The murder of a teenage high school football player is a hot topic in the culture war-obsessed world of social media, and the case has become one of the most hotly debated topics on social media. This week, Charlie and Jack cover the case of Austin Metcalf, who was murdered at a high school track meet in Frisco, Texas.
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00:00:58.000Alright, ladies and gentlemen, welcome aboard for this week's edition of Thought Crime Thursday.
00:01:05.000Charlie, of course, is out on assignment.
00:01:07.000We know that he's on the campuses right now.
00:01:11.000It's hard to lock in Charlie's schedule because he's spending so much time on the campuses talking to literally thousands and thousands of students all across the country as they come to him.
00:01:23.000on these campuses, on these camps, camp, camp high, camp high, maybe we'll ask Blake about that one and try to, you know, try to deal with a lot of the leftist social conditioning that they're getting on these campuses.
00:01:35.000But as, as it stands, we have assembled still a panel of thought criminals for you this evening.
00:02:38.000The first story that this was one of those ones where it feels like it's almost kind of...
00:02:46.000Taylor made for a thought crime type show because it's something where, you know, it doesn't necessarily fit into the normal news of the day, but it's this massive culture war issue that's going on throughout the country, and it's been roiling social media.
00:03:00.000Not so much, I think, the case itself, this criminal case that happened down in Frisco, Texas.
00:03:08.000But the aftermath to it has become this massive social media just explosion of interest and explosion of debate and controversy, but actually in some instances not so much debate and controversy and disinformation and misinformation and fake news.
00:03:28.000And this is the case of the murder of, of course, teenage high school football star Austin Metcalf.
00:03:36.000By his alleged assailant, we'll say alleged for legal purposes, Carmelo Anthony.
00:03:52.000And Carmelo Anthony, who, by the way, admits this to police and police records, stabbed him in the heart, killing him almost instantly or very quickly at the track meet on the bleachers.
00:04:05.000But what's gotten really, I think, everyone riled up so much is the fact that there are now two crowdfunds, and this is sort of emblematic of the social media age in which we live.
00:04:15.000There are two crowdfunds now, one for legal defenses for Carmelo Anthony, and then one for the family of Austin Metcalf.
00:04:26.000And it's almost like they're kind of competing to see who can raise or which sides can raise more money in the case.
00:04:35.000The one on GoFundMe for Austin Metcalf, as we record this, has over $310,000, whereas the legal defense fund for Carmelo Anthony has $284,000.
00:04:50.000So they both sit right around the $300,000 mark.
00:04:55.000I guess we'll go to Blake first really quickly.
00:04:59.000Blake, when you're looking at this case, let's talk about it from the facts perspective.
00:05:06.000Carmelo Anthony, his supporters say that he was acting in self-defense.
00:05:12.000Is there anything that you've seen, and I'm sorry to put you on the spot, I don't know if you've really dug into this case or not, I know you're on the tour with Charlie there, but is there anything that you've seen that would provide for this self-defense argument?
00:05:25.000Well, a lot more details are going to come out on this, I have to imagine.
00:05:43.000It seems that Carmelo was allegedly...
00:05:50.000It was for a sporting event and he was where the other team was supposed to be, so it might have been that he was fraternizing before a match.
00:05:59.000It might have been that he was causing mischief before a match.
00:06:02.000Unclear. I haven't heard more details on that.
00:06:05.000I think the reason they're saying self-defense...
00:06:07.000I should have called for this because we actually do have the side on it.
00:07:04.000So, you know, each team will set up their tent for the bleachers.
00:07:08.000We don't have the information exactly on whose team was supposed to be where or anything like this.
00:07:14.000But what's really been crazy is I've also seen there's been a ton of misinformation that's spread.
00:07:20.000People were even making like, I don't know if you guys have seen this, there have been fake Facebook posts that were made by the sheriffs talking.
00:07:29.000From the Frisco Police, or, you know, the Sheriff's Department, saying that, oh, there was a fight, and there was a huge altercation, and someone, you know, and that Austin Metcalf, the white kid, had been attacking the black kid, and he was trying to throw him off the bleachers,
00:07:46.000and that's why he responded, etc., etc.
00:08:16.000And like we said, more will come out about this.
00:08:19.000And so, you know, to get at why this is becoming a politically resonant topic, so you have a ton of money being raised in what seems to be superficially at least a pretty, like a nasty case that would not justify stabbing someone to death.
00:08:37.000And it's like Carmelo Anthony has become I like the fact that GiveSendGo's position is,
00:09:03.000it's a free platform, you can raise money for things, and of course...
00:09:07.000People have the right to a criminal defense.
00:09:09.000People have the right to donate to support someone's criminal defense.
00:09:12.000I'm glad we had a place where we could do that for Kyle Rittenhouse.
00:09:16.000I think that option should exist for people.
00:09:18.000But the bigger picture, of course, is whether people have a right to donate to this or not, should they be donating to it?
00:09:25.000And where this has become a cause for debate, as I'm sure you could elaborate on, Jack, or we can loop in Andrew and Tyler here, Creepily become a racially tinged thing that the idea is Carmelo Anthony is being railroaded or targeted in a racial manner that Austin Metcalf arguably deserved to be stabbed to death when there seems to be very little argument that that's the case.
00:09:52.000And then competing with this is the fact that people are, you see this in a lot of cases where people are coming out and Let's get,
00:10:40.000But I'm reading, according to the arrest affidavit, witnesses told police that Anthony warned Metcalf, so Carmelo Anthony warned Austin Metcalf, the white kid, not to touch him, and then he reached into his bag.
00:10:52.000When Metcalf reportedly touched him, Anthony dared him to throw a punch.
00:10:57.000One witness claimed that Metcalf then grabbed Anthony to get him to move, at which point Anthony allegedly pulled out the knife and stabbed him once in the chest before fleeing.
00:11:07.000So their whole shtick here is that this was Carmelo Anthony acting in self-defense.
00:11:13.000And you can see, and I think to Blake's point, why this is becoming politically charged and racially charged is because you've got...
00:11:23.000Carmelo Anthony's defenders basically saying these were bullies, these white privileged jocks thought they could push around this black kid and he react to defend himself.
00:11:35.000Carmelo Anthony was sitting under the wrong tent.
00:11:37.000Not that that really matters, but you can understand that in high school kids are going to be like, hey, this isn't your school's tent.
00:12:02.000To me, to Blake's earlier point, there's zero explanation of why that was a rational or justifiable move in that moment other than a complete wild overreaction.
00:12:13.000Now his family member, apparently Kevin Hayes is a relative of Carmelo Anthony, says it was self-defense and that he panicked after being allegedly jumped.
00:12:25.000I've seen no indication that Austin Metcalf jumped him other than to try and grab, probably grab him and push him out of the tent.
00:12:33.000Now, you could argue that that was the wrong thing to do.
00:12:36.000But these kind of things happen all the time in high school.
00:12:40.000And to say that it was somehow justifiable to stab him and that there's nearly $300,000 that has poured into his legal defense fund of people that seemingly agree is the part that troubles me so deeply.
00:12:54.000To me, this has nothing to do with race.
00:13:22.000That the kid was carrying around a knife.
00:13:24.000And they mentioned this in the clip, which is they don't know how it got in because most of these schools have detectors and stuff like that when you walk in now.
00:13:32.000They have a bad check policy and all that stuff.
00:14:15.000So this sounds like, to me, the story that's been told sounds like a pretty standard high school confrontation.
00:14:23.000And I don't think anyone would ever expect someone to pull out a weapon, especially at a track meet or a football game or something where there's probably maybe hundreds of people that are around.
00:14:36.000I don't know how many people are there.
00:14:37.000I don't think anyone would ever expect to have a knife pulled on them and get stabbed in the chest.
00:14:42.000You know, and I think worst case scenario, you've heard about situations where someone's pulled out a weapon and kind of flaunted it and be like, oh yeah, back up.
00:14:52.000But the amount of psychopathic tendency that you have to have to have a weapon carried on you and at the moment of being challenged just to have the immediate reaction to stab somebody tells me that, number one, this kid has had been probably running in dangerous circles as it is.
00:15:16.000And that should point more to what we've seen coming out of some high schools of that gang mentality and that type of stuff that really isn't being handled because policing isn't being handled because nobody wants to do any of that, especially when race comes into the question.
00:15:34.000Well, and they said this wasn't the first time that he'd had a knife incident at school, but actually that they knew he had brought knives in the past.
00:15:41.000So when you're talking about like metal detectors and bag checks, it's like you'd think that, you know, student resource officer or whatever, school resource officer would kind of know like, oh, hey, that's the knife kid.
00:16:09.000I'm sorry, I'm just going to call it what it is.
00:16:10.000That is somebody that has been idolizing gang culture, rap culture, thug culture, and it's like, big man, oh, nobody's going to mess with you, you touch me, I'm going to kill you.
00:16:21.000As if that is somehow to be lauded and looked up to.
00:16:25.000No, if you want to tell somebody that they're not allowed to put their hands on you, then use your fists.
00:16:42.000And the fact that there is anybody, anybody supporting those actions is beyond the pale and really an indictment of some really sick, twisted narratives that are floating around this country.
00:16:57.000Yeah, and I'll give a huge shout out to Andrew Branca, who does a YouTube show called The Law of Self-Defense, and he's got a book out about it.
00:17:05.000And he goes through these things, and he talks about the basic elements that you would need to prove self-defense in many cases.
00:17:12.000And he's, in fact, a lawyer, and he's consulted on a lot of cases like this.
00:17:19.000In any self-defense case, the first thing that you need is an imminent threat of deadly force.
00:17:24.000So in this case, where is the imminent threat of deadly force or the use of deadly force?
00:17:29.000The only imminent threat of deadly force comes from Carmelo Anthony, not from Austin Metcalf, because the police report doesn't say anything about people ganging up on him or jumping him.
00:17:41.000And in fact, it points out that there, and I did read the police report, the entire thing that came out, there's...
00:17:47.000Over a dozen witnesses, including the coaches of both teams, so people who are conceivably not biased against him.
00:17:54.000And so this idea that people are making it up at all, no, it's very clear, it's very...
00:18:02.000This wasn't in some dark alleyway is what I'm trying to say.
00:18:05.000It was done in full view of a number of people at this track meet.
00:18:09.000So there's no imminent threat of self-defense.
00:18:13.000But also, he even points out that saying the phrase, touch me and see what happens, it could be interpreted in some cases as a provocation.
00:18:25.000And given the fact that it was a provocation, it's essentially, from a legal perspective, An invitation to mutual combat.
00:18:33.000Like, he's basically egging him on to fight.
00:18:36.000Well, if you provoke someone, then you don't get to turn around and say, oh, I was just defending myself against this person.
00:18:46.000I'm not going to say that he provoked the fight just by sitting there, but by saying, you know, touch me and using language like that and see what happens, reaching into a bag, you know, from Metcalf's perspective, let's say he was around to make the...
00:19:00.000the case that, you know, he could even say, I saw him getting a knife out and I was trying to prevent him from getting the knife out.
00:19:07.000Right. So, no, not only is there no element of self-defense here, there's actually lots of arguments against it.
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00:20:17.000We're talking, we can go back and forth on self-defense argument, but the reason this is a national news story is not, you know, the finer points of self-defense law, because unfortunately, teenagers do kill each other in the United States with depressing regularity.
00:21:20.000Now, what I will say is I would never question or criticize how a parent specifically chooses to respond.
00:21:30.000To a tragic event, because I think it's understandable.
00:21:34.000I think if you've experienced a huge personal loss, it would probably be traumatic and upsetting to have it be at the center of a national political discussion.
00:21:46.000Nonetheless, it is a pattern that people have noticed that this occurs.
00:21:53.000It's happened a lot in, for example, cases where illegal immigrants have killed people.
00:21:58.000A lot of people remember Molly Tibbetts.
00:22:01.000This would have been about, I want to say, seven or eight years ago.
00:22:06.000She was a young woman tragically killed by an illegal immigrant in Iowa, and her father had this thing where, you know, actually, illegal immigrants are better than native Iowans, and we should not be angry
00:22:57.000That's about race before anyone even says anything!
00:22:59.000So it's like, it's like, it's this huge double standard that you're getting at, and I'll let you finish, but I want to say, it's not just any case, it's only when the victim is a white kid like this, or something like that, then it's, then it's, oh, don't talk about race,
00:23:15.000or, you know, Molly Tibbetts, et cetera, it's all not about race, it's not about race, but if it's George Floyd, or any, you know, Trayvon Martin, et cetera, it's race from the very start, and nothing else is allowed to be talked about.
00:24:22.000They may genuinely believe he is innocent, but there may even be people out there who would say it doesn't matter if he is innocent, that we just want him to get away with it.
00:24:32.000Yeah, and that's kind of the Luigi Maggioni thing that we've been talking about for, you know, what, six months now or whatever.
00:24:38.000Yeah, I just jinxed you in saying this is all Luigi mentality.
00:24:42.000This is where the crippling effect of...
00:24:45.000You know, societal decay, that's where we're at, is that it's just backwards, where you have people on the left who would rather see people they disagree with because they've been so mind-melted on DEI and everything that they sit through for,
00:25:01.000you know, seven hours a day in class, hearing from, you know, preschool to where they're at, to now, you know, the true enemy is, you know...
00:25:12.000just the person that doesn't look like them or and that's class warfare I mean this is class warfare stuff that is happening and that's who donates to
00:25:22.000Well... I think it's very telling, though, and it's a generational thing, and I think, Jack, you would agree with me on this.
00:25:32.000It's like, boomers especially were raised in a country with the civil rights era, and they wanted to see themselves as post-racial, and what happened is you had a bunch of whites, the country was essentially 90-85% white as they were growing up,
00:25:49.000and they wanted to believe that it was post-racial, and I think It was true for Boomer Whites.
00:25:55.000They had gotten to a point, and maybe they're Gen Xers.
00:25:58.000I certainly know as a millennial when I was growing up, I kind of thought we were in a post-racial world.
00:26:32.000I don't want to judge him for the way he reacted to his son being murdered.
00:26:35.000I cannot imagine the horror that that must be.
00:26:39.000And so, like, I'm trying to extend some grace to the father in saying, like, listen, you're going to process this in your own way, and I don't ever want to know what that's like.
00:26:51.000But it's yet, I have to observe the fact that he reacted instantly and said, I don't want to make this about race, and I forgive him one day after.
00:27:29.000But the point is, it's like you have the white father saying it's not about race because this thing has gone so, so deep into the subconscious of a certain subsection of America.
00:27:40.000And then you've got younger Americans that have been like, well, listen, we were told it wasn't about race and it was post-racial.
00:27:46.000And yet the world that we live in has become more racialized than ever.
00:27:49.000So it's like we tried to live up to our end of the bargain.
00:27:52.000Now, I know there's a big part of the country that doesn't agree with that, but I certainly grew up in an America where it felt like all the white kids were trying to be post-racial.
00:27:59.000And it's like we didn't get reached out to on the other side.
00:28:03.000The other side didn't live up to their end of the bargain.
00:28:05.000And so now we've got to have these conversations again, and we've got to be honest about it.
00:28:10.000And the younger you are, the more willing you are to be honest, in my opinion.
00:28:13.000And I think it's telling that Austin Metcalfe's dad, of a certain age, so quickly went to that line that very...
00:28:24.000Yeah, and you see it again and again, and it's become this sort of script.
00:28:28.000And in fact, at humanevents.com, we've had pieces about how the DOJ actually had a unit where I believe that Pam Bondi is working to shut down this unit.
00:28:37.000They call it the community relations services where they would go around.
00:28:48.000Wow. The breaking point of the white guilt narrative.
00:29:03.000And so what's the white guilt narrative?
00:29:05.000And it goes back to this 1965 essay by James Baldwin that I think that we'd all recognize where it's, you know, he said that the white man's guilt is a, quote, curtain of guilt and lies behind which white Americans hide,
00:29:21.000unable to confront the realities of their history and talk about how this narrative of sort of white guilt then became the cornerstone of progressive ideology, DEI and all these things that we talk about that say that, you know, white privilege
00:29:36.000is mainstream and these ideas of systemic racism.
00:29:39.000But it also created a sort of cultural hierarchy of moral culpability where there's an idea that so being labeled a racist is currently the worst possible thing.
00:29:51.000That you could be labeled as in your entire in the entire country.
00:29:58.000Our whole country is basically, you know, really in sort of the post World War Two consensus and definitely in the civil rights era has been the it is the largest crime.
00:30:09.000And something that when I was on Tucker, I talked about this, that I've always thought it was very fascinating.
00:30:26.000You know, I think it was like 16, was the 16, 17, up to like early 20s.
00:30:31.000But in interviews that he gave later from prison, so he confesses to the police, and then in interviews that he later gave from prison or while locked up, he would implore people to Understand that he was in fact not a racist.
00:30:50.000That he didn't choose them because of the color of their skin.
00:30:52.000Because he didn't want people to think Izzy was a racist.
00:30:55.000So I just want everyone to understand that Jeffrey Dahmer, a guy who killed in some cases eight body parts of his victims, was willing to admit to murder.
00:31:06.000But he really wanted to make sure people didn't know he was a racist.
00:31:11.000And obviously, you know, that's an extreme example, but I do think that it's something that discusses this social fabric of what's going on in our country, where it's like, even a guy like Jeffrey Dahmer, as depraved as he is, is still worried about breaking this social taboo,
00:31:27.000when he's obviously done so many other horrible things.
00:31:30.000And so, it's like we have this narrative that can't be broken, and even in a situation like this, we've just got this horrible human tragedy.
00:31:40.000You know, a twin brother dying in his own brother's arms, that you still have people that want to hold to this narrative of, you know, well, you know, it's not really his fault because he's acting out based on the years of oppression that he's, which by the way,
00:31:55.000if you go and look at, and people have showed pictures of Carmelo Anthony's house that he grew up in, he's got a bigger house than I do.
00:32:03.000And they've got, you know, gorgeous, by the way, you know, gorgeous looking family, great cars.
00:32:09.000Looks like he's very upper middle class, if not higher than that.
00:32:13.000So, I mean, this is not someone who comes from, like, poverty or anything like this.
00:32:18.000It's actually someone who comes from a very stable background, it seems like, and yet still was willing to be violent in this instance.
00:32:27.000And so, obviously, you know, it's like our realities are not comporting with the things that we have been taught at school or taught by Hollywood.
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00:34:54.000I wanted to highlight because we mentioned the Jeffrey Dahmer one and I wanted to give because I think this would be an update to a lot of people.
00:35:03.000We gave a lot of focus to the when there was that shooting in Nashville, Tennessee, where the shooter appeared to be, you know, had pronouns of uncertain gender identity, and then they were never releasing the manifesto for ages, and it trailed off.
00:35:18.000And recently they released a very lengthy police report on the shooting and what motivated it, and they basically did give the whole story on it.
00:35:28.000And one of the things that was revealed in that report was that the shooter...
00:35:33.000...had been planning a shooting for some time and had considered many different targets, and the shooter had been bullied and had been unhappy at her, I think it was her middle school.
00:35:45.000But she didn't want to do a shooting there and instead targeted the Christian school she had attended where her best memories were because she believed she would be regarded as racist if she shot up her middle school and didn't want to distract from the real reasons for the shooting with misleading reporting about her motivations.
00:36:04.000And this is not to say she should have shot up a different place.
00:36:08.000That would be a deranged thing to say.
00:36:12.000I think a revealing look at American psychology, when you have absolutely psychopathic people still having this thought intrude on their thought process for how these things work.
00:36:25.000There was another case I was reading about the other day, because Jack mentioned.
00:36:30.000Oh, Blake, I'm sorry to interrupt, but some of the lines that she used will underscore your point here.
00:36:36.000It's like, she says, yeah, so she says, Again, this is Audrey Hale, who thought that she was a boy.
00:36:43.000But being white sucks, but being black is so cool.
00:37:58.000Where this happened is a once suburban rural community that's turned into a more suburban urban area.
00:38:09.000And that's what's happened to a lot of places.
00:38:11.000and a lot of people are saying, I don't recognize my community anymore.
00:38:14.000And this is what happens when you don't have a good handle on things, when you let things slide, when you let gangs like start to infiltrate, like we saw in Denver, we're seeing in Dallas, we're seeing in Phoenix, we're seeing Las Vegas, we're seeing all over California.
00:38:29.000You let gang-like mob-like behavior happen.
00:38:34.000And when you have lackadaisical leadership that's in schools and
00:38:39.000I would call this out and say, this is...
00:39:33.000Yeah, and I am thinking about it, Jack, because I've got a 15-year-old, which is crazy, and I go to his wrestling meets, and I see some aggressiveness all the time.
00:39:46.000Obviously, it's wrestling, and you see kids getting into fights.
00:40:58.000I hope there's a major reaction that happens in their community there and it's not just like, oh, well, you know, it's not anyone's fault because of their skin color or whatever, you know, how they were raised.
00:41:10.000It's like, no, actually, how they were raised has everything to do with it.
00:41:14.000How they're being taught and managed, you know, in the classroom has everything to do with it.
00:41:19.000How they're being coached has everything to do with it.
00:41:23.000Life-altering stuff, and it shouldn't just be glossed over and ignored.
00:41:28.000And again, I'm not trying to be critical of the dad.
00:41:30.000Like you said, I probably wouldn't be going on TV, and if someone caught me outside my house, I would be going probably a little bit crazy, like what I'm saying right now, which is just like there's no excuse.
00:41:55.000Now, one thing that I do want to say before we move topics here is that de-escalation, this is really a great example of why, and we're not justifying anything here, but what I'm saying is if you do find yourselves in one of those situations, it's always the best opportunity or the best option to take yourself and say,
00:42:16.000take a step back and say, all right, guys.
00:42:19.000you know this way is it really worth it over a seat right is it really worth going and paying that price overseeing i'm not saying that you know he thought that that would happen at all or was anywhere within his thinking but again De-escalation is always an option in these cases.
00:42:35.000Like, hey, we're going to go get somebody if we have to, et cetera, et cetera, something like that.
00:42:39.000Or, hey, this guy's threatening, you know, whatever it is, you do want to try de-escalation.
00:42:44.000And I would say teaching that to people.
00:42:46.000Now, if you find yourself in a threat, if you find yourself in a fight, someone actually is threatening you, of course, you got to do what you got to do.
00:42:53.000But again, de-escalation, I think, is absolutely key.
00:42:56.000And I've been in a number of situations where, and people have seen stuff where I've been, you know, outnumbered by, you know, hundreds of people and, you know, held my ground, but I did what I could to deescalate.
00:43:07.000So I was able to get out of those situations.
00:45:29.000For people who don't know my background, before politics, I kind of first got big on the internet for running this Game of Thrones blog called Angry GOT Fan.
00:46:53.000And, you know, a lot of the fans and this has been something where, you know, HBO has been trying to kind of overcome this by releasing the prequel series, which isn't quite as popular as the original one.
00:47:04.000I mean, when Game of Thrones first started, it was just this massive cultural force.
00:47:08.000And, you know, that's definitely one of the things I would be like on deployment.
00:47:14.000And yeah, you just see, you know, thousands and thousands of people there live tweeting the show or, you know, arguing about it and arguing about things.
00:47:23.000And, you know, then of course we had like the SJWs came in and I sort of experienced like a little bit of, I think with the video game guys called Gamergate, you know, around about that same timeframe in 2014, 2015.
00:47:34.000And then I took a brief sabbatical, brief break from that to go and make America great again.
00:47:43.000But, you know, it's been this crazy thing where, yeah, you know, it was such a good series, and, you know, I think that what they did on the TV show, I'm just going to say it, I think what they did on the show totally poisoned the experience for a lot of people,
00:47:59.000and it just killed what could have been this massive fandom, but instead, you know, it just made a lot of people be like, oh, yeah, I don't like that anymore, and they kind of just walked away.
00:48:09.000But now the Dire Wolves are back, so maybe there's...
00:49:17.000There's always that question if they can mate for themselves.
00:49:22.000Producer Foz is saying it's like IVF for extinct animals.
00:49:26.000Yeah, so I want to explain more of it, because this is real science that's coming that people should be aware of.
00:49:32.000Because what they did is, really what they did is they took existing wolves, I think, I'm not sure if it was a timber wolf or a gray wolf, and they just added, they manipulated a few traits of it to take it in a dire wolf direction.
00:49:45.000And then they're hyping it as they brought the dire wolf back because they're a Texas startup that wants lots of attention on themselves because biological sciences.
00:49:54.000But it does raise the possibility we are headed in the direction of being able to do this more and more.
00:50:01.000The thing they used to do this is called CRISPR, and it's basically a science we have that allows for gene editing.
00:50:07.000And what is coming eventually is CRISPR-edited technology.
00:50:23.000So you can take a baby that is in utero and edit its genes to potentially change its eye color.
00:50:30.000On the positive end, you could manipulate its genes to take away some otherwise fatal or harmful genetic abnormality.
00:50:39.000But obviously you'll also have it on the other end.
00:50:41.000Could we be using CRISPR to make sure people come out with an IQ of 120 or 140 or 190?
00:50:49.000We could make sure they're 6 feet tall or 7 feet tall or 10 feet tall.
00:50:55.000All of this is coming down the pipe and it's interesting how the spin of we're bringing back an animal you thought was fictional is just sort of the...
00:51:07.000...leading edge of what will actually be an enormous social and scientific issue in the years to come.
00:51:15.000And I think there was a lot more attention on it before AI came and suddenly took over all of our ominous future technology vibes, but the future is coming very aggressively.
00:51:29.000Springtime is here and baseball season is officially underway.
00:52:34.000There's a ton of Michael Crichton where he gets into this.
00:52:37.000Not just Jurassic Park, but other books as well that do specifically get into gene editing.
00:52:42.000The fact that there's no laws on this whatsoever.
00:52:45.000It's also, interestingly enough, it's going to play a role in insurance rates.
00:52:50.000Right. Because, you know, people will be able to, you know, the company will say, well, hey, we want your DNA sequence.
00:52:55.000And then they're going to say, oh, well, you have a, you know, you have a propensity for this, propensity for this, propensity for this.
00:53:02.000And so your insurance is going to be a lot higher for a number of different things.
00:53:06.000But on the flip side, too, just with gene sequencing, not necessarily gene editing, you potentially can actually get like tailor made health care, like your health care could actually get.
00:53:17.000And even I've seen some writing about, you know, people talking about the idea that you could get specifically made synthesized medicine that's made specifically for you because they know it's exactly something that can work with your, you know,
00:53:32.000work with your genotype and to say like, OK, this is exactly what you need.
00:53:36.000But if you give it to somebody else, like it might not even have any effect at all or it might kill them, you know, which is you're not supposed to be giving your medicine to other people anyway.
00:53:54.000I was at the NATO conference in Austin last weekend, and this was like a huge controversy they were writing about because there were some speakers there who claimed that they have used a, so they use IVF, and they were
00:54:08.000about a sort of process that they were using for screening the embryos that were created in their IVF process and screening for intelligence.
00:54:23.000Editing, but it was like they were looking at the embryos and they were trying to figure out which ones would be the strongest or the smartest, etc.
00:54:32.000And then they were selecting for those.
00:54:34.000And so that's just for me as a Catholic, that's something I have a huge issue with, particularly when it comes to the destruction of the embryos.
00:55:59.000I'm mixing it up with a creature that might only be in Star Wars.
00:56:02.000The ancient megafauna I always think of is they have those giant ultra sloths that used to live in the Americas that are like the size of a grizzly bear.
00:56:13.000I can't remember the name of it, but I think it might have just been like giant sloth or super sloth.
00:56:59.000No, he's literally told the story that that's where he got the idea to do direwolves, because he was visiting the tar pits, and I guess, like you're saying, they have some display of the megafauna, the mega mammals, and he saw direwolves and was like, oh, this would make a cool thing.
00:57:44.000Maybe Angela has a good question for us, which is would we be willing, would we consider it moral to Alter the genes of any children we're going to have.
00:59:18.000But eventually, down the line, what you will do is you'll create a society where basically you have like, and this is what they depict in Gattaca, they call them the valids and the invalids, where there's this two-tier system of social classes.
00:59:35.000Where one are the genetically modified people and then the rest, they call them like love babies.
00:59:53.000And so it becomes a problem, I think, for society because what you're doing is you're taking away that essential human condition to say that people can naturally be stronger, people can naturally be better,
01:00:09.000people can actually have that talent, and that there is something that you're tapping into that's ultimately bigger than just the sum of your genes.
01:00:18.000Well, and I just want to point out, too, the effects of...
01:00:22.000Current CRISPR outcomes is that there are tons of mutations that are awful.
01:00:32.000This is part of the reason why most of Christendom opposes stem cell research is because of the outcomes that are there and how it does cause.
01:00:52.000But to your point, let's say that there was none of those that existed.
01:00:57.000I still think that like exactly what what Jack is saying is that you like part of the beauty of the procreation is that you don't have control over the outcomes.
01:01:09.000And this is this goes to where, you know, some of the arguments are made from the pro-life community is that you.
01:01:16.000Take the outcomes that exist and you work with that because that's what God has given you.
01:01:23.000So I think that that's, you know, you start getting into that.
01:01:27.000Obviously, there's things that haven't.
01:01:29.000Plus, I mean, we saw what happened in the Clone Wars and Star Wars, right?
01:01:35.000I mean, if there's another Blake walking around, I mean.
01:01:40.000Truly, if we start getting into slightly better-looking versions of all of us out there, we're definitely going to fall to the bottom of the barrel.
01:01:51.000Since we're specifically on the topic of dire wolves, I think we have to engage with a particularly horrifying kind of genetic engineering, which could be possible, which is, what if...
01:02:04.000The furries become capable of creating actual humanoid furry creatures.
01:02:12.000I think, because one, they'll definitely want to do this.
01:02:17.000Two, it's not well known, but furries often work in tech.
01:02:20.000They're an oddly well-funded, gross, creepy hobby.
01:02:25.000So they will have the money, and soon they will have the technology.
01:02:32.000They may unleash horrors beyond our comprehension.
01:03:09.000Yeah, I mean, candidly, I was there for, you know, official business.
01:03:14.000And so we were close to the winter White House.
01:03:18.000And they picked me up in a Tesla Model 3. So, it was a Tesla.
01:03:25.000This person was not a Trump fan, but they voted for Trump because, I don't know, they just, anyway.
01:03:32.000And this person was apparently sort of ambiguous gender stuff and had a boyfriend, but I think was actually technically a girl, but didn't identify as one.
01:03:47.000It was lots of strange things going on.
01:04:52.000That guy saw this news story and actually I don't want to say more about how that person reacted to this news story because I'll get in trouble.
01:05:10.000We may need to prepare in advance, maybe announce.
01:05:14.000Like, if we pull off the Greenland thing, we could say there will be a safe part of Greenland and it can be the colony for all of the furry people.
01:05:23.000And you can make them, you can exist, but they have to go into exile.
01:07:03.000What if Charlie has to go do an event?
01:07:07.000What if Charlie has to do an event at a large furry convention because we determined that they're political swing voters and he has to speak at the...
01:07:24.000We've had, in the early Turning Point days, we used to hold our conferences at the cheapest time of year at some of the cheapest hotels.
01:07:32.000And there was more than one occasion where we had some really interesting conventions happening like the week before or like simultaneous like right next door to us.
01:07:42.000And one of them for one of our trainings was a furry convention was happening at the same hotel.
01:07:54.000from a distance and they were not can I say this this has been one of the weirder thought crimes and I dig it so they were not Charlie Charlie leaves for one week Tyler says they observed
01:08:09.000Tyler says they observed it at a distance, and all I'm going to note is, like, five feet is a distance.
01:10:32.000I think that's part of the reason why the election was won, was because a lot of people have kind of given up on all the fakeness of Instagram, so I think that was more at its peak ahead of 2020, which that's a whole other theory, but it's interesting.
01:11:07.000Well, I would just say there's one weird breaking news tie in, which is not usually what we do on Thoughtcrime.
01:11:13.000But TikTok, the sale of TikTok has been shelved indefinitely.
01:11:18.000Not even sure there will be a deal to be made with the Chinese because of the tariff announcement pausing with all the other countries and going up to 125 percent with China.
01:11:28.000So the China trade war is putting the future of TikTok in some in some question.
01:11:50.000I think before we get into any more trouble, once again, Tyler's comments may have to be scrubbed from the record, but as always, go out there and...
01:12:04.000But as always, go out there and commit more thought crimes.
01:12:07.000Thanks so much for listening, everybody.
01:12:09.000Email us as always, freedom at charliekirk.com.