Ep. 1575 - Matt Walsh Breaks Down The Deceptive Propaganda In ‘Adolescence’ Netflix Show
Episode Stats
Words per minute
178.57016
Harmful content
Misogyny
11
sentences flagged
Hate speech
10
sentences flagged
Summary
Netflix released a miniseries called Adolescence, which is supposed to expose the problem of toxic masculinity and male rage. The show is fictional and completely far-fetched, but the British government and media are treating it like a documentary. Also, sports commentator Stephen A. Smith says that he s considering running for president, and a CNN correspondent shares a hearty laugh with Taylor Lorenz as they fawn over accused murderer Luigi Mangione. We ll talk about all that and more today on The Matt Walsh Show.
Transcript
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Today on the Matt Wall Show, Netflix recently released a miniseries called Adolescence,
00:00:03.720
which is supposed to expose the problem of toxic masculinity and male rage. The show is fictional
00:00:08.780
and completely far-fetched, but the British government and the media are treating it like
00:00:12.420
a documentary we'll discuss. Also, sports commentator Stephen A. Smith says that he's
00:00:16.220
considering running for president for some reason, and a CNN correspondent shares a hearty laugh with
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Taylor Lorenz as they fawn over accused murderer Luigi Mangione. We'll talk about all that and
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One of the easiest ways to tell that one side is losing a debate, whether it's about politics or
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anything else that's grounded in the real world, is when they stop talking about specifics and they
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start talking about fantasy. Once you have to start relying on pure fiction to make your point,
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it's usually a pretty good indicator that you don't have much of a point to begin with.
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When feminists began citing The Handmaid's Tale as a warning of what Donald Trump's administration
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would look like, serious people understood that it was not a clever analogy or a useful metaphor.
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It was desperation. It was a bit like citing Shrek as proof that we need to open the borders to
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creepy-looking outsiders. No one who's attained even a basic level of maturity and competence
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would fall for that kind of thing. Unfortunately, as we've all known for a while now, basic levels
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of maturity and competence are nowhere to be found in the UK, which is why the entire country
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is currently transfixed by a Netflix miniseries called Adolescence. And the show debuted last month,
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and already it's something of a cultural icon over there. At this point, calling Adolescence
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a mere miniseries is practically hate speech in Britain. They prefer to think of the show as a
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documentary, if not their Bible. Everyone is expected to watch the entire show start to finish
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before they can engage in any kind of public debate on any topic. Now, in a moment, I'll talk
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about why this is happening. We'll also go through the show episode by episode and discuss the plot
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and how terrible the whole thing is in every respect. But for now, all you need to know is
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that, spoiler alert, the show is about a white 13-year-old boy who stabs a female classmate
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to death. And he was upset because she rejected his advances and then taunted him online about
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being an incel. And the show makes a big deal out of how online interactions like this, along
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with misogynistic content on the internet, can supposedly radicalize young boys and turn them
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into killers. From a production standpoint, the central gimmick of the show is that all
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four episodes are done in one take. At least that's how they present it, with no camera cuts
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of any kind. So you follow the journey of this 13-year-old kid as he's arrested for murder
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and processed, interrogated, and so on at various points as a result of this groundbreaking approach
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to production, which has been done much better already in other films and other shows.
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But you're treated to uneventful 10-minute-long car rides to the local store, you know, which is
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really riveting television. But they have to do that because they insist on just doing this all in
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one take. Now, as far as I could tell, the point of this gimmick is to remind you of why things like
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cuts and editing were invented in the first place. And if that was the objective, then mission
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accomplished. But before we get further into the specifics of the show, just so that you understand
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the magnitude of the mass psychosis I'm talking about, you need to watch this interview that just
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aired on a morning show called BBC Breakfast. Throughout this entire conversation, the two
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anchors berate the leader of Britain's Conservative Party, a woman named Kemi Bandanok, for not watching
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this show, Adolescence. And as the interview goes on, the anchors become more and more annoyed
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with the politician for not showing the proper deference to this show, which the anchor calls
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a documentary at one point. It's pretty remarkable. Watch.
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No, no, I haven't. I probably won't. It's a film on Netflix, and most of my time right
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It's a four-part series on Netflix, and everyone is talking about it. It is prompting conversations
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about toxic masculinity, smartphone use, young men feeling that they're being ignored, the
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idea of misogyny being increased in school. Why would you not want to know what people
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Well, I think that those are all important issues, and those were issues that I've been
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talking about for a long time. But in the same way that I don't need to watch Casualty
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to know what's going on in the NHS, I don't need to watch a specific Netflix drama to understand
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what's going on. It's a fictional series. It is not a documentary. What I've been talking
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about recently, for instance, is banning smartphones in schools. I've been going to
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schools all around the country. I was in Evesham just yesterday, talking to headteachers,
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talking to students, and they talk about the problems that phones are causing.
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The difference this documentary has made compared to, say, a politician, any politician, leader
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of a party, the prime minister, going around talking in schools, is this has made much
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more of an impact than any politician has in terms of what people are talking about right
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Just to remind you, this is real. This is not like a comedy skit. And it's, I mean, you
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know, I'm thinking I should do this. I want to do an interview where we invite some important
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politician on, and I'm just going to berate them for 10 minutes about not having seen my
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favorite movie. You know, I'll ask them, have you seen, have you seen Master and Commander,
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the 2003 Russell Crowe film about a naval ship? You haven't, why haven't you seen it? Why would
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you not watch this movie? Because that's the most important thing, is that you've watched my
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favorite thing that happens to be on TV. We'll play more of this interview in a second, but
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it's important to highlight this particular moment. Remember, she says, the difference this
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documentary has made is that this has made much more of an impact than any politician has in terms
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of what people are talking about right now. This is the anchor's response when the conservative
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leader reminds her again and again that the show is fictional. She calls it a documentary
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and says the show is being taken far more seriously than anything any political figure is saying.
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But instead of treating that like a very bad development for public discourse in Britain,
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the BBC anchor embraces it. She's thrilled that the country has decided to abandon reality and fixate
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on a fictional diagnosis of their problems. And she can't understand why the politician is
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confused and appalled by all of this. And the male anchor gets in on the action too. He begins
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accosting the politician because she dared to compare adolescence to casualty, which is another
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fictional show that the British can't get enough of, I guess. And that's when Bananak reminds them of
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the actual problems facing the country in, you know, reality. Watch.
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One of the things that I'm more bothered by is the fact that just yesterday we had Labour telling us that
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they're not going to be investigating the rape gang scandal, something which had happened all across
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the country. That's real. That's happening right now. We're not talking about that. We're talking
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We had thousands of... If I may just finish. We had thousands of victims.
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Female victims. Those are girls, young women, and some boys too.
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I met the mother of a boy who killed himself after being a victim.
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I want to talk about that because that is real. And yes, I'm glad that the Netflix drama
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is something that people are talking about. But it is not the only thing. There are many
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other things that are going on. And my job as opposition leader is to hold the government
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to account, get them to hold a full national inquiry on what is one of the biggest scandals
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And do you stand by the thing you just said a moment ago, that you're comparing adolescents
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with casualty, these TV programmes? Did you really mean to say that?
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I'm saying very clearly that my job is not to watch lots of TV. My job is to get out
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there and make sure that I'm talking about the issues that are happening in the country
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right now. There are many ways for us to be informed.
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Adolescence has made more of an impact than any politician has on parents and when it comes
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to the issue of smartphones and misogyny. And yet you are saying, despite that, you don't
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Well, no, I haven't said that I don't need to know about the issue.
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I don't need to watch a specific show to know what is going on in this country. It's
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a fictional show. Let's talk about what's real. I'm going out there every day. I have
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constituents coming to me, telling me what they're worried about. I had a colleague,
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an MP who was murdered due to Islamic terrorism. You look at what's happened in Southport.
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You look at what's happening in Rotherham, in Oldham. There are real issues.
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Do you stand by, do you stand by not watching my favourite show? Oh, you stand by that?
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Have you ever seen Everybody Loves Raymond? Oh, you haven't. Oh, do you stand by that? Do you today,
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in front of all these people, stand by having not seen my favourite sitcom? Interesting. Hmm.
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Now, Bananak is trying to explain that in Britain, Islamic terrorists are killing people in the street
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and Pakistani sex abuse gangs are terrorizing children. These are real problems. But the anchors
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didn't ask a single question about any of that. Instead, they just continue to grill her over the
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13-year-old white killer in a fictional Netflix show. We're supposed to believe that this made-up
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13-year-old character, his name is Jamie, is representative of the real threat in the UK.
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Now, from a statistical perspective, that is not simply false. It is one of the most flagrant lies
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that BBC has ever told, which of course is saying something. The statistic I'm about to read comes
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directly from the website of the Government of London, and it's accurate as of 2022. Quote,
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despite making up only 13% of London's total population, black Londoners account for 45%
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of London's knife murder victims, 61% of knife murder perpetrators, and 53% of knife crime
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perpetrators. In England and Wales, as of 2017, roughly 38% of youth knife crime charges involve
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ethnic minorities, even though they're only around 70% of the population. And of course,
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most of these killers come from broken homes, as one UK study found. More than 70% of violent youth
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offenders came from single-parent households. Now, if all of these numbers sound familiar,
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especially the 13% accounting for 50% thing, well, that's because that's how crime stats break down
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in our country as well. Meanwhile, violence that's targeted against women, the problem that
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adolescence is all about, is actually declining. Let's take a look at this chart. As you can see,
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violence against women in particular has been declining for decades in the UK.
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So there's no wave of young males taking out their aggression on women. On the other hand,
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there is an epidemic of violence that's being committed by Britain's non-white population,
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which has exploded in recent years. According to the UK's Office for National Statistics,
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knife crime has increased by roughly one-third since 2010, as the population has grown dramatically
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due to migration. Now, people in the UK can see that this is happening all around them.
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But now, rather than confront reality, they're creating a fantasy world in which white young
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men are the actual problem. The British government is playing a large role in creating this alternate
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universe for the obvious reason that it deflects from their failures. And that's why they're now
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instructing schools to play adolescence for their students as if it has any kind of instructional value
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It has sparked a national conversation, and now the prime minister wants to be a part of it.
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And I have to be honest, as a dad, I have not found it easy viewing.
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The creators of Adolescence were invited to Downing Street, along with youth charities,
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The thing that's been really lovely since the show's been on has been hearing friends, family,
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people that I barely know, contact me and tell me that they're having conversations on the sofa
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He's got something he wants to talk to you all about.
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In order to prompt more of those often difficult discussions, the program is being made available
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So they're calling Adolescence a documentary, and they're using it as an educational tool in
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schools now. This is the British equivalent of the Handmaid's Tale metaphor, except
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the entire country is transfixed by it. So what is this show exactly? And just how terrible is it?
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Well, as it turns out, it's not simply an example of race swapping in this show, as you've probably
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heard many others say online. Yes, they've made sure that a white boy stabs the victim in this show
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instead of somebody more realistic, like a Somali migrant, for example. But if you watch Adolescence,
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you'll realize that this is actually much worse than a simple race swap. That's just the beginning
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of what's going on here. Throughout the entire show, they beat you over the head with the idea that
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there's a vast underground community of white misogynist men lurking in the shadows because
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their brains have been poisoned by content that they're seeing on Instagram or whatever.
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For one thing, the killer's white male best friend supplies the murder weapon and knife
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so the killer can scare the female victim with it. And this is all very upsetting to the studious
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black student in the school who's dismayed by all the white male rage that surrounds him.
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Then there's a scene where the father of the killer goes to the hardware store,
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and he's trying to buy paint because his work van has just been sprayed with graffiti.
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And then when he's talking to an employee who happens to be a young white man,
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the employee suddenly starts whispering, and the employee tells the father that he's on his side,
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meaning that he thinks his son didn't do anything wrong. And then he starts offering advice to the
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father about how his son could be acquitted by challenging certain pieces of evidence,
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even though the murder was caught on surveillance footage. The employee even tells the father to launch
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a crowdfunding campaign because there are apparently a lot of other angry white men out there who
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think it's great when white males stab innocent victims to death. Now, as maybe you've already
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realized, the irony, of course, is that there is indeed a large community that's willing to pay money
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to killers who stab people to death for no reason, but it's not a community of young white men.
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I mean, in reality, so that's what happened in the fictional show. In the real world,
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the fundraisers are being established for thugs like Carmelo Anthony, as we discussed last week.
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In fact, Anthony has now raised a half a million dollars at this point, a half a million,
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$500,000 because he stabbed a white high school student in the heart during a track meet.
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But in the world of adolescence, reality is inverted. We're supposed to pretend that
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all of these deep-seated cultural problems exist among young white men to the point that
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the father can't even go to a hardware store without being reminded of how many angry incels
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are out there. And in case you're wondering just how angry these 13-year-old incels can be in this
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world, there's also an entire episode that's devoted to the killer doing an interview with a
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female forensic psychologist. And for an entire hour, you get to listen to this child talking
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to the psychologist. And it's supposed to be really profound because this is the first time
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that you see how angry and vindictive this child can become when he's dealing face-to-face with a
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woman. And the dialogue includes truly clever lines like, what do these emojis mean? And the kid's
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hour-long interview with this psychologist ends with her telling him that there won't be any more
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sessions between the two of them. And then the child freaks out and berates her. It has to be
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carried out of the room. So again, they're beating you over the head with the idea that
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he needs to control women with his male rage. And then the psychologist breaks down practically in
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tears because even though she's an adult professional who's trained for situations just like this one,
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she's still no match for the male rage of a 13-year-old kid. And the rest of the episodes are
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just as ludicrous. There's a scene where a white kid assaults a black girl at school. There's a scene
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where the black girl is distrustful of the police. And all this, of course, is evidence that systemic
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racism is real in this world of this fictional world of Netflix. And then there's a scene where
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the son of the detective on the case, a wise black pupil at the school, explains to his father,
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who's also the detective, what's going on. He says that girls at the school, including the victim,
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bully the boys online, calling them incels and so on. And the pupil explains to his detective father
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that he'll never understand just how damaging this can be to kids. And at one point, just to underscore
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how out of touch the detective is, he asks his son to define what the word incel means.
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And once again, the message here is completely backwards because they're trying to suggest,
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even when you have a loving and intact family, which is the case for the 13-year-old killer in
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the show, that it's still no defense against the emojis of the online manosphere. You know,
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having an intact family is supposedly no assurance that if your son is cyber bullied by a girl,
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that he won't go out and stab her to death in a parking lot because he's been brainwashed by
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Andrew Tate. So the show makes this messaging explicit. It's not a very subtle production.
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Throughout the entire series, it's clear that the killer's family is very concerned with his
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well-being. They're with him when he's arrested. They're hugging him and showing him affection
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constantly and so on. The mother and father are together. They're married. And yet, to their shock
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and horror, their kid becomes a murderer anyway. And just in case you missed the message they're
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trying to send, the show's creators have given about a thousand interviews where they explain
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that, in their view, having an intact family will not prevent your child from going out and committing
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murder. Here's just a few examples of them saying this.
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This wasn't about othering, Jamie. Don't put this in the extraordinary. Make this feel like it could
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happen to you because that is the reality of what is happening in our world.
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You'd have a bit by your side all the way through it.
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We wanted the audience to be thinking, there's no way he's done this. This kid couldn't do
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that. So for him to see this act committed by his boy, he's poleaxed. And his life from
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It was really important to Stephen that this wasn't a show that made easy answers.
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The one thing he said to me right at the beginning was, we can't blame the parents.
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I didn't want Jamie to come from a background where his mum was a drinker or his dad was
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violent and aggressive. I wanted to eliminate all of those things. To try and get the audience
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to ask the question, why? But also in the same respect, think that could be me. That could be my child.
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I wish he'd have picked you. You'd have done better.
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We wanted to make this feel like it could happen to you. The one thing he said to me right at the
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beginning was that we can't blame the parents, close quote. So in other words, the single most
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important variable that's indicative of childhood delinquency, which is a lack of proper parenting,
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was taken off the table before they even wrote a word of the show. Now, if you remove broken homes,
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mass migration, and Islamic jihad from the equation, everyone knows that knife crime would plummet in
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the UK. It would almost disappear. But those are the three topics that from the outset they knew
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they couldn't talk about. So they've decided to base the entire show around an extreme outlier
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fictional case, which is fine in and of itself. I mean, you can have a show that's based around
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some extreme event happening. There are plenty of shows and films like that. But the problem is that
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the media and the British government and the creators of the show are treating it like it's not
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an outlier case, as if the plot of this show happens all the time. So that's the kind of
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sleight of hand trick here. The producers claim that it's impossible to understand what drives the
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supposed epidemic of male rage beyond vague personalities on the internet. Watch.
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I thought the show was, it was a good watch, but it was a very intense watch. I mean, the subject matter
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was, I mean, it just feels so relevant to so much of what's happening today. And obviously, Stephen,
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you kind of co-create and co-wrote this. I'd love to start by knowing just what kind of triggered
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I read an incident in the paper, and it was about a young boy killing a young girl,
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stabbing a young girl to death. And then not long after that, I saw on the news, on the television,
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you know, it happened again in a different, completely different part of the country.
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And a young boy had stabbed a young girl. And if I'm really honest with you, both of those incidents
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really hurt my heart, in a way. And it just made me think, what's going on?
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you know, I'll never understand it. To kill a young girl,
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Especially when you're dealing with incel culture,
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name is mentioned in this, although you've said
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you don't really want the show to be dominated by that name.
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It is mentioned in this show, but it's only ever mentioned by adults.
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And that's really deliberate. Because Andrew Tate
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just about the parents. It's about everything. It's societal.
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well, you don't really understand why we mentioned Andrew
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Tate in the show. We're just making fun of the dumb
00:23:24.840
And that's why he offers none of his own conclusions about what's
00:23:31.360
I mean, take a look at this image, for example.
00:23:46.940
know. It's a mystery that can't truly be solved.
00:23:58.920
Well, as it happens, it's not much of a mystery.
00:24:16.660
confusing. You can't possibly begin to understand
00:24:24.540
dramatically lower chance that their son will become
00:24:50.540
jihadists will storm the local Taylor Swift
0.93
00:25:02.040
a Somali criminal seeking asylum in the UK has avoided
00:25:06.420
returning him to his home country would cause him
0.92
00:25:24.240
Somali committed, by the way. The information is
00:25:30.180
angry and sad if he was deported. So he gets to
00:25:52.140
is reality because they don't want you to notice
00:26:32.100
serve others in ways that promote human flourishing
00:26:34.080
and creates a ripple effect of transformation for
00:26:50.140
and hybrid learning environments are designed to help you
00:27:26.120
the talk shows where he confirmed that he might,
00:27:35.900
Maher, and he was asked what Democrats he worries
00:27:51.900
officials, and I'm not going to give their names,
00:32:41.880
already heard this from people that, yeah, well,
00:32:44.860
but but Trump became president with no political
00:32:46.780
experience. And that just shows you that lots of
00:32:51.040
phenomenon somehow. Yes, Trump was an outsider,
00:32:54.380
but he was also a businessman who had operated at a
00:32:56.960
very high level for a long time. And he had been
00:32:59.720
he'd been engaged and speaking about issues like
00:33:02.700
trade and so on for decades by by the by the time
00:33:06.980
that he ran. So this was a business mogul with a long
00:33:10.580
track record on issues like the economy and trade and
00:33:12.940
foreign policy, which is very different from an ESPN
00:33:16.460
personality whose entire career has been spent shouting
00:33:26.620
Political experience isn't necessarily important if you
00:33:29.280
want to run for president. In fact, as we've seen, you
00:33:31.520
know, I mean, there's something to be said for people that
00:33:33.460
don't have political experience, but leadership
00:33:40.680
somebody's made it to the age of 60 or whatever, however old
00:33:43.040
Stephen A. Smith is and has no leadership experience, then I
00:33:46.500
wouldn't hire them to run a Wendy's. If I was the owner, if
00:33:50.120
I was a franchise owner of Wendy's restaurants, I would
00:33:54.100
not hire Stephen A. Smith to manage one of the restaurants
00:33:58.260
because he has he has never displayed any leadership or
00:34:02.260
organizational skills at any level. So why would I think
00:34:06.260
that he could even run a Wendy's, much less the country, for
00:34:09.980
God's sake. So, you know, when you have some celebrity who
00:34:13.380
wants to run for office, if they have no relevant
00:34:16.400
experience, if they weren't even politically engaged or
00:34:19.280
interested until recently, then there's a really good test to
00:34:22.600
see whether they're running because they want to serve or
00:34:25.920
whether they're running because they are on an ego trip and
00:34:29.860
this is a publicity stunt. And the test is this. What office are
00:34:36.260
they running for? Okay, if Stephen A. Smith was talking about
00:34:39.820
running for state senator or even Congress, I would say, okay,
00:34:43.060
you know, maybe he's doing this because he feels called to do
00:34:46.920
it. I still wouldn't vote for him, but I would at least buy
00:34:50.940
that maybe this isn't this is sincere. Maybe it's more than
00:34:54.420
just an ego trip. But if they're going right for the
00:34:56.820
highest office in the land, right from the top spot from
00:35:00.760
zero leadership experience of any kind to president, then
00:35:05.920
then that that tells you this is just an ego trip. If you had
00:35:10.840
even an ounce of humility, you would recognize you need to
00:35:13.520
prove yourself. You need to work your way up. You can't just,
00:35:17.880
you know, jump in like I mean, how would Stephen A. Smith react
00:35:22.180
if the janitor at ESPN went to his bosses and said, hey, give me
00:35:25.900
Stephen A. Smith's job. You know, I've never been a sports
00:35:29.340
analyst at all ever. I have zero experience in anything relevant
00:35:33.520
to this, but give me his job. Well, I'm pretty sure that Stephen A.
00:35:38.420
Smith would say to that, like, wait a second. No, no, no. That
00:35:40.460
guy, I mean, he's never, I've been doing this forever. This guy's
00:35:43.560
never done anything like this ever. So you can't, obviously, you
00:35:46.760
can't just give him my job. Even though actually pretty much
00:35:52.260
anyone can do sports analysis. If you watch, if you watch sports,
00:35:55.900
you can do sports analysis. It's not that hard. But not anyone can be a
00:36:00.540
good president, as we've seen. That's not a job that just anyone
00:36:04.060
can slide into and do well. And so that's the case here. All that
00:36:12.060
said, I hope he does run. And I hope the Democrats nominate him. I
00:36:19.460
don't really see that happening, but I hope it does. Because it'll be
00:36:23.460
a total bloodbath. I mean, this should probably be the last time
00:36:27.800
that I rant about why Stephen A. Smith shouldn't run. Because
00:36:30.120
really, he should. I mean, you know, just being strategic, it would be
00:36:36.220
great if he ran and somehow was nominated by the Democrats. Because it
00:36:40.220
would make the, you know, the wave in this past election look like a
00:36:48.360
ripple in a pool, right? Compared to the title wave, the red title
00:36:53.420
wave that would happen if they ran Stephen A. Smith. Oh, yeah, those
00:36:57.360
Rust Belt voters are really looking for a guy whose experience is shouting
00:37:02.080
about LeBron James. That's who they're looking for, those Rust Belt voters,
00:37:06.060
all right. So, yeah. Forget everything that I said. I think that Stephen A.
00:37:12.180
Smith should definitely run for president. And if you're a Democrat, you
00:37:14.880
should nominate him. I think that'd be fantastic. Okay, this is pretty
00:37:19.400
great. Gretchen Whitmer, the Wicked Witch of Michigan, also the governor
00:37:23.840
there, appeared at the White House a few days ago. And she was there
00:37:28.800
ostensibly to talk about federal funding for an Air National Guard base or
00:37:34.480
something. But what she didn't expect, reportedly, is that, so reportedly she
00:37:42.340
thought this would be a private meeting, but she got led into the Oval Office
00:37:45.340
where a whole gaggle of reporters were waiting for her. And because she didn't
00:37:50.500
want anyone really to know that she was palling around with Donald Trump. And so
00:37:55.300
she walked into this room, into the Oval Office, and all the reporters are
00:37:59.540
there. And she panicked because she didn't want to be seen. So here's how she
00:38:05.720
responded. Let's put the picture up on the screen. Okay, so there's Gretchen
00:38:11.460
Whitmer hiding behind a binder that she's holding in front of her face so that she
0.58
00:38:17.280
isn't photographed. But of course, she was still photographed. It's just that now
00:38:21.700
the photos are of her using... Okay, I saw this photo, and I'm like, what does that
00:38:27.980
remind me of? I couldn't quite place it of her. No, that's my toddlers. Okay, that's
00:38:36.260
every kid I've had at the age of two playing hide-and-seek. That's how one of my
00:38:42.360
two-year-olds, one of the twins right now, if they're playing hide-and-seek, that's how
00:38:45.280
they do it. It's the classic move for toddlers. I was just playing hide-and-seek
00:38:52.160
with the twins yesterday. And one of them did exactly that. They just picked up a
00:38:58.940
thing and held it like this over their face. Because they think that if they
00:39:03.420
can't see you, then you can't see them. Which is very cute for a small child, but
00:39:11.380
I've never seen an adult try that before. I've never seen an adult attempt that move.
00:39:18.260
And I'm just... I'm fascinated by it. And I'm also fascinated that somebody could make it to this
00:39:29.840
level in politics and have zero political instincts at all. And this is not the first
00:39:36.120
incident to demonstrate Whitmer's total lack of political instincts. It's one of many, but this
00:39:41.140
maybe is the worst. This is maybe the most egregious. Because when you find yourself suddenly
00:39:46.340
in the middle of an event with reporters and you don't want to be seen, out of all the possible
00:39:50.720
ways to respond, trying to hide your face behind a stack of folders that you're just holding up like
00:39:56.960
this. Okay, playing like a game of peekaboo with the... That's the worst option on the whole menu
00:40:04.580
of options. It's so bad that if I were in that position, I wouldn't even... That wouldn't be on
00:40:09.260
my menu. I wouldn't think to do that. You would be better off just running out of the room.
00:40:15.100
You'd be better off faking a heart attack to change the subject. You'd be better off pulling
00:40:21.720
a Jamal Bowman and tripping the fire alarm. You would be better off pretending that you are your
0.85
00:40:30.540
own evil twin. You'd be better off just riding with it and then later saying, no, that wasn't
00:40:35.260
me. That was my evil twin. I have an evil twin you never heard about. And she's a Republican.
0.79
00:40:40.720
It's a whole thing. That would be better than putting a binder in front of your face in a photo
00:40:47.400
that will live in it. I mean, her political... It's one of those moments, her political ambitions
00:40:53.020
are done. She cannot be president. She cannot... That never should have been an option to begin
0.84
00:40:59.420
with. And I think it'd be very unlikely that she could even get nominated, much less win the
00:41:03.540
presidency. But now that's over. Yeah, she certainly had presidential ambitions. I think we all know that.
1.00
00:41:11.920
And that's done now. This is one of those... It's one of those rare moments you get where some...
00:41:16.260
Where a politician does something and we can all point to that moment and say, yeah, well, that's
00:41:21.180
done. You're finished. Your career's over. You're never going to advance BA. You're never going to
00:41:26.260
be president because of that moment. Because you held... Even though you've been a terrible governor
00:41:31.140
and have screwed up immeasurably in so many ways, you held a folder in front of your face to hide from
00:41:37.100
the press. And that is the thing. You cannot survive that. Just that... This is what we've learned.
00:41:44.080
As a politician, you could have many scandals. You could screw up in so many ways.
00:41:49.760
And you could survive that because people don't remember it or it's more complicated.
00:41:55.160
But when you do something that can be captured on camera like that, it's just an image.
00:42:00.700
That destroys you, right? So her political ambitions are done forever because of that.
1.00
00:42:11.400
And it really just goes to show that we have a real crisis of midwittery in this country,
00:42:20.700
which is not really a word. But we have a crisis of midwits, especially in the leadership class.
00:42:26.560
And look, I'm happy that people like Gretchen Whitmer are morons. Don't get me wrong. I guess
0.88
00:42:33.080
I'd rather have evil dumb... Instead of evil geniuses. But in a way, I don't know. In a way,
00:42:40.240
there's a part of me that actually would prefer if we had evil geniuses screwing the country up.
00:42:46.820
Because it's less demoralizing to have your country destroyed by evil geniuses.
00:42:51.740
Because they're geniuses, right? I mean, you could always say, like, what are we going to do?
00:42:55.540
There's evil... They're evil and they're geniuses.
00:43:01.300
But instead, we're being run into the ground by evil morons.
00:43:06.020
People who have the strategic intelligence of toddlers.
00:43:08.700
Okay, those are the people driving us into the dirt.
00:43:14.280
The state of Michigan has been destroyed by, you know, Amelia Bedelia here, hiding behind a folder.
00:43:24.800
And there's... I don't know. There's something about that that I find
00:43:27.400
even more depressing, but also funny in its own way.
00:43:32.520
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If you're not a Daily Wire member, you are missing out on the full,
00:45:01.360
ad-free, unfiltered, uncensored shows from the most trusted voices in conservative media.
00:45:06.480
You get live chat during the show where you can talk with us
00:45:08.900
and thousands of fans just like you across the country.
00:45:10.860
And if you're an all-access member, you get extended episodes
00:45:25.880
This morning, I took a little trip down memory lane
00:45:31.580
and went back to a show that I posted about four months ago
00:45:34.020
in the wake of the murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson.
00:45:38.660
And if you recall that show at all, then you remember the position that I took.
00:45:45.380
And my position was and still is that first-degree murder is wrong.
00:45:50.100
It is wrong to shoot a man in the back while he's walking down the street.
00:45:56.180
We should not take the side of people who defend murder or commit it.
00:45:59.440
And that means that just because you don't like a company where somebody works,
00:46:02.940
that doesn't make it morally permissible to walk up and execute anyone on the executive team of that company.
00:46:16.000
But I still think that you can't just kill the people who work there.
00:46:22.520
And I was absolutely, as you may recall, excoriated for it.
00:46:26.500
And you can go back, as I just did, and read the YouTube comments for that show.
00:46:30.320
You can scroll for pages and not find a single comment that agrees with me.
00:46:35.680
My opinion that it's not okay to commit first-degree murder is, judging by the comments,
00:46:41.260
maybe the most unpopular thing I've ever said in my career, which is really, really saying something, as you know.
00:46:51.120
You'll find hundreds of comments, often from self-professed conservatives,
00:46:54.320
not just disagreeing with my stance against first-degree homicide, but actually angry at me for taking that stance.
00:47:00.300
They declared that I'm out of touch, and I'm elitist, for thinking that we shouldn't just start murdering CEOs.
00:47:13.340
Now, of course, I know that most of those comments weren't really from conservatives,
00:47:17.120
and most of them certainly weren't from my actual audience.
00:47:19.860
But I do think that there were at least some people on the right
00:47:22.820
who really did fall into the mass psychosis of defending and siding with a murderous scumbag.
00:47:29.180
And I imagine that most of those people are now embarrassed that they jumped on the pro-murder bandwagon
00:47:34.300
and would probably rather pretend that it never happened.
00:47:37.100
But I think we need to revisit this whole episode so that we can, you know,
00:47:40.920
figure out what sort of lessons we should learn from it.
00:47:43.180
And what brings all this back to mind is an interview that a CNN correspondent named Donnie O'Sullivan did
00:47:51.840
Lorenz, who pretends to be a journalist, was one of Mangione's most unabashedly outspoken cheerleaders.
0.99
00:47:56.960
At the time, she fawned all over him, justified his murderous acts.
00:48:00.920
She even said, as you may remember, she said that she felt joy after hearing that Brian Thompson,
00:48:06.020
who's a father, by the way, and had never been convicted of any crimes, was murdered.
00:48:12.940
And in this interview, which was just posted yesterday, she doubles down and goes even further.
00:48:17.660
And if you were one of these self-professed conservatives taking her side on this issue,
00:48:22.620
I want you to watch even closer and ask yourself if this is really the kind of ally that you want.
00:48:33.540
Hilarious to see these millionaire media pundits on TV clutching their pearls about someone standing a murderer
00:48:40.860
when this is the United States of America, as if we don't lionize criminals,
00:48:46.060
as if we don't have, you know, we don't stan murderers of all sorts,
00:48:52.240
There's a huge disconnect between the narratives and angles that sort of mainstream media pushes
00:49:01.780
And I can tell you, I saw the biggest audience growth that I've ever seen.
00:49:06.340
Because people were like, oh, somebody, some journalist, is actually speaking to the anger that we feel.
00:49:12.720
The women who got her outside court in New York.
1.00
00:49:16.120
So you're going to see women, especially, that feel like, oh, my God, right?
0.99
00:49:19.500
Like, here's this man who's a revolutionary, who's famous, who's handsome, who's young, who's smart.
00:49:27.360
Or he's a person that seems like this morally good man, which is hard to find.
00:49:35.280
Yeah, I just realized women will literally date an assassin before they swipe right on me.
1.00
00:49:43.080
So to review, Nurse Ratched here brags that she experienced the biggest audience growth she's ever seen
00:49:52.320
Then she starts gushing over the murderer, describing him as famous, young, handsome, smart,
00:50:00.060
The CNN correspondent, of course, listens to all this with a smile on his face, then starts giggling.
00:50:06.640
I mean, Taylor Lorenz has always been a cartoon.
00:50:09.500
Now she's playing the role of a cartoon villain.
1.00
00:50:12.740
She's like Cruella de Vil, if Cruella de Vil was a frumpy hypochondriac.
1.00
00:50:17.120
And I must say, again, if you're a conservative who found yourself on the same side as this psychotic demon,
00:50:26.920
You should not be on Taylor Lorenz's side on any topic,
00:50:30.680
especially not when she's explicitly advocating for first-degree murder.
00:50:35.340
And since we're on the subject, and now that perhaps the initial hysteria that led so many people in Taylor Lorenz's camp,
00:50:41.260
led so many people to be in Taylor Lorenz's camp, has worn off a bit,
00:50:44.900
I thought it would be useful to go back and review the two major reasons why
00:50:50.100
we should never applaud a guy who walks up to another guy in the dark and shoots him in the back.
00:50:57.240
Okay, these are the two major reasons, beyond the number one fundamental reason,
00:51:04.520
It breaks not only the laws of man, but also the laws of God.
00:51:07.220
It violates a code written in the Bible, in the Ten Commandments,
00:51:12.920
Even if you never read the Ten Commandments, which rather clearly forbids this kind of activity,
00:51:18.160
you would still know that it's wrong to execute an unarmed man in the street.
00:51:24.060
Okay, so that's all the reason you should need to know that this is not okay.
00:51:33.580
And the first, as I try to explain it at the time,
00:51:36.840
it's that the major voices cheering on or excusing the murder of Brian Thompson
00:51:41.760
will not stop and have not stopped with Brian Thompson.
00:51:47.280
If you're a conservative, you should understand that the Taylor Lorenz's of the world
00:51:51.680
think that you deserve to be executed just as much as Brian Thompson does.
00:51:56.460
You are standing beside and finding common cause with a person who would feel just as joyful
00:52:10.340
You are shouting amen to an argument that can be and will be and has been used
00:52:16.080
to justify violence against you and your loved ones.
00:52:19.740
What does Taylor Lorenz mean when she says that Luigi Mangione is a morally good man?
00:52:27.920
I mean, from my vantage point, he's a spoiled trust fund baby and murderous coward
00:52:33.040
who snuck up behind an unarmed man under the cover of darkness,
00:52:36.680
shot him in the back, and then tried to run away and escape accountability.
00:52:43.640
Well, when Taylor says it, she means simply that Mangione did something that,
00:52:48.460
in Taylor's mind, advanced her own political interests.
00:52:55.420
Whatever advances their interests is morally good, by definition.
00:53:00.260
So if killing a father and husband in cold blood advances her interests,
00:53:05.160
Well, again, you should keep in mind that if you are a conservative,
00:53:09.360
then Taylor Lorenz also thinks that your death advances her interests.
00:53:15.020
Whoever shoots you in the head is also morally good.
00:53:19.460
And, you know, you might say that I'm biased here because making this personal for a moment,
00:53:24.900
I can say that approximately 100% of the leftists who cheered Thompson's murder
00:53:30.380
would also cheer, probably even louder, if I was murdered.
00:53:35.240
I mean, there are a lot of leftists out there waiting eagerly for the day when I drop dead.
00:53:46.020
But they want me dead because I'm an outspoken conservative,
00:53:48.820
and they've determined that it would advance their interests if somebody got rid of me.
00:53:53.720
So am I going to find common cause with the people who are actively and vocally wishing for my demise?
00:54:00.000
Am I going to legitimize an argument that these people would directly use to justify my own murder?
00:54:10.220
I'm not going to do that because I'm not suicidally insane.
00:54:13.160
The second point, related very much to the first, is that as conservatives, one of the most basic things that we're trying to conserve and defend is civilization.
00:54:33.620
Leftism despises civilization and wants to destroy it.
00:54:38.080
We are supposed to be the ones defending and conserving civilization.
00:54:42.220
If we will not conserve civilization, then there's no point to anything.
00:54:48.560
There's no point to any of this if we will not, at the most basic level, conserve and defend civilization.
00:54:57.180
And one of the very first things you need, I mean, if you're forming a civilization from scratch, one of the very first things you need is law.
00:55:10.540
And the most basic law of all laws is the law that forbids you from walking up to someone you don't like on the street and executing them.
00:55:18.460
So, I'm opposed to the murder of Brian Thompson because I am a fan of civilization.
00:55:24.360
I prefer civilization over the alternative, which is degradation, depravity, and chaos.
00:55:31.180
In a civilized society, men who shoot other men in the back are treated as cowardly, murdering scum, which is what they are.
00:55:41.860
We certainly don't fawn over them like groupies.
00:55:43.980
That is if we want to be civilized people, which I do.
00:55:48.320
Because the other option is to be morally debased savages.
00:55:53.680
And that is really what our culture war comes down to.
00:56:18.560
And that is why Taylor Lorenz and everyone who took her side are all today canceled.