The Matt Walsh Show - Ep. 1211 - We Need To Solve Our Violent Crime Epidemic The El Salvador Way

00:00:00.000 Today on The Matt Walsh Show, the media has started another round of hit pieces against

00:00:03.420 the president of El Salvador because of his very harsh way of rounding up and imprisoning

00:00:07.460 violent gang members. They say that instilling law and order is inhumane and not worth the cost,

00:00:12.040 but they never acknowledge the cost of not instilling law and order. We'll talk about

00:00:15.100 that today. Also, the first Republican primary debate is tonight, and CNN hails Biden for his

00:00:19.880 empathetic performance when visiting Maui after the wildfires, even though, of course,

00:00:23.540 he was the exact opposite of empathetic. And are we experiencing an epidemic of people

00:00:27.540 behaving rudely in public? If so, what's causing it? We'll talk about all that and more today on

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00:01:45.900 844-ROUGH-700 today. There are so many news reports now on rampant crime in major cities that at this

00:01:52.380 point, you can't be blamed if your eyes glaze over when you see them. There are only so many

00:01:56.360 clips of thugs shoplifting, doing street takeovers, or shooting at cops that you can watch. And at some

00:02:02.460 point, even though it's horrible, you get numb to it. But one recent report from CNN on property

00:02:07.800 crime in San Francisco stands out. We played part of this clip a couple of weeks ago on the show,

00:02:11.880 but here it is in full context. Watch. San Francisco businesses fed up with crime. One sandwich shop

00:02:18.940 owner is calling for action after he says he was attacked outside his store. He says he yelled

00:02:23.360 at a man to stop urinating on his trash can and then was sucker punched. His Instagram post about

00:02:27.760 the incident has now gone viral. I'm fed up with this city. It's like, I can't just be outside and

00:02:37.080 just running a business without getting punched in the face. It shouldn't be this way at all. Like,

00:02:41.960 this isn't how our city should be. Now, it's not clear what was said before the altercation or

00:02:47.840 whether there's even video of it, but San Francisco police have said they are investigating.

00:02:52.400 It comes as some stores are locking up everything from coffee to frozen food to try to combat

00:02:57.120 theft. Our Kyung Law visited one Walgreens that's hit by shoplifters more than a dozen times a day.

00:03:03.480 It happened three times while she was inside.

00:03:09.320 Richie Greenberg walked into his San Francisco Walgreens when he saw in the frozen food section

00:03:14.760 this. Chains, heavy chains that went from padlock to padlock on both sides of the doors.

00:03:22.180 And this was bizarre, something I'd never seen before. This is just more icing on the cake

00:03:28.620 telling us that rampant crime is, is, has become a regular part of life. So typical that in the 30

00:03:37.080 minutes we were at this Walgreens, we watched three people, including this man, Steele.

00:03:46.080 Did that guy pay? Did that guy pay? He didn't pay.

00:03:52.640 So this Walgreens is supposedly hit by shoplifters more than any other Walgreens in the United States,

00:03:57.100 which is really saying something. The bar is pretty high to achieve that record. People are walking in

00:04:01.920 and out with, with, with merchandise at will without paying. Shoplifters robbed the store

00:04:06.660 three times while CNN was inside reporting on shoplifting. As I said, you've seen portions of

00:04:13.020 that clip when it went viral several weeks ago, we played it on the show, but we never played the end

00:04:16.740 of that segment. And here it is. San Francisco City Supervisor Matt Dorsey,

00:04:22.480 former police spokesman and recovering drug addict, sees the rampant shoplifting as a systemic problem

00:04:28.660 from city leaders to an understaffed police force to the fentanyl crisis.

00:04:33.520 When you're seeing that level of retail theft, that tends to be subsistence level retail theft.

00:04:40.020 People are hungry. People are hungry. There is a level of addiction playing out in many parts of our

00:04:45.460 city. It's happening at levels we really haven't seen in San Francisco. What I'm hearing from my

00:04:50.520 residents and what I'm hearing from San Franciscans is it's time for tough love. We are not doing any

00:04:55.640 addict in this city favors by enabling behavior that is potentially deadly in ways we have never

00:05:02.780 seen. Now in a statement to CNN, Walgreens says it is focused on safety and preventative measures,

00:05:09.160 but that retail theft remains one of its top challenges. Here's some important context though

00:05:15.700 on the city, Aaron. Property crime and violent crime at the end of last year was actually lower

00:05:21.540 than it was before the pandemic. So what's going on here? So first CNN trots out a city supervisor to

00:05:28.560 inform you that the causes of all this shoplifting are systemic, you know, sort of like racism in that

00:05:33.600 way. He's applying that there's no way to solve it. But of course, you should pay a lot of, you know,

00:05:38.100 consultants and government agencies a ton of money to try to solve it, even though it can't be solved

00:05:42.260 because it's systemic. That's what every bureaucrat means when they talk about systemic problems.

00:05:47.500 Systemic problems is really, that's just a job pro jobs program for, for bureaucrats in other words.

00:05:52.420 And then the CNN reporter comes back and she says that she's providing some important context. And

00:05:56.860 what is that context? Well, she says that property crime in San Francisco is lower than it was before

00:06:01.880 the pandemic. In other words, as bad as the footage you just saw might look overall, the city is doing

00:06:07.140 fine. The ice cream sandwiches might be locked away with chains and people are so brazen about stealing

00:06:12.840 they're doing it in front of news cameras. Still, the city is on the right trajectory. Everything is

00:06:17.720 fine. Nothing to see here. That's the message. Now, in the world of statistics, they have a few

00:06:23.600 terms for this, and one of them is non-response bias. Another is measurement bias. So if you're

00:06:29.520 looking at a chart of reported property crimes and it goes up and then up and up, and then suddenly it

00:06:34.940 goes down out of nowhere, a couple of things are possible. The first possibility, the one that CNN

00:06:39.320 implies is happening here is that people are committing fewer property crimes. Somehow the

00:06:44.200 criminals have decided on their own to stop doing crime. Even though they know they can easily get

00:06:49.400 away with it, they decided to just stop doing it. They've decided to become law-abiding citizens

00:06:53.340 out of the goodness of their hearts. Their hearts have all grown three sizes, like the Grinch

00:06:58.660 when he visited Whoville. The other possibility, though, is that maybe people have simply stopped

00:07:05.240 reporting property crimes because they know the police and the DA won't do anything about them?

00:07:11.360 Could that be happening in San Francisco? Despite the city's property crime statistics,

00:07:16.820 is it possible that property crime is actually increasing? Dick's Sporting Goods just provided

00:07:22.220 another data point to help us answer that question. Dick's has locations all over the country,

00:07:26.500 of course, and they just announced that property theft is costing them so much money that they're

00:07:31.460 now laying off a mass number of employees. The company says that profits dropped 23 percent last

00:07:38.340 quarter, which is a staggering amount, and they blame much of it on rampant shoplifting.

00:07:45.080 So when you hear that property crime is going down and then you see stories like that, you have to

00:07:49.820 wonder whether the statistics give you an accurate picture, especially when Dick's is far from the only

00:07:55.300 chain that has had to shut down locations, lay off employees because they keep losing so much

00:08:00.840 merchandise to theft. It's kind of like when influenza cases started to, went down basically to zero during

00:08:07.320 COVID. Is that because, as the experts said, influenza simply just stopped spreading somehow during the

00:08:13.660 pandemic? That's a comforting explanation, so it mainly went unchallenged. And most statistics from

00:08:21.580 the government are like this. They're technically correct, but wildly misleading. However, one government

00:08:29.160 statistic is very tough to fudge, no matter how hard politicians try, and it's the murder rate.

00:08:33.940 The government can lie and say that shoplifting is down, but it's challenging for them to lie about

00:08:38.800 murders because murders leave dead bodies. People talk about them. I mean, they usually get reported.

00:08:45.240 Coroners have to be dispatched to the scene and so on. Between 2019 and 2020, the homicide rate in the

00:08:51.020 United States increased by more than it did at any other point in modern history. Went up by 30%.

00:08:56.580 Following year, it increased again. Some of the country's most prominent tourist destinations have

00:09:02.600 become too dangerous for many people to visit. Last year, for example, New Orleans became the murder

00:09:07.280 capital of the United States, recording 52 homicides per 100,000 residents. Now, browse news reports on the

00:09:14.860 violent crime wave in this country, and invariably, you'll hear the same excuses. They'll tell you that COVID is

00:09:20.180 responsible for the murder rate. They'll do what the San Francisco city supervisor did and blame

00:09:24.940 systemic issues like policing. What they won't do is tell you that actually a real and immediate solution

00:09:33.620 to this problem is available. In El Salvador, under the leadership of Nayib Bukele, they have figured out 0.99

00:09:42.000 a solution. In 2018, the year before Bukele took office, El Salvador posted a murder rate of 51

00:09:48.180 per 100,000 people, which is the New Orleans rate. By 2022, the murder rate in the country had fallen to

00:09:55.160 7.8 per 100,000 people. That's 7.8, not 78. This chart that we have a chart here we can show you

00:10:03.800 that shows the magnitude of the decline. You can see that the murder rate was decreasing before

00:10:07.440 Bukele took over, but he took it to an unprecedented low level. I mean, this is a homicide rate now in El

00:10:14.820 Salvador that's significantly lower than what you'll find in several major American cities.

00:10:21.960 And these are not cooked numbers, okay? You know that because Nayib Bukele is overwhelmingly popular

00:10:27.220 in El Salvador. People know that murders are down. They know that they are safer in their communities

00:10:32.520 because they live in these communities. They don't need the government to tell them about it.

00:10:37.740 El Salvador accomplished this massive reduction in homicides, if you can believe it,

00:10:41.780 by doing something radical. They decided to start punishing criminals. Specifically,

00:10:47.420 Bukele implemented something called the Territorial Control Plan. And phase one of that plan

00:10:51.900 involved flooding high crime areas with heavily armed police officers. Many criminals with gang

00:10:57.240 affiliations, often indicated by their tattoos, which are often on their face, easy to see,

00:11:01.500 went to prison. Officials paraded them before cameras in a humiliation ritual.

00:11:06.520 This has been an integral part of El Salvador's strategy for years. Just a few months ago,

00:11:10.580 Bukele uploaded a video which shows gang members in one of the super prisons he's constructed

00:11:16.620 to house them, kind of showing you how it works in these prisons. And we'll play a quick clip of that.

00:11:21.500 Here it is.

00:11:21.900 Here it is.

00:11:51.500 So, seems like an unpleasant place to be. And El Salvador's government has not relented in the

00:12:00.680 past few years. In fact, this summer, El Salvador's Congress approved new rules allowing the trial of

00:12:05.480 up to 900 gang members simultaneously to expedite the otherwise slow-moving judicial process.

00:12:10.800 Now, in some publications, including the National Review and various left-wing outlets,

00:12:16.240 you'll find alternative explanations for how Bukele lowered the murder rate so quickly. And one

00:12:21.180 popular theory is that all these harsh measures are not reducing crime. Instead, the theory goes,

00:12:27.420 Bukele struck a secret deal with the gangs that convinced them to stop committing crimes.

00:12:31.980 And there's some truth to that. Bukele did indeed try to negotiate a truce with 0.92

00:12:35.100 the MS-13 and other gangs. But as CNN reported last year, citing an expert in Central American

00:12:40.320 affairs, quote, there are some consensus among security watchers that Bukele's truce

00:12:44.460 with the gangs fell apart in late March 2022, which prompted the MS-16 to do the killing spree

00:12:50.040 to pressure the government to give concessions. So, Bukele's latest crackdown followed the breakdown

00:12:55.600 in negotiations. And still, violent crime remains low. The crackdown has saved lives. There's no

00:13:01.780 question about it. Other Central American leaders are now looking to model El Salvador's approach.

00:13:08.040 There's no question about that either. The only remaining question is whether saving these lives

00:13:14.020 and restoring order to society and making communities livable again is worth a few sacrifices.

00:13:21.680 Most notably, is it worth sacrificing some of what we in modern Western society consider to be

00:13:28.740 humane standards for imprisonment? Is it worth sacrificing some of those standards?

00:13:35.900 In response to that question, the media has answered unanimously in the negative. The Sun,

00:13:40.020 for example, just published a lengthy piece lamenting the conditions in El Salvador's prisons.

00:13:45.320 Inmates are crammed together like sardines, the Sun says, quote,

00:13:48.340 In each 100-square-meter cell, around 75 crammed inmates sleep on metal cabins and are forced to

00:13:53.900 share just two toilets and two sinks. Several other outlets have run similar stories in recent days,

00:13:59.680 talking about how terrible it is in these prisons in El Salvador, how it's all a human rights violation.

00:14:04.320 Here's the BBC, for example. Watch.

00:14:06.840 Relatives of those detained have been desperately trying to find out what's happened to them.

00:14:12.160 I saw the video on Facebook and I was going through it, pausing and rewinding.

00:14:17.940 He was almost unrecognizable, so very thin. I only knew it was him by his tattoos.

00:14:24.060 Angelica says her husband has no links with gangs. She's heard nothing further about him since he was

00:14:30.220 arrested under emergency powers brought in in March 2022 by President Bukele.

00:14:36.120 Through satellite imagery, data released by the Salvadoran government and documents seen by BBC

00:14:43.840 Mundo, we've gathered information about the site.

00:14:48.240 There are eight cell blocks monitored by 19 watchtowers.

00:14:53.980 Inside the cells, the beds are metal plates and there are two toilets open to the room.

00:14:59.380 So far, the authorities say they have transferred 4,000 prisoners to the jail and that there is

00:15:06.740 capacity for up to 40,000. The BBC has found that at full capacity, each person would have

00:15:14.000 0.58 square meters of space. The International Committee of the Red Cross recommends 3.4 square

00:15:21.540 meters in a shared cell. Okay, so this prison does not live up to the standards of the Red Cross or the

00:15:27.580 U.N. or any Western human rights watchdog group. It's very, very uncomfortable to be in prison in

00:15:34.320 El Salvador right now. So uncomfortable, in fact, that it might even make you think twice about joining

00:15:39.420 a gang in that country to begin with, which is obviously the point. Now, with that said, we hear

00:15:44.060 from someone in the clip who claims that at least one of the inmates, her husband, has no connection

00:15:48.900 to gangs. He's an innocent man caught up in the crackdown, caught up in the net. And we have no way of

00:15:54.640 assessing whether that story is true, obviously. We don't know. Is this person innocent or guilty?

00:15:58.800 How do we know? But if we're being honest, we probably can assume that some nonviolent people,

00:16:06.420 even some innocent people, have been caught unwittingly in this net. Some of them may be

00:16:10.380 innocent. True. Anytime the government assumes emergency powers and arrests more than 70,000

00:16:15.600 people without ensuring their due process rights, it's bound to happen. And yes, it's almost certainly

00:16:20.720 true that many of these inmates live in conditions that would make Amnesty International extremely

00:16:25.640 squeamish. There's no reason to paper over that. But that's not where the discussion ends or where

00:16:31.360 it should end. The question that follows is a simple one, though it's rarely discussed. And the

00:16:35.420 question is this. Would you rather have a safe society where a few innocent people are imprisoned,

00:16:40.740 or would you rather have a very dangerous society where only a few guilty people are imprisoned?

00:16:46.340 Ben Franklin famously answered a version of the question. He said, it's better for 100 guilty 0.96

00:16:52.180 persons to escape than one innocent person to suffer. And we hear people repeat this mantra

00:16:58.200 unthinkingly all the time. But Ben Franklin didn't address what happens when all those guilty people

00:17:04.780 get out of prison and make it impossible for innocent people to live their lives. What happens when

00:17:09.760 allowing guilty persons to escape means that innocent people can't start businesses or use the subway or go

00:17:15.500 to the store, walk down the street, or guarantee the safety of their children? What happens when

00:17:21.740 letting the guilty go free means letting them randomly assault elderly people or carjack women at the

00:17:27.560 stoplight or execute gas station cashiers for the few dollars in the cash register? That's unfolding

00:17:35.960 now in major cities all across the country. It's happening so often that CNN is capturing it on camera

00:17:41.360 unintentionally. This is not the high trust society that existed in the 19th century.

00:17:47.300 When Barack Obama was in office, he made a habit of calling difficult decisions, quote, false choices.

00:17:53.260 He said that we should, for example, reject the, quote, false choice between our security and our ideals.

00:17:59.720 But the truth is that there are hard choices to be made when weighing our security against our ideals.

00:18:05.140 This is not a false choice. There are actual trade-offs you have to make.

00:18:11.280 There's no sense in lying about it. As Richard Hanania pointed out recently on his Substack,

00:18:16.540 sometimes a slavish devotion to ideals gets a lot of people killed, and it ruins livelihoods.

00:18:22.500 Nobody wants to talk about that, but it's true.

00:18:24.220 And as more criminals act with total impunity, it's getting hard to ignore. Besides,

00:18:29.640 the other point here is that nobody can claim that they really have a zero tolerance for,

00:18:35.040 you know, for example, innocent people going to prison. We like to say that, well, we can't allow

00:18:39.260 a single innocent person to go to prison. Because the only way to bring that number down to zero

00:18:43.640 is to have no prisons at all. If you have any kind of prison system, there's going to be that kind

00:18:49.360 of unintended consequence. Regardless, it's going to happen. And we all accept that tacitly. We have

00:18:54.960 to, or we cannot have a civilization. But we're currently in the process of losing our civilization,

00:19:02.000 and it's in part because modern Western people have a totally upside-down view of these kinds of

00:19:07.540 trade-offs. Or they're so naive that they think that we can have no trade-offs. But that's not the

00:19:13.940 case. You can't get around it. Either you emphasize justice, social order, and punishing

00:19:19.880 criminals, and you deal with the collateral damage that comes with this harsher and more brutal

00:19:24.900 approach. Or you emphasize tolerance and acceptance and rehabilitation and forgiveness,

00:19:30.540 and you deal with the collateral damage that comes with that. You will get the collateral damage

00:19:34.060 either way. There's no way around it. In the former case, it means that you'll have a safer and more

00:19:38.300 orderly society where people can live their lives and your children can walk outside without fear.

00:19:42.500 But criminals will be made very uncomfortable and will be treated in ways that are sometimes quite

00:19:48.320 ugly. And in the latter case, criminals will be more comfortable, and prisons will not be such an

00:19:53.780 ugly place. But your communities will be unlivable cesspools. As I've said before, there will be

00:20:00.000 ugliness in society no matter what. You can choose to contain it in prison, or you can let it loose on

00:20:05.700 the streets. You will have it, the ugliness, whether you like it or not. The question is, where do you

00:20:10.100 want it? In prison or outside your front door? El Salvador's solution is not ideal. I mean, you'd 1.00

00:20:16.640 prefer if your country didn't need to have super prisons with tens of thousands of violent gangsters

00:20:21.020 in them. Nobody would call that an ideal situation. Certainly not naive and Kelly. At a certain point,

00:20:26.960 though, it becomes necessary because the alternative is even worse. If our leaders don't have the stomach

00:20:31.820 to punish criminals now, then down the line, they'll be replaced by people who do. That's the lesson of

00:20:37.100 El Salvador. We can either learn from it, or we can keep repeating the same mistakes. The choice is 0.99

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00:21:56.740 for full offer details. So the first GOP primary debate is tonight as we officially get into

00:22:03.440 my least favorite season as a conservative commentator. I'm something of an aberration

00:22:09.700 in my community, as you probably know if you listen to the show. Most of my peers, you know,

00:22:13.520 they live for election seasons, debates, presidential elections. They're very excited about it because

00:22:20.420 that's the sweet spot, you know, in this world normally. I'm exactly the opposite. I find this stuff

00:22:25.960 sort of boring, to be honest. Analyzing debate performances and reading polling data. It's all

00:22:32.800 tedious to me, but here we are anyway. And of course, the big controversy going into the debates

00:22:37.660 is that Trump won't be attending. We talked about this a few days ago, and I already made my point

00:22:43.420 that I, well, I basically agree with both sides. So I'm, not to take the cop-out approach, but I can

00:22:48.960 see where both sides are coming from. And on the one hand, you know, there are those who say that

00:22:54.300 Trump should debate, that it's, it's wimpish not to. You owe it to the voters to get up there and

00:23:00.680 answer questions and, and, and allow yourself to be scrutinized. That's just, you should do it. You

00:23:07.400 should, you should put yourself in that position. You owe it to the voters. The fact that Trump was

00:23:11.820 already in office, that, that doesn't mean that he doesn't need to debate. That means all the more

00:23:15.260 that he should debate because he has a record that needs to be defended and he needs to answer

00:23:19.900 questions about it, especially about what happened in the final year of his tenure when the country

00:23:24.380 was handed over to Fauci and BLM. And so he needs to be there and he needs to talk about it. So I get

00:23:29.040 that. And I understand that. And I, and I can see where that side's coming from. On the other hand,

00:23:34.680 though, from a political perspective, the people on the other side of this will say that, well, Trump

00:23:37.980 doesn't stand to gain much from, from debating. I mean, debating, it's, it's a political decision.

00:23:42.980 Debating is a political activity. It's, it's, it's, it's all about politics, obviously.

00:23:49.120 And, um, so you're not going to put yourself in a position and running a campaign is all about

00:23:53.340 politics, obviously, by definition. So you're not going to put yourself in a position if it's,

00:23:57.520 if it's going to be politically, uh, not useful to you and potentially dangerous and, and, and

00:24:02.100 harmful. And when you think about Trump being so far ahead in the polls already and being such a

00:24:09.500 known entity, you put them up there on the stage, he probably potentially stands to lose more than

00:24:15.160 he would gain. Um, now sure, he, he dominated the primary debates in 2015, but that was as a

00:24:23.420 newcomer and an outsider and kind of a novelty. It's nearly a decade later now, and it's just not

00:24:29.520 going to be the same. Um, so to stand up there and allow the other candidates to take shots at him

00:24:35.920 or to use him to prop themselves up or whatever else they do while he's already so far ahead in

00:24:41.280 the polls. I mean, that's like politically foolish. Why would you do it? And, uh, and I get that. I 0.99

00:24:45.880 think it's a solid argument. Of course, there's the downside. There's the political downside. Most

00:24:52.040 of the people that are insisting that Trump should be there at the debate, they're making kind of a

00:24:55.020 principle that argument that just in forget about the politics in principle, you should be there.

00:24:59.180 It's the right thing to do, but that's just, that's not the reality. Okay. It's, it's all about

00:25:03.880 politics. It's not about principle. And that's just the fact of the matter. Um, but there's also

00:25:08.520 the political downside, as I mentioned a couple of days ago, which is that potentially significant.

00:25:14.440 It's not nothing that Biden in the general election will certainly want to skip the debates.

00:25:22.520 And if you've already skipped all of, all of your primary debates, which is what Trump is

00:25:26.600 implying he's going to do, then you just, you're not going to be in a position to complain when your

00:25:32.400 opponent does the same thing on the same pretense. I mean, you can complain and the Trump camp

00:25:38.240 obviously will. I mean, you're not going to just let Biden get away with skipping the debates.

00:25:41.260 You're going to criticize him for it. And you're going to hope that most people don't remember

00:25:44.660 the fact that the recent history of you skipping all of your debates. So you're going to do it.

00:25:48.480 But I think your, your arguments, uh, your complaints will, will ring hollow, uh, in a lot of

00:25:53.460 ways. That's the political downside, but ultimately I think politically the right move is for him

00:25:58.600 not to debate. And that's, that's where I come down. I can see both sides, but, and, and here's,

00:26:02.200 here's the way you look at it. You know, and I'm, I'm a simple person. I look at these things very

00:26:06.020 simply. Uh, you always have to ask yourself, what do your opponents want you to do?

00:26:16.100 And then most of the time you should be doing the opposite of that. Okay. If you're doing something

00:26:20.220 that your opponents want you to do, if it's something that your opponents will look at and

00:26:24.380 they'll be very happy that you're doing it, it's probably not a good idea. And I'm not saying that

00:26:29.120 you make all of your political decisions in this, in this reactive kind of way, but, but this could

00:26:34.480 be, it could be illuminating to think of it in those terms. And I say the same thing. This is the

00:26:38.560 case in political campaigns. It's the same thing in, in, on a broader cultural level, right versus

00:26:45.260 left, you know, in our battle for the culture, we should always think about, you know, if we're

00:26:49.380 approaching something, if we're fighting an issue in a certain way, is this how the other side wants

00:26:54.740 us to fight it? Are they happy that we're doing it this way and not some other way? Uh, and in this

00:27:00.240 case, if, if the Trump camp is asking themselves this question, like, what do our opponents want

00:27:03.940 us to do? Do they want us to be there or do they, or, or, uh, or would they prefer for us to skip it?

00:27:10.160 I think there's no question that Trump's opponents want him on the stage. They want him to be there.

00:27:15.680 And if they all want you to be there, it's not because they, they are looking out for you and

00:27:21.200 your best interest is because it's in their best interest for you to be there, which means that if

00:27:25.200 you want to win, then the smart thing is to not be there because that's what they want. Um,

00:27:31.580 the only, the only question now is without Trump at the debate, um, given that he's the front runner

00:27:40.560 and a far, far away, the front runner, can any of the other debate participants, uh,

00:27:48.000 are they going to be able to do anything to separate themselves from the pack? Can they have

00:27:52.540 any, can this have any real effect on the polls when the front runner isn't even there? Um, and I'm,

00:27:57.560 I'm very skeptical of that. Uh, yesterday we talked about Biden visiting Maui and the fact that it was a,

00:28:05.200 it was a disaster. Uh, it's, it's a disaster zone already. And then it's a disaster on top of disaster

00:28:12.480 when would Biden visits there and just makes an absolute fool of himself. I mean, to start with 0.97

00:28:17.820 getting there two weeks late after saying almost nothing about this issue for two weeks, in fact,

00:28:22.660 saying no comment, he doesn't want to talk about, ask about the, the, the, the victims of the fire.

00:28:27.640 He says, no comment. He's on vacation. He doesn't care. Finally, he finally moseys over there

00:28:31.580 two weeks later. And we played some of the clips yesterday that, that, that will live in infamy or

00:28:36.080 at least should. And in particular, the one where Biden compares this fire where more than a thousand

00:28:45.160 people have likely died, many of them children to his small kitchen fire, you know, 20 years ago.

00:28:51.880 So the whole thing, any, any objective observer who, who saw this, look at Biden's performance and say,

00:28:58.580 this is just horrendous. Uh, but that's not how CNN saw it because these are not objective

00:29:05.560 observers. Obviously here's how they interpreted the events. Let's watch a little bit of this

00:29:08.560 president and Dr. Biden spent several hours, both over Lahaina on the ground here and meeting with

00:29:16.300 both first responders and victims of this tragedy at the big shelter, the war memorial shelter in central

00:29:21.780 Maui. And he said the right things in many cases. When he came to the microphone to give his

00:29:27.480 statements, he said the thing that a lot of folks I've been hearing from for two weeks have been

00:29:31.800 saying that he wants Maui, the people of Maui to help determine how this place is rebuilt.

00:29:37.960 There was a question as to who will have the most influence in that conversation going forward.

00:29:43.220 Locals here, working class native Hawaiians and multi-generational locals are worried of disaster

00:29:48.820 capitalism, people moving in to exploit this and buy up as much land as they can in this paradise and

00:29:54.640 rebuild it, uh, for their interests as well. The president says promises that that won't happen.

00:30:00.820 It remains to be seen. There's a lot of forces at play here right now. He did serve as empathizer

00:30:06.300 in chief after five days of being mostly silent on the issue publicly, but the governor said he was

00:30:11.400 working behind the scenes to assure first responders that the feds had their back on this. Uh, he shared

00:30:17.740 this. So I just wanted to get to that line at the, at the end there. He says, uh, Biden was the

00:30:23.340 empathizer in chief. This is, this is empathy. Uh, is Biden comparing the worst wildfire in a hundred

00:30:31.220 years and talking to the, the, the victims and the families and comparing it to his kitchen fire.

00:30:37.060 That is empathy. They say, uh, when of course it's obviously the exact opposite of empathy because

00:30:44.480 Joe Biden is the exact opposite of an empathetic guy. He's only thinking about yourself. Okay.

00:30:50.540 Uh, being able to understand someone's suffering and let them know that you understand it and caring

00:31:00.900 about it like that is empathy. Relating everything back to yourself is not empathy. At least if that's

00:31:08.780 where the, it ends like in empathy, you, you, you, you, you can relate, but then it goes back. It goes

00:31:14.780 back to the, the person you're relating to it's for their sake. It's right. It's to comfort them.

00:31:22.540 Uh, Biden has one part of that process. He relates it back to himself, but then it stops there. He just,

00:31:26.940 he just brings it always back to himself, not in a way that comforts those who are suffering,

00:31:32.700 uh, not in a way that, that, that helps them to understand that they, that he understands what

00:31:36.360 they're going through. Not at all. Again, it's the exact opposite. When you relate it back to

00:31:41.620 yourself and you say, you know, it's, I'm looking at the devastation here. It reminds me of the time,

00:31:44.940 uh, when there was a brief, uh, kitchen fire, I had a grease fire in my kitchen once,

00:31:48.980 you know, we were cooking up some, uh, some bacon and there was a little, little, uh, grease fire

00:31:55.220 through a wet rag on it, went out. It was a little scary for a second. That's what I think of when I,

00:32:00.060 when I see billions of dollars of damage and a thousand people lost.

00:32:06.360 When you say that, that what that conveys is that you don't understand their suffering at all

00:32:12.860 because you're making that kind of comparison and you bring it always back to yourself.

00:32:16.940 Speaking of not being empathetic, there's a video that's circulating

00:32:19.240 of Biden appearing to fall asleep during a, uh, a ceremony to honor the victims of the wildfire.

00:32:26.560 He's sitting there. And the funny thing is that that was the video that went viral. He seems to be

00:32:30.440 sitting there kind of falling asleep, nodding off. He's there's someone talking about losing.

00:32:34.000 You can hear in the audio, someone's talking about losing their home. Everything's burned

00:32:37.220 up and destroyed. Someone talking about the terrible misfortunes that they've suffered

00:32:40.720 through. And you see Biden just kind of staring down at his desk and breathing heavy. And it looks

00:32:46.300 very much like he's asleep. Now some media came along, NBC news, for example, had a clip that they

00:32:52.440 put out. They said, no, we can prove he's not actually falling asleep. And they had a high res,

00:32:56.940 high resolution video where you could see, look, you can see the whites of his eyes. His eyes are still

00:33:00.820 open. He's not actually sleeping. So we debunked that. But of course these people don't, uh, understand

00:33:09.500 that that doesn't make it any better. Okay. The fact that you can't tell if Biden is awake or asleep,

00:33:19.000 that's not a good thing. That doesn't make it look better. You need to bring out a high resolution

00:33:25.560 video to detect the whites in his eyes in order to know whether he's asleep or not.

00:33:30.680 The fact that you can't, him being awake looks identical to him being asleep, aside from eyes

00:33:37.680 being open or closed. That's not a good thing. Hey, he might not have been technically asleep,

00:33:43.700 but that's because he's just always asleep. His brain is in permanent sleep mode.

00:33:47.340 And, uh, I don't consider that a positive necessarily. All right, let's see. Uh, this

00:33:54.500 is from the Daily Wire. A federal district court sided with a Michigan farmer on Monday,

00:33:58.660 ruling that he is free to participate in a city run farmer's market after he was booted over his

00:34:02.720 Catholic views on marriage. Steve Tennis, who owns Country Mill Farms, was banned in 2017 from East

00:34:10.060 Lansing farmer's market by city officials after he posted on Facebook that he follows the Catholic

00:34:15.320 Church's teachings on marriage, which includes opposing same-sex weddings at his family's

00:34:19.340 orchard. East Lansing officials reacted by using a discretionary system of individual assessments

00:34:23.860 to ban Tennis and his farm from participating in the seasonal market, despite Tennis never receiving

00:34:29.100 any complaints from customers, his legal team said. Tennis and his farm sued the city of East Lansing

00:34:33.660 in, uh, 2017. On Monday, U.S. District Judge Paul Maloney ruled that the city's ban on tennis

00:34:40.100 constituted a burden on plaintiff's religious beliefs. Tennis and his farm were forced to choose

00:34:45.540 between following their religious beliefs and a government, uh, benefit for which they were

00:34:49.940 otherwise qualified. And it took all of these years, but they have finally got the correct ruling

00:34:57.100 on that, that this was a discrimination. I think this is a, in fact, this case is instructive and it

00:35:03.860 gives us a handy contrast. Um, because this is what actual discrimination looks like. We hear this

00:35:10.500 phrase discrimination all the time. Many people are always claiming to be discriminated against

00:35:15.040 and it makes you wonder, what does it actually look? Is everyone really just being discriminated

00:35:19.060 against all the time? Or, uh, do we have a, do we have a, do we need to adjust our view of what

00:35:24.620 discrimination is? Um, and what we find is that this actual illegal discrimination, like this is the

00:35:33.780 kind that Christians face in the real world, in this country all the time. Um, it's not the kind 1.00

00:35:40.180 that LGBT people face. That's almost always fake discrimination. And here's the contrast. So let's

00:35:47.540 take, you know, LGBT people claim one of the most famous cases, recent cases, modern cases of an

00:35:54.380 LGBT of gay man claiming to be discriminated against is of course the masterpiece cake shop case 1.00

00:35:58.580 where they wanted to the cake made for their wedding and they were turned down. And then you

00:36:04.520 have that and let's compare that to this case where the Christian is banned from the farmer's market.

00:36:09.380 On the one hand, you have, uh, a, a Catholic farmer banned by the local government from a farmer's

00:36:20.840 market as opposed to a gay couple who are told that they're not going to get a custom cake.

00:36:28.300 A couple of differences. First, government entity versus, versus a private entity. So this is the,

00:36:35.100 the local government in Michigan saying that you're not allowed to attend the farmer's market because

00:36:40.660 we don't agree with your views, uh, versus a private entity, a, a cake shop saying, we don't want

00:36:48.120 to serve you this particular cake. Second, you have someone who's banned from participating in

00:36:55.140 something based on their beliefs that banned completely say, you're not allowed here, go away.

00:37:01.420 Versus, uh, in the case of masterpiece cake shop and many other similar cases, uh, the gay couple, 1.00

00:37:09.160 they weren't banned from the store. They were never told, get out of the store. We don't serve your kind 1.00

00:37:13.060 here. You're not allowed to be in the store. We won't serve you anything. No, they were told,

00:37:16.880 well, well, you can be in the store. You can shop around. In fact, we will sell you anything in this

00:37:23.240 store right now. Look around the store. There's all the pre-made cakes and everything. You look

00:37:27.140 around, you can have any of it. You can buy all of it if you want, if you have the money.

00:37:31.600 We just can't custom make a cake for this particular purpose of a gay wedding. 1.00

00:37:39.660 There's a very obvious distinction there, which goes to the third difference, which is

00:37:44.180 on one hand, you have discrimination against a belief system. Again, it's the local government

00:37:50.680 saying you believe these things. We find those beliefs abhorrent and therefore you're not allowed

00:37:56.040 here. Pretty clear cut discrimination. Shouldn't have taken six years to get the correct ruling on

00:38:01.640 that case. Okay. That should be, that should be a case that lasts about 30 minutes because if that's

00:38:06.700 not illegal discrimination, then the concept means nothing. On the other hand, you have,

00:38:15.100 if there's any kind of discrimination, it is discrimination against inactivity.

00:38:19.920 So it's not the gay men themselves who were discriminated against because they were never

00:38:24.380 told you're gay, you're not allowed here. Instead, you had the owner of this private company saying,

00:38:31.260 we don't agree with that activity, with that particular event, and we don't want to be

00:38:36.340 involved in that event, in that activity, which is a gay wedding. Very clear differences there that I

00:38:43.520 think any reasonable person could see. All right, finally, before we get to the comment section,

00:38:49.780 Bud Light is still trying to salvage its brand, trying to move on. And they have their latest attempt

00:38:57.800 here. And every attempt is very funny because they put out a new ad, a new campaign,

00:39:02.120 and they always put it, I don't even know why they bother putting the stuff on social media anymore,

00:39:05.180 but they do. And I'm glad that they do because then it's always a lot of fun to read the comments

00:39:09.240 and they're just getting ripped apart for it. So they've teamed up with the Washington Redskins,

00:39:12.720 who are still the Washington Redskins, as far as I'm concerned. And they've made this very fun

00:39:16.800 commercial to try to, you know, try to reset the brand. And here it is. Let's watch.

00:39:27.800 All right. So there, there it is. All I'm going to say is that first of all, if you're trying to

00:39:46.860 be seen, if you're trying not to be seen as the gay beer, then that's not the way to do it. That's 0.84

00:39:52.500 the opposite of what you want to do. Uh, you, we, we want to see football players like,

00:39:58.480 uh, you know, we want to see hard hits tackling, giving each other concussions like that. That's

00:40:04.020 what, if you really want to reset the brand, if you want to have any hope of it, then that's what

00:40:07.600 it would be. Uh, instead you've got football players. Okay. That part's fine, but they're all

00:40:12.240 just dancing. It really doesn't matter. Cause it's hopeless for Bud Light. It just is. Their

00:40:17.640 brand is forever tarnished. Um, you know what it's like for the, you know what Bud Light is at this

00:40:22.220 point? I think the best analogy is Bud Light is basically like the kid in middle school

00:40:28.360 who pees his pants in class. And, and, and that's what they are because there's no coming back from

00:40:34.840 it. Right. The kid who pees his pants in class is always going to be that kid. There's just nothing

00:40:39.800 you can't, you will always be seen that way. There's nothing you can do. You can move schools

00:40:45.040 or something and change your name, but that's the only, that's the only way. And it's kind of like

00:40:50.200 that for Bud Light. They're just the kid who peed his pants in class. It's like forever. Anytime

00:40:53.940 anyone sees a Bud Light, they just can't help but laugh anymore. It's a, it's an automatic

00:40:58.340 instinctive reaction that people have because your brand has been that tarnished. So what's the

00:41:04.040 equivalent for Bud Light? I mean, at least if you're in that position, you can change schools.

00:41:07.180 How does Bud Light change schools as it were? Uh, I don't know. They really can't. I mean,

00:41:12.180 honestly, just complete rename. That's one thing they could do is rename the beer. It's the exact

00:41:18.740 same beer, exact same company. Give it a different name. Honest to God, that's their one hope. Their

00:41:24.400 one chance. That's not going to fool me. I'm not going to buy Bud Lights. I never would have bought

00:41:27.920 them anyway, but I'm still not going to. Uh, but I think, you know, fast forward another year or

00:41:33.020 something. I think that's what we'll be looking at. That's their only hope is just give it a different

00:41:36.220 name. And, uh, and then most people, then maybe it won't have that. At least give, give your

00:41:44.240 customers a chance. Like there are people out there that for whatever reason, enjoyed Bud Light

00:41:47.580 and, uh, and, but they're not going to buy it and walk around holding it because they know they're

00:41:56.500 going to, everyone's going to make fun of them. And so there's just, no, they're not going to do it.

00:42:01.760 If you want to have any chance and you have to allow whoever your potential customers would be

00:42:06.660 to like purchase it and not be mocked ruthlessly for it, which probably means you just need to change

00:42:11.660 your name. All right, let's get to the comment section. A majority of Gen Z supports left-wing

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00:42:33.900 the country we know and love will be lost forever. Those are the stakes. PragerU is the

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00:43:30.020 Giggly says, uh, how this decaying hollow shell of a human being is allowed to get in front of

00:43:37.400 cameras and speak publicly anymore is beyond me. Are you talking about me or Biden? I'm gonna assume

00:43:43.480 you're talking about Biden. Well, it was, that was a comment under the Biden video. So we'll go with

00:43:47.620 that. Uh, Julie says the lack of empathy disgusts me. No wonder residents are angry, shouting profanity

00:43:53.300 at elected officials. That was the one encouraging thing about that video play yesterday. The mayor,

00:43:58.680 um, uh, I believe it was the mayor in Maui County said, was refusing to answer questions about how

00:44:05.560 many people had been lost, how many children are lost. Uh, and that is all very terrible. The one

00:44:11.180 encouraging thing to me is just the utter disrespect that the people were, including the media,

00:44:17.860 heaping on this elected official, the total contempt for him, which I, which I think is

00:44:24.220 exactly the right attitude to have to politician towards politicians like that. And really probably

00:44:29.620 all politicians. I think it'd be a good thing if we felt that way about all politicians. If that was

00:44:33.700 our instinct, if we had an instinctive disgust for all politicians, uh, I think that we'd be in a much

00:44:41.400 better spot. Another comment says, dude, I live on big Island and, uh, I swear to God, this is one of

00:44:47.540 the worst things I've ever seen. I'm not a big Matt Walsh fan, but everything he said was wildly

00:44:50.940 accurate. Uh, the mismanagement, the deflection, the lack of care, the lack of attention paid to

00:44:56.160 survivors, the lack of attention and care paid to the people who lost their loved ones and children.

00:45:00.740 Everything about it is atrocious. My friend told me that she was trying to, uh, get out days later

00:45:05.640 and they wouldn't let her. The local government trapped her in a town with no water or food. And even

00:45:10.000 now it's difficult for residents to access, but there are subjective reports of homeless encampments and

00:45:14.400 looters taking advantage of the empty homes. The whole thing is egregious and terrifying and sincerely

00:45:18.980 makes me want to leave my home. It's one of these things that can't be forgiven or forgotten. I just

00:45:24.260 pray that people see the reconstruction of their town in a way that feels good for them. Don't donate

00:45:28.540 to the Red Cross or FEMA, although I'm sure people on here know that already. Yeah, I've heard many,

00:45:33.800 many stories like this from people who actually live, uh, and have seen the, the devastation

00:45:38.360 firsthand. And a lot of this is, is certainly not just the case in Hawaii, but so much of this is

00:45:47.620 that we are not electing serious and competent people. Putting aside all the political bias and

00:45:53.720 everything else, we're just not electing serious, competent people. And then the problem with that

00:46:00.400 is that when something serious inevitably happens, because we live in the, in the real world and 1.00

00:46:06.560 terrible things happen, well, now you have these unserious morons who are tasked with dealing with 1.00

00:46:12.800 it. Perfect example is that the water official, the guy in charge of the water talking about in an 0.99

00:46:18.940 interview before the fires happened, talking about, uh, you know, the importance of water and

00:46:24.820 ancestral traditions and dispensing water in an equitable way. The thing with that is, you know,

00:46:31.680 again, there's been this connection people have drawn. They've, they've, we know that, that water

00:46:36.160 was held up. People needed water to fight the fires and it was held up. And a lot of people online are

00:46:41.040 kind of making the connection that they held it up because of some sort of equity concern, because we

00:46:45.520 heard this from this water official before. And I think that's a fair theory. We don't know for sure.

00:46:52.340 We actually don't know exactly why the water was held up, but that's almost this, that's a secondary

00:46:59.840 point. Almost. The first point is whatever the reasons were, this was just an unserious person

00:47:06.180 put in a position to be in charge of, you know, dispensing this necessary, you know, this necessity,

00:47:16.100 which is water. Uh, and so a lot of this just felt inevitable. Let's see. J man says, Matt,

00:47:24.120 you don't get to tell me what I mean by my own words. Also, Matt, I've decided that my interpretation

00:47:29.040 of a small part of the lyrics means that the entire song is about a nanny sexually molesting Freddie

00:47:33.360 as an infant. I love you, Matt, but even you are dense at times. Well, I hate to say this J man, 1.00

00:47:39.540 but this is what you've said here is, uh, it's pretty much the definition of being dense, uh,

00:47:46.120 and intentionally. So like, let, let's just go. So I know maybe you're a queen fan. Maybe you like

00:47:51.560 the song fat bottom girls. Maybe you've already been, I don't know. Maybe you've already been on

00:47:54.780 social media posting about how, uh, they've been canceled and this is so terrible because you saw

00:47:59.120 the rage bait on Fox news. And so now you're a little bit embarrassed because as I pointed out in

00:48:03.340 the show yesterday, the whole story about queen getting canceled was fake. And so maybe you're

00:48:07.580 embarrassed by that. So you feel like you have to grasp for some sort of way out, but you don't

00:48:13.260 have to do that. You really don't. You can just admit like a lot of people, including people I

00:48:16.620 respect on the right, they got this story wrong. They heard from Fox news and some of these outlets

00:48:20.900 that queen's been canceled. It's political, it's political correctness overboard. And they didn't

00:48:24.420 look into it. They didn't look into what the story actually was. They didn't, they didn't realize

00:48:27.600 that no, they haven't been canceled at all. They just, they just didn't put this one particular

00:48:31.240 song on an audio platform for three-year-olds. And they also didn't look into to see what the song

00:48:36.620 actually is, what it's about. And so many people made that mistake. I think it's better just to

00:48:41.760 admit it. I told you what the lyrics are. I mean, again, the lyrics, I was just a skinny lad, never

00:48:48.120 knew no good from bad, but I knew life before I left my nursery, left alone with big fat Fanny. 0.99

00:48:54.400 She was such a naughty nanny. He big woman. You made a bad boy out of me. What, what is your 0.99

00:48:59.980 interpretation of that? How do you interpret it? To me, it seems very clear that it's about a

00:49:07.160 overweight nanny molesting a child in the nursery. It's like, that's what it is. That's what he's

00:49:11.600 talking about. Okay. I don't know what to tell you as I wish that wasn't the case. I wish that's

00:49:16.500 not what the song was about, but it's what it's about. It's right there. I didn't make those lyrics

00:49:19.720 up. I didn't make them up. Queen made them up. They're right there. So what is your, what,

00:49:25.340 just tell me, how do you interpret that? Okay. I don't need to read between the lines or turn

00:49:30.380 the thing upside down and read it backwards to get this interpretation. You have to do that to not

00:49:34.460 get this interpretation. So what are you going to do? Is this, you know, it's a metaphor. It's a

00:49:39.460 poetic license. It's a metaphor. You see, the nursery is not literally a nursery. It's a metaphor for,

00:49:45.540 I don't know, big fat Fanny. That's the nanny. Well, she's not really the nanny. It's, 1.00

00:49:51.100 you know, she's a metaphorical nanny. Come on. And once you understand something like 0.82

00:49:57.780 so much of the music that is considered, oh, the classics, these are the classics from the 60s

00:50:04.500 and 70s. There's a lot of this kind of stuff. As I said yesterday, so much of it is just degenerate

00:50:10.340 garbage. It just is. And it has the reputation of a classic now simply because it's been around a long 1.00

00:50:17.320 time. This is not a great song. It just happened to be made 50 years ago. It doesn't make it good

00:50:23.160 now. Finally, Emily says, cancel culture is something that you take part in, Matt Walsh.

00:50:29.160 Think Target, Bud Lay, slavery, rainbows, books, et cetera. Slavery. I mean, sure, I cancel slavery.

00:50:36.660 Yeah, but I don't know why you would. Anyway, you're saying it's not canceled because you would be

00:50:40.700 the one canceling it. No, I think you're mistaken, Emily, that, well, I mean, you're not mistaken.

00:50:48.360 You're right. I do cancel all those things. I want all those things to be canceled. And,

00:50:53.120 well, not books in general, but you forgot to mention, I'm not in favor of canceling books in

00:51:00.080 general, but in particular, gay pornography books in schools is what we've talked about canceling.

00:51:05.820 So you need to be more specific there. But I have never said that there's anything wrong with

00:51:12.000 canceling something. I have a whole segment called the Daily Cancellation. There's nothing wrong with

00:51:17.100 that. Okay. It's what you're canceling. It's what you're going after. Trying to shut something down,

00:51:25.360 impose some sort of social penalty on it, publicly shame something or someone. I'm not opposed to any of

00:51:32.840 that. I never said I was. What I'm opposed to is picking the wrong people and targets for that kind

00:51:41.400 of treatment. That's my issue. So should we cancel people? Should we cancel things? Yes. If they

00:51:48.360 actually deserve it. Sure. Why not? Of course we should. Seems pretty simple to me. Despite the

00:51:54.480 lackluster economy, the Daily Wire is thriving. And not only that, but we are hiring. We're currently

00:51:58.320 looking for a graphic designer to join our fast growing creative department. As a graphic designer,

00:52:02.740 you'll collaborate with copywriters, creative directors, and other designers under the guidance

00:52:06.440 of the executive creator director to craft show assets and thumbnails for a variety of mediums.

00:52:11.720 To excel in this role, you'll need proficiency in Adobe Creative Cloud, experience in creating

00:52:16.440 engaging web graphics, keen attention to detail, and excellent communication and collaboration skills.

00:52:22.140 The position is based in Nashville, Tennessee. If you're interested in joining our team,

00:52:25.080 visit dailywire.com slash careers. That's dailywire.com slash careers today.

00:52:32.740 The website Vox has an urgent report this week. The headline from writer Alex Abad Santos tells us,

00:52:40.340 quote, people forgot how to act in public, which of course raises the question, when did people ever

00:52:45.060 know how to act in public? What do you mean they forgot? Did they ever know? But we'll get back to

00:52:49.320 that in a moment. Here's how the piece begins. Some people shouldn't be out in public right now.

00:52:53.920 Movie theaters have become a lawless land where some moviegoers have no reservations about using their

00:52:58.300 phones after films have started. Sometimes it's not just a glance at the time, but full-on social

00:53:02.760 media scrolls and posting. In New York City, Broadway audiences are drunk, rowdy, and apparently leaving

00:53:07.600 feces in the aisles of theaters. This summer at various concerts, Albanian pop star Bebe Rekse,

00:53:14.680 Bebe Rekse, is that what it is? Was, okay, close enough. Was bean in the face. A fellow pop princess, 0.98

00:53:21.620 Ava Max, was slapped by a stage rusher. An aerial enthusiast, Pink, was handed someone's mother's

00:53:27.140 ashes. Fans interrupted country singer Miranda Lambert's intimate show with an impromptu photo

00:53:31.600 shoot. And a fan threw water on rapper Cardi B. Cardi B responded by chucking her microphone at her 1.00

00:53:37.700 water flinger. Large-scale in-person events are down bad. Well, we should also note that journalism is

00:53:44.780 down bad when the phrase down bad is appearing in articles. As for the rest of it, I haven't been to a

00:53:50.340 concert in probably 13 or 14 years. I've never been to a Broadway show. And with six kids, I go to

00:53:55.040 movies maybe twice a year at this point, which actually has less to do with the six kids and

00:53:58.960 more to do with the fact that there are only two movies a year at most that are worth watching in

00:54:02.520 the theater. My point is that I can't attest to the epidemic of bad public behavior at these venues.

00:54:09.020 Personally, I haven't been around, I haven't been in these venues very often, but I don't doubt the

00:54:13.200 claim. And I'll also say that obviously, this should go without saying, anyone who scrolls social

00:54:19.600 media in a movie theater during a movie should be arrested on the spot and publicly flogged.

00:54:25.720 If I were theocratic fascist dictator of America, this is one of the very first policies I would

00:54:29.440 instate. There would be public flogging stations set up directly outside of movie theaters so that

00:54:34.820 those who misbehave can be dealt with quickly and efficiently. We would also have guillotines on

00:54:39.300 spot for repeat offenders. And just to clarify for our big tech overlords who are listening to this

00:54:43.880 episode, I am not advocating violence against those who talk, text, or use social media in the

00:54:48.200 movies. I'm not advocating it. I'm simply suggesting a legal policy that we might want

00:54:54.400 to explore. It would be at least one way to curb the behavior that Vox is reporting on. And it's 0.99

00:55:00.940 not just Vox. On the same day, the BBC published an article on what it calls, quote, the summer of

00:55:06.580 bad tourists. And it begins, quote, this summer every day seems to bring another headline of tourists

00:55:11.520 around the world behaving badly. Last week, it was two drunk Americans sneaking into a closed section of 0.56

00:55:16.320 the Eiffel Tower and sleeping off their bender high above Paris. The previous week, a French woman 0.95

00:55:22.300 was arrested for carving a heart and her initials into Italy's iconic Leaning Tower of Pisa.

00:55:27.520 A Canadian teen defaced a 1,200-year-old Japanese temple last month just after a Bristol-based man

00:55:33.120 etched two names into Rome's Coliseum and told authorities he was unaware of the arena's age.

00:55:39.480 And who could forget the German tourists who crashed a performance inside a sacred Bali temple and 0.88

00:55:44.060 stripped naked after having previously run out of the bill, run out on the bill at several local

00:55:48.420 hotels? Feels like the whole world has forgotten how to act in other people's homes. So people are

00:55:53.980 acting up in movies, at concerts, on vacation, at tourist destinations. Where else? Well, of course,

00:56:00.280 we can't forget airplanes, which I've seen over the past few years a stark rise in incidents involving

00:56:04.480 rowdy and unruly passengers. 2021 was a very bad year for that kind of thing. And it looks like 2022

00:56:10.260 was even worse. This past June, the International Air Transport Association released its official

00:56:15.580 report on the subject. Reading now, it says, quote, the International Air Transport Association

00:56:20.540 released a new analysis showing that reported unruly passenger incidents increased in 2022

00:56:25.740 compared to 2021. Latest figures show that there was one unruly incident reported for every 568 flights

00:56:32.040 in 2022, which was up from one per 835 in 2021. The most common categorizations of incidents in 2022

00:56:39.940 were noncompliance, verbal abuse, and intoxication. Physical abuse incidents remained very rare,

00:56:46.160 but these had an alarming increase of 61% over 2021. Now, one incident every 568 flights doesn't

00:56:54.660 sound too bad on the surface, but when you consider the increase and also just how many flights take

00:56:59.880 off around the world every day, thus just how many episodes of drunkenness and physical abuse

00:57:04.540 in the sky this translates to, you start to see the scope of the problem. And it's a problem that

00:57:10.840 extends beyond airplanes and beyond tourist destinations and theaters and concerts. In many

00:57:14.640 ways, this is part and parcel with the epidemic of violent crime we talked about in the opening,

00:57:18.700 looting, shoplifting. It's all part of the same picture. And we haven't even mentioned the most dire

00:57:24.720 and urgent indicator of social chaos, which is the fact that, as I talk about often,

00:57:31.300 nearly everyone these days seems to have no problem ditching their shopping carts and parking

00:57:35.080 lots. I actually looked for some hard data on the rate of shopping cart ditching to see how it's

00:57:39.820 increased over time. I spent like way too much time this morning looking for that. Somehow it seems like

00:57:44.900 this issue has never been formally studied, and I don't know how that could be the case.

00:57:47.760 All we can say then is that there are a lot of people doing it, and everyone who has ever done

00:57:54.160 it for any reason is a psychopath who should be in solitary confinement. But the real question is

00:58:00.960 why? Like, why is all this happening? Why are people acting this way? If outrageous, offensive,

00:58:06.260 antisocial behavior is becoming more common, then what explains the increase? Well, that Vox article has

00:58:12.740 an answer, and it's exactly the answer that you would expect. It's the answer they give for everything

00:58:16.220 they say it's all because of COVID. Reading, quote, according to experts I spoke to, this rash of bad

00:58:22.980 behavior can probably be traced to the pandemic shutdowns of 2020. During the lockdowns, we didn't

00:58:27.700 have large-scale social events, and no doubt, some people have sort of forgotten how to act now that

00:58:32.520 they're back. Since humans thrive on collective effervescence, it was a complete shock to our systems

00:58:37.600 in 2020 when the pandemic, seemingly overnight, obliterated those large social gatherings, finding

00:58:42.800 that in-person effervescence became impossible. The pendulum swing from gathering in real life to

00:58:48.060 being relegated to social media to now in 2023, coming back to real life events, may explain why

00:58:53.260 some people are being disruptive and not fully comprehending the impact they're having on their

00:58:57.300 fellow audience members. They're using the modes of social connection they got accustomed to, posting

00:59:01.620 a video from a movie theater, scrolling through social media during a Broadway play, or treating a

00:59:06.620 concert like a performance they're watching from home in a setting that's inappropriate.

00:59:10.200 Now, to be clear, I don't dismiss this explanation out of hand. There's no doubt

00:59:14.720 some truth to it. When you lock people in their homes and you shut down all social gatherings,

00:59:20.140 you force people to wear muzzles, depriving them of the ability to see each other's faces and fully 1.00

00:59:24.520 connect even on the rare occasions when they're out in public. When you do all that, there are going

00:59:29.260 to be social consequences, and none of those consequences will be good. But this doesn't come close to

00:59:35.900 explaining the a-hole epidemic or accounting for the entire scope of the problem. The lockdowns may

00:59:44.100 have exacerbated some of this stuff, but it was there all along. The real source of the problem,

00:59:50.000 the thing that you probably aren't going to hear anyone talk about on Vox, is that we live in a culture

00:59:55.480 that fundamentally encourages this kind of self-centered behavior. There has been a deliberate effort going

01:00:02.360 back decades to undermine and ultimately destroy all of the basic standards of etiquette that nearly

01:00:08.060 everyone once recognized. They used to teach etiquette as a subject in school, but those days

01:00:13.600 are long gone. Etiquette has become such a dirty word that Vox wrote an entire article about etiquette 1.00

01:00:20.460 and never used the word etiquette in the article. They never acknowledged that that's what they were

01:00:24.060 talking about. What they're discussing is not just people being, quote, down bad, whatever that means.

01:00:29.660 They're talking about a loss of etiquette in social situations. The problem for our culture and those

01:00:38.220 in charge of it is that etiquette, both as a term and a concept, first of all, has the vibe of

01:00:44.100 something old-fashioned, like our grandparents cared about etiquette, which makes it automatically

01:00:48.900 archaic and inherently bigoted in the modern mind. Etiquette, by definition, is a customary code of polite

01:00:54.900 behavior among members of a social group. But customary means old. It means traditional. It means

01:01:00.820 something that has existed prior to yesterday. We, and by we, I mean the universal we, not you or me

01:01:07.560 specifically, hopefully, we've decided that we have no use for tradition, which is why tradition has also

01:01:12.540 become a dirty word right alongside etiquette. And that's what a lot of this stuff links back to.

01:01:17.400 Second and most importantly, etiquette is a code of conduct that you as an individual are expected

01:01:25.640 to abide by whether you want to or not, whether it feels good or not, whether it infringes on your

01:01:32.460 personal expression or not. It is something that is often supposed to supersede the desires of the

01:01:39.260 individual. It comes before living your truth, whatever that means. But as a society, we've entirely

01:01:46.120 lost the ability to convey that kind of message. We don't even have the language for it anymore.

01:01:51.060 The feelings of the individual have long since taken center stage. And they now come before any

01:01:56.760 notion of the common good or the needs of society. In other words, people look at their phones in the

01:02:02.200 movie theater because they want to look at their phones in the movie theater. It's what they desire

01:02:06.720 to do in that moment. It's what will make them happiest right then and there, they think. And so why

01:02:13.940 shouldn't they simply do what makes them happy? Why should they care if it makes you less happy?

01:02:19.460 Why should they concern themselves with your truth when they're so busy living theirs?

01:02:25.740 The writers at Vox have no answer for that. They can't really deal with this dilemma because they

01:02:30.820 don't understand what the dilemma is. We can complain impotently about people being jerks, but 1.00

01:02:36.520 when it comes to explaining why exactly people should not be jerks, it all breaks down. 0.99

01:02:43.020 The only real solution here is to restore some sense of order, of traditional etiquette, of 0.96

01:02:48.600 social custom. It's to reestablish a hierarchy where the momentary impulses and desires of the individual

01:02:55.640 are not sitting at the very top in the place of utmost importance.

01:02:59.780 In other words, it means defeating leftism. That's the only actual solution.

01:03:07.560 And we can be pretty sure that Vox will not be up for that, which is why all the people acting 0.92

01:03:13.140 like jerks in public and also Vox are all today canceled. And that'll do it for this portion of 0.76

01:03:18.260 shows. Move over to the members block and become a member today by using code Walsh to check out for

01:03:21.380 two months free on all annual plans. Hope to see you there. If not, talk to you tomorrow. Godspeed.

01:03:25.860 Hope to see you there.

The Matt Walsh Show - August 23, 2023

Ep. 1211 - We Need To Solve Our Violent Crime Epidemic The El Salvador Way

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