The Matt Walsh Show - Ep. 1059 - How The Red Wave Became The Red Ripple

00:00:00.140 Today on the Matt Walsh Show, the red wave did not come to pass, but it wasn't a decisive win

00:00:04.660 for the Democrats either. So how do we interpret this and where do we go from here? We'll talk

00:00:08.480 about that today. Also, voting machines were having hiccups in Arizona. Well, hiccup is one

00:00:13.120 way to put it. And there was a red wave in Florida, at least. What can we learn from what

00:00:17.300 happened in Florida? The women of The View try to explain what qualifies as okay free speech. 1.00

00:00:22.720 In our Daily Cancellation, a New York Times writer accuses Jennifer Lopez of feminist heresy for 0.98

00:00:27.420 taking her husband's last name. How dare she? All of that and more today on the Matt Walsh Show.

00:00:41.300 Roe v. Wade has been overturned and this battle is now finally leaving D.C. and going to the

00:00:46.000 grassroots. No group in America is better positioned than 40 Days for Life to deal with that. With about

00:00:50.680 1 million volunteers in 1,000 cities, 40 Days for Life holds peaceful vigils outside abortion

00:00:55.900 facilities. They have a larger presence in blue states with California being their largest state.

00:01:00.760 Some former abortion facility directors say that these vigils can cause the abortion no-show rate

00:01:05.200 to go as high as 75%, which is detrimental to their abortion business. These law-abiding vigils have

00:01:11.440 closed many abortion businesses in America and nearly half of those closed abortion facilities were in

00:01:16.240 liberal cities where abortion remains legal, including closures in San Francisco, Chicago, and Seattle.

00:01:21.580 40 Days for Life is effectively changing hearts and minds in the grassroots to end abortion.

00:01:26.400 Check out their locations, their podcasts, and their free magazine at 40daysforlife.com. And you know,

00:01:32.840 it's more important than ever, especially now after the election, what we find is that the fight for life

00:01:38.460 has entered a new phase, a critical phase. It's all the more reason to get more information on 40 Days for

00:01:43.820 Life at 40daysforlife.com. After our marathon election coverage last night, I emerged from the studio and

00:01:51.240 looked up to see the promised red moon, or I was hoping to see it, but I couldn't see anything because

00:01:55.980 it was overcast. It was, I think, a perfect symbol, the red moon blotted out by clouds and fog just as

00:02:03.760 the red wave lost steam and became in the end at most a red ripple, a small red splash maybe in the

00:02:11.160 shallow end of the pool. Now, as I speak right now, we still don't know, we don't have the final results.

00:02:15.580 Control of Congress remains up for grabs. Republicans are inching closer towards the 218 seats in the House

00:02:21.420 needed to take control. But the Senate sits at a 48-48 split right now, while the results in four states are

00:02:28.360 still pending. Once again, it may all come down to a runoff election in Georgia, as at this moment, Raphael Warnock

00:02:35.000 leads Herschel Walker by 40,000 votes or so. Now, Republicans had decisive victories in some races

00:02:42.720 and in some states. Stacey Abrams lost convincingly to Brian Kemp, though she is, of course, still the

00:02:48.020 governor of Georgia this morning. Beto O'Rourke once again showed off his skill as a professional

00:02:52.400 political loser, getting demolished by Greg Abbott in the Texas governor race. In the Ohio Senate race,

00:02:57.700 rising Republican star J.D. Vance knocked out incumbent Tim Ryan. In South Dakota, Kristi Noem doubled her

00:03:04.100 Democratic challenger's vote total. In New York, Republicans did manage to flip a few House seats.

00:03:09.680 And then, of course, there's Florida, where Ron DeSantis beat Charlie Crisp by 20 points,

00:03:14.820 not only taking the governorship, but effectively flipping the entire state red. So Florida is no

00:03:21.420 longer a swing state. It is a red state. And that's something that even the media had to begrudgingly

00:03:27.020 admit. Can we just talk about Florida? Because we really haven't had a chance to do that.

00:03:34.100 I was texting with a source in Florida, political source, who pointed out to me that this will be the

00:03:41.180 first time since Reconstruction that Florida won't have any Democrats in statewide office. Period. So and

00:03:49.160 DeSantis' victory, Miami-Dade. Florida, once a perennial swing state, it turned blue for Obama twice, then red for

00:03:57.400 Trump twice. Now it appears solid red, thanks in part to a huge effort in voter registration on the

00:04:03.540 Republican side and the powerful Latino vote leaning further and further red. Even the Democratic

00:04:09.720 stronghold of Miami-Dade County turned red for the first time in 20 years. Can I ask you while we've got

00:04:14.800 you if there's any single result or any single trend that's evident thus far that surprised you the most

00:04:22.600 tonight? Obviously, all of us looking at this stuff and hearing both sides make their projections, you sort of

00:04:28.040 weigh everything based on what you know and what you can view yourself. But as somebody who's been inside these

00:04:32.760 kinds of campaigns, what has struck you as legitimately unpredictable in tonight's results?

00:04:38.340 Well, first of all, the divergence between Florida, which, you know, can't sugarcoat a disaster for the Democrats.

00:04:43.680 Disaster for the Democrats indeed in Florida, but the entire election nationwide was not. In fact,

00:04:51.620 the disaster went the other way in some cases. Dr. Oz may now lay claim to the most humiliating

00:04:58.560 Republican political defeat in American history, losing his Senate race to a man with brain damage.

00:05:04.040 Fetterman, an oafish, ridiculous man-child who lived off of his parents' money until recently

00:05:09.520 and campaigned on releasing violent criminals from prison, and then suffered a stroke almost

00:05:15.060 entirely destroying his ability to understand English or speak it, both of which skills that

00:05:19.480 he hadn't quite perfected even before the stroke, still managed to win. He was one of the weakest

00:05:24.880 candidates ever fielded by a major political party in the United States, and somehow Republicans

00:05:29.980 managed to field an even weaker one. So we'll return to that in just a moment. But staying on the

00:05:35.260 depressing side of things, both Gretchen Whitmer in Michigan and Kathy Hochul in New York won their 1.00

00:05:41.380 races. Now, you could say that both races were uphill battles for Republicans, and that would

00:05:45.480 be true. You could try to find a moral victory in the fact that Lee Zeldin, the Republican challenger

00:05:49.780 in New York, made it within striking distance. In fact, he did better than any Republican gubernatorial

00:05:55.240 candidate in that state in years. But there really are no moral victories in politics. There are only

00:06:01.260 victories and defeats, wins and losses. And the fact is that Nurse Ratched in Michigan and her awkward aunt 0.98

00:06:07.260 in New York both won their races. That's it. So no matter what happens from here, it will not be the

00:06:14.360 Republican blowout that many of us expected. Neither will it be a resounding victory for the Democrats.

00:06:19.840 The voters certainly are not giving the Democrats a mandate. They might not even give them control over

00:06:25.080 Congress, let alone a mandate. But they also aren't delivering a sharp rebuke. So where are we left?

00:06:32.880 We're left with an electorate, divided, confused, uninspired. And here are my takeaways at this point.

00:06:42.460 First, as a believer in personal accountability, we cannot ignore the role of the voter in their own

00:06:49.700 voting decisions. In fact, one might even say that the voter is 100 percent responsible for his own

00:06:56.120 vote, which means that voters in New York and Michigan, for example, chose feckless tyrants who 0.92

00:07:01.680 locked them down during COVID but refused to lock up violent criminals to keep their community safe.

00:07:07.080 They chose moral incoherence and tyranny. In Pennsylvania, they chose a vegetable.

00:07:12.220 In many states and in many races, they chose to reward the people who are actively making their lives worse.

00:07:17.620 Exit polls, for whatever they're worth, which clearly isn't much, did consistently show that

00:07:23.240 voters are angry, they're dissatisfied with the direction of the country. And yet, in so many cases,

00:07:27.660 they chose more of what they're not satisfied with. They think we're on the wrong path,

00:07:33.100 and they decided that we might as well keep driving down it.

00:07:37.140 This is the kind of election post-mortem analysis that nobody really wants to give because it's

00:07:41.580 unpopular to blame the voters for their own choices. We'd rather treat voters like children

00:07:45.400 who are not responsible for their own decisions, but I'm not a fan of infantilizing adults in that

00:07:49.820 way. And so I must point out, however unpopular it might be, that there is a sickness in the minds

00:07:55.380 and souls of many people in this country. It compels them to choose tyranny, to choose dysfunction,

00:08:00.060 to choose things that are anathema to their own well-being. And this election isn't, that isn't,

00:08:07.640 you know, breaking news from this election. We've known that's the case for a long time now.

00:08:12.240 And we have to confront that fact, whether we like it or not. And I certainly do not like it.

00:08:17.480 Second, all of that said, we cannot let the Republicans off the hook, not by a long shot.

00:08:24.400 Yes, it is actually, in a literal sense, insane for Pennsylvanians to choose a cucumber to represent

00:08:31.120 them in the United States Senate. But it's not as though the Republican alternative was highly

00:08:35.480 appealing. I mean, Dr. Oz is a snake oil salesman fraud, as I said during the primaries.

00:08:41.080 He's a carpetbagger phony who didn't even live in the state he wanted to represent. 1.00

00:08:46.280 I actually largely agree with, and there are some conservatives that are making fun of this,

00:08:50.940 but I largely agree with this assessment from Claire McCaskill on NBC. Listen.

00:08:56.300 I don't think we should leave the conversation of Oz and Fetterman without talking about authenticity.

00:09:01.540 Yes.

00:09:02.220 John Fetterman kind of oozed authenticity.

00:09:05.160 He was who he was. He dressed how he dressed. He was comfortable in his own skin. Meanwhile,

00:09:11.880 we had crudités. And then, maybe the biggest sin of all, the Sunday before the election,

00:09:18.520 or Saturday before the election, he makes reference to people, Oz does, in Pennsylvania.

00:09:24.220 He says, go out and find 10 voters before the Steelers game tomorrow. The Steelers had a bye.

00:09:29.200 They didn't even play the next day. He didn't even know the Steelers' schedule. Now,

00:09:35.140 that is really political malpractice in a state like Pennsylvania.

00:09:40.260 That's basically right. I mean, John Fetterman's regular guy shtick wasn't nearly as authentic as

00:09:45.640 she claims that it was, but he was more authentic than Oz. Most importantly, Fetterman was a leftist,

00:09:53.200 and for the most part, he didn't try to hide it. Now, with a few exceptions, flip-flopping on fracking

00:09:58.160 and all of that, but he mostly ran on a platform that he believed in. It was an insane, destructive,

00:10:04.840 radically crazy platform, but it was his platform. Oz, meanwhile, ran on a conservative platform that

00:10:10.860 he was making up on the fly. Oz, too, is a radical leftist. I mean, he was shilling for transing the 0.98

00:10:18.540 kids 10 years ago. He was ahead of the curve, except he decided 15 seconds ago to pretend to

00:10:24.860 be a conservative. Now, voters shouldn't want to vote for a radical leftist, but if they do,

00:10:32.100 why would they choose the one pretending to be a conservative when they have the authentic

00:10:36.280 article available to them, right? The authentic leftist who embraces his leftism. If that's what

00:10:43.600 they want, that's what they're going to take. Oz's campaign had no message. It had no point.

00:10:49.020 It couldn't justify its own existence. Oz had nothing to say. He couldn't even explain, like,

00:10:55.160 why are you running for Senate again in Pennsylvania, of all places? You don't even live here? Like,

00:11:00.000 what do you, why? He could never explain that. He was fighting for nothing but his own political

00:11:05.260 advancement, and that was incredibly obvious to everyone, everyone except Republican primary voters

00:11:09.340 in the state, apparently, and Donald Trump, who endorsed Oz. Yet, this is symptomatic of a much

00:11:15.480 larger issue with the Republican Party nationwide. It has no message. It has no point. It has no

00:11:21.280 coherent platform. It has no leadership. It has leaders, you know, warm bodies filling those roles,

00:11:26.960 I mean, but they're not actually leading, which is why they should all be fired and sent off into

00:11:30.960 exile in disgrace. I mean, it's one thing to campaign on the fact that Democrats are bad.

00:11:40.000 And they are, and that's easy enough to point out. We know they're bad. Apparently,

00:11:45.260 even many of their voters know they're bad. But you also have to be able to explain, number one,

00:11:50.200 why they're bad and why you are better and what exactly your vision for the country is. You need

00:11:56.260 to have a complete message. But what is the Republican message? It's a day after the election. They still

00:12:01.720 haven't figured it out. Third, all of that said, there is one place, at least, where the Republican

00:12:09.200 Party has a message and knows how to communicate it. And as we already covered, that place is

00:12:14.500 Florida. In fact, Ron DeSantis conveyed that message very concisely, I think, during his victory speech

00:12:19.920 last night. Let's listen to this. We have embraced freedom. We have maintained law and order. We have

00:12:28.360 protected the rights of parents. We have respected our taxpayers. And we reject woke ideology.

00:12:36.360 We fight the woke in the legislature. We fight the woke in the schools. We fight the woke in the

00:12:47.000 corporations. We will never, ever surrender to the woke mob. Florida is where woke goes to die.

00:12:54.800 Now, these election results are shaking out in such a way as to guarantee that both parties learn

00:13:01.780 exactly the wrong lessons. Democrats will decide that losing by less than expected counts as a historic

00:13:09.380 paradigm-shifting victory. And they will proceed to double down on left-wing radicalism.

00:13:16.000 Republicans, on the other hand, will likely determine that they lost because they leaned

00:13:20.140 too heavily into the culture war. They'll decide that they should simply stick to talking about taxes

00:13:25.080 and leave it at that because that's what they learn after every election.

00:13:28.580 But Florida proves both assumptions wrong. You heard it there in his speech. Ron DeSantis ran on

00:13:33.960 and governed on a commitment to freedom, law and order, the rights of parents, opposing leftist

00:13:39.800 indoctrination in education, and rejecting woke ideology wholesale. On that final point, he is one of a few

00:13:47.120 Republicans on the national stage who made gender ideology, especially as it targets kids, into a

00:13:52.060 central campaign issue. And do you know what those few Republicans all have in common? They won. And

00:13:58.020 they won big. Ron DeSantis fights the culture war. He fights it boldly. And he fights it not just with

00:14:05.260 speeches, but with law and policy. And he wins. He doesn't just win. He flipped deep blue parts of his

00:14:11.600 state red with his strategy. He took entire Democrat voting blocks away from them. He won the Latino 0.81

00:14:17.500 vote. And not by pandering, but with a cultural family first message. And it turns out that's what

00:14:28.360 Latino voters are looking for. I mean, many of them live in multi-generational households. They value

00:14:35.360 family. So they don't need to hear Latinx and they don't want to hear the LGBT. They don't want to hear 1.00

00:14:41.040 about that. They want to hear about the rights of parents, protecting kids. That's what many

00:14:49.620 Americans want to hear about. DeSantis is perceived as the governor most invested in the culture war

00:14:57.140 and most willing to fight it. And this was the result. That was the result. Okay. And on top of that,

00:15:07.660 he is simply an effective and competent governor in a country that has too few of them.

00:15:13.660 And you need to have both of those. Okay. Because you can't just like talk about cultural issues

00:15:19.100 and all of that. You also have to govern. He does both. The common thread connecting the

00:15:26.500 underperforming Republicans is that most of them, not all, most of them were empty vessels with no

00:15:33.460 coherent vision or message. And despite of what you'll hear in the coming weeks, they mostly shied

00:15:40.260 away from the cultural issues. Or they were too busy, you know, sucking up to Donald Trump,

00:15:46.100 thinking that that would bring them over the finish line. And that brings me to my final point, which is

00:15:51.320 that we can whine and cry about this and throw up our hands in defeat, you know, and that's it.

00:16:01.320 Or we can see this as an opportunity. Because again, neither party has a mandate. Neither party came

00:16:08.060 away with a landslide victory on a national scale. The voters, as I said at the top, are listless,

00:16:13.860 confused, apathetic, uninspired. They're looking for leadership, for a message, for something and

00:16:25.400 someone to rally behind. Are we going to give that to them or not? Now let's get to our five headlines.

00:16:34.500 Do you have a mystery smell in your home that you just can't get rid of? You've tried candles and cover-up

00:16:46.300 sprays, but nothing seems to work. The best-selling Eden Pure Thunderstorm air purifier uses proven

00:16:51.820 oxy technology that quickly seeks out and destroys any odor, whether it be from litter boxes, trash cans,

00:16:57.040 dirty diapers, or cooking smells. Even if you don't know where the smell is coming from, the thunderstorm

00:17:01.120 will get rid of it in minutes. Unlike candles and cover sprays, the thunderstorm doesn't mask

00:17:06.100 or cover up bad odors. It completely eliminates them. Best of all, the thunderstorm doesn't require

00:17:11.440 any separate purchase of a filter. It plugs directly into the wall so as not to take up any

00:17:15.560 floor space. Its compact design makes it great for traveling as well. Right now, you could save $200

00:17:20.980 on an Eden Pure Thunderstorm 3-pack for whole home protection. You'll get three units for under $200.

00:17:26.820 Put one in your basement, your bedroom, your kitchen, anywhere that you need fresh, clean air.

00:17:32.920 All you got to do is go to EdenPureDeals.com. That's EdenPureDeals.com. Use code MATT3 to get

00:17:38.480 three units for under $200. That's EdenPureDeals.com. Discount code MATT3 to save $200, and shipping is free.

00:17:45.800 All right. Well, it wouldn't be an American election in the modern age without hiccups,

00:17:57.580 you know, voting machine hiccups. You know how they always have those hiccups. And so this is

00:18:02.840 a report from Fox News. It says, the campaigns for Republican gubernatorial candidate Kerry Lake,

00:18:08.220 U.S. Senate candidate Blake Masters, and the RNC are suing Maricopa County, Arizona over issues with

00:18:13.920 voting tabulation machines. The GOP lawsuit sought to keep polls open until 10 p.m. in a county. It

00:18:21.760 also asked the state court to instruct the inspector at every polling location that voters whom the e-poll

00:18:27.300 book have recorded as having previously voted this election must be permitted to complete and cast a

00:18:31.000 provisional ballot. So that was the lawsuit. And what this comes from is, as we say, or as the

00:18:38.980 Maricopa County Board of Supervisor Bill Gates told Fox News there was a hiccup, and the hiccup led to

00:18:45.900 20% of the voting machines going down, just like that. The GOP lawsuit said that the issues hit at

00:18:53.400 least 36% of all the voting centers. Now, the fact that we always have these kinds of issues,

00:19:01.820 the fact that they are so often in the same places, like Maricopa County is always a problem,

00:19:06.620 like at a certain point it becomes a conspiracy theory to claim that, or to assume that there's

00:19:17.620 no intentionality behind any of it. That becomes the conspiracy theory. You have these kinds of

00:19:23.640 issues every single time, burst water pipes, whatever, like you just, you know it's going to

00:19:28.120 happen, and it does. And it's happened here too. So as I've said many times, like first of all,

00:19:38.320 is there cheating in an election? Of course there is. I mean, absolutely. That's just a fact.

00:19:45.720 The only question becomes, where is it happening? On what scale did it happen?

00:19:50.520 But just to deny it wholesale, as Democrats like to do, again, that's just, that's the conspiracy

00:19:57.280 theory. Because now, they don't want to talk about voter fraud. For them, they say, they talk

00:20:06.440 about voter suppression. And in fact, they were doing that last night. There were left-wing pundits on,

00:20:13.580 there was one on MSNBC, for example, blaming voter suppression. And in fact, saying that this doesn't

00:20:20.560 count as a fair and equitable election in Georgia, because Stacey Abrams didn't win. 0.68

00:20:28.220 The thing about voter suppression is that, you know, to use a term I find myself using a lot

00:20:33.640 recently, that is unfalsifiable. That's an unfalsifiable theory, to say voter suppression.

00:20:37.720 Because what you're claiming is that, well, there are a whole bunch of voters who would have

00:20:42.080 voted, but they didn't. And the reason they didn't is because the vote was somehow, in some

00:20:48.960 really abstract way, suppressed. Like they were convinced in this, some kind of mind game to not

00:20:56.200 go and vote. You can always just claim voter suppression. It's unfalsifiable. Now, on the other

00:21:03.500 hand, when we talk about potential issues of voter fraud, cheating, rigging, that sort of thing,

00:21:11.180 you can point to actual things that are happening, like a voting machine hiccup, for example.

00:21:17.940 And also, we can look at what they're doing in broad daylight.

00:21:24.460 You know, opening up early voting, turning election day into election month, election two months,

00:21:31.600 election three months, going out of their way to make the election less secure.

00:21:40.600 These are all, these are all attempts to, in effect, rig the election. And then that's to say

00:21:46.080 nothing of the media and big tech, as we know, they did Hunter Biden laptop. That's the most infamous

00:21:50.680 example. It's certainly not the only example. It's the full, it's a, it's a full court press all the

00:21:56.880 time, but especially around elections, to get rid of and suppress anything that might be inconvenient

00:22:02.600 or embarrassing for Democrats. They did with Hunter Biden laptop, but they do that with everything.

00:22:08.780 And all of these are efforts to influence and, in effect, rig the election. All of that is happening.

00:22:16.540 There's also this, a lot of the analysis this morning focuses on Trump, and a lot of that analysis

00:22:27.100 is like this from CNN. This is a typical, typical article here. It says, former President Donald

00:22:33.280 Trump's endorsements for political candidates in close, high-profile races have not yet given

00:22:38.300 Republicans the swift and sweeping victories they had anticipated for this election cycle,

00:22:41.660 despite many GOP hopefuls banking on his support to propel their campaigns.

00:22:44.580 Many critical midterm races have yet to be called as of Wednesday morning, but so far,

00:22:48.500 no Republican endorsed by Trump in a toss-up gubernatorial U.S. Senate or House race has won.

00:22:53.000 Among those toss-up races where Trump had publicly backed a candidate, CM projects the governor's seats

00:22:57.560 in Wisconsin and Kansas, a Senate seat in Pennsylvania, and four House seats are going to Democrats.

00:23:02.200 The Trump-backed candidate with the highest profile who pulled out a win was J.D. Vance in Ohio,

00:23:06.500 who is projected to become the next U.S. senator from Ohio after defeating Tim Ryan.

00:23:10.520 Trump has traveled across the country, stumping for Republicans at huge rallies that mirrored event

00:23:16.120 programs of his past presidential campaign stops, and so on and so forth. Now, right,

00:23:20.580 not all of Trump's candidates did poorly. J.D. Vance, good example of one who did well.

00:23:26.700 And we say Trump's candidates, it's like he endorsed them, but he didn't own them. And J.D. Vance in

00:23:32.800 particular. Now, you're not going to take the credit away from Trump. So that's the thing you

00:23:36.620 can't give him. That's what the media wants to do. And Trump pointed this out yesterday.

00:23:43.680 And of course, it's true that if the candidate loses, then that's Trump's fault. But if it

00:23:50.060 wins, Trump doesn't get any credit for that. So you can't do that. J.D. Vance, the endorsement helps,

00:23:59.540 but J.D. Vance is also was a really good candidate and ran a very good campaign on top of that.

00:24:05.880 So there's a candidate that won. And some of the ones who may or may not lose were still good

00:24:11.960 choices in my view. I mean, I like Blake Masters in Arizona. I would have chosen him too if I was

00:24:17.400 Trump. I would have endorsed him. And I don't know if he's going to win or not at this point. It's

00:24:21.940 still, I guess it's, it still hasn't been decided. And you also can't blame Trump entirely for

00:24:28.800 a candidate's loss, obviously. But the fact is that he made some awful choices. Principal among

00:24:36.400 them was Oz, but that's not the only one. And these again are, these are, it's not,

00:24:42.320 it's one thing to come along during the general election and endorse the Republican, okay.

00:24:47.120 And then the Republican loses, well, you know, you can't be blamed for that, obviously.

00:24:49.900 But Trump actually, you know, Trump is the reason, most likely, that Dr. Oz became the

00:24:57.620 Republican nominee, endorsed him in the primaries. And then that nominee went on to lose to a

00:25:02.380 vegetable. It's not like this was unforeseeable, okay. It's not like this is, this is some sort of

00:25:08.220 twist ending that nobody could have seen coming. Many of us were saying all along, it cannot be Dr.

00:25:14.000 Oz. Whatever you think of the other candidates in the GOP primary, Oz cannot be the guy. He's a

00:25:19.600 fraud. He's a phony. He doesn't even live in the state. Nobody's going to take him seriously.

00:25:24.420 The fact that he was on TV doesn't matter. Nobody cares about that. No one's impressed with that

00:25:28.680 anymore. And we said that and it was to no avail. So what does this mean? Does it mean that everything

00:25:36.440 Trump, that every pick Trump makes is wrong? No, but it does mean he doesn't have a Midas touch,

00:25:43.700 far from it. And then there's the bigger point that Trump sort of reasserted himself into the

00:25:51.580 election conversation in the days leading up to Tuesday. And that doesn't appear to have helped

00:25:56.980 very much either. The other thing to keep in mind, you look at Trump now in 2022, you look at him after

00:26:02.400 after 2020. And there's been a definite change. Because Trump in 2016, this is one thing people

00:26:09.920 miss. Yeah, he was a sensation. Yes, he was a celebrity and all of that. And he still is all

00:26:18.520 those things. But he also, it was a very message-driven campaign in 2016. You knew what the message was.

00:26:26.660 It was a forward-looking, message-driven campaign. And people forget that it's not just a personality

00:26:34.600 cult. People got behind Trump because they believed in his message. And he hammered that message home

00:26:41.260 constantly. Immigration, build the wall, right? That was probably the number one thing. But also, 0.99

00:26:49.600 drain the swamp, dismantle the establishment. Now, we can talk about how well he followed through,

00:26:56.540 in any of those things when he was actually president. But that was the message. And it was

00:27:00.460 a message-driven campaign. And there's this, the media wants to pretend that Trump in 2016 was

00:27:10.640 entirely personality cult. That's all it was. Yeah, there's some element of that. There's an element

00:27:15.820 of that with every politician on a national scale. With Trump being at the level that he is,

00:27:21.060 it's a much, much greater element. But even so, it was message-driven.

00:27:27.540 You look at him now, though, and what is the message? It's, it's, it's, there's, I'm not even

00:27:34.000 sure what, we talk about the problem with Republicans not having a message. What's your point? What's your

00:27:37.900 message? That includes Trump. He's one of the principal violators here. What's your, what's your message?

00:27:45.320 What does all this mean? Well, it means it needs to be a real primary in 2024.

00:27:54.380 You know, if you're a Ron DeSantis supporter, there's no point in complaining and saying that

00:27:59.560 Trump should just not run and should endorse DeSantis. It's not going to happen. And if you're

00:28:05.520 a Trump supporter, there's also no point in saying, well, DeSantis should stay out of it and just,

00:28:09.320 this rightfully belongs to Trump. It doesn't rightfully belong to anyone. No one's a king.

00:28:13.900 You got to run and you got to win. And so now this is what we should be pushing for.

00:28:20.080 This is, this is what we're, we're, we're gearing up for is a, a 20, a primary for 2024,

00:28:24.160 knock down, drag them out. And it's not just going to be Ron DeSantis and Donald Trump either,

00:28:28.500 by the way, there's gonna be a bunch of them jumping in there. We might as well embrace that.

00:28:33.820 Let the best man win. All right. Not all bad news. Uh, actually some very good news here in Tennessee,

00:28:40.180 where our incumbent governor, by the way, Bill Lee won easily, uh, bill one, this is the first,

00:28:45.640 well, Bill Lee won easily. We also have the legislation, which is bill number one that is

00:28:51.780 just officially been filed. Uh, the first piece of legislation of the season, which bans the gender 1.00

00:28:58.340 transition of minors in the state. Uh, we've been fighting for this and now we have it now it's here. 0.99

00:29:03.940 So here's the press release from majority leaders, William Lamberth and Jack Johnson.

00:29:08.260 We pull it up. Um, it says Tennessee majority leaders, William Lamberth and Jack Johnson today

00:29:13.440 introduced the protecting children from gender mutilation act, providing the nation's strongest

00:29:18.100 protections against the removal of a child's healthy body parts. House bill one, Senate bill one

00:29:23.500 bans medical interference that alters a child's hormonal balance and procedures that remove their

00:29:28.600 organs to enable the minor to identify as a gender different from their biological sex.

00:29:32.920 So this is not just banning the, uh, surgical procedures on minors. Of course it does ban that,

00:29:40.640 but very crucially, it also bans the drugs, you know, puberty blockers, hormone drugs,

00:29:45.940 and all that. That's all bans. It creates a private right of action, allowing a minor injured due to a

00:29:51.060 violation of the law to sue for damages. The legislation also allows courts to impose an

00:29:55.600 additional $25,000 for each violation. Republican leaders committed to, uh, ban gender disfiguring

00:30:02.000 procedures for minors after troubling video surfaced on social media in September. Reports

00:30:05.720 from daily wires, Matt Walsh showed a local medical provider promoting so-called gender affirming care

00:30:09.900 as a huge moneymaker. The report raises nationwide awareness and serious ethical concerns about

00:30:14.760 procedures performed on minors at pediatric transgender clinics across the country. Uh, 0.99

00:30:18.980 and then we've got the bullet points that the statement goes on for a while, but the bullet points

00:30:22.880 just to review the protecting children from gender mutilation act filed today.

00:30:27.160 One creates a private right of action, allowing a minor parent of a minor injured as a result of

00:30:32.300 the violation to sue for damages, uh, allows a child to bring a civil cause of action against

00:30:37.560 a parent. If a parent consented to the violation on the minor's behalf allows courts to impose a

00:30:42.920 $25,000 penalty per violation requires a state attorney general to establish a process for reporting

00:30:48.340 violations of the law allows the state attorney general to bring an action against a healthcare

00:30:52.020 provider for knowingly violating the law within 20 years of the violation, uh, within 20 years.

00:30:58.100 That's important too. Uh, and then also the bill makes exceptions for children born with chromosomal

00:31:03.740 anomalies or congenital defects. Now, um, so there's two key points here.

00:31:12.260 Well, three, I mean, the first is that these procedures are banned. That's the most important thing.

00:31:16.100 The second is the financial compensation aspect of this, which I think is really important,

00:31:21.940 uh, because there are a lot of people, a lot of minors that are being victimized by this stuff,

00:31:31.180 but they have no recourse. They have nowhere to go because the law doesn't allow it. The law doesn't

00:31:37.400 allow them to sue for medical malpractice because according to the law in these States, technically,

00:31:42.820 even though what is happening to them is this Frankenstein butchery, it's technically legal.

00:31:49.040 And so they can't sue. They got, so there's just, there's no recourse. There's nowhere to go for,

00:31:54.480 for justice, nowhere to go for compensation. Not that you can ever be fully compensated when your

00:32:00.900 body is altered in this way and disfigured permanently, but there's nowhere for them to go.

00:32:05.340 That's going to change in Tennessee. So they have somewhere to go and they can sue. 1.00

00:32:09.660 I also think it's great that they, that the children, they can not only sue the medical

00:32:16.040 providers who did this to them, but they can also sue their parents if, if their parents were complicit.

00:32:24.720 And, uh, I don't know how people are going to react to that or, or, or take that, but as far as I'm

00:32:31.880 concerned, that is exactly what needs to happen. Because in many of these cases, not all, but in many of

00:32:38.840 these cases, these parents are the number one villains. Yeah. There's the doctors. Okay. And

00:32:43.640 they're in it for the money and it's a big cash cow and all that. We know that from the videos that we

00:32:47.300 posted, but the parents, like at least you can. So you've got corrupt money, hungry doctors. I get

00:32:57.480 that. It's not good. It's evil. It's terrible. But I sort of understand the concept that there are

00:33:02.300 corrupt money, hungry people out there that will do terrible things because they get paid and you,

00:33:05.860 you understand their motivation. Um, it's the motivation shared by many evil people who've

00:33:13.880 done many evil things over, over history, but the parents, I mean, what's your motivation

00:33:19.280 to consign your children to this? And I'm being somewhat rhetorical here. I know some of the

00:33:25.460 motivation. It's, it's a form of virtue signaling. It's a lot of different things,

00:33:28.760 but they need to be held accountable to. And there's one other point in the way that this

00:33:35.800 bill was written, but I also want to point out, um, which is that the, the bill makes the gender 0.76

00:33:45.320 transition of minors. It makes it a prohibited medical practice. Okay. Bans it as a medical 1.00

00:33:50.460 practice. And what does that mean? It means that, well, it means you can't do it. It's your band.

00:33:53.840 If you do it, you lose your medical license, uh, along with all these other penalties that will,

00:33:58.340 that, that come down as well, but it's not criminalized. It hasn't been made a criminal

00:34:04.360 matter. And I, I, I talked to some of the legislators about this and they were explaining to me,

00:34:09.980 you know, when they, and they first shared the bill with me and, you know, the fact that it's not

00:34:15.340 actually criminalized, of course, for my, cause I'm, I'm gung ho. And like, I want to take these

00:34:20.100 doctors, put it, put it, throw them in prison for 50 years, you know, for, for life in prison

00:34:24.680 is what I would like to do. And what they explained to me, and I thought I found it very compelling

00:34:30.240 is that if you don't make it a criminal matter, then you are sidestepping the DAs because one of

00:34:39.280 the big problems that Republicans have is you got these woke, often Soros funded DAs that come into

00:34:45.900 these cities. And yeah, there are a lot of things that are crimes, but the DAs have the power to

00:34:51.460 decide what they're going to enforce. And they could just say, well, I'm not enforcing that,

00:34:54.780 you know, it's a crime and I'm not going to enforce it. You say that it's a crime, but I say,

00:34:58.300 I'm not going to enforce it. And then what do you do? You're just, you're just, uh, you're handicapped 1.00

00:35:03.640 by that. You've, you've put yourself at their mercy. So this is, this is a way of getting around

00:35:10.500 that problem. You're not going to make yourself, you're not going to put yourself at the mercy

00:35:14.380 of democratic left-wing DAs relying on them to enforce this law, which they simply just will

00:35:20.700 not do. I think this is a clever way of getting around that by saying, well, it's, we're, we're,

00:35:26.500 we're going an entirely different direction. So of course, if you, you know, you remove,

00:35:33.320 you take away the medical license, if you continue practicing medical without medicine without medical

00:35:36.920 license, that is a crime and you go to prison for that. So it's in effect, it's still even criminalized.

00:35:41.600 Uh, but then you also have the civil penalties and you are initially stepping around the DAs,

00:35:47.640 which I think is a smart idea. All right. So the women over on the view were, um, squawking this 1.00

00:35:53.820 week about free speech. And I want to go through a couple of these clips. First of all, here's Whoopi

00:35:58.940 Goldberg announcing, um, tragically that she's leaving Twitter.

00:36:04.980 It has been a little over a week since Elon Musk took over Twitter and the places. It's a mess.

00:36:11.920 He's already called back some of the workforce. He fired a few days ago. He's putting his $8 charge

00:36:17.420 for blue check verification on hold. First, it was going to be $20. Now it's going to be $8.

00:36:22.660 He also suspended Kathy Griffin for impersonating him on a parody account,

00:36:29.260 which has started a free Kathy hashtag to Trent. I mean, I'm, I'm, I'm getting off. I'm getting

00:36:38.880 off today because I just feel like, you know, it's, it's so messy and I I'm tired of now having

00:36:48.420 had certain kinds of attitudes blocked and now they're back on. And I just, I'm going

00:36:55.260 to get out. And if it settles down and I feel more comfortable, maybe I'll come back. But as

00:37:01.540 of tonight, I'm done with Twitter. Of course, if you're like me, you hear that and you think,

00:37:07.780 uh, uh, Oh, you were on Twitter. I didn't even know that. Like, what are the, what are the,

00:37:11.600 I just want to know if I can get in their own head, get in their heads, which is not really

00:37:16.240 the place I'd want to be. But well, how do you think people are going to react to this?

00:37:19.560 Do you think people are making some big dramatic announcement? I'm done. You know,

00:37:24.120 I might be back later, but I just, for now I'm out of there, which by the way,

00:37:27.740 when it comes to dramatic announcements, that's, uh, that's, that's kind of an anticlimactic way

00:37:32.940 to go about it. I'm done. I mean, I might come back later, but I'm done for now. I will not be on

00:37:38.820 Twitter again until at least tomorrow morning, if not a little bit sooner, but at this moment

00:37:44.600 right now, I'm not going to be, I am not using Twitter at this moment while I'm on TV.

00:37:49.320 But what do they expect? Do they think that people are going to, like the people think it's

00:37:53.920 good that Elon Musk took over Twitter? Are they going to say, well, nevermind. I mean,

00:37:56.460 if this scares, uh, Whoopi Goldberg away, I can't imagine Twitter without Whoopi Goldberg.

00:38:04.380 And then you also see once again, just the total absolute fragility of these people.

00:38:09.720 She says, oh, all these people that were, they were, I was insulated for them, from them. And now,

00:38:16.040 and now their, their ideas are going to be, I'm going to maybe be exposed to some of their ideas

00:38:23.280 and opinions and their words. And I can't, I, I can't deal with that.

00:38:30.860 She also has some thoughts on the nature of, uh, free speech. I think this is in clip six.

00:38:35.860 Communications Act, which a lot, which basically allows this to happen. I think it's section 230.

00:38:42.400 It allows, um, you know, protection of social media as just platforms under the freedom.

00:38:49.420 Well, they're just say that they're, they're third party platforms. They're not the ones that

00:38:52.840 are putting it out there. And that can only change by legislation. And if the Republicans

00:38:57.720 rule the Senate, it's a bit challenging. So if you treat it like a publication, then that means

00:39:04.220 they're liable for any crazy thing someone posts, which-

00:39:06.600 Well, it is a publication. It is a publication.

00:39:08.600 But there is a way to craft it appropriate.

00:39:10.080 They keep saying that it's free speech. And some speech is not all for, all speech is not

00:39:15.340 free speech. Some speech is not okay free speech. So everybody has to agree on that. But if people

00:39:22.140 keep saying, well, you heard my free speech, it's going to be a problem. But you know what?

00:39:26.020 This is going to be, this is our problem, but ain't my problem today because I'm out.

00:39:33.700 Some speech is not okay free speech. That's, that's it. So there's been this debate for

00:39:41.000 centuries really about, about free speech. What is free speech? What counts as free speech?

00:39:45.620 And is free speech absolute? And Whoopi Goldberg has, I guess, settled, settled the debate entirely.

00:39:54.800 She says that, you know, some speech is just not okay. And how do we know if it's not okay or not?

00:40:01.880 I guess she'll tell us. Meanwhile, although this maybe has been a debate, I've never found the debate

00:40:09.980 all that interesting because to me, now they're always around the margins. They're always going to be

00:40:14.740 the harder kind of cases. But for the most part, you know, when you, like 99.9% of all the speech

00:40:23.300 that goes on, it's, it's really easy to, to determine whether it, quote, counts as free speech

00:40:31.000 or whether it ought to count as free speech or not. Okay. And the things that shouldn't count as free

00:40:38.060 speech, generally speaking, if you're making direct violent threats against someone, actual threats,

00:40:44.740 and using a pronoun, you know, like that's not a threat. Disagreeing with you is not a threat.

00:40:52.480 Saying something like, I'm going to come to your house and kill you, like saying the things that

00:40:55.400 trans activists say to me almost every day, that's a threat. That's clearly a threat. So 0.83

00:41:00.800 that's not free speech. At least it shouldn't be. Trying to explicitly encourage other people

00:41:07.880 people to cause harm to someone or to commit a crime. Again, that clearly shouldn't count as free

00:41:14.500 speech. Defamation, right? Slander, libel, any, any, any, any form of, of speech written or spoken

00:41:24.640 where you're lying about someone in order to cause them harm, not free speech.

00:41:30.940 And those are pretty much all the exceptions. You might be able to come up with a few here and

00:41:36.660 there, but you know what the exceptions are when you see them. It's, it's pretty rare when you come

00:41:44.020 across an actual hard case of trying to determine, oh, does that qualify as free speech or not?

00:41:48.460 Because again, I think 99.9% of it, we all know. And most of the speech that goes on,

00:41:54.360 on social media, it's, uh, people might be vulgar. They might be, you know, they might be cruel.

00:42:01.380 They might be rude, but they're essentially just expressing their opinion. And if you're expressing

00:42:08.400 your opinion, that's free speech. And that ought to be allowed on social media. It ought to be allowed

00:42:15.300 on Twitter. If Twitter is saying, I mean, if, if Twitter is saying that they've got, if Elon Musk is

00:42:19.700 saying is a commitment to free speech, if that's what he's saying, that's what he wants to run his

00:42:22.780 company, then that means that people should be able to simply just express their ideas

00:42:27.000 and their opinions. And that's it. And if you don't like what someone says, you can disagree with

00:42:33.460 them. You can even block them. There's a lot of, you can choose not to read it. There are a lot of

00:42:37.180 ways around it, but to me, it's not all that difficult. Let people speak, let them voice their

00:42:46.340 opinions. That's it. That's all. Uh, speaking of letting people speak, let's get to the

00:42:52.500 comment section. You know, while today's coffee often comes with hints of soy, Black Rifle delivers

00:43:10.880 an entirely different experience. Bold, strong, and delicious Black Rifle coffee is the coffee that

00:43:15.160 I choose to get me through the day. Black Rifle coffee is veteran founded and operated. Their

00:43:19.500 mission is to help service members successfully transition from the military into entrepreneurship.

00:43:24.200 They provide assistance to veterans who seek to launch businesses of their own with the goal of

00:43:28.360 helping more companies like Black Rifle become a reality. Black Rifle is committed to hiring 10,000

00:43:33.320 veterans and they're well on their way. As for the coffee itself, Black Rifle is very selective about

00:43:36.680 where they source their coffee beans and very disciplined when it comes to ensuring the freshness of

00:43:41.400 every bag. So go to BlackRifleCoffee.com, use promo code Walsh for 10% off your first order,

00:43:47.460 or when you sign up for a new coffee club subscription. The subscription gives you free

00:43:52.020 shipping and all coffee club orders, early access to club deals and promotions, and special discounts

00:43:56.660 from their partner brands. That's BlackRifleCoffee.com with promo code Walsh for 10% off your first order,

00:44:02.860 or when you sign up to become a coffee club member. Black Rifle Coffee, supporting veterans and America's

00:44:07.820 coffee. CoolPapaJMagic says, Matt is the worst of all the DW hosts when it comes to pretending to be

00:44:14.060 excited about the sponsors. I don't know why I'm always accused of that, but my excitement is

00:44:21.200 deeply sincere. Dakota says, after watching the Rogan episode, I think you really planted the seed to

00:44:29.520 get his mind going in the right direction. Well, you know, and that's in a conversation like

00:44:34.400 something like gay marriage. That's what you're looking to do, to my mind anyway.

00:44:44.020 It's very unlikely. It's unlikely in any debate, but especially if something like gay marriage, 0.77

00:44:49.340 you know, a really contentious topic like that, it's unlikely that the person you're talking to

00:44:54.820 in the moment will say, you know what, you're right, I'm going to change all, I have completely

00:44:59.500 changed my mind about this fundamental issue. So what you want to do is plant some seeds,

00:45:06.340 say a few things to get them thinking. And if in, you know, of course, in the context of a

00:45:09.300 Joe Rogan episode, it's not just talking to Joe Rogan, but to tens of millions of other people.

00:45:14.300 So even if you can't plant a seed in his mind, maybe in the minds of others.

00:45:20.920 Amanda says, my biggest criticism of Matt's appearance on JRE is that aliens didn't come up

00:45:26.440 not once. I can tell you that is also my regret as well. I just, I'm not the one leading the

00:45:36.080 conversation. It's not my interview. I was hoping for a pivot point, but then once we got on the

00:45:42.860 marriage topic, even I could, it seemed very difficult to like, how do we get from here to

00:45:47.740 space aliens invading and UFO sightings? And I just couldn't figure out how to bridge that gap.

00:45:54.020 But if there's ever another appearance, maybe we could talk about it then.

00:45:59.320 Let's see. Sarah says, side note, why does Matt look so small at his desk? Did he get a new desk,

00:46:06.500 a broken chair? This is driving me nuts. Steve says, excellent show, Matt. Thanks. Is your chair

00:46:11.620 seat closer to the floor lately? Met Freak says, for some reason, Matt looks like he's a little person

00:46:17.600 at a giant desk, like he shrunk about half a foot or something. We had this conversation before we

00:46:24.140 went on and I'm very upset by this because I know that Sean's in the control room right now

00:46:30.480 celebrating because I said I wanted to put the chair down a little bit so that I could pull my

00:46:35.020 chair in and get it underneath the desk. It just bothers me. I can't get it all the way underneath

00:46:38.380 the desk. And so I put the chair down and then we had this conversation before on the air where Sean

00:46:42.820 said that I look, you know, I look like a little person at the desk now. I look like a small child,

00:46:46.980 small beard. I look like the sweet baby gang. I look like a bearded baby at the desk because it's

00:46:50.960 too low to the ground. And I was hoping that the audience wouldn't notice it. Or if you did,

00:46:57.100 you wouldn't have, you wouldn't make comments about it, but I should know better. So Patrick says,

00:47:03.860 finish listening to the Rogan conversation before listening today. The Daily Wire article didn't capture

00:47:08.260 how well you handled yourself in the discussion on gay marriage. Rogan consistently changed

00:47:11.660 between hypothetical, moral, and legal arguments. You stayed constant. You even started defining

00:47:15.460 which argument it was as it went on. The longer it went, the better you looked. Still room for

00:47:21.340 improvement though. For example, when Rogan asked if God makes gay people, I really wanted you to ask

00:47:26.300 if God makes kleptomaniacs. And if he does, is stealing still wrong? Yeah, to me, the question about 0.98

00:47:33.840 whether people are born gay, and that kept coming up in the conversation, to me, it's kind of

00:47:39.960 irrelevant to the marriage question. Right? Like, are people born gay? Where does that come from? 0.86

00:47:51.840 All of that, that's not directly relevant to the question of how you define marriage.

00:47:57.600 And it's yet another road that takes us away from the main point that I wanted to stay focused on,

00:48:03.640 and I wanted to hammer home. But room for improvement? Yeah, absolutely. There's always

00:48:10.800 room for improvement. Look, one thing you have to know about me is that I am not satisfied with

00:48:15.860 anything ever. You know, any show, any interview I do, anything at all, I'm going to go back. It's

00:48:23.420 like a football player watching game tape, and you start picking yourself apart. That's what you have

00:48:27.740 to do though. I think that's what you have to do to be successful. It may not be to never be satisfied

00:48:32.660 with anything and to constantly be picking yourself apart and looking for weaknesses and looking for

00:48:37.160 things you can do better. That may not be the key to, you know, always being the happiest and most

00:48:43.780 satisfied person in life, but I do think it's necessary for success. Are you still giving your

00:48:48.160 money to woke razor companies that hate your values, see masculinity as toxic, and think that you

00:48:53.040 should teach your daughter to shave her beard? Well, there's a better way. Jeremy's razors are 100% 0.99

00:48:57.740 real and 100% woke free. The premium matte tungsten handle has more heft than the left. The razor head

00:49:03.480 pivots without caving and has six blades that are sharper than truth. Those other razor companies,

00:49:08.320 they keep virtue signaling to the totalitarian left and using your money to do it, but you don't have

00:49:12.400 to let them. When you buy Jeremy's razors, you aren't just making Jeremy richer, you're making the

00:49:17.200 woke left poorer. 75,000 people have already made the switch. Visit jeremysrazors.com to get 40%

00:49:23.400 off your founder series shave kit. That's jeremysrazors.com. Jeremy's razors, shut up and

00:49:27.680 shave. Now let's get to our daily cancellation. Today for our daily cancellation, we turn to the

00:49:38.560 New York Times and a writer by the name of Jennifer Wiener. Back in July, Ms. Wiener wrote an article 0.99

00:49:44.160 reflecting on a very important national issue that Jennifer Lopez had gotten married to Ben Affleck

00:49:50.480 and taken his last name. I only became aware of this article because Lopez reacted to it this week

00:49:55.440 in an interview with Vogue magazine. And as you know, I am an avid reader of Vogue magazine.

00:50:00.900 Before we get to Lopez's response, let's first review Wiener's piece, which is titled,

00:50:06.560 Why It Matters That J-Lo Is Now J-F. She writes,

00:50:11.220 The second chance romance leading up to last week's nuptials between Jennifer Lopez and the actor and

00:50:15.560 director Ben Affleck was a pandemic gift that kept on giving for romantics and celebrity gossip

00:50:21.080 addicts alike. Every chapter of the Bennifer 2.0 love story gave us something new to chew on. The

00:50:26.980 most recent nugget, J-Lo's decision first announced in her subscription only on the J-Lo newsletter

00:50:31.820 to change her last name. Quote, love is a great thing, maybe the best of things and worth waiting

00:50:37.600 for. She wrote, signing off, With Love, Miss Jennifer Lynn Affleck. True love wins, except also

00:50:44.480 oof, Wiener writes. And just so you know, except also oof will be about as insightful as this essay

00:50:51.240 gets. She continues, Miss Affleck may be surrendering to the power of love with this, her fourth marriage,

00:50:57.260 but given the cringy history behind the practice, a woman taking her husband's last name feels to me

00:51:02.240 like a submission, a gesture that doesn't say I belong with him so much as I belong to him. And at

00:51:08.700 this fraught moment for feminism in America, a woman like the former Jennifer Lopez deciding to 1.00

00:51:13.920 change her name feels especially dispiriting. Sure, taking your husband's name might be a way of saying

00:51:19.080 this is for keeps, but it's also a gesture inextricably rooted in peak patriarchy, specifically

00:51:24.060 in 11th century law of coverture, which held that a married woman was for legal purposes merged with her

00:51:28.980 husband with no standing or identity of her own. That notion hung on for centuries and still

00:51:32.920 endures in various forms around the world. Now, it will not shock you to learn, as Wiener reveals

00:51:38.060 later in the article, that she herself has been married multiple times. She explains that she

00:51:42.980 didn't take the last name of her, in her words, current and final husband. It will also not shock

00:51:48.760 you to learn that she references The Handmaid's Tale, writing, quote, The idea of taking a husband's

00:51:53.220 last name always made me uncomfortable, reminding me of The Handmaid's Tale. In Margaret Atwood's

00:51:57.200 Gilead, the Handmaids, who exist to carry the babies of the elites, are stripped of anything 0.93

00:52:02.220 that identifies them as individuals, including their names. As we know, if not for Harry Potter

00:52:07.340 and The Handmaid's Tale, leftists would not be able to make any literary references at all,

00:52:11.920 just as if not for Hitler, they would be unable to make any historical references at all.

00:52:17.220 But in any case, Wiener goes on for several more paragraphs explaining why Jennifer Lopez should have 1.00

00:52:21.360 made a different decision about her own last name, and why her decisions are somehow relevant to the

00:52:26.940 public. Indeed, she says, Jennifer Lopez's name is, whether she likes it or not, a political issue.

00:52:32.900 She concludes, whether or not to take a spouse's name is a personal decision. But the personal is

00:52:38.540 political now more than ever, and especially for celebrities. Like every star or every mortal with

00:52:43.620 an Instagram account, Ms. Affleck has constructed a persona for public consumption. She has used her

00:52:48.840 platform to tell the tale of the upward trajectory of a strong, independent woman, a woman who has gone

00:52:53.600 from backup dancer to global superstar. Her brand is intense competence and hardcore self-sufficiency.

00:52:59.840 In control and loving it, as she sings in Jenny from the Block. Whoever Jennifer Affleck is in her 0.96

00:53:04.640 private life, J-Lo is a woman who might love a man but doesn't need one. Imagine if in her newsletter

00:53:10.500 she had said, I love my husband. Right now, though, women are under attack, and I won't participate in a 1.00

00:53:15.420 tradition that's historically rooted in women relinquishing their identities and their legal standing.

00:53:19.180 I'm giving my husband my heart, but I'm keeping my name. Or imagine if Ben Affleck had become Ben

00:53:26.220 Lopez. Now, admittedly, I'm sort of surprised that he didn't go that direction. And I'm also

00:53:32.280 surprised, pleasantly so, by Jennifer Lopez's response in Vogue this week, where she offers a

00:53:37.880 defense of family and of tradition. She says, reacting to the New York Times article, what, really?

00:53:43.320 People are still going to call me Jennifer Lopez, but my legal name will be Mrs. Affleck because we're

00:53:47.220 joined together. We're husband and wife. I'm proud of that. I don't think that's a problem.

00:53:51.160 And then when asked about the idea of Ben Affleck becoming Ben Lopez, she says, no, it's not

00:53:54.840 traditional. It doesn't have any romance to it. It feels like it's a power move. You know what I mean?

00:53:59.580 I'm very much in control of my own life and destiny, and I feel empowered as a woman and as a person.

00:54:04.100 I can understand that people have their feelings about it, and that's okay, too. But if you want to

00:54:07.740 know how I feel about it, it just feels romantic. It still carries tradition and romance to me, and

00:54:11.960 maybe I'm just that kind of girl. Well, well said. And now, admittedly, Jennifer Lopez has 0.92

00:54:19.340 been married something like 14 times. Under most circumstances, you would not consider her to be

00:54:23.360 an advocate or defender of the sanctity of marriage and the beauty and importance of tradition. But on

00:54:29.000 this issue, at least, she's correct. And Miss Wiener in the New York Times is, like so many other left-wing 1.00

00:54:33.660 feminists, frivolous, ridiculous, spiteful, despising what is traditional simply because it is 0.97

00:54:40.980 traditional without being able to articulate any reason beyond that. So there are three points we

00:54:46.780 made here. First, you notice how quickly the let women make their own decisions facade falls away. 1.00

00:54:53.640 As we see time and time again, the feminists left, they respect and value a woman's choice 0.97

00:54:59.360 provided she makes exactly the choice that they want her to make. If she makes the personal choice

00:55:05.780 they prefer, then it's good that, you know, she made a personal choice and they should respect her

00:55:09.980 choices. If she makes the personal choice they do not prefer, then the personal is political and they

00:55:16.200 have every right to attack her for it. That's just the way the game is played. Second, Lopez is correct

00:55:21.640 that sharing a last name is about unity. It's about being joined, bonded together. The modern,

00:55:27.320 enlightened, quote-unquote, marriage is one where nothing is shared. Separate finances, separate names,

00:55:33.420 separate lives, and eventually separate houses and separate divorce lawyers. Because the whole point of

00:55:39.440 marriage, the reason it exists is to bring man and woman together as one. That's its beauty, its mystery,

00:55:45.220 its reason. If you're determined to maintain an entirely separate identity from your spouse,

00:55:50.060 then you're really determined to close yourself off from the true nature and the greatest joys of the

00:55:56.220 marital union. Now, you could say that a last name is just a last name. What does it matter? But a name is a

00:56:03.660 symbol and symbols are deeply important and meaningful to human beings. The choice to share a name is

00:56:09.600 symbolic as discussed, but it symbolizes unity and fidelity. The choice to not share a name is also

00:56:17.900 symbolic then. And what does that symbolize? Well, the opposite of unity and fidelity. One of my favorite

00:56:23.840 Avett Brothers song called Murder in the City says, always remember there was nothing worth sharing like

00:56:28.680 the love that let us share our name. And that's what it symbolizes. Men and wife share a name because

00:56:35.480 of the love that bonds them together. Third point, finally, to Jennifer Lopez's point, tradition does 0.82

00:56:45.780 matter. Now, it may not always be enough to defend a tradition merely on the basis that it is a tradition.

00:56:52.280 Not all traditions should continue indefinitely just because they're traditions. But traditions

00:56:58.840 matter. They tie you to your ancestors, to your heritage, to your past. Our ancestors speak to us

00:57:05.940 through tradition. Traditions are their voice, the democracy of the dead, as Chesterton said.

00:57:12.620 What this means is that if you're going to tear down a tradition or get away from one,

00:57:17.900 you better have a very good reason. We may not continue every tradition, but there needs to be

00:57:24.160 a reason to discontinue it, a compelling reason. But because, you know, even if at first you're

00:57:31.360 doing something and you're saying, well, why are we doing this? And the fact that generations and

00:57:38.000 generations and for centuries and millennia before you, people did that thing, that's like an indication

00:57:45.780 that there's something worth doing here. And again, that's not always going to mean that you

00:57:50.880 should continue it. But to just reflexively say, oh, we're not going to do this anymore.

00:57:57.420 That's the problem. And the left reacts reflexively to tradition. Only their reflex is to reject it.

00:58:04.120 It may not always make sense to defend traditions merely on the basis that they are traditions,

00:58:07.800 but it makes even less sense to attack them merely on the basis that they are traditions.

00:58:12.180 In the case of marital names, the tradition is good because, as we've already covered,

00:58:16.980 it fosters unity and a shared purpose and a shared identity. It's also good because it is a tradition.

00:58:23.900 It became a tradition because it's good and meaningful. And the fact that it is a tradition

00:58:28.660 only makes it all the more good and meaningful. And that ultimately is why the left wants to dismantle

00:58:35.360 it, because they seek to dismantle everything that is good and meaningful, especially if it's traditional.

00:58:40.580 And that is why Jennifer Wiener, not Lopez, is today canceled. And that'll do it for this portion 1.00

00:58:49.540 of the show as we move over to the members block. Hope to see you there. If not, talk to you tomorrow.

00:58:53.300 Godspeed.

The Matt Walsh Show - November 09, 2022

Ep. 1059 - How The Red Wave Became The Red Ripple

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript