The Matt Walsh Show - Ep. 1711 - Venezuela Has Been Dealt With. Somali Scammers Should Be Next

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00:01:20.680 Today on the Matt Wall Show, Donald Trump captures the communist dictator of Venezuela. I'm as non-interventionist as they come, but I think this was a brilliant move, and I'll explain why.

00:01:28.340 Also, as we saw over the break, Somali daycare fraudsters were exposed in a massively viral video.

00:01:34.340 Why can't we handle these people as swiftly and decisively as we handled Maduro? We'll talk about that.

00:01:38.140 Plus, the communist dictator of New York, Mamdani, extols the virtues of collectivism over individualism.

00:01:43.900 And I have some important advice for fathers as we begin the new year.

00:01:47.460 We'll talk about all that and more today on the Matt Wall Show.

00:01:49.480 One of the benefits of taking some time off and letting the news of the day unfold,

00:02:19.460 for a couple of weeks without responding to it or even hearing about it, is that you gain some perspective.

00:02:25.620 You inoculate yourself from the usual call and response outrage cycles, the latest true crime style conspiracy nonsense, and all the rest of it.

00:02:34.560 And then when you return, it's easier to take stock of the issues that matter and the ones that don't.

00:02:39.820 And this is clarity that, on the right, we've needed for some time now, desperately.

00:02:45.360 And over Christmas and New Year's, in a kind of one-two punch, that clarity arrived.

00:02:49.520 We were treated to a contrast that was so stark and so sobering that it's just impossible to ignore.

00:02:55.640 So first, there was the man-on-the-street video of the Somali daycares and healthcare centers posted by the YouTuber Nick Shirley,

00:03:02.260 which you've probably seen along with 200 million other people.

00:03:05.820 And of course, the fact that Somalis are openly scamming Americans is not exactly new information.

00:03:10.800 We've talked about it many times on this show.

00:03:12.840 There have been dozens of reports from outlets like Alpha News, County Highway, the Manhattan Institute, and so on,

00:03:19.560 documenting in excruciating detail just how widespread the corruption is.

00:03:23.280 Now, federal prosecutors prove that Somalis ripped off hundreds of millions of dollars from taxpayers as part of the so-called Feeding Our Future scam.

00:03:32.080 And that's just one of their fraudulent organizations, where they pretended to feed children in exchange for federal reimbursements.

00:03:39.060 Somalis have also set up fake autism treatment centers on virtually every block,

00:03:43.120 which is another scam that's cost hundreds of millions of dollars in just the past five years.

00:03:47.020 Then there's the adult daycares, the normal daycares, the home health aides, the housing stabilization services, and so on.

00:03:55.880 Somalis have scammed all of it. They've scammed everything.

00:03:58.340 In fact, even before Nick Shirley's video came out, the state of Minnesota announced that they were pausing all new licenses for home and community-based human services providers

00:04:07.720 because, quote,

00:04:08.400 So, in other words, Somalis were clearly pillaging the treasury, and they were not being subtle about it.

00:04:22.900 And really, that's the part of Nick's video that was so significant.

00:04:26.520 I mean, everybody already knew what the Somalis were doing.

00:04:29.760 We all knew that the average Somali has an IQ that hovers around the level of mental retardation.

00:04:35.260 You know, scientifically speaking, that's the case.

00:04:37.180 We all knew that half of the population of Somalia lives on roughly a dollar a day.

00:04:41.800 Yes, a dollar a day.

00:04:43.900 Something like 70% of the population is below the poverty line.

00:04:46.880 They have an economy so primitive that it's hard to even comprehend it.

00:04:50.560 And we all knew that there was never a universe in which importing hundreds of thousands of these people

00:04:56.780 was ever going to improve this country.

00:05:00.860 Now, what was surprising about Nick's footage is how open and obvious the fraud is.

00:05:06.040 I mean, it turns out that if you simply walk up to these Somali establishments

00:05:09.580 and attempt to patronize their business,

00:05:12.420 they'll respond by asking,

00:05:14.740 Why?

00:05:15.940 Yes, why?

00:05:17.840 They'll respond with total befuddlement about the mere idea

00:05:21.040 that somebody would want to pay them in exchange for the goods and services

00:05:24.980 they're supposed to be pretending to provide.

00:05:26.920 And meanwhile, they'll collect millions of dollars from taxpayers.

00:05:30.820 They'll park Range Rovers out front.

00:05:33.080 They'll bark at you in some incomprehensible Star Wars language

00:05:36.240 when you ask them why their daycare doesn't have any children inside of it

00:05:40.080 or why a single building houses more than a dozen clinics

00:05:43.660 that all supposedly serve the same purpose.

00:05:45.920 So we're not talking about a subtle or, you know, nefariously brilliant operation here.

00:05:52.620 These are not criminal masterminds.

00:05:55.200 It shouldn't take much to shut it down completely.

00:05:57.940 I mean, you could simply cut all federal funding to the state of Minnesota, for starters.

00:06:01.720 That'd be the obvious solution.

00:06:03.860 There's no reason for taxpayers to fund anyone else's daycare in the first place,

00:06:07.740 even if the operations were, in fact, legitimate.

00:06:10.720 But there are about a million other solutions, too.

00:06:13.440 For example, the FBI could set up cameras outside of every daycare,

00:06:17.580 all these Somali daycares, and log the entrance and exit of every single person

00:06:21.740 and then check those numbers against the billing records.

00:06:25.140 With AI, it wouldn't be especially difficult to do.

00:06:27.860 It would cost, like, what, a hundred bucks for the camera?

00:06:30.960 Maybe a few thousand dollars to hire someone to program the AI?

00:06:34.840 Why hasn't that already been done?

00:06:36.600 I mean, we're talking about hundreds of billions of dollars worth of fraud here.

00:06:42.040 This is, when you add up all the different scams,

00:06:44.700 this is one of the biggest frauds in American history.

00:06:48.300 And if the American government actually wanted to stop the fraud,

00:06:53.280 it could obviously do so.

00:06:55.200 In fact, they've done it before. Watch.

00:06:57.620 In December of 2021, the FBI installed a surveillance camera

00:07:01.380 overlooking this building just off Lake Street in Minneapolis.

00:07:04.620 At the time, it was Safari Restaurant,

00:07:07.780 which overall took in $12 million in federal child meal payments

00:07:12.000 through Feeding Our Future.

00:07:13.800 Safari's former co-owner, Salim Saeed, is on trial,

00:07:17.560 alongside Amy Bach, the Feeding Our Future executive director.

00:07:21.400 Safari claimed to feed 4,000 to 6,000 kids a day.

00:07:24.720 It's invoices and meal counts shown to the jury alongside the video.

00:07:28.800 An FBI agent testifying that an average of 40 people came and went

00:07:33.440 during the six weeks it was surveilled.

00:07:35.880 The FBI set up a total of 12 cameras at sites

00:07:38.820 claiming to serve extraordinary numbers of meals.

00:07:41.740 Another was at a deli in St. Paul,

00:07:44.020 also registered by defendant Salim Saeed,

00:07:46.940 which claimed 1,800 meals per day.

00:07:49.760 The video, shown to the jury,

00:07:51.640 showed an average of 23 people a day coming and going.

00:07:55.000 Now, the only reason this kind of 24-7 monitoring

00:07:59.300 isn't mandated by law outside of every daycare and health clinic

00:08:02.900 that receives millions of dollars from taxpayers

00:08:05.040 is that we can only conclude the government wants the fraud to continue.

00:08:10.880 That was the lesson of the Nick Shirley video,

00:08:12.640 which dominated social media towards the end of 2025.

00:08:15.360 It wasn't really a revelation in the sense that it didn't reveal

00:08:17.640 some previously unknown conspiracy.

00:08:19.740 It was very important footage.

00:08:21.820 Nick deserves a lot of credit for going out and capturing it,

00:08:24.160 but as important as it was,

00:08:27.160 it was also extraordinarily, almost unbelievably frustrating to watch

00:08:31.540 because it raised an obvious question.

00:08:34.760 As Nick went from daycare to daycare,

00:08:36.680 it was impossible not to ask,

00:08:38.800 why are we allowing this?

00:08:42.000 Why is no one monitoring these daycares?

00:08:44.040 Why doesn't the government simply ignore the NGOs

00:08:46.240 and the special interests and the ACLU and the lawyers

00:08:48.700 and shut all this down immediately by force?

00:08:51.680 I mean, why can the FBI send SWAT teams after the January 6th grandmothers,

00:08:56.700 but not Somali fraudsters who openly despise this country

00:08:59.560 and all the people in it, at least the white people?

00:09:04.140 Then in the new year, we saw exactly what the federal government can achieve

00:09:07.820 when it decides, contrary to the advice of experts

00:09:11.060 experts and the norms that are supposedly so sacrosanct

00:09:15.060 to actually take decisive action for the benefit of American citizens.

00:09:19.680 It turns out that, indeed, the U.S. government

00:09:21.680 is capable of using its overwhelming power within our own hemisphere

00:09:26.180 to advance our interests in a direct and tangible way.

00:09:30.100 There's nothing that stands in our way.

00:09:32.040 There's no military or militia that's powerful enough to stop us.

00:09:35.600 There's no international law that holds us back

00:09:37.580 because international law is fake.

00:09:40.760 The only laws that exist are rules that are written and codified by

00:09:46.300 and enforced by a legitimate governing authority

00:09:50.180 and enforced with violence if necessary.

00:09:53.140 That's it.

00:09:54.660 Those are the only laws.

00:09:56.800 That's what a law is by definition.

00:09:58.860 And everything else is just a suggestion.

00:10:05.040 That's why Donald Trump invoked the Monroe Doctrine,

00:10:07.480 or the Donro Doctrine, as he called it,

00:10:09.680 at his press conference after the U.S. attack on Venezuela.

00:10:12.860 It's also why Trump invoked Manifest Destiny

00:10:14.980 during his inaugural address last year.

00:10:17.920 This administration understands that America first

00:10:20.480 means that America should rule over the Western Hemisphere

00:10:25.020 and use its power to advance the interests of our people.

00:10:29.840 We have the power to do that, and so we should.

00:10:33.680 We're not beholden to the approval of the United Nations

00:10:36.520 or to the Somalis in Minnesota or to any other group

00:10:39.420 that would happily eradicate all white people from the planet

00:10:42.480 if they ever gained any kind of military superiority whatsoever.

00:10:46.760 We're also not beholden to precedent.

00:10:49.680 We don't have to let our military go to waste,

00:10:51.860 idling in hangars and bases all over the world

00:10:54.000 because of the failures of past wars.

00:10:56.200 You often hear this argument that because of the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan,

00:11:01.320 Vietnam were quagmires, that we should never again use them

00:11:06.680 to topple a foreign regime or wage war over natural resources.

00:11:10.760 That was the implication of Thomas Massey's remarks recently,

00:11:14.800 which I'm going to play.

00:11:16.580 Because in general, I respect Thomas Massey.

00:11:18.240 He's a Republican.

00:11:19.420 He's not a mindless MSNBC drone repeating DNC talking points.

00:11:23.960 But here's what he said about this.

00:11:26.720 Listen.

00:11:27.660 If it were about drugs, we'd bomb Mexico or China or Colombia,

00:11:32.580 and the president would not have pardoned Juan Orlando Hernandez.

00:11:38.220 This is about oil and regime change.

00:11:40.740 Well, yeah, this is about oil and regime change.

00:11:45.660 Donald Trump has come out and said that many times.

00:11:48.900 And there's nothing wrong with that whatsoever.

00:11:54.380 Wars over natural, over resources are as old as human civilization itself.

00:12:00.340 I mean, this, like, reflexive assumption that it's never valid for a war to be,

00:12:07.360 at least in part, motivated by the need for resources is absurd.

00:12:12.140 That's, like, one of the only reasons why wars are fought.

00:12:17.260 Now, specifically, though, you know, this is not about just going in

00:12:21.480 and, quote-unquote, stealing oil from some poor and innocent people.

00:12:25.960 I'll tell you what this is about.

00:12:27.160 This is about the oil infrastructure and the oil rights that the socialists

00:12:33.260 in Venezuela, led by Hugo Chavez, seized from the U.S. two decades ago

00:12:38.980 without fair compensation.

00:12:41.960 The Venezuelans brought in companies like ExxonMobil and ConocoPhillips

00:12:46.040 in order to construct the facilities, including pipelines and factories,

00:12:49.540 that were necessary to extract and sell the oil in Venezuela.

00:12:53.780 And we're talking about some of the most valuable oil deposits

00:12:56.100 in the entire world.

00:12:57.100 We're talking about trillions of dollars worth of oil.

00:13:02.100 Americans were entitled to a share of the profits

00:13:05.780 in exchange for investing billions of dollars into it.

00:13:08.620 But the Venezuelans broke the deal after the fact.

00:13:11.300 They compensated the Americans for the book value of the infrastructure,

00:13:14.960 but not the value it was creating.

00:13:17.180 And in doing so, Venezuela spiked gas prices and stole billions,

00:13:21.860 really trillions of dollars from the U.S.,

00:13:25.360 not to mention an invaluable strategic resource.

00:13:28.560 The Venezuelans also proceeded to introduce a tremendous degree of inefficiency

00:13:31.400 to the whole process because they have no idea how to maintain

00:13:34.280 the infrastructure that they see.

00:13:36.100 So now Venezuela is responsible for producing roughly 1% of the world's oil.

00:13:40.700 In the 1970s, before they nationalized the oil industry,

00:13:43.300 they supplied nearly 10%.

00:13:45.000 So it is the duty of the American government,

00:13:48.460 especially in our hemisphere,

00:13:49.860 to protect the property rights of American citizens and American companies.

00:13:54.980 It's also the duty of the American government, when possible,

00:13:57.840 to ensure that natural resources in this hemisphere

00:14:01.200 are used for the benefit of American citizens,

00:14:04.900 especially natural resources that are only being extracted because of us,

00:14:09.020 because of our infrastructure that belongs to us.

00:14:12.300 And that's why when Thomas Massey and the left

00:14:16.460 complain about how we're going to war for oil

00:14:19.260 and how this is about regime change,

00:14:22.240 well, the appropriate response is, okay.

00:14:26.480 I mean, it's not much of a war.

00:14:27.880 It lasted 90 minutes.

00:14:29.160 So I think we could,

00:14:30.020 I could take some exception to the going to war part of that.

00:14:34.780 But to say that oil is a big part of this,

00:14:38.980 like oil is the lifeblood of civilization.

00:14:41.500 What are you talking about?

00:14:43.640 And it was stolen from us.

00:14:46.580 And it's being used and squandered by this tinpot communist dictator.

00:14:52.560 It's like, why shouldn't we seize that back for the benefit of our people?

00:14:56.260 Why shouldn't we do it?

00:14:56.960 The assumption, the answer that most people would give prior to this is,

00:15:03.080 well, there's no way to do that without creating this huge quagmire that goes on for decades

00:15:08.160 and thousands of American lives are lost.

00:15:11.060 And that's a reasonable assumption given our recent history.

00:15:15.480 But if you can do it efficiently without a single American life lost

00:15:21.320 and it doesn't turn into a 20-year quagmire, why not do it?

00:15:26.360 It doesn't mean it's going to be a replay of the Iraq war.

00:15:29.300 It doesn't mean that we're going to have ground troops in Venezuela for 20 years.

00:15:33.860 It doesn't mean that Venezuelans are identical to jihadis in Fallujah.

00:15:37.560 It means that we're doing what's necessary to advance the interests of our own people.

00:15:44.500 You know, Venezuelans managed to go from extreme wealth to eating zoo animals for food

00:15:49.260 in the span of about 20 years.

00:15:51.160 All while sitting on some of the most lucrative oil reserves on the planet.

00:15:55.980 Even if they hadn't stolen the oil from us, which they did,

00:16:00.120 you could still make a very strong argument that the U.S. has the moral right,

00:16:03.480 even responsibility to seize control over the vital resources that these people are squandering.

00:16:09.760 And even worse, allowing to be exploited by our global adversaries.

00:16:13.080 And that's to say nothing of the drugs they're trafficking into our country,

00:16:15.500 which are killing Americans.

00:16:16.840 All these facts make this very different from interventionism in the Middle East.

00:16:21.520 This is our hemisphere. This is our region of the world.

00:16:25.180 This was a 90-minute military mission, not a 20-year mission.

00:16:29.440 There is a clear benefit to the American people in the case of the Venezuela operation.

00:16:33.480 Whereas there was no discernible benefit to the American people in Iraq or Afghanistan.

00:16:38.880 And on top of that, Venezuela doesn't have Islamic militants that have the will and the ability

00:16:43.540 to wage any kind of meaningful counter-strike, which is why they haven't.

00:16:48.100 So it's a very different situation by just about every measure.

00:16:52.300 And more generally, no American should oppose having a country like Venezuela

00:16:57.540 turned into basically a vassal state subordinate to the United States.

00:17:03.480 Like, that's the way of the world.

00:17:06.700 Okay, that's what we should do with inferior countries in our region of the world

00:17:10.360 who cause problems for us.

00:17:12.820 Especially when those inferior countries are run by communist dictators.

00:17:17.380 It just has to be done the right way so that we are the beneficiaries of the arrangement

00:17:21.220 and it's not a quagmire that costs us billions of dollars and thousands of American lives.

00:17:27.280 Having more control over global oil supplies will also put us in a better position against

00:17:32.060 our adversaries like Russia and prove our negotiating position with Canada,

00:17:35.480 which is run by another hostile socialist government.

00:17:38.440 Undermine China's ambitions because they don't have vast oil reserves.

00:17:42.560 Meanwhile, Cuba's communist government has been propped up by oil money from Venezuela,

00:17:46.640 which is why Cubans were guarding Maduro at his residence when Delta Force got there.

00:17:52.420 Looks like Cuba's communist government is about to fall.

00:17:55.060 Colombia's socialist leader may not be in power for very long based on how Trump is talking lately.

00:18:00.320 In other words, we have a real chance after the attack on Venezuela to

00:18:04.500 at least severely undermine communists throughout the hemisphere, our neighbors.

00:18:10.460 And unquestionably, that's a good thing.

00:18:12.300 Especially since, as you've probably noticed, communism is on the rise domestically.

00:18:18.020 New York just installed a Muslim socialist who explicitly endorsed collectivism when he was inaugurated.

00:18:24.700 It's now more urgent than it's been at any point in memory to directly combat communism in our hemisphere.

00:18:31.140 Even aside from the oil, that's also worth it.

00:18:34.560 Now, I will concede that at this point, we can't definitively say whether this attack will turn out the way the Trump administration expects

00:18:42.620 or whether we'll begin nation building in Venezuela.

00:18:47.180 No one can say with certainty one way or the other exactly what will happen next.

00:18:51.320 And when Donald Trump, who was clearly going on zero hours of sleep,

00:18:54.780 said that the United States will run the country of Venezuela,

00:18:57.400 Venezuela, he admittedly and probably unintentionally raised the possibility of another nightmarish,

00:19:03.260 never-ending occupation, which is not what we want.

00:19:07.200 But at the moment, we should give Trump the benefit of the doubt here.

00:19:11.360 And I think on foreign policy stuff, he's earned that because he's got an established pattern,

00:19:16.320 which is that he doesn't get us into these decades-long disasters.

00:19:23.300 Now, first of all, last night, Venezuela's new president said that she wants to work with the U.S.

00:19:27.260 not that she has much choice.

00:19:29.400 Other administration officials, including Marco Rubio, have suggested that that's the approach we're going to take.

00:19:35.780 Additionally, there are no indications that we're staging for any kind of occupation.

00:19:39.840 It appears that we're going to pressure Venezuela to open up the oil fields to the United States

00:19:43.860 under the threat of more decapitation strikes,

00:19:47.340 and it doesn't seem like any more action will be necessary.

00:19:51.880 Venezuela is clearly incapable of resisting the U.S. military in any meaningful way.

00:19:57.260 Which is enough to make you wonder if we couldn't have taken a similar approach to Afghanistan and Iraq

00:20:02.720 rather than sacrifice thousands of American troops in a profoundly misguided campaign

00:20:07.820 to sell Muslims on the wonders of democracy and equal rights.

00:20:11.020 Maybe instead, we could have simply demolished their government, crippled their ability to oppose us,

00:20:16.700 and moved on within a week.

00:20:19.100 Who knows? Maybe that could have worked.

00:20:21.040 In any event, as for Venezuela, it doesn't appear that we have any reason to engage in nation-building,

00:20:27.840 and we shouldn't, especially since Maduro wasn't especially popular in the first place.

00:20:33.540 Also, as we should all know by now, Donald Trump will often use words very loosely

00:20:38.320 in a way that we're not meant to take literally, especially to give himself more leverage in a negotiation.

00:20:44.280 So when he says that he'll run Venezuela, you know, you got to keep that in mind.

00:20:49.420 A year ago, for example, Trump said that we'll take over Gaza and that we'll own it.

00:20:54.520 Those were his words.

00:20:55.820 And there was a flurry of articles at the time about how Trump was going to send troops to occupy Gaza

00:21:00.520 and how it would be just like Iraq and all the rest of it.

00:21:03.560 But especially with the benefit of hindsight, we can safely say that Trump didn't literally mean

00:21:08.040 that we'd make Gaza the 51st state.

00:21:11.060 He meant that we'd bring some order to the situation over there,

00:21:14.620 and there's every reason to believe that with Venezuela, he's basically saying the same thing.

00:21:20.660 There's also reason to believe that there could be many additional benefits

00:21:24.360 to converting Venezuela into a client state of the U.S. beyond securing oil reserves for the U.S.,

00:21:30.880 which isn't to say that we make it an actual state, obviously, with voting rights and all the rest of it.

00:21:36.320 But here's just one possibility.

00:21:38.040 Venezuela could receive immigrants and refugees who can't be deported to their home countries,

00:21:43.020 which is an arrangement we currently have with El Salvador and Panama,

00:21:46.740 which itself, by the way, was subject to a successful U.S. coup during the first Bush administration.

00:21:51.540 It's been a reliable ally ever since.

00:21:54.300 And if we were to do that, that would be an unequivocal positive development for the United States

00:21:59.740 and every American citizen living here.

00:22:02.500 I haven't seen anyone make that suggestion, but it's the kind of policy

00:22:05.920 that we should be talking about.

00:22:08.820 It's what we voted for in the last election.

00:22:11.880 We didn't vote for inane podcast drama.

00:22:14.820 We voted for observable, significant improvements in the day-to-day lives of Americans.

00:22:20.520 And right now, one of the biggest obstacles to deporting illegal aliens is that many countries won't accept them.

00:22:28.600 Well, Venezuela can now be a top destination for these illegal aliens.

00:22:32.580 In other words, rather than us accepting the undesirables from these third-world hellholes,

00:22:40.720 we should make them accept the undesirables from us.

00:22:45.320 That's the way it should go.

00:22:46.320 As the most powerful country in the world, that's the way it should go.

00:22:52.660 No, we're not going to make the sacrifice and sacrifice the well-being of Americans for you.

00:22:59.000 That's not the way this works.

00:23:00.220 We're the powerful country.

00:23:01.260 Speaking of podcast drama, you may have noticed that some self-described right-wingers are coming out against the attack on Venezuela

00:23:09.940 on the theory, in some cases, as I've seen floating around, as I'm sure you have also,

00:23:14.980 that Israel is somehow involved.

00:23:17.620 And the idea, I guess, is that if not for Israel, then no wars would ever be fought.

00:23:23.100 And we'd all live in utopian harmony.

00:23:25.200 So the idea is that the shadowy Jewish cabal is pulling the strings, as usual.

00:23:31.880 And a mildly less deranged version of this sentiment is that Venezuela is the victim of godless globalists

00:23:37.120 because they supposedly have some vaguely conservative values or whatever,

00:23:42.020 never mind the fact that Venezuela doesn't allow freedom of speech or free markets,

00:23:47.060 never mind the fact that Venezuela's government routinely intimidates Christians,

00:23:51.180 abolish the right to private property,

00:23:52.680 which, you know, is one of the most fundamental rights for any functioning society.

00:23:56.860 We're meant to conclude that somehow Venezuela is really a conservative place,

00:24:00.280 and that's why these sinister globalists wanted to take them down.

00:24:03.060 And, you know, it's a contrarian take for the sake of being contrarian.

00:24:06.140 And it's intended to make you think the United States isn't exceptional

00:24:09.020 and that we can't simply do things that meaningfully make the world,

00:24:15.700 more importantly, this country, a better place to live,

00:24:19.340 which should always be the number one objective of our leaders,

00:24:23.800 is to make this country, is to do things that will help this country and its people.

00:24:30.560 But we can do those things.

00:24:33.200 And we are exceptional.

00:24:34.420 That's what being America first actually means.

00:24:39.180 And as I've said many times, I'm not just America first, I'm an American chauvinist.

00:24:42.280 I make no bones about it.

00:24:45.440 What does that mean?

00:24:46.160 It means I think I put my country first,

00:24:47.960 and my country is better than every other country.

00:24:51.400 And our needs and what we need to do, that supersedes anyone else.

00:24:58.420 Now, if you live in another country, that's not how you feel about it.

00:25:00.920 You put your own country first. Fine.

00:25:02.360 But you should, as a patriot of your own country.

00:25:08.500 But it just so happens that, you know, we have the same attitude, or at least we should,

00:25:13.140 and we're a lot more powerful and important than you are.

00:25:19.280 And in a matter of hours, we can put an immediate end to some of the biggest problems facing this country,

00:25:24.660 problems that no administration has bothered to solve.

00:25:26.960 You know, we could shut down every single Somali fraudster and deport them all back to Somalia.

00:25:33.440 We can do that.

00:25:35.500 Then we can tell the leaders of Somalia, to the extent that Somalia has leaders,

00:25:39.560 that if they don't stop sending scam artists to our country to bilk our taxpayers

00:25:45.040 and send the money back to their country,

00:25:48.040 Delta Force will be paying them a little visit next.

00:25:50.020 We can do that.

00:25:53.220 We can also require Mexico to stop the flow of fentanyl into this country

00:25:56.640 and tell them that if you don't do that,

00:26:00.300 we're going to go to war with the cartels ourselves, inside your country.

00:26:05.020 You won't do the job.

00:26:06.020 We'll do it for you.

00:26:06.880 And you're not going to like it.

00:26:09.840 And you're going to complain about it and say,

00:26:11.440 we don't want you to do that.

00:26:12.260 We don't give you permission.

00:26:13.460 So what?

00:26:15.700 Do something about it.

00:26:16.760 That's the attitude we could have.

00:26:20.880 Oh, we can't go in and fight the cartels.

00:26:22.620 Mexico doesn't want us to.

00:26:23.640 Who cares what Mexico wants?

00:26:26.600 They've been a major problem for us for decades.

00:26:29.160 Thousands of Americans have died because of them.

00:26:32.020 And so who cares what they want?

00:26:34.120 Do something about it.

00:26:35.180 Try to stop us.

00:26:35.980 You can't.

00:26:38.060 We could demand that Canada give us more trade concessions,

00:26:41.300 restore freedom of speech, end the church burnings,

00:26:44.460 stop its rampant discrimination against white men,

00:26:46.660 or else we can destroy their entire economy overnight.

00:26:51.320 Especially now that we have access to Venezuelan oil and don't need Canada's.

00:26:55.500 We can denaturalize and deport foreign infiltrators like Zoran Mamdani and Ilhan Omar,

00:26:59.820 who lied about their communist sympathies when they became American citizens.

00:27:03.240 We can spend our money in ways that benefit Americans instead of foreigners who hate us.

00:27:11.040 And those are the two options we have.

00:27:13.400 We can choose Minneapolis-style dysfunction and never-ending decay on the one hand.

00:27:20.440 We can let invaders sabotage us using our norms as a shield.

00:27:28.280 Or we can use Venezuela as the model, what we just did in Venezuela as the model.

00:27:33.340 We can go in, do what needs to be done, and just put an end to it.

00:27:39.760 An entire generation of Americans, including conservatives,

00:27:43.080 has been conditioned to believe that the latter option is impossible, but it's not.

00:27:48.100 All that's necessary, all that was ever necessary, was decisive action

00:27:53.680 before any response was even possible.

00:27:57.660 That's what we just saw in Venezuela.

00:28:00.320 And it's what we need to see in this country and across the hemisphere.

00:28:04.280 Foreign invaders and their NGO lawyers need to recognize that the Monroe Doctrine

00:28:09.240 and manifest destiny are infinitely more valid than whatever international law they want to hide behind

00:28:15.980 as they rip us off in plain sight.

00:28:20.560 That's because, unlike the UN Declaration of Human Rights or whatever else,

00:28:26.300 someone is capable of enforcing manifest destiny and the Monroe Doctrine.

00:28:30.580 And that someone is the United States of America.

00:28:35.180 Now let's get to our five headlines.

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00:30:55.100 Well, I hope you had a good Christmas and New Year's.

00:30:58.780 My Christmas was very good.

00:31:01.940 We only had to go to the emergency room twice over Christmas break, so that's pretty good.

00:31:06.100 Pretty good for us.

00:31:07.500 And the first trip, I'll tell you, was on Christmas night.

00:31:11.420 So I was in the emergency room on Christmas night.

00:31:14.160 My 12-year-old son had an allergic reaction to lobster.

00:31:19.440 And here's the thing.

00:31:21.260 Well, first of all, you know, we didn't know about the allergies.

00:31:23.320 Had crab in the past and was fine.

00:31:25.040 So apparently not all shellfish is the same.

00:31:29.220 And so this allergy just popped up out of nowhere.

00:31:31.740 But second, you might be asking yourself or saying to yourself,

00:31:35.340 why the hell were you guys eating lobster for Christmas dinner?

00:31:39.660 What kind of Christmas dinner would have lobster?

00:31:42.020 And to that I say, yeah, exactly.

00:31:44.700 I agree.

00:31:45.720 I totally agree.

00:31:47.120 I mean, you're preaching to the choir.

00:31:49.660 This was a family debate, heated family debate for weeks, really years.

00:31:54.280 I mean, this has been going on for years, this war that we've been waging against each other.

00:32:00.540 Because some members of, you know, the extended family, I'm not going to call them out, my in-laws,

00:32:07.440 insist that lobster is like the ideal Christmas dinner.

00:32:11.420 That's what they insist.

00:32:12.440 But me, because I'm not a heretic and not a communist,

00:32:15.220 I say that Christmas dinner is supposed to be ham or turkey or both, ideally, right?

00:32:20.300 You don't eat sea insects on Christmas.

00:32:23.600 And that's what lobsters are.

00:32:24.600 They're the insects of the ocean.

00:32:25.880 You shouldn't eat them at all, but especially not on Christmas, of all things.

00:32:30.000 It's like sacrilegious.

00:32:31.920 God made lobsters, made them hideous looking, like alien creatures,

00:32:40.420 covered them in a hard shell, gave them massive claws,

00:32:45.200 and threw them to the bottom of the ocean.

00:32:49.100 He made lobsters and looked at them and said,

00:32:51.080 these things are ugly and just chucked them to the bottom of the ocean.

00:32:56.300 Pretty clear sign we're not supposed to eat them.

00:32:59.120 I don't know.

00:32:59.800 Like, I'd say just take the hint.

00:33:03.220 Okay?

00:33:03.860 It's like you had to travel down to the bottom of the ocean to find these alien creatures.

00:33:10.380 Probably not supposed to eat them.

00:33:13.340 So, especially not on Christmas, of all things.

00:33:15.820 Of all things.

00:33:16.620 To eat lobster on Christmas.

00:33:17.840 Who does that?

00:33:18.800 So anyway, that was the debate.

00:33:21.020 I lost the debate.

00:33:21.960 We ended up with a compromise where we had, you know,

00:33:23.960 the normal Christmas dinner, but we had a few lobsters for those who wanted to eat them.

00:33:28.480 And my son had a couple bites of it.

00:33:32.060 And his face, like, inflated like a blimp.

00:33:35.320 It looked like a Macy's Day.

00:33:36.340 It was like a Snoopy.

00:33:38.180 Macy's Day balloon.

00:33:40.260 And again, Benadryl kept getting worse.

00:33:42.800 It looked pretty bad.

00:33:44.300 So we had to take it to the emergency room.

00:33:46.680 And all because of the godforsaken lobsters.

00:33:50.820 This was God's punishment for besmirching our Christmas table with those hideous creatures.

00:33:56.120 So the good news is that ultimately I won the debate.

00:34:01.000 Ultimately, I could come home from the hospital and say, see, I told you so.

00:34:03.860 I told you so.

00:34:06.320 No more lobster on Christmas.

00:34:07.580 And he's fine.

00:34:08.020 It was, you know, it was fine.

00:34:10.640 And then the second trip, he was, it was the same kid.

00:34:12.660 We were out, he was, we was ice skating, face planted, fractures, needed stitches, concussion.

00:34:19.560 It was real bad.

00:34:21.060 But no surgery needed and he's feeling fine after that.

00:34:25.840 So those were, it was within about three days of each other, two trips to the emergency room.

00:34:31.000 Everyone survived and, and restful break as always.

00:34:35.660 And we're ready for 2026.

00:34:36.940 We're ready to go.

00:34:38.920 Now I want to start by actually going back a few days.

00:34:42.320 We have a couple of things from earlier last week that I want to talk about.

00:34:47.840 And this one we referenced in the, in the opening.

00:34:50.660 You've almost certainly seen it now.

00:34:52.740 Infamous moment.

00:34:54.120 There was a lot from Mamdani's inauguration in New York that we could discuss.

00:34:58.460 None of it was, was good.

00:35:00.780 But this line about collectivism, it got the most attention.

00:35:04.780 I think, I think rightfully so.

00:35:06.200 So, and if you haven't seen it somehow, let's play that for you.

00:35:10.120 We will draw this city closer together.

00:35:13.340 We will replace the frigidity of rugged individualism with the warmth of collectivism.

00:35:18.780 If our campaign demonstrated that the people of New York yearn for solidarity, then let this government foster it.

00:35:27.700 Because no matter what you eat, how you pray, or where you come from, the words that most define us are the two we all share.

00:35:37.800 New Yorkers.

00:35:38.640 The warmth of collectivism.

00:35:43.980 Now, honestly, the first time I saw that clip, and I was, I was mostly tuned out over the break, but I did a few things crossed my, my, my view that I saw.

00:35:55.560 And this was one of them.

00:35:57.440 And the first time I saw it, I thought it was like AI.

00:35:59.600 Because it's, it's so on the nose.

00:36:01.820 The warmth of collectivism.

00:36:04.520 That's something straight out of like a dystopian horror film.

00:36:08.240 I mean, isn't that basic, I'm sure other people have pointed this out.

00:36:11.880 Isn't that the premise of the Vince Gilligan show, Pluribus?

00:36:16.160 Isn't that, like, basically that?

00:36:19.520 And what, what, you know, what made it kind of unbelievable isn't the substance.

00:36:26.440 Obviously, I know that Mamdani is a collectivist, but rather the fact that he's actually extolling the virtues of collectivism explicitly.

00:36:33.120 And usually collectivists promote collectivism while stridently denying that that's what they're doing.

00:36:40.840 But he just came out and said it.

00:36:42.580 He just came right out and said it.

00:36:44.880 And I think there's a couple of points we made here.

00:36:46.420 The first is the, is the one that everyone has made in response to this, which is that this is as anti-American as it can possibly get.

00:36:54.020 I mean, this is the mayor of New York, our biggest, the most important, most iconic city,

00:36:58.780 using his inaugural address to launch an assault on the most quintessential American value, you know, rugged individualism as Mamdani,

00:37:06.620 as Mamdani would define it, right, built this country.

00:37:12.160 There's no question about it.

00:37:14.180 It built the city that he's now in charge of.

00:37:17.180 That's why we've never had a politician at his level, as far as I know, actually come out and by name condemn individualism for the sake of collectivism.

00:37:26.720 It's like, it's like coming out and attacking bald eagles or apple pie or football or something as a, as a politician.

00:37:34.880 It's like anti-American to its core.

00:37:36.900 But there's another point, which is that, which I haven't seen made, which is that this collectivism versus individualism thing is really a false frame.

00:37:51.500 You know, Mamdani is attacking a certain thing, and that thing that he's attacking is very American and very good.

00:38:00.680 But the individualism that he's talking about, it's not purely individualistic, right?

00:38:06.660 So when we talk about individualism, we, we, we don't mean just the individual by himself necessarily.

00:38:16.660 And the collectivism that he's promoting isn't purely collectivist either.

00:38:22.100 So what I mean is that the individualism that built America is not one where the single soul atomized individual reigns supreme and his desires come before the needs of the larger group all the time.

00:38:42.280 That's not, that's not what it is.

00:38:44.160 It's an individualism where the individual identifies with and serves and often subordinates his desires for the sake of his family and his faith, right?

00:38:59.640 You know, you, you, you can certainly argue that individualism is not the best or most apt label for that, but whatever you want to call it, um, it's what built America.

00:39:09.420 And that's what Mamdani is attacking.

00:39:10.900 You know, when you think about like the kind of classic quintessential American rugged individualism, well, that's the pioneer, right?

00:39:20.920 The, uh, the homesteader, the guy out on the frontier in the, in the 1800s, building a life from scratch, expanding his own horizons and the American horizon at the same time.

00:39:32.460 And so when you think about rugged individuals, I'm like, that's, that's the, the image that pops into your mind.

00:39:38.760 And that's what he's going after.

00:39:40.100 He's going after that, which again is like right at the core of American identity.

00:39:45.000 But that guy was not out there by himself, usually doing all that stuff by himself or for himself.

00:39:52.200 He was out there with his family.

00:39:53.520 He was building a home for them.

00:39:55.660 And he was, um, he was driven by his faith in God.

00:40:01.700 Those were his concerns.

00:40:03.040 That's what he cares about.

00:40:03.940 And everything else comes second or doesn't factor into the equation at all.

00:40:08.040 Now, on the other hand, when Momdani talks about collectivism, he doesn't really mean collectivism in the strict dictionary definition, which is, I guess, like the, the, the giving a group, giving the group priority over the individual is the most basic, probably dictionary definition of collectivism.

00:40:31.100 But that's not exactly what he means because there are some important caveats to that.

00:40:35.540 Because while these leftists might promote collectivism, they also, in most other contexts, will constantly talk about the desires and alleged rights of the individual and how nothing can ever come before that.

00:40:48.780 They worship the self, the individual self.

00:40:54.520 Like these are the same.

00:40:55.540 So this is the confusing thing when you think about, well, they're collectivists.

00:40:58.240 So the, the, the desires of the group come before the individual.

00:41:01.280 That's what it's supposedly means.

00:41:04.060 And yet these are the same people who will tell you that the sexual fantasies of a trans identified male should have primacy, should be such a priority that all of society should be reorganized.

00:41:18.780 If you're a trans identified male, then what the left would say is that what you want, your desires, your perception of yourself and of reality should come before anything and everything.

00:41:33.380 Everybody should reorganize themselves around you.

00:41:36.520 That's not exactly collectivism.

00:41:39.080 It's also not rugged individualism.

00:41:41.940 We have to change our language, change the bathrooms, change the sports teams, change everything for the sake of the sexual fantasies of this small group of fetishists.

00:41:50.740 So if he was being a collectivist in the, in the, in the purest sense of the term, then he'd be saying to those trans people, well, no, like you're, it's, it's not all about you, right?

00:42:01.020 It's about the collective.

00:42:02.960 And, and, and guess what?

00:42:04.640 Giving you what you want is going to hurt the collective.

00:42:07.420 And so we're not going to do it.

00:42:08.420 They don't say that though.

00:42:11.700 Um, so the answer is that Mamdani and all leftists don't really believe in giving a group priority over each individual in that group.

00:42:26.180 They believe in giving certain subgroups priority over the larger group.

00:42:33.780 So that, that's really what they're talking about.

00:42:36.260 So if you're in a protected class, if you're black or gay or trans or a woman, then your needs and desires and entitlements reign supreme.

00:42:45.760 Uh, if you're a white male, then your individual wants and needs are totally irrelevant.

00:42:53.720 That's when the collectivism really kicks in.

00:42:56.520 I guess that's what we're getting to.

00:42:57.860 It's like collective, if collectivism means that the, the needs of the individual are subordinate to the group.

00:43:03.340 And, well, that they only really apply that totally to a white, to a straight white male.

00:43:09.620 That's in that case, then your, what you want, your rights and everything, that doesn't matter at all.

00:43:18.100 What matters is the group.

00:43:19.480 And when we, and when he says the group, he doesn't mean the whole group.

00:43:22.400 He doesn't mean everybody.

00:43:23.740 He means the, the certain protected classes.

00:43:26.760 Um, and so that's what he's really talking about, which is a kind of collectivism.

00:43:35.360 It's just, it's the most deranged, uh, you know, kind of collectivism that you can have, basically.

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00:44:51.180 Here's another thing we missed a few days ago, which I can't let it go.

00:44:56.160 I can't let it slide.

00:44:57.520 This is our dear friend, Wajahat Ali, trying to explain how Islam influenced the founding of our country, the deep influence that it had on our founding fathers.

00:45:10.080 Although his timeline seems to be a little bit confused.

00:45:13.040 Listen.

00:45:13.240 What people don't know is Thomas Jefferson, the founding father, actually bought his Quran from England, purchased it in 1965 as a law student.

00:45:23.560 And he had all these different texts from different religious communities.

00:45:27.200 He himself wasn't that religious.

00:45:28.760 In fact, didn't really care for Islam.

00:45:30.080 But reading the Quran and, you know, embracing DEI made him more open to religious tolerance and pluralism.

00:45:37.540 And his Quran is now part of the Library of Congress.

00:45:40.440 And his Quran, in part, and all the religious texts that he used inspired him to write about religious liberty, which is why we have in the Constitution the establishment.

00:45:50.560 Yes, Thomas Jefferson bought his Quran in 1965.

00:45:58.900 He drove down to the store in his Ford Thunderbird, right, listening to some Bob Dylan, purchased a Quran.

00:46:07.220 That was in 1965.

00:46:08.940 And then in 1995, a lot of people don't know, he went and bought his first Limp Bizkit album and a Tamagotchi.

00:46:16.340 It was the same shopping trip.

00:46:17.840 But, so, Thomas Jefferson lived to be about 236 years old, if you didn't know that.

00:46:23.320 He cut the seed oils out of his diet and he lived for two centuries, which is basically what everybody who doesn't eat seed oils expects to happen.

00:46:30.800 Okay, even if we give Wajahat the benefit of the doubt, which I'm not sure he deserves, and assume that he misspoke and meant to say 1765, still his claim is very retarded.

00:46:42.840 It's only slightly less retarded.

00:46:44.560 And it's only very slightly less anachronistic to say.

00:46:48.900 Because Thomas Jefferson did not learn anything about religious tolerance from reading the Quran.

00:46:54.520 The Quran had no influence over the founding of this country at all, even a little bit.

00:46:58.780 Even a little bit.

00:47:00.400 And it's interesting to me that these anti-American leftists, like, they can't accept that.

00:47:05.580 They hate this country.

00:47:08.100 They think that it's fundamentally racist, that it's bigoted based on slavery and subjugation and all the rest of it.

00:47:14.120 And yet they also want to insist that the founding fathers were ideologically indistinguishable from some green-haired Antifa member in Portland.

00:47:22.120 So people like Wajahat, they come here, complain about America, dump on it constantly, criticize it, tear it down, while also trying to take credit for it, which is totally schizophrenic.

00:47:37.120 And here's what we know for sure.

00:47:40.220 The founding fathers may have expressed some measure of tolerance for Islam.

00:47:46.060 They also criticized it.

00:47:48.480 Thomas Jefferson went to war against Muslims in the Barbary War.

00:47:52.340 But they did express at various points some measure of tolerance.

00:47:57.080 That's true.

00:47:57.660 But here's the important point.

00:48:00.960 Our founding fathers, when they talked about tolerance of, and they wouldn't necessarily use that term, but when they talk about being tolerant of Islam, if you can find any quotes to that end, they were talking about Islam from afar.

00:48:17.660 They saw Islam as an exotic thing far away.

00:48:22.520 A religion for people thousands of miles away, for people that are inaccessible, especially in the 1700s and 1800s.

00:48:32.320 And we are inaccessible to them.

00:48:34.940 The idea that Muslims would ever come here in large groups and would one day, you know, comprise, there'd one day be millions of them here and they'd set up enclaves in the United States.

00:48:48.540 Like that was just not in the realm of possibility at the time.

00:48:52.520 The idea that we would have elected officials who are Muslims, the idea that Muslims would take over entire American towns, the idea that the Muslim call to prayer would be heard wafting through the streets at five in the morning in American cities.

00:49:13.980 None of that was anticipated.

00:49:16.320 None of that was foreseen.

00:49:17.780 It was unthinkable at the time.

00:49:20.780 And it would remain unthinkable for like 150 years after Thomas Jefferson died.

00:49:27.460 And there's really no question that if any of them could have seen that coming, they would have had, their tolerance would have been greatly diminished if they could have seen that coming.

00:49:44.380 This episode is sponsored by Preborn Ministries.

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00:50:39.040 Finally, I want to close with this last thought.

00:50:44.320 Some words of encouragement.

00:50:46.340 Encouragement, in my own way, for parents, especially fathers, as we begin the new year.

00:50:52.100 But I recently saw a viral post from a man named Justin Murphy, who tells us in his bio that he's a writer, a PhD, and a creative director, whatever that means, for some Silicon Valley company that I've never heard of.

00:51:06.380 And Justin decided to ring in the new year by publicly airing his deepest parenting anxieties and personal insecurities in a tweet that has now been viewed around 3 million times.

00:51:18.800 And here's what he wrote.

00:51:19.440 I'll read the whole thing. It's pretty long, but here's what he wrote.

00:51:23.980 So just bear with me.

00:51:26.240 Am I just a monster?

00:51:27.760 It's been four years since I became a father, and I'm beginning to fear for my soul.

00:51:31.300 The truth is, I just don't like being around kids for very long.

00:51:34.340 Historically, this is not uncommon among fathers, but today it feels almost illegal.

00:51:38.300 It's causing me a lot of confusion and anguish.

00:51:40.980 The ideal amount of time I would like to spend playing with my kids is probably around 70 to 140 minutes a week.

00:51:47.480 Roughly 10 minutes each day, maybe two times a day, taking breaks from work.

00:51:51.660 My feelings of love toward them are perfectly strong, but if I have to watch them or entertain them for more than about 10 minutes, my blood starts to boil.

00:52:00.480 I just want to be working or accomplishing something.

00:52:02.760 I try to be grateful, but it doesn't work.

00:52:04.540 It's 9 a.m. this morning, Saturday, January 3rd.

00:52:07.040 It's a sunny and warm day here in Austin, and my four-year-old son is begging me to play catch in the street.

00:52:11.600 I was drinking coffee, still waking up, so I didn't really feel like it, but at his age, his desire to play is insatiable.

00:52:16.720 He begged and begged, so I conceded, and with a smile.

00:52:19.600 I have no problem being a kind and loving father.

00:52:21.540 The problem is only that I do not enjoy it.

00:52:23.840 It's not that I'm trying to maximize my personal pleasure.

00:52:26.260 It just seems wrong that I experience so little delight when my dad and friends all claim to experience so much.

00:52:31.300 It was beautiful.

00:52:32.200 We live on a picturesque, tree-lined block.

00:52:34.620 I'm even relatively relaxed from the holiday rest.

00:52:37.200 Playing catch with your son is supposed to be an iconic peak experience, yet for every single minute on the inside, I just don't want to be there.

00:52:43.900 I want to be drinking my coffee in peace, and I feel guilty and absurdly ungrateful and ashamed when we're done.

00:52:50.840 I know that when he's a teenager, I'll long to have those days back.

00:52:53.820 I have all this perspective rationally, and I've been very patient and steadfast trying to digest it, but nothing fixes me emotionally.

00:52:59.780 Am I a terrible person, or is my feeling within a certain range of historically normal and its modern parenting norms that are off?

00:53:06.880 Whether it's my fault or not, I don't even care.

00:53:08.760 I just want to figure this out.

00:53:10.160 Something is wrong, and I no longer have the excuse of being new to this.

00:53:14.740 Okay, so to recap, Justin, the PhD Silicon Valley guy, says that he feels like a monster because he doesn't enjoy spending time with his son.

00:53:25.640 And in his ideal scenario, he would be around his kid for like 10 minutes a day, anything more than that, and he boils with rage at how boring and unfulfilling the experience feels to him.

00:53:36.040 He doesn't feel fulfilled or enthralled by parenting, and he feels really bad that he feels that way or doesn't feel that way.

00:53:43.620 Every minute he's with his son, he feels like he just wants to be someplace else, and that makes him feel guilty, and he wants to know if this is normal.

00:53:51.140 Now, there are a lot of comments responding to this confession or whatever it's supposed to be.

00:53:56.620 Some of them are critical.

00:53:57.600 Some of them are supportive, reassuring Justin that he's not a monster.

00:54:00.880 And they're right.

00:54:04.280 He's not a monster.

00:54:05.880 He's just weak and selfish, and he talks too much.

00:54:09.360 He has the same problem that plagues millions of people in our society.

00:54:12.900 He has a lot of company, though it isn't a very good company.

00:54:15.720 So, let me offer two pieces of advice to Justin and to any man who resonates with this ex-post slash diary entry or whatever it's supposed to be.

00:54:26.600 These are two of the most crucial lessons that I have learned from my experience parenting six kids.

00:54:31.860 So, number one, stop obsessing over how you feel.

00:54:36.840 Spend time with your son.

00:54:37.920 Stop worrying about how you feel about spending time with him.

00:54:43.660 Because it doesn't really matter how you feel about it.

00:54:46.700 You should play catch with your son, not because it's the most thrilling experience in the world, but because he's your son.

00:54:52.900 And you're his father, and that is what a father is supposed to do.

00:54:56.460 Now, your primary role in your child's life is not to be his playmate, but playing with him, teaching him, being present, showing him how to throw and catch a ball, these kinds of things, that matters.

00:55:06.180 And they're not meant to be exhilarating experiences.

00:55:10.700 You know, he's four years old.

00:55:12.720 Four-year-olds suck at playing catch.

00:55:15.600 Like, he can't catch.

00:55:16.980 He can't throw.

00:55:18.160 Now, if you play with him now, then in a few years it will be more fun.

00:55:22.640 Right?

00:55:23.040 In a few years he can go long.

00:55:24.880 You can hit him on the deep fade, and it's a lot more fun that way.

00:55:27.680 But for now, you're tossing a ball underhanded to a toddler standing nine feet away who drops it 80% of the time.

00:55:36.040 So now you know how Lamar Jackson feels, but that's a different story.

00:55:38.220 I won't get into it.

00:55:39.260 The enjoyment you get from this experience is not the thrill of playing a sport against high-level competition.

00:55:46.620 It's not the relaxation of lounging on the sofa and sipping a coffee in peace.

00:55:50.800 It's not going to be fun in either of those senses of the term.

00:55:54.300 And the problem is that prior to having kids, those are the only kinds of fun that a person can experience.

00:56:01.640 Like, in your pre-parenting life, a fun thing, right?

00:56:05.720 If you call something fun and you're not a parent, what you're saying is that either the fun thing is relaxing or it's exciting.

00:56:14.140 That's what you mean by fun.

00:56:17.540 Relaxing or exciting.

00:56:18.880 Like, the only fun things are one of those two.

00:56:22.260 But spending time with your children, especially young children, well, it's rarely going to fit either bill.

00:56:27.920 It certainly isn't relaxing, most of the time.

00:56:31.600 And it's usually not very exciting.

00:56:34.680 People like Justin, they become parents and they expect or hope that it will be fun in the way that things were fun before they had kids.

00:56:42.340 And because it's not fun in that way, they become miserable and angry and their blood boils, as Justin put it.

00:56:49.460 Now, keep in mind that people these days are also dopamine addicts who need constant stimulation in order to feel like they're enjoying anything.

00:56:55.400 And parenting does not offer that kind of enjoyment most of the time.

00:56:59.920 So that's part of the problem here.

00:57:01.940 But there is a third kind of fun that is available to you if you can manage to take your head out of your ass long enough to experience it.

00:57:10.840 It's the fun that comes from teaching, from guiding, from fulfilling your fatherly obligation and doing what you should be doing.

00:57:19.100 It's the fun of watching your children learn and grow.

00:57:22.100 It's the fun of seeing that they're having fun.

00:57:25.400 You know, it's the fun of glimpsing the world through their eyes, if only briefly.

00:57:30.640 And another word for this kind of fun is contentment.

00:57:34.640 Now, I've never had a game of catch with a four-year-old that was thrilling or relaxing.

00:57:40.160 I've never felt that kind of fun in that context.

00:57:43.240 But I have felt, as someone who's played catch many times with kids of all ages, I have felt a great deal of contentment where I knew that I was where I should be doing what I should be doing with people I love in a place where I belong.

00:58:01.820 And that is something better than fun.

00:58:04.940 That's happiness.

00:58:07.020 It's a very adult kind of happiness, which is hard for overgrown adolescents like Justin to experience.

00:58:14.080 You'll never feel that contentment or any other positive emotion if you spend all of your time with your child dwelling on how you feel about spending time with your child.

00:58:25.780 Now, the truth is that sometimes you'll feel annoyed.

00:58:27.860 Sometimes you'll feel tired.

00:58:28.920 Sometimes you'll feel bored.

00:58:30.700 You'll also feel contentment.

00:58:32.060 You'll feel joy.

00:58:32.700 You'll feel a deep sense of love and belonging.

00:58:34.540 You'll feel all of those things, the good and the bad, at the same time sometimes.

00:58:39.020 That's just called being a conscious human.

00:58:42.020 You feel a lot of things all the time.

00:58:45.620 The only way to respond to that as a man, if you want to be productive and stable and reliable, is to stop worrying about your feelings.

00:58:55.100 Feel however you feel.

00:58:57.640 It doesn't matter.

00:59:00.660 What matters is what you do.

00:59:02.300 The only other option is to get stuck in a doom loop of constantly contemplating your feelings and your feelings about your feelings and your feelings about how you feel about how you feel about your feelings and on and on and on.

00:59:12.920 Down the rabbit hole of your own self-obsession.

00:59:15.580 Meanwhile, all your son wants is for you to walk outside and throw a football around for a few minutes.

00:59:22.840 And you're not even present in the moment because you're just thinking in your head the whole time, I don't know how I feel about it.

00:59:27.780 Well, I feel bad that I feel this way.

00:59:29.220 Well, I don't know how I should feel about how I feel.

00:59:32.300 Just put that to the side and just throw the damn ball, okay?

00:59:37.560 And that brings us to the second piece of advice, which is even more important, which is this.

00:59:43.800 And this is something everyone can take with them as we go into the, make this one of your 2026 New Year's resolutions.

00:59:50.760 Stop revealing your most intimate feelings and deeply personal anxieties on the internet.

00:59:56.580 Okay, the internet is not a place for you as a grown man to spill your guts and open up your heart for the world to see.

01:00:07.060 None of us out here in the world can do anything about or with these personal details that you've revealed, except judge you harshly for them, which we will.

01:00:15.920 You can't blame us.

01:00:19.280 I mean, you could tell us this stuff about yourself and say, don't judge me.

01:00:22.060 Well, sorry, I'm judging you.

01:00:23.340 I can't help but form a perspective on this information.

01:00:28.660 I'm a person with a brain.

01:00:31.020 I have a perspective on anything.

01:00:32.240 And so you've given me this information about you.

01:00:35.240 I'm going to form a perspective on it.

01:00:36.960 My perspective is not flattering to you.

01:00:39.600 Like most of us never heard of you before this post.

01:00:43.620 We'll never hear of you again.

01:00:45.820 We now know only one thing about you.

01:00:49.380 And it's the only thing we'll ever know, which is that you're the guy who gets pissed off if he has to be around his own kid for more than 10 minutes.

01:00:55.540 That's all you will ever be to us forever now, which is why you should not have opened up in the first place.

01:01:03.380 In fact, and here's the thing that will be really hard for most people to hear.

01:01:10.360 There are a lot of feelings, worries, and anxieties that you shouldn't share with anyone, even in your private life.

01:01:22.620 Okay.

01:01:24.120 This is a good example.

01:01:25.540 If you don't like being around your kid, that is the kind of inner struggle that you actually should not reveal to a single soul in the world.

01:01:37.720 Again, I realize this is way outside of a modern orthodoxy.

01:01:41.980 The idea that there should be any feeling that you just never tell anyone.

01:01:44.900 Like, I could never tell anyone?

01:01:46.240 Yeah, you should just never tell anyone that.

01:01:48.280 But what am I going to do with this feeling?

01:01:49.580 I don't know.

01:01:50.900 Just forget about it.

01:01:52.000 You shouldn't tell strangers that for the reasons I've already described.

01:01:57.840 You shouldn't tell your wife.

01:02:00.960 Because now all you've done is saddled her with this knowledge about you.

01:02:04.600 She can't do anything with the information either, except think less of you because of it, which she will.

01:02:10.860 Okay.

01:02:11.500 It's not because she doesn't love you.

01:02:12.680 But if you go to your wife and say, you know, honey, I'm really struggling.

01:02:15.860 I just really hate being around our kid.

01:02:17.800 I can't, you know, I can't be around our son for more than 10 minutes without my blood boiling.

01:02:22.400 Don't you feel sorry for me?

01:02:25.180 No, now she thinks less of you.

01:02:27.640 And she always will.

01:02:29.000 Like, she can't, not be able to get that out of her head.

01:02:33.260 She might pretend to be sympathetic, or maybe she won't even pretend.

01:02:37.960 What do you want?

01:02:38.600 She's going to pat you on the head?

01:02:40.700 She'll pat you on the head and say, oh, I'm so sorry.

01:02:42.860 I'm so sorry it's hard for you to just be around our child we created together.

01:02:49.000 But she's going to think less of you.

01:02:50.960 And same goes for anyone else that you divulge this information to.

01:02:55.040 Now, you could tell a close male confidant.

01:02:57.280 I mean, that's your best option if you're going to tell anyone.

01:03:00.660 But that's not going to solve your problem either.

01:03:03.680 Because your problem, like, if you can't be around your kid for more than 10 minutes,

01:03:09.580 at the age of four, which, by the way, isn't even like a hard age,

01:03:12.860 like, four-year-olds are easy to deal with.

01:03:16.860 And if you can't be around them for more than 10 minutes,

01:03:19.140 like, the problem is that you are very selfish and very weak.

01:03:26.900 And nobody can fix that problem for you.

01:03:32.200 Nobody can do anything about it.

01:03:35.820 Nothing.

01:03:36.820 You just need to get over yourself.

01:03:39.480 That is the only solution.

01:03:41.360 And nobody can implement that solution but you.

01:03:46.080 You could go talk to a therapist.

01:03:48.940 You could spend 10 years in therapy.

01:03:51.520 It won't get you past square one.

01:03:53.780 The problem is that you're being weak and selfish.

01:03:56.680 Get the hell over yourself.

01:03:58.060 That's it.

01:03:59.860 I want another solution.

01:04:01.280 I need to get to the bottom of these feelings.

01:04:03.080 I just got to the bottom of them for you.

01:04:05.520 You're weak and selfish.

01:04:06.980 Stop being that way.

01:04:08.400 I don't know what else to tell you.

01:04:11.360 Now, people these days, even grown men, they walk around every day desperately looking for someone who will fix their feelings for them.

01:04:17.900 Billions of dollars have been spent on drugs and therapy for this purpose.

01:04:22.160 But the truth that nobody will tell these people, partly because it would cut off the cash flow, is that nobody can fix your feelings.

01:04:29.680 The best thing you can do about them, the only thing you can do about them, really, most of the time, is shut the hell up about them and go live your life.

01:04:38.680 Now, I realize that this sounds harsh.

01:04:41.640 I realize that it goes against everything we're programmed to believe.

01:04:44.320 The world tells us that we should be honest about our feelings.

01:04:47.000 We should open up.

01:04:47.900 We should be vulnerable.

01:04:48.780 We should talk it out.

01:04:51.040 But the cold, hard reality is that most of your feelings you should keep to yourself.

01:04:57.080 You shouldn't make them anyone else's burden or business.

01:05:00.820 They are your feelings.

01:05:03.000 We can't help you with them.

01:05:04.960 I'm sorry.

01:05:05.720 Again, nobody, not one person on this earth, can solve your feelings for you or make you feel differently than you do or do anything about your feelings at all.

01:05:16.380 Now, it's not to say that you should never divulge any of your feelings about anything.

01:05:19.920 Obviously, that's not the case.

01:05:21.860 And it's not to say that you shouldn't seek help if you're in a truly dire state.

01:05:26.560 It's only to say what is true, which is that you should keep most of that stuff to yourself.

01:05:33.020 And your feelings are not a problem that anyone else can solve.

01:05:37.900 Like, most of the time when you complain about your feelings to someone, whether it's a stranger or your spouse or your therapist or anyone else,

01:05:44.260 they'll pretend to care.

01:05:45.900 But deep down, they find yourself pitying, whining to be extremely annoying and off-putting.

01:05:52.500 You know, when you sit there, hours on end, I feel this way.

01:05:56.880 This is how I feel.

01:05:57.940 This is how I feel, but I feel like this when I'm doing this.

01:06:02.780 I was playing catch with my son, but this is how I felt about it.

01:06:06.340 It was so hard to feel this way.

01:06:10.720 Anyone that you talk to about that, like they might say, oh, I'm so sorry you feel that way.

01:06:16.900 But in their head, they're thinking, dear God, man, shut up and stop.

01:06:22.460 I got my own problems.

01:06:24.440 Every single person you tell that to, that is what they're all thinking.

01:06:28.180 It's just that none of them except me will tell you that.

01:06:32.900 And if you complain about your feelings a lot, then this annoyance will grow into contempt.

01:06:38.800 And eventually, they'll stop hiding it, which is why one of the worst pieces of marriage advice people get these days, men get, is, oh, open up to your wife.

01:06:47.180 Tell her how you feel all the time.

01:06:50.300 Constantly complain about your feelings to your wife, and it will not be long until she feels content for you.

01:07:00.500 And rightly so, by the way.

01:07:01.680 You're supposed to be a man, and here you are just like unloading your emotional baggage constantly, just whining, whining, whining about everything.

01:07:12.800 Whining about how you felt when you played catch with your son.

01:07:15.720 Like, how is your wife supposed to feel about that?

01:07:18.040 I don't know how else she could feel other than resentment.

01:07:23.240 All you can do with your feelings, feelings like the one you described, is put them to the side and do your duty.

01:07:31.680 What would your, if your grandfather's still alive, and you went to him and said, granddad, I was playing catch with my son, and I just felt, I just don't feel, I'm not into it.

01:07:49.440 I just feel, what would he say to you?

01:07:52.140 He would look at you like you're, he would look at you with disgust and say, like, pull yourself together.

01:07:58.900 What are you, what are you crying about?

01:08:01.680 You know, carry your emotions quietly, like a man, and do what you're supposed to do.

01:08:08.100 And here's the good news, especially for fathers starting a new year.

01:08:11.840 Okay?

01:08:12.240 If you do this, if you stop living as a slave to your feelings, you will actually feel better.

01:08:18.940 Not immediately, not on command, but slowly, naturally, as a byproduct of living rightly instead of this endless, pointless navel-gazing.

01:08:26.600 Purpose precedes pleasure.

01:08:29.280 Meaning comes before happiness.

01:08:32.420 Your son doesn't need you to be endlessly delighted by every second you spend in his presence.

01:08:37.660 And you're not going to be.

01:08:38.880 But he needs you to be present.

01:08:41.880 And one day, sooner than you think, he won't ask you to play catch anymore.

01:08:44.940 And when that day comes, you won't remember how bored you felt.

01:08:51.400 You'll remember whether you were there, and so will he.

01:08:54.220 So stop whining, stop interrogating your emotions, stop staring into the mirror, trying to crack the code of your own inner experience.

01:09:05.780 Just pick up the ball and go play catch with your son.

01:09:10.460 It really is that simple.

01:09:11.680 So, that's my encouragement as we enter the new year.

01:09:18.480 And that will do it for the show today.

01:09:20.640 Thanks for watching.

01:09:21.440 Thanks for listening.

01:09:22.280 Talk to you tomorrow.

01:09:23.520 Have a great day.

01:09:25.180 Godspeed.

01:09:25.500 Godspeed.

01:09:33.620 What was it like, Merlin, to be alone with God?

01:09:41.680 Is that who you think I was alone with?

01:09:49.220 Merlin, I knew your father.

01:09:51.640 I am yet convinced that he was not of this world.

01:09:56.760 All men know of the great Taliesin.

01:10:00.100 You are my father.

01:10:01.300 That the gods should war for my soul.

01:10:04.460 Princess Garrus, the savior of our people.

01:10:10.000 I know what the bull god offered you.

01:10:12.520 I was offered the same.

01:10:14.560 And?

01:10:16.020 There is a new power at work in the world.

01:10:18.140 I've seen it.

01:10:20.160 A god who sacrifices what he loves for us.

01:10:22.880 We are each given only one life, Singer.

01:10:25.620 No.

01:10:26.760 And we're given another.

01:10:30.580 I learnt of Yezu the Christ.

01:10:32.900 And I have become his follower.

01:10:34.780 He's waiting on a miracle.

01:10:36.300 And I think you can give him one.

01:10:38.320 Trust in Yezu.

01:10:39.320 He is the only hope for men like us.

01:10:42.620 Vader Britain never rests in the hands of the great light.

01:10:45.620 Great light.

01:10:46.780 Great darkness.

01:10:48.220 Such things mattered to me then.

01:10:50.660 What matters to you now, mistress of lies?

01:10:54.360 You.

01:10:55.860 Nephew.

01:10:56.380 The sword of a high king.

01:11:03.260 How many lives must be lost before you accept the power you were born to wield?

01:11:10.960 Circling to the promises of a god who has abandoned you.

01:11:14.180 I cannot take up that sword again.

01:11:17.040 You know what you must do.

01:11:20.640 Great light, forgive me.

01:11:21.720 The time has come

01:11:30.480 to be reborn.

01:11:32.420 You know what you're saying.

01:11:51.760 You.

01:11:54.320 You.

The Matt Walsh Show - January 05, 2026

Ep. 1711 - Venezuela Has Been Dealt With. Somali Scammers Should Be Next

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