The Matt Walsh Show - Ep. 1104 - The Vengeful, Petty Tyrants Who Lead Us

00:00:00.000 Today on The Matt Walsh Show, the Biden administration tried and failed to throw a father of seven in prison for 11 years for the crime of being a pro-life activist.

00:00:07.120 The ruling regime is vengeful and petty and will do everything in its power to destroy anyone who fails to submit.

00:00:12.440 We'll talk about that.

00:00:13.220 Also, more states across the country are moving to ban the mutilation and castration of children.

00:00:17.720 We'll discuss how the anti-gender ideology movement managed to have so much success in such a short amount of time.

00:00:23.700 And the Surgeon General warns about the dangers of social media for children.

00:00:27.160 He's right about that, but his concern for the safety of children seems to be rather selective.

00:00:31.100 Plus, I scandalized a feminist during a panel segment on Piers Morgan's show when I suggested that women should maybe wear clothing when they go out in public. 1.00

00:00:38.800 We'll talk about that provocative opinion and much more today on The Matt Walsh Show.

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00:01:21.300 Well, in September of this past year, early one Friday morning, dozens of armed federal agents descended on the home of a wanted fugitive.

00:01:29.460 This is a man accused of violating federal law and who said the federal government deserves to spend over a decade in prison.

00:01:35.800 That man was named Mark Houck.

00:01:38.840 Despite appearances, he was not actually some sort of terrorist or drug trafficker or child predator.

00:01:44.380 We could already assume that he was none of those things because if he was, he never would have attracted the FBI's interest in the first place.

00:01:50.160 Instead, he was, along with being a law-abiding father of seven, a pro-life activist.

00:01:56.020 Houck stood accused of violating the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances, or FACE Act.

00:02:01.820 And supposedly, he had done something to prevent people from accessing an abortion clinic, which is a violation of federal law now.

00:02:08.280 Although, strangely enough, the incident in question had occurred a year prior in 2021.

00:02:12.760 And the local DA in Philadelphia, who's hardly a right-wing zealot, had already looked at the case and decided that no charges were warranted.

00:02:20.600 A year after that, the Biden administration gave it another look and decided that not only had a crime occurred,

00:02:27.520 but that the alleged criminal was so dangerous and so sinister that he deserved to be frog-marched outside of his home at the break of dawn,

00:02:34.960 and if they could prove their case in a court of law, thrown in federal prison for 11 years.

00:02:39.940 But as it happens, they could not prove their case in federal court.

00:02:43.980 On Monday, at the conclusion of a week-long trial, Houck was acquitted by a jury that was not convinced

00:02:49.720 that he was the dastardly militant that Biden's goons tried to make him out to be.

00:02:54.260 Judge Gerald Papert seemed to echo the jury's concerns when he asked, during the trial, he asked the prosecutor in the case

00:03:01.600 whether the law that Houck was being tried under was, perhaps, he said, being, quote, stretched a little thin.

00:03:07.500 Stretched a little thin, indeed.

00:03:10.440 As it turns out, Houck was not blocking anyone from entering a clinic.

00:03:14.580 Now, if he had been, he, of course, still wouldn't deserve a decade in federal lockup.

00:03:19.440 I mean, if it were up to me and he was actually blocking people from entering a clinic,

00:03:22.920 then I would give him the Medal of Freedom for his efforts.

00:03:25.420 But even by the already deranged standards of the FACE Act, a law written and passed by politicians

00:03:33.220 who were purchased and paid for by the abortion industry, even by those standards, this prosecution was unjust.

00:03:40.120 In fact, there is video of the altercation that led to Houck's arrest, video that was just made public this week.

00:03:46.900 Sean Hannity played the tape on his show a few days ago, and here it is.

00:03:50.980 Now, for this altercation with a, if you take a look, with a Planned Parenthood escort.

00:03:57.860 Now, as you can see in your upper left-hand corner, Mark, accompanied by his son,

00:04:03.060 standing away from the entrance to the clinic when he is approached by the escort identified as Bruce Love,

00:04:09.420 who repeatedly tried to antagonize Houck, allegedly verbally harassing him and his son

00:04:15.020 before Houck eventually shoves him after multiple attempts to defuse the situation. 0.98

00:04:20.220 The Planned Parenthood manual clearly states that escorts are not to antagonize or even engage with any protesters.

00:04:27.600 A rule that love clearly broke.

00:04:31.520 So there it is.

00:04:32.860 That's why Biden wanted to lock a father of seven in prison for a decade, for that, because he shoved a guy.

00:04:40.260 Houck, standing far away from the entrance to any clinic,

00:04:43.220 he was standing on the street corner where he has every right to be.

00:04:47.740 And while he was standing there, he shoved a clinic escort.

00:04:50.500 And Houck says that he was, you know, lashing out because the escort was harassing him and his teenage son

00:04:57.020 and saying crude and disgusting things.

00:04:59.360 Now, the escort says that that isn't true.

00:05:01.040 And you can decide whether you believe Houck or whether you believe the sort of man who volunteers his time

00:05:07.700 to escort pregnant women into a building so they can have their babies butchered. 0.98

00:05:12.880 I know who I trust, but it doesn't make much of a difference anyway.

00:05:16.820 Whatever the reason for the push, a push is all it was.

00:05:20.800 It's hard to imagine a push that could warrant the involvement of 25 FBI agents and felony charges carrying a decade in prison.

00:05:28.740 But if such a push exists, that one certainly wasn't it.

00:05:34.060 And one can't help but note the irony here.

00:05:36.320 I mean, we spent much of the past week responding to the bleeding heart types who recoil in horror

00:05:42.420 and shout cruel and unusual punishment if you advocate harsher penalties for violent criminals

00:05:47.580 and carjackers and drug kingpins.

00:05:51.120 These types, they'll always show up, pocket constitutions in hand,

00:05:54.840 solemnly citing the Eighth Amendment if you dare suggest that we should go a little tough

00:05:58.520 on the types of criminals who have made countless communities across the country basically unlivable.

00:06:04.360 But how quickly does their compassion run out when the criminal in question is a pro-life activist?

00:06:11.180 In this case, they have no problem, in fact, are strongly in favor of giving him a tougher sentence

00:06:15.660 than the courts usually give to rapists and armed robbers.

00:06:19.080 I mean, that's no surprise.

00:06:21.600 After all, these are the same people who scream about police brutality

00:06:24.360 but then cheered when Capitol Police shot an unarmed woman for the crime of, you know, trespassing.

00:06:31.580 So what was this all really about then?

00:06:33.500 Why was Biden determined to rip this man away from his children, destroy his family,

00:06:38.660 confine him to a cage for the next 11 years of his life?

00:06:41.200 Why was he so determined to do that?

00:06:42.300 Well, for the obvious reasons, they wanted to ruin him because he dared to act according to beliefs

00:06:47.880 that the ruling regime abhors.

00:06:51.780 And they wanted to ruin him because they could or they thought they could.

00:06:55.760 He was meant to be an example, a warning signal, a head on a pike at the edge of town, 1.00

00:07:00.500 an ominous sign for those who come after him.

00:07:03.640 A tried and true strategy on the left, and you can just ask Jack Phillips if you want to know more about that.

00:07:08.260 Before Mark Houck had become the Al Capone of the modern era for getting into a brief shoving match

00:07:13.080 with a creep outside of an abortion clinic, Jack Phillips had long since begun his own reign of terror.

00:07:19.300 Now, Phillips, if you see him, he may look unassuming and non-threatening,

00:07:23.900 but beneath that placid exterior lies the dark heart of a supervillain

00:07:27.840 who once viciously traumatized a gay couple by declining to make a customized cake for their wedding.

00:07:34.100 But that's not the only cake he didn't want to make.

00:07:36.320 Fox News has the latest, quote,

00:07:38.460 A Colorado baker who won a partial U.S. Supreme Court victory in a case where he refused to make a cake for a gay wedding

00:07:43.580 lost an appeal in another legal fight in which he rejected a request for a birthday cake celebrating a gender transition.

00:07:50.640 The Colorado Court of Appeals ruled on Thursday that the refusal by Jack Phillips,

00:07:54.020 a masterpiece cake shop, to make a cake requested by Autumn Scardina did not constitute free speech.

00:08:00.180 The court also found it was illegal to refuse to provide services to people based on characteristics

00:08:04.660 like race, religion, or sexual orientation.

00:08:07.020 Quote,

00:08:07.240 We conclude that creating a pink cake with blue frosting is not inherently expressive

00:08:11.920 and any message or symbolism it provides to an observer would not be attributed to the baker,

00:08:16.040 said the court, which also rejected procedural arguments from Phillips.

00:08:18.640 The cake shop initially agreed to make the cake but then refused after Scardina explained that it was going to be used

00:08:26.000 to celebrate her, her, that's Fox News using the her there, transition from male to female, the court found. 1.00

00:08:35.340 Phillips said the cake that he makes are a form of free speech and plans to appeal the ruling.

00:08:41.320 Quote,

00:08:42.240 One need not agree with Jack's view to agree that all Americans should be free to say what they believe,

00:08:47.520 even if the government disagrees with those beliefs.

00:08:50.380 According to Jake Warner, Senior Counsel for Alliance Defending Freedom, who represented Phillips,

00:08:54.580 John McHugh, one of the lawyers who represented Scardina,

00:08:57.760 said that Phillips objected to making the cake because he objected, quote,

00:09:00.540 to the idea of Miss Scardina wanting a birthday cake that reflects her status as a transgender woman

00:09:05.360 because they object to the existence of transgender people.

00:09:10.340 Okay, so it has been 10 years since Phillips gently declined the request to customize a cake for a gay wedding.

00:09:19.900 And that's an important point.

00:09:20.800 He didn't refuse to bake a cake for the gay couple. 0.92

00:09:23.660 He never refused service to gay people.

00:09:25.640 He never said, I won't make you a cake.

00:09:27.720 What he said is, I can't specifically customize this cake for the purpose of this gay wedding.

00:09:35.240 10 years since that, a decade.

00:09:37.560 The amount of time that Biden wanted Mark Houck to spend in prison,

00:09:40.940 an LGBT activist has spent all that time trying to destroy him, 0.99

00:09:44.960 destroy a small town cake maker for refusing to bend the knee and submit.

00:09:50.580 They have spent 10 years targeting him.

00:09:53.540 That's how vengeful and petty they are.

00:09:56.760 10 years trying to exact their revenge for a cake.

00:10:00.980 And that's all that this gender transition cake was about. 0.96

00:10:05.760 Mr. Scardina is a trans activist who engaged in a not at all subtle attempt

00:10:10.440 to entrap Phillips by asking him to make a pink cake with blue icing.

00:10:15.400 Something that, again, he would have done.

00:10:18.880 Okay, if Scardina had just gone to Phillips and said,

00:10:21.260 oh, I want a cake.

00:10:23.340 I want it to have blue icing and I want it to be a pink cake.

00:10:25.900 If he had done that, Jack Phillips would have said, sure, here you go.

00:10:30.840 Here's your cake.

00:10:31.420 No problem.

00:10:32.860 Okay, Phillips wasn't asking, what's this cake going to be used for, huh?

00:10:35.960 Tell me.

00:10:37.940 You know, fill out this disclosure form to tell us all the purposes that this cake will be used for.

00:10:43.540 That never happened.

00:10:45.480 Phillips said, sure, we'll make the cake.

00:10:46.760 And then Scardina made a point of explaining, oh, by the way, this is going to be used at a gender transition celebration. 0.98

00:10:56.680 What do you think about that, huh?

00:10:59.780 There was no reason to tell Phillips that.

00:11:02.680 There was also no reason to throw this celebration,

00:11:04.980 especially because Scardina certainly has no friends to invite to the party anyway.

00:11:08.840 But Scardina targeted Phillips, tried to back him into a corner, 0.61

00:11:12.080 all so that he could do exactly what he has done, spend years in court suing him for his refusal.

00:11:20.380 That's how ruthless and soulless and downright trifling these people are.

00:11:26.520 That's how determined they are to make you submit.

00:11:31.720 Both Mark Houck and Jack Phillips are meant to be a warning to all of us.

00:11:37.440 But you know what?

00:11:37.800 Instead, they should be an inspiration.

00:11:39.040 Because they show us what happens if you don't surrender.

00:11:43.940 But they also show us that you don't have to surrender.

00:11:48.080 And you shouldn't.

00:11:50.220 Now let's get to our headlines.

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00:12:50.280 All right, by the way, my apologies for missing the show yesterday.

00:12:54.960 I think a pretty good excuse.

00:12:56.200 I didn't film the show because at the time when we would film it, I had been sitting in the hospital with our two-week-old baby for, at that point, about 10 hours or so.

00:13:04.600 At like midnight on Monday night, I took one of the twins to the emergency room because he was having kind of a labored breathing and erratic breathing.

00:13:12.220 And he'd also stopped eating, which is very, very bad signs for an infant on both counts.

00:13:17.320 There's a cold basically has been going through our house, really mild for the rest of us.

00:13:21.080 But for undersized preemie newborns, a cold can be, you know, potentially quite catastrophic.

00:13:27.440 So he made the decision that I would take him.

00:13:30.120 Actually, my wife wanted to take him. 0.93

00:13:31.480 But to make matters more interesting, there was supposed to be an ice storm that was going to be hitting us that night.

00:13:37.920 And I wasn't going to send my, you know, two weeks postpartum wife and my newborn son out into an ice storm.

00:13:43.900 So, of course, I took the child.

00:13:47.040 And to get to the end of the story, everything's fine.

00:13:49.300 The baby's fine.

00:13:50.120 They monitored his breathing for what ended up being like 16 hours.

00:13:53.380 And he's okay.

00:13:54.320 Scary moments there at first.

00:13:55.500 But everything, thank God, everyone is fine.

00:13:57.680 And actually, the baby's doing better than I am at this point because after I pulled an all-nighter, it's like that's the kind of thing.

00:14:04.940 As a younger man, I can remember being younger and there were times when I would stay up all night, never for a selfless reason, like taking care of a baby.

00:14:12.500 But then the next day, you know, you're okay.

00:14:13.920 You just, you kind of function.

00:14:15.040 And as you get older, it's just that you have to pay one all-nighter.

00:14:19.120 You're going to pay for that for the next two and a half months, pretty much.

00:14:21.440 Although I will say, while I was sitting in the triage area of the hospital, the nurses came in.

00:14:28.300 And they said, you know, if you, we could bring in a cot so you can sleep.

00:14:33.260 And I'm thinking, is that, do parents usually do that?

00:14:35.660 You've got to, you bring your child and you can't breathe.

00:14:38.380 And you come in to deal with the child and the father's like taking a nap in the corner of the room.

00:14:44.520 I don't know.

00:14:46.520 And by the way, those ice storms, two of them, there were supposed to be, there was supposed to be one on Monday night when we took the baby to the hospital.

00:14:53.820 And then last night, there was supposed to be another one.

00:14:55.460 And both of them ended up being total duds.

00:14:57.420 I mean, a little bit of freezing rain, but nothing to the level that the forecast predicted.

00:15:01.720 And yet, of course, everything is shut down here in Nashville anyway.

00:15:05.200 Small amount of freezing rain, some slippery sidewalks, everything shuts down.

00:15:09.120 If you want to know how society would fare in an actual catastrophe, like a nuclear strike or a, you know, asteroid impact, all you got to do is go to a warmer weather climate and see how they respond to a little bit of winter weather.

00:15:26.500 And it's a, everything, people panic.

00:15:29.040 So that's, that gives you an idea of how well we would do, which is not well at all.

00:15:33.200 All right.

00:15:34.260 Let's begin with this good news from the Hill.

00:15:37.860 Utah has become the first state in 2023 to ban gender affirming care for minors.

00:15:42.060 As Governor Spencer Cox signed a bill Saturday to restrict their access to puberty blockers, hormones, and surgical procedures.

00:15:49.480 Cox said in a statement announcing his signature that legislation that affects minors necessitates careful consideration and deliberation.

00:15:55.980 He said the bill is not perfect, but is a more nuanced and thoughtful approach to a terribly divisive issue.

00:16:00.540 Cox said states and countries are pausing gender affirming care for new patients until additional and improved research can be conducted to determine the long-term consequences of receiving this type of care.

00:16:12.980 Lawmakers in Alabama, Arkansas, Arizona, and Tennessee have all approved measures restricting, quote, gender affirming care in recent years.

00:16:19.820 And there are more states as well.

00:16:22.280 And this is, this is, in fact, happening all across the country.

00:16:24.720 Florida had previously passed a measure to ban these procedures.

00:16:29.720 And here is Ron DeSantis a couple days ago explaining that measure a little bit more.

00:16:36.380 I mean, look, you have, and this is sad, but this is going on, you're having, in our society, they're giving teenagers, kids, puberty blockers.

00:16:47.560 They're changing, they're doing sex change operations.

00:16:50.260 And so we actually have very, you know, young adults who went through this when they were minors, and they're saying this was a huge mistake.

00:16:56.960 And, in fact, it's not evidence-based when you start talking about sex changes and puberty blockers.

00:17:01.820 So we've worked through our department or our medical licensing board to say that you in the state of Florida, if you're performing those procedures on these minors, you're going to lose your medical license here in Florida.

00:17:15.820 So that is happening.

00:17:16.760 Thank you.

00:17:46.760 In a radical gender theory, Trump blasted the Biden administration's cruel policies on so-called gender-affirming care and vowed to stop federal agencies from promoting such policies.

00:17:57.120 He said, quote, left-wing gender insanity being pushed on our children is an act of child abuse.

00:18:02.920 Well, he said this while launching his third bid for the nation's highest office last November and is so far the only major Republican to have declared his candidacy of 2024.

00:18:10.860 The announcement comes as radical gender ideology has become a hot-button issue with The Daily Wire at the forefront of the conversation.

00:18:15.100 So we've got DeSantis, Trump.

00:18:17.300 We have all these states.

00:18:18.120 And then, obviously, Tennessee is another one.

00:18:21.160 And here is a very disapproving report from News Channel 5 here in Nashville.

00:18:27.460 It says, a controversial bill that would affect youth considering gender-affirming care moved toward becoming Tennessee law.

00:18:34.200 Republicans are sponsoring a bill that would ban gender-affirming surgeries for children in the state of Tennessee.

00:18:39.180 Tennessee lawmakers made their way into the discourse of gender-affirming care and minors in September after a conservative blogger.

00:18:45.920 That's me, a blogger, apparently.

00:18:47.040 I haven't written in anything that could be called a blog for, I don't know, seven or eight years.

00:18:54.160 But that's all right.

00:18:55.520 Questioned whether Vanderbilt University Medical Center should provide gender-affirming care to patients.

00:19:00.440 Matt Walsh, a Daily Wire conservative commentator who questions the legitimacy of LGBTQ rights,

00:19:06.220 said he considered the care to be that of castration and mutilation of minors and adults.

00:19:10.380 That's the way that, that's the tortured phrasing they're forced to use in defense of what they call gender, quote-unquote, gender-affirming care.

00:19:37.340 It's not that I consider this, quote, care to be castration and mutilation.

00:19:41.860 It's that, by definition, that is what these procedures do.

00:19:48.220 That's what the procedures are.

00:19:50.240 That's, that is a, a, a definitional thing.

00:19:53.840 A standing room crowd inside the committee room in the Cordell Hall building reached capacity before News Channel 5 could even get our camera inside.

00:20:00.560 Republicans invited Chloe Cole to testify she's an 18-year-old from California who, at age 13, began gender-affirming care,

00:20:05.460 only to decide that she didn't want to continue down that path.

00:20:08.100 She spoke about why lawmakers should pass House Bill 1. 1.00

00:20:12.040 And so this bill is making its way through the process of becoming law, and I have absolutely no doubt that it, that it will, will be law in short order.

00:20:23.180 So, we got all these things going on, you know, states across the country banning the mutilation of kids, Ron DeSantis coming out strongly against it, Donald Trump coming out strongly against it.

00:20:36.400 And, and you have to keep in mind that just a few years ago, there was no political will or momentum to ban this butchery at all.

00:20:44.700 I mean, nobody was even talking about it.

00:20:47.440 There was, we, we had a Republican White House and Congress for two years, and they never made any attempt to do anything about any of this.

00:20:56.320 They never, they never talked about it.

00:20:57.460 They never brought it up.

00:20:58.220 And now, and now it has become an issue, and it's one that conservatives are, for the most part, united on.

00:21:08.360 And this is something that we, and I say, when I say we, I mean the, the anti-gender ideology movement.

00:21:15.720 This is something that we made happen.

00:21:17.540 This is a, it's a major success story for conservatives in the anti-gender ideology movement. 0.80

00:21:22.440 Now, most importantly, it's a success story, success, success story for the kids who are now going to be protected from this mutilation.

00:21:31.140 But it's also worth noting that, you know, I'm not sure there is any other example that I can think of.

00:21:38.440 Where conservatives mobilized and so quickly converted that mobilization into not only cultural change, but policy changes as well.

00:21:47.820 Where this went from something that wasn't even discussed a few years ago, to now states across the country banning it, presidential candidates coming out against it.

00:22:00.640 I mean, it's worth paying attention to what we did here and how we did it.

00:22:05.780 Because this, this should be the model moving forward on every issue.

00:22:09.120 And on top of that too, I think, I think that's the success goes farther than that because we've also made it not only popular and common now for people to come out against castrating and mutilating kids.

00:22:24.760 We've also made it popular and common to question the fundamental claims of transgenderism, quote unquote, as a concept.

00:22:31.680 Now, it's still not popular on the left, obviously, but I think normal people are waking up and feeling bold enough to speak out.

00:22:40.140 You know, as I've said plenty of times when we were shooting What is a Woman? 0.91

00:22:44.080 And we did our man on the street interviews all across the country in many different states and talked to lots of different people.

00:22:51.900 What we found, and we were filming this, you know, started filming a year and a half ago or so.

00:22:56.320 So it was very, very difficult to find anyone who was willing to be skeptical about transgenderism, about any, any part of it, who was skeptical or was at least was willing to express that skepticism on a cam, on camera.

00:23:16.080 That was a year and a half ago.

00:23:17.140 Now, I'm thinking that if we did it again, it'd be a very different story.

00:23:19.980 Anyway, I think we'd have no difficulty finding people that would stand in front of the camera and say, no, man's a man, a woman's a woman.

00:23:28.320 Get your hands off these kids. 0.93

00:23:29.620 Don't do this to kids.

00:23:31.560 Okay, you can identify, you could say you identify as whatever you want, but that doesn't mean that you are that thing.

00:23:36.000 I think it wouldn't be that hard to find people willing to say that.

00:23:39.300 A year and a half ago, it was.

00:23:41.860 So, I think this is a very important lesson that we should learn here.

00:23:47.120 From the Daily Wire, U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, that is, believes children 13 years old are too young to join social media platforms, citing kids are still developing their identity, quote unquote, and such engagement can create a distorted sense of themselves.

00:24:04.520 Murthy, who has served as Surgeon General under the Obama and the Biden administrations, signaled the warning in an interview with CNN, noting adolescents should only be allowed to access the platforms until they are 16 years old at the earliest.

00:24:17.120 Murthy said, it's a time, early adolescence, where kids are developing their identity, their sense of self.

00:24:22.540 It's a time where it's really important for us to be thoughtful about what's going into how they think about their own self-worth and their relationships.

00:24:29.020 And the skewed and often distorted environment of social media often does a disservice to many of those children.

00:24:33.740 Now, this is obviously correct on every point.

00:24:41.880 I mean, the idea that children at 13 or younger would be old enough to engage with the entire world on a platform, because that's what social media is.

00:24:53.120 You are saying to a child, well, here you go, engage with the whole world all at once.

00:25:02.160 The idea that they're old enough for that at 13 or younger or even older, it's madness.

00:25:08.140 I mean, it's truly crazy.

00:25:11.480 Why aren't children old enough for that?

00:25:13.180 Not only old enough, by the way, to engage with the whole world, but also to see and be exposed to and consume whatever content anyone in the world wants to post to that same platform.

00:25:26.680 I mean, when you put your kid on social media, what you're saying is, okay, child, you are old enough to see anything that anyone happens to want to post.

00:25:40.460 That's what you're saying.

00:25:42.060 Which, again, is crazy.

00:25:44.980 Why aren't they old enough?

00:25:45.880 Well, because their minds are still developing, as the Surgeon General points out.

00:25:49.880 They can't make informed choices about things.

00:25:52.140 They can't discern between what is true and what is not, what is harmful, what is not. 1.00

00:25:56.820 They're impulsive, they're gullible, they're innocent, they're ignorant. 0.73

00:26:03.240 Lots of adults are all these things, except for innocent, but the rest describes a lot of adults in this society.

00:26:09.680 The difference is that kids have an excuse to be all of those things.

00:26:15.600 So, yeah, keep kids on social media, as I've been saying forever.

00:26:19.880 And 16 is also too young, by the way.

00:26:21.540 There is, there's no benefit.

00:26:25.640 That's another way of thinking about these sorts of things.

00:26:28.900 Anytime you're allowing your kid to do something, you should think to yourself, well, what do they gain from this?

00:26:34.860 What's the benefit?

00:26:36.580 What is the win here?

00:26:38.280 Okay, even for 16.

00:26:41.180 Say your 16-year-old daughter is on Instagram and TikTok and all the rest of it.

00:26:44.560 Think, what's the win for her? 1.00

00:26:46.440 How does she win being on this platform?

00:26:48.520 I know how she loses.

00:26:51.540 We all know how she loses.

00:26:53.240 But what's the win?

00:26:54.600 So we know what the risks are.

00:26:56.100 And the risks are enormous.

00:26:59.280 What are the benefits?

00:27:01.040 I mean, it makes sense.

00:27:02.120 You know, kids have to learn how to take risks in a thoughtful and controlled environment.

00:27:09.180 As parents, we have to be willing to take risks.

00:27:13.740 You know, we have to be willing to, in some circumstances, do things where there's a possibility that things go wrong.

00:27:19.220 Anytime you let your kid run around outside and play in the yard, I mean, they could trip and fall and break an ankle.

00:27:26.400 And there are things that could go wrong.

00:27:27.940 But you allow that in a controlled environment because the benefits are, well, they get fresh air, they get exercise, they get to, you know, have a normal, joyful childhood.

00:27:38.180 And the only other option is that you keep them locked inside their whole childhood, and we can't allow that.

00:27:43.220 But what are the benefits of being on social media when you're 16?

00:27:49.980 They really don't exist.

00:27:54.220 So, you know, we can agree on most of that, apparently, and I'm glad that we do.

00:27:58.760 But then I can't help but point out, as many others have already pointed out, that the Surgeon General and the Biden administration generally,

00:28:06.020 they say that kids of 13 are too young for social media.

00:28:08.580 Yet they also say that these are the same kids who are old enough to change their gender.

00:28:15.380 Think about the reasoning that he gave.

00:28:18.740 He didn't just point out that their minds are developing.

00:28:20.940 He said that their identities are still developing.

00:28:24.540 You know, their sense of themselves is still developing.

00:28:33.220 And yet these are kids that can change their gender at 13.

00:28:38.580 Okay, so a 12-year-old, we all agree, doesn't have the mental capacity, doesn't have the psychological and emotional maturity,

00:28:49.560 doesn't have the powers of discernment necessary to use TikTok.

00:28:53.880 And yet that same child does have all those things in ample quantity if he declares that, you know, that although he was born a boy, he's actually a girl.

00:29:12.100 This is completely incoherent.

00:29:13.920 All right, this is a video that's gone viral today.

00:29:19.340 Matt Gaetz proposed that members of the House Judiciary Committee should say the Pledge of Allegiance before every Judiciary Committee meeting.

00:29:29.200 And he actually proposed this back in 2021, but they didn't have the change.

00:29:32.120 They didn't have the power then to actually institute this change.

00:29:36.220 And now they have instituted it.

00:29:37.520 But Jerry Nadler, also known affectionately as the Penguin, opposed the measure.

00:29:43.080 And this little exchange here has gone viral.

00:29:45.060 Let's watch it.

00:29:46.780 And our Pledge of Allegiance is a national symbol of pride and unity.

00:29:51.720 And it was a great honor to be able to invite one of my constituents this morning to offer the Pledge of Allegiance.

00:29:56.820 And so my amendment gives the committee the opportunity to begin each of its meetings with the Pledge of Allegiance.

00:30:04.000 It gives our members the ability to invite inspirational constituents to be able to share and lead in the Pledge of Allegiance.

00:30:10.440 I offered this amendment to the Judiciary Rules two years ago, and it was defeated.

00:30:14.800 And I'm very optimistic that we'll have a different outcome today.

00:30:17.540 That's the amendment, Mr. Chairman.

00:30:19.260 I thank the gentleman for his amendment.

00:30:20.740 Support the amendment.

00:30:21.620 Does anyone seek recognition?

00:30:23.520 Gentleman from New York, ranking member now.

00:30:25.600 I would oppose it simply on the grounds that, as members know, we pledge allegiance every day on the floor.

00:30:32.160 And I don't know why we should pledge allegiance twice in the same day to show how patriotic we are.

00:30:41.580 I've got to say, I kind of agree with the Penguin on this one.

00:30:46.360 Not kind of, actually.

00:30:47.300 I really do.

00:30:48.160 I don't think I've ever agreed with Nadler on anything.

00:30:52.600 But on this one, I agree.

00:30:54.940 And I know that, like I said, it's gone viral on social media.

00:30:57.800 And there are conservatives on Twitter that are pretending to be outraged by it or whatever.

00:31:00.900 But it's all performance.

00:31:02.040 I mean, they already say the pledge to start the day.

00:31:06.920 You know, the House members say the pledge to start the day already.

00:31:09.980 There's no reason to say it again except as empty performance.

00:31:14.260 You're doing it for the cameras.

00:31:16.300 It's the only reason you're doing it.

00:31:20.060 And I'd say the last thing that we need from Congress is more performance.

00:31:24.600 That's not what we need.

00:31:26.620 It doesn't move the ball down the field.

00:31:28.380 And this is the kind of thing, you know, when I first heard about this and I saw the video, I had that reaction.

00:31:37.840 I said, yeah, I kind of agree with Penguin, honestly.

00:31:40.120 They don't need to say it a second time.

00:31:41.580 Like, you said it once.

00:31:43.820 And for most of them, even once, it doesn't mean anything.

00:31:47.700 Okay, either they are loyal to the flag and to our country or they aren't.

00:31:50.900 And they could say the pledge a million times.

00:31:54.480 It's not going to make them any more loyal.

00:31:56.060 So either what they're saying is true or not, it doesn't become any more true with repetition.

00:32:03.680 That was my first reaction.

00:32:04.780 You know, I kind of agree, but who cares?

00:32:06.000 But then as the more I thought about it, it just annoys me.

00:32:08.140 Because this is exactly the kind of boomer bait, red meat pageantry that we always get from Republicans.

00:32:17.660 The only reason that this exists is so that we could have that moment where some Democrat says, yeah, we don't really need to do this.

00:32:24.500 And then it can end up on Fox News.

00:32:25.800 This is a Fox News segment.

00:32:27.220 Okay, this is tailor-made for Fox and Friends, for a Fox and Friends segment.

00:32:31.600 It's the only reason it exists.

00:32:32.980 It's not because the Republicans in the Judiciary Committee are so patriotic and they love the country so much that they just can't contain themselves.

00:32:40.360 They want to say the pledge every five minutes they love the country so much.

00:32:43.860 Does anyone really believe that?

00:32:46.440 It's like, obviously, that's the only reason.

00:32:48.960 Just showing off of the cameras and also putting Democrats in a position where they would say no so you can then go, Democrats aren't patriotic.

00:32:54.420 Like, you know, and by the way, like, political gamesmanship like that, where you're trying to paint your opposition as the bad guy, I'm fine with that.

00:33:04.200 That doesn't make me squeamish.

00:33:06.040 But this is just especially lame, I think.

00:33:09.260 And when you're using the pledge and the flag to do it, it makes it a little bit, I don't know, just irritating.

00:33:16.860 All right.

00:33:18.720 And all the more irritating because you are forcing me to agree with and defend Jerry the Penguin Nadler.

00:33:28.380 And I resent that.

00:33:32.600 All right, what else we got here?

00:33:34.720 So this is a story that's been going on for the last, well, for months now, but really ramping up over the last few days.

00:33:40.100 This is a story from a few days ago.

00:33:41.480 So CNN says, former President Donald Trump took aim at Ron DeSantis Saturday, claiming the Florida governor and his team are trying to rewrite history regarding their COVID-19 pandemic response and called a potential presidential run by his GOP rival very disloyal.

00:33:57.340 Trump told reporters while aboard his plane, there are Republican governors that did not close their states.

00:34:02.400 Florida was closed for a long time.

00:34:03.960 They're trying to rewrite history, he added.

00:34:07.900 And there are actually several examples of this.

00:34:11.080 Trump has been going after DeSantis on the lockdowns for several days.

00:34:16.440 He had mentioned it a few times prior to this.

00:34:19.260 But over the last few days, this has been the attack that he's decided to launch on DeSantis.

00:34:27.920 He tweeted, well, he didn't tweet it.

00:34:29.340 He sent this out on his Truth Social app a few days ago.

00:34:32.060 He said, the fake news media was good yesterday in their coverage of my stops in New Hampshire and South Carolina, other than the Globalist Street Journal, which is rarely accurate or good.

00:34:40.240 They said the day was really amazing.

00:34:43.860 The enthusiasm to make America great again.

00:34:46.320 I don't know.

00:34:49.140 I don't think that there was anyone in the news media who described a Trump rally as really amazing.

00:34:53.800 I somehow doubt that, but I don't know.

00:34:56.380 The enthusiasm to make America great again has never been stronger.

00:34:58.820 The revelations about Ron DeSantis doing far worse than many other Republican governors, including that he unapologetically shut down Florida and its beaches, was interesting indeed.

00:35:06.760 DJT leading big.

00:35:09.320 Okay.

00:35:11.100 Just a few points here.

00:35:12.740 And DeSantis still has not responded.

00:35:14.480 So Trump has been going after DeSantis for months now.

00:35:18.180 DeSantis has not said anything directly in response, which I think is the right approach.

00:35:24.240 Now, I have heard, which I think is an interesting argument, that the right thing here politically is for Donald Trump to be going after DeSantis because he realizes he's the number one challenger.

00:35:38.680 So that's politically smart.

00:35:40.240 It's also politically smart for Ron DeSantis to say nothing.

00:35:42.640 And so they're both kind of doing what is politically smart for them to do.

00:35:45.900 I agree on the latter point.

00:35:47.600 It's smart for DeSantis not to respond.

00:35:51.200 But because I agree, I must disagree with the first point. 0.98

00:35:55.880 Like what makes DeSantis smart for not responding is that Trump comes off as weak and kind of desperate and pathetic for obsessing over a guy that's not even talking about him. 0.91

00:36:07.040 So I don't see how it's politically smart for Trump to continue down this line of attack. 0.97

00:36:12.540 When he just looks desperate.

00:36:15.380 I mean, this is the kind, this is the advantage that Trump has always had in the past. 0.99

00:36:20.320 That his enemies are obsessed with him and are constantly talking about him and it just makes them look desperate and pathetic. 0.95

00:36:28.100 We've never seen the reverse. 0.94

00:36:29.820 We've never really seen Trump obsess over someone who doesn't respond to him.

00:36:36.420 Now, Trump has attacked people in the past, but they always respond.

00:36:41.100 Or they started by attacking him first.

00:36:44.580 This is a new one.

00:36:45.900 And given especially that Ron DeSantis is in office right now and Trump isn't.

00:36:49.860 So you've got Trump ranting about DeSantis, DeSantis just doing his job as governor, doing a good job.

00:36:55.520 I don't think the contrast makes Trump look very good.

00:36:58.880 And then there's also the fact that, talk about rewriting history.

00:37:01.380 I mean, look, he wants us to forget, and I don't think anyone actually will forget, that he shut the entire country down.

00:37:12.160 Okay?

00:37:12.420 He shut the entire, 15 days to slow the spread that turned into months and months and months.

00:37:17.060 That was Trump.

00:37:18.540 He handed the country over to Dr. Fauci.

00:37:21.860 He could have fired him, but he didn't.

00:37:23.300 And in explaining why he didn't fire him, Trump has said that the reason he didn't fire Fauci is that the media would have been really mad at him if he did it.

00:37:31.260 That's his excuse.

00:37:32.760 That's what he has actually said.

00:37:34.500 That he couldn't have fired Fauci because the media would have complained. 0.99

00:37:36.920 So instead, you would hand our entire country over to this narcissistic psycho?

00:37:48.760 So taking the guy who was very pro-lockdown and trying to make him into the lockdown guy while you were the lockdown president, yeah, I don't know about that.

00:38:01.880 I don't, I don't, I don't, it's obviously not true, but of course we know in politics, truth is sometimes irrelevant.

00:38:09.040 The question is whether that, whether this narrative will resonate with anyone.

00:38:12.420 Can he convince anyone to actually buy into this?

00:38:17.880 I tend to doubt it.

00:38:19.520 And not only was Trump the guy who locked down the country, but he attacked DeSantis and Kemp for opening their states too soon.

00:38:28.320 Trump, when he was in office, went after DeSantis and Kemp in, in, in Georgia for opening their states.

00:38:36.520 He said it was reckless and dangerous to do it.

00:38:39.440 It's not hard to, like, anyone can find the tweets and the statements and the things that he said at press conferences.

00:38:44.760 It's all out there.

00:38:45.580 It's all documented.

00:38:48.160 I'm, uh, very skeptical of this approach.

00:38:51.580 All right, finally, I, uh, on Monday afternoon, I appeared on Piers Morgan's show and we talked about, as we've discussed in the show here, the viral trend of women trying to entrap men at the gym by filming them and pretending that the men were harassing them.

00:39:07.640 And I made one point that scandalized one of the feminists on the panel. 1.00

00:39:12.380 And, uh, let's listen to that.

00:39:15.040 I don't think you could avoid looking at people because I'm looking at them to see what their forms like, how they're carrying certain weights, are they carrying more than me?

00:39:22.800 You know, male or female, I don't really care. 0.99

00:39:24.280 I'm just, I'm quite curious about other people using a gym.

00:39:27.740 Am I now going to be something appearing on Instagram that influences sites as some sort of perv?

00:39:33.500 Well, it's possible.

00:39:35.640 And look, by the way, I also, I don't mean to be a victim blamer here, but, but can we also say that if you're a woman and you don't want to, you don't want men to notice you in the gym, maybe wear more than your underwear to go work out?

00:39:45.740 I mean, that's the one thing.

00:39:46.620 These women in these videos, they're wearing sports bras and like hot pants. 1.00

00:39:50.400 I mean, how about put some clothes on if you don't want people to look at you?

00:39:52.880 This is victim blaming.

00:39:54.120 And I'm sorry, I'm going to, I'm going to quite longer Atwood here that, uh, men are afraid of women laughing at them.

00:40:00.280 Women are afraid that men are going to kill them. 1.00

00:40:02.080 It is not okay to say that it's a woman's fault for wearing the wrong thing.

00:40:06.040 You think the people looking over at people using some equipment at a gym are going to kill them?

00:40:10.660 I think that taking photographs is threatening.

00:40:13.560 Staring at people is threatening.

00:40:14.560 But the ones photographing it are these Instagram influencers.

00:40:16.820 No, they're not.

00:40:17.920 They are videoing men taking photographs of them and living at them.

00:40:20.480 Final word.

00:40:23.200 Victim, victim.

00:40:24.480 We get the Margaret Atwood quote there.

00:40:26.340 Um, and, and, and, and actually just so you know, uh, men, the, the big fear that men have when it comes to women, especially women who try to do exactly what these women in the gym are doing.

00:40:42.240 Um, the fear is not being laughed at.

00:40:44.340 The fear is being publicly shamed.

00:40:46.980 It's being falsely accused.

00:40:48.920 It's having your life and reputation destroyed.

00:40:53.020 Being laughed at to your face.

00:40:54.320 Who cares about that?

00:40:56.420 The fear is reputational destruction.

00:40:59.760 And that is a power that women wield much more than men. 1.00

00:41:05.920 Okay.

00:41:06.380 An accusation from a man in our society doesn't carry a lot of weight, but we know we've heard the, the slogans, believe all women, believe women.

00:41:16.220 And we also know that the people that say that, you know, there, there are plenty of women that they don't want to believe, such as the woman that accused, uh, Joe Biden of sexual assault.

00:41:23.240 But that's the slogan anyway.

00:41:27.900 So one woman says something and your life is destroyed.

00:41:30.420 That is the fear for men.

00:41:31.820 And it's a, it's a valid fear.

00:41:35.100 Um, and having your entire life and reputation destroyed is a, is a major tragic event.

00:41:42.240 It's not simply being laughed at, but I know that I said kind of facetiously, I don't mean to victim blame, but fine.

00:41:50.160 I am victim blaming.

00:41:51.120 Okay.

00:41:51.400 If, if, if, uh, we're talking about someone who is a woman who is the victim, she's the victim of a man looking at her.

00:41:58.120 If that's the kind of victimization we're talking about, a man looking at you, if that makes you a victim, if that makes you a victim, then yes, I blame you.

00:42:07.420 If you're walking outside of your house in your underwear.

00:42:10.420 Uh, yes, that you, you have made yourself the victim by doing everything in your power to attract the male gaze, not just the male gaze, but anyone's gaze.

00:42:20.480 Because as I said, when we talked about this last week, if I walked out of the house in my underwear, if any man walked out of the house in my underwear, people would stare at us.

00:42:28.820 They might not stare, uh, in a, in a sort of pleased way, but they would still be staring.

00:42:35.940 Whether they're horrified and grossed out or whatever, whatever the reason for the sake, they'd be staring because they'd be thinking, why?

00:42:41.280 Look at that person in their underwear. 0.87

00:42:42.960 Let's just say that's a normal human response when you walk around in your underwear.

00:42:46.580 And if that makes you a victim, to be the object of someone's gaze, okay, if that's the kind of victimization we're talking about, then yes, you deserve the blame for it.

00:42:56.660 You deserve actually 100% of the blame for it if you're walking around in your underwear.

00:43:02.340 Um, if you're dressed in a way that is, that is designed to attract people's gaze, and then you get exactly what you're, what you were hoping for, yes, the blame goes to you.

00:43:14.200 Uh, without question.

00:43:20.520 And there's a pretty easy solution here, which is to put on clothes.

00:43:24.120 And also, it does make me question, you know, I know we hear from the feminists, women walk around all the time terrified that a man's going to kill them. 1.00

00:43:32.960 Is that?

00:43:34.980 So then you walk around in your underwear?

00:43:36.140 Like, wearing your underwear to the gym, that's the behavior of a woman who's afraid she's going to be killed by a man? 0.98

00:43:43.100 That if you're afraid of men, that's how you respond?

00:43:48.620 No, this, that to me seems like the behavior of someone who has no fears at all.

00:43:52.800 That's just, that's someone who's utterly oblivious and not afraid of anything.

00:43:56.460 All right, let's get to the comment section.

00:44:00.060 Who makes a Twitter mob fly off the handle with rage?

00:44:06.000 Who's to blame?

00:44:08.840 It's a sweet baby gang.

00:44:13.180 All right, we have some comments here.

00:44:14.500 Well, these are from two days ago, so we missed the show yesterday.

00:44:16.860 But Chrissy Liberty says,

00:44:18.200 Matt forgot to mention Pelosi having a drink in his hand when he opened the door.

00:44:21.880 Can't imagine if you really feared for your life, you would, you'd stop for a drink.

00:44:27.920 Well, yeah, I think people were saying that he had a cocktail in his hand.

00:44:31.960 And I think it looked to me like just a glass of water.

00:44:35.020 But it does make sense because, again, Pelosi was trying to act nonchalant.

00:44:42.440 And he was telling the intruder that, yeah, we're just waiting for my wife.

00:44:45.720 And he probably offered him a drink.

00:44:48.120 You know, it would be a normal thing to do.

00:44:49.400 He was trying to play it off, which is the smart move.

00:44:54.200 Especially when you're an unarmed elderly man and a crazy intruder breaks into your house.

00:45:01.000 Your best move, really your only move, is to try to de-escalate the situation.

00:45:05.860 And, you know, rather than using force to get your way out of it, you got to use your wits.

00:45:10.460 And that's what he tried to do.

00:45:11.620 Ka Ra says, Matt, it's unfair to say that that man skates so bad that he makes you look like a professional skater because you skate like a graceful swan.

00:45:22.020 Well, thank you.

00:45:22.820 I didn't want to say that about myself because it would seem, although I'm not sure that swans really are graceful on the ice.

00:45:29.100 So there might be, we might need a fact check on that.

00:45:34.180 Ghost Leviathan says, Matt, what's your take on cigarettes?

00:45:37.280 I know you have attacked other drugs, but just want to get your take on them.

00:45:42.220 You know, a cigarette, I don't smoke them.

00:45:44.920 I don't think you should smoke them.

00:45:47.320 I don't think it's, you know, we talked before about how does social media improve your life if you're a child.

00:45:53.180 Really, how does it improve your life if you're any age?

00:45:55.900 You could ask a similar question about cigarettes.

00:45:57.320 How is that going to improve your life?

00:45:59.780 Probably isn't.

00:46:01.980 But, so, yeah, what's my opinion on it?

00:46:04.780 I don't think you should smoke cigarettes.

00:46:05.920 I also don't think you should eat fast food every day, right?

00:46:08.960 But people do.

00:46:11.520 However, cigarettes, we don't put them on the same plane as fentanyl and heroin and crack and all that kind of stuff.

00:46:20.440 Because of the effect on individual that those drugs have.

00:46:26.440 Where they're going to, they could kill you on the spot, first of all.

00:46:30.160 They are certain to utterly destroy your life immediately. 0.99

00:46:33.560 You know, they're going to turn you into a zombified husk of a person.

00:46:38.320 Cigarettes don't do that.

00:46:40.500 And also the effect that they have on society.

00:46:43.180 Like, a society where lots of people smoke cigarettes can be very functional.

00:46:48.660 And we know that because that was a society that we lived in for much of the 20th century.

00:46:52.680 Much of the 20th century, while America was thriving, it was at the same time a time when, like, everybody was smoking.

00:47:01.380 Now, I'm not saying it's because of the cigarettes.

00:47:02.920 I'm not necessarily saying we should go back, we should all start smoking cigarettes again.

00:47:06.720 But we know that we can have a functional society where people smoke.

00:47:10.060 Can we have a functional society where lots and lots of people are on these hard drugs? 0.86

00:47:19.020 The answer is absolutely no.

00:47:21.680 We can't even have a functional city where a sizable minority are on these drugs.

00:47:27.440 We see what they've done to the cities.

00:47:29.460 So, I think that there's clearly a very big difference here. 0.70

00:47:35.260 Night Warrior says, no, sir, white people are not to blame for the things that we black people do.

00:47:41.820 Well, Night Warrior, that is internalized racism. 0.97

00:47:44.800 That is internalized white supremacy, I'm told, that we're hearing from you.

00:47:49.100 Christopher says, come on, Matt, I expected better from you at least. 1.00

00:47:51.900 This talking point of the 911 operator being bad at the job is horribly dumb. 0.97

00:47:55.440 She obviously knew what was going on since police were dispatched. 0.95

00:47:57.880 We don't need to divert from the main point by making light of completely misconstrued talking points.

00:48:03.000 No, the 911 dispatcher tried to hang up the phone.

00:48:07.260 Okay, she was ready to hang up.

00:48:09.560 Let's not forget that.

00:48:11.080 When Paul Pelosi said, yes, this person came into my house and is waiting for my wife.

00:48:15.820 My wife's name is Nancy Pelosi.

00:48:17.740 They're here waiting for my wife.

00:48:19.700 And they say everything's fine, but I don't think so.

00:48:22.060 It was at that moment that the dispatcher said, well, all right, talk to you later.

00:48:25.720 Hey, give us a ring back if there's any problems.

00:48:29.640 So, no, I think we can say that she did a terrible job.

00:48:31.920 And, in fact, Matthew W., no relation, agrees.

00:48:35.620 Says, Matt, that 911 dispatcher did a terrible job, and it's honestly embarrassing.

00:48:39.160 I was a dispatcher for seven years, and one thing drilled into you is listening for clues

00:48:43.100 that lead you to believe that the caller is calling under duress.

00:48:46.760 You must listen carefully to your callers, especially when things don't make sense.

00:48:50.300 You're supposed to ask yes or no questions to give them options that might be transparent

00:48:54.340 to someone next to them.

00:48:56.440 For example, is someone there?

00:48:57.800 Say pepperoni for yes and cheese for no, for example.

00:49:00.740 If they call, you'd ask for a pizza.

00:49:02.960 Dispatchers need to be able to adapt and use critical thinking.

00:49:06.440 Well, okay, so there's the former 911 dispatcher who agrees with me, so I feel pretty good about that.

00:49:11.020 And that was my other problem with the 911 dispatcher in the Pelosi call,

00:49:13.560 is not only was she, like, trying to get off the phone, almost she was annoyed she wanted to get back

00:49:18.780 to doing whatever she was doing, but she was also asking questions that were not yes or no questions.

00:49:25.100 She was asking questions that forced Paul Pelosi to say things out loud that would reveal that he was

00:49:30.680 talking to a 911 operator.

00:49:33.440 So, not a great job all around.

00:49:37.380 As you've heard, we've been running a massive 40% off sale for annual memberships,

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00:50:28.100 Now let's get to our daily cancellation.

00:50:33.840 For our daily cancellation today, we turn to New Jersey,

00:50:36.600 a state that is always perpetually canceled simply for existing.

00:50:39.500 But, you know, the state's general crappiness and the fact that the whole place smells like

00:50:43.440 a poorly-maintained Burger King restroom is incidental for our discussion today.

00:50:48.440 NewJersey.com has a story about a former public school teacher now suing the school that she says

00:50:52.940 drove her to quit after shaming her for having emotional breakdowns in the classroom.

00:50:58.220 A lot going on here.

00:50:59.360 Let's start at the top.

00:51:00.160 It says,

00:51:00.300 A former teacher in the South Orange-Maplewood School District has filed a lawsuit claiming

00:51:04.280 that she was forced to resign after transfer to teach special education without an aid caused

00:51:08.800 her to have crying spells in the classroom. 0.62

00:51:11.200 Sarah Barlow, 34, of West Orange, said in court papers that she was teaching kindergarten

00:51:16.020 at South Mountain Elementary School during the 2020-2021 school year when she was abruptly

00:51:19.940 transferred to the district's annexed school to teach a different class.

00:51:23.420 Barlow was asked to teach a classroom that included special education students, yet she was not

00:51:27.540 provided any special education teachers or paraprofessionals to assist her, according to the suit filed December

00:51:32.320 22nd.

00:51:33.400 Prior to her transfer, Barlow had disagreements with school principal Kevin Mason over the

00:51:37.200 handling of two troubled students, according to the suit.

00:51:41.080 All right, well, so far it seems as though Ms. Barlow has legitimate reasons to be frustrated. 0.98

00:51:45.020 She was pulled out of her class, thrown into a more difficult situation without proper

00:51:48.520 supportive resources, assuming, of course, that her version of events is correct, and I have

00:51:52.120 no reason to doubt that it is.

00:51:53.240 After all, it all sounds haphazard, inefficient, self-defeating, which is exactly what we've

00:52:00.060 come to expect from the public school system.

00:52:02.100 And if this is where the story ended, then she would have my sympathy.

00:52:06.020 But unfortunately, it keeps going, and my sympathy quickly evaporates.

00:52:09.960 Continuing, this situation caused Ms. Barlow a significant amount of emotional distress and

00:52:13.920 exacerbated her anxiety, a condition she has suffered with since her teenage years, the suit states.

00:52:18.500 On October 24th, Mason sent Barlow a letter admonishing her for exhibiting signs of anxiety

00:52:23.400 and stress in the classroom.

00:52:24.960 The suit said, Barlow alleges that her symptoms were caused by not having an aid and by Mason's

00:52:29.720 alleged mistreatment.

00:52:31.280 In this letter, Mason stated that Ms. Barlow's crying spells were unprofessional and stated

00:52:34.900 that a corrective action would be forthcoming.

00:52:37.700 The lawsuit says that Barlow's therapist then placed her on a six-week medical leave due to

00:52:41.940 the stress and anxiety that she was experiencing at work.

00:52:44.280 Okay, so she broke down in tears in front of her students multiple times and then took 0.91

00:52:50.700 a six-week vacation to work on her feelings.

00:52:53.720 Sorry, it wasn't a vacation.

00:52:54.740 It was medical leave because in our insane culture, we use the same language to describe

00:52:59.580 a woman taking a break from her work because she's anxious as we do to describe a woman

00:53:04.180 taking a break from work because, you know, she needs a heart transplant. 1.00

00:53:07.580 But it gets better.

00:53:08.440 Listen, it says, quote, unfortunately, due to the district's failure to address her complaints

00:53:12.660 of unlawful behavior and complete disregard for her disability and mental health, Ms. Barlow

00:53:16.840 was forced to resign from her position on November 1st, 2022, the suit states.

00:53:20.500 The lawsuit says that Barlow's anxiety, which requires medical treatment, is a recognized

00:53:25.240 disability under the New Jersey Law Against Discrimination.

00:53:28.560 In addition, administrators in the South Orange Maplewood School District failed to accommodate

00:53:33.080 Barlow's disability, disciplined her for her symptoms, and failed to include her in

00:53:37.800 the discussions about reasonable classroom accommodations, the suit says.

00:53:40.860 Okay, so to use a phrase that I hate, there's a lot to unpack here.

00:53:48.040 First of all, you know, I do hold men to a higher standard of stoicism than I hold women 1.00

00:53:54.580 to.

00:53:55.580 As men, we should be expected even more to bear difficulty and hardship without complaint.

00:54:02.260 This capacity is one of the things that makes a man valuable to his family and his community.

00:54:06.060 It's what makes a man a man. 0.95

00:54:08.560 And it's why men who cannot carry their burdens with silent dignity are so incredibly useless 0.96

00:54:13.280 and such a strain on everybody around them. 0.95

00:54:16.160 And also really unappealing to women, because it's the last thing that they want. 1.00

00:54:20.340 Now, women are more expressive, more emotive, more empathetic by nature, which is why we have 0.99

00:54:25.240 and should have greater tolerance for their emotional displays.

00:54:28.920 But that tolerance only goes so far, because whether you're a man or a woman, if you're

00:54:34.480 in a position of leadership, especially if that leadership position involves caring for

00:54:39.280 and educating children, you need to be able to handle stress and frustration and setback

00:54:44.680 without making it everyone else's problem.

00:54:48.240 Women have a greater compulsion to share their feelings with those around them, which is usually 1.00

00:54:52.200 fine if they're sharing their feelings with their husbands or their friends or their family

00:54:55.520 or a trusted confidant.

00:54:57.840 But the children in your classroom are none of those things.

00:55:01.680 Let's hope.

00:55:03.140 They are not going to school in order to be sounding boards for your frustrations or to

00:55:07.880 validate your feelings.

00:55:09.560 Your responsibility is to provide them an education, one that is unburdened by your emotional baggage.

00:55:15.620 If you can't do that or you won't do it, then you shouldn't be teaching.

00:55:20.220 I mean, I don't care what you've been through in your life.

00:55:22.020 I don't care how difficult your life is or has been.

00:55:26.240 Sometimes in life, it is your responsibility to suppress your feelings, the feelings you

00:55:32.700 have about those difficulties, and carry on like nothing is wrong.

00:55:36.560 I know that's a shocking thing to hear these days, people hear.

00:55:39.220 But yeah, there are plenty of times in life where no matter what you're going through,

00:55:43.660 it is your responsibility to deal with it and shut up and do your job.

00:55:49.060 It's what's expected of you.

00:55:50.360 You know, the doctor who's performing brain surgery on you, he might be having a bad day

00:55:55.360 also.

00:55:56.460 But you'd be very concerned if he came into the room right before they put you under,

00:56:00.880 sobbing and crying and complaining about his anxiety disorder.

00:56:03.300 And that's because in his capacity as brain surgeon, you expect him to do his duty and to subordinate

00:56:10.480 his feelings.

00:56:12.180 Whatever he's going through, you expect him to just deal with it and get the job done like

00:56:17.420 a professional.

00:56:18.020 You would expect that of your heart surgeon, your brain surgeon, your airplane pilot, really

00:56:25.460 anyone else who's performing a job that you need done.

00:56:28.540 You would be annoyed if you ordered a pizza and it came to your house late.

00:56:35.100 And the reason it came late is because the pizza delivery guy is having a really bad day

00:56:39.860 and, you know, struggling with his feelings.

00:56:42.440 That would annoy you.

00:56:43.840 And it should.

00:56:46.160 Because you're here to do a job and your job is to bring me the pizza.

00:56:51.420 And in that same way, you know, we expect you to do your job as well.

00:56:54.560 And again, if you can't do it, there's always the other option, which is to, which is to

00:56:59.480 not, if you really can't, if you can't do the job, then don't do the job, leave the job.

00:57:04.120 If you're there, people expect you to do it.

00:57:06.260 It's that simple.

00:57:09.460 Second point, anxiety is not a disability.

00:57:12.560 It is not a medical condition.

00:57:14.280 No matter how often this claim is made, no matter what the psychiatrists say, no matter

00:57:18.860 the billions of dollars the pharmaceutical companies are able to make off of it, anxiety

00:57:22.860 is not a disease.

00:57:23.800 It is rather just one of the tolls we all must pay for the privilege of being human.

00:57:30.160 There is nothing strange or unique about the person who experiences anxiety.

00:57:34.640 There would be something quite strange about the human being who did not experience it,

00:57:38.040 but no such human exists or has ever existed.

00:57:41.100 Of course, the medical industry will claim that what I'm talking about, you know, when

00:57:44.860 I say everyone experiences anxiety, what the medical industry says is that, well, that's

00:57:48.320 just regular anxiety.

00:57:49.380 That's average anxiety.

00:57:50.900 That's anxiety in its normal amount.

00:57:53.800 But when anxiety reaches beyond that threshold, that's when it magically becomes an illness

00:57:59.040 as medically valid as diabetes or Parkinson's or the flu.

00:58:04.540 Well, who decides what qualifies as normal anxiety?

00:58:07.040 Who determines where the threshold is?

00:58:08.940 Who gets to declare what amount of anxiety we're supposed to have?

00:58:12.800 Well, coincidentally enough, the people who have drugs to sell us, they get to decide.

00:58:19.340 And they're the only ones who can decide, by the way.

00:58:21.340 Indeed, if you as a human being dare to speak about anxiety, which is the most ubiquitous of

00:58:27.760 all human experiences, and if you dare to speak about it as someone who is not selling anything,

00:58:33.860 someone who doesn't stand to profit off of your position on the subject, that somehow makes

00:58:37.960 you less reliable.

00:58:40.000 The message is clear.

00:58:41.080 When it comes to questions of supposed mental illnesses, the only trustworthy people are

00:58:45.520 the people who are financially incentivized to come up with certain answers.

00:58:51.460 This is all nonsense, of course.

00:58:52.820 Questions about the nature of anxiety and what we should do with anxiety and how much anxiety

00:58:57.320 a healthy person should experience, these are philosophical questions.

00:59:01.880 These are spiritual questions.

00:59:04.000 They're questions that defy simple medical analysis.

00:59:07.600 Questions that cannot be reduced down to formulas or solved merely with prescription medication.

00:59:15.100 And the problem is that the spiritual authorities, the priests and philosophers of our day, are the

00:59:20.520 people who put the title doctor in front of their names.

00:59:23.120 We have long since given them authority over not only strictly scientific and medical questions,

00:59:26.800 but deeper questions about the very purpose and nature of the human person, and about the

00:59:31.700 meaning of life, and how life is supposed to be lived, and how people are supposed to feel,

00:59:36.580 and all of that.

00:59:38.960 We've done this partly because we've been duped, and we do this partly because we prefer the

00:59:42.560 fiction that these people are selling us, because it lets us off the hook.

00:59:46.900 It allows us to claim that we have no control over our emotions.

00:59:50.500 We can't be blamed for how we behave.

00:59:52.320 And now it even allows us to claim disability and take six weeks of medical leave because we're

00:59:58.040 feeling stressed out.

01:00:01.320 That's what Ms. Sarah Barlow was up to, and it's why she is today finally canceled. 0.99

01:00:07.900 And that'll do it for this portion of the show.

01:00:09.200 As we move over to the members block, if you want to become a member, you can do that now by

01:00:12.640 using code WALSH at checkout for two months free on all annual plans.

01:00:16.180 Hope to see you there.

01:00:16.820 If not, talk to you tomorrow.

01:00:18.160 Godspeed.

The Matt Walsh Show - February 01, 2023

Ep. 1104 - The Vengeful, Petty Tyrants Who Lead Us

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