A reporter for The Daily Wire quits the company and publicly accuses some of our personalities, me and Michael Knowles, of being too divisive and mean when it comes to the gender issue. Also, Chuck Schumer calls for Fox News to stop Tucker Carlson from releasing more January 6 footage. And a Washington Post journalist complains that monitoring J.K. Rowling for evidence of transphobia is exhausting work.
00:00:00.000Today on The Matt Walsh Show, a reporter for The Daily Wire quits the company and publicly accuses some of our personalities, me and Michael Knowles, of being too divisive and mean when it comes to the gender issue.
00:00:10.160Also, Chuck Schumer calls for Fox News to stop Tucker Carlson from releasing more January 6 footage.
00:00:15.680Apparently it's a threat to our democracy if we're given more information about what happened on January 6.
00:00:20.640El Salvador's harsh treatment of violent cartel members comes under scrutiny from squeamish Americans.
00:00:25.140The Homeland Security Secretary refuses to admit that there's a crisis on our border.
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00:01:40.540Yesterday, I learned that one of my colleagues, The Daily Wire, had decided to leave the company.
00:01:45.340And this is not exactly breaking news. People come and go all the time, as is the case at any large and growing company.
00:01:51.540What made this unique is that I learned about her resignation from a blog post, which was then picked up by outlets like Mediaite and The Daily Dot and amplified, of course, by employees at Media Matters, where she, in part, blames me for her decision to quit the company.
00:02:08.120Christina Buttons was her name. She was a reporter hired just a few months ago to cover issues related to gender ideology, and especially the abuse of children that happens in the name of gender ideology.
00:02:17.980I appreciated the work that she did when she worked for The Daily Wire and never had any issues with her, as far as I was aware anyway.
00:02:23.640And then she tweeted this on Tuesday morning.
00:02:27.300I'm leaving The Daily Wire. I worked hard getting the facts right and using precise language because of the heated nature of the gender debate, with so much at stake, while their pundits dump gasoline all over it for entertainment and clicks.
00:02:39.320Now, accompanying the tweet is a link to a blog post with a picture of herself, along with me and Michael Knowles, off to the side there.
00:02:46.040Now, in the post, she explains that our inflammatory and divisive rhetoric has driven her away.
00:02:54.600When the documentary What is a Woman was released in 2022, I thought it was a brilliant commentary on the state of our culture.
00:03:01.340Matt Walsh didn't insult his interviewees, but instead let them embarrass themselves with deeply incoherent attempts to answer a question any first grader should be able to answer.
00:03:08.800Even my liberal parents loved the movie, so when The Daily Wire approached me with the opportunity to write exclusively on transgender issues with an emphasis on pediatric gender medicine, I accepted.
00:03:18.180But recent videos and posts have weakened my confidence in their commitment to this message.
00:03:22.600On Valentine's Day, Matt Walsh did a segment on a show about transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney that has now been viewed by millions.
00:03:29.740You are weird, artificial. You are manufactured lifeless. You are unearthly and eerie. You are like some kind of human deepfake, Walsh said.
00:03:35.780Everyone who looks at you will see something pitiable and bizarre.
00:03:39.840Walsh has defended these statements as a good strategy because he says they rallied the conservative base.
00:03:44.480He adds that the goal is not to convince the other side, but to defeat, humiliate, and demoralize his opponents.
00:03:50.140This triggered a race to the bottom with other social media personas one-upping each other to see who can take more extreme stances.
00:03:57.240She goes on to explain that there are people who she calls transsexuals who are not ideologues, she claims, and who, she says, you know, are, they know that they're not actually the opposite sex, even if that's how they identify.
00:04:11.280And she worries that my, quote-unquote, hardline stance may be not only alienating them, but also fueling a, quote, sudden deluge of animus towards transsexuals.
00:05:23.680Now, I admit that outside of her articles on Daily Wire, I didn't follow Christina's work very closely, and so I didn't know that in recent weeks she had also been on Twitter accusing those who are too far to the right, as far as she's concerned, on trans issues, of transphobia.
00:05:50.680Transphobia, using that term exactly, calling people transphobes.
00:05:54.840Now, if I had known that this was a sort of person who unironically accuses people of transphobia, I would not have been too surprised by what happened yesterday.
00:06:03.340And even without knowing that, I'm still not very surprised, because as we've seen over the last several weeks, there has been what we might call a kind of great sorting among the critics of gender ideology.
00:06:15.200Those who are not willing to go as far as needed and to say everything that needs to be said have been weeding themselves out.
00:06:25.160And this is just the latest in that line, in that procession.
00:06:29.240They're turning against their own allies, doing it in public, thereby intentionally giving ammunition to the very people they were supposed to be fighting against.
00:06:39.500There's a reason why Media Matters picks this up.
00:06:41.620I mean, just as a general rule, by the way, if you are supposed to be opposing the left or opposing them on any of these issues and you do or say anything that Media Matters finds useful, then that's a pretty good indication that you screwed up.
00:06:56.180But they do this to their own side because they were never fully on our side to begin with.
00:07:03.020And that's, I think, the crucial point here.
00:07:05.240I'm not going to waste a lot of time on the personal side of this, except to say that I worked in the same building as this person, right across the hall from her.
00:07:14.820If I'm not traveling, I'm in the office essentially from dawn to dusk and sometimes longer.
00:07:20.120So she would have an ample opportunity to walk across the room and talk to me about her concerns.
00:07:26.180Could have had a private conversation as colleagues and alleged allies in the fight against gender ideology.
00:07:49.880Accusing us of being mainly interested in cliques and entertainment.
00:07:53.060And insinuating that we're not taking the issue seriously enough.
00:07:58.520This is ironic, given that she made these accusations in a blog post where she used both my name and my picture, and Michael Knowles' name and picture, to get cliques.
00:08:08.640And at the end of her resignation, she even solicits personal donations.
00:08:13.480So it's like, Matt Walsh is only in it for the money.
00:08:15.580By the way, if you agree with my complaints about Matt Walsh, please consider giving me money.
00:08:19.260It's a bold sales pitch, I will admit.
00:08:29.700You know, I was raised to always speak directly to people if I have an issue with them.
00:08:35.080I was also taught that I shouldn't needlessly burn bridges with people who have helped me and may be able to help me in the future.
00:08:41.800I mean, I can remember being 17 years old and working at the local pizza place, and I was getting ready to quit.
00:08:50.140And my dad told me even then, make sure you don't burn the bridge.
00:08:53.500Don't want to burn the bridge with the pizza place.
00:08:55.340You never know when you're going to need them again.
00:08:56.640But these days, many people feel that whenever they quit a job, they have to nail their 95 theses to the door, publicly outlining every single thing they didn't like about the place.
00:09:10.100They do that in the form now of, it's not so much a thesis on the door, but it's in the form of a TikTok video or, you know, a substack or something like that.
00:09:17.060So I would say that this is not only improper and an unfair way to treat people who've helped you professionally, but also just a very bad career move that you are destined to regret in the future.
00:09:33.520Much more important point is that, again, this is someone who's just the latest in a line of people who are supposedly on our side in this fight, and yet have turned against those of us who they feel are too extreme or too harsh or whatever.
00:09:52.020As far as that goes, I think there are a couple of crucial takeaways here.
00:09:56.420Now, I've already explained in strenuous detail why I believe it's not only morally justified, but also a good strategy to be blunt and more aggressive.
00:10:06.860I don't need to belabor the point any more than I already have, except to say that if you think that it's possible to win a cultural battle and bring about a massive social change,
00:10:18.880while also being exclusively polite and mild-tempered and focused on compromise, then you have never studied history, any history, I have to assume, because that's not how this works or has ever worked anywhere.
00:10:40.000Every social movement needs its frontline combatants, its street fighters, you know, it's people who are willing to get their hands dirty.
00:10:50.300So if you think that I'm a confrontational jerk, maybe you're right.
00:10:54.920But the confrontational jerk community, okay, serves an important purpose.
00:11:01.160You need us, whether you like it or not.
00:11:04.000Now, no cultural battle can be won or has ever been won anywhere in the world without us.
00:11:12.920Now, not everyone needs to adopt our approach or should adopt it.
00:11:17.740You see, this doesn't go the other way.
00:11:20.060I'm not out here saying, well, nobody should ever be polite.
00:12:16.200Now, they might have a debate when there's some people on the left, like Bill Maher or whoever, who might say, I think we're being too crazy.
00:12:23.880I think that some of the things we're advocating for are insane.
00:12:27.420And we need to pull back from that because we're alienating.
00:12:29.600A few people on the left will make that point.
00:12:32.460But if they can all agree that they're right about something, then they will never, ever even consider the possibility that they're being too mean.
00:14:39.480This is the fault line that runs through the movement and separates one side from the other.
00:14:44.020There are those who want to prune the branches, which means you're going to always be pruning them because the branches aren't going anywhere.
00:14:51.560And then there are those of us who want to uproot the entire tree.
00:14:57.740And yes, uprooting the tree is more dramatic.
00:16:13.640You know, having your private life exposed for others to see was once something only celebrities had to worry about.
00:16:24.360But in an era where everyone is online and everyone becomes a public figure, what's changed?
00:16:29.700Think about everything that you've browsed, everything you've searched for, watched, tweeted.
00:16:33.260Now imagine all of that data being crawled through, collected, aggregated by third parties into a permanent public record, which is your record.
00:16:41.640That's why to keep my data private, when I go online, I turn to ExpressVPN.
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00:17:44.820Now, they do a fair amount of outright lying about things, but most of the misdirection is about curating reality, like taking certain bits of what is real and curating it in a certain way to present a picture that's either not the full picture or is completely wrong and misleading.
00:18:06.280What they don't want is, because they're curators, what they don't want is just a, you know, a full, this full stream of information being released to the public.
00:18:22.460They don't want information that they can't control being released to the public.
00:18:25.680And that's what they're very afraid about, especially when it comes to this.
00:18:27.920And that's why Chuck Schumer took to the floor of the Senate yesterday to very explicitly call for Carlson to be censored and for the footage to be suppressed.
00:18:38.920And he wasn't hinting at it or anything.
00:18:40.800He was directly calling for it from the floor of the Senate.
00:18:46.300So many others who were here in the Capitol and millions and millions of Americans are just furious with Tucker Carlson and Kevin McCarthy today.
00:18:57.100And he's going to come back tonight with another segment.
00:21:15.840We have a sitting United States senator on the floor of the Senate, directly calling for a member of the media to be censored and suppressed.
00:21:26.280Calling on his employer to stop him from doing a news segment.
00:21:56.820A news figure, a news personality, an opinion host, giving his opinion about an event, and also releasing footage that we can all see.
00:22:07.140Like, is that the attack on our democracy?
00:22:08.760Or is it a United States senator directly using his power as a senator and his platform to call for that person to be censored and suppressed?
00:22:19.580It's also, if you're, if you are concerned about how, you know, what the audience will think when they see the January 6th footage.
00:22:30.800And you're, and if you're, I mean, if you're a Democrat and you're worried that they'll see it and they'll be sympathetic to, to the rioters and all the rest.
00:22:39.160Well, the best way to make sure that they're sympathetic and the best way to, to confirm all of their suspicions is to do exactly what Chuck Schumer's doing.
00:22:49.280I mean, if I didn't know any better, I would think these people are, they're trying to provoke another.
00:22:52.800As much as they, as much as they, as much as they pretend to fret about, there's going to be another January 6th.
00:22:59.480What we know is that they would love nothing more.
00:23:01.600They would love nothing more than for there to be another one.
00:23:05.320That would be, that would send them into, almost an orgasmic delight if there was another one.
00:23:12.300I mean, just, just look at how much mileage they got out of the first.
00:23:26.760Well, yeah, it's a one hour news program.
00:23:29.980You can only fit so much footage into it.
00:23:32.280So yes, cherry picking, as in picking the parts that are the most relevant and interesting and, and that are the most revealing and the most newsworthy and releasing those.
00:23:43.560Tucker Carlson cannot air 40,000 hours of uncut footage during his one hour news program.
00:23:50.700Well, speaking of cherry picked, what, what about, so this is the unreleased footage.
00:23:56.780Remember, this is the unreleased footage from January 6th.
00:24:00.380There has been a little bit of footage that's been released.
00:24:03.400Well, what about the people that released it?
00:25:33.200If the Capitol Police officers were not escorting this guy through the building as if he was taking a sightseeing tour, if that's not what they were doing, then what were they doing?
00:25:43.340And if there's, if it was cherry-picked, then show us the rest.
00:25:49.340Have you noticed that, too, that they, they say it's cherry-picked, it's not the full story?
00:25:53.120Okay, well, then, whatever footage Carlson released, if there's more footage that would create a context that would totally change, you know, our, our opinion and perception of, of what Carlson shows, then release that footage.
00:26:08.840But you notice they're, they're not, what they're, what they're doing instead is just trying to suppress the footage rather than releasing more footage to give us more context.
00:26:20.140And I think that tells you everything you need to know.
00:26:23.680The White House was asked about this as well, and here's what Karen Jean-Pierre said about it.
00:26:27.800Last night, Tucker Carlson cherry-picked video surveillance from the January 6th insurrection, severely downplaying the event of that day.
00:26:36.980He said the mob was orderly and meek and that they were tourists instead of insurrectionists.
00:26:43.120What's your response to Carlson and to Speaker Kevin McCarthy, who granted him access to that video?
00:26:49.840Anybody who watched that video would strongly disagree.
00:26:53.760Anybody who watched that video in a, with their own eyes in a real way and saw what happened on that day would, would disagree with what was just stated.
00:42:05.480I've been proven, I've been proven totally wrong.
00:42:08.360Listen, uh, the point I made there that I will reiterate is that, you know, if you are defining yourself, your, your perceived inability to develop romantic attractions to other people, um, that's not an identity to be embraced.
00:42:31.700Okay, it's, it's, it's, that's the absence of something.
00:42:34.980That is your, your inability to experience one of the, something that's, that's central to the human condition.
00:42:42.300You know, the ability to, to experience love and romantic attraction.
00:42:45.720It's part of what makes us human beings.
00:42:48.360And so if you perceive yourself to be unable to do that, it's not, that's not your identity now.
00:42:53.820This, this, this emptiness, this absence is not an identity.
00:42:58.080I mean, it's bad enough when people claim an identity, you know, find their identity entirely in their sexual attractions.
00:43:07.040That's bad enough because our identity should not be completely tied up in our sexual proclivities and attractions.
00:43:13.480That shouldn't be our whole identity, our whole personality.
00:43:16.100But to make your whole identity and your whole personality, the lack of that is even worse.
00:43:20.880And it's also not something that you need to just accept.
00:43:25.400That's part of the problem with making an identity, put it on the flag.
00:43:28.960You know, you have your own acronym in the, in the, uh, in the LGBT thing.
00:43:32.700You have your own letter in the acronym.
00:43:34.440Uh, when you do that, you've just, you've, you've embraced and accepted this thing that you don't need to.
00:43:41.400Because, um, there, there, there's obviously some other issues that are going on that you need to address.
00:43:47.740And if you address that, then you may discover that actually, although you perceive yourself to be unable to develop romantic attractions and to have that kind of bond with another human being, you perceive that yourself to be unable to do that.
00:43:59.720You actually are able to do it, but you have to go and get the help that you need to be able to experience that aspect of being a human.
00:44:10.020So, I think it's, it's a rather encouraging and uplifting message for me.
00:44:14.320At least it's as uplifting and encouraging as it gets.
00:48:14.800I know that there's been a lot of reaction to it and I guess it's been a similar reaction to Dave Chappelle where this was supposed to be a comedy special where he's going after the woke crowd and everything.
00:48:27.280And I know there are a lot of conservative people on the right that are applauding it.
00:48:35.540Hopefully, you know, I've said this before about I appreciate some of what Dave Chappelle says, obviously.
00:48:40.860But I've actually found his last couple comedy specials that got all this publicity and I watched them and I agree with some of this, but I don't find it that funny.
00:48:51.400It's like it's it seems like he's he's preaching and I agree with some of what he's preaching, but it's not as funny as his older stuff.
00:48:58.060And so that's a that's something I've noticed with some of these anti-woke comedians.
00:49:03.860There aren't many of them, so maybe we can't beggars can't be choosers, but they're saying things that are right, but they've lost some of the of the of the wit.
00:49:57.920And the employees witness it and do nothing because they're told that they're not allowed to do anything.
00:50:02.280I can remember this even back when I worked in retail.
00:50:04.920And this is one thing they told is that if you see anybody stealing, you are not if you try to stop them, you will be fired.
00:50:10.200We'll fire you for trying to stop them.
00:50:12.520And so that's why I don't I don't when I when I see all these videos of people going in and robbing a place and throwing items into a black trash bag and walking out with it.
00:50:21.600And you see the employees just standing there doing nothing.
00:50:25.500And sometimes the reaction online will be, why are they doing anything?
00:50:28.580I don't blame them for not doing anything.
00:50:39.240I blame the person who's doing the stealing.
00:50:43.720And to a certain extent, I guess you have to blame these these corporations in these these stores for having those policies in the first place.
00:50:49.620They might want to adjust those policies.
00:51:01.620But it is it is this is a connection that's not made often enough, but it is not a coincidence that this current trend of mass looting and mass shoplifting and this kind of brazen shoplifting that goes on that we see all the time in the viral videos.
00:51:16.540I don't think it's a coincidence that this started to happen pretty much at the exact moment when all the customers in all these stores are wearing masks.
00:51:29.540I can remember sending a tweet out early on with the masking stuff saying that, you know, this is going to lead to shoplifting.
00:51:34.080You've got a bunch of customers in there with their faces hidden.
00:51:37.720You're creating opportunities for shoplifting.
00:51:39.500I can remember saying that and being laughed at as if it was some sort of absurd, slippery slope, you know, extreme hypothetical.
00:51:50.620And it might have been a slippery slope, but it's nothing extreme about it.
00:51:53.800It's just a matter of connecting the dots.
00:51:55.220You know, when you when you tell when you tell customers to hide their faces and obscure their identity, you are creating more of an incentive and more of a temptation for stealing, more of an opportunity for stealing.
00:52:40.720OK, why should you maybe you have a terrible father and you have a terrible mother?
00:52:44.540And you might say, well, why should you honor them and why should you honor the elderly?
00:52:49.480And one answer is going to be something like, well, your destiny is to become elderly.
00:52:55.180And so if you set up your society so that the elderly, the traditions aren't valued and then you're going to eventually end up in a situation where you're the tradition that's not valued.
00:53:06.740So there's this hint of iterability there, right, is that and so and so you might also think, too, that that capacity that we have to honor that which came before us, our father and our mother, is what is it?
00:53:23.420It's it's an honoring of the fundamental spirit of patriarchal and matriarchal love.
00:53:54.260And this is not I don't think it is even original to me, but I haven't heard it elsewhere, but I'm sure it's been said.
00:54:01.320The first four rest on the fifth and the second four rest on the tenth.
00:54:06.140If you honor your father and mother, it is the conduit to God.
00:54:10.500If you don't have a father on earth, you won't have a father in heaven.
00:54:14.120And that the authority of the parent, Freud, even who was an atheist, made this point.
00:54:21.540How you see your father is how you will see God.
00:54:24.820Your parents are the conduit, especially your father, to God.
00:54:30.060And if you don't have that authority, you won't have divine authority.
00:54:34.060Really interesting. Great, great insights there.
00:54:36.820And also, you know, it's it's I was going to say one of the commandments, but this is true of all of them that have been forgotten in modern society.
00:54:43.740And talking about honoring your parents and honoring your elders, especially in a culture that worships youth, is is incredibly important.
00:54:52.320It's one of the one of the many insights you get from from this.
00:54:54.840Episode nine is available now with new episodes streaming every week.
00:54:57.920That's exclusive for Daily Wire Plus members.
00:54:59.920Also, don't miss out on our full library of Jordan Peterson content, including Dragons, Monsters and Men, Vision and Destiny, Marriage, Logos and Literacy, and the Beyond Order Tour.
00:55:10.380I don't know how he manages to create all this content and it's all interesting and insightful, but he doesn't.
00:55:15.320So join now at dailywire.com slash subscribe to watch Exodus today.
00:55:19.360Now let's get to our daily cancellation.
00:55:20.660A new podcast called The Witch Trials of J.K. Rowling examines the life and times of the Harry Potter author, focusing in particular on her efforts to defend the reality of biological sex and the insane backlash she's received because of that.
00:55:40.060I haven't listened to the series myself, so I'll just read.
00:55:42.680I'll read for you this very objective explainer by CNN as they are explaining what the series is.
00:55:48.820Here's what CNN says, and this is not labeled as an opinion article, by the way.
00:55:53.940For years, J.K. Rowling, one of the best-selling authors of all time, has made inflammatory comments about transgender people, particularly trans women, using dehumanizing language and baselessly accusing them of harming cisgender women.
00:56:05.380Her words have disappointed legions of Harry Potter fans and even the stars who brought Rowling's book to life.
00:56:10.440Now a podcast called The Witch Trials of J.K. Rowling indicates that she'll discuss the reaction to those anti-trans comments, in addition to discussing her journey as an author, with host Megan Phelps Roper, a high-profile former member of the anti-LGBTQ Westboro Baptist Church.
00:56:25.100Even before its release, the podcast was met with criticism by LGBTQ advocates for seemingly siding with Rowling based on the title alone.
00:56:31.860Well, all right then. At least CNN clearly isn't taking sides.
00:56:36.300Or maybe they are, but it's okay, because Rowling is a dangerous figure, prone to making outrageous comments such as the claim that, you know, biological sex exists and that women don't have penises.
00:56:47.780The threat she poses is so severe that the news media must drop even the pretense of objectivity when reporting on her.
00:56:54.060Though in fairness, these days, they also feel the need to drop the pretense of objectivity when reporting on literally anything else.
00:57:01.780But what sort of threat does Rowling pose exactly?
00:57:04.920You know, they know that she's a horrible person.
00:57:15.140And how is Rowling actually wrong about anything she's said on the subject of biological sex and transgenderism?
00:57:21.980These are questions that the media doesn't spend very much time trying to grapple with.
00:57:26.100I mean, why bother explaining why someone is bigoted when you can simply accuse them of bigotry and just leave it at that?
00:57:31.980Why bother explaining how they're wrong when you can, again, simply accuse them of bigotry and leave it at that?
00:57:37.600This has been their general strategy, of course, when it comes to most people.
00:57:41.480But one intrepid reporter, Monica Hess of The Washington Post, has decided to tread the perilous road that few journalists dare to go down.
00:57:50.380So she has listened to the entire Witch Trials podcast, looking for specific evidence that Rowling is a transphobe.
00:57:58.040And she reports her findings in a piece titled, quote,
00:58:00.940Listening to the Witch Trials of J.K. Rowling is exhausting work.
00:58:04.620A podcast promised clarity from Harry Potter author on how she feels about trans issues, but it falls to the audience to fact check her.
00:58:11.960Reading a bit from the article, it says,
00:58:13.220Listening to the Witch Trials of J.K. Rowling is exhausting.
00:58:16.560It's exhausting because it requires constant vigilance.
00:58:19.700And it's exhausting because the phrase, constant vigilance, I've just realized,
00:58:23.560entered my own lexicon via Mad-Eye Moody, a beloved Harry Potter character.
00:58:27.980Because Rowling is brilliant, is a brilliant and beloved storyteller who is astonishingly good at entering lexicons,
00:58:33.960manipulating language, and telling fantasy stories.