speaker 2 But that's the kind of conservatism that we're getting back to. Kind of conservatism where we say, yeah, we do stuff because it's worked really well in the past.

Speaker 2 And it's not dispositive that if you've done something for 5,000 years that it's going to work into the future, but it's a pretty good guess. And innovation for innovation's sake isn't any good.

Speaker 2 And you couple that paradoxically with wanting to pursue innovation in a

Speaker 2 circumscribed way, in a way that is intentional and likely to benefit us, which is why President Trump for much of the cabinet meeting yesterday focused on investments in AI, which is why when I sat down with the Treasury Secretary Scott Besson, he focused on investments in AI.

Speaker 2 This is why the Intel acquisition

Speaker 2 was obviously geared toward technology, because these are ways that America can come to dominate. Now,

Speaker 2 there's much, much more I have to tell you,

Speaker 2 because while we're all celebrating Travis and Taylor finally tying the knot, I think she's 35, a lady never tells, but these days...

Speaker 2 35, you're like a child bride. By historic standards, it's not that young.
But by today's standard, I don't know. It's like one of these Middle Eastern countries where you get married off at 12.

Speaker 2 So congratulations to them. But here's the wrinkle.
New study has come out.

Speaker 2 Men with high status jobs are more likely to cheat.

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Speaker 2 How does sweet little Elisa avoid it? Is being a cigar salesman a high-status job? I don't know. We'll get to all of that momentarily first.
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Speaker 2 Men... with high status jobs are more likely to cheat.
Here are the three takeaways from this study. I can link to it if you want to read more.

Speaker 2 In the 1990s and 2000s, about one in five ever married men, so it includes divorcees,

Speaker 2 reported engaging in extramarital sex.

Speaker 2 Now, I think this also, I think that excludes premarital sex. I think you have to have been married for this to count.
So one in five guys who've gotten married have cheated on their wives.

Speaker 2 That share fell to 17%.

Speaker 2 and has continued to drop in recent years. So that's good.
Still a pretty high number, though.

Speaker 2 20% and 17% and then it's fallen a little bit, but that's bad.

Speaker 2 Second part, men in high prestige occupations, CEOs, physicians, and surgeons, for example, are more likely than others to have cheated on their spouse.

Speaker 2 This is the part that might surprise some people because they say, well, no, cheating on your spouse,

Speaker 2 that's low-class behavior. That's not what the really fancy guys would do.
Or some people might say, well, the really fancy guys, you know, the CEOs and the surgeons and stuff,

Speaker 2 they have so much to lose. They have so much to lose.
Why would they risk it all?

Speaker 2 Subject themselves to compromise, potentially lose their whole family, just to have a fling. Why would they do it? I see a guy who doesn't have anything to lose, but why a guy who has a lot to lose?

Speaker 2 Finally,

Speaker 2 among ever married, ever, even if you're divorced now, prime age adults who have cheated on a spouse,

Speaker 2 about half are currently divorced or separated.

Speaker 2 That's really scary. That's really, really scary.
Because now what that puts together is a warning.

Speaker 2 If you are married, if you're planning to get married, and you haven't cheated on your spouse yet, you probably shouldn't. Because if you cheat on your spouse, you have a 50-50 shot of divorcing.

Speaker 2 And if you divorce, especially if you have kids, you're going to seriously damage your life. No one's ever passed redemption, but you're going to seriously, seriously damage your life.

Speaker 2 And having that little fling

Speaker 2 is going to

Speaker 2 greatly increase the odds that you get divorced and have a terrible life.

Speaker 2 One in five men ever and the guys in the high prestige positions are more likely to do it.

Speaker 2 This

Speaker 2 really doesn't surprise me at all. And it doesn't surprise me because

Speaker 2 the imagination of man's heart is evil from his youth. That's one reason why it doesn't surprise me.
And two, because

Speaker 2 As you start to enjoy more luxury, as you start to feel a little more power, as you start to,

Speaker 2 actually, as you start to feel stresses in your jobs, but

Speaker 2 as you start to rise in prominence and as you're able to make demands,

Speaker 2 you begin to put yourself in the position of God. That's really what you do.

Speaker 2 You begin to say, well, look, I no longer have to wait online. for the customer service line because I'm a fancy person.
I have the really high status at the company, so I can get right through.

Speaker 2 I don't have to inconvenience inconvenience myself for that. I don't have to make appointments anymore.
I have secretaries and assistants to do that for me. I don't have to drive myself.

Speaker 2 I get driven around in a limo or an SUV. I don't have to do that.

Speaker 2 Why should I have to respect the limits that are imposed by my marriage? It's very

Speaker 2 dangerous, very, very tempting.

Speaker 2 It's icarus. It's just the closer you get to the sun, the more likely you are that your wings are going to melt and you're going to fall to the ground.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 final point on this.

Speaker 2 It's Drew Clavin's favorite joke. It's the orange for a head joke.
The short version of it is a guy walks into a bar, has an orange for a head, says, how did it happen?

Speaker 2 I said, well, I found a genie's lamp. I rubbed it.
I said, I got three wishes. I said, no way.
Okay, I want a million dollars. Knock on my door.
A guy shows up, check for a million dollars.

Speaker 2 Second wish, I want every Playboy Playmate of the Year. Knock, knock, knock, 12 half-naked women walk into my room.
Wow.

Speaker 2 Okay, what happened next? Well, this is the part that is hard to explain. I asked to have an orange for a head.
The appetite that people have for self-destruction,

Speaker 2 the

Speaker 2 ability to resist that requires an abundance of grace, and more and more grace, actually, the further along you get.

Speaker 2 Don't let it happen to you. A little bit of a warning sign, but it's a

Speaker 2 liberalism.

Speaker 2 If you are a political liberal, or an anthropological liberal, this study doesn't make any sense to you because you think that the more advanced you become, the more a master of yourself you become, and the harder it is to sin and the easier it is to do good.

Speaker 2 If you're a Christian, if you understand that human nature has fallen,

Speaker 2 you recognize that actually the further along you get,

Speaker 2 in certain ways you're more in control of yourself, but sin is crouching in the corner waiting to devour you. You recognize that actually the temptations only get worse.

Speaker 2 Speaking of men seeking status, this brings me to a story I wanted to cover for a week. And this is a really rough one.

Speaker 2 It's being reported in The Guardian that men are surgically lengthening their legs.

Speaker 2 Have you heard about this? Have you seen this on TikTok? I think I saw it on Instagram or something like that.

Speaker 2 Men are flying to other countries with fewer medical regulations, and they are having doctors break their legs and then pull their bones apart and then insert metal into their legs to and then hope that the bone will grow back so that they can go from being 5'5 to 5'7 or something like that.

Speaker 2 Well, it's actually, it's worse. It's also so that they can go from being 6'3 to 6'4.

Speaker 2 That's the key to this whole story.

Speaker 2 So because you figure it's just these short guys and it's tough out there for the short kings sometimes I mean listen if I'm not like the tallest guy in the world either.

Speaker 2 I'm a fairly moderately sized person not quite Napoleon, but I'm not LeBron James either And

Speaker 2 if you're below average height, if you're significantly below average height, it probably is tough for you. I'm not going to sugarcoat it.
I'm not going to deny it.

Speaker 2 It's probably, it is a little tricky to go dating.

Speaker 2 Is it worth permanently disabling yourself and having both of your legs broken?

Speaker 2 No, I wouldn't say it is. And the evidence that this is disordered is it's not just the shorties that are doing it.
It's guys who are over six feet. So just a little touch from this article.

Speaker 2 Frank.

Speaker 2 Frank is determined to become taller than Amelia. Amelia is 5'5 ⁇ .
By gaining 9 centimeters, just, I don't know, it's a British thing, so they do centimeters, so try to convert.

Speaker 2 Just above the, so he wants to gain 9 centimeters, just above the 8.5 centimeters doctor told him, is the maximum his muscles and tendons can safely handle. That would make him 5'9.

Speaker 2 5'9. Not like the biggest guy in the world, but...

Speaker 2 That's probably about average height, a little below. His dream is simple.
Yeah, okay, it is average height, being average height.

Speaker 2 Speak with any patient at the Wannabe Taller clinic in Istanbul, where Frank chose to undergo leg lengthening, and it becomes clear that shortness is relative.

Speaker 2 Men over six feet have had the procedure. One tells me he needed surgery to correct his bow legs and decided to add some height at the same time.

Speaker 2 Over six feet, he's going to break his legs. to

Speaker 2 become 6'2 or something like that. This is just anorexia for men.
Well, men can be anorexic too, but this is particularly anorexia for men. And it reminds us of

Speaker 2 maybe the most forgotten of the virtues, and that is

Speaker 2 to cultivate a spirit of resignation. This

Speaker 2 modernity and liberalism hate, a spirit of resignation.

Speaker 2 The spirit that says, you know,

Speaker 2 I strive for things, I have ambition, I want want to achieve.

Speaker 2 But

Speaker 2 if it doesn't work out,

Speaker 2 so be it.

Speaker 2 If it doesn't work out, I accept my lot in life. I'm not going to be the tallest guy.
I'm not going to be the basketball player. I'm not.

Speaker 2 That kind of a spirit is very important. And it actually

Speaker 2 gets to something that the president mentioned in the cabinet meeting, which is he had this great line. These lines, they just kind of come out sometimes.
He says,

Speaker 2 everybody has his place.

Speaker 2 Everybody has his place. Not everyone is going to be.

Speaker 2 It might have been related to,

Speaker 2 he was talking about Bobby Kennedy and Pete Hegseth's challenge where they do a bunch of push-ups and they do a bunch of pull-ups or I don't know. More exercise than I've ever done in my entire life.

Speaker 2 And I think Scott Turner, the HUD Secretary, is currently winning it. He's a former professional athlete, so it kind of makes sense.
But he was going off.

Speaker 2 Oh, no, you know what? Now I remember what it was about. It was when he was talking about war, Ukraine and Russia.
And he said, you know, Ukraine, they got to come to the table too because

Speaker 2 you're not going to win a war against a country 15 times your size. It's not going to happen.
That's no knock on you, but you're Ukraine. And Russia is 15 times your size.
And you're not going to,

Speaker 2 if I walked up to Mike Tyson, even today, Mike Tyson's like 100 years old. If I walked up to Mike Tyson today and I poked him, he could kill me.

Speaker 2 He could rip my head off and eat it, like he ate a Vander Holyfield's ear. He could do that.
He's bigger and stronger than me,

Speaker 2 even today.

Speaker 2 And he said, you got to,

Speaker 2 he goes, look, I have limits too. I can't do everything either.
This is Trump. You know, it's that kind of humility where he said, I want to end this war because I want to go to heaven.

Speaker 2 You know, I feel right now, I don't think I'm that high on the list. I think I'm low on the totem pole.
I want to, I want to go to heaven.

Speaker 2 It expresses a deep humility.

Speaker 2 Humility is the beginning of wisdom. You know, fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.
You have to accept limits. Limits are the one thing that liberalism will not tolerate.

Speaker 2 But people are transforming out of liberalism toward more traditional and religious points of view, which we'll get to in one second, because a major actor is converting.

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Speaker 2 My favorite comment yesterday is from Ross Niemer3142.

Speaker 2 It says, Michael's Snoop Dogg impression sounds like his Ronald Reagan impression. Wow.

Speaker 2 You and I, you and Dizzle, have a rendezvous with Destin Dizzle.

Speaker 2 You dig, hey, hey, hey,

Speaker 2 smoke weed every, eat jelly beans every day. Yeah, maybe I didn't notice that before.
That's shocking. Wow.
They're both great showmen. Both had a lot to say about politics.

Speaker 2 Okay, well, speaking of show business,

Speaker 2 an actor is becoming Catholic.

Speaker 2 Everybody's becoming Catholic. Have you noticed everybody's becoming Catholic? I did it slightly before it was cool.

Speaker 2 I feel that I was, I mean, I was cradle Catholic, but I was an atheist for 10 years, and I reverted about a dozen years ago.

Speaker 2 I was kind of in this first wave. Now, everybody, everybody in their grandma is converting to Catholicism, including this guy, Michael Iskander,

Speaker 2 is in the Amazon show House of David. He plays King David.
It's a prime series.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 I saw it reported that one of the lines that jarred this was

Speaker 2 the line from 2 Samuel 6, 9.

Speaker 2 It's a lovely parallel. And David was afraid of the Lord that day, and he said, how can the Ark of the Lord come to me?

Speaker 2 This is sometimes non-Catholics, they don't like that Catholics really like Mary.

Speaker 2 And I don't know why. I mean,

Speaker 2 you're nice to your friend's mother, all right, like Beth.

Speaker 2 You go to like Johnny's house and Beth is there and you're not mean to her. You don't hit Beth.
You don't disrespect Beth. You're nice to her.

Speaker 2 How much more so should you be nice to the mother of our Lord and venerate her and honor her? Anyway, it's a tangent.

Speaker 2 This is one of these parallels in Scripture because the Old Testament is figurative. It's a figure of the New Testament.

Speaker 2 So there's a carnal reality to it, but it's also figurative and it's fulfilled in Christ.

Speaker 2 So in 2 Samuel, you read, And David was afraid of the Lord that day, and he said, How can the ark of the Lord come to me?

Speaker 2 This is paid off in Luke 1.43,

Speaker 2 where Elizabeth says, and Mary, during the visitation, Mary goes to visit, and John the Baptist dances in the womb when the Lord in the womb comes to him.

Speaker 2 And Elizabeth says, and why is this granted to me that the mother of my Lord should come to me? Because Mary

Speaker 2 is the new ark. She's the true ark

Speaker 2 of the new covenant, of Christ himself.

Speaker 2 So

Speaker 2 I don't know. I haven't spoken to this actor.
I don't know if that line in particular got him or if it was just a broader trend, but it's happening.

Speaker 2 The conversions keep on coming.

Speaker 2 You know, I'm in Washington, D.C. right now, and the conservative movement always kind of punched a little above its weight with Catholics and Orthodox Jews, conservative Jews.

Speaker 2 Relative to the country, it always,

Speaker 2 there are a lot of Protestants in it too, but the Protestants were relative, proportionally smaller in the conservative movement, you know, the think tanks and the government.

Speaker 2 Anyway, now they're all Catholic. The Protestants are becoming Catholic.
The Jews are becoming Catholic. There aren't that many Muslims to begin with, but maybe they would become Catholic.

Speaker 2 Hollywood's becoming...

Speaker 2 But this was predicted. You know, I'm not to beat a dead horse, but this was predicted by Tocqueville

Speaker 2 because of a paradox of democracy. Democracy inclines people to make themselves into gods.
Liberalism inclines people especially to make themselves into gods. And so to throw off all authority.

Speaker 2 In democracy, we say we're the people. We rule.
Vox popoli, vox dei. The voice of the people is the voice of God.

Speaker 2 It's not really true. There's a kind of a truth to it, but it's not literally the voice.
The voice of God is the voice of God.

Speaker 2 So on the one hand, they're inclined to throw off the shackles of authority.

Speaker 2 On the other hand, if they don't throw off all religion, if they don't become atheists, Tocqueville says they're going to become Catholic.

Speaker 2 And they're going to become Catholic because it's the most democratic of religions. Because if they don't throw off all authority, they're going to want to all be under the same religious system.

Speaker 2 They're going to want unity. They're going to want a single kind of religion.
And that's what Rome offers that the others don't. Expect more.

Speaker 2 Tocqueville was right about many things. He's right about this.

Speaker 2 Okay.

Speaker 2 Speaking of big transformations, before we go, it's kind of a sad story.

Speaker 2 Denmark is ending letter deliveries. Post Nord.

Speaker 2 If you want to get your letters to Denmark, send them now. Post-Nord announced that it will cease letter services at the end of this year.

Speaker 2 That will end 400 years of letter deliveries by this state-owned operation. A third of its workforce is going to be fired.
That's losing 2,200 positions.

Speaker 2 Though this Danish parcel service is now going to focus just on packages. So no more letters, just packages.

Speaker 2 Since the year 2000, the volume of letters that the business handles has declined by more than 90% from around $1.5 billion to around $110 million last year, continues to fall rapidly.

Speaker 2 So this is another thing that's going to happen.

Speaker 2 People don't send letters because they send emails and texts.

Speaker 2 Yet we saw a kind of a recoiling against that. You've seen for a quarter century now a moving of society toward ever more digital and virtual forms of engagement.

Speaker 2 This reaches its peak during 2020, 2021 because of two simultaneous phenomena. One was COVID, where you had to say goodbye to your granny from a hospital room through Zoom.

Speaker 2 You couldn't even go hug her. You couldn't go to Christmas.

Speaker 2 And two, transgenderism, which says that your true self has nothing to do with your body, that you can just live as some kind of avatar floating in outer space.

Speaker 2 And this bled over into ideologies and absurdities like transhumanism, uploading your body to the cloud, whatever, all that nonsense. Two things hit at the same time.

Speaker 2 People have recoiled against that tremendously. They hated the COVID restrictions.
They want to go back out. They want to see people in person.

Speaker 2 And they hated the crazy trans stuff, which is deader than disco. It's almost not worth speaking about anymore.
But

Speaker 2 you're not going to start sending letters, are you? You're still sending your emails, you're still sending your texts.

Speaker 2 You're not.

Speaker 2 You can't totally avoid technology. I am as conservative as it gets.
I am Mr. Conservative, okay?

Speaker 2 And yet, I don't write letters. And people write me letters, I don't respond.

Speaker 2 In order to conserve, you have to keep up with certain things. And what you want to preserve is the

Speaker 2 aspects aspects of life that are required for human flourishing, that are in

Speaker 2 coordination with your human nature, that

Speaker 2 help preserve your identity. But you don't need to preserve every single technology.

Speaker 2 And this is again where it seems to me, especially now having seen the man up close and listened to him speak about every issue for about four hours straight, I'm more convinced than ever that Trump is a kind of a traditionalist.

Speaker 2 Because out of the one hand of his mouth, he's saying, we're going to prosecute people for burning the the American flag, and we're going to make America great again.

Speaker 2 We're going to go back to the old ways.

Speaker 2 By golly, these cities used to be so great, and now they're bad, and we're going to make them great again.

Speaker 2 And then on the other hand, he's talking about all these investments in AI, including a First Lady initiative.

Speaker 2 a First Lady AI competition, and new investments in AI and the potential sovereign wealth fund that will look at strategic industries like AI and how we need to beat China in AI and how we need to be the world's leader in these things.

Speaker 2 Because there's no standing still. And maybe the best image I've heard of traditionalism comes from Chesterton, who taught

Speaker 2 two related images.

Speaker 2 One from Chesterton, one from Lewis, I think it is. And they both involve fence posts.

Speaker 2 One is Chesterton's fence, where he says, if you walk into the middle of a field, you see a fence, you have no idea why it's up, what it's doing, don't tear it down.

Speaker 2 Your impulse is going to be to tear it down, don't tear it down. First, you have to figure out why it's there.

Speaker 2 Only once you figure out why it's there, why it was put up in the first place, can you tear it it down.

Speaker 2 Second one is Lewis. I think it was Lewis.
Might have been Chesterton too, though. It's easy to confuse those guys.
It says,

Speaker 2 if you put up a white fence post and you just leave it there, you leave it alone, you're not leaving it as it is.

Speaker 2 You're leaving it to a torrent of change. And if you just leave it and don't fix it up every now and again, you're going to have a black fence post pretty soon.

Speaker 2 because the dirt and the wind and the muck and the gunk is going to age and the decay is going to age. You have to keep up on these things.
And that's a fine balance.

Speaker 2 And that balance is more an art than a science.

Speaker 2 The ideologues on the left and the right, the libertarians and the neoconservatives and the thisists and the thatists, they want everything to be a neat, fine clinical science that you can plug into an AI system and you won't even need politicians anymore.

Speaker 2 The traditionalists understand that politics really is much more of an art and it's about balancing different virtues. that not to be too Chesterton heavy today, but that, you know,

Speaker 2 heresies come about when you take virtues away from all the other virtues. You choose one to the exclusion of the others.
You have to balance these things, though.

Speaker 2 It's a fine balance.

Speaker 2 What you need really is an art of the deal, which is why, to the great shock and consternation of the political class in Washington, thus far, and now we're pretty much 10 years into this thing, the president, who everyone said was going to be just awful, has done a better job than any of them in my lifetime.

Speaker 2 Okay.

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Speaker 2 Total drag.

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Speaker 2 Well, that's a final message here from the White House. I'll be back in Nashville very, very shortly.
There's no member block. Secret Service won't let you in.

Speaker 2 So anyway, I'll see you back in the studio tomorrow. I'm Michael Knowles.
This is the Michael Knowles Show.

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