The Matt Walsh Show - Daily Wire Backstage： Now With Even More Dystopia!

00:00:00.000 Hey everybody, this is Matt Walsh. Drop everything you're doing and check out the latest episode of

00:00:03.720 Daily Wire backstage. You're going to hear Jeremy Boring, Ben Shapiro, Andrew Klavan,

00:00:07.520 Michael Knowles, and yours truly talking about all the important issues affecting you and your

00:00:11.000 family. You don't want to miss it unless you're a leftist, in which case you're canceled.

00:00:30.000 Welcome to the Daily Wire backstage. Joining us tonight, Andrew Klavan, accused hospital bomber

00:00:44.540 Michael Knowles, and I'm very sorry. I know it will cause you great harm and pain that will always be

00:00:53.480 Ben Shapiro. I'm Daily Wire God King, lowercase g, lowercase k, Jeremy Boring. Listen, we're doing

00:01:00.640 things completely different around here, and we've started adding a members block to every show. This

00:01:04.880 show is no exception, so you'll be with us for the next 90 minutes, and after that, we hope you'll

00:01:08.680 head over to dailywire.com and become a member. You'll get 35% off with code PLUS, because we are,

00:01:14.880 after all, Daily Wire Plus, and we'll be bringing you the members block of backstage, which is just

00:01:19.540 more of us doing the same thing that we're doing here, only you pay for it. And a thousand times

00:01:23.960 better. So much advice. Like, we do all the best stuff for that part. It actually is really important,

00:01:29.060 and as we've made this transition to Daily Wire Plus, we're trying to bring more and more value

00:01:32.580 to our paying subscribers there who make it possible for us to do all of this, and so the members

00:01:36.840 block is just another way of us giving them a little bit of extra access, and we'd love for you to

00:01:41.540 become a member if you are not one already. So, I don't know which one of the two threats to

00:01:47.580 civilization. Hey, Jeremy, in fairness, so it's true we've got, you know, the hospital bomber and

00:01:53.000 the podcast convention beer adder, but in fairness, according to Joe Biden, all of us are terrorists

00:02:00.460 because statistically the entire Republican Party poses an extreme existential threat to the homeland.

00:02:07.080 Well, you make a fine point, and undoubtedly he'll be sending F-15s to remedy the situation at any

00:02:14.840 moment. I want to start by talking, Matt, about your situation, apparently. About my plot.

00:02:19.080 About your plot. Yeah. How did you think you would get away with it?

00:02:25.280 Yeah, it seems too on the nose, I guess. You know, the whole thing is just, it's obviously

00:02:31.020 completely absurd. I mean, the story is that after a couple of weeks of, not just me, by the way,

00:02:37.680 lots of us talking about the fact that Boston Children's Hospital performs gender surgeries on

00:02:43.560 minors, which they do, that is a fact, after talking about this, because what we've been told

00:02:50.980 is that if you even acknowledge this reality, then you are inciting violence, even if you don't say

00:02:57.380 that there is violence. That's right. And then what do you know, last night there was supposedly a

00:03:01.240 bomb threat, and immediately the left realized that it's me and also Libs of TikTok as the others.

00:03:06.760 We got together, and we put this bomb threat together, I suppose. You have her number because

00:03:12.560 of her being doxed recently. Exactly. Libs of TikTok is an Orthodox Jew, by the way, so the Catholic 0.88

00:03:16.680 Jewish Alliance rides again. There you go. Always. The thing is, even, of course, like, even if there 0.57

00:03:20.880 was a bomb threat, there's no connection you can draw to the fact that we are simply talking about

00:03:25.720 something that the hospital does, and then somebody called it a bomb threat. There is no connection

00:03:30.260 there. And I also don't feel, you know, when I first heard about this last night, I didn't go on

00:03:34.660 Twitter and say, I unequivocally condemn bombing hospitals. Because, like, everyone knows that. I

00:03:42.600 don't need to tell you that. That's the game the left wants to play. Well, you say everyone, again,

00:03:45.640 not to, I mean, unless there are brave right-wing patriots in there trying to fight their government,

00:03:50.820 and then it's just F-15 the hell out of that children's hospital. That's true. But then, of course,

00:03:55.940 it comes, it turns out this morning that, it's like, was there even a bomb threat in the first place?

00:04:00.060 So you said, is there even a bomb threat? Why would you doubt the list? Because we're hearing 0.99

00:04:05.360 it from the media to begin with. But, you know, the police apparently showed up. The details come

00:04:11.000 out later. The first indication is that the media, last night, they're all over this. This morning,

00:04:16.300 I woke up, I thought there was going to be headlines all over the place about bomb threats

00:04:19.200 at the children's hospital, and there's nothing, they're not talking about it anymore. So that makes

00:04:22.760 you suspicious. And then you realize that the police showed up, they were gone, they cleared the scene

00:04:26.040 in like 30 minutes. And then the post-millennial gets a hold of the police report, they put it out

00:04:32.040 there. On the police report, it never even says there was a bomb threat, just that there was a call

00:04:35.800 about one, and then they showed up, and there was nothing on the scene, and they left. Which makes

00:04:40.180 you wonder, was there even a threat? Or did someone at the hospital see that someone left a bag and

00:04:46.160 just, and call and freak out? Or was it a hoax? This is an absolute true story that we had a employee

00:04:51.020 quit one time, and they filed a series of sexual harassment complaints against the company. When I say a

00:04:55.420 series, I mean an exhaustive series of sexual harassment complaints, and one of them was that

00:04:59.720 one of our employees had been listening to porn on his computer in her presence. And I couldn't,

00:05:06.520 my very first thought was that in the long storied history of man's fall and sin, no one has ever used

00:05:15.060 the term listened to pornography. That's just a complete non-starter. And this is kind of that way,

00:05:20.420 like, what is a call about a bomb threat? Like, that's, that language, no one has ever used this

00:05:25.640 language before. Somebody called the, like, somebody just called the hospital, and they said,

00:05:28.800 hey guys. Have you heard? Have you heard of this thing called a bomb threat? What is it?

00:05:34.320 There's a, they've rigged the game here. It's pretty insidious what they're doing. You know,

00:05:37.660 whether the bomb threat, there was no bomb, but whether someone actually called and made the bomb

00:05:41.380 threat. And even if they did, there's no way, was that someone on the, it seems more likely to me,

00:05:45.400 it's someone on the left. The left gains more from a bomb threat than the right does. So who's more

00:05:49.580 likely to call it? Beyond that, the left has this stupid game, which is that if they can any way

00:05:54.360 tangentially connect anyone to an act of violence who is prominent on the right, they will do it.

00:06:00.800 And meanwhile, they will openly bail people out of prison in the middle of riots and then declare

00:06:04.960 that they are in favor of funding the police, which is what Joe Biden did this week. So like,

00:06:08.140 they're never responsible for any of the violence that they help.

00:06:10.940 And that's, that's the game, right? Because on this particular issue,

00:06:14.140 what, what the left wants to say is that there are no gender surgeries happening to minors.

00:06:19.940 That's unequivocally false. It is happening. Um, and then if you speak up and say, well,

00:06:24.620 no, I have evidence that it is happening. Then they said, well, you're a terrorist. You're inciting

00:06:28.240 violence. By the way, it's almost, you're not allowed to prevent, present evidence against them

00:06:31.920 without. It's, it's even a little more insidious because what they will say, it's what Mike Anton calls

00:06:36.040 the celebration parallax. They will say, Hey, we're doing gender surgeries for minors. Isn't that great? 0.96

00:06:42.380 And then we will say, wait, wait, you're doing gender surgeries for minors. And they'll say,

00:06:46.600 how dare you suggest that? That's a lie. That's evil. That's, and so they're allowed to celebrate

00:06:51.740 what they're doing. The minute you repeat their words back to them with any criticism,

00:06:55.640 you're a conspiracy theorist, kook, uh, hospital bomber. 0.80

00:06:58.900 I noticed this by the way, this week about Lizzo. Lizzo is like, I'm a fat sex, positive woman.

00:07:04.380 You're like, you are a fat sex, positive woman. How dare you? She's a beautiful, 0.99

00:07:08.360 beautiful person. You bastard and, and just historically beautiful. How did it by every

00:07:15.480 classical standard? You know, I'll tell you when, when I see all these kinds of headlines,

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00:08:37.000 So I want to talk about the second big Daily Wire controversy of the last week, and that is Ben's

00:08:42.560 dangerous... Essence. Essence. My essence. His very appearance. My spirit. At podcast movement. I think

00:08:49.560 we have video here of Ben's assault on podcast movement. Just terrifying. Do I need to get a picture?

00:08:55.680 All right. One, two, three. God bless you. Hey, thank you.

00:09:03.000 All right, Ben. Punch with me. Hey, good to meet you here. Oh, heroin.

00:09:09.720 You reached right for him. Look at that. Oh, thank you. Yeah, thanks for everything you do.

00:09:15.720 Thank you so much. I appreciate it. Thank you. I'm excited about it. That's good. Thank you so much.

00:09:19.240 Unbelievable. Yeah, I just want to say exactly what happened. I haven't really spoken about this yet,

00:09:32.100 but I actually do think it's an important story, and that's that podcast movement is the premier

00:09:36.560 gathering of podcasters. It's an industry conference that happens every year. I spoke

00:09:40.480 at it last year. It was here in Nashville at the Gaylord, and this year, because the Daily Wire is

00:09:45.040 selling more and more of our own shows as we bring more and more of our sales infrastructure

00:09:49.420 in-house. We sponsored podcast movement. You can go to their website, look under sponsors,

00:09:54.360 there's Daily Wire, and we purchased a booth on the floor at the conference. Well, a very good friend

00:09:59.860 of ours, someone who's been very good to the company, who in the podcast space was also having a

00:10:04.340 retirement party that evening, the evening of podcast movement. So Ben and I flew into Dallas to

00:10:10.720 attend this guy's retirement party, slap him on the back, thank him for everything that he's done

00:10:15.180 for the Daily Wire over the years. While we're there, we stopped by the conference that we are

00:10:21.360 sponsoring to visit the booth that we paid for and our employees who've been there all week

00:10:26.200 working and doing the important work of helping us with our ad sales. And you can see from the video

00:10:32.280 what happened. It's kind of a lightly attended conference. There's not like 25,000 people or

00:10:37.360 something, but the people who were there, people came up, they wanted to get a picture with Ben.

00:10:40.960 We were probably on the floor for all of five minutes, five minutes. Yeah, maybe 10. We made a

00:10:46.120 loop, walked around, went to the retirement party, came home. I wake up the next morning and I see

00:10:51.920 these tweets. And I'm going to read the tweets in their entirety because I think that they're so

00:10:55.320 remarkable. This was put out by the official podcast movement Twitter account. Hi folks,

00:11:00.720 we owe you an apology before the sessions kick off for the day. Yesterday afternoon, Ben Shapiro,

00:11:06.780 briefly visited the PM22 Expo area near the Daily Wire booth. Though he was not registered or

00:11:13.360 expected, we take full responsibility for the harm done by his presence. Good for them.

00:11:20.500 There's no way around it. That's right. At least they didn't shuck off the responsibility.

00:11:25.800 There's no way around it. We agreed to sell the Daily Wire a first-time booth based on the company's

00:11:30.940 large presence in podcasting. The weight of that decision is now painfully clear.

00:11:35.940 Shapiro is a co-founder. A drop-in, however unlikely, should have been considered a possibility.

00:11:42.840 Many in our community are appalled, not just by this incident, but by our choice to take money from

00:11:48.560 the Daily Wire in the first place. As a Twitter user said, this was signed off on by a human. Yes,

00:11:56.400 during event planning, the dangerous nature of the company's messaging was overlooked.

00:12:01.520 Many in our community are appalled, not just by this incident, but by our choice to take money

00:12:07.900 from the Daily Wire in the first place. I'm repeating myself. The final two tweets. Those

00:12:11.980 of you who called this unacceptable are right. In nine wonderful years growing and celebrating this

00:12:19.000 medium, podcast movement has made mistakes. The pain caused by this one will always stick with us.

00:12:26.060 Forever. We promise that sponsors will be more carefully considered moving forward.

00:12:31.100 Just to clarify, the Daily Wire representatives were scheduled, no Daily Wire representatives were

00:12:36.480 scheduled to appear on panels, and Shapiro remained in the common space and did not have a badge. If you

00:12:41.780 have questions, we're here to talk. Thank you for reading, and we hope you'll continue to join us

00:12:46.960 from here on out. I have to tell you, when I first saw this, I had my usual reaction to everything,

00:12:51.980 which is I cracked up. I started laughing. And then, first of all, I started to feel resentful

00:12:56.000 because I haven't received an apology. I've been here seven years. But the other thing is,

00:13:01.940 it actually isn't as funny as it could be. Whenever anybody attacks George Soros, who is actually an

00:13:09.020 evil plotter trying to destroy America, everybody said, well, you're anti-Semitic, because George

00:13:14.400 Soros passed through a kind of fog of Jewry at some point. You know, like the incredible shrinking 1.00

00:13:22.100 man, he went through this kind of radioactive thing. You know, an actual Jew is harming us 1.00

00:13:27.460 simply by existing. And I have to say, I thought about that for a minute, and I thought, well,

00:13:31.360 what's the answer to his existing? Right.

00:13:33.580 I thought, this actually isn't as funny. Maybe a final.

00:13:36.660 It's not, you know, it's not, I want a final solution to that. I thought, like, this actually

00:13:41.140 isn't as funny as I thought it was for the first half hour.

00:13:44.520 If Ben's mere presence does harm, then the only way to prevent harm is to ensure that Ben

00:13:49.800 has no presence.

00:13:50.800 The joke's on them, because honestly, I didn't tell anyone, but I did leave some of my aura

00:13:55.480 in the H-Rest. So, well after I had left, I still lingered there. And I'll be there for years. 0.75

00:14:00.780 Well, I appreciate that you have a sense of humor about it, but it's not funny. It's,

00:14:05.040 it is an actual rhetorical call to violence.

00:14:09.340 Yeah.

00:14:09.860 A rhetorical call to violence to say that.

00:14:11.360 It's Walsh, and he's a dangerous man.

00:14:13.140 If someone's presence is, causes harm, then the obvious conclusion is that they must not

00:14:19.360 have presence. The second thing is, we gave these people our money. So, I immediately read

00:14:24.340 these, and I go to DM the president of podcast movement to figure out what the hell, right?

00:14:29.340 How to get your money back.

00:14:30.180 He's preemptively blocked me on Twitter. So, I call some of our pals around the movement,

00:14:35.140 you know, people who we've done business with, and ask them to apply some soft pressure. I say,

00:14:39.440 listen, I'm going to have to, I'm going to have to go to war with podcast movement. I mean,

00:14:43.640 this is an outright act of bigotry. That is the actual correct word. It is an outright expression

00:14:49.480 of bigotry. But I don't want to do that. Please apply some soft pressure and try to get these guys

00:14:54.380 to retract this statement and issue an apology and commit to having the dominant podcast conference

00:15:00.980 in the country. Be inclusive of the sixth largest podcast company in the world and one of the 10

00:15:07.560 largest podcasts in the world. It seems like maybe we should be present at podcast movement. So,

00:15:12.780 people made a few phone calls and then I hear later that evening from one of the owners of podcast

00:15:19.100 movement. And I'm going to tell you what the guy said and I'm going to say something about myself that

00:15:25.680 I'm actually a little embarrassed about, which is I cried on this phone call. My voice started

00:15:31.720 to break. I got so emotional. I've never gotten emotional over one of these things before. We get

00:15:36.640 canceled. We get called racist. We get called whatever, right? And, you know, I take it. It

00:15:41.800 doesn't bother me. Obviously, Ben's got a great perspective on it. But here's what happened. The

00:15:46.140 guy calls me and I'm just going to hear him out. I'm going to hear what he has to say, hoping maybe

00:15:52.020 that this is the resolution we've been looking for. And he starts the call. He's got a great radio

00:15:56.440 voice. All these guys have great radio voices. Truly. And he says, Jeremy, you know, so-and-so gave me

00:16:01.820 your phone number. And I just wanted to let you know that we have a policy here in podcast movement

00:16:07.040 that the talent not appear. And you'll notice like Joe Rogan has never appeared on our stage.

00:16:13.180 We don't like for the talent to appear. And so Ben showing up caused some of my other sponsors to be

00:16:18.860 angry because they want to know why can't our talent be here if Ben can be here. And so I just

00:16:24.380 want you to know this statement is a reaction to other sponsors being angry that their talent didn't

00:16:30.400 get equal treatment. That's why I called for his extermination. That's right. And he said,

00:16:35.200 and a little leap. He said, this was not in any way political. And when he said it,

00:16:41.740 I'm embarrassed about it. I got so adrenalized and so upset. And I said, not in any way political.

00:16:49.880 And I just started reading from the tweets, the danger of this company, the dangerous,

00:16:54.760 endless pain, the pain that will be with us forever. The harm caused by his very presence.

00:16:59.580 I said, you're saying that that isn't political. You're saying that that's because he showed up,

00:17:04.260 by the way, podcast hosts appear on all of their panels. It's just nonsense. The whole

00:17:10.120 fracking conference is for podcasters, for people in podcasting. I said, you're going to tell me this

00:17:16.220 isn't political. You called, you, you canceled us from the place. You sent us an email that said,

00:17:21.100 we can't be here anymore. No, we did not ban you from the conference. Your people are there now.

00:17:25.280 Right. Because I told them to ignore your stupid email and go to our booth anyway. I said, I said,

00:17:31.860 there's no one else in the world who would be subjected to this kind of bigotry and you get

00:17:35.760 away with it. You could not treat a black man this way. You could not treat a lesbian woman this way. 1.00

00:17:41.400 You could not treat anyone on the left in any way. Disney would have walked out of the conference,

00:17:45.960 right? Like I heart and Westwood one cumulus all would have walked out of the conference,

00:17:50.180 but you can treat a conservative this way with unadulterated bigotry on the page.

00:17:57.640 Anyway, what I told the guy, well, I didn't say all that. What I said to the guy was,

00:18:01.440 take down the tweet, apologize for the tweet and commit to keeping this conference a neutral place

00:18:09.260 for all podcasters. And he said, well, now the problem with that is that just makes it political

00:18:14.320 on the other side. And I said, yeah, I can't unstep on the rake for you.

00:18:21.700 This is an actual, take it down and apologize. I said, well, I'll have to talk to my people about

00:18:27.440 whether or not we can do it. So of course the day goes by, it doesn't get taken down. The next day

00:18:32.280 goes by, it doesn't get taken down. Then I get a call from the guy and he says, hey, we're going to

00:18:36.960 have a meeting. The conference is over now and we're going to have a meeting on Tuesday. Everybody needs

00:18:41.520 Monday off because we put in a hard week's work, you know, showing prejudice to Jews.

00:18:48.320 Hard day's work. He said, but I'm going to get the team together and see if maybe we can make a new

00:18:53.600 policy. He said, you know, and he offered, he did offer me my money back. We had paid $30,000 or

00:18:59.260 something like that for the booth. And I, no, I told him to keep the money. Really? Yeah. I said,

00:19:03.580 I don't care about the $30,000. I care about my $200 million business that you injured. I care about

00:19:08.880 my 250 employees whose jobs you put at risk by using your leadership position in the podcast

00:19:15.540 movement to communicate that our very existence causes harm and that the words that we speak are

00:19:21.560 dangerous and cause pain that will never cease. That's what I'm concerned about. Fracking apologize.

00:19:28.140 So he calls me after the conference is over, says, we're going to get together,

00:19:31.360 craft a policy. Maybe we'd like Ben to be on stage with somebody from the left next year.

00:19:36.300 Maybe we'd like you guys to help us with the policy, or maybe we'll decide in our policy,

00:19:39.620 just not to have politics from either side going forward. But one way or the other,

00:19:43.560 we'll let the new policy be our statement. Great. And I said, well, I'd love to work on that policy

00:19:47.500 if you take down the offensive tweets that call for the annihilation, essentially, the rhetorical

00:19:53.300 annihilation of one of my close friends and business partners and commit to not doing that in the

00:19:58.900 future. I said, and while you're at it, make sure that your apology is just as groveling

00:20:03.020 as the apology that you put out for taking our money. Because a bigot who commits bigotry

00:20:10.380 really should grovel a little bit for all of our forgiveness. That's a thing that actually causes

00:20:16.380 harm, that actually causes pain. So he says, well, I'm going to call you on Tuesday if you'll hold

00:20:21.200 off on hitting us until Tuesday. And I said, I will. I will hold up. I will let you have your meeting.

00:20:25.400 Don't worry. Backstage is Wednesday.

00:20:26.600 That's right. Backstage is Wednesday. So yesterday at 6 p.m. our time, I get a call from the assistant

00:20:33.260 of the man who preemptively blocked me on Twitter, who's the president of Podcast Movement. And she

00:20:39.420 says, you know, the president of the movement would really like to talk to you. Could you get back to

00:20:44.000 us? So we returned the call probably within a half hour. They got back to us today and said,

00:20:49.960 very much would like to talk to you. Our first availability is September 14th at 3 p.m.

00:20:54.620 Stop it. September, two weeks from now at 3 p.m., I can finally get on the phone with a guy who

00:20:59.780 preemptively blocked me after apologizing for taking my money and saying that the existence,

00:21:06.600 the mere presence of my friend and business partner causes harm. This is, again, I've said it

00:21:15.440 before, this is a kind of bigotry that could not be expressed against any other kind of person

00:21:21.940 that exists in our country today. And there will be essentially no consequences for these sons of

00:21:28.580 bitches. They they'll blow us off. They'll they'll talk to us in a few weeks and maybe they'll write a 1.00

00:21:33.980 policy. The tweets will stay up. There'll be no backlash. People will celebrate. They've already

00:21:38.320 lied to you when they said this is not political. This is why to our face saying it's not political.

00:21:43.280 And I'd like to point out here that, again, there are a lot of podcast companies there and

00:21:47.920 they are all supposedly in favor of things like open debate. That's right. Talking about things.

00:21:51.820 And I can guarantee you this. If they had said about, say, John Lovett at Pod Save America and

00:21:57.020 coming and visited the crooked booth. That's right. And they had said that his very presence caused harm

00:22:01.180 and therefore he was banned. I would have been openly mocking them, as would you. Of course.

00:22:05.260 Online. We would have we would have gone to podcast movement. We would have threatened to take our

00:22:08.600 booth off the floor for that sort of thing. We would have said that we would not co-sponsor the event.

00:22:12.820 As far as I'm aware, zero companies. I think maybe there's one guy, Dan Granger.

00:22:16.760 From Oxford Road. From Oxford Road, who put out a statement saying this is unacceptable and

00:22:20.160 ridiculous. Not a single other company, including companies that make tens of millions of dollars

00:22:25.160 off my show personally. Right. I'm the one whose essence is threatening. That's right. My herbal

00:22:28.880 essence is threatening. Our own representatives in this space who have made tens of millions of dollars

00:22:33.960 could not be bothered to validate our right, to publicly validate our right to exist. Plus,

00:22:39.860 when they do this to people like, what's that guy's Alex? What's his name? Alex Jones. Alex Jones.

00:22:44.580 The guy's at least a loon. Whereas you're you're pretty much a conservative based on anything Ben

00:22:50.920 said. Right. This is correct. I was there. I didn't have a conversation with anyone. But even beyond

00:22:55.860 that, you represent you represent ideas and those ideas. Those ideas are central to American thought.

00:23:03.360 They always have been. You've never you've never come on and said anything that made the rest of us

00:23:06.800 like move away. You know, it's just your presence, of course, has. But as I've said, as I've said before,

00:23:11.820 I am not sure that it's bewildering to me on a personal level because you guys all know me.

00:23:16.900 You've known me for years. The gap between me and the perception of me as highly dangerous human.

00:23:22.040 Yeah. And then me in reality is maybe the greatest gap between supposed dangerous human and person

00:23:27.080 in reality that I've ever conceived of. But it's yeah, it's the fact that people listen to the show.

00:23:31.280 Right. And people watch what we do. And that's what scares the hell out of them. And so what they are

00:23:34.660 actively attempting to do now is cast an entire side of the political aisle out of the of of the

00:23:40.080 movement. Which is it was essential. There's not solidarity. Like this is so indicative of

00:23:46.780 there were some people online who aren't part of the podcast movement space. You know, Ryan Grimm at

00:23:51.800 The Intercept, who's on the left, or Charlie, who's on the left, who can't say this is like insane and

00:23:55.440 ridiculous. Of course. But in the podcast. And good on them. Right. Good for them. In the podcast space.

00:24:00.580 Where are you guys? Where are you guys? So I'll say this the day before. Actually, not today. The day

00:24:06.340 this happened, we had a meeting with one of the companies that we do business with. And somebody at that

00:24:10.580 company said, you know what I'd love to do? I would love to broker like a joint show between you and the

00:24:15.840 people of Pots of America. And I said to them, that's never going to happen. And the reason it's never going

00:24:21.080 to happen is because these people do not want us to be a company that is on the air. They do not want our

00:24:27.460 company to exist. I mean, Dan Pfeiffer from Pots of America literally went on MSNBC and said that we

00:24:31.800 should be quashed because we have too much reach. I've said many times, I say on my show routinely,

00:24:37.200 I say, if you want to know, people always ask, how do I discern the fact in an opinion podcast from

00:24:41.060 the opinion? And what I always say literally every time is listen to my show, listen to Pots of

00:24:45.000 America. The stuff where we're saying the same stuff, that's the core of fact. Everything else is

00:24:49.040 an opinion takeaway. That's at least a good rule of thumb. Okay. So listen to their show.

00:24:53.640 That's right. They would never in a million years say that anyone should listen to the show. In fact,

00:24:58.400 they would say that the show should come off the air. And so the whole predicate of us having a

00:25:02.400 functioning republic is the idea that there are a bunch of people I disagree with who should be

00:25:05.440 allowed at things like a neutral free speech space like podcast movement. And literally no one at that

00:25:12.900 event filled with these companies that do free speech for a living, no one except for Dan,

00:25:17.840 literally no one said a public word to chastise podcast movement for this. That's insane to me.

00:25:24.180 But this is the key. They take down libs of TikTok for basically putting the left on video. It's just

00:25:30.600 holding a mirror up to what they are. It's the mirror that does it. When you're a vampire, you don't

00:25:34.500 want to look at them. But you hit the nail on the head, Jeremy, which is that they're going after Ben

00:25:38.580 because Ben is the big guy. He's the big dog in the space and you have giant reach Ben. And so this is

00:25:44.220 what really spooks me about this. You have giant reach because you are as mainstream as it gets.

00:25:52.120 So when they say Ben Shapiro is too far, I say, you ever listen to my show? Are you kidding me?

00:26:00.340 Ben Shapiro is as mainstream as it gets. So what they're really saying is the entire right is gone.

00:26:06.420 This is when Joe Biden says, listen, some Republicans are good Republicans, but the MAGA Republicans,

00:26:11.980 by which he means any Republican, by which he means statistically everyone other than Bill

00:26:16.920 Crystal and his like four friends who have tea together. You know, 100% statistically of the

00:26:22.640 Republican Party is in a sort of sometimes kind of way, MAGA Republicans. But I'm saying get rid of

00:26:27.860 half the country. Here's what really worries me, like the combination of things happening,

00:26:33.000 because on one hand, there's an escalation of it's not just your opinions that are harmful,

00:26:36.960 it's your very presence. And then we're being told that all MAGA Republicans, which is most

00:26:41.040 Republicans are extremists and a threat to democracy, for voting as a threat to democracy.

00:26:45.880 We're being told that if conservatives simply speak and present arguments or actually present

00:26:51.520 facts that were terrorists, stochastic terrorists is the phrase now that they like to use.

00:26:55.840 Libs at TikTok, as you point out, she got kicked off of Twitter. They didn't even give her a reason. 0.99

00:27:00.200 They just said, you're gone. And then on top of that, so that's what's happening. And then also,

00:27:05.100 there's another escalation in just the total lack of accountability on the left. And we're sort of

00:27:09.980 used to that, but it's, it seemed to be worse now than it's ever been where there's just,

00:27:13.040 they can do whatever they want. I mean, I've been having this back and forth with this

00:27:17.840 person on Twitter, who's been like openly organizing this drug running operation to minor

00:27:27.100 children with hormone drugs. Committing felonies.

00:27:29.820 Committing felonies, breaking probably 50 laws all at once. And you know, you contact the DEA,

00:27:36.140 you contact everyone. You can't, nobody cares. So there's no accountability. All that's happening

00:27:40.100 once. And then what does that, what does that do? First of all, it, it, it creates an environment

00:27:44.800 where they're basically setting the stage here to start essentially rounding people up and I don't

00:27:49.920 know, throwing them in prison. But then on the right, it also has this radicalizing effect because

00:27:53.640 people get desperate. I mean, they're, they're accusing us of being radicals and being dangerous

00:27:58.200 and it's a self-fulfilling prophecy. It's actually what they want. And they're going to create that

00:28:02.320 because people, when they look around and see there's no accountability, these people can do

00:28:05.860 whatever they want to us. The rules don't apply to them. It is radicalizing. It makes people

00:28:09.960 desperate and desperate people do become dangerous.

00:28:13.280 And it's the, it's the end game of something that's been going on for 50, 60 years though.

00:28:17.360 This idea that we, that they are the people who determine what virtue is, who determine what

00:28:24.080 racism is. I mean, they call, they call us racist, not because we're racist. I don't actually know

00:28:29.680 that many racist, but they call us because we disagree with them. And so if they set the standard,

00:28:34.760 our ideas are the non-racist ideas. If you disagree with us, then ultimately we are going

00:28:39.800 to be, you know, basically demonized. Absolutely. A lot of people, one of the things I really loved

00:28:44.960 about this whole episode, the only thing I really loved about this whole episode is that on Twitter,

00:28:48.740 I must've read 200 reactions that were, I guess they're going to start their own podcast

00:28:54.740 movement now. Will they call it Jeremy's podcast conference? Like we've established a reputation

00:29:01.220 at the Daily Wire as we don't take this stuff lying down and we don't just complain about it. We

00:29:05.560 challenge. And so, you know, a lot of people want to know what we're going to do. It took a minute

00:29:09.200 to come up with I hate Harry's.com. Like Jeremy's razors wasn't like an overnight thing, right?

00:29:13.500 And we're not going to tell you. We're just going to do it.

00:29:15.380 We're not going to tell you. We're just going to do it. But I will say this,

00:29:18.060 we will not allow podcast movement to continue to present itself as a neutral place. If you're

00:29:26.200 a conservative podcaster, they don't want you there. If you're a conservative podcaster and

00:29:31.240 you're with any of the major podcasting companies, they don't care to defend you.

00:29:35.280 They want to make money off of your success while your political foes try to destroy you.

00:29:43.200 And then they will watch you die when the left finally does land the kill shot.

00:29:48.120 And then they will shake their heads, find another conservative talent and go extract

00:29:52.240 money quietly from them. It's even worse. That's the game.

00:29:55.160 It's the minute, not that they step out of line, this conservative who goes,

00:29:58.940 it's the minute they get anywhere near as big as Ben Shapiro. The minute you're a little too

00:30:04.120 successful, that's when you're out. It's also a sign of weakness. I mean, if you guys watch Netflix,

00:30:09.460 I mean, Netflix fired a lot of its social justice warriors, but if you watch the stuff that they say

00:30:16.040 is their top shows for a while after George Floyd, it was all Black Lives Matter material. And I was 0.95

00:30:22.840 sitting there going like, nobody's watching this. They're telling us this is number one, two, three.

00:30:26.140 Then slowly it just vanished. It just disappeared. And I just thought like, yeah, because it's still

00:30:33.100 basically a center-right country. Black people are as conservative as anybody else. The Hispanic 0.99

00:30:39.840 group, whatever they want to call them now, they're drifting over to the right. They're losing,

00:30:44.280 they are losing the people who have supported them all these years because they're saying, you know,

00:30:48.160 this doesn't represent me. It doesn't represent most people to have their kids told that they're

00:30:52.620 the wrong state. But they, it might be a center-right country, but our vote doesn't really count

00:30:57.500 culturally. Whereas if you're in a protected class, your vote counts times 10, which is,

00:31:01.360 which is another important point here about this, about the podcast conference, is that from what

00:31:05.580 I saw, there certainly was, it wasn't like they were getting, because Ben showed up, they were

00:31:10.660 getting all this pressure publicly. People were coming out and blasting them. I saw one person. It

00:31:15.920 was, it was a trans person, right? I think one, one person. It was a woman. It was in the tweet. It

00:31:20.580 said uterus. It was a trans, it was a trans man, I think. Okay. Yeah. Well, it had a uterus. And so I 0.91

00:31:25.940 called that person a woman. You monster. As I learned from your film. So one, one person that

00:31:32.800 we could tell complained. They're in a protected class. They have the LGBT thing that they can 0.98

00:31:37.260 claim. And, and because of that one complaint, that's the power that they wield. At the time

00:31:43.160 that podcast movement put out their groveling, bigoted, bullshit tweet, I believe that that

00:31:48.100 original post had 15 likes. Yep.

00:31:50.020 And I said to the guy on the, on that first phone call, you chose, you made a calculated

00:31:56.040 risk assessment and concluded that the higher risk to your company was to get on the wrong

00:32:02.780 side of a person with 15 likes, as opposed to expressing bigotry to a company with 50 million

00:32:10.180 monthly listeners. You made that calculation, but, and you probably, he probably isn't wrong.

00:32:14.840 That is where the great risk is, the left, because they are so totalitarian, because they're

00:32:19.100 so unforgiving, because they're so tyrannical right now.

00:32:22.080 But is that a real risk? I mean, what if, what if people just stood up to them?

00:32:25.800 Well, then it would go away. Yeah.

00:32:26.960 Like anything else, right? That would be the end of it, which is why the fact that people

00:32:30.340 who actually profit off of us couldn't be bothered to acknowledge our right to exist is the most

00:32:34.900 deeply offensive part of the whole thing. And I will turn this into a promo because it is a direct

00:32:39.620 attack on our business. I mean, we derive a great percentage of our revenue from ads on our shows.

00:32:44.460 That's a big part of how we stay in business. And this is a direct attack on our ability

00:32:48.980 to function in the podcast ad space. And that's another reason to be grateful to our Daily Wire

00:32:53.760 Plus subscribers. Please go over to Daily Wire Plus, become a subscriber. If you're not one,

00:32:58.580 if you are one, please stick with us. That is the only safe revenue that we have as a company,

00:33:05.680 is the people who want to be in this fight with us. That's why we're adding things like

00:33:09.340 Members Block. That's why we have been bringing all access back online now that we're recovering

00:33:13.260 from those technological deficits that we've had. And there are still a few wrinkles,

00:33:17.080 but we're moving forward and trying to make this community part of the Daily Wire Plus

00:33:23.200 really come to the fore. Because at the end of the day, it's the only thing we've got.

00:33:28.020 Even the people who make eight figures a year off of us will not acknowledge publicly our right to

00:33:33.140 exist. This is why the right has ignored, the right ignoring the culture for so long has gotten us

00:33:40.760 into this position. That's right. Always talking politics, but this is pure culture. It's pure culture that

00:33:45.440 he feels that a 15-like tweet from some protected class person is more dangerous than losing your

00:33:52.560 audience, losing our audience. It's an amazing thing what happens to the mind when a narrative

00:33:57.960 takes over, when a narrative is promulgated. It's not about the right being nice and the right saying,

00:34:02.220 we don't want to engage in tactics. We don't want to push. We want to be cordial. It's a free market.

00:34:06.820 They can say what they want. Well, here's the thing. If you guys don't push back,

00:34:09.600 then it's asymmetric. It's completely asymmetric. It means that they do, in a certain sense,

00:34:14.560 have more to fear. Until we existed, until Daily Wire existed, they did have more to fear

00:34:19.320 from the idiot with 15 followers on Twitter than they did from multi-million dollar or even billion 0.55

00:34:24.960 dollar conservative companies. Because the conservative companies would just sit back 0.97

00:34:28.340 there and they would take it. They would sit there and they'd say, okay, well, you know,

00:34:30.600 we exist at your sufferance. We understand we exist at your sufferance. And so, you know,

00:34:34.040 we understand what you're doing. We get it. We get that they're mean and they're nasty.

00:34:37.120 We're over here. We're nice. But you know what? Screw that. Because the reality is that we're

00:34:42.640 not nice anymore. If you're going to seek to destroy us, then we are not going to sit here

00:34:46.260 and be destroyed. That is not something that I do not acquiesce to the erasure of my own

00:34:50.340 existence. I'm sorry, but I like existing. I'm addicted to breathing. There are certain things

00:34:55.160 I'm not willing to do. And not existing is one of the things I am not willing to do.

00:34:58.680 But we don't even have to fight at their level. All we have to do is speak out without fear

00:35:03.200 because the things that we say make sense to most people. And I think that that's the whole problem.

00:35:07.720 But cowards need to be punished. What's that? Cowards need to be punished.

00:35:10.320 And we need to mobilize, too. The good news, I think, is that people on the right are hungry

00:35:14.320 to mobilize and to get out. I hear this from people all the time. They're ready. They want

00:35:18.040 to get out. They want to do something. That's one of the reasons why they love the Daily Wire so much

00:35:21.500 is that we are out there doing things. So that's the good news. But they need an outlet.

00:35:25.580 That's one thing. The left also, they own the culture. They're much,

00:35:28.180 much better at mobilizing. If they're upset about something, they're going to show up.

00:35:32.760 And you know they are. The right is much more reticent to do that. I mean, we could show up at

00:35:37.560 the podcast movement conference next year and have 10,000 people picketing or whatever.

00:35:41.500 We agreed not to talk about it. Hypothetically, I'm just saying,

00:35:45.400 you don't want your thing to be political. We can make it real political. Make it more political.

00:35:49.020 We could do that. So it's just, there is that hunger to really...

00:35:54.020 For a long time, there was a strain on the right where the right wanted to lose. If we were going

00:36:00.300 to lose, we were going to lose with dignity. You know, we're just going to step back and lose

00:36:04.520 with dignity. And I think what you realize from that tweet thread from podcast movement,

00:36:09.300 what you realize from them saying, yeah, Ben Shapiro shouldn't exist, that's not very dignified.

00:36:13.720 That doesn't feel... And so I have no interest in losing. I don't want to lose in an undignified way.

00:36:18.820 You know what I'd rather do? I'd rather win with dignity and honor and winning.

00:36:23.000 And that's why the Daily Wire is committed to building alternatives. Because at the end of

00:36:26.800 the day, one of the reasons that the right has gone along with this is because what else are you

00:36:30.540 going to do? You still need a razor. Well, you know what? Now you don't. If you're still shaving

00:36:35.040 with a razor from a razor company that hates you, you're doing that by choice. You're not doing that

00:36:39.520 because you don't have alternatives. If you're still getting your news from news companies that

00:36:43.780 hate you, you're doing that. You've decided to do it. You have an alternative. We and others are

00:36:48.340 providing. That's why we're launching into this kids content so that you don't have to put your kids in

00:36:52.120 front of what the left wants to serve them up. So we're launching entertainment. Who knows what

00:36:55.660 we'll launch next? Other people need to jump into this space. There are a few, of course, Dan Bongino

00:36:59.440 and others in this parallel economy space. But we have to create economic incentive to move. Because

00:37:05.660 at the end of the day, podcast movement is just a business. It's a business that has made a risk

00:37:10.400 calculation. I want them to reevaluate that risk calculation. And I want to make all of these... I

00:37:15.940 think to have a free country, you have to have a largely neutral economic sphere. The economic

00:37:22.440 sphere needs to be a... You don't need to have to think about the politics of your toilet paper

00:37:27.100 company. If you do, it is a real sign that your country is in trouble. And until we have Jeremy's

00:37:33.440 toilet paper company, or Dan Bongino's... I think I'll let Dan...

00:37:36.460 I'll look forward. I'll look forward to that, actually, Jeremy's toilet.

00:37:38.800 Fontino four-ply. But until we have these things, we can't create the conditions for the left...

00:37:43.800 I can express a lot of hostility of Jeremy's toilet.

00:37:46.540 Oh, it'll be rough.

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00:39:00.740 So we've talked a lot about the threat that we represent, obviously, in the world. But we haven't

00:39:06.440 talked about the great savior of the country against threats like ours. And that's, of course,

00:39:12.420 our fearless and absolutely still cogent president, Joe Biden, who has declared us all

00:39:18.300 to be renegades and scoundrels and need to be bombed from the air. 0.84

00:39:21.620 Which is like, we're semi-fascist, right? Which is like a quasi-Nazi.

00:39:24.700 Yeah, yeah, yeah. Nazi-adjacent is how we would say it.

00:39:28.180 Quasi-Nazi has a ring to it.

00:39:29.840 Quasi-Nazi, yeah. So he says that we are a threat to democracy itself. We're also a threat

00:39:34.320 to the future of human existence. He said that because of climate change, of course,

00:39:37.720 which makes us somewhere between Hitler and Thanos, which is exciting stuff. I mean, 1.00

00:39:41.940 the phenomenal cosmic power we wield is just beyond compare.

00:39:46.280 And I think Gina Carano was actually canceled by Disney for comparing Thanos to Hitler. 1.00

00:39:50.440 I don't remember all that.

00:39:51.300 I don't remember all that. In any case, there was something that struck me when I heard Joe

00:39:56.600 Biden suggesting that those who oppose him are semi-fascist. And that is, these people,

00:40:00.980 people are so ignorant. And when they hear fascist, they just hear Hitler. And when they think of

00:40:05.140 Hitler, they just think of the worst thing that Hitler did, the Holocaust. And so what Joe Biden

00:40:08.960 means when he says semi-fascist is that you want to perform holocausts or something.

00:40:13.180 Yeah.

00:40:13.660 But when you actually think about the history of fascism, typically fascism begins with the

00:40:17.640 usurpation of massive centralized power and executive authority free of legislative oversight.

00:40:22.780 So I started thinking, can I think of any recent example of massive usurpations of executive

00:40:28.500 authority, unconstitutional usurpations, you know, things where people say, I don't actually

00:40:33.900 have the power to do that. And then they just go ahead and do it. Like say, I don't know,

00:40:38.200 $500 billion in student loan relief that you said one year ago, you did not have the power to do.

00:40:43.500 The single largest expenditure by the executive branch via an executive order in the history

00:40:48.260 of the United States. Right. I mean, it would be, I could see why Joe Biden might forget about that

00:40:52.180 since it was four days ago. He tried to ride a bicycle since then. That's true. He does have

00:40:57.280 the memory of a guppy. But the fact that we are all supposed to believe that true fascism lies in

00:41:03.080 resisting the centralizing impulse of a federal government that has over the course of the last

00:41:07.840 year and a half declared on an emergency basis that you all have to vax, that you don't have to pay your

00:41:13.080 mortgage, you won't be evicted, and that we can get rid of all of your student loan debt. You can

00:41:17.560 do all of that on the back of emergency declarations. It's so historically ignorant, and he counts on

00:41:22.960 our ignorance, to suggest that it's fascist to oppose that. When again, the very nature of fascism,

00:41:27.680 what people don't understand if you actually want to look at the history of Hitler,

00:41:30.200 centralized power in a dictatorship existed pre-Hitler in Germany. By 1930, Heinrich Brüning,

00:41:35.340 who was the chancellor of Germany at the time, was operating under Article 48 of the Weimar

00:41:38.720 Constitution, which is an emergency declaration making the legislature essentially an adjunct to

00:41:43.560 all policymaking in the Reich. And then it was just a matter of time until the really bad guy took 0.71

00:41:49.040 over using that authority. But that's been the pattern in the United States since Barack Obama

00:41:52.960 said in 2014 he was just going to act with a pen and a phone if he didn't control Congress.

00:41:56.260 So if you're looking at threats to the American system and threats to democracy,

00:41:59.560 you might want to start with the doddering old fool in the White House who can't string together two

00:42:02.920 sentences out of his doddering stupid face hole. 0.84

00:42:04.740 Did you see the op-ed in the New York Times by the Harvard and Yale law professors

00:42:10.120 calling for the end of the Constitution for the simple reason that it got in the way of

00:42:14.380 their brilliant ideas? And they said, we've got to get rid of judicial review because we've got to

00:42:18.500 be able to pass laws permitting abortion and controlling energy without this stupid

00:42:23.680 Constitution stuff getting in our way. That would be one thing if it was a 17-year-old saying,

00:42:29.980 I don't want daddy telling me what I can't do. But a Harvard and a Yale professor,

00:42:34.080 I've got to say, my favorite thing about that is that they have controlled the direction of the

00:42:38.540 judiciary since like 1960, basically. And a string of uninterrupted successes from the left

00:42:47.180 in the judiciary for 50-odd years. They lose one decision in Dobbs. They're like, that's it.

00:42:52.360 It's only judicial review. Obliterate the institution. It's over, guys.

00:42:55.140 Since when is the Constitution getting in their way anyway?

00:42:56.860 But it could. It could. But you know, when Biden said that and when Corrine Jean-Pierre at the

00:43:04.120 White House doubled down on it, that we're all fascists, my first instinct was, I would bet my

00:43:10.180 life savings that neither Corrine Jean-Pierre nor Joe Biden have, forget about red, they've never even

00:43:15.580 heard of the doctrine of fascism, the Mussolini essay that defines what fascism is. I studied history

00:43:22.320 and Italian at college. The one thing I think you have to study if you do both of those things

00:43:26.640 is you have to study what fascism is. They've certainly never read that. They've never read

00:43:30.400 the early fascist manifesto by the founder of Futurism actually wrote it. They've never heard

00:43:34.880 it. They don't have any idea what fascism means. Fascism to them, and George Orwell made this point,

00:43:39.720 fascism to the left means something I don't like. It's whatever I don't like. And if I don't like it,

00:43:45.920 then you are, forget Mussolini, you're Hitler and you're a Nazi and we're going to treat you like we 0.81

00:43:50.840 would treat Hitler and the Nazis and you have absolutely no right to speak in our public 0.95

00:43:54.480 square. That's all it means. So they'll change the definition like they change the definition of

00:43:57.720 every other word. They change the definition of the word woman. All it means is we are going to

00:44:01.900 shut you up and we are going to push you out of politics. And then they say, well, you know,

00:44:06.020 what we want is unity. Tomorrow we're going to get Joe Biden's big unity speech on the heels of

00:44:09.320 half the country of semi-fascists. He literally says that. He's going to speak to the soul of the

00:44:13.800 country. Well, first of all, I think his soul left his body quite a while ago. So it's going to be

00:44:17.300 amazing. He is proof positive that resurrection does exist because he's been dead for quite a

00:44:22.060 while and yet he's still ambulatory in some way. They do want unity. I actually don't think that

00:44:26.180 that's... Right, through purges. Right. Well, we have right now, ideologically, this vast canyon

00:44:33.480 that separates us and it's not bridgeable. There's no compromise area between it. So the only way to

00:44:38.820 have unity is for one side to either just throw itself into the canyon and die or to join the other

00:44:46.360 side. So that's the kind of unity they want. It's just we're obliterated by either assuming

00:44:50.540 ourselves with them or just dying or whatever. I had a really... I had a sad thought yesterday

00:44:56.080 because Gorbachev died. You know, the last leader of the Soviet Union. He was 91. And I had this

00:45:01.320 thought. I said, Gorbachev, what can we learn from history? I said, there's some parallels here.

00:45:04.740 You got a very old, a dead guy. So, okay, Soviet Union. I'm thinking of my own president right now. 0.76

00:45:08.800 Okay. And it came to prominence in politics in the 70s. Okay. Palled around with actual communists.

00:45:14.020 Okay. This is right now checking out Gorby and Biden. They presided over the decline and fall

00:45:19.120 of their nations and empires. Okay. I'm seeing a whole lot of parallels here, except for one.

00:45:25.200 Gorbachev tried to make his country freer and more transparent. And he was sort of likable in

00:45:31.640 Friends with Ronald Reagan. I thought, gosh, 30 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall,

00:45:35.640 how on earth do we, the people who won the Cold War, how do we find ourselves in this really awful

00:45:41.260 political? Do we learn nothing from the Cold War? It is really interesting that we defeat people and 0.90

00:45:45.740 then take on their characteristics. It's really interesting that we start out. I mean, the

00:45:50.480 Holocaust started with euthanasia. You know, it started with killing off people who were crippled 0.79

00:45:55.620 or mentally ill and all this stuff. And now we have actual headlines that say, you know, we've gotten

00:46:00.760 rid of a syndrome through abortion. You go like, good job. They're doing it in Canada. They're pushing 0.96

00:46:04.800 right now. 3.3% of deaths in Canada in 2021 were euthanasia, doctor-assisted suicide. And there's

00:46:12.400 a bill. 3.3%? 3.3% of all deaths. By the way, it's going to spike way higher than that. And right

00:46:17.940 now in October, they're pushing for a bill that will legalize euthanasia, euthanasia, it's assisted

00:46:22.660 suicide, for children. And what children are they going to kill? You know they're going to kill the

00:46:27.880 weakest children, the ones with problems, the ones with disabilities. You just think, and it's all 1.00

00:46:32.640 going to be done with a smile, happy, happy. And they're suggesting it too. They had a veteran

00:46:37.820 that called the VA and they suggested to him, oh, have you thought about euthanasia? They're

00:46:42.740 actually like promoting it as an option if you're feeling down. I mean, this is the thing that I

00:46:48.200 think people forget. And this was Jonah Goldberg's point in liberal fascism, which is that nobody

00:46:52.640 actually shows up at the front door making the case for fascism wearing the shiny boots. The shiny

00:46:56.820 boots come later. I mean, it starts with all of the happy promises and all the wonderful things we

00:47:00.500 can do with you. We can make your life easier. If you just get rid of these moral standards here

00:47:03.540 and these moral standards there, your life becomes significantly more convenient. If

00:47:06.380 you don't have to listen to that guy on the other side of the aisle, your life is just going to be

00:47:08.880 richer and better. And all this stuff is messy. It makes it a lot less messy if you just give us

00:47:14.120 the power to do whatever we want. I'm going to push back on you just slightly. I don't think it's if

00:47:17.720 you give up this moral standard and that moral standard. I think it's if you accept this moral

00:47:22.780 standard. It always comes in the guise of a higher morality. It's actually wrong of you to

00:47:28.340 what you want that veteran to suffer. You want children born with Down syndrome to have to live.

00:47:35.660 Imagine how hard it is for them to be alive. I mean that. And their families to take care of it.

00:47:41.080 And their families take care of it. They frame all of this in a way that makes it seem like a

00:47:45.740 virtuous thing. You're going to let Ben Shapiro, who disagrees with us, you're going to let him speak

00:47:51.040 and cause emotional distress. Or you're going to let kids with gender dysphoria kill themselves. 0.54

00:47:54.300 Yeah, you just want to erase trans people. But it always comes back to the idea. I think

00:48:00.340 you're right though. It comes back to the idea of having a hierarchy of values. What do you mean

00:48:05.960 that a homosexual marriage isn't the same thing as a straight marriage? What do you mean when you say

00:48:10.580 being fat is less attractive than being fit? What are you talking about? That you should have

00:48:16.360 some kind of value system where you value things, natural things, more than others. And I think that

00:48:22.260 is actually an elimination of moral difference. And I actually do think it comes out of the idea

00:48:27.900 that we can all get together, we can all have our own religions, and they're all going to be equal.

00:48:34.440 That's not, you know, it's one thing to be religiously tolerant, which of course I'm for,

00:48:37.920 but it's another thing to say that no religion is better than any other, which is absurd.

00:48:41.740 It's just absurd. And, you know, and people actually make the argument, it's really wild.

00:48:46.340 How can you say that one religion is true when there are so many religions? It's like easy. 1.00

00:48:51.260 One is true, and the others aren't.

00:48:54.420 There are so many answers to the fat problem. How can only one be true?

00:48:57.980 Exactly, exactly. You know, so I think there is this kind of elimination of values,

00:49:01.860 and it's put in terms of the fact that if you hold to values, people suffer, which is true.

00:49:06.680 I mean, I think it's a very unpleasant thing to be fat. I think that people who are fat feel

00:49:11.200 a tremendous amount of shame, they blame the shame on us, but it's there to begin with,

00:49:15.320 and it is, but it's incredibly unhealthy, and incredibly shameful, and shaming, self-shaming,

00:49:21.440 and an incredibly bad way to live. But just to say it is what makes you an evil person.

00:49:26.040 To say that there's a hierarchy of values is what makes you an evil person.

00:49:29.240 Well, I think that one of the things that they've done, and I'm thinking this through in real time,

00:49:32.460 is they've made the core of human behavior, the emotion you feel in response to the human behavior.

00:49:38.580 That's the thing that we're supposed to focus in on. And so that means that the behavior is really

00:49:41.800 secondary. So if you feel pain because you're overweight, and then it really doesn't matter

00:49:46.760 whether you're overweight because you choose not to stop eating, or whether you're overweight

00:49:49.980 because you have an actual genetic anomaly that makes you fat, the pain is the same.

00:49:53.860 And so therefore, we cannot tell people that they should exercise, because if we do that,

00:49:58.380 well, you're ignoring the pain. And so the core is always the emotional response. It's not the

00:50:02.820 behavior that leads to the emotional response. And so that's just a difference in kind between

00:50:06.420 how I think religious people who see cause and effect in the world, and people who don't believe

00:50:10.320 in cause and effect, and only care about the emotional state in which you find yourself.

00:50:14.600 That's just two different ways of viewing the world. And if all you're focused in on is the

00:50:18.400 emotional state of people at all times, regardless of the behavior that leads to the emotional state,

00:50:22.320 number one, you're depriving people of their agency, because the truth is that you can,

00:50:25.960 in fact, in many cases, control your emotional state. That's what it's called to become an adult.

00:50:29.380 I mean, you've-

00:50:30.240 Discipline, patience.

00:50:31.240 I mean, yes. I mean, looking at, so the Bible very rarely, the Old Testament, very rarely commands

00:50:36.900 emotion, right? It commands action. But there are certain times where the Bible literally commands

00:50:40.680 emotion. It says that you have to love God with all of your heart and all of your soul and all of

00:50:43.640 your means, right? So what does it mean when God says, I want you to love? Or when God says,

00:50:49.060 I want you to love your neighbor as your child? What is that actually supposed to mean? How can you

00:50:52.880 command somebody else to feel something? So that says, you can't. There's no way, because you can't

00:50:56.240 change your emotional state. Nothing you do can change your emotional state. And what religion

00:51:00.180 typically teaches is fake it until you make it, essentially, right? Treat other people as you

00:51:05.220 would wish to be treated, and you will end up loving your neighbor as yourself. That's the basic

00:51:08.560 idea.

00:51:08.620 It is an absolute certainty that if you are sitting in a movie theater watching a scary movie

00:51:13.240 and you become afraid, if you turn on the light and take your eyes off of the screen,

00:51:18.940 your fear will mitigate. Because emotions are controlled by externalities. It doesn't mean that

00:51:25.340 every emotion, this is this whole cause and effect, and we've talked about it on this show before,

00:51:29.760 that some things can start in the physical and then infect the spiritual, and some things can

00:51:34.260 start in the spiritual and then manifest in the physical. That door swings both ways.

00:51:38.740 For sure.

00:51:39.240 So you can have fear that isn't caused by an externality, certainly. But in many, many,

00:51:45.140 many instances, your fear can be caused by the externality.

00:51:48.260 And you can have irrational feelings.

00:51:50.140 Of course you can.

00:51:50.920 Of course you've observed. I think you can.

00:51:53.280 Fear at a scary movie is actually an irrational feeling.

00:51:55.440 Of course it is.

00:51:55.860 You volunteered, and that's what you're there for. But it's also true that as you get, I think,

00:52:01.940 a little wiser, you start to look at your life and think like, well, I feel this way,

00:52:05.840 but that's not really the state.

00:52:07.160 That's the entire basis of the only area of psychology that has actually been proved over

00:52:10.380 time to be effective, cognitive behavioral therapy.

00:52:12.300 Yes, yes.

00:52:12.740 Cognitive behavioral therapy is about the idea that you have an emotional response to a stimulus,

00:52:16.640 and maybe that's an irrational and unreasonable response to the stimulus, and you need to

00:52:19.840 change the way that you're responding to the stimulus. That idea in itself is offensive to the left.

00:52:24.560 And so what that means, again, because they focus in on the emotional state, this is how

00:52:27.860 you end up with, the right will say things like, wait, you took out a debt, and now you're

00:52:31.020 pissed off because you can't pay back your college debt. That's your fault. You shouldn't have taken

00:52:35.100 out a college debt that you couldn't pay. And maybe somebody was predatory, and that person

00:52:39.200 should be punished. But if you take out a debt and you can't pay the debt, that's not my fault.

00:52:42.680 That's not somebody else's fault.

00:52:43.500 By the way, they keep saying that the student loans are predatory, but they offer absolutely no

00:52:46.860 solutions for how to get rid of them. Right. Only forgive them and keep the system. 0.74

00:52:50.620 On the emotion thing, though, the piece that we're missing, because yeah, they say emotion

00:52:56.140 matters the most. That takes primacy. If they applied that across the board, it would still

00:53:02.420 be bad, but it wouldn't be nearly as bad as the actual situation, which is that what they're

00:53:07.460 really saying is that emotions have primacy for some people. But then if you're in the out group,

00:53:14.360 your emotions don't matter at all. They don't give a damn how you feel. You could be in the utter

00:53:18.820 depths of despair, and it doesn't matter. That's why I ask this question all the time about the

00:53:23.220 women's locker room debate. And they tell us, well, the trans person, how are they going to

00:53:27.360 feel if they're not allowed in the women's locker room? And then usually the response from the right 0.99

00:53:31.180 is about, well, what about safety? What about this? I always respond, well, what about the emotions

00:53:34.800 of the women? What about how they feel? And what you find is that, oh, their emotions don't matter at 0.83

00:53:38.440 all. Who cares about them? They just have a phobia. Right. Exactly. Which makes you think that maybe in the

00:53:43.640 end, it's all just, as always, a power game for the left. Yeah, of course. The emotional veneer is all just,

00:53:48.540 but in the power game. The jackboot is behind the smiley face, right? The smiley face is the pitch.

00:53:53.460 The jackboot is what's really important. We're making it, we almost sometimes make it sound like

00:53:57.480 they have an overabundance of empathy. Which is what they want us to think. Right. But that's not

00:54:02.660 it at all. I think they don't care. This is not empathy. This is, I think, power. And the power

00:54:06.660 game obscures the fact that they are erasing truths, central truths about human nature that have been

00:54:12.920 handed down to us, you know, through long centuries of wisdom. You know, what we're really talking

00:54:18.060 about is we're talking about the flesh and the spirit. You know, you're talking about the fact

00:54:21.060 that your flesh feels things that your spirit knows are false. You know, your flesh feels envy. And

00:54:25.640 then you sit and think about it and think, well, do I really want my friend to fail? No, I actually

00:54:28.960 want my friend to succeed. My flesh maybe has this kind of, you know, instant response. Do I really

00:54:34.600 want to sleep with that woman and destroy my family? Actually, no, I actually don't. But my flesh

00:54:38.940 feels that. And this is where the cultural echo chamber really, that you're talking about,

00:54:41.540 really matters so unbelievably much. Because what they do is a path to unhappiness. It is a path to

00:54:46.900 misery for millions and millions of people. I cut a video this week about Demi Lovato's new album.

00:54:51.780 And, you know, this is not my area of expertise. I'm not a Demi Lovato fanatic. I don't listen to

00:54:55.940 this kind of music. As I said on the show, it's not that I'm a cultural snob. It's just I don't

00:55:00.780 like shit. But the real problem is that if you actually listen to her album, it's actually quite

00:55:07.060 sad. I actually feel terrible for this person, like really feel terrible for this person. This is a

00:55:10.780 person who alleges that she was raped at the age of 15 when she was on a set. Her parents were

00:55:14.700 divorced when she was two. She was put on TV at the age of 10. She was being dated when she was 17

00:55:19.480 by a man of 29. And she was in rehab by the time she was 17 years old. This is a person who has led

00:55:24.780 an absolutely misery-ridden life. And her entire new album, which is titled, unsurprisingly, Holy F,

00:55:31.960 right? And the cover is a picture of her in bondage gear on a cross-shaped couch, right? It's her just 0.83

00:55:37.880 taking Madonna's routine. But the whole idea of the album, she sings about being victimized when she's

00:55:43.160 17. She has a whole song about her being 17, how terrible that felt. And she has these songs about

00:55:47.320 how it's terrible that she's a drug addict and she's had to fight that and all these things.

00:55:50.800 But the entire album is geared at the evils of traditional morality, the one thing that she's

00:55:55.880 never actually tried or been trained in or actually involved herself in to the plaudits of the media.

00:56:01.740 And so the point that I was making is that what the media do, they churn out misery. And then in order

00:56:06.920 to alleviate your misery, they reward you for becoming a messenger of the misery, right? You attack the system

00:56:11.920 you've never actually tried as the thing that's held you back. And the thing that actually has

00:56:15.680 held you back, if you champion it, we will reward you.

00:56:18.020 This is a form of porn that the New York Times op-ed page has now brought to absolute perfection,

00:56:23.400 which is usually a woman, but sometimes a man, but she says, my life has been an absolute misery

00:56:28.220 and I defend to the death my right to have been this miserable. I mean, you know, and we see it,

00:56:34.700 our pal Bridget Phetasy, who wrote a very touching piece about she was sorry for being a slut. 0.99

00:56:40.360 But even in that piece, she says, I'm not saying we should go back to Victorian era or the 1950s. I

00:56:47.000 would just tell my younger self, if you cherish yourself, then someone will cherish you. I thought,

00:56:51.300 well, that's what a woman in the 1950s would have told her daughter to, you know, so maybe,

00:56:54.720 maybe they were just right. This is the power of practice though. And it's why I think we've got

00:56:59.340 to be a little careful about this neutral language because not, some things can't be neutral. You know,

00:57:04.280 if you call the, the great example is you call the girl she, or you call the girl he,

00:57:09.720 and that, that is not neutral. There's no neutral ground. You're, you're making a moral claim there.

00:57:14.480 And there's this idea, it's lex irandi, lex credendi, the way that we worship, the way that we,

00:57:20.440 and really a French, you know, it's classic Arabic. So the way that we worship affects the way that we 0.85

00:57:26.000 believe. And so these people who have been just trained in these rituals of, of leftism,

00:57:31.140 liberalism, whatever you want to call it, they're trained in it. They know that it's making them

00:57:34.860 miserable. The practices that have defined their lives have ruined their lives. They'll even admit

00:57:38.960 it in a way in the paper, but they can't change the belief. That is the power because we have,

00:57:45.160 we are bodies in many ways. And so the things that we do every single day, our behaviors every day

00:57:50.460 are going to affect the way that we believe. It's why we don't always succeed when we make total,

00:57:55.760 we rarely succeed actually, when we make totally rational arguments for why our way is better than

00:58:00.860 their way. It doesn't matter. They got to do it. We also don't realize the tribal nature of some

00:58:04.760 of this stuff. There's, there's one, my favorite op-ed writer right now is this woman in the Times

00:58:08.940 named Michelle, Michelle Goldberg, because Michelle Goldberg is constantly discovering that everything

00:58:13.840 she believes is wrong. And then by the end of the column saying, oh, but it's all true. You know,

00:58:18.060 so she suddenly finds out that like, maybe, maybe the sexual revolution wasn't such a good thing,

00:58:22.720 but yeah, I'm not saying, I'm not saying, yeah, but it was great. You shouldn't stop. You know,

00:58:26.040 the other day she wrote my, my favorite, one of my favorite of her columns, which is art is now

00:58:30.980 boring. That's absolutely true. We've hit an absolute low in the culture in my lifetime. This

00:58:35.760 is the lowest the culture has been because of woke, because their values don't, aren't conducive to

00:58:40.260 art because they're not conducive to life. But she starts quoting Karl Marx. You know, this is all

00:58:44.900 explained. And I thought like, yeah, okay. I know the rest of this column. Oh yeah. No, there's

00:58:48.660 my favorite recent piece in the New York Times, as long as we're doing favorite recent pieces in the New York

00:58:52.460 Times. There's a woman who wrote this whole article about I'm in a progressive marriage. Yes. It was an

00:58:57.040 open marriage and I was miserable. Yes. I was just miserable. It was the worst marriage ever. But

00:59:02.020 that just demonstrates that progressive marriage is actually a wonderful, wonderful thing. And we

00:59:05.900 need to get past the morality of the past. It was great. And it's, it, it, there's so much of this

00:59:10.020 on the left. And that's why there's a study today that came out and it's a study that every sentient

00:59:15.680 human being knew was going to be true, which is that religious people have better sex. Yeah. Right. 1.00

00:59:19.300 There's a study that says religious people have better sex. Particularly women have a more 0.96

00:59:23.080 meaningful sexual life when they are in a long-term relationship with a person who shares their

00:59:28.940 values, which is the least shocking piece of news that has ever been broken upon the American

00:59:33.520 people ever, ever. And it was, it held true for men as well. Religious men tend to have better 1.00

00:59:38.020 sex because it is in the context of a relationship that is actually fulfilling. And it turns out married

00:59:42.200 people actually have a fair bit of sex because they actually know the person that they're having

00:59:45.000 sex with. They do it fairly regularly as it turns out. And you don't have to go shopping for

00:59:48.760 it. Exactly. And, and so this entire study is written in the, in the realm of almost like

00:59:54.540 Jeff, Jeff Corwin, like in, in Australia and he's going around in the outback. Like, why

00:59:58.860 would, it's Steve Irwin. He's like, Cronky. Cronky. What? These, these people, bunnies. I can't

01:00:07.340 believe it. And you're like, well, I mean, this, but this makes perfect sense. Why do you think,

01:00:12.680 even if you're not a religious person, let's, let's assume that you have a naturalistic explanation

01:00:16.420 for religion. Okay. Then why do you think these religious rituals began in the first place? And

01:00:20.700 the answer is their outgrowths of evolutionary biology, even if you're an atheist, because

01:00:24.900 human beings are naturally driven toward a life of meeting. Women are naturally driven 1.00

01:00:29.340 toward mating with people who are very specific so they can propagate their line with not the

01:00:33.940 schmo down the block. And men tend to be driven toward polygamy. But if they are forced by 0.91

01:00:40.340 circumstance and namely by women into monogamy, they tend to lead healthier sex lives than people 1.00

01:00:45.860 who are just outscrewing whatever is available. Yeah. But that's, that's part of the trade-off.

01:00:50.080 Right. This is right. And so the, but the fact that, that we keep, there's so many, Christine

01:00:54.920 Embaugh at the Washington Post, she keeps writing pieces about like, well, you know, it seems like

01:00:59.060 the consent values that we've been promoting my entire lifetime, they're not sufficient. There's

01:01:02.440 so many women who are consenting and then they regret and is really consent enough. It's like, 0.98

01:01:06.100 where have you been? Can I recommend this thing? It rhymes with marriage. It's, it's,

01:01:10.820 we've had it for literally forever. And, and, and it's, I don't want to tell a tale out of school,

01:01:15.860 but my friends and I, some male friends and I back in my wayward youth, we were discussing this one

01:01:20.820 day and we had this kind of epiphany. We said, you know, you know, fellas, I think, I just thought

01:01:25.740 about this the other day. I think sex actually is better with people that you know. And furthermore,

01:01:33.720 it's even better with people that you like. And we're sitting there like, wow. And I'm not,

01:01:37.900 I'm being somewhat, you know, hyperbolic here, but those are the exact words we said. And we,

01:01:42.080 we thought about that like an actual epiphany. And then we thought, you know,

01:01:45.340 maybe every person ever throughout history knew this except for us.

01:01:50.920 Like maybe we're the, this is the battle.

01:01:52.260 This was the hinge of my life. This was the hinge of my life. I was walking down the street one day

01:01:55.140 and I said, you know what? I'm not sleeping with women I don't like anymore. I'm not going to

01:01:58.320 pretend to like women I don't like. Within six months, I met the woman who became my wife. 0.96

01:02:02.040 Within six, first of all, within six months, I was having the greatest dating experiences of my

01:02:05.800 life because I just thought I'm not going out with women I don't like. You know? Yeah. And then,

01:02:09.340 and then within six months I met the woman.

01:02:10.880 It's not just that you like the person too. It's also you're having sex with someone 0.64

01:02:14.480 and you can embrace the totality of the act and all of its consequences and see those things

01:02:20.760 not as a, not, not as this, there's this thing that must be feared, but as a, as a great blessing.

01:02:25.420 So that, that's another part that, that allows us to enjoy it quite a bit more.

01:02:28.820 This is the thing about the, you mentioned the flesh and the spirit a little bit ago. You

01:02:31.700 mentioned, you know, people have, certain people have genetic predispositions towards being

01:02:37.100 overweight and other people, uh, have eating disorders and et cetera, et cetera. All of this

01:02:41.220 is sort of one thing, which is that in the battle between flesh and spirit, you're being fed two

01:02:47.720 ideas all the time. And the one idea is always a lie. And the, so it's like you're, the fear of your

01:02:56.840 spirit is a lie and the promise of joy of the flesh is a lie. And so I've talked to, because we

01:03:04.180 obviously we've never had a obese society before until right now, but you look, you look at pictures

01:03:08.820 from the beach in 1968, no one was overweight. And when I mean not overweight, people who we think

01:03:15.340 of as not overweight now would have been considered overweight then. They didn't have seed oils.

01:03:19.980 That's why it's, that's right. It's not even, it's not even that they were side note, by the way,

01:03:23.620 have you noticed that the sizes are changing? I'm talking about like clothing sizes. Oh yeah.

01:03:27.180 They're changing. Like it's bizarre over the course of my lifetime. Okay. Like I I'm five,

01:03:30.760 nine and I weigh about 160, which puts me normally in the medium category. And now I'm having to wear

01:03:35.020 smalls because the mediums are for giants. This is definitely happening. But the point I'm making

01:03:43.460 is that I've had to have conversations with people about the fact that almost no one is overweight

01:03:49.400 because of, because of hormones and genetics and they don't believe you. So you're just wrong.

01:03:55.200 I've had to have conversations with people who I'd, who I'd have true affection for about the fact

01:04:00.580 that most of the mental illness that we're dealing with is inflicted, not biological. Yeah. And my

01:04:06.940 evidence of it is it's brand new. It's never existed before. All of this is because on one hand.

01:04:13.340 It doesn't exist in most places right now, by the way. Not terribly. Even right now, most people aren't

01:04:16.320 overweight in the world. Even right now, most people in the world don't have mental illnesses among

01:04:19.840 other things. If you, if you believe the flesh, then you think. So I did hardcore keto right for

01:04:26.600 a while and I've never felt better. I've never been in better shape. It requires some discipline.

01:04:33.780 It requires routines. That's a big part of how you accomplish it. We moved to Nashville. All my

01:04:38.480 routines are broken. All of my discipline falls apart. All the places where I knew how to get the

01:04:42.800 food that would still taste good, but you know, like you've sort of solved it. All that goes away.

01:04:46.900 And there are biscuits literally everywhere. Under this chair right now, there are biscuits.

01:04:52.680 And, and I've gained 12 pounds. I feel worse. Every few days I start trying to go back to the

01:05:00.000 thing that I know made me feel better. And every few days I'm tempted by the things that make me

01:05:03.780 feel worse. And in the moment, the things that make me feel worse come with the promise of joy.

01:05:10.360 The milkshake promises to make me feel better. The funny thing is it makes me feel worse

01:05:14.960 immediately. I don't just feel like guilt. I actually feel bad from the sugar, bad from the

01:05:19.540 dairy. And nevertheless, that temptation is real. This is every single thing that we deal with in

01:05:24.940 life. Sex with a waitress is always better than sex with your wife, except that sex with your wife 1.00

01:05:31.000 is always better than sex with the waitress. It's not that one thing is true and the other is false.

01:05:35.620 It's that both things possess in themselves a kind of truth, but only one of them is true,

01:05:41.500 is fundamentally true. It's almost as if there's a conscious power trying to destroy us.

01:05:46.320 With personality. Yeah, I don't know. You know, people write into my show constantly. I would say

01:05:50.260 this is the most frequent question I get on the show. It's from young men. Why do you have a show?

01:05:54.040 Yeah. Michael, why is Ben still permitting? Sign Ben. Yeah. Ben, why do you, why do you let him

01:06:00.480 into all access? The, the question I get more than any other is from young men who say I'm addicted

01:06:05.380 to porn. Yes, I get that all the time. I get it constantly, right? And it's the thing,

01:06:10.200 this is the biggest one because now we have these portals to hell in our pockets and it's brand new

01:06:14.720 really of the last 20 years, but it really can be applied to any addiction or any kind of vice or

01:06:19.940 any temptation. And they'll write in and they, in near desperation, they'll write in and say,

01:06:24.740 is there any way to get better? Is there any way to recover some lost innocence? That was a question

01:06:30.860 last week. Is there any way to, and the answer is if you've ever disciplined yourself or recovered

01:06:36.160 from any sort of addiction or anything, you'll, you'll know the answer is yes, eventually there

01:06:42.180 is, you actually can get better. You actually, the temptation can go away a little bit. You can get,

01:06:47.260 and it's because virtue and vice are habits. They're not just, we like to, we're in the eternal

01:06:51.520 presence. So we want instant gratification. That's not how it works. When you have routine,

01:06:55.560 when you have habits in virtue, then the temptation gets to be a little less device and it's easier to

01:07:00.800 do the virtue. And then you go back to the biscuits and then all of a sudden it's harder to go back

01:07:05.160 to the keto and it's easier to keep the biscuits. In order to actually do this sort of stuff,

01:07:08.640 you have to have a realistic assessment of your own limitations. And this is something that society

01:07:12.380 actively mocks. If you, if you say, for example, like Mike Pence, you know what, I'm not going to

01:07:17.800 have dinner with a woman who's not my wife in a room with a closed door. You are a bigot. You are a

01:07:22.840 ridiculous person because what do you think you're just going to have sex with her? What do you think 1.00

01:07:25.660 you're just going to cheat on your wife? Just like that. Is that really what you think that it's just,

01:07:28.880 so you mock the notion that you have to set up prophylactic rules, which is what most of life

01:07:33.800 is, setting up prophylactic rules around the innate fallen nature of yourself. And this is true of

01:07:39.480 literally everything. You have to set up these prophylactic rules around the things that you

01:07:43.980 care about so that you never come within a hundred yards of actually violating the thing that you care

01:07:48.620 about. And society mocks this. There's a section of the Talmud that's actually quite wonderful about

01:07:53.120 essentially what I think is pornography addiction, really, where it's talking about,

01:07:56.840 it says it's a sin for you to walk near a river and see women bathing, but, or it's a sin where 0.99

01:08:04.840 to walk near a river where women are bathing and avert your eyes. And so it's like, well,

01:08:08.040 why is it a sin to avert your eyes? It's not. It's a sin that you went near the river in the first

01:08:11.520 place because you're putting yourself in a position of temptation. All of society is designed,

01:08:16.660 they keep saying this over and over. It's a mantra of the left. Well, I mean, if you can't resist the

01:08:21.060 temptation, was it really worth resisting? What kind of person, are you really so weak that you can't

01:08:25.320 resist the temptation? Yes. Yes, I am, in any case. And so we used to have a society constructed

01:08:31.560 around the idea that you had to create all of these fences in order to prevent a lot of people

01:08:36.700 from falling into the chasm. And then we're like, well, you know what? It's not really going to

01:08:40.220 change your life if we get rid of those fences, as in a lot of people start falling into the well.

01:08:43.420 I mean, it's not a shock. You also have to... The occasion of sin is one of the great pieces of

01:08:46.780 advice ever. When I get this question about pornography addiction, the first thing I say

01:08:51.360 is, well, if you want to beat the pornography addiction, stop calling it an addiction.

01:08:55.160 Because I think that word in and of itself, there might be a sense in which it's true,

01:09:00.320 but what that has come to mean is a disease. And when we say disease, we mean something you don't

01:09:05.400 have any control over. So you need someone else to come in and you're basically powerless to stop.

01:09:10.540 It's not an addiction. It's a compulsion. It's a habit. I mean, that's what it is. It's a bad

01:09:15.980 habit. And habits have a lot of power over you, but you can still... You still have your free will.

01:09:20.120 You're able to make a choice. And so every time you look at the pornography, you are making a choice

01:09:24.800 to do it. And I think when you think of it like an addiction, then it gives you an out. It's sort

01:09:28.880 of like, well, it's not my choice. It's the addiction. You're one step down, though, because it is

01:09:34.260 an addiction, but an addiction is not a disease. I mean, if you could give up cancer, you would. That's

01:09:39.760 what a disease looks like. For Lent. Exactly. But you can beat it. I mean,

01:09:45.520 the only thing I've ever been actually addicted to is cigarettes. And you beat it. You just beat it.

01:09:49.520 And you curl up in a ball and it's awful. It is an awful experience.

01:09:52.660 I do want to say, like, the apostles clear the things I don't want to do. I do things I want to

01:09:57.220 do. I scarcely ever do. I don't think it's as simple as saying that everyone can simply choose

01:10:01.920 to overcome any expression of sin. That's not true. We had a society with more condoms. I didn't

01:10:08.920 understand exactly what you were saying before, but in the past, we had a society, there were

01:10:12.340 condoms everywhere. Biscuits on the condoms. I don't know.

01:10:15.440 And we had a society that had a lot of rules meant to prevent the occasion of sin. And it was still a

01:10:20.200 sinful society. But in many ways, not all, but in many ways, it was a better behaved society. And so

01:10:26.340 it's challenging when you talk about these issues to make the distinction between the absolute nature

01:10:32.200 of righteousness, the absolute nature of virtue, and the sort of practical realities of life on

01:10:38.400 earth. When you say to a person that they can overcome, that they can kick cigarettes, that is

01:10:45.040 absolutely true. And sometimes telling them that is actually encouraging and helps them kind of

01:10:51.020 realize that they're not just victims of circumstance. Sometimes I think it can also be demoralizing to

01:10:56.400 people because it almost obscures the other reality, which is that sin is very powerful,

01:11:04.340 that sin can't be done away with. I think that that's why the genius of beating addiction,

01:11:09.960 I was off cigarettes for five years, was in Amsterdam where everybody was smoking on a book tour. And I

01:11:16.140 thought, well, one cigarette, I was addicted like that. I had to do it all over again. But that's the

01:11:20.980 thing, you know, it's not every day is a day. So like if you get off it the next day, you're off it

01:11:25.100 again, you know, and that's, and that's what you have to do. Sin is always present. The flesh is

01:11:28.780 always present. These things are incredibly powerful. It's very challenging. The problem,

01:11:33.480 when I was a kid, and cartoons actually taught you things. Yeah. They still teach you things.

01:11:39.340 But you mean good things. The common meme in cartoons was that a person would have a decision

01:11:43.480 to make and a little angel would appear on one shoulder and a little devil would appear on the 0.84

01:11:47.360 other shoulder. And this one would try to make them be bad and this one would try to make them be

01:11:51.400 good. The problem as you become adult is that you realize there, there is an angel on one shoulder

01:11:56.980 and there is a devil on the other. And they're both you and they sound exactly the same. And that is

01:12:02.080 one of the hardest things about life. And they both have your voice. They both have your voice.

01:12:06.540 Yeah. The devil speaks to you in your own voice. That was Soltzman. Soltzman, this is a great line

01:12:10.860 that the line between good and evil runs through the human heart, you know, and it's, it's not,

01:12:15.300 it's not actually about political systems. It's not actually about where you live or who you are.

01:12:18.920 It's right there, you know, and that's the battle you're in. And, you know, the thing about it is,

01:12:22.840 I think Christians particularly have been very bad about depicting this as some kind of grim

01:12:29.020 struggle, but it's actually a joyful struggle. It is. It's actually a struggle to get to your joy.

01:12:33.900 And what you were saying before about the lies of the flesh and the truth of the spirit is actually

01:12:39.520 just siding with joy. It is, you know, it is. And it's a funny thing because in the end,

01:12:44.500 you know, joy takes a little bit longer to get to, you know, it's like the pleasure, the bliss

01:12:49.400 of sin is there. I mean, it's like, there's no question about this. I mean, people yelled at me

01:12:53.820 in another kingdom for writing a scene about how great sex was when you lied to a woman that she

01:12:58.760 was going to get a part in your movie and then slept with her. And it was great. And they yelled 1.00

01:13:01.940 out, that's pornographic. I said, no, no, that's the problem. It is great. You know, it's, it's just

01:13:07.920 that the joy, which is a deeper emotion, a much more global emotion, something that actually fills

01:13:12.640 your whole life takes longer to get to. But there's also, this is why Jordan Peterson is so

01:13:17.540 popular. Oh, he's Jordan now. He's Jordan. You know, Jordan, Jordan, this is why it's one,

01:13:22.780 it's because of the accent. And two, it's because he talks about dragons. And it's the same reason

01:13:27.860 that the Latin mass is exploding in the United States, especially among young men. It's exactly 1.00

01:13:32.160 the same reason because this lame, super lib thing that we've heard for 50 years, like,

01:13:37.400 hey, man, you know, your spirituality, it's all just about peace, man, you know, and all

01:13:42.640 it is, is just kind of acoustic guitars. No, it's about like, there are actual dragons trying

01:13:47.600 to eat me all around me right now. And I just want to just slay that dragon in pursuit of

01:13:52.880 something greater. Because the consequence of the spiritual combat that we're all in is

01:13:57.560 not just that we're suffering a lot. It's that there's a prize, you know, there's something

01:14:01.740 actually worth getting out of it. That's much, that's, that's much more motivating than just,

01:14:06.880 you know. I will say that the best thing about Jordan Peterson is listening to Knowles and my

01:14:11.140 son, Spencer, do imitations of him. We would never do anything like that. And you better be sorry

01:14:16.980 that you ever suggested we would. It is one of the funniest things I've ever. Bloody ridiculous.

01:14:23.980 You start with Kermit the Frog. You take him, you take him to Toronto. Yeah, I, having Jordan on

01:14:31.660 Daily Wire Plus has been a real treat for me because you guys kind of knew him better than

01:14:36.000 I did, but I've gotten to interact with him a lot here, here lately. And I'm so tickled

01:14:40.360 by what a contrarian he is. Oh yeah, yeah. I just hadn't really realized it. I know it

01:14:44.640 of myself and I certainly know it of Andrew Clayton. But, but Jordan is like one of the

01:14:49.480 only guys in, in public life. We're all contrarians, but we, we try to at least pretend

01:14:54.540 to be, you know, good and decent and agreeable chaps. But with Jordan, you'll say something 1.00

01:14:58.820 like, uh, here's a question from a Daily Wire subscriber. Uh, uh, Dr. Peterson, you

01:15:04.340 know, well, how can I be more happy? Well, I'm not going to answer that. And it's a damn

01:15:09.240 foolish question. That's pretty good too. I got to say, we should just have a Jordan. 0.97

01:15:15.240 Everybody does a Jordan Peterson. It's like Bill Clinton, you know, everyone has a Bill

01:15:18.580 Clinton impression. By the way, that, that answer actually that you just gave in Jordan's

01:15:22.560 name is the right answer. But you know, the Bible, like the old Testament, it does not

01:15:28.460 really ever deal with the idea of happiness and never discusses happiness. It gives you

01:15:33.500 a bunch of duties. It tells you a bunch of things to do. And then it promises you that

01:15:37.260 there will be some good effects from the things that you do. But at no point does it say you

01:15:40.700 will experience more joy in your life if you do X, Y, and Z just on a, on a pure emotional

01:15:46.020 level. Cause no one can guarantee that up to and including God, I think. I mean like

01:15:51.720 that, that one, that, that one really is up to you. What, what, what isn't up to you

01:15:56.200 is that if you, if you fulfill the duties, then you will be doing what you were established

01:15:58.980 to do. That's the problem. I do believe that the new Testament offers up joy. I want to

01:16:03.420 take an issue between the old Testament is not, but using the word joy and happiness

01:16:07.080 as synonyms is not, is not the right thing. I do not believe in happiness at all. You know,

01:16:11.160 you're happy, you win the lottery, you're happy for a couple of minutes and you know,

01:16:13.820 you lose a lottery, you're not happy. But, but joy is a, is a state of mind that actually

01:16:17.760 is there even when you're in grief. You know, it is that vitality of life, the presence,

01:16:21.940 you know, it's, I always compare it to a movie where you're watching some, some character

01:16:25.680 die and you're weeping and then you come out and say, wow, it was a great movie. You know,

01:16:29.260 life is kind of like that too. You know, the, the vitality of, of all the things that happen

01:16:33.180 in life is what joy is. And I think you can achieve that if, if you side with the spirit.

01:16:38.720 I think it was C.S. Lewis who described it this way. And if not, I'll just make it up

01:16:42.000 Yeah, go ahead. That joy is more akin to all just about, just about being able to answer a

01:16:49.220 question. Like there's just this kind of journey and this approach and this, you're so close to

01:16:54.640 the satisfaction, which is very different than just, you know, Hey, that was a good drink.

01:16:59.620 Yeah. I'm happy now. Yeah. In, in, there's this very cryptic sort of commentary in the book of

01:17:05.740 Exodus, which I'm supposed to discuss with Jordan, actually in the interview with Jordan.

01:17:10.700 In, in, it, it discusses how the Jewish people come to the, to Mount Sinai, Tahr, Sinai,

01:17:15.860 and they're at the base of the mountain. And it says that they're, and it says that they're

01:17:19.560 Tachat HaHar. So that the actual Hebrew meaning of that is underneath the mountain. Tachat means

01:17:23.280 under. It doesn't mean at the base. It means under the mountain. And so there are a bunch of

01:17:25.620 commentaries and these commentaries, the Midrash, it suggests that, that what God actually did

01:17:29.740 is he holds the mountain over the heads of the Jews. And he says, if you don't accept the Torah,

01:17:35.260 I'm going to drop this on you. And so this raises all sorts of questions. So mutically like,

01:17:39.680 okay, so was the Torah accepted by the Jews under duress, right? I mean, was this, if, if,

01:17:44.620 and it's a full scale conversation that goes on for a fair bit of time. And the, the sort of

01:17:48.860 conclusion is the, the only way to rectify that, that sort of bizarre take on the, on the narrative

01:17:54.160 that God is literally threatening you with destruction. If you don't take, is that that's not

01:17:57.820 God threatening you? That's just the reality that unless you undertake the duty of living as you

01:18:02.820 were supposed to live, the mountain will fall on you. That is not because God is threatening you

01:18:07.380 that way. That's just the way the world is. Meanwhile, we've got the culture, which cuts

01:18:12.260 off all the pathways to joy, which is, which is what's so sinister. My favorite, uh, New York

01:18:17.480 Times piece recently, since we're talking about it, I think this is the New York Times was, uh, the,

01:18:21.440 the maternal instinct. Yes, that was the New York Times. Okay, good. I'll do that a Washington Post.

01:18:25.280 So, maternal instinct is a, is a myth that men created. Yeah. 50 years ago, we made it up.

01:18:30.160 Uh, but meanwhile, that's what, what she's really like militating against is, is women 1.00

01:18:34.940 fulfilling their duties as mothers and finding joy and happiness in it. And, uh, and it's the

01:18:40.200 same sort of thing where she, I read the whole piece and it's very, it's very windy and secure,

01:18:43.920 secure it is. And she, she kind of, she seems close to acknowledging that, oh, maternal instinct

01:18:48.320 does exist. And by the end, she's like, no, it doesn't actually exist. But that's, that's,

01:18:51.560 you know, a path to joy. Another one that they're trying to sort of cut off.

01:18:54.180 Almost as good as Scientific American, which sent out seven tweets. Did you guys see this?

01:18:58.200 Oh, no, that, that, that, that the idea of two sexes was invented in the late 18th century 0.97

01:19:03.440 to, uh, to bring more, uh, you know, bigotry into human life. Right, there were less sexist

01:19:08.820 in 1400s. I don't know if you knew that. But before that, there was only one sex, scientifically.

01:19:13.500 Great. Yeah. And men could have sex with men and make babies. It was amazing. 0.58

01:19:17.160 We actually invented women. I know. I, well, I, you know, I wish I could take credit for that, 0.84

01:19:21.940 but like. I guess we did out of our rib, you know, they just got their time scale slightly off.

01:19:28.680 It, it was, I did see that and I don't see nearly as much as you guys do, but I, I couldn't even

01:19:33.440 really figure out how they could possibly have arrived. It's the opening of my show tomorrow.

01:19:37.980 It's, and I have to say, I've been, whether I can get through this with a straight face,

01:19:41.480 I don't know. Cause it is an amazing. I do. It actually makes me wonder if we're getting

01:19:46.100 the gender conversation a little bit off because our argument now, which is, you know, manifestly

01:19:52.100 true, just looking around is there's sex and there's gender. And the, the libs say that gender 0.94

01:19:57.000 expression and sex are divorced. And we say, there's no such thing as gender. It's just sex,

01:20:00.900 right? You met men and women. That's what it is. But in a sense, no, there is gender expression.

01:20:05.560 I mean, there is first of all, and second of all, the very fact that they are expressing

01:20:10.300 gender in these weird ways kind of proves that there is. And really what we're trying 1.00

01:20:15.020 to say is there is sex and gender expression and the libs want them to be completely divorced. 0.98

01:20:19.660 And if you want to have a good life and flourish and like be in accord with reality, you've got

01:20:24.920 to just bring them together that actually when men do manly things, they'll do better. And 0.93

01:20:31.480 when women do womanly things, they'll do better. 1.00

01:20:33.020 But that's not really, that's not gender. That's what Jordan Peterson talks about. 0.96

01:20:35.080 That's personality, right? That's what we're really talking about.

01:20:37.680 But I also disagree because if reality has taught me anything here lately, it's that

01:20:42.740 when men do feminine things, they do better. 0.99

01:20:46.180 These days.

01:20:47.360 I don't understand. They keep telling us that gender and sex are different.

01:20:50.480 But then they also say things like trans women are biological women, which is a... 1.00

01:20:56.340 That's because they're lewons. 1.00

01:20:57.520 Oh, that solves it.

01:21:00.500 It was a sleight of hand trick where they invented this distinction between sex and gender.

01:21:04.660 And then it was very useful for them for about three or four decades.

01:21:08.100 And then in the last five years, they got rid of it and they said, oh, it's actually the

01:21:11.260 same thing again. So they got us to buy into this.

01:21:13.560 Your first engineered it. It was pretty clever.

01:21:15.400 But you know, we even have words for this. Like the word womanish, we don't use it that

01:21:19.640 much. Norm MacDonald used to use it a lot. But womanish is... 1.00

01:21:22.080 Effeminate, yeah.

01:21:22.900 Effeminate for a man. You wouldn't call a woman womanish, right? 1.00

01:21:26.520 A woman is womanly and that's good. And when a man is behaving like a woman, that's womanish 1.00

01:21:30.860 and that's bad. Why are we saying that's good or bad?

01:21:32.620 Like when your voice starts to wobble a little bit when you're talking to that guy from podcast.

01:21:36.420 Yeah, yeah.

01:21:37.600 And you don't. You say, get it together. Come on, boring. Come on, boring. What's the matter

01:21:41.800 with you?

01:21:43.960 Just punched myself in the crotch.

01:21:46.220 You know, to try to...

01:21:48.240 No, I believe. I do believe. I mean, I've mentioned many times that Brian Stelter missed

01:21:53.160 a deadline in order to go to bed and cry. And I think that may prove that you can change

01:21:58.520 from a man to a woman. Okay. Sorry, go ahead. 0.91

01:22:03.600 No.

01:22:04.020 Well, I was going to say, we have a few questions from our Daily Wire Plus members, but I'm going

01:22:08.560 to save them for the member block, which is coming up here in 10 minutes. If you're watching

01:22:12.900 on YouTube, head over to Daily Wire Plus. If you're a member, log in. If you're not a

01:22:16.620 member, become a member, then log in. We're going to continue the show for an additional

01:22:20.600 half hour and we'll take a ton of member questions during that period of time. But let's wrap

01:22:26.460 up the show, Ben, with your thoughts. Okay, so I want a quick roundtable here on what

01:22:30.420 do you guys think is going to happen in the election, considering the polls have narrowed

01:22:32.920 considerably and people are getting very, very nervous.

01:22:36.160 I think it's all fake. I think the headlines are fake. And here's why. We had a 10-point

01:22:39.920 lead on the generic ballot in July, which is amazing. I mean, that's when you talk about

01:22:44.340 the red tsunami. Now that lead has narrowed. It's a five-point lead on the generic ballot.

01:22:48.980 And they're saying, see, the walls are closing in. The Republicans are going to lose it

01:22:51.720 for all sorts of reasons, whatever. But if you look back to 2018, the Democrats at this

01:22:56.500 point had exactly the same lead as the Republicans did. And by the way, it narrowed as the election

01:23:00.780 got closer. That's just what kind of happens.

01:23:03.020 And they went on to win.

01:23:03.880 And they crushed it. Yeah, they absolutely crushed it. So I think the libs are just trying

01:23:07.060 to discourage conservatives. I think the numbers don't bear out this fear that we're all of a

01:23:11.600 sudden going to lose our momentum.

01:23:13.180 I largely agree with that. I thought you, on your tweet thread about this, you made a really

01:23:17.700 good point, that focusing on Trump may hurt us with independence. The people who attacked you

01:23:25.000 immediately said, well, Trump is, you know, Trump's selections have won all these primaries. And you

01:23:29.200 think, yeah, but that's not the point. You're talking about the generals.

01:23:32.240 Right. But I basically agree with what you're saying. Typically, summer polls are worse than

01:23:38.300 autumn polls because they don't poll likely voters as much. They tend to favor Democrats.

01:23:43.900 The polls have narrowed. I do believe- The specials are not going as well.

01:23:47.620 What's that?

01:23:48.120 The special elections are not going as well.

01:23:49.280 But the specials, 8% of people are showing up for those specials. And I don't think,

01:23:52.980 I think that the abortion question may serve the left more than we thought. But I think that if

01:24:02.100 Republicans can get their heads around the fact that they have to fight the culture war,

01:24:06.020 that they have to fight the culture war, they can bring people out. One place where I disagree

01:24:09.540 with you is you frequently say that people vote against things. But I think only conservatives vote

01:24:13.620 against things. I think women and other Democrats basically do vote for things because they want 0.99

01:24:19.400 the government to do stuff. But I do think you're right in terms of the numbers. Right now,

01:24:24.640 the numbers still favor Republicans. And I think as the autumn continues, they're going to favor

01:24:29.740 Republicans more. And I actually think we still have an over 50% chance of taking the Senate.

01:24:36.920 Yeah. It might be like 52, but it's-

01:24:39.100 Yeah, it is. It's like 55.

01:24:40.120 I agree that the polls are fake and everything's fake. And that's probably correct. But I'm not

01:24:45.160 as nervous about the polls. I agree with Ben's take on this largely. I mean, I'm just nervous

01:24:49.020 about what I see from Republicans, which is it does seem like they're getting off message.

01:24:53.820 When the FBI raid happened and there are all these predictions on the right that, well,

01:24:57.840 this is what's going to lead to the red wave. It's like people are not going to the polls

01:25:01.800 to protect Donald Trump. That's not what they're, they're not getting up, you know,

01:25:05.120 parents are not waking up in the morning thinking, well, how's Donald Trump doing today with the FBI

01:25:09.140 thing? What Republicans need to think about is what do people wake up in the morning worried about?

01:25:14.440 What do they go to bed worried about? The whole cliche classic thing. What are they talking about

01:25:17.740 around the kitchen table? Like that is actually true. And what are they thinking about? They're

01:25:20.840 thinking about their finances. They're thinking about inflation. They're thinking about,

01:25:23.320 are my kids safe crime? They're, they're, they're really, really worried about the fact that it seems to

01:25:28.620 them that our culture is plunging into insanity. They're worried about what kind of culture we're

01:25:33.340 leaving for our kids. These are the things that plague people's minds every single day.

01:25:36.880 It seemed to me when Republicans were talking about that, that, that they were doing well. And

01:25:41.240 then when we went on, we went on this detour and we're talking about Trump and the FBI, then

01:25:45.260 that's when the polls start to travel. But the FBI raid, the issue with them raiding Mar-a-Lago is not

01:25:49.620 Donald Trump. The issue with them raiding Mar-a-Lago is that Biden himself is saying it's about us.

01:25:54.780 He's going to sick the IRS on us. I think, at least for me, when I, the reason I care about the

01:25:59.240 Mar-a-Lago raid is not because, you know, I'm upset about Donald Trump's furniture getting moved

01:26:03.700 around. It's that I think Trump is, it's like that meme he put out in the campaign. They're going

01:26:09.060 through him to get to us because they call us all fascists. I don't, I don't disagree that you're

01:26:14.060 right. And eventually Biden, he keeps saying he's going to send F-15s to blow us up. This isn't the

01:26:18.400 first time he said it. They are, they are fighting a proxy war against us by way of Trump.

01:26:24.640 That still doesn't make it a winning thing for us to talk about right now. The average American is

01:26:29.840 not sitting around today worried that the FBI is going to raid their houses and look for classified

01:26:33.980 documents. The average American today is, is not re-litigating 2020. That's right. The average

01:26:41.540 American today is trying to figure out how to pay for gas when it's so freaking expensive. And when

01:26:46.020 Joe Biden is saying, oh, I brought gas prices down 43 cents, you know, it's up two bucks. Like we,

01:26:52.380 he, the average American is deeply concerned right now about what has happened to their kids over the

01:26:56.880 last two years. The fact that suicidality is up so high, that drug use is up so high. The average

01:27:01.840 American is worried about what their kids are being taught, about what kind of lives their kids 0.76

01:27:05.120 should lead. These are the kinds of issues that if we're, if we run on them, we win. And the problem

01:27:09.800 with President Trump is that he wants this election to be a referendum on him because Donald Trump sees

01:27:16.800 the entire world as a referendum on him. He puts his name in gold letters on everything that he touches.

01:27:21.260 He is, he is constitutionally, and I don't mean the document. He is constitutionally incapable

01:27:26.940 of allowing the election to be about the things that matter to America because he wants to be the

01:27:32.980 thing that matters most to Americans. And that may very well be fine in a presidential election.

01:27:38.260 It is not, I, I, even then I actually agree with Ben. I think that all modern elections are

01:27:43.020 referendums on someone and you should make sure it's a referendum on the other guy. But even if it

01:27:47.660 could work in 2024 with Donald Trump, it is a losing strategy for Republicans.

01:27:52.200 That's also what the Democrats, that's what the Democrats want too. I think this is very simple.

01:27:55.460 Think about, think about what opposite, right? Think about what your opponents want to talk

01:27:59.980 about and then don't talk about that. Think about the things they really don't want you to talk about

01:28:04.940 and talk about that thing. The trans stuff, they will call you a terrorist. If you talk about it, 1.00

01:28:09.340 desperately, they will kick you off of every social media platform. If you talk about it,

01:28:13.100 obviously that's the thing we should be talking about the economy. They don't want to talk about it.

01:28:16.000 Those are the things they really, really want us to talk about Trump, but that, that is enough

01:28:19.200 reason in and of itself to not talk about it. And you know, the thing about Trump is I keep

01:28:23.160 getting these letters every time I criticize them, you know, like, oh, you're criticizing the great

01:28:26.460 Trump. You know, I have to say this. Trump to me is, is not what I'm here for. Like I am here for

01:28:34.120 this country. I am, I got into this business because of this country, because I actually do love it.

01:28:39.080 And I think like, if Trump can help, I'm for Trump. If, if he's past his point and I think he is

01:28:44.040 past the point where he can help, I'm for somebody else. You know, it's like, it's not really about

01:28:48.340 Trump. And I think that, that, that this attachment to him, and as you say, Trump is a narcissist.

01:28:53.800 Nobody would, I don't think even Trump would deny that. I think Trump is a narcissist.

01:28:57.120 He may not know what a narcissist is, but if you give him the question of Donald Trump,

01:29:00.380 are you a narcissist? I'm the biggest narcissist. I'm the best narcissist.

01:29:04.520 You know, I just think that we should be thinking about how to win for the country.

01:29:09.040 Trump's not on the ballot. He's not going to be on the ballot. The people who are on the ballot,

01:29:12.620 we should support them because basically the alternative is, are these guys who put your

01:29:17.820 children? If Donald Trump's the nominee in 2024, I will almost certainly vote for him.

01:29:21.500 Yep. Right. I'll never say certainly two years out from an election. You're just not going to get

01:29:25.600 that out of me. But most likely if Donald Trump is the nominee, I will almost certainly vote for

01:29:29.260 the guy like you. He did an awful lot of good in the first three years of administration, of his

01:29:33.520 administration. I think it's very hard to say that he wasn't, his presidency in the fourth year was a

01:29:39.580 failure. I mean, he, he lost the country during COVID. Does that mean that he would be a failure

01:29:44.220 in a second term? No. I mean, if the guy gets a second term, undoubtedly, a lot of great things

01:29:48.320 will happen that I really like from a policy point of view. That's great. This is 2022.

01:29:53.460 Alan Estrin, our dear friend and the founder of Prager University has a theory and his theory is

01:29:57.860 that narrative is sort of a, uh, an actual force that exists in the world. I'm actually somewhat

01:30:02.960 persuaded by this argument. I'm 100% with this argument.

01:30:05.620 In the same way that Bible, Ben often says of the Bible that it's not always prescriptive. It's

01:30:10.880 almost always descriptive. I think Alan Estrin's new theory is that, uh, narrative isn't our way

01:30:16.220 of talking about narrative isn't a human construct for understanding the world. Uh, narrative is

01:30:21.300 something that humans have observed about the world. And I'm, I'm compelled by this to some degree.

01:30:26.180 He says in the great narrative of our time, it is all about Donald Trump, that it isn't even about

01:30:33.460 whether or not Donald Trump makes it about himself, which of course he will. It's that they have made

01:30:37.440 it about Donald Trump. And then into this sort of grand narrative, uh, sense, the, the fight of the

01:30:44.340 century has to happen. America will not be able to let go of this crazy moment in our politics until

01:30:50.020 we see what happens with Donald Trump in 2024. When people tell me, when people tell me, well,

01:30:55.200 if only Trump would go away, if only Trump would be keep quiet, if only we were, we can move past

01:30:59.600 Donald Trump. I think, you know, if my aunt had testicles, she'd be my uncle, right? You know,

01:31:04.620 there's a lot of ifs here. Might still be your aunt. And she might, and these days she might still

01:31:07.920 be my aunt. It's, it, that's not, that's not the way it's working. The libs are targeting all of 0.96

01:31:14.100 their fire on this guy. To me, that speaks well of him. Uh, but regardless, they're going to do that.

01:31:19.500 They're going to put this in the news. The guy is polling 40 points ahead of anybody else for 2024.

01:31:24.300 He's playing an active role in the midterms as would anyone who's going to run for president in 2024.

01:31:29.600 And, and so it's just, that is just a fact it's baked into it right now. And I, I, I just don't

01:31:35.040 think there's, I don't think there's all that much use in saying, well, what if this fundamental

01:31:38.780 fact of the political landscape were different? No, no, no, no. I have made a executive God King

01:31:44.960 like decision to let Michael Knowles have the last word for the first time in the history of the

01:31:51.300 Daily Wire backstage. Uh, and I'm going to say that if you want to hear what we all think about how

01:31:55.700 wrong Michael knows is, you have to head over to dailywireplus.com and become a subscriber. You

01:32:02.060 don't want to miss the rest of the show. We're going into the member block right now. If you

01:32:05.580 use code plus, you will get 35% off and you can stick around for the next half hour. We're going

01:32:11.200 to be taking member questions and talking probably more about Donald Trump because even when the

01:32:16.120 message is it would be better electorally to stop talking about Donald Trump. You can't resist.

01:32:20.860 And it ain't better for ratings. We'll see you guys next time.

The Matt Walsh Show - September 01, 2022

Daily Wire Backstage： Now With Even More Dystopia!

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