00:00:39.820is found guilty of killing her husband.
00:00:41.440All of that and more on The Matt Wall Show.
00:00:56.360According to the most recent studies on the subject, the average American now subscribes
00:01:14.660to four different streaming services. Many subscribe to five or six or even more. Netflix
00:01:19.840alone has 300 million subscribers, which almost equals the entire population of the United States,
00:01:25.180not counting illegal aliens. And yet the surveys and our own experience tell us that most people
00:01:30.620aren't satisfied with these services and are only becoming less satisfied every day.
00:01:34.340We all have the impression that it's just, it's too much. There are too many of these platforms.
00:01:38.720They're only getting more expensive. And as the service declines and the one major promise of
00:01:45.240streaming that we wouldn't have to deal with ads has been almost entirely abandoned at this point,
00:01:49.760people are experiencing a great amount of fatigue, streaming fatigue. And what's more,
00:01:55.180It seems that these services are bad for movies themselves.
00:01:59.760The art of filmmaking has declined, which everyone has noticed.
00:02:03.320While streaming services are ubiquitous, the movies and shows themselves feel somehow more marginal, less relevant than ever before.
00:02:11.500The Oscars happened this past weekend.
00:02:14.080Nobody noticed or cared because nobody noticed or cared about any of the movies that were nominated.
00:02:18.660So what's really happening here and why?
00:02:20.800We've done a series of deep dive explorations into various facets of American cultural life over the past few months, trying to figure out why the quality of everything is on the decline.
00:02:32.860In a word, everything kind of sucks now.
00:02:50.800Well, let's explore that question. Start with the fact that everything is bundled now. Roughly 85% of subscribers to Amazon Prime Video are also subscribed to Amazon Prime, which supposedly gets you faster shipping on some items.
00:03:04.480Relatively few people subscribe to Prime Video all by itself. Meanwhile, millions of people have access to Netflix and Hulu through a deal with their cell phone carrier, usually T-Mobile or Verizon.
00:03:15.200the reason that the streaming services offer these bundles is that they're worried about churn,
00:03:19.660which means losing customers. Churn is reduced by a significant margin when customers have
00:03:26.080Netflix or Hulu as part of a bundle with their carrier. Bundles are complicated to cancel,
00:03:32.860for one thing. They might be presented as a free add-on, when in reality, you're definitely paying
00:03:37.860for it. And maybe most importantly, when you have a Netflix or T-Mobile bundle, you're likely to be
00:03:43.820less demanding about the content on Netflix. Over time, you naturally come to see Netflix as a
00:03:48.620component of a larger necessary contract with your phone carrier. And that's exactly how Netflix and
00:03:54.480the other streaming services want you to perceive things. Amazon doesn't have to justify their cost
00:04:00.720increases if everyone thinks of Prime Video Ultra as a necessary component of Amazon Prime.
00:04:07.420The other part of the problem, one of the reasons why it's so hard to evaluate the value of the various services, is that they lose the rights to shows and movies all the time.
00:04:18.240Netflix acquired the rights to Seinfeld in 2019, but you have no idea if they'll have the show in 2027 because the licensing deal expires at the end of this year.
00:04:27.220And on top of that, even when a show is available, you have no idea if it's going to be the original version.
00:04:32.280There's no streaming service that offers scrubs as it originally aired.
00:04:35.740For example, the licensing rights to the music, which is a big part of the show, were simply too big of a hassle to renew.
00:04:43.340And to give another example, the version of Seinfeld that's on Netflix is widescreen, even though the show was never intended to be widescreen.
00:04:50.520For the Netflix version, they simply just cropped the original image so that it fits widescreen TVs.
00:04:55.600And that means they deleted some of the content on the top and bottom of the image in every frame.
00:05:01.660And the result is that the show looks very different from how it originally aired, which may seem like a small issue, and maybe it is in the grand scheme, but it's more significant than you might think.
00:05:11.000I mean, if we look at films and shows as pieces of art, which they are or should be, then it's a problem that these services are making alterations to the art, basically as they see fit, with no way for most people to access the original version of it.
00:05:28.180The only way to avoid these kinds of changes is to buy physical media that streaming services
00:05:32.260can't mess with. You can buy Seinfeld on 4K Blu-ray, for example, complete with the original
00:05:37.040formatting and a bunch of special features and so on. And indeed, a lot of people are doing that
00:05:41.360now. There's a whole market for physical media that's undergoing something of a renaissance at
00:05:45.180the moment. But as it stands, there's simply no legal way to stream the show in its original
00:05:50.340broadcast format. Unless you're an extremely devoted Seinfeld fan, you probably weren't aware
00:05:54.820of this. And you probably aren't aware of the many, many other ways that streaming services
00:05:58.940mess with the content that you think you're getting. On Hulu, you can't access five episodes
00:06:04.340of Always Sunny in Philadelphia because they were retroactively canceled during the BLM hysteria.
00:06:09.240Basically, any episode where a character appears in blackface, even if the point of the gag is to
00:06:13.900mock Danny DeVito for wearing blackface, has been erased. Just doesn't exist anymore. If you
00:06:20.360subscribe to Hulu, this is never explained to you. They act like you're getting the whole show,
00:06:25.200but you're not. And many other shows have similar banned episodes for similar reasons. A lot of
00:06:31.340them do. Again, none of this is ever explained. You're not told about it. But NBC removed four
00:06:36.66030 Rock episodes for depictions of blackface, which again, obviously were not endorsements
00:06:42.000of the idea of blackface, but whatever. The community episode entitled Advanced Dungeons
00:06:47.180and Dragons was nuked from streaming services as well because the Asian comedian dressed up as a
00:06:53.080dark elf. And South Park took five episodes offline because they depicted Muhammad in an
00:06:59.580unflattering manner, which is a capital offense in the Muslim world, which we've now imported to
00:07:03.980the United States. So they decided to stick to mocking Jesus and Christians and Trump voters
00:07:09.380instead, which is safe, which is one of the reasons why comedy is dead, by the way. All the comedians
00:07:14.360are cowards. And what's important to emphasize here is that, while it's obviously very bad that
00:07:19.820these streaming services are censoring shows without even admitting it, this censorship is
00:07:25.500a symptom of a much larger problem. The problem is not simply that wokeness has run amok or that
00:07:31.740left-wing DEI bureaucrats have taken over the entertainment industry, although that's all true.
00:07:37.160The real problem is, in part, all this content exists in the ether. You access it through
00:07:43.640subscriptions. Even if you buy a streaming movie on Amazon, you still only have access to your
00:07:49.420purchase as long as you have your Amazon subscription. The death of physical media
00:07:53.740means that nobody owns any particular piece of media anymore. You know, when I was a kid,
00:07:58.520we had a physical library of physical copies of our favorite films. We would watch those films
00:08:03.460over and over again. And what this meant was not only that the movies couldn't be retroactively
00:08:08.380changed or censored, but also that we got to know these movies. They became a part of our lives in
00:08:13.900a way that no movie today ever will be because it always exists in the digital cloud, one bit of
00:08:20.480content in an endless scroll of other bits. This is how it works now across the board. I mean,
00:08:26.200in every area of life, we are confronted with an infinite number of options. It plagues society at
00:08:32.780every level. You go to the store for ketchup and there are like 97 different options to choose from.
00:08:37.260The same is true of cars, watches, dating apps, clothing, cosmetics, toiletry is anything. It's too many choices. It's overwhelming. It's overstimulating. You commit to one and then you worry that maybe that one or that one or the other one would have been better.
00:08:55.380It's this kind of paralysis by analysis that everybody is suffering from perpetually all the time.
00:09:02.240And along the same lines, as mentioned, there's no communal experience of film anymore.
00:10:18.720probably heard of all of them. Some of them are classics. Now, let's look at the major Oscar
00:10:24.540nominees from 2026. Here's what we have. Sinners, Marty Supreme, One Battle After Another, Blue Moon,
00:10:31.380The Secret Agent, Sentimental Value, Begonia, If I Had Legs, I'd Kick You, Zootopia 2, Arco,
00:10:37.540Weapons, and F1. Now, again, these aren't all necessarily bad movies. Some of them are.
00:10:43.100Some of them, like weapons, are actually pretty good, I thought.
00:10:47.080And all of them are technically sophisticated filmmaking.
00:10:50.540They're all well-made from a technical perspective.
00:10:54.100But most people haven't heard of about 90% of them.
00:10:57.680It's not just that most people haven't seen them.
00:10:59.640It's that they don't even know they exist.
00:11:02.400And we certainly won't be talking about any of these films in 20 years.
00:11:05.320They'll be forgotten because, you know, we're all watching different things.
00:11:08.560And there are so many choices, such an infinite array of options all the time that no particular piece of content can remain in our consciousness for very long.
00:11:18.160That's why ratings are down, by the way, way down.
00:11:21.240This is from The Hollywood Reporter, quote, Sunday's 98th Academy Awards drew 17.86 million viewers on ABC and Hulu based on Nielsen's Big Data Plus panel ratings.
00:11:31.520That's down about 9% from last year's Oscars, which drew 19.69 million viewers for a post-pandemic high
00:11:38.900and the smallest audience for the award since 2022 when 16.68 million people watched.
00:11:43.840The show delivered a 3.92 rating among adults, 18 to 49, a 14% decline from last year.
00:11:52.600So they dropped 14% of the key demographic, and that's including streaming numbers.
00:11:56.140They tried to boost the numbers as much as they could, and it's still a big drop.
00:11:59.660unless some kind of stunt is involved, say somebody gets slapped on stage or they announced
00:12:04.920the wrong best picture winner or something, then there's basically nobody who even pretends to care
00:12:10.180about the awards anymore. Now, for comparison, the Oscars had around 45 million views in 1996.
00:12:16.840That's the year that Braveheart won. They had more than 35 million viewers in 2016, just a decade ago.
00:12:23.180And now they're down to 18 million, including a streaming audience, which mostly isn't paying
00:12:27.580attention. Now, is Braveheart a better movie than the ones that were nominated this year?
00:12:33.000I think it certainly was, yes. But it's not just about it being a better movie. The point is that
00:12:38.300Braveheart was a cultural phenomenon in a way that no Oscar movie today is or ever could be.
00:12:46.080The proliferation of streaming and the internet generally has destroyed the communal experience
00:12:51.100of movie watching so much that it's almost impossible for any film to be enjoyed and known
00:18:52.820uh and that black woman was the hero of course that's yeah that's the other way you know that
00:18:57.940it's a netflix streaming slop is it you got the black female hero beating up the bad guys
00:19:04.140also this woman has apparently has uh absolute authority and power like she gets to the airport
00:19:10.660i don't even remember the she gets to the airport and she's like she's connecting with uh with with
00:19:16.700the you know air traffic control and telling them whether to let planes fly or not it's like no one
00:19:22.080questions whether she has the authority to do that. Now, some people with shockingly low standards
00:19:27.100praise this scene because it's one of those single-take sequences that isn't actually a
00:19:31.040single take. Really, it's completely unconvincing in every way. You could tell these people aren't
00:19:35.200really in a car. There's no sense of physics or momentum at all. It looks like they're in front
00:19:39.900of a green screen because that's exactly what's actually happening. I mean, they had more
00:19:44.680convincing and more authentic car chases in the 1960s. Films like Bullet were much more interesting
00:19:50.280and watchable than whatever this is in 2005 before the streaming era the budget didn't go entirely to
00:19:56.780cgi it went to scenes like this one uh which you can see here it's from the first season of the
00:20:02.760hbo series rome the crew built a five acre set which is part of the reason the production costs
00:20:08.320uh was over 100 million dollars the goal was to make everything look as believable as possible
00:20:12.500and uh they succeeded now it's kind of the goal is to make everything look like a video game or
00:20:18.160at least they don't care if it looks like a video game because the assumption, again, is that you're
00:20:21.700not paying attention to what you're watching anyway. So that's what you get when you watch
00:20:26.260streaming films and shows these days, a video game. This is what you're paying an ever-increasing
00:20:31.540amount of money for, along with your fake two-day shipping and your phone bill. Just like your
00:20:37.400Amazon purchases with two-day delivery or whatever, streaming shows are now a generic commodity
00:20:42.040served up without any artistic vision or integrity whatsoever. Then to top it off, partially as a
00:20:47.200consequence of the above, attention spans are shot to hell. Algorithms know all of this. They feed
00:20:53.400off of it. The streaming services help to cause the decline in attention spans, and also they
00:20:58.400profit from it. And this is a real phenomenon, by the way. A recent report suggests that attention
00:21:02.680spans have dropped by up to 70% in the last 20 years. This isn't due to any mysterious epidemic
00:21:10.100of adhd it's because we have an infinite amount of content streaming into our faces all day every
00:21:16.920day so this has the potential to be a terminal decline in other words and it will continue
00:21:23.720until the moment it stops being profitable until there's a crash in the entertainment industry
00:21:29.020which could be happening based on the data from los angeles until it does the amount of content
00:21:34.860will continue to increase exponentially the monoculture will remain a thing of the past and
00:21:38.860And one by one, without even telling you, these streaming services will continue to retroactively mess up the shows you like while flooding you with shows that no sane adult would ever want to watch.
00:21:49.180And soon, sooner than you think, thanks to AI, these streaming algorithms will be generating on their own entire films by the thousands every day.
00:22:01.520It will generate films just for you, kind of like how Spotify will generate you a playlist based on the songs you listen to.
00:22:08.860and then you listen to those songs, and then it generates more another playlist based on the fact
00:22:13.220that you listen to those songs. So pretty soon, your taste is not your taste anymore. You have
00:22:17.900the taste that the algorithm has kind of assigned to you. And the same thing is going to happen with
00:22:23.140movies. It already is. And this will be the moment when popular culture is destroyed forever. We
00:22:29.040won't have any kind of shared experience of anything anymore. Now, on the other hand,
00:22:34.860in theory, if enough people collect their own physical media and cancel the monthly payments
00:22:41.120they've probably forgotten about, then these streaming services won't be profitable for long.
00:22:46.700And eventually, if we maintain that pressure, we could revive an important part of American culture
00:22:51.420that for the past few decades has been vandalized and looted beyond recognition.
00:22:57.060The people who somehow made Star Trek even gayer than before and the people who butchered
00:23:01.300Seinfeld and everything else, they're not geniuses, but they're not suicidal either.
00:23:05.680They respond directly to incentives. The moment we stop paying for their slop, they will relent.
00:23:11.900The deluge will stop, and eventually Hollywood will do something it hasn't done in decades,
00:23:15.960produce worthwhile films that people actually want to see and that millions of people will
00:23:20.400want to see together without a cell phone glued to their hands. Now, we're on a trajectory
00:23:24.800heading into the total obliteration of anything that can be properly described as a culture.
00:24:33.660Let's begin with this report in New York Post from Chris Ruffo, who continues to do tremendous work.
00:24:39.220And I'm going to read some of this because it's just so perfect in so many ways.
00:24:45.580It says, in 2022, California Governor Gavin Newsom broke ground on the Wallace-Annenberg Wildlife Crossing,
00:24:53.200a project featuring an overpass for animals atop 10 lanes of the 101 Freeway in Southern California.
00:24:58.980At the ceremony, Newsom boasted that the state had committed $54 million. He promised to complete the job within another $10 million before seeming to hedge on whether that final sum would do the trick.
00:25:09.800Officials projected a 2025 completion date for the overpass, estimated that the entire project would cost $92 million, some of it coming from private philanthropists.
00:25:18.800Nearly four years after the ceremony, the bridge is past due,
00:25:21.160and the project is some $21 million over budget.
00:25:25.240What's supposed to be the world's largest wildlife crossing
00:25:27.520has become a jobs program for environmentalists,
00:25:29.880with taxpayers on the hook for what WAWC leader Beth Pratt told us
00:25:34.740is an overpass for everything from monarch butterflies to mountain lions.
00:25:42.440You can go to New York Post and read the entire report.
00:25:44.520You should, because it just, everything that's wrong with bureaucracy and California in particular
00:26:14.520And my favorite thing about this project, as Chris points out, is that it's a wilderness bridge connecting the wilderness on one side of the highway directly to a suburban area on the other side of the highway.
00:26:34.960It's the wilderness going directly into a neighborhood.
00:26:37.420So if you live in one of those houses, I mean, this means the mountain lions can come across the hill and, you know, pay you a visit, which is great.
00:26:50.320I don't think, if you live in one of those houses, there isn't anything living up in those hills that you really would necessarily want to have in your neighborhood.
00:27:02.780But that's what these geniuses decided.
00:27:04.800They looked at the communities and they said, you know what these communities need? Mountain lions.
00:27:10.320That'll liven things up. That'll make things exciting.
00:27:13.460So you might be wondering how this could possibly cost $100 million.
00:27:16.800How does a bridge for animals cost about 40 times more money than the average American will earn in a lifetime?
00:27:25.000I mean, the animals themselves could have built a bridge quicker and cheaper than this.
00:27:30.180You get like some beavers and army ants on the job and they'll get it done quicker and, you know, your budget will be quite a bit lower.
00:30:26.440Well, that's who you want working on your construction project, right?
00:30:29.940That's the project lead you're looking for,
00:30:31.900a blonde woman in a pink vest carrying a stuffed animal.
00:30:37.560She's walking around the construction site with a stuffed animal.
00:30:41.640Shockingly, this woman has no previous construction experience at all, apparently.
00:30:46.260And yet she's heading up this project.
00:30:49.080That's got to be great if you're one of the guys actually working the construction on this bridge.
00:30:54.980This is your foreman walking around with her stuffed animal.
00:30:59.700Trying to what? I don't know. Trying to give directions.
00:31:02.860Yeah, good job, guys. Keep doing that. Keep hammering away.
00:31:07.480Hey, the pole things over there seem to be a little, yeah, fix that.
00:31:14.360And $100 million later, it's still not done.
00:31:18.760Now, you compare this to back in the old days when they didn't have women with stuffed animals running around construction sites, and they weren't paying hippies to go on seed scouting missions.
00:31:29.700And what you find back then is that they could build much bigger and more impressive things,
00:31:36.560and they could do it much quicker. So this has taken four years to complete, and it's still not
00:31:41.500done. A little bridge, a little bridge over the road for the forest creatures. You know how long
00:31:49.560the Empire State Building took to construct? One year. The Pentagon was built in 16 months.
00:31:57.740Sears Tower built in three years. The Hoover Dam was built in about the same amount of time that
00:32:07.020it's taken them to get to this point on the Wilderness Bridge. The Hoover Dam. I believe
00:32:12.780that the main construction of the Hoover Dam was done in four years. One of the greatest
00:32:17.780engineering feats in the history of the world was built in the amount of time it has taken
00:32:23.040California to make a little bridge for cats and butterflies. A little bridge for butterflies.
00:32:30.680They built the Hoover Dam in that amount of time. Think about that. And we could go through and
00:32:37.700find a million things to compare it to. This one is probably the most mind-blowing. So think about
00:32:44.380this. The Panama Canal, okay? The Panama Canal, a canal 50 miles long connecting the world's two
00:32:54.180great oceans, okay? Very possibly the most impressive engineering and construction feat
00:33:00.520ever in the history of the world. And by this time, in the amount of time it's taken California
00:33:08.540to make its cute little bridge for woodland creatures,
00:33:11.700they were halfway done on the Panama Canal.
00:33:15.880They were 50% finished building a 50-mile canal
00:33:19.720that required digging out and moving 200 million cubic meters of dirt and rock
00:33:25.760in the middle of the jungle with thousands of workers dropping dead
00:33:30.780left and right from malaria and starvation.
00:33:35.020so how has this happened i mean everyone kind of points this out it's always fun making these
00:33:46.300comparisons it's not fun it's very depressing but it's it's uh easy to do it's low-hanging fruit
00:33:51.780but it's a real thing it's a real thing i mean the fact is 100 years ago you could build the
00:33:57.160empire state building in a year and now this is what's happened so how does that happen well
00:34:42.200There's no incentive because these projects become jobs programs
00:34:46.400for useless government workers and useless women
00:34:49.340from the nonprofit space who come over here
00:34:53.160and suddenly have the whole thing infested with activists
00:34:56.900and bureaucrats and women like the ones we saw in the clips,
00:35:00.600and they don't want it to be done because then they're out of a job.
00:35:05.780So it's all by design. I mean, that's why the project exists in the first place.
00:35:11.900It doesn't exist to accomplish the task. It exists to give jobs to these people, women,
00:35:17.980many of them, and that's why it never gets done. You don't always realize how bad your sheets have
00:35:24.820gotten until you finally replace them. That's why you need to upgrade to our sponsor, Bowling Branch.
00:35:29.560If your sheets are pilling, thinning, slipping off the mattress, or making you overheat at night, that's your sign.
00:35:36.520Bowling Branch's signature sheets are made from 100% organic cotton, and they're actually designed to hold their shape, stay breathable, and feel luxuriously soft night after night.
00:35:45.500You'll fall asleep faster, stay comfortable all night long, and notice the difference the moment you get into bed.
00:35:50.220My wife and I have had their signature sheets on the bed for a while now.
00:36:18.980New York Post, Utah's children's grief author, Corey Richens, was found guilty on Monday of fatally poisoning her husband.
00:36:25.780in a twisted plot to bail herself out of debt with his $4 million estate and run away with
00:36:30.620her handyman lover. The jury in Park City handed down the guilty verdict after roughly three hours
00:36:35.160of deliberations following a three-week trial where prosecutors painted Richens as an egotistical
00:36:40.540social climber who, I guess, tried to poison her husband one other time and wasn't successful and
00:36:48.700then was able to successfully poison him. And one of the many things that's bizarre and sort of
00:36:57.720shocking about this is that Richens wrote and promoted a kid's book called Are You With Me
00:37:02.660about grief. And the point of the book was to help kids cope with grief. She said it was
00:37:08.280specifically to help her own kids cope with grief after they lost their father.
00:37:12.340and it turns out that they lost their father because she killed him she actually went on a
00:37:18.660familiar show good things utah to promote it and fans of this show will recognize good things utah
00:37:24.780from my film am i racist because i went there to promote my diversity seminar
00:37:29.080and that was i guess shortly after uh this woman showed up to promote her um her book so they
00:37:36.520really just don't vet anyone on this show. They will just let anybody out. They are really
00:37:43.400extraordinarily committed to not vetting a single person that they allow on their airwaves. But this
00:37:49.820is pretty chilling to watch now. So here she is a couple of years ago promoting this book. Watch.
00:37:55.260And talking about loss with kids can be a tricky subject. Joining us now is author of Are You With
00:38:01.400me, Corey Richens, to share her three C's to helping kids cope with grief. And Corey,
00:38:07.340I want to start with your story. What happened in your personal life?
00:38:11.300So my husband passed away unexpectedly last year. So it's March 4th was a one year anniversary
00:38:18.180for us. And he was 39. It completely took us all by shock. And we have three little
00:38:26.140boys 10 9 and 6 and um you know we kind of my kids and i kind of wrote this book on the different
00:38:35.260emotions and grieving processes that we've experienced last year and you know hoping that
00:38:41.340it can kind of help other kids you know um deal with this and kind of you know find happiness
00:38:49.180some some way or another and to make sense and process i'm sure and i'm sure you felt that
00:38:56.140going through and trying to explain it and articulate it for you and your boys yes exactly
00:39:02.380exactly and so i've done you know i'm new to all of this so kind of doing all you know research
00:39:08.380and reading books and things to try and understand you know not only how to grieve as a widow as a
00:39:15.900wife but also you know turns out that uh she was the one who killed her husband and you know i i
00:39:23.820I don't usually follow these kinds of cases. I'm not much for true crime. It's not my beat
00:39:28.620that I follow, but I follow this one a little bit, enough to know that this woman is an absolute
00:39:35.380monster, calculating, ruthless, barbaric. The first-degree murder designation was made for
00:39:42.420somebody like this. She executed her husband deliberately with planning, malice aforethought,
00:39:48.840total disregard for his life, the lives of her children, which she has ruined, just evil to the
00:39:55.960core. So my question is, is there any reason, any moral reason why she should not be once convicted,
00:40:03.240simply brought around back and hanged? Is there any good reason to not simply execute this woman
00:40:10.080legally by the state as punishment for her crimes? Is there any reason not to do that?
00:40:18.840I think that we need to bring the death penalty back as a political issue, as a debate in this
00:40:26.060country. Now, I think we need to bring the actual thing back, but in order to get there,
00:40:30.240it first needs to be a live issue, pardon the pun, a subject of debate again, which it really
00:40:37.260isn't right now. We just sort of stopped talking about it. And certainly politicians don't talk
00:40:42.720about it. It's treated as one of those settled issues. Oh, it's settled. And it's settled on,
00:40:49.040we don't really do it anymore. Right now, there are only 11 states in the country that carry out
00:40:53.720executions and it's banned in like 20 or 25. And then there are several more that haven't banned
00:40:58.000it officially, but they just don't, they don't do it. And that leaves 11 on the books that carry
00:41:04.080it out, that will, that have it on the books and that will carry it out. But even then it's rare.
00:41:07.940There are only like 30 or 40 executions in this country nationwide every year. Federal executions are even more rare. They basically never happen. There were none at all last year, none the year before that.
00:41:22.320um all this has happened even though a majority of americans still support the death penalty
00:41:29.340that's what's strange about it it's it's effectively been it's effectively gone from
00:41:35.700the country it's been banned in most states officially or unofficially and yet still
00:41:42.520if you were to do a poll most americans support it not as many as used to uh in the in the 90s
00:41:51.160support for the death penalty was like 80%. So it wasn't that long ago that there was
00:41:56.060almost unanimous agreement on the death penalty. Now it's like 52% or so. But that dip in support
00:42:06.580is also a function of the fact that nobody is making the case for it anymore. Nobody's really
00:42:10.520trying to whip up support for it. It's just not talked about. It isn't discussed. And so we have
00:42:15.180this status quo where the death penalty, in effect, basically doesn't exist in this country.
00:42:19.56040 executions in a country of 300 plus million means that it basically doesn't exist. And that's
00:42:25.340the status quo. And the polls are kind of slowly coming to reflect, as they often do, the status
00:42:31.280quo. That's why we need to bring it back as a subject, I think. We need to start talking about
00:42:36.760it again, advocating for it. And it wouldn't take much effort to get the support back to 70 or 80%.
00:42:42.900It really wouldn't. Even in our very divided time, and the death penalty is seen as this
00:42:48.520one of the most divisive issues. I don't think it is. Historically, it hasn't been.
00:42:54.660Even in recent history. I actually think we could get 80 to 85% agreement on the death penalty. I
00:43:01.060really do think we could. Especially when you're not talking about it in the abstract, when you're
00:43:09.440talking about it related to specific cases. So like, take this case. This woman, coldly,
00:43:16.740coolly planned the murder of her husband and then went and tried to profit off of it,
00:43:23.440not just with the insurance money, but with this children's book about grief,
00:43:26.920how many Americans as a percentage do you think would object to this woman getting a lethal
00:43:34.240injection? If that were to happen, how many Americans would object to it?
00:43:42.480Like go on the street, stop a hundred people, tell them about this case and say,
00:43:46.300do you think it'd be okay to execute this woman?
00:43:48.220How many of the hundred random people would say,
00:44:16.300Very few. The fact is that executing this woman would be wildly popular. It would be and it should
00:44:22.180be. Executing any child rapist would be wildly popular. And it should be. This is a major
00:44:31.800political win, just sort of like sitting there for somebody to grab. It's not something the
00:44:37.120Democrats want to talk about. They might be fine talking about it in the abstract again,
00:44:41.520but they don't want to talk about specific cases. They don't want to get up there and argue that
00:44:45.140This woman in particular, or if you take any specific case of a child killer, child rapist, the worst of the worst, they don't want to get up and say, oh, no, we can't do that to them.
00:45:15.140So it's a political winner. It's just sort of like sitting right there. And also it's the right thing to do because we need justice in this country. It really is. It's about that. It's about justice. That's what it comes down to.
00:45:32.420starting something new could be daunting when we launched the matt wall show we had all the usual
00:45:37.940fears but i'm glad we went for it and you can too with our sponsor shopify shopify is the
00:45:43.020commerce platform powering millions of businesses around the world and 10 of all e-commerce in the
00:45:48.340u.s including our very own daily wire shop getting started is incredibly easy with hundreds of ready
00:45:53.240to use templates you can build a beautiful online store that matches your brand style shopify is
00:45:58.300packed with helpful AI tools that write product descriptions, page headlines, and even enhance
00:46:03.400your product photography so you can accelerate your efficiency, whether you're uploading new
00:46:08.000products or improving existing ones. Need to get the word out? Shopify helps you find your customers
00:46:12.280with easy-to-run email and social media campaigns. What's more, you can tackle all those important
00:46:16.780tasks in one place, from inventory to payments to analytics, without juggling multiple websites or
00:46:22.000platforms. If you ever get stuck, Shopify's 24-7 customer support is always around to help.
00:46:26.480So it's time to turn those what ifs into with Shopify today.
00:46:32.680Sign up for your $1 per month trial at shopify.com slash Walsh.
00:46:54.140When we get it, there's wide approval.
00:46:55.580This is what I think everybody is hungry for. We're tired of living in a society without justice, where people can do evil things and they're either not punished for it at all, or they're not punished with the severity that the crime deserves.
00:47:12.400and but we are seeing cases here and there where judges are starting to wake up so um here is a
00:47:18.400judge passing down a sentence to a um an 18 year old who committed armed robbery and she passes
00:47:28.400down this sentence this is a this is a female judge you know we've given we've given female
00:47:32.540judges a hard time on the show rightly so but so i think it's important to give her some credit
00:47:37.180um this is an 18 year old so we think about how this normally works okay you got an 18 year old
00:47:42.380teen, black teen, commits armed robbery. Um, and I believe this was the first felony that this
00:47:55.620person had committed. I believe I could be wrong about that. Um, standing in front of a judge,
00:48:00.840a female judge, how does this usually go? Well, how's this going to normally go? Well,
00:48:05.600normally it goes, well, give it, give a lecture. Naughty, naughty. Shouldn't have done that. Uh,
00:48:10.600here's probation, do some community service. We'll see you back here in two years after you
00:48:14.320kill somebody. That's not what happened here. And the family was not happy about it. Let's
00:48:18.880watch this. Mr. Fontenet, there was a time some years ago that there really wasn't even a question.
00:48:26.680Everyone, state's attorneys were recommending youthful offenders, probation, let's give
00:48:33.140everybody an opportunity. And things have just changed in such an incredibly dangerous way
00:48:39.740with young people doing what I just saw you do on that screen.
00:48:48.120I cannot imagine the fear that that person had that was working in that store
00:48:56.140that he now has just trying to go to work, make a living and go home.
00:49:01.140And he has three people come in and not just grab a little quick something
00:49:07.360and run out, but terrorize him for quite some time. Pulling him around, yanking him around,
00:49:16.520putting guns in his face, all three of you. I also, in addition to the PSI, get jail incident
00:49:26.340reports. And you apparently like to fight and jump people, which is what's been happening in
00:49:32.060the jail. So it makes it very difficult for me to go, oh, this is somebody that's going to get out
00:49:39.640and behave, who can follow the rules, because you can't even follow the rules in jail. And
00:49:46.020the pre-sentence report shows that you're a high risk level, which tells me that after they've
00:49:53.220looked at everything, that you don't have, unfortunately, a good likelihood of being
00:49:58.360successful if I were to put you on probation. And Mr. Coleman's right. We're tired of it.
00:50:04.000And there's got to be something done. So in cause number 25, DCCR 1759, I'm going to find that you
00:50:12.100enter your plea of guilty freely and voluntarily. I'm going to find sufficient evidence to find you
00:50:17.240guilty. And at this time, I'm going to find you guilty of aggravated robbery. I'm going to sentence
00:56:49.460So two factors have combined. There's the desire to score a point against the opposition at any cost and the desire to call attention to yourself and get clicks at any cost. But really, it's mainly the second thing. It's a little bit of the first. It's mostly the second. And it drives people to go around blabbering, saying anything, anything at all, just to get attention.
00:57:09.320Joy Reid is almost 60 years old, and this is what she's doing with her time.
00:57:15.960She's fishing for cliques. Don Lemon, the same way.
00:57:21.420And it happens on the right also, clearly.
00:57:23.940You got people on both sides who don't believe what they say,
00:57:27.480desperately saying anything it takes to get attention.
00:57:29.920You know what I really hate about it, among other things?
00:57:33.340It's taken all the fun out of trolling, out of being a provocateur.
00:57:37.440That used to be fun. I know from experience. And there used to be, I think, some value in it. Maybe, you know, sometimes being outrageous, being provocative. At least it used to be funny. And now these idiots have taken all the fun out of it.
00:57:53.560um this is this is so much this is so much of the commentary i don't know how much of it but a huge
00:58:02.720chunk of the commentary that you see now it's like i can't even engage why engage with it you
00:58:08.220don't believe that so we're all sitting around and then it starts a debate and we're debating
00:58:13.040it's like does anyone in the debate even believe the thing we're arguing over i don't think anyone
00:58:17.740does. And it's taken, uh, it's really taken the fun out of this whole business, to be honest with
00:58:26.820you. My whole line of work, it's just infested with the dumbest, most morally bankrupt humans
00:58:32.780on the planet. And, uh, that's why I just need, I, you know, I've told my wife for years that my,
00:58:41.240my 10-year plan, my career plan is by the time I turn 50 to open a small tackle shop. That's my
00:58:50.100ultimate goal. That's my dream, really, truly. I just want to own a tackle shop. That's like a
00:58:56.440small tackle shop by a lake somewhere, open six days a week, open up at 6 a.m. early for that
00:59:04.320morning bite, close at 3 p.m. or something like that. I didn't just spend all day talking about
00:59:08.180fishing baits. That's what I want to do. And I've always thought maybe 50s when I make the
00:59:13.420transition, I might have to move that up by about, I don't know, 10 years. Um, cause this whole
00:59:19.140business is anyway, I'm kidding. Not really, but all I'm saying is that much of the commentary you
00:59:25.960hear is a performance. It's, it's not even convincing performance. It's not meant to be
00:59:30.480convincing. It's just meant to get you to click or to do what I'm doing right now, which is to
00:59:35.580acknowledge it, to talk about it. And to what end, really? I mean, it exists for its own sake,
00:59:42.160not to advance any real point of view. And that is what makes debate impossible in this country.
00:59:49.060That's why it's so unproductive. It wasn't always this way. I'm not saying we lived in a utopia,
00:59:54.720and people have always had disagreements. But it really is true. I mean, it sounds
01:00:02.260impossible to believe, especially for younger people, but there was a time when you could
01:00:07.020actually have a productive debate and discussion about the issues of the day. And it might have
01:00:15.260gotten heated and people might have gotten really upset, but there was a chance for something
01:00:21.660productive to be had. Like you had one side that had a point of view, another side had a point of
01:00:25.180view, and they would explain their point of view and maybe something could come from that.
01:00:32.260and, uh, now it's just impossible because so much of the debate is dominated by people who
01:00:39.240don't believe what they're saying anyway. So it's, you can't convince somebody of something. You
01:00:45.320can't dissuade them from a point of view that they don't actually hold. Right. And that's what's
01:00:52.220happening. All right. Finally, it's been a little depressing. I just wanted to end on a high note.
01:00:59.060um, just mentioned this very quickly and, uh, big congratulations to Kim Jong-un. It was according
01:01:06.340to reports, um, I'm seeing online anyway, the Supreme leader of North Korea, just one reelection
01:01:12.120with get this, this is pretty inspiring. 99.93% of the vote. Um, and, uh, here he is just, you know,
01:01:19.880being, uh, I guess, congratulated by the North Korean parliament here. Yeah, there we go. So
01:01:26.400just an extraordinary victory. And look, say what you will about Kim Jong-un, but he got a hand to
01:01:33.860the guy. He ran a great campaign. He obviously has his finger on the pulse. He ran a unifying
01:01:39.420message. And the thing that I really admire, frankly, is that he didn't compromise on his
01:01:45.120principles to get there. He was able to preach a bipartisan message, something that appealed to
01:01:50.580both sides of the political aisle without moderating his message at all, which I think
01:01:54.240was pretty extraordinary. And I thought there was one campaign promise in particular that he made
01:01:58.860that was really effective and it definitely resonated. And that's when he promised that
01:02:04.060if you don't vote for him, he'll kill your family. I think, and different pundits have
01:02:09.960different views on it, but to me, that was the promise he made where he said that if you don't
01:02:14.780vote for him, he'll throw your family in a dungeon, he'll be eaten by dogs. That was the thing in
01:02:18.220particular that I think according to a lot of the exit polls that I read really motivated a lot of
01:02:23.120voters. A lot of voters said that was the thing. You know, that's mainly why I'm going to vote for
01:02:27.260him is the whole thing about, I don't want him to kill my family. So, you know, he understands
01:02:30.940the common man. He understands the working man. Knows how to connect with the middle class.
01:02:37.640I mean, there is no middle class in North Korea, but that's why it's so impressive that he's able
01:02:40.880to connect with it. So, I don't know. That's something inspiring to end with. It's still
01:02:47.480possible to reach a consensus. I think Kim Jong-un has proved that, which is why 99.93% of the
01:02:54.420country voted for him. Rest in peace to the 0.07%. And that will do it for the show today. Thanks
01:03:01.360for watching. Thanks for listening. Talk to you tomorrow. Well, tomorrow. We'll actually have a
01:03:05.220show tomorrow on Friday. Talk to you then. Godspeed.
01:03:16.040I do believe that if people have committed treason against the United States of America,
01:03:21.780their statues should not be in the Capitol. History is written by the victors. And since
01:03:27.500the 1960s, we've been told mostly by people whose ancestors didn't even live here during the war,