Ep. 1310 - The Government Accidentally Confirms That It Has Absolutely No Evidence To Support So-Called 'Gender Affirming Care' For Minors
Episode Stats
Length
1 hour and 5 minutes
Words per Minute
173.18436
Summary
The Department of Health and Human Services has assured us that the evidence supports castration and sterilization of children, but they never produced any of this evidence until a Freedom of Information Act request forced their hand. Now we can take a look at the evidence, and it s even more underwhelming and ridiculous than we expected. Also, the mother of a school shooter has been convicted of manslaughter. We ll take a peek at the potentially troubling implications of this unprecedented move, Donald Trump says that we should end the Bud Light boycott, and in our daily cancellation, we ll deal with Ice Spice, a woman who has all the intelligence and artistic merit of a loud fart, which also happens to be the subject of her latest song.
Transcript
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Today on the Matt Wall Show, the Department of Health and Human Services has assured us that
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the evidence supports castrating and sterilizing children, but they never produced any of this
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evidence until a Freedom of Information Act request forced their hand. Now we can take a
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look at the evidence, and it's even more underwhelming and ridiculous than we expected.
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Also, the mother of a school shooter has been convicted of manslaughter. We'll take a look at
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the potentially troubling implications of this unprecedented move. Donald Trump says that we
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should end the Bud Light boycott. And in our daily cancellation, we'll deal with the hit
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recording artist Ice Spice, a woman who has all the intelligence and artistic merit of a loud fart,
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which also happens to be the subject of her latest song. We'll talk about all that
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be proud to spend your money with. Again, puretalk.com slash Walsh today. When he was nominated
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to be the Assistant Secretary for Health three years ago, Richard Levine, who in his 50s began using the
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name Rachel Levine, was asked a series of questions by Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky. And Paul wanted to
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know why Levine, as a medical professional, wouldn't reject the idea of mutilating the genitals of minors in
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the name of gender affirming care, quote unquote. And here's how that conversation went. Watch.
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What I'm alarmed at is that you're not willing to say absolutely minors shouldn't be making decisions
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to amputate their breast or to amputate their genitalia. For most of our history, we believe
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that minors don't have full rights and the parents need to be involved. So I'm alarmed that you won't say
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with certainty that minors should not have the ability to make the decision to take hormones that will
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affect them for the rest of their life. Will you make a more firm decision on whether or not
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minors should be involved in these decisions? Senator, transgender medicine is a very complex
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and nuanced field. And if confirmed to the position of Assistant Secretary of Health, I would certainly
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be pleased to come to your office and talk with you and your staff about the standards of care and
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the complexity of this field. Let it go into the record that the witness refused to answer the question.
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Before I turn it over to Senator Murphy, I do want to say, Dr. Levine, I wanted to say I
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appreciated your thoughtful and medically informed response to Senator Paul's questions earlier in
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the hearing. It is really critical to me that our nominees be treated with respect and that our
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questions focus on their qualifications and the work ahead of us rather than on ideological and harmful
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misrepresentations like those we heard from Senator Paul earlier. And I will focus on that
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as chair of this committee. So thank you again for your response.
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These people are, they're just so evil. They're so cartoonishly evil. And that's just a portion of the
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whole exchange. In the full clip, Levine evades the question multiple times. It's not an ideological
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question. It's like, medically, is this an okay thing to do? A very, very simple medical question.
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And he just repeats the same rehearsed answer, really, which is a non-answer. He says that he's
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more than happy to stop by Paul's office at some later date to explain the complex science behind
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mutilating children. And they go back and forth until Paul finally has to give up. And then at the
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end, of course, as you saw, Democratic Senator Patty Murray congratulates Levine on his, quote,
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thoughtful and medically informed answers to Rand Paul. Answers that, the medically informed answer
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was, I'm not going to answer that. We can talk about this in private because I don't want to talk
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about this subject of the, you know, the surgeries that I support. I don't want to talk about it in
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front of people. I'd rather talk to you privately about it. But what does that tell you? Now, 10 years
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ago, this would have been a scene from a dark comedy sketch about a dystopia that's just too far
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fetched to imagine in real life. And this should have been the moment that Levine was disqualified from
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ever holding public office again, much less becoming a senior official in the Department
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of Health and Human Services, for God's sake. But Democrats and even some Republicans, including
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Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, didn't see a problem with Levine's answer. They
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voted to confirm Levine after hearing all of this. And these are sitting U.S. senators who evidently
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have no problem with the fact that Levine supports the physical castration of children, even though
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he could present no evidence that it's medically appropriate. Given the opportunity to present
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evidence, he could not do it. To be clear, Rand Paul was not misrepresenting Levine's position in
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any way, of course. This was not a gotcha question. Emails unearthed by Megan Brock show that in 2017,
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when he was the Secretary of Health in Pennsylvania, Levine went looking for data to justify so-called
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gender-affirming care for minors. Levine wrote to Nadia Dowshin, the co-founder of the gender
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clinic at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, that he was seeking information concerning, quote,
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the possibility of gender confirmation surgery for young people under 18 years of age, which,
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by the way, is the thing they tell us never happens. Remember? They tell us this never happens.
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They don't do surgeries on kids, we're told. Levine added that, quote, this could include top
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surgery for trans young men and top and bottom surgery for trans young women. Is there a literature
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to support this protocol? Please let me know if you have any references. In response, Dowshin wrote,
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quote, quote, hi, Rachel. I'm not aware of existing literature, but it is certainly happening.
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I think we've had more than 10 patients who have had chest surgery under 18, as young as 15,
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and one bottom surgery. Let's just pause there for a moment. This was in 2017.
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They were already doing surgeries, including, quote, unquote, bottom surgery, which is gentle mutilation,
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on minors, which is something the left will still claim never happens, right? And not only that,
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but the hospital that is performing these surgeries is not aware of any literature that supports doing
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the surgeries. Now, needless to say, after reading that response, Levine did not put an end to these
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surgeries in Pennsylvania. Even when he was told there was no medical evidence to justify them.
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Instead, Levine continued to hide behind the consensus of various self-appointed medical
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experts, including the several medical associations that have endorsed this butchery.
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That's what Levine did at the hearing with Rand Paul, and it's what he's done ever since he assumed
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office. A little over a year ago, for example, Levine commented on a viral clip featuring John Stewart
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and the attorney general of Arkansas. And I'll play a little bit of that for you. And I think we played
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this on the show last year when it happened. But just to refresh our memories and provide some context
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I would, the state of Arkansas, step in to override parents, physicians, psychiatrists,
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endocrinologists who have developed guidelines. Why would you override those guidelines?
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Well, I think it's important that all of those physicians, all of those experts, for every single
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one of them, there's an expert that says we don't need to allow children to be able to take those
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medications. That there are many instances where... But you know that's not true. You know it's not
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for everyone. There's one. There's... These are the established... Well, I don't know that that's not true. I don't
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know that... Then why would you, why would you pass a law then if you don't, if you don't know that
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that's true? Wouldn't you have done so? Well, I know that there are doctors and that we had plenty
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of people come and testify before our legislature who said that, you know, we have 98% of the young
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people who have gender dysphoria, that they are able to move past that. So you can see in that clip
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why the appeal to experts is so effective. Because even people who, it shouldn't be as effective as it is,
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but it is. Because even people who are on the right side of this issue, like the Arkansas Attorney
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General, don't know how to respond to it. And the best she could do is say, well, my experts disagree
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with your experts. But of course, that's the wrong response. The right response is that you don't need
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to be an expert, quote unquote, in anything to know that mutilating the genitals of children is wrong.
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And if anyone claims to be an expert and they defend that sort of butchery, then they lose their expert
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status immediately by default. And it's that simple. But for some reason, many on the right
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can't bring themselves to say that, even as the quote unquote experts lied to them about pretty
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much everything from COVID to foreign affairs to climate change and even the mutilation of children.
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In any event, Levine saw that clip and decided that it was yet another opportunity to promote these
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all-knowing medical associations and experts. And here's what Levine wrote on Twitter, quote,
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Accredited medical professional groups agree that gender-affirming care is medically
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necessary, safe, and effective for trans and non-binary youth. States should translate this
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knowledge into more compassionate policies that protect rather than undermine youth mental health.
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So this is a bluff that Levine has made over and over again throughout his career.
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He repeatedly states that there's a vast body of knowledge that justifies these surgeries and
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procedures. But this time after that tweet, and yet he says that, but then cannot provide any of
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that evidence. And we know that when he went looking for that evidence, he was told there
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isn't, isn't any, and yet he gets away with it. But this time after that tweet, someone decided to
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actually call Levine out on a kind of call his bluff. A non-profit watchdog group called Protect the
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Public's Trust, or PPT, filed a Freedom of Information Act request in response to Levine's tweet.
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And the request sought records of scientific evidence studies and or data to support the assistant
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secretary's claim that gender-affirming care is medically necessary, safe, and effective for trans and
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non-binary youth, as well as, quote, records of surveys of medical professionals regarding the
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value and importance of gender-affirming care for minor children. And I want you to stop and think
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about the fact that they needed to file a Freedom of Information Act request just to get this
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information. This is the kind of information that should be readily provided. Like, anybody should
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be able to contact HHS and say, hey, you said there's a lot of evidence to support doing these things to
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kids. Where is it? Can you just... They won't give it to you until they're forced by law to provide it.
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So this week, more than a year after Levine's tweet, the results are in. We finally have access
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to this data that Levine promised to show Rand Paul in his office, but never did, and which he talks
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about constantly. In response to the Freedom of Information Act request, HHS produced a grand total
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of one document. And it's not a long, well-researched study that proves convincingly why we need to
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mutilate children. It's not a whole stack of papers like they make it seem like, oh yeah, here we go,
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just reams and reams of papers and folders full of documented evidence that shows that this is...
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Not that at all. It is instead a two-page brochure called Gender Affirming Care and Young People.
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That's all they needed to summarize all of the evidence, all of the enormous amount of evidence
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that supposedly exists was contained in two pages. And this is all they could produce a year after
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it was initially requested. And the brochure itself, as you probably guessed, is not exactly
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the most compelling document. The brochure states, as a matter of fact, that puberty blockers are
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always reversible. Okay? That's one of the things that it says. But that's not true. Like, we know
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that's not true. Even the New York Times reported recently, quote, a transgender adolescent in Sweden
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who took the drugs from age 11 to 14 with no bone scans until the last year of treatment developed
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osteoporosis and sustained a compression fracture in his spine. An x-ray shown in 2021, the patient
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now suffers from continued back pain. Medical records note describing a permanent disability
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caused by the blockers. And that's not even getting into potential issues with fertility.
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I mean, there are documented cases in medical literature of these drugs having permanent effects,
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right? And they've only been in use in this way for a few years. And we already have documented
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cases of kids being irreparably harmed by them. So the claim in the brochure, which has no citation,
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is just false. Just makes an assertion that it's totally false. As more and more children are put on
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these puberty blockers, and as time passes, that's going to become more and more obvious.
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But the brochure provided by the Biden administration doesn't stop there. It also claims that, quote,
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research demonstrates that gender-affirming care improves the mental health and overall well-being
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of gender-diverse children. As evidence of that claim, the brochure cites one study in a footnote.
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And this single study, the Daily Wire's Luke Rosiak reported yesterday, supposedly, quote,
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showed that transgender-identifying young people were slightly less suicidal when receiving treatment.
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Specifically, the researchers say that they found in a survey group that 51% of trans-identifying
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young people who were receiving cross-sex hormones were suicidal, compared to 62% who weren't
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receiving hormones, but wanted them. But even the authors of the study admit that it doesn't
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prove anything about causation. They write, quote, causation cannot be inferred due to the study's
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cross-sectional design. It's possible that those who historically have higher rates of depression,
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suicidal thoughts, and behaviors are also less able to seek or obtain cross-sex hormones.
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This also says absolutely nothing about the long-term psychological effects of this treatment,
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which is the thing that people are really interested in. And that's really the big
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question. That's the big problem, is long-term, what is this doing to kids?
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Well, they offer no evidence, no research on that question. None at all. Nothing.
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This is the sum total of the evidence that the Biden administration was able to present to justify
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the castration of children. It's a two-page pamphlet that links to a study from three years ago in which
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the author admits that their study doesn't even really mean anything. The authors admit that they have
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not proved any sort of causation. So this is definitive proof, as if we need it, that the
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Biden administration and the medical establishment, along with the entire American left, jumped on
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board the gender-affirming racket without any solid evidentiary basis for doing so. And this is a
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major problem, obviously, because they're harming children in horrific, unthinkable ways, but also
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because the burden of proof for the people in favor of child castration is extremely high.
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Like I've explained many times, the burden of proof is on the people who are making the claim. That's
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the way it always works. You're making the claim. You have to prove it. So if you are claiming that we
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can turn boys into girls and vice versa, burden of proof is on you. And if you are making an extraordinary
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claim that contradicts what everybody in the history of the world has always known to be true,
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then you need extraordinary evidence to support that position. Instead, they have no evidence. They
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have nothing. Yet they were believed automatically, while the sane side was required to produce evidence
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refuting them. Like suddenly, the burden of proof was on us to prove that you shouldn't mutilate and
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castrate children. Of course, we can prove our case a million times over, and we have. But that's in
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spite of the fact that the game was rigged against us from the start. The pro-child castrators wanted
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documented research showing the actual real-world harm of these kinds of procedures on kids. But
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obviously, we couldn't immediately provide very much of that because we didn't yet have real-world data
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showing the harms these drugs do to kids for the simple reason that nobody had ever done this to kids
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before. So they came along and was like, let's start doing this new horrible thing to kids.
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And we said, no, don't do that. It's a horrible thing. Well, can you prove where's the data showing
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that this harms kids? Well, it hasn't been done yet. We're telling you not to do it. That's the point.
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What, you want us to just do it and then find out if it harmed them after the fact?
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Well, yeah, that's exactly what they wanted. So we turned a whole generation of kids into lab rats
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so that the kids themselves would become the data. Now, the only way to explain how anyone fell for
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this scam is that trans activists are good at only one thing, which is emotional manipulation. It's the
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only thing these people are capable of doing. They've perfected the art of emotional blackmail to the
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point that weak people have allowed this to go on for the better part of a decade. But the good news is that
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the ruse is not working nearly as well now as it used to. Now people are asking actually to see
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the evidence. And there isn't any. All trans activists can do is screech as loudly as they
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can about genocide, even though nobody's really buying it anymore. And we saw this phenomenon play
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out to a comical degree this week in Florida, which is preparing to pass a bill that would prevent
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people from changing their gender on their driver's license, which is a very common sense thing.
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So in other words, the Florida law would just make it so that driver's licenses are the way that
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driver's licenses have always been since there have been driver's licenses, which is that it says
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male if you're a male and female for female. So it's not really a change. It's just like
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maintaining the status quo. But I want you to watch how the completely calm and rational local
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trans activists and concerned citizens respond to this legislation. Watch this.
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I feel like I'm in a playground and bullies are just beating me upside the head. You're not wanted.
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You're not worth it. You're no good. I feel like I live in a state that if I'm not in mainstream,
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The only thing that this period of Florida history will be remembered for is the trail of body bags
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left behind as they've left working class and regular Floridians poor and without any assistance
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I had to look my 13-year-old in the face the other day when they looked at me and asked,
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why does Florida hate? Please protect my child. Their blood could be on your hands.
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These bills are not just a threat to the rights and dignity of transgenders, Floridians,
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but they're also a fear-based attack that perpetuates discrimination and violence.
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You know, there's a lot in there, but maybe the most telling thing is the first clip. I feel,
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just that emphasis. I feel, I feel, this is how I feel. No evidence, nothing, no argument,
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nothing like that. Just feeling raw. Here are my feelings. This is all they have. No matter what
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the proposal is, whether it's mutilating the genitals of children or changing genders on their
00:19:42.120
driver's license, the response is always the same. They claim you're leaving a trail of dead bodies
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if you dare to disagree with their delusions. If you don't let them change their gender on their
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driver's license, you're leaving a trail of dead bodies. You know, you go into Florida,
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right? And there's just going to be dead bodies strewn all over the place, everywhere,
00:20:07.480
littering the ground. And you'll go, what, what happened? This is hard. Oh, they couldn't make
00:20:14.100
a change in their driver's license. And this is what happened. They just dropped over dead.
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Trans activists, they wield their emotional fragility like a bludgeon. We see it constantly,
00:20:25.700
which leads to the conclusion that really one of two things is possible. You know, when you watch a
00:20:31.560
video like this, either it's all an act and they are really just manipulative liars and therefore
00:20:38.680
shouldn't be taken seriously, or they actually are this insanely unstable and weak and immature
00:20:45.780
and therefore shouldn't be taken seriously. Whichever is the case, or if it's a combination
00:20:53.100
of the two, the conclusion is the same. We cannot take these people seriously and we never should
00:21:00.180
have to begin with. Now let's get to our five headlines.
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details. So I want to start with this story. It's a very interesting story. And one of the things that
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makes it interesting is that it's one of the few current events with huge implications that where
00:22:31.740
the political sides are not exactly clear. Like this one is not really, the political teams aren't
00:22:41.400
clear, you know. And that doesn't happen very often. So here it is. ABC News has a report.
00:22:49.520
A jury has found Jennifer Crumbly, the mother of Michigan school shooter Ethan Crumbly, guilty of
00:22:54.100
involuntary manslaughter in connection with the shooting deaths of four students at Oxford High School
00:22:58.480
in November of 2021. Crumbly was found guilty of four counts of involuntary manslaughter in connection
00:23:05.200
with the shooting, one for each victim, Madison Baldwin, Tate Meyer, Justin Schilling, and Hannah
00:23:10.780
St. Juliana. The jury deliberated for roughly 11 hours. Jennifer and James Crumbly are a rare case of
00:23:17.100
parents being charged in connection with a shooting carried out by their son. James Crumbly,
00:23:21.960
who also faces four counts of involuntary manslaughter, will have a separate trial in March.
00:23:28.720
And so they're going to jail for the fact that their son committed a school shooting.
00:23:34.420
Now, so this is a very important case. And I think that it's obviously getting some attention. I think
00:23:43.060
it's actually getting more attention than it is. And I'm not sure if everybody quite grasps just how
00:23:51.300
vast the implications are. Because this is really an unprecedented moment in the history of the
00:23:57.980
American legal system. The article said that this is a rare case where the parent of a school shooter
00:24:03.040
is charged. I'm pretty sure it's the first case. So a new precedent is being set. There's a new precedent
00:24:12.180
being set here. And I think the precedent is troubling. I think it's quite troubling.
00:24:20.980
Now, listen, Jennifer Crumbly and her husband, by all accounts, based on everything we heard
00:24:25.600
in the trial, based on everything we've seen, not to mention, obviously, just based on the fact of
00:24:32.000
what their son did. So based on all that, we can establish beyond any reasonable doubt that these
00:24:38.120
are bad parents. You know, of course, they failed in spectacular fashion in their basic parenting
00:24:45.340
duties. They were not, just to call them bad parents would be an understatement. And there's
00:24:53.140
no denying that, no disputing it. I certainly don't dispute it. And that's why on a visceral,
00:24:58.940
emotional level, I understand the people that are cheering this verdict.
00:25:05.060
And from what I've seen anecdotally, I don't know what the surveys would say,
00:25:09.780
what I've seen anecdotally just on social media, it seems like most of the people who've reacted to
00:25:14.640
the story and the verdict yesterday are in favor of it. That's what it seems. Certainly,
00:25:20.000
there's a lot of people who are happy about the verdict. And if I'm being guided purely by my
00:25:26.460
feelings of disgust towards parents who apparently didn't even attempt to do their job as parents,
00:25:33.320
then, and I'm being guided by that, then I would say, hell yeah, go rot in prison.
00:25:37.520
You deserve it. And if I was, God forbid, you know, I was a parent who lost a child
00:25:44.240
in a circumstance like this, even more, I would probably be, want the parents to suffer for their
00:25:56.320
failures as parents. So I get all that. And I have no interest in defending the parenting job that
00:26:02.860
these two people did. There's no defending it. And I would also say that it seems clear to me
00:26:09.980
that it is, it is at least partially their fault that their son went off and murdered innocent
00:26:17.020
people. So if you're blaming them, at least partially for what happened, I think that makes
00:26:22.820
sense. Yeah, I think they are at least partially to blame. All of that is true. However, with all of
00:26:29.920
that said, I just have extreme reservations about it. And, and, and I'll give you two things to think
00:26:36.360
about here. First of all, the prosecutor's case, even though it was ultimately successful, he
00:26:45.060
prevailed, but really the, the case that the state was making here, it makes no logical sense.
00:26:52.500
And there are a few reasons for that, but the main one, the big one in my mind is that they charged
00:26:57.720
Ethan Crumbly, the shooter as an adult, right? Now, why is that significant? Well, because in
00:27:05.380
charging him as an adult, and he committed the crime when he was, uh, I think 15, but they charged
00:27:11.460
him as an adult. And I agree with that. I agree with charging as an adult for a crime like this.
00:27:16.320
Now 15 is not an adult, but for a crime like this, I think you have to, it's like, what else are you
00:27:22.940
going to do? Send him to juvenile detention and let him out in, in, in five years? Like you can't do
00:27:26.680
that. So I agree with the move. I think it's the right move in this case. And, uh, if you have
00:27:34.000
someone even at 15 who commits a crime of this sort, well, they, they just have to go away forever.
00:27:39.040
There, there, there's no way that you could ever, like it's, we cannot contemplate a future where
00:27:45.960
someone who murdered, uh, who's committed mass murder is, is walking free. But in charging him
00:27:56.160
as an adult, the state is saying that he is fully culpable, fully competent, and fully responsible
00:28:01.840
for his own actions. That's what it means to charge him as an adult. That's the argument the state is
00:28:07.000
making. And, and they made it successfully. He got life in prison. But then when they turn around and
00:28:15.820
charge his parents, blaming them in part for their child's actions, they're there, they are also
00:28:21.720
then arguing by extension at the exact same time that Ethan Crumbly was not fully culpable, culpable
00:28:27.880
and not fully responsible for his actions. Because to blame the parents to any degree at all is to say
00:28:34.500
that they had some sort of control over this situation, which would mean that, that, that the
00:28:40.560
child is not responsible for his actions, at least not completely. So how can they argue
00:28:45.720
both? How can both be true? How can he be fully culpable, but not fully culpable at the exact same
00:28:52.240
time? Um, how can Ethan be an adult responsible for his own actions while at the same time being
00:28:59.400
a child whose actions are partially the fault of his parents?
00:29:04.780
Here's parents who, by the way, even if they were negligent in the extreme and they were, they still
00:29:09.400
didn't know that he was going to commit the crime. Now, like, obviously if, if the parents have
00:29:13.760
direct knowledge that a crime is going to be committed and they don't try to prevent it,
00:29:19.280
um, or they facilitate the commission of the crime, well, then clearly that that's, there's no
00:29:25.480
controversy there. Uh, but that's not exactly the claim here. The claim here is like, they should
00:29:31.680
have seen it coming. They saw warning signs. They knew that he was troubled. They knew that he had
00:29:36.580
written things on about killing people, but, but that's not the same as saying like he told mom
00:29:43.780
and dad, I'm going to go commit the shooting. And they said, okay, see you later. Like that didn't
00:29:48.420
happen. Um, so the claim again is that they were really bad parents basically, and they needed to
00:29:56.720
take better care of their child, which is all again, true. But I just don't see how you can argue
00:30:03.320
that. And at the same time, argue that the child is, is an adult. Like it seems like it's gotta be
00:30:09.320
one or the other in order for the charges to make sense logically. And, and yet they didn't make
00:30:15.700
sense and they contradicted, uh, but they got the conviction on both counts. So I want you to think
00:30:21.680
about the implications here. Cause this is the, this is the, the, the really the biggest issue is what
00:30:28.420
is the limiting principle. We all agree that the Crumblies were bad parents. Um,
00:30:34.140
and I think we all agree that if there were better parents, probably this crime never would
00:30:39.180
have been committed. We can't say that for sure because people are, even a kid is like their own
00:30:45.240
human being with their own mind. And, and, and, you know, it's, it's, it's plausible that you could
00:30:50.880
be a perfect parent basically, and still end up with a kid who does something horrible. It's like,
00:30:54.540
it's unlikely, but it could happen. So, but probably if they had been better parents, this
00:30:59.160
wouldn't have happened. Um, but that same argument applies just as well to many thousands of parents
00:31:09.040
who are still walking free today. I mean, it stands to reason that a large majority of the
00:31:13.800
violent criminals in prison right now have parents who were at least, at least as negligent and
00:31:19.980
incompetent and disinterested as the Crumblies were. So put it out of the way as, as a percentage,
00:31:26.180
as a percentage, how many mass murderers, serial killers, and gang bangers do you think
00:31:32.960
had good attentive parents? Like, does anyone think that it's more than 10%? I mean, 10% is like
00:31:41.900
extremely generous estimate. Um, it's pretty obvious that like the, the armed robber who is,
00:31:50.120
uh, walking into a gas station in some city, as we speak right now, stealing everything from the
00:31:56.860
register and then maybe shooting the cashier just for the sake of it on the way out the door. Um,
00:32:02.580
it's pretty obvious that that person almost certainly has parents who at best were negligent.
00:32:08.660
Uh, most likely the father is completely absent. So that's total 100% negligence. And the mother is
00:32:15.900
just not interested in doing anything that could be described as actually mothering her child.
00:32:20.240
So my question is, are we charging all of those parents too? Are we going to round up hundreds of
00:32:25.060
thousands of parents potentially and charge them for their failures, their failure to do anything at
00:32:31.500
all to prevent their children from becoming violent criminals? I mean, just imagine
00:32:37.540
a lot of the, a lot of these criminal violent criminals in the inner city, like imagine what
00:32:43.080
their home life is like. Imagine what kind of parenting is being done here. Um, some people
00:32:50.960
don't have to imagine it cause they've seen this kind of thing firsthand. And, and, and, you know,
00:32:56.140
it's the kind of parents, it's like, it's like very easy. You could see the way the child's parented
00:32:59.280
and you get, well, yeah, of course that kid's going to end up being a criminal. And yet we never go back
00:33:04.440
to the parents and charge them when the inevitable occurs. Uh, even though crumblies, yeah, it's
00:33:12.600
partially their fault. I had, I agree. 90% of violent criminals in prison right now, it's also
00:33:19.460
partially the fault of the parents. So I don't see how we justify only charging these parents
00:33:27.340
and not all of the others who are at least just as culpable.
00:33:34.880
But then on the other hand, do I actually want to see all those parents charged? Probably not
00:33:41.580
because then now we've really opened a can of worms that, um, I don't know how you close it again.
00:33:49.360
Um, and again, I don't know where the limiting principle is. Um, once you start charging parents
00:33:56.800
criminally for the terrible things their kids do, uh, it just, uh, you know, eventually 90% of the
00:34:05.520
parents in the country are in jail. I, you know, that's, that's where it leads. And, um, and I don't,
00:34:12.200
I don't think that this has all been thought. I just, I don't think anyone's really thinking
00:34:15.000
some people have thought this through, but I don't think that, uh, that we've quite faced
00:34:20.740
the implications here enough. All right. Um, Politico has this report. Former president
00:34:26.540
Donald Trump offered an olive branch to Anheuser-Busch on Tuesday, issuing a post on a
00:34:31.120
social media platform, calling on conservatives to drop their opposition to the besieged
00:34:35.680
beer company. Trump wrote the Bud Light ad was a mistake of epic proportions. And for that,
00:34:40.980
a very big price was paid, but Anheuser-Busch is not a woke company. Anheuser-Busch is a great
00:34:44.860
American brand that perhaps deserves a second chance. What do you think? Perhaps instead we
00:34:49.080
should be going after those companies that are looking to destroy America.
00:34:53.380
Trump's post on Truth Social represents a major attempt at de-escalation and a long-simmering
00:34:56.920
feud between the political movement the former president leads and the mega corporation since
00:35:00.400
April, 2023. Um, Trump's message also comes as a top Republican lobbyist for the company is set
00:35:07.280
to host a fundraiser for the former president next month with some tickets going at $10,000 each.
00:35:12.220
Jeff Miller, a close confidant of former Speaker Kevin McCarthy, who built his Washington business
00:35:17.080
during the Trump years, announced on X, formerly Twitter, on Tuesday that he will be hosting a
00:35:20.820
fundraiser. All right. Um, let me be among the many here to say no. Um, hell no. Definitely not.
00:35:31.160
The Bud Light boycott is not ending. There is no strategic reason to end it. Um, and it, it,
00:35:42.160
and Trump never even gave any strategic argument for ending it. What's the strategic, like,
00:35:48.620
how does this help strategically? His argument is just, eh, they've had enough. Let's be nice to him.
00:35:53.340
Let's be nice to this, this international corporate brand. And by the way, they are not an American
00:36:02.540
brand. Anheuser-Busch is a foreign owned company. It is not an American company. So this is a foreign
00:36:11.460
owned company that this, that went woke and decided to push transgenderism. And in response,
00:36:20.180
conservatives organized for the first time ever in history to launch a successful boycott that
00:36:28.800
actually worked. And now the argument is that we should back off of it just to be nice, just to be
00:36:38.620
nice to this international mega corporation because we feel bad for them. That's the argument. And, uh,
00:36:49.380
no, now, uh, does that mean that the boycott never ends? Well, sort of yes. And no, I, I think that
00:36:59.720
a lot of what we're dealing with, as I've said all along, it's not just a boycott for, for Bud Light.
00:37:06.020
Their problem is that the boycott has metastasized to an extent that it's like a terminal, it's a terminal
00:37:12.060
illness now. And they can never really get rid of it. Um, because the brand itself is just seen as
00:37:20.600
lame, right? People see it as it's the gay beer. That's how it's seen. And no amount of rebranding,
00:37:28.040
it does, it doesn't matter who tries to rebrand it. Even Donald Trump himself cannot, can't, can't make
00:37:33.060
it not lame anymore. Like most guys, if you see your friend drinking a Bud Light, you're going to make fun
00:37:39.240
of them now. And that's never, you're going to make jokes about it. You're never going to not make
00:37:42.500
a joke about it. It's always going to be that way. And, um, so, uh, that, that can't be stopped.
00:37:50.860
They did that to themselves, unfortunately for them, but the official sort of boycott,
00:37:56.480
uh, could that end? Yeah, it could, but you need to get an explicit concession. That's the way a boycott
00:38:04.960
works. It's what the left does. It's what every successful boycott campaign in history has done.
00:38:10.300
You get an explicit concession. And this case that would, that could only be, that would only need
00:38:17.840
to be, um, an apology. That's it. They say, we shouldn't have done that. We apologize. Like
00:38:24.420
literally two sentences would be enough. And, and I think most people would say, yeah, it's still a gay
00:38:29.220
beer. I'm not interested in it, but, but yeah, okay. The boycott's fine. You apologized. We'll move
00:38:34.900
on. They have not apologized. They have not apologized. It's all they have to do. And they
00:38:42.860
haven't. And until they do, the boycott needs to remain. If, if we back off, take, take the, the,
00:38:49.780
uh, our foot off their throats without getting the apology, then we will have, uh, you know,
00:38:56.540
rescued defeat from the jaws of victory. It'll, it'll be one of the, one of the greatest conservative
00:39:02.480
cultural victories in recent times will turn into one of our greatest self-owns in recent
00:39:08.120
time. And there have been a lot of self-owns, unfortunately, a lot more self-owns than
00:39:12.440
victories where you're winning. You've done something, you're successful. And then you just
00:39:18.060
stop. You simply stop for no, for no reason. It's like, well, I'm bored. Let's stop doing
00:39:23.300
that. The left, have you noticed the left never does that? They'd never do that. Like
00:39:30.880
they don't, they don't, they actually don't get bored of winning. Um, and when they single
00:39:36.480
somebody out and they say, this person, this entity, uh, is the enemy and, and all they,
00:39:44.520
they don't back off. They don't back off for years. Um, at least until they get an apology.
00:39:51.380
And even sometimes when they get an apology, they still don't stop.
00:39:56.120
So to me, this is very simple. Bud Light is a crappy product. First of all,
00:40:01.860
it's a foreign owned company. They, they did something. They're reaping the consequences
00:40:08.120
of their own choices. And, uh, and, and there's only one simple thing they need to do to, uh,
00:40:16.180
have those consequences be, be, uh, you know, in order for that to stop. And they haven't done
00:40:20.580
that thing. They haven't given the apology. And, um, but this goes beyond, you know,
00:40:29.140
what we're seeing now is it's not just ending some people calling for the end of the boycott.
00:40:36.320
It's like an actual attempt to rehab Bud Light's brand for them.
00:40:41.740
And that I'm definitely never going to do. Even if I said, okay, the boycott, we should probably
00:40:48.840
end the boycott because they apologized. I'm not going to try to help them recover their own brand.
00:40:55.040
That's on you. You got to pick up the pieces. I'm not going to help you with that.
00:40:57.520
Why should we do that? Is that, is that, is that, uh, is that, uh, how you win? Is that,
00:41:06.960
is that, is that being a fighter now? Take your foot off the throat without a concession and then
00:41:13.960
help them, help them recover from the consequences of their own actions. No, no, no, hell no,
00:41:23.180
not going to happen. Uh, and that's it. All right. Let's see. Well, I'm going to mention this
00:41:32.840
briefly. Catholic vote says this, a newly, a newly released video by Planned Parenthood
00:41:38.520
features a sex education instructor teaching young people that virginity is a completely made
00:41:43.640
up concept, a term that was created simply to control and shame people, mainly women.
00:41:47.880
Um, this is a, a video that can be found currently on Planned Parenthood's website. It's in their
00:41:55.340
Four Teens section. So you go to the section of the website that is for teens, for kids,
00:42:01.880
and this is what they have. And let's play a little bit of this video for you.
00:42:08.880
What is it? And what's the big deal about losing it? Let me cut to the chase. Virginity is a completely
00:42:16.480
made up concept. It's a term that was created simply to control and shame people, mainly women.
00:42:22.820
Mm. A virgin is someone who's never had sex, but it's not as simple as it seems. For one thing,
00:42:31.640
medically, virginity isn't a real thing. In some cultures, people place a lot of importance on the
00:42:38.220
hymen, a thin, fleshy tissue located at the opening of your vagina, as a marker of virginity. But the status
00:42:45.180
of your hymen doesn't actually mean anything. That's because having penis and vagina sex is
00:42:51.520
not the only way a hymen can stretch open. It can happen by putting something in your vagina,
00:42:56.680
like a tampon or a finger, riding a bike, or doing sports. So you can't tell if someone's had sex by
00:43:04.020
the way their hymen looks or feels. Another reason the idea of virginity is complete nonsense is that sex
00:43:11.680
means different things to different people. Generally speaking, society tends to define sex
00:43:18.020
in a very narrow way, penetration, penis into vagina. I mean, I have no doubt that
00:43:24.600
this woman probably knows a thing or two about virginity. And it's always like, before I even
00:43:31.460
played this video for you, you already knew. You probably had the image of this woman in your mind.
00:43:37.080
The only thing you didn't know is whether she's black or white. So that's the way, that could go
00:43:40.400
by the way, that's, that's the thing they meant. They, they kind of switched that up. But, but the,
00:43:44.880
the kinds of women who make these videos, like encouraging kids to have sex, these creepy women
00:43:51.280
who do this, they all look, it's like, they're all assembled in the same factory and they all have
00:43:55.760
the short hair and they all have that. And it's, it's, they all come, they're all made from the same
00:44:03.620
rather large mold. Um, and you know, the, the two things to realize about, about this kind of thing.
00:44:12.780
I mean, obviously it's completely disgusting. Um, and, uh, in a just world, you, you'd go to jail
00:44:20.320
for this kind of thing. Like as an adult, making videos, encouraging kids to be sexually active. It's
00:44:25.620
just, it's just, it, it, it, it, it, it's, we should not accept it. Um, and instead, not only do we accept
00:44:33.360
it, but, but it, we, we put it in schools. We make it part of the curriculum. And that's what we have
00:44:40.920
to realize is that, uh, this is every time you see one of these videos and you're horrified by it,
00:44:46.800
uh, you should realize that this is what sex ed is. This is what it has actually always been.
00:44:54.240
Um, there are many ways in which our culture has gotten worse and the degradation and decay of our
00:45:01.120
culture has, has, uh, increased, become more rapid. But when it comes to sex ed, it's actually
00:45:09.120
pretty much always been this bad. That's why I don't know if people quite realize that, but sex ed
00:45:15.340
25 years ago was like pretty much this, which is not to say that it's not a problem. It's like,
00:45:21.740
it's always been this, but it's all, it has always from the very beginning been this. It has always
00:45:27.140
been, uh, an explicit attempt to sexualize children and to encourage them to engage in
00:45:33.020
sexual behavior and to normalize sexual behavior. As we've talked about many times, uh, uh, Alfred
00:45:39.120
Kinsey is the godfather of modern comprehensive sex ed. And that was quite clearly what he wanted.
00:45:46.060
And it's always been that. And then the second point is that this is a Planned Parenthood. And
00:45:51.440
there's a reason why Planned Parenthood is so interested in encouraging people at younger ages,
00:45:59.140
younger and younger ages to become sexually active, uh, because they are, they are recruiting,
00:46:03.540
uh, it's evil. It's disgusting. It's horrible. Um, but in their business of baby murder,
00:46:09.760
it's also smart business. Uh, this is, this is, there's a reason why they've made billions of
00:46:14.260
dollars and partially it's this, they're recruiting more customers. They're, they're ensuring a larger
00:46:21.080
and larger customer base through these kinds of videos. So that's what's going on. Let's get to
00:46:25.760
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00:47:20.020
So we've got some, uh, comments here on the Bud Light question, um, even though that's too soon for
00:47:27.080
them to respond to what we talked about on the show, but we were talking about it on Twitter last night. So,
00:47:29.900
uh, just a few comments. Jessica says, meh, getting old, to be honest, who cares? I won't be drinking
00:47:37.920
that. Meh. Yeah, who cares? Boring. Yeah. Winning, winning a cultural battle. That's boring. Lame.
00:47:49.740
Who wants to win? I'm bored with it. Let's just move on. Yawn. All right. Let's, uh, let's forget about
00:47:58.620
that. Let's forget about like the serious actual work of making cultural impact and that kind of cares
00:48:03.700
about that. Let's find another psyop that we, that we can complain about for a week and a half and then
00:48:11.140
move on to the next one. That's how you win, right? That's how you win in the culture. That, that's how
00:48:16.160
you achieve a cultural victory. Uh, I disagree. Someone says, companies market to all kinds of
00:48:24.220
sectors internationally. Not everyone gets along with or agrees with every other sector, but it
00:48:27.820
doesn't mean that they shouldn't market to them. This is a tiny campaign that was supposed to fly
00:48:31.600
under the radar. Someone got ahold of it and blasted it all over social media. Can one person here say
00:48:35.680
that they saw one of those cans in their local grocery? It was a marketing campaign for, so it's
00:48:41.020
a marketing campaign that was supposed, that no one was supposed to see? Is that what you're,
00:48:45.360
is that your argument? Is a, it is a major corporation's marketing campaign and your argument and
00:48:51.800
marketing it to somebody who was at the time, one of the most visible people in the culture.
00:49:00.480
And, but it was supposed to be under the radar. You see how that doesn't make any sense at all?
00:49:06.280
Like, even if it was true, it wouldn't change anything for me, but it's obviously not true.
00:49:11.840
And, um, this is not, you know, marketing to another sector. I have no problem with that.
00:49:18.760
There's all kinds of different sectors and demographics and markets out there and you
00:49:22.960
want to market them. That's fine. But in this case, the marketing is specifically helping to push
00:49:31.300
an extremist, uh, ideological agenda, probably the most extreme and corrosive ideological agenda
00:49:40.740
that we've seen in American history, which is the trans agenda. And that is the quote unquote
00:49:46.140
sector that they were marketing to. And that is just unacceptable. Many companies have done it.
00:49:54.320
They should all pay a price for it. Unfortunately, we can't make all of them pay a price for it. We
00:49:58.500
can't even make most of them pay a price for it. We couldn't make this one pay a price. And we did.
00:50:05.740
I don't think they're going to apologize. And I'm not convinced that they're going to stay down
00:50:08.640
forever. Maybe it would be better to recognize a W than move on to more relevant boycotts. Not sure,
00:50:13.140
but I do know I'm not, I'm going to continue not buying that in a can because it tastes bad.
00:50:18.860
I'm with you on the last point. Uh, and I think that yes, we, this is a win,
00:50:26.760
but if you back off of it before getting the concession, then, then in the, in the longterm,
00:50:35.540
it's not a win anymore. Then it becomes a blip on the radar screen, which remember in the early
00:50:41.220
goings of the Bud Light boycott, that's what a lot of people said, especially including people
00:50:44.260
on the right. They, they said, it's going to be a blip on the radar. It's going to last a month.
00:50:47.560
And then, you know, they were very skeptical of it. And then we managed to make it stick in a way
00:50:52.060
that nobody thought would happen. And it did, but you back off of it now, then, then in the longterm,
00:50:58.240
it does become a blip. You know, it becomes this self-fulfilling prophecy. So yes, we're winning
00:51:04.680
on that issue, but it's not a win. You know, it doesn't become a win that you can look at and
00:51:11.300
say, well, there it is. There's a, it's like the self-contained thing. That was a W that doesn't
00:51:15.980
happen until you get the concession, which again, in this case is just an apology. That's it.
00:51:23.360
Um, and yeah, it's an apology. And then also them not doing it again, but we already like that part,
00:51:28.340
we know, and I'll be the first to say, I'm quite confident that Bud Light will never do this again.
00:51:33.080
I'm confident in that. Sure. But they haven't done the apology. And that is what the, uh,
00:51:40.660
concession has to be. Once you get that, then you claim a W. And so if you're somebody with a lot
00:51:46.860
of influence on the right, like Trump, for example, nobody has more influence than him
00:51:52.780
on the right. But what you could say, rather than just telling all of us, let's back off and
00:51:58.180
they've had enough. You could say publicly to Bud Light, Hey guys, we, you know, we think you've
00:52:05.260
had enough. We would love to end this, but you guys got to apologize. So why don't you do that?
00:52:11.380
So rather than putting the onus on us and saying to us, why don't you guys back off? You could go
00:52:15.860
to them and say, Hey guys, why don't you apologize? And then we can move on. Put the pressure on them
00:52:22.160
publicly to put an end to this. Say, Hey, we want to put an end to this. Here's how we do it. Here's what we
00:52:27.340
need from you. And so just give it to us and then, and then it'll be over. Seems to me that that's,
00:52:32.320
you know, if you want to be a negotiator, that's really good negotiation. That's using leverage.
00:52:37.100
You have leverage. We have a ton of leverage. Use it to get the concession that you want,
00:52:42.400
but that is not what happened here. And so it is not a win. All right. I've got a major announcement
00:52:48.380
to make. Mark your calendars for the epic return of backstage. After almost a year away,
00:52:53.720
filming the Pendragon cycle, the God King, Jeremy Boring is back and joined by Ben Shapiro,
00:52:58.560
Michael Knowles, Candace Owens, Andrew Klavan, and also myself. Watch the show live exclusively on
00:53:03.380
Daily Wire Plus Tuesday night at 7 PM Eastern, 6 PM Central. You don't want to miss this. Now let's
00:53:08.980
get to our daily cancellation. So I want you to know that I did try to avoid doing this daily
00:53:18.800
cancellation. I tried my best to resist the low hanging fruit. I mean, there's so many other
00:53:23.080
worthy cancelees, so many others who are just as deserving of the honor. So why subject all of us
00:53:29.680
to this? Why force the audience to listen to the thing that I'm about to force you to listen to?
00:53:34.420
Must we do this? Must we spend our time on this? Well, yes, we must. I'm sorry, but we must.
00:53:42.160
The rapper Ice Spice has a new song out titled, Thank You the S*** Fart. And the fart is in
00:53:47.940
parentheses, by the way. This is a parenthetical fart. It's important that I mention that so that you
00:53:52.280
can fully appreciate all of the artistic subtleties of this song. And well, that is the only artistic
00:53:59.360
subtlety, to be clear, but still kind of impressive for a musical artist who I'm willing to bet $10,000
00:54:03.960
cannot spell the word subtleties in the first place. But in any case, this new Ice Spice song
00:54:09.600
came out just a few days ago. It's already a hit. Music video has nearly 9 million views on YouTube.
00:54:14.300
It's been streamed over 15 million times on Spotify, which is the real test of a song's popularity
00:54:19.240
these days. Overall, Ice Spice, who emerged on the music scene just two years ago or so,
00:54:23.720
has garnered hundreds of millions of streams, hundreds of millions more views on YouTube.
00:54:28.220
She's achieved widespread popularity, especially on TikTok. She's been featured in songs with Taylor
00:54:33.500
Swift. She's been on the Barbie movie soundtrack. So she is, by every quantifiable measure,
00:54:38.320
a bona fide musical superstar. But is she any good? Well, you might assume from the title of her
00:54:46.660
latest song that the answer to that question is no. You might want to dismiss her talents altogether
00:54:51.400
without even giving her a chance. Based on what you know about rappers these days and about the
00:54:56.320
music industry and about the sorts of musical artists who put words like s*** and fart in the
00:55:00.880
titles of their songs, let alone both words in one title, you might arrogantly and presumptuously
00:55:07.100
disregard her from the outset. And I want you to know that if that's your attitude, then it is
00:55:13.560
absolutely correct. Her music is indeed as hideous and mind-numbing as you imagine. This 45-second
00:55:20.700
clip of her performing her latest track at the Spotify Best New Artist event should be enough to prove the
00:55:27.920
What? You're not even the f***. I'll be going hard. I'm breaking they hearts. Like what? Be quick,
00:55:37.860
but I'm quicker. Be thick, but I'm thicker. She could be rich, but I'm richer. Damn!
00:55:45.000
Take it home, man. Don't give a f***. Don't give a f***. Out in the yams. Out in the yams. And I'm keeping
00:55:51.140
one tux. Keep one tux. I'll make me some jams. I'll make me some jams. Unlock that I dance. Unlock that I dance.
00:55:56.140
I set 400 bands. I set 400 bands. Just to do my little dance. To my brand. To my baddie, I get what I want.
00:56:02.560
All in the last day, I look like a bump. I got the jaddy, he just want a hump. Walk through and start shaking my hips.
00:56:08.960
You know, we've talked before about the incredible prophetic accuracy of the movie Idiocracy, which came out in 2006. It imagines a dystopian future where average IQ scores have plummeted well below room temperature and American culture has become so crass and stupid that, for example, the biggest hit reality show in this universe is called Owl My Balls.
00:56:36.240
And it features a guy getting hit in the balls by various objects. The only thing that Idiocracy got wrong is that it predicted things would get that dumb in 500 years.
00:56:46.920
But instead, it took less than 20. In fact, a song called Thank You the S*** Fart sounds like it's taken directly out of the Idiocracy screenplay.
00:56:55.880
We have reached our futuristic idiot dystopia, and we didn't even need a time machine to get there.
00:57:00.780
Now, it goes without saying that the lyrics of this new I Spice song are so juvenile and witless that simply listening to them causes brain damage.
00:57:09.420
Popular music has gotten so dumb that exposure to it causes actual concussion symptoms.
00:57:16.000
We all now probably have CTE just from watching that clip.
00:57:19.580
And I don't mean to belabor the point, but just to make it clear, here are some of the lyrics to this song, in case you couldn't understand what she was babbling about.
00:57:25.300
I said 400 bands. I said 400 bands. Just to do my little dance.
00:57:38.080
I got the jaddy. The jaddy? Is that what I'm supposed to say? Jaddy?
00:57:43.460
Walk through and start shaking my hips. I'm a dip when I stack all my chips.
00:57:49.900
I got a French N-word sending me tips. Thank you the s**t. You not even the fart.
00:57:58.940
S**t be quick, but I'm quicker. S**t be thick, but I'm thicker.
00:58:05.460
Now, sure, based on these lyrics, you would assume that English is her second language, and she doesn't have a first language.
00:58:14.580
Ice Spice has the intelligence and artistic sensibility of an earthworm.
00:58:18.960
This song is the musical equivalent of an overflowing port-a-potty that's been baking in the sun for three weeks.
00:58:25.460
The think you the s**t, you not even the fart, it's the sort of metaphorical play on words that wouldn't even count as clever if this woman was in third grade.
00:58:34.760
Like, even an eight-year-old would hear that and think that it lacks sophistication.
00:58:38.800
The whole thing is so vapid and stupid and meaningless that you can't listen to it for very long before plunging into despair.
00:58:47.460
I mean, listening to this kind of music is like staring into the abyss.
00:58:50.640
It's like some kind of great void where beauty and meaning and intelligence are consumed and obliterated.
00:58:56.560
In a just world, you would go to prison for making music this bad.
00:59:00.620
I don't even mean because it's profane or whatever.
00:59:02.260
The music itself is so bad, you should go to jail for it.
00:59:08.440
So in that sense, it's really no different from most pop music these days.
00:59:11.300
And indeed, it's essentially on that basis that many people dismiss concerns about the absolutely god-awful, soul-crushing ugliness and idiocy of modern pop culture.
00:59:20.020
They will insist that this kind of stuff really isn't that much worse than the pop music that was being churned out 20 or 30 years ago.
00:59:28.280
And, you know, people were complaining about that stuff back then and saying that it was the death of art and, you know, they were getting upset about it.
00:59:40.380
Number one, like, it obviously didn't turn out fine.
00:59:44.560
The people who were making those kinds of critiques of music and pop culture 30 years ago have obviously been absolutely vindicated.
00:59:54.760
They were worried that American culture was headed over a cliff.
00:59:59.520
Everybody ignored them when they talked about this.
01:00:04.420
The so-called church ladies of the 80s and 90s that were so upset about pop culture back then,
01:00:09.500
they have been, again, vindicated perhaps more than any group in history has ever been vindicated.
01:00:16.260
In fact, if you were to go back in time to 1987 and find a church lady complaining about pop culture at that time,
01:00:22.520
and you were to play a clip of this Ice Spice song performing, you know, the fart song for the church lady,
01:00:32.620
That's exactly where I thought this was leading.
01:00:36.560
Now, and if that church lady had gone out to the world and told them that in a little over 30 years,
01:00:42.900
there would be semi-literate women who can barely speak English rapping about farts
01:00:48.360
while they present their asses to the camera like dogs in heat,
01:00:52.460
everybody at the time would accuse them of exaggerating.
01:01:02.860
And second, lyrically, this song, like many other songs produced today, is, yeah, it's only a few degrees dumber than the dumb songs of the past.
01:01:18.280
We long ago got to a point where it's hard for the content to get any dumber.
01:01:22.500
Once you arrive at a juncture where hit recording artists are making songs where they simply ramble incoherently
01:01:28.920
in a way that only vaguely resembles any sort of human language, you've gotten about as dumb as you can get.
01:01:37.800
But the overall product can still get worse, and it is.
01:01:42.500
Like, music 20 years ago was dumb, but at least it was exuberant.
01:01:49.680
You know, there was some life, some feeling to it.
01:01:56.000
Now, there are many examples from my childhood of dumb music, but that had character and feeling.
01:02:02.100
If I had to summarize the 90s, I'd say, like, it was kind of dumb, but it had feeling.
01:02:08.220
Maybe one of the best examples is the band Counting Crows.
01:02:10.980
They put out several albums back in the 90s full of songs that were lyrically gibberish for the most part,
01:02:16.080
but they captured somehow a certain feeling, a certain, like, spirit.
01:02:21.260
The classic Counting Crows hit is a song called Mr. Jones, which I still love as a 90s, as someone who grew up in the 90s.
01:02:30.420
So come dance this silence down to the morning.
01:02:34.300
Now, in the 90s, again, full of songs that have lines like that.
01:02:39.460
Like, I think it doesn't really mean anything, but it's kind of poetic, and again, it has feeling.
01:02:48.800
You didn't know what the artist was trying to say exactly, if he was trying to say anything.
01:02:53.120
But you kind of knew how you were supposed to feel when you listened to it.
01:02:59.180
But this stuff now, I mean, it has none of the above.
01:03:03.880
You can see it even in the performance that I just played.
01:03:07.780
On top of the general crappiness of the song, it's also, like, lazy and lackadaisical and weirdly half-hearted.
01:03:15.100
She's just sort of wandering around on stage, mumbling with no effort or inflection.
01:03:20.120
Take out the musical track and ignore the substance of what she's saying, if you can call it substance.
01:03:24.840
And based on the tone, it sounds like she's answering the phones at a Verizon call center.
01:03:30.700
It sounds like she's, like, giving someone directions on how to get to Rite Aid.
01:03:39.040
So it's crass and it's vulgar, but it's also just blah.
01:03:44.840
How are we even supposed to feel when we listen to this stuff?
01:03:49.400
You know, I made this point with some other dumb pop star recently.
01:03:54.260
And Lil Nas X, it's like, what feeling even is there here?
01:04:03.480
The 45 writers that wrote that song, what feeling did they have when they wrote it?
01:04:12.080
Even the sexuality of these songs is empty and bland.
01:04:16.520
The songs are explicitly sexual to a degree never seen before in popular music.
01:04:20.980
And the women spend the whole time gyrating their butts to the camera like some kind of mating ritual.
01:04:32.140
It's off-putting and boring and so gross that the songs almost have a stench to them.
01:04:40.120
You could replace Ice Spice with AI and you wouldn't lose any humanity because there is no humanity in it.
01:04:46.280
There's a lot of flesh, but not flesh and blood.
01:04:52.520
You know, not that it's stupid and vulgar and crass and profane, although all of that is bad and all that is true.
01:04:56.580
But the worst thing is that it has no heart and no brain.