The following is an edited transcript excerpt of The Michael Knowles Show. * * * The war in Iran is in its third week, and the U.S. Army is raising the enlistment age to 42. Hearing that news makes me want to pull out the banjo and start playing that old Arlo Guthrie song, “The Draft Dodger Rag.” Have you ever heard that song? I actually played it in my little high school band. It goes like this: “Sarge, I’m only eighteen, I got a ruptured spleen And I always carry a purse I’ve got eyes like a bat and my feet are flat My asthma’s getting worse” The whole song is about this guy who doesn’t want to be drafted and is making all these excuses. How quaint it is now, too. “I’m only 18, I’ve got a ruptured spleen, and I always carry a purse.” The excuse is — “I’m a gay guy.” Under Obama and Biden they were only recruiting gay people. The CIA and the military were putting out commercials about going with your lesbian moms to the pride parade and how that would prepare you for the Army or whatever. Now the commercials are getting a little tougher. Now they’re going back to just regular old guys — disproportionately white guys, actually — but, you know, just real tough guys. In any case, they’re raising the age. Why? Does this mean the Iran war will go on for years? Does this mean there’s going to be a draft? I don’t think that’s what it means. I think it means the world is getting more dangerous. From the fall of the Berlin Wall up until September 11, 2001, we had a vacation from history. And even during the global war on terror, only a very small percentage of Americans actually served in the military. The war dragged on forever, but there was no real intense national focus on winning. It wasn’t even clear what the objectives were. They became vague — kind of imperial wars with humanitarian justifications: We need to protect women’s education in Afghanistan. Now the world is starting to feel a little more real. There’s growing talk of multipolarity, and even the current war in Iran — which has disrupted the Strait of Hormuz — could threaten the petrodollar. The fact that oil is priced and purchased in U.S. dollars gives the United States a massive advantage on the global stage. You could envision a world — though I’m not betting on it, as Trump still has my full trust — where, if things went south, China steps in, demands that oil be purchased in yuan, and triggers a major shift in global power: multipolarity, or even a China-led order. All of that means things are going to get more dangerous. And when things get more dangerous, we raise the enlistment age to 42 — which is a little scary for me. I mean, I barely made the T-ball team — I’m not the most athletic guy in the world. But I just turned 36 — I’m still well within range. Also, they’re lifting a restriction. Previously, if you had a minor marijuana offense, you weren’t eligible to enlist. Now they’re lifting that restriction. And coincidentally, they’re doing it on April 20th — 4/20 — so clearly someone in the Pentagon is having a little fun with that. But regardless of whether you can puff a little devil’s lettuce now, what this is telling you — once you sober up — is that the world is getting more dangerous. The Pentagon is declaring it and we should be listening.

Outside of the Revolutionary War era, it would be hard to find another period in American history when Americans have been more reluctant to pay their taxes — and justifiably so. At this point it’s understandable if your eyes start to glaze over when you hear about yet another massive fraud scheme that’s been engineered by foreigners to steal millions of dollars’ worth of your money. We’re talking about billions of dollars in Medicaid fraud, in just the state of Minnesota alone, every year. Think about that for a second. In just one state, Medicaid fraud all by itself — which is enabled by insurance companies and the Democrat Party — accounts for billions of dollars in theft. In response, the Trump administration has launched an “anti-fraud task force,” led by JD Vance, to prosecute some of the worst offenders. But the truth is, an anti-fraud task force can’t actually solve the problem. Playing whack-a-mole with fraudsters isn’t going to work — they’re too creative, and our system of taxpayer handouts is effectively based on the honor system. In order to understand what I mean, we’ll start with a fun little exercise, where we all play detective. Watch this footage from an alleged armed robbery in Georgia, and try to identify what — if any — type of fraud might be occurring here. Also, for your own amusement, watch very closely when they zoom in on the alleged “attack” on the store clerk. Here it is: Source: Law & Crime Network/YouTube.com First of all, if you’re going to stage a robbery to steal $5,000 from the store, you’ve got to make it look more convincing than that. LeBron James would be embarrassed by the flop. For $5,000, you’ve got to make contact, at the very least. And it would probably be smart to have your accomplice leave the premises for a bit, instead of sticking around and pouring the cash all over the ground when the police show up.  But that’s all besides the point. The point is — if you were a detective assigned to this case, what are the possible motives you’d come up with? Besides the cash, what would someone named “Patel” possibly have to gain by staging a robbery like this? To answer that question, we need to go back to a much different time in America — the year 2000. That was before we imported tens of millions of foreigners and transformed the entire country. By some estimates, 38% of all immigrants currently living in the United States arrived after 2010. And 21% arrived between 2000 and 2009. Before all of that migration, America was a very high-trust society. And that’s why, in 2000, the Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act passed the House and Senate with only one “no” vote. The entire House and Senate agreed on this legislation, and the only holdout was upset about the deficit — he didn’t actually object to the bill. So what did the legislation do? It created a new “U Visa,” which allows illegal immigrants in the United States to obtain legal status, as long as they’re the victim of a serious crime — including a violent assault. At the time, no lawmaker — in either the House or the Senate — even considered the possibility that large numbers of foreigners would stage their own violent assaults, in order to qualify for this new “legal status.” But that’s exactly what’s happening at the moment in the United States. This is a recent press release from the DOJ. Bear with me here as I try to read these names. Eleven Indian nationals have been charged in connection with a conspiracy to carry out staged armed robberies of convenience stores for the purpose of allowing store clerks to falsely claim they were crime victims on immigration applications. The following defendants have been charged with one count of conspiracy to commit visa fraud: 1. Jitendrakumar Patel, Maheshkumar Patel, Sanjaykumar Patel, Dipikaben Patel, Rameshbhai Patel, Amitabahen Patel, Ronakkumar Patel, Sangitaben Patel, Minkesh Patel, Sonal Patel, and Mitul Patel. Yes, every single one of them is named “Patel.” (Which incidentally, is the same name as the cashier in the video above, although to be clear, that particular Patel hasn’t been accused of visa fraud — he was supposedly after insurance money). As for these 11 other Patels, according to the DOJ: Rambhai Patel and his co-conspirators set up and carried out staged armed robberies of at least six convenience/liquor stores and fast food restaurants in Massachusetts and more elsewhere. It is alleged that the purpose of the staged robberies was to allow the clerks present to claim falsely that they were victims of a violent crime on an application for U non-immigration status. As you might imagine, this kind of fraud is very difficult to detect. So we can assume this is happening constantly, all over the country. Unless these people are monumentally dumb, they won’t get caught. They’re taking advantage of laws that were passed when America was a very different place. And unless we repeal all of these laws, we’re going to see a lot more fake crimes, and a lot more fraud. Every other day, we’re learning about a new scam. The New York Post, along with Nick Shirley, have just uncovered rampant hospice fraud in California, to the tune of $100 million. For example, take a look at the empty building below. LA’s shameful hospice fraud crisis laid bare – and the tens of millions of your cash going down the drain https://t.co/RMuCh2Pf53 pic.twitter.com/tRFwSOWWqa — New York Post (@nypost) March 1, 2026 Source: @nypost/X.com According to the Post, a grand total of 12 “hospice and home health care agencies” are registered to operate from this one vacant strip mall, in the San Fernando Valley. And there’s plenty more where that came from. St Rita’s Home Health, which data shows billed Medicare about $4.3 million between 2019 and the first-half of 2025, was registered to a vacant Van Nuys strip mall with a “for rent” sign outside … The Post contacted several of the companies allegedly operating inside the building. … One hung up when asked to confirm its location, another said it moved — despite still being listed on the [California government] database at the North Hollywood address — and a third went to a voicemail for ”Alexander from Southern California Auto.” One alleged hospice fraudster had the audacity to show off her $4 million Carmel-by-the-Sea home for a news outlet just days before being arrested and charged with stealing $3.2 million from Medicare. CBS did its own investigation, and found the same. Watch: A CBS News investigation into hospice fraud in California is prompting a congressional review. House Republicans called the findings “alarming evidence of fraudulent activity.” https://t.co/ok74kuzmcW pic.twitter.com/Jg2vE7Hp1k — CBS Evening News with Tony Dokoupil (@CBSEveningNews) March 24, 2026 Source: @CBSEveningNews/X.com 700 fraudulent hospices. And those are just the ones CBS found. Obviously, if journalists and YouTubers can uncover fraud like this, there’s no excuse for state and federal regulators. They’re obviously complicit in an unprecedented fraud on the taxpayer. And unless we simply turn off the funding, the looting will continue indefinitely. It’s not enough for Republicans to “look into it.” They need to turn off the funding entirely. At the same time, as disastrous as this fraud is, it’s important to understand that it’s just one symptom of a much larger problem, one that every American recognizes. So today I want to move past the issue of immigrant fraud and see if we can get to something deeper. A problem that has been on my mind for a long time now. A problem I think everyone has noticed. And that problem is that virtually everything is fake now. In high-trust societies, there’s a general expectation that people tell the truth, and everything is transparent. But in the society that we have now — partially as the result of foreign migration — the opposite is true. You can’t get a straight answer on anything. And very little of what you see — whether online or in the real world— is authentic. Take something as fundamental as food, for example. Johns Hopkins recently found that “more than half of calories consumed at home by adults in the U.S. come from ultraprocessed foods.” These are foods with ingredients that are often impossible to pronounce, contain no nutritional value, and significantly increase your risk of cardiovascular disease, obesity, and colon cancer — which as we all know, is now dramatically more common in young people. One of these ultraprocessed ingredients is called TBHQ (or “tert-butylhydroquinone”). It’s found in a large variety of “shelf-stable” foods, because it prevents the fats and oils from breaking down. Common products with TBHQ include microwave popcorn, potato chips, pretzels, frozen meals (including pre-packaged dinners and frozen pizzas), fast food, cooking oils, peanut butter, packaged cookies and pastries, and so on. In high enough doses, TBHQ has been found to cause liver enlargement, convulsions, tumors, and weakened immune systems. While the FDA has classified TBHQ as “safe for consumption,” there’s a caveat — it can only account for 0.02% of total fat or oil content in a product. In that respect, TBHQ is similar to aspartame, the fake sugar that’s found in Diet Coke and many other “diet” products. In moderation, it’s generally considered to be safe. But several studies — including one published in 2023 from an agency of the World Health Organization — classified aspartame as “possibly carcinogenic to humans” if consumed in large quantities. Some previous studies had found that it can cause cancer in rats, in high doses. But again, in “moderation,” it’s supposedly okay — just like cell phone use. But most people don’t realize any of this. They don’t understand that food is intentionally made to be more dangerous — and more artificial — because it needs a longer shelf life. And that’s not even getting into foods that are fraudulently labeled in the first place. Something like 50% of Parmesan cheese isn’t authentic, for example. The outlet “Food & Wine” just reported on the extensive fraud that affects a variety of food products in the grocery store. In 2024, The Guardian reported that olive oil fraud reached an all-time high in the European Union, with most of the fraudulent olive oil mixed with cheaper alternatives and several labeled with “misleading origin” labels. … In Turkey, one of the world’s largest honey-producing nations, authorities seized nearly $30 million worth of fraudulent honey over the course of just a few months in 2025 alone. Spices are another concern, with the FDA explaining that not only do people sometimes mix in other plant parts to bulk up production, they may also use “dyes to give spices a certain color, especially when the color strongly impacts the perception of quality.” It added, “Lead-based dyes and other industrial dyes that can cause adverse health problems such as cancer have been found in spices such as chili powder, turmeric, and cumin. Even cheese is often misrepresented. A few months ago, we talked about how one company, Leprino Foods, makes roughly 85% of the cheese that goes on pizza — whether you buy it frozen, or at a restaurant. They have a variety of patents for making cheese as efficiently as they can. But most companies that supposedly sell “cheese” in this country aren’t bothering with that. Take Cheez Whiz for example. Here’s the label: It’s an incredible list of ingredients. You’ve got your whey, canola oil, corn syrup, protein concentrate, mustard flour, garlic powder and sorbic acid. Less than 2% of the product, according to this label, is “cheese culture.” So they add a microscopic element of cheese in the product, and that gives them the go-ahead to claim that their product is “Made with Real Cheese” and “Real Dairy.” But there’s nothing “real” about any of this. It’s all fake. What you want in actual cheese is a much simpler list of ingredients: Pasteurized Milk, Cheese Cultures, Salt, and some enzymes. And this is one area where federal regulators have actually made authentic products easier to identify. Watch: Source: History of Food/YouTube.com What’s interesting about the video I just played is that it’s probably not real, either. The facts are real — I verified them. But I have no idea if there’s an actual person narrating that footage, or if it’s AI. No narrator ever appears on camera. He maintains the same cadence throughout the entire thing. All of the footage is stock imagery. No one has left a comment. And the script is all based on information from government websites, like the FDA, so for all I know, an AI wrote the script, too. That brings me to yet another area of life that’s becoming almost entirely fake, which is social media. Bots and AI have overrun pretty much every social media platform. Go on Facebook, and you’ll get bombarded with AI videos everywhere you look. Some of the most popular genres involve fake stories about celebrities, complete with sob stories or some other lazy emotional hook. Here’s Peyton Manning going to a funeral for a fan he’s never met. People loved that one. There’s a whole genre of Peyton Manning AI slop along these lines. Source: Magic Clement Then you have videos like this one. incredible things are happening in the facebook AI slop arena pic.twitter.com/aI5uJt3WSG — Daniel (@growing_daniel) October 9, 2024 Source: @growing_daniel/X.com Apparently, an awful lot of people think giraffes are rescued with cranes. There’s something like 23,000 likes on this video. And that sounds pretty bad, but then you realize that those 23,000 likes might not be real, either. A lot of them are probably bots, which drive up engagement for the video. And when engagement goes up, the algorithm is more likely to show the video to more people. And that means more ad revenue for the creator. So social media is full of artificial content generated by bots, and liked by bots, and commented on by bots. It’s bots talking to bots. Layer upon layer of fakeness. As a result of fraud like this, the truth is, you really can’t tell how many people are actually watching any particular piece of content. It’s also hard to know if you’re debating a real person, when you respond to a comment. And the flip side of this problem is that, very often, legitimate channels (and outlets) will be accused of buying fake engagement, when there’s actually no evidence that they’re doing it. You’ll also see accusations that AI was used to create artwork, just based on a hunch that some people have. I don’t need to belabor the point. Most people who watch my show are already aware of AI slop. What’s important is recognizing that, as much as we’d like to dismiss AI slop as a unique phenomenon, it’s actually part of a broader trend where reality becomes much harder to discern. A few weeks ago, we talked about the home buying process, and how many new homes are in very poor condition, even though they were advertised as move-in ready. Many homes also have fake wood and fake wood exteriors now, to the point that it’s hard to buy a home with natural wood. You’re likely to get stuck with “luxury laminate flooring” or vinyl flooring instead. That vinyl flooring is a lot cheaper. It doesn’t scratch easily. It’s waterproof. And it looks like wood, at a distance. The problem is that you’ll almost certainly have to replace it in 20 years, once the top layer is damaged. It starts to fall apart very quickly after that. You can have genuine hardwood floors that last a century, or you can have the imitation that falls apart in a decade.  And increasingly, the fake option is winning out. A decade ago, according to one survey, vinyl flooring accounted for just 6% of all new home flooring. Now it accounts for 30%, making it the second-most popular option (behind carpeting). On the other hand, real hardwood was used in around 37% of new builds back in 2017, but now it’s down to less than 7%. These are estimates, but they give you an idea. People’s homes — the single most important purchase of their lives, the place where they spend the vast majority of their time, the place where they raise their children — are becoming demonstrably more fake, along with everything else. What do you lose, as a country, when inauthenticity runs that deep? And in the same vein, what happens when fake jobs are created solely for the benefit of women and so-called “people of color”? There’s an awful lot of those fake jobs, as you might have noticed. Around 80% of government employees at the local, state and federal levels are just as incompetent as the DMV or the TSA — and they have the same demographics (which is almost certainly a violation of federal civil rights law). It’s just that you never see these government employees, and they never show up to work. They’re basically in a jobs program. Not that the private sector is much better, in some cases. 90% of HR Departments serve no purpose. They exist to discriminate against white men and foster a culture of constant paranoia. Meanwhile, Silicon Valley is full of “project managers” who are ripped straight from “Office Space.” They’re supposedly good at “talking to engineers” or whatever, but in reality they spend half their days posting TikToks about all the perks they get at work, like the free lunches and spa days. Thankfully, ever since Elon Musk fired 90% of Twitter employees, these videos have been harder to find. But just in case you forgot, here’s one of those videos, from 2022 — just before Elon took over: @utchattanooga Check out a day in the life of a Twitter employee, and UTC graduate Kaylah Santos! Thank you so much to Brittany, Taylor and Kaylah for participating. We are so proud of your accomplishments

Loyola University Chicago’s student newspaper, The Loyola Phoenix, issued an apology and a lengthy editor’s note after initially identifying the suspect in freshman Sheridan Gorman’s murder as an “illegal immigrant.” The paper’s original headline read, “Immigrant man charged in murder of Sheridan Gorman, DHS involved” — and the story correctly identified suspect Jose Medina-Medina as an “illegal immigrant.” Medina-Medina, 25, is a Venezuelan national who the Department of Homeland Security said had been “living in the United States illegally.” The paper later edited the story to identify Medina-Medina as simply a “Rogers Park Resident,” and included a lengthy editor’s note apologizing for the previous characterization. “That headline didn’t reflect the most important elements in the story, and it was taken down minutes later to prevent any further harm to affected community members,” the note read. “Additionally, in the body of the original post, we described the man who was charged as an ‘illegal immigrant,’ using language provided by the Department of Homeland Security. That language does not align with Associated Press style, nor does it align with the values of this newspaper … No human’s existence is illegal, and we quickly changed our wording to reflect that.” The White House issued a statement on the murder, blaming liberal sanctuary city policies that protect illegal aliens in cities like Chicago: “A preventable tragedy. Sheridan Gorman was murdered by an illegal alien released into the U.S. in 2023 under the Biden administration — a direct result of failed border & sanctuary city policies.” When a reporter asked Democratic Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson whether he’d apologize to Gorman’s parents — for the sanctuary policies that had allowed Medina-Medina to live in Chicago — he opted instead to point the finger at President Donald Trump: “He points the finger at everything and everyone else versus doing some real self-reflection on what his responsibility is.”

Whoopi Goldberg took a moment during Wednesday’s broadcast of “The View” to lecture War Secretary Pete Hegseth about what it means to be a soldier, arguing that he “should know” what he was subjecting service members to when they deployed to the Middle East. Goldberg and her cohosts insisted, as they have previously, that President Donald Trump’s administration launched Operation Epic Fury and unleashed American military force on the Iranian regime without first planning for contingencies. That, she complained, meant that he was “sending people in to die.” WATCH: Whoopi claims the administration is just “sending people in to die” “without a plan” and nothing else. Despite never serving herself, she lectures Secretary Hegseth (who did serve) about what it means “to be a solider in our Army” and claims he doesn’t care about the lives of… pic.twitter.com/nUun9OJxd3 — Nicholas Fondacaro (@NickFondacaro) March 25, 2026 After first asserting that the United States was manipulating the numbers to hide the number of American troops who were already deployed to the Middle East and the number of those who had been hurt or killed, Goldberg asserted that there was still no plan in place to bring Operation Epic Fury to an end. “At this point, at this point, I want them to stop what they’re doing. They are sending people in to die. They are sending people in to die and I’m surprised because Hegseth served,” Goldberg said, suggesting that because American troops were in harm’s way, Hegseth could not possibly have planned the operation. “Yes, he did,” Sunny Hostin agreed. “He served. He should know what —” Goldberg said. Cohost Abby Huntsman added, “He should know better than anybody.” “Yes, better than any body, but when you listen to [Hegseth] — Stop looking so angry! He should know more than anybody what it takes to be a soldier in our Army,” Goldberg explained, adding, “What it means when you send people in. When you send them in with a plan, it’s horrific. You send them in without a plan, you willy-nilly and you’re not explaining what’s going on.” “Fathers, mothers, daughter, sisters, brothers, these are all our American citizens who are being asked to do this. And because, because of the way the military is, they will do what they’re asked to do,” she continued. “Damnit, I rather this were in the hands of people who actually cared about them enough to say, ‘I going to do everything I can for you to be not in a place where you could be killed.'”

The Environmental Protection Agency temporarily is set to cut regulations on fuel blended with ethanol in an effort to address gas prices which have soared in recent weeks due to the ongoing conflict in Iran. President Donald Trump’s EPA said on Wednesday that it is waiving federal restrictions to allow the nationwide sale of gas blended with 15%, commonly referred to as E15. The sale of E15 is barred in much of the United States during the summer months to cut back on air pollution. The EPA is also removing “all federal impediments” on the sale of E10 gas. The Trump administration’s move to free up the sale of E10 and E15 gas is set to take effect on May 1 and remain in place until May 20, and it could be extended. “EPA is working with our federal partners to reduce unnecessary costs and uncertainty and ensure that gas prices remain affordable for all Americans through the summer. This emergency action will provide American families with relief by increasing fuel supply and consumer choice,” said EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin. “President Trump has prioritized ensuring American families have an affordable domestic energy supply. The Trump Administration has made great strides on this during the first year and will continue to do so.” Gas prices climbed to a national average of nearly $4 per gallon this week, marking the highest nationwide average since 2022, according to AAA. Diesel prices, meanwhile, have jumped around 40% to an average of $5.37 per gallon. The drastic rise in fuel prices is due to the ongoing war in Iran as the Iranian regime’s attacks on ships in the Strait of Hormuz has effectively shut down passage in the strait where around 25% of the world’s oil must pass through. While the United States doesn’t import much of its oil from the Middle East, the shutdown of the Strait of Hormuz has disrupted global oil markets, causing prices to rise throughout the world. Brent crude, the international benchmark price point for oil, spiked to nearly $120 per barrel in recent weeks after it sat between $60-$70 per barrel for most of 2025. As of Wednesday afternoon, Brent crude was at $98 per barrel. President Trump has acknowledged that Americans are feeling some more pain at the pump, but said in the early days of the Iran war that the operation is “far more important than having gasoline prices go up a little bit.” Trump added that gas prices would drop “very rapidly” once the major military operation had concluded. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said on March 10, “The recent increase in oil and gas prices is temporary. And this operation will result in lower gas prices in the long-term.” Some of America’s allies — including United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, and Japan — suggested earlier this week that they are prepared to help the United States secure the Strait of Hormuz.