The Matt Walsh Show - Ep. 1306 - The Best Way To Protect Your Kids From Being Harmed By A Smartphone Is To Not Give Them A Smartphone

00:00:00.000 Today on the Matt Walsh Show, Mark Zuckerberg performatively apologized at a congressional

00:00:03.780 hearing for the harm that social media does to kids. But the real answer to preventing that harm

00:00:08.740 is not yelling at big tech CEOs. It's parents taking responsibility for their children.

00:00:13.340 Also, James O'Keefe catches another White House official on camera making damning confessions.

00:00:17.880 A man is charged with committing a hate crime against Satan, and officials in D.C. are trying

00:00:21.640 to figure out why violence and crime is rising among kids in the city. I have a few answers

00:00:26.500 to that question. We'll talk about all that and more today on the Matt Walsh Show.

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00:01:35.680 won't last long. Start preserving your past and save 50%. Go to LegacyBox.com slash Matt to get

00:01:42.660 started today. That's LegacyBox.com slash Matt. For a long time, it hasn't been clear what could

00:01:48.040 possibly prompt a tech oligarch in this country to apologize for anything, really. Everybody knows that

00:01:54.180 Tim Cook will never say he's sorry about working with sweatshops in China, just like Jeff Bezos 0.97

00:01:59.140 will never apologize for selling all of the garbage products that these sweatshops produce. 0.93

00:02:05.120 And you certainly won't hear Mark Zuckerberg say that he regrets his efforts to manipulate the

00:02:09.520 last presidential election. Spent hundreds of millions of dollars to influence everything from

00:02:13.980 mail-in voting to the design of the physical ballots that were delivered to voters' homes.

00:02:18.940 And to this day, he seems to be proud of it. He also doesn't seem that bothered by Facebook's

00:02:23.500 decision to censor the Hunter Biden laptop story. He certainly didn't release the Facebook version

00:02:27.600 of the Twitter files or anything like that. There was no meaningful mea culpa. Zuckerberg just said

00:02:33.260 that the situation, quote, sucks, and that was the end of it. That's what makes this moment from 0.95

00:02:38.280 yesterday's hearing in the Senate Judiciary Committee on online child safety so interesting.

00:02:44.340 After some prodding from Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri, Zuckerberg stood up and apologized to

00:02:50.340 the families seated behind him. These are families who say that their children were exploited

00:02:54.320 or died because they encountered content on Meta's social media apps, whether that's because they were

00:02:59.760 bullied and committed suicide or because they bought drugs on Instagram or they participated in the

00:03:04.740 blackout challenge and suffocated or they were in child pornography or other unspeakable horrors along

00:03:11.940 those lines. And they were all there. And after being again prompted to do so, Mark Zuckerberg stood up

00:03:19.220 and this is what he said. Who did you fire? I said you mischaracterized. 37% of teenage girls

00:03:26.360 between 13 and 15 were exposed to unwanted nudity in a week on Instagram. You knew about it. Who did

00:03:33.040 you fire? Senator, this is why we're building all. Who did you fire? Senator, that's I don't think

00:03:38.480 that that's. Who did you fire? I'm not going to answer that. That's because you didn't fire anybody,

00:03:43.940 right? You didn't take any significant action. It's appropriate to talk about it. Like it's not

00:03:49.620 appropriate decisions. Do you know who's sitting behind you? You've got families from across the

00:03:56.620 whose children are either severely harmed or gone. And you don't think it's appropriate to take a talk

00:04:02.440 about steps that you took. The fact that you didn't fire a single person. Let me ask you this. Let me

00:04:06.560 ask you this. Have you compensated any of the victims? Sorry? Have you compensated any of the

00:04:11.200 victims? These girls, have you compensated them? I don't believe so. Why not? Don't you think they

00:04:19.580 deserve some compensation for what your platform has done? Help with counseling services? Help with

00:04:25.440 dealing with the issues that your service has caused? Our job is to make sure that we build tools

00:04:31.080 to help keep people safe. Are you going to compensate them? Senator, our job and what we

00:04:36.000 take seriously is making sure that we build industry-leading tools to find harmful to make

00:04:41.000 money, take it off the services to make money and to build tools that empower parents. So you didn't

00:04:45.660 take any action. You didn't take any action. You didn't fire anybody. You haven't compensated a

00:04:50.060 single victim. Let me ask you this. Let me ask you this. There's families of victims here today.

00:04:53.760 Have you apologized to the victims? I would you like to do so now? Well, they're here. You're on

00:05:00.140 national television. Would you like now to apologize to the victims who have been harmed

00:05:04.640 by your product? Show them the pictures. Would you like to apologize for what you've done to these

00:05:09.480 good people? I'm sorry for everything that you've all gone through. It's terrible. No one should have

00:05:17.480 to go through the things that your families have suffered. So it's hard to hear exactly what

00:05:24.020 Zuckerberg says there. So here's the quote. I'm sorry for everything you've all gone through.

00:05:27.600 Nobody should have to go through what your families have suffered. This is why we have

00:05:30.320 invested so much and are going to continue industry-leading efforts to make sure that no

00:05:33.500 one has to go through the types of things your families have suffered. Now, this is being treated

00:05:39.600 as sort of an unscripted moment. Maybe it was, but it's still worth dissecting one way or another a

00:05:46.020 little bit. The implication of what Mark Zuckerberg said is that if his social media platforms had done

00:05:51.900 more, maybe these people's children would still be alive. As carefully workshopped as this apology is,

00:05:58.380 it's still an unprecedented admission from the head of a major technology company.

00:06:02.700 Even though Zuckerberg stopped short of admitting that his products were directly responsible for

00:06:06.240 any deaths, he did convey some, some, at least some sense of remorse to these grieving families.

00:06:12.180 And that's the headline that's been blasted everywhere in the media, as you might expect.

00:06:15.680 But it's important to clarify exactly what Meta is accused of and what Mark Zuckerberg is apologizing

00:06:21.400 for. Last summer, the Wall Street Journal reported that Instagram not only hosts child pornography,

00:06:26.180 but also promotes child pornography through its algorithm. This was a discovery that incidentally

00:06:30.640 did not prompt any kind of sustained advertiser boycott from major corporations, unlike the time

00:06:36.240 Elon Musk agreed with a post that criticized the ADL. In any event, Instagram was exposed to promoting

00:06:43.780 some of the worst kind of content imaginable. As Ted Cruz demonstrated at yesterday's hearing,

00:06:48.460 Instagram didn't even block child pornography that its algorithm had identified.

00:06:54.040 And here's how Mark Zuckerberg explained that.

00:06:57.000 Instagram also displayed the following warning screen to individuals who were searching for child

00:07:04.020 abuse material. These results may contain images of child sexual abuse. And then you gave users

00:07:14.780 two choices. Get resources or see results anyway. Mr. Zuckerberg, what the hell were you thinking?

00:07:26.700 All right, Senator. The basic science behind that is that when people are searching for something that is

00:07:37.620 problematic, it's often helpful to rather than just blocking it to help direct them towards something

00:07:44.180 that that could be helpful for getting them to get help in what I understand. Get resources in what sane

00:07:50.600 universe. Is there a link for see results anyway? Well, because we might be wrong. We we

00:07:56.580 try to trigger this this warning or we tried to when we think that there's any chance that the

00:08:04.260 results. OK, you might be wrong. Let me ask you, how many times was this warning screen displayed?

00:08:09.400 I don't know. But the you don't know. Why don't you know? I don't know the answer to that off the top

00:08:14.820 of my head. Well, that's a bad enough excuse on its own. Sure, it's conceivable that content that isn't

00:08:19.880 child pornography may have gotten caught up in the algorithmic net, as Zuckerberg is suggesting. But you

00:08:25.800 don't you don't show the content anyway out of fear of censoring non-child pornography. If you think it

00:08:31.000 might be child pornography, you just shut it down, period. Obviously, that's what you should do. But

00:08:34.740 the problem for Instagram is that even beyond that, for years, they refused to censor even child

00:08:39.860 pornography that was right out in the open. According to the journal, users on Instagram could use

00:08:44.020 hashtags like preteen sex to find these materials. And the platform made no effort to shut that down.

00:08:49.740 It was like Twitter before Elon Musk bought it, when Joel Roth was running things. And at most,

00:08:54.260 users would get this little dialogue box, which they could easily dismiss, even when there was

00:08:58.900 no doubt what they were looking for. To the extent that Zuckerberg was apologizing for anything yesterday's

00:09:04.180 hearing, it was it was this flagrant disregard for the welfare of children and possibly for the

00:09:08.780 various federal laws against child pornography that his company may or may not have violated.

00:09:13.360 And that apology is long overdue. I mean, that's the least he could have offered under these

00:09:18.120 circumstances. And it's not even close to enough. But to be clear, Zuckerberg was not apologizing for

00:09:24.000 the mental health effects of Instagram and Facebook. You may have heard that he was,

00:09:28.460 but it's not really true. We can be sure of that because later on in the hearing, Zuckerberg denied

00:09:32.720 that there's any research showing that his products impair the mental well-being of young people.

00:09:37.960 Watch.

00:09:39.660 Mental health is a complex issue. And the existing body of scientific work has not shown a causal link

00:09:46.060 between using social media and young people having worse mental health outcomes.

00:09:49.900 This is the part of Mark Zuckerberg's testimony that underscores why no one and in particular,

00:09:57.900 no parent should ever rely on big tech oligarchs or US senators for that matter to safeguard their 0.95

00:10:04.560 children on the internet. First of all, you know, you don't need to look at existing research to know

00:10:08.960 that excessive social media use is bad for children. It's just common sense. You can tell intuitively

00:10:14.400 that children who spend hours staring at a screen are going to suffer as a result. Our brains are not

00:10:19.500 wired to scroll endlessly through social media feeds. And typically when you do things that are

00:10:25.280 extremely unnatural, especially when you're a child whose brain is constantly changing and it's

00:10:30.480 unnatural again to just sit there staring at a screen for hours a day, we're not made to do that

00:10:34.080 as human beings. But if you do that, then bad things happen as a result. But we don't need research

00:10:39.540 to tell us that because we all know it's true. Putting aside the actual content that kids are

00:10:44.380 engaging with on the internet, ignoring the fact that much of the content is actively harmful

00:10:47.940 and degrading and bad and toxic and worse, just the very fact that children are spending the majority

00:10:55.020 of their waking hours staring at a little glowing rectangle is troubling enough on its own.

00:11:01.500 You know, if you went up to someone who didn't know anything about the internet, maybe someone who

00:11:04.600 just came here through a time portal from 1920, and you told them that the focal point of life

00:11:11.400 for most children in our culture is a little screen, and they spend almost all their time just staring

00:11:17.240 at this thing, and they care about nothing as much as they care about the screen, that person would

00:11:21.960 automatically recognize that this is a very bad development. No other information is required.

00:11:26.940 In fact, he would go back in the time machine to his own time period in a panic, having learned that

00:11:32.860 human beings 100 years in the future have become voluntarily zombified. No research required

00:11:38.920 to know that it is bad. But in any event, we do have research, and there's a lot of it. Researchers

00:11:44.300 have demonstrated a causal link between social media use and poor mental health outcomes. It's not just

00:11:50.160 correlation. It goes beyond that. Jonathan Haidt is one of the leading social psychologists in the

00:11:55.040 country. He's at NYU, and here's how he responded yesterday. Quote, Zuckerberg is wrong. There are now

00:11:59.980 dozens of experiments showing causality. I laid out the evidence, and here's some of the evidence.

00:12:03.940 As psychology professor Gene Twang has noted, quote, teen pregnancy crime, physical fights,

00:12:10.420 and child poverty are all down since 2010, but teen depression doubled. It should have gone down,

00:12:16.500 but it didn't because smartphones and social media led to social isolation and sleep deprivation.

00:12:22.620 It was in the year 2012, the first year that a majority of children in this country possessed a

00:12:26.840 smartphone. That teen mental health plummeted. And you can see, I mean, it's very clear in the

00:12:32.220 chart. It's like smartphones are introduced, and then alongside it, depression and everything else

00:12:38.940 skyrockets. Twang looked at more than a dozen other possible explanations from COVID to the economy,

00:12:44.580 and none of them fully explained what was happening. And you can just look at the charts and see how

00:12:49.320 stark the change is. The chart shows that the percent of U.S. adolescents and adults with major

00:12:54.360 depression in the last year, 2005 to 2021. It's from the National Survey of Drug Use and Health.

00:12:59.320 As you expect, the graphs for the youth suicide rate look similar. And as far as these researchers

00:13:04.920 can tell, there's no other serious alternative explanation for what's happening here except

00:13:08.960 cell phone and social media use. That's because this phenomenon happens all over the world,

00:13:13.780 across varying economic conditions. Everywhere that kids had cell phones, mental health declined.

00:13:20.000 And pretty much at the exact rate that they were getting cell phones.

00:13:24.760 The same pattern played out in five Nordic nations, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Iceland, and Finland.

00:13:30.080 Of course, this doesn't mean that other factors are not contributing in some way to the decline in

00:13:35.280 mental health in this country. The number of Americans who go to church every week has dropped

00:13:39.580 from 70 million in 2008 to 62 million in 2022 and still falling, for example. And that's not helping.

00:13:47.740 And obviously, it's not just happening because the iPhone was invented. There's also the rise of

00:13:52.080 victim culture in schools, which teaches young people that nothing is ever their fault. They're

00:13:56.720 always oppressed. They're always a victim. They've been trained to see themselves that way.

00:14:02.140 As Jean Twang writes in her book, Monitoring the Future, many more young people have an external

00:14:06.480 locus of control, quote unquote, as compared to the 1970s. And that means that they believe that

00:14:11.540 they don't have control over their lives, which is a feeling that leads to higher instances of

00:14:16.440 depression and anxiety. And this is what people are trained to believe these days.

00:14:21.240 So this has been a trend for some time. But again, in the chart, you see a massive spike around 2012,

00:14:26.260 when most young people got smartphones for the first time. And as far as arguments about correlation go,

00:14:32.300 this one is pretty strong. But it gets stronger when you look at the evidence showing causation.

00:14:37.560 And that evidence is also mounting. A study in JAMA Pediatrics, for example,

00:14:41.720 found that regular social media use appears to change the brains of young people.

00:14:45.580 It modifies how they respond to social cues. Quoting from the study, quote,

00:14:50.180 this cohort study examined whether early adolescence frequency of checking behaviors on three popular

00:14:55.200 social media platforms, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, was associated with trajectories of

00:14:59.940 functional brain development across adolescents. Adolescents who engaged in high habitual checking

00:15:04.940 behaviors, that is checking social media, showed distinct neural trajectories when anticipating

00:15:10.180 social feedback compared with those who engaged in moderate or low non-habitual checking behaviors,

00:15:15.160 suggesting that habitual social media checking early in adolescence is associated with divergent brain

00:15:19.760 development over time. The study goes on to state that researchers don't yet know exactly what the

00:15:24.180 effects of this divergent brain development might be, largely because this research is still

00:15:29.400 relatively new. I mean, all this stuff is new. But it does appear, based on all the evidence we

00:15:34.220 have, that social media use is basically rewiring the brains of young people. It causes development

00:15:40.420 that is clearly unnatural and not fully understood. So again, common sense, historical trends,

00:15:46.760 medical research are all pointing in the same direction. They're all pointing to the conclusion that

00:15:51.620 introducing kids to smartphones and social media use, especially early on in childhood,

00:15:56.240 could cause, and probably is causing, real and permanent damage. Given that conclusion,

00:16:03.740 the solution is sort of obvious. Badgering Mark Zuckerberg at a hearing is not going to solve the

00:16:10.160 problem. And I'm all for having laws protecting kids, particularly when child sex trafficking and

00:16:16.000 pornography are involved. We need all the laws possible to protect them there. But at a certain point,

00:16:23.060 in addition to that, parents need to be willing to do some actual parenting. Accountability needs to

00:16:30.760 begin not with one tech CEO, or even all of them, but with the millions of parents who give their kids

00:16:36.460 devices with internet access in the first place. According to the New York Presbyterian healthcare

00:16:42.060 system, 42% of kids have smartphones by the age of 10. 42%. And 91% have a smartphone by 14.

00:16:51.400 So that means that almost all kids have smartphones with internet access at least two years before

00:16:57.720 society has deemed them responsible enough to operate a vehicle. There is just no conceivable

00:17:03.200 valid reason why a 10-year-old needs a smartphone, especially when dumb phones that only call or text

00:17:10.740 still exist and can be purchased easily and are cheaper. The underlying problem is that most of the

00:17:18.820 parents are addicted to social media too, so they get their kids started on the habit so that it frees up

00:17:23.900 more time for them to scroll their own phones. And that's how the phones have taken over most households.

00:17:28.780 They've become the focal points of most families. That's the root of the problem. But of course, senators can't 0.57

00:17:34.800 subpoena millions of parents and yell at them. And that's not going to make very good television anyway.

00:17:40.160 So instead, we demand performative apologies from tech billionaires for making the dangerous thing

00:17:45.900 that we ourselves are willingly buying and handing to our children.

00:17:51.240 You know, it's a lot like handing your kid a cigarette while simultaneously ranting about the

00:17:56.560 evils of the tobacco industry. In this case, it's tempting to offload all the blame to Mark Zuckerberg,

00:18:02.320 as unlikable as he may be to many people. That's probably why there was so much applause at the

00:18:08.580 hearing yesterday as Zuckerberg was dressed down by Josh Hawley. But there's now clear evidence that

00:18:13.780 children are suffering while this theater plays out in the Senate. They're becoming more depressed,

00:18:20.320 more addicted to drugs, less self-assured, more anxiety, everything else, and so reliant on

00:18:27.240 smartphones that their brains are changing because of it. The solution is not to bully Mark Zuckerberg,

00:18:34.340 even though he's maybe the easiest person on the planet to bully, and I'm sure it is kind of fun.

00:18:39.320 But the real solution is something far simpler, but apparently quite radical these days.

00:18:43.960 The solution is for parents to be parents. Now let's get to our five headlines.

00:18:55.180 Are you a few years or maybe a few decades out of school and wondering,

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00:19:18.260 check out American Citizenship and Its Decline with Victor Davis Hanson. In this eight-lecture course,

00:19:23.480 Victor explores the history of citizenship in the West and the threats it faces today.

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00:19:44.580 slash Walsh to enroll. There's no cost, and it's easy to get started. That's hillsdale.edu

00:19:50.640 slash Walsh to enroll. Hillsdale.edu slash Walsh. Daily Wire reports. Michael Cassidy,

00:19:56.980 a 35-year-old Navy veteran, was charged with a hate crime on Tuesday after he admitted to beheading

00:20:01.860 a satanic statue that was on display in the Iowa State Capitol building last month. Cassidy,

00:20:06.380 a Christian who lives in Mississippi and previously ran for congressional seat,

00:20:09.380 was arrested and charged with fourth-degree criminal mischief after beheading the statue.

00:20:13.380 Court documents now say that the damage done to the statue will cost between $750 and $1,500 to

00:20:18.760 repair, and prosecutors allege that Cassidy acted in violation of individual rights under Iowa's

00:20:23.820 hate crime statute. The documents also note that in light of new evidence, his charge has been

00:20:28.400 up to third-degree criminal mischief, a Class D felony. Lynn Hicks, a spokesperson for the Polk

00:20:34.540 County Attorney's Office, told the Des Moines Register, evidence shows the defendant made statements

00:20:41.340 to law enforcement and the public indicating he destroyed the property because of the victim's

00:20:46.100 religion. The victim. And the victim is Satan here, it would appear. The satanic temple of Iowa had 0.77

00:20:53.800 received permission from the state to display the statue in the state capitol, and then it was torn

00:20:59.980 down. Cassidy said, I saw this blast. At the time when he destroyed it, he said, I saw this blast from

00:21:06.080 the statue. It was outraged. My conscience is held captive to the word of God, not to bureaucratic

00:21:11.000 decree, and so I acted. Now, the first thing that comes to mind here, and has come to many other

00:21:17.140 people's minds, is that we have never heard of anybody getting hate crime charges for tearing down

00:21:22.840 a monument in any other context that I can think of. And yet, we have heard of and seen many monuments

00:21:31.760 being illegally destroyed. Hundred-year-old statues, memorials decapitated, defaced, toppled, stomped on.

00:21:39.120 Set on fire, like thrown into the ocean. Okay, I mean, this is what they've done all over the country

00:21:47.200 dozens and dozens of times. No hate crime charges. At all. It's only when you desecrate a monument to

00:21:54.860 Satan that you get the hate crime charge. And this is also in Iowa, for God's sake. This is America's

00:22:02.320 heartland. And even there, they're charging somebody with committing an act of hate against Satan.

00:22:09.120 Now, you know, I've said we, you know, we've, I just said we've never heard of someone getting

00:22:14.580 hate crime charges for tearing down a monument until now. And that's true, but we, there have

00:22:19.400 been similar sorts of situations recently. We have seen people get hate crime charges for defacing and

00:22:24.880 tearing down pride flags, which is a different sort of monument, you might say. So those are the two 0.54

00:22:30.640 things, pride flags and satanic monuments. Those are the two things that are specially protected by the law.

00:22:36.540 Why is that? Well, because that's our state religion, effectively. You know, every country

00:22:43.060 will protect its most sacred symbols. And in our culture, these are our sacred symbols. Pride flag,

00:22:52.380 satanic culture. That's our, effectively our state religion. But looking at this from a legal perspective

00:23:00.420 is, is an entirely different thing. Like, yes, Satanism is essentially, has essentially become

00:23:08.540 the state religion because it is the religion of the elites. But officially, legally, definitionally,

00:23:19.640 Satanism is not a religion. Like from a strict definitional standpoint, any different definition of

00:23:25.580 religion that I have seen looks something like the one from a dictionary.com, which is the belief in

00:23:30.800 and worship of a superhuman power or powers, especially a god or gods. Now, charging this guy with a hate

00:23:40.240 crime rests on the claim that he destroyed this monument in order to attack a religion. But is Satanism

00:23:50.600 a religion according to the literal definition of the term? No, it's not. Now, again, you know, as I've

00:23:58.000 said, you could ask the Satanists themselves and they will be the first to clarify that they do not

00:24:03.600 actually believe in a literal theological Satan or in God. They are atheists. So, Satanism is an

00:24:11.320 anti-religion. Now, the caveat here is that the Satanists themselves do not consider themselves to be

00:24:17.980 worshiping an actual devil. Now, they are actually worshiping Satan, even if they don't consider

00:24:23.840 themselves to be doing that. But, you know, what they're actually trying to do is worship the same

00:24:30.800 thing that Satan worships, which is the self. It is the worship of the self. That's what Satanism is.

00:24:35.320 Which is why Satanism and leftism are essentially mean the same thing. It's the worship of the self.

00:24:40.880 But, if you were to ask them, they would say, in fact, they would laugh at you. This is what they

00:24:49.560 do. This is the game they play. If you accuse them of worshiping the devil, they'll laugh. The devil's

00:24:54.740 not real. So, in that case, then how could you get any religious protections? Religion, by any working

00:25:04.740 definition, involves a belief in some sort of superhuman power or deity. And you've got them,

00:25:14.340 you have them saying themselves that they don't have that belief. So, the question is whether an

00:25:21.440 anti-religion, should an anti-religion religion be protected as a religion? And the answer is obviously 0.94

00:25:31.080 no. It's no because it's illogical and contradictory. And no, because this is obviously not what was

00:25:35.400 intended when religions were granted protection to begin with. And when I say to begin with, 0.57

00:25:39.180 I don't mean when hate crime laws were first invented. I mean when the First Amendment was

00:25:43.500 written. Satanism was never meant to be included, obviously. Does anyone actually think otherwise?

00:25:50.200 No. Even the ghouls at the Satanic Temple, they know that. Even they know that the founding

00:25:55.220 fathers never had in mind that they were granting religious protection to Satanism. So, the whole

00:26:02.300 thing is a mockery. You know, it's intended to be a mockery. The Satanic altar is a mockery, a parody

00:26:10.400 of Christianity. So, the idea that if we protect religions, particularly the religion that built 0.86

00:26:19.840 this country, which is Christianity, that we must also protect cosplaying atheist dorks who call 0.95

00:26:25.920 themselves Satanists, it's just absurd. The whole thing is totally absurd. But we live in an absurd 0.98

00:26:35.220 country now. Daily Wire has another report. James O'Keefe released new video Wednesday from a sting

00:26:40.700 operation in which he talked to a White House official who offered insight into private White House

00:26:44.800 deliberations about myriad issues concerning President Joe Biden and the 2024 election,

00:26:49.420 including the mental decline of the president and widespread dissatisfaction with Vice President

00:26:54.140 Kamala Harris. The guerrilla journalist said he met with Charlie Krager, a cybersecurity policy analyst

00:26:59.720 and foreign affairs desk officer in the executive office at the White House, earlier this month while

00:27:04.160 undercover. And they were at a restaurant. They were having drinks. And I guess we'll play a little.

00:27:14.040 So, it's a 13-minute video that he posted of this conversation with this guy. And it looks like it's a date

00:27:19.320 you know, at least the guy thought that's what it was. And let's play just like the first couple

00:27:24.040 minutes and get some of the highlights here.

00:27:25.760 I work for the White House. So you're pretty high up in the government.

00:27:30.760 Yeah, I'm fairly high up. I'm good at keeping secrets. And so I manage two federal agencies,

00:27:35.760 the State Department and USAID.

00:27:37.920 So when you say it's like security, like you're protecting...

00:27:41.760 The networks of the federal agency. You give all your information to...

00:27:45.760 The mission is to protect information.

00:27:49.480 And we serve... We are like the President's voice when we go into meetings in terms of

00:27:54.820 discussing and promoting the President's priorities.

00:27:58.400 Is he going to be the nominee?

00:28:01.160 Yes.

00:28:02.660 And she will be the Vice President nominee.

00:28:05.040 Yeah, I don't...

00:28:05.860 There was a debate about removing her from the ticket, but sadly they didn't.

00:28:09.940 She can't keep Black staff. 1.00

00:28:11.640 They quit on her in mass.

00:28:13.160 But with him, I mean, he's got dementia.

00:28:18.880 Yeah, well, he's definitely slowing down.

00:28:21.400 But they know that he has those issues.

00:28:23.280 I think so.

00:28:23.720 But they're not willing to say it.

00:28:24.560 The polling shows that.

00:28:25.520 They're not willing to say it publicly.

00:28:27.120 Correct. And same thing with Kamala Harris. 1.00

00:28:28.420 She's not popular, but you can't remove the first Black lady to be Vice President from 1.00

00:28:33.900 the goddamn presidential ticket. 0.99

00:28:35.880 Like what kind of message are you going to send to like an African-American voter? 1.00

00:28:39.380 How would you spin that? 1.00

00:28:40.980 People would be like, what the fuck? 1.00

00:28:42.400 Like, she's a woman and she's multiracial. 1.00

00:28:45.480 I think that they're really concerned about me.

00:28:47.920 But they won't say it.

00:28:49.440 I guess if they say it publicly, that Biden is...

00:28:51.400 Correct.

00:28:51.460 They can't say it publicly.

00:28:52.120 They can't say it publicly.

00:28:54.300 No, no.

00:28:54.720 They've got to throw the line.

00:28:55.900 If they say it privately?

00:28:58.000 But they won't say it publicly.

00:28:59.660 Correct.

00:28:59.940 If they can't say it publicly.

00:29:01.840 They can't say it publicly.

00:29:02.900 No, no.

00:29:03.320 They've got to throw the line.

00:29:04.120 If they say it privately?

00:29:05.280 I'm just telling you what I've heard.

00:29:09.620 You're just telling me the truth.

00:29:11.720 Does it make sense?

00:29:12.620 No.

00:29:13.040 But that's what I've heard.

00:29:14.880 I've had a meeting with Michelle Obama at one point when I was an intern and someone

00:29:20.600 asked her, will you ever run for office?

00:29:23.040 And she said, no.

00:29:24.300 Emphatically, no. 0.99

00:29:24.960 I've seen all this shit my husband has had to go through, and that does not interest 1.00

00:29:28.960 me. 1.00

00:29:30.120 Good at keeping secrets, he says.

00:29:31.700 That's the one.

00:29:32.260 That's his best qualities.

00:29:33.380 They can keep a secret.

00:29:35.220 And then he's blabbing all the secrets to this guy he doesn't know and has never met

00:29:39.740 before.

00:29:40.460 That's how good he is at keeping secrets.

00:29:45.020 First of all, when I heard that James O'Keefe himself went undercover and got this footage,

00:29:48.740 I assumed that he must have had some kind of killer disguise.

00:29:52.020 I was thinking mustache, maybe a fat suit.

00:29:55.400 I was thinking it'd be like Eddie Murphy in Nutty Professor.

00:29:57.980 I thought that's what he was going in, fully, you know, full method acting.

00:30:02.700 But instead, he disguised himself as himself.

00:30:05.820 It's just him.

00:30:06.720 Like, that's just, how do you not recognize that that's James O'Keefe?

00:30:09.900 He put on glasses.

00:30:11.640 And that's it.

00:30:13.240 Hiding in plain sight.

00:30:15.020 And it worked, I guess.

00:30:16.220 Maybe the idea is that, like, make yourself obviously James O'Keefe so the other guy sees

00:30:20.300 you and then thinks, well, that obviously can't really be James O'Keefe.

00:30:25.140 Like, it's a reverse psychology.

00:30:28.080 You're so obviously James O'Keefe that the other guy assumes that it's so obvious that

00:30:31.340 you are James O'Keefe that you must not really be James O'Keefe because you're really James

00:30:34.300 O'Keefe.

00:30:34.640 You would not be as obvious about being James O'Keefe.

00:30:37.200 Maybe that's the level they're playing on here.

00:30:39.880 That's some real psychological trickery going on.

00:30:43.180 And, but I still don't understand how this, how does this still work?

00:30:50.200 Like, I know they're not going to give away their trade secrets, but how do they find these

00:30:54.860 guys that are just willing to spill their guts to somebody they don't know?

00:30:59.380 Knowing that James O'Keefe is out there and having seen this exact video a million other

00:31:05.640 times, they still fall.

00:31:08.360 Well, I don't get it.

00:31:10.240 And here's, look, if you're a Democrat operative, not that I'm trying to give you any advice

00:31:15.060 or help you in any way, but if you're a Democrat operative and you're on a first date with someone

00:31:19.820 who is asking way too many questions about your line of work, then you should probably

00:31:24.340 just assume that you're being O'Keefe'd.

00:31:27.320 Or don't, I mean, don't get me wrong.

00:31:31.220 If you want to embarrass yourself, you want to continue embarrassing yourselves, I'm, you

00:31:34.320 know, it's great.

00:31:35.500 It's fantastic.

00:31:36.540 But for the record, I'm saying this could be avoided.

00:31:41.060 And actually, if you're anyone and you're talking to anyone else who is asking a million

00:31:47.920 questions like this, you should be suspicious.

00:31:51.360 Not that I'm promoting paranoia.

00:31:53.100 I'm not saying you should be paranoid, but it's like in my entire life, okay, and you could

00:31:58.220 probably think to yourself, it's like the same thing.

00:31:59.500 In my entire life, I've only met maybe one person who in real life will listen intently

00:32:06.680 and ask interesting, penetrating questions and lots of follow-ups so that in a conversation

00:32:13.020 you feel like you're talking to Joe Rogan on a podcast.

00:32:16.100 Like a regular conversation feels like a long-form podcast interview because of all the follow-up

00:32:20.580 questions and they're really interested and they're asking.

00:32:23.240 I met one person in real life who is like that, and that would be my wife.

00:32:30.120 She's the best listener and asker of questions that I've ever encountered in my life.

00:32:33.660 It's not even close, actually.

00:32:36.540 Maybe my whole marriage has been a James O'Keefe sting operation.

00:32:40.360 I don't know.

00:32:41.580 But for anyone else, you should be worried because no one else asks.

00:32:45.600 Like in a normal conversation, people are just wrapped up in their own lives.

00:32:49.080 And so in a normal conversation, they ask, well, what do you do for a living?

00:32:51.200 Oh, I do this.

00:32:52.320 Oh, cool.

00:32:52.900 And then they move on.

00:32:53.640 They don't ask anything else about it.

00:32:57.600 But as for what this person actually said, of course, it should be a major scandal.

00:33:02.800 We've got somebody from the White House admitting, among other things, that the president is senile.

00:33:08.920 And we can all see it.

00:33:10.600 Like we know it.

00:33:12.400 But he's admitting it. 0.75

00:33:13.480 And the rest of the stuff, the stuff about Kamala and how they want to replace her, but they can't because she's a black woman.

00:33:20.380 All that is interesting.

00:33:21.400 All that is newsworthy.

00:33:22.360 But the scandal is the admission by a White House official that the president has dementia.

00:33:27.540 Because remember, that was the question.

00:33:30.060 O'Keefe said, he has dementia.

00:33:32.340 And the guy said, he's slowing down for sure.

00:33:35.100 And the thing is, if the president doesn't have dementia, and somebody says, he has dementia, doesn't he?

00:33:43.460 You would say, no, he doesn't.

00:33:45.600 You wouldn't say, he's slowing down for sure.

00:33:48.580 It's like if somebody said, he's a murderer, isn't he?

00:33:51.460 You wouldn't respond by saying, well, he's made a lot of mistakes for sure.

00:33:54.840 You would just say, no, he's not a murderer explicitly.

00:33:57.320 That's definitely not the case.

00:33:58.280 So if it needed to be confirmed, we have it confirmed from the White House, from a White House official, unintentionally confirmed, you know, that the president has lost his mind.

00:34:10.020 And everyone knows it.

00:34:13.700 Everyone at the White House knows it.

00:34:14.940 The whole world knows it.

00:34:16.520 And we're going to march on ahead anyway.

00:34:19.200 Because it doesn't matter.

00:34:20.700 It makes no difference, apparently.

00:34:21.860 And instead, what's happened is that the Biden campaign, in order to deal with this problem, to deal with the problem that their candidate has lost his mind and is senile, they are projecting.

00:34:35.560 And so they've ramped up their attacks against Trump on the basis of Trump having dementia.

00:34:41.540 So they're now continually tweeting out and posting all these clips of Trump supposedly losing his train of thought and mumbling and, you know, all the kinds of things we see from Biden all the time.

00:34:54.280 Now the Biden campaign is putting out all these videos of Trump supposedly doing the same thing.

00:35:00.300 And the thing is, most of those clips are pretty weak.

00:35:03.840 Or they're just flat out lying about what's in them.

00:35:06.120 Or they're taking a clip of Trump just sort of rambling.

00:35:12.320 And they're trying to frame it like he has dementia.

00:35:15.680 And they want us to forget that, well, that's always been Trump.

00:35:18.180 Like Trump has always been, when Trump was 50 years old, he's always just kind of, he's a guy that just rambles off the top of his head.

00:35:23.240 So that's always been him.

00:35:24.120 That's no different.

00:35:28.340 So I don't know if this tactic is going to work on their part.

00:35:31.080 But this is what it's come to.

00:35:33.700 So this is where we are now, where we're going to have a campaign, a presidential campaign, between two people accusing each other of being senile.

00:35:44.800 No, you have dementia.

00:35:46.580 Not me.

00:35:47.540 Like that's going to be the campaign.

00:35:50.000 That's what we have.

00:35:50.800 That's what 2024 is going to be.

00:35:54.540 Great sign.

00:35:55.320 Great sign for America. 0.85

00:35:56.480 That's when you know things are going really well for your country.

00:36:01.340 All right, I've had this for a few days that I wanted to mention.

00:36:07.060 Not the most pleasant story in the world, but most of the stories we talk about aren't very pleasant anyway.

00:36:11.520 So AP News reported on this.

00:36:14.260 Alabama executed a convicted murderer with nitrogen gas on Thursday, putting him to death with a first-of-its-kind method that once again placed the U.S. at the forefront of the debate over capital punishment.

00:36:23.980 The state said the method would be humane, but critics called it cruel and experimental.

00:36:30.400 Officials said Kenneth Eugene Smith, 58, was pronounced dead at 8.25 p.m. in Alabama prison after breathing pure nitrogen gas through a face mask to cause oxygen deprivation.

00:36:41.020 It marked the first time that a new execution method had been used in the United States since lethal injection, which is now the most commonly used method, and that was introduced in 1982.

00:36:51.720 The execution took about 22 minutes from the time between the opening and closing of the curtains for the viewing room.

00:36:55.660 Smith appeared to remain conscious for several minutes.

00:36:57.940 For at least two minutes, he appeared to shake and writhe on the gurney, sometimes pulling against the restraints.

00:37:04.700 This was followed by several minutes of heavy breathing until breathing was no longer perceptible.

00:37:08.580 In a final statement, Smith said, tonight, Alabama causes humanity to take a step backwards.

00:37:13.660 I'm leaving with love, peace, and light.

00:37:16.860 And this guy, we should be really concerned about his opinion about how society takes a step backwards or forwards.

00:37:26.180 He's, of course, a credible source of information on that, given that he was executed for carrying out a contract killing on somebody's wife.

00:37:36.180 A guy hired him to kill his wife, and the guy that hired him, I think, committed suicide a long time ago, or would have been executed as well and should have been.

00:37:44.740 And so he's the only guy left, and he was executed for it, as well he should be.

00:37:50.060 You know, this is, it's like the worst kind of murder, obviously.

00:37:54.000 That's why it's a first-degree murder.

00:37:55.460 Where you go in and you're, you know, you're doing it for money, and it's just like cruel and callous in the extremes, the most cruel and callous thing you can do.

00:38:05.820 And it's the kind of thing where if you do that, we don't need you in society anymore.

00:38:12.020 That's, you've punched your ticket out of society permanently.

00:38:14.600 And that's the way that it should be.

00:38:18.000 And you can't call it unjust, because these are the laws, everyone understands it.

00:38:24.160 Like, these are the rules for living in human society.

00:38:27.540 This is the bars where we're setting the bar.

00:38:29.600 It's pretty low.

00:38:31.240 Like, it's about as low as a bar can get.

00:38:33.880 Where we're saying, you know, if you want to at least continue living, you cannot do these things here.

00:38:41.120 And we're not even saying that if you want to continue living, you can't kill someone else, because there are plenty of murders where you don't get the death penalty.

00:38:48.360 It's only, like, the worst kinds of murder.

00:38:49.960 Do not, do not commit the worst kinds of murder imaginable if you want to avoid execution.

00:38:57.400 And if you're not able to get over that bar, then you have earned yourself the death penalty, and there's no reason for anyone to mourn you or feel bad about it.

00:39:05.480 But the issue here, in this case, was the method of the execution.

00:39:11.480 And so when this happened, and we talked about this before the execution was carried out, there's a lot of controversy over the method they're going to use.

00:39:17.680 Is it really painless, or is it going to cause suffering?

00:39:20.520 And then after the execution was carried out, there were a lot of leftists and activists that were upset about it.

00:39:25.260 And there were a lot of people on social media giving all these graphic depictions and descriptions of what it was like for this person to be executed in this way.

00:39:34.600 And how he was writhing in pain for multiple minutes.

00:39:38.100 And I guess we're supposed to feel very badly about that.

00:39:46.880 But, of course, I don't.

00:39:48.120 And the reason that I do, there's a couple reasons that I don't.

00:39:50.040 And the first reason is that, and this is the part of this conversation that most people won't say, but I think, why are we assuming in the first place that execution should be painless?

00:40:03.460 So we got it into our heads as a society in the last few decades that it's like a foregone conclusion that, of course, if we're going to do executions, that, of course, we should do it in a way that's painless.

00:40:16.540 And I'm not exactly sure why that's the case.

00:40:20.240 You'd have to convince me of that.

00:40:21.560 I'm not really convinced.

00:40:22.400 If somebody has earned death by their own actions, have they not also earned the pain that comes with the death?

00:40:34.140 Are we saying that you can earn an execution, but the pain that comes with being executed, you haven't earned that part of it?

00:40:41.480 But the other problem, of course, is that the whole idea of a painless death is basically incoherent.

00:40:48.280 Because death, execution, killing someone, that's what this is. 0.86

00:40:54.840 You're killing someone, obviously. 0.99

00:40:57.920 And killing someone is an ugly, brutal thing, no matter how you do it. 0.97

00:41:02.520 There is no non-brutal way of doing it.

00:41:06.520 There's no pretty way to do it.

00:41:09.400 And probably no matter how you do it, there's going to be a considerable amount of pain.

00:41:12.840 And even if you're able to minimize the physical pain, which again, I'm not even sure why necessarily that is important.

00:41:21.920 But if it is, there's still the immense psychological pain, which would be even greater than the physical pain.

00:41:30.160 You think about the psychological pain.

00:41:32.500 First of all, you're sentenced to death, and then you're waiting for the execution.

00:41:36.080 Walking into the death chamber, knowing they're about to execute you.

00:41:39.760 I mean, it's impossible to even fathom the amount of psychiatric, psychological, and emotional pain that comes with that.

00:41:48.240 But you earned it.

00:41:49.160 This is justice.

00:41:51.480 So the whole idea of a painless execution is a misnomer.

00:41:56.660 And that's because we're not really, the issue is not really, well, we want to find a painless way of doing it.

00:42:02.140 Because really, the most painless way to do it, for everybody involved, would be you pass down the sentence, you convict the person, you've proven that they've done it, you've proven it in a court of law, they're convicted, it's proven, this is it, okay. 0.99

00:42:14.880 And then a day later, two days later, you execute them, and you do it, firing squad, bullet to the head, you do it, death by hanging.

00:42:25.580 You know, many of the methods that have been used for centuries are perfectly fine, and they're very quick, they're swift, and they're probably as painless as it's going to get. 0.94

00:42:33.680 And you're minimizing the pain for everyone, even the psychological pain of the condemned, if you're worried about that, well, you're minimizing it because you're just getting it over with, rather than stretching it out for decades while they sit in solitary confinement somewhere.

00:42:49.380 So that tells me, because we don't handle it that way, that tells me that all this stuff about the different methods of execution and what's the right way, it's not really about minimizing pain.

00:42:58.480 It's about insulating society from the reality of what the death penalty actually is.

00:43:08.480 It's like finding ways to sanitize it and insulate us from what that actually is.

00:43:14.580 So we are always looking for ways to carry out executions that don't look like executions.

00:43:20.860 And we're not doing that for the sake of the person who's being executed.

00:43:24.100 It doesn't really matter to them at the end of the day.

00:43:26.060 Because they're going to the same place no matter what.

00:43:29.200 It's really for us. 0.93

00:43:31.580 And that's why I think the whole thing is a fool's errand, this pursuit of this sanitized form of execution.

00:43:38.980 I think we should all face it for what it is.

00:43:41.400 The person who's condemned should have to face what they've done and face the reality of what their punishment is.

00:43:46.800 And the rest of us should face it too.

00:43:48.680 This is what it is.

00:43:49.840 This is what happens to people that are very bad people who do these bad things.

00:43:52.740 And it's not ugly.

00:43:54.580 I mean, it's not pretty.

00:43:55.340 It's not nice.

00:43:56.320 But this is what it is.

00:43:59.500 All right, let's get to Was Walsh Wrong?

00:44:04.740 We're experiencing a lot of global instability as we plunge into the new year.

00:44:08.800 North Korea is testing missiles.

00:44:10.680 Iran continues to increase its aggression. 0.90

00:44:12.700 Oh, and by the way, we have a presidential election coming up in November.

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00:45:14.960 A.J. Campbell says,

00:45:17.620 Sorry to disagree with you, Matt, but there's a perfectly good reason the criminals who went after the pro-life centers weren't prosecuted.

00:45:22.860 Merrick Garland explained to Congress the crimes happened at night in the dark.

00:45:26.860 We all know that crimes committed after the sun goes down are impossible to solve.

00:45:30.660 Honestly, Matt, got to get with it.

00:45:32.940 You're right.

00:45:33.680 I had, and that is, you know, I guess I owe an apology to Merrick Garland.

00:45:37.340 I had completely forgotten about that.

00:45:38.800 I was, silly me, I had assumed that, you know, the Justice Department is going after pro-life activists,

00:45:45.440 but not making any attempt to track down and arrest the people that have actually committed acts of arson and vandalism against pro-life centers,

00:45:55.640 which also, by the way, are protected under the same federal law that protects the abortion clinics.

00:45:59.860 And I had assumed there was some sort of ideological or political bias.

00:46:03.180 But you're right, I had completely forgotten that Merrick Garland did say that the reason they haven't been able to prosecute any of those crimes that have been committed against pregnancy centers

00:46:11.100 is that they were done at night.

00:46:13.780 And so there's no way of knowing.

00:46:15.240 And we all know that if a crime is committed at night, there's just no way you can't prosecute it.

00:46:20.860 No one's ever been prosecuted for a crime committed at night because it's too dark.

00:46:24.320 So you can't, there's no way.

00:46:25.300 It's, that's why the nighttime, everyone knows the sun goes down to sun down to sun up is, uh, it's like the purge every single night.

00:46:32.320 You can, you can commit any crime you want and you won't be, um, you won't be arrested for it.

00:46:38.000 Which I'm being sarcastic, but like in our, in many major American cities, that is basically how it works.

00:46:44.280 Uh, Anna says, Matt, do you realize that even your own Daily Wire colleagues don't agree with your blind faith in the moon landing?

00:46:50.840 Maybe you should debate Candace Owens about it. 1.00

00:46:52.860 Uh, I have debated Candace Owens about it just a couple of days ago, but we debated off air.

00:46:58.440 Uh, we had a, we had a long conversation about this and, um, I, I'd be perfectly happy to, I think, to, to have this debate on air.

00:47:10.480 We should, we should do that.

00:47:13.860 Um, yeah, I think that's, I think that's a good idea.

00:47:16.720 Ann Cush Sharma says, Taylor Swift is one of the worst, most overpushed acts our culture has ever been beset with, but it's not an op.

00:47:29.360 Uh, yeah, I mean, you're right.

00:47:31.060 It's not, it's not a psyop.

00:47:32.160 Taylor Swift's not a psyop as we covered yesterday.

00:47:33.620 Is she one of the worst, most overpushed acts? 1.00

00:47:37.480 I, I don't know.

00:47:39.620 I don't, I always say that because think about all of, I mean, I, I just don't think that we talked about a low bar.

00:47:47.740 Again, I mean, it's a, it's a, well, in this case it's a kind of a high bar, however you want to look at it.

00:47:51.260 But that's a high bar to get over, to be the worst pop act, uh, that's ever been pushed on the culture.

00:47:59.320 I just don't think she's, she's mostly pretty innocuous. 0.98

00:48:04.660 That's when I think of Taylor Swift, up until she became public enemy number one for some people on the right.

00:48:11.920 I think of Taylor Swift, I would think just like innocuous, innocuous bubblegum pop type stuff.

00:48:18.360 Really no different from what pop music, it's like you could take Taylor Swift songs today and you could supplant them in the year 1998 and they would sound like it, it's a, all this stuff could have been made in 1998.

00:48:35.440 It could have been part of the pop scene in 1998, um, which cannot be said about some of this other stuff.

00:48:45.160 I mentioned sexy red for she just one example and it's kind of interchangeable.

00:48:51.320 Like she's the five years from now, she, she probably won't even be on the scene anymore if she's even still alive. 0.95

00:48:58.340 But so it's always, you know, there's, it's her or someone else or whatever, Cardi B, you know, you take some of these thoughts, like that stuff, even in the 1990s could not have existed. 0.94

00:49:09.340 Like, it would have been too vulgar and stupid and just obnoxiously, garishly obscene, even for the pop scene 25, 30 years ago. 0.95

00:49:23.800 Um, leave says, Matt, are you secretly a Swifty haters going to hate, hate, hate, hate, uh, look, this has been the charge. 0.99

00:49:35.360 This has been the accusation.

00:49:36.540 I realized that I am not doing anything to beat those charges.

00:49:40.580 Um, but if that, look, if that makes me a Swifty, if, if my, if the simple take of it's an, she's innocuous, if that makes me a fan, then I guess so.

00:49:52.780 Um, I think, and I was thinking about this the other day that, that there was a meme a few years ago when the left would always get angry at Taylor Swift for not being more political.

00:50:09.700 And so that was the mean is like any, anytime something happened in the world, politically, culturally, uh, it's like, what was Taylor Swift?

00:50:18.180 Taylor Swift's silence about this is deafening.

00:50:21.240 They were just insisting on seeing her as a political sort of, uh, creation.

00:50:27.520 And now we're kind of, now it's like the right is doing the same thing. 0.86

00:50:30.640 And my take has always been on the Taylor Swift question that she's just, she's just a pop star that makes dumb music that is mostly pretty harmless. 1.00

00:50:43.880 Um, finally, Cherry says, this is not a role model. 0.82

00:50:47.680 A 34 year old who's made a living off of bad relationships with a huge fan base of young girls is not a role model.

00:50:54.260 I would agree with that.

00:50:55.320 I agree with you there.

00:50:56.820 Certainly not a role model.

00:50:59.020 Okay.

00:50:59.520 She's not a woman that I'm presenting to my daughters as a role model. 0.99

00:51:04.680 Like in general, if kids are looking up to inevitably, lots of kids do end up looking up to pop stars as role models, but that's not ideal.

00:51:12.600 And they shouldn't.

00:51:15.100 And, uh, and it, it is true.

00:51:19.900 As I said yesterday, Taylor Swift, like her whole thing, she's how old is she? 0.95

00:51:24.660 35, something like that.

00:51:25.820 33, 34.

00:51:27.160 In her mid thirties, still singing songs about breakups. 0.87

00:51:30.380 Like she's in high school still, you know, uh, it's, it's a little bit pitiful and it's immature and it's ridiculous.

00:51:38.760 Um, but yeah, I guess I am grading her on a curve because when I compare that, but when I compare that problem with someone who's just immature and need to grow up and you're 34 years old, you're too old to be singing about breakups.

00:51:51.000 Like compare that to a lot of this other stuff that's out there.

00:51:55.060 It's just, it's hard to find the time to complain about that in my mind.

00:51:59.740 Lady Ballers is the hilarious story of how a group of male losers who can't win against other men decide to identify as women and join a women's basketball league. 0.80

00:52:07.500 Yes, it's absurd. 0.99

00:52:08.240 It's ridiculous. 0.88

00:52:08.820 It's laughable, but, uh, it's a lot of fun. 0.93

00:52:11.500 And yes, it's happening right now in the world.

00:52:12.940 Here's a quick look at what is being called the most triggering movie of the decade.

00:52:17.320 Leftists are losing over Lady Ballers. 1.00

00:52:20.100 Nothing's changed. 0.93

00:52:21.660 This movie is a straight up and intentional transphobic hate crime.

00:52:26.020 What?

00:52:26.780 I see you.

00:52:28.000 The Lady Ballers movie needs to be banned.

00:52:30.960 I'll cancel you.

00:52:32.260 Go ahead and get the blinds, please.

00:52:33.560 Code 11.

00:52:34.800 The most toxic BS you've ever seen. 1.00

00:52:38.240 You're a monster. 1.00

00:52:39.520 Yeah. 1.00

00:52:40.200 Next level hate speech propaganda.

00:52:42.440 That's it.

00:52:42.900 That's the pitch.

00:52:43.380 Watch the most triggering comedy of the decade.

00:52:47.340 Woohoo! 1.00

00:52:48.980 Lady Ballers. 0.80

00:52:50.300 Streaming exclusively on Daily Wire+.

00:52:52.780 Don't wait.

00:52:53.660 Watch Lady Ballers, the movie that Hollywood didn't make, so we did, exclusively on Daily Wire+.

00:52:58.380 Now.

00:52:58.860 It probably won't surprise you to learn that there has been a rash of violent crime involving young people in Washington, D.C. recently.

00:53:11.940 Of course, there's a lot of violent crime involving young people in every major city in America, but in our nation's capital, the problem is especially pronounced.

00:53:19.000 For example, between 2017 and 2022, D.C.'s homicide rate rose by 180%.

00:53:24.160 Other crimes, like carjacking, have risen almost as dramatically during that time frame.

00:53:29.020 So what could possibly be driving this epidemic?

00:53:31.900 That's a question that some people in positions of authority are finally starting to ask themselves.

00:53:36.060 On a national level, the Democrat Party still hasn't noticed the crime, the mayhem, the murder plaguing our cities.

00:53:41.380 But on the ground, in these communities, even the most oblivious political leaders have been forced to at least admit that there is a problem.

00:53:47.800 But what is the cause of the problem?

00:53:49.160 Well, a recent report from some kind of agency that makes reports about this stuff claims to have the answer.

00:53:55.420 Reading from WTOP in D.C., quote,

00:53:58.140 Music videos and inflammatory social media posts have been a driver of shootings in the nation's capital in recent years,

00:54:03.400 according to a report released this week by the Criminal Justice Coordinating Council,

00:54:07.140 an independent agency in D.C. that identifies local public safety challenges.

00:54:11.480 Researchers spoke with street outreach workers, violence interrupters,

00:54:15.320 and more than 70 police officers in D.C. who were selected for their particular knowledge and expertise of gun violence.

00:54:21.580 Among those who were interviewed, there was nearly unanimous agreement on the primary driver of gun violence.

00:54:26.540 There's a deadly mix of group, crew, gang members making music videos taunting or disrespecting their rivals that are posted on social media.

00:54:33.840 And those videos spark or further inflame neighborhood conflicts that escalate into shootings, according to the report.

00:54:39.320 While the music videos were identified as the primary issues,

00:54:41.440 other comments and pictures posted on social media by group members also lead to shootings.

00:54:45.400 Additional leading causes of shootings include drug sales, drug use, robberies, personal disputes,

00:54:50.500 such as fighting over a young woman, and the increased availability of firearms, the report found.

00:54:55.800 The article then goes on to mention that out of the nearly 1,000 shootings,

00:54:59.020 both homicides and non-fatal shootings in D.C. in 2021 and 2022,

00:55:03.040 almost all of the victims and suspects were black, male, and under the age of 35,

00:55:08.040 which is not breaking news to anyone who's paid any kind of attention. 0.96

00:55:10.620 The violent crime problem everywhere in the country from coast to coast is driven in a vastly disproportionate way by young black males. 0.99

00:55:17.540 Now, are music videos and social media posts to blame? 0.96

00:55:21.140 That's one theory.

00:55:22.740 A report from D.C.'s Fox affiliate offers some other ideas to explain specifically why juveniles are increasingly committing these crimes.

00:55:30.440 Tonight, new insight into the crime crisis involving young people in the district.

00:55:35.740 There has been an alarming increase in the number of teens involved in shootings and homicides in D.C.

00:55:40.960 Our Katie Barlow reports there is much more to this story.

00:55:43.840 She's live in Northwest for us tonight. 0.99

00:55:45.600 Katie.

00:55:45.880 Well, Kenneth, although there has been an increase, an extraordinary increase in juvenile involvement in both shootings and homicides,

00:55:55.980 juveniles still constitute a small portion of overall shootings in the district.

00:55:59.980 That's according to a new report from the Criminal Justice Coordinating Council.

00:56:04.040 But the report also notes that over a quarter of suspects arrested for non-fatal shootings are kids, and that number has gone up.

00:56:13.200 We think a lot of things need to change.

00:56:15.280 We think, for example, that we need to have greater prosecution of juveniles.

00:56:20.020 We have seen our kids become more violent at younger ages and have less accountability.

00:56:29.020 D.C.'s Attorney General Brian Schwalb is responsible for prosecuting juveniles.

00:56:33.940 Schwalb's team pushed back on the mayor today, saying they prosecute 85 percent of gun possession cases involving a minor and 65 percent of carjacking cases.

00:56:42.580 A spokesperson said finger-pointing and playing the blame game will not improve public safety,

00:56:47.580 but also points out that there needs to be a focus on prevention before prosecution becomes necessary.

00:56:54.340 Finger-pointing and playing the blame game won't help, says the Attorney General, but actually, of course, it will.

00:56:59.200 In fact, the first step in solving any problem is to figure out who or what is to blame for it.

00:57:04.880 The blame game is a critical part of the problem-solving process, and usually you can identify the parties to blame because they're the ones saying we shouldn't blame anyone.

00:57:13.440 You know, it's like the people that are out there saying, no, let's not play the blame game.

00:57:15.640 Well, those are always the people to blame, no matter what the situation is.

00:57:20.060 It's perhaps not a surprise that the blame game is the least fun for the people who are actually to blame for the problem.

00:57:24.800 And in this case, the Attorney General's office defends themselves against the charge that they aren't prosecuting criminal minors

00:57:29.460 by pointing out that they do prosecute 85 percent of gun possession cases and 65 percent of carjackings.

00:57:36.820 Now, I don't think I've ever seen someone so thoroughly incriminate themselves in an effort to exonerate themselves.

00:57:41.620 Only 65 percent of carjackings involving minors are prosecuted.

00:57:47.060 That's not even the number of convictions or jail sentences passed down.

00:57:50.520 Those are just prosecutions.

00:57:52.340 That's to say nothing of the lenient sentences and plea agreements that are often given.

00:57:56.640 Recall, for example, those two teenage girls who carjacked an Uber Eats driver in D.C. and killed them in the process.

00:58:03.120 And they were prosecuted, and the prosecution resulted in a sentence that will have them back out on the street when they turn 21.

00:58:10.300 That sort of thing happens a lot.

00:58:11.880 But even by the Attorney General's own admission, and remember, this is a statistic that he offered in defense of himself,

00:58:19.280 35 percent of carjackings by minors aren't prosecuted at all.

00:58:24.400 35 percent of carjackings.

00:58:26.280 It's not even like just vehicle theft, which is also bad.

00:58:29.980 The actual carjacking where someone's in the car and you drag them out or point a gun at them and take the car.

00:58:33.920 Do you know what that number should be?

00:58:37.660 Like the number of carjackings that are not prosecuted?

00:58:40.880 You know what percentage of carjackings should be completely ignored by prosecutors?

00:58:44.560 Zero percent.

00:58:46.440 Anything above zero percent is a scandal.

00:58:49.000 35 percent is a farce.

00:58:52.400 There were almost 1,000 carjackings in D.C. last year, which was double the year before that.

00:58:56.620 But if 35 percent of juvenile carjackings aren't prosecuted, that means dozens, if not hundreds, of carjackers are intentionally and knowingly left to roam the streets.

00:59:09.300 And that's a number that the authorities in the nation's capital are proud of.

00:59:14.020 They're saying, see, we're tough on crime.

00:59:16.260 We only let a third of our carjackers go without even a slap on the wrist.

00:59:19.760 So is this the reason why so many kids in D.C. and across the country are becoming violent criminals?

00:59:27.300 Yeah, it's part of the reason.

00:59:29.540 The fewer negative consequences there are for a certain behavior, the more of that certain behavior you will get.

00:59:34.000 This is a basic fact of human psychology.

00:59:35.760 Any parent knows this to be true.

00:59:37.100 If a child doesn't suffer any negative consequences for bad behavior, he will continue behaving badly.

00:59:41.660 And if the bad behavior is really, really, really bad, like carjacking, then you're going to get a lot of really, really bad behavior and worse.

00:59:51.440 What about social media and rap videos?

00:59:53.080 Again, yes, no question.

00:59:54.400 All that plays a part.

00:59:55.340 No reasonable person can deny that.

00:59:57.780 As for rap videos, it's not just that the kids are making their own videos and, you know, making fun of their rival gangs and all that kind of stuff.

01:00:07.280 It's also rap music in general has obviously for decades now been one of the drivers of violent crime in our cities.

01:00:12.880 The fact that there are people who will still deny this self-evident common sense fact is absurd, though not shocking given that people deny all kinds of self-evident common sense facts these days.

01:00:24.240 But the reality is that a child who grows up from the moment of birth listening to music that explicitly glorifies and encourages violence and criminality will be more likely to engage in that behavior than he would have if he hadn't grown up listening to it. 0.69

01:00:42.520 And again, like the fact that anyone would still deny this is ridiculous. 0.79

01:00:47.460 We are human beings.

01:00:48.460 We are persuaded and moved by art and by messaging in the media we consume.

01:00:52.940 The entire advertising industry, hundreds of billions of dollars, is built on this fact that you can encourage and promote people to do things with just messaging.

01:01:05.300 If you saturate the airwaves with a message encouraging people to do something, more people will do it.

01:01:12.120 That is not a complicated equation.

01:01:14.740 But all those factors are, to one degree or another, downstream.

01:01:18.720 They're not the source.

01:01:20.220 They're important points, but they're not the most important.

01:01:22.060 They are factors, not the biggest factor. 0.93

01:01:25.500 Why are so many black kids in D.C. killing and robbing and committing all manner of other violent crimes? 1.00

01:01:29.380 Well, before we talk about social media or music videos or even the criminal justice system, 0.97

01:01:33.460 we have to talk about the fact that almost all those kids are growing up in homes without fathers.

01:01:37.640 Nearly 80% of black babies in D.C. are born to unwed mothers,

01:01:41.640 which is 10% higher than the already sky-high unwed birth rate for black people nationwide.

01:01:46.580 80%, which leaves, and you've heard this figure before, but think about what it means for a second.

01:01:53.620 We usually don't trace this all the way down.

01:01:55.780 So that leaves 20% of black kids with a father in the home when they're born.

01:02:01.680 But keep in mind that the black community also has, by far, the highest divorce rate.

01:02:09.200 So a huge portion of the black kids lucky enough to be born with a father in the home 0.53

01:02:15.440 will not have a father in the home by the time they reach middle school.

01:02:18.620 So how many black kids in D.C. or any other major city have a father in the home for their entire childhood?

01:02:27.260 Well, it's hard to say exactly.

01:02:29.960 But that number is way less than 20%.

01:02:32.400 That much we can say for sure.

01:02:35.840 The black child in a stable home with married parents who stay married is an anomaly. 1.00

01:02:41.400 It is a rare exception to the rule.

01:02:44.000 And that's the problem.

01:02:46.080 Every other problem is rooted in that one problem.

01:02:48.380 You could and probably should ignore every other factor and just focus on this one for now.

01:02:55.620 Because it's like the whole story. 0.96

01:02:58.160 Why do black kids end up committing so much crime? 1.00

01:03:00.300 Why do they end up dead or in jail or in gangs or all of the above? 0.98

01:03:03.860 How do you explain the black poverty rate, black unemployment, so on and so on? 0.52

01:03:06.880 Well, the black nuclear family basically doesn't exist. 0.91

01:03:12.620 That's how. 0.98

01:03:14.080 Black kids are not growing up in stable homes with mothers and fathers. 0.73

01:03:16.920 Almost none of them are at this point. 0.83

01:03:21.100 Especially in the cities.

01:03:24.100 And that's it.

01:03:24.920 I mean, that's all you need to know.

01:03:25.760 It's almost ridiculous to talk about anything else when you've got that factor hanging there right in front of you.

01:03:34.120 And yet this one major underlying factor is the one factor that is almost never mentioned in any article lamenting or analyzing crime and violence in the black community.

01:03:41.940 They'll talk about criminal justice and social media and music videos and systemic racism and policing.

01:03:46.820 And literally every single thing besides this one thing that is, without a doubt, the main thing.

01:03:51.960 Your community has no chance of success, is doomed to misery and failure and disaster and poverty and chaos if you do not keep your families together.

01:04:01.800 And if you abandon the family almost entirely, if you become the first demographic of people in human history to essentially eradicate the nuclear family completely, then there is no hope. 0.91

01:04:10.600 Nothing else will matter. Nothing will help.

01:04:14.280 No improvements can be made.

01:04:16.740 We might as well just give up and stop trying.

01:04:19.640 If you've given up on the family, then it's over.

01:04:22.140 There's nothing, like, it's okay.

01:04:23.780 Well, that's it.

01:04:25.260 That's it.

01:04:26.780 Nothing else we can do.

01:04:28.840 So, this is the thing we should be talking about.

01:04:31.460 When it comes to the plight of the black community, it's really the only thing we need to talk about.

01:04:35.260 Or at least, we shouldn't talk about anything else until we have talked about that.

01:04:42.460 And that is why the people who wish to continue ignoring this issue, the main issue, the whole issue, they are the ones who are today canceled.

01:04:51.720 That'll do it for the show today.

01:04:52.420 Thanks for watching.

01:04:52.920 Thanks for listening.

01:04:53.460 Have a great day.

01:04:54.200 Talk to you tomorrow.

01:04:54.800 Godspeed.

The Matt Walsh Show - February 01, 2024

Ep. 1306 - The Best Way To Protect Your Kids From Being Harmed By A Smartphone Is To Not Give Them A Smartphone

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