00:20:20.180apparently, who works in the Trump administration
00:20:21.800who who is not recorded having said anything so he's he was in it but as far as we know
00:20:28.060he didn't say anything quote-unquote offensive um but there were other comments made in the group
00:20:33.540chat as politico uh reveals uh that were a lot of edgy jokes and a lot of um a lot of a lot of
00:20:43.780offensive language that's being used in the in this group chat. And most of it, as Politico
00:20:51.320finally admits in the article, if you read all 57 paragraphs of it, they'll finally admit that,
00:20:56.760yeah, most of this is supposed to supposed to be a joke, although they don't, of course,
00:21:00.420put that in the in the headline. And, you know, that the title of the article has the quotes,
00:21:06.100I love Hitler. And when you look at the context of that comment in the group, in the group chat,
00:21:13.780it's very obvious that it is a joke it's sarcasm uh very much in line with the kind of sarcasm
00:21:19.220republicans use all the time about yeah i'm real far right i guess i love hitler uh you know along
00:21:24.420the lines of me having theocratic fascist in my twitter bio which isn't entirely a joke but it's
00:21:30.420mostly a joke um so this is kind of this this kind of breaks down a few different ways and
00:21:37.460And for me, the story here is not the group chat, because these are private messages between people that no one knows.
00:21:47.280These are not relevant people. And the only reason why the media is showing us is the only reason why they're doing this is obviously it's a political hit.
00:21:57.060And in particular, they're trying to distract from the fact that the left has spent the last month, I mean, really much longer than that, but especially the last month, openly celebrating political violence.
00:22:07.840And now we have a attorney general candidate is probably the next attorney general of Virginia, who was was was in his own messages saying not as a joke that he wants his political opponents to die and even their children to die.
00:22:21.020And he was very specific that he was not joking about it.
00:22:23.900And so the left is looking to distract from that.
00:22:26.040And their way of doing it is by somehow obtaining these messages and putting them out to distract us.
00:28:15.500So, I mean, here's the thing, we're just not.
00:28:17.860I mean, so I would agree with you that, quote unquote, policing, you need to be prudent about how you police.
00:28:24.200I also think that everyone agrees, I would assume Matt included, and Matt, you told me if I'm wrong here, that, you know, there are certain things that can be said that social consequences should actually attend to.
00:28:38.420So certainly that's true on the left. Right. If you say that you want to murder the speaker of the House and then calls the kids fascist, there should be social consequences that actually attend to that.
00:28:47.660I agree with everything you say about the difference between a private group chat between a bunch of young Republican idiots who are who are outbasing each other and the attorney general candidate in Virginia actually saying the thing running for office.
00:29:00.540Now, I will say, I don't think these people are kids.
00:29:29.740And I think the kind of loose playing with with that term, as though if you're a 31 year old, which is what one of these people was, that somehow this is the equivalent of being 17.
00:29:37.820I don't think that's true either. Why are you down to 22?
00:29:40.500I mean, I agree. But some of the people who are being quoted here in their 30s, some are up all the way up to 40.
00:29:44.440I get it. I get it. Again, I'm not even disagreeing with the motivations of the Politico story.
00:29:48.740In fact, even on my show today, I talked about the motivations of the Politico story, which, Matt, I agree, are completely scurrilous and designed to distract from the sort of violent rhetoric we've seen from the left.
00:29:58.280But it has led to, I think, a reactionary response on some parts of the right to say there should be no policing ever at all.
00:30:05.160No social consequences should ever attend to things that are said on the right.
00:30:09.600That it's basically just pure my side versus your side.
00:30:12.540The problem I have is, number one, I think that's moral.
00:30:14.740And number two, I don't think that's pragmatic.
00:30:16.300I don't think that's moral because I think that there are things that get said on the right that are really, really, really ugly.
00:30:21.320And pretending those away doesn't make them go away.
00:30:24.740I think that they're getting more common.
00:30:26.360I know that my death threats from that side are getting more common.
00:30:28.700I know I have more security because of that, and it's not just from the left.
00:30:31.340I have lots of security from the left, and I also get lots of security from the right.
00:30:34.980Matt, I think a little bit earlier today you tweeted that kind of your litmus test is the people who are trying to kill you, and I totally get that.
00:30:42.680The difference is that I think that if somebody tries to kill Matt, there's a good shot that it's going to be a leftist.
00:30:47.900If somebody tries to kill me, it's a freaking Agatha Christie novel.
00:30:51.700I just don't know which direction the bullet is coming from at this point, given the sort of various and sundry radical extremes that exist.
00:30:59.060I'm not going to say that the right is equivalent to the left in this respect, because I don't think it's been mainstream to nearly the same effect on the right.
00:31:04.720I think he's trying to say groipers are trying to get him.
00:31:08.440I have not found the groipers to be violent.
00:31:12.760It has been on the left, but to pretend that it has not infiltrated a lot of very important spaces, I think is sort of whistling past the graveyard.
00:31:18.840Now, again, that's not about the Politico story.
00:31:20.280There's more of a broad commentary about where we are in the movement.
00:31:24.060And as a matter of sort of morality, we all have things where, again, I'm not saying cast into the outer darkness.
00:31:30.880I'm not calling for any of these people who I think everyone knows who I'm referring to.
00:31:34.960But I don't think I'm calling for any of these people to be deplatformed or removed from YouTube or removed from Twitter.
00:31:38.840In fact, I've called for many of these people, Nick Fuentes, for example, to actually be returned to Twitter,
00:31:43.240despite the fact that we have some pretty significant disagreements,
00:31:46.080including the fact that he thinks that I and people like me are scurrilous sons of Satan
00:31:54.100But that is a different thing from, is this person part of-
00:31:58.520I know, but Ben, I think you're miscategorizing people's disagreement to you.
00:32:06.220They don't disagree with you or hate you because they think you're a son of Satan or whatever.
00:32:11.440I'm sure there's some of that, but people feel as though Ben is loyal to Israel and not loyal
00:32:16.720to the United States. That he wants Israel's best interest and not the United States best interest.
00:32:23.200I would say that's people's main problem with that. I just think he's miscategorizing,
00:32:30.900quote unquote, the movement that I belong to. And the answer there is he doesn't think I'm part of
00:32:34.380the movement that he belongs to, which he's made very clear. And so that gets into the question
00:32:38.800of there's the morality of when someone says something bad should you condemn it and i think
00:32:44.120that as a general matter you can do what winsome sears did right winsome sears is running against
00:32:48.140the attorney general candidate in virginia she was asked about the politico chat she said yeah
00:32:52.000that's bad now you do jay jones which seems to me like a pretty good answer and a good way of
00:32:56.680policing and then when it comes to the pragmatic can i just find you were in the group chat yeah
00:33:01.700i mean one more point on the i just want to make one more point here and then you can say whatever
00:33:05.540on. On the pragmatic side, I fundamentally disagree with this idea that the reason that
00:33:10.240the right quote unquote loses is because we fragment while the left is unified. The left
00:33:13.900is losing because it unified around its crazies. Do not unify around your crazies. Sure, the crazies
00:33:19.980can vote for you. They can vote for your party. You can't stop them from doing that. It's a free
00:33:23.240country. But that doesn't mean they should have like a decisive. I think that people should think
00:33:27.360for themselves. I am really not in the camp of everyone going into this group and having this
00:33:33.880movement. And like, I just think it's unrealistic. I think people have to think for themselves.
00:33:39.200When you join a group, the challenge you get is that then you have to adopt the opinions of that
00:33:44.360group. And then if you infight too much, it's, oh, well, you're not going along with the group.
00:33:49.860Well, I don't know. When has it ever been a good thing to go along with the group? I think you
00:33:54.260should think for yourself. Voice in the future of the movement, because if you do that, you end up
00:33:59.820with the trans movement running the Democratic Party and you lose from here to forever. It's
00:34:03.220the democratic solidarity that's destroying them not the democrats as as a sort of fragmentary
00:34:07.940let me let me let me go to just a second i just want to respond to two things there and the first
00:34:12.860is and i've heard this argument that well the left is losing because they uh they failed to
00:34:19.480drive out the radical elements of their party i just i i think there's a i think there's a false
00:34:24.240premise there though i i don't think that's actually happening i think you know mom donnie
00:34:28.700one of the most radical political figures we've ever seen in this country is about to be the mayor
00:34:32.440of our largest city because there are no republicans or moderates in new york man i mean trump's been
00:34:36.220president twice and it was the trans issue that killed kamala harris in the last election because
00:34:39.900they won't stop doing the trans issue which is the most okay i'm curious so what are the major
00:34:47.040cities in america if we're gonna say are the republicans winning what are the five biggest
00:34:51.940cities in america um okay la democrat new new york democrat chicago democrat houston and phoenix
00:35:05.260i don't know if those are houston has a democrat or republican mayor i didn't know phoenix was
00:35:15.180that big actually i did not know that was that big uh democrat has houston phoenix is
00:35:24.300um democrat yeah literally five democrats this is what i mean when thinking for ourselves
00:35:35.360dream elements of the party including obviously you know what happened to charlie yeah uh yeah
00:35:42.440And the trans issue was was it was a big problem for that. But that's also that's another thing, too, is that when we talk about the sort of the, quote unquote, radical elements of the right versus the radical elements of the left, these are not exactly the same thing.
00:35:56.240The radical element of the left denies basic biological reality. I mean, you're you're you're you're militating against, you know, these these basic realities that we all understand.
00:36:07.200and that that's not that's not happening on the right there there's no equivalent of that of
00:36:11.720someone saying that men can have babies like that's there's just no there's no exact equivalent of
00:36:16.780that but the second point on the politico oh ben does not like this what do the comments say
00:36:22.060ben's giving matt the same look he gave charlie
00:36:25.460left the group chat get back to work matt why does walsh look like he was kidnapped no
00:36:34.680article itself okay obviously if somebody says something publicly and they've decided to announce
00:36:43.080it to the world well then that's fair game for anyone to disagree and anyone to say anything
00:36:46.820they want about it but with that in particular i i think that in almost every case if you are
00:36:53.780speaking in private you're having a private conversation and then somebody with obviously
00:36:59.380sinister intentions comes along and takes that private conversation and makes it public in
00:37:05.060almost every case my position is and this has always been my position i don't care i'm not even
00:37:09.420paying attention to it okay i i am not going to uh dignify that i'm not going to go along with i'm
00:37:14.960not going to give you what you want i'm not going to reward yeah i i agree with matt there i think
00:37:20.260that's actually a really good take um you're never going to know the context you're never
00:37:25.480going to know the relationship that people had. Yeah. So when you leak private tax, you just got
00:37:33.140to be careful. Ford that strategy. And by the way, part of that's, that's a principled stand on my
00:37:38.260part. It's also, it's like a self-preservation thing. I don't want, I don't want people doing
00:37:42.540that to me. I don't want people going through and revealing my private conversations, not because
00:37:46.580I'm saying those kinds of things, but because these are private conversations. Now there are
00:37:49.940exceptions to that. One exception is if you're running for political office and you want to be
00:37:54.220the top law enforcement official in a state and you've said privately that you think that you know
00:38:00.140half of your state should die well that's one of those exceptions i think probably in general if
00:38:04.900you're running for political office that's an exception there are things that become fair game
00:38:09.000that otherwise wouldn't be but but outside of those exceptions um i just i just i just fundamentally
00:47:31.500That forum was really setting the agenda for the Republican Party.
00:47:34.800And Charlie made a really important point to have a coalition in which he would not be pressured to get rid of Tucker.
00:47:41.380but he also wouldn't be pressured to get rid of people who hated Tucker or who Tucker hated or
00:47:46.240whoever, you know, where the various constituencies hated them. But Charlie, furthermore, to your
00:47:50.640point, Ben, also drew a line. There were plenty of people that were not permitted into TPUSA events.
00:47:55.800And so he did this in, I think, an obviously very effective way, a way that did not fall
00:48:00.980into the perils of, you know, a- Counter super expenses and damages. I don't have the time.
00:48:06.220yeah let me with all the stuff i have going on let me counter sue
00:48:13.120just ignore the suit yeah right a movement becoming too extreme and i just wonder if
00:48:19.580there's not a lesson that we could take from that i mean i think i think a good here's a good rule
00:48:23.200of thumb about about charlie by the way how about this how about you probably don't belong in a
00:48:28.160leadership position shall we say in the conservative movement if you won't just buy into the basic
00:48:33.560factual idea that charlie kirk was murdered by a gay man who is a trans furry lover how about that
00:48:41.180if you spend your days fulminating about all the other things with regard to charlie and and
00:48:47.120speculate that he was murdered by other forces that seems to me not connected with reality
00:48:51.060i mean that's something he hates can't so if you guys don't know the beef ben made the mistake of
00:48:56.180hiring women and both of the women decided to crash out on him and be completely ungrateful
00:49:00.720for his, um, opportunity that he gave him. Brett pretends she didn't do that, but I saw it. Brett,
00:49:09.520you think I'll forget? I'll never forget. I'm a woman. I'm a woman. But Candace now is, um,
00:49:14.560pushing all this Jay stuff and she completely crashed out on Ben, damaged his reputation.
00:49:22.620Yeah. I like Ben as a person. I think he's a good person, but I do, I would argue he probably does
00:49:28.540side more with israel but um yeah that's what erica's said that's something tp usa has said
00:49:36.120like that that seems like that seems like a pretty good easy rule of thumb that if you
00:49:39.660if you're if you're spending all your days doing that if you even if you even tangentially are
00:49:43.620doing that seems if you're trying to divide them matt i thought that what you said when charlie
00:49:47.400died was right you know that one of charlie's goals was to keep the movement together it's
00:49:50.820obviously something shady is trying to do he's trying to keep people in the room together i
00:49:53.660totally get it i've talked publicly about the fact that tucker called me that day two days
00:49:57.700after Charlie was shot and said, like, let's stop. Let's stop fighting. And I said, you know
00:50:01.400what? That sounds great to me. That's fine. I really don't want to be fighting with you
00:50:04.280because obviously we have other priorities. In fact, I even offered Tucker that we should get
00:50:08.220on stage together and talk about the things that we agreed with. He's got to take me up on that
00:50:11.380offer. But the bottom line here is that when it comes to where you set limits, limits at some
00:50:17.320point are going to have to be set. And it seems to me that the. But Candace was fired from her
00:50:21.880job. Well, she wouldn't have had a job in the first place if it wasn't for them. Look, Candace
00:50:26.780is not even qualified to talk about the war, in my opinion. I think she just kind of repeats what
00:50:34.000Nick F says to some degree, which is fine. But look, if you're hired to do X and then you start
00:50:41.400doing Y, you can't really be mad when you get fired. That's my opinion.
00:50:46.560Move on the right is that because we don't like the left at all, because the left is bad,
00:50:50.640there must be no limit set. And any attempt to set a limit is somehow firing inside the tent.
00:50:54.920And what this actually leads to is many of the same people who are firing inside the tent, then turning around and claiming that you're violating the truce.
00:51:01.360Because I'll tell you what, it's Nick Fuentes who's attacking Donald Trump on a regular basis.
00:51:06.080It is Alex Jones who's attacking Donald Trump on a regular basis.
00:51:09.140I mean, it is Tucker Carlson who's attacking Donald Trump.
00:51:11.480Yeah, but why don't you guys just have a show and put them all together and argue and let the best ideas win?
00:51:45.360And number one, yeah, just on your point, Ben, about who killed Charlie Kirk, I've been very
00:51:51.980clear about it. This was clearly a leftist, this was leftist violence, and we should stay focused
00:51:56.800on that. I think we're letting them off the hook when we try to blame anybody else other than the
00:52:02.120left. This was a leftist violence for sure. Does that mean that anyone who feels differently
00:52:07.260should be drummed out of the movement? No, I don't think so. And I also think that,
00:52:11.760That, you know, it's like we're not even in a position to decide, well, who should be a leader, who should have a platform, who should be, you know, who should be getting attention in this movement.
00:52:18.680It's like that's not up to us up to us to decide anyway.
00:52:21.520Well, let me just say after Charlie died, a couple a couple of days after Charlie died, I put out a tweet where I said that I want to call a truce.
00:52:35.880I can only do it on my end. I want to call a truce. I want to extend an olive branch to everybody on my side, everybody on the right.
00:52:41.580Everybody to the right of Bill Maher, including him, not that I ever had really a beef with him, but I want to extend a truce because we are dealing with a threat.
00:52:53.980Drew, you said it yourself. These are people like the political violence is on one side. This is on one side.
00:52:59.920There is one side that engages in political violence. There is one side that rejects the basic realities of life.
00:53:06.720there's one side that's responsible for murdering 60 million babies in this country okay there's it's
00:53:11.840one side and so i think that for right now maybe we'll get back to the big arguments maybe we'll
00:53:16.480get back to the infighting we'll get back to that in the future i'm sure i don't you can't control
00:53:20.880men i mean you can only control what you do you can't control if people are going to infight um
00:53:29.360it would be more fruitful discussion if i could really hear what they're going to do because the
00:53:35.680But the way they're speaking, it's as if they have control of the whole movement, and I
00:58:23.300It's an interesting thought exercise, but it's the reason I tell my dad about some of
00:58:28.240these right-wing, like, you know, ban this, ban that. That's why my dad said to give up on abortion.
00:58:32.760My dad said, stop arguing about abortion because it's never going to change.
00:58:38.660Um, I hope you're doing good today. Thank you. I am.
00:58:43.460Didn't conserving Western civilization at all. And, uh, and so if you don't want to conserve
00:58:47.980that, then like, we're just not, we're, we actually are fundamentally cause that.
00:58:50.840Okay. So let's, let's, let's put it this way, Matt. Um, what does that mean? But let's,
00:58:56.300let's take the abortion idea matt would say ban abortion right and i'd say well pragmatically
00:59:00.700that's not going to happen however i do think we could make an agreement at three months with
00:59:05.020the pro-life side or pro-choice side we could say three months we'll give you guys abortion
00:59:10.540let's make a deal that's what i would say make a deal and then we can never argue about it again
00:59:14.620and that's and that's like the mindset like when you have a business guy and they really want to
00:59:18.220make a deal by the end of the month you know everything has to be timely when you really
00:59:23.660want to get something changed you do it quick you're like how fast can we get this done right
00:59:28.940now i have a list of like things i want to get done for this channel and every day i just look
00:59:34.540at my list and i think how do i get this done how can i how can i finish this and it's just a very
00:59:40.220different mindset than well we should have a theocracy and we should bring these women back
00:59:43.980in the kitchen you know it's not going to happen what can we do today what can we do this month
00:59:50.540and if you can't get it done this month it will likely not happen in her lifetime it could happen
00:59:56.300but i'm not in the world of kids and i just i'm really trying to build a community of pragmatic
01:00:01.900people that want solutions for today what if you told a young girl to not go on the dating apps
01:00:06.460are you crazy men aren't gonna approach you nowadays if you're 18 get on freaking hinge
01:00:12.380get on hinge go on a date a week that's more pragmatic that's the thing i'm saying we need
01:00:16.620to unite to defend is western civilization and so if women have the option to opt out of motherhood
01:00:21.820then why can't the father opt out as well i agree with you however however this is the society we
01:00:28.380have you cannot opt out of fatherhood so what is the best plan in this society that we have
01:00:34.940that's how you want to think that's the best way to think right even though that's true
01:00:40.620right now there's no indication the laws are going to change anytime soon
01:00:43.660so now you have to make a strategy based on the unfair laws
01:00:48.140now a lot of people come back and they say pearl but pearl but pearl
01:00:51.900um you're being a doomer i'm like well i'm being realistic
01:00:55.280i'm being realistic you have to deal with the world we have you cannot wait on politicians
01:01:03.900for the hope to live your life you can't your effects on the culture are cumulative well
01:01:11.140they're not measurable and if i can't measure and show how i've affected the culture that would be
01:01:16.260my that would be my push um what how did you affect the culture other than social media posts
01:01:21.460um has the birth rate gone up has marriage gone up no none of these things have
01:01:29.700civilization that has to mean something right that's right so so for example in in you know
01:01:37.380Recently, I've been talking about the Islamic takeover of Dearborn, and I've had people who I guess claim to be conservatives who are trying to tell me that actually this is a very good thing, that our country becomes Islamic.
01:01:49.300And it's like, okay, we're clearly not on the same side.