Ep. 1637 - This One Shocking Stat Proves That The American Dream Is Dying
Episode Stats
Length
1 hour and 4 minutes
Words per minute
176.96768
Harmful content
Misogyny
33
sentences flagged
Hate speech
31
sentences flagged
Summary
A woman who was beaten in a brutal mob attack speaks publicly for the first time. And a right-wing female influencer posted a picture of her engagement ring, which set off a week of outrage on social media for some reason. We ll talk about all that and more today on The Matt Wall Show.
Transcript
00:00:00.000
Today, The Matt Wall Show, a startling statistic that not nearly enough people are talking about
00:00:03.960
proves that the American dream is dying a rapid death. We'll discuss. Also, the woman who was
00:00:09.140
beaten in that brutal mob attack in Cincinnati speaks out publicly for the first time. More and
00:00:13.340
more people are turning to chat GPT for therapy. Is that really any worse, though, than going to
00:00:18.420
an actual therapist? And a right-wing female influencer posted a picture of her engagement
0.96
00:00:22.660
ring, which set off a week of outrage on social media for some reason. We'll talk about all that
00:00:30.000
The problem with Facebook, Google, and other so-called free services is that they aren't
00:00:58.100
really free at all. You pay for them by letting these huge tech companies record your activity
00:01:02.500
and sell it to advertisers. As the saying goes, if the product is free, you're not the customer,
00:01:07.320
you are the product. The digital version of you is being bought and sold by Facebook's
00:01:12.100
real customers. And who are they? Well, you never know. They could be marketers who want
00:01:17.020
to sell you something, lobbyists who want to change your mind about gun control or anything
00:01:20.920
else, or even foreign governments who want to influence how you vote. If you don't want
00:01:24.920
to be a product that's bought and sold, you need to start protecting your privacy online
00:01:28.620
today. And the way that I do that is with ExpressVPN. If you don't protect your online
00:01:32.460
privacy, your internet service provider can see every website you visit. Third-party data
00:01:37.200
brokers can collect logs from apps and websites, tracking your activity through your IP address
00:01:41.520
to build an incredibly detailed profile of you. But because I use ExpressVPN, 100% of my online
00:01:46.500
activity is rerouted through secure encrypted servers. That means my ISP has no record of my activity
00:01:52.040
and nothing to sell. ExpressVPN also hides my IP address so data brokers can't track me or
00:01:57.560
assemble any profiles about me. Just like that, I'm no longer a product to be sold. You don't have
00:02:02.700
to be a tech expert to use it. Just one click and you're connected. But the tech experts at CNET
00:02:06.860
and The Verge, they agree. ExpressVPN is the number one VPN. I partnered with ExpressVPN because I want
00:02:11.940
all my viewers to have access to this important privacy protection, which is why right now you can get an
00:02:16.400
extra four months free when you go to expressvpn.com slash walsh. That's e-x-p-r-e-s-s-v-p-n.com
0.76
00:02:21.660
slash walsh to get an extra four months totally free. After he graduated from Vanderbilt, a man named
00:02:29.340
Nathan Halbertstadt began working at the Boston Consulting Group. This is a familiar path for
00:02:34.500
students who attend schools that are highly ranked. Often they're hired by one of the big three
00:02:38.560
consulting companies, which on paper means they'll provide useful advice for large businesses and the
00:02:44.020
government, which is how it's supposed to work anyway. Very quickly though, Nathan realized what
00:02:48.000
the job actually entailed. In his words, working for a big consulting group meant that you had to
00:02:52.500
promote, quote, the bureaucratic optimization of opioid sales, mass migration, offshoring, and DEI.
00:02:58.640
You had to churn out bogus statistics to advance anti-American agenda items like that fake McKinsey
00:03:04.580
study a few years back we've talked about, which claimed that diversity somehow makes companies more
00:03:08.720
profitable. That's what consulting actually means in practice. New graduates from Vanderbilt aren't
00:03:15.040
really walking into companies like Boeing and Apple and blowing their minds with their unique
00:03:20.100
insights. Instead, in many cases, they're simply giving executives a pretext to do exactly what they
00:03:24.920
wanted to do all along. So seeing all this, Nathan decided to quit. And instead of manipulating data to
00:03:31.020
promote the destruction of the United States, he decided to spend his time actually identifying statistics
00:03:35.540
that really matter. He would look through government data and try to find important connections that
00:03:40.280
no one else has made before. And the other day, as you may have seen, Nathan accomplished that goal.
00:03:46.220
He published this remarkable chart, which has already been cited by several members of Congress,
00:03:51.000
seen by millions of people. And here it is. As you can see on the screen, it's a graph that shows the
00:03:57.480
estimated percentage of 30-year-olds who are both married and own a home. The data runs from 1950 all the
00:04:05.460
way through 2025. In the 1950s, the number was more than 50%. In other words, in 1950, well over half of
00:04:13.720
the 30-year-olds in the country were both married and living in a home that they owned by the age of 30.
00:04:21.080
But as you can see, the percentage has been steadily dropping since then until it fell off a cliff in the
00:04:25.120
1990s. And now in 2025, the percentage is well below 20%. In fact, according to this estimate, only around 15%,
00:04:32.200
15%, one five of 30-year-olds are married and own a home. Something that was once commonplace in this
0.94
00:04:38.380
country is now rare, from over 50% to 15%. Now, right off the bat, it's impossible to look at an
00:04:45.260
estimate like this without immediately asking, why haven't we heard these numbers before? For all the
00:04:51.720
very granular information we have about gross domestic product and unemployment numbers and
00:04:56.140
per capita manufacturing output. It took a random Vanderbilt grad to produce this particular chart.
00:05:04.560
Now, to be sure, we all knew that these numbers were probably bad. It was very evident that fewer
00:05:08.800
young people were getting married or owning homes, but the scale and the timing of the decline
00:05:13.880
were not very clear. I mean, frankly, this is a lot worse than I think anyone realized, which is why
00:05:19.300
the chart has attracted so much attention. But the numbers were always available to anyone who wanted to
00:05:25.300
look for them. All you have to do is look up the marriage data from the U.S. Census Bureau, which
00:05:29.280
tabulates the median age of first marriage, along with Pew surveys of the percentage of people who
00:05:33.820
are married at 30, and then factor in homeownership data from the census. You know, it's not a perfect
00:05:38.440
calculation. Some estimation is involved. We just talked yesterday about the problems with census data,
00:05:43.880
how unreliable it can be. But the overall story is pretty clear. It's corroborated by other sources,
00:05:49.960
so it seems reliable. In Ohio, for example, researchers at Bowling Green State University
00:05:56.340
have compiled similar estimates. So there's some cross-referencing here, and it seems pretty
00:06:02.680
reliable. Amazingly, though, very few of our political leaders are talking about this. It's not a topic of
00:06:09.340
mainstream conversation at all. I mean, making sure that Americans are getting married and acquiring
0.96
00:06:15.360
homes by the age of 30 should be an urgent priority of every politician in the country. It's hard to
00:06:23.220
think of many other things that could possibly be more important, but it's not getting anywhere near
00:06:30.980
the attention that it should. To the extent that some action is being taken in Washington, it raises
00:06:35.360
some unanswered questions. For example, this week, a very unusual alliance formed in Washington between
00:06:41.420
Elizabeth Warren, who's the socialist from Massachusetts, and John Kennedy, the Republican
00:06:46.400
from Louisiana. The two senators have introduced legislation called the Build Now Act, which would
00:06:51.020
withhold taxpayer funds from states that don't build enough housing while sending taxpayer money to
00:06:55.940
states that build more housing. Now, unlike most proposed legislation that you hear about, this particular
00:07:00.780
bill actually has a good chance of passing because it was just unanimously approved by a Senate
00:07:05.480
committee. And here is Kennedy's explanation of the plan. Listen. The most stunning statistic to me
00:07:13.320
is the fact that the median age of a new homeowner, first-time homeowner in America today, is 38.
00:07:22.360
That's almost 40 before you can afford a home. It hasn't been that many years ago that the median age was 29.
00:07:29.560
We've got a problem. We give $2.3 billion a year in HUD grants to local government for things like housing, sewer, infrastructure, water.
00:07:42.280
$2.3 billion a year. Under Senator Warren and I's proposal, if you increase your housing stock over a five-year period,
00:08:03.640
Here's the other side of that coin. If you don't increase your housing stock over a five-year period,
00:08:13.480
more specifically, if you fall below the median point compared to other states,
00:08:23.400
Now, as a general rule, and I've talked about this many times, whenever Democrats and Republicans,
00:08:27.800
in this case a conservative like John Kennedy and a socialist like Elizabeth Warren, team up
00:08:32.040
on legislation, it's usually a good idea to be skeptical of it. I mean, the only ideas that have
00:08:38.440
bipartisan support in Washington, generally speaking, are bad ones. And as we all know, socialists are
00:08:45.580
well-known for making housing even less affordable by introducing high-minded plans to manipulate markets,
00:08:50.920
as New York City is about to discover the hard way. And that said, more housing is obviously a
00:08:56.200
good idea. Increasing the supply of housing usually means that prices will go down. That's basic
00:08:59.880
economics. And although it's reasonable to be concerned about the federal government throwing
00:09:04.600
taxpayer money around, this is one of the rare times when if it's done right, it makes sense.
00:09:11.320
Certainly, the federal government helped many homeowners in the 1950s with the GI Bill and so on.
00:09:15.720
Now, at the same time, it's reasonable to ask whether this kind of legislation will simply
00:09:19.080
provide incentives for the creation of, say, more dilapidated housing for the homeless to use as
00:09:24.840
drug dens or more rental units for neighborhoods that are already flooded with them. This is a problem
00:09:30.920
that's become increasingly apparent, as you may have noticed. Large institutions are buying up homes
00:09:36.440
and suburbs and renting them instead of putting them up for sale. Watch.
00:09:41.400
America's suburbs undergoing a transformation. We're priced out of the market right now,
00:09:46.680
and we're not the only ones. The dream of owning the house with the white picket fence
00:09:51.640
increasingly giving way to white picket renters. In Lake Villa, Illinois, outside of Chicago,
00:09:59.320
engineer Andrew Decker earns a six-figure salary and only wishes he and his fiancee could buy a home.
00:10:05.640
You could buy a house tomorrow if the price was right, if the interest rates were where they needed to be.
00:10:09.880
But mortgage rates are near seven percent and home prices at record highs. Since the pandemic,
00:10:15.960
the median single-family home price has soared almost $100,000, now topping 400 grand.
00:10:22.920
According to new analysis of census data, renting in the burbs is surging so much,
00:10:27.960
203 suburbs across the country are now majority home renter rather than homeowner. In 15 suburbs,
00:10:35.160
the number of renter households more than doubled between 2018 and 2023.
00:10:39.640
I don't see any end in sight. I really don't. And I and I foresee it getting worse and worse over the
00:10:45.160
next five years. So constructing new housing doesn't necessarily solve this particular problem if the
00:10:50.760
houses are being purchased by institutions and then rented out as apartments. A lot depends on why the
00:10:58.280
homes are being constructed, where they're located, who's buying them. Kennedy's bill does have a provision
00:11:04.520
that provides incentives for new construction in high demand areas. But again, you still might wind up with
00:11:09.800
apartment complexes where actually you want single-family homes, which is not to disparage
00:11:15.400
a particular bill or to declare that it can't possibly help matters. But it's safe to say that this legislation won't
00:11:20.040
come close to solving the underlying problem, which again is that young people aren't getting married
00:11:25.480
and they're not buying homes oftentimes because they can't afford them. Those are those are problems
00:11:31.000
with a lot of different causes, probably too many to list compared to the 1950s. We have, first of all,
00:11:36.360
tens of millions more illegal aliens living inside our borders. We've devalued the dollar to an almost
0.77
00:11:43.240
unprecedented degree. We've opened up our job market to the entire world, driving down employment,
00:11:49.800
on and on. There are also many cultural factors that have, in many cases deliberately by design,
00:11:54.280
made marriage and family life seem less appealing to younger generations. And we do have an older
00:12:00.200
generation, the boomers, who were a disaster. To the institution of marriage, the boomers were an
1.00
00:12:08.040
absolute disaster. Their divorce rates were sky high, so they just destroyed the institution.
00:12:13.480
And they did basically nothing at all to defend the border, protect our sovereignty. Not only did they
00:12:18.840
do nothing, but they intentionally imported all these third world migrants. And not to lay it all at the
1.00
00:12:26.040
feet of one generation, but those two factors alone make the boomer generation, by and large, just a
00:12:32.200
catastrophe. Just an absolute catastrophic generation. And there's just no getting around it. The numbers
1.00
00:12:39.480
speak for themselves. There is one aspect of this new data that's worth homing in on, because it does
00:12:44.760
suggest one practical way forward. In the 1950s, roughly 90% of 30-year-olds were married, and more than
00:12:51.560
50% were homeowners. By contrast, right now, only around 50% of 30-year-olds are married. Roughly 30% are
00:12:58.360
homeowners. So both numbers dropped by huge margins. But the marriage decline has been
00:13:03.480
drastically more significant than the drop in homeownership. More than any other time in this
00:13:08.280
country's history, men and women are choosing not to get married. And there's reason to believe that
1.00
00:13:12.840
this broader cultural trend is what's convincing a lot of young adults to forego homeownership as well.
00:13:18.600
After all, if you're single, the prospect of paying most of your savings to a bank in the form of
00:13:23.560
a down payment for a house isn't exactly appealing. You don't need all that space for yourself and your
00:13:28.200
dog. Before I was married, I never even considered trying to buy a home. It wasn't on the horizon.
00:13:33.560
Then as soon as I got married, I felt a sudden and very strong pull, as many people do, to buy a home,
00:13:40.440
have a piece of land that we could call our own. Within about three years of getting married,
00:13:45.480
we bought our first home. But for single people, the financial sacrifice seems irrational and
00:13:50.360
unnecessary. So if they have any extra money to throw around, they're more likely to put it into
00:13:54.280
a Bitcoin or whatever else. On the other hand, if you're intent on starting a family,
00:13:58.840
then the cost of a mortgage makes a lot more sense. People can make it work in many cases.
00:14:03.960
I've said before that homeownership is attainable for many more people than they think. It's more
00:14:12.040
doable than I think a lot of people think. If you have a full-time job and decent credit,
00:14:16.120
it's often a matter of priorities. And as we look at the plummeting numbers of homeowners who are young
00:14:21.080
and married, it's a fact that just needs to be restated. In this case, as in many other cases,
00:14:26.760
decline is a choice. It is a result of choices that have been made many times by our leaders.
00:14:36.440
It's a result of policies that have been put in place. And make no mistake, this is decline.
00:14:43.080
Millions of young adults who aren't even that young at 30 have now no skin in the game. I mean,
00:14:52.200
no, no real stake in the country or its future. You don't have any, you don't own anything.
00:15:00.360
You don't own anything. You don't have kids. You don't have a family. You're not married.
00:15:04.280
That when you're, when you're in that position, you don't have a stake in the country in this,
00:15:09.960
in the same way that, that people do when you own something, you have property and you have kids,
00:15:16.520
you have a family. Getting married, starting a family, owning property are the basic fundamental
00:15:23.160
pillars of the American dream. They're, they're the starting point in most cases for a fulfilling and
00:15:31.560
productive life and, and for a well-ordered society. As this new data reveals, most young
00:15:37.960
people were able to achieve those milestones in the 1950s, but they're not achieving them anymore.
00:15:42.920
And those numbers are only getting worse by the year. Things are trending in the wrong direction
00:15:49.720
and quickly. And if we want the kind of country that we had in the 1950s, which is to say a country
00:15:55.560
that has the potential to survive for another century, then one way or another, that needs to change.
00:16:10.200
Nearly half of American adults say they would suffer financial hardship within six months if
00:16:14.520
they lost their primary income earner in the house. As a father and husband, I know how important
00:16:19.480
it is to protect my family's financial future. If the worst were to happen, that's where policy
00:16:23.640
genius comes in. Policy genius takes the complexity out of life insurance, making it easy to find and
00:16:28.760
purchase coverage that ensures your loved ones have the security they need if something happens
00:16:33.240
to you. Whether it's covering everyday expenses, paying off debts, or providing funds they can
00:16:38.360
invest for long-term growth, the right policy gives you peace of mind. With policy genius,
00:16:42.760
you can quickly compare quotes from leading insurers to find coverage that works for your family's needs
00:16:48.040
and your budget. With policy genius, you can find life insurance policies starting at just
00:16:51.960
$276 a year for a million dollars in coverage. It's an easy way to protect the people you love
00:16:57.160
and feel good about the future at the same time. As the country's leading online insurance
00:17:01.320
marketplace, policy genius simplifies the life insurance process by letting you compare quotes
00:17:06.440
from America's top insurers with just a few clicks to find the lowest price. Their team of licensed
00:17:11.080
agents walk you through everything step-by-step, answering questions, handling paperwork, and advocating for
00:17:15.480
you throughout the process so you can be informed and make the best decision about your future.
00:17:20.600
Secure your family's future with policy genius today. Head to policygenius.com slash Walsh to
00:17:25.400
compare free life insurance quotes from top companies and see how much you can save. That's
00:17:30.040
policygenius.com slash Walsh. Okay, the woman who was brutally attacked in Cincinnati spoke out publicly
00:17:36.920
yesterday for the first time. She spoke at a press conference. First, we've seen her publicly
00:17:41.320
talking about this incident. So let's watch some of that. First and foremost, I just want to say that
00:17:47.400
I don't want to relive what happened to me, you know, eight or nine days ago. I'm here to talk about
00:17:53.400
the future and how we can change it, how we can prevent this from happening to anybody else. These
00:18:00.280
heinous crimes have to stop. You know, I never want this to happen to anyone else, especially a mother,
00:18:06.840
a daughter, somebody who is loved. So I just know what it's done to my family, not just to me.
00:18:15.480
And I think that moving forward, we do need more accountability. And I definitely think that,
00:18:22.920
you know, we, we need more police officers. But like he said, you know, the judges who are just
00:18:29.400
letting people out with a slap, the man who attacked me and might have permanently damaged me forever,
00:18:36.520
should never have been on the streets ever. And the fact that he had just gotten out of jail
00:18:43.160
previously for something, he should have been in there for years. It's really sad to me because I
00:18:49.640
can't even fathom how many other people who have been attacked by the same type of man over and over and
00:18:56.920
over in Toledo, in Columbus, Cincinnati, Dayton, our streets are being taken over and nobody is doing
00:19:03.960
anything. I am so sad and I need to be the voice to help all of the victims that never got their
00:19:12.760
justice. You could see there the severe facial injuries that she has. And she said at another
0.99
00:19:18.920
point in the press conference that she's in excruciating pain all the time, which, which she
00:19:24.360
certainly looks at. She has brain injuries. Her doctors are surprised that she's even alive.
1.00
00:19:28.920
Uh, she easily could have died, which is very clear. Now there are two, two notes on this. One,
00:19:35.160
first of all, she's right. This, this incident could have easily been avoided. And that's not
00:19:40.600
just by having more police officers around, although that would help, but by the criminal
00:19:45.880
justice system, actually punishing criminals. I mean, it's no surprise that the people who attacked
00:19:50.200
her had criminal records. They could have, and should have already been taken off the street
1.00
00:19:55.880
and they weren't. And people are fed up with it. They're completely fed up with it because now the
00:20:03.260
average American is looking at this and asking, why are we choosing leniency and compassion for
00:20:09.240
violent criminals at the expense of law abiding citizens? I think people are asking why, why do we
00:20:18.900
have to suffer for the sake of the scum of the earth? Which is a very good question. That's the
00:20:25.700
question we should be asking. As I always say, compassion for criminals is cruelty to the innocent.
00:20:32.100
Why are we choosing cruelty to the innocent? Why? We should demand answers to that.
00:20:40.140
And second, on a more positive note, I think it is very significant that this case has gotten
00:20:46.740
all this attention. You know, corporate media is obviously not really paying attention. They're
00:20:52.740
paying attention begrudgingly because we forced them to, but it is still getting a lot of attention.
00:20:59.140
And that's a positive sign because up until very recently, it would have, it would have been
00:21:03.660
pretty inconceivable that a white victim of a violent crime, uh, committed by a non-white person
0.76
00:21:12.000
would end up giving a press conference that is widely covered. I mean, up until recently, this,
00:21:17.640
this case would have gotten no attention at all, right? We'd, we'd never hear about it and that
00:21:22.780
would be it. We just wouldn't hear, but Austin Metcalf is another one. And there have been a lot of
00:21:28.100
Austin Metcalfs, right? Over the years, a lot of victims like him. We don't know. We don't know any of
00:21:33.420
their names. Uh, but we do know Austin's name and we know Holly's name and that's because things are
00:21:43.180
changing. And that change is fueled again by the fact that people are fed up as they, as they should
00:21:51.300
be. And I think people are starting to ask the, the right questions, questions that for the people
00:22:01.480
in charge who've created this situation are, are basically unanswerable questions like, again,
00:22:08.800
you have a violent criminal and you have to choose between prioritizing
00:22:17.020
his compassion for him or prioritizing the safety of the community. It's, it's, it's one or the other.
00:22:27.380
And yet you choose not to prioritize the safety of the community. Why is that? Why would you do that?
00:22:37.800
These are unanswerable questions for them, but we should keep asking them.
00:22:41.320
All right. Here's a story from a few days ago and I'm not even going to read it, but it's a, it's a,
00:22:50.620
it's another story about, I'm not going to read an article about it, but it's another story about a girl
00:22:54.960
who I guess was famous or moderately famous on social media as a child who just turned 18 and
00:23:04.120
then started an only fans and immediately made like a million dollars or something in, in, in five
00:23:10.640
hours or whatever it was. The first 24 hours, she made a million dollars and I'm not going to read
0.93
00:23:15.600
the story or say the person's name because I don't want to advertise her porn business for her. Uh,
00:23:19.940
although you can easily find out the name or maybe you already know it, but I, in my own way,
00:23:25.100
I'd like to not participate in it. I did want to mention the story because it's yet more proof for
00:23:29.940
my point that, uh, that, which is that only fans should not be allowed to exist. I mean, here's,
00:23:37.380
here's another important question we should be asking. Why does that, why do we let this exist?
00:23:40.740
Why does this, why do we allow this to exist? We don't have to. Now, what's actually happening
00:23:50.220
here is that this girl immediately upon turning 18 excitedly went out and became a prostitute
00:23:55.880
and not because she was desperate and poor and, you know, being sex trafficked or whatever. It's
0.96
00:24:02.380
just because she wanted to. And this is what makes only fans so distinct. This is why you can't compare
00:24:09.760
it to, uh, anytime I talk about this and how you've got all these women on only fans, I always have
0.98
00:24:16.000
people that are trying to downplay the significance of it, downplay the problem by saying, oh, prostitution
00:24:20.720
has always existed. Do you know how many women were prostitutes in Victorian England?
00:24:27.400
Well, this is very different. Okay. This is a new era of whorishness in our culture because now we
0.95
00:24:33.960
have a whole generation of prostitutes who cannot be in any way considered victims.
00:24:39.760
Now, 30 years ago, 40 years ago, really any time until right now, if a woman was a prostitute,
0.98
00:24:48.020
that usually meant that she was poor, she was drug addicted, she was being exploited,
00:24:53.820
which doesn't mean that she bears, uh, no blame at all, no moral guilt at all, but it usually
00:25:00.580
meant like, this is someone in a desperate situation. Usually there was a pimp, you know,
00:25:07.480
who would backhand her across the face if she didn't come back with enough money. I mean,
0.67
00:25:10.860
that's the way that these things quote unquote, traditionally were done. But these days,
00:25:15.440
these women are their own pimps, right? There's no one, there's no one whoring them out. They're
1.00
00:25:20.880
doing it themselves. Now, I mean, only fans as an organization, as a company is, but only fans
00:25:26.100
isn't like coming into their home, forcing them into it. Only fans is the platform is providing
00:25:33.620
them a platform to be their own pimps. It's like a franchise, a franchise opportunity.
00:25:40.800
So now you have women, girls who just turned 18, women in their twenties, soccer moms in their thirties
00:25:46.360
and forties, uh, you know, women of all types, women who are not poor are not desperate, are not
0.95
00:25:54.000
necessarily drug addled or anything who choose to whore themselves out. They exploit themselves for,
0.87
00:26:01.480
for no reason other than making some extra spending money and getting attention from,
00:26:07.220
from strangers on the internet. It's very bleak. You know, I mean, the fact that women were given
1.00
00:26:15.100
the opportunity to become prostitutes in the comfort of their own home and so many millions
0.87
00:26:19.060
of them eagerly took advantage of it, that's bleak. That's the kind of thing that really gives
00:26:26.860
ammo to the, uh, the red pill guys. That's it gives them a lot of ammo. When you look at that and
00:26:34.020
say, okay, well, this opportunity was given to women and said, Hey, you can be a prostitute
1.00
00:26:39.300
and millions jumped at it. I mean, that's, you look at the numbers, there are like three and a
00:26:45.720
half, 4 million women selling their bodies and only fans. If you break it down, you find that
00:26:50.060
it equates to like 2% of all women in America between the ages of 18 and 45, 2%. Now maybe you'd
1.00
00:26:59.380
want to say, well, 2% is not that bad. You know, it's not, it's not, it's not a really high
00:27:02.520
number. No, that's bad. 2% of all women in that age. That's hard. That's a nightmare.
1.00
00:27:13.280
You kidding me? 2% of all women in the country in that age bracket. That is staggering.
0.99
00:27:21.320
Especially again, when you consider that these are elective prostitutes, these are all women who by no
0.97
00:27:25.700
means have been forced into it. They could all get real jobs or in a lot of cases, they don't even
00:27:31.760
need a job. Like we're not talking about 2% of women who are sex trafficked, which would be a
1.00
00:27:37.200
different kind of horror. We're talking about 2% of women who are sex trafficking themselves for fun.
00:27:44.540
And that goes back to my question, which is why do we allow this? Why is it legal?
00:27:51.900
There's so many things that we allow in this country and because we sit back and say, well,
00:27:55.700
there's nothing we can do about it. Well, we wouldn't want to pass a law, but we wouldn't want to do that.
00:28:01.760
We wouldn't want to like stop someone from doing something they want to do. That's the worst thing
00:28:06.680
in the world. So many people, including many conservatives have been brainwashed by this
00:28:14.340
garbage, by this, by this libertarian nonsense that as long as someone wants to do something,
00:28:20.200
we can't stop them. The greatest sin in the world is to stop someone from doing a thing they want to
00:28:26.820
do. This is the mindset that so many people have. And, um, I really, the ultimate, the ultimate red
00:28:35.500
pill is to get past that. Okay. I don't want to hear anyone's red pilled until you, until you realize
00:28:41.140
that, you know, we can act, it's like laws are good. It doesn't mean every, there's a lot of bad
00:28:45.140
laws, but in general laws are, it's a good, it's a good thing to have laws. And just because somebody
00:28:50.460
wants to do something, that's actually not a good enough reason why they should be allowed to do
00:28:55.540
it. There are a lot of things that people want to do that they shouldn't be allowed to do.
00:29:00.000
Why? Because we're, we're, we're civilized people. We want to be in a civilized society,
00:29:04.120
which means that your justification for doing something has to be more than I wanted to do it.
00:29:10.060
Um, and when your behavior is objectively, deeply detrimental to, to, uh, the country as a whole,
00:29:22.600
to the, to, to the, the, the wellbeing of, of, of the country, then you just shouldn't be allowed
00:29:28.340
to do it. And there's really no argument in response other than, but I want to.
00:29:35.980
What's the other argument? Oh, I have a right. I have a right.
00:29:40.060
Here's the other red pill realizing that like 90% of the rights people are constantly claiming
00:29:44.940
don't exist. It doesn't mean anything. I have a right to be a prostitute. What do you mean?
0.94
00:29:51.000
What do you mean you have that right? Like from where, where are you deriving that? What does it
00:29:54.680
mean? Right? What are you talking about? Yeah, but see, so you're, you're like born with this like
00:29:59.200
mystical entitlement to go, so to be a whore. Is that, is that what you're saying?
0.53
00:30:03.620
Where does that come from? If I go looking for the, you, you have a right to be a prostitute.
1.00
00:30:10.540
Okay. Well, where is that right? Well, where can I find it? Oh, it's invisible. It's like this
00:30:14.900
invisible thing that you, it's like your imaginary friend. It doesn't, it's not real. It doesn't
00:30:19.340
exist. Okay. The only, the only right that means anything are like the God given. And this is a,
00:30:26.400
this is a, a, obviously a doctrine that our country is founded on God given, God given rights that,
00:30:31.440
that, that are, that are specifically imbued by the creator God. Okay. And did God, did the creator
00:30:40.620
God imbue us, uh, imbue women to go with the right to go be prostitutes? Uh, no.
0.94
00:30:49.660
So this is clearly prostitution. The fact that it's being done through a screen is irrelevant.
00:30:56.500
You know, whatever it is that women are doing on OnlyFans now, imagine that they were doing that,
1.00
00:31:00.240
putting on that show in person in a motel room for some guy. In that case, nobody would have any
00:31:06.620
trouble, you know, accurately assessing it as prostitution. So then you put a screen in between
00:31:12.140
them and suddenly it's not prostitution. What if she was in the room with him, but she was doing
0.98
00:31:19.020
this on video and he was only watching the video. Is it now not prostitution? So just like the presence
00:31:25.800
of a video camera, all of a sudden means not prostitution, that makes no sense.
00:31:35.700
Uh, it's actually not hard to define people act like it's hard. Well, how do you define pornography?
00:31:39.800
How do you define prostitution? Uh, not that hard, not hard to define.
00:31:43.200
Uh, prostitution is performing a sex act for money. That's prostitution. Okay. And it's not,
1.00
00:31:54.620
it's not, well, anything you do for money is, no, performing a sex act for money is prostitution.
00:32:01.260
So in any form, it doesn't matter if you're in your own home, you're in someone else's home,
00:32:05.580
you're in a motel six, you're on a street corner, you're in a back alley. It doesn't matter.
00:32:10.040
No matter where you are, you're performing a sex act for money. Women and OnlyFans are performing
1.00
00:32:16.000
sex acts for money. So they are prostitutes. Prostitution is already illegal in 49 of 50
00:32:23.540
States. So why in the world would we not apply that to OnlyFans? Why do we have this weird carve
00:32:32.140
out where we say prostitution is illegal. You can't do it unless you're, unless it's a subscription
00:32:37.060
model, then it's okay. None of that makes any sense to me. None of it makes any sense.
00:32:46.280
A few days ago, we talked about the interview that, uh, washed up former CNN anchor Jim Acosta
00:32:51.260
did with a dead child. This is a, uh, interview in quotes. Of course, this is a kid who died in a
00:32:57.140
school shooting, but was quote unquote brought back to life by AI. Uh, and, uh, he, and Jim Acosta
00:33:03.580
interviewed the AI and speaking of bleak, I mean, it's one of the bleakest things you'll
00:33:07.280
ever see and creepiest. And, uh, now the father of the kid is speaking out and he's defending
00:33:13.300
their decision to reanimate, uh, the son with AI and saying that if you disagree with that
00:33:21.800
Hello everyone. Um, this is Manuel Oliver. I am Joaquin Oliver's father today. He should
00:33:30.380
be turning 25 years old and my wife, Patricia and myself, we, we asked our friend Jim Acosta
00:33:39.220
to, to make an interview, have an interview with our son because now thanks to AI, we can bring
00:33:48.800
him back. It was our idea. It was our plan and it's still our plan. We, uh, feel that Joaquin
00:33:58.440
has a lot of things to say. And as long as we have an option that allows us to bring that
00:34:04.740
to you and to everyone, we will use it. So stop, uh, blaming people, um, about where is
00:34:13.020
he's coming from or blaming Jim about what he was able to do. Um, if the problem that
00:34:19.980
you have is with the AI, then you have the wrong problem. The real problem is that my
00:34:25.740
son was shot eight years ago. So if you believe that that is not the problem, you are part of
00:34:33.660
Now, listen, I'm not going to go too hard on this father or their family. I don't, I
00:34:38.060
don't, I don't like how they're pushing gun confiscation laws. I hate this AI thing. I
00:34:43.300
think it's a horror show, but I'm not going to attack parents who lost a child. If that
00:34:46.900
happened to me, who knows what I would do? I mean, I think I'm strong enough to withstand
00:34:50.500
a lot of stuff, but that would, that would break me. That would just destroy me. I would
00:34:54.400
never be the same again. So there's no telling what I would, I mean, I can't pass judgment.
00:34:59.740
I can't look at that and say, I would never do that if I, because I have no clue what I'd be
00:35:02.840
a different person. I'm, I'm a totally different person at the other side of that experience.
00:35:07.900
And, um, so I just can't, I really can't judge. I can't pass judgment on the parents who lose
00:35:17.000
their children, you know, uh, unless they do, unless their behavior is so gratuitous and over
00:35:23.860
the line that it's the kind of thing that, uh, you have no choice, but to speak out against,
00:35:27.960
but, but, but generally speaking with something like this, um, it's, uh, hard to pass judgment.
00:35:35.420
So all that said, what I really want to say is that I understand the temptation to use this
00:35:40.480
technology to, to try to reconnect with a lost loved one. We talked about this a few days ago,
00:35:45.540
how the dad said that his wife, the child's mother spends hours a day talking to this AI.
00:35:52.380
And that is very sad. I mean, that's like one of the saddest things I've ever heard.
00:35:58.720
And again, I'm not going to judge the mom. I might do the same thing in her shoes.
0.90
00:36:02.500
I might be so totally desperate and broken that I would do that. I don't know.
00:36:07.140
And that's why I'm just very worried about this technology. I've expressed my worries about AI
00:36:10.780
many times. And here's another level of worry, another dystopian sort of awful application of it.
00:36:16.720
And, uh, and it makes me ask again, here's another area where are we going to even attempt to do
00:36:23.200
anything to prevent the nightmare that we're currently waltzing into? I like anything.
00:36:30.940
And I know you might tell me, well, we can't, we can't stop all of it. And this is an AI is an
00:36:35.240
unstoppable force. And in many ways that's true, but does that mean we're not going to do anything?
00:36:39.380
No guardrails, nothing, nothing at all. You're telling me that we can, we can, we can do zero
00:36:46.380
percent. I don't buy that. At the very least we can try. So are we going to pass any laws at all
00:36:54.380
to govern this technology and the companies that produce it? Or are we just going to sit here,
00:37:00.800
slack jawed, watching in horror as they do whatever they want. And they do these things that we all
1.00
00:37:07.380
recognize are terrible. Like you look at this, a grieving mother spending hours a day trying to
00:37:15.280
reconnect with her dead child to an AI. You look at that and you go, that is one of the worst things
00:37:20.600
I've ever heard of. I can easily see that the, uh, the, the slippery slope that this leads to,
00:37:28.780
it'll be really bad for everybody. Um, now that you'll have AI hucksters out there promising that
00:37:39.080
they can reanimate your, your dead child, your dead parent, your dead loved one. I mean,
00:37:44.340
we could all see that this is horrific. I mean, it is absolutely horrific. And, um,
00:37:51.980
and yet there are very few people saying, Hey, maybe we should think about some laws. Like maybe
00:37:56.300
there are some things we, maybe there's a few things we can do here rather than, than,
00:38:00.040
than sitting here impotent. Um, just assuming at the outset that there's nothing we can do to
00:38:06.980
prevent or mitigate the dystopian nightmare scenario that we are again, are just like
00:38:13.240
strolling into. Um, so I'd like to think about that. Finally, staying on AI, you know,
00:38:21.760
there've been some stories recently about a worrying, uh, but totally predictable trend
00:38:25.640
a rise in people using AI, specifically chat, chat GPT as a therapist. And now, uh, changes are
00:38:36.260
being made supposedly to curb this kind of usage USA today reports in a case of it's not you. It's
00:38:40.820
me. The creators of chat GPT no longer want the chat bot to play the role of therapist or trusted
00:38:45.400
confidant. Sure. They don't open AI, the company behind the popular bot announced that it had
00:38:50.620
incorporated some changes, particularly mental health focused guardrails designed to prevent
00:38:54.340
users from becoming too reliant on the technology with a focus on people who view chat GPT as a
00:38:59.220
therapist or a friend. The changes come months after reports detailed negative, particularly
00:39:04.060
worrisome user experiences, raised concerns about the model's tendency to validate doubts,
00:39:08.960
fuel anger, urge impulsive actions, or reinforce negative emotions and thoughts.
00:39:14.160
Uh, meanwhile, Sam Altman, the CEO of open AI has recently warned people that if they use chat
00:39:18.800
GPT as a therapist and they reveal private personal information, that none of that stuff is
00:39:22.940
confidential or protected. It is when you say it to your therapist, it is when you say it to your
00:39:27.120
doctor or your lawyer, but the chat GPT is none of those things. It's not a person. So none of that
00:39:31.360
stuff is protected, which means that it can be revealed. Uh, if there was a lawsuit or subpoena or
00:39:35.580
something, all that stuff is out there. It could be revealed at any time, which should be obvious,
00:39:40.240
but apparently this was a revelation to a lot of people. Um, but the funny thing is to me, aside from
00:39:45.380
the privacy problems is, you know, rather than, than spending another 10 minutes lamenting AI,
00:39:49.960
I will say that I don't think using chat GPT as a therapist is any worse in most cases than going
00:39:56.160
to an actual therapist. I mean, I'm not recommending it. I don't think you should use chat GPT as a
00:40:00.820
therapist. I'm just saying that human therapists oftentimes are not any better and can be worse.
00:40:08.720
It's funny because what, what, what the article said about, well, they'll validate, all they do is
00:40:12.960
validate and affirm. Well, yeah, that's welcome to therapy. I mean, that's 95% of all therapists.
00:40:20.080
Affirmative therapy has been the, the, uh, the way now for a long time. So when you
00:40:26.900
have something you're struggling with, really what you should do in most cases, not all, not all,
00:40:33.400
most what you should do is forget about therapy altogether. I mean, the urge to sit down and tell
00:40:40.160
your life story and run through your list of grievances and whine and complain and sulk and
00:40:44.420
wallow in your misery. That urge is an urge that should be rejected. It should be suppressed.
00:40:53.040
You know, you don't need therapy. You need to go for a run. You need to lift weights. You need to
00:40:56.500
go outside and get some fresh air. You need to, you need to start a, start a project, do something
00:41:01.740
with your time. Right. That I found that to be effective. I find all these things to be effective,
00:41:09.040
but I find that I'm, I'm always in a much better place mentally. My, my head, my head space.
00:41:19.380
I hate that phrase is, uh, is in a, is better when, when I, when I've got like a project that
00:41:24.920
I'm working on, you know, cause that that's, it's something to focus on. So it's like something
00:41:29.320
to focus on. It gives you clear, like, this is the thing that I'm doing. Uh, it gives you something
00:41:33.980
to look forward to, to, to the completion. So that can be helpful. I think all these things,
00:41:38.240
all this stuff is helpful, but most of all, but what all these things have in common,
00:41:43.820
you're working on a project, you're going, you're lifting weights, you're going for a run,
00:41:48.180
whatever it is, all these things are therapy and much better than talk therapy. Most of the time,
00:41:53.880
what do they have in common? Is that you stop thinking about yourself when you do them
00:42:01.120
going for a run can be cathartic because especially as you get into it and you're running,
00:42:07.680
uh, it, and, and it's, it's hard and you're out of breath and all of that. You're not, you can't,
00:42:13.780
you're not focused on yourself anymore, right? When you're saying, when you're lifting weights,
00:42:17.820
when you're, when you're doing, when you're working on some project, we're doing something
00:42:20.340
creative. You're not, you're not just obsessing about yourself. You're not like staring back at
00:42:26.120
yourself and your internal mirror, just gazing at your own reflection. Um,
00:42:31.120
and 95% of the time that is the solution, right? I mean, there is no solution to everything you're
00:42:39.380
going to struggle with mentally, but the best way to quote unquote treat it most of the time is just
00:42:44.120
to not, is to stop thinking about it, stop obsessing over it. And the problem is that talk therapy,
00:42:49.060
uh, it requires the opposite. It's all you're doing is sitting there talking about yourself the whole
00:42:54.680
time. That's why you're there. And it's this narcissistic urge, I think that drives people to
00:42:59.540
therapy. Most of the time, the desire to talk about themselves and vent every petty frustration
00:43:03.560
and anxiety they have in their heads. It's not healthy to actually do that. The more, the more
00:43:07.960
you do it, the more you want to keep doing it. It's kind of like a drug. It's a, it's like crack,
00:43:11.540
which is why you've got these people that go to therapy for decades and never stopped going and
00:43:16.000
never get better. But the reason they keep going back is that they're actually addicted to it.
00:43:19.260
You know, you have the psychological industry that pathologes everything, pathologia, patho,
00:43:25.520
whatever the word is tripping over it. Um, they make everything into a pathology and they talk
00:43:31.220
about everything as an addiction. You don't hear them talking about therapy addiction
00:43:35.200
with his, which is his own pathology. Now, does that mean that therapy is never effective? I'm not
00:43:43.420
saying that it could help you maybe in some limited circumstances, but the problem with therapy is
00:43:47.820
I've argued many times is that the effectiveness of the therapy depends entirely on whether the
00:43:53.520
therapist possesses deep personal wisdom and insight. Because a therapist is not a doctor
00:44:02.160
treating a medical disorder. A therapist is there to deal with problems of the mind and the spirit
00:44:07.960
problems of the soul. The therapist is basically a soul doctor. We don't call him that, but that's what
00:44:14.340
it is. Which can be fine in theory, but only those with great wisdom can do that. And by the way,
00:44:23.680
somebody with great wisdom, the first thing they're going to do is they're going to tell 90% of people
00:44:27.880
that come in their office that you shouldn't be here. Go lift weights, right? 90, 95% of people
00:44:34.640
come in. If they have wisdom, they're going to tell them to leave because you don't need, you actually
00:44:39.460
don't need this. This will hurt you. Sitting around talking about your problems and whining,
00:44:42.660
like you, you will hurt you. You'll be better off. Go, go paint a picture, go do, just do something,
00:44:46.560
anything, right? Get a hobby. Um, and for the five to 10% who are left, uh, it, it, it, you know,
00:44:56.160
what you, what you, uh, if you're going to therapy to actually receive therapy, to get something in
00:45:02.240
return, to get some insight into your problems that again, you need someone with deep wisdom.
00:45:06.260
If all you want is a sounding board to someone who just sit there and, and, and not move as you
00:45:14.900
pummel them with your problems, well, then why not? You might as well just use a chat GPT.
00:45:20.400
Um, but if you want to receive therapy, if you want actual, uh, insights, then you need somebody
00:45:26.360
with deep wisdom. And, um, many therapists do not have that. You know, they just don't. A degree is
00:45:32.340
no guarantee of wisdom. Um, and, and, you know, of course for millennia, people consulted when they
00:45:39.060
had these kinds of, you didn't have for, for, for thousands of years in human history, there was no
00:45:43.040
such thing as a therapist. Didn't exist. That didn't exist. That hasn't existed since the last
00:45:46.680
hundred, 200 years. You know, this is a relatively modern phenomenon. And, uh, what did people do before
00:45:53.640
that? Well, they would consult the elders in their families or their villages for wisdom. They talk to
00:45:59.620
their parents, their grandparents, their great grandparents. Well, now you've got like a 45
00:46:03.640
year old adult turning to some random 29 year old woman with a degree in social work who has far
00:46:09.860
less life experience and wisdom than most of the people she's advising. So it's totally absurd.
00:46:17.540
And not only that, but to make matters worse, a lot of therapists get into that line of work
00:46:21.280
because they themselves have psychological problems. The thing that drove them into the field
00:46:26.300
is their obsession with their own problems, which is why for a lot of therapists, if you get to know
00:46:32.260
them in their personal life, these are like dysfunctional people. I'm not saying again, I I'm
00:46:36.660
speaking in general terms. This is a common, this is common though. This is, this is a common
00:46:42.400
phenomenon that you'd get to know someone as a therapist and they're totally dysfunctional in
00:46:46.540
their personal life. Their personal life is a mess and they got all kinds and you know them
00:46:51.540
personally, like this person is worse than, I mean this, if anyone needs therapy, it's this person.
00:46:59.300
So how could they possibly be giving it? Um, so that's the, that's the problem.
00:47:08.840
And when I've talked about this, I've been, I've been told that, well, Hey,
00:47:11.640
what else are you supposed to do? If you have childhood trauma, if you were the, uh,
00:47:16.360
someone said to me the other day, they said, well, haven't you ever, you know, you're speaking like
00:47:20.840
someone who's never been the victim of something? Well, if you've been the victim of something,
00:47:24.900
then this is what you need therapy. Okay. Well, no, you know, you're speaking like someone who spent
00:47:29.900
way too much time in therapy. That's what you're speaking like. Because, uh, otherwise you would
00:47:35.540
know that everyone's been the victim of something. Not all, not, not, not to the same degree. I mean,
00:47:41.040
some things are worse than other things, but everyone's been the victim of, of, of many things.
00:47:46.720
Everyone has been the victim in situations like thousands of times in their lives. Everyone has
00:47:52.040
literally everybody. Um, and most of the time sitting around and, uh, thinking about that is
00:47:59.980
not going to help you. Your childhood, this is your childhood. It's, it was what it was. It's over.
00:48:09.920
It's over now. You're an adult now. Like sitting around and still thinking about, oh, my dad,
00:48:19.220
he, I was, I did saw, I did soccer for five years. My dad only came to one soccer match.
00:48:27.800
Yeah. Well, what ages, how old were you? 10? What are you now? 45? What are you still thinking
00:48:35.540
about that for? Okay. He should have been to more soccer matches. He should have done a better job.
00:48:41.280
Right. He should have, but he, but he didn't, but he didn't. So that happened. It's over. You
00:48:46.100
can't redo it. You want to join a soccer league now and like force your dad to come watch,
00:48:50.740
watch your old fat ass play soccer. Is that, is that the way you're going to rectify this?
0.78
00:48:55.140
Probably not. So it's over. It already happened.
00:48:59.880
This is what the therapist should most of the time be saying. Like, what do you want me to do about
00:49:02.740
that? Oh, that, oh, that happened for 35 years ago when you were seven. What do you want me to
00:49:07.640
do about it? It's over. It already happened. So are you going to move on with your life or not?
00:49:16.460
The, the answer to the bad things that happened to you when you were younger, the answer is nothing.
00:49:23.360
Like the, what the solution to those things is nothing at all. There is no solution. You cannot,
00:49:27.600
that already happened. You can't solve it. So it's already happened. So it's all baked in now.
00:49:32.740
And that just is what it is. So move on with your life or don't, or spend your whole life like
00:49:41.080
revolving around just like spiraling around these, this, this list of grievances. Many of them may be
00:49:49.160
legitimate, but you can spend your whole life in a spiral orbiting right now. Now you're like a moon.
00:49:55.320
You're not even the planet and you're all, you're a moon orbiting around this, this giant cluster of
00:50:03.480
complaints and grievances and past harms and hurts. And that's all you ever do. Uh, you could live that
00:50:09.980
way or you can move on. I suggest moving on. You may have noticed that, uh, I don't shave much. I do
00:50:17.580
ever have opinions about men pretending to be women and women pretending to be men. And so does Jeremy's
00:50:22.720
razors. When Harry's pulled their advertising from the daily wire for saying that boys are boys and
00:50:27.820
girls are girls, we launched Jeremy's razors to be the sole company in the industry that isn't afraid
00:50:32.440
of biological reality. Well, right now you can try Jeremy's razors for just seven 99. You heard that
00:50:37.280
right? Seven 99. That's their lowest price ever. And look, yeah, you know, I don't recommend shaving,
00:50:42.220
but if I did, it would be the Jeremy's razors that I'd be recommending. Go to Jeremy's razors.com
00:50:47.360
today and join the fight against radical gender ideology, but don't tell them I sent you that's
00:50:52.440
Jeremy's razors.com. There's a lot coming to daily wire plus and it's not inclusive. It's not safe.
00:50:57.460
It's not moderated by NPR. You'll love it on August 13th, the Pope and the Fuhrer unburied the lie.
00:51:03.200
They hoped we never fact check. And it exposes how Pope Ius the 12th didn't stay silent during
00:51:07.800
world war two. And now the Vatican's receipts are wide open this fall. Isabel Brown's new show
00:51:12.500
joins the lineup alongside the most trusted voices of conservative media, all ad-free uncensored
00:51:16.940
with live chat. So you're not just watching, you're part of the conversation. We built this
00:51:20.840
because no one else would. Now it's yours too. Go to dailywire.com and become a member today.
00:51:33.940
There has been a discourse raging on X over the past couple of days, not important or intelligent
00:51:40.280
or worth your time or mine. And that's exactly the kind of content this segment was made for. So
00:51:44.540
here we are. A few days ago, the right-wing commentator, Sarah Stock, who we've mentioned
00:51:48.040
before on this show, apparently got engaged. She posted a picture of her hand bearing the new
00:51:52.620
engagement ring with a caption that says, I won. Pretty standard thing for a woman to post
1.00
00:51:57.060
after getting engaged. Nothing provocative or particularly notable about it. I won is like
00:52:02.460
a slightly aggressive caption, but who cares? Not, not anything. No big deal.
00:52:08.600
If one feels inclined to respond at all, you'd think that something along the lines of congratulations
00:52:13.600
would be the only response worth making. But that is not how certain other female right-wing
1.00
00:52:19.180
influencers, quote unquote, decided to respond. Instead, a number of them chimed in by mocking
00:52:24.800
the size of the ring and laughing at it because it is, by their standards, too small. There are a
00:52:30.880
couple of male influencers, homosexual alleged conservatives for the most part, also joined in the mockery.
00:52:37.020
And I'm not going to say any of their names or put their comments up on the screen. You've
00:52:40.480
probably never heard of them, so their names won't mean anything to you. And also, I don't
00:52:43.340
want to reward this kind of engagement bait, pun sort of intended, by giving them free publicity
00:52:48.280
on my platform. Suffice it to say, these are some of the most shallow and useless conservative
00:52:52.740
influencers in a market crowded with a whole lot of shallow, useless ones. This sniping about the
00:52:59.540
size of the ring devolved quickly into a female right-wing influencer catfight. And very soon,
1.00
00:53:04.940
a whole bunch of them were taking shots at each other, spreading embarrassing gossip.
00:53:09.400
Again, I'm not going to repeat any of it. I don't know what's true and what isn't.
00:53:13.000
Basically, they're all accusing each other of being low-class sluts. And I have no idea who's
00:53:17.740
right, but when it comes to that, I suspect they all are. All in all, it has been a humiliating week
00:53:24.420
for the right-wing e-girl community, which is a change of pace from all the weeks up until now,
00:53:28.940
which have also been humiliating. As embarrassing and ridiculous as all this is, I do think there
00:53:33.680
are two mostly unrelated points worth making. Maybe they aren't worth making. I don't know,
00:53:37.920
but we will anyway. And first of all, you know, this is kind of like, I suppose, a pet peeve of
00:53:43.640
mine. But this thing about ring size, let's make this clear. Unless you're rich, you should not be
00:53:51.780
spending tens of thousands of dollars on an engagement ring. Putting yourself into five-figure
00:53:57.860
debt for the sake of buying jewelry is not a flex. It's not something to brag about. It makes you a
00:54:05.940
moron. Now, you've probably heard the rule, quote-unquote, that a man is supposed to spend three months
00:54:11.360
salary on an engagement ring. Well, that rule was invented by, you guessed it, a jewelry company.
00:54:17.020
And you can see why they like the rule. In fact, every company has a rule where you as the customer
00:54:22.620
are supposed to spend a lot of money on whatever they're selling. If you walk into a car dealership,
00:54:27.360
you discover that there's a, there's kind of a rule where you're supposed to buy the most expensive
00:54:31.380
type of car with all the features and upgrades. They're very insistent on it. Isn't that funny?
00:54:37.180
Isn't that weird? It's a funny thing about people who sell stuff. They want you to buy the stuff.
00:54:42.200
They want you to spend as much money as they're able to convince you to spend. That's their rule.
00:54:47.660
But your rule as a rational adult should be different. Your rule should be that you buy
00:54:51.920
only what you can afford. Your rule should be that you aren't going to begin your life as a married
0.91
00:54:57.340
couple by plunging yourself into staggering debt for the sake of buying a slightly bigger diamond.
00:55:03.060
Spending three months salary on jewelry is insane behavior. I mean, spending three months salary on
00:55:09.700
anything other than a down payment on a house is insane behavior. If you want an actual rule to
00:55:17.260
govern your ring shopping, or at least some kind of guide for it, uh, it's all totally arbitrary,
00:55:23.980
but I'll make us something at least as more reasonable. If it is still arbitrary, how about
00:55:27.460
this? Spend no more than a week's salary, no more than a week. And now if you're rich,
00:55:33.920
that's enough to buy a sizable ring. If you're not rich, it's enough to buy something extremely
00:55:39.420
modest. And if you're not rich, you shouldn't be pretending that you are rich when you're at
00:55:44.900
the jewelry store. In fact, of all the places to pretend to be rich, that's the worst place.
00:55:50.020
Now here's another arbitrary, but I think reasonable guideline. Don't spend five figures on a piece
00:55:56.360
of jewelry unless you have say half a million liquid in the bank. You know, even if you have
00:56:03.740
a hundred thousand in the bank, a $10,000 ring, which is the lowest level of five figures, obviously
00:56:08.000
is 10% of your liquid assets. That's foolish to spend that much. Now, when I proposed to my wife,
00:56:15.400
I was very broke. I bought her a discount ring for a few hundred bucks because it was all I could
00:56:23.700
afford. And years later, when I was in a significantly better financial position, I bought
00:56:30.740
her a much more expensive ring. And now I buy her jewelry all the time. I can afford it now. I couldn't
00:56:35.720
back then. I had to earn my way to that position. It took a long time. It took a long time. Most people,
00:56:42.060
if you'll ever get to a point where you can afford $15,000 on a ring or a necklace or something.
00:56:49.800
And a lot of people, you'll just, you'll never be in a spot where you can afford that, which is fine.
00:56:53.740
You know, that's also fine. But if you're going to be in that spot, it's going to take a long time
00:56:58.000
to get there. It takes a long time and a lot of hard work and you can't cut the line. You cut the
00:57:02.100
line, you're going to pay for it. There are very few like 20, 20 somethings out there who actually can
0.93
00:57:09.500
afford 15 grand for a thing that you're going to wear, right? Now, my wife never complained about
0.98
00:57:18.420
the modest ring or showed any disappointment at all. And for the first several years of our marriage,
00:57:23.660
when I never bought her any expensive gifts of any kind, she didn't whisper a word of complaint.
00:57:32.140
And, but here's a note for young men. If you're about to propose to a woman who actually expects an
0.58
00:57:36.520
expensive ring, who will be disappointed if you stay within your budget, well, here's the good
00:57:42.960
news. You could save your money. Don't propose to her, break it off right now and go find a woman who
0.96
00:57:49.320
is not a superficial materialistic bimbo. I mean, find a woman who, when you propose, will see you as
1.00
00:57:55.360
the prize, not the ring. If you don't have a lot of money, but you have to pretend you do for her
00:58:03.460
sake, she's not the one. Okay. That's a woman who will screw your life up, run away while you still
1.00
00:58:10.460
can. Now, for me, my wife knew that I was broke. There was no hiding it. And I never tried to. She
00:58:17.400
got in on the ground floor with me. We built a life together. And that's what you should be looking
00:58:20.740
for. You don't, you don't need a lot of money to get married, but you do need, if you're a man,
00:58:25.660
a woman who isn't materialistic and shallow. And if you have that, then marriage doesn't need to be
1.00
00:58:30.340
a great expense. You know, these days people have the idea that, and this is one of the reasons we
00:58:34.180
talked at the start of the show about the declining marriage rates. This is obviously not the whole
00:58:38.600
picture, but part of the picture, part of the reason I think that the rates are declining is that
00:58:42.060
people have this idea that, well, I can't afford to get married. I hear this all the time. I can't
00:58:47.280
afford to get married. What do you mean afford? There's no entry fee. What do you mean afford?
00:58:52.680
I mean, if anything, you can't afford not to get married. If anything, like teaming up with somebody
00:58:56.680
and working together to build a life that should be more affordable. You should find that life is
00:59:02.260
more affordable after you get married than it was before. But the problem is that these days people
00:59:08.340
have the idea that getting married is expensive because we choose to spend thousands of dollars on the
00:59:15.480
ring, tens of thousands on the wedding reception, thousands more on the honeymoon. We've decided
00:59:21.660
as a culture that, you know, we have to put a six-figure price tag on this milestone. It doesn't
00:59:29.240
have to be that way. You know, in fact, what we've done is we put a six-figure price tag on going to
00:59:35.000
college, another six-figure price tag to get married, so that if you are, you know, if you're taking the
00:59:43.060
culture as the queue, it seems like, well, you can't do anything. You can't even begin your life unless
00:59:49.860
you're already a millionaire. It's crazy. The whole thing is nuts. I mean, in reality, you can get the
00:59:57.100
ring, the wedding reception, the honeymoon without breaking five grand total all in. You could do it for
01:00:02.060
less if you wanted to. I mean, you could get married almost for free if you want to. I mean, that is, it's
01:00:09.180
legal to do that, did you know? You can actually do that. It's, you know, there might be a few bucks
01:00:15.620
you got to spend on the marriage license and that sort of thing, but you can get, I mean, you could
01:00:19.340
get married for like a hundred bucks. It's just a question of whether you're willing to be modest
01:00:24.140
and stay within your means, or do you insist on relegating all the wedding-related expenses into this
01:00:28.540
weird alternate reality where even though you make 55 grand a year, you pretend that you're a wealthy
01:00:33.860
oil baron. Um, and that's entirely up to you. Secondly, a brief note about these female
1.00
01:00:40.100
influencers who started all this trouble. Uh, there are at this point, a lot of right-wing
01:00:44.700
commentators, podcasters, influencers. I realize I'm one of them. We are legion. Our numbers grow by
01:00:50.000
the day. We are a giant parasitic blob expanding, threatening to consume the entire country. Pretty
01:00:56.180
soon half the world's population will be conservative influencers. Okay. It's a, it's a highly saturated
01:01:00.820
field. And it's hard to know which of these people you should pay attention to if any. So let me
01:01:06.840
suggest a few filters that you might use, um, filters that would at least sift out the kinds
01:01:11.800
of vain frivolous airheads that have spent the week, you know, gossiping about each other and
01:01:16.480
making fun of a woman's engagement ring. Okay. So number one, if you're considering listening to
01:01:22.780
any conservative commentator, podcaster, pundit, et cetera, ask yourself, does this person have
01:01:29.380
any relevant life experience at all? Are they married? Do they have kids? Do they have
01:01:36.340
responsibilities outside of generating content? Number two, has this person ever had an original
01:01:44.680
thought? Have you ever heard or read something from this person and thought to yourself,
01:01:48.080
that's an interesting idea. I hadn't thought of it that way. Or even like, wow, I really disagree
01:01:54.020
with that. That sounds insane, but you know, I hadn't actually thought about that. That's kind of
01:01:57.140
interesting. Have you ever thought that about this person, whoever it is? Has this person ever offered
01:02:02.080
any kind of unique insight into anything ever at all? Do they present you with new ideas? Do they
01:02:06.460
help you clarify your own ideas? Is there any evidence that this in any way is a thoughtful
01:02:10.120
person with unique or worthwhile insights at all? And finally, number three, has this person contributed
01:02:14.820
meaningfully to the conservative cause? Can you point to some kind of cultural or political victory
01:02:21.500
that this person played an integral part in? Does this person have any wins under their belt at all?
01:02:28.680
Is there any evidence that this person is an effective cultural or political warrior?
01:02:33.540
If this person didn't exist, if they had never posted a single thing to the internet,
01:02:38.920
if they had gone off and become a Walmart greeter instead of a conservative influencer,
01:02:42.020
would anything on the cultural or political landscape be different right now?
01:02:47.000
Now, if the answer is no to any of those questions, much less all of them, then this is not a person
01:02:56.480
worth listening to. I mean, they should not have an audience or a platform. And I'm not saying they
01:03:01.120
should be deplatformed. I'm saying that they should be shouting into the wind. They should be ranting in
01:03:05.380
an empty forest with nobody listening because they have absolutely nothing of value to say or contribute.
01:03:11.300
That's the first thing that came to mind with these women that are going on about the ring.
0.99
01:03:14.680
And it's like some of them I've never heard before, but I'm looking at them, apparently they're
01:03:17.580
influencers. And I'm running through these. I always do this with someone new pops up on the
01:03:21.660
scene or someone at least new to me, new on my radar. And I go, what is this? Do they do anything?
01:03:27.780
What have they ever said that's interesting? What are they contributing at all? Have they took
01:03:32.180
a part? Have they been involved in any of these wins? Have they done anything? And the answer is no.
01:03:39.260
And I think that describes a substantially high number of the people in this space,
01:03:42.120
not just the ridiculous women who've spent all week mocking an engagement ring, but certainly
1.00
01:03:46.900
describes them too, first and foremost. And that is why ultimately they are today canceled.
01:03:55.380
That'll do it for the show today and for this week. Have a great weekend. I'll talk to you on Monday.
01:04:07.720
ICE offers big money to help them deport illegals. President Trump threatens a federal takeover of
01:04:13.360
Washington, D.C. Last I checked, it's already a federal district. And Jim Acosta interviews
01:04:18.260
a dead teenager. Check it out on The Michael Knowles Show.