The Matt Walsh Show - May 27, 2021


Daily Wire Backstage: The Mask Is Off


Episode Stats

Misogynist Sentences

6

Hate Speech Sentences

134


Summary

Ben Shapiro, Jeremy Boring, Michael Knowles, Andrew Klavan, and myself talk about Joe Biden, the conflict between Israel and Hamas, but the real treat is hearing me dominate the conversation and win the debate about aliens.


Transcript

00:00:00.000 This episode of Daily Wire Backstage is one you really don't want to miss. Ben Shapiro,
00:00:03.680 Jeremy Boring, Michael Knowles, Andrew Klavan, and myself talk about Joe Biden,
00:00:07.740 the conflict between Israel and Hamas, but the real treat is hearing me dominate the
00:00:12.760 conversation and win the debate about aliens. Trust me, you're going to love it. Thanks for
00:00:17.600 listening. Nobody? Welcome to the Daily Wire Backstage. The mask is off. I'm Jeremy Boring,
00:00:25.440 known as the God King, lowercase g, lowercase k, and we are glad you've tuned in. Can Biden's
00:00:30.640 daily regimen of Gatorade, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, and Flintstone vitamins really keep
00:00:34.920 him in the tip-top cognitive shape we've come to expect? Is there a certain number of rockets fired
00:00:39.400 by Hamas at Israeli citizens that would actually convince the left that they're on the, quote,
00:00:43.140 wrong side of history because clearly 3,500 isn't the number? And when the UFOs playing peekaboo with
00:00:49.720 our military do finally land, will John Senna apologize to our alien overlords for Hollywood's
00:00:54.680 shame that is The Last Jedi, Battlefield Earth, and Howard the Duck, let's hope he does
00:00:58.940 the right thing in whatever language we all end up speaking. Roll intro graphic.
00:01:18.280 Is there anything more shameful than that John Senna video apologizing in Mandarin for calling the
00:01:24.220 country of Taiwan? Wait, wait, wait. I want to say something about this. It's an actual Mao
00:01:28.480 struggle session. You know, I want to say something about this. Everybody, it's fun to blame him,
00:01:32.720 but it's Universal. It's Universal Studios. No, I blame him. No, you blame Universal Studios. He's
00:01:37.600 not doing that on his own, and Universal Studios is insisting on that because they made more money
00:01:41.480 off this new Fast and Furious thing in China than they're going to make here. That's his fault for
00:01:46.760 going along with it, though. That's right. Universal can tell him to do that. He did it. But he's just a big
00:01:51.660 face, you know, and he's fun to make fun of. And I'm not saying he's not to blame. I'm not saying
00:01:55.100 we shouldn't make fun of him. I'm just saying that we should understand that this is when those
00:01:59.060 Hollywood people get up and they make speeches about how evil we are for voting for Donald Trump
00:02:03.400 when they do all this stuff, they cut scenes of gay love out of movies for different countries.
00:02:09.720 You heard it here. Andrew Klavan does not think John Senna did the wrong thing.
00:02:13.160 The Daily Wire backstage is sponsored by ExpressVPN. For peace of mind whenever you go online, visit
00:02:19.440 expressvpn.com slash backstage. Joining me with all the correct opinions, Andrew, Ben Shapiro,
00:02:27.340 Anna Klavan, Matt Walsh, and Michael Knowles. We are so glad that you're joining us tonight,
00:02:32.540 and we want to take just a quick moment to say, if you want to get your question in, head on over to
00:02:36.860 thedailywire.com and become a member. We take questions from our audience, particularly from
00:02:42.640 our members when we do this show, because they are the reason we are able to do the show in the
00:02:46.480 first place to get access to the box where you can submit your questions. Go become a member,
00:02:50.240 dailywire.com slash subscribe. You can even get 20% off your membership and get automatically
00:02:55.680 entered to win a trip to our studio to meet Candace Owens and the rest of us. All you have to do
00:03:02.660 is use the code VIP. This is the last week you can enter to win, so hurry up before the opportunity
00:03:08.400 slips sliding away. Dailywire.com slash subscribe. This thing's still going. I'm done. That's the
00:03:14.380 entire promo. You heard it here. You heard it here first. Code VIP, and Andrew Klavan thinks that
00:03:21.120 John Cena did this. Basically the whole show. Does he have a deal with China too? Does he have a deal
00:03:26.600 that we sell out? You know, this is Hollywood. It's a whole industry. Of course. Wait,
00:03:32.100 Hollywood are whores? What's that? Hollywood are whores. Wow. You're talking about Hollywood who
00:03:37.640 took the actual remake of Red Dawn, and instead of it being the Chinese, a global superpower.
00:03:43.860 Took the Taiwan patch off Tom Cruise. I mean, come on. And it is unbelievable. It's unbelievable
00:03:49.380 that they're making speeches to us while supporting these communist jackbooted oppressors who are
00:03:55.220 literally putting people in concentration camp. I'll do one better. It is the fault of Hollywood that
00:03:59.260 they've decided. There are two things. One is doing business with China. The second is overtly
00:04:03.440 kowtowing to China. They're not the same thing, right? Doing business with China, but saying that
00:04:07.420 China is an authoritarian garbage state, which it is, I really don't see a huge problem.
00:04:12.000 Well, we all do business with China because we live in a world like a lot of people like to complain
00:04:15.960 sometimes that our leftist here stumblers are made in China. And I always think, are you writing this
00:04:22.360 hateful comment to me on your iPhone? Or on your laptop, which was made in China? Or on your
00:04:28.380 desktop computer, which was made in China? So my broader point is that if you really want to get
00:04:31.700 to the root of the problem here, the root of the problem is that the West made the fundamental
00:04:38.060 miscalculation that if it could get China to engage in market transactions, this would moderate China.
00:04:44.560 And instead, it just made itself dependent on China via market transactions. And what should
00:04:48.240 happen right now and what should have always happened is that the West should be economically
00:04:51.280 isolating China. And that has to be an act of collective action because you can't have American
00:04:55.160 products saying, OK, American manufacturers can't make in China, but we'll still import products from
00:04:59.020 other manufacturers who are making in China and then undercutting them by 20 percent on the price.
00:05:02.520 That's not going to work. There has to be an actual move by the government to prevent people
00:05:06.460 from doing business in China. If you actually want to hamstring the Chinese government.
00:05:10.180 Absolutely. In fairness, I don't think that it was a bad experiment. I don't think it was a bad
00:05:14.360 notion that opening up China economically could have led to liberalization.
00:05:18.520 It just didn't work out.
00:05:19.520 It just didn't work out.
00:05:20.080 You know, Joe Biden. So we're probably not going to get much of this anytime soon because Joe Biden
00:05:24.980 very famously, I think it was only about five years ago, said, a rising China is good for
00:05:30.320 everybody and a rising China will lead to prosperity. And it just didn't happen. That was the argument
00:05:35.620 for letting him into the world trade.
00:05:35.980 How much money did his son make for his country?
00:05:37.540 I know. He waited for the check to clear before that happened. But that was the argument for letting
00:05:41.300 China into the World Trade Organization. And what did China do? They started immediately. They start
00:05:45.380 cheating. They start undercutting us. And they obviously don't change the government.
00:05:48.420 But it's also the argument Obama used in Iran. It's always the wrong argument that if we let
00:05:53.460 these people into the community of nations, they will act as if they're part of the community of
00:05:57.140 nations, as if they're not grownups with a philosophy of their own. They have a philosophy
00:06:01.340 that philosophy is what we're fighting. We're not fighting Chinese people. You know, we're fighting
00:06:05.200 the philosophy.
00:06:05.600 I guess what I would say, though, is that sometimes when I think about FDR, just for example,
00:06:09.160 and obviously I disagree with almost every piece of FDR's domestic, in particular,
00:06:13.320 domestic policy is precedent. But I have a little bit of sympathy. I have a little bit of sympathy for
00:06:18.240 like very early 20th century communists as well.
00:06:22.980 Me too. Yeah, so do I.
00:06:24.000 They didn't know.
00:06:25.100 That's right.
00:06:25.680 I have absolutely no sympathy for modern day communists because you have 100 years of
00:06:30.700 oppression and mass murder that you can look immediately to. And so we know that a lot
00:06:35.840 of those ideas are bad. I'm not sure at the time that Nixon or Kissinger were opening up.
00:06:39.220 There are also real politic concerns. I mean, part of the argument was that opening China would
00:06:43.880 make China more moderate. But the other part of it was take China off the table so they're not
00:06:46.840 an ally to Russia. Right. That was that was really the real policy concern involved in the opening
00:06:50.880 of China. But the issue now is how do we shut down China? Because China is indeed an aggressive
00:06:56.800 authoritarian enemy of the United States that is pursuing global power, threatening Taiwan.
00:07:01.580 They just subjected the free state of Hong Kong and nobody cared to complete tyranny over the course
00:07:05.220 of two years.
00:07:05.980 Unbelievable.
00:07:06.340 So they just took it right over. It's the first reversal, total reversal for a free country since
00:07:10.540 the end of the Cold War. It's an amazing, amazing thing. The world just did not give any craps
00:07:14.600 at all. That's not fair. The NBA cared.
00:07:18.480 And so the real problem I see right now is now what's what's amazing right now is that now you
00:07:23.800 have a unique opportunity for the West to mobilize in opposition to China. Why? Well, because we now
00:07:28.180 have fairly good information that this this Wuhan virus probably started in the lab in Wuhan,
00:07:33.880 right?
00:07:34.140 Whoa, whoa, whoa.
00:07:34.700 I want to know, are we going to get a video of Ben Shapiro saying,
00:07:38.860 yeah, start speaking Mandarin to apologize for all of this. But the reality that, you know,
00:07:47.660 this story was cudgeled to death for a year, right? If you if you said this in social media,
00:07:52.400 they would literally take you off of Twitter and off of Facebook because it was a conspiracy
00:07:55.620 theory. It was fact check false by PolitiFact. And they just had to reverse the fact check
00:07:59.220 because PolitiFact, of course, is a garbage partisan organization designed only to shut down
00:08:02.680 conservative outlets.
00:08:03.400 Yeah, like all fact checkers.
00:08:05.220 Pretty much. But like this is such an opportunity for the United States and for the rest of the
00:08:10.100 world to say, OK, so China did two things, both of which are unbelievably egregious and led to the
00:08:14.260 deaths of millions of people. Right. Number one, this thing in all likelihood began through a gain
00:08:19.560 of function research failure at a at a Chinese laboratory. And it was allowed to escape the lab
00:08:24.240 in November 2019, which brings you to the much bigger thing because mistakes get made.
00:08:28.280 The much bigger thing is that they then hid this all the way until the end of January.
00:08:32.140 Yeah. Right. So to be fair, once the DNA sequencing on COVID-19 was released within one
00:08:39.420 weekend, the scientific community had created the vaccine one weekend. By the end of the weekend,
00:08:43.940 the mRNA vaccine sequencing was done. Literally, they released it at the beginning of the weekend.
00:08:48.380 By the following Sunday, everybody had sequenced the mRNA vaccine. And then it took all the way
00:08:52.960 until November to get it ready for market. OK, although if you'd cut out all the middlemen and
00:08:56.500 you really accelerated, maybe you're ready by September, October.
00:08:59.480 And if there hadn't been a presidential election for sure by October, 100 percent. But if this
00:09:03.700 is started in November, say you use the exact same timeline and they release the DNA sequencing on
00:09:08.100 COVID-19 in November or December and you push the entire timeline up by two months, how many lives
00:09:13.940 get saved? That last wave happened in September, October, November. It killed like 200,000 people.
00:09:18.420 I also have a question of this gain of function research that they claim makes it easier to study
00:09:23.440 these viruses. But it also essentially weaponizes the virus. I mean, do we know what the Wuhan lab is
00:09:30.240 not sitting around making viruses for germ warfare? I mean, I think we probably have known for decades.
00:09:35.500 That's what they're doing. Right. We in the United States have known. Except for Anthony Fauci.
00:09:40.920 But I had a mask on and I was facing the wall. And now when Fauci is being caught, you know,
00:09:44.420 Rand Paul is now accusing him of perjuring himself because Anthony Fauci said the United States has not
00:09:49.640 in any way funded gain of function research that was done in Wuhan. And Anthony Fauci very cleverly
00:09:54.840 denied. And he said, we did not send any money to Wuhan for gain of function research, but we did
00:09:59.760 fund gain of function research that was done in cooperation with Wuhan. Exactly. I'm just one thing
00:10:04.360 I'm wondering through all this is, first of all, what is gain of function research? But secondly,
00:10:09.500 when you when you look at the fact that for a year we weren't allowed to talk about the lab in Wuhan
00:10:16.720 and now all of a sudden we can. I think the assumption among a lot of conservatives is that
00:10:20.260 well, it's the media was covering for China. I think that's part of it. But I also think
00:10:24.100 a bigger part of it is just that it was a common sense
00:10:27.840 conclusion that anyone could draw. Once you realize this came from Wuhan, they have this
00:10:33.040 lab there. Gee, that's a coincidence.
00:10:35.920 Right. And there are so many common sense judgments that people have been making for a year that the
00:10:41.520 media said, no, no, no. Hey, wait. Hold on a second. Wait for us to tell you you're allowed to draw that
00:10:45.820 conclusion. Right. Then you can. So now, yeah, you're allowed to talk about it. But just because
00:10:49.740 they don't want regular people to go off on their own thinking about things. And the Washington Post
00:10:53.700 is as much as said we denied it because Trump said it. Right. They said, well, Margaret and Margaret
00:10:58.980 Haberman, Maggie Haberman. She said she said that on national TV. She said, well, because Trump was
00:11:03.720 talking about it, obviously we couldn't take it seriously. And it's like, well, actually, that would
00:11:06.940 mean that you should take some of those New York Times reporters and maybe, you know, go research this sort
00:11:11.120 of thing. You don't have to take the president at face value. You could go check. But the thing
00:11:16.060 that's truly amazing is that why isn't the Biden administration taking this opportunity? I mean,
00:11:20.740 literally half a million people died in the United States of COVID-19. Like, why isn't he taking the
00:11:25.500 opportunity to say, OK, now is the time for us to crack down on China? By the way, there's wide
00:11:28.780 bipartisan approval for this. If you look in the polling on whether Democrats and Republicans are kind of
00:11:32.940 there's like the only thing we agree on is that China is an actual threat and that China screwed
00:11:37.120 the pooch on COVID. And the fact that Biden instead is saying, well, you know, let's let the WHO do
00:11:43.040 their investigation and we don't need an independent investor. We don't need to put any pressure like
00:11:46.940 this is that we were told if you remember what Michael said, because Biden believes that a rising
00:11:53.020 China is right. He still holds his view. They're not bad people, folks. They're not bad people. It's not
00:11:57.360 even just that Biden's not taking this seriously. He's impeding the investigation. There was a State
00:12:02.760 Department investigation launched under the Trump administration. And Blinken, the new
00:12:06.820 secretary of state, shut it down when he got into office. Well, this is a hallmark of their entire
00:12:10.560 foreign policy, right, which is never let the facts get in the way of your ideology.
00:12:13.940 But it's also also the racial stuff just makes it impossible, I think, for modern day Democrats.
00:12:18.920 That's why we didn't we've heard some people in the media saying they deleted some of the tweets,
00:12:22.760 but saying that, of course, it's racist. They were saying that for a year, but some are still saying
00:12:26.440 it's racist. Right. Just just today. So so the fact that Chinese people are not white is a big
00:12:33.220 political problem for for Joe Biden and the Democrats. I think in some ways it's as simple
00:12:37.760 as that, that, you know, this came from a place where these are not white people. And so this is
00:12:41.680 getting very offensive. I was in Washington's D.C.'s Chinatown the other day, and there's a big
00:12:46.680 lit poster, electric poster telling us not to hate Asian people. I'm beginning to be offended by
00:12:52.780 these signs telling me not to hate people. You know, it's like, first of all, screw you. Who the hell
00:12:57.800 are you to tell me? I'll hate whoever I want. No, but I will hate whoever I want. And why what
00:13:03.320 makes them think this country that has been so welcoming to everybody has been so welcoming to
00:13:08.100 everybody needs a lecture from corporate toadies who are doing business with the Chinese and doing
00:13:12.940 business to the point where they won't criticize them. Why? Why are they lecturing me? Anybody who
00:13:17.360 can afford that sign shouldn't be lecturing me. Put a sign about how we shouldn't hate Asian
00:13:20.720 people up at the Harvard admittance. Right, right. That's where that belongs. There's a question
00:13:24.960 from a dailywire.com subscriber for the group. If the Wuhan virus was man-made, how should the U.S.
00:13:31.460 respond? Not how will they, which is not at all. How should they respond? Well, I mean, the really,
00:13:36.500 the big question isn't whether it was man-made. It was whether the leak was the responsibility of
00:13:41.520 the lab and whether they then covered that up for months, right? Because without the cover-up,
00:13:45.660 even there you would understand, okay, this is the stand, right? Something escapes a military facility.
00:13:49.400 It's not the first time this sort of thing has happened before, actually. But once it starts
00:13:53.160 getting covered up, that's the real moral responsibility because they knew for months,
00:13:56.300 for sure, 100 percent that this thing was transmitting human to human. They were lying
00:14:00.560 about their casualty statistics. They knew 30,000 people probably died in Wuhan. They said 3,000
00:14:05.400 people died in Wuhan. What should the punishment be? The punishment should be massive economic
00:14:09.980 sanctions against any company that is based in China. I mean, that should be like take on the
00:14:15.340 entire economic regime of the Chinese. What's amazing to me is that the Biden administration is
00:14:20.260 willing to sacrifice the American economy so that we can blow out the dollar by borrowing
00:14:24.300 money from China, essentially. But if you are actually going to make economic sacrifices,
00:14:28.860 you should do so for perhaps the higher purpose of getting rid of the authoritarian regime in China,
00:14:33.860 which is threatening all of its neighbors and threatening the freedom of the United States
00:14:38.020 eventually because we can lose this thing by default. That's the part that I'm afraid of.
00:14:41.460 You know, this is why I don't think it's the worst idea in the world for there to be a union of
00:14:45.620 democracies. You know, instead of a United Nations, which I think we should walk out of tomorrow,
00:14:50.400 if not yesterday, I think this should be a union of actual free peoples that they can stand together
00:14:55.500 against threats like this. You know, one of the things I thought Trump did that was was reckless
00:15:00.580 was when he got rid of that Asian, you know, the United States partnership because we do need to act
00:15:05.760 together against this. He had problems with it, but this was a big mistake. He should. Yeah. TPP was
00:15:09.800 legitimate problems to it. But I agree. There are certainly problems with the TPP. It gave
00:15:14.720 too much power to international institutions, but it should have been corrected in the same way that
00:15:18.820 Trump tried to correct NAFTA, right? I do not think it would be a terrible thing to have an
00:15:23.060 international union of democracies. I think this is this is the thing we keep talking about globalism
00:15:27.300 as if it's somehow going to go away. It's a global world. It's a global world. I can pick up my take
00:15:32.300 the phone out of my pocket and call Afghanistan and and get put directly through. It's a global world.
00:15:37.360 We need to unite the people who actually believe that the people should rule. But is the issue here that we
00:15:42.020 want instant regime change in China or is the issue we want to contain China and stop them from
00:15:48.920 aggressing on Taiwan, aggressing in Hong Kong, aggressing on our interests in the South China
00:15:53.000 Sea, aggressing on us economically? We have to cut off their leverage. Right now,
00:15:57.140 they have way too much leverage over America's ability to operate, whether it is through the
00:16:00.960 number of American treasuries they hold or whether it is over the number of American businesses who are
00:16:06.400 doing serious business. The property they steal. Yes, I do want a regime change in China. But if you're
00:16:11.000 asking me if I want some sort of military regime change or some sort of instantaneous regime
00:16:16.000 change, no. But I think that if you're a if you love the idea of human freedom, then your long term
00:16:22.020 objective would be to see China liberated from this mess that they've made or this. Yeah. As long as it's
00:16:28.020 not going to cost me five dollars more for my iPhone. Forget the whole thing. And the thing is that we have
00:16:32.940 the model of this, right? The United States did not engage in large scale trade with the Soviet Union in
00:16:37.900 the middle of the Cold War. The United States basically cut them off at the knees economically.
00:16:41.040 And then we outcompeted them because their system was not capable of functioning. I do want to push
00:16:44.660 back on that, though, because I think what you just said reinforces a bad idea out there that
00:16:48.520 people have, even on the right, about how economics work. Your iPhone is not five dollars cheaper because
00:16:54.100 it's manufactured in China. Your iPhone exists at all because it's manufactured in China. Yeah, that's true,
00:17:00.260 but that shouldn't be true. I agree that it shouldn't be true, but it is true because it isn't just that it's
00:17:04.980 cheaper in China. It's that in America you cannot manufacture at the rate of innovation because of
00:17:13.500 things like environmental regulations, because of all of the just all of the rules that impede trade
00:17:20.800 the precious the precious minerals that they use to make this stuff. We have those available and you
00:17:26.160 can't get out of here. And this is but this is something that needs to be addressed that actually
00:17:30.080 when you're saving the environment, which is not in any trouble, really, which is not not a crisis
00:17:34.800 at all. You are enslaving people and you're making it easier to enslave. Well, we've outsourced all
00:17:38.880 of our pollution at the world countries, right? Yeah, I was I my my I was in the car recently with my
00:17:44.080 son. He was peppering me with all these questions about how different things are made. And of course,
00:17:48.080 you know, as a parent, you realize how stupid you are. I can't answer most of them. But at one point
00:17:51.660 he asked me, how long did it take to build the Empire State Building, which was built 90 years ago or so.
00:17:56.820 And so I thought, you know, OK, maybe 10 years or something like six days. Yeah, I looked at and I
00:18:02.180 looked it up. And so I said, OK, let's look it up. And it was built in a year. Yeah. And of course,
00:18:07.700 you you try to build the Empire State Building today. I mean, look at the at the building that
00:18:11.640 replaced the World Trade Center. It took them it took them 15 years to even get even get started.
00:18:14.820 I've been doing the big dig in Boston since Ted Kennedy was wandering around leaving women in rivers.
00:18:19.620 Right. And that's that's back when you wanted to build a building. You just built the building.
00:18:22.720 But now it would take five years to even get the permits to even start. So right.
00:18:26.200 What you need to do while you're trying to figure out, well, if everything is going terribly,
00:18:30.740 what what should I do? What can I do, Jeremy? You can go to Policy Genius and you need to go to
00:18:35.120 Policy Genius. We laugh. I like to have fun with the ad reads. But you have a responsibility to the
00:18:40.040 people in your life. What will happen if you are gone and unable to care for them? The answer is you
00:18:45.180 need a life insurance policy like all other kinds of insurance. You need to be a responsible adult
00:18:48.960 and make sure that you are insured against the worst possible outcomes. Policy Genius makes it
00:18:53.340 easy to compare quotes from over a dozen top insurers all in one place. Why compare? Because
00:18:58.620 comparing lets you save. You can save 50 percent or more on life insurance by comparing quotes at
00:19:03.560 Policy Genius. The licensed experts at Policy Genius work for you, not the insurance companies,
00:19:08.180 so you can trust them to help navigate every step of the shopping and buying process. That kind of
00:19:12.800 service has earned Policy Genius a five star rating across thousands of reviews on Trustpilot and on
00:19:18.080 Google. And from me, I've told you guys before, I've gotten three life insurance policies on
00:19:23.160 policygenius.com. One for myself to provide for my wife and for my child in the event of my,
00:19:29.100 I shouldn't say the unlikely event, it's the very likely event of my untimely demise. One on my wife,
00:19:34.900 because, you know, she also has responsibilities to our child. And the most important one is the one
00:19:39.660 that I carry on Ben Shapiro. Head to policygenius.com. Get started right now. Policy Genius,
00:19:46.020 when it comes to insurance, it's nice to get it right. It's even more nice to do the right
00:19:50.240 thing. Policygenius.com. Okay. You forgot the one you took out on Knowles because of the murder
00:19:54.680 plot. Wait, hold on a second. That can be evidence. The problem with getting a life insurance policy
00:20:01.620 that would give me the kind of confidence it would take to murder Knowles is that he would have to have
00:20:06.660 a medical exam first. And there's not even policygenius.com. No, he would be gone. Could never deal with all
00:20:15.100 of this. It's too healthy. China bad. Another thing going on in the world that's been bad since
00:20:20.680 the last time we were together is this horrible conflict going on in the Middle East. Hamas
00:20:25.380 deciding to fire 3,500 rockets indiscriminately into Israel and Israel responding the way that any
00:20:33.580 first world power would, which is with very expensive, very technological, very directed,
00:20:39.860 but very lethal force. And to see the reaction both in the news media and in the left politics in this
00:20:49.920 country has just been unbelievable. I want to talk about it for a little bit. You know, someone this
00:20:55.040 week, our very own Candace Owens made this great point. She said, you know, there are people on the
00:21:01.300 left who are sending me pictures of dead Palestinians, children even saying, you know, if you don't speak
00:21:06.120 out against this, then you don't deserve to have your platform. And there are people on the right
00:21:09.740 who are saying, you know, if you don't stand up for Israel, you don't deserve to have a platform.
00:21:13.020 And Candace rightly said, we can't all be experts on everything all the time. She said, I'm reading
00:21:18.500 books about this. I'm trying to get educated. She has a history of doing this on other issues in the
00:21:22.220 past where she doesn't want to speak out until she really knows. And I appreciate that. At the same
00:21:27.080 time, I don't think that one has to be an expert to understand the immorality of firing rockets
00:21:34.440 indiscriminately into civilian areas. It seems to me that what the left has been saying during this
00:21:40.160 conflict is essentially because Israel is better at war than the Palestinians, Israel is evil, which
00:21:49.220 A, makes me understand why we do so badly in wars in this country. If 50% of Americans actually think
00:21:54.980 that the purpose of war is equal destruction. Well, no, we need equity. It's equity in warfare is
00:22:01.660 equitable outcome, equitable outcome in warfare. Um, but essentially they're saying Israel would
00:22:07.680 be a lot better if more Jews died in these conflicts. Well, Israel is also the West and
00:22:11.380 they, they seriously hate the West. It is, it is amazing to me. I read on the air Hamas's charter,
00:22:18.260 which is just a series of anti-Jewish filth. They blame them for the French revolution. I'm not
00:22:25.880 making this up. I wish I were making this up. They blame Jews for the French revolution. They blame
00:22:29.580 Jews for world war one. They blame Jews for world war two, their clever plan to exterminate
00:22:33.960 themselves in order to take over the world. I don't know what that was about, but you know,
00:22:37.780 this is the kind of stuff. They quote the Hadiths about Jews hiding behind rocks and trees and Muslims
00:22:42.080 being called to kill them. It is everything, everything, but the blood libel is in it, but I'm
00:22:45.840 sure they would believe in the blood libel too. Surely, surely, if somebody tells you, you know,
00:22:51.260 my philosophy is that I believe Jews should be exterminated because of this. We should believe them.
00:22:55.660 We should believe that this is a, a genocidal terrorist movement that was elected, was duly
00:23:02.320 elected by the Palestinian people somewhere along the line that has to be addressed. And somewhere
00:23:06.980 along the line has to be addressed that the Jewish state is the freest, uh, most multicultural,
00:23:12.720 most successful state in the Middle East and should be imitated. The thing that drives me about this,
00:23:17.680 and it goes back to what you were saying, it goes back to what you were saying about no, uh,
00:23:21.300 no policy result is going to change their philosophy. Right. The, the Iranian deal by Obama,
00:23:29.220 one of the great disasters of his administration was overturned by Donald Trump and he instituted
00:23:34.340 the first actual advance in Middle East peace that I have seen in my lifetime, which now goes
00:23:39.500 back to 1776. Right. So this is the first time I ever saw anybody do anything. Just a little bit of
00:23:44.100 a change in, in the strategy of going into the Middle East. They have gone directly back to the
00:23:49.660 Iranian deal. I mean, to, and when you bring this terrorist state, the Iran, Iran is a terrorist
00:23:54.900 state. When you bring it back into the center of power in the Middle East, you encourage all the
00:23:59.320 bad actors to climb on board. They're the ones who are funding Hamas. They're the ones who are sending
00:24:03.040 them the missiles. It is, it's just incredible to me that no fact can penetrate their ideology.
00:24:08.700 To give it a two minute synopsis for people who don't know the modern origins of this particular
00:24:12.740 conflict. First of all, do not go back to the Exodus. I definitely don't. I have a video coming out
00:24:17.480 that's like a full hour going all the way back to the Exodus, but no joke. But the, but the, the,
00:24:22.780 what, what Drew says about Hamas is not only correct. The fact is that what just happened
00:24:26.360 over the past few months, what, what actually drove this, what started this is that in late April,
00:24:30.480 Mahmoud Abbas is the head of the Palestinian authority. He's currently in the 16th year of
00:24:33.900 a four year elected term because the last election in the Palestinian authority was held in 2005.
00:24:39.720 So he's now, you know, 85 or 15 days, kind of like 15 days to slow the spread. Exactly.
00:24:44.800 Exactly. So he, he was elected. So he, he won in the West bank in very contentious circumstances.
00:24:50.440 Then Hamas won the next year in the Gaza strip. So he called another election because the Biden
00:24:54.580 administration said, we would love to see you guys do an election. So he called an election
00:24:57.700 and then he looked at the polling and he realized he was going to lose to Hamas because Hamas right
00:25:01.180 now rules the Gaza strip and they're at war, literal war, like people killing each other
00:25:04.300 with the Palestinian authority and Islamic Jihad. So he called these elections and then he canceled
00:25:08.600 the elections in late April. He said, oh, you know what? Bad idea. No more elections. And so in order
00:25:12.880 to distract Palestinians from the fact that he had just canceled an election, it would have allowed
00:25:16.460 him to be replaced in power. He decided to launch essentially a terror campaign against Israel.
00:25:21.300 He started posting videos on Fatah TV about how it was good to stab Jews. He started encouraging
00:25:26.100 Fatah members to go up to the Temple Mount and fling rocks and projectiles at Israeli police to start a
00:25:30.940 conflagration on the Temple Mount that could then be treated as though it was a mutual conflict on a
00:25:35.940 Temple Mount. And he started propagandizing about what was happening in Sheikh Jarrah, which is a suburb of
00:25:39.580 Jerusalem. There's a 50 year, literally 50 year legal case that has been winding its way through
00:25:44.300 the courts about, I kid you not, four houses. These four houses were basically owned by Jews
00:25:49.020 before 1948. Jordan won this territory between 48 and 67. They handed deeds over to a bunch of Arabs
00:25:54.340 in that area. Israel respected the deeds that were handed over, but there were four houses where
00:25:58.320 Jordan hadn't handed over deeds. So the Jews came back in 67 after they won and they said, okay,
00:26:03.520 well now these houses, we have the title, it's our house. The courts came up with the solution. You guys pay
00:26:07.420 rent and you get to stay. The Palestinians didn't pay rent for 50 years. And so finally the Jews
00:26:11.640 were like, well, you didn't pay rent, so we're evicting you. That was the eviction crisis.
00:26:15.100 Four houses in Sheikh Jarrah. Okay. There are 1.9 million Israeli Arabs living in the state of
00:26:19.860 Israel. So when people talk about ethnic cleansing or moving people out, there are 1.9 million Arabs
00:26:24.460 living in Israel. There are zero Jews living in Gaza. There are zero Jews living under the
00:26:27.980 Palestinian authority. There's only one apartheid regime in this particular conflict and it is not Israel
00:26:32.440 by any stretch of the imagination. Hamas had to get in on the business. Once Fatah started
00:26:36.140 the conflict in order to generate more publicity for themselves, Hamas couldn't be left out. Now
00:26:39.740 it's a party, right? So they start firing rockets at Israel in order to not be left out and to outflank
00:26:44.240 Fatah. And you can see, by the way, all of this play out after the ceasefire was signed. There's
00:26:48.320 this big, the riots on the Temple Mount have continued. In Al-Aqsa Mosque, you have thousands
00:26:52.380 of Muslims who have gathered and they actually shouted out the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, who's a Fatah
00:26:57.200 member, a member of Mahmoud Abbas's party. They shouted him out shouting, we are Mohammed Dayif's men,
00:27:01.680 meaning Mohammed Dayif is the spiritual leader of Hamas. We are with Hamas.
00:27:05.320 So all of this is basically just an internal Palestinian conflict that was then projected
00:27:09.280 outward at the Israelis. And the Israelis were like, okay, listen, thank God for Iron Dome. We
00:27:13.160 can prevent 90% of these projectiles from hitting Israelis, but we're going to have to take out like
00:27:18.360 a bunch of your stuff. When we say that any state did what Israel would have done, that's not true.
00:27:23.080 Any state that was hit with 4,500 rockets in the middle of, for example, its capital city or Tel Aviv
00:27:27.960 or Washington DC or New York, let me put this, of a thousand rockets at San Diego, which is not a top 10
00:27:32.840 American city in terms of population. The American flag would be flying in Mexico City by tomorrow
00:27:37.100 morning. And we all know this.
00:27:38.760 I also wonder from just the perspective of the American interest, I think there are plenty of good moral
00:27:43.960 arguments to be made about the problem itself in Israel and Palestinian Arabs. But just from the
00:27:49.200 American interest, I'm confused as to how it would serve the American interest to back Hamas or to back the
00:27:56.300 national pretensions of a people that would elect Hamas. When people say Hamas doesn't represent
00:28:00.680 the Palestinians, Hamas does in fact represent the Palestinians. Hamas won an election. They're
00:28:04.840 about to win another. Yeah. So I just don't understand. I suppose the argument would be that
00:28:09.780 Israel, you know, relatively young nation, that's the big problem. And so we've got to give more power
00:28:15.580 to the Palestinian Arabs who are calling for, by the way, from the river to the sea, Palestine to be
00:28:20.460 free. So they're calling for the eradication of Israel. Does anyone believe that that is a tenable?
00:28:24.460 Taking the moral arguments aside, that that's a tenable thing? You're going to wipe out a nuclear
00:28:28.960 power that the world would tolerate that? That doesn't seem like such a good idea. So now we're
00:28:32.620 going to back Hamas? You know what's heartbreaking about this? When I was a kid, we were really not
00:28:37.140 that far from the Holocaust. And I used to call us, I actually wrote this, that we were holiday Jews.
00:28:43.240 We were taking a holiday from a history, a relentless history of anti-Semitism. I mean,
00:28:48.420 the nonstop hatred of the Jewish people that has really been going on before the year dot,
00:28:53.700 as they say in England, it's been going on forever. We have this holiday and the holiday's
00:28:58.060 over and it's heartbreaking. It is heartbreaking to see Jewish, ordinary Jewish people attacked on
00:29:03.880 the street and no one saved. As with all racism in America, we all lived in this beautiful period
00:29:09.600 where it wasn't happening and now it's back. I do want to pick up though briefly on what Michael
00:29:13.520 is bringing up because there are a lot of voices on the right today that call into question our
00:29:19.800 relationship with Israel. Some, some very ugly voices. I think it's important to say that when
00:29:24.080 we, I'm very critical of the America first movement. There are, there are two distinct
00:29:28.540 America first movements. Yeah, there's Lindbergh's. Well, there's, there's Trump who uses America first
00:29:33.680 to mean that America must put America's interest ahead of other interests. And then there's the
00:29:38.780 America first movement, uh, which is online jolly, uh, right-wing trolls who actually are racist
00:29:47.420 and actually do despise the state of Israel and actually do want an American, uh, a white ethno
00:29:51.920 state in this country. It's unfortunate because they're sophisticated online trolls that they've
00:29:56.600 used the language of Donald Trump's, Hey, wouldn't it just be nice if we put America's interest ahead
00:30:01.140 of, uh, other interests, but they have. And so when I'm critical of America first, I'm not being
00:30:05.600 critical of Donald Trump. I'm being critical of the people. First of all, Donald Trump was the
00:30:08.780 most pro-Israel president. But you do have this America first movement, this internet America
00:30:15.280 first movement, uh, but, but very, very hostile to Israel. And they, they say a lot of things,
00:30:21.220 you know, they, they're angry about the bombing of the USS Liberty, uh, in 1967. I used to get
00:30:28.140 this, people ask me that question. They're like, really? Yeah. They, they apparently haven't heard
00:30:32.560 that, you know, England burned the actual white house during the war of 1812. Why can't Israel be
00:30:38.640 allies don't ever get mad at each other? Anyway. Uh, but I, but I sort of think like,
00:30:42.840 you're right. There's this distinction and this, as with all these terms, they're used in lots of
00:30:47.020 different ways, but let's, let's take it totally seriously for a second. Let's say this is a,
00:30:51.000 just from the American interest point of view, this is where I'm going. Right.
00:30:53.980 The claim, I guess, is that it is in the American interest to ditch Israel, that we've got a sort of
00:31:01.760 Israel first foreign policy. And, you know, like so many of these online movements, first of all,
00:31:06.780 you got to remember, a lot of these guys are very, very young. A lot of them are pushed to the
00:31:11.560 fringes. A lot of them are told you're evil because you're a white person or you're a man
00:31:14.920 or whatever. So like I was young once, I remember the sort of crazy, extreme things, 18 year olds
00:31:20.520 say, but, but what does that mean? I mean, I just, just because you're reacting, it's like,
00:31:27.700 you know, when we're told that men are evil, take Israel out of our present, we're told men are evil.
00:31:31.680 One way that men react when they're 18 years old and they're just so sick and tired of this
00:31:36.400 is they become sort of performatively sexist or chauvinist or misogynistic or whatever.
00:31:41.440 That's not the answer, right? That's just sort of the flip side of the coin. So I think,
00:31:44.540 sure, if someone, if, if these guys are saying where we've been told our whole lives that Israel
00:31:50.140 is the greatest ally of the United States ever in the history of the world. And now we found out
00:31:53.760 it's only like a fine ally, but it's not like the greatest one ever. I think, well, okay. So your
00:31:58.420 answer is to back Hamas? What are you talking about?
00:32:00.680 I think just to take up a little bit for, for, for them, not really, but, um, I think obviously
00:32:07.320 from, from a moral standpoint, morally, it's clear. And all you have to do is apply like just
00:32:11.760 war theory to this. And, uh, you know, one thing in, in waging a just war is first of all,
00:32:16.220 there has to be a chance of success. And when you have Hamas just firing rockets randomly at
00:32:20.080 the civilian centers, nothing's going to happen from that, except that you kill a bunch of civilians
00:32:24.680 maybe, and then get destroyed yourself. So, right. But at the same time, I think one thing,
00:32:30.100 the people that you're talking about, one thing that, uh, annoys them is when they see,
00:32:38.600 I think, I don't remember who tweeted, someone tweeted something like, if you're an American
00:32:41.360 patriot, it means you're pro Israel or something like that. Um, this, this idea that like it is
00:32:47.020 your patriotic duty to have this particular feeling about another country, no matter what
00:32:52.060 the other country is, I don't care what country it is. Um, so that, that goes too far on that
00:32:55.960 side of it. And I think they're kind of reacting. It's kind of what you're saying. Yep.
00:32:58.240 But they're reacting to that. I do think, um, I do think that there is something patriotic
00:33:03.300 about supporting our allies because we form alliances because it's in our national interest
00:33:08.580 to form alliances and having formed those alliances. And, and if we're all operating in a kind of good
00:33:13.840 faith where those alliances are concerned, then there is a kind of patriotic. Yeah, but you don't
00:33:17.880 have a, you don't have a patriotic, you don't have a patriotic, you do not have a patriotic
00:33:21.980 duty to support any country that is not your own. Well, it's, I will say that, that I think
00:33:27.360 that what that statement is missing is the phrase at the end right now. Okay. So I don't think that
00:33:32.320 you have a patriotic duty to eternally support any other country because circumstances change the
00:33:36.620 country. I mean, how many times we've seen alliances change and people end up on the other
00:33:39.420 side of those alliances. But the, the idea that in a conflict between a democratic ally and an actual
00:33:45.420 terror group that it, that it doesn't connect to any sort of, we're not talking about nationalism
00:33:50.220 now, which is just attachment to country. We're talking about patriotism, which goes to underlying
00:33:53.240 principle that you have no duty at all to, to support a fellow democracy that is an ally in
00:33:59.900 its own battle for survival. That seems to me to, to raise some patriotism principles in the same way
00:34:05.300 that we raise patriotism principles to say that if Hitler were about to overrun Britain, people who
00:34:09.680 are saying, well, you know what, it doesn't implicate the United States at all or patriotism at all to
00:34:14.220 watch Hitler overrun Britain. And it seems like it kind of implicates patriotism to watch Hitler overrun
00:34:18.160 Britain. But you know, the other side of this is that no matter who does this, it helps the left,
00:34:22.120 whether the right does it or whether the left does it. It's the same, it's the same thing with blacks.
00:34:25.940 If, if the left so encourages black violence in cities that some white people start to say,
00:34:31.920 well, those blacks are being violent, that all helps the left. They want us fighting with each
00:34:35.600 other. They want us fighting with our fellow citizens. They want us to hate people who are
00:34:39.680 different than us. They want, and they don't care. They don't care if they inspire blacks to have
00:34:44.680 hostility against white people. But if that then inspires white people to have hostilities against
00:34:48.680 black, they don't care because we're fighting with each other instead of fighting with the people
00:34:52.480 who are usurping power from the people. And that's, that is all happening at the top. That's always
00:34:57.920 happening at the top.
00:34:58.780 I sort of am even kind of of your opinion, Matt, to, to give, give the critics here even more of,
00:35:08.360 of the benefit of the doubt, just to make the realpolitik argument, which is, you know, during
00:35:13.320 Trump, we were told that we had to back the Kurds. The Kurds are our greatest ally. The Kurds are the
00:35:17.860 most wonderful people in the world. And Turkey was aggressing against the Kurds. But this creates a
00:35:22.140 problem is Turkey has been a NATO ally for how many decades at this point? So now do we reflexively
00:35:27.280 back our ally Turkey in this battle with the Kurds? I don't know. That raised a lot of problems on the
00:35:31.920 right. So I understand there were nuances.
00:35:34.140 But we, but we should have, we are no longer allies of Turkey. And the fact that we, the fact
00:35:38.820 that we are unprepared to move with haste to, to address the changing realities that Ben refers to.
00:35:45.760 And this, and this context is completely different in the sense that we were never allies of Hamas.
00:35:50.220 There's no world in which we are allied with Hamas.
00:35:51.860 This is sort of my point is I just mean, you know, granting that, that people are just
00:35:56.480 rebelling in this very, I think, emotional and reactionary way against these sort of extreme
00:36:02.340 statements that we, you know, that's your patriotic duty to be an ally of Israel or something to just
00:36:06.180 say, look, in this case, we just should back Israel. Israel's the better.
00:36:11.700 I can understand the principled argument. I'll give people this. I can't even understand the
00:36:14.740 principled argument that the United States should just be hands off completely in terms of foreign
00:36:17.480 policy. I think it's wrong. But I think that, but I can understand the complete isolationist
00:36:21.300 argument. Why are we involved anywhere in the world, right? I think that it's an ignorant
00:36:24.820 argument that's based on a failure to understand the realities of the world, which is that vacuums
00:36:28.340 exist and that bad states fill them if we leave those vacuums open, which is the lesson of the
00:36:31.900 last century and a half. Yeah. But if, but I can at least understand that argument. What I cannot
00:36:36.300 understand is the situational application of that argument. Yes. Yeah. Right. Which is, okay, well,
00:36:41.360 we should be involved here and we should be involved there. But this particular one,
00:36:44.680 we should definitely not be involved in. And I have real objections to these Jews firing,
00:36:49.000 firing, you know, at Hamas batteries that are located in civilian areas to protect themselves.
00:36:54.120 I've, I've heard people this week say, you know, if Israel, you know, Israel might be our ally,
00:36:59.220 but why are we giving them military aid? We, you know, England is our ally and we don't give them
00:37:03.680 military aid. It's like, well, no, the last time England was in a war, not only did we give them
00:37:10.260 military aid, we gave them a significant percentage of our GDP. And then when things got bad enough,
00:37:15.080 we gave them hundreds of thousands of our sons. And then when it was over, we gave them the Marshall
00:37:19.540 plan and rebuilt their entire country. It's important to, I think with a conversation like
00:37:24.560 this to get really specific, because one of the, one of the issues here is that there are so many
00:37:29.840 things caught up in it. So we could talk about what's in America's interest to support Israel.
00:37:34.460 What's, what's, what's the morally, what the morality of it, but then also there are other
00:37:39.500 things that caught up in this. Like for example, evangelical conservatives tend to also believe
00:37:45.620 that it's our religious duty. We're biblically called to support Israel. And that, and that
00:37:50.640 brings in a whole other aspect of the conversation. And then you have people that kind of react against
00:37:54.500 that and are saying, well, no, we don't, you know, I think it's a misinterpretation of Christian
00:37:57.820 doctrine. And, you know, so I think we have to, you have to be really specific in this conversation.
00:38:02.380 Here's one place where I think that we should all be able to agree. And frankly, I think that
00:38:05.980 people of any level of good heart should be able to agree in a conflict between a thriving,
00:38:11.400 diverse democracy that upholds humanitarian values and an actual honest to God,
00:38:15.380 a genocidal terror group. That's not a moral choice. Whatever you think are the practical
00:38:19.560 applications as to whether the United States should be involved or should provide aid or any
00:38:23.800 of that sort of stuff on a moral level, the New York times is specifically saying that Israel is
00:38:27.700 in the wrong, that Israel should not be defending itself, right? You have them literally printing
00:38:31.240 op-eds from people who are activists for Hamas, downplaying the evils of Hamas. You have the
00:38:35.600 entire democratic party right now. By the way, that's how I know that it's morally right.
00:38:38.940 You have the entire democratic party right now, basically covering for the open
00:38:44.620 anti-Semitism of Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar, who spread blood libel. When they say that Israel
00:38:48.260 is targeting Palestinian children, that is just an abject lie. Israel has been participating in
00:38:52.520 those pinpointed attacks of any military I have ever seen, including the United States military.
00:38:56.540 They're dropping knock bombs.
00:38:58.640 Rashida Tlaib is saying this fight is not just in Israel. It is the fight against,
00:39:02.860 for all minorities everywhere.
00:39:04.600 Which, by the way, is why you're seeing Palestinian activists go to Jewish areas in the United States
00:39:08.480 and protest there. If you thought this was a foreign policy problem, why are the protests not
00:39:12.340 happening in Washington, D.C.? Why aren't they happening next to the Congressional?
00:39:14.880 They're not. They're going down to a restaurant a quarter mile away.
00:39:18.980 They're going down to Brooklyn, and they're beating Jews in the streets.
00:39:21.500 Or they're going down to areas in Miami where there are lots of Jews who live there.
00:39:25.100 They're driving through in trucks with Palestinian flags on the back. Are those the policymakers?
00:39:28.500 No. I'm sorry. That's the Nazis marching through Skokie.
00:39:31.000 But, you know, Jeremy makes a great point here. I can't believe I said that. I need to wash my
00:39:35.120 mouth out with soap. Jeremy makes a great point, which is, if you are not an expert on the past,
00:39:40.480 I don't know, what, 3,000, 4,000 years of this conflict in the Middle East,
00:39:44.420 there is a rule of thumb. I know we're not supposed to appeal to authority,
00:39:47.440 but when I see AOC and Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib and Bernie Sanders and the New York Times
00:39:53.360 and CNN and just all of them lined up on one side of the issue, I'm going to have to go in on the
00:39:59.240 other side. And maybe my opinion will change as I learn more, but I think it's a good rule of thumb.
00:40:02.900 That's a very reasonable judgment.
00:40:04.280 Given, I mean, really, especially Rashida Tlaib, these people are really vile, evil.
00:40:10.240 I don't think we can emphasize that enough. It's not a political disagreement.
00:40:12.660 The New York Times is too, by the way. The New York Times was supported Castro,
00:40:15.120 which supported Che, which supported Stalin. Like, yes, these are bad people. And when they're
00:40:21.200 all uniformly agreeing, don't wear your mask. The New York Times printed a graphic today that was
00:40:28.880 such an abject lie. It was a graphic depicting the state of Israel, but it said Palestine across.
00:40:33.480 And then it showed how Palestine was shrinking. Okay. This graphic is so bad. In 2015, when MSNBC
00:40:38.620 ran it, they had to issue an overt apology saying that this was an anti-factual map. The New York
00:40:43.440 Times ran it today. I mean, like the media are so all in on us. It's insane.
00:40:46.780 But other than the moral and other than the political, I also do want to address this sort
00:40:51.260 of idea on the right that America first means that we're somehow completely disengaged in the world.
00:40:57.260 And it doesn't. We have alliances. We give aid because we believe, maybe sometimes inaccurately,
00:41:04.780 but because we believe it is in our interest to do so. We want to contain openly hostile powers like
00:41:13.360 Iran and North Korea. We want to constrain rival powers like Russia and China. We want to incent
00:41:21.060 economic activity around the globe, which is in America's interest. Those are the reasons. Now,
00:41:26.380 you may disagree with specific examples of us doing this. I disagree with specific examples of
00:41:31.260 us doing this. But the idea that we're just a piggy bank charity out there giving people money because
00:41:35.880 it's great. When you hear people say, we're not the world's policemen, they're usually denying that
00:41:40.120 there's any American interest that exists outside of our own borders. I think that that's a complete
00:41:45.380 mistake. That's never been true. We have interests and you have to pursue your national interest in a
00:41:50.860 very messy world with shifting alliances, with shifting realities on the ground. Again, I'm not
00:41:55.900 saying that any individual conversation is out of line. Israel itself, a nation that I am very fond of,
00:42:03.740 has its own national interests. And Israel's national interests will not always in every-
00:42:07.980 Sometimes it's in conflict with America.
00:42:09.480 That's right. Align with America's interests. Being allies doesn't mean that we're in
00:42:12.500 some sort of perfectly symbiotic relationship.
00:42:15.520 Isn't there a problem with the foreign aid thing? And I agree, situationally, we have allies and we
00:42:21.560 should support them in situations. My issue with foreign aid as a concept, no matter what country
00:42:26.320 we're talking about, is that this is American taxpayer money you're taking from American families.
00:42:32.920 Yeah.
00:42:33.380 And you're giving it to a foreign government. And those American families have absolutely
00:42:36.480 no say over what happens with the money. They do not directly benefit from it anyway. And they also
00:42:41.460 don't know what happens. The American family sitting around their dinner table,
00:42:45.480 that money comes from them. It goes to the government.
00:42:46.560 First of all, this is true of almost all taxes, that you don't get a direct say
00:42:51.020 what happens with the money. And you don't really know what happens with most of it. I don't agree
00:42:55.200 that you don't get a direct benefit from some foreign aid. You don't get a direct benefit from
00:43:01.200 some domestic spending. There's a lot of domestic spending that they take your tax money and you get
00:43:05.060 no direct benefit. Some of it's in contravention of your interest. But there is an interest in
00:43:12.200 spreading America's influence around the world. So one thing that has given us the wonders of
00:43:17.380 America's 20th, the American century, the 20th century, is that America essentially controls the
00:43:22.400 waterways of the entire earth. And that's a remarkable thing that exists and has allowed us
00:43:27.140 to have huge advances in technology, huge economic advances. You have that in part because of an
00:43:35.360 expression of America's military might and in part an expression of America's economic might
00:43:39.320 and in part because America has crowded out rivals who would break parts of that off and keep us from
00:43:45.360 being able to access it if they could. And a lot of Americans, listen, sometimes you just give
00:43:49.580 charity. There's an earthquake in some country and we decide we want to help them out. A lot of our aid,
00:43:53.900 though, the majority of our aid, is about keeping influence in strategic places around the country
00:43:58.540 where if we don't, China will. And of course that's true. I mean, the notion in the United
00:44:03.640 States seems to be that foreign aid is a form of charity. That is certainly not the notion in China.
00:44:07.440 That's right. China does not give a crap about charity. This is not a charitable democracy.
00:44:11.520 This is a country that has used its Belt and Road program as a way to bootstrap itself into
00:44:15.260 influence in a variety of countries around the world. Russia is doing the same thing. So again,
00:44:18.920 you can make the argument that you don't care, right? That's okay. You can make that argument that you
00:44:21.960 don't care if China expands its sphere of influence or you didn't care if the Russians
00:44:25.060 do it or you didn't care even back when it was the USSR and the USSR was expanding its sphere of
00:44:28.760 influence. But that begs a further question, which is what do you think America's role in
00:44:33.040 foreign policy ought to be? If you think that America's role in foreign policy is that we stay
00:44:36.600 within our own borders and only when somebody knocks over a tower in New York do we respond and
00:44:42.120 militarize. Well, that is one view of foreign policy. I think that it's a very short-sighted view of
00:44:46.000 foreign policy and I think that it leads to a much more difficult world for the United States to
00:44:51.120 navigate with a lot fewer allies available for us to fight back against some of the worst people on
00:44:54.900 earth. But what exactly do people think is the fundamental role of American foreign policy?
00:45:00.480 I guess with foreign aid, I would say, I think again, going back to American families that have
00:45:05.940 to, this is, this isn't, you know, this money is coming from people, from us. I think you should be
00:45:11.000 able to give a really specific answer. Like we're going to take this money, we're going to give it to
00:45:15.560 this government for a specific reason. I think, I think the families are taking the money from,
00:45:20.080 have a, have a, have a right to know specifically what is this money going to? And I'm not saying
00:45:24.640 there could never be a good reason, but you should be able to give a specific reason. And I think
00:45:27.720 when you, when, when you are giving billions and billions every single year to countries across the
00:45:31.520 world, and the answer is American influence, uh, that's just not quite specific enough.
00:45:37.860 Yeah. Um, but I would, I would only argue that foreign aid is a very small part of the budget
00:45:42.740 and that most of what we steal people's monies for and do in contravention of their interests
00:45:47.760 actually happens domestically. And what bothers me about this sort of America for sure is that
00:45:51.900 quite often they say, we don't need to be given our money overseas. We need to be taking care of
00:45:55.440 our own right here at home. And I go, no, for God's sake, give all the money overseas rather
00:46:00.320 than continuing to prop up huge socialist spending programs at home that actually do take away my
00:46:05.880 freedom far more than just not only take away my money, but also constrain my freedom. We'll talk a
00:46:10.600 little bit more about this. First, I want to talk about our friends over at express VPN. You don't need
00:46:15.360 me to tell you that people are, that big tech is clamping down on freedom of speech everywhere
00:46:19.600 that isn't apparently run to sand governed by Ron DeSantis. Those are the only places where big
00:46:24.780 tech isn't clamping down on free speech. You should have the right to express yourself freely online,
00:46:29.660 but unfortunately big tech has monopoly on what you can say. And they've opted for silencing tactics
00:46:34.800 and censorships to fight back on big tech's control of the internet. I use express VPN. When you use
00:46:40.600 express VPN, the app on your computer or your phone, you anonymize much of your online presence
00:46:45.400 by hiding your IP address. That makes your activity a whole lot more difficult to trace. And it makes
00:46:49.920 selling your information to advertisers even more difficult still. What's more, express VPN encrypts
00:46:55.440 100% of your network data to protect you from eavesdroppers and from cyber criminals. You have an
00:47:01.640 obligation to yourself. You have an obligation to your family to protect your data. We live in a digital
00:47:06.320 age. You have absolutely no idea the power that you're giving to these companies when you loosely
00:47:12.080 let them have access unnecessarily to your data. Revoke big tech's right to your data. Secure your
00:47:18.220 internet with a VPN that I trust for online protection. Visit expressvpn.com slash backstage.
00:47:24.240 That's expressvpn.com slash backstage. You'll get three extra months free with this exclusive link.
00:47:30.480 Go to expressvpn.com slash backstage right now to learn more. Expressvpn.com slash backstage. That's
00:47:36.840 right. We got our own promo code backstage. You know what strikes me about this at the heart of
00:47:43.520 kind of this disagreement over projecting American strength abroad. And I don't just mean a disagreement
00:47:48.080 among us. I mean, among the American people and among the right too. I understand one argument,
00:47:53.620 one sort of more novel argument against projecting American strength abroad, which is some years ago,
00:47:59.300 there was broad consensus on what it meant to project American strength abroad. The American
00:48:04.200 truth, justice, and the American way, the American cultural exportation around the world, right?
00:48:08.540 There was, we were broadly in agreement and in support of that, but that largely Christian, you know,
00:48:14.580 unique, but American kind of version of that has fallen away into this broad, global, liberal empire.
00:48:21.540 And so I think there are a lot of people who say, why I'm all for projecting American influence abroad,
00:48:26.240 but I don't want to promote transgenderism in Namibia. That's not the, where I want my tax dollars
00:48:31.720 going. But I also don't want to find Black Lives Matter flags at American embassies.
00:48:35.680 Exactly. Exactly. I think none of us think we shouldn't have embassies.
00:48:38.540 Right. But that is the influence that's being pushed. The fact that our government is out of
00:48:41.600 control, but it's unconstrained, that it is in no way limited, that it believes that what it needs
00:48:45.680 to be promulgating around the globe and at home is socialism and leftism and critical race theory.
00:48:51.560 And this incredibly anti-Christian modernist worldview. I agree that all of that needs to
00:48:58.240 be fought. And to the extent that you say that we need more transparency and how the government
00:49:01.340 spends our money, I agree with that. But there's an attitude on the right. That's what I'm kind of
00:49:06.400 pushing back again. Well, the, the, the question is to, you know, you mentioned when we say that
00:49:10.520 what we're getting in return is American influence, that's been true of all American foreign
00:49:15.120 interventions ever. Yes. I mean, true of like including wars, right? What were, what were the American
00:49:20.000 interests that were threatened when the Soviets threatened to take over Berlin? And we participate
00:49:24.260 in the Berlin airlift, which was an act of foreign aid, right? I mean, we actually flew supplies into
00:49:28.300 Berlin to maintain Berlin as a free city. Why exactly did we bother doing that? And Soviets could
00:49:33.100 have just taken Berlin. We didn't rule it. Didn't have anything to do with us. It was very far away
00:49:36.880 across the water. Right. And that's been true of literally all projections of American power ever.
00:49:41.320 So the answer was always that American influence is important because we understand that the,
00:49:45.300 the opposite of American influence is not a vacuum. The opposite of American influence is very
00:49:49.800 bad people increasing their own sphere of influence and then using that sphere of influence in order
00:49:54.000 to threaten true American interests. So to take an example in the Middle East, for example, if Israel
00:49:57.520 were to disappear tomorrow, what that would mean is that authoritarian states would take probably
00:50:01.180 they'd threaten control of the Suez Canal. We saw the Suez Canal blocked recently by a giant shipping
00:50:06.220 container, right? And that giant ship basically cut off all world trade for a significant period of
00:50:11.420 time. Like the gas lines in the United States. Right. And if the, if the straits of Hormuz are cut off,
00:50:17.500 oil supplies falter, if the South China Sea falls to complete Chinese domination, then the shipping
00:50:21.980 of products. But these are specific, you're giving specific cases of this is what America needs to do
00:50:26.780 in this particular situation for this reason, which is great. And, you know, I'm sure I could pull up on
00:50:32.640 my phone a list of all the countries we're giving aid to, how much money we're giving. And I, and I
00:50:37.740 suspect that if I were to do that, I'm going to find dozens that equals billions of dollars where
00:50:43.380 there's not going to be necessarily that really specific answer. So that's my question is whether
00:50:48.140 you're in disagreement with the general concept. That's why I said what I'm pushing, what I'm
00:50:51.580 pushing back again is an attitude, not specifics. So you're suggesting that government should be
00:50:55.580 more efficient, that we should be more strategic with what we do and don't do. Of course, I agree.
00:50:59.740 Just the idea, the idea of the government, of our government sort of in perpetuity, having all
00:51:04.900 these other, other governments on the dole. Um, that's what, that's what I'm pushing.
00:51:08.840 Well, I mean, Japan's been on the dole for what, some 80 years with American military
00:51:12.780 presence in Japan. And thank God for that. Yeah. I mean, some of them need to be on the
00:51:15.900 dole for a while. You know, I'm kind of amazed. I say something controversial because I only come
00:51:21.760 to the show to try and give Ben a heart attack before I have one. But I'm kind of amazed we could
00:51:28.600 have this entire conversation about Israel without really talking about the Jews, without actually
00:51:33.120 talking about the fact that the Jews are special. This is the thing that anti-Semites get right.
00:51:36.660 They get right. They think the Jews are special because they're evil. That's crap. But, but
00:51:41.060 the Jews are special. They're special in our history. They're special in our religion. Matt
00:51:44.400 was talking about the evangelicals. I think the evangelicals have a point. You know, this,
00:51:48.560 these are the people with, with the Athenian Greeks who basically inform everything we think
00:51:53.940 and believe. And there are no Athenian Greeks. There are, you know, the Athenian Greeks are
00:51:57.560 gone, but the Jews aren't. And that's a really important fact. When one of the things the
00:52:01.840 left is really objecting to is that this is a Jewish state and that offends them because
00:52:06.080 it is racially specific, but the world has proved that it can't tolerate Jews unless
00:52:10.980 they have a state. If Jews don't have a state, they will, they'll be killed and chased from
00:52:14.180 pillar to post. And so it seems important to me that someone stands up and says, you know,
00:52:20.140 these, these people are important because they're us. They're saying there's some way
00:52:23.960 the source of who we are and we need to defend them and their values. One of the amazing things
00:52:28.660 that happens when you're in Israel, and you've been in Israel a lot more than I have,
00:52:31.080 probably not. I've only been three times actually. Okay. Well, I was there and I opened the newspaper
00:52:35.300 and read the editorials and the, the fineness of the ethical and moral conversation that was going
00:52:43.340 on in their newspapers made me embarrassed for our newspapers. I mean, we have a good op-ed section in
00:52:48.520 the wall street journal that James Toronto should win the Pulitzer prize. There's nothing like the
00:52:54.140 ordinary editorials that are going on in an Israeli newspaper because they're Jews and they say it in the
00:52:59.980 things. Well, wait, you know, other countries could do that, but we can't because we're Jews.
00:53:04.380 I mean, what they did in this war is something that Israel has, has long-term Tahrir Haneshek,
00:53:08.100 right? Which means purity of arms. They literally write it into the military code. This, this attempt
00:53:11.920 to prevent civilian casualties. Again, I point out the fact that everybody's saying, look at that
00:53:16.540 wild disproportion between the number of people who died in Gaza and the number of people who died in
00:53:19.620 Israel. Yes. Israel fired massive ordinance into Gaza and only killed 200 odd people after experiencing
00:53:25.320 4,500 rockets fired at it. But there's something else there. There is an underlying idea. And this
00:53:29.820 has taken root mostly on the left, but a little bit on the right. And that is the idea that the
00:53:35.000 world would be a more peaceful place if Israel ceased to exist. And you can see this in the way
00:53:39.240 that so many people on the radical left actually talk about the state of Israel, right? The idea is
00:53:42.720 that because first it was Israel has to have a two-state solution because if there's no two-state
00:53:46.920 solution, we can't solve all the problems in the Middle East. Now you're starting to see people
00:53:49.640 openly say, well, maybe there shouldn't be a two-state solution. Maybe there should be a one-state
00:53:52.800 solution in which the Israeli Jewish demographic majority just disappears. And it just becomes a complete
00:53:58.440 one-state, which of course means that the Jewish state ends. Well, the notion that seems to be
00:54:03.840 out there is that anti-Semitism, and this is being really pushed by the media right now,
00:54:07.700 anti-Semitism, right? And this headline right here is it, right? From Michelle Goldberg,
00:54:10.900 attacks on Jews over Israel are a gift to the right. Yeah. The basic idea here. We bounced on it.
00:54:15.420 Right. The basic idea here is that when it comes to anti-Semitism, that anti-Semitism is an
00:54:22.820 outgrowth of anti-Zionism, right? Or rather, of Zionism. If it were not for the state of
00:54:27.620 Israel, anti-Semitism would just disappear, which ignores all of human history between 136 CE and
00:54:31.860 1948, right? There's a lot of intervening history right there. The same people who are beating Jews
00:54:35.860 on the streets with poles in Brooklyn are shouting at them that they're only beating them because of
00:54:39.380 Israel. And it's like a random Jew in Brooklyn. Yeah. I have a feeling that's not true. I have a
00:54:43.700 feeling that if Israel didn't exist, there would be a lot more Jews who are getting beat.
00:54:46.800 When Jesus said, you are the salt of the earth, you're the light of the world, he was talking to
00:54:51.840 the Jews. He was talking specifically to the Jews. God doesn't break those covenants. That's still
00:54:56.660 in place. And when we look at these people, we're seeing where our ethics come from, where our ideas
00:55:01.340 come from. One of the great evidences, by the way, for the truth of the Bible, to me, for the truth of
00:55:06.400 the New Testament. Sorry, Ben. You're complimenting my folks, so continue. The New Testament posits
00:55:12.160 that in the future there will be an Israel. And Christians believe that. They believe that the
00:55:19.760 Bible is true. It's very hard for us. I'm fascinated by this notion that it's almost impossible for us
00:55:24.940 to ever separate ourselves from this moment. And that connection to this moment really blinds us
00:55:31.660 to the experiences of almost all humans across all time. It's a fun thing. Maybe we'll talk about it on
00:55:36.100 this or a future episode more generally. But specific to the topic at hand, it's easy for us to
00:55:41.760 imagine being Christians and thinking that in the future there's Israel. Because there's Israel.
00:55:47.780 But for almost 2,000 years, every single Christian who ever lived, like the vast majority of time
00:55:53.660 that there has been Christianity, Christians had to believe in that future. And there was no Israel.
00:55:59.920 You talk about the Athenian Greeks. The reemergence of Israel in the land that God gave to the Jews
00:56:08.660 is a quirk of human history that has absolutely no corollary. Almost 2,800 years later, no people has
00:56:18.820 ever been scattered from their home, continued to exist, and then come back into possession of that
00:56:23.580 home across 1,800 years.
00:56:25.560 Odd, what?
00:56:28.260 Yeah. Another strange thing about the Jews, if I may, is, you know, one of the criticisms is...
00:56:34.660 That they control the weather.
00:56:35.620 That they control the weather, for goodness sake.
00:56:37.240 That was weird.
00:56:37.860 Top three weird things about the Jews.
00:56:39.320 Yeah, I would say these are...
00:56:40.780 Space losers.
00:56:41.420 Space losers. Very peculiar.
00:56:42.280 But, you know, one of the arguments against the United States support of Israel is, you know,
00:56:48.120 I don't even think it's particularly... I hate to call it an argument, but one of the impulses
00:56:52.020 is to say, well, it's just Jews, you know, who are in positions of power in the government. And
00:56:55.720 there are plenty of Jews in positions of power in the government, and they're really behind this
00:56:58.600 whole thing. But then I couldn't help but notice, Ben, when you were reading that headline,
00:57:01.800 it was by... What was that name? Michelle Goldberg.
00:57:03.780 It's not an Italian name. I mean, it's not an Irish name. It's in the New York Times.
00:57:07.340 Bernie is wildly anti-Israelian.
00:57:09.200 Bernie. So, you know, it's a bit strange, isn't it, that so many American Jews seem very anti-Israel.
00:57:14.180 I will say, you bring up the evangelical support of Israel, and I'm...
00:57:18.020 Drew and I are the two potentially evangelicals. I don't think either one of us is truly in the
00:57:23.340 category of evangelicals, but the closest evangelicals on the panel. I don't support
00:57:28.140 Israel because of a belief that the Bible commands me to support Israel. That's not part
00:57:34.280 of my... I do think that I have a kinship with the people of the Bible, with the Jews.
00:57:42.180 I think that we share common history. We share common ethics. Not the exact same ethics. The
00:57:48.560 Judeo-Christian worldview, that term makes people mad because Christians and Jews believe very
00:57:53.540 different things and places. Yes, of course. Saying Judeo-Christian doesn't mean I believe
00:57:57.940 Jews and Christians believe the same things. It means I believe that there's a foundational
00:58:02.200 framework that we share.
00:58:05.180 Right, book one.
00:58:06.300 Book one, we share, that takes on distinct characteristics. But all of that to say,
00:58:10.740 the existence of the state of Israel today actually convinces me that it's not up to my
00:58:18.100 support. God doesn't need me to support Israel. If he decides there's going to be an Israel,
00:58:22.080 there's going to be an Israel. And as an American, what I'm more concerned with is who should I
00:58:27.640 support? With whom do I share values? God doesn't need much from me. He's God. He's the uppercase
00:58:33.500 GK. I am but a lowly lowercase GK.
00:58:38.060 And so my support of Israel is premised completely on that shared set of values, completely on a shared
00:58:44.800 set of interests. I believe national interests and I believe ideological interests. That really
00:58:50.980 is the limit of my... So you don't feel biblically compelled?
00:58:54.540 I do. I feel biblically compelled both through commands from the Bible and through the values
00:59:04.540 that I've derived from the Bible or the beliefs that I've derived from the Bible to support in a
00:59:12.120 broad sense the Jewish people. But that doesn't mean if the Jewish people are wrong that God wants
00:59:17.300 me to say that they're right. So as an example, if Israel had gone into the Gaza Strip and started
00:59:24.360 rounding up people like the Germans did in the 30s and putting them into ghettos or rounding them
00:59:29.740 up like they did in the 40s and putting them onto boxcars, I would tell you that this was wrong. I
00:59:34.380 wouldn't feel like, I don't know, yeah, they're indiscriminately killing Palestinians, but God does
00:59:39.340 say be nice to the Jews. Of course I wouldn't take that position.
00:59:41.780 But nobody ever said that Germany should cease to exist. I mean, this is the thing.
00:59:46.400 The only country on earth, literally the only country on earth that has to argue for its right
00:59:50.700 to exist is the Jewish state. And that is biblical. It's also worth noting here that when we talk
00:59:56.000 about foreign aid to Israel, particularly in this context, a lot of that foreign aid is going for
00:59:59.480 the Iron Dome. If you are a believer that Palestinians should not be mistreated, you should thank God
01:00:05.420 every single day for the Iron Dome. Because if it were not for the Iron Dome, Israel would have
01:00:09.020 eviscerated the place. And everybody understands this. The fact that 90% of the rockets being shot from
01:00:13.880 the Gaza Strip were shot down by this miraculous technology that is located in all of the population
01:00:17.940 centers of Israel, that you can fire for, I mean, the simple statement that 4,500 rockets were fired
01:00:22.220 at civilian areas and 12 people died is a demonstration of just how effective the system
01:00:26.260 is. If those rockets had all hit in civilian areas and killed hundreds or thousands of Jews,
01:00:30.360 Israel would have no Hamas. Hamas would not exist anymore.
01:00:32.240 And also the idea that, well, if you get rid of Israel, then the Middle East is a peaceful place
01:00:37.320 is of course absurd because first of all, these Islamic groups are killing each other anyway.
01:00:41.700 They're going to continue to do it. I think with the, with the biblical thing,
01:00:44.720 it doesn't bother me, you know, evangelicals that feel spiritually inclined to take this position
01:00:50.080 doesn't bother me at all. Um, I, I do think my theological difference with them, which doesn't
01:00:55.280 sound like this is your position, but the idea that our salvation is still somehow tied to a
01:01:00.200 particular geographic place or even worse to it, to a government. Um, you know, that, that to me is
01:01:06.520 a problem because we, yeah, we know that now it's, that that's the whole idea. It's universal.
01:01:10.980 Go preach to all nations.
01:01:11.960 Salvation has existed from a Christian point of view for the past 2000 years. And for 1800 of
01:01:16.960 those, there was no, uh, state of Israel and there was no particular government. And so it just wouldn't,
01:01:22.020 I almost reject any theological notion that requires you to live in a specific time in a
01:01:27.500 specific place in order for it to be true. And so tying salvation to support of Israel, I would
01:01:32.880 just see as another one of those.
01:01:34.080 But you know, I, I do wonder too, if some of the recent uptick against Israel or let's
01:01:41.080 rephrase it in defense of say the Palestinian Arabs is actually caused by radical leftism
01:01:46.480 because for much of my young life, right? Certainly since nine 11, there has been this sense on the
01:01:51.980 right that the Muslims are out to get us. You know, they've been, and there have been a Muslim
01:01:56.240 incursions on Western Christendom for roughly, Oh, 14 centuries now. So obviously there's historical
01:02:01.280 precedent for this, but I think a lot of people are looking now and they're saying, well, you know,
01:02:05.480 I don't think I exactly want to live under Sharia, you know, look, I don't want to live under Hamas
01:02:09.440 or anything like that. But there is a sense among not these insane radical extremist Muslims,
01:02:15.300 but among Muslims more broadly that at least we're, we can talk about God, right? We talk about how
01:02:22.340 Judaism, you know, sort of writes the first book and then, uh, then, uh, you get Christianity.
01:02:27.700 And from that, there is this derivation. Let's not forget Islam is the product of an encounter
01:02:32.840 between Muhammad and a, and a heretical Christian monk. And this is not even disputed by Muslims.
01:02:36.860 And so there is obviously a lot of commonality there. And when you look at the radical left,
01:02:41.100 which says God doesn't exist, boys can really become girls. We need to kill the babies. We need
01:02:45.420 to do this all for freedom or something. And then you look over at the Muslim world, which has
01:02:50.020 different answers than we do, but they still recognize that God exists, that there is a moral order,
01:02:54.000 these sorts of things. I think that might explain a little bit of the rapprochement you've seen in
01:02:58.220 the last four or five years. I completely agree with that. I think there's more connection between
01:03:01.840 the transgender mania and the hatred of Jews than anything else. Absolutely.
01:03:07.200 Yes. Yeah, really. Well, I mean, one of the things- Today.
01:03:10.340 Yeah, today. It's sort of like, you know, Jesus says, I've told you, I asked this before that Jesus
01:03:14.440 says, they'll hate you for my namesake. And anytime I meet some Christian and people are mad at them,
01:03:18.820 they always say, well, you know, the Bible told us that they'd hate us for his namesake. And I said,
01:03:22.220 no, no, no. They hate you because you're an asshole. They would hate you for his namesake
01:03:27.580 if it ever came down to you. And it's the same with the Jews today. But yes, today they hate the
01:03:34.940 Jews because of leftism. I agree with that. But they've always hated them for something.
01:03:39.400 I honestly think that the most important point was actually the one that Jeremy made at the very
01:03:42.620 beginning, which is that most of the conversation around this is not circulated around what Hamas
01:03:48.360 believes. Because if you had that conversation, then this moral conversation would be over,
01:03:51.160 right? Hamas is a terrorist group that believes in genocide. So end of story. What it has
01:03:54.600 circulated instead around is a particular leftist point of view, which is that power is inherently
01:03:58.680 evil and corrupt and that the powerless are inherently victimized. Yes. And so you see BLM
01:04:03.920 tweeting out, I mean, and they said this in the BLM manifesto that they were, they were in favor
01:04:07.520 of Palestine. You thought to yourself, what in the world did these two things have to do with each
01:04:11.400 other? But you see Rashida Tlaib saying it's the same conflict that black people are having with
01:04:15.700 police in the United States and Palestinians are having with Jews in the Middle East. And it's just a
01:04:20.520 matter of power imbalances. What this really is about for the left and the reason why they are
01:04:24.440 covering for anti-Semitism at this point is because they share a lot of the basic principles
01:04:27.900 of anti-Semitism. A lot of the left's point of view, the hard left's point of view is a conspiracy
01:04:32.380 theory about how power works. The intersectional hierarchy, all the systems of power are geared
01:04:37.100 toward the most powerful. And so therefore, if you are powerful, it is because you sit at the top
01:04:40.500 of the hierarchy in order to achieve equity. These hierarchies must be torn down. Now you look to the
01:04:44.420 Middle East and you say, okay, look, here's this very powerful, small, tiny Jewish state. And then you see
01:04:49.180 these Palestinians and they're living in privation and horror. And you don't look to, okay, maybe
01:04:52.700 they're doing that because terrorist groups run them. Instead, it becomes, well, the people who
01:04:56.140 are really doing well over there, they must be the ones who are responsible for all of this. And then
01:05:00.380 you obfuscate in order to, in order to conceal basically what's going on. They'll say things like,
01:05:05.440 well, it really is a color thing. First of all, that demonstrates such unbelievable ignorance of what
01:05:09.140 Jews are, that it's almost beyond the pale. Number one, Jews are not white. Number two, the Jews in
01:05:13.980 Israel are super not white. Like if you've ever been to Israel, over 50% of the population is from
01:05:18.060 Arabic countries, right? Like my wife's family, they're entirely from Morocco, right? All of
01:05:22.720 their ethnic derivation. They participate in whiteness. Yeah, exactly. Whatever that means,
01:05:28.180 that's what you're doing. They participate in whiteness. And what the left means by they
01:05:31.260 participate in whiteness is they are successful under the current system and the current system
01:05:34.760 needs to fall. And so when they, and so this is why you see. I don't know, Ben, I wish it was as
01:05:39.740 rational as this. If all they were doing, trying to do is attack power centers, I'd almost have some
01:05:43.780 sympathy for them. But I think they have overturned the moral order. They're just going up the line
01:05:49.080 to anybody who has morals. Yeah. So we've talked about China. We've talked about Israel. You may
01:05:55.640 be wondering, when are we going to talk about America around here? We're not, but we're going
01:05:59.360 to go even further afield and talk about the final frontier. But before that, I want to tell you
01:06:06.240 about all the time you could save by not going to the post office. I, as aforementioned,
01:06:11.240 and, but a lowly lowercase, God King, uh, I am not omniscient. I'm not omnipotent. I can't be in
01:06:17.740 all places at once. And I did not spend time itself into existence with my spoken word. As a result,
01:06:23.660 I am an impatient. You've been lying to us all this time. There's a lot of false advertising.
01:06:29.540 If you're still going to the post office, you are wasting your time. I was wasting my time for many
01:06:36.220 years because I did not know about our friends at stamps.com. Don't pay full price for postage.
01:06:40.800 Go to stamps.com and you don't have to do either of them anymore. You can mail and ship anytime,
01:06:46.140 anywhere, right from your computer. Send letters, ship packages, pay less, a lot less with discounted
01:06:51.600 rates from the USPS, UPS, and more. Stamps.com saves businesses like ours, thousands of hours,
01:06:57.380 and tons of money every year. Here at Daily Wire, we've used stamps.com since 2017. No more wasting
01:07:03.480 our time. And back in 2017, there were very few of us. So it was quite often my time. Now, if we had to go
01:07:09.340 to the post office, it wouldn't so much be my problem, but it still saves us a ton of money.
01:07:13.260 Simply use your computer to print official US postage 24-7 for any letter, any package, any class
01:07:19.060 of mail, anywhere you want to send. Once your mail is ready, just schedule a pickup or drop it off.
01:07:24.420 It's that simple. With stamps.com, you get discounts up to 40% off post office rates and up to 66% off
01:07:31.480 UPS shipping rates. Not to mention, stamps.com is a fraction of the cost of those expensive
01:07:36.220 postage meters. Stamps.com is a no-brainer. It saves you time. It saves you money. You want to
01:07:42.060 go because you owe yourself your time. You owe your business your time. You owe your family your
01:07:46.520 time. You owe me a little bit of your money. Go over. Stop wasting your time by going to the
01:07:51.500 post office and instead go to stamps.com. No risk. With promo code backstage, you get a special offer
01:07:57.220 that includes a four-week trial plus free postage and a digital scale. No long-term commitments,
01:08:02.000 no contracts. Stamps.com. Click on the little microphone at the top of the homepage. Type
01:08:06.800 in backstage at stamps.com. Promo code backstage. Never go to the post office again because where
01:08:14.280 we're going to go, my friends, out there somewhere. Obviously, earth-shaking news coming out of the
01:08:24.800 Pentagon on 60 Minutes this last week. Matt's been covering the story since long before 60 Minutes
01:08:29.060 got in on the action. There are unidentified aerial phenomena being observed by United States military
01:08:35.880 aircraft. Apparently, it's happening with some frequency. Our former Senate Majority Leader,
01:08:43.440 the Right Honorable Harry Reid, and that's how you know it's true. The Right Honorable Harry Reid
01:08:48.720 became very concerned about this, and because of him and others in the government, a task force was
01:08:54.560 formed within the Pentagon to track these unidentified aerial phenomena, or as you may
01:08:59.120 know them, unidentified flying objects. Object. And now we're starting to see a lot of gun cam
01:09:07.720 footage, a lot of sensor footage, a lot of radar footage coming from military aircraft, primarily
01:09:13.060 F-18s, things that are flying over the water. And the question I have for the panel is,
01:09:17.520 look at that, come on. Are we alone, or are geese just getting super fast?
01:09:24.400 Dining in my head fast.
01:09:26.940 Can I just, just to open this up, I believe I'm the only alien-believing American on the
01:09:31.820 panel tonight.
01:09:33.000 Okay, so you haven't committed yet, but I am the representative of our people and culture.
01:09:37.800 And I do feel marginalized and, frankly, unsafe sometimes in this workspace.
01:09:41.940 Anyways. But, so, just, I think there are two things here. Okay, first of all, obviously
01:09:49.040 we don't know exactly what that is, or what those things are. And in order to come up with
01:09:54.100 any kind of, like, probability that it's aliens, we need some background information that we
01:09:57.180 don't have. Like, for example, we need to know, are there aliens in the universe? And how
01:10:04.520 many such civilizations are there? And where are they? And what sort of technology do they
01:10:08.240 have? We don't know any of that. But what that tells us, first of all, is that you can't
01:10:12.480 just rule out, you can't basically rule out as a possibility, or even as a plausible possibility,
01:10:16.720 that those are aliens. Because for all we know, now, if we're the only intelligent civilization,
01:10:20.560 even just in the galaxy, then that's definitely not an alien. But if there's intelligent
01:10:25.020 civilizations in all of our surrounding solar systems, let's just say, or in some of the
01:10:29.260 nearest ones, then the probability goes up. So we don't know that at all. So we kind of
01:10:33.500 have to put that to the side. And then we just look at that. And now we have to say to
01:10:37.160 ourselves, what the hell is that? Yeah, but we've been hearing these UFO reports for a
01:10:41.900 long time, for decades, really. And I think the objection that a lot of people had, including
01:10:46.200 myself, is that we said, well, if there were actual UFOs, like alien spaceships in the sky,
01:10:52.720 then we should get better evidence than, why is it always a farmer in Kansas that sees them?
01:10:56.660 It's kind of like Bigfoot. You know, the only person that sees Bigfoot is someone who has
01:11:00.020 a camera from like the battlefield reporter at Antietam had. So why is that always the case
01:11:05.920 with aliens? And that was always my objection until in the last few years, we're getting
01:11:10.660 trained observers up close. There were four Navy pilots who observed one of these things
01:11:15.460 up close, four of them. For five minutes, they watched it. And corroborating their testimony,
01:11:21.440 we have radar data and video of that one thing, this tic-tac-shaped thing that was flying around,
01:11:26.580 breaking the speed of sound and doing things that seem physically impossible.
01:11:30.240 So that's exactly the kind of evidence that for decades we said, well, if they were really UFOs,
01:11:34.700 we should have that evidence. Now it's here. And so I feel like that should at least get us to
01:11:40.060 reassess our original. Mickey, I hate to pour water on this. Okay. I've got a couple other theories
01:11:46.160 beyond the Martians. One is that this is foreign technology. Now you say we've never seen technology
01:11:54.440 like this. Right. I said it's foreign technology. Now there's another possibility. Maybe it's our own
01:11:59.900 technology. But Michael, you say, the government says that it's not. I know the government would
01:12:05.120 never lie to you. I know the government's always totally above board, but maybe it is our technology.
01:12:09.880 Maybe this whole PR campaign is a bit of a fake out to our adversaries. But let's say it's not. Let's
01:12:14.160 say we have no clue what that is up in the sky. Do the aliens exist on other planets? Is there
01:12:23.020 intelligent life? I'll go even further. Is there life at all on other planets? The one argument that
01:12:27.640 drives me the craziest is this one. They say, Michael, it's just, it's just probable. It's just
01:12:33.420 probability. The universe is a gazillion light years across. It's so big. So it's just probable
01:12:39.640 that there is life somewhere else. And I say, you know, to ascertain a probability, you need to know
01:12:45.280 literally anything about the subject that you're talking about. And when it comes to the origins of
01:12:50.540 life, there are a few, there are actually, I don't know, six or seven main hypotheses. There is the
01:12:55.060 Miller-Uray hypothesis of the primordial soup. This was in the fifties, but the experiment didn't
01:12:59.320 work out that well because they didn't have the right chemicals. Then there was the clay hypothesis
01:13:02.720 that there are actually these crystal structures within clay that could form the basis of sort of
01:13:06.660 organizing genetic information. But there's really no way to describe how it goes from that to
01:13:11.940 nucleotides, right? So that kind of fell apart. Then there's the idea that it was actually formed in
01:13:15.880 the sub-oceanic vents. Then there's an idea that it was actually the opposite. It was filmed,
01:13:21.660 formed underneath frozen oceans. Then there's this idea that it came here from Martians,
01:13:25.900 you know, from outer space, which only pushes the question off and says, well,
01:13:29.440 how the hell did life form there? My point is in modernity, we're told we're not, we're not special.
01:13:35.860 We not look, there's probably a zillion other of us. And my only point is maybe that's true,
01:13:40.440 but we have no evidence. We have no reason to believe that we're not special.
01:13:44.100 This is my whole, my whole approach to this is, you know, the philosopher Wittgenstein,
01:13:48.340 who may have been an alien, said of that which we cannot speak, we must remain silent. And the
01:13:52.620 philosopher Clavin says, that which we don't know, we don't know. And this is the thing,
01:13:57.340 you know, the arguments against the aliens always take the form of, well, would aliens do this?
01:14:02.940 Would aliens do that? How the hell do we know? First of all, if anybody who has the technology to
01:14:07.560 send actual objects across the galaxy to us is in another sphere than we are, the things that they do
01:14:14.540 may seem illogical to us and may be logical, but even more so, they may be stupid. They may be
01:14:19.400 incredibly technological proficient and stupid. We, we can build phones. We can, we can build,
01:14:25.760 we can build phones where we can talk across the, the, uh, the planet. And we still elected AOC to
01:14:32.100 Congress. You know, you can do incredibly stupid things. So they may be coming down here with these
01:14:36.800 tic-tacs from outer space and building little rock statues. And you say, well, would they do that?
01:14:41.580 How the hell do we know? So all I would say is we now have information, which I, this is where I
01:14:46.700 agree with Walsh. We now have information, which we said nobody had, and all the people who were
01:14:52.300 conspiracy theories and it was zone, whatever it was, 50, what is it? Two in Nevada?
01:14:56.740 Zone, no, area 51.
01:14:58.200 Area 51. You know, we now have these pictures of things that are really interesting, really different,
01:15:04.580 worth stopping for a minute and saying, gee, what is that? And the point you make is actually
01:15:10.500 really important. We don't know how life began. We don't know whether we are in fact
01:15:15.260 the special thing that happened on this one planet, or if this is something that would happen on any
01:15:20.040 planet, uh, uh, near, you know, equally distant from a star. I read your piece that you wrote,
01:15:25.180 which I found incredibly offensive and hateful, uh, where you said there's no, there's no reason
01:15:30.800 to believe that aliens exist, right? That's the headline. But you could easily flip that around
01:15:35.040 and say there's absolutely no reason to believe they don't exist. When you, when you live in a universe
01:15:38.620 with trillions and trillions and trillions of planets. And we have seen, we have visited
01:15:44.560 none of them and we've sent, we've sent probes to a few, but we've, we've actually visited none of
01:15:48.660 them to sit here. And, and it seems to me the problem, it is a probability thing.
01:15:53.220 Well, this is my problem. My issue. It's like walking in to me, it's like walking into a,
01:15:59.380 to a 50 bedroom mansion and you get to the foyer and you don't see anybody there. And you say,
01:16:04.600 well, I guess the place is, it doesn't make any sense. Somebody had to build the mansion. And
01:16:08.660 that, that person who built the mansion would be a person, right? But we, and we would, we have some
01:16:13.300 idea of how the person got like, you know, someone got there, he probably took a car. I don't mean,
01:16:16.360 you look for the car. We have no clue how life, we don't have any idea. There are going to be a
01:16:22.320 lot of people in the comments. But we do know. How? Well, we, you and I, we all know how, how life
01:16:27.620 started. We don't know the exact. Man formed Adam out of clay. Right. We know God created it. I mean,
01:16:31.600 that, that, that might seem like a shortcut, but we all know that. So I actually think when you
01:16:35.720 introduce God into the equation, which of course you have, you can't take them out. Um, a lot of,
01:16:39.860 uh, believers think that this is a challenge to their faith and it just doesn't make any sense.
01:16:43.760 How can you have intelligent civilizations? Well, I, I actually think that, that when you, when you,
01:16:48.080 when you factor in God, which again, you must, it, it makes the probability higher because you,
01:16:52.520 then, then there's a purpose. There's a purpose element. Like, or there's aliens fallen.
01:16:56.680 Well, I don't know that, but there's a purpose. Mustn't they not be fallen for Christianity?
01:17:02.200 I don't know why. I don't know the answer to that, but all I know is that there's a purpose
01:17:04.800 for all these billions of galaxies. Well, here's why, because the Christian ideas that there's a
01:17:09.000 Godhead, it's Trinity, father, son, and the bond of love between the father and son, which is the
01:17:12.700 Holy Spirit. The son saves mankind by taking on human nature and dies on the cross and is resurrected
01:17:19.080 three days later, right? Ascends up into heaven, seated at the right hand of God, the father
01:17:21.880 Almighty. Is he all, is he like, is he, so he's fully human and fully God and also fully
01:17:27.500 Martian. We don't even know, we don't even know whether Martians are exactly like us or
01:17:30.820 not. I really want to, I want to, I'm trying to filibuster Ben because I know he has a good
01:17:36.380 argument. I don't want him to jump in. It's not that great. I mean, go ahead. Okay. So here's
01:17:40.640 my not that great argument. So I agree with what you are saying. And it's a burden of proof
01:17:45.500 question. Obviously is the burden of proof on the people who are trying to provide the idea
01:17:50.280 that aliens exist or is the burden of proof on the people who are saying that aliens don't
01:17:52.940 exist, but that doesn't change the balance of the evidence, which is that we have no
01:17:56.500 idea. Right. And so we were all saying the same thing. We have no idea. Right. Do aliens
01:17:59.520 exist or do aliens not exist? What I think is that the likelihood that aliens not only exist,
01:18:05.880 but have been floating around the planet in what seemed to be bizarrely bird-like shapes
01:18:11.940 and also are behaving in ways that seem to conflate with optical illusions that we have
01:18:22.040 seen before suggests to me that because human beings have a very long time. When have you
01:18:27.380 ever seen a tic-tac bird? Tell me that. And they're kind of far away. Where did that come from then,
01:18:31.900 I asked. I mean, it could be very far away. That doesn't look like amazing pixelation. It's not
01:18:38.940 like right up on it. Like, like, I don't know, but it doesn't seem to me that the most plausible
01:18:42.740 explanation for that. Four people saw the tic-tac. But this, but this, but this reminds me,
01:18:46.580 and from far away, it might look like a tic-tac. I mean, like just because things refract off surfaces
01:18:52.520 of clouds differently. Can I say, like David Blaine also isn't cutting coins out of his arm. Like,
01:18:56.660 whoa, whoa, whoa. Illusion, like the skepticism. It's illusion, Michael.
01:19:02.040 Here's my position on it. The burden of proof is on people who want to say that there are
01:19:06.040 aliens. Not on people who say that there aren't. You never, the burden of proof is never on a person
01:19:11.040 who is maintaining the status quo or is maintaining what we know. The idea, the idea of aliens is a
01:19:20.960 novel concept rooted in fiction. The fact that this is even in our minds is a possibility. When we see
01:19:26.780 something moving across that screen, the only reason we even ask ourselves, is that extraterrestrial
01:19:31.580 life? 200 years ago, that would, no one would have, you could have seen it in the sky and your
01:19:35.920 thought wouldn't have been, is that extraterrestrial life? Because that idea had not been broadly
01:19:40.460 introduced into the American psyche. We have a frame of reference now, largely programmed in us
01:19:45.740 by fiction, that causes us to see certain things and judge them according to that frame of reference.
01:19:52.880 What is the tic-tac? I don't know. What I know is that our government is testing technology
01:19:59.260 decades before we know about that technology. The first time we ever saw an F-117 stealth fighter,
01:20:05.320 it was almost 20 years old before Americans even knew that that existed. It had been not only in
01:20:10.060 existence, it had been flying around our country nonstop. There's a reason that the pilots you're
01:20:14.780 referring to keep seeing these things in restricted airspace. Why in restricted airspace? Why is that
01:20:19.760 airspace restricted? Because that's where we test things. That's where our government goes to test
01:20:23.200 things. Also, we keep trying to figure out what is the thing, but there are so many examples of
01:20:28.620 you can't paint with a broad brush. Some of it may not even exist. You may be looking at something on
01:20:33.440 one of these cameras and that something is nothing. It's not a goose. It's not a tic-tac bird that do
01:20:39.900 exist. It's not a weather balloon. It's literally a nothing because these airplanes, their sensory
01:20:46.100 mechanisms are programmatic. They're so software driven now and we're constantly updating and we're
01:20:51.540 finding that software. It could literally be tracking something that doesn't even exist because
01:20:56.260 of an update that happened to the firmware. It could be foreign governments hacking our systems
01:21:00.560 to show us things that aren't there. It could be foreign governments testing technology. I think
01:21:04.000 that's actually unlikely. I think it's far more likely there to be us testing technology. It could be
01:21:08.380 hackers in some basement in Tuscaloosa hacking our equipment. But of all those theories, the least
01:21:13.960 likely is that it is something from another planet. The reason I don't agree with it. Because we know all
01:21:18.980 those other things existing you just said. This is like ghosts. Whenever I have more than 10 people
01:21:23.480 in a room, I always ask anybody who's seen a ghost. Always, always, never fails. Somebody has seen a
01:21:28.260 ghost. Some sane, rational person has had an experience that's inexplicable. Weird dinner
01:21:32.880 question. It's not. But you do get a yes answer. Because it's been true through history. It's been true
01:21:38.500 through history. The reason we don't believe in ghosts is because we don't believe in ghosts. That
01:21:42.060 doesn't mean that the burden of proof is on somebody who does believe in ghosts. I mean, more people
01:21:47.380 have seen ghosts through history than have seen Brazil. I mean, there's plenty of reason to
01:21:54.560 believe in ghosts. You know, and I think the same thing is true here. The fiction that you're talking
01:21:58.740 about is extrapolative fiction. It's people extrapolating from life on earth to life on
01:22:03.600 other planets. That's not illogical. That's not like... Do you believe in ghosts? What? Do you believe in
01:22:07.460 ghosts? I'm actually unsure what I believe. But let's hold on. All I can say... As long as we're going
01:22:13.420 here, we're going to go full our bell here. I don't want to get off on ghosts. You can't say
01:22:16.660 that what I just said, which is that the least likely of all of those options is that it's
01:22:20.660 extraterrestrial life. You can't say that I'm wrong about that. Of course, the least likely
01:22:24.860 explanation is that it's extraterrestrial life. No, I think... Definitionally, not just by a little,
01:22:29.120 it's not 5% less likely that it's a software glitch than that it's extraterrestrial life.
01:22:33.800 It's not even 100% less likely that it's a software glitch than extraterrestrial life.
01:22:37.860 But definitionally, what I'm saying is true. Because what... I'm saying what they're
01:22:41.780 saying... No, what Noles is saying about probability is only a half-truth, right? It's true.
01:22:47.500 I only... That's all I do.
01:22:49.940 It's true. Based on what you're saying right now, it could be a time machine.
01:22:55.020 Well, and it could be... It's at least equally... I would say it's even more likely that it's a time
01:22:59.160 machine because... No, no, I don't agree with that. But it's at least as likely that it's a time machine
01:23:02.640 and it's far more likely that it's a fun spot. The thing that Noles is saying about
01:23:06.820 probability is right in the sense that we have no idea. We have no idea how to calculate the
01:23:11.940 probability. And that's why we need to know. That's what I'm saying. You can't talk about...
01:23:14.180 But there's a theory. No, this is not... No, this is not true. I'm just kidding. I'm going to...
01:23:17.540 But there's a theory under which it's probable that there's life...
01:23:20.580 This is not true. The probability of seeing something and not understanding what it is,
01:23:26.600 every human has that happen all the time. The theory that a software glitch happens in military
01:23:32.480 hardware that's being updated happens all the time. It is far more likely. And I'm saying you
01:23:39.440 can't paint with a broad brush about this. I'm not even saying there aren't aliens. I'm not saying we
01:23:43.160 didn't see an alien. If we saw an alien, it's one single instance of these things. This is another
01:23:48.600 thing. When we talk about, are they aliens? Every one of them's different. If we had 50 pilots all the
01:23:54.720 time and they were all seeing something that looked exactly the same...
01:23:57.480 Can I just say one thing? Can I just say one thing? I don't... I'm not saying the alien is
01:24:02.700 the most likely explanation. Sure. For example, there could be civilizations under the ocean and
01:24:07.260 that... You make a good point. But hold on a second. That is at least as likely or more. That's
01:24:12.620 actually more likely. The alien is not the most likely. I also don't think it's the... It's not
01:24:15.760 necessarily the least likely. We know there's life here. We have... Like you said, we have to look at each
01:24:18.520 individual case. So the Tic Tac, for example. I would say that the alien is more likely than the
01:24:23.680 seagull, okay? Because I have never seen a seagull that can go the speed of
01:24:27.460 sound and that doesn't have wings. I've never been to Atlantic City.
01:24:32.260 So I would say that... So I would put it above some other options. I do think it's not the
01:24:37.920 most likely, but it is a... It's a plausible... Here's what I would say. It's a plausible
01:24:41.340 explanation and it's more plausible... It should be judged more plausible today than we would
01:24:47.020 have 50 years ago, given that the evidence has... I don't believe there's any reason to say
01:24:49.880 that it's a plausible explanation. It is certainly because definitionally it is true that it is
01:24:54.920 possible. It is a thing that could be. But Occam's razor tells us that the vast majority... The most
01:25:02.620 likely... It is far more likely that it is something known than that it is something unknown.
01:25:08.040 But the thing about not knowing... The thing about not knowing... The thing about not knowing is that you
01:25:15.740 really don't know. Just to go back to Knowles' point about probability... No, wait. Just let's go back to
01:25:20.660 Knowles' point about probability. It is genuinely true that we don't know how life began and we don't know
01:25:26.620 how special it is on earth and any... So we have no way of calculating the probability. But if you start
01:25:31.640 with a theory that things happen physically basically the same way, then it's very probable
01:25:37.580 that there's life on other planets. It's also probable that some of it is more advanced than
01:25:41.240 ours. And it could be... Because we don't know, we literally don't know. We don't know how
01:25:46.220 probably... Well, hold on. But what is the probability... We don't know how probably... When you say...
01:25:49.140 Here's how you could tell. Yes, because we've all... Because we've all had software malfunctions and we
01:25:54.260 haven't all interacted with aliens. Correct. What is the probability that birds exist?
01:25:57.680 100%. It's 100%. What is the probability that software exists? I think they were all replaced
01:26:01.640 by drones. 100%. Right? These are... I mean, there's some people who don't believe that birds
01:26:05.620 exist. Right. Yeah. All I can say is... Let's use a less controversial one. What is the probability
01:26:10.940 that chemtrails and lizard people exist? That's 100%. That's 100%. That the frogs aren't
01:26:14.680 correct. They literally... This is the thing. Is it possible that there are aliens? I doubt. I think it is
01:26:22.440 possible. I think it is incredibly unlikely. I base this on the fact that we've picked up no radio
01:26:26.920 signals from space. I base this on the possibility that we don't have anything. The best thing that
01:26:31.980 anybody can come up with to tell me that aliens did. Aliens with so much sophistication that they
01:26:36.640 were able to traverse interstellar space is that they came here a long time ago and stacked rocks
01:26:41.280 on top of rocks in the Sahara. That's crazy. If we had opened Pharaoh's tomb and it had been
01:26:45.600 air-conditioned, I would have gone, you know. There is a real possibility that somebody else built this
01:26:51.480 besides slaves in Egypt for a thousand years ago. The very fact that we don't commonly encounter
01:26:57.300 aliens and we do commonly encounter myriad other things that this could be means that the most likely
01:27:02.660 answer to every one of these individual things is that it has... So you're saying there's a chance.
01:27:09.960 That's my whole argument, really. I'm also saying, Drew, that it's far more likely that you'll die of a heart
01:27:14.480 attack than that you'll be killed by an alien. You can't say that's not true. It's far more common that I
01:27:18.480 will have a heart attack. But the thing is, if I'm killed by an alien, then that's a thing, right?
01:27:24.060 All I'm saying is we have no way of calculating the probability. No, but you do. I mean, it's the same
01:27:28.880 question as ghosts, okay? There's no hard evidence that ghosts exist, right? Okay, so if suddenly you're a
01:27:34.180 creek and a door shut in your house, what does that even mean? What is the probability? Isn't the probability
01:27:37.400 tied to the number of alien civilizations in the universe? Don't you need to know that? No, you don't.
01:27:42.220 Well, because if there's zero, then... If it's zero, then that would be an answer, but we'll never know if it's zero.
01:27:46.980 But if there are... Above zero, any number above zero actually doesn't factor into our equation at
01:27:51.680 all. I guess I don't... It actually doesn't factor into our equation. Because when you're in a 747
01:27:57.780 and you look out the window and you see a 737 going by, is it an alien spacecraft? I mean,
01:28:03.840 it damn well could be. I once thought it was. They could have technology that makes them mimic the
01:28:08.520 look of our technology. But of course, while that is possible, it is the least likely of all the
01:28:14.780 possible... It's more likely that you didn't see anything than that the 737 that you probably
01:28:19.720 saw is an alien spacecraft. But when you say there's no hard evidence that ghosts exist,
01:28:23.480 all those people, the sane, rational people who have had really convincing experiences,
01:28:28.220 why isn't that evidence? Yeah, I think... Because lots of people have experiences of
01:28:31.520 things that don't happen all the time. That's true, but... I don't think aliens and ghosts are
01:28:34.520 related. Let me introduce you to a discussion about systemic racism, my friend. I'm not talking about aliens and ghosts
01:28:38.120 being related. I'm talking about the probability of things being true and how... What you need to calculate
01:28:43.420 this? But you're not asking what the probability that aliens exist is. You're asking me what the
01:28:47.300 probability that things being observed on gun cameras by American pilots are aliens. There's
01:28:52.120 also... That's a different... There is just on the... That requires you to answer a bunch of
01:28:55.060 probabilistic questions, by the way. No, no, it isn't because it's... Because even if there were to be
01:28:59.760 alien civilizations, you then have to multiply that by the probability that those alien civilizations
01:29:03.480 are sophisticated enough to build technological spacecraft. Multiply by the probability that millions of
01:29:09.000 years ago, literally millions of years ago, they launched these spacecraft to reach... Not necessarily.
01:29:12.780 I mean, we don't know what... Well, if you believe that the laws of physics hold, they're not
01:29:16.620 traveling faster than the speed of light. They could have a wormhole. These are only the laws of
01:29:19.400 physics we know. They could have a wormhole. That's a thing. You know, that's... Have you guys
01:29:23.220 never seen ancient aliens? I also watched Interstellar, okay? It was cool. But like, the probability that
01:29:27.140 things are traveling through wormholes to the United States... Well, I know, but to Drew's point,
01:29:30.380 to Drew's point here, there is a far greater likelihood... Unbelievable. That's how Trump got elected, guys.
01:29:35.660 There is a far greater likelihood that the ghost of Donald Trump will run in 2024. No, there is a far
01:29:39.600 greater likelihood that ghosts exist because we know people exist. We know we're fairly certain
01:29:44.640 that souls exist. We're fairly certain, at least I am, that angels and demons exist. So we're like,
01:29:50.380 we can sort of extrapolate from our own understanding of these things. But I don't know that ET exists,
01:29:55.880 goodness gracious. And that's why I think it's... And we're not talking about the probability of
01:29:59.140 whether or not life exists. You are a little bit, and I like your argument. But I'm not actually
01:30:02.760 talking about the probability that aliens exist. I'm talking about the probability that when we see
01:30:07.640 something on radar in an F-18... Yeah.
01:30:10.640 That it is more likely...
01:30:12.680 I can ask a question.
01:30:13.760 When a pilot says, I saw this thing happen, and it moved up in a way that I've never seen before,
01:30:17.980 and he's obviously not crazy... Maybe he is crazy, but we don't know that. I mean... And it came up in
01:30:23.200 front of me, and then it vanished. I don't know. Maybe he's seen an illusion, but wouldn't...
01:30:29.200 The other day, I played three-card bounty with a guy, and the dude totally made me believe me.
01:30:32.300 That's a serious question. That's a serious question. So, would you agree that... We would
01:30:39.520 all agree, if we know that there's no aliens out there in the universe, then the probability is
01:30:42.540 zero for any of these encounters. If we knew that, let's say, there was one intelligent
01:30:47.300 civilization per galaxy, that still makes 100 billion civilizations, but the chances of crossing
01:30:51.660 a galaxy is very slow, very slim. But if we knew, for example, that there was an intelligent
01:30:57.040 civilization in 20 of the 30 nearest stars to us, would you say that that makes the probability
01:31:04.000 more likely that one of these unexplained situations is alien in order?
01:31:09.580 Yes, but by so fine a margin that it's like saying that buying two lottery tickets makes
01:31:14.480 you more likely to win the lottery than buying one. It is true, as an absolute statement of fact,
01:31:19.720 that you have twice as much of a chance of winning the lottery if you buy two tickets. But it is not
01:31:24.380 true by any statistical actual reckoning. You are still overwhelmingly not going to win the lottery.
01:31:32.440 It doesn't mean you won't. Overwhelmingly not going to win the lottery. Your odds have changed
01:31:36.760 only by the most minute of margin. If I knew for a fact that there were aliens, if we had even heard
01:31:43.180 radio transmissions from aliens, even Elon Musk says there's something wrong that the universe is
01:31:48.540 so quiet. He obviously believes in aliens. He says he thinks that there's something that happens
01:31:53.040 that actually destroys civilizations before they can become interstellar travelers or we would
01:32:00.300 have been aware of them long before we saw them on a gun cam because we're listening, we're looking,
01:32:04.940 we observe, we watch the sky. Obviously the things aren't invisible if our pilots are seeing them.
01:32:08.860 In fact, in a funny way, we're capable of making aircraft that can't be seen by these same sensors
01:32:16.280 that apparently the aliens who can travel interstellar space aren't capable of.
01:32:19.580 But how do you explain? It's more likely that America, and I don't think this is what it is
01:32:23.540 either, but it's more likely that we're testing some sort of drone vehicle that can actually become
01:32:28.300 invisible, that can refract light and cloak itself. I know that's more possible because it's possible
01:32:33.180 and there are humans and we're making things all the time. Can we just use, I just want to go back
01:32:36.880 to the TikTok, not TikTok. The aliens might be on TikTok for sure. Let's use the TikTok example because
01:32:45.340 we have their four eyewitnesses up close. They observed it for five minutes, plus we have radar
01:32:51.180 data, plus we have video of all this same thing. That's really compelling evidence that at least,
01:32:54.760 so we know. Something was observed. Right. It was not a, it was not a glitch or anything. It was,
01:32:58.640 there was a real thing that was there that they saw. So. That is likely, although still not completely.
01:33:05.160 So what is, what is, what, what, what are your theories on what that thing was?
01:33:09.860 Well, I wouldn't begin to know what it was. As I said, they could have seen. It's literally called
01:33:14.480 an unidentified flying object. There are unidentified flying objects. This is where we
01:33:17.980 agree. I agree with you completely about this. I have no idea what it was. But the, but there are
01:33:21.400 far more likely scenarios than that it is extraterrestrial life, which we don't even
01:33:25.300 know exists. Far more likely that these pilots observe some man-made, because we know there are
01:33:31.420 men and they make things, craft operating in restricted zones where we know we test those kinds of
01:33:35.720 crafts. Hypersonic missiles that move at speeds we've never seen. Drones that are capable of
01:33:40.560 breaking, uh, G's that would have killed humans. Unpiloted vehicles can do things that piloted
01:33:45.840 vehicles never could because piloted vehicles kill people if they make certain hygiene maneuvers.
01:33:51.520 Testing with speed, testing with shapes, testing with, uh, automated control, maybe even testing with,
01:33:57.180 um, uh, electronic hacking where once we are observed, we're able to send false data to,
01:34:04.200 to the radar of our enemy to tell them what we're observing. I'm saying that any of those things
01:34:10.020 are possible and more likely than what was observed was a flying tic-tac UFO, uh, flying tic-tac full
01:34:16.040 of aliens. Um, although I will grant you that like winning the lottery, it is, there is a numeric
01:34:22.560 possibility that they observed extraterrestrial life. But I will also say that it is no more likely
01:34:28.120 that what they observed is an alien than that one of us is an alien. It's no more likely that what
01:34:32.660 they observed is an alien than that there are invisible aliens standing over our shoulders,
01:34:36.520 documenting this conversation to figure out how much more, how much we know.
01:34:40.800 Like whether they can subscribe or whether nothing was most importantly, you know, it's also,
01:34:45.920 we keep forgetting the, the communications element of this. So we we've been talking now for,
01:34:51.860 for our entire lives about how messaging is not accidental. Generally speaking,
01:34:57.560 there are strategies to communication, especially when it's coming from the government.
01:35:00.520 Does no one think it's like a little bit weird that the government and the mainstream media,
01:35:06.040 which is in cahoots with the federal government, is just like all pushing this one story right now?
01:35:11.000 Is that not, is there a way you're saying it's like a distraction or it's a, yeah, possible,
01:35:16.320 very possibly enough. That's more, I don't know if that's true, but it's more likely than that.
01:35:20.380 I find it very unlikely the government would use all this, all of a sudden decide to use
01:35:23.900 UFOs as a side. You know what? The only reason I mentioned it right now is because I realized we've
01:35:27.580 come to, you know, almost the end of the show and I haven't yet once plugged my book, which is about
01:35:31.640 like, it's called Speechless Controlling Words, Controlling Minds. There we go. There's the bell.
01:35:35.220 Okay. I just wanted to make sure we got at least one in during the, you know, but I also think it's
01:35:39.300 possibly true. I also think that, you know, we're just like the government does this and they can
01:35:43.640 probably buy your book. Usually when there's very quickly a bunch of confirmation that the thing
01:35:48.660 has happened. So say for example, that you're a native American living, you know, in America
01:35:55.140 before the settlers arrive and suddenly you see a boat on the water. You've never seen a boat on
01:35:58.560 the water before, right? This is a crazy thing. What is this thing? So you go and you tell all
01:36:01.720 your friends and your friends are like, that's crazy. That doesn't exist. Nobody's ever had
01:36:04.740 anything like that. Okay. And then the next day the boat arrives on the shore and a bunch of settlers
01:36:08.600 get off and they're like, Hey, now you've had some more confirmation. Okay. If the boat just went
01:36:13.960 away, sure, it could have been a boat, but like usually that's not how things go. Usually within a
01:36:19.680 fairly short period of time. And we've been talking about, as you say, these UFOs for like
01:36:22.780 what, 50 years, 60 years at this point. Yeah. They didn't go away. They're here, Ben.
01:36:27.060 Where's the, where's the cascade of information that confirms your belief that they are here?
01:36:31.000 We're getting the cascade of information right now. You just ruined your own argument.
01:36:34.760 No, what is the, what is the cascade? All of these, you're like, you're like, you're like,
01:36:39.940 you're like, you're like the native Americans going, there's no ship out there.
01:36:43.900 What is a white plane? No, because eventually the ships from other lands get off and then proceed to
01:36:48.640 destroy the, what's the worst thing you can do? I'll agree with this. If in 10 minutes they get
01:36:55.160 off the pill and get pregnant and if in 10 minutes they get off the pill and they start lecturing to
01:37:02.920 us about communal anarchism, then I will fully admit that the, you guys are going to be in trouble
01:37:09.560 when they come. Just solving this as anybody. I mean, listen, the Jews are in trouble with everyone.
01:37:13.420 They may as well get early on the bandwagon. Everyone hates us anyway. May as well get on
01:37:16.780 fourth ever civilizations, you know. I for one welcome our new Tic Tac.
01:37:21.040 Thank you for tuning in. As always, we're very happy to have you join us and we'd like to invite
01:37:25.200 you to become a member to enjoy the full Daily Wire experience. Head over to dailywire.com slash
01:37:29.380 subscribe. Use promo code VIP for 20% off and the chance to get a free trip to come meet Candace
01:37:34.700 herself and whichever of the rest of us happens to be here on that day. Don't miss out. This is the last
01:37:40.520 week to enter the sweepstakes. Thanks for joining us tonight. We will see you next time, assuming that we
01:37:45.200 haven't been probed.
01:37:54.460 Daily Wire Backstage is produced by Mathis Glover. Executive producer is me, Jeremy Boring. Our
01:38:00.920 technical director is Austin Stevens. Our production manager is Pavel Witowski. Studio and equipment
01:38:06.240 management is by Patrick Kennedy and broadcast engineering is by Mark Herman. Editing is by Jim
01:38:11.560 Nickel. Audio is mixed by Mike Coromina. And our audio assistant is Israel McFarlane. Playback is
01:38:17.120 operated by McKenna Waters. Hair and makeup by Nika Geneva. Daily Wire Backstage is a Daily Wire production.
01:38:23.000 Copyright Daily Wire 2021.