Ep. 1575 - Matt Walsh Breaks Down The Deceptive Propaganda In ‘Adolescence’ Netflix Show
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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
00:19:28.460
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
00:20:16.680
beginning was that we can't blame the parents, close quote. So in other words, the single most
00:20:21.060
important variable that's indicative of childhood delinquency, which is a lack of proper parenting,
00:20:25.900
was taken off the table before they even wrote a word of the show. Now, if you remove broken homes,
00:20:32.780
mass migration, and Islamic jihad from the equation, everyone knows that knife crime would plummet in
00:20:40.200
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
00:21:06.340
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
00:22:03.780
really hurt my heart, in a way. And it just made me think, what's going on?
00:22:21.080
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
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And that's why he offers none of his own conclusions about what's
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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
00:25:02.040
a Somali criminal seeking asylum in the UK has avoided
00:25:06.420
returning him to his home country would cause him
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
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
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.
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
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
00:49:16.120
So you're going to see women, especially, that feel like, oh, my God, right?
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.
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.
00:50:12.740
She's like Cruella de Vil, if Cruella de Vil was a frumpy hypochondriac.
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.