Ep. 1826 - The Government Shutdown And The Dumb Reasons EXPLAINED In 4 Mins

There's a simple way to keep all those teams that are making content from going off-brand.

Meet Adobe Express, the quick and easy app to create on-brand content.

Now everyone can make presentations, posts, videos, and flyers that follow design guidelines.

Brand kits with pre-approved assets and lockable templates make it easy.

Generative AI features powered by Firefly are safe for business, so people in marketing, HR, and sales can confidently create content on their own.

Learn more at adobe.com/slash express.

This This is Marshawn Lynch.

But on Prize Picks, being right can get you paid.

So I'm here to make sure you don't miss any of the action this football season.

With Prize Picks, it's good to be right.

With millions of members and billions of dollars awarded and winning, Prize Picks is the best place to put your takes to the test.

The app is really simple to use and available in 40 plus states, including California, Texas, and Georgia.

Just pick two or more players across any sport, pick more or less on their projections.

And if you're right, you can cash in.

With simple stats and fan-friendly policies, PrizePicks is the best place to make your picks.

Most importantly, they don't play about your paper.

All transactions on the apps are fast, safe, and secure.

Download the PrizePicks app today and use code Spotify to get $50 in lineups after you play your first $5 lineup.

That's code Spotify to get $50 in lineups after you play your first $5 lineup.

PrizePicks, it's good to be right.

Must be present in certain states.

Visit PrizePicks.com for restrictions and details.

This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance.

Fiscally responsible, financial geniuses, monetary magicians.

These are things people say about drivers who switch their car insurance to Progressive and save hundreds.

Visit progressive.com to see if you could save.

Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates.

Potential savings will vary, not available in all states or situations.

Democrats have officially shut down the government.

Why?

Republicans are arguing that the Dems shut down the government to give health care to illegal aliens.

Democrats are responding that they only shut down the government to give health care to legal immigrants as well as other Americans.

In reality, the shutdown has almost nothing to do with health care, and it has everything to do with Democrats' historically bad poll numbers right now.

We'll get into the minutiae of Michael Knowles.

It's the Michael Knowles show.

Welcome back to the show.

Not unrelated to the government shutdown.

CNN, of all outlets, has just interviewed a Sinaloa cartel member admitting, admitting to CNN that President Trump is making their job tougher.

That's when CNN is running essentially campaign ads for Republicans, you know things are tough for Dems.

We will get into that.

But first, I want to tell you about Shopify.

Go to shopify.com slash Knowles.

Starting a business is very, very tough.

And if you want to have the absolute best shot, to keep things moving smoothly and keep growing, you're going to want to check out Shopify.

Shopify is the commerce platform behind millions of businesses around the world and 10% of all e-commerce in the U.S.

We even use it for our own daily wireshop to make sure things are running smoothly and efficiently so you can get all the goods.

You might be asking, what if I can't design a website?

What if I'm worried people haven't heard about my brand?

No problem.

Shopify has got you covered from the start.

with beautiful ready-to-go templates that match your brand style and helps you find customers through easy-to-run email and social media campaigns.

If you need a a hand with everyday tasks, their AI tools created specifically for commerce can help enhance product images, write descriptions, and more.

Plus, their award-winning customer support is available 24-7 to share advice if you ever get stuck.

Turn your big business idea into

with Shopify on your side.

Sign up for your $1 per month trial and start selling today at shopify.com/slash Knowles.

That is shopify.com/slash Knowles, Kennedy W-L-E-S, Shopify.com/slash Knowles.

Why is the government shut down?

Is it because, as the Republicans contend, Democrats want to give health care to illegal aliens?

Democrats do, I'm sure, want to give health care to illegal aliens, but I don't think that's quite what's going on.

Is it because, as the Democrats contend,

they just want to give health care to all Americans, and those Republicans want to let Americans die in the streets?

No, I don't think it's that either.

I think this is all about poll numbers, and I think this is about every other issue beyond health care.

What could have happened?

There was a midnight deadline.

We just passed it.

We're now, whatever, eight, eight, nine hours past it.

And the midnight deadline was to fund the government.

What the Republicans tried to do was pass a continuing resolution.

that would just fund the government at its current spending levels.

Nothing changes.

Republicans aren't trying to sneak anything in.

It's just, they're going to just keep it going while they negotiate a broader budget.

Democrats said no.

They said, no, we're not going to keep the government going at current spending levels.

Nothing changes.

It's all normal.

We're not going to do that.

We are going to shut down the government.

We are going to shut down so-called non-essential services.

Does raise some question as to why we have so many non-essential services in our government.

That's a point for another time.

The Democrats say we will only fund the government if you Republicans who control the White House and the House of Representatives and the Senate and the Supreme Court, I guess, and who have unified government, if you guys give us a bunch of extra subsidies for Obamacare.

Obamacare.

What?

Why?

What's that about?

What this is about is Democrats right now losing on every single issue, almost every single issue, other than healthcare.

Also the environment, women's rights.

But if you look, we covered this on the show just a few days ago.

Right now, and we're what, nine months into President Trump's second term.

Right now, the Democrats should be winning on a lot of issues.

That's just what happens.

The midterm elections happen.

after a presidential election, and the party that's out of the White House usually does really, really well.

And the problem for the Democrats right now is they're actually somehow still underwater on all the issues that matter to people, on crime, on the economy, on immigration, on foreign policy.

They're even tied on defensive democracy, which is a kind of made-up issue.

It's a real sloganeared kind of issue that is supposed to just buoy the Democrats.

Even that, the Democrats and Republicans are statistically tied on.

The only issues that the Democrats are still doing all right on are

women's rights, the environment, whatever, and healthcare.

Healthcare is one that the Democrats historically can lean on, and so they're doubling down on that.

And

they're going to shut down the government in order to change healthcare, or at least change the conversation now to focus on health care.

Now, part of the reason the Democrats feel like they can do that is Republicans always get blamed for a government shutdown.

Maybe that will happen again.

Republicans, that's the conventional wisdom is the Republicans always get blamed for the shutdown.

I'm not so sure it's going to work this time.

You have to remember, we've just endured a seismic political shift.

The coalitions have changed.

A lot of voters that have historically gone to the Dems have moved significantly to the right, including black men, including women of all kinds, including young women, especially young voters moved 10 points in 2024.

The GOP has flipped the script on a lot of issues, on things like tariffs, on things like immigration to some degree, on things like foreign wars.

So I'm not sure that the conventional holds.

I'm not sure conventional wisdom holds rather.

I'm not sure that past really is precedent here.

And on top of that, the voters gave Republicans unified government.

So it does not stand to reason that the party that controls the entire government would shut down the government.

Also because

I think what the Democrats are counting on is the heavy libertarian influence in the Republican Party for

the entirety of my lifetime, for many decades at this point,

which suggests that Republicans are thrilled to shut the government down.

The Republicans are borderline anarchists.

They don't want any government at all.

They want to privatize everything.

Once again, though, after the Trump revolution in 2016, that's not really the case.

That's not, there are plenty of Republicans and conservatives who do want to wield the government.

In fact,

it's a discordant line of argument for the Democrats because the Democrats have spent the last seven months claiming that Trump is a fascist dictator who wants to turn the government on all of his enemies, that he's an authoritarian, that he's using the government too much.

So again,

you can't simultaneously make both of those arguments.

These Republicans hate the government.

They want to dismantle the government.

Also, they want to build up the government and use it to pummel their enemies.

You have to pick one

if you want to make sense.

But the one thing the Democrats do have to do, though, is change the conversation.

Because at this point in Trump's first term, the Democrats should be doing really well in their poll numbers, and they're not.

In fact, their unfavorability rating is as high as it's ever been,

which is really, really bad news.

They have to do something.

And

I think this government shutdown comes out of sheer political desperation for Democrats.

Shoot, the economy was supposed to collapse.

The tariffs were supposed to destroy the economy.

The tariffs were supposed to lead to massive inflation.

The tariffs, and none of that happened.

Even Jerome Powell, who's being rhetorically pummeled by Trump every single day, even Jerome Powell, chairman of the Fed, said, nah, actually, the inflation has not come about because of the tariffs.

Well, the immigration crackdown, that was supposed to work for Democrats.

No, actually, the Republican immigration policies are still very popular, very popular.

Well, Trump was supposed to get us into World War III.

Actually, he hasn't.

Well, well, well.

So Democrats have these really high unfavorables.

They have to change the conversation away from crime in the cities.

Every second we're talking about crime in the cities,

It's bad for Democrats because the Democrats are the ones letting their own constituents be murdered by criminals and taking the side of the criminals when they do it.

Every second that we spend talking even about the economy, which does have some underlying issues, of course, even that, it's not working for the Democrats.

Every second we're talking about really just about any issue.

The only issue that might be able to move the needle for them is healthcare.

And the only way that they can distract from the conversations that are going on

Probably first and foremost, the political violence from the left, which has not had success persuading persuading voters in recent years, and so has increasingly threatened its opponents and actually celebrated even the murder of one of its most prominent opponents.

All of that stuff redounds to the detriment of the Democrats.

So I get the calculation.

Hakeem Jeffries there in the House, Chuck Schumer in the Senate.

Even though these guys have spent many, many years inveighing against government shutdowns,

which they always blame on the Republicans, now they are advocating for a government shutdown, but they're doing it because they have no other option.

They have to do something to change the conversation, and they have to do anything they can to make the conversation about health care.

Whether or not that will work remains to be seen, because there's a brutal poll just came out from the New York Times and Siena.

We'll get to that in one moment.

First, though, I want to tell you about Policy Genius.

Go to policygenius.com slash Knowles.

Rising costs have left many Americans overestimating expenses across the board.

While people often assume certain products and services cost far more than they actually do, this tendency is particularly evident with life insurance where 72% of Americans overestimate the actual cost of coverage.

Policy Genius makes finding and buying life insurance fast, easy, and surprisingly affordable.

So if something happens to you, your loved ones have a financial safety net.

See if Policy Genius can help you find 20-year life insurance policies starting at just $276 a year for $1 million

in coverage.

Life insurance, very, very important for your family someday, without question.

Also for you.

Just to have peace of mind, do the responsible thing and do it in the most efficient, cost-effective way possible.

Shopping for life insurance does not have to be complicated.

Policy Genius proves just that.

With just a few clicks, you can compare quotes from top insurers, see all your options laid out clearly.

No confusing jargon, no guesswork.

Secure your family's financial future today with Policy Genius.

Go to policygenius.com/slash Knowles to compare life insurance quotes from top companies, see how much you could save.

PolicyGenius.com/slash Knowles.

New York Times Sienna poll September 22nd through 27th, so quite recent.

Views on whether the Democrats should or should not shut down the government if their demands are not met.

So right there off the top, I know what Democrats are going to say.

They're going to say, that's a push poll.

That's a loaded question.

Why are you blaming the shutdown on the Democrats?

And the answer is

because the Democrats are obviously the ones doing it.

The Republicans control the government.

They very much do not want to shut down the government.

The only party advocating to shut down the government is the Democrats.

Even the New York Times is admitting it.

So

don't go after the New York Times if you're on the left.

Trust me, if the New York Times could spin this in a way that would blame Republicans, I'm sure they would.

They just can't.

It's not possible.

So if the Times isn't going to succeed at it, I don't think you, random Democrat congressmen, are going to succeed at it either.

What does the poll say?

All respondents, only 27%

say that the Dems should shut down the government.

65% say they shouldn't.

Only one in four voters, just about, says the Dems should shut down the government.

65% no.

Among Democrats, only 47% say that they should shut down the government.

So this government shutdown is unpopular, less than 50% support.

Even among Democrats.

Among independents,

only 32%

think that support the Democrat shutdown.

Among Republicans, unsurprisingly, 5%.

So, first of all, those poll numbers alone show you who is shutting down the government.

No group, no group wants to shut down the government.

There is no majority of any political group in the country that wants to shut down the government.

But in as much as the different groups support or don't support it,

the support is only among Democrats.

Basically, no Republicans support this.

So

in my mind,

if the media do not have their

hegemonic power that they once did,

if the spin machine for the Democrats is not firing on all cylinders,

I don't know that this is going to be blamed on Republicans.

If even the New York Times today cannot blame this on the Republicans.

This seriously could backfire for the Democrats.

And meanwhile, Trump is willing to take advantage.

He says, look, I don't want to shut this thing down.

Things are going pretty well.

But if you're going to shut it down and you're going to make us get rid of these federal workers, then we're not going to play your game and merely furlough a lot of the federal workers and then give them their jobs back with back pay and extra pay.

And no, if you really want to shut this thing down, Fine, then we're going to use this opportunity that you're foisting upon us in order to continue to streamline government, which is one of the things we were elected with

back in November.

In fact, this is one of the things we won the popular vote on, namely bringing efficiency back to government, Doge.

This could really backfire.

This could really, really backfire for the Dems.

And even still, it shows you the desperation of their position.

Even still, if I were Hakeem Jeffries, I might shut down the government anyway.

Not because I think that's likely to help the Democrats.

It's just that

everything else seems worse.

If the the Democrats continue on their current trajectory, they're going to get blown out in the midterms and maybe in 2028.

So in some ways, it's the least bad option for Dems, but I see a lot of upside here for the Republicans.

I don't see a lot of upside for Democrats.

Meanwhile, the essential services are moving ahead.

And this is the real threat for Dems.

So they're going to stand around and they're going to whine about how they want to, they're going to hold the government hostage in order to ram through a bunch of

plausibly popular healthcare proposals,

but some of them are pretty unpopular.

And the ones that pertain to immigration are really unpopular.

But at least we're not talking about ICE, right?

Well, not really, because the Department of Homeland Security is an essential service.

Law enforcement is an essential service.

So while the Democrats are putting on this sideshow,

Trump is going in and enforcing the law in a popular way.

Like a federal raid just happened in Chicago.

300 ICE agents rappelling down from helicopters, targeting a building full of illegals.

And we're not just talking about the gardener.

We're not just talking about the nice ebuela who, you know, cleans your home or something.

We're talking about

Trende Aragua terrorists.

They led 300 federal officials to that apartment complex.

Some even rappelled down from Blackhawks onto the rooftop in order to help secure that perimeter.

Now, they were searching for suspected members of the violent Venezuelan gang, Trende Aragua.

Of course, TDA has been designated as a terrorist organization under the Trump administration.

Now, it was the biggest show of force that we've ever seen on the ground here.

We had agencies, FBI, Border Patrol, ICE, and ATF all involved here, and they were all looking for targets in that same exact building.

It was a five-story building.

It was a tall task for them, and anything could have gone wrong.

But luckily, the operations went pretty smoothly.

Preliminary reports show that about 30 illegal immigrants were arrested in this operation.

Some of them suspected Trende Aragua.

Okay, so 30 illegals arrested, massive show of force here.

10x, the number of people arrested, show up as law enforcement.

Really, really smart.

Smart as a matter of justice.

You need to arrest these people,

but also really smart politics.

And bold, by the way, because you're talking about serious gangsters.

You're talking about a foreign terrorist organization, Trende Aragua.

This could have turned into a shootout in Chicago.

I guess a shootout in Chicago is, you know, just a day ending in why.

But

had this gone south, had some innocent or largely innocent person been killed, had a law enforcement official been killed,

that could have been really bad.

That did not happen.

And ICE rounds up these people.

And so the Democrats are in this awful position.

They either need to do what is obviously right and what is obviously politically popular and say, okay, all right, I guess it's good that we're arresting trende Aragua gangsters, human traffickers, people who kill Americans, a foreign terrorist organization.

Yeah, I guess that's good.

They can either take that side or,

I know it sounds preposterous, or they can take the side of the terrorists, the foreign national terrorists killing Americans.

And you know which side they took?

Here we have governor of Illinois, J.B.

Pritzker, thinks he's going to run for president in 2028.

Democrat Mr.

Pritzker says on Twitter to Donald Trump,

stop using military troops and ICE to invade and disrupt American cities.

First of all, federal troops don't invade American cities to carry out federal law.

The federal government that the federal troops refer to is the American government.

You're part of America, Mr.

Pritzker.

Maybe you don't feel that way.

Maybe you don't like America.

Maybe you wish you weren't part of America.

I don't see a lot of American flags at the Democrat rallies, so I know you have an antipathy to the country.

But

they're your troops.

They're your countrymen.

You say, thank you.

Thank you, American servicemen, for protecting American citizens by carrying out basic American laws.

No, no, no.

Stop using military troops to invade and disrupt American cities.

Stop sending in the Americans

to fix my bad governance.

Stop, he says, calling your political opponents enemies of the United States.

Excuse me, that's a real pot calling the kettle black, isn't it?

By the way, where's the political violence coming from?

It's coming uniquely from the left, according to the left-wing magazines.

So if you want to insinuate here that Trump is treating his domestic opponents as enemies, That's not coming from the right.

That's coming from the left.

You're murdering your political enemies, you on the left.

We're not doing that.

You Democrats, you people who identify as very liberal are, according to polling, eight times as likely to defend political violence against your opponents.

The young Democrats, the young liberals, 30% of them support political violence against their enemies.

Many, many multiples over what conservatives and moderates say.

Stop calling you, are you kidding me?

You're the ones doing it.

Stop attacking the First Amendment.

Wow, that's it.

You know, I wrote a whole book on the First Amendment called Speechless, Controlling Words, Controlling Minds.

Thank you very much.

Number one national bestseller.

You can get it wherever great books are sold.

I did a real deep dive into the First Amendment and the broader free speech tradition in America and in the West.

I don't recall the provision of the First Amendment that says that

Foreign gangster murderers have a right to live in American apartment buildings.

Do you remember that part of the First Amendment?

If someone can pull up the text of the First Amendment, please do let me know.

I know it protects freedom of speech, of religion,

the right to redress.

Grievances is in there somewhere.

I don't recall

the right of Venezuelan murderers to invade American cities and murder Americans.

I don't recall that one.

Our troops, says Governor Britzker, and our nation deserve better than you acting as a petty tyrant.

Who's the petty tyrant here?

What's a tyrant?

A tyrant is a leader, a single leader, who wields power for private interest, not for the common good, but for private interest.

What is Donald Trump doing?

Donald Trump is merely enforcing the most basic laws.

That's what he's doing.

That is the first charge of a U.S.

president.

That of all the things we elect the president to do, hold state dinners, give addresses,

of all the things we elect them to do, enforcing the most basic federal laws is pretty much the first one.

Trump is acting like a president.

On the contrary, these Democrat leaders, especially including J.B.

Pritzker, They're the ones acting like tyrants because what they're doing is they're ignoring the law.

They're neglecting the common good.

They're undermining the common good.

What is the law?

The law is an ordinance of reason for the common good by him who has care of the community and promulgated.

These guys are ignoring that.

They're letting crime fester.

Chicago is like a war zone.

J.B.

Pritzker doesn't care.

He's willing to let Chicagoans be murdered and slaughtered by the bushel basket, as long as he thinks it will give him an electoral advantage.

And the chief way that the Democrats have tried to gain an electoral advantage is by flooding the country with illegals, largely including these criminals and these gangsters.

Who's acting like the tyrant?

It's the Democrats.

This is a terrible response by Pritzker and by the Democrats broadly.

But once again,

I don't think we can leave the analysis at, wow, these dumb Democrats, boy, they should get their act together, right?

Because it's actually, they're in a tougher spot than that.

You have to have almost a little more sympathy for them.

What are they going to do?

Are they suddenly going to come out in defense of enforcing immigration law, in defense of national sovereignty, in defense of borders, in defense of the right of citizens to determine who gets to come into their country?

No, if they do that, they're conceding the whole point

to Trump.

And they're going to lose the electoral advantage that they were cynically trying to gain by flooding the country with foreigners.

Are they suddenly going to defend law enforcement?

Then they're ceding the point to Trump.

They're in a tough spot.

Trump has staked out virtually all of the popular positions on issues with a few exceptions, right?

Healthcare is the hail mary for the Democrats.

But with a few exceptions, Trump has all the popular views.

That's how he won the popular vote.

Democrats, on the other hand, they're on the wrong side of virtually every single issue.

And so long as that dynamic continues, so long as the Democrats remain Democrats,

then Trump is going to force the law.

He's going to look like a hero.

Pritzker is going to look feckless at best and nefarious at worst.

Now,

you don't just need to take my word for it.

Trump's popular and effective immigration policy is being lauded not only by Republicans, but by CNN, one of his big political rivals in the media, and even by the foreign gangsters.

We'll get to that momentarily.

First, though, I want to tell you about Chevron.

America is built on hard work and powered by American energy.

Chevron has spent $44 billion with local businesses across all 50 states since 2022, fueling infrastructure and communities, all while strengthening local economies.

Last year, Chevron increased U.S.

production nearly 20%, powering communities and businesses from the heartlands to the coasts.

We're helping to fuel America's energy advantage, building a brighter future right here at home.

Visit chevron.com/slash America to discover more.

CNN runs a quick little interview here with a cartel leader, Sinaloa Cartel,

talking about the dangers of being involved in the cartel, what that looks like.

And CNN asks this cartel leader, hey, is Trump's policy making your life tougher?

Because the ideal answer for the Democrats is no, Trump's policy is ineffective and we're still doing whatever we want and Trump's a bumbling idiot and he's distracting and he's going after lawful legal Americans and blah, blah, blah.

That's the right answer for the Dems.

Here's the answer they get.

Do you think what President Trump has been doing has been making your job tougher?

Oh, yeah.

Yeah.

Yes.

Yes.

But it's becoming more difficult, you think?

Yeah.

I got to give the devil his due.

The devil's their due, the Sinaloa cartel members and CNN.

The cartel members, they didn't study abstract leftist political theory in college.

The Sinaloa, the gangsters,

I don't know, they don't have the most ideological view of politics.

They're pretty tough, practical people.

Trump is a pretty tough, practical person.

So CNN says, is what Trump's doing making your life harder?

And the Sinaloa guy says, yeah, for sure.

He's blowing us up.

Yeah, I think he's rounding us up.

He's deporting us to mega super prisons in El Salvador where Bukele is dealing with us in a reasonable way.

not one of these Mamby-Pamby kind of ways.

And then when we try to run our poison up to the American shores, Trump blows us out of the water with drones.

So, yeah, I would say he's making our job a little bit tougher.

I can't quite figure out why CNN would air this.

I get why they asked the question, but why would they air this?

Unless it's that

the Democratic Party has become so ideologically perverted that they really have sympathy for the cartel members.

I mean, they do.

The Democrats have openly run on

letting criminals off the hook.

The Democrats have openly run on suppressing law enforcement or even abolishing law enforcement, abolishing prisons.

So the Democrats openly run on that stuff.

Maybe, I don't know, maybe CNN thinks that everyone's going to have their heartbreak for the poor Sinaloa cartel members.

Will somebody please think of the cartel members?

Maybe that's what they're thinking, but it just reads

horribly to the right, which is a lot of the country, and certainly to the middle.

If the Democrats are on the side of the Sinaloa cartel, I think most people are going to be on the opposite side from the Democrats.

Now, the Times had a smarter way

to go after Trump's immigration policy, which is one of the most popular things he's doing.

So, this is how the Times covered it just on the Feast of St.

Michael, just a couple of days ago.

Headline, I'm from here.

U.S.

citizens are ending up in Trump's dragnet.

As immigration agents take a more aggressive approach, they have stopped and, in some cases, detained American citizens.

There are four Times writers on this piece,

sorry, three, three ladies.

Jasmine Uloa, Allison McCann, and Jennifer Medina.

Three ladies

very upset about the Trump immigration policy, because you see, the immigration raids, which the Democrats oppose in general,

even when it targets MS-13 and Trende Aragua.

They said, oh, those poor guys, let them off the, let the Sinaloa cartel off the hook.

But they say it's supposed to target only illegals.

But did you know some American citizens are getting trapped and caught up in it?

Yeah.

What did you think was going to happen?

Just think about this for two seconds.

What did you think was going to happen?

How do you think immigration raids work?

Do you think that the illegals are walking around the country wearing big t-shirts that say, I'm an illegal, come get me, Tom Homan?

Is that what you think?

And then all ICE has to do is go in and say, oh, there he is.

I see that shirt right there.

It says, Yosoy illegal.

Come and get me, Toma.

No.

The whole problem is is

these people are hiding in the country.

They were invited in by Democrats, quite explicitly invited in by Democrats.

Democrats even went so far as to violate their own interpretation of the Constitution to give these people amnesty, to let them further blend into the country.

That's what Barack Obama did.

That was executive amnesty, which he had previously said was unconstitutional.

Joe Biden, come on in.

And then

they blend in.

And now the American people elect Trump to say, we got to get these guys out.

They're causing a lot of problems.

So if they're not wearing shirts that say, Yo, soy illegal aliano, send me down to Bukeleville, then how do you get it?

Well, you go to the job sites that they work at.

You go to the crime houses that they live in.

You notice that they don't speak English.

You take a look and you see, you know, probably

a little old lady from Norway is not going to be an illegal alien.

But if, you know, if you got the accent, you got the look, you clearly haven't been here very long, then maybe you're if you got some face tattoos, if you're

trafficking fentanyl, maybe there's a better chance you're an illegal alien.

So they go in, they round people up.

But sometimes

legal residents or citizens get caught up too.

Yeah,

that's the problem, of course.

This is a pretty insidious little article here because

catching some citizens in an immigration raid is inevitable.

It is not possible to enforce immigration law when you have this many, tens of millions of illegal aliens in the country.

It's not possible to pinpoint all of the illegals.

That's the whole issue.

You can't quite pinpoint them.

So once again, I think even that could,

I think all that will really serve to do.

is to highlight just how widespread the illegal immigration problem is and how much it affects our political order.

Because you're going to have the Democrats say, oh, they really don't commit crime and they really don't use welfare resources and none of that's true.

But

one real sticking point is a lot of us are concerned that the illegal aliens are voting.

We'll say, well, they're screwing up our elections.

Now they are already compromising our electoral system because congressional apportionment is based on the census.

It's based on population data.

It's not based on the number of citizens.

It's based on the number of people in a state.

So you flood the country with illegal aliens.

That is going to give the states that have those illegal aliens

more representation in Congress.

So when you have sanctuary cities and sanctuary states where you say, hey, illegals flood in here, that is Democrats cheating to rig the electoral system to give themselves more power in the federal government.

That is indisputable.

So you've already got that issue, but the Democrats will then say, well, look, yeah, okay, we flood the country with these guys.

We flood certain states with these guys.

And that does in some way affect the electoral system, but at least they don't vote.

And it turns out that's not true.

You remember the superintendent we were covering last week?

He's the Des Moines, Iowa superintendent.

He's the superintendent of the biggest school district in Iowa.

He was paid over $300,000 per year.

You know, all the jobs Americans won't do.

That's why we need the illegal aliens.

He's been there for a while.

He had a rap sheet.

He had some problems.

Well, this guy finally gets arrested, and it turns out that this guy

was registered to vote.

Hold on, what?

That cannot be.

I was reliably informed by the Democrats and by the liberal media that the illegal aliens are never registered to vote, that this is a made-up issue by the Republicans.

Could never happen.

Then, how was this guy registered to vote?

For years, for years and years.

How did that happen?

Now, this is just one high-profile case.

As we mentioned, ICE goes in, rounds up 30 of these guys.

And then there have been 1.6 million who have left in the first, what, seven, eight months of the Trump administration, according to the Center for Immigration Studies, many through self-deportation.

We don't know their names.

We don't know their cases.

The reason we know this guy's name and we know his case is because it's so particularly absurd that he was making over 300 grand a year as a school superintendent.

He was an illegal alien.

But when you finally put a face in a name to illegal immigration, and then you scratch below the surface for two seconds, you realize this guy was registered to vote.

How many more of them are registered to vote?

What would our elections look like without illegal immigration?

Would Democrats ever win a national election?

It's a very real question.

And

I know there are going to be all these warning labels.

No, actually, no, illegal aliens don't vote.

There's probably going to be a warning label on my video today from the big tech companies.

Well, how do you explain that?

There's your proof that the illegal aliens are, in fact, registered to vote.

Once again, any way the conversation turns,

it just seems like the bill is coming due for Democrats.

Bill started to come due in November.

Massive shifts of the voting populace moving to the right.

And as the Republicans now do have the government, are wielding the government to uncover the Democrat perfidy on this and all the other issues.

It's hard to see.

It's hard to see the Democrat numbers improving.

No surprise that their unfavorables are as high as they've ever been.

And we haven't even talked about crime itself.

Just wait till you hear what the residents of Democrat cities have to say about the way Democrats have covered crime.

When the left attacks, the answer isn't silence, the answer is not to retreat.

It is not to do less.

The answer is to show up everywhere, to make our voices louder than ever, to push out more content, more truth, more breaking news, more investigative journalism, fighting harder than ever before.

That is what we are doing at the Daily Wire.

This October, Daily Wire Plus members are getting more new films, more new series, more new documentaries, and more of everything that you expect from us.

Join now, get it all with 40% off new Daily War Plus annual memberships.

At the University of Arizona, we believe that everyone is born with wonder.

That thing that says, I will not accept this world that is.

While it drives us to create what could be,

that world can't wait to see what you'll do.

Where will your wonder take you?

And what will it make you?

At the University of Arizona, Wonder makes you.

Start your journey at wonder.arisona.edu.

My favorite comment yesterday is from C.

Dan Howell, who says, this whole we need to bring down the temperature thing reminds me of a kid who hits another kid and starts yelling truce and getting mad that he was hit back.

Yeah, of course.

The left

murders its political opponents, threatens its political opponents, murders its political opponents, excuses the murder of its political opponents, in some cases celebrates the murder of its political opponents, and then demands that its political opponents bring down the temperature.

We can't.

We can't.

It's not even that we're not willing to.

We can't.

You control the thermostat.

You're blocking the thermostat.

You're the one jacking up the temperature on the thermostat.

I'd like to bring down.

The one way we could bring down the temperature, I guess, is by punishing you.

By punishing you and stigmatizing your behavior and in some cases, prosecuting you when you break the law.

Is that what you that's the only way that we can bring the temperature down?

And you're right.

I guess we should do that.

Good idea.

Be careful what you ask for.

Now, speaking of all this crime, really, really sad story, but an illustrative story.

A woman from DC

testifying on what crime in DC, you know, this slogan bandied about between the political parties.

What does that really mean in practice?

He shot my grandson in cold blood seven times.

And they didn't consider that as first-degree murder.

They act like we would be lucky if we got manslaughter.

The bottom line is that murder in DC is treated as a joke when it comes time to justice.

Your heart breaks for this woman, and she's totally right, especially that last line there.

She says, you know, the fact is,

crime in D.C., it's treated as a joke.

It's treated as nothing.

It's a little slogan or something.

Oh, it's just this abstraction.

Crime in D.C., crime in Chicago.

No, it's not.

We're not talking about jaywalking, first of all.

We're talking about murder.

And murder in Chicago, it's not just a punchline.

It's people's grandkids.

It's people's grandkids being shot and murdered every day,

every weekend.

What's the number?

That's what it is in cold blood.

And then

the prosecutors letting the murderers largely off the hook, going real soft on them, which is a grave injustice to the families and

creates more victims.

That's what that means.

When the Democrats are inveighing against the supposedly tyrannical Donald Trump, who is bringing the federal government to do its job, which is to step in when American cities fail, when they cannot govern themselves.

And they say, you're being authoritarian.

Please respect

our cultural right to allow murder to fester.

That's our right to let

women's grandkids be slaughtered.

by the bushel basket every week.

That's what that means.

That's what they're saying.

And I know there's still Republican consultants who are scratching their heads.

Wow, how did Donald Trump do so much better in 2024 with black men?

How did so much of the black male vote move over to the right?

With women?

With Hispanics?

How did that happen?

It's not rocket science.

Politics really is not rocket science.

It's a practical science.

It's pretty, I guess rocket science is a practical science too.

But this is a simpler one

because it's about the basic aspects of human nature and incentives.

And people have had enough.

That's been a theme for the past few weeks.

We've had enough on the right.

We've had enough of your nonsense.

I think that's true even for people who wouldn't call themselves on the right.

I don't know what that woman's political views are.

I don't know that she's some rock-ribbed conservative, but she knows that she does want her grandkid to be murdered.

And the party that is allowing her grandkid to be murdered and going soft on his murderers as the Democrats.

So, you know, maybe I'll be a Republican.

Maybe I'll try out being a Republican now.

Now, speaking of black issues, black cities, particularly black issues, Jamal Bowman.

Do you remember Jamal Bowman?

Jamal Bowman was a member of Congress.

I've only had one or two run-ins with Jamal Bowman.

After I gave a CPAC speech on the transgender ideology,

Jamal Bowman called me a Nazi who wants only white people to live.

From Congress, he called me that.

Anyway, he's excitable, as you can see.

And Jamal Bowman went on CNN

to

make a curious claim about public health and medical science.

And where are you on the city?

You can't be calm about this.

I'm a black man in America.

The reason why heart disease.

I'm white, I can't calm out.

Listen to what I'm saying.

The reason why heart disease and cancer and obesity and diabetes are bigger in the black community is because of the stress we carry from having to deal with being called the N-word directly or indirectly every day.

If your colleagues would listen and try to learn and engage and grow and stop being so hateful, we could have a better country.

Stop being so hateful and let me explain to you that diabetes and heart disease is caused by hearing the N-word.

I didn't go to medical school.

I'm a doctor.

I'm an honorary doctor of humane letters, but I'm not a medical doctor.

And so

I guess none of my doctor friends have ever told me.

I've never seen a study about that.

But it turns out, well, not heart disease and diabetes generally.

Heart disease and diabetes, specifically among black people, is caused

not by diet

or a lack of exercise or genetics or any other

factor.

It's caused by hearing the N-word,

which

raises a really interesting thought because white people don't say the N-word, if you haven't noticed.

Maybe in Jamal Bowman's fevered imagination,

there are Klansmen around every corner looking to burn a cross and drop a hard R.

But in reality, white people don't say the N-word.

And actually, statistically, the only people who say the N-word are black people.

Sometimes colloquially, and especially in rap music.

That's though, those are the only people who say it.

So Black, we've found the culprit for diabetes and heart disease.

It turns out it's like Snoop Dogg.

Isn't that crazy?

I never knew that.

Jamal Bowman screaming, you need to stop being so hateful, you white devil.

You ice person.

You need to stop.

And you need to learn your medical science and know that the N-word causes diabetes.

And

these people.

Who you mean these people?

No, I'm talking about the libs, the Democrats thing.

I'm not talking about these people.

I'm saying the Democrats have the audacity to accuse Trump and the Republicans of medical misinformation.

Because we, for instance, instance, say, hey, if you get the Fauci Auchi, that probably won't protect you from catching COVID.

Remember, we said that and people were kicked off of YouTube for that.

And then it turned out that was completely true and everyone admitted it.

That was medical misinformation.

Donald Trump says that there's an association between acetaminophen, Tylenol, and neurological developmental disorders, which

Harvard, Johns Hopkins, Columbia, basically every major, Mount Sinai, every major medical institution, and the manufacturer of Tylenol all have admitted, apparently going all the way back to 2008.

We'll have to cover more on that story tomorrow.

But they, so they, that's medical misinformation.

But when a Democrat congressman goes on TV, he says, your N-word gave me heart disease, that, that's not.

Hmm.

I think, well, Trump is investigating the universities in Harvard.

And by the way, I'm going to be at Harvard tomorrow.

If you're around, I'll be giving a speech up at Harvard Law School tomorrow evening.

So come by.

Just Google it, Michael Knowles Harvard.

You can get tickets, I think.

I don't know.

Maybe I'll have to ask the medical school up there.

I don't.

They need to investigate.

Maybe we need to defund these medical schools.

Maybe Jamal Bowman can be the new chancellor of Harvard.

Who knows?

Breathe deep.

Imagine your legs more limber in Duluth trading double flex denim.

Envision euphorically squatting for that can of suds.

Bending for your toolbox in a state of bliss.

Plunging for your laser level on a whole new level.

Relax and allow the flex to fill you with ability.

Find your inner flex in double flex denim only at Duluth Trading.

Okay, today is Woke Wednesday.

The rest of the show continues now.

You do not want to miss it.

Become a member.

Use code Knowles Canada WLE as a checkout for two months free on all annual plans.