The Matt Walsh Show - March 20, 2025


Ep. 1559 - The Downfall Of “Pride” Is Here And It’s Glorious


Episode Stats

Length

59 minutes

Words per Minute

174.2966

Word Count

10,399

Sentence Count

691

Misogynist Sentences

13

Hate Speech Sentences

38


Summary


Transcript

00:00:00.000 Today on the Matt Wells Show, corporations are already pulling their money out of Pride Month
00:00:03.740 several weeks ahead of time. The BLM movement has collapsed. The Pride movement is next, it seems.
00:00:08.180 Also, one of the most disturbing cases of alleged sexual abuse by a teacher,
00:00:11.240 the epidemic of sex abuse in our school system continues. When will the public start to actually
00:00:15.240 care about it? Speaking of which, Trump signs an executive order to abolish the Department of
00:00:18.720 Education. People are mad about it, but it's the right thing to do. And also, people are angry at
00:00:22.700 me on the internet again, this time because I made the very accurate claim that America is not a
00:00:27.460 nation built by immigrants. It was built by settlers. There's a difference. We'll talk
00:00:30.380 about all that and more today on the Matt Wells Show.
00:00:57.460 Attention, investors. While this is a paid endorsement, we've got some good news to share.
00:01:01.680 We believe that we've turned the tide in the battle for the soul of America. Donald Trump has been
00:01:05.100 elected and is beginning the Herculean task of pushing back against the forces of wokeism in
00:01:09.320 America. It's true that many businesses are beginning to mothball their DEI, CRT, and ESG
00:01:13.960 programs and focus on serving customers, all customers, rather than political interests.
00:01:18.080 What about you? Have you joined the movement of Americans who are using their investments to hold
00:01:21.540 companies accountable for their ethical behavior? I'm not a client of the firm, but if you'd like to
00:01:25.540 join other patriotic citizens by aligning your investments with your conservative values,
00:01:29.620 go to constitutionwealth.com slash Matt for a free consultation. Constitution Wealth is a
00:01:34.360 registered investment advisor. You should review Constitution Wealth's disclosures at
00:01:38.020 constitutionwealth.com to understand their services and fees. All investing involves risks, including
00:01:42.660 the risk of loss. We have seen the collapse of a lot of supposedly grassroots movements ever since
00:01:49.220 Donald Trump took office. BLM, as we've discussed, has literally been dismantled on the streets of
00:01:54.200 Washington, D.C., as in the mayor, remove the BLM graffiti from the road and tore up BLM Plaza.
00:02:00.760 And no one even pretended to care about that, even though, you know, just a few years ago,
00:02:05.060 it would have been considered blasphemy against the great St. George Floyd. But in 2025,
00:02:10.140 there was no rioting. There wasn't even really a protest about it. And of course, the Women's March
00:02:14.300 is also completely demoralized and gutted. When Trump was inaugurated back in 2017, half a million
00:02:19.640 protesters reportedly participated in the so-called Women's March in downtown Washington, D.C.
00:02:24.520 They claimed at the time, dubiously, but they claimed that it was the biggest single-day protest
00:02:29.500 in the history of this country. But for Trump's second inauguration earlier this year, only a few
00:02:34.260 thousand people participated in the so-called People's March. Even though the People's March was
00:02:39.380 supposed to be more inclusive and have more people, they expanded their branding from women
00:02:44.500 to people, and yet they still lost about 99% of their manpower, or I guess we should say
00:02:49.440 people power, it's enough to make you wonder how many of these movements were ever really
00:02:54.720 grassroots in the first place. To what extent were they relying on funding that's no longer there?
00:03:02.100 Where did that funding come from? These are questions that are worth asking, especially because
00:03:06.380 we're seeing this phenomenon happen more and more often. As Donald Trump kills federal funding for
00:03:11.320 various NGOs and non-profits, and as major corporations decide to scale back their activism,
00:03:17.260 some of the left's biggest protest movements are falling apart. They're proving to be unsustainable.
00:03:22.880 I mean, it's almost as if they were never actually that popular in the first place. Maybe the most
00:03:28.120 extraordinary example of this phenomenon is the current state of Pride Month, which is set to take
00:03:34.140 place, of course, in June. Now, when we released my film What is a Woman back in 2022, Pride Month had the
00:03:40.960 backing of pretty much every Fortune 500 company on the planet. The organizers of various pride
00:03:47.140 parades were flush with cash. They were setting the dominant narrative, one that valorized hedonism,
00:03:53.560 narcissism, perversion, and child abuse. It was never explained exactly why these people needed lavish
00:03:58.600 parades all over the country for weeks on end in order to celebrate their sexual interests. We were just
00:04:03.500 supposed to accept it as a kind of quasi-religious ritual, and indeed, many people did accept it.
00:04:08.080 But just three years later, it's clear that whatever power these people once had,
00:04:13.360 they don't have very much of it anymore. We're now gearing up for the most muted,
00:04:18.680 small-scale Pride Month that we've seen in a very long time. The organizers of some of the largest
00:04:24.280 pride parades in the country are currently scrambling to raise money because their major
00:04:28.720 corporate sponsors have stopped writing checks. And that includes sponsors who have been involved with
00:04:33.440 these San Francisco pride events going back for more than a decade. And that's led to a funding
00:04:38.820 shortfall that, at the moment, is threatening to tragically derail San Francisco's Pride Month,
00:04:46.080 which is probably the largest in the country. Yes, it turns out that, you know, they need millions
00:04:51.460 of dollars to prance naked in the streets and demonstrate their sexual preferences to as many
00:04:56.660 children as possible. Watch. Four major corporate sponsors have pulled out of San Francisco's 2025
00:05:03.840 Pride celebration, creating a more than a million-dollar gap in funding. Crown Force Stephanie
00:05:09.780 Rothman spoke with the director of SF Pride, who says the Trump administration has disrupted funding
00:05:15.900 efforts. Every summer, San Francisco serves as a beacon for the LGBTQ community. But this year's Pride
00:05:24.720 celebration is facing some challenges. Sponsors Comcast, Anheuser-Busch, Benefit Cosmetics, and Diageo
00:05:32.440 have dropped out. These companies represent $1.3 million in much-needed funding. It definitely felt
00:05:39.600 like the floor was being pulled out from under you. But, you know, I think we're going to find some new
00:05:45.140 sponsors, some new partners, and we're not going to give up. We're going to knock on every door in
00:05:49.440 this city. And we don't have a choice. We're going to have the event. Recently, the event cut ties with
00:05:55.580 local and longtime sponsor, Meta, due to a lack of fact-checking online and the elimination of DEI
00:06:02.240 programs. Now, when they say that they ended their relationship with Meta because Meta doesn't do
00:06:08.040 fact-checking anymore, they really mean that Meta has stopped banning people for stating basic
00:06:13.700 biological facts. And when they say that Meta has given up on DEI, they mean that Meta will stop
00:06:17.780 discriminating against applicants on the basis of their race and gender, supposedly. Those policy
00:06:23.920 changes were apparently a red line for the organization running the San Francisco Pride
00:06:28.020 Parade, which is somehow classified as a nonprofit. But in context, it looks a lot like a kind of a
00:06:34.200 you-can't-fire-me-I-quit situation. It seems like Meta dropped the Pride Parade, not the other way
00:06:40.000 around, given that a bunch of other major sponsors have bailed on the event as well. As you just heard,
00:06:45.300 the list of sponsors who have given up on San Francisco's Pride Month include Comcast, Anheuser-Busch,
00:06:50.460 the wine company La Crema, and Diageo, which makes Smirnoff and Guinness. So the makers of Bud Light
00:06:57.100 have apparently realized that sponsoring degeneracy is not, in fact, good business. All it took was one
00:07:01.760 of the most successful conservative boycott campaigns in a generation to make them come around.
00:07:07.340 And now a bunch of other alcoholic beverage makers, including some of Anheuser-Busch's rivals,
00:07:12.380 are preemptively making the same decision. As a result, the organizers now say they're going to
00:07:17.600 knock on every door in San Francisco as part of a desperate last-minute bid for cash. In another
00:07:23.800 interview, the organizer of this Pride event in San Francisco offers some more insight into how dire
00:07:28.920 the situation has become. And in this conversation, it becomes more clear that Meta indeed made the
00:07:34.940 decision to stop funding these people, not the other way around. Listen, Meta is one company that
00:07:41.120 people have been asking questions about. What is the current relationship between SF Pride and Meta,
00:07:46.000 and do you expect they're going to be there in June? I don't believe they will be. I'm both proud and sad
00:07:52.780 that we don't have a relationship with Meta. That was discontinued last year. So at this moment,
00:07:58.400 and I don't see it being rectified, Meta will not be included. And is that because the individual
00:08:05.320 employees don't want to be a part of this? Is it because the company at large and their leadership
00:08:11.320 doesn't want to be a part of this? I think their leadership has made clear that they don't want to
00:08:15.500 be active in SF Pride anymore. What about Google? Have you had conversations with their employee groups
00:08:21.380 at all? You know, in the last few years, Google, last year, Google made a contribution. They had some
00:08:27.100 people marching the parade, but it was not the presence that they've had in years past. Well,
00:08:31.100 in the last few years, I think, and I think we haven't told the story enough, but we have
00:08:34.920 pushed the corporations to the back of the parade. Only our top sponsors, people like Kaiser and Gilead,
00:08:41.620 BMO, Alaska Airlines, are in the first start of the parade. All the other corporations are in the back.
00:08:47.080 And in the front of the parade, we feature our non-profit partners here in San Francisco,
00:08:51.440 especially those queer non-profits. Now, if you can get past the depravity, and it is, I mean,
00:08:59.120 it's amazing that corporations don't want to give that person money. Can you imagine? But if you get
00:09:05.520 past the depravity, these people are actually kind of entertaining to watch. This person is trying to
00:09:10.120 demonstrate that the pride parade is really grassroots and anti-corporate. This is their way of sticking it
00:09:16.660 to Meta and also Google, apparently, which seems to be dropping the event as well. And accordingly,
00:09:21.460 we learn that the corporations are placed at the back of the parade and that the non-profits are at
00:09:25.520 the front, especially the queer non-profits. And you might think, hey, that actually sounds
00:09:29.760 somewhat principled for an anti-capitalist revolutionary style parade, pride parade, with the theme of
00:09:35.100 resistance, which is what they're going with this year. You know, it's just like the French
00:09:39.000 Revolution, except instead of killing the elites, they're just putting their floats in the back.
00:09:43.000 Other than that, it's basically the same thing. But then we're informed that there's a big asterisk
00:09:48.780 to this highly principled revolutionary anti-capitalist stance, which is that corporations
00:09:54.540 that pay a very large amount of money can still buy their way to the front of the line.
00:10:00.240 In other words, in the same breath that these activists claim that they care more about their
00:10:04.040 mission than the money, they admit that they're willing to make an exception if a megacorporation,
00:10:08.260 ideally a big pharma giant, let's say, can come up with the right amount of cash.
00:10:13.000 Then they can do whatever they want. Now, read between the lines, and it's obvious that this
00:10:17.220 non-profit is running a pretty transparent grift. This is a shakedown operation, essentially.
00:10:23.380 That's exactly what you'd expect when a bunch of highly immoral people get together and plan an
00:10:27.300 event, of course. And that's exactly what you get with the organizers of the San Francisco Pride Month.
00:10:32.260 And at various points in different interviews, this organizer essentially admits that this whole
00:10:36.000 operation is a shakedown. Watch.
00:10:38.040 Well, we're going to remember the people that support us and the people that don't.
00:10:42.660 How that looks, I don't know yet. Of course, the board and I will be discussing that.
00:10:47.320 We do not want to stop our relationships with people. Obviously, we're going to have some tough
00:10:52.200 conversations with some corporations.
00:10:53.940 It's coming from all sides for us. And we're going to remember who stood by us. And this is going to
00:11:01.500 swing back. This won't last forever. We're going to fight and we're going to be okay. But
00:11:06.880 you know, it's like watching an unkempt, delusional, homeless ex-mobster shaking down the local
00:11:15.220 business for protection money. They're threatening companies like Meta and Google and Comcast as if
00:11:20.820 these people have any leverage whatsoever. They're still acting like we're back in 2020 and most
00:11:25.800 Americans haven't yet become completely fed up with the insanity that so-called pride parades
00:11:30.680 represent. But people are fed up with it because the gay pride movement, so-called, such as it is,
00:11:37.560 has totally backfired. I mean, the best thing that the LGBT activists could have done if they really
00:11:45.500 wanted their lifestyle choices to be normalized and accepted, the best thing they could have done
00:11:50.520 is act normal. I mean, all they had to do was keep their clothes on and just behave like regular
00:11:58.040 people. Instead, they put on leather bondage gear and danced in the street in front of children. In some
00:12:03.680 cases, they did a lot more than just dance. They pushed for the tolerance of increasingly deranged
00:12:09.680 lifestyles and sexual behaviors. They demanded more and more tolerance until the tolerance well
00:12:15.020 just ran dry. At this rate, it's only a matter of time until we follow in Hungary's footsteps and ban
00:12:20.420 pride parades where children can be present, which we should, by the way. We are witnessing the death of
00:12:26.000 the pride movement, including pride parades and pride month. At the moment, various far-left
00:12:29.940 publications appear to be realizing this. They're melting down in response. Quoting from Pink News,
00:12:33.920 quote, San Francisco publication SFist has called out companies, SFist. That's what it is. SFist? Okay.
00:12:44.980 I don't even want to know why it's called that. Has called out companies, including Comcast,
00:12:49.280 Anheuser-Busch, and British multinational alcoholic drink Diageo for pulling support for the event,
00:12:56.480 calling the decision to back away shameful fair-weather friend behavior in a time of frightening
00:13:01.680 fascist action. So now they're lashing out in hysterics because they realize that the money's
00:13:08.320 not coming back, and every normal person who sees them react like this can tell immediately how
00:13:12.600 unhinged and unstable they are. And it was always destined to end this way. The LGBT movement at its
00:13:17.660 core is a Marxist movement that despises Western civilization and everything that it was built on,
00:13:23.080 namely Christianity. And that's why at the school board meeting we discussed yesterday in Illinois,
00:13:27.560 one of the trans activists railed against the so-called white God. That's why they show up in
00:13:33.220 large numbers to demand that young girls undress in front of male students. The more you let these
00:13:37.220 people speak, the more overt and obvious their anti-Christian animus becomes. But put simply,
00:13:44.300 they just couldn't quit while they were ahead. I mean, even when they had every major corporation
00:13:50.080 and the entire federal government on their side, it wasn't enough. Their never-ending drive to push
00:13:56.480 further and further and further and get more and more extreme is, of course, what makes them so
00:14:01.000 dangerous. But it's also what makes them beatable. And it's why, like BLM and the Women's March and so
00:14:07.820 many other supposedly grassroots movements on the left, they are failing. We have seen pride in action.
00:14:15.100 We have been subjected to nationwide celebrations of one of these seven deadly sins.
00:14:20.260 And now, as was inevitable, we are seeing the fall. Now let's get to our five headlines.
00:14:33.580 Did you know that over 140,000 family farms in the U.S. have closed down since 2017? Shocking,
00:14:39.200 right? Well, meanwhile, grocery stores are stocking their shelves with mystery meat from, well, who
00:14:43.580 really knows where? That's the mystery. But hey, at least it's cheap. If you actually care where your
00:14:47.400 food comes from, it's time to check out GoodRanchers.com. I go with Good Ranchers because,
00:14:51.720 call me crazy, I prefer knowing my dinner wasn't shipped from the other side of the planet.
00:14:55.880 Their meat is born, raised, and harvested right here in the USA. Revolutionary concept,
00:14:59.560 but that's what they do. And get this, no antibiotics, no added hormones, and no seed oils.
00:15:03.540 Just meat. Imagine that. One ingredient you can actually pronounce without a chemistry degree.
00:15:08.400 These folks are practically showing off when it comes to transparency about where your food is
00:15:11.800 coming from. All their meat is farm-to-table, zero mystery, meaning you're supporting American
00:15:16.060 ranchers while serving food that won't make you question your life choices at 3 a.m. I've tried
00:15:20.440 many of their steaks and other choices, and they're quite possibly the most tender, tasteful,
00:15:24.340 clean protein options I have ever had. Right now, during their spring in action promotion,
00:15:28.280 they actually managed to save you money while providing better, high-quality food. When you
00:15:32.540 sign up, you'll get free bacon, ground beef, seed oil-free chicken nuggets, or wild-caught salmon in
00:15:37.020 every order for a year, plus $40 off with code Walsh. So again, unless you enjoy mystery meat roulette,
00:15:42.700 visit GoodRanchers.com today. Use code Walsh to get free meat for a year and $40 off your next order.
00:15:48.840 Good Ranchers, American meat delivered. Okay, I want to start with this disturbing story. It's a
00:15:55.160 very familiar type of story, which is why I want to talk about it. But this is even more disturbing
00:16:00.760 than usual. So to begin with, here's a local news report on this, on yet another teacher sex scandal.
00:16:09.200 But the details here are, as I said, even shocking by the standards of these kinds of
00:16:15.340 stories. Listen to this. New tonight, more teenage students in Morgan County are now coming forward,
00:16:21.660 and they're accusing a former teacher of sexual misconduct with a minor. Ashton Hackman is in
00:16:27.260 Morgan County to explain why the prosecutors are now looking to bring even more charges against this
00:16:32.180 woman. 31-year-old Brittany Fortenberry has been held here at the Morgan County Jail since her
00:16:38.280 arrest last month on charges of sexual misconduct with a minor. Since then, five new victims have
00:16:44.360 come forward with additional allegations. Prosecutors have asked to file up to 24 additional
00:16:50.260 criminal charges against her, including 10 counts of child molesting, sexual misconduct with a minor,
00:16:56.200 and 13 other charges for disseminating material harmful to minors and contributing to the
00:17:01.680 delinquency of a minor. Court documents say all of the teens reported Fortenberry would send them
00:17:06.720 nude and explicit photos and videos on Snapchat and force them to have group sex at her Martinsville home.
00:17:13.500 A child victim advocate says it's important for parents to feel comfortable having difficult
00:17:17.720 conversations with their children. And what we just encourage is that parents kind of ask that
00:17:22.060 open-ended question and they give their children a chance to speak and then they praise their courage
00:17:27.540 at that time rather than asking them questions about what they did or why they didn't tell.
00:17:32.700 The last thing that we want is a child to feel blame or shame as a result of making a disclosure.
00:17:38.400 We reached out to the Morgan County Prosecutor's Office to see when these formal charges will be filed.
00:17:43.700 We have not yet heard back. Now it actually gets much worse than what you just heard because
00:17:48.900 according to WTHR in Indianapolis, this woman allegedly abused multiple middle school boys,
00:17:55.920 13 years old, were the victims, at least some of the victims. And that includes on one occasion
00:18:02.600 allegedly having them all wear scream masks, you know, masks from the movie Scream, while she molested
00:18:10.200 them. And she was also paying them, these young boys, hundreds of dollars for them to send her
00:18:16.680 explicit pictures, $100 to $800 in some cases. And she told them that if they reported any of this
00:18:24.240 to anyone that she would kill herself. And she was also drugging them, allegedly, allegedly drugging
00:18:30.900 them as part of this whole process of grooming and molestation and abuse. Now, assuming this is all
00:18:40.360 true, it makes you wonder, as you always have to wonder in these kinds of cases, how in God's name
00:18:48.800 did a woman like this get a job as a teacher in the first place? Yes, we can assume that she was not
00:18:55.580 advertising the fact that she's a sexual predator. She probably wasn't putting it on the resume or on
00:19:00.320 the job application. She wasn't mentioning it in the interview process. But it's just impossible to
00:19:05.000 believe that there were no warning signs. It's impossible to believe that she came off as totally
00:19:10.300 normal and never gave any indication that she was a demented predatory freak. It's not like these
00:19:16.820 people are, these people are not criminal masterminds. Okay, these are not evil geniuses we're talking
00:19:21.080 about here. I mean, they're sending allegedly pictures back and forth. That's the easiest way to get
00:19:34.040 caught, is to create this digital paper trail, which in these kinds of cases, every single time you hear
00:19:41.620 that. That's always part of it. So my point is that these are not people who appear to be
00:19:49.320 brilliant deceivers, right? And if that's the case, then how do they get the job? I mean, we know this
00:19:59.780 about predators. You don't just start off one day molesting multiple children in Halloween masks at
00:20:06.240 your home, allegedly. This happens as part of a long, long pattern of behavior. It's a pattern of
00:20:12.880 increasingly awful, deranged behavior. And it's very difficult to believe that there were not warning
00:20:19.040 signs. But the most disturbing thing is the larger pattern, the systemic pattern. You want to be able
00:20:27.440 to write this off as an aberration, as an extreme case, as an isolated incident. You want to be able
00:20:33.120 to say, well, throw this woman in jail forever and the problem solved. You want to be able to say that,
00:20:40.180 but that is not anywhere close to the reality. This is not isolated. This is constant. I mean,
00:20:46.180 we all know that. It's a constant, never-ending thing. One teacher after another, after another,
00:20:51.580 after another, for decades and decades, decades upon decades, hundreds, thousands at this point,
00:21:00.740 probably, of predatory teachers, one after another. We hear about open secrets, right? During the
00:21:10.780 Me Too era, we would always hear about this or that predator that was an open secret that this was...
00:21:18.580 Well, what's happening with teachers is an open secret among the entire American population.
00:21:25.080 It's an open secret among everybody. We all know it.
00:21:31.080 And for everyone that has been caught, we know it stands to reason there's another
00:21:35.040 one or five others that haven't been caught. Because we also know that when you've got a systemic
00:21:41.800 problem of sexual abuse inside an institution, you're not catching all of them.
00:21:48.580 So this is a system-wide problem. This is an epidemic. There is a decades-long epidemic
00:21:55.000 of sexual abuse by educators in our school system.
00:22:00.960 Yet we have not reached a point, even now, where the public is ready to treat this as an epidemic.
00:22:09.020 And that's what I just... And I'm not even playing dumb or saying this rhetorically.
00:22:13.860 I really don't quite understand why there is not mass public outrage bordering on even hysteria
00:22:25.480 over the fact that our public school system is infested with sex predators.
00:22:31.140 It's very difficult to understand.
00:22:35.700 The public school still has not gotten the Catholic Church treatment.
00:22:39.700 I mean, I've been talking about this epidemic of teacher sex abuse for many years, going
00:22:47.320 back to when I was just blogging for a living. I've been on this story for many, many years.
00:22:53.440 And every time I talk about it, the response is like a big yawn.
00:22:59.600 Most people don't care. They don't want to discuss it.
00:23:04.340 Sex abuse scandal in the church.
00:23:06.560 Yes, that's a big deal. Let's discuss it.
00:23:09.780 Sex abuse scandal in Hollywood. Yes, let's turn that into a news cycle that lasted like an entire year.
00:23:18.040 But sex abuse in public school, where we send like 50 million children every day,
00:23:24.200 somehow doesn't attract anywhere close to the same level of interest.
00:23:27.940 even though almost none of us have children in Hollywood.
00:23:36.020 Very few people these days, I mean, comparatively few people these days are going to Catholic Church.
00:23:44.000 And therefore, comparatively few people are, and even if they are, sending their kids in to be altar boys and all the rest of it.
00:23:52.060 So, those are institutions where, compared to the public school system, right, very few children are at risk.
00:24:04.880 The public school system, though, again, 50, what's the latest number?
00:24:09.020 I think it's around 50 million kids are going every single day into this environment.
00:24:14.640 And yet, and we all know, I mean, there's no one, if you said, well, there's a sex abuse epidemic with teachers in public school,
00:24:25.620 I don't think you'd meet anyone out on the street that would deny that,
00:24:29.260 and would say, well, I haven't heard that, what are you talking about?
00:24:31.940 That's crazy talk.
00:24:34.300 And every time we see one of these stories, we all say the same thing.
00:24:36.420 Oh, another one?
00:24:37.520 Yeah, here we go, here's another one.
00:24:38.640 And yet, we're just not treating it like an epidemic.
00:24:46.340 Now, I do know part of the reason.
00:24:47.860 I know why the media is not interested in pursuing this story.
00:24:55.720 You know, what was that movie that won all the Oscars, Spotlight,
00:25:00.760 about the Boston Globe journalists or whatever it was that help uncover the sex abuse epidemic in the Catholic Church,
00:25:10.700 particularly in the Boston area.
00:25:13.440 And, you know, the movie was fun.
00:25:14.720 It was kind of a boring movie.
00:25:15.980 It didn't deserve to win all the awards it did.
00:25:17.480 But that's, you know, that's Hollywood calling attention to that problem
00:25:25.820 and sort of canonizing these journalists that were chasing down the story.
00:25:34.520 Well, where are the journalists chasing down this systemic abuse epidemic in the public school system?
00:25:41.160 Where is the, you know, Boston Globe-style expose?
00:25:47.060 I'm not talking about just reporting on one case or another, isolated.
00:25:50.800 But where are the big stories?
00:25:54.600 Right?
00:25:55.140 Or, you know, the journalists that were chasing down in the early days of Me Too.
00:25:59.920 Where are the big stories reporting on, look, here's this.
00:26:02.980 It's not just one thing.
00:26:04.020 Here's the whole story of how this is happening.
00:26:07.620 Look, here are the administrators that are covering it up.
00:26:09.920 Here are the teachers that are accused of inappropriate conduct.
00:26:13.700 And rather than being arrested or fired, they're just moved to another district.
00:26:18.720 All of that is happening.
00:26:20.020 The story is right there.
00:26:22.520 And there's no interest in chasing it down.
00:26:25.040 And for the media, it's obvious why they're not interested in chasing it down.
00:26:30.320 Politically, it doesn't serve them to point out that there are a lot of sex predator public school teachers.
00:26:38.020 A lot.
00:26:39.920 It doesn't serve them anything to point that out.
00:26:45.040 And maybe that's kind of it.
00:26:47.320 Maybe that explains the whole mystery here of why there doesn't appear to be any sort of intense public interest in this epidemic.
00:26:54.580 And maybe the answer is that, well, the media, you know, the media still does have a lot of power to shape narratives.
00:27:00.980 And this is a narrative that they're not interested in shaping or talking about.
00:27:04.320 And so it isn't discussed.
00:27:06.000 I don't know what it is.
00:27:10.980 So I can't explain the kind of lackadaisical attitude that not everybody, but that so many people seem to have about this.
00:27:18.680 But whatever explains it, like we got to snap out of it because this is a real thing.
00:27:25.680 I mean, you go back, every time I talk about this, I bring up the 2004 study that was done by the Department of Education about the teacher sex abuse epidemic.
00:27:35.020 And this is back in 20 years ago that they did this study.
00:27:38.120 And they found that I think it was at the time like one in 10 students by the time they graduate will be the victim of sexual misconduct by a staff member at a school.
00:27:50.120 One in 10, that's 10%.
00:27:51.460 That's millions.
00:27:52.520 That's millions and millions of kids.
00:27:56.400 That's not a small number, okay?
00:27:58.300 That's a huge number.
00:28:00.100 10% is a mind-boggling number.
00:28:03.660 And that was 20 years ago.
00:28:10.120 Has it gotten better since then?
00:28:14.460 Is that how it usually works?
00:28:16.320 When you've got a sex abuse epidemic in an institution and you just ignore it, does it go away?
00:28:20.940 Does it get better?
00:28:21.720 No.
00:28:22.520 It only gets worse.
00:28:24.180 It gets worse and worse and worse until somebody does something about it.
00:28:29.520 All right, here's a good follow-up.
00:28:30.880 Fox News has this.
00:28:31.800 President Donald Trump is moving forward with plans to abolish the Department of Education.
00:28:35.420 Trump is expected to sign an executive order following through on a campaign promise to disband the department,
00:28:39.540 claiming on the campaign trail that the department was full of radicals, zealots, and Marxists, which it is.
00:28:46.220 A White House fact sheet states that the move will turn over education to families instead of bureaucracies.
00:28:50.840 Trump and proponents of eliminating the department have long said the agency has failed American students, which it has.
00:28:58.020 But in order to completely eliminate it, Congress has to act.
00:29:03.240 And so this is another area where Congress needs to come in behind Trump and codify his executive orders.
00:29:10.460 And they need to do – there's a bunch of executive orders they need to do that with, and they need to do that with this as well.
00:29:15.440 So, but we're moving in the right direction.
00:29:17.800 This is great news.
00:29:18.600 Yeah, abolish the Department of Education, burn it down, destroy it, incinerate it, dump its ashes in the ocean.
00:29:24.140 Absolutely.
00:29:25.220 And, of course, the left is going to panic over this.
00:29:27.100 They panic over everything.
00:29:28.300 But I'd like for them to answer this question in the middle of their panic.
00:29:34.100 A simple question, which is this.
00:29:36.800 What has the Department of Education achieved?
00:29:41.360 Let's take a look at the state of education in America prior to the department's existence, compare it to the state of education today, and tell me where you see the department's achievements.
00:29:51.920 You know, the Department of Education was founded in 1979, and so you can kind of compare that today.
00:30:01.200 Now, you can look at test scores and all that stuff, but I don't think we need to because does anyone seriously believe that the average high school graduate in 2025 is smarter, better read, more well-rounded, knows more about history and civics and literature than the average high school graduate in 1978 did or 1948 for that matter?
00:30:21.920 Does anyone really think that?
00:30:25.000 And, by the way, here's a measure that we don't talk about enough, I think.
00:30:30.900 Because we can talk about how well or how poorly educated the average graduate is today, and I think that he's quite poorly educated.
00:30:37.120 But the even bigger question is this.
00:30:39.220 What is his appetite for education?
00:30:42.360 Does the average high school graduate, after his experience in the school system, graduate with a great desire to keep learning and to learn more and to continue gaining knowledge?
00:30:55.180 I'm not talking about college.
00:30:57.680 A lot of people go to college for reasons that have nothing to do with a hunger for more knowledge.
00:31:01.940 And there's a lot of people that don't go to college who do want, who do have a hunger for more knowledge.
00:31:07.260 But whether he goes to college or not, does the average high school graduate have an appetite for education?
00:31:15.040 Does he want to keep reading and learning and expanding his mind?
00:31:18.160 That's a hard thing to measure, of course, but there are certain measurable things you can look at.
00:31:21.820 For instance, we know that Americans are reading books a whole lot less than they used to.
00:31:26.180 As one recent survey I saw said that half of Americans had not read a single book in the past calendar year.
00:31:33.620 So there are some very serious indicators that a huge number of high school graduates have very little appetite to continue learning and to continue gaining knowledge.
00:31:42.640 And that's really what matters most.
00:31:45.160 Because it doesn't matter how good of a student you were.
00:31:47.820 It doesn't matter, you know, you could have gotten straight A's.
00:31:50.200 It doesn't really matter if you don't continue learning, if you don't continue expanding your base of knowledge, continue consuming knowledge,
00:31:55.740 then you will become an ignorant moron in pretty short order.
00:32:00.280 Any straight A student can become a total ignoramus in the span of just a few years if they stop learning, if they stop pursuing knowledge.
00:32:09.420 Knowledge is perishable.
00:32:11.020 Knowledge is perhaps one of the most perishable things that there is.
00:32:14.660 And I certainly don't get the sense that we are a society populated mostly by people with an insatiable desire to gain knowledge.
00:32:22.600 I think what ends up happening is that you've got kids that leave the public school system and that whole experience.
00:32:30.300 And they have completely soured on the concept of learning.
00:32:36.540 They have no interest in learning anything else ever again.
00:32:38.680 Now, is that all the fault of the Department of Education?
00:32:42.400 Of course, you know, it's not, of course.
00:32:43.500 But there's just no evidence that the department has improved anything.
00:32:48.760 What are the fruits of its labors?
00:32:50.680 Where are the wins?
00:32:51.980 I don't see them.
00:32:54.220 And meanwhile, to bring it back to what we discussed a minute ago,
00:32:56.400 there's been this decades-long sex abuse epidemic in the schools that the department has done precisely nothing to address.
00:33:02.840 I said they did a study 20 years ago, which they did, and they confirmed in the study that, yeah, we've got a big problem here.
00:33:08.580 We've got millions of victims, millions, millions, and millions.
00:33:13.380 And then they did nothing.
00:33:14.980 And they did exactly nothing with that information.
00:33:17.940 Not a single thing was done.
00:33:19.920 Not one reform was put in place.
00:33:23.060 They just said, oh, wow, look, millions of child sex abuse victims in the school system.
00:33:28.500 Well, that's unfortunate.
00:33:29.200 Anyway, so if the Department of Education had any use whatsoever, then it would be precisely this kind of thing.
00:33:43.320 It would be to address systemic problems in the education system as a whole.
00:33:50.340 But they're not doing that.
00:33:52.320 They're doing the opposite of that, actually.
00:33:54.460 So, yes, get rid of the Department, and at a minimum, it will have no impact, right?
00:34:04.500 At a minimum, worst-case scenario, you get rid of the Department of Education, and nothing changes.
00:34:11.700 But I think more likely is that we actually see some improvements in the way education is handled.
00:34:17.160 Okay, Tim Walls has some thoughts about masculinity.
00:34:20.380 As we know, he's a real expert on the subject.
00:34:22.360 Let's listen to that.
00:34:22.960 But I think this notion of toxicity and masculinity needs to be separated, and I think it's been conflated, and I think we're going to have to work on that a little bit.
00:34:35.560 And I think, look, there is a crisis.
00:34:36.780 I think some of us scare them.
00:34:38.060 I think I scare them a little bit, why they spend so much time on this.
00:34:41.140 No, I'm serious, because I can fix a truck.
00:34:43.180 They know I'm not on this.
00:34:45.100 I'm not putting this in people's grill.
00:34:47.000 I don't know if my identity is not hunting.
00:34:49.660 My identity is not football coaching.
00:34:52.600 My identity is not, you know, a beard and a truck.
00:34:56.640 No, Tim, you don't scare us.
00:34:59.080 You creep us out.
00:35:00.580 And there is a difference.
00:35:02.780 The difference is this.
00:35:03.880 See, if I'm scared of you, it means that I would be nervous standing next to you in a room.
00:35:08.960 If you creep me out, it means that I'd be nervous if my child was standing next to you in a room.
00:35:16.980 It is very much the latter in this situation.
00:35:19.840 I would not be worried being in a room with you.
00:35:22.160 I'd be worried if my kids were around you unattended in a room.
00:35:25.680 Okay?
00:35:26.160 You creep me out.
00:35:26.800 You're a creep.
00:35:27.600 You creep us out.
00:35:29.420 Okay?
00:35:29.980 You're a weirdo creep, and that's our issue with you.
00:35:33.260 Also, it's funny that he says that his identity is not hunting or football coaching.
00:35:37.280 I mean, we know that.
00:35:38.240 Famously, the guy can't even come up with a coherent football metaphor.
00:35:43.480 Anytime he talks about football, he sounds like if my 11-year-old daughter tried to talk about football
00:35:47.640 or use a football analogy to make a point.
00:35:50.680 But he certainly did try to make it his identity.
00:35:52.320 He tried to make it his identity.
00:35:54.260 He couldn't give a single speech during the campaign without mentioning the fact that he was allegedly a football coach.
00:36:00.680 And now he says it's not his identity, so okay then.
00:36:03.340 But we hear Gavin Newsom talking about toxic masculinity, and I just wanted to say this.
00:36:11.060 I'll make a prediction.
00:36:14.200 I'll throw down a marker here, and I'll make a prediction about the culture.
00:36:20.460 And my cultural predictions are usually right.
00:36:23.380 I'm usually pretty good.
00:36:24.340 Now, if I'm predicting who's going to win a football game, or if I'm predicting who's going to win an election,
00:36:32.340 you can mostly ignore me about that because I'm usually wrong about those kinds of predictions.
00:36:37.720 But when I predict cultural trends, I'm very often right.
00:36:40.720 Not always, but very often right.
00:36:41.880 And so I'm going to say this, that I think that toxic masculinity, so-called, the war on men,
00:36:50.260 this will be the major battle of the latter half of the 2020s.
00:36:55.580 Now, obviously, it's already been a battle for a long time.
00:36:58.840 What I'm saying is that this is what the left is going to pivot to in a big way.
00:37:02.660 It'll be a heavy pivot.
00:37:03.740 So it's going to be less about race.
00:37:06.460 It's going to be less about LGBT.
00:37:08.540 It's going to be more about men versus women, about why men are toxic, about why we need feminism,
00:37:14.200 why men are the problem, and so on and so on and so on.
00:37:18.320 You know, race was the major culture war in 2020 and 2021.
00:37:22.720 Trans was the major cultural conflict in 2022 and 23 and into 24.
00:37:27.920 And I think that this kind of assumes that position in the coming years.
00:37:34.380 And I think that we're seeing signs of it.
00:37:41.700 You know, the big streaming show right now that everyone's talking about on social media anyway
00:37:46.560 is this show called Adolescence on Netflix, which is apparently all about toxic masculinity.
00:37:53.040 So we see Hollywood turning back that way.
00:37:55.440 We know politically that the gender divide is growing.
00:38:00.800 It's maybe the most salient, the most relevant political fact, right, in our country right now,
00:38:07.800 is the political gender divide.
00:38:13.220 And so what the left is doing and what all their institutions, the media, Hollywood, and so on,
00:38:17.800 what they're always doing is they're looking for the pressure points.
00:38:20.560 They're looking for the grievances.
00:38:23.340 They're looking for the special protected classes of people that they can use.
00:38:29.580 You know, where are, you know, what's the, what can, what's our vehicle going to be?
00:38:35.900 What's going to be the most useful vehicle for the next few years to push forward,
00:38:40.540 not just our agenda in that area, but our entire agenda?
00:38:42.860 And for a few years, it was the race hustlers.
00:38:46.720 For a few years, it was the trans LGBT activists.
00:38:49.820 And now I think it's going to be the, you know, liberal women, the feminists, the man-haters.
00:38:56.700 And I think that's where, I think that's where we're heading.
00:39:00.420 All right, let's get to the comment section.
00:39:01.960 Let's talk about Qualia, which has become a standout brand in the health and wellness world.
00:39:16.280 Their products have been gaining attention for their quality and effectiveness,
00:39:19.180 with so many people experiencing positive results after making Qualia part of their regular wellness routine.
00:39:24.820 Qualia's health formulas meticulously blend many ingredients with complementary relationships
00:39:28.620 into easy, once-a-day formulas.
00:39:30.960 This makes supporting some of our body's most nutritionally complex health system needs very simple.
00:39:36.720 Qualia senolytic is a formula that's been clinically tested to help your body get rid of those pesky senescent cells naturally,
00:39:45.840 you know, so you can age more gracefully.
00:39:47.740 These cells are basically what cause all those annoying aging symptoms that we deal with,
00:39:51.440 the aches and pains taking forever to bounce back after a workout,
00:39:54.900 and that mental and physical sluggishness that makes you think,
00:39:57.560 is this what middle age really feels like?
00:39:58.960 It helps tackle all of that.
00:40:00.040 Plus, Qualia keeps each formula vegan, which is so important to me,
00:40:04.880 non-GMO, gluten-free, and backed by a 100-day refund guarantee.
00:40:09.480 Take a look at Qualia's line of truly inspired health formulas.
00:40:12.980 Go to qualialife.com slash Walsh and use code Walsh at checkout for up to 15% off your purchase.
00:40:18.480 That's Q-U-A-L-I-A-L-I-A life.com slash Walsh for 15% off your purchase.
00:40:25.080 Thank you, Qualia, for sponsoring this episode.
00:40:26.880 The dry humor and or sarcasm is getting old.
00:40:30.860 I agree with a lot of your commentary, particularly the anti-woke stuff, but I'm atheist,
00:40:35.040 and so your pro-God, Jesus, Christian comments come across as gibberish to me.
00:40:40.140 Well, saying that sarcasm and dry humor are getting old, that comes across as gibberish to me.
00:40:45.100 I mean, that's my language.
00:40:46.940 You might as well say that English is getting old.
00:40:49.820 Your English is getting old.
00:40:50.900 Why don't you speak in French from now on?
00:40:52.600 That's just, that's totally absurd.
00:40:53.860 It doesn't register.
00:40:56.440 Having flat feet can hold incredibly worthy people from joining the military.
00:41:00.820 Having delusions about objective reality sure should, too.
00:41:04.500 That's a good point.
00:41:05.280 And also keep in mind that mental health disorders can already disqualify you from military service.
00:41:13.140 I mean, there are all kinds of mental health problems that a person can have,
00:41:17.000 so-called mental health problems a person can have,
00:41:19.260 that would disqualify them from military service.
00:41:21.480 So this is not a big change.
00:41:22.800 Talking, of course, about banning trans people from the military.
00:41:25.540 I mean, this is gender dysphoria.
00:41:28.940 That's the mental health disorder that that falls under.
00:41:32.820 And so it's not really a change at all.
00:41:37.800 Matt, Guyana is in South America, not Africa.
00:41:40.440 Yeah, I'm an idiot.
00:41:41.320 I had a geography flub in the show yesterday.
00:41:43.800 And I think what happened is I confused Guyana and Ghana, which, you know, I think can happen.
00:41:52.600 And, you know, I was mad at myself, too, because I generally consider myself to be,
00:41:57.140 I pride myself on being pretty good at geography.
00:42:00.020 You know, I was just going over with my daughter a few days ago,
00:42:03.860 and she's, she's, and it was actually African geography.
00:42:07.560 She was quizzing me a little bit, because that's what, that's what she's doing in her lessons now.
00:42:11.620 And she had the, you know, the note card with like the, with the continent and all the countries were blank.
00:42:18.180 And I did pretty well.
00:42:20.820 You know, I haven't even studied it, you know, in a while, but I did pretty well.
00:42:24.400 I felt good about it.
00:42:25.840 And then, and then I make that mistake.
00:42:27.840 So, and you know, the bad thing is that geography, to me, it's like spelling.
00:42:33.000 That if somebody makes a basic spelling mistake, not a typo, but an actual, an actual spelling mistake,
00:42:39.640 like they didn't know how a thing was spelled, then they lose about 20 IQ points in my mind.
00:42:46.180 And I'll never forget it.
00:42:47.800 I will hold a crutch.
00:42:49.460 There are certain spelling mistakes.
00:42:50.540 If you make that mistake, I'll always remember that you made that mistake.
00:42:53.000 And I'll always think a little bit less of you, of your intellect because of it.
00:42:57.420 And it's the same for if someone makes a basic geography mistake,
00:43:00.720 which means that all of you must now assume that I'm 20 IQ points dumber than you initially thought.
00:43:07.400 And I didn't have a lot to lose.
00:43:08.860 So this is, this is bad.
00:43:10.560 The only question is, is Guyana, is the Guyana-Ghana flub, is that a basic geography?
00:43:16.620 Is that like a, is that an acceptable geography mistake for a person to make is really the question.
00:43:24.560 And I can't honestly say that it is an acceptable one.
00:43:27.980 That's, that's the, that's the rough part.
00:43:30.720 All right.
00:43:33.840 There has, there has to be a better word for Indians in the context of North America.
00:43:37.800 I'm not offended by it in the least, quite the opposite.
00:43:39.780 It literally means someone from India.
00:43:41.080 The only reason Columbus called them Indians was because he messed up and thought he was in India.
00:43:44.600 Not a great look.
00:43:45.560 Native American doesn't make sense either.
00:43:46.980 They weren't American until the country was formed, just like everyone else.
00:43:50.040 I'm not sure what the proper word should be,
00:43:51.580 but Indian and Native American are both pretty absurd if you actually think about it.
00:43:54.280 But you raise an interesting point.
00:43:56.320 And you're right that none of the words we use to refer to these people really make sense in a literal sense.
00:44:02.340 And I've talked before about why Native American doesn't make sense.
00:44:04.920 Indigenous also doesn't quite make sense.
00:44:06.860 Indian obviously is a term that's rooted in a misconception.
00:44:09.380 It is, or a mistake.
00:44:10.600 So you might think, but this is what makes it difficult, is that you might think, well,
00:44:14.880 okay, what word did the Indians use to describe themselves?
00:44:19.560 Maybe that's the word we should use.
00:44:21.680 Well, the problem is that the Indians didn't have a word for a group that we call Indians.
00:44:27.180 They didn't have a word for so-called Native Americans.
00:44:29.920 That word, they didn't have that word.
00:44:31.740 They had a word for their own tribe and maybe for the other tribes around them that they were aware of.
00:44:36.120 And often the word they used for their tribe, the one they used to describe themselves, Navajo, for example, just meant people.
00:44:45.200 So they were just referring to themselves as the people.
00:44:48.540 The point is that the Indians did not recognize Indians or Native Americans as some kind of distinct ethnic group.
00:44:55.180 They didn't feel any sort of kinship with or identify themselves with other Indians at all.
00:45:01.700 And so that's where the trouble and the naming comes from.
00:45:06.120 Love Matt, but he's solidly wrong about steak.
00:45:11.900 Marinate in soy sauce, garlic, and onion powder overnight, then grill.
00:45:16.000 Best steak on earth.
00:45:16.800 Soy sauce?
00:45:18.320 Do not marinate your steak in soy sauce.
00:45:22.360 You're completely destroying the steak flavor by marinating it really in anything, but especially in soy sauce.
00:45:30.140 Don't do that.
00:45:30.940 Finally, but do you at least cook the steak in butter?
00:45:37.220 Yeah, I, I, okay, here's my steak strategy since we're talking about it and, and five people care, I'll tell you.
00:45:43.720 Uh, so pretty simple, pretty simple recipe.
00:45:46.760 First of all, you got to buy a nice cut of steak.
00:45:48.540 It doesn't matter, it doesn't matter how you cook it.
00:45:50.400 If it's not a nice cut of steak, then it's not going to, if it's a cheap steak, it won't be any good.
00:45:54.220 So you got to get yourself a nice cut.
00:45:56.560 You got to splurge on a nice cut of steak.
00:45:58.520 Uh, pull the steak out of the fridge about 30 minutes before you cook it because you got to eat it down to room temperature.
00:46:02.260 Put a bit of oil on the pan.
00:46:04.160 Okay.
00:46:04.620 You don't want to use butter initially because that's what you don't use butter initially because it'll burn.
00:46:08.620 So you turn it up to high heat, get a very, very hot, uh, salt and pepper on the steak.
00:46:12.560 That's all you need.
00:46:13.240 Throw the steak on three minutes on one side, three minutes on the other.
00:46:16.140 Very high heat.
00:46:17.060 Sear the edges of the steak.
00:46:18.040 Very important to do.
00:46:18.940 Put some butter in the pan, you know, midway through or two thirds of the way through.
00:46:23.180 Uh, baste it in butter a little bit.
00:46:24.820 If you want to use garlic, fresh garlic, fresh rosemary, you throw that in the pan with it.
00:46:28.520 So you let some of those aromas get into the steak, but in a very subtle way.
00:46:31.940 And then you pull it off, let it rest for five minutes and you're good to go.
00:46:35.060 Like that's, that's, that's it.
00:46:36.500 I mean, that's how you make a steak.
00:46:37.580 It's, it's as simple as that.
00:46:38.680 You don't need all the fan.
00:46:39.480 You don't need the, the steak sauces, all the fancy seasonings, the rubs.
00:46:43.580 You don't need any of that.
00:46:44.580 You don't need it.
00:46:45.320 If you have a good quality steak and you cook it that way, that's going to get you a good medium rare sear.
00:46:50.640 And, um, that's all you got to do.
00:46:52.700 So I'm well on my way to making the transition into being a full-time cooking influencer, which is truly my dream.
00:47:01.940 Right now, Ben Shapiro is breaking down one of the most controversial cases in modern history, the case for Derek Chauvin, an exclusive five-part series on The Ben Shapiro Show.
00:47:09.900 Episode two drops today and you don't want to miss it.
00:47:12.180 In today's episode, Ben walks you step-by-step through what really happened when George Floyd tried to pass counterfeit money in Minneapolis, the struggle, the police encounter, and the events leading up to his death.
00:47:21.500 This is not the slanted, woke tale we've all been sold by the media.
00:47:25.280 It's the whole story from start to finish.
00:47:27.060 Ben Shapiro is making the case for why President Trump should pardon Derek Chauvin.
00:47:30.400 You need to hear it for yourself.
00:47:31.440 Listen now on Daily Wire Plus.
00:47:33.740 Now let's get to our daily cancellation.
00:47:41.520 Today we're going to cancel hundreds, if not thousands, of people in one fell swoop.
00:47:45.660 We are canceling all of the people who are outraged at me on social media right now.
00:47:50.520 Now, of course, there are always people outraged at me on social media, but there has been an unusually intense wave of it due to something I posted on X yesterday.
00:47:57.840 I was reiterating something I said on the show earlier that day, which itself was a reiteration of something that I've said many times on the show.
00:48:06.140 But here was the post, which has now been viewed four or five million times, many of them angry views, a lot of angry viewing going on.
00:48:14.380 And the post said this, America is not a nation built by immigrants.
00:48:16.880 America was built by settlers.
00:48:18.100 There's a difference.
00:48:18.680 Settlers ventured out into the wilderness to build a civilization from scratch.
00:48:21.520 The modern immigrant comes to a place that's already built.
00:48:24.100 Settlers plant the trees.
00:48:25.400 The modern immigrant comes to eat the fruits.
00:48:27.260 If you cannot see the difference, I don't know how else to explain it.
00:48:30.140 Now, as you can imagine, there are many angry responses to this, and I can't read them all.
00:48:36.140 But let me give you a representative sample.
00:48:38.640 I'll read five or six of these and give you the flavor of how people are responding.
00:48:44.240 First one says, slaves shipped from Africa provided the white settlers colonizers free, bonded, lifelong slave labor, while white settler colonizers killed Native Americans.
00:48:53.820 A civilization to be proud of?
00:48:56.300 Another says, the Americas were already inhabited by tens of millions, maybe even hundreds of millions of indigenous people long before colonizers arrived.
00:49:02.920 Another says, you constantly dog whistle for white supremacy, yet you remain a confused bigot whose base consists of people who can't be bothered to read a history book or any book for that matter.
00:49:13.100 America wasn't built from scratch by settlers.
00:49:15.440 It was taken from thriving indigenous civilizations built on the forced labor of enslaved people and expanded by waves of immigrants who continue to shape it today.
00:49:22.360 The idea that settlers built civilization alone ignores the history of destruction, displacement, and stolen land.
00:49:27.920 Indigenous nations had governments, trade networks, and advanced societies long before your ancestors, mostly thugs and fugitives, arrived.
00:49:34.040 Another says, settlers, you mean colonizers, who took land from indigenous people and built an economy on slavery, because that's the reality of how America was actually built.
00:49:43.320 And the idea that immigrants today just eat the fruits without contributing is pure nonsense.
00:49:46.620 Every generation of immigrants has worked, innovated, and strengthened the country, whether it was the Irish, Italians, Chinese, or today's diverse wave of newcomers.
00:49:53.000 America was and still is built by immigrants.
00:49:54.980 The only difference is that today's immigrants don't have to commit genocide to settle here.
00:49:58.680 And then, actually, America was built by neither immigrants nor settlers.
00:50:02.700 It was built by illegal invaders who came here without permission from the local population, committed genocide on them, and utilized enslaved free labor to build it.
00:50:12.800 And then, it wasn't a wilderness, and the settlers did not build anything from scratch.
00:50:16.240 They invaded a continent that was already cultivated and slaughtered the people who cultivated it.
00:50:19.700 This Matt Walsh douche is one of the biggest fascists around, and he's proud of it.
00:50:23.160 And finally, Keith Olbermann chimes in and says, settlers wiped out the population that was here to make room for inbred mother effers like you.
00:50:31.780 Now, it is pretty bold for Keith Olbermann to call anyone else inbred, considering that he looks and sounds like a dimly sentient wart come to life.
00:50:40.840 Olbermann's only achievement in life, really, is that he's been fired more than anyone else in the history of media.
00:50:46.340 He enjoys being fired so much, in fact, that he got fired from ESPN and then bounced around to other media outlets and got fired by all of them,
00:50:52.760 and then went back to ESPN and got fired a second time by them.
00:50:56.440 So, now he's an unemployed man in his 60s with no wife and no children, and when he dies, his bloodline will be terminated like his ESPN contracts.
00:51:04.640 That's how committed this guy is to getting fired.
00:51:08.840 But anyway, needless to say, that was mean, but it was also true.
00:51:14.120 But needless to say, all of the outrage and accusations of racism and fascism have not dissuaded me or convinced me that I'm wrong about my initial point.
00:51:23.060 They have achieved, if anything, the opposite of the result.
00:51:26.060 So, let me make a few points in response to all this.
00:51:28.860 These are all points I've made before, but I'll make them again and keep making them,
00:51:31.800 because defending America's history and its foundation has become, I think, one of our most important cultural fights.
00:51:39.000 At least it is to me.
00:51:40.920 So, first, it is not true that all of this land in the Americas was already occupied.
00:51:50.880 Yes, there were Indian tribes living here, but even so, most of the land was not occupied.
00:51:55.840 The continental United States and Canada comprise about 7 million square miles, give or take.
00:52:00.080 Nobody knows how many Indians lived here prior to first contact.
00:52:02.980 The tribes had no written language.
00:52:04.220 They had no sophisticated method of record keeping.
00:52:05.800 They certainly weren't conducting any kind of census, but most estimates would say that there were maybe 6 or 7 million people living in North America,
00:52:13.160 or specifically, especially in the continental United States and Canada, on the very high end, 13 to 18 million maybe.
00:52:21.640 I doubt it was close to that high, but even if it was, we're talking about the population of Pennsylvania spread out over a continent.
00:52:29.900 Now, you can go to Pennsylvania right now and find thousands of acres of unoccupied forest.
00:52:35.560 With its population of 13 million people, you can still walk around Pennsylvania for days,
00:52:40.060 if you're in a forested region, without seeing a single human being.
00:52:44.180 So now imagine that population spread out over the entire continental U.S. and Canada.
00:52:51.400 Now you can travel for weeks and months and never see another human.
00:52:58.180 The point is that the vast majority of this land was not occupied.
00:53:04.360 Almost all of it was not occupied.
00:53:07.800 Almost all of it was empty of human life.
00:53:10.680 Nobody was living in it.
00:53:11.780 Nobody was using it.
00:53:12.720 This side of the world was mostly empty of human life.
00:53:18.920 Now, does that mean that all of this land was unclaimed?
00:53:23.100 No, not exactly.
00:53:24.520 Most of it had been claimed by some native tribe or another.
00:53:28.080 But what does that mean?
00:53:29.640 Well, let's take a look at one example, okay?
00:53:31.340 Let's use actual examples.
00:53:32.420 The Cherokee, for instance.
00:53:33.560 By the beginning of the 16th century, the Cherokee claimed an incredibly vast swath of land
00:53:37.920 that would include modern-day West Virginia, Kentucky, Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, South Carolina,
00:53:44.760 I think Georgia and Alabama, too.
00:53:46.520 So that's like 30,000 or 40,000 square miles, okay?
00:53:50.680 That was Cherokee land.
00:53:52.960 There were only maybe 20,000 or 25,000 Cherokee people total.
00:54:00.080 That's about two square miles of land per individual.
00:54:03.680 That's like if half the population of Scranton, Pennsylvania claimed that it owned seven entire American states.
00:54:13.960 Now, it's absurd.
00:54:15.860 So when we say that it was Cherokee land, all we mean is that a very small primitive tribe
00:54:20.660 had driven out or killed whichever group was there before and announced that it owned an absurdly huge slice of land.
00:54:26.480 A white settler could have been a two-week journey away from the nearest Cherokee,
00:54:31.100 and yet he was still on Cherokee land.
00:54:33.680 And it was Cherokee land only because the Cherokee said so, and for no other reason.
00:54:39.840 But in truth, it was unoccupied wilderness.
00:54:43.500 So what they don't emphasize in school is that white settlers were very often slaughtered by Indians
00:54:49.900 for building a small cabin many, many miles from the nearest Indian village.
00:54:55.840 And yet somehow we're supposed to see the white settlers as the bad guys in that scenario.
00:55:00.660 Second, these settlers were not illegal invaders.
00:55:05.720 They were not illegally taking possession of anything.
00:55:07.900 The word illegal implies the existence of laws and government.
00:55:11.180 And while the Indians had customs and rules within the tribes, and in some cases even a form of government,
00:55:15.500 the only law that determined the boundaries of their land was the law of conquest.
00:55:20.540 They owned the land that they owned because they were able to take it and defend it.
00:55:26.880 That was the law that governed the entire hemisphere.
00:55:31.000 Whatever you can take is yours.
00:55:32.360 The concept of illegally taking something didn't really exist.
00:55:37.200 Because if you could take it, then it wasn't illegal.
00:55:41.340 As long as you were taking it from an outside group.
00:55:44.580 Now, they may have had laws or rules against stealing from somebody within your tribe.
00:55:48.820 But if you're taking something from another tribe, as long as you can take it, it's yours by definition.
00:55:54.520 This is how the Indian tribes operated.
00:55:56.280 It's how they lived.
00:55:56.960 It's how they determined who gets what and which land belongs to which tribe.
00:55:59.840 The settlers entered into that fray, into the ongoing game of war and conquest.
00:56:03.640 They didn't start it.
00:56:04.260 They didn't invent it.
00:56:04.900 They didn't introduce it.
00:56:05.920 They entered into it.
00:56:07.700 They became one party involved in that eternal struggle.
00:56:10.620 Just as they didn't invent or introduce slavery or rape or pillaging and so on.
00:56:14.040 All of that was happening long before they arrived.
00:56:16.580 And it was happening much more often and in a much more brutal form most of the time.
00:56:21.640 Third, finally, to answer a question posed in one of the comments I just read.
00:56:25.980 Is our civilization one that we should be proud of?
00:56:28.980 Even in spite of its history of conquest?
00:56:32.420 No.
00:56:32.820 Not in spite of that history.
00:56:36.580 I'm proud of it in large part because of that history.
00:56:40.880 It is one of the great triumphs of all time that our forefathers had to first conquer an ocean in order to then land on a giant mass of uncharted wilderness filled with untold dangers and wild beasts.
00:56:52.660 And yes, primitive warring tribes, many of whom practiced human sacrifice and cannibalism.
00:56:57.420 And who, if they captured you, would torture you for fun and rape your wife and children before killing you, maybe eating your internal organs and taking your family as their property.
00:57:05.340 And yet, in the face of those unimaginable horrors, our forefathers and ancestors conquered this entire hemisphere and settled it and single-handedly dragged it out of the Stone Age and built from the wilderness the greatest civilization the world had ever known.
00:57:20.160 Am I proud of that?
00:57:20.840 Am I proud of that?
00:57:22.840 Now, the natives lived in the Americas for 20,000 years.
00:57:26.800 And this is something that the left and the people who hate this country like to bring up all the time.
00:57:32.400 Well, they were here for so long.
00:57:33.500 Yeah, they were here for a long time.
00:57:35.200 What did they do in that time?
00:57:36.700 During that time, they never figured out the wheel.
00:57:39.200 They never figured out written language.
00:57:40.700 Most of them progressed hardly at all over the course of 200 centuries.
00:57:47.860 They were still eating each other and living in tents, many of them.
00:57:52.320 The great tribes of Mesoamerica had advanced the most.
00:57:57.060 And by that, I mean they had caught up to the ancient Egyptians by the time that the Kisidor showed up.
00:58:02.240 They were building pyramids at a time when Europeans were using the printing press.
00:58:06.380 Then European settlers arrived here.
00:58:09.640 And in less than three centuries, they had established a nation.
00:58:13.560 In another 70 or so years, that nation would stretch across the entire continent from one ocean to another.
00:58:18.180 In another 50 years, they'd be digging a giant trench through the earth to physically connect one ocean to the other.
00:58:23.760 At the same time, they would be building vehicles that can fly through the air.
00:58:27.060 In another few decades, they'd be walking on the surface of the moon.
00:58:31.160 These settlers took a wilderness sparsely inhabited by hostile Stone Age natives.
00:58:36.400 And in a matter of a few centuries, built the greatest, most advanced, most globally dominant nation the world has ever known.
00:58:42.540 Am I proud of that?
00:58:43.720 Oh yes, I am very proud of that.
00:58:46.180 And I will always be proud of that.
00:58:48.680 And I will never apologize for it.
00:58:51.660 Period.
00:58:53.660 And that's why anyone who is not proud of it,
00:58:55.920 and who says that we should somehow be ashamed of these monumental human achievements,
00:59:01.500 is today canceled.
00:59:04.900 That'll do it for the show today.
00:59:05.900 Thanks for watching.
00:59:06.420 Thanks for listening.
00:59:07.400 Have a great day.
00:59:08.080 Talk to you tomorrow.
00:59:09.580 Godspeed.
00:59:09.780 We'll be right back.