Daily Wire Backstageļ¼ Memorial Day Edition
Episode Stats
Length
2 hours and 3 minutes
Words per Minute
203.70435
Summary
Ben Shapiro, Andrew Klavan, and the God King Jeremy Boring join host Michael Knowles to talk about Memorial Day. Plus, a special guest appearance from our friends Jocko Wilnick and Gary Sinise. Subscribe to Dailywire to get 15% off your first month with code DWACCESS.
Transcript
00:00:00.000
Did you know that over 85% of grass-fed beef sold in U.S. grocery stores is imported?
00:00:05.260
That's why I buy all my meat from GoodRanchers.com instead.
00:00:08.900
Good Ranchers products are 100% born, raised, and harvested right here in the USA from local family farms.
00:00:14.600
Plus, there's no antibiotics ever, no added hormones, and no seed oils.
00:00:21.280
Best of all, Good Ranchers delivers straight to your door for added convenience.
00:00:24.760
So lock in a secure supply of American meat today.
00:00:26.980
Subscribe now at GoodRanchers.com and get free meat for life and $40 off with code DAILYWIRE.
00:00:32.380
That's $40 off and free meat for life with code DAILYWIRE.
00:00:38.940
The latest episode of Daily Wire Backstage Memorial Day Edition is right around the corner, and you don't want to miss it.
00:00:45.040
Join me, Ben Shapiro, Andrew Klavan, and the God King Jeremy Boring, along with awesome guests on this special Memorial Day episode.
00:01:14.780
Welcome to the Daily Wire Backstage Memorial Day Edition.
00:01:18.640
I am Jeremy Boring, God King around these parts.
00:01:21.240
I'm rich, handsome, powerful, beautiful, and a coward, which is why we don't celebrate me this time of year.
00:01:27.600
We celebrate actual men who actually sacrificed for their country.
00:01:32.600
And today we will be talking about Memorial Day.
00:01:35.560
Here to help me with that endeavor, Ben Shapiro, Andrew Klavan, Michael Knowles, and, that's right, she's lovely, Elisha Krause.
00:01:46.660
Apparently now I work for a fake news organization, because I think most of the way that you introduce yourself is not true, just saying.
00:01:55.080
We are going to be taking subscriber questions, and how do you become a subscriber?
00:02:02.300
And if, of course, they are fans of the Tumblr, we have that special happening, so you can get a his and her Tumblr or a COVID neighbor Tumblr.
00:02:13.000
I don't know why we haven't done this yet, but the double Tumblr deal is back.
00:02:16.820
And, of course, that's it when you become an all-access member for things like the fun discussions that we have.
00:02:22.020
We're going to be having a discussion with me and the guys after the show.
00:02:24.460
I'll be doing another one on Friday as well about the slow reopening of America, thank God.
00:02:30.720
If you're not an all-access member, go to dailywire.com slash subscribe, so you'll get your two Tumblrs and 15% off using the coupon code DWACCESS right now.
00:02:41.960
And if you're already a subscriber, be sure to head over to dailywire.com slash shows and find the chat box for backstage,
00:02:48.960
and I'll be taking your questions from the comfort of my lovely office.
00:02:54.220
Alicia, we actually were going to turn out a Daily Wire COVID mask, but then I asked her to send me over the first draft, and it was crocheted.
00:03:04.320
And I thought, what kind of dog and pony show do you think we're running here, Flavin?
00:03:11.520
We're going to be joined in that discussion by our friends Jocko Wilnick and Gary Sinise later on in the program.
00:03:17.280
Before we get to all of that, though, today is an amazing day, not as amazing as it could have been.
00:03:23.580
Hopefully, Saturday or Sunday will be more amazing still.
00:03:26.780
I still want to talk about it, though, and that is the greatest American, Elon Musk, is right on the precipice today of returning Americans to space from America on an American rocket for the first time in over a decade.
00:03:39.120
And since we won't be together to talk about it Saturday or Sunday, and it's so momentous, I thought it would just be fun to talk about something positive.
00:03:47.880
I see this as the greatest moment of innovation that's happened probably in my lifetime.
00:03:58.480
I think he's the only living person with a true vision for the future who's willing to put his money where his mouth is and to take responsibility.
00:04:11.720
The two astronauts who are going up in the Dragon capsule, very brave people.
00:04:18.540
Anytime you strap yourself basically to an exploding rocket and hurl yourself out of the atmosphere, it's a very high-risk endeavor.
00:04:30.660
And yet, you have these brave men and you have this amazing innovator.
00:04:34.200
The thing about Elon Musk is, if you saw the story today, he said, listen, I am the chief designer for SpaceX.
00:04:44.060
So if things go according to plan, everyone at SpaceX and NASA deserves the credit.
00:04:52.840
And you think, that is so refreshing in this day and age.
00:04:55.500
There's almost no one who's willing, especially in corporate America, who's willing to just step up and say, yep, humans are risking their lives.
00:05:02.860
Their lives and the success of this mission are 100% my responsibility.
00:05:09.380
Because of that and because of his vision, I'm confident the guy is going to succeed here.
00:05:14.760
Jeremy, I can't believe Elon Musk fooled you like that.
00:05:19.520
Oh, it just coincidentally, whoopsie-daisy, they couldn't do the launch today.
00:05:27.540
Frankly, he probably doesn't even have a rocket.
00:05:29.520
This was probably just a big publicity stunt to sell more cars.
00:05:32.660
Yeah, he's probably selling monorails to Springfield.
00:05:35.160
No, I think he actually is one of the greatest marketers of his generation.
00:05:41.480
I like that he's one of the few people in America that still just does what he wants to do.
00:05:46.040
In not just a licentious way, but in like an actually productive, creative way.
00:05:53.640
So I think probably the conspiracy theories are not true, and he will launch it on Saturday.
00:05:58.620
I just, I think going into space is everything.
00:06:02.560
I don't think, I think the human life depends on frontiers.
00:06:05.600
I think that the idea that the marketplace can be a frontier, the idea that we're going
00:06:10.280
to go inward and get smaller and smaller is going to do it.
00:06:17.280
I believe that the solar system is colonizable.
00:06:20.060
I think that we'll do it over time, but we've got to be working on it all the time.
00:06:26.500
And if you don't have a vision, an actual vision outward, your vision turns inward and
00:06:32.340
I personally am looking forward to living in my basement, wearing a mask, but that's
00:06:36.900
I mean, I think that not everybody can do that.
00:06:39.920
The rest of us have got, we've got to get on the move.
00:06:42.680
Well, when you look at the sort of videos that trend and get everybody together, it is
00:06:48.180
We all sat down, waited for the SpaceX launch, and obviously it didn't happen.
00:06:52.800
But when I was sitting there, I thought, wow, this hasn't really happened in the last,
00:06:56.360
what, 20 years or more, that we're all looking at something positive.
00:07:00.520
We're all actually excited about something, whereas the day before, all of us were also
00:07:04.800
looking at the same video, but it was of some crazy lady and some crazy man yelling at each
00:07:10.480
And then we're all yelling at each other about that.
00:07:12.740
I think much better to have that positive vision looking outward that maybe we can all
00:07:19.180
Well, we'll definitely find a way to screw it up.
00:07:21.480
I mean, there will be racial divisions over SpaceX.
00:07:24.540
Within the next five minutes, somebody will have done something with this rocket that turns
00:07:30.680
I mean, there are only two astronauts on that capsule, and that means that we are not
00:07:36.580
I mean, it's physically impossible for us to be racially representative with just two
00:07:40.640
That's just not the way that actual human representation can work.
00:07:43.660
We're going to need at least 10,000 people, and it's going to be mostly representative,
00:07:47.260
not down to like the percentage points, but we'll find a way to screw it up.
00:07:59.400
Like, you've got two astronauts and they're both men, which is just evidence that the game
00:08:03.540
Elon is playing is nothing like the game that most people at home are playing right now.
00:08:07.380
He's not playing the game of political correctness.
00:08:13.260
He's thinking, all right, these are the two guys that NASA put up for the job.
00:08:19.480
And it is a tremendous contrast with this thing where we all stare at each other on a
00:08:25.020
little screen and point our fingers and call each other names.
00:08:27.620
This thing with those two people in Central Park was as dispiriting as anything that's
00:08:34.340
The idea that we have to care because one person may be a little bit racist and the other
00:08:45.420
Why I'm involved in a discussion about their behavior in Central Park, of all places, where
00:08:54.680
The options are we build stuff, we go places, we do new things, or we sit around and point
00:08:58.860
at each other until we've all got our hands around each other's throats.
00:09:02.080
Yeah, I actually had a thought about the two people.
00:09:05.380
I mean, obviously, the situation for anyone who has been living under a rock and doesn't know,
00:09:09.620
you have a woman walking her dog off leash in Central Park, by all accounts, a left-wing
00:09:17.380
She's approached by a black man in the park who's offended that she has her dog off leash.
00:09:22.040
There's signs up that say you have to have your dog on the leash.
00:09:27.620
So he pulls a dog treat out of his pocket and lures the dog and says, you're not going to
00:09:32.140
So she says to him, I am going to call the police and tell them that a black man is threatening
00:09:41.620
She doesn't say a black man is threatening her, but she does say a black man is threatening
00:09:45.800
Ben, you made the point on your show that what she actually says she's going to do is not
00:09:56.500
Apparently, the people who sold her the dog say by pulling on the dog's collar to restrain
00:10:03.840
And all I could think is, what do you think the leash does?
00:10:06.360
Like if she had had the dog on the leash, the leash connects to the collar.
00:10:12.780
Dogs are naturally colorblind, but she was teaching that.
00:10:22.420
And that basically sums up like all the politics right now, like all of it.
00:10:27.200
And now we're seeing this basically imported into every single scenario.
00:10:32.400
Every single scenario has to be read in the deepest possible way.
00:10:35.900
This scenario, actually, at least you got a tinge of this.
00:10:41.320
What she actually said that the part that I thought was actually quite despicable that
00:10:44.360
nobody else picked up on was her actual implication was if I call the NYPD and say a black man is
00:10:49.240
is threatening me, they're going to come here and just shoot you with no evidence.
00:10:52.000
I mean, her actual system was obviously like her kind of implicit threat was I think the NYPD
00:10:58.620
So I'm going to call up the NYPD and I'm going to say this thing to get you shot.
00:11:02.240
That's the that's the part that's really disturbing.
00:11:12.680
What you've seen with on Twitter lately is in the aftermath of the Arbery shooting, which
00:11:19.280
Again, it is not clear to me whether that shooting was racially motivated or whether
00:11:22.660
that was just a couple of vigilantes being vigilantes who were doing stuff they shouldn't
00:11:27.520
And then an insider game with the D.A. who happened to know the vigilantes.
00:11:30.580
It seems more likely that that was the case than that these guys were just vicious racists
00:11:34.260
who are going around looking for a black guy to shoot.
00:11:36.360
And the same thing seems to be true in Minnesota.
00:11:39.500
People are suggesting this is obviously a race based case because the cop was white and the
00:11:44.740
It could also be the case that the cop is just it's just a jackass and was doing something
00:11:51.540
It was just because the cop is a jackass and doing something terrible.
00:11:53.700
It seems to me that it's kind of weird that now in America, the because racism is and should
00:11:59.020
be sort of the highest form of sin in America, we immediately conflate all other forms of
00:12:05.340
So we can't just say, OK, maybe the cop in Minnesota was a jackass who should go to jail
00:12:10.740
It has to be that he hated black people and that's why he's doing it.
00:12:13.120
And this is indicative of broader American racism.
00:12:14.860
You can't believe that Barry's shooting is not just about it.
00:12:20.000
Ben, I have a question for you guys are in the news more than I am.
00:12:23.760
Do we know for a fact that the cop's behavior, that video is difficult to watch, but do we
00:12:28.100
know for a fact that that despicable behavior actually caused the death?
00:12:36.460
We know we they're still waiting for, I believe, the medical examiner report to determine
00:12:40.280
So it could look a lot like Eric Garner, whatever it is.
00:12:42.460
I mean, obviously, moral of the story, don't sit on a dude's neck for four minutes, you
00:12:47.720
I mean, like, that's just not something that you do.
00:12:49.320
But again, the rush to everybody virtue signal that we have to all suggest that this is racism
00:12:57.600
And like last week, there was another one of these cases where you saw these two guys
00:13:01.100
who worked for FedEx put up a story suggesting that there was a white homeowner who came out
00:13:05.100
and was treating it was racially profiling them and yelling at them.
00:13:07.860
And nothing from the video actually showed the white homeowner being racist.
00:13:11.540
And this trended number one, people saying we should boycott FedEx after these guys got
00:13:15.780
And now today there's another story like this where there are these black guys who posted
00:13:19.020
a photo, a video of a guy in Minnesota who apparently was asking them to leave what is
00:13:27.720
And at no point does he say, like, you guys should leave because you're black.
00:13:32.900
And I really don't know, like, what you're doing here.
00:13:36.520
So this is the rule now is that if somebody is rude or annoying or if somebody decides
00:13:41.020
to act like a jerk, that we are immediately going to attribute racism to that person because
00:13:44.560
this underscores the Joe Biden message that America is a deeply racist, horrible place
00:13:50.300
Now, again, any or all of these or none of these situations may actually be racist.
00:13:55.340
And as soon as you say you're waiting for the evidence, this means that you are now a great
00:13:59.040
I actually think that you're missing what's actually happening because I don't think that
00:14:05.120
I think it's the rule in America every four years when there's a presidential election.
00:14:09.440
But before we get to that, I want to tell you guys about my trip to Texas that I just took.
00:14:12.800
You know, I was gone for 10 days back in America, out of L.A., back in America, the
00:14:18.120
land of the free where you could go sit down in these interior box-like buildings and other
00:14:26.520
humans would come up to you and ask you if you would like anything to eat or drink.
00:14:30.440
And then you would tell those people, yes, and what you would like to eat or drink.
00:14:39.220
While I was there, I met up with one of my best childhood friends, David, with whom I've
00:14:45.000
And he has this beautiful piece of land that he and his family own.
00:14:47.780
We went out in the country with 22 rifles and we shot metal things and listened to them
00:14:52.380
and go, and we did this for an hour in the most beautiful country on God's earth with
00:14:59.500
no masks, no fear, a little bit of fear, probably on his part, because I'm not the best shot.
00:15:06.460
So he stayed, you know, to the right and slightly behind me.
00:15:09.160
But basically, we just had fun with firearms all afternoon.
00:15:13.580
And it made me think about our pals over at Bravo Company Manufacturing, because they make
00:15:21.480
Of course, they do it because of the Constitution.
00:15:23.860
When the founders crafted the Constitution, the first thing they did was to make sacred
00:15:26.960
the rights of the individual to share their ideas without limitation by government.
00:15:30.720
The second right that they enumerated was the right of the populace to protect that speech
00:15:34.720
and possess their own firearms so that they could do it with force.
00:15:38.560
You know how strongly everyone here believes in the Second Amendment.
00:15:42.740
The difference between all of you and all of me is I was a gun owner first, and I got to
00:15:46.960
shoot metal things this week and listen to them go bink while all of you were
00:15:54.280
Bravo Company Manufacturing builds a professional-grade product which is built to combat standards.
00:15:58.600
That's because they're not building these guns so that I can shoot metal pigs.
00:16:01.680
They're building them so that every American can have access to the same kind of consistent
00:16:06.860
and predictable firearm for personal protection that anyone in the military or in law enforcement
00:16:19.960
Everybody loves Bravo Company Manufacturing because their stuff is incredible.
00:16:26.220
You should go check out all of their videos at youtube.com slash bravocompanyusa.
00:16:32.940
You can check out all of their products over there.
00:16:37.000
I mean, these are military guys, great background.
00:16:39.920
And again, they're making the weapons that you need.
00:16:41.520
And if ever you thought that maybe there might come a time when the government started to
00:16:45.080
just infringe your freedoms and do so in extraordinary fashion, and maybe you might want at some point
00:16:49.220
to have the ability to defend yourself against that sort of thing, then you might want to
00:16:58.400
You know, there is one aspect of this whole video cancel culture racial politics thing that
00:17:06.180
And that's the difference between the narrative and the reality.
00:17:08.860
What we're being told is that there is this epidemic.
00:17:12.180
It's happening every, according to LeBron James, every time people of color walk out of their
00:17:22.320
The reason that these stories become such media sensations is precisely because they're so rare.
00:17:27.840
And you can see this even in this kind of ridiculous altercation in Central Park.
00:17:31.560
There's a piece in the New York Times written by someone whose name I don't know with some
00:17:36.880
But the one point they make, the central thesis is that this woman knew she, she could just
00:17:42.900
give a couple distressed cries and bring the weight of white supremacy down on this man's
00:18:00.620
And this guy, this weirdo who goes up to women in parks and has treats just to lure their
00:18:09.620
But the reality of what the left is pushing every four years, as Jeremy says, and the,
00:18:15.060
the reality of the situation, those are totally different.
00:18:17.260
There are only race riots essentially in years when it can benefit the Democrats in presidential
00:18:22.400
You had riots going on in, in St. Louis, wasn't it?
00:18:27.140
In Ferguson during the 2012 election, it wouldn't have been beneficial to have had the same
00:18:35.260
Now it is beneficial again in an election against Donald Trump here in 2020.
00:18:40.660
We'll go through it again the next time it's beneficial to them in a presidential election.
00:18:42.920
Although I will say the Ferguson, the Ferguson riots though happened in 2014.
00:18:47.660
I do think that it is, it is worth downloading.
00:18:53.320
I mean, I just, I think that it's, I think it's important.
00:18:56.280
Again, I think that it does back a particular political narrative, but I, and I think that
00:19:01.140
the media right now, I think we're coming up with airsats instances of, of racism right
00:19:05.920
now because it does support a particular narrative.
00:19:08.880
And, and that, that's been a consistent pattern.
00:19:10.880
I think that it's been alleviated for, for a couple of years now because the media didn't
00:19:15.460
feel the necessity to go to broad based American racism.
00:19:17.940
They could just point at Trump and scream racist at him.
00:19:20.160
And, and they were all distracted by Trump, Russia for a couple of years there.
00:19:23.380
But, and I do think that as the election approaches, obviously there's going to be more focus on
00:19:27.020
the sort of 16, 19 project angle that Joe Biden is trying to exacerbate in the run-up
00:19:32.160
I mean, that, that is reflective of the Joe Biden.
00:19:33.880
You're going to put us all back in chains or put them all back in chains.
00:19:36.760
You're not really black if you vote for Republicans.
00:19:38.360
And again, that narrative is, is a pretty simple narrative for Democrats because what
00:19:42.720
people weren't commenting on is when Joe Biden said, you're not really black.
00:19:45.160
If you're, if you're thinking about voting Republican, what he meant by that is no black
00:19:49.020
person would vote for a party that seeks to exterminate black people, right?
00:19:53.080
And so the, the underlying implication is that Republicans seek to exterminate black people.
00:19:58.080
Republicans obviously do not seek to exterminate black people.
00:20:00.560
In fact, until very recently, the black unemployment rate was at an all time low.
00:20:04.060
Republicans across the country condemn racism and hate it.
00:20:06.420
Um, and so you have to come up with an alternative set of facts.
00:20:09.280
And so if you need to manufacture a controversy, then you manufacture a controversy.
00:20:13.200
Again, I'm not saying the instances are manufactured.
00:20:15.360
These are, these are, a lot of these are bad cases.
00:20:17.120
I'm saying the controversy is a little manufactured because I'm wondering who exactly is, who exactly
00:20:22.620
Who's out there going like, there's 330 million people in the country right now.
00:20:26.120
You don't have to look very far to find some example of any bad behavior.
00:20:29.600
And Drew, isn't that what, what's really happening here is the media is selectively choosing
00:20:36.160
The problem is always the narrative and the problem with race is the narrative.
00:20:39.140
You know, I don't believe that race is the, you know, being a racist is the worst thing
00:20:43.160
I think it's one of a range of many low qualities that we all have that we're trying to get past.
00:20:48.820
This is an amazing, you know, the whole thing about this country is how amazing and new
00:20:52.980
and fresh this idea is that we can have a multi-ethnic country where we somehow live in all
00:21:01.260
This is, this is a completely original idea, not since ancient Rome, really literally not
00:21:06.880
since ancient Rome has there been a country that has tried to meld this many ethnicities
00:21:14.580
It's, it's kind of an amazing thing that we're doing here.
00:21:17.120
And that every now and again, someone somewhere acts like a clown in Central Park becomes a racial
00:21:24.320
The problem is the narrative, the thing about, uh, what you, what Jeremy was saying about
00:21:28.760
electra, uh, a election years, the, the Obama entire Obama presidency was run on a race baiting
00:21:36.680
status where every distraction, everything that he did wrong, everything that he did, which
00:21:41.400
didn't work, which was everything was just, we were distracted by race narratives.
00:21:46.140
And the fact is, you know, Donald Trump, the idea when you read the New York times, you
00:21:51.200
would think that really Donald Trump was wearing a hood, was sitting there, you know, on the
00:21:55.200
top of Mount racism, uh, plotting against the black race, where in fact, he's been as
00:21:59.340
good a president as Americans of color have ever had.
00:22:02.400
And I think that that's the problem is the story we're being told, you know, right this
00:22:06.340
minute, one of the most amazing things that's going on is the popularity of Andrew Cuomo.
00:22:10.960
And when I look at Andrew Cuomo, who ran the state where this, uh, Chinese virus got started,
00:22:16.100
where it's spread, where people, uh, where a huge number of the people have died and he's
00:22:22.780
We know that something is wrong with our communication system.
00:22:26.160
And when something is that wrong with our communication system, where we're calling good,
00:22:31.840
I think we have to start asking questions about every story we hear and every kind of narrative
00:22:36.720
that we're being sold because we're being sold a lot of lies.
00:22:39.660
But there's one other aspect of this that occurred to me and I haven't heard anyone else talk
00:22:44.280
And that's the fact that this woman in Central Park had to make a public apology.
00:22:53.440
It's a little nuanced because the four of us are, to varying degrees, public figures.
00:23:00.580
We do this show, for example, and people are able to watch it.
00:23:03.980
And so it makes a certain amount of sense that if we say the wrong thing or if we engage
00:23:08.380
in a bad behavior, we might have to speak publicly about that.
00:23:12.940
And we may have to give a public apology to our fans or a public apology to the people
00:23:18.560
Isn't it interesting, though, that we live in a time where private individuals would feel
00:23:24.780
Like, I can imagine a world where this woman does what she does.
00:23:28.060
It's discovered she might offer an apology to the person, the gentleman in the park.
00:23:34.680
She might offer an apology to her friends and family.
00:23:36.820
She might offer an apology even to her employer for making them look bad.
00:23:40.780
Why does she feel compelled to give a public apology?
00:23:44.520
I feel like if this happened to my father, for example, I would tell him, yeah, that
00:23:50.080
Apologize to the person you hurt and then disappear back into private life as quickly
00:23:57.260
You know, I think I have at least a partial insight into this.
00:24:01.940
And Ben, I know you read this book, The Age of Entitlement.
00:24:08.160
It really is an insightful, clear-headed, truly intellectual book in the real sense
00:24:14.300
And one of the points he makes is that race law, racism law, has become so constructed
00:24:21.480
by both law and precedent that a business can be sued for things that its employees did
00:24:27.880
or the things that its employees did can be used as evidence against them.
00:24:31.820
So if somebody wants to prove that the God King of the Daily Wire is somehow doing a
00:24:36.500
racist practice, evidence can be brought that Clavin said on his show or in his private
00:24:41.440
life that as a dinner party, he got drunk and started saying racist things.
00:24:46.080
And that can be used as evidence against Jeremy.
00:24:50.260
Anybody who's been at my house, know that's a big problem for you.
00:24:52.880
But no, but seriously, I think we have frequently, all four of us have asked, why has corporate
00:25:02.220
Why do they cancel people the minute anybody says anything?
00:25:06.440
And this is the reason they've constructed a law by trial by lawsuit where you can be nailed
00:25:13.840
for so many different things and lose money over so many different things that essentially
00:25:18.860
Our speech is being policed through our corporations.
00:25:21.500
And that is, to me, that's a real problem because everybody has stuff in their hearts that
00:25:28.940
And I just don't think we can live in this world where if you get caught, that somehow
00:25:32.440
gets me off the hook until everybody turns on me.
00:25:35.100
I mean, that's the system we're in now where if we can all gang up on person X, then person
00:25:40.500
And that's not a good system for preserving freedom, basically.
00:25:44.920
I mean, I think there's something else happening here, too.
00:25:49.000
So it used to be that when it came to corporate America, well, corporate America has always been
00:25:53.600
known for it, was the sort of man in the gray flannel suit, right?
00:25:56.280
The idea that you had a sort of corporate cutout and that the corporation was risk averse,
00:26:01.140
They were going to create a bunch of nice, uncontroversial people, and those people were
00:26:05.900
And this has been true, you know, going back to the stereotypes all the way back to the
00:26:09.000
All these babbits were going to be nice and middle class, and they were all going to act
00:26:13.260
Well, that's actually not a horrible aspiration is that we should be nice to each other.
00:26:16.100
But one of the things that's happened is we have weaponized niceness to basically mean
00:26:21.640
And therefore, I'm coming after your corporation, you no longer fit in, and you have to be excised.
00:26:26.660
I think that actually has some ramifications for the mask debate, actually, because there's
00:26:31.760
an attempt now to basically suggest that we can tell whether you're a virtuous person based
00:26:36.300
on whether you are wearing a mask all the time.
00:26:38.200
We're going to determine whether you're a nice person based on whether you're wearing
00:26:42.960
And what this means is that if you are perceived to be a not nice person, there's not an actual
00:26:46.980
hard moral standard as to like what line you've crossed.
00:26:48.880
But if you've crossed our vision of niceness, then this means you must be excised from the
00:26:55.880
Even the guy who originally released the tape, right?
00:26:58.440
And he came out, he's like, I'm not sure she should have lost her job.
00:27:00.620
So first of all, dude, you probably should have considered that before you dumped it onto
00:27:03.380
Twitter, the place for dunking and being dunked upon.
00:27:06.280
And the place where everybody gets points for trying to get people fired.
00:27:09.160
It's whose line is it anyway, except the points mean you get fired.
00:27:12.160
Maybe you should have thought about that like five minutes beforehand.
00:27:14.540
But the weaponization of the idea of niceness has been thoroughgoing.
00:27:19.380
And the substitution of niceness for morality is an ongoing American problem that goes back
00:27:25.420
And you see it being used in nearly every argument from the transgender pronoun debates
00:27:33.180
Whoever grabs the mantle of niceness is now perceived as the moral person, even if sometimes
00:27:38.120
the person who's not nice is the person you need in a given situation.
00:27:41.920
There's also this aspect that's just technological.
00:27:45.240
It's actually not primarily social, which is that all of us now fancy ourselves public
00:27:51.260
Even the most private person, if you've got an Instagram and you've got a Twitter, then
00:27:55.120
very often people don't have a thought that passes through their mind without expressing
00:27:59.620
So they feel the need to make public statements themselves.
00:28:02.380
And what's even more insidious than that, I mean, that's probably corrosive for our souls
00:28:07.640
But what's even more insidious is that we have the power to make other people public
00:28:13.120
This random guy in the park who thought it was a good idea to film some woman walking
00:28:17.180
her dog, he made her a public figure, whether she wanted to be or not.
00:28:21.360
And so, again, whether she wanted to or not, she sort of did have to make this public apology.
00:28:27.900
And social media plays to this because it keeps us online.
00:28:34.140
They play to our anger and they play to our divisiveness because it keeps us coming on.
00:28:40.320
To Michael's point, they play to the idea that we all are public figures, that we all,
00:28:44.980
instead of being individuals operating in a community, we're performers operating for
00:28:49.800
And I think that that actually is part of the corrosion of our country.
00:28:53.300
But before we talk more about that, I want to talk about our friends over at Ring.
00:28:57.320
You know, our pal, Dave Rubin, has had his house robbed like three times.
00:29:02.320
You know, there's a lot of crime going on out there, especially in cities right now because
00:29:07.680
of certain policies that have been put in place.
00:29:09.660
And people are just stealing the mail left and right.
00:29:13.640
And I think even worse things have been happening around town.
00:29:19.320
Ring, listen, they provide an amazing set range of products.
00:29:24.100
Most famously, their Ring doorbell, which lets you answer the door and check in on your
00:29:29.160
You can keep an eye on your doorstep, see who's stealing your packages.
00:29:34.580
So even if you're at work, someone shows up to drop something off on your porch, you
00:29:38.300
can speak to them right through the Ring doorbell when they come to your door.
00:29:42.440
They also have outdoor security cameras where you can check in on every part of your house
00:29:46.840
Smart lighting that brightens up blind spots and make sure you always come home to a brightly
00:29:51.600
And full home security systems to give you everything you need to protect your family,
00:29:59.840
They've been longtime sponsors of the work that we do here at The Daily Wire and on the
00:30:06.760
We were talking about SpaceX and the launch at the beginning of the show and the sort of
00:30:10.960
innovation, the time of innovation in which we live.
00:30:16.620
And really, home security has changed so much in the last few years because of Ring.
00:30:22.360
And the fact that your home can be so intelligent, it can be so smart, you can check in on it
00:30:28.060
from everywhere, you can communicate from everywhere.
00:30:31.000
And really, I think that you can have a handle on your property in a way that you never could
00:30:36.580
Their home security products are designed to give you peace of mind around the clock.
00:30:40.420
You can get a special offer on the Ring welcome kit when you go to ring.com slash backstage.
00:30:48.620
The welcome kit includes the Ring Video Doorbell 3 and Chime Probe.
00:30:52.680
It's all you need to start building custom security for your home today.
00:30:59.440
All three of you use Ring products in your home, right?
00:31:04.240
I give it out to friends of mine as a housewarming gift.
00:31:07.600
There was one friend I didn't give it to, and he just had his lap stop stolen.
00:31:10.620
I'm not going to say which friend it was, but it's a very sad situation.
00:31:14.700
And the laptop was actually stolen out of his car while he was at work, but it made for
00:31:22.080
Alicia is joining us now from the bunker at her home.
00:31:25.820
We usually keep her in a bunker here at the office.
00:31:28.180
It's down, but at her house, she's built, there's a fake light.
00:31:33.540
Believe me, that's the only place we allow Alicia to be.
00:31:36.020
Fake blinds and special art for my kindergartner over here on the desk.
00:31:42.060
So don't forget, if you are a Daily Wire subscriber, if you're an all access subscriber, you can chat
00:31:46.060
with me and the guys after the show on our discussion.
00:31:48.760
And right now we're going to start taking the subscriber questions.
00:31:52.940
I know a lot of you guys have touched on this on your shows recently, but somebody wants
00:31:56.120
to ask the whole game, they're observing that recently Trump seems to be more Trumpy or
00:32:03.440
And then people on the right immediately jump to his defense and say that his behavior is
00:32:09.000
This subscriber thinks, is the right becoming like the left, that as long as the guy is
00:32:13.120
quote unquote, our guy, we're going to defend whatever they do and say?
00:32:16.840
I'm not going to let Ben or I answer this question because I just think it's bad for
00:32:27.380
Well, you know, I think, I think, I think what is happening to Trump is part of what is
00:32:33.900
When there's a crisis, everybody immediately girds their loins and gets their mindset and
00:32:39.120
kind of plants themselves and is ready for what's coming.
00:32:41.620
And as the crisis starts to alleviate, as we open up and as the doors come open and the
00:32:45.720
wind comes in, you start to let down your guard a little bit and everybody gets a little
00:32:50.560
I think this thing in Central Park, I think the vileness and meanness that is now apparent
00:32:57.140
We're talking to each other in ways that no one should talk to anyone.
00:33:00.440
And I think it's part of the fact that we've just, you know, kind of had it with the situation
00:33:04.360
And Trump is a human being and a very big human being with not a lot of impulse control.
00:33:09.320
And he's doing some things that are very hard to defend.
00:33:11.620
I will, I will not defend the stuff that he's doing to Joe Scarborough.
00:33:15.060
You don't accuse a person of murder, even if it's Joe who probably did it.
00:33:21.880
However, however, we do have to put Donald Trump in the context of the communication
00:33:28.880
He is a guy who we've had a judge accused of rape on the public record.
00:33:33.380
We've had him accused of being a Russian spy on every channel on earth.
00:33:37.800
We had Mitt Romney accused of essentially killing somebody with his business by Barack Obama.
00:33:42.380
He cannot be the only person whose bad behavior matters, who's the only person whose bad behavior
00:33:49.440
And that's the only the only thing I will say about this in his defense.
00:33:52.400
And I'm not I'm not going to defend what he's actually doing.
00:33:55.220
But I will say that when we have a a communication system, a press that basically says, oh, if
00:34:02.340
you make a sexual charge against a conservative, it will be the headline for the next six weeks.
00:34:08.280
And if you make one about a Democrat, dead silence.
00:34:13.440
You can't have that kind of double standard, which is why the people sent Trump to Washington.
00:34:22.860
We're sending this guy to tell you what we think.
00:34:25.860
You can't then turn around on him and say he alone is the problem.
00:34:30.680
He is part of a kind of meanness that is seeped into our political conversation and maybe into
00:34:37.920
And so I will not look at him independent of that situation, even though I do condemn this
00:34:45.380
I think one of the problems that Donald Trump has is that he may engage in behavior that other
00:34:51.040
people engage in and get away with, but he does it so much more grotesquely.
00:34:55.580
And that gives people the opportunity, a sort of visceral reaction.
00:34:59.860
And so what people like Barack Obama are very, very good at is smiling while they slide the
00:35:06.040
And Donald Trump, you know, he comes right in the front door.
00:35:19.240
It makes what he's doing less effective than what they've been doing.
00:35:23.300
So I don't disagree with you, Drew, on either count.
00:35:26.560
What what the president said about Scarborough is despicable and can't be defended.
00:35:29.660
At the same time, it is part and parcel with the kind of accusations that the left makes
00:35:35.520
They're just better at it because they're not grotesque.
00:35:37.840
But it is a grotesque thing to do, but they are not grotesque in the delivery of it.
00:35:43.800
I think that that's where he gets himself in the most.
00:35:48.620
You haven't even allowed me to try to defend it, which I actually I actually don't want
00:35:52.340
I don't want to I don't want to defend it per se.
00:35:55.800
I think I don't think Joe Scarborough is a murderer.
00:35:58.240
I think it is just as plausible that Joe Scarborough is a murderer.
00:36:01.980
It may be more plausible that Joe Scarborough is a murderer than that Donald Trump was a secret
00:36:06.840
Manchurian sleeper cell for Russia all these years or that Brett Kavanaugh, a milquetoast
00:36:15.900
And I think what Trump is doing here and you could say it's dark humor.
00:36:19.520
You could say it's mean and nasty and rotten and no good.
00:36:23.780
That's why in the tweet what he said was Joe's crazy future ex-wife, Mika.
00:36:31.680
It's not it's not funny in the long term to joke about people murdering other people.
00:36:36.520
You know, I mean, that's that's like a little much for the president of the United States.
00:36:39.800
But the the issue here is that when Donald Trump does it, it's the end of the world.
00:36:46.000
And when James Comey and John Brennan and James Clapper and the entire media complex and
00:36:51.220
the entire Obama administration make equally absurd charges at Trump, then it goes by the
00:36:59.360
And then on the point of defending Trump, which, again, I'm not defending the Joe Scarborough
00:37:05.400
I do think that it is perfectly right for people on the right to give a little more grace to
00:37:24.920
And so I'm going to give him a little more grace.
00:37:26.360
I'm going to laugh a little bit more at his jokes and maybe more tacitly, more quietly,
00:37:30.860
I would encourage him not to keep accusing Joe Scarborough of murder.
00:37:34.520
I do think this is one of the places where Ben and I differ from you and Drew, because
00:37:38.740
you just articulated, I think, very well your position, which is we should have more grace
00:37:43.740
for our side when they're wrong than we would the other side.
00:37:46.340
And I think the other point of view, which is the one that Ben and I hold to, is that we
00:37:50.020
should hold our side more accountable because they're the only ones we can hold accountable.
00:37:53.880
They're the only ones from whom we can even hope to affect any kind of change that might
00:37:57.760
result in a better future where this isn't the standard, where we're not just in a battle
00:38:05.380
You know, I can't do anything about the candidates that the left puts up or how terrible they
00:38:13.300
Well, I love, I love, I love, okay, so a few things.
00:38:15.260
I love my child more than I love other children.
00:38:17.160
If my child does something wrong and another child does something wrong, I will punish my child.
00:38:23.380
And, and I want to make sure that my child doesn't do immoral things.
00:38:26.560
I love my side and I want my side not to do a moral thing.
00:38:29.320
And by the way, I think that it is worth noting here that it's, it's one thing for, for Trump
00:38:38.020
I mean, this is not the first time that he has gone after Mika and Joe by any stretch of
00:38:42.180
He sideswiped a dead Catholic woman who was married at the time and basically suggested she was having
00:38:51.320
It's like, I understand that you're saying it's bad, but I think I should underscore.
00:38:57.720
And, and this, and by the way, her family's like a nice Republican family from Panhandle,
00:39:01.980
So that, that's not something I think that we should, that we should simply gloss over.
00:39:07.560
And it will continue to be apparent and glaring.
00:39:11.100
I think one of the places that we're differing is that you're suggesting that the new information
00:39:16.560
to be added into the mix to sort of, you know, let us move on from this thing is the double
00:39:23.900
The new information that was added to the mix is that President Trump, you know, it's
00:39:27.260
not new information, but he, he tweets viscerally.
00:39:32.280
And then he's basically willing to spew out any conspiracy theory.
00:39:34.780
He feels like, I mean, he already went after Rafael Cruz for killing John F. Kennedy.
00:39:38.120
The man is basically Sherlock Holmes at this point.
00:39:40.460
He's solved all of the outstanding crimes in the United States.
00:39:43.120
But, but the, the thing that, that I think is necessary here to point out, and this is
00:39:46.920
the part where I think there is like an actual deep and abiding conflict is not about Republicans
00:39:53.700
I think all four of us are going to vote for Trump, right?
00:39:56.820
I mean, yeah, Knowles is going to commit fraud to vote for Trump like several times.
00:40:00.020
He's going to, he's going to find every mail in ballots in the state of North Carolina and
00:40:03.540
he is going to find all the mail in ballots and check them off.
00:40:09.000
I do not think that the way that you win votes is by doing this.
00:40:12.520
And I understand that there's a bunch of people out there who are pretending that votes don't
00:40:18.440
The reality is that there is only one stat that in the end is probably going to matter
00:40:23.580
And that is people who don't like either candidate in 2016, people who didn't like Hillary and
00:40:27.900
didn't like Trump broke for Trump in 2020 by poll data, people who don't like Biden
00:40:32.740
and don't like Trump are breaking for Biden and they're breaking for Biden in fairly large
00:40:38.000
And again, we can talk till the cows come home about the double standard, which does
00:40:44.320
And Democrats are never held responsible for the garbage that they say.
00:40:47.100
Although I will say that, you know, just be like the reason I was angry at the Democrats
00:40:50.740
over the Brett Kavanaugh stuff is because they were doing it right.
00:40:55.260
Like it was bad that they were doing that to Brett Kavanaugh accusing a man of gang rape
00:40:58.620
without any evidence turns out to be a bad thing.
00:41:02.280
I've got another example of a bad thing for you guys.
00:41:04.440
You know, this is that you can be you can root for your side and you can recognize the
00:41:08.800
importance of your side winning, particularly when it comes to policy.
00:41:12.600
You can also recognize it does great damage to your side when the leader of your side
00:41:17.500
I mean, he's the president of the United States when the leader of your side goes off script
00:41:22.260
And by the way, does so in the middle of a time when people are worried about their lives
00:41:26.380
I mean, let's let's not forget that all of this was kind of frivolous nonsense.
00:41:29.100
Well, the economy was good and we had three point five percent unemployment.
00:41:32.320
Now we have 20 percent unemployment, one hundred thousand people dead in the last three months.
00:41:35.440
And so it just underscores the kind of frivolity and silliness.
00:41:43.040
And that means he has to be a little more disciplined for last thought.
00:41:46.000
The part the part where we you and I completely agree, Ben, and Jeremy, I think, also agrees
00:41:54.200
Sometimes he does this stuff and you think it's going to go wrong and somehow he pulls it out.
00:41:58.600
But this one, I think, is just is just bad for our side.
00:42:05.480
It's not it's not some kind of moral battleground.
00:42:11.360
And I'm willing to turn a blind eye to certain things that I think will help us win.
00:42:15.500
And I don't accept I will not accept this double standard.
00:42:21.640
They were given to a series of false stories by The Washington Post and The New York Times
00:42:26.320
that were fed to them by the intelligence community to cover up their illegal spying
00:42:32.380
on the Trump campaign and their dirty take on Trump colluding with the Russians.
00:42:39.800
It's being given for lies, just like it was with the 1619 project.
00:42:47.340
I don't mean to mind a little bias tilt toward the left on any organization.
00:42:51.660
But I really do mind this complete attempt to transform this into a leftist country by
00:42:56.780
virtually every communication arm in the country.
00:43:03.000
And we can't let guys like Chris Wallace sit around and say, oh, that Kayleigh McEnany,
00:43:10.400
And I do think that Trump acts as a brace against that, that he's doing it badly right
00:43:15.020
now and he's doing it in a way that truly is immoral and can't be accepted.
00:43:23.500
So you were right about more of what you said just then than you've been at any other point
00:43:29.580
I'm going to let it stand, even though you were even though you were still completely wrong
00:43:34.280
Alicia, we're going to check back in with you in a few minutes.
00:43:36.580
And here's some more questions from our Daily Wire subscribers.
00:43:38.980
But first, I want to tell you guys, it's an update on what's been going on with me and
00:43:43.940
You know, I told you the last time we were together that I actually decided to protect
00:43:47.620
my family, protect my wife and take out a life insurance policy on myself because, as
00:43:53.120
you all know, I've become incredibly successful.
00:43:55.460
And the loss to her, if I were to die, would just be staggering.
00:44:18.520
They understand the way that we like instant information.
00:44:27.340
And I think I told you guys last time I also went somewhere else besides Policy Genius
00:44:36.820
When last we spoke, they had sent someone out to my home to do all the medical exam.
00:44:42.380
Because, you know, you can't actually go anywhere and do medical exams in L.A. anymore because of the times in which we live.
00:44:48.620
They sent someone to my house, painless, 20 minutes, done.
00:44:55.920
I have high cholesterol and high triglycerides.
00:45:00.160
I didn't know that until Policy Genius sent this person to my house.
00:45:04.760
But the quest for life insurance is going incredibly well.
00:45:11.240
The most graceful solution here to the problem of how do you protect yourself and your family.
00:45:18.780
Policy Genius compares quotes from top life insurance companies all in one place.
00:45:22.500
It takes only a few minutes and truly only a few minutes.
00:45:25.340
Compare quotes from the top insurers and find the best price.
00:45:30.540
It can save you a lot of money, $1,500 or more a year by using Policy Genius to compare life insurance policies.
00:45:36.900
Once you apply, the Policy Genius team will handle all the paperwork, all the red tape for free.
00:45:41.580
They're in contact with the life insurance companies every day, monitoring developments and helping customers navigate every step.
00:45:50.200
A person from Policy Genius made sure that I got my medical records delivered to me.
00:45:57.640
And honestly, the fact that I now know that I have high cholesterol and high triglycerides, maybe I'll be able to do something about that.
00:46:06.060
If you're one of the many people looking to buy life insurance right now, but you're not sure where to start, head over to PolicyGenius.com.
00:46:15.980
And let me tell you, if you need insurance, the best place you can get insurance of all types, disability, auto, home, life, PolicyGenius.com.
00:46:23.680
I mean, Drew, it's almost impossible to insure for Drew.
00:46:26.300
I mean, it's basically like insuring your house after it's burned down if you're talking about life insurance for Andrew Klavan.
00:46:32.540
I mean, the only person who it's harder to buy life insurance for than Andrew Klavan is Joe Biden.
00:46:39.080
And yet, Drew has been able to use Policy Genius with alacrity because it is indeed an incredible service that allows you to use the wisdom of the online gods in order to competitively shop your life insurance.
00:46:49.500
So go check them out at PolicyGenius.com and be a responsible person, which means, you know, actually go get the life insurance your family needs.
00:46:55.720
And I'll keep you updated on whether or not they're actually ever able to get coverage for me when next we meet.
00:47:01.440
Our guest today, Jocko Willink, is a decorated retired Navy SEAL officer, co-founder of Echelon Front, which offers leadership training based on combat leadership lessons, and is the author of Extreme Ownership and Leadership Strategy Tactics, his latest book.
00:47:17.920
You know, PragerU is basically a sister company of ours.
00:47:21.020
Michael and I work with Prager founder Alan Eskren on the scripts week to week.
00:47:26.100
Our animation team here had the privilege of animating Jocko's video.
00:47:31.120
And since it's Memorial Day, I'd like to share a little bit of it with our audience before we welcome Jocko onto the show.
00:47:38.080
I am the fallen soldier, sailor, airman, and marine.
00:47:57.460
In order to serve, I left behind the family, friends, and freedom that so many take for granted.
00:48:07.820
A sword, a musket, a bayonet, a rifle, a machine gun.
00:48:18.720
Other times, I rode to battle on horseback or in wagons.
00:48:29.820
In early wars, my ships were made of wood and powered by the wind.
00:48:35.880
Later, they were made of steel and powered by diesel fuel or the atom.
00:48:40.880
I even took to the air and mastered the sky in planes, helicopters, and jets.
00:48:47.140
The machines of war evolved and changed with the times.
00:48:51.820
But remember that it was always me, the warrior, that had to fight our nation's enemies.
00:48:58.240
On that distant battlefield, amongst the fear and the fire and the bullets.
00:49:04.000
Or in the sky above enemy territory filled with flak.
00:49:07.320
Or on the unforgiving sea, where we fought against the enemy and against the depths of the abyss.
00:49:27.460
I stood my ground and sacrificed my life, my future, my hopes, my dreams.
00:49:39.120
This Memorial Day, remember me, the fallen warrior.
00:49:44.580
And remember me, not for my sake, but for yours.
00:49:49.860
Remember what I sacrificed so you can truly appreciate the incredible treasures you have.
00:50:01.480
You have the joys of life, the joys that I gave up, so that you can relish in them.
00:50:09.840
A cool wind in the air, the gentle spring grass on your bare feet, the warm summer sun on your face.
00:50:53.440
This idea that we should treat every day like Memorial Day really resonated with me.
00:50:57.660
And I want to say it didn't just resonate with me.
00:51:00.220
The animation staff here who got the opportunity to work on this video,
00:51:04.360
they actually brought the script to me even before the video was shot.
00:51:08.420
And Alexia Garcia, who was heading up the department at the time,
00:51:11.440
had tears in her eyes telling me how much this video moved her as an immigrant to the country.
00:51:15.700
It's such a great, powerful thing that you've created here.
00:51:22.240
And I appreciate the folks over at Prager wanting to take those words and do the animation behind them.
00:51:30.380
You know, it's obviously for someone like myself, every day is Memorial Day.
00:51:35.960
Because every day, you know, we think about the friends that we lost and that's what we have to live with.
00:51:40.900
And I think it was, I tried to share that message and get everyone to kind of think about that as well.
00:51:47.260
You know, it's an amazing country that we live in.
00:51:49.740
One of the reasons is because we've separated out these holidays in a way that others haven't.
00:51:53.720
We have Veterans Day where we celebrate everyone who served in combat in the country's history.
00:52:00.460
We have Armed Forces Day where we remember everyone who's served,
00:52:03.980
regardless of whether or not we actually took the country to war during that period of time.
00:52:09.480
Memorial Day is the day that we remember those who didn't come back.
00:52:12.720
We very specifically remember the people who made that ultimate sacrifice
00:52:17.140
so that we can sit here and talk about nonsense on the Internet so that we can go home and raise our kids.
00:52:23.980
As, you know, as someone who did come back but knows those who didn't,
00:52:29.240
what sort of special way do you recognize Memorial Day when it comes along every year?
00:52:36.880
Well, you know, I live here in San Diego, California.
00:52:39.440
And in San Diego, California, at the top of a place called Point Loma,
00:52:47.160
And I've got three of my friends are buried up there, three of the guys that worked for me.
00:52:51.740
Two of them died in the Battle of Ramadi, and one of them died later on in a training accident.
00:52:58.020
And there's a lot of other SEALs, and then obviously thousands of other servicemen are buried up there.
00:53:05.000
I go up there on Memorial Day, and I go see my old friends.
00:53:09.700
So I don't want to make the segment political Memorial Day is not a political holiday.
00:53:13.580
It's a day where all Americans of all persuasions can come together and honor the sacrifice of those
00:53:19.180
who've allowed us to engage in political debate on other days.
00:53:23.160
But there is one thing that happens in a democratic society that's somewhat unique,
00:53:27.960
and it's that we re-litigate all of our past decisions and we make them political after the fact.
00:53:32.700
You see it happening right now as the president contemplates a withdrawal from Afghanistan,
00:53:37.020
as we see the Taliban perhaps becoming partners in a negotiated peace settlement in Afghanistan
00:53:43.360
after warring against them, you know, for maybe the longest war in the history of the country.
00:53:48.240
You saw it during the previous administration when there was a drawdown of our forces in Iraq.
00:53:53.120
We've obviously all lived through some version of the shifting political narrative around the Vietnam War.
00:54:00.340
As a soldier, as someone who, you know, who was there, who sacrificed on the ground,
00:54:05.560
who saw other people make even greater sacrifices,
00:54:08.460
what does a soldier make of their sacrifices in the face of those sort of changing political narratives over time?
00:54:15.160
You know, for me, I think what's different for folks that served and went into combat is that
00:54:22.960
we actually know what it was like on the ground.
00:54:27.740
And so for me, having served in Baghdad and in the Battle of Ramadi,
00:54:31.700
you know, I got to see what it was like for the local citizens of Ramadi
00:54:36.620
to know that they were living under the most heinous and sadistic group of people
00:54:43.000
that you could ever imagine, that they cheered when we would kill insurgents,
00:54:47.460
that they helped us to try and root out the insurgents.
00:54:51.280
And so from that perspective on the ground, I know that we were doing the right thing.
00:54:56.260
And if I had to do it again, I'd do it again in a heartbeat.
00:55:01.420
Can you tell us a little bit about the work that you're doing now
00:55:03.800
and taking some of those lessons that you learned in the service, in the SEALs,
00:55:09.080
and helping other people learn about leadership and how to make their lives better?
00:55:15.620
Yeah, you know, when I got home from the Battle of Ramadi,
00:55:20.080
one of the most important things that I brought back was the lessons that we learned,
00:55:26.260
And I ended up taking over the training for the West Coast SEAL teams.
00:55:30.880
And the training that I took over wasn't the training where you see guys carrying logs
00:55:34.320
on their shoulders and carrying boats on their head.
00:55:37.940
The training that I took over was the tactical training
00:55:40.560
where we teach them to shoot, move, and communicate,
00:55:42.920
and where we teach SEALs leadership, combat leadership.
00:55:47.460
And so I immediately started teaching the principles that I had learned throughout my career,
00:55:52.400
but really that I had solidified and crystallized in the Battle of Ramadi.
00:55:55.980
Started teaching those to the young SEAL leaders.
00:55:57.640
When I ended up retiring from the SEAL teams, I worked with a civilian company
00:56:03.960
and immediately realized that everything that I had learned about leadership in the SEAL teams
00:56:08.800
applied to any aspect of leadership in any environment, leading any kind of team.
00:56:17.340
And it doesn't matter if you're leading a group on the battlefield trying to capture or kill a bad guy,
00:56:21.260
or you are, you know, leading an organization that's trying to produce something or sell something.
00:56:28.780
And so now I have a company called Echelon Front, and that's what we do.
00:56:32.040
We work around the country and around the world, teaching people leadership
00:56:35.460
and helping them get their leaders and their organization aligned so they can lead and win.
00:56:40.900
What do you think would be most interesting to people who've not served in the military?
00:56:44.240
You know, one of the things that's always interesting to me about tier one operators
00:56:48.940
is that nothing like them has ever existed in all of human history, right?
00:56:52.680
We have this idea of what a soldier's life is like.
00:56:55.600
We might even have an idea of what special forces are like.
00:56:58.060
But you get these guys now who are the most lethal, the most highly trained, the most capable.
00:57:07.120
Like, you know, everybody could play ball in high school.
00:57:14.440
And then there's that top echelon, the guys, you know, the Tom Brady's or whatever.
00:57:18.620
And those wind up being these sort of tier one guys who exist.
00:57:22.220
We've never seen their life, I don't think, in the history of warfare.
00:57:30.100
What are the special qualities that those people have?
00:57:34.360
Well, I'm not here to get into a bunch of disagreements with you.
00:57:38.360
But if you look at the tradition of the American fighting man, this is an unmatched tradition of men that are braver than you could ever imagine.
00:57:48.020
If you look at the guys that stormed the beaches in Normandy, if you look at the people that went through the Pacific campaign,
00:57:52.560
if you look at the frozen mountains of Korea, you can go to any war and you can find people that are unbelievably brave and courageous and very, very lethal.
00:58:04.860
And I think and, you know, I know that the video is edited down a bit from the original form.
00:58:10.780
But, you know, the main point of that of that Memorial Day video was to remind people that the soldier, sailor, airman and marine that we refer to, they're not just warriors.
00:58:26.120
And if there's anything that I would say, people that I would try and, you know, how you phrase the question, what would people want to know?
00:58:34.380
People should know that these soldiers at every level, soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines, they're human beings and they have families, their brothers, their sisters, their fathers, their sons, their husbands, their wives.
00:58:48.900
They have things that they want to accomplish in their life.
00:58:51.220
And they're willing to put all that on the line for the freedom and the way of life that we have in this country.
00:58:58.600
Well, feel free to disagree with me on those topics anytime.
00:59:01.780
Obviously, I know nothing and it's a real privilege to get to hear from someone who has those insights.
00:59:08.980
Thanks for helping us all think a little bit more clearly about this Memorial Day.
00:59:15.040
Everybody needs a great pair of wireless earbuds.
00:59:18.140
But before you go dropping hundreds of dollars on a pair, you need to check out the wireless earbuds from Raycon.
00:59:27.260
You can have earbuds that make you look like an alien.
00:59:32.160
Or you can have these Raycon E25 earbuds, which I have and I think you guys have as well.
00:59:40.800
They're so form-fitting and they're so comfortable and they're so clear.
00:59:44.240
You already know Raycon earbuds start at about half the price of any other premium wireless earbuds on the market and that they sound just as amazing as other top audio brands.
01:00:01.140
Six hours of playtime, seamless Bluetooth pairing, more bass and more compact design that gives you a nice noise isolating fit.
01:00:14.720
They're perfect for listening to audiobooks written by Andrew Klavan and narrated by Michael Knowles.
01:00:21.440
Unlike some of your other wireless options, Raycon earbuds are both stylish and discreet.
01:00:24.980
No dangling wires or stems to distract anyone during video calls to make people wonder, what's wrong with him?
01:00:35.260
You've heard us talk about how the company was founded by Ray J and celebrities like Snoop and Cardi B and others.
01:00:44.260
Because of how good they sound, because of how discreet they are.
01:00:46.760
And you can pick up a pair right now and see what the hype is all about.
01:00:58.620
I like to think that we're mild celebrities here.
01:01:01.220
I mean, Ben's probably like an actual celebrity.
01:01:03.660
Michael Knowles worships celebrity who met a celebrity once during the early days of the talkies.
01:01:12.720
We also didn't found Raycon, but are huge fans and love it.
01:01:28.620
And you will get 15% off of Raycon wireless earbuds.
01:01:31.840
I'm actually going to bring them on the next backstage to show them to the audience.
01:01:35.080
Because I guarantee you, if I were wearing one, you wouldn't know.
01:01:37.360
In fact, I could just say I'm wearing one and you don't know.
01:01:39.880
But it would be better if I actually demonstrated that.
01:01:47.220
Can you talk masks so that it can be like all three of you versus me?
01:02:00.820
What is it that, I know what, what, I, I can't stand this, this idea that masks are a symbol
01:02:09.220
That somehow we're fighting the American revolution.
01:02:12.300
We're somehow fighting the American revolution.
01:02:13.900
I think what is, what is truly bad, what is truly bad is the overbearing fascistic in
01:02:19.760
your face approach of some of governors that I, you know, that I won't mention like Gretchen
01:02:24.060
Whitmer who are just gone out of their way to offend everybody's sense of freedom and
01:02:29.620
But that doesn't mean you shouldn't be polite and wear a mask when you go into a crowded
01:02:35.180
The violation, the violation is the violation of the, of the governors and the mayors who are
01:02:43.720
Well, you know, to use a phrase that Ben uses a lot, I think two things can be true at once.
01:02:47.580
And I hate to make my opinion more reasonable here, but it is the case there obviously is
01:02:56.920
It's a little odd that the surgeon general told us that masks are terrible and no one
01:03:00.820
And then two seconds later, he said, we all have to buy them.
01:03:02.980
But, but, but putting that political aspect aside, obviously there's a use for masks.
01:03:06.680
But when you look at someone like mayor Eric Garcetti, who I think might be the most foolish
01:03:10.940
mayor in America, including Bill de Blasio, at least it's, it's close.
01:03:14.980
You know, Eric Garcetti the other day was giving an address in the center of empty Dodger
01:03:21.060
So not just an empty baseball stadium, he's standing actually in the center of it and he
01:03:26.700
Does he think that there's going to be a heat seeking guided missile of coronavirus
01:03:32.900
That's, that obviously is a political statement.
01:03:35.060
When Joe Biden puts a mask on in his backyard, far away from everybody, and then makes that
01:03:39.460
picture his avatar on Twitter, that makes the mask a political statement.
01:03:43.820
And so I think the left has politicized it and they're asking us to wear masks in a way
01:03:48.680
That doesn't mean we shouldn't wear masks when it is reasonable, but, but I think we do have
01:03:55.620
I think that one of the dangers here though, is being sucked into the sort of reactionary
01:04:01.400
And that is, you've got these Democrats, many of whom are basically suggesting that unless
01:04:05.320
you duct tape your face, like your entire head, like you just take the roll of duct
01:04:08.340
tape and go all the way around your head until you suffocate, that you are doing something
01:04:11.840
deeply wrong and endangering the elderly or some such.
01:04:14.400
And then in response, you have a bunch of people who are like, well, guess what?
01:04:16.960
I'm never wearing a mask because masks don't do anything.
01:04:19.580
And all those surgical masks that people wear in the operating rooms, they're useless,
01:04:24.280
I'm just going to go into the supermarket and lick all the milk cartons because that's the
01:04:31.680
And so this is where, you know, I think that we ought to be pretty careful.
01:04:35.920
I actually think that it's sort of a bit of a clever stratagem by a man who is legitimately
01:04:41.320
Like I wasn't aware that lack of brain activity could actually create cleverness of this sort
01:04:45.900
in that by polarizing the debate and making it into, I'm a responsible citizen and responsible
01:04:53.320
Everybody is out there not wearing a mask and partying it up at the lake, the lake of the
01:04:58.200
It's actually a smart pitch for the security moms from 2004 because security moms are basically
01:05:08.160
I want to make sure that our leadership is worried about this.
01:05:10.260
So the the open virtue signaling of wearing the mask that Biden is doing right now and
01:05:14.220
then sort of taunting Trump into taking the position that masks are inherently a sign of
01:05:19.180
cookery, that you are less masculine and you don't actually you've never eaten a steak
01:05:26.880
And there's no reason to fall into that trap because there's a perfectly reasonable response
01:05:31.740
But also, you should probably not do that when you are just like in your backyard by yourself
01:05:35.760
or in your basement by yourself, which are apparently the only two places that you ever
01:05:38.680
go. So I obviously have a slightly different take on the mask issue.
01:05:42.360
I mean, I largely agree with what you guys are saying.
01:05:44.540
My problem is the government has been wrong about every single thing that they've said 100
01:05:50.320
Yeah, the virus targets people who are already retired.
01:05:55.740
The virus in no way affects people who are under the age of 20.
01:06:09.000
Then everybody should wear a mask at every turn.
01:06:13.860
So I got to thinking if they've been wrong about everything, I bet they're wrong about
01:06:21.440
They're saying the mask is only effective at preventing transmission.
01:06:27.840
And I think to myself, I think that is absurd on its face.
01:06:32.880
It's absolutely absurd to say that if I sneeze into a piece of cloth at high velocity, a sneeze, high
01:06:42.260
It will successively prevent all of those particles from going out into the world.
01:06:46.560
But if you, the person who's worried, are wearing the same mask and I'm not, and I sneeze five
01:06:52.680
feet away from you, the low velocity, highly diffused particles that make it all the way to you
01:06:57.700
will not be stopped by the exact same mask that you're wearing.
01:07:01.560
It's a way, the mask controversies that currently exist, in my view,
01:07:05.600
it's a way of making healthy people act like they're sick.
01:07:08.900
Instead of doing what we should be doing, which is isolating the vulnerable and the sick,
01:07:15.140
the actually sick, the demonstrably sick, not the you could be sick and don't know,
01:07:19.540
the demonstrably sick and the vulnerable and taking care of them.
01:07:23.060
The left can't win on a narrative of if you are at risk or if you are particularly concerned,
01:07:29.320
take special precautions because that doesn't give them electoral advantage,
01:07:34.060
And so we've allowed, we've allowed them to convince us that the answer is that every human,
01:07:40.000
the vast majority of whom are perfectly healthy and not at risk, even if they weren't,
01:07:45.460
has to modify their behavior so that the, while meanwhile, they, the same government,
01:07:51.320
are like shoving as many sick people into nursing homes as they could possibly.
01:07:55.240
And meanwhile, by the way, they initially told us we had to wear the masks because
01:07:58.500
you could catch the coronavirus from infected services.
01:08:01.160
So you wear the mask so that your particles don't land on tables and things like that.
01:08:04.660
But then, you know, five seconds ago, they say, actually, you're very unlikely to contract
01:08:10.620
So the case, as the case for constantly wearing masks all the time falls apart,
01:08:15.720
they seem to double down on it, which seems to make it so much more political.
01:08:19.740
I think that we have, have to say that we have actually achieved top Shapiroism and that
01:08:27.140
I think that that's, I think that is what we've managed to achieve.
01:08:29.760
We've managed to achieve Ben Shapiro's America.
01:08:33.460
Listen, of course, there's a time and a place for masks.
01:08:41.660
I can see that punchline coming like three miles away, like a slow train moving down the
01:08:47.200
Thanks for tuning in to our, it's like the lady at Walmart that I saw online today,
01:08:52.480
who her mask was just a scuba mask and a snorkel.
01:09:00.720
There's a reason that you wear a mask in surgery.
01:09:02.600
That is to prevent transmission because you've got someone slayed out on a table who can't,
01:09:07.540
who can't do anything to take care of themselves to guard against what you might transmit.
01:09:11.460
And therefore you, the potential transmitter have to be the one to take that particular
01:09:16.920
But I don't think, generally speaking, that it's a good thing that we've bought into this
01:09:21.520
idea that the healthy must act as though they are a threat to the also healthy, that
01:09:27.880
that's the only way that we can declare victory here.
01:09:31.120
You know, I've actually made my own custom masks.
01:09:34.320
And on the front of the mask, it's just that tweet from the surgeon general that says,
01:09:53.400
Now, I'm going to re-intro our friend Gary Sinise, because I just spoke at length for
01:09:58.860
like eight minutes about how great Gary is, and then Gary wasn't ready to go on the show,
01:10:02.780
and no one would just do me the simple courtesy of coming in my ear and saying, hey, Jeremy,
01:10:11.180
I think what I said was that our friend Gary Sinise has been a humanitarian looking after
01:10:17.540
veterans and first responders since all the way back in his days at Steppenwolf Theater
01:10:21.400
in Chicago, when he really, even in those days, was doing events honoring veterans of Vietnam.
01:10:28.600
After 9-11, he expanded his work to include not only our nation's heroes in uniform, but
01:10:34.620
also frontline responders, firefighters, police officers.
01:10:37.840
And more recently, he's been doing enormous work for the people who are on the front lines of the
01:10:43.860
I think we have a little video before we bring Gary on the show of the terrific work that the
01:10:47.600
Gary Sinise Foundation has been doing these last several months while the nation has been
01:10:54.200
In the past few weeks, the Gary Sinise Foundation's Emergency COVID-19 Combat Service has donated more
01:11:00.260
than 4,000 pieces of equipment to first responders across the country.
01:11:04.380
Johnson County Med Act has a new tool to help prevent the spread of coronavirus.
01:11:08.960
The county received three new ozone decontamination units for their ambulances and other vehicles.
01:11:14.800
It sterilizes the areas that would be much harder to get to with just a surface wipe.
01:11:19.160
This organization is providing PPE equipment and essential gear that the first responders need
01:11:24.460
while they're out there working on the front lines.
01:11:26.260
We'd like to thank the Gary Sinise Foundation for the grant they gave us to help us purchase
01:11:30.760
this much-needed personal protective equipment.
01:11:33.580
This new program of the foundation has become a gateway to providing relief on many levels.
01:11:38.960
I have to say that we're actually supporting, or we have supported, 45 different first responder
01:11:44.820
stations in 21 states that are serving a population that's 2.8 million people across the country.
01:11:51.460
And we're covering the cost of groceries, utility bills, moving costs, rent, and mortgage payments
01:12:11.000
The list of contributions goes on, yet our work is far from over.
01:12:16.880
More help is needed, and more help is on the way.
01:12:20.620
When I heard about the COVID-19 campaign, I wanted to offer my full support.
01:12:25.440
I learned about the foundation through Gary's book, Grateful American.
01:12:28.660
His story just resonates with me, and his dream of giving back to those who give so much
01:12:34.120
and ask so little in return, to be able to help out and donate is just an honor of mine.
01:12:40.500
During this extraordinary time, the generosity of thousands of Americans continues to enable
01:12:45.580
the Gary Sinise Foundation to ensure our nation's heroes and their loved ones are receiving the
01:12:50.520
support and resources needed to overcome the crisis facing our country.
01:12:55.260
For over six decades, my father, Bob Hope, entertained the troops around the world, while also supporting
01:13:04.040
The foundation my mother and father created carries on his legacy today.
01:13:09.760
And during these challenging times, we are proud to contribute to the work Gary and his foundation
01:13:16.560
Supporting our heroes on the front lines who are doing so much during this COVID-19 pandemic
01:13:24.500
Thank you to those of you on the front lines making a difference every day.
01:13:30.320
Thank you to those of you on the sidelines cheering them on, offering your support in whatever
01:13:40.320
From one grateful American, God bless you as you go.
01:14:05.160
The Gary Sinise Foundation does so much for the nation's veterans.
01:14:08.980
And one of the things that, one of the reasons we wanted to have you on is sort of recognition
01:14:12.880
of Memorial Day and to get perspective from you on the work that you and the foundation
01:14:17.100
But when the team said that you were also doing this amazing work for our first responders
01:14:22.080
during this pandemic, we thought, well, that's a really important thing that we should be
01:14:26.440
So we'd encourage everyone to go over to the Gary Sinise Foundation and make a donation
01:14:30.220
to support the work that you guys are doing right now.
01:14:40.260
We started to get, you know, various requests coming in from around the country, from departments
01:14:47.400
around the country that were in need of this personal protective equipment and whatnot.
01:14:52.240
And then we saw kind of a storm brewing and all of that.
01:14:55.860
So we launched this campaign, the COVID-19 combat service campaign, April 1st.
01:15:02.560
And since then, we've raised over a million dollars.
01:15:06.000
We've passed much of that on so far to first responder departments all around the country.
01:15:12.060
We're working with 80 different VA hospitals, supporting them in various ways around the
01:15:19.140
country, just sending out a lot of support where it's needed.
01:15:23.860
And we're getting more and more requests in all the time so we can use the help.
01:15:28.600
So with Memorial Day having just passed, Gary, one of the things that's been on my mind
01:15:32.800
as the country sort of moves away from the active part of the wars, the war on terror,
01:15:46.780
As we move further and further from that sort of time period where everyone's thinking
01:15:50.500
about combat all the time, does the work of the foundation get harder as that sort
01:15:55.300
of becomes a more distant memory for the donors?
01:16:01.300
Well, I mean, it's the ongoing work is always difficult.
01:16:06.180
We're trying to rally support for the men and women who defend our country.
01:16:11.180
And there's a lot of there's a lot of need out there in a lot of different ways.
01:16:15.260
So people, you know, people always ask, well, why should I support this particular effort,
01:16:20.700
this particular organization over another that's that's doing something?
01:16:26.900
We're residual effects that we're going to be facing for many, many, many years from
01:16:31.280
these ongoing wars that we've been involved with since September 11th, 2001.
01:16:36.700
I mean, we're still we're still supporting Vietnam veterans, you know, I mean, and and
01:16:42.840
So the the challenge and the effort to support the men and women who serve our country and
01:16:49.660
That's that's just that's just a daily Memorial Day is every day.
01:16:56.080
We've got to remember that we have people on the front lines.
01:16:58.980
We've got to remember that the children of our fallen.
01:17:03.200
These these people are sacrificing each and every day.
01:17:05.920
And my foundation, you know, from the very beginning has also been focused on supporting our first
01:17:13.660
responders from the very beginning of starting the foundation.
01:17:17.560
I have been involved with supporting, you know, the FDNY and firefighters in New York after
01:17:26.980
And once I started the foundation, I wanted to make sure that we were outreaching across
01:17:31.960
the country to the people that that defend and protect our cities.
01:17:36.060
And now more than ever are not maybe more than ever, but certainly right now, these these
01:17:43.280
first responders are right in the thick of this deadly enemy that we're facing.
01:17:48.600
And now we've, you know, we've begun supporting our nurses, our doctors, our health care workers,
01:17:55.340
the staff members that are working in these hospitals, dealing with all these patients that
01:18:04.280
We're just part of the part of the the team here trying to get something good done.
01:18:14.800
I know that your work with first responders and your work with veterans really has been
01:18:19.240
gone back long before Forrest Gump, all the way back to your Steppenwolf days.
01:18:24.100
And just in the time I've known you, though, I can only imagine that you've interacted probably
01:18:28.620
with more of our nation's first responders, interacted with more of our nation's veterans,
01:18:33.380
interacted with more of our nation's active duty military than probably just about any
01:18:40.580
What is it about that that group of people that draws your heart the way that it does?
01:18:50.300
I mean, I don't know if it's more than any other living American, but that's kind of you
01:18:59.760
He's done some tours, yeah, for the USO and been supportive.
01:19:05.100
Look, there's other people that are out there doing it.
01:19:09.160
But but I've just decided because because of the veterans in my own family and the work
01:19:13.440
that I've done in the past with Vietnam veterans and with our wounded post for Forrest Gump and
01:19:20.860
And then September 11th, I just decided that this was kind of a calling and that that there
01:19:28.740
was a role for me to play and there was a way that I could support.
01:19:31.940
And the more I did, the more I saw the benefit of getting out there and putting my boots on
01:19:39.000
the ground and going out there and visiting our troops and supporting multiple military
01:19:43.780
charities out there who were, you know, supporting them in various ways.
01:19:48.600
And I felt by supporting a lot of different charities, I could help a lot more people.
01:19:53.240
So I was raising money for multiple charities and raising awareness, doing PSAs, whatever I
01:19:59.300
could do, showing up at events, playing concerts to raise money, whatever it was.
01:20:04.300
And then when I started my own foundation, it was it was because I'd been involved with
01:20:09.640
And I just saw a great need out there and I saw what these people were doing and I was
01:20:14.960
inspired by their work and I wanted to help them.
01:20:17.160
And I felt that, you know, at the time I started my foundation, I developed a pretty good track
01:20:32.800
Just, you know, start raising money to do more good.
01:20:36.540
And since then, I mean, we've raised hundreds of millions of dollars to support the men and
01:20:41.620
women who serve our country and our first responders.
01:20:50.000
You've been over the office, guys, and you've seen some of the stuff that we're doing over
01:20:55.400
We continue to grow and we continue to expand and we continue to reach more people because
01:21:02.780
Gary, you know, I think I read somewhere that the number of Americans or the percentage of
01:21:07.860
Americans who have served, I think maybe at an all time low, it's certainly very low.
01:21:12.520
And so in your work in the foundation, do you find that there is an education gap maybe,
01:21:17.840
you know, between the civilians and those who have served?
01:21:21.140
I mean, is that is that, you know, an aspect of of what you're seeing as well?
01:21:28.980
I mean, it's, you know, I felt like from the beginning of really, really getting actively
01:21:37.740
involved post-September 11th that one thing that I could do as an entertainer, as a person
01:21:43.380
with a public platform is to shine a spotlight and to go where the troops were and see what
01:21:49.960
they're doing and try to talk about it on television and radio and try to encourage other
01:21:55.920
people to focus on our defenders and why it's important to support them.
01:22:01.780
And I did, you know, I did find if you don't have a personal relationship with anyone who's
01:22:07.080
served in the military or you have a family member that you, you know, have who's served
01:22:13.300
in the military and understanding of what military life can be like, you're really disconnected
01:22:20.320
And there are a great number of Americans out there that are just they don't have that
01:22:28.020
They're not around military bases or they're not around soldiers.
01:22:33.600
So somebody like me who's on television or radio or whatever, I've made it a kind of a
01:22:39.160
mission to just try and talk about what I see and what I experience.
01:22:46.820
It was it was all about just trying to help people understand how I got involved, why I got
01:22:53.340
involved, what motivated me to get involved, the types of people I was meeting that were
01:22:59.560
And I put it all in the book and and and tried to you, you know, try to encourage people,
01:23:06.100
hopefully, to read the book and see what happened to me.
01:23:10.280
And what happened to me was I was inspired by a lot of incredible people that I've met over
01:23:15.580
And I've tried to talk about those incredible people so that other people understand why we
01:23:24.260
And so and that we have such a dynamic force out there and people that are willing to go
01:23:31.380
out there and do the heavy lifting to defend us.
01:23:34.940
Gary, how can people support the work of the foundation?
01:23:37.240
Well, the best thing to do is go learn about it at the Gary Sinise Foundation dot org.
01:23:46.620
There's a whole you know, the whole book is called A Journey from Self to Service.
01:23:51.760
I've been Ben and I spent a good good hour talking on his show about the book.
01:24:00.980
But the whole book is about kind of going from sort of a self-focused life, you know, my acting
01:24:10.040
career and, you know, movie business and TV and all that stuff to a different focus, which
01:24:21.220
And so I write about that in detail in the book.
01:24:23.860
And the whole last part of the book is all about the Gary Sinise Foundation and how most of
01:24:29.360
the book just manifested itself into the creation of that.
01:24:33.000
So I encourage people to go to the Gary Sinise Foundation website, Gary Sinise Foundation dot
01:24:39.240
You can check out our program page and see just multiple initiatives in many different spaces
01:24:48.300
A lot of people when I started the foundation, the legal guys said.
01:24:54.780
You know, what are you what are you know, do you are you the home builder guy or are you
01:25:00.460
know, are you, you know, working with the wounded?
01:25:03.800
And I said, well, my my thing is a lot of different stuff because that's what I'd done.
01:25:08.220
So that's why the Gary Sinise Foundation covers a lot of ground, including first responders.
01:25:12.940
And right now we're in the midst of a very good campaign to help the people that are fighting
01:25:20.480
Well, and the best thing about your book, Gary, is that both you and Ben in the same
01:25:26.340
three or four month window held live book signings with Premier Collectibles.
01:25:32.020
And we're getting ready to have a second book signing for Ben's new book, which is about
01:25:36.680
And I was on the phone with Premier Collectibles the other day and I said, oh, are we all ready?
01:25:40.720
And they go, oh, yeah, we love you guys so much.
01:25:45.460
You know, Ben is well, you know, he's one of our best selling authors ever.
01:25:50.700
And they said, well, I mean, Gary Sinise, his book just absolutely destroyed you guys.
01:25:57.040
And that actually gives me some hope for America.
01:25:59.780
I'll give I'll give you a little secret, Ben, there.
01:26:01.940
You just have to be willing to sit there hours after hour after hour and sign those little
01:26:08.480
And if you're willing to do that, you could you could beat me.
01:26:11.860
I also have to be an iconic American of my generation.
01:26:14.260
I think I'm a little behind in that department, Gary, so it'll take me give me a few more
01:26:23.980
And thanks for the great work that you do at the Gary Sinise Foundation.
01:26:31.780
So we all know, Gary, that one of the most fun things about knowing Gary is getting to
01:26:37.180
vicariously feel like you're a good person because you're like, I've never had that experience.
01:26:42.220
I mean, I said some encouraging things to Gary.
01:26:48.060
I'd like to think that while he's out there doing all of it, that he might think that when
01:26:53.660
It's like when you show up to a party with somebody, you know, and the somebody bought
01:26:58.040
the gift and then you kind of show and you're like, yeah, this one's from both of us.
01:27:01.400
That's how I feel about Gary is like, yeah, all this good stuff.
01:27:06.100
But I will say I want to know I want to know if he's moved, if he's moved from self to
01:27:10.540
service, are they going to kick him out of Hollywood?
01:27:17.380
They didn't know there was anywhere after self.
01:27:19.860
One beautiful thing about the Gary Sinise Foundation that I will say, you know, when
01:27:25.480
people a lot of people want to support our first responders, they want to support our
01:27:30.440
veterans and they and you see all these organizations out there and you don't know if they're legitimate.
01:27:35.320
You don't know if this is a scam or people are going to take my money.
01:27:37.680
And one of the beautiful things, each one of the four of us knows Gary and knows the
01:27:44.340
We've supported the foundation in very small ways, obviously.
01:27:51.800
And the beauty of Gary is Gary isn't like some guy who had one hit back in 1973 and he
01:28:00.540
And so he started a charity and he's really funneling about half of that money into his pocket.
01:28:04.500
You know, Gary was a guy when he at the time that he starts the Gary Sinise Foundation,
01:28:10.760
He has this lengthy, unbelievable career of being in some of the greatest movies.
01:28:18.620
He's not a guy who's filtering money into Gary Sinise.
01:28:21.780
This is a guy who is legitimately devoted himself in a very selfless way to serving others.
01:28:28.320
And and you couldn't you could not do much better than to support the Gary Sinise Foundation.
01:28:34.180
I want to hear from some of our DailyWire.com subscribers.
01:28:37.760
I believe we have Alicia here to ask us a few questions on their behalf.
01:28:42.900
Along the lines of those who have decided to voluntarily serve, there is a Daily Wire subscriber
01:28:48.220
that wonders, would it actually be better, though, if the United States moved into a system
01:28:51.940
like Israel has that requires everyone to serve?
01:28:54.260
Because he thinks that that will create more innovation and success for the American economy
01:28:58.880
than them wasting hundreds of thousands of dollars on higher education, a.k.a. college,
01:29:07.040
I mean, I think everybody should weigh in on this question, but I'm decidedly no.
01:29:13.120
It's an incredibly small country with an incredibly with a proportionally small population surrounded
01:29:19.580
on all sides by active, violent, hostile neighbors.
01:29:24.840
And so they have to make special considerations for how to defend a country in that position.
01:29:29.180
They need every one of their citizens to be able to defend the nation.
01:29:36.120
We're surrounded by the two largest bodies of water on Earth and Canada, somewhere to the
01:29:41.780
We live in a hemisphere where we basically control the hemisphere, and we have a very diverse
01:29:49.660
population, most of whom will never know any sort of hostile action from a foreign adversary.
01:29:56.460
To use conscription in a country like this, I think, actually breeds malcontent.
01:30:05.560
But instead of in Israel, where conscription actually breeds a kind of sense of common
01:30:11.280
struggle, because there is struggle in America, it would only breed a sense of common resentment
01:30:17.000
because you're not actually bringing people into the struggle.
01:30:19.660
You're only bringing people into an institution that they don't actively want to serve in.
01:30:23.560
One of the beautiful things about our country and one of the reasons we've been so successful,
01:30:28.300
I think, during this sort of American century is because at least for the second half of that
01:30:32.840
century and beyond, our military has been a voluntary military force.
01:30:36.540
And that means that it actually draws people who want to be there.
01:30:42.460
And that is a certain caliber of people that a draft or a conscription, a conscripted army
01:30:51.920
And there is, though, a sense that right now, increasingly, we are all funneling our 18-year-olds
01:31:00.600
We are now telling 18-year-olds they must go to college.
01:31:03.860
They have to go to a very particular kind of college, even if it won't help them, even
01:31:07.120
if it won't give them much of an education, even if it won't set them up to have a prosperous
01:31:11.100
And there's no law saying you have to go to college yet because Elizabeth Warren didn't
01:31:18.060
So I do wonder if there were a social force that said, hey, do two years at least of service,
01:31:23.740
if that would give us some kind of common culture, common love of our country, some firearms
01:31:28.600
training, which wouldn't be the worst thing in the world, to defend our cherished political
01:31:33.900
You know, I just notice increasingly in the country, there's so little that binds us together.
01:31:38.700
We don't even have a common TV culture anymore.
01:31:42.620
I mean, we're becoming so isolated that perhaps a common sense of service might be a better
01:31:48.900
alternative than the other kinds of common institutions we're being pushed into that probably won't serve
01:32:00.420
I've been disturbed during this kind of lockdown or crisis or whatever it is.
01:32:05.600
I've been disturbed at the kind of childish view of liberty that we've developed.
01:32:14.880
It's a way of preserving the idea of the individual as a key actor and as an end in himself.
01:32:22.560
And I don't think that asking everybody to serve in some way is such a bad idea.
01:32:32.140
Liberty is not like just you're not the boss of me.
01:32:37.400
It is a way of looking at it, not just at yourself, but looking at the other guy.
01:32:40.760
And it wouldn't be such a bad thing if we could inculcate that a little bit through service,
01:32:44.440
through action, instead of sending people off to colleges where guys who've never done
01:32:48.860
anything for anybody teach them about systems that have never worked anywhere and basically,
01:32:56.780
If you have to do something, if you have to do something useful for everybody, I don't
01:33:02.680
And I think that really the only thing that's ever stood between us and that have been unions
01:33:06.680
and the fact that they don't want us to find out that we could do their jobs for them.
01:33:10.760
Yeah, I have problems with the basic idea of national service, as Jeremy does, namely
01:33:17.180
because we do have a form of national service in this country, which is called public school.
01:33:21.440
Whenever you put people in the position in this country of being drafted into public
01:33:26.220
institutions, it typically doesn't go well because it turns out that the same people
01:33:29.380
you guys despise at the college level tend to run the public institutions into which
01:33:33.320
we inculcate people, unless we are talking explicitly about the military.
01:33:36.980
And as Jeremy sort of suggested, I mean, the founders were not super comfortable with the
01:33:41.480
idea of a standing military altogether in the first place.
01:33:43.900
And then the idea that we are going to be drafting presumably tens of millions of Americans
01:33:48.620
into military service where they live in barracks under the harsh rule of government without
01:33:56.680
It was pretty controversial throughout the Civil War.
01:34:00.460
It was less controversial in World War II because there was an active threat against the American
01:34:03.720
homeland after Pearl Harbor, but the draft became so controversial again that we did away with the
01:34:10.120
The big problem that you guys are talking about solving is a problem I don't think that can be
01:34:13.580
What you're talking about is, again, a lack of social fabric, which I've talked about a lot,
01:34:20.080
And those things have to exist outside the bounds of government.
01:34:24.280
And in Israel, it does exist outside the bounds of government, but it's also a different thing,
01:34:28.420
again, because Israel is under existential threat at literally all times.
01:34:31.380
I mean, at all times, even people who are no longer serving the military are basically
01:34:36.660
I mean, if you're up to the age of 50, then you can be called back into the military pretty
01:34:39.740
much if there's any sort of emergency at any time, and for good reason.
01:34:43.340
The place is a postage stamp, and it's surrounded on all sides by hundreds of millions of people
01:34:47.960
Thank God we don't have that situation in America.
01:34:50.420
I'd be a little bitāI'm always not eager to give more authority to government to place
01:34:54.960
us into institutions that we don't voluntarily go.
01:34:58.780
Yeah, the revolution is beautiful because there wasn't conscription during the revolution.
01:35:02.800
It was the people who wanted a free country, who went out and got us a free country.
01:35:06.700
And I would alsoāthen I really would reinforce what you just said.
01:35:09.640
The people who run coercive organizations are always coerced.
01:35:14.200
It's the coercers, people who want that, who are drawn to that.
01:35:17.540
And Drew, I would disagree a little bit with you about the nature of liberty.
01:35:20.800
I think it's very popular right now to speak against liberty.
01:35:31.380
American liberty is leave me alone to do what I want.
01:35:36.840
The fact that sometimes we see, obviously, as with anything in a fallen world, in an imperfect
01:35:48.080
I think that we run a risk sometimes of pointing to those bad attitudes or bad behaviors and
01:35:53.760
saying, that's not what libertyāthat's not liberty, but it is liberty.
01:35:56.640
That is just one aspect of liberty, the worst aspect, as opposed to the better aspect.
01:36:02.720
But the idea of stay off my yard, leave me alone, let me do what I want, let me pursue
01:36:07.360
The frontierāthe idea of I'm going to leave this behind and go to the frontier where I
01:36:12.400
I mean, that is the animating idea behind the United States.
01:36:15.660
There is a difference, though, and one could have a debate about liberty for a long time,
01:36:20.240
but the kind of old idea of liberty that we had until very recently actually ties in with
01:36:26.900
The idea was that when you're born, you're not exactly free.
01:36:30.500
A little baby needs his mother, little children are slaves to their passions, and only through
01:36:34.840
learning how to tame your passions, tame your appetites, practice the virtues, do you acquire
01:36:42.860
Whereas there's this kind of new idea that liberty is the same as libertinism, that actually
01:36:47.600
when you go and just pursue your own appetites willy-nilly, then you're really free.
01:36:52.060
But actually what we find, like any drug addict, right, you can go and shoot up all the
01:36:55.480
drugs, but then you find out you're a slave to those drugs.
01:37:01.160
And to Ben's point, you know, Ben, you said that government rules or policies cannot encourage
01:37:08.620
this kind of culture, but you certainly can see it discourage a common unity.
01:37:13.480
So just to give the instance of this libertinism during the sexual revolution, you had something
01:37:19.600
You had things like abortion on demand, which we all oppose.
01:37:22.020
You had things like the sexual revolution, which we would oppose.
01:37:24.920
That encouraged this isolation that has destroyed our common culture.
01:37:30.480
Presumably, if you reversed some of those decisions, if you made it a little bit more
01:37:34.780
difficult to get divorced, if you made it a little bit more difficult to just follow our
01:37:39.060
own passions, then you would be able to regain those sorts of issues.
01:37:42.860
You know, I know that we like to draw this big distinction between culture and politics,
01:37:46.820
and it's a worthy distinction, but it's a little bit blurrier than I think some of us want
01:37:52.260
And I don't think any of us wants to pursue a liberty that is just doing whatever we want
01:37:56.960
all the time, even when it's very harmful to us.
01:37:59.460
Well, I mean, obviously nobody wants a liberty that is not restricted in any way.
01:38:02.540
I think that the big question, and this goes back to a debate that we've been having in
01:38:05.060
an ongoing fashion for the last several years at this point, is this sort of Adrian Vermeule
01:38:08.900
government as great educator and government as virtue inculcator?
01:38:14.680
And I'm very uncomfortable with that idea, because historically, government has been much
01:38:17.860
more of an oppressor than it has been a great inculcator of virtue.
01:38:21.340
The fact is that religious institutions typically have been that which filled the gap.
01:38:25.820
And I agree with you, the government can wreck all of that, but I think that if you give
01:38:28.760
government more power, it's more likely to wreck more of it.
01:38:30.780
Meaning that the big story of the 1950s and 1960s was not that government decided to reeducate
01:38:36.220
everybody in a particular direction, it's that government decided to undermine all of
01:38:39.300
the institutions that allowed the education toward virtue in the first place.
01:38:42.480
It was government undermining church, it was government undermining marriage, it was government
01:38:47.020
Government gained power during the 1960s, it didn't give up power during the 1960s to control
01:38:51.540
Government decided instead it was going to pay people to be single mothers.
01:38:53.960
If you're going to talk about the destruction of marriage in America, I think you'd be much
01:38:59.060
better off focusing, I mean, listen, I think no fault divorce is idiotic, but with that
01:39:03.080
said, I think that no fault divorce is less of a problem in American life than the government
01:39:07.400
actively incentivizing women to give birth to children out of wedlock, just as a matter
01:39:13.040
I just think it cuts a little bit both ways because you're absolutely right in a certain
01:39:16.660
sense, in a huge sense, the government gained a lot of power in the 60s, but you also got
01:39:21.400
this idea that what happens in a person's bedroom is no business of the government.
01:39:25.460
When that was not true in the United States for a long time, I mean, just to use one debate
01:39:29.880
that keeps coming up on this topic, which is porn, you know, we've had laws against pornography
01:39:36.660
We still have laws against pornography in this country, even if they are not enforced, but
01:39:40.320
some were enforced relatively recently during the Bush administration.
01:39:43.560
That would be an instance where the government is actually, in a certain sense, ceding power,
01:39:48.640
saying we have nothing to say about this issue.
01:39:50.880
And by ceding that power, it gave people a kind of libertinism that I think has made our
01:39:57.340
I just think that the whole idea that there is a relationship between the liberal arts
01:40:01.580
and liberty, of course, that we were trying to instill in people the virtues that made
01:40:07.660
But I think the idea that it was all people, educated people with liberal arts educations
01:40:13.600
who were the real bulwark for liberty in this country is just not true.
01:40:19.000
I think that we always talk about this question in the context of the 50s and the 60s, and that's
01:40:24.120
20 years of the 200-plus-year history of the country.
01:40:27.620
The vast majority of the time that people in this country were free, no one could know
01:40:32.160
what was going on in your bedroom because it was a frontier nation.
01:40:34.920
These people were out away from government, and they were having, therefore, to rely on
01:40:41.560
They were having to rely on their neighbor, even though their neighbor might be miles away
01:40:46.520
They were having to rely on their religion and their faith.
01:40:50.300
And they weren't relying on things like education or forced service.
01:40:53.540
There was no education, and there was nowhere to serve.
01:40:56.660
You were a free person, not being shaped by government.
01:41:04.220
And instead, you had to, therefore, be shaped by reality, by nature.
01:41:07.980
You had to be shaped by more local institutions.
01:41:15.540
You and I, Jeremy, have a lot of sympathy on this issue of liberty being left alone.
01:41:21.600
I mean, I think that you're absolutely right about this.
01:41:24.080
But liberty has always been generated by ideas, and it really was ideas that filter into the
01:41:31.260
common, that become common property, even of people who don't have the education.
01:41:35.420
It's those ideas that really have made people free.
01:41:38.400
And key to one of those ideas has been the idea of the interior life of an individual as
01:41:45.460
The fact that you are you and I'm me and that we experience a life, that that is something
01:41:50.420
that doesn't need any explanation, doesn't need any defense.
01:41:53.620
And I think in order to have that idea in operation, we do have to have a sense of respect
01:41:59.760
I mean, you just, you cannot have liberty for me and not for thee.
01:42:03.300
And that's one of the reasons that, for instance, these rights that people suddenly have, the right
01:42:08.900
to of gay marriage, where you can then go and sue somebody if he doesn't accept your vision
01:42:15.440
of life, if he doesn't accept your behavior as good, you can then sue him.
01:42:19.440
That that is damaging to liberty that actually is not extending.
01:42:27.460
These are two separate conversations, though, that we're having.
01:42:31.460
The threat of government, which Ben is talking about, obviously, obviously always a problem.
01:42:35.980
And it is definitely a drawback to any idea of common service.
01:42:41.880
I'm not sure whether it can be gotten around, but I think that's true.
01:42:44.680
But it's but it is not the same thing as the way we behave and where those ideas are going
01:42:51.860
We're in a very, very damaging and dangerous situation where we have lost our religion to
01:42:59.020
We've certainly lost any kind of binding sense of religion.
01:43:04.820
We have a constitution that was built for religious people.
01:43:07.600
And that is something we're really going to have to address.
01:43:09.920
And I think that the thing that Knowles is talking about, which is now this bubbling debate
01:43:15.520
on the left of how are we going to reinstill these these common ideas of good without doing
01:43:23.900
This is a difficult debate, but we better be having it because we cannot survive as a free
01:43:27.900
nation without an idea of virtue, without a common sense that there's something bigger
01:43:32.800
And I think I think it's a very, very difficult thing.
01:43:39.480
Somewhere between those two ideas, there's got to be some way of restoring some sense of
01:43:44.220
unity because we are really a daggers drawn and we can't continue that way for very long.
01:43:51.280
I don't disagree that we're a nation that's lost its religion.
01:43:55.240
I don't disagree that our constitution is for a religious people, that our way of government
01:44:00.980
I guess what I'm not sure about is what is the alternative that's being proposed?
01:44:05.460
Well, I can give you a little bit of the alternative because there's there's one vision
01:44:09.240
of America, which is that it's only the Wild West and it's John Wayne in a saloon with a pistol.
01:44:17.540
America begins really in New England and on the East Coast.
01:44:24.180
And part of Western expansion was expanding across the country and spreading out a little
01:44:30.300
In those New England towns and cities in particular, there was intense social cohesion.
01:44:38.860
There was a real authentic politics where people thought they could make their own political
01:44:43.620
decisions that, you know, we didn't simply have to pursue our own individual ends ad infinitum
01:44:52.660
But I think the key here is the localism of it.
01:44:55.500
You could call it localism or federalism or subsidiarity.
01:44:58.080
The idea that these kinds of decisions are absolutely within the scope of politics and
01:45:04.360
But when you make those decisions at the national level or the federal level or even worse, the
01:45:09.560
international level, that those decisions are going to be heavy handed.
01:45:12.580
They could become tyrannical, that it's good for us to have a politics and a sense of common
01:45:17.000
virtue, but it's probably safer for us to make those decisions more locally.
01:45:23.540
On that note, and on that note, can I just chime in since we went after Trump for going
01:45:28.900
I have to wave the Trump flag here for just a minute.
01:45:31.600
This thing that he brought out, I've loved during this Chinese flu epidemic that he has remained
01:45:38.540
a federalist, whether he knows what that word means or not.
01:45:40.840
He has just said, let the states do what they're going to do.
01:45:44.020
And it has revealed where the states are badly run and where they're well run.
01:45:47.740
But when he did that thing where he dialed back regulations and contained in that executive
01:45:52.280
order is a bill of rights of regulations, which I think should become constitutional since
01:45:57.440
we're being governed by all these regulatory agencies instead of by Congress.
01:46:00.720
I think that that that is a brilliant thing that he's done.
01:46:04.300
I cannot remember in my lifetime anyone ever meeting a crisis by dialing back the power
01:46:11.900
And I just think it's something that we can celebrate in the midst of, you know, the mourning
01:46:15.580
of the people who have died and, uh, the complete difficulty of our, uh, of our economic situation.
01:46:23.680
I mean, with all the stuff that he does, it's crazy.
01:46:26.700
He then does these wonderful golden things that I just think we have to pause for a minute
01:46:30.880
and recognize because it is something that conservatives, it's a holy grail that conservatives
01:46:36.200
have gone after of don't let the crisis be used to oppress us.
01:46:46.260
And I got to say my answer to the draft question, pull this in case I ever run for office.
01:46:50.240
The only draft that I am interested in is the beer one.
01:46:53.800
So moving on, we're also never going to force you to become a daily wire subscriber, but we
01:46:58.760
will compel you with fabulous deals that involve not one, but two tumblers.
01:47:03.020
So be sure to go on over to the dailywire.com right now to become an all access member.
01:47:07.420
And if you're not an all access member, it's very easy to do.
01:47:10.000
Go to dailywire.com slash subscribe to get your two tumblers on top of 15% off using
01:47:20.300
After you go to dailywire.com slash subscribe, that's for 15% off and two tumblers.
01:47:25.340
I would highly suggest it because then you get to not only hear the guys blabber for two
01:47:28.460
hours on backstage, but you can also chat with them and hear them blabber some more via their
01:47:32.820
keyboards right after this, when we have a discussion that's available only for all access members.
01:47:46.840
We know that men are from Mars, women are from Venus, but how many of you would actually
01:47:54.920
Would you, would the Shapiro family instead of, I don't know, going to Hawaii, end up going
01:48:01.780
Well, as you can tell, we're pretty risk averse here in the Shapiro household.
01:48:07.900
At current, in current modulation, where you are strapped to the front of a bar, I'm going
01:48:14.940
But if we got to the point where you could actually fly into low orbit, then absolutely.
01:48:21.000
And I'm hoping that's something that we will actually achieve during my lifetime.
01:48:23.420
I know that Virgin was talking about doing something like that.
01:48:27.940
It was something that was extraordinarily expensive, but not so crazy that if you got extraordinary
01:48:33.280
It was like 50 grand to fly into space, to fly into low-level space.
01:48:38.900
I mean, like, you actually take a picture of yourself in space.
01:48:41.840
That seems like that would be worth it, I feel like.
01:48:45.140
I'd do it if I had the kind of money that it would take.
01:48:47.740
In the lifetimes of the people here, this will never be possible to go to space safely.
01:48:54.840
It requires people who are willing to take a risk and strap themselves, as Ben says,
01:49:00.940
I think, though, that if I had the money and I didn't have young children at home at the
01:49:06.980
I just can't imagine, at this moment, what else is there for a man to account?
01:49:13.040
Like, what other experience is available to us as mortals on this rock that is greater
01:49:19.940
than to go up into orbit, experience weightlessness, look down at the blue marble?
01:49:29.060
By the way, I think it's a fairly miserable experience.
01:49:38.180
You have headaches and muscle cramps and all kinds of digestive issues the whole time you're
01:49:42.400
up there, because it turns out the body was made for gravity and not for weightlessness.
01:49:46.520
But I just think, man, yeah, the experience of that would be very difficult to pass up.
01:49:51.200
Honestly, I get all those symptoms every time I hang out in a room with Noles.
01:49:54.420
I get all of those symptoms every time I hang out in a room with Noles.
01:49:58.720
Ben's going to strap me to a rocket ship, and then we're going to go straight up.
01:50:04.500
You know, Alicia, you mentioned about going to Mars.
01:50:11.620
It's like the one nice place in the whole universe, so I want to stay on Earth.
01:50:16.840
Yeah, look, if I were a gambling man, I'd put my money on Earth.
01:50:20.140
But I would love to, as you gentlemen say, I would love to go up into orbit.
01:50:26.040
I would love to be up there for three to five hours.
01:50:30.980
Ben, I know you haven't paid me in years, but I know you say the check is in the mail.
01:50:34.400
Whenever the check arrives, I'm giving it to Elon.
01:50:37.020
I want to go up and do that, but I want to come home to Earth right afterwards.
01:50:42.860
How much would it cost to actually pay Elon Musk to get him to send Knowles to space?
01:50:49.020
Because I will say that you are an absolute money suck.
01:50:51.460
I feel like a one-time payment to Elon Musk to murder you by sending you to space might
01:51:08.120
The two things that I would do is I'd go into low orbit for a couple hours and I would
01:51:12.520
go to a planet or the moon someplace, a destination.
01:51:15.700
The one thing I would not be interested in is going to that space station, which just looks
01:51:22.240
So, I mean, once you're in orbit, you've kind of seen everything.
01:51:25.540
You're as close to the, you know, you're no closer to the stars than you are here.
01:51:28.660
You know, it's just the perspective that you get on the Earth that would be so spectacular.
01:51:32.440
But I would definitely love to walk on the moon or see Mars or something like that.
01:51:37.340
I mean, I just think that that would be an experience worth having.
01:51:43.300
I definitely would take the vomiting sickness for the experience.
01:51:49.960
But the idea of going to, every time I see people in that space station, I think, eh,
01:51:53.360
that's too much like being in a tin can for me.
01:51:55.840
Well, you have to be in that space station for like 150 days at a time, which is also
01:51:59.840
why I wouldn't go to Mars because it takes months and months to get to Mars.
01:52:02.880
What Ben is talking about is suborbital, which is where you go up, you experience weightlessness,
01:52:08.660
But this is like a 90-second experience, right?
01:52:11.620
What you guys are talking about, actual low-Earth orbit is, you know, it's basically the range
01:52:23.940
The moon, I think, is as far as I would ever go.
01:52:26.900
You know, even the moon, you're dealing now with probably a week-long trip.
01:52:30.080
But, yeah, to step foot on a celestial body and you don't have to be in space for like
01:52:37.900
20 months to pull it off, it'd be hard to say no.
01:52:43.640
I think whoever comes up with the marketing, which probably will be Elon Musk or one of
01:52:46.900
his oddly named children in the next couple of generations that comes up with a space spa
01:52:52.900
The last question of the night is actually an interesting one, especially as we're heading
01:52:56.560
into summer, which typically has lots of outside and public recreation.
01:53:02.360
Do you guys see large outdoor events like sports or outdoor concerts at Red Rocks, etc.,
01:53:08.740
And would each of you be comfortable participating?
01:53:13.420
I'm furious because the L.A. Phil canceled their season.
01:53:16.840
And the L.A. Phil, I don't like to go necessarily because I know anything about classical music,
01:53:22.640
I like to go because it is the cheapest, best entertainment in L.A.
01:53:32.100
They've already canceled it because L.A. has been totally hysterical on this lockdown.
01:53:37.200
Other states, though, have not been hysterical.
01:53:39.340
And I would not be surprised if while California, New York and other places remain closed for
01:53:44.760
better or worse for the near future, I could see other states where politics are a little
01:53:50.560
And maybe I'll have to hop a flight and go check out a concert.
01:53:53.120
I completely agree, particularly the Hollywood Bowl or baseball outdoor events in warm climates
01:53:59.920
There's no reason that these events shouldn't be taking place.
01:54:02.680
You're not going to get the Rona sitting at Dodger Stadium in the 96-degree heat watching
01:54:08.320
what was promising to be the best season of Dodgers baseball probably in the last 50 years.
01:54:14.200
I mean, I think that the wholeāI thought at first that the coronavirus, because it's
01:54:19.280
the royal disease, right, the corona, the crown, I thought that it was actually just
01:54:23.740
God's way of keeping Prince Charles from ever becoming king of England.
01:54:27.860
But then Charles survived it, and I realized there is no God.
01:54:31.100
And since there is no God, I now believe that it was just a conspiracy to keep the Dodgers
01:54:35.200
from actually winning the World Series this year.
01:54:41.320
Should we just clarify for Media Matters that that was a joke about Prince Charles dying?
01:54:51.920
You know, my feelings about these public events are a little bitāare slightly different,
01:54:56.460
not becauseāso first of all, here's the reality.
01:54:58.880
Young people will end up going back to rock concerts and rap concerts, and all that stuff
01:55:03.700
will happen within the next four months, right?
01:55:07.080
I mean, the Lake of the Ozarks tape is going to be the reality for a bunch of people who
01:55:12.560
I mean, effectively speaking, statistically speaking, it is very, very close to zero.
01:55:15.920
If you're under the age of 25, you ain't dying from this thing unless you have some very
01:55:20.600
So it would not surprise me at all to see people go to concerts that are specifically
01:55:26.840
The L.A. Phil, it's going to be a while because the audience is Michael Moles and a bunch of
01:55:30.280
people who are 60-plus, so it's going to be a while until those people want to hang
01:55:37.240
As far as baseball stadiums, I think that it'll probably be early next year.
01:55:41.340
Bottom line is, once theyāI think once we hit early next year and they either have
01:55:45.680
or have not developed the vaccine, people are going to be like, okay, well, whatever
01:55:49.860
They're going to be like, okay, this is just a new risk of life.
01:55:51.760
I'm either willing to do it or I'm not willing to do it.
01:55:53.500
I think that you could see some baseball games come back even in the fall based on the possibility
01:56:00.620
of blocking off particular numbers of seats and then spacing out how people enter stadiums.
01:56:05.420
There's some creative ways to go about doing this sort of stuff.
01:56:07.720
I don't see any reason at all, by the way, why college sports shouldn't continue.
01:56:11.060
College sports is a bunch of college students who are 20 years old.
01:56:13.740
They're living in dorms with each other and having sex with each other anyway.
01:56:16.380
I feel like they are more socially distant at a football game than they are in the rest of
01:56:19.700
their lives, so it seems to me less risky for them to be outside a foot and a half from
01:56:24.300
each other than inside and zero space between each other.
01:56:27.220
But, you know, that'sāmovie theaters are going to be big ones, right?
01:56:31.140
Movie theaters are going to be shot for a while.
01:56:33.620
Small spaces, lots of older people, not a lot of good air circulation, and classical music
01:56:39.440
concerts, unfortunately, are going to go away for a while.
01:56:41.000
But they should open the Hollywood Bowl and they should just restrict the number of people
01:56:43.300
who can come in because it wasn't like they were making bank off the thing anyway.
01:56:46.580
You know, I called my doctor to ask if I was particularly vulnerable, and he was shocked
01:57:00.200
I've reached a point now where I'm starting to think like, you know, I don't necessarily
01:57:05.800
I would likeāif I go to a restaurant, I would like them to be a little bit cautious, a little
01:57:09.480
bit, you know, a little bit of social distancing.
01:57:12.780
Going to a baseball game in an open stadium, certainly going to a college game where the
01:57:17.040
kids aren't in any danger whatsoever, those are things that I'm getting ready to do.
01:57:23.840
I think that, you know, when you really do look at the statistics, this has killed off
01:57:29.200
people, even if it's possible to imagine older than I am.
01:57:39.980
There's no point in not being dead if you're not living, you know.
01:57:43.720
And so I think thatāI think, yeah, I think people are just going to come back.
01:57:49.280
I think the guys who are trying to keep their state shut down are going to end up looking
01:57:54.140
It's a very bad look for a leader to say, follow me and turn around, have no one behind
01:58:03.060
I mentioned that I went on a road trip this weekend.
01:58:06.840
I was actually at the Grand Canyon at the same time as young Spencer Clavin.
01:58:10.900
And no, we didn't see each other there because I think he was on a date and I was just with
01:58:23.600
I went all the way to the ancestral homeland of West Texas.
01:58:26.300
And while I was there, my grandfather, who's in his mid-80s, has pretty late-stage Parkinson's
01:58:37.880
He's a really heroic figure in our family, a true patriarch.
01:58:42.180
He founded, has an eighth-grade education, worked for the man for very low wages doing
01:58:50.660
Then in his 40s, decided to go on his own and start a business and created a very successful
01:58:58.540
He's a really inspirational figure, as I say, in our family.
01:59:06.060
And if you've ever seen someone go through Parkinson's, it's just a tragedy.
01:59:12.720
And so the first day that we're there, my papa, as I call him, called me and said, you
01:59:20.000
And so I thought, I said, Parkinson's makes your body go.
01:59:24.900
I am the least athletic human that has probably ever walked the earth.
01:59:32.620
But, you know, he wanted me to go golfing with him.
01:59:34.700
I'm not going to say no to my papa while I'm there.
01:59:48.280
You know, I think the reason my papa wanted to be there is because he's like, you feel
01:59:56.440
And we got out there and I thought, this is amazing.
01:59:59.240
If anyone in L.A. witnessed this, they'd say that I was murdering my grandfather.
02:00:03.980
And keep in mind, we're outside and it's 100 degrees.
02:00:08.900
He has a very advanced version of diseases that I'm not speaking ill of my grandfather.
02:00:16.320
He will not win his battle with Parkinson's disease and diabetes.
02:00:20.880
And it could be that we have him with us for five more years.
02:00:23.480
It could be that we have him with us for five more months.
02:00:25.640
It could be that we step off of this stage and they hand me my cell phone and there's bad news.
02:00:29.720
None of those three outcomes would be surprising.
02:00:35.360
And then I realized, oh, my papa isn't ignorant to the risk that's taking place.
02:00:41.460
He's been watching TV every day for the last two months like everyone else.
02:00:45.040
He's an intelligent man who built the business and employed people and raised children.
02:00:51.000
And I actually think his perspective is better.
02:00:58.600
But he also realizes he's only got so many more chances to spend time with his grandson.
02:01:03.120
And he's only got so many more golf games ahead of him one way or the other.
02:01:09.540
I think that if I were to ask him, and I think his actions demonstrated, he would rather spend
02:01:13.620
time with his grandson and get in a few more golf games and live for a shorter end of what
02:01:18.780
life is potentially left to him than be locked up in his house, not play golf again, not see
02:01:24.100
his grandchildren and eke out six or eight or 12 or 24 extra months.
02:01:29.460
And it's yet another one of the of the important, meaningful lessons that I think that I've learned
02:01:37.720
The purpose of life is to live doesn't mean to be reckless, doesn't mean to treat life
02:01:45.520
But I do think particularly as people of faith, that we are to hang on to our lives with somewhat
02:01:51.460
We're not to we're not to hold on to our lives as though the length of life is the ultimate
02:01:57.420
And so I'm hopeful that in particular, as it warms up around the country, we all start
02:02:07.720
Remember, join Daily Wire as an All Access member today and you will get two, not one,
02:02:15.380
Current All Access members, join us right now over at dailywire.com for an exclusive online
02:02:30.240
Daily Wire Backstage is produced by Robert Sterling and directed by Mike Joyner.
02:02:46.660
Our assistant director is Pavel Wadowski and our technical producer, Austin Stevens.
02:02:54.020
Audio is mixed by Mike Coromina and our audio assistant is Robin Fenderson.
02:03:02.580
Daily Wire Backstage is a Daily Wire production.
02:03:06.720
Those sweltering summer nights that leave you tossing and turning, desperately kicking
02:03:12.420
Crafted from the finest 100% organic cotton, Bowlin Branch's premium sheets feature a soft,
02:03:19.120
Get the best savings of the season during Bowlin Branch's annual summer event.
02:03:22.620
Get 20% off plus free shipping on your first set of sheets at bowlinbranch.com slash dailywire.
02:03:27.680
That's bowlinbranch, B-O-L-L-A-N-D, branch.com slash dailywire to save 20% off and unlock