Ep. 1690 - Trump Deports Pro-Palestine Columbia Student
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On Saturday night, Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrested Mahmoud Khalil, a former Columbia graduate student who led pro-Palestine demonstrations on campus last year. Yesterday, a federal judge blocked the Trump administration from deporting Khalil until a meeting on Wednesday. Leftists are arguing that Mahmoud should stay because they hate Israel and support Palestine.

Some on the right are arguing that Mahmoud should stay because they think his protests are protected free speech, regardless of what they think about Israel or Palestine.

I, for one, think Mahmoud should be deported, not because I care all that much about the Israel-Palestine conflict, but because he's a Columbia graduate student and all Columbia graduate students should be deported, even if they're American citizens. At a time of tectonic political shifts, what is the correct conservative American take? What do we believe? I'm Michael Knowles. This is The Michael Knowles Show.

Thank you.

Welcome back to the show. You want to talk about ideological confusion. There is a funding bill that is before Congress right now that President Trump is in support of. You got a member of Congress and Thomas Massey who says he's going to vote no on the bill. And you got President Trump comparing Massey, who is arguably the most right-wing member of Congress, to Liz Cheney and saying that he's going to primary him. So which side are we on? What do we believe? Who do we believe?

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Before we move on from this Columbia grad student or former Columbia grad student, I should say, what do you think? I bet there are many of you in the audience who are so certain about your political views. Whenever you see a news story, you say, I immediately know this side is right, this side is wrong. These people are going to be on this side. Those people are going to be on that side. But this one is dividing people, even on the right.

You have some who are saying, look, this guy, he supports a terrorist group. He is not an American citizen. Get him out of here. Who cares? Even some people say, I really support Israel. Israel is one of my most important issues. And this guy hates Israel. So deport him for that reason. But there are going to be some people who say, look, well, there are going to be some people on the right who say, I don't like Israel. And so I actually like this guy that he's pro-Palestine. He should stay here. There are going to be some people who say, even though I'm the most ardent pro-Israel supporter in the whole world,

I think this man has a right to free speech and he can lead protests even if they're disruptive, even if they threaten students, even if they cause all sorts of problems. I'm a little bit simpler about it, I guess. I try not to get too lost in the ideology of constantly talking about rights and in the ideology of liberalism and in the ideology of free speech and academic freedom and this-ism and that-ism. I look at it, I say, okay, is this guy, he's a citizen or he's not a citizen?

Oh, he's not a citizen. Okay. He's not even a student anymore. He graduated in December. Okay. So he's not a citizen, which means he has no right to be here in the United States. I look at the protests that he was involved in. I don't know. I mean, the Israel-Palestine conflict, I guess, is complex, but...

I don't know, you're supporting the side that's run by Hamas. That's a little sus to me. And those protests were quite nasty to Jewish students, in particular at Columbia. And I don't really care all that much about the Israel-Palestine conflict. And I do wish that

that we in America were as muscular at tackling anti-Christian discrimination as we are at tackling anti-Jewish discrimination, anti-Muslim discrimination, anti-thisism, anti-thatism. But Christianity is the one religion that we are allowed to and actually encouraged to mock in public and denigrate and push to the side. So all of those things considered, yeah, yeah, sure. But my chief question for immigration is,

What benefit are these people to America? In some cases, in rare cases, we take in refugees out of the goodness of our heart because it's gracious and charitable and we were strangers in the land of Egypt. That's a relatively small aspect of what we're talking about here. When it comes to immigration, the primary question, at least to my mind, is do these people benefit America? In fact, that's how our immigration laws are written. That's how basically all immigration laws everywhere in the world are written.

Does this person benefit the country? Do they do a job, for instance, that people in the country can't do? Do they offer some special benefit? If they do, let them in, maybe. And if they don't, don't let them in. So I look at this guy, I say, okay, his political ideology is pretty whack, and he doesn't seem to be contributing all that much to the country. And he's a Columbia graduate student, which means his views are almost certainly horrible, and he's very unlikely to support America.

So I don't know, to me, it's a little bit more of a practical prudential question. I'm not going to lose sleep over Mahmoud Khalil being deported after leading a bunch of his fellow Columbia grad students, one of the most left wing of the Ivy League schools, which are already left wing. I'm not going to lose sleep over that. Now, speaking of ideological conflict and immigration, for that matter, a clip has gone viral from Jubilee's Surrounded show. This is the show that I was on a month ago.

It's the show where you have one person surrounded by 20 or 25 people who disagree with him, and he's got to just debate them successively. So it was me versus 20 or 25 LGBT LMNOP activists. That was an hour and 40 minutes. You can go watch it over at the Jubilee channel. This week's episode was with a left-wing political commentator named Sam Sater. And Sam Sater is

showed up and he was surrounded by, I guess, 20 or 25 conservatives. They were debating all sorts of questions, one of which was religious fundamentalism. We'll get to that in a moment. The other of which was immigration. And so he's sitting down next to this right-wing journalist, Sarah Stock, and they're just getting down to brass tacks on immigration. And Sam Sater is

cannot believe the things that she is saying. Take a listen. What's the problem with xenophobic nationalism? Don't you think that's better for Americans in general?

To be xenophobic? Yes. Nationalism is better? We should have a coherent culture. Everyone should be a part of the same culture. We should have assimilation. Do you get to choose what the culture is? We already have a dominant culture. What is the dominant culture? Based on European and Christian values and identity. That is the dominant culture. White Christian. It's rooted in European identity. White, so your argument is that...

been the dominant culture. Just to be clear. And we're not letting people assimilate to that. We're saying you should keep your culture and this is why our culture is so divided. Your argument is that Trump is good for those who want a dominant white European culture. I mean that is what America is. It's rooted in European identity and Christian values. That's what it has been. Would you really disagree with that?

What is it then, if that's not the identity of America? Well, I think the identity of America- For the majority of time, America's been a country. You don't think that's been the identity? Well, actually, no. I think actually the identity of America has been, you know- Okay, let's put a pause right here before he gets into what it means. I love how he's stalling. He doesn't know how to respond to her.

Well, no, actually, but actually, what's her argument? She's using a provocative slogan, no doubt. Xenophobic nationalism. This is a scare phrase used by the left. And so she is provocatively throwing that phrase back at the left. But what she's saying, xenophobic, meaning preferring one's own countrymen to foreigners, and nationalism, meaning preferring the nation to a kind of borderless liberal globalism.

That's what most American voters voted for in November. Not exactly in those terms, not in such sensationalist rhetoric, but that is what people voted for. And then Sam Sater says, well, hold on. You're telling me

You think there's a dominant culture in America? She says, of course, there's a dominant culture. There's a dominant culture in any polity. Of course, there is. Culture is defined by something and whatever it is defined by is the dominant aspect of the culture. Okay, well, you're telling me that America traditionally has been defined by European culture and Christianity? She says, yes. But could you disagree with that? Would anybody seriously disagree with that?

In 1960, she says it has been, you know, at least until very recently. In 1960, 93% of Americans were Christian. In 1960, just under 90% of Americans were white, so descended from Europeans.

America, really, whatever view you take of the Mayflower, great cigar brand, and the American founding, you know, the Revolutionary War and the 19th century up through the 20th century, can you really argue it didn't come from European values?

European institutions. We were a British colony. What is your argument? The American Revolution was influenced by the European Enlightenment, for better and worse.

The founding of America at Plymouth Colony was a separatist movement from England. You know, America doesn't just exist in outer space or something like that. It's not just floating through the ether. It comes from historical movements developed by real people from real places. You know, you might say, well, that's terrible. I hate Europe. Or you might say, that's terrible. I hate Christianity. I wish America weren't like that. You can make that argument. The left makes that argument all day long.

But if you're this guy, if you're the liberal guy on this, are you really going to be confused by the idea that America comes from Europe and that the religion that has dominated in America has been Christianity? I mean, John Adams says the principles on which the revolution was won were the principles of Christianity. John Jay goes further. He says, thank God that we all descend from the same stock and that we all have the same religion and we all believe basically the same stuff.

And you can find similar writings throughout many, many other founding fathers and framers of our Constitution. And you just look at the demographics, religious, ethnic, national, all the rest. We didn't have mass migration of the sort that we're looking at today until the mid-1960s. So things start to change. But even still, most Americans are at least vaguely Christian. And I guess the majority of Americans are still white.

That's 60%. So it's obviously much lower than you. So I don't know what, regardless of, of whether you think that's a good thing or a bad thing. How, how could this liberal guy be confused by that? Does he, he re he's really that ignorant of, of not just what his opponents believe, but of American history. There's so much more to say. First though, go to pure talk.com slash Knowles. If you're with Verizon, ATT or T-Mobile.

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The identity of America has been, you know, for better or for worse, a melting pot in that regard. Yeah, maybe since like the 1960s. Even then, like even we had this idea of a melting pot literally means assimilation too. It means melting. It means you're assimilating to the dominant culture. Is that not what melting means? No.

Okay, so he says, no, no, it's a melting pot. And she says, yeah, yeah, that's how we view it since the 1960s. It goes back a little earlier. The term melting pot comes from a play by a playwright named Israel Zangvill in 1908.

And curiously, Teddy Roosevelt went to see this play and loved it so much. He said, Mr. Zangvill, this is a great play. I love this play. And the notion of America being this melting together of different identities goes back earlier than 1908. So it had been building for some time. But then she hits the real point there, which is, well, hold on. A melting pot means assimilation.

A melting pot is not a salad bowl, for instance. It's not that you keep your distinct identities, the tomatoes over here and the cucumbers over here and the lettuces over here. The melting pot means you all melt together. And Zangvill, who wrote the play, The Melting Pot, actually explained this. Five years after it was first produced, he said...

The process of American amalgamation is not assimilation or simple surrender to the dominant type, as is popularly supposed, but an all-around give and take by which the final type may be enriched or impoverished. So he's saying, it's not that you totally give up your identity. When the Italians came here, for instance, they didn't totally give up their identity. When the Irish came here, they didn't totally give up their identity. But they largely did, to the point that, just to use the Italians, partially my people as an example, right?

You can no longer predict an Italian American's political views and behaviors based on their ethnicity. You get Nancy Pelosi on the left. You get Antonin Scalia on the right. You get Andrew Cuomo on the left. You get Michael Knowles. That's the English name from my father's side. But, you know, I got a lot of Italians on the other side. On the right. You can't tell. The Italians have assimilated. And they've added to American culture.

You know, mob movies are a big part of our popular entertainment. People really love pizza. You know, certain Italian expressions have gained traction. But they've also surrendered a lot of Italian stuff. So what Sarah Stock is saying here, the point she's making is almost entirely correct. She says, yeah, it's a... Look, we're not just a melting pot. Like, we come from a real culture. But even if we were a melting pot, that means that you do at least largely...

give up your identity. You contribute a little, but you give up your identity to assimilate to this new kind of identity, which is the American identity. And then they conclude on the biggest head scratcher.

And now instead we're saying there's something wrong with xenophobia. No. I mean, look, I got to be honest with you. Like, you and I have a fundamental disagreement. We will never see eye to eye on this. It's a choice. And people, I think what you're expressing, though, is really what the Trump administration

movement at its heart is about. And I think that's problematic. I disagree. I don't think Trump's anywhere close to being a Christian nationalist. That's ridiculous. Trump's basically a Democrat from 15 years ago in a kind of socialist. I love this point. And I think President Trump would agree with that.

I think a lot of Trump voters would agree with that. Yeah, he's like waving the rainbow flag. You know, Trump is, he doesn't care that much about, you know, hard right-wing traditionalist social conservatism. That's how he got people like Bobby Kennedy and Tulsi Gabbard and Joe Rogan and most voters to vote with him. He's the center. Trump is the center. Trump is the mainstream. It's the left that is extreme now.

But Trump is, you know, he's not Sam Sater saying, well, you know, this kind of extreme right wing rhetoric. That's why people vote for Trump. She goes, what are you talking about? He says, that's I just disagree with you. I got to be honest with you. Whenever someone says, I got to be honest with you as a preface to their statement. What they are admitting is that they are regularly not honest with you. They previously have been dishonest with you. So he says that is, oh, I got to be honest with you. I just don't agree that America, what? That America has a religion?

You don't agree. You don't agree. We have in God we trust in our national anthem and on our money. We were founded by people who called themselves pilgrims. Okay. The founding fathers and the framers wrote extensively about the importance of Christianity to their country. And you're telling me we don't have a religion. We don't have a founding stock of people. No, not England.

It's not the Dutch. It's not, no, no, no, it's not. It's Martians. I don't know what it is. There's no religion. There's no founding stock. There are no traditions. There's no common morality. There's really no geography. So what is America? Matt Walsh asked this question yesterday. It's probably going to be his next movie. That's going to complete the trill. What is America? But the answer from the libs on the left and the right is, well, America is an idea.

merely an idea floating in outer space in the ether, except when they say that, they say America's an idea. You say, okay, what's the idea?

At least the people who say that on the right, well, they'll say, well, it's the idea of individual liberty and it's the idea of free association. And they'll give you some answer from late 20th century libertarian readings of the American founding. And it might be right, it might be wrong, but at least they'll give you an answer. You ask the left, what's the idea of America? They won't give you an answer because...

The left-wing liberal project is about surpassing all limits. It's about maximizing individual autonomy. It's about breaking down anything that might circumscribe choice. So if you say, well, what's the idea? America is just an idea. Okay, what's the idea of America? They can't tell you because to say America is this idea is simultaneously to say that America is not that idea which contradicts this idea.

And they can't do that. America's got to be everything to everyone for all times. America, the idea would have to contradict Aristotle's law of non-contradiction because it would have to include every idea. So to the left...

America is not even just an idea. America is an idea of an idea. It is so radically abstract that it's nothing. And in practice, when the left governs, America is nothing. It has no border. It has no tradition. It has no common language. It's nothing. It's just, it's a vacuum. Now, you know, nature abhors a vacuum and will fill it up. I suggest you fill up the air in your home with the smells and bells candle from the candle club.

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Okay, I will move on from this Jubilee episode, but it was fascinating. And this guy in particular was a really interesting guest on the Jubilee episode because the format it has seemed to be is you get one conservative to debate two dozen libs. The first guest was Charlie Kirk. Ben Shapiro went on there. Lila Rose went on there. I went on there. And without – I have no false modesty here –

generally seems to be the rule that the conservative is surrounded by two dozen libs and the conservative beats all the libs. That's it seems to be the structure of the show. OK, I'm not. Listen, false modesty is a form of pride. And so I will admit not just for me, but for the other three conservatives, too. They generally won pretty, pretty decisively. In this case, the lib facing off against the 20 conservatives, he lost the

He didn't come, even if you're a big fan of this guy or whatever, I don't follow his stuff at all, but I've heard of him at least. I know he's a liberal commentator and he did not do as well as the conservatives did against the libs. You saw the exchange with Sarah Stock. Here's another exchange. I wish I had this guy's name. I just started following him on X yesterday, but I don't have his name off the top of my head. Another conservative comes up to debate religious fundamentalism and here,

Sam Sater's ideological confusion becomes, or philosophical confusion, becomes even more manifest. Hey. It's nice to meet you. Nice to meet you. Okay, so I would like to touch on the religious fundamentalist aspect. Are you an atheist? I'm a Reformed Jew. I don't have a strong belief in the existence of God, but I don't think that religion in and of itself is bad.

Okay, so what's wrong with religious fundamentalists? So like when you said trans rights and women's rights or something like that? Well, the problem I have with religious fundamentalists and really more, I guess, it's really theocrats, is that they want to impose their morality that comes from their religion on the rest of us. But morality, from your view, is going to be a preference, right? It's not morality, it's a preference? Yes.

So, morality without a foundation is going to reduce you to a preference. Well, I have a foundation for my morality. Which is what? It's a humanist vision of what basically creates as little suffering as possible for as many people. Okay, so you're like a consequentialist? Utilitarian? I don't really bother myself with being a consequentialist or utilitarian. Okay, what...

What is remarkable about this exchange is not that Sam Sater is a leftist or that his interlocutor is a conservative. What is remarkable about this exchange is that the leftist taking on the two dozen conservatives doesn't know what he himself believes. What's remarkable about this exchange? It's not that the leftist doesn't understand what the conservatives believe. That we expect.

The leftist doesn't understand the basic premises of his own arguments. He says, look, I don't like...

religious fundamentalism. He never really defines it. He's obviously confused about it. I don't like theocrats. He clearly doesn't know what a theocrat is because a theocracy is government by religious clerics. But here he's using theocracy to mean government by people who have religious views, which is all governments for all time. And certainly we have a self-government and we're a people that have religious views. So he's totally confused about what theocracy means. But so the interlocutor says, what is,

So what is the basis of your morality? Is it just preference, just whatever you feel like, which is sort of what it seems like? And Sater says, no, no, it's not that. And he's kind of stumbling around. He says, I want to reduce suffering for the greatest number of people possible. Okay, now that is a moral view. That is the view of Peter Singer, for instance, who is a professor at Princeton. And the interlocutor rightly says, he said, okay, so you're a consequentialist.

And your ethics is a consequentialist ethics. And Seder looks really confused. He says, ah, ah, homina, homina. He says, you know, utilitarian. Utilitarianism is a subset of consequentialist ethics. And Seder looks at him and says, I don't think about I'm a consequentialist or utilitarian.

But it wasn't like really a question to him. The interlocutor was helping him. He was saying, no, the thing you've just described by definition is a form of utilitarian ethics, specifically one advocated not even just by John Stuart Mill or Jeremy Bentham, but most recently by Peter Singer. That's your view. And so the question then becomes, OK, well, why is that your view?

I guess the grounding of my ethics is that good is to be done and evil is to be avoided. That's different than his utilitarianism, which is just minimize suffering for the greatest number of people possible.

It reveals a great distinction between classical political philosophy and liberal political philosophy. Classical political philosophy pursuing the greatest good, the summum bonum, the common good, recognizing that there is such a thing as a common good in society. Liberal political philosophy, beginning with Thomas Hobbes,

saying that basically there is no common good. We can't really understand a greatest good. The only thing that we could even define as a common good is peace to save us from the war of all against all in which life is nasty, brutish, and short. And so really what we're after is not pursuing the greatest good, but avoiding the greatest evil, which is death, suffering and death. That's kind of where that comes from. So it's an interesting political divide, and it could have been an interesting conversation, except...

the left, this guy showed up. He's supposed to be one of the better people on the left to articulate his views. He doesn't even know what he believes. Also, it's not like this guy is 22 years old. I think this guy's pushing 60, okay? This guy's had a long time to figure out what he thinks. He doesn't even know what he thinks. I think this is true broadly with the left, and it's why our political debates are largely fruitless. And this is backed up by social science, by the way. I think Jonathan Haidt did a paper on this.

It's not just that we're speaking past each other. It's not just that, you know, we have an irreconcilable first principles or something like that. It's even more basic than that. The right understands the left and the left doesn't understand the right. And so when the left is simply making arguments about

from ignorance, the bases of which they themselves don't understand. Now, speaking over confusion on what we believe, that's all. It's a great, you got to watch the Jubilee episode. It's fabulous. Speaking of confusion over what we believe, Dylan Mulvaney, he's back. He needs a little press. He'd been out of the news for a year or so. And so he's got a book. We covered the book on the show a week or two ago, a little bit from the first part of it. Now he's doing the media tour. He goes on The View,

And forget about Dylan Mulvaney, even forget about the transgenderism issue, which I'm sick of talking about. Just pay attention to how Whoopi Goldberg, a chief spokesman of the American left in pop culture, because she has the seat on The View for many years, notice how little she understands about the view that she is proposing. I'm not sure what's going on or why this is an issue. The same for me as when people say, oh, you know,

I don't know how I feel about you. You do. God doesn't make mistakes. And the challenge is not to the trans people. It's to the people who are not trans. That's what God is looking to see, how you treat people. Yes. That's what is happening.

The argument is transgenderism is true. Men can be women. Men should be permitted to behave as women. Men should be permitted to undergo mutilations, to radically change their bodies, chemical procedures, psychiatric treatment, perhaps all the way down even to little children. They must be permitted to do that because God doesn't make mistakes. You catch the contradiction there?

Listen, Johnny, you're Johnny, you're a boy, you got all the boy parts and the boy DNA, and you've been Johnny your whole life. But now you say that you're Sally, and you say you were born in the wrong body, and your true identity doesn't match the body in which you, the true you, were born. And so you must undergo very expensive, very painful treatment.

medical experiments to change your body to better align with your perceived understanding of yourself because God doesn't make mistakes. If you want to take that God doesn't make mistakes, obviously God in principle doesn't make mistakes, though that doesn't really tell us about the point Whoopi's trying to make here. But if you say God doesn't make mistakes, then you would say your transgenderism is fake. God doesn't make mistakes. You're a boy.

Now, what is needed here really is just a more thorough and coherent anthropology because God does not make mistakes. God does not do evil. And yet, mistakes are made in the world, and evil exists in the world. So how do we account for that?

Whoopi's confusion, a lot of the left's confusion in political philosophy, by the way, comes from their inability to understand original sin. The fact that they took original sin, the Christian concept, Christianity, which built our civilization, and they just throw it out. They don't like the idea of original sin. But original sin is not some prescription about people. It's a description. It's just a fact of the world. It's a fallen world. So how do we make sense of that?

Even little babies, they don't commit any personal sin, and yet bad things happen. And they do bad things, even though they're not totally aware of it. How do you make sense of that? Well, there is original sin. Okay, so if you can make sense of original sin, where does original sin come from? It's because human beings have abused their free will. So it's not God doing the evil. It's not God making a mistake. It's man abusing his free will.

And in the Christian understanding, then, you would say, well, look, maybe God didn't make a mistake in the evil that pervades the world, but he definitely made a mistake in creating the world because he created a world in which human beings would abuse their free will. And so that itself was a mistake, right? No. Christianity accounts for this, too, in the fact of the incarnation and the atonement, that perhaps this is, in fact, the greatest possible world because a world in which God himself –

takes on flesh and dwells among us in which God sends his only begotten son to be crucified for our sins and to be resurrected on the third day is an even better world than a world in which man had not abused his free will and fallen. You might say, well, that's all crazy, Michael. I don't believe in any of that. I'm not a Christian. I'm not saying you have to be, though I recommend it. I think you should be. I'm just telling you, Christianity accounts for that. Our traditional understanding of ourselves and our culture accounts for that. It makes sense of the world.

liberalism does not. Leftism, random humanist utilitarianism, whatever Sam Sater on the Jubilee show says, it doesn't. Whoopi Goldberg's understanding of transgenderism, it doesn't make sense of the world, even on their own terms. So you can tell me, well, I find Christianity unsatisfying and insufficient. Okay, what's better? Give me a better alternative. You can't.

And that's where a lot of our confusion comes from. We threw out the systems that did make sense and that allowed our civilization to flourish. And we said, we know better. You know, we can recreate the world out of our tiny stock of reason. But turns out we're not that good at it. And things begin to decay as a result of that. Did you know 39% of teen drivers admit to texting while driving? Even scarier, those who text are more likely to speed and run red lights. Shockingly, 94% know it's dangerous, but do it anyway.

Now,

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My favorite comment yesterday actually didn't come from YouTube. It came in an email from a young man who hosted me one evening after I spoke at a university and had a really enjoyable dinner after this university speech, number of the students and people. But anyway, he wrote this in. He said, Michael, I briefly wanted to push back on your outlook of boozing and Zoomers.

While I do partially share your sentiment, the rebellion against the system or your parents, which Joe Rogan points to as a reason young men have flocked to conservatism, I fear the problem is far more serious. We live in a recorded, judgmental digital world where a foolish night out sees young men faced with allegations that strip them of their dignity and where men do not even wish to approach women for fear of being seen as creepy or weird. A shocking 45% of men my age, 18 to 25, have never experienced

asked a woman out in person. That's a crazy number. I wasn't aware of that number. Meanwhile, online alternatives mean no more drinking in the parking lot before a movie, after the football game, or at a casual bar. Less hookups, good. Less drinking, neutral. And less eudaimonia, less happiness, less human flourishing, bad. A great point.

A great point, because my view was it's hip to be square. The Zoomers aren't drinking because they're on the straight and narrow or something. But that's a great caveat to it. And it takes a big, handsome, wise, delightful man to admit when he's missed something. And that's a very good addition. Getting back to some practical politics for a second, we got a fight going on, baby. This actually does...

Link in with everything we've been talking about today because it gets to ideological confusion. This time, not on the left, but on the right. House Republicans have a continuing resolution before them, a bill that would avoid a government shutdown and fund the government through September. President Trump supports this bill. The vast majority of Republicans in Congress support this bill. All the Democrats oppose it. I think every single one, maybe either one or two straight, but I think every single one opposes it.

The Republicans overwhelmingly support it. Three Republicans are no or maybe no on it, and one of those Republicans is a hard no, Thomas Massey. What's really interesting about this is Thomas Massey is regularly considered one of, if not the most right-wing member of Congress, but he says no. So first, what's in the bill? The continuing resolution increases defense spending by $6 billion.

It decreases non-defense discretionary spending by $13 billion.

So non-defense discretionary spending excludes things like Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, which the libs have been fear-mongering on for decades at this point, saying Republicans want to throw granny off a cliff and kill your Social Security. Some Republicans have been open to it. Trump, though, consistently for his entire political career has said, we're not going to touch entitlements. We're not touching Social Security. We're not touching Medicare or Medicaid. Now, that's non-discretionary spending. That's money that just has to be spent. So the $13 billion that's being decreased is out of

Money that is not spent on defense and it's not mandatory spending. There is not a single earmark in this bill. Pork barrel spending, community projects, which is how members assent to give their vote to a lot of bills is they'll say, well, look, I'll give you my vote, but you got to build a $10 million bridge in my district. It doesn't even need to go anywhere. It could be a bridge to nowhere, but you got to build it.

And so there's a lot of federal spending there. As a portion of the federal budget, it's not a huge deal. John McCain made it a big deal during the 2008 presidential campaign because he was a Republican who supported

bigger spending projects, not just on defense, but also on entitlements. So the way that he could seem like he was tough on spending was to go after earmarks, which are a relatively small portion of federal spending. But in any case, this bill doesn't have that either. Immigration customs enforcement spending is slightly up to $10 million here. So my read on it is, as far as continuing resolutions go, it's pretty good. It freezes spending at 2024 levels, so the spending is at least not going to increase.

And it reduces spending in certain areas, which is good. And then Trump and Elon are reducing spending in the executive branch through their own power, not through the legislature. So all in all, it's pretty good. If I were a member of Congress, I would vote for this. However, I understand why some members might say, well, it's still a lot of money. And so you got Tim Burchett and Corey Mills, two Republicans are saying, I don't know, I'm on the fence. But the one who says, no, I'm a no, is Thomas Massey, who is a huge fiscal hawk.

He's kind of like Rand Paul in that way. Rand Paul in the Senate votes against a ton of stuff, just kind of reflexively. Both of these guys are from Kentucky, must be something in the water. But in any case, it's a principled stand. I don't know that I agree with it, but it's a principled stand. And Trump is furious. Trump is now threatening to primary Thomas Massa. He says, thank you to the House Freedom Caucus for just delivering a big blow to the radical left Democrats and their desire to raise taxes and shut our country down. Because the House Freedom Caucus, which is usually

the impediment. They usually obstruct these kinds of bills. They've agreed, okay, we're going to support it. The Democrats hate America and all it stands for. That's why they allowed millions of criminals to invade our nation. Sometimes it takes great courage to do the right thing. Congressman Thomas Massey of beautiful Kentucky is an automatic no vote on just about everything. That's kind of true.

Despite the fact that he has always voted for continuing resolutions in the past, he should be primary, all caps, and I will lead the charge against him. He is just another grandstander who's too much trouble and not worth the fight. He reminds me of Liz Cheney before her historic record-breaking fall, parentheses, loss. I like how he has to give you a synonym. He has to define what her fall was. It's a loss. She lost.

The people of Kentucky won't stand for it. Just watch. Do I have any takers? All caps, three question marks. Anyway, thank you again to the House Freedom Caucus for your very important vote. We need to buy some time in order to make America great again, greater than ever before. Unite and win. Okay, this is notable, not because Trump is threatening to primary a Republican. That's happened before. He's threatening to primary one of the most right-wing Republicans. How is the Republican base going to take this? Say what you will. Thomas Massey is no Liz Cheney.

He's got some real right-wing bona fides. Will the GOP base take this? This will be a test of how much Trump dominates the GOP. I suspect in a fight between Trump and Massey, even though Massey is a real tough guy, I think Trump's going to win. I think he just dominates the GOP that much. But there's a real question. What do we believe?

What do we want? What are we fighting for? Whose side are we on? What defines conservatism? What defines our politics? The Trump election, certainly the Trump re-election, signals a seismic shift, a tectonic plate shift in our politics. The shift from Reagan to Bush to Clinton to Obama, sorry, to Clinton to Bush to Obama, it wasn't all that big. They all kind of basically agreed the same stuff. The shift to Trump was a big shift.

Okay. The shift from Eisenhower and Nixon to JFK and LBJ, and then certainly into the LBJ administration, that was a big shift.

The shift into FDR's administration, certainly the shift into Woodrow Wilson's, that was another big shift. Wasn't just moving deck chairs around. That was an actual change. We're seeing a change here. And so the question is, what will define the right at American politics moving forward? This battle between Trump and Massey is a pretty good example of that. Okay, there's a story I really want to get to. I don't know if I have time, though. Well, I'll get to it. I'll get to it really quickly.

The Financial Times has a woman's guide to wearing ties. Woman's guide to wearing ties. FT, women should wear ties. The latest female power dressing flex is women wearing long neck ties.

I can get to this story very quickly because my advice is very simple. Don't do it. It makes you look like a lesbian. Neckties are good. Men should wear more neckties than they do. I'm guilty of this. I don't wear a necktie on this show. I probably should. Neckties look good. It completes an outfit for a man, but it's for a man, not for a woman. The FT is admitting this when they say it's a power dressing flex. And power is traditionally understood as more a male virtue than a female virtue. Women have plenty of power in their own right, but it's a little bit different.

And when the women try to be the girl boss in the boardroom, that is women consciously taking on virtues that are traditionally ascribed to men, not to women. Neckties for women are nothing new. They have popped up for over 100 years, but it's always by women who are trying to be more like men.

and who are probably disproportionately lesbian, if we're being totally frank about it. Okay. It's the suffragettes, for instance, wore neckties. Feminists of 150 years have worn neckties. Ladies, don't do it. You have real power in your own nature. You don't need to, I'm not saying you can't go work in public. I'm not saying you can't do this. I'm not saying you can't do plenty of things that men do that you want to do, but don't

Trying to be a man is not expanding your power. It is limiting your power by saying that the only kinds of virtues that are to be pursued, that have any value, are the virtues that naturally attain to men. Okay, don't, no, you're a woman. That's something, I can't be a woman.

Men are dressing like women. Women are dressing like men. It's very confused. Ideologically very confused. Anthropologically very confused. It's TEE Tuesday. The rest of the show continues now. You do not want to miss it. Become a member. Use code Knowles, K-N-W-L-E-S at checkout for two months free on all annual plans.