The Matt Walsh Show - Ep. 1638 - The Fake “Mental Health” Test Coming To Your Child’s School

00:00:00.000 Today on the Matt Walsh Show, it's not getting a lot of attention, but the state of Illinois

00:00:03.240 just rolled out one of the most horrifying and dystopian policies in American history.

00:00:07.220 It will be very bad for your kids, but very good for big pharma. I'll explain.

00:00:11.120 Also, Donald Trump prepares to send the military to deal with drug cartels to talk about why this

00:00:14.840 is a good use of American military power. And scientists are saving the planet by developing

00:00:19.380 a new type of butter that doesn't involve cows or plants or anything edible. Plus,

00:00:23.880 an EBT recipient on TikTok declares that she deserves brownies and candy provided by the

00:00:28.120 taxpayer. Is that true? Do EBT recipients deserve free junk food? Do they deserve

00:00:32.340 free food at all? We'll talk about all that and more today on the Matt Walsh Show.

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00:02:04.220 be wrong. That's AmmoSquared.com. Check them out today for a special offer. One of the ironies of

00:02:10.020 the medical community is that at a superficial level, conflicts of interest are taken very seriously,

00:02:15.480 but most of the time, if you look just an inch below the surface, the most obvious and severe

00:02:20.200 conflicts of interest are routinely ignored. This happens all the time. There are all sorts of

00:02:24.760 guidelines about how physicians can't directly take cash from drug companies in order to prescribe

00:02:29.840 certain medications, for example, but at the same time, it's completely fine for Big Pharma to hire

00:02:34.220 doctors as, say, consultants or speakers. And then if those doctors in turn happen to prescribe a lot

00:02:39.900 of drugs from Big Pharma, who's to say there's any connection? We saw something similar during COVID.

00:02:44.900 Every medical journal is supposed to inform readers about conflicts of interest that exist in any of

00:02:50.020 their articles. And yet when every single virologist who was conducting dangerous bat experiments in 0.97

00:02:56.140 Wuhan wrote that infamous letter in The Lancet explaining that this new virus definitely didn't

00:03:01.820 come from their dangerous bat experiments in Wuhan, there was no disclaimer at all. Instead, virtually 0.99

00:03:07.300 everyone in the scientific community took that letter as gospel. After all, why would the people

00:03:12.500 involved in making a Frankenstein virus ever lie about their role in creating it? And this kind of

00:03:18.600 corruption happens all the time in medicine, but it's rarely discussed because the pharmaceutical

00:03:22.140 industry happens to be one of the biggest advertisers in the media. Again and again,

00:03:27.220 conflicts of interest are brushed over or ignored completely. And one of the most disturbing examples

00:03:32.840 by far is the way that the medical community developed something called PHQ-9. Now, even if that doesn't

00:03:41.480 ring a bell, there's a good chance that you or your child have had a run-in with PHQ-9 at one point or

00:03:46.980 another. This is probably one of the most scandalous untold stories in medicine. So essentially,

00:03:54.200 PHQ-9 is a nine-item test that's used to measure whether someone might need psychiatric treatment,

00:04:00.480 including medications. And it's used by school psychologists and nurses, as well as doctor's

00:04:05.160 offices all over the country. Pfizer developed it, then released it into the public domain so that it

00:04:11.140 would spread throughout the medical community. And here for reference is what the test looks like.

00:04:16.800 It's a list of questions asking patients whether they've experienced a handful of negative symptoms

00:04:22.880 over the last few weeks. They have to rank the frequency of these symptoms as not at all, several days,

00:04:29.300 more than half the days, and nearly every day. And possible negative symptoms, quote-unquote,

00:04:35.180 include little interest or pleasure in doing things, trouble falling or staying asleep,

00:04:40.480 sleeping too much, feeling tired, poor appetite or overeating, trouble concentrating, moving or

00:04:47.280 speaking so slowly that other people could have noticed. Now, typically, if five of these symptoms

00:04:52.560 are present for more than half of the past 14 days, then you're diagnosed with depression and handed an

00:04:57.140 SSRI. And it's supposedly a reliable system. But as I rattled off those symptoms, you may have noticed the

00:05:03.960 problem already that many of these symptoms don't necessarily have anything to do with a mental

00:05:08.980 health condition. At various points in their lives, every human being alive will report that they're

00:05:13.820 having trouble sleeping or feeling tired or having a bad appetite. In fact, you might have these

00:05:19.840 quote-unquote symptoms for years at a time. You might have it for your entire life. You know, that's

00:05:26.740 particularly true for children as well as adults going through stressful periods in their lives. If

00:05:32.300 you have a stressful job, if you're in school, you know, you might be tired a lot. That's pretty

00:05:37.220 common. For example, a woman named Callie Williams was given a PHQ-9 test as part of a prenatal

00:05:43.260 appointment with an OBGYN in 2016. Williams was recently married and she was a brand new stepmother,

00:05:49.240 which naturally made her feel somewhat overwhelmed and tired and all those things. And after filling out

00:05:54.880 the form, she was told that she was depressed and that she needed to take Zoloft. When she asked for

00:05:59.900 more detailed mental health examination, she was denied. She spoke to Stat News about her experience

00:06:06.440 and here's how they reported on what happened next. Quote, if Williams didn't take Zoloft, the doctor

00:06:10.960 said, she would be marked as non-compliant. She was unnerved by that threat, so agreed to take the

00:06:16.300 medication. It didn't help. It was very easy to rely on the checked boxes, said Williams, who lives in

00:06:21.020 Sacramento, California. I didn't see an effort to dig any deeper even when I was asking for that.

00:06:27.580 So here we have an adult, a woman who was pressured into taking psychoactive medication because of a

00:06:33.060 survey that's obviously imprecise by design. And if you're the inquisitive type, that might lead you

00:06:39.060 to ask a very basic question, which is who exactly wrote the survey? Is it possible that the creator of

00:06:43.660 the survey could potentially have a vested interest in getting people to take psychoactive drugs?

00:06:48.040 Now, as you probably guessed, indeed, there is a major conflict of interest at work here,

00:06:52.880 but it's actually a lot worse than you're probably assuming. And very soon, courtesy of the Democrat

00:06:58.480 Party, this particular conflict of interest has the potential to impact the lives of millions of

00:07:03.880 children. Now, before we get to that, we'll start at the beginning of the story, which for SSRIs is the 0.70

00:07:09.880 early 1990s. At that point, if you can believe it, it's hard to believe these days, but SSRIs were not

00:07:16.320 popular among most doctors. They didn't want to prescribe the drug because they were untested and

00:07:21.820 they came with a lengthy list of severe side effects. It's the exact opposite of the current

00:07:26.260 status quo, where SSRIs are distributed like candy, but at the time, that wasn't the case.

00:07:30.920 But Pfizer, which was producing the SSRI known as Zoloft, a competitor of Prozac,

00:07:35.760 had a plan to change that. They were going to find a way to make psychiatry a matter of primary care

00:07:41.500 instead of a specialty that involved far fewer patients. A big part of that plan involved funding

00:07:46.700 the creation of the PHQ-9 test. So without Pfizer's funding, which amounted to hundreds of

00:07:53.160 thousands of dollars, there would be no PHQ-9. Everyone involved in the project has now admitted

00:07:59.380 that. But the PHQ-9 was not the brainchild of a hardworking, earnest Pfizer scientist who wanted to

00:08:05.840 ensure the most accurate diagnostic test that he'd come up with. In fact, it wasn't even the brainchild

00:08:11.000 of an MD. Instead, it was the creation of a marketing guru named Howard Croplick. Croplick

00:08:16.920 is not a doctor. He's not a scientist. He has an engineering degree from Stony Brook University,

00:08:22.120 an MBA from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. And that's it. And immediately

00:08:27.720 after graduating from Wharton, he went to work at Pfizer. And very quickly, he became one of the most

00:08:31.640 influential figures in modern medicine. Croplick is the reason that, for example, Viagra ads don't

00:08:37.160 mention the word impotence because they don't want to insult or demean their potential customers.

00:08:43.340 Quoting again from Stat News, Janet Williams, a Columbia University professor, confirmed Croplick's

00:08:48.140 role in creating the PHQ-9, saying he came up with the idea and recruited her and a renowned

00:08:52.820 psychiatrist, Robert Spitzer, to develop a tool. Both Williams and primary care doctor Kroenke said

00:08:59.580 that they understood the form would be beneficial to Pfizer as a way to sell more of its medication.

00:09:04.560 Potential conflict of interest around the PHQ-9's development is a good point, said 0.99

00:09:09.040 Croplick. But he said Pfizer didn't interfere with the research.

00:09:13.580 And the last part may be true. It's quite possible that Pfizer didn't explicitly state that these

00:09:18.440 doctors and the marketing guy had to come up with a test that would result in doctors over-prescribing 0.99

00:09:24.160 their products. In fact, they probably didn't say that explicitly because that's not how these things

00:09:28.460 work. But the whole point of a conflict of interest is that even without this kind of explicit

00:09:33.580 quid pro quo, everybody understands what needs to be done. There was clearly a strong incentive here

00:09:41.800 for these doctors, along with Pfizer, to present the PHQ-9 as a diagnostic tool, not merely a survey.

00:09:49.020 And it appears they did exactly that. A paper published in 1999 states, quote,

00:09:54.140 the PHQ is the first entirely self-administered diagnostic instrument designed for use in primary

00:09:59.620 care. Now, on their website, as Stat News pointed out, the PHQ is described as both a screener

00:10:05.700 and a diagnostic tool. But it's not especially useful for either purpose. Here's the title of a paper

00:10:11.920 published just five years ago, quote, patient health questionnaire nine scores do not accurately

00:10:16.680 estimate depression prevalence. Our researchers looked through dozens of studies involving PHQ scores,

00:10:24.100 and here's what they found, quote, an analysis of 44 studies in 9,200 patients found that when the

00:10:29.120 PHQ is used to gauge the prevalence of depression, it's more than twice as likely to find patients

00:10:33.660 have the illness compared to when physicians conduct a clinical evaluation. By other estimates,

00:10:40.240 including one from the psychiatrist Nicholas Badre, up to two-thirds of the results from this test

00:10:46.720 are false positives. Two-thirds. So to recap, Big Pharma wanted to market an SSRI. They hired a

00:10:55.700 marketing guy to invent a survey that resulted in mass over-diagnosis of depression, which could then

00:11:02.080 be treated by SSRIs made by Big Pharma, and it worked. They made billions of dollars off it. Within a

00:11:09.100 decade, SSRIs started printing billions of dollars every year, and through all of this, no one has any

00:11:15.300 idea how SSRIs even work or if they work. In fact, a study released just a few years ago from

00:11:20.040 researchers in Saudi Arabia and published in the peer-reviewed journal PLOS-1 found that, quote,

00:11:25.740 the real-world effect of using antidepressant medication does not continue to improve patients'

00:11:29.860 health-related quality of life over time. And as we've discussed many times, even establishment

00:11:35.420 scientists have abandoned the notion that depression is somehow related to serotonin levels or chemical

00:11:41.200 imbalances, which is how it was sold for decades, and now they have admitted that that's not true.

00:11:46.620 So with this recent history in mind, which no one outside of the niche publication Stat News has

00:11:52.240 bothered to cover, it should be apparent that no one in their right mind would try to expose millions

00:11:58.300 of children to these kinds of phony diagnostics. Mental health screening is an unreliable and often

00:12:05.040 fraudulent tool that has been used to justify the over-prescription of powerful psychoactive

00:12:10.440 medications, and that's not debatable. That is a fact. That is what has happened. At a minimum,

00:12:16.460 it's extremely error-prone, even when you're talking about adults who have voluntarily gone to the doctor

00:12:21.420 to seek this treatment. So very clearly, we should be reducing the use of these kinds of broad

00:12:26.620 diagnostic tests as much as we possibly can. That's especially true when there's no reason

00:12:31.560 to make someone take one of these tests because they're not complaining of any problem.

00:12:36.500 The risk of a bad diagnosis is astronomical. But the Democrat Party, well, they're not limiting

00:12:46.360 the use of these tests. Instead, they've just announced a plan to drastically expand

00:12:51.420 these diagnostics and to compel children to take them, at least unless parents go through some kind

00:12:58.540 of opt-out procedure, which most of them won't. And this doesn't seem to have gotten very much

00:13:03.200 attention, but it should because I think it's one of the most horrifying policies in modern American

00:13:08.500 history. And I mean that sincerely, no exaggeration. So here's what's happening. The state of Illinois is

00:13:16.240 now demanding that children, beginning in the third grade in public school, undergo annual

00:13:22.600 psychiatric evaluations. In other words, even if there's nothing wrong with them, a third grader

00:13:30.200 will probably be asked the same kind of questions that I just ran through. Now, as of right now,

00:13:34.740 Illinois hasn't announced the specific tests they're going to implement, but it stands to reason it's

00:13:38.880 going to resemble, if not replicate, the test that Pfizer has put out in the public domain.

00:13:43.400 After all, that's the gold standard. Children will presumably be expected to tell their school

00:13:49.760 psychologists whether they've been having trouble focusing or having trouble sleeping or whether

00:13:54.680 they're, you know, sad going to school every day. Completely normal childhood behaviors and feelings

00:14:01.500 will be reclassified as symptoms of major mental health disorders, and millions of more children

00:14:07.860 will be put on these dangerous, potent drugs. Watch.

00:14:11.620 Now, Illinois students will soon be taking another type of test, but this one has nothing to do with

00:14:19.180 their report cards or their fitness. The state of Illinois will now start screening for mental health

00:14:24.300 issues. The governor's signature today at the Chute School in Evanston makes Illinois the first school

00:14:30.540 in the nation to roll out universal mental health screenings to its schools. At a time when our kids are

00:14:35.920 struggling with anxiety and depression more than ever before, it's our responsibility to ensure that

00:14:43.200 young people have all the support that they need to get the help that they deserve. The new law will

00:14:48.820 require public schools to offer age-appropriate screenings to identify mental health concerns in

00:14:54.360 students in the third through twelfth grades. The process will be overseen by the Illinois State Board of

00:14:59.440 Education who will develop model procedures for districts. The screenings are designed to be

00:15:05.040 confidential, and parents who don't want their kids to participate must opt out. The screenings

00:15:10.180 will also connect families with the Beacon Portal that helps them find psychiatric care in their

00:15:14.860 communities. What we have heard from families and from young people is that an annual check

00:15:19.620 on sadness, worry, fear, and other problems would help to identify young people who need to talk.

00:15:25.820 Now, if you listen to Republicans' reaction to this really evil plan that's been concocted by

00:15:32.420 devious people, you'll hear the generic claim about government overreach and so on. But the actual

00:15:41.560 problem here is much more straightforward, a lot worse, and it needs to be spelled out. The point of

00:15:49.560 these annual screenings is to ensure that they drug as many children as possible with psychoactive

00:15:54.880 medications so that those children become loyal customers of big pharma for life. And of course,

00:16:01.860 they'll also become profoundly unhappy people, which accounts for roughly 100% of the Democrats' voter

00:16:06.700 base. So it's a win-win for politicians like J.B. Pritzker and for big pharma. And it's a lose-lose

00:16:14.300 for you and for your children. If big pharma was able to prescribe millions of SSRIs to adults based

00:16:20.480 on bogus tests that were invented by Pfizer's marketing department, then there's no doubt that

00:16:26.020 children in public schools in Illinois will be extremely easy targets. And not just for SSRIs.

00:16:32.260 We all know that ADHD medications, puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and so on will be distributed

00:16:38.400 to minors as well as a result of this program. These are drugs that aren't simply unnecessary.

00:16:43.460 They're actively harmful for children. In the case of ADHD drugs, even the so-called experts in the

00:16:48.840 field have admitted as much. The New York Times, of all places, just published a lengthy article on

00:16:53.600 the topic with the headline, Have we been thinking about ADHD all wrong? Yes, we have. But the drugs

00:17:02.280 aren't being pulled from the market. No one's being prosecuted. Instead, the pill pushers are coming up

00:17:08.060 with new tactics to convince more children to take these drugs. And politicians in Illinois,

00:17:12.480 many of whom take a lot of money from big pharma, are happy to oblige. This is an unmistakable

00:17:18.260 escalation in the ongoing effort to medicalize normal human thoughts and emotions and behaviors

00:17:24.220 and to corrupt and profoundly and permanently alter the lives of children for financial and political

00:17:30.740 reasons. For decades, the school system has been a conveyor belt feeding kids to big pharma.

00:17:37.960 And now that conveyor belt will work at warp speed. It'll begin in Illinois, but it's not going to

00:17:44.540 end there. Before long, the only children who will be spared this sales pitch, the only ones who will

00:17:49.740 be insulated from this heavy-handed effort to drug them, will be the children who don't attend public

00:17:54.740 school at all. You probably didn't need another reason to keep your children far away from the public

00:17:59.100 school system, but in case you did, here it is. If these people can pressure adults into taking drugs

00:18:05.080 they don't need, then they can do it to your children as well. And with this new law, some of

00:18:10.900 the most prominent Democrats in the country are making it abundantly clear that one fake diagnostic

00:18:17.180 test at a time, that's exactly what they intend to do. Now let's get to our five headlines.

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00:19:23.780 pressure off. Let Tax Network USA handle your tax issues. Now, the big news today is, as you probably

00:19:30.120 heard, is that Donald Trump has announced that he's going to federalize law enforcement in D.C.

00:19:35.420 And I'm going to talk about that tomorrow. We're going to do a big monologue on that tomorrow and

00:19:39.920 break it down. Spoiler, I'm very much in favor of it, but I want to go into that in much more

00:19:47.120 detail tomorrow. For today, I wanted to hit on a couple other things and some other initiatives,

00:19:54.520 recent initiatives from the Trump administration that were announced. This one I also like a lot.

00:19:59.200 This is from Fox News. President Donald Trump has secretly authorized military force against Latin

00:20:03.920 American drug cartels designated by the United States as foreign terrorist organizations, according to

00:20:08.220 reports. The move reported by New York Times would give U.S. forces permission to engage the cartels

00:20:15.060 with which traffic drugs like fentanyl across the U.S.-Mexico border. The New York Post, according to

00:20:21.220 the White House, said, according to New York Post, the president is determined to not just dismantle,

00:20:25.300 but completely destroy Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro's cartel de los Soles and obliterate their

00:20:32.420 operations in the Western Hemisphere. Mexican President Claudia Scheinbaum on Friday said the U.S.

00:20:38.140 military would not be entering Mexican territory following reports that Washington could take

00:20:41.900 action to combat the cartels. It has nothing to do with Mexican territory, she said. It has nothing

00:20:45.960 to do with, it has to do with their country. It does not involve our territory. Now, this is military

00:20:53.900 intervention that I support. This is how we should be using the military, clearly in defense of the

00:20:59.920 homeland. Go into whichever countries these cartels are operating in and kill them, kill them all. 1.00

00:21:08.320 The Mexican president, she says the U.S. won't be entering Mexico. Mexico has nothing to do with us 1.00

00:21:13.360 as that country has just been funneling drugs and gangs and violence into our country for decades.

00:21:20.020 But, of course, we should just disregard that. What is she going to do about it? I'd love for Trump to

00:21:29.800 say that to her. It's the kind of thing he would say. Yeah, we are coming in. What are you going to

00:21:35.000 do about it? What are you going to do about it? You're the president of Mexico. Oh, yeah, we're coming

00:21:40.260 in. Oh, you think we're not? Yeah, no, we totally are. And there's absolutely not a damn thing that you

00:21:45.220 are going to do about it or can do about it. What now? Yeah, sit down. Sit down in the corner over

00:21:52.040 there like a little child and behave. Okay? How about that? I would totally support Trump speaking

00:21:59.940 to other world leaders exactly like that. Hey, you, just sit down over there. No, this is not,

00:22:06.520 you know, go in timeout. Yeah, you'll speak when you're spoken to, Claudia. How about that?

00:22:15.220 You know, Mexico has been sending crime again and drugs and violence and gangs into our country 1.00

00:22:20.980 for a very long time. And so we'll do whatever we need to do to protect our country. And we don't

00:22:29.520 give the slightest damn how you feel about it. You know, how about get your own country out of

00:22:34.600 control? How about take care of this problem yourself so we don't have to come down and do it

00:22:37.880 for you? You know, it's like, it's like my, it's, it's, this is my kids know this. If they're

00:22:45.620 having a, if they're having, you know, if they're having some kind of squabble, right? They're down,

00:22:50.960 they're down in the basement in the playroom and they're, and they're fighting. And they know if I

00:22:55.800 call down and say, look, you guys better figure this out because you don't want me to come down and

00:22:58.620 figure it out for you. Okay. You got about five seconds to figure out your little problems.

00:23:02.940 If I come down to figure it out, you're not going to like the solution. How about that?

00:23:08.520 And that's, uh, that's kind of how we have to deal with these other countries like children. 1.00

00:23:16.340 Um, because really they're lucky that, uh, Claudia Scheinbaum is lucky that we don't go down and just

00:23:21.960 conquer the whole country and turn it into a vassal state. We'd be entirely justified in doing so 1.00

00:23:27.640 entirely justified. All the problems you've caused for us,

00:23:32.940 of all the nations in the world, Mexico is the greatest threat. One of the greatest threats. 0.99

00:23:39.500 It's caused the greatest damage to this country. I think that's like inarguable.

00:23:46.600 So, um, now the only reason I'd oppose doing that is just that it's, there's easier and cheaper ways

00:23:52.000 of dealing with the problem. So send in the military, obliterate the cartels, kill every single 0.99

00:23:56.900 cartel member, hunt them down, kill them and, uh, go full Sicario on their asses basically. And 1.00

00:24:03.880 that's what we should be doing. You know, which is why, you know, I get accused of being some kind

00:24:09.380 of libertarian anti-war hippie, but I'm not any of those things. Certainly not libertarian or a hippie.

00:24:17.460 I'm also not anti-war. I mean, anti-war is a ridiculous position. Speaking of children, 0.97

00:24:23.820 that's a childish, that's a childish position. That's the kind of thing that like a six-year-old

00:24:27.600 I'm anti-war. Okay, sweetie. Yeah. Yes. War. I, of course you are, but it's like saying you're

00:24:35.840 anti-sadness or something. Like there are times when war is the right path. There's time, 0.96

00:24:42.500 times when war, uh, is obviously necessary. Uh, war is a part of life. It's a part of human

00:24:48.800 existence, a part of having a civilization. You can't have a civilization without war. Every war,

00:24:53.380 every civilization requires war, requires the military to maintain civilization. And the entire

00:25:02.380 history of human civilization clearly shows us that. Although without civilization, you end up

00:25:07.500 actually with even more war. So that's kind of the catch 22. So, um, anti-war, no, that's just a dumb,

00:25:15.060 that's a dumb, useless thing to say. Uh, I'm anti-bad wars. I'm anti-unjust wars. I'm anti, uh, 0.98

00:25:22.240 wars that we get involved in that have nothing to do with defending our people and our homeland. I'm

00:25:28.840 anti-wars that are waged on behalf of other countries that are not the United States of

00:25:32.760 America. I'm against those. I'm against wars of liberal colonialism, wars that are waged to export

00:25:41.280 liberal values across the, the, the globe to be, to be distinguished from wars of sort of traditional

00:25:48.620 colonialism, wars work where we are conquering a land, bringing it under our control and subjugation.

00:25:55.640 Um, I'm not opposed to that in principle, you know, because historically, uh, that kind of

00:26:02.500 colonialism has clearly been on balance, a force for good in the world. Our country wouldn't exist

00:26:06.760 without it. So that's where I stand. And this would be, uh, this would be a war, not, not, uh,

00:26:12.860 if not a full scale war, then a use of military power, a use of military force that is clearly in

00:26:19.720 the name of national defense, clearly, uh, you know, actual national defense. And I'm very much

00:26:26.180 in favor of it. Uh, here's one that I'm not in favor of though. This is the New York post reporting

00:26:32.960 president Donald Trump is reportedly eyeing reclassifying marijuana as a less dangerous

00:26:38.400 drug, a move that could expand medical marijuana research and ease industry restrictions at a $1

00:26:44.180 million plate fundraiser at his New Jersey golf club earlier this month. Trump told attendees that

00:26:48.820 he's interested in pursuing the change fundraiser guests include Kim rivers, chief executive officer

00:26:54.280 of true leave a top marijuana company who encouraged Trump to pursue the change and expand medical

00:26:58.900 marijuana research, uh, according to the report. Um, so this is one that I'm not in favor of,

00:27:05.620 and this is where I, I tick off a certain portion of the audience, but that happens like every show,

00:27:11.260 I guess. So this is nothing new. Uh, I think this is a terrible idea. Um, I hope that Trump does not pursue it.

00:27:18.820 I hope he goes the opposite way. There's, there's nothing good that will come out of

00:27:23.620 normalizing weed even more than it already has been and making it even more accessible than it

00:27:28.480 already has been even less stigmatized, right? There's nothing good that will come up. And I know

00:27:33.400 that nothing good will come of it because we've watched it as I, as I've said, every time, you know,

00:27:38.240 whenever this comes up, this, the great thing about this topic, if there's anything great about it

00:27:42.160 is that we don't have to speak in hypotheticals anymore. We don't have this, we don't have to engage in

00:27:46.780 thought experiments. We don't have to guess how this will go because we have now evidence. We have

00:27:54.080 now real world experience. We have watched as marijuana has been progressively normalized and

00:28:00.180 legalized, made more accessible and less stigmatized, uh, over the past decade plus. And we've seen the

00:28:06.920 results and the results are terrible. I mean, it's just, it's right in front of your face.

00:28:13.120 The results are bad. The results are in and they're not good. Okay. Um, and I've made this

00:28:21.940 point many times. I've yet to hear a pothead engage with it, honestly, but here's my contention.

00:28:28.000 Every single city that has legalized weed has in the aftermath become measurably worse by just about

00:28:34.140 every metric. Okay. Cities are dirtier, filthier, grimier, less livable places now with legalized weed.

00:28:42.160 than they were before. That's my contention. Now you could easily disprove it. If it were possible

00:28:49.120 to disprove, all you have to do is point to an example of an American city. I don't care about,

00:28:55.600 don't give me some city in Europe somewhere. Although I think this holds true in most of those 0.88

00:29:00.640 cities too, but we're talking about America. So give me an example of an American city

00:29:04.220 that has seen measurable improvements that has become a better place to live after weed was

00:29:12.920 legalized. So go ahead and give me an example. I know the comment section will be filled with

00:29:19.380 potheads that are, you know, freaking out and crying about it. I'm not interested in your tears.

00:29:25.120 I'm interested in just like, put what I want to see is a whole list of cities in the comments. Go

00:29:29.180 ahead. Go ahead. List the American, give me, give us the American city. You say, oh, this place is a

00:29:34.500 lot better now. I would, I'd love to see it. I'd love to see you try. Um, here's another way of,

00:29:42.860 of kind of looking at it. And I was thinking about this, like think about a task that you might want

00:29:50.460 a group of people to complete. Okay. Maybe you're an employer, maybe you're a homeowner and you

00:29:57.140 need, you know, the roof fixed or whatever, any task. Now, can you think of a task where you would

00:30:04.080 want your workforce that you've put on this task, whatever it is, to consist of people who smoke weed

00:30:09.960 every day? Okay. Like in what context would you look at the people that you've assigned to a task

00:30:16.320 and see them smoking weed and say to yourself, oh good. Oh, oh good. These people are, are perfect

00:30:22.780 for the job. If you needed it, if you had a task, you want to complete it and you had to choose and

00:30:29.380 someone gave you an option, well, we got group A and group B and you don't know anything about them.

00:30:33.740 All you know is that group A, they smoke weed every day and group B doesn't. Who, is there any

00:30:38.500 world where you'd say, oh, give me group A? Yeah. Give me the weeds. Definitely them. 1.00

00:30:42.220 I mean, I don't know. Maybe if you needed to write a song or something, then maybe the people

00:30:49.280 that are smoking pot would be, maybe. I'm not even, in fact, I'm not even sure if that's the

00:30:55.920 case. Maybe it depends on the genre. But aside from that, it's hard to imagine any task where

00:31:01.080 pot smoking would be considered an asset. And all that proves again, is that marijuana is a net

00:31:07.600 negative for society. And if it's a net negative, then we shouldn't encourage it or normalize it

00:31:12.820 or legalize it. It seems like a really simple calculation to me. As you know, I am a simple

00:31:17.500 man and I, and I look at things in a simple way. I, I, I, I'm accused of that often. Oh,

00:31:24.240 you simplify. Yeah, you're right. That's what I do. Because I actually think that a lot of

00:31:28.660 problems and one of the reasons why problems aren't solved in this country is because we just

00:31:32.480 make them way more complicated than they actually are. And a lot of times that, you know,

00:31:36.940 there are some problems that are more complicated, but most problems are actually pretty simple.

00:31:42.100 Really pretty simple. How do you solve obesity? It's not, well, we need the right equation,

00:31:48.060 the right this, we need the, you got to figure it. No, just, just get some exercise and don't

00:31:51.680 eat as much. It really is that simple. No, you don't understand it. No, it's really that simple.

00:31:57.260 It really is that simple, but it doesn't work. No, you're not doing it because you're lazy.

00:32:03.320 Don't, don't lie. You're not, you actually haven't tried it. You're claiming you've tried to be

00:32:06.600 haven't. So that's, so that's how it works for most things. And, um, in this case, uh, I think

00:32:14.000 it's also very simple that it's kind of clear from the recent historical evidence that marijuana is a

00:32:21.040 net negative for society. And if it's a net negative for society, then, and we're asking

00:32:24.560 ourselves, Oh, should we continue to legalize this and make it more accessible? Well, it's a net negative.

00:32:31.500 So no, why, why, why would you, if it's, if it's undeniable that this like overall is harmful to

00:32:40.460 society, then why, what, what would be the reason? And you can't respond, well, why don't we want to,

00:32:46.980 if it's net negative, why don't we want it? I don't know, because it's a negative. That's why

00:32:51.400 that's the answer is in the question. Marijuana makes people lethargic, lazy, unmotivated. These

00:33:01.260 days that also can make you psychotic. I mean, the kind of weed people are smoking these days is

00:33:05.300 very potent, way more potent than stuff back when I was a teenager or when, when my parents were

00:33:10.520 teenagers. And, um, for plenty of people, it causes psychotic episodes. I mean, that's a real

00:33:16.120 thing. And again, the potheads will scoff at it and they'll laugh. Oh, when is that ever happening?

00:33:19.820 I don't know. It happens all the time. I mean, there's a lot of research on this. There's a lot

00:33:23.940 of literature. There's plenty of just example. It's a thing. I'm sorry that it upsets you, but

00:33:28.440 it is actually a real thing. And you just going, yeah, right. That's not an argument. Okay. That's

00:33:34.780 not an argument. Rolling your eyes and going, yeah, okay. Not an argument. Marijuana does in fact

00:33:41.500 cause psychotic episodes. It happens all the time, especially the stuff people are smoking these days.

00:33:45.420 So, uh, why would we do anything but prohibit it?

00:33:49.820 And you could tell that I'm right because the only thing that potheads can or will do in response

00:33:54.940 is to claim that alcohol is worse, right? That's the number, that is the go-to every time. Oh yeah.

00:34:01.560 What about alcohol? You know, now I think that alcohol's effects on society is very, uh, these

00:34:08.400 effects are very demonstrably better than weed's effects. Again, history speaks for itself. Um,

00:34:14.100 societies where everybody smoked tobacco and drank booze, uh, thrived. Our own society went from horse

00:34:20.440 and buggy to rocket ships in, in a span of a few decades and everybody was drinking whiskey for

00:34:26.900 lunch. Okay. Now I'm not saying that those things happened because of the booze. What I am saying

00:34:33.500 is that the booze obviously didn't prevent it. So I can make a factual statement that is 100%

00:34:40.380 proven by history, which is that a society can thrive while people are also drinking booze and

00:34:49.500 smoking cigarettes. That's a factual statement. There is historical evidence of it. Lots of it,

00:34:56.020 hundreds of years of historic, thousands of years, really.

00:34:59.600 I can also make another claim, which is that societies of stoners have not thrived.

00:35:08.000 There's really no example of that. I mean, the, the, the societies of stoners,

00:35:11.580 you're talking about people that wear loincloths, cloths and sleep in mud huts. Okay. Um, 0.77

00:35:17.860 societies where everyone is stoned all the time. It's like you had a society where people drink whiskey

00:35:23.220 for lunch. Well, I'm not saying that that's good. I'm not saying you should drink whiskey for lunch,

00:35:26.020 but we know that we know that that, that, that, that doesn't, it's not, it's not going to send

00:35:30.740 society crashing down. We've seen it. A society where everyone is smoking weed at lunch. Well,

00:35:37.200 all the historical evidence tells us that what you end up with is a mud hut. Okay. And sleeping in pig 0.72

00:35:44.220 in a, in a, in a, in a, in a, in a, you know, in a tent, right. That's, that's what those societies

00:35:49.840 look like. Okay. That's it. And that's the, uh, that's the, the, the, but, but regardless, again,

00:35:57.440 even if I were to acknowledge, yeah, alcohol is terrible. Even if I said alcohol is worse than

00:36:02.160 weed, I don't think it is, but if I did, that, that doesn't help you at all. All that would only be

00:36:07.360 an argument for also prohibiting alcohol. It's not an argument for, for, uh, permitting marijuana.

00:36:17.220 Like by pointing to, right. By, by it's like, if I said that a carjacking is bad and you said,

00:36:26.980 well, murder is a lot worse. Well, yeah, but that doesn't make carjacking any better.

00:36:32.700 And if we lived in a society where murder was legal, actually we do, it's called abortion. 0.73

00:36:39.540 That would not be a reason to make things even worse by also legalizing carjacking. That's,

00:36:45.680 that's actually argument, not for legalizing carjacking, but for making murder illegal.

00:36:51.260 Right. So if, if someone is saying that something is bad and your response is, yeah,

00:36:56.800 maybe it is, but this other thing's also bad. All you've done again is if you've done

00:37:02.420 anything, all you've done is make an argument for also prohibiting that other thing. That is in no

00:37:07.380 way an argument for permitting the thing that you're ostensibly trying to defend.

00:37:14.160 All right. Um, I have some, uh, news here that will actually interest, uh, the, the potheads. It's

00:37:23.140 about, it's about butter. And that's news that I, that I also take seriously because I am a devoted

00:37:29.380 fan of butter. So CBS news reports on a new company backed by Bill Gates that, uh, makes butter

00:37:38.260 without the use of cows. And, uh, and I know you're, you're probably thinking, well, haven't we've

00:37:44.900 already done this a million times plant-based, no cows, no plants, nothing, nothing edible is involved

00:37:51.720 in the creation of this new butter that Bill Gates is gracing the world with. This is another way to save

00:37:57.420 the planet allegedly, but, uh, let's watch the, uh, the clip from CBS news. Here it is.

00:38:02.380 It looks, smells, and tastes like the butter we're all familiar with, but without the farmland,

00:38:07.880 fertilizers, or emissions tied to that typical process. And this butter breakthrough, it's

00:38:13.900 happening right here in Batavia. In the middle of an industrial park in a suburb west of Chicago,

00:38:19.940 Chicago, something unprecedented is happening. So you're using this gas right now to like cook your

00:38:25.940 food. Um, and we're proposing that we would like to first make your food with, with that gas.

00:38:31.860 The company is called Saver and you better believe it. Their pioneering tech uses carbon and hydrogen

00:38:38.680 to make the stick of butter you see on this plate. This is pretty novel to be able to make food that

00:38:45.240 looks and tastes and feels exactly like dairy butter, but with no agriculture whatsoever.

00:38:50.800 And no long ingredient list the average person can't pronounce.

00:38:54.960 It's really just our fat, some water, a little bit of lecithin as an emulsifier,

00:38:59.320 and some natural flavor and color.

00:39:01.400 How? Fats are made up of carbon and hydrogen chains. The goal here? Replicate those chains

00:39:08.240 without animals or plants. And they did it. They tell me, to simplify,

00:39:12.920 they take carbon dioxide from the air and hydrogen from water, heat them up and oxidize them.

00:39:19.700 The final result? It looks like a wax, like a candle wax at first.

00:39:24.360 But they're fat molecules, like the ones in beef, cheese, or vegetable oils.

00:39:30.380 Sustainability is why we are here. It's all done releasing zero greenhouse gases,

00:39:36.280 using no farmland to feed cows. We're like not at full capacity in this facility yet.

00:39:41.720 How does it taste?

00:39:43.680 I love butter, so I'm going to take a really healthy amount.

00:39:48.500 Admittedly, surprisingly, like butter.

00:39:52.160 Cheers.

00:39:54.360 We're tasting butter.

00:39:55.260 Yeah, no, it doesn't. No, it doesn't. You are a filthy liar. You are lying. Now, I have two major

00:40:04.720 problems with this. The first is that I know damn well that it does not taste like butter. We all know

00:40:09.620 that. Every day they have some new alternative product on the market, you know, alternative butter,

00:40:15.060 alternative milk, meat, cheese. Thousands of alternatives. I've tried many of them,

00:40:19.760 always just sort of out of morbid curiosity. And it never tastes like the thing that it's

00:40:26.720 imitating. Never. Here's another statement I'll make. There is not an alternative product like

00:40:34.120 this on the market that actually tastes like the thing that it's imitating. That does not exist.

00:40:37.780 And yet there will always be someone who will swear to you that it does, no matter what it is.

00:40:44.560 There's always going to be someone handing you the glass of like fake milk made out of liquefied

00:40:49.760 mulch or whatever it is, claiming, claiming, oh, dude, this tastes just like right. You will never

00:40:55.640 tell the difference. If I gave you this in a blind taste test, you'd never even know.

00:40:59.540 And then you taste it and you say, no, that's, yeah, that's mulch. That's definitely mulch. That

00:41:06.140 tastes exactly like mulch, undeniably, unmistakably. So I guarantee this is no different. This is,

00:41:13.640 I absolutely guarantee it. Second, regardless of the taste, I really just object in principle to

00:41:21.480 artificial slop made in a laboratory. I reject it. I object to it in principle. And if you think the

00:41:31.080 word, if you think the word slop is, is too harsh, well, let me call your attention back to the video

00:41:35.780 because you might not have noticed this, but let's look at the freeze frame from minute 138.

00:41:42.920 There's the freeze frame. And there you can see it. There's a giant vat in the background at this

00:41:48.500 factory that literally says slop water. I mean, they are literally calling this stuff slop water.

00:41:57.200 So if you want to be a good little planet here and eat your emulsified slop water, then you go

00:42:03.120 ahead. I'll pass. I'll take a pass on the slop water. I'll take a pass on the slop water that

00:42:08.340 they turn into candle wax and then expect you to spread it on your toast. You know what I want?

00:42:14.900 I want real. Okay. I want, that's what I want.

00:42:18.500 This is my cry in the wilderness. This is, uh, this is my, this is my, uh, cry, my, my protest

00:42:26.200 against the, uh, the darkness. I will not go, I will not go silently into the, into the dark

00:42:32.500 because I'm sick of, I'm sick of fake. The last thing we need is more fake. Give me something real.

00:42:39.640 Everything's fake. Now you go on social media, half the accounts are bots. So much of what you see

00:42:44.020 is generated by AI. It's people, people spend all day, you know, staring at their screens, the

00:42:49.660 reality filtered through curated by algorithms. And it's all fake. Even the real people are still

00:42:58.000 fake, right? Everything. I saw another video the other day, one of 900 million of a woman crying and

00:43:04.920 having a meltdown on camera on a selfie video. It's fake. The emotions are fake. It's all fake.

00:43:10.640 The food is fake. The emotions are fake. The butter is fake. So this is the dividing line. Um,

00:43:17.060 I think in, in the future, there will be those of us who are satiated by all the fake stuff.

00:43:27.580 Those people who will eat the fake butter and watch the fake movies generated by fake AI

00:43:33.300 and just sit in this totally fake world, not numbed by it, satiated by it.

00:43:41.460 There'll be people like that. And then there'll be the people who, uh, you know, and, and these

00:43:47.100 are people who, who, who no longer hunger for authenticity because their souls have grown numb.

00:43:52.540 They don't even have the urge for it. Like they don't even understand.

00:43:59.460 These are people that they'll never even look outside the window ever again.

00:44:03.300 They have, they have no interest. There could be a beautiful sunset and, and you'll tell

00:44:08.040 them, go look at the sunset. They won't even turn their necks to look at it. It's not worth

00:44:11.400 the effort. Um, and so they do those people. And then on the other hand, you're gonna have

00:44:16.940 people who just deeply long for what is real and what is natural and what is authentic and

00:44:22.200 what is genuine. You're going to have those people too. And that, that really is going to

00:44:27.800 be, I think sort of the core issue. Like the, the, the, the dividing line in the culture

00:44:35.320 will be that people that are satisfied with fake and people who want something real and

00:44:40.840 they want it. They want what is real for its own sake. It won't matter. I mean, this will

00:44:46.120 be, this will be why AI will not take over everyone's lives. It probably take over a lot

00:44:51.600 of people's lives. It won't take over everybody because if you still have a soul, it won't

00:44:56.840 matter how realistic it is or how close it is to the real thing. It won't matter. You

00:45:04.580 just want the real thing, right? It's like if, if they put you in a windowless box and, and,

00:45:12.960 and replaced all the windows with screens so that it looked like a beautiful sunset, it looked

00:45:18.740 exactly like the real thing. Well, they're going to be, they're going to at least be some

00:45:25.040 people who still have a soul and say, no, I want, I want to see the real sunset and it'll

00:45:30.440 be no use to say, yeah, but this looks exactly like it. Yeah, but it's not it though. It looks

00:45:34.800 like it, but it's not it. And I want the thing that is it for its own sake. And you can have

00:45:41.880 people that understand that and people who don't and the fake people will go off and live

00:45:47.080 in their fake world and in a, in a matrix that they willingly plug into while the rest of us

00:45:53.680 take what is real, what is true, including the butter, especially the butter. Am I making too much

00:46:02.740 of this? Maybe, but, but no, I'm not. I don't think I, you know, I've talked before about one of

00:46:11.240 the problems that we have in society is that sometimes there are too many choices. And when you

00:46:14.540 got a lot of choices, it's a, it, it, it kind of causes this, this analysis, paralysis analysis,

00:46:20.220 where you don't know what to choose because there are too many options. And look, the same applies

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00:47:40.060 You want culture that fights back? You want daily shows that are uncensored, unapologetic,

00:47:44.460 and actually grounded in facts? You want entertainment that entertains without the pronouns,

00:47:48.800 lectures, or the ideological landmines? Well, it's all here. Take a look at what's happening

00:47:53.060 this month on Daily Wire+. I don't care what you did in your career the last five years. What are you

00:47:58.220 going to do tonight? Yeah, that's a very good question.

00:48:03.320 Are you ready? I'm ready. Let's do it.

00:48:09.740 The moment you've waited for is here.

00:48:13.860 Coming up on The Pope and the Fuhrer. Here we are with yet another week of Ben Afterdark. My podcast

00:48:18.140 has a brand new home, The Daily Wire. This is where you make a decision of conscience. I'm somebody that

00:48:24.140 never gave up.

00:48:44.060 Don't miss a moment of what's coming to Daily Wire. Now's the time to join a community that still

00:48:49.280 believes in values, common sense, and the truth, no matter who it offends. Go to DailyWirePlus.com

00:48:54.640 and be part of the fight. Now let's get to our daily cancellation.

00:49:04.580 Food stamps have been a topic of conversation on the show several times over the past few weeks.

00:49:09.040 The EBT program has been in the news thanks to extremely belated efforts by a number of states

00:49:13.520 to exercise some basic level of control over the kinds of food items that people on the program

00:49:18.520 can purchase or can force taxpaying Americans to purchase for them, I should say. We've also

00:49:24.080 talked about the rise of EBT influencers. These are food stamp users who upload videos showing off

00:49:30.380 their tax-funded grocery hauls. In the process, they confirm every negative stereotype about EBT

00:49:35.800 recipients. It's almost as if these videos are really part of a vast right-wing conspiracy to turn

00:49:41.420 public opinion against welfare programs. Here's just a case in point. Here's another example of a

00:49:48.080 recent entry in that genre. Watch. First thing I got is these jumbo beef meatballs. I got these.

00:49:59.640 These go in the refrigerator. I've been seeing these soy loin, no, these sliced grass-fed beef soy loin.

00:50:08.120 They go in the refrigerator as well. I've been seeing these on TikTok. So I got this.

00:50:17.680 We got, I don't know if these are new, but these are the marshmallow crispy cookies. So we got that.

00:50:24.680 I'm going to go fast because it's hot. We got this chicken milk. There's 15 individuals in here.

00:50:34.560 I see these. I see these on TikTok too. These brilla and cheese. These stuff and cheese. I've got these.

00:50:45.240 These go, these go in the refrigerator as well. Obviously, we had to get these pizzas for the kids.

00:50:54.840 Now, if I were to script a video designed to portray the EBT production,

00:51:24.820 program in the worst possible light, it would look exactly like that video. Everything from the

00:51:29.080 morbid obesity to the food selection to the smoke detector beeping in the background. It so perfectly

00:51:34.620 proves the point that it seems staged, but it's not staged. And there are hundreds of videos like

00:51:41.600 this. In every case, their grocery haul consists predominantly of junk food with no nutritional value.

00:51:48.080 If there's any protein or anything resembling actual nutrition, it's always a pre-cooked or frozen

00:51:52.500 meal, which is almost certainly really high in sodium among other problems. These are people

00:51:56.700 who definitely don't need more sodium in their diets. The vast majority of EBT recipients don't

00:52:01.120 have full-time jobs. Keep in mind, most of them don't have jobs at all. And yet they refuse to take

00:52:05.200 the time to cook a fresh meal from scratch. They only buy meals that can be reheated in three minutes or

00:52:10.620 less, saving even more time so that they can, you know, waste it by staring at a TV or their phones.

00:52:16.160 Now, maybe that wasn't fair. EBT recipients don't just watch TV and scroll TikTok. As we've covered,

00:52:23.320 they also make TikTok videos, which takes time as well. Several minutes of their day, which is why

00:52:29.800 they can't cook, I guess. And of all the EBT influencer videos I've seen or played on this show,

00:52:35.500 this next one is perhaps the most obnoxious. And it does perhaps the best job of demonstrating

00:52:41.000 everything that's wrong with the food stamp program and the welfare state generally,

00:52:46.620 particularly because of one word that she uses that I want to spend a little time

00:52:50.480 analyzing. But before we do that, watch.

00:52:54.840 I am so dumbfounded right now. There are people that genuinely think that people who use EBT

00:53:01.440 don't deserve soda, candy, or desserts. You're going to tell me that my daughter doesn't deserve a 1.00

00:53:08.320 popsicle. You're going to tell me I don't deserve to get brownies. You're going to tell me I can't 1.00

00:53:13.380 have Dr. Pepper with my dinner. And all I'm hearing is be grateful, be grateful. It's free food. Get off

00:53:20.260 of your throne of entitlement and take a look around you guys. Everyone is one bad day away from being

00:53:26.720 homeless or even needing government assistance. Do you guys not see how that makes you look? Your lack

00:53:33.140 of empathy and understanding is outstandingly atrocious.

00:53:38.200 Yes. Get off your throne of entitlement, says the able-bodied woman demanding that American 1.00

00:53:42.740 taxpayers buy her a brownie. This is an adult whining because other adults won't give her a treat. 1.00

00:53:50.700 And somehow we're the entitled ones. Now, nevermind the fact that even if she was banned from buying 0.94

00:53:56.800 popsicles and brownies with her EBT card, she'd still be able to have popsicles and brownies.

00:54:01.460 I mean, she could buy that junk with her own money, or she could even use her EBT card to purchase the

00:54:08.680 ingredients to make that stuff herself. Now, I'm not much of a baker, admittedly, but I do know that

00:54:15.140 you can make brownies with some flour, a couple eggs, sugar, cocoa powder, a few other ingredients.

00:54:22.760 Making a popsicle is even easier. Buy some fruit, blend it with water, throw it in the freezer.

00:54:27.040 You're done. Again, you have the time to do all this. You don't have a job. So keep in mind,

00:54:32.900 when food stamp users complain that they can't buy junk food, they're actually complaining that we

00:54:36.980 won't provide them with ready-made junk food that they can purchase and eat right away. So they want

00:54:43.000 it for free, and they want it quickly, and they want it with maximum convenience and minimum personal

00:54:50.400 effort. This is not just entitlement. This is a kind of snobbishness and sense of privilege that

00:54:56.480 used to be reserved for the children of billionaires and royalty. And now we find it among people who have

00:55:02.820 no wealth at all. People who, by their own testimony, can't afford to buy a popsicle.

00:55:07.760 It's the worst of all worlds, really, coming together. You have the vices of wealth, but none of the wealth of

00:55:19.520 wealth. It's really just the worst possible thing for a person. But is it even true that they can't

00:55:30.080 afford it? Well, let's go back to the woman in the last video. Not to keep picking on her, but she did 1.00

00:55:35.140 volunteer for it. I mean, don't post a video demanding that we buy you brownies if you don't

00:55:39.140 want to be heavily scrutinized. And so what do we notice in this video? Well, this woman has manicured 1.00

00:55:45.180 nails, wearing lots of makeup, highlights in her hair, obviously has a smartphone, obviously has an 1.00

00:55:51.360 internet connection. There's a TV on in the background. Which streaming service is she subscribed

00:55:56.040 to? How many streaming services? So just in that brief selfie video that we just played,

00:56:01.600 I can see, I can see more than enough money to buy brownies and popsicles for like several months.

00:56:10.400 Now, I want to take a moment to reflect on a word that she uses repeatedly in that clip. It's a word

00:56:18.600 that comes up a lot in these kinds of videos. It's a word that comes up a lot when we talk about welfare

00:56:23.800 and EBT and food stamps and all the rest of it. It's a word that finds its way into our political debates

00:56:28.440 in this country all the time. It's a word that a lot of people seem to use hundreds of times a day.

00:56:34.460 And it has become maybe my least favorite word in the English language. And that word is deserve.

00:56:43.460 This woman is offended by the idea that she doesn't deserve soda, candy, or desserts. 1.00

00:56:49.920 You're going to tell me that I don't deserve a brownie, she asks incredulously.

00:56:55.600 Well, yes, I am going to tell you that.

00:56:58.440 You don't deserve a brownie. You don't deserve soda. You don't deserve candy, cookies, cake.

00:57:05.320 I'll take it a step further, ma'am. You don't deserve any of the free food that you receive. 0.92

00:57:13.600 Okay? You don't even deserve bread or rice from the taxpayers. You don't deserve any of it.

00:57:23.160 You don't deserve a single dime from your fellow Americans. Not a single one.

00:57:32.520 Every single thing you own that was paid for by the taxpayers, you don't deserve any of it.

00:57:37.860 What does the word deserve mean? Well, it means, literally, merit.

00:57:44.960 To deserve something is to merit it. It's to have a claim to it.

00:57:50.140 In other words, earn. You deserve what you earn.

00:57:53.720 If you get a job at a certain salary, you deserve the salary.

00:57:59.980 If your boss tries to pay you less or nothing at all, you'd be justified in marching into his office

00:58:05.520 and demanding that he pay you what you deserve, what you merit, what you've earned.

00:58:10.080 You would agree to perform a certain task for a certain amount of money,

00:58:13.480 assuming you actually perform the task in a satisfactory manner,

00:58:16.080 then you deserve that money in both a legal and moral sense.

00:58:20.420 You deserve it.

00:58:22.340 The word deserve has another word that's implicitly attached to it,

00:58:26.800 and this is the point here, okay?

00:58:30.100 The other word that's attached to deserve, the other side of that coin, is owe, okay?

00:58:37.100 If you deserve something, it means that someone else owes you something.

00:58:42.320 Nothing can be deserved by one party unless it is owed by another.

00:58:49.180 That's why it wouldn't make any sense to, say, jump off a building

00:58:52.120 and then say that you deserve to land safely on the ground.

00:58:56.220 I mean, you could say that as you're plummeting to the ground.

00:58:58.920 You could say, I deserve to live through this.

00:59:03.200 You could say that, but it won't matter because who are you making the claim against?

00:59:07.540 Gravity?

00:59:08.760 Gravity can't owe you anything.

00:59:10.260 The laws of physics can't owe you anything.

00:59:13.620 So the word deserve is irrelevant.

00:59:17.060 Only another person can owe you something.

00:59:19.800 You can only deserve what another person owes you.

00:59:23.060 Deserve is an obligation.

00:59:25.220 If you have an obligation to me, then I deserve to have that obligation fulfilled.

00:59:30.360 If I pay you to build a fence in my backyard, I deserve to have that fence built after I've paid you.

00:59:35.780 If I lend you money, I deserve for it to be paid back.

00:59:41.720 Now, sometimes you can deserve something that isn't explicitly owed to you,

00:59:45.060 but that requires that you make the case and essentially convince the indebted party that they are in debt to you.

00:59:50.840 If you're performing well above expectations at your job and your value far exceeds the salary that you're paid,

00:59:57.460 then you should go to your boss and make the argument that you deserve more money.

01:00:02.940 If you win the argument, it won't be because your boss agrees that you possess some kind of mystical entitlement written in the stars,

01:00:09.660 decreeing that you should make more money.

01:00:11.080 It'll be because you've successfully made the case that your work merits the pay increase.

01:00:18.420 You have earned it.

01:00:20.420 It is something that you have achieved.

01:00:24.000 So let's go back to our friend with the manicured nails and the EBT card.

01:00:29.620 You say you deserve brownies. 0.99

01:00:32.420 Deserve it from who exactly?

01:00:35.960 From us?

01:00:37.740 From the taxpayers?

01:00:38.720 From me?

01:00:41.720 So what?

01:00:42.460 We owe you brownies? 0.98

01:00:44.040 We're in debt to you?

01:00:46.540 And the debt is brownies? 0.99

01:00:48.680 That's what you're saying?

01:00:51.020 But where do you get this idea?

01:00:52.720 What did we do to suddenly find ourselves in debt to you?

01:00:57.140 What agreement did we make with you?

01:00:59.600 What did you do for us that puts us in debt to you, lady? 0.97

01:01:06.760 How do you know that?

01:01:09.040 I owe you brownies.

01:01:11.580 Maybe you owe me brownies. 0.98

01:01:13.640 I mean, if we could just impose a debt on a stranger out of thin air, then it's kind of a wash.

01:01:18.900 I mean, you're placing that magical debt on me, but I'm placing it back on you.

01:01:22.200 You say I owe you brownies.

01:01:23.580 Well, I say you owe me a brownie and ice cream and whipped cream and a cherry.

01:01:27.160 You owe me an entire fudge sundae.

01:01:29.000 Okay?

01:01:29.400 Every single day.

01:01:30.220 That's what you owe me.

01:01:32.040 Two could play at this game.

01:01:33.140 Now what?

01:01:33.580 See, this is the problem with throwing the word deserve around so carelessly.

01:01:38.700 In reality, you can only deserve a brownie from us if you've done something to earn it.

01:01:44.400 So what have you done exactly?

01:01:47.020 What have you done for us to merit this reward?

01:01:51.900 The answer is nothing.

01:01:55.860 The answer is you've done nothing for us, which means we owe you nothing.

01:02:03.660 Zero dollars.

01:02:05.080 I'll say that again.

01:02:06.400 We owe you nothing.

01:02:08.340 We don't owe you a brownie. 0.98

01:02:09.900 We don't owe you a cookie.

01:02:11.540 We don't owe you a can of soda.

01:02:12.820 We don't owe you a cup of rice.

01:02:15.680 We owe you nothing.

01:02:19.960 Now, does that mean that I think all forms of welfare and quote-unquote social safety nets should be abolished outright?

01:02:27.400 No, I don't.

01:02:28.300 I think there's a reasonable argument to be made for that, but it's not my argument.

01:02:31.900 I think it's good to have programs in place to temporarily help people who are actually in a desperate situation until they're able to get back onto their feet.

01:02:39.520 I think it's good to have those.

01:02:40.360 But even then, we are not helping because it's owed.

01:02:46.120 We're not giving what's deserved.

01:02:48.480 In fact, we're giving what is not deserved.

01:02:51.080 When you're on EBT, you get what you don't deserve.

01:02:55.500 That's called charity. 0.98

01:02:58.320 In this case, it's forced charity, but that's what it is.

01:03:01.760 And the only appropriate response to charity, the only appropriate response to getting what you don't deserve, the only words out of your mouth should be, thank you.

01:03:14.540 We don't owe you what you're getting.

01:03:19.440 But we are owed something from you.

01:03:22.860 We are owed at least a thank you.

01:03:26.780 And maybe just a little bit of humility.

01:03:29.620 That's what you owe.

01:03:30.780 And like JFK said, you should spend a lot more time thinking about what you owe the country rather than what you think it owes you.

01:03:41.440 And that's why all entitled EBT recipients demanding tax-funded junk food are today canceled.

01:03:47.800 That'll do with the show today.

01:03:48.540 Thanks for watching.

01:03:49.000 Thanks for listening.

01:03:49.640 Have a great day.

01:03:50.500 Godspeed.

01:03:50.820 Hey there, I'm Daily Wire executive editor John Bickley.

01:04:04.360 And I'm Georgia Howe, and we're the hosts of Morning Wire.

01:04:07.120 We bring you all the news you need to know in 15 minutes or less.

01:04:10.480 Watch and listen to Morning Wire seven days a week, everywhere you get your podcasts.

The Matt Walsh Show - August 11, 2025

Ep. 1638 - The Fake “Mental Health” Test Coming To Your Child’s School

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