The Matt Walsh Show - Ep. 1676 - ＂No Kings Protest＂ Turns Into A Rallying Cry For Political Violence

00:00:00.000 Today on the Matt Walsh Show, leftist protesters take to the streets to bravely stand up against

00:00:03.940 our non-existent king, and they do so, as always, by explicitly calling for violence

00:00:08.520 against their political opponents. When will they finally be held accountable for it is the

00:00:12.000 question. We'll talk about it. And I think I've identified the precise moment in time when our

00:00:15.180 culture peaked and then started its decline. The real reason for the decline, the thing that may

00:00:20.280 make the decline permanent, is something that isn't talked about very much, but we'll talk

00:00:23.440 about it today. It's an important conversation, in my opinion, so stick around for it. All of that

00:00:27.460 and more today on the Matt Walsh Show.

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00:01:48.100 slash Walsh to make the switch. Again, go to puretalk.com slash Walsh and switch to America's

00:01:53.640 wireless company, Pure Talk. In the fall of 2022, a disabled 300-pound Air Force veteran in his

00:02:00.960 mid-70s by the name of Craig Robertson posted the following message on Facebook from his home in

00:02:07.100 Provo, Utah. Quote, hey, Merrick Garland, you demented weasel. Send your FBI SWAT team to my house.

00:02:13.760 Less than a year later, Merrick Garland did exactly that. Shortly before 6 a.m.,

00:02:19.000 a heavily armed FBI SWAT team showed up at Robertson's door. They brought an armored vehicle

00:02:24.720 with them, along with night vision goggles, ballistic shields, a mechanical boom that they

00:02:30.520 used to shatter his windows. Dozens of agents then launched flashbangs and barged into his home

00:02:36.040 without even giving him the opportunity to get dressed. When Robertson awoke, startled,

00:02:40.020 officers say he pointed a handgun at them. They quickly shot him several times,

00:02:44.640 killed him, and dragged his body onto the sidewalk, where it remained unattended for

00:02:49.120 several hours. As news of the killing spread, various members of the media, including one of

00:02:53.720 my producers, filed records requests so that we could see the FBI body cam footage of this shooting,

00:03:00.660 but we never received it. The FBI acknowledged that the footage exists, but they've refused to share

00:03:06.600 it. To this day, we still have not seen it. The FBI insists that the information cannot be released,

00:03:12.280 saying that it might interfere with some vague, unmentioned law enforcement proceeding.

00:03:18.920 Meanwhile, as they hid the evidence, the Biden administration celebrated what they had done.

00:03:24.240 The neighbors were horrified, but the Biden White House was thrilled with the outcome.

00:03:28.680 Craig Robertson, they said, had threatened Joe Biden's life in various Facebook posts,

00:03:32.880 and because Biden was visiting Utah that day, the FBI had no choice but to assault the man's home,

00:03:38.180 even though he was crippled. Watch.

00:03:42.200 The Federal Bureau of Investigation has launched a review into the deadly shooting of a Utah man

00:03:47.520 during an FBI raid on his home on Wednesday. Agents were attempting to serve arrest and search

00:03:53.120 warrants on 75-year-old Craig Robertson after they say he made credible threats to kill President Biden

00:03:59.080 and other Democratic public officials. The deadly incident unfolding just hours before President

00:04:04.500 Biden landed in Utah for an event. The tipping point to me was President Biden was coming,

00:04:09.920 he was going to be in close proximity, and this individual had looked like he was on a planning

00:04:15.400 path to carry out the attack. A federal complaint full of screenshots details the dozens of threats

00:04:20.760 Robertson allegedly posted on social media, one of them just four days ago. Quote,

00:04:26.260 I hear Biden is coming to Utah, digging out my old ghillie suit and cleaning the dust off the M24

00:04:32.200 sniper rifle. We're glad that nobody in law enforcement was hurt. This is really not about

00:04:36.440 just the rhetoric. It's about the actions that that can sometimes go with that rhetoric.

00:04:44.980 Biden's spokesman is just happy that no law enforcement officers got hurt. He's grateful that

00:04:49.980 this terrorist mastermind, this crippled 75-year-old morbidly obese man who needs a cane to get

00:04:56.100 around was taken out without any loss of innocent life. What's left unstated by Biden's spokesman and

00:05:02.780 by the corporate media is that more than six months before this pre-dawn raid, FBI agents watched

00:05:07.580 Craig Robertson drive to church, which he did every week, and they saw him hobble with his cane

00:05:12.320 and sit down in the pews and attend a service and then hobble back home. And then when he got home,

00:05:17.780 the agents asked him a series of questions about his Facebook post, to which Robertson replied,

00:05:21.760 don't come back without a warrant. So they were tracking this guy for the better part of the year.

00:05:26.680 They knew his routine. They knew of his physical condition. And they knew that he was highly

00:05:31.960 paranoid about law enforcement. Justifiably so, it turns out. Therefore, whatever you make of

00:05:36.800 Robertson's Facebook posts, and some of them were probably illegal under the law, it's obvious that

00:05:41.760 the FBI had no reason whatsoever to besiege his home before 6 a.m. as if he was Osama bin Laden.

00:05:47.400 I mean, they could have just walked up to him on his way to church, put him in handcuffs.

00:05:53.760 Could have placed him under surveillance to see if he really was going to suit up and camouflage

00:05:58.000 and try to assassinate Joe Biden. They could have taken his cane away and told him to go to sleep.

00:06:02.720 I mean, they could have done anything. All of these options would have worked perfectly fine.

00:06:07.040 But it's obvious why Joe Biden's FBI decided against taking any of those steps. They wanted to kill

00:06:14.120 Craig Robertson. They knew he would grab his revolver if they tried to break into his home

00:06:19.760 at 6 a.m. They knew his response would give them the pretext they needed. And then as they sprawled

00:06:26.220 Craig Robertson's lifeless body on the sidewalk, they'd be able to send a very clear message to

00:06:31.020 every other so-called MAGA Republican in the country. Now, just months before Robertson was shot,

00:06:37.920 Joe Biden, as you remember, flanked by Marines in front of a blood-red background, declared the

00:06:45.200 MAGA Republicans to be the single greatest domestic terror threat faced by Americans.

00:06:50.820 In no uncertain terms, Joe Biden ordered his entire administration, including the FBI,

00:06:55.380 to pursue MAGA Republicans as if they were, you know, members of al-Qaeda or ISIS.

00:07:01.200 That's exactly what the FBI's field office in Salt Lake City did when they attacked the home of

00:07:05.280 Craig Robertson. They were following Biden's orders. Now that the Biden administration is out of power,

00:07:12.220 it's easy to forget about the story of Craig Robertson, the story and about the video that

00:07:19.680 they still have not shown us. But we shouldn't forget about it for several reasons. First of all,

00:07:25.820 obviously, it's a reminder of what Democrats will do if they ever return to power.

00:07:31.360 However, they won't simply imprison their political enemies, they will happily kill them

00:07:36.580 if they can concoct any justification for doing so. But there's now another reason to revisit the

00:07:44.380 case. Over the weekend, as you may have seen, Democrats held a series of so-called

00:07:47.660 no-kings protests in various locations across the country. Now, yes, they were sparsely attended and

00:07:53.600 many of the attendees were old, pathetic geezers, but these protests still served a purpose. They

00:07:58.540 allowed Democrats to openly call for the deaths of their political opponents. And these were not the

00:08:04.460 idle online threats of a disabled 75-year-old man. They were threats of violence that were made in public

00:08:11.840 and in broad daylight by people and by a movement that has the capacity to carry them out.

00:08:20.400 Many of these people were demonstrating their allegiance to Antifa, which is a known terrorist

00:08:24.360 organization. In a moment, I'm going to show you some of these threats of violence. As you watch

00:08:30.320 them, ask yourself, why haven't any of these people been raided by the FBI at 6 a.m.? Why haven't FBI

00:08:39.600 SWAT team showed up to any of their houses? Why haven't any of them had their windows demolished

00:08:45.280 by armored vehicles before they can even put their clothes on? And that's not to say these people

00:08:50.960 should suffer the same fate as Craig Robertson. I'm certainly not saying that the FBI should

00:08:55.480 concoct a pretext to kill any of these people. I don't think the federal government should operate

00:09:00.300 that way. But at the same time, as long as we're pretending that the rule of law still exists in

00:09:05.920 this country, you'd think they'd suffer some consequences for breaking the law, just as Craig

00:09:12.600 Robertson supposedly broke the law. And yet, as far as we know, none of the leftists who made threats of

00:09:17.740 violence have even been questioned by federal authorities, much less arrested, much less

00:09:22.760 attacked in their own homes at 6 a.m. This is footage from the perimeter of a No Kings protest

00:09:28.820 in downtown Chicago over the weekend. Christopher Sweat with Greystack Media shot this footage.

00:09:35.440 Here it is. Watch it.

00:09:36.180 You got to grab a gun. We got to turn around the guns on this fascist system. These ICE agents got to

00:10:00.360 get shot and wiped out. The same machinery that's on full display right there has to get wiped out.

00:10:07.060 On the longer clip, the man says that killing ICE agents is necessary to ensure justice for black

00:10:12.900 people and working class people and, of course, Palestine. Now, by any measure, this is unlawful

00:10:20.960 speech. The man should be arrested. The Fed should seize all of his computers and his cell phones,

00:10:28.120 figuring out who he's been coordinating with, if anyone. We need to know if anyone is funding him.

00:10:34.660 These are basic steps that need to be taken to ensure that more conservatives aren't assassinated

00:10:39.060 by people like this. So is anyone taking those steps? And we have no idea at the moment. Certainly

00:10:45.720 there's been no statement from the DOJ that this person has been arrested or that his home has been

00:10:50.500 raided. The man has supposedly been identified by random internet detectives as a staff member at

00:10:57.060 Wilbur Wright College, which shouldn't be remotely surprising. Some of the most deranged, violent

00:11:02.260 leftists work in academia. But we don't have official confirmation at this point, even though we should

00:11:08.820 have it about who this guy is. We should have official confirmation because we should have a mugshot

00:11:15.460 of him because he should be in jail right now. We need to see mass arrests after these so-called

00:11:21.580 protests. Here's another threat of violence. This one was captured by Brandy Cruz of the Undivided podcast.

00:11:28.580 The footage is from Seattle. Watch.

00:11:31.860 Now there's another video that Brandy Cruz uploaded shortly after this one in which a random middle-aged

00:11:57.200 guy who looks relatively normal says basically the same thing. He agrees that it would be quote

00:12:01.760 justifiable to murder Stephen Miller. Again, this is the prevailing sentiment on the left right now

00:12:08.000 in the mainstream. Now the FBI is apparently aware of this footage according to Brandy Cruz,

00:12:13.520 but we don't know exactly what that means. The FBI certainly hasn't released a statement saying that

00:12:18.560 they've arrested this person, thrown him in solitary confinement where he should be.

00:12:22.800 He's a political terrorist. He's a suspected political terrorist. He should be in Guantanamo Bay

00:12:29.020 right now. And until that happens, they might as well do nothing at all. Until there's an actual

00:12:35.940 crackdown on these people with a tenth of the intensity of the Biden administration's crackdown

00:12:40.060 on conservatives, nothing will change. They'll continue threatening us and killing us with total

00:12:46.460 impunity. And indeed, that was the entire point of the so-called No Kings protest. This is footage

00:12:52.360 from Chicago in which a woman mocks the assassination of Charlie Kirk as Kirk's supporters drove by.

00:13:00.040 She mimes a gun shooting someone in the neck. Watch.

00:13:07.980 Hey, you ever heard of those subjects, you fat ass?

00:13:13.060 Now, probably the least surprising development of all time, this woman has been identified online

00:13:16.680 as a, I'll give you one guess, a public school teacher in Chicago. There's no official confirmation,

00:13:23.640 but her reported school, Nathan Hale Elementary School, apparently just deleted its X account

00:13:28.280 and took its entire website offline. So that seems like confirmation. And also confirmation that you

00:13:36.220 should homeschool your children immediately, or at least take them out of public school,

00:13:39.800 if that's where they are. You know, a huge number of public school teachers think like this.

00:13:46.720 They're truly demented individuals, and they want your children to be demented just like they are.

00:13:56.040 And there's a very high likelihood that if your child is in public school,

00:13:58.620 and you're a conservative, his teacher wants him dead, and you dead alongside him.

00:14:05.160 It's just the reality. And again, this woman belongs in prison. She's threatening Charlie

00:14:12.740 Kirk supporters to their faces. It's unambiguous. So why hasn't she been arrested? Where is the SWAT

00:14:19.920 team for her? Why aren't we throwing every single thing we can at her? Why not every, every, look,

00:14:27.120 look through the book to find every single law that she may have theoretically broken and charge her

00:14:36.040 with all of them? Make her life a living hell from now until the foreseeable future. Legally.

00:14:46.760 Why isn't that happening? Now we'll run through a few more examples of leftist glorifying violence at

00:14:52.920 these so-called protests. Some of these don't rise to the level of criminal conduct necessarily,

00:14:57.320 but they do give you a sense of the prevailing sentiment on the left. This is footage from

00:15:01.980 the main wire. Watch. So this is your birthday. So you came out on your birthday. You thought it

00:15:08.080 was important. Tell me why. Absolutely. Because I have two little boys who deserve a bright future of

00:15:13.320 freedom and democracy. And this is a nightmare that I'm living in. And I'm here to make a difference

00:15:20.920 and to be loud and proud. And there's no other way I'd want to celebrate my birthday than with my

00:15:25.820 ferrets and my best friend fighting for our country. So, okay. So for, for a birthday present,

00:15:32.500 what do you hope happens? You know, you wake up tomorrow morning. I hope that, um, I see the

00:15:37.880 obituary that we're all waiting for tomorrow. That's what I hope for. Yeah. You wishing that, uh,

00:15:43.860 President Trump is dead? Yes, absolutely. Okay. Absolutely. Absolutely. Okay. Absolutely.

00:15:50.860 Now, one of the things you probably noticed watching this clip is that the woman, uh,

00:15:54.180 seems happy overall out there on her birthday, smiling other than being massively overweight.

00:16:00.340 She seems normal enough. And then without missing a beat or changing her sing-songy demeanor in any way,

00:16:06.840 she says that she'd be thrilled if the president of the United States is dead. And the woman behind

00:16:14.260 her clearly thinks the same way. This is the kind of woman that if you pass by her in the grocery

00:16:19.980 store, she would seem to be smiley and friendly. And you would say, oh, you see, our political

00:16:25.760 divisions aren't that bad. It's, it, it's all online. It's all on X. Out here in the real world,

00:16:32.900 things aren't so bad. Yeah. Little do you know that this same woman will cheerfully tell you,

00:16:38.480 oh yes, I want my political enemies to die. Oh, for sure. This is mainstream on the left. I don't

00:16:44.740 know how many times I have to say it. I don't know how many, how much, much more evidence we need.

00:16:49.880 Now, of course, if this woman really believed that she was living in a fascist empire under a king,

00:16:54.240 she wouldn't be allowed to protest at all. And she certainly wouldn't be happy,

00:16:59.880 smiling for the cameras as if she's out for a picnic. She wouldn't be joking around with her

00:17:05.100 friends. And she would not be saying, yes, we're living under a fascist dictator king and I hope he

00:17:12.280 dies. If you have a fascist dictator in charge and you say that, it'll be the last thing you ever say.

00:17:20.780 This is the absurdity of it. All these people, we have, we're living under a king,

00:17:26.040 under a dictatorship and I hope he dies and let's rise up and kill all of his, you know, and kill him.

00:17:34.560 The fact that you're able to say that is all of the evidence we need that there is nothing

00:17:40.120 approaching a dictatorship in this country. So how do we explain this inconsistency? I mean,

00:17:43.680 one way to think of these protests is that for a large contingent on the left,

00:17:47.400 they're an opportunity to do something with their very empty and dysfunctional lives. They don't

00:17:51.600 believe in God. Many of them have damaged relationships with their family and friends,

00:17:56.360 if they have relationships at all. You know, a lot of them are, you know, they hate their parents,

00:18:04.360 they are divorced, they just totally dysfunctional lives. They're profoundly hateful people,

00:18:08.680 indistinguishable from demons, really. They've been affirmed and indoctrinated for decades,

00:18:12.700 even as the central promises of their ideology, one by one, have turned out to be lies. So

00:18:17.480 in their boredom and nihilism, they attempt to express themselves through aimless astroturf

00:18:22.080 protests about a monarchy, even though we don't even have a monarchy, without any guiding principles

00:18:27.900 or morality and without any fear of consequences, they have no problem making death threats or

00:18:32.000 making light of death or expressing their death wishes. It's entertainment for them.

00:18:36.420 Now, it's all they have left. Now, that's presumably why this elderly man, for example,

00:18:43.480 showed up to a protest dressed as Charlie Kirk's assassin. A normal man of this age would be

00:18:50.360 playing with his grandchildren or, you know, going to church or reading a book, tending to his garden,

00:18:56.440 anything. He'd also, by this point, have come to terms with his own mortality. But when elderly,

00:19:03.160 immature men haven't come to terms with their own mortality when they don't believe in God,

00:19:08.120 when they have no purpose in their lives, this is the natural result.

00:19:13.800 You know, age and wisdom, we like to think, go together, and oftentimes they do. But

00:19:18.920 there is nothing uglier and more pathetic than age devoid of wisdom. There is nothing uglier and

00:19:26.900 more pathetic than an old, decrepit person who has no wisdom. The one thing you're supposed to gain

00:19:35.300 with age you don't have. And instead, you're just this immature child in your late 70s,

00:19:42.320 wilting away. And that's described so many of these so-called protesters. They use irony to mask

00:19:49.060 their very deep-seated insecurity over their own impending demise. And to be clear, there's no age

00:19:54.540 limit or age requirement on this kind of thinking. Here's the Pennsylvania Democratic Party chair

00:19:59.100 in Crawford County. You can see here, she's holding a sign calling for Donald Trump to be 86th,

00:20:06.100 as in assassinated. Again, it's all very flippant. They're smiling. Why wouldn't they be?

00:20:13.760 You know, they don't think anyone's going to do anything about it. In fact, they know it'll make

00:20:18.200 them even more popular in the Democrat Party. The Daily Signal spoke to a woman at yesterday's

00:20:23.340 protests who voiced similar sentiments. She repeated a bunch of lies about Charlie Kirk,

00:20:27.720 compared him to Hitler, and said that she was grateful that he's dead. And in the same breath,

00:20:32.000 she said that she's a very nice lady, a very nice person. Watch.

00:20:37.360 Something that I've heard in interviewing Republicans is that they're concerned with

00:20:41.740 the health care going to undocumented immigrants. What would you say about that?

00:20:46.180 I don't know that it's true. Everybody deserves health care, and we can certainly afford it in this

00:20:52.400 country. So again, they're just, you know, they're pointing to things and saying it's our fault,

00:20:58.340 we're too liberal. It's really depressing. I don't know how anybody your age even thinks of having

00:21:05.860 children, okay? Okay, millions of Democrats did not vote. Whose fault is that? We need to get

00:21:13.040 ourselves together. And we might even need to be a little bit meaner, because the Republicans don't

00:21:20.360 mind being mean. And by mean, what do you mean? Do you mean protesting? Do you mean... Maybe we have

00:21:25.060 to, I don't know, stop being so nice. Because you seem like a pretty nice lady. I'm a pretty nice lady,

00:21:30.300 but I can be pretty mean, too. Okay, and I have to ask this, because people on the other side are

00:21:35.220 going to say that they feel like the Democrat Party has been mean recently, with Charlie Kirk

00:21:39.920 being assassinated. They... It's a piece of garbage. Of course we were mean. I am so tired of people

00:21:44.980 saying, oh, but, you know, it's a terrible thing. No, Hitler is dead. I'm glad Hitler's dead. Evil people

00:21:52.280 have no place in my world. He was a hateful human being. It was disgusting, the things that he said and

00:22:00.840 did. I have, you know, I don't have time for that. I'm sorry. I have to point my energy in other

00:22:06.700 directions. Nice. She's a nice lady. She wants health care for everyone, but she also wants half

00:22:15.440 the country to die. So just to be clear about who gets health care. That's the kind of health care

00:22:23.360 that she wants for me and you and pretty much anyone watching this. This is the official position

00:22:29.380 of every single true believer in the Democrat Party, without exception. All of them. Every

00:22:34.400 single one. That's why there's so much footage like this. They want you dead. They will dance

00:22:41.680 on your grave. And as they do, they will tell themselves that they're very kind people. They'll

00:22:46.620 claim that by blowing your head off, they're being compassionate. And they'll inevitably invoke

00:22:51.560 Hitler, not because they understand history or care about factual accuracy, but because it

00:22:55.260 makes them feel like they're a vital part of an existential struggle. And because it's literally

00:23:00.840 the only historical figure that they know. Quote, I don't know how anyone your age even thinks about

00:23:07.480 having children, says the older woman. After all, how could you have children when climate change is

00:23:12.300 going to destroy the world? How could you have children when we have a king who's going to enslave

00:23:16.280 all the women? How could you have children when instead you, you know, could focus entirely on

00:23:21.180 yourself? Rather than raise a family, you could save civilization from the neo-Nazis who lurk behind

00:23:26.680 every corner. Like all deeply held beliefs that are rooted in narcissism, these propositions fall

00:23:32.460 apart the moment that you think about them for a second. For example, in this clip, the woman says that

00:23:37.320 everyone, including illegal aliens, deserves health care. Again, she also wants the government to

00:23:42.200 forgive student loans, punish hate speech, etc. That's her proposal at this No Kings rally. But the

00:23:47.200 only way to achieve any of these objectives is to massively expand the power of the executive branch,

00:23:51.400 far beyond its current capabilities. They want to force doctors at gunpoint to provide services to

00:23:56.060 people who can't pay for it. In other words, they do, in fact, want a king. They just want a king

00:24:03.020 who's on their side. And just to underscore that point, not that it really needs to be underscored at

00:24:06.920 this point, here's a post from the website of Democrats Abroad, which has been organizing

00:24:12.200 No Kings protests overseas for the past six months. And you can see there, a quote,

00:24:17.600 a few notes. We've changed the No Kings theme of other events around the world to no tyrants,

00:24:23.140 so as not to mix messages in a country with a monarchy. We're also swapping out no crowns in

00:24:28.740 favor of no clowns. Come dressed as a Trump clown. Think bad blonde wig, orange face, long red tie,

00:24:35.900 or whatever gets your creative juices flowing. Yes, after months of campaigning against a king,

00:24:41.420 leftists have realized that some of their favorite countries, like Canada and the UK,

00:24:45.480 have a king. Meanwhile, the United States, which just voted for Donald Trump, you know,

00:24:50.260 voted Donald Trump in office with a majority of the popular vote and support of every single swing

00:24:54.140 state, does not have a king. And that's obviously a bit inconvenient for the whole No Kings messaging,

00:24:59.480 which is intended to protest Donald Trump. So now they've called an audible, at least in some

00:25:05.020 parts of the world. It's enough to make you think that these people may not be completely honest

00:25:09.960 about their intentions. This footage has the same effect, which you can see. Here in Seattle,

00:25:16.800 leftists dressed up as lice agents and rolled around in the dirt on the Constitution.

00:25:23.120 You get it? They're lice agents instead of ice agents. Really, really reaching for the puns on this

00:25:30.460 one. It's reminiscent of the No Kings protests from a few months ago when leftists paid money to berate

00:25:35.760 effigies of Donald Trump. This is now a well-established pattern of unhinged behavior and really cringy,

00:25:41.940 lame behavior. It's not a one-off. So it's incumbent on conservatives at this point

00:25:46.140 to answer the following question. How should we respond when our political opponents are openly deranged,

00:25:53.860 immature, nihilistic, and most importantly, committed to murdering every single one of us?

00:25:58.960 Well, here's a thought. We should not respond by obsessing over naughty jokes in a Republican group

00:26:06.700 chat. We should not spend weeks fighting amongst ourselves. We should not be obsessively

00:26:14.320 counter-signaling each other. And we should not be doing that when no one on the left under any

00:26:22.960 circumstance would do the same thing. Instead, we should recall what they did to Craig Robertson.

00:26:30.180 What they'll do to you. We should think about the FBI SWAT team that shot up his house because he

00:26:35.700 ranted about Joe Biden, when they absolutely did not need to do that. And we should keep Craig

00:26:43.320 Robertson in mind as we pursue the leftists making threats today. Not because they should suffer the same

00:26:48.840 fate, but because they are far, far greater threats to us than Craig Robertson ever was to Joe Biden.

00:26:57.760 And after the murder of Charlie Kirk and the celebration of political violence that just

00:27:01.120 took place all over the country under the guise of no-king's protests, we should treat them accordingly.

00:27:07.320 Now let's get to our five headlines.

00:27:16.300 You know, there's no way around it when it comes to health care. People are really frustrated

00:27:19.340 with how much it costs and how to pay for it. The usual ways that we've been doing this have

00:27:24.280 only gotten more expensive, more complicated, and really aggravating. That's why MediShare is such a

00:27:30.620 welcome relief. It's called health care sharing. It's different and it works. More than a million

00:27:36.460 Americans are now doing this and MediShare has been a great option for more than 30 years. So

00:27:40.740 really, you could save thousands of dollars a year on your health care and be happy. Imagine that.

00:27:45.840 If you've heard about it and you want to know more, there are two easy options. Go to

00:27:49.440 MediShare.com slash Matt. That's MediShare.com slash Matt. Text the word Matt to 70246 to get the

00:27:58.800 facts. Again, that's Matt to 70246 and you'll get the link. That's Matt 70246.

00:28:07.040 What started as an idea is now the podcast and business blasting through your earbuds. Launching

00:28:12.180 your own business is pretty much on everyone's bucket list, but most people let it collect dust

00:28:16.180 right next to learn a language and get abs. Stop hiding behind lame excuses like I don't have the

00:28:21.200 skills. I can't do it alone. Turn those what ifs into bold why nots with Shopify backing your ideas.

00:28:27.420 They've got the tools. You just need to take the chance. Shopify is the commerce platform behind

00:28:33.120 millions of businesses around the world and 10% of all e-commerce in the U.S. We even use it for

00:28:37.720 our own Daily Wire shop to make sure things are running smoothly and efficiently so you can all get

00:28:42.820 the goods. You might be asking, what if I can't design a website or I'm worried people haven't heard

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00:29:01.820 specifically for commerce can help enhance product images, write descriptions, and more. Plus,

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00:29:16.560 per month trial and start selling today at shopify.com slash Walsh. Go to shopify.com slash Walsh.

00:29:22.020 Shopify.com slash Walsh. All right. Let's see the fish cam. Pull up the fish cam. You know,

00:29:29.320 good news about the fish cam, by the way. We were talking about how it was missing. There it is.

00:29:33.260 There's the fish cam. You can't see it with the shadow, but actually, this is the good news.

00:29:38.400 If you get a closer look, it does have an anal fin. So that's the good. A lot of people have been

00:29:44.240 worried about it. All weekend, you've been worried that my fish is missing an anal fin, but it does have,

00:29:48.060 it's harder to see, but it does have an anal fin. So it's only missing one fin. It's missing its

00:29:52.920 first dorsal fin on top. But other than that, fish is in pretty good shape. So now we've centered

00:29:59.300 ourselves again, calmed down a bit. You know, we're not going to spend a lot of time on the

00:30:03.940 headlines today because I want to leave more time for the final segment, which will be longer than

00:30:08.440 usual. And, you know, it won't really be a cancellation exactly. I just have a kind of an idea that I want to

00:30:13.820 talk about. And actually, I was up till about like 2.30 in the morning last night writing this

00:30:20.180 monologue about this theory that I have. And I, because I also made the mistake of drinking coffee

00:30:27.780 past 7 p.m., which I never do. And this was the result. But I've been thinking about it, and I

00:30:33.080 believe I've identified the exact moment when our culture peaked and began its decline,

00:30:39.860 which also kind of tells us what exactly our problem is, what our real fundamental underlying

00:30:46.160 problem is in our culture. And it's one that is actually not political or ideological. And

00:30:53.500 it also tells us where things are headed, what comes next. So I think it's an important

00:30:58.760 conversation. We're going to talk about that. So we'll touch on one headline, and we're going to

00:31:08.880 talk about this one, which is horrifically awful, unfortunately. New York Post reports,

00:31:16.520 two young Ohio children are facing attempted murder, rape, and other charges for an unthinkable

00:31:21.120 assault on a five-year-old girl who was left bloodied, scalped, and unrecognizable, according

00:31:26.060 to authorities and her horrified mother. The suspects, a nine-year-old boy and a 10-year-old girl,

00:31:31.560 were hit with a laundry list of charges, including the shocking September 13th, following the

00:31:35.580 shocking September 13th attack on the little girl. Prosecutor's office in Cleveland Division of

00:31:41.060 Police both declined to share additional information or provide comments due to the

00:31:44.760 sensitive nature of the case. Victim's mother told local outlets that she dropped her daughter off at

00:31:48.560 a family member's house for a few hours on September 13th. And somehow the young girl left the property

00:31:54.640 on her own and was missing, and then was found later that day unresponsive, beaten, and bloodied in a

00:32:01.660 field. So just unthinkable, here's more from this mother talking to local news. Here it is.

00:32:10.280 Literally saw the worst thing ever, like.

00:32:13.640 In Tavia Kinnebrew, a mother, heartbroken and pleading for justice. Police say her five-year-old

00:32:18.660 daughter was beaten, scalped, and sexually assaulted. The people that did it, they believe,

00:32:23.340 are a nine-year-old boy and a 10-year-old girl. I saw my daughter unrecognizable.

00:32:30.740 Kinnebrew says she dropped her daughter off with a family member on September 13th. Somehow,

00:32:35.860 the five-year-old got outside. The next thing the mother knows, her little girl is being treated

00:32:40.420 by paramedics. Police say the brutal attack happened in a field near East 148th Street

00:32:45.860 and St. Clair Avenue. Her hair was scalped from her head. She had bruises and blood all over her body.

00:32:53.120 Her eyes was filled with blood. Her lips and mouth was filled with blood. Her nails had dirt,

00:32:58.180 debris and dirt stuck in it. 19 News spoke to Kinnebrew last week. Nearly a month after the

00:33:03.960 attack, she's still wondering how and why this could have happened. The Cuyahoga County Prosecutor's

00:33:09.300 Office charging the children with some adult-like crimes, attempted murder, rape, kidnapping,

00:33:15.240 and strangulation. Kinnebrew telling us her daughter is left emotionally and physically hurt.

00:33:20.520 I want her to just be somewhat of a normal five-year-old again.

00:33:26.640 The prosecutor's office says they are still going through evidence and getting new information.

00:33:31.000 Our team reached out to Kinnebrew's lawyer for comment on these charges, but have not heard back.

00:33:36.160 For 19 News, I'm Aria Janelle.

00:33:37.900 So this is obviously just beyond all imagining one of the darkest, most twisted things I've ever heard

00:33:43.180 of. And for a crime like this to be committed by a nine and a 10-year-old is unfathomable. I mean,

00:33:51.340 I have three kids around that age and they are, I can say, literally incapable of doing anything like

00:33:59.720 this. I mean, it's more likely that they would sprout wings and fly across the room than that they

00:34:04.500 would commit a violent, heinous, felony crime. And most parents, hopefully, can say that about

00:34:12.600 their kids. So what happened with these kids then? And this brings me back to something that

00:34:19.360 we've discussed before. We've talked about the recent cases increasing in regularity where the

00:34:23.680 parents of school shooters are charged for the crime that their child commits. The parents of,

00:34:30.700 we must stipulate, white school shooters. And I've said in those cases that the only way I could

00:34:39.340 possibly support charging the parents is if the approach is applied consistently, but it isn't

00:34:43.840 because every day in this country, in the inner cities and urban areas, horrible, violent crimes

00:34:49.200 are committed by children and the parents of those kids are basically never charged. And here we are

00:34:56.140 with the most stark illustration of this point. As far as I know, the parents of these nine and 10-year-old

00:35:00.660 kids have not been identified. I don't know why they haven't been identified.

00:35:06.900 And they have not been charged. Will they be charged? I don't know. But if history is any guide,

00:35:15.220 no. Because this is urban crime. It's street crime. And the culprits, we can assume, with a high degree

00:35:21.780 of certainty, are black. And we can assume that because of where this happened. But also, if these

00:35:27.060 assailants were white, we would definitely be told that fact. I mean, in fact, if they were white,

00:35:33.220 this would be the biggest story in the country right now. It would be the biggest headline news

00:35:39.020 right now. So the fact that it isn't kind of tells us, tells us, it gives the game away. So where are

00:35:45.800 the charges? Why aren't the parents charged not just with a crime, but a capital crime? I mean,

00:35:51.240 why aren't they facing the death penalty for this? The parents, I mean. They should be.

00:35:59.300 And I say that as someone who has been very skeptical of charging parents for the crimes

00:36:02.720 of their children. Skeptical because of the inconsistency, as I said. But also skeptical

00:36:08.880 in principle because, you know, this... I'm skeptical in principle of the idea of holding a parent

00:36:15.640 responsible, legally responsible, for a crime that the child goes off and commits on their own.

00:36:23.460 And obviously, if the parent was somehow involved in encouraging it or planning it or something,

00:36:28.600 then clearly everyone agrees the parents would be charged in that case. But I think this case

00:36:33.420 shows us where the line should be drawn. So here's what I think we should do.

00:36:38.100 I don't think that parents should automatically be charged whenever a child commits a violent crime.

00:36:42.440 It is possible for a parent to be basically attentive, basically loving, trying to do their

00:36:48.880 best, and yet still end up with a child who does something terrible. That can happen. It happens all

00:36:53.600 the time. It's scary to think about as a parent, but it's true. You know, your child is his own person.

00:36:59.920 He has his own mind. He has his own free will, his own conscience. And so he could go off and do

00:37:06.980 something terrible. I mean, you can't absolutely 100% guarantee that won't happen. But here's where

00:37:13.360 I would draw the line. And you have to draw it somewhere, and there will be an element of

00:37:16.340 arbitrariness to it. But I think that this is the least arbitrary line you can draw. If you have a

00:37:21.760 child who is 10 years old or younger and commits a violent felony, you as the parent should automatically

00:37:29.240 be charged and sentenced as if you committed that crime yourself. I think that's what we should do.

00:37:36.720 And yeah, drawing the line at 10 is kind of arbitrary. You could draw it at 9. You could draw it at 11 or 12.

00:37:40.880 But the point is that if a very young child does, you know, commits a violent crime against another

00:37:49.720 human being. It means that you have utterly failed as a parent at the most fundamental and basic level.

00:37:58.280 Kids get into mischief all the time. They do dumb things, even if you're a good parent.

00:38:03.420 But that's one thing. On the other hand, if a young child becomes a violent felon and commits

00:38:12.600 heinous, monstrous atrocities, then it means that you are pathologically neglectful, incompetent,

00:38:22.280 and probably sadistic as a parent yourself, obviously. And, you know, things can change as

00:38:29.980 kids get older. It is possible that a 15-, 16-year-old teenage boy could go out and do something violent

00:38:34.840 and bad, even if you aren't the worst parent in the world. I mean, there's a lot you can do as a

00:38:40.000 parent to protect against that. It's not like it's the luck of the draw completely. And if your 15-year-old

00:38:46.020 son commits a violent crime, chances are high that you have at least made some significant mistakes as

00:38:52.340 a parent, at a minimum. But it doesn't necessarily require you to be a monster yourself, right? A 10-year-old,

00:39:00.940 I mean, a 10-year-old doing something like this, well, then you're just a monster. I mean,

00:39:05.240 you as the parent are a monster. I mean, if your 15-year-old commits this kind of crime,

00:39:13.460 rape, torture, kidnapping, then you're probably also a monster as a parent. If your 25-year-old

00:39:19.640 commits this kind of crime, pretty good indication that you're a monstrously terrible parent. But

00:39:23.400 you've got to draw the line somewhere. And what I'm saying is that 10 and under,

00:39:26.880 the charges against the parent should be automatic. It should just be,

00:39:31.840 the kid does something like this, violent felony under the age of 10, you are required by law to

00:39:39.420 at least get your kid past the age of 10 without committing violent felonies. And if you can't do

00:39:43.680 that, you automatically are going to jail. And beyond that, it's a case-by-case basis. And there's

00:39:50.720 one other point I want to make about this. We talk so much about political violence.

00:39:55.220 I talk about it on this show. We talked about it at the start of the show. It's a big problem.

00:39:58.760 But the violent crime epidemic is not, of course, driven primarily by political violence. And it

00:40:06.560 isn't driven by mental illness. I've seen some of the commentary about this case. And we don't know

00:40:12.160 these kids who did this terrible thing. But a lot of people saying, well, this is mental illness.

00:40:17.500 Once again, we see the epidemic of mental illness, and they must have been mentally ill.

00:40:20.960 But that's not what is at play here. And this is not driven by lax gun laws or whatever. I mean,

00:40:32.100 the culprits in this case didn't even have a gun, as far as we know. And the worst and most prevalent

00:40:37.800 violence doesn't happen in the form of hate crimes. It's not even driven by hate. The real epidemic is

00:40:44.280 nihilistic violence committed by people utterly devoid of humanity, totally soulless.

00:40:51.400 Violence committed just for the sake of it.

00:40:56.820 Now, I've been making this point for a long time that we always hear about hate crimes. Crimes of hate

00:41:01.420 are not the biggest problem. And hateful people are not the most dangerous or necessarily even

00:41:09.760 dangerous at all. I mean, they can be, but... Now, the biggest problem and the most dangerous

00:41:16.200 people are the indifferent people, the soulless, nihilistic, you know, apathetic. Crimes of

00:41:22.640 indifference are the worst crimes. And total indifference is what drives people to do the worst

00:41:30.260 things. And we have now in our culture, you know, we have this happening on a mass scale.

00:41:42.940 You know, when you see the crimes that are committed in our cities, this is like nihilistic,

00:41:50.420 soulless, passionless crime. I saw a video a while ago, I didn't want to see it, but it popped into my

00:41:56.300 feed of a guy who robbed a liquor store or a convenience store or something, gas station,

00:42:02.320 something like that. And then just casually shot the cashier after he already, he already been given

00:42:08.260 the cash. He was on camera. I don't even think the guy was wearing a mask. Maybe he was, but

00:42:14.340 no reason to shoot the guy. Not just no reason to, but like you're, you, all you've achieved is that

00:42:24.240 when you get arrested, you're going to go to jail for a whole lot longer, or you should anyway.

00:42:29.760 You never know with these DAs these days, but he just shot him anyway. No reason. Didn't appear to

00:42:35.780 be like angry. He wasn't yelling at him. Just shot him. Shot him for the sake of it. And that's the

00:42:43.620 kind of violence that infests our cities, making it down even to young children. So

00:42:51.820 only way out is real accountability. And we talk about it all the time for the criminals themselves

00:42:58.540 and how there needs to be real criminal justice again. But this accountability has to go to the

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00:43:52.180 myoffer to see the scholarships you may qualify. Thursday night on the debut episode of Friendly Fire,

00:43:58.460 we announced Daily Wire lifetime memberships. We also mentioned only 10,000 exist, but here's something new.

00:44:04.460 Now you can win a lifetime membership. Download the free Daily Wire Plus app in the App Store,

00:44:09.540 then open the app, tap Explore and follow me. That enters you for a chance to win a lifetime membership.

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00:44:21.840 If you've already downloaded the app and followed, you are already entered. For everyone else,

00:44:26.360 get to work, download the Daily Wire Plus app and follow me today. Now let's get to our daily cancellation.

00:44:34.460 I want to talk about a theory that has been bouncing around in my head for several years now.

00:44:43.340 And it's not just my theory. I'm sure other people have landed on this conclusion too.

00:44:48.440 The theory is that pop culture peaked at a specific and identifiable point in our very recent past

00:44:55.080 and has fallen off a cliff, perhaps irretrievably since then. And I want to discuss when this peak

00:45:02.580 occurred, why it dropped, where this is all leading. I want to make the case that pop culture is now dead

00:45:09.620 because the culture itself, in a very real sense, is dead. And this is not just reflexive, pessimistic

00:45:16.500 doomerism. Something very real and very important is happening here, as I will explain.

00:45:21.860 Now, pop culture, of course, is the artistic output of a society. It's why it's important.

00:45:27.620 It's the story we tell ourselves about ourselves. And a healthy culture tells great stories well.

00:45:33.820 A sick culture, a dying culture, tells bad stories, or sometimes worse, tells good stories badly.

00:45:40.260 We used to be the former, and now we no longer are. And I think I can show you exactly when

00:45:45.240 everything took a turn. The peak happened during the years 2007 and 2008.

00:45:50.260 And I don't think we appreciated it at the time. You never do. That's how peaks usually work. You

00:45:54.920 don't notice them until you've already started, you know, the descent. You started going over the

00:45:58.940 other side. But that was the zenith. That was the top of the mountain. 2007 saw the release of two of

00:46:05.320 the greatest films ever made, There Will Be Blood and No Country for Old Men, which not only came out

00:46:09.680 in the same year, but also, it just so happens, were filmed at the same time in the same town,

00:46:14.260 only miles apart from each other. But there was more. You know, there's a lot more. The David Fincher

00:46:19.220 masterpiece, Zodiac, released in 2007. So did Michael Clayton, George Clooney film,

00:46:23.820 Into the Wild. Superbad, the last good teen comedy. 2008 gave us The Dark Knight, The Wrestler,

00:46:29.820 Tropic Thunder, which was one of the last great comedies of any type to be made by Hollywood.

00:46:34.340 We get a few more decent comedies between 2009 and 2013, and that would be it. The entire genre

00:46:40.320 essentially died after that point. Now, back in 2007, 2008, every genre was thriving. They were

00:46:46.200 still making great children's movies. Ratatouille in 2007, WALL-E in 2008. Even the smaller movies

00:46:51.340 that didn't light up the box office were exceptional. The Assassination of Jesse James by the coward

00:46:56.340 Robert Ford's a really good movie. The Mist, Before the Devil Knows You're Dead, once in Bruges.

00:47:01.820 I didn't personally enjoy Juno or Gran Torino all that much, but they came out at this time,

00:47:06.560 and they're both better, more daring, more original than the vast majority of the slop Hollywood puts

00:47:11.900 out these days. Gone Baby Gone. Ben Affleck film was another very good film to come out during this

00:47:17.340 time. Apocalypto, for my money, a nearly perfect movie. Almost came out in 2007. It premiered in

00:47:23.340 theories in December of 2006. So did Children of Men. In fact, you can make an argument for expanding

00:47:28.480 the peak to include 2006, a three-year period then, covering 06 through 08. 2006 gave us not only

00:47:35.040 Apocalypto and Children of Men, but it also gave us Departed, The Departed, Borat, The Prestige,

00:47:39.880 Rescue Dawn, Idiocracy, Pursuit of Happiness. You can throw a dart at a list of every movie released

00:47:46.160 during this period, and the chances are pretty high that you'll hit something good, maybe even

00:47:51.300 great, and maybe even a masterpiece. And this holds truer for television shows. Now, if you were to

00:47:58.060 make a list of the 10 greatest TV shows ever made, five of those shows that you would likely put on

00:48:05.160 your list were on the air during this time. The Wire, The Sopranos, Breaking Bad, Mad Men,

00:48:10.220 The Office. A lot of people would make an argument for The Shield as one of the great shows of all

00:48:14.400 time. It was also on the air at this time. Lost had its best seasons during these years. Kirby

00:48:19.280 Enthusiasm was hitting on all cylinders. South Park hadn't fallen off a cliff yet like it has now.

00:48:24.120 30 Rock, not my bag, but it was a solid network sitcom also airing at this time. It's Always Sunny in

00:48:29.800 Philadelphia was in its prime. The extremely underrated, hilarious Flight of the Conchords

00:48:34.460 premiered on HBO in 2007. For my money, one of the funniest shows of all time, Extras,

00:48:39.380 Ricky Gervais' show, was airing on the same network at the same time. I would argue that

00:48:44.620 if you factor both movies and TV shows together, you cannot point to a one or two or even three-year

00:48:50.120 period that beats it. The volume of great cinema and television can't be matched. Now, 1999 was a

00:48:58.020 great year for movies. So was 1996. So was 1975. 1939 gave us both Gone with the Wind and The Wizard

00:49:03.760 of Oz. But 2007 to 2008 or 2006 to 2008 gave us masterpieces on both the big and small screen.

00:49:11.600 Both art forms seem to have reached their pinnacle at the same time. And what we could say for sure,

00:49:18.340 with absolute certainty, is that no year or two-year period or three-year period after 07 to 08

00:49:24.280 comes anywhere close. And that's the most important point. Because even if you argue that there were

00:49:29.500 better years before 07 or 06, the point is that nothing comes close in the years since. Now, you may

00:49:36.820 not think that 2007 was the best period. I think it was. It doesn't matter. All that matters for my

00:49:42.540 theory is that it was the last great one. If it wasn't the peak, it was the last peak. Now, there have

00:49:51.020 been great films since then. Some of my favorites, Whiplash, Sicario, The Social Network, Once Upon a

00:49:55.700 Time in Hollywood, plenty of others. I mentioned In Bruges, which came out in 2008. The Banshees of

00:50:01.180 Inishirin is a better film by the same director and same lead actors, which came out in 2022.

00:50:06.720 But these films are spread out over a period of nearly two decades. And they're drowned in a sea

00:50:12.460 of slop. Remakes, franchise films, sequels, superheroes. And there have also been good TV

00:50:20.120 shows since 2008. The first season of True Detective came out in 2014. Chernobyl in 2019.

00:50:24.620 An absolute masterpiece, in my opinion. But again, nothing like the murderer's row of The Wire,

00:50:30.380 Breaking Bad, The Sopranos, Mad Men, The Shield, overlapping each other. Throw a dart at a list of

00:50:36.620 any movie or show that came out after 2008, and especially any that have come out in the past 10

00:50:41.520 years, and especially any that have come out in the last five years. And your chance of hitting

00:50:46.300 something even watchable, much less good, much less great, is significantly smaller. I mean, sure,

00:50:53.220 you might hit something like Severance, which is a true artistic triumph, I think. But you're much

00:50:58.160 more likely to land somewhere in the sea of just mediocre streaming sludge that we're all swimming in.

00:51:04.240 Why? What happened? Well, two other things premiered in the 07-08 period that might help

00:51:12.980 explain the problem. The first, the one that conservatives will most likely point to,

00:51:18.040 is Barack Obama's presidency. Obama was, of course, elected in 2008. He took office in 2009.

00:51:23.520 And with the election of our first truly far-left president, a radical black activist who used his

00:51:29.000 race as a cudgel against the entire country, we entered the era of what we would come to call

00:51:33.520 wokeness. All forms of risky, interesting, provocative artistic expression began to die

00:51:39.660 off as a result, starting with comedy. It is really striking, as many people have pointed out,

00:51:44.200 to look at a list of the best comedies of this century and notice how the genre simply disappears

00:51:50.020 from the face of the earth by the end of Obama's first term. Not a coincidence.

00:51:55.600 But that is not the whole story. And it isn't even half of the story. Because something else happened

00:52:03.300 in 2007 that would prove to be a much more determinative factor. The iPhone was, of course,

00:52:10.660 released in the U.S. on June 29, 2007. And again, it is startling to look at a list of the greatest

00:52:17.760 films and TV shows of this century and see how many of them were packed in and produced from the year

00:52:25.160 2000, right up until the release of the iPhone and how quickly everything drops off, almost from that

00:52:31.220 moment precisely, or within a year or so of it. The iPhone came out, social media proliferated alongside

00:52:37.140 it. 2007, only about 23% of American adults had ever used social media. Twitter had only just been

00:52:42.700 launched. TikTok didn't exist. Instagram didn't exist. Today, of course, basically everyone uses social

00:52:47.660 media, basically every waking moment of the day. Now, here's the point. As our lives have become

00:52:57.340 increasingly centered around these devices, centered and condensed into these little glowing boxes,

00:53:03.820 we have lost something very important. We no longer have a shared cultural experience,

00:53:11.440 what some have called the monoculture, or what you might just call mainstream culture.

00:53:17.220 The monoculture began its march to extinction in 2007. Today, the march is over. Process is complete.

00:53:24.600 There is no shared culture. The monoculture gave way to the fragmented culture, a culture broken and

00:53:31.760 divided into 300 million little pieces, a culture driven by algorithms, designed to feed us a nonstop diet

00:53:39.380 of lowest common denominator, slop, all the time. Now, for as long as modern pop culture has existed,

00:53:46.180 going back to the mid-1900s at least, there have been subcultures, you know, there have been divisions,

00:53:50.920 divisions along generational lines, sure. Monoculture didn't mean that everyone's culture experience was

00:53:56.880 exactly the same, with no variations whatsoever. All it meant was that, generally speaking,

00:54:03.120 we all watched the same movies, same TV shows. And even if we didn't watch them,

00:54:10.000 we knew about the popular ones that other people were watching. You know, not everybody watched

00:54:14.660 Seinfeld in the 90s, but most people did. And if you didn't, you still knew about Seinfeld. You

00:54:20.120 recognized the characters. It was still part of your cultural experience. It was a cultural benchmark

00:54:25.780 for everyone, even if you didn't watch it. And that's because, you know, we went to the same

00:54:30.540 places to access all this stuff. We went to the same movie theaters. We browsed through the aisles

00:54:35.200 at Blockbuster. We turned on our TV. We scanned through the same channels. We went to the same

00:54:40.420 places. We're exposed to the same things. We had a culture. That's what a culture is. It's a shared

00:54:46.600 experience. There's a reason why music, which, you know, of course is an essential part of the culture

00:54:51.680 I haven't mentioned yet, and which doesn't really graft onto this timeline exactly the same.

00:54:57.040 It peaked a little bit earlier than movies and television. The musical monoculture broke up almost

00:55:02.300 a decade before that with the advent of Napster and file sharing. Napster arrived on the scene in 1999.

00:55:08.100 This was also arguably our musical peak. And it's not that 1999 had all the best music. I mean,

00:55:13.520 that's up to, you know, it's whatever your taste is. But every genre of music was thriving in 1999.

00:55:19.080 Rock, pop, rap, country, R&B. We had big musical acts that were like actual bands that played,

00:55:27.760 you know, mute, played instruments. And today, rock music doesn't exist in the mainstream.

00:55:33.760 All the other genres have melded together and become indistinguishable from each other.

00:55:38.040 Before file sharing and eventually iPhones and streaming, if we wanted to hear new music,

00:55:42.980 you turn on the radio and you listen to the stations or, for my generation, MTV.

00:55:48.280 When I was a teenager, almost everyone I knew went home after school. You put on MTV,

00:55:53.820 you watch TRL, where we'd all see the same 10 music videos. Our opinion of the music may have

00:56:00.200 varied, but we were all exposed to the same things. We had a shared experience. We had a culture.

00:56:05.680 And this meant that even the generational divides were not nearly as stark as they are today.

00:56:12.640 And there was a divide, but it wasn't a brick wall. You know, it was not this impenetrable

00:56:16.960 fortress like it is now. In the 90s, my parents did not much care for the pop stars and rock bands

00:56:24.600 that the kids were listening to, but they generally knew who those stars were. I mean,

00:56:29.460 they weren't big fans of Eminem or Britney Spears, but they would have recognized those people if they

00:56:35.380 walked into the room because we all had the same stars. We all had the same celebrities.

00:56:39.500 Today, if your 14-year-old son has a phone, which most of them do, unfortunately, he also has his

00:56:47.140 own personal list of stars and celebrities that he looks up to and follows obsessively.

00:56:53.460 And these are people that you've never heard of. You don't know their names. You don't know who

00:56:59.260 they are. You don't even know what they do. It's not even as simple as, oh yeah, well,

00:57:04.040 that's a famous pop star. I was like, they might not even do anything. And there isn't one place for

00:57:12.260 you to go and find out who these people are because they're streamers and they're influencers and they're

00:57:17.840 various other random people with huge followings who enjoy a very peculiar and very modern kind of

00:57:22.500 fame. One that is vast, but narrow. Millions of fans know them intimately and the rest of us have

00:57:32.460 never even heard their names. And I can't stress enough how new and weird internet fame is. And I

00:57:39.200 say this as someone who has some experience with it, as you know. At any other point in history,

00:57:43.960 up until very recently, if you had 5 million fans, then you were famous. If you had 5 million fans,

00:57:50.420 it meant that there were 50 million other people who at least vaguely knew who you were.

00:57:55.780 Now you can have 5 million fans and be totally obscure to every other person on the planet.

00:58:01.080 I mean, there are YouTubers with 100 million subscribers who I wouldn't recognize if they

00:58:05.900 walked up to me and introduced themselves by name. And I am a YouTuber with millions of subscribers.

00:58:12.200 Not 100 million, but millions. You know, there's something poetic in the fact that Michael Jackson,

00:58:17.300 the last celebrity of the monoculture, the last true global star, died in 2009.

00:58:24.540 Coincidentally, you know, when the monoculture was extinguished, so was its biggest star.

00:58:29.880 The death of celebrity, true celebrity, is a symptom of the death of the monoculture,

00:58:34.700 the extinction of the shared cultural experience. Radio is long since dead. So is MTV. Blockbuster

00:58:40.460 went the way of the woolly mammoth a long time ago. Movie theaters still exist, but they don't have

00:58:44.700 anywhere near the kind of cultural importance that they used to have. And nobody watches TV channels

00:58:49.980 anymore. All of that, all of it, has been consumed by an infinite scroll of content created by an algorithm

00:59:00.740 specifically for you. You know, there is no local radio DJ telling you and all your friends about the

00:59:07.660 coolest new band. I was a radio DJ right at the tail end of music radio's relevance in its twilight. I also

00:59:14.820 worked at Blockbuster at the tail end of that. So I kind of checked in on these industries right as

00:59:19.720 they were all dying. And I remember I would hear stories from the veterans of the radio business

00:59:25.740 about what it was like back in the good old days when your local DJ was a household name in the

00:59:30.060 community. He was almost like the unofficial mayor of the town. And I felt like a guy who got to the

00:59:35.360 party right when everybody was putting on their coats to leave. And now the party's over.

00:59:39.200 Now there is a faceless, nameless, mindless, soulless, lifeless code, an algorithm, a formula

00:59:45.300 feeding you content specifically designed to keep you staring at a screen.

00:59:50.540 Now the code doesn't care what you're staring at or why you're staring. Only that you stare.

00:59:57.300 And for as long as possible. If a cute cat video will keep you staring, it'll show you that.

01:00:03.960 If a video of a guy getting shot in the head will do it, then it'll show you that.

01:00:07.400 It'll serve you anything and everything all the time, as Bo Burnham sang.

01:00:13.320 Now in this environment, it's extremely difficult for any piece of art, especially something longer

01:00:18.080 than 75 seconds, to break through and grab the attention of the masses. And even if it does grab

01:00:22.300 all of our attention for a brief moment in time, we're not going to experience the thing together

01:00:27.260 or even in the same context. We'll experience it alone on our phones, on our feeds, sandwiched

01:00:33.580 between other content, pulling our attention back away from this thing that we all briefly

01:00:37.620 noticed at the same time and forgot about just as quickly.

01:00:41.820 You know, today we still have hit songs that lots of people stream and we have hit movies

01:00:45.240 that lots of people watch. But very rarely does any show or film or song become a cultural

01:00:50.800 touchstone, a true sensation, a thing that you cannot avoid, that you almost cannot help

01:00:57.180 but experience. You know, in 1997, when I was in middle school, every person I knew, adult

01:01:03.240 and child, had seen Titanic. And even if they hadn't seen it, they had a strong opinion about

01:01:07.720 it. And the Celine Dion song from that movie was so pervasive, was so totally ubiquitous that

01:01:13.260 I heard it five times a day, whether I wanted to or not. And I didn't want to. I have a distinct

01:01:18.500 memory of going on a hike with my dad at the height of the Titanic craze and hearing my

01:01:23.080 heart will go on wafting through the trees from somebody's campsite somewhere, I assume.

01:01:28.520 You couldn't even escape it in the woods. I mean, it was everywhere. There are movies

01:01:33.460 today that, you know, make more money at the box office than Titanic did. And there are songs

01:01:37.560 that probably get more streams than My Heart Will Go On got radio plays. But none of them,

01:01:43.320 no matter how widely consumed, are the same kind of cultural sensation. Not even close.

01:01:47.900 Not close. There hasn't been one that even comes close to it in 15 years, at least.

01:01:56.820 You know, a movie these days can make a billion dollars and have virtually no cultural impact

01:02:02.580 at all. A movie can be seen by millions and barely noticed at the same time. Consider this,

01:02:11.180 when is the last time a movie produced an iconic moment or line? You know, one that's like repeated

01:02:16.060 and parodied and known by everyone. Something like, to stay with Titanic, Kate Winslet, you know,

01:02:22.860 with her arms outstretched at the front of the ship. Everybody knows that image. My kids were born

01:02:27.300 16 years after the movie came out. They've never even seen the movie, and they know that image.

01:02:32.940 When's the last time that any film produced an image that widely recognized? I mean, think about it.

01:02:39.160 I was racking my brain. I can't... It's been like 20 years? Longer? It's been a very long time.

01:02:48.440 Why? Well, for a simple reason. An iconic image is like an impact crater on the surface of the

01:02:53.800 culture. A thing that imprints itself indelibly onto it. But it's impossible to make a cultural impact

01:02:59.180 when there is no culture to begin with. It's like an asteroid hitting a gas giant, like Jupiter.

01:03:05.180 There's no crater. There's no impact. The thing just gets sucked into a giant ball of gas and

01:03:10.620 incinerated. Speaking of asteroids, by the way, just in parentheses, the movie Armageddon came out

01:03:15.940 a year after Titanic. It also had a song on its soundtrack that was instantly iconic and inescapable.

01:03:20.400 I mean, this was common back when we had a culture. You know, it's popular these days

01:03:25.560 to rail against gatekeepers. Everyone does. Oh, the gatekeepers. People gatekeeping.

01:03:31.820 You know, it turns out that gatekeepers aren't always a bad thing. In fact, they are necessary.

01:03:39.740 Radio DJs used to be gatekeepers. So were movie theaters. So were video rental places,

01:03:44.460 concert venues, TV channels. They maintained the boundaries of the culture by deciding what we were

01:03:50.280 all exposed to. If a movie was not in theaters and Blockbuster didn't have it and it wasn't playing

01:03:54.000 on TNT or AMC, that meant you just couldn't watch that movie. In fact, most movies that you would

01:03:59.700 want to see, you just could not watch them. You just couldn't do it. You couldn't listen to most

01:04:04.400 music. If there was a song, this will really blow the minds of kids these days. If there was a song

01:04:10.880 you wanted to hear and you didn't have it on CD or cassette, your only other choice was to physically

01:04:16.220 pick up your phone and call your local radio station and ask them to play it. Now, this was gatekeeping,

01:04:23.440 yeah, but within the gate was our shared cultural experience. Within the gate was culture. Now, those

01:04:31.520 gatekeepers are all gone. Doesn't mean there's no gatekeeper now. Now there's one. And it's not flesh

01:04:40.000 and blood. It's the algorithm. And this one is far more tyrannical and sinister than any of the other

01:04:46.460 ones ever were. And worse, it's invisible. We don't even know that it's there, but it is. And it has,

01:04:53.840 it has again, one mission and one mission only to keep us staring at the screen and to keep us staring

01:05:01.060 at it alone, isolated, fragmented. Now, if this all sounds kind of bleak, well, I'm afraid that it gets

01:05:11.640 worse. Uh, AI is about to take the fragmented culture and explode it into an infinite number

01:05:19.060 of microscopic pieces like dust floating in space. Now, up till now, the algorithm has been showing

01:05:25.720 you for the most part content created by other people. Well, soon it will show you content that

01:05:33.780 it creates. And this is already happening. And soon it will be the only thing you see

01:05:37.060 or that it has given you the illusion of creating yourself, which means that in the not too distant

01:05:44.560 future, if the AI industry has its way, your favorite film will be one that nobody else on

01:05:51.760 earth has seen. And your favorite song will be one that nobody else has heard because you will

01:05:58.360 generate your own pop culture by feeding prompts into a machine. And by the way, the machine will prompt

01:06:04.700 you about what sort of prompts it wants you to type in so that it's telling you what to want

01:06:12.060 and then create, and then giving you the thing that it's letting you pretend you created.

01:06:18.500 And I've talked a lot about how AI art is soulless and dead and that's true, but perhaps the bigger

01:06:24.500 problem is that it's lonely. It exists for you and you alone. It kills for good whatever is left of

01:06:32.220 the shared cultural experience. That's our future. It's already here. I wish I had better news to

01:06:39.100 share, but like, that's the news, like it or not. Now, if I'm very optimistic, which I'm not, I would

01:06:46.480 hope that people will rebel against this fragmented, algorithmic, digital pseudo-culture by building

01:06:52.740 strong communities where there can be a shared culture, at least on a local level. Building actual

01:07:00.540 communities in physically, in physical space with people that you're actually around in person.

01:07:06.940 You know, over the summer, we visited a place that had a small theater where the local troop would

01:07:12.080 put on plays for the community once or twice a week. And people came out. It's a community event.

01:07:17.460 People would come out and watch the plays. Maybe that sort of thing will become more popular. Maybe,

01:07:22.420 you know, if I can't have a shared culture with the entire country, I'll at least have one with my

01:07:26.540 neighbors. That's the optimistic view. Of course, the other possibility is that we'll all stay

01:07:33.580 plugged into the matrix in a world that the machine designs for each of us individually to live in

01:07:39.080 alone, distracted and amused, but never happy. A post-culture, a non-culture, a culture that isn't

01:07:47.120 real because it isn't shared. That could also happen. I know which possibility I would put my

01:07:55.780 money on, but in the end, it's up to us. Because the last decision that we will make as a culture

01:08:02.660 is whether we want to have one or not.

01:08:06.080 That'll do it for the show today. Thanks for watching. Thanks for listening. Talk to you

01:08:11.420 tomorrow. Have a great day. Godspeed.

01:08:14.600 Hey there, I'm Daily Wire executive editor, John Bickley. And I'm Georgia Howe, and we're the hosts

01:08:30.060 of Morning Wire. We bring you all the news you need to know in 15 minutes or less. Watch and

01:08:34.680 listen to Morning Wire seven days a week, everywhere you get your podcasts.

01:08:38.040 Calling all book lovers. The Toronto International Festival of Authors brings you a world of stories

01:08:48.500 all in one place. Discover five days of readings, talks, workshops and more with over 100 authors

01:08:55.580 from around the world, including Rachel Maddow, Keturo Isaku and Kieran Desai. The Toronto

01:09:02.020 International Festival of Authors, October 29th to November 2nd. Details and tickets

01:09:07.980 at festivalofauthors.ca.

The Matt Walsh Show - October 20, 2025

Ep. 1676 - ＂No Kings Protest＂ Turns Into A Rallying Cry For Political Violence

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