The Charlie Kirk Show - August 20, 2020


Greg Gutfeld | How to Survive Mob Rule and Preserve Your Sanity in 2020


Episode Stats


Length

30 minutes

Words per minute

182.35359

Word count

5,501

Sentence count

395

Harmful content

Misogyny

1

sentences flagged

Toxicity

18

sentences flagged

Hate speech

3

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Greg Gutfeld was a self-help writer in the 90s and early 2000s. He was a founding member of the Men s Health magazine Prevention and served as the editor-in-chief of Men's Health. Greg has a new book out called The Plus: A Self-Help for People Who Hate Self Help.

Transcript

Transcripts from "The Charlie Kirk Show" are sourced from the Knowledge Fight Interactive Search Tool. Explore them interactively here.
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 Thank you for listening to this podcast one production.
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00:00:09.000 Hey, everybody.
00:00:10.000 Today on the Charlie Kirk Show, I have an exclusive conversation with Greg Gutfeld from Fox News.
00:00:16.000 I love Greg Gutfeld.
00:00:17.000 He's a terrific person.
00:00:18.000 You're going to love this conversation.
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00:00:41.000 Get engaged, get involved, start a chapter.
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00:00:48.000 Greg Gutfeld is here, everybody.
00:00:50.000 Buckle up.
00:00:51.000 Here we go.
00:00:52.000 Charlie, what you've done is incredible here.
00:00:54.000 Maybe Charlie Kirk is on the college campuses.
00:00:56.000 I want you to know we are lucky to have Charlie Kirk.
00:01:00.000 Charlie Kirk's running the White House, folks.
00:01:03.000 I want to thank Charlie.
00:01:04.000 He's an incredible guy.
00:01:05.000 His spirit, his love of this country.
00:01:07.000 He's done an amazing job building one of the most powerful youth organizations ever created, Turning Point USA.
00:01:14.000 We will not embrace the ideas that have destroyed countries, destroyed lives, and we are going to fight for freedom on campuses across the country.
00:01:22.000 That's why we are here.
00:01:26.000 Hey, everybody.
00:01:26.000 Welcome to this episode of the Charlie Kirk Show.
00:01:29.000 We are joined by what I call the most witty and wise and funniest person in the entire conservative movement, Greg Gutfeld.
00:01:38.000 You've probably seen him on Fox News many times, and he's actually had the opportunity to speak at a few of our Turning Point USA events throughout the years.
00:01:46.000 And he has a new book out that I encourage everyone to go get.
00:01:50.000 It's called The Plus, a Self-Help for People Who Hate Self-Help.
00:01:54.000 And Greg, you were once a self-help writer at a magazine.
00:01:58.000 Is that right?
00:01:59.000 Yeah, actually, first of all, thanks, Charlie.
00:02:01.000 And it's good to see you being hated by so many people because that means you're doing something right.
00:02:07.000 Because I went through all that.
00:02:08.000 So it means that means you're doing something when you have a lot of critics.
00:02:13.000 Okay, so back to your question.
00:02:16.000 I kind of began my career after I was an American Spectator as a staff assistant.
00:02:20.000 I went to Prevention Magazine in Allentown, Pennsylvania, and I was their first fitness editor.
00:02:25.000 Then I moved to men's health and became their editor-in-chief.
00:02:28.000 I was at men's health.
00:02:29.000 I was at Rodale, which was prevention and men's health, for 10 years.
00:02:33.000 And so that's service journalism.
00:02:35.000 That's how-to, how to be a better person, how to get six-pack abs in three days.
00:02:41.000 I am responsible for all those ab cover lines of the 90s.
00:02:46.000 The obsession with abs was my fault.
00:02:49.000 But the irony of the whole thing was that these magazines are generally for kind of older people, prevention, especially.
00:02:57.000 It was the largest health magazine and mostly read by 60-year-old women.
00:03:02.000 I'm a 25-year-old guy giving them advice.
00:03:04.000 You know, I am drinking every day, smoking every day, going to bars, having a ball.
00:03:11.000 And here I am giving health advice to like people that are twice my age.
00:03:14.000 It doesn't work.
00:03:15.000 You know, I realize how cheesy and false it is because whenever you meet self-help writers, they're generally really miserable and in need of help.
00:03:26.000 There's like themselves.
00:03:28.000 I've been on, I've been at conferences where there are other self-help writers from other magazines, men's magazines, women's magazines, and they look terrible.
00:03:37.000 They just look terrible.
00:03:38.000 They are the least healthy looking people.
00:03:40.000 So I never liked it.
00:03:41.000 And then all of a sudden, I'm on the other side of that hill.
00:03:45.000 I'm now 55, which I can't believe I've said that.
00:03:48.000 And I, because you don't believe you're that old.
00:03:51.000 And now I have wisdom.
00:03:52.000 And now I feel like, okay, now I can actually accomplish the stuff that I wanted to accomplish.
00:03:56.000 And I have stuff I can tell people.
00:03:58.000 I think I learned a lot.
00:04:00.000 And we don't take wisdom seriously.
00:04:03.000 So I thought I'd do that instead.
00:04:05.000 Well, I'm actually really pleased and encouraged that there's a non-political book out there in this entire political landscape.
00:04:12.000 And it's very funny.
00:04:13.000 I think that kind of self-help industry, I've met these same sorts of people.
00:04:17.000 They're just kind of disheveled.
00:04:19.000 You know, they're probably 60 or 70 pounds overweight.
00:04:22.000 They haven't shaved in like two and a half weeks.
00:04:24.000 And then they write this long article about self-discipline and waking up on time.
00:04:27.000 And it's like, there's something a little bit contradictory here.
00:04:31.000 If you meet them in the, like, if you ever meet a self-help person like in a green room, there's like the button is always like the buttons on the shirt aren't actually lined up.
00:04:43.000 And if it's a guy, the fly is never totally up.
00:04:47.000 They're just, and they're, I shouldn't talk because look at me.
00:04:49.000 I mean, I just got, I just got done exercising, so I'm kind of a wreck, but they're not put, they're not put together.
00:04:56.000 And it's, but you're to your point, though, in journalism in general, the people that are dispensing advice, whether it is self-help or political or how to be a better person in general, when you meet them, the contrast is so stark.
00:05:14.000 It is, and I think that's why, like, you know, it's always interesting with like people paint Republicans and conservatives as like evil, awful people.
00:05:23.000 And then you, in person, they're like, sorry, they're like pretty good looking.
00:05:28.000 They're pretty put together.
00:05:30.000 They're pretty generous.
00:05:32.000 They're pretty happy.
00:05:34.000 It's like, okay, so the way the world portrays bad, evil people, you find out are really, really great.
00:05:43.000 And the people that we're supposed to listen to for advice, like a Paul Krugman, look like they are on, they're from evil island.
00:05:52.000 You know, it's like the idea of conflating protesters with rioters.
00:05:57.000 It's like, no, it's peaceful protests.
00:05:59.000 It's like, no, I see with my own eyes. 0.98
00:06:01.000 These are sick people.
00:06:04.000 I'm coming to the conclusion in that world that the only difference between the protesters and the rioters is the time of day. 0.99
00:06:11.000 Once it goes dark, just changes.
00:06:15.000 Yeah, it's fine.
00:06:16.000 You could say what you can say whatever you want.
00:06:18.000 And also, to your point about this not being a political book, it is frustrating to work in television and that I never could win the argument.
00:06:26.000 I don't want my face on the book because all the books with faces on them now are just, you just feel like it's a right-wing book, right?
00:06:33.000 And you always have somebody like this with their, with their like with a flag draped over them.
00:06:38.000 Yeah, yeah, yeah. 0.98
00:06:39.000 Like I always gave, who's the guy I give crap to? 0.98
00:06:41.000 Pete Hegston. 0.99
00:06:42.000 Giant American flag.
00:06:43.000 By the way, at least he went for it.
00:06:45.000 Like his cover is insane.
00:06:47.000 No, I gave him credit.
00:06:48.000 It was the full brave heart.
00:06:50.000 It's just like we are going straight to light of fire.
00:06:53.000 Go all out.
00:06:54.000 But it's like, I so what I wanted to do was I wanted this to be more like the secret or power where there's just a symbol.
00:07:01.000 But everybody that who's your agent or marketing people, like, dude, you're on TV.
00:07:06.000 You're not going to put your face on the book. 1.00
00:07:08.000 That's how you sell this book, you idiot. 1.00
00:07:10.000 And so I'm going to do this. 1.00
00:07:11.000 But I think the next iteration when this comes out in, because it's not political.
00:07:16.000 And people, I think this out of all my books is going to last way longer than my other books.
00:07:22.000 Because if a book is political, it doesn't, it literally does not have a shelf life because it's a moment in time.
00:07:30.000 It's a perishable job.
00:07:31.000 It's a great meeting, which was about Joy Hate was about cancel culture.
00:07:35.000 And that was from 2010 or 2012 when I wrote that.
00:07:38.000 It was all about cancel culture.
00:07:40.000 It's more relevant today, but I don't think anybody's reading it because it's man guy on the cover.
00:07:45.000 It's eight years old.
00:07:47.000 It seems dead.
00:07:49.000 So I want this to have a different cover so people can pick it up who don't know who I am five years from now and can go like, wow, this was about living in a time of hysteria, mobs, and disease, and it could be helpful.
00:08:02.000 I'm sorry, I blathered.
00:08:04.000 It's perfect.
00:08:05.000 So you'd say in the book that there's a crisis of meaning.
00:08:07.000 I'm paraphrasing here, or that people are without direction.
00:08:10.000 I see this firsthand.
00:08:11.000 We see it statistically and anecdotally, especially with young men in this country, where, and you see it reflected in we're having 500,000 less children this year than last year, drug use is up, suicide is up.
00:08:22.000 How do you address this in the book?
00:08:24.000 You're embarking on this very important task of trying to communicate wisdom.
00:08:28.000 A lot of young people look up to you.
00:08:30.000 What are some of the themes that you hit on?
00:08:31.000 Well, you know, it's kind of interesting.
00:08:33.000 You go back to like what Jordan Peterson said about start by making your bed.
00:08:39.000 And people laughed at that, but that's kind of what I, what the plus is about is like, I created a new or artificial, let's call it an artificial replacement for impulse control.
00:08:50.000 Let's say you don't have a religious upbringing and you don't have a two-parent household and you don't have a role model.
00:08:56.000 And so you're faced with options that are good and bad or in the mix of good and bad.
00:09:02.000 This book creates this artificial thing that you teach yourself before every decision, plus or minus.
00:09:10.000 So before I text, before I tweet at Charlie Kirk something obnoxious because he ripped my show, is this a plus or minus?
00:09:17.000 Because this book was made for me as somebody who could have better impulse control on Twitter, online, on email, in meetings, even on TV.
00:09:29.000 Although I think it's funny that I'm more in control on TV than I am anywhere else, I think.
00:09:35.000 But the idea of the plus was like, how can I add some muscle to my impulse control, especially when my impulses can be so negative?
00:09:45.000 So it was also, that's why I said it's self-help for people who hate self-help.
00:09:48.000 It's me.
00:09:49.000 I hate self-help because I'm kind of negative, if you haven't noticed.
00:09:53.000 So to your point, they may not find, it may be hard to find meaning these days.
00:09:58.000 So you have to almost create.
00:10:01.000 You have to create a system for yourself that becomes ingrained.
00:10:05.000 And that was what I was doing with the book.
00:10:07.000 It's like, okay, if you can't control the world, you can control your reactions to the world and you can reshape the world.
00:10:13.000 In a weird way, the book is my example of the plus in action.
00:10:19.000 I didn't have a contract for this book.
00:10:20.000 Normally, when I do books, I have a contract.
00:10:22.000 I had a book that I was supposed to do in 2021.
00:10:25.000 So I could have sat out all year done and done nothing.
00:10:28.000 But I thought about this in the middle of the night about this system.
00:10:32.000 And I had all these ideas about cancel culture, the Kavanaugh stuff, the Covington stuff.
00:10:39.000 All this stuff was in my head.
00:10:41.000 And I thought, well, what's the plus thing to do?
00:10:43.000 And what should I do?
00:10:45.000 I'm going to write a self-help book that tackles these things.
00:10:48.000 And that was like, I wasn't planning on the negative would have been not to do anything.
00:10:54.000 So I hope that this is just a valley for us and that we come out of it and that there will be meaning rediscovered.
00:11:06.000 It is, I do think that when you're watching what's going on in the streets, there's a lot of miserable people who are finding meaning in self-destructive envy.
00:11:20.000 It's like they're not trying to rob Charlie Kirk of his wallet.
00:11:24.000 They just don't want Charlie Kirk to have that wallet.
00:11:27.000 And that's envy.
00:11:28.000 It's not even jealousy.
00:11:29.000 You know, jealousy is, I really would like your car, so I'm going to go to work and earn enough money to have a car like that.
00:11:35.000 This is, I'm going to destroy your car.
00:11:38.000 And I don't even want your car.
00:11:39.000 I just don't want you to have it.
00:11:40.000 That is, that is envy.
00:11:43.000 That is pure envy.
00:11:44.000 And we're seeing it on the streets.
00:11:46.000 And I don't know if it's up to us to provide moral value or meaning to those people.
00:11:54.000 I would provide them with prison and three meals a day because I think it's a lost cause for them.
00:12:00.000 I don't know.
00:12:01.000 Yeah, and they actually find satisfaction in not even getting the good, but in seeing other people suffer, which is even way, it's actually way more morally twisted than people recognize.
00:12:12.000 Is that when they get the Gucci bag, that's actually gave them less satisfaction than when the glass shattered.
00:12:17.000 Absolutely.
00:12:17.000 And also, I mean, my neighborhood got ravaged on that, it was Saturday, Sunday, and somewhat of Monday night back in June.
00:12:25.000 And my wife was in the apartment because she had told me she was staying with friends because I was up north about an hour away.
00:12:33.000 And I said, you know, you should get out of the apartment.
00:12:35.000 She says, I'm already out of the apartment.
00:12:36.000 I'm at my friend's house.
00:12:37.000 She was at a birthday party in Brooklyn.
00:12:40.000 And I said, and I called her because I saw the looting from Friday and Saturday.
00:12:44.000 And I said, you have to stay where you are because SOHO is going to get destroyed.
00:12:51.000 She said, no worries, but she lied.
00:12:53.000 She actually came.
00:12:53.000 She actually was home.
00:12:55.000 That was not the plus thing to do.
00:12:57.000 She was looking out our window and watching every single store, hundreds, just going in and going out. 0.99
00:13:04.000 And to your point about stuff that they were stealing was like a woman running out of a store with like 100 bras, you know, of a different, that was out of the lingerie store.
00:13:14.000 And it was just insane, but completely understandable when you don't have impulse control and there are no incentives or disincentives, i.e. punishment or consequences.
00:13:27.000 There's like punishment is an incentive not to do something.
00:13:31.000 You subtract that.
00:13:32.000 It's free money.
00:13:34.000 And that's why it was an organized looting in Chicago.
00:13:39.000 They had time to plan it organized because they knew there wasn't going to be any repercussion.
00:13:43.000 Yeah, with no, with no guidelines.
00:13:45.000 I mean, and there's the old expression that the laws are the wise restraints that keep men free.
00:13:49.000 When there is no law, men actually are not free.
00:13:52.000 And I'm convinced that some of these looters and terrorists, if there's a pile of dirt, they would take it.
00:13:58.000 It's almost they find some sort of satisfaction in the capacity to be able to hotwire the laws and not be held accountable for it.
00:14:05.000 That gives them meaning.
00:14:06.000 It's almost they've gamified the criminal process.
00:14:09.000 It is a mentality that has been ingrained if you went to any major university in the last 20 years that capitalism, free markets, achievers do not deserve what they have.
00:14:23.000 So you have protesters walking through the suburbs, I think it might have been Seattle, telling the white owners of homes to leave their homes and let black individuals have their homes because I guess historically it was a black neighborhood.
00:14:38.000 But it's like, you have to give up your homes.
00:14:40.000 And that happened.
00:14:41.000 I guess that happened last week.
00:14:43.000 I'm trying to make sure, like maybe it was just, maybe it's just five people.
00:14:46.000 But, you know, there's a guy running for office in Minnesota who was standing outside somebody's house shouting expletives saying F the police and all this stuff.
00:14:56.000 And he's got the governor's endorsement.
00:14:59.000 So the leaders are doing it.
00:15:00.000 Yeah.
00:15:01.000 And it's perfectly philosophically consistent if you understand the left and you understand what drives them.
00:15:06.000 And I don't mean to make this too political, but I mean, you kind of went there, so I will. 0.96
00:15:10.000 I mean, they just are more miserable.
00:15:12.000 And it's because, and I would love your opinion of this.
00:15:14.000 I don't know if you talked on this in the book or not, which is it's a lack of gratitude.
00:15:18.000 If you don't have gratitude, it's very easy to become bitter.
00:15:22.000 Do you talk, do you kind of, can you walk us through this kind of this new like systematic thinking that you have in the book, which I'm really, I'm really interested and intrigued by, because it's very, it's pragmatic, basically what you're saying.
00:15:35.000 It is basically looking at everything as an opportunity for a plus or a minus type behavior, two roads and figuring out which way to go.
00:15:44.000 It's real simple.
00:15:44.000 It's almost like Bongino said this to me.
00:15:46.000 He goes, Greg, it's so idiotic, but no one's ever done it before. 0.99
00:15:51.000 That's how I that's how I hear Bongino when he's talking to me. 0.99
00:15:54.000 He's like, This is, I've never read this before, but it's so obvious, and it is obvious.
00:15:59.000 Um, I actually use this uh principle when talking about dealing with people like uh uh miserable leftists.
00:16:08.000 And if there is a glimmer of hope that you can kind of open them up to other ideas, I have strategies in there to do that, whether it is like trying to meet them a little bit, um, trying to get them to talk about other things as analogous to politics.
00:16:22.000 So it's like, okay, so if you think this is wrong, how do you, why do you use an alarm clock, you know, or why do you not?
00:16:27.000 That's a dumb analogy, but why do you why do you invoke discipline in these areas, but not in these areas?
00:16:32.000 Stuff like that. 0.81
00:16:33.000 But then there's often no hope.
00:16:36.000 There's an interesting study of the social, the social justice warrior type activists, and they're generally anti-social.
00:16:46.000 If you're in a pub, they're the person that rather than having a drink and having a chat is yelling at you.
00:16:53.000 And it's not like I was trying to figure out what came first.
00:16:57.000 Does the social justice activism make a person miserable, or does the miserable person gravitate towards that?
00:17:05.000 And I think it gravitates toward it and then it inflames.
00:17:08.000 Because if you notice, if you've noticed, even among the groups of the social justice warriors, they're not even very nice to each other.
00:17:17.000 It's not like they all go out afterwards and have a beer.
00:17:20.000 You know, they're actually pretty bitter and angry towards themselves.
00:17:25.000 And a lot of it is the lack of gratitude in the sense that they feel that they deserve more without actually trying to earn it.
00:17:34.000 You know, it's like, I deserve this.
00:17:37.000 I deserve your respect.
00:17:39.000 I have self-identified as X, Y, and Z. 0.98
00:17:43.000 And if you don't genuflect before my identity, you're a racist bigot.
00:17:48.000 And I always say, whenever anybody starts giving me their identity speech, I pull the Tommy Lee Jones line from the fugitive.
00:17:57.000 You know, when Harrison Ford says, I'm innocent, and Tommy Lee Jones just goes, I don't care.
00:18:02.000 And it's like when somebody starts telling me as a blank, I go, yo, I don't care.
00:18:09.000 I'm just listening to your words.
00:18:11.000 And right now, I don't care what you claim you are today because it's going to change tomorrow.
00:18:18.000 So there's a lot of people listening to this podcast, and we've done a podcast on how to try to get people's lives reorganized.
00:18:24.000 It's a serious problem in our country to try to get people straightened out and try to get them understanding of how they can find purpose and responsibility.
00:18:32.000 Just technically, Greg, what is your message in the book of the applicability of this kind of systematic thinking, of looking at everything through a plus and minus?
00:18:39.000 It's somewhat utilitarian, but it's also deeper than that, right?
00:18:43.000 It's not just kind of funny because I am not religious, but the people that have interviewed me, God, Dennis Prager.
00:18:54.000 Oh, geez, I hate it when I cite names.
00:18:57.000 I'll just say that, but they all say that there's a religious tradition in this.
00:19:02.000 And the advice that I give about leading a productive life has a lot to do with forgiveness, doing the right thing because religion instills impulse control.
00:19:15.000 And my book is about impulse control because I'm not religious.
00:19:18.000 So what I'm trying to do is almost offer a secular religious tract, but I didn't mean to.
00:19:24.000 Probably the most important part of the book is to share the risk.
00:19:29.000 I say that a couple of times.
00:19:31.000 I first heard that phrase from Claire Lehman from Quillette when I interviewed her.
00:19:35.000 And it was that, and it was, you know, I had been writing about the cancel culture.
00:19:38.000 And I do think cancel culture is probably one of our biggest threats.
00:19:41.000 If a group doesn't like you, they will try to destroy you.
00:19:44.000 So there's the Breitbart model as a response, mutually assured destruction.
00:19:50.000 So if John Smith wants to destroy Charlie Kirk by going to Charlie Kirk's employer and saying, if you don't fire Charlie Kirk, I'm going to do a boycott.
00:20:02.000 Then you have the right to know where John Smith works.
00:20:06.000 So then you can direct people to go to his place of work and say, this guy is bullying, blah, blah, blah.
00:20:13.000 That would be like a Breitbartian kind of mutually assured destruction mode, which I don't disagree with, but I don't want to do it.
00:20:19.000 So I'm asking him as a why I don't want to do it because there's a certain religious element to the idea of turning the other cheek combined with sharing the risk.
00:20:28.000 The idea that rather than go after them, you share the risk with Charlie Kirk or you share the risk with the Covington kid, meaning anybody who gets targeted, no matter even people on the left, which I think I mentioned it in the book. 0.96
00:20:40.000 There was an occasion where there was a guy targeted on the left for doing something, saying something totally stupid.
00:20:48.000 And I really do believe that I had a large part in keeping his job because when I tweeted a defense of his, it kind of got, it kind of snowballed and stopped that mob from going.
00:21:04.000 So I shared the risk with this guy. 0.98
00:21:05.000 And of course, like two months later, the guy is back to crapping all over me and taking my stuff out of context from the five and saying I'm a jerk. 0.99
00:21:15.000 And it's like, you know what? 0.99
00:21:16.000 It's like you can't, but you got to do it.
00:21:18.000 I'm hoping that the message of sharing the risk is going to be the way forward in destroying.
00:21:25.000 Like I should share the risk if Bill Maher comes under fire.
00:21:28.000 Will Bill Maher do the same for me?
00:21:30.000 I don't know, but he should.
00:21:32.000 Jimmy Kimmel, I would share the risk with him if he would share the risk with me.
00:21:36.000 It's that kind of thing.
00:21:37.000 Sometimes I'm guilty of not doing that, but I don't think I've ever called for anybody to be fired.
00:21:43.000 And I've accepted, and the one thing that's in the book that I say a lot, I accept every apology, no matter how bad the crime is.
00:21:55.000 Well, not murder, but I mean, like, if somebody screws up and within 24 to 48 hours that I screwed up, I'm sorry.
00:22:04.000 What else can you ask of them?
00:22:05.000 Do you want them to crawl through broken glass?
00:22:08.000 If you really hate, I mean, did Roseanne's mistake about Valerie Jarrett offend you that much that you need to see her career ruined?
00:22:17.000 And it's like, no, you really don't care.
00:22:19.000 You're just looking for the endorphin dopamine rush of that moment of cancellation, which lasts like, it's almost like looting.
00:22:27.000 It lasts 20 minutes.
00:22:29.000 Hey, I really destroyed somebody more famous than me.
00:22:33.000 But if this person apologizes, why not accept it?
00:22:37.000 So that's my point.
00:22:38.000 And it is, it just makes me think of we have, the bar to destruction is so low.
00:22:45.000 We have to make it higher somehow.
00:22:47.000 Sharing the risk and maybe a little mutually assured destruction makes it more of a challenge for that person to come and ruin you if they think that they're not anonymous, right?
00:22:57.000 They're not anonymous.
00:22:58.000 If they have skin in the game, it's we share the risk.
00:23:02.000 We makes them have skin in the game.
00:23:05.000 So, hey, if John Smith comes after you, he could show up the next day at work.
00:23:10.000 And his manager goes like, what's this stuff you're doing on social media, calling people Hitler and blah, blah, blah.
00:23:17.000 There needs to be a little bit of that.
00:23:19.000 Well, you said something really interesting, Greg, where I can't remember exactly the phrase.
00:23:23.000 You said, when you're on TV, you feel like there's more weight on you when you say things, something like that earlier in this interview.
00:23:30.000 And I think there's a lot of wisdom to that because you're the least anonymous when you're on television, right?
00:23:35.000 I mean, it's like the opposite of anonymous, right?
00:23:37.000 You're ubiquitous.
00:23:38.000 Yes.
00:23:39.000 And so, because of that, there's almost this weight of every word you're saying is this could be the end of my career.
00:23:44.000 I'm going, and I experience the same thing when I go on TV, right?
00:23:47.000 Yeah, of course, and not just and now, I mean, anything, everything lives forever.
00:23:52.000 And it is kind of funny that the people that can destroy you aren't ubiquitous, they're anonymous, they don't have the skin of the game.
00:24:01.000 So, there's like you can get 50 people, 20 people, media matters.
00:24:05.000 Nobody cares.
00:24:06.000 Nobody cares who works at media matters.
00:24:08.000 Those people, their lives are bent on just sitting there watching Fox and going, Oh, what did he say?
00:24:15.000 And it's like I don't get upset at that.
00:24:18.000 I feel bad that there is somebody who is forced to watch me every day who doesn't like me.
00:24:24.000 I mean, they have to hate watch me, find what I said.
00:24:27.000 Oh my God.
00:24:28.000 And then, and then they have to send it out in hope that Mediaite and God knows who else picks it up.
00:24:33.000 And sometimes they won't.
00:24:34.000 You're like, oh, and it's, it's, it's interesting.
00:24:36.000 So basically, when you're on TV, you are absolutely, you are out there saying, come get me.
00:24:45.000 And you have to, in the back of your head, you have to, you have to, you have to choose your words so carefully, but you also have to tell the truth and you have to entertain.
00:24:54.000 And that, those two are, are almost almost required that you jump off a verbal cliff to take a risk.
00:25:01.000 If you're in the other side, I, I, it's like always like this, and you always see this with people now who are on TV and they are like, it's like they're so tight-lipped because they're afraid that what they might say might ruin their careers.
00:25:13.000 And that's why you also see a lot of celebrities not doing many interviews anymore because it always comes back to haunt them.
00:25:20.000 Well, yeah.
00:25:21.000 And so when you're anonymous, you're actually able to be much more destructive.
00:25:25.000 When you don't have an identity, you're able to well, yeah, I mean, but there is something to be said.
00:25:30.000 There is something to be said that the indecency and the cancellation has only been inflamed by how people can hide behind Twitter accounts or they have such small followings, they're able to do things that they otherwise wouldn't do, or they have duplicative accounts.
00:25:44.000 And so then all of a sudden, you have an entire group of people that are held to an unholy standard.
00:25:50.000 And it actually creates really unhappy dynamics between the communicator and the audience.
00:25:57.000 And I think that's also why we have the death of comedy is because people are like, well, I'm so afraid of offending anyone, which comedy is.
00:26:02.000 I mean, comedy by definition is offensive.
00:26:04.000 And the worst people are the comedians that are kneeling before canceled culture, the ones that say, you know, they have a point.
00:26:04.000 Right.
00:26:12.000 I think it was Sarah Silverman who said, like, it's true.
00:26:15.000 Some comedy from 10 years ago, I'm paraphrasing completely, but it was like, and I'm pretty sure it was her, but like, you know, attitudes change.
00:26:23.000 You know, it's like, so she, and remember, she wore blackface, which I, you know, back then, I think she was, I think she was absolutely petrified that she was going to be canceled over blackface.
00:26:35.000 So she, you know, she got on her knees before the crocodile, you know, the crocodile hoping that it won't, you know, always eats you last, you know, and I find I really admire the comedians that are just basically giving the finger to cancel culture.
00:26:51.000 And we need to support them when they get in trouble.
00:26:55.000 I love Andrew Schultz and Dave Smith and a whole bunch of people that are that kind of like, they're just, they're doing it without a net, you know, and also that's the other answer to whether it's Joe Rogan, Adam Carolla, Dave Rubin, you got to create your own business for two reasons.
00:27:16.000 One, then you can't be canceled unless they demonetize you on YouTube.
00:27:21.000 And number two, you can get rich.
00:27:24.000 I mean, you can get, I mean, Adam Carolla is rich.
00:27:26.000 Dave Rubin's getting rich.
00:27:28.000 I assume Joe Rogan's worth, what, like $100 million now?
00:27:31.000 So there's an incentive for me to get the hell out of here.
00:27:35.000 It's like, I'm thinking, like, what am I doing?
00:27:38.000 But that's the bright spot is that if you go, the audience will find you and cancel culture will be left with this safe, homogenized syrup of inanities that they won.
00:27:52.000 And absent people doing that, if you stay in the institutions, the institutions will die alongside the individuals that don't have the creative capacity.
00:28:01.000 Absolutely.
00:28:02.000 I think you're seeing it in movies.
00:28:06.000 Movies with messages are dreadful.
00:28:09.000 I think any TV show, I mean, and then you'll see Netflix will keep certain shows alive that aren't being watched simply because of the demographic of the talent or just the message.
00:28:23.000 They need to keep the PC elements going.
00:28:26.000 And that'll kill your business.
00:28:27.000 It always look at Vice magazine.
00:28:30.000 Vice was offensive and disgusting, but at least it was interesting. 0.95
00:28:35.000 Now it's a woke Bible. 0.97
00:28:38.000 It is so sad. 0.99
00:28:39.000 Anyway, and it's gone totally down ever since they've done that.
00:28:43.000 So we have a couple minutes remaining, Greg.
00:28:45.000 The book is called The Plus.
00:28:47.000 And in your own words, you believe this will be one of the more timeless pieces of literature that you have written.
00:28:52.000 Anything else we didn't cover, Greg, how people can find it, or just kind of big themes you want to communicate?
00:28:57.000 No, I think you nailed it.
00:28:59.000 And I do think that it's, it's, for me, anyway, it wasn't something I planned on.
00:29:05.000 And when that happens, I always, it always ends up doing better.
00:29:09.000 Like the stuff that I didn't plan on, like with the five, became a success.
00:29:13.000 The stuff that I plan on, they do fine.
00:29:17.000 But I have a feeling because this was an organic thing, I think it's really a different book.
00:29:23.000 So it's terrific.
00:29:24.000 Well, it's called The Plus.
00:29:25.000 Greg, keep up the great work.
00:29:27.000 We love watching you every day.
00:29:28.000 And thank you for all that you do.
00:29:30.000 You've got it, buddy.
00:29:31.000 Take care.
00:29:32.000 Thanks for the time, too.
00:29:33.000 Awesome.
00:29:34.000 Bye-bye.
00:29:37.000 What a great episode that was with Greg Gutfeld.
00:29:39.000 If you guys have any questions for me or for guests, email me yourquestions at freedom at charliekirk.com or just me your thoughts.
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00:29:47.000 I read all the emails.
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00:30:06.000 Thank you guys so much for listening.
00:30:08.000 Talk to you soon.
00:30:09.000 God bless.