The Matt Walsh Show - Ep. 1754 - The Real Reason Your Airport Is Now A DISASTER ZONE

00:00:00.600 Spring break isn't what it used to be. It's better. This spring, stay three nights and get a $50 Best Western gift card. Life's a trip. Make the most of it at Best Western. Visit BestWestern.com for complete terms and conditions.

00:00:13.600 Today on the Matt Walsh show, airports across the country have become dysfunctional hellscapes

00:00:19.800 with TSA wait times in excess of three hours in some cases. All of that is bad enough on its own,

00:00:24.760 but it's even worse when you consider the reason. Democrats are once again making American citizens

00:00:29.040 suffer for the sake of protecting foreign invaders. Also, a man in Seattle shoots a

00:00:33.340 pregnant woman at a traffic light, killing her and her baby. He's just been found not guilty

00:00:38.000 by reason of insanity. It's a time to actually abolish the insanity defense once and for all.

00:00:42.820 And some good news out of Hollywood for a change as a wholesome family film, Project Hail Mary, becomes one of the most successful movies in recent years.

00:00:50.380 I saw the film with my family over the weekend. I'll give you my review. All of that and more today on The Matt Walsh Show.

00:01:12.360 Well, if you've been in an airport at any point over the past few weeks, then you know that they are a disaster zone right now, even more than they usually are.

00:01:28.940 Over the weekend, the chaos has descended to the point that some airports were reporting four or five hour wait times at security.

00:01:37.020 And this is all being blamed on the government shutdown, of course.

00:01:39.600 But if you look back at all previous government shutdowns in American history, you're not going to find anything like the breakdown that's currently taking place in Congress, which is now resulting in those five-hour TSA lines at major airports all over the country.

00:01:53.860 Now, to give you just one example of how bad it's gotten, a reporter at Reason Magazine in New Orleans wrote, quote,

00:02:00.840 I arrived at the airport three hours and 40 minutes before my flight. I ran up to the gate,

00:02:05.800 no exaggeration, as they were about to give my seat away on the last flight out.

00:02:10.700 The highest call-out rates among TSA agents this weekend were at the following airports.

00:02:16.220 Houston Hobby Airport, where 47% of TSA agents didn't show up for work. George Bush Intercontinental

00:02:22.940 Airport, also in Houston, 42% call-out rate. New Orleans International, 34% call-out rate. Atlanta,

00:02:30.300 33%, JFK 33%, Baltimore 29%, Chicago Midway 29%, Pittsburgh 23%, Philadelphia 31%, and LaGuardia

00:02:40.920 17%. Because TSA officers aren't allowed to be furloughed, all of those absences were unauthorized.

00:02:48.120 Most of these TSA agents are simply pretending to be sick. Now, you can draw your own conclusion

00:02:53.500 as to why the TSA officers living in the biggest urban centers in the country are more likely to

00:02:59.280 abandon their posts than everybody else. But whatever the case, the result has obviously been

00:03:05.500 disastrous for millions of Americans. And it's a unique situation in many ways.

00:03:11.660 This shutdown is not simply the result of a bog standard funding dispute or opposition to a major

00:03:17.820 new direction in American policy like Obamacare. Instead, it's about undermining the existing

00:03:23.220 authority of the executive branch and punishing American citizens, all in the name of foreigners 1.00

00:03:30.300 who have become the primary constituency of the Democrat Party. Now, the way Democrats see it,

00:03:36.580 Americans should suffer and our airport should fall into total dysfunction in service of their 1.00

00:03:43.400 open borders agenda. That's what this is all about. Put another way, the TSA catastrophe is

00:03:48.700 the Democrat Party in a nutshell. This is their foreigners' first ideology, perfectly illustrated. 1.00

00:03:55.880 Now, you may have heard that this shutdown is about preventing abuses by ICE or something along

00:04:01.860 those lines, but that is not remotely true. First of all, when Democrats talk about abuses by ICE,

00:04:07.900 they're referring to left-wing agitators like Renee Good, who got shot when they try to run 0.88

00:04:13.720 over federal agents with their SUV or otherwise violently interfere with law enforcement

00:04:19.120 operations. Or they're talking about debunked stories like ICE used a child as bait when in

00:04:25.160 reality the child's father abandoned him on the side of the road. So the entire narrative is a

00:04:30.020 fabrication. But more importantly, even if ICE agents were going around terrorizing American

00:04:35.120 citizens, which they aren't, this shutdown wouldn't do anything to stop them. Thanks to the 0.94

00:04:41.120 Big Beautiful Bill, which passed last summer, ICE, along with Customs and Border Protection,

00:04:45.720 has already been funded to the tune of $75 billion, which won't run out for several years.

00:04:51.440 And therefore, the best Democrats can hope for is that if they shut down TSA long enough,

00:04:57.020 which is what they're doing now, and make it impossible for Americans to board a plane,

00:05:01.780 then the White House might offer some concessions on how ICE goes about its day-to-day operations.

00:05:06.660 In particular, Democrats are demanding that ICE agents take off their masks so that they can be doxed, stay away from schools and hospitals, and restrict immigration enforcement to foreigners who have committed multiple serious crimes in addition to illegally entering the country, which Democrats obviously don't see as a crime at all.

00:05:28.880 Democrats also demand that ICE obtain a judicial warrant from a federal judge every time they

00:05:34.620 want to arrest an illegal alien inside a residence instead of an administrative warrant, which

00:05:38.700 is approved within the executive branch.

00:05:41.340 So in other words, Democrats believe that illegal aliens are entitled to the same constitutional 0.81

00:05:46.060 protections as American citizens, and they don't want to have that fight in court because

00:05:51.880 they know they're going to lose.

00:05:52.900 So instead, they're holding American citizens hostage. They're turning our airports into a dysfunctional hellscape in order to get the Trump administration to concede on the point.

00:06:07.260 So that's the 20,000 foot view of the current debate. You've probably heard some version of it from one outlet or another, but the reality of what's going on here is very different.

00:06:17.760 And if you listen to Democrats talk long enough, they'll explain what they're really after.

00:06:23.680 This is not, in fact, a shutdown that's intended to stop abuses by ICE, whatever those abuses may be.

00:06:30.260 The point of the shutdown is to terrorize Americans into another round of amnesty for the tens of millions of illegal aliens who currently reside in the U.S.

00:06:40.160 Here's Peter Wells, the senator for Vermont, making that point explicit.

00:06:45.460 Watch.

00:06:47.760 And if we were able to open up the rest of the government and focus on the ICE issue, it may allow us then to have, I think, a discussion that's overdue.

00:06:57.860 The border is secure now.

00:06:59.460 It wasn't under Biden.

00:07:00.680 You say that.

00:07:01.420 And that's true.

00:07:02.200 All right.

00:07:03.060 There's the consensus that we should deport criminals.

00:07:06.460 But there is a lot of concern in the country from Republicans and Democrats about what you had of a mass roundup,

00:07:14.540 where we were going to construction sites, we were going to farms, we were going after people who don't have legal status, 1.00

00:07:21.840 but who came here sometimes as kids, have no criminal record, and are contributing members of the community.

00:07:27.640 So I think it's ripe for us to have a sensible discussion about a reasonable immigration plan in a reasonable way to deal with some folks who don't have legal status.

00:07:42.340 If we were able to open up the rest of the government and focus on the ICE issue, it may allow us to then have, I think, a discussion that's overdue.

00:07:49.800 The border is secure now. It's ripe for us to have a sensible discussion about a reasonable immigration plan in a reasonable way to deal with some folks who don't have legal status. 0.98

00:07:57.640 he says. And that's the part that Democrats, for the most part, haven't actually been saying out

00:08:04.160 loud. This is not actually about ICE at all. It's about protecting the criminal foreign nationals 1.00

00:08:10.120 they've allowed into this country so that they and their children can vote for Democrats.

00:08:16.200 Same reason Democrats oppose the SAVE Act, which would require proof of citizenship before

00:08:20.640 someone can vote, which 85% of Americans support. The whole point of the shutdown

00:08:25.120 is to lock in Democrat votes from illegal aliens.

00:08:28.340 That's the whole point.

00:08:30.360 The Democrats' leader in the House, Akeem Jeffries,

00:08:32.300 also made this objective pretty clear.

00:08:34.220 Jeffries is one of the least intelligent members of Congress.

00:08:37.520 He was chosen for the leadership role solely because of his skin color.

00:08:42.520 So, you know, he's not very good at keeping secrets

00:08:45.440 or being, you know, coy about this.

00:08:49.520 Watch.

00:08:50.840 Completely and totally out of control group of people.

00:08:53.400 The reason why we are in a DHS shutdown right now, because Republicans have refused to agree to the type of bold, transformative, meaningful and dramatic reforms we are demanding in order for the Department of Homeland Security funding bill to move forward.

00:09:12.080 And I won't go through all of the demands, much of which we've talked about repeatedly in the public.

00:09:17.300 But one of those demands is keep ICE out of sensitive locations.

00:09:23.500 And we've defined that as schools, houses of worship, hospitals, and polling sites.

00:09:31.280 We want an explicit prohibition that ICE can go nowhere near any polling sites in the United States of America.

00:09:39.760 It's one of our demands. We're not going to bend on it.

00:09:41.520 Huh. So out of the 10,000 demands that Democrats have, strangely enough, Hakeem Jeffries is really

00:09:51.280 keen on this one very specific demand. He doesn't choose to highlight his demand that ICE agents

00:09:58.940 take off their masks or that ICE agents obtain judicial warrants or any of that. Instead, he

00:10:05.060 makes it clear that he desperately wants ICE to stay away from polling stations in particular.

00:10:10.400 He says it several times.

00:10:12.840 Now, why might that be?

00:10:14.720 Who exactly would be intimidated by the presence of a federal immigration officer at a polling station?

00:10:20.500 I mean, I wouldn't be.

00:10:22.300 Would you?

00:10:23.200 Who cares if they're there?

00:10:25.240 Who would choose to stay at home in hiding rather than, you know, go vote if they knew that ICE was going to be there? 0.99

00:10:34.260 Well, Jeffries is simply too dumb to realize how transparent he's being here. 0.97

00:10:38.140 his overriding concern and the concern of his party is ensuring that tens of millions of illegal aliens 0.99

00:10:43.620 can vote in the next election. And so if you have to wait five hours in line to get on a plane

00:10:49.660 for that purpose, that's well worth the sacrifice as far as Hakeem Jeffries is concerned.

00:10:55.700 And that's what the shutdown is about. None of these people care about Alex Preddy or Renee

00:11:01.640 Good or whatever. They're not even hiding it anymore. The only rational conclusion you could

00:11:06.580 draw is that illegal aliens are even more important to the Democrats than we previously

00:11:11.160 realized. This is where a lot of their votes are coming from, and they're willing to take down the

00:11:17.020 airports in this country and make your life worse in every way in order to help these criminals cast

00:11:22.340 a vote in the midterms. That's what this is all about. And by the way, it's not just TSA that's

00:11:28.040 been affected by the shutdown. While ICE and Customs and Border Protection have funding,

00:11:32.500 Many other agencies within DHS are impacted. Homeland Security Investigations, or HSI, is also defunded at the moment. They handle investigations and do child sex trafficking and terrorism. The Secret Service, FEMA, the Coast Guard are all impacted.

00:11:49.340 And ever since, at a moment when we're at war with Iran, Democrats are not simply making life less convenient.

00:11:56.620 They're also making life a lot more dangerous for American citizens.

00:12:01.380 I mean, we've had, what, four terror attacks in the past month?

00:12:06.500 And guess what happens when you have a five-hour TSA line at every major airport?

00:12:11.440 You create a large, obvious target for a mass shooter.

00:12:15.080 hundreds of people are lined up like sitting ducks for days on end and this is before you

00:12:23.740 get through security so nothing is stopping a terrorist from walking into the airport um

00:12:29.240 you're inviting a terrorist attack that's what democrats are doing for the benefit of foreign

00:12:34.900 invaders and they don't care but if you ask democrats they won't even mention this instead

00:12:40.860 they'll claim that ICE agents, who the Trump administration is going to deploy to airports,

00:12:45.500 has already done to assist with operations during the shutdown. They'll claim that they

00:12:50.640 are actually murderous psychopaths who are going to mow down American citizens when they try to

00:12:55.280 carry more than, you know, 3.4 ounces of liquid onto the plane or something. Watch. 0.96

00:13:01.780 There are three things that have been true since Donald Trump and Republicans came back into power

00:13:06.620 last January. Life is more expensive, life is more chaotic, and life is more extreme.

00:13:12.880 The last thing that the American people need are for untrained ICE agents to be deployed

00:13:17.840 at airports all across the country, potentially to brutalize or in some instances kill them.

00:13:23.560 We've already seen how ICE conducts itself. These are untrained individuals when it comes

00:13:29.060 to doing the current job that they have for the most part, let alone deploying them in close

00:13:35.340 exposure in highly sensitive situations at airports across the country.

00:13:42.180 Yes, ICE is going to kill Americans in line at the security. I was just in the airport last week

00:13:48.120 and I had a water bottle in my bag, my carry-on bag that I forgot about. And they pulled me aside

00:13:55.980 and they took the water bottle out and it was fine. I went about my day, but thank God it wasn't

00:14:01.180 an ICE agent doing that because if they saw the water bottle, they'd pull the water bottle out

00:14:04.920 and say, you forgot about this water bottle. And I would say, oh, sorry. And then they just shoot

00:14:08.500 me in the head. And that would be it. Like, that's what's going to happen now. So he repeats the lie 1.00

00:14:14.740 that ICE agents are untrained, which is not true. But even if it were true, so what? I mean, how

00:14:20.520 much training do you think people need in order to fill in for a TSA agent? Exactly. All you got

00:14:26.940 to do is tell people to put their stuff in the bin, be really surly about it and impatient,

00:14:32.160 get mad at people for not following the rules even though the rules change day to day depending

00:14:37.600 on which TSA line you happen to be in pat them down if the machine tells you to

00:14:42.600 if you see a gun on the x-ray machine make sure you grab the gun and actually you don't even need

00:14:49.020 to do that a few years ago the inspector general at DHS found that roughly 70 to 80 percent

00:14:55.080 of weapons managed to get through TSA checkpoints. TSA has a failure rate of 70 to 80 percent.

00:15:06.940 These highly trained agents who no one could possibly fill in for. Well, they sent undercover

00:15:13.000 agents in and only around a third of them were stopped when they tested this. And that was

00:15:17.580 considered an improvement because in previous years, 90 percent of the guns got through the

00:15:22.580 checkpoint. So if you replaced every TSA agent with an untrained, random person off the street,

00:15:29.700 you'd almost certainly get better results than we're getting now.

00:15:33.380 But Democrats who have created a universe in which ICE agents randomly kill people for no

00:15:38.020 reason all the time, they're intent on pushing the narrative. Here's Senator Richard Blumenthal

00:15:44.000 of Connecticut, for example, quote, ICE agents at airports will only aggravate delays in lines,

00:15:48.340 disrupting checks, interrogating travelers, dragging parents from children, detaining citizens,

00:15:54.380 brutalizing families, shooting and even killing. It's just going to be a total bloodbath in line

00:16:00.820 at TSA now. Now, again, if you read between the lines here, it's not hard to see what they're

00:16:06.720 actually worried about because they know that if ICE is manning the TSA stations, they're very

00:16:12.320 likely to come across illegal aliens. It's especially true if the ICE agents are checking

00:16:16.900 ids uh tom holman the border czar has suggested that that is going to happen watch no ice can

00:16:24.800 check identification before people enter the screening area right and that that we're trying

00:16:29.400 to release tsa resources to get to uh positions that they really need expertise and like the like

00:16:36.220 the x-ray screening so it's just we're going to be a force multiplier with respect if you're doing

00:16:41.040 this in 24 hours, how well thought out could it possibly be? Again, ICE has been at airports

00:16:48.160 across the country for a long time. It's just expanding those things. Look, how much of a plan

00:16:54.140 does it mean to guard an exit to make sure no one comes through that exit? I mean, we're talking

00:16:59.360 about security options, and these officers are well-trained in security, and they're well-trained

00:17:04.640 in identification, and look, we're going to do what we can to help TSA move those people to the

00:17:10.040 So what's going on here, in case it's not obvious, is that Democrats in the corporate press are convinced that they're being far more subtle than they actually are.

00:17:22.160 You simply cannot convince any American with a functioning brain that it would be difficult to replace all of these famously highly trained TSA agents.

00:17:32.280 You can't convince any sane person with an IQ above room temperature that we need a plan

00:17:36.940 developed over many days before we can possibly replace the brilliance of the typical TSA employee.

00:17:44.020 We've all been to airports, okay?

00:17:46.980 I mean, we know how mind-numbingly simple their job is and how poorly they do it.

00:17:52.040 We know that these people are calling in sick right now so they can play call of duty.

00:17:56.140 So the attempt at deceiving everybody is just laughable.

00:18:00.060 but again, there's a point to it. At every turn, they want to protect illegals. They want to

00:18:06.360 protect illegal aliens at the polling place. They want to protect illegal aliens at the airport 0.60

00:18:11.040 when they have to show ID, which is probably fake or stolen. They want to protect illegal aliens so 0.98

00:18:17.100 that they can vote for Democrats in November, period. And they don't care if they destroy

00:18:21.920 your life in the process. This is another area where Democrats don't have their story straight.

00:18:27.860 Here was Hakeem Jeffries the other day from that same CNN interview.

00:18:32.960 Listen.

00:18:34.440 So let me ask you about that, because you are the whole reason, as you just laid out, that DHS is not funded right now is because you're trying to push the administration to enact some policy changes on how Border Patrol and ICE act when they're out looking for illegal immigrants.

00:18:55.320 And now what you're saying is that you're okay with funding TSA, which has been, I think, the biggest point of leverage that you possibly had in order to get what you want on ICE, because ICE already has its money.

00:19:11.420 So what was the point of this shutdown if you're okay with funding TSA?

00:19:16.780 Well, we never approach these things that are in front of us with respect to government funding in the context of leverage.

00:19:24.840 Our approach is, what is the appropriate use of taxpayer dollars?

00:19:31.920 So Democrats, according to Jeffries, would never dream of using the American people as leverage to enact their open borders agenda.

00:19:39.760 Never even crosses their mind, he says.

00:19:42.460 But Representative Catherine Clark of Massachusetts, the number two Democrat in the House, said something very different in an interview with Fox just back in October.

00:19:51.180 Watch.

00:19:51.460 I mean, shutdowns are terrible. And of course, there will be, you know, families that are going to suffer. We take that responsibility very seriously. But it is one of the few leveraged times we have.

00:20:11.040 So in case you missed that, she said, of course, there will be families that are going to suffer, but it's one of the few leveraged times we have.

00:20:17.640 It's hard to think of a more on-the-nose quote

00:20:20.820 If you want to summarize the objectives of the Democrat Party

00:20:24.460 And it's coming directly from the Democratic whip of the U.S. House of Representatives

00:20:27.600 Their goal is to terrorize you and your family

00:20:30.880 So that you do what they want

00:20:32.340 It's why they endorsed and funded the BLM riots in 2020 0.99

00:20:34.780 It's also why they paid for Lake and Riley's killer

00:20:37.600 To fly around the U.S. after letting him into the country 0.99

00:20:40.100 It's also why Loyola University student Sheridan Gorman

00:20:43.700 Was just gunned down in Chicago

00:20:45.100 allegedly by a Venezuelan national named Jose Medina Medina.

00:20:50.340 She was walking in a park by the waterfront with her friends on Thursday morning.

00:20:56.320 And according to the authorities, Medina Medina shoots her in the head, completely unprovoked.

00:21:01.860 Same situation again. The Biden administration caught him at the border in 2023, released him.

00:21:07.900 Police arrested him for shoplifting from Macy's that same year.

00:21:11.040 But again, he was let out of jail and not deported.

00:21:15.100 never showed up to court.

00:21:17.440 This is why Democrats exist as a political party at this point.

00:21:21.120 If they actually wanted to improve the lives of American citizens,

00:21:24.220 they'd be talking about abolishing TSA entirely right now.

00:21:28.360 I mean, they'd point out that there are around 20 airports in this country

00:21:30.840 with private security arrangements, including San Francisco International,

00:21:34.040 and all of them are operating smoothly right now.

00:21:37.900 They'd tell you that TSA operates like a gigantic scam

00:21:40.680 using taxpayer money to purchase extremely expensive body scanners

00:21:44.020 that are sold by companies with high-level political connections, but Democrats don't

00:21:49.140 want to tell you any of that because right now, the TSA is one of the most effective

00:21:52.880 weapons in their arsenal. They're using the TSA to disable American infrastructure in

00:21:58.040 service of their open borders agenda. That's the same reason they don't want to privatize

00:22:03.260 air traffic control, by the way. And speaking of which, late last night, there was a catastrophic

00:22:08.000 collision on the runway of LaGuardia Airport, you may have heard about, involving a fire

00:22:11.800 truck and a passenger plane. Here's the image there. Really awful. ATC is not affected by

00:22:19.120 the current shutdown, but if you remember just a few months ago, they were. Democrats have no

00:22:24.060 problem leveraging these public agencies to terrorize the public. The only way to solve

00:22:29.860 that problem is to privatize these agencies immediately, which we should. What you need

00:22:36.120 to understand is that while TSA is the issue right now, they have no intention of stopping

00:22:41.080 with TSA. At every opportunity, Democrats will sabotage and endanger your life if it

00:22:47.580 means protecting foreigners. That's their voter base. Their future as a political party

00:22:53.480 depends on it. And everybody else, right now the traveling public, is just collateral

00:22:59.180 damage. Now let's get to our five headlines.

00:23:02.460 Charlie Kirk was a longtime friend and student of Hillsdale College's president, Dr. Larry Arnn.

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00:23:53.560 Totally free. Pick up the mic. Carry it forward.

00:23:56.520 Learn like Charlie. Start right now.

00:23:57.860 Go to hillsdale.edu slash Walsh. All right, we'll start with this story. Honestly, I don't even know

00:24:03.640 what to say about this kind of madness anymore. We've been covering these stories for years.

00:24:08.640 We've called it out a million times. It keeps happening. And this is maybe the worst example

00:24:14.260 yet, but here's the story from the New York Post. The man charged in a 2023 shooting that

00:24:19.440 killed a pregnant Seattle woman and her unborn baby has been found not guilty by reason of

00:24:25.200 insanity. Cordell Goosby was charged with first-degree murder and first-degree attempted

00:24:29.700 murder in the death of 34-year-old Ina Kwan and the shooting of her husband Sung Kwan,

00:24:35.080 who was also injured. Ina Kwan and her husband were on their way to work at their Japanese

00:24:39.960 restaurant. When they were stopped at a red light at an intersection around 11.15 a.m.,

00:24:47.220 Goosby allegedly sprinted toward the driver's side of the window of their white Tesla with a

00:24:51.500 gun raised. In a short span of time, he fired a gun. After firing all the bolts he had into the

00:24:57.740 victim's car, he turned and ran from the scene. So this is someone who was driving. It was in

00:25:05.700 their car. In the middle, it's 11.15 a.m. You're just stopped at an intersection. In your car,

00:25:12.380 door is locked, right? And not even safe doing that. So this is a brutal murder in broad daylight.

00:25:20.900 Pregnant woman is killed along with her unborn child, and the killer is not guilty by reason of insanity, which means that he can be and likely will be, it says in the article, can be released.

00:25:33.840 Last line of the article says, Goosby's future release would depend on approval from multiple state and court entities, the station added.

00:25:40.220 So he could be released, and he will be eventually, and then he'll do it again.

00:25:47.280 I mean, we know how this movie ends, or that's not even the end. We know how it goes, how it continues. The fact that he is too delusional to know, allegedly, that he shouldn't murder innocent women means that he will be released back to the public to murder more innocent women, which he will almost certainly do.

00:26:08.380 Now, like I said, we've talked about this lunacy many times. It just keeps happening. I've made the case against the insanity plea on several occasions in the past. I think the plea should not exist. And just to summarize again, because it's important, the insanity defense should not exist in the law. 0.62

00:26:30.120 It has been, I think there are a lot of conceptual problems with it, a lot of problems in principle.

00:26:38.600 But even if you think that in principle it makes sense or you can make an argument for it, the fact is that it has been abused.

00:26:47.860 At a minimum, we can say it has been abused horrifically for decades.

00:26:53.900 And a lot of people have died because of it.

00:26:56.780 And so it just should not exist anymore.

00:26:59.120 I mean, first of all, not guilty by reason of insanity? What does that even mean? I mean, you are guilty, right? The guy in this case, he definitely did it. He admitted to it. They went to arrest him, and he said, and I quote, I did it, I did it.

00:27:16.280 So there's no question that he did it

00:27:19.520 So then how can a person be not guilty

00:27:22.640 Of doing something

00:27:24.400 That they did

00:27:26.480 I mean even if I accept the premise

00:27:28.560 That he was insane

00:27:29.820 And not in control of his faculties

00:27:31.960 He still did it

00:27:33.620 I mean it was a thing that happened

00:27:36.720 Somebody did it

00:27:39.100 And no one else did it but him

00:27:42.340 Just as a factual matter

00:27:46.280 And, you know, for as long as courts have existed, not guilty has always meant that the person accused of doing something didn't do it, or at least it was not proven beyond a reasonable doubt that they did it.

00:28:03.260 That's what not guilty means.

00:28:05.520 Not guilty means you're accused of doing something, but the prosecution did not prove that you had done it.

00:28:11.780 but a ruling that says, yeah, you did it. And we all know you did it for a hundred percent

00:28:18.600 certainty, but you're not guilty of doing it makes no sense. I mean, like imagine just if

00:28:25.920 this was something innocuous, like if you walk up to an insane person who's wearing a red shirt

00:28:31.140 and you go, you put on a red shirt this morning, it wouldn't make any sense for somebody else to

00:28:37.600 run up and say, no, he didn't. He's insane. He didn't put on a red shirt. He might be insane, 0.98

00:28:45.620 but he did put on a red shirt. I mean, that's a thing that happened. It's a thing that happened. 0.67

00:28:51.460 He is guilty of putting on a red shirt. That's what guilt means. Now, if you want to argue that

00:28:57.560 he did the thing, but his guilt is mitigated because of other factors, well, we already have

00:29:04.380 that kind of distinction built into the system. That is why we have degrees of murder. It's why

00:29:11.940 we have manslaughter. It's why we have all these other distinctions that are already in the system.

00:29:19.080 It's also why we have a judge who's in charge of sentencing and is supposed to weigh 0.76

00:29:23.380 mitigating factors. But the question of whether he did it, whether he's guilty of doing it,

00:29:28.520 is one of objective reality. And the objective reality is that he did the thing. He is guilty.

00:29:34.380 not guilty of doing what you did is incomprehensible.

00:29:42.280 And even if the person is crazy, but are they even crazy?

00:29:45.860 What does crazy mean?

00:29:47.680 Nobody can tell you that.

00:29:50.300 Did you know that no one can define what the word crazy means?

00:29:54.360 There's no real agreed upon definition.

00:30:00.460 Like, where do you draw the line in crazy?

00:30:02.140 There's all kinds of people out there all the time doing things that I would judge as crazy, doing things that are irrational, self-destructive. Are they all crazy? It's entirely subjective. And the idea is that, well, he's crazy because he didn't understand what he was doing while he did it. Well, that's impossible to prove. Impossible.

00:30:25.500 and the facts on the ground indicate otherwise he ran away he ran away if he didn't know that

00:30:35.420 what he was doing was wrong why did he run away and this almost always happens with these insanity

00:30:42.720 cases by the way that you've got someone who does something terrible tries to run away and then is

00:30:49.980 caught and then we're supposed to believe they didn't know that what they did was wrong well

00:30:54.960 then why did they run? Running away is a universal sign that is a universal form of communication

00:31:02.120 saying, I did something bad. Now, if we're making judgments about a person's mental state,

00:31:11.740 as I've argued a million times, every person who's ever committed a heinous crime

00:31:17.060 has at the time of the crime been in a state of mind that could not be considered normal or

00:31:24.000 healthy by definition. I mean, how do you distinguish every sane killer in history

00:31:30.100 from this guy? You can't. It's totally arbitrary. Because murdering somebody is not something that

00:31:36.860 you do if you're a well-adjusted, clear-thinking, normal person. And that's true of a lot of other

00:31:44.160 crimes. Armed robbery. Normal people don't commit armed robbery. Normal, healthy people don't do

00:31:50.580 that. The mental state of every murderer, armed robber, et cetera, is automatically by definition

00:32:00.660 impaired compared to you or me, right? I mean, you take anyone who's a murderer and if that person

00:32:11.040 had my mental state or your mental state, they wouldn't have done that

00:32:16.380 because you or I would never do that.

00:32:22.340 But in their own mental state, they did do it.

00:32:26.040 Okay.

00:32:29.440 Okay.

00:32:31.200 Well, that's what prison is for. 0.95

00:32:32.980 Prison is for people with that kind of mental state.

00:32:35.980 That's what it's for.

00:32:38.100 So we just need to get rid of the insanity defense,

00:32:40.000 which, by the way, we can.

00:32:41.640 States can abolish the insanity defense.

00:32:44.460 Four states have already done it. Idaho, Kansas, Utah, Montana, I believe are the four states without an insanity defense. And there was a Supreme Court decision on this relatively recently back in 2020. This went to the Supreme Court.

00:33:02.080 The question of whether or not states can abolish the insanity defense, or is it like a constitutional right that people have to plead insanity, and so states can't abolish it.

00:33:12.720 The Supreme Court found that states can abolish it, but you're not actually entitled to be able to plead insanity.

00:33:22.840 And so this is something that certainly every red state at a minimum should do this.

00:33:28.920 And if they won't do it, then they should have to explain why.

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00:34:40.260 New York Post says this.

00:34:41.640 A new statue of Christopher Columbus went up on the White House grounds Sunday that was built using pieces from a monument to the Italian explorer the protesters destroyed six years ago.

00:34:50.080 The 13-foot, one-ton replica of a Columbus statue toppled in Baltimore in 2020 was commissioned by the Conference of Presidents of Major Italian-American Organizations, and it's part of White House's celebration of America's 250th anniversary.

00:35:04.360 The statue has been placed outside the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, and that statue just went up, which is great. I'm a huge fan of this move, as you would expect.

00:35:15.500 And it's important. One of the most important things we can do for the culture is to build and rebuild statues and monuments to our heroes, our real heroes. And Columbus is a real hero. He deserves to be recognized, admired, remembered, along with many of the other historical figures who've had their statues torn down.

00:35:37.520 You know, I've said before that when you think about Columbus in particular, he was operating at a time during the, you know, what we call the age of discovery or the age of exploration, where, and this is a time where some of the most impressive human beings who have ever lived on the planet were alive.

00:36:02.320 and they were ship captains. Ship captains during the Age of Discovery were some of the most

00:36:06.720 impressive humans who've ever lived. I think that we have trouble appreciating, especially these

00:36:14.260 days, we have trouble appreciating just how unimaginably great these men were. We actually

00:36:23.200 just can't fathom it. We have no frame of reference. I mean, you or I have never been

00:36:31.480 in a position to do anything like what these guys did, take on the responsibility that they

00:36:38.780 took on. If you were a ship captain in the year 1500 or 1600 or 1700, then you had to play the

00:36:49.720 role of navigator, cartographer, astronomer, logistics manager, military commander, judge,

00:36:59.140 police captain, diplomat, CEO, recruiter, dietician, right? I mean, accountant, governor.

00:37:12.240 And you're going to do all of that at the same time under extreme duress in the middle of the

00:37:18.560 ocean, cut off from the rest of the world. And if you made a wrong decision, the penalty

00:37:25.680 is likely to be that everybody dies. And dies in the most horrific ways imaginable, by the way.

00:37:32.380 Dies of scurvy, where your teeth are falling out and you're coughing up blood and your insides are

00:37:40.700 basically liquefying. So they had levels of both skill and physical courage and

00:37:49.260 and, uh, intellect brilliance that really don't exist on the planet anymore. And Columbus is one

00:37:56.240 of the best examples of that. Um, he was very great and he deserves this statue, especially

00:38:03.860 in the district of Columbia, the city that bears his name. You know, we've obviously spent a lot

00:38:10.460 of time objecting to the removal of monuments and statues and, uh, which we should, but now

00:38:17.820 it's time to move past objecting and start building, start actively doing, because this

00:38:23.880 really does matter. The memorials and statues and stuff that we surround ourselves with

00:38:28.940 are reminders. And I'd like to see this go beyond Columbus. Yeah, put up all the Columbus

00:38:35.940 statues. Absolutely. Let's go beyond that. We should also go and erect and re-erect the

00:38:42.840 Robert E. Lee statues that came down. Speaking of impressive men, ship captains in the Age of

00:38:50.260 Discovery, I think were arguably the most impressive men who ever lived, but also military

00:38:57.260 generals in the 19th century and before, and also today, in some cases, a few cases. But in the 19th

00:39:05.700 century, in the Civil War era in particular, I mean, Civil War generals, these were, again,

00:39:11.600 some of the greatest men on both sides

00:39:15.540 that this country has ever produced.

00:39:17.140 And part of it is a similar thing to the ship captain.

00:39:19.860 I mean, they were not as cut off from the world, certainly,

00:39:22.460 and they were more supported than a ship captain would be.

00:39:25.980 But when you think about all the roles they had to play

00:39:28.580 and the duress that they were under

00:39:35.320 and the threat of not just death,

00:39:38.900 but horrifically painful death,

00:39:41.600 that they were facing every second of the day.

00:39:44.840 And Robert E. Lee was the best of them,

00:39:47.900 which is a fact that everybody in this country,

00:39:50.420 no matter their political persuasion,

00:39:52.260 used to be able to acknowledge.

00:39:54.060 But there's a very effective propaganda campaign

00:39:56.880 that has changed that.

00:39:58.020 And it's given many Americans

00:39:59.140 a kind of cartoonish idea of the Civil War

00:40:01.340 in which guys like Robert E. Lee

00:40:03.400 are these cartoon villains.

00:40:05.920 And which, speaking of that,

00:40:07.860 that's why our latest episode of Real History,

00:40:10.220 which comes out today on Daily Wire, deals with precisely this issue. It's debuting today on

00:40:15.480 Daily Wire. It's the real history of the Civil War. And we're going to tell you the truth about 0.83

00:40:19.400 the Civil War. We're going to give you an objective, balanced summary of it, something

00:40:24.220 you'll be hard-pressed to find anywhere, because we know that in the schools and from media and

00:40:29.400 Hollywood, we get the one where the version where the Confederates are these evil villains.

00:40:36.860 and the South, you know, has all the moral complexity of serial killers, as I said,

00:40:42.280 cartoon villains. And then on the other side, you do have this kind of a pendular response,

00:40:48.160 which is to make the North into the villains and the South into the heroes. And to say that,

00:40:54.460 you know, well, they were fighting for reasons that had nothing to do with slavery whatsoever.

00:40:59.360 But what we do in this episode is we try to give you the actual truth, something objective,

00:41:03.940 which is to say a version of history where actually neither side are villains.

00:41:10.100 In fact, the motivations on both sides are coherent and comprehensible and understandable.

00:41:17.600 And there were great men on both sides, men of great dignity and courage.

00:41:24.340 I mean, you can't say that of every conflict that's ever been fought, but you can in this case.

00:41:29.560 and all of this will be focused around not solely focused on but it'll be organized around

00:41:35.220 Robert E. Lee and he's kind of our case study so here's a clip of that watch

00:41:39.560 Robert E. Lee witnessed the 1860 election results from a U.S. Army post in San Antonio Texas

00:41:48.800 as the fervor over secession began to boil over Lee wrote his father-in-law quote

00:41:54.140 if the union is dissolved which God in his mercy forbid I shall return to you

00:41:58.920 According to historian Alan Guelzo, as the states of the Deep South left the Union, Lee complained that the behavior of the cotton states was wholly beyond any justification, and he was worried that their selfish and dictatorial bearing would make life for Virginia miserable should she determine to coalesce with them.

00:42:18.480 In a letter to one of his cousins, he wrote,

00:42:21.080 Secession is revolution.

00:42:23.520 He wrote that, quote,

00:42:24.160 According to Guelzo, Lee wished to live under no other government

00:42:41.300 and to have no other flag than the Star-Spangled Banner.

00:42:44.480 But if that government was now going to disappear,

00:42:46.200 and the only alternative was to go back in sorrow to my people and share the misery of my native

00:42:52.200 land. Like so many Americans from this period, Lee was a patriotic American and a war hero,

00:42:58.620 but he saw himself first and foremost as a Virginia.

00:43:05.440 Yeah, that's the reality of Robert E. Lee. He was not a, he didn't want to secede. He was not in

00:43:10.300 favor of secession. He was not, uh, he wanted to avoid the conflict altogether, but then secession

00:43:16.720 happened and, uh, he faced a, he faced a choice, uh, which was he could either fight, uh, for the

00:43:23.740 North or fight for the South and not fighting at all was, would not have been something that

00:43:28.800 a guy like Robert E. Lee would even consider, you know, he considered his duty to fight one

00:43:32.500 way or another. He was a military man. And, uh, but to fight for the North would be to march

00:43:37.780 against his hometown, to march against his family, to march against Virginia, which is where he had

00:43:45.200 his allegiance. That was his home. And the idea of marching and drawing a sword on his own home

00:43:50.960 was something that he could not do. And so he decided to fight for the South instead.

00:43:55.460 And like I said, if you're an honest and fair observer, you should be able to understand that

00:44:03.220 choice. You know, it's a serious moral dilemma, one which you or I have never been faced with,

00:44:09.840 never will be faced with, hopefully. But that's what he faced. And he chose to fight for his home,

00:44:22.880 Virginia, instead of fighting for the federal government. That's what it came down to. 0.99

00:44:27.260 A lot more where that comes from, you can go to dailywire.com right now, become a subscriber,

00:44:30.700 and watch Real History with Matt Walsh.

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00:45:00.500 God is calling you to be. Join Relay today. Okay, this is kind of funny. Postmillennial has this

00:45:07.540 report. As CNN's ratings continue to fall, the hosts have appeared to be moving toward a production

00:45:11.820 format that looks more like a podcast and less like a broadcast news station. Host Jake Tapper

00:45:17.760 was recording a show from his office chair, and Anderson Cooper was speaking from a desk mic

00:45:22.540 with rolled up sleeves. Dylan Byers at Puck observed, CNN has been experimenting with new

00:45:28.000 formats this week, including Anderson in rolled up sleeves, massive desk microphones, and a

00:45:33.520 physical map channeling early Edward R. Murrow era broadcast. Experimental continue today with

00:45:39.320 Jake Tapper broadcasting from his audience. So CNN viewership is declining. They're getting their

00:45:46.900 lunch eaten by new media and podcasts. All cable news is. They're losing huge parts of the market

00:45:56.260 share to new media. And so the solution over at CNN is to basically cosplay as podcasters.

00:46:05.420 And Anderson Cooper appeared, sleeves rolled up, sitting at a desk in the middle of the office,

00:46:13.680 looks very unproduced, which is the vibe they're going for. And then Jake Tapper. So here's Jake

00:46:20.080 Tapper, this was, I guess, his show a couple of days ago, in his office, in his very cluttered

00:46:26.520 office, I might add. But they didn't want to clear away any of the clutter because they want it to

00:46:30.900 look, you know, unproduced, authentic. And here it is. Watch. So you're probably wondering what's

00:46:39.080 going on, why we're in my office for the first hour of the lead today. So it's an experiment.

00:46:44.800 This is my actual desk where I do my actual work, not the desk in the studio.

00:46:50.060 And we thought we would bring you into the space where me and my team do our actual journalism and plan the show every day.

00:46:55.500 So here we are giving it a shot.

00:46:57.140 You might also be wondering about the decor, the posters and the kerchiefs and such on my wall.

00:47:03.300 Well, the theme is these are all losing presidential campaigns.

00:47:06.500 And this hobby started 26 years ago after I covered my very first presidential campaign in the year 2000.

00:47:11.780 And campaigning and hopping from bus to plane to bus to plane, I collected the lawn signs and posters of all the candidates I covered. 0.58

00:47:18.400 And by the end of the election, I had a really great collection of, well, losers.

00:47:23.580 And there's an autographed Gore Lieberman one from 2000.

00:47:28.920 So anyway, this all became a hobby. Here, come back to me here.

00:47:31.920 You'll see this is one of the grand achievements in my collection.

00:47:37.500 It's an Al Smith poster he lost in 1928, Democrat to Herbert Herber.

00:47:43.040 Republicans, too, on the wall here from the modern era.

00:47:45.860 There's autographed Romney and Ryan from 2012, autographed McCain-Palin from 2008, the oldest one in the corner there.

00:47:53.460 Wow.

00:47:54.960 Wow, this is so cool.

00:47:56.820 These CNN guys, you know, they're really cool.

00:47:59.060 They get it.

00:47:59.540 They're with it.

00:48:00.280 They're so hip.

00:48:02.080 They're not like those old, stodgy news anchors.

00:48:04.380 No, these guys are.

00:48:05.280 They're so informal, so casual.

00:48:07.500 He's in his office.

00:48:09.980 Not even in a studio.

00:48:11.300 He's in his office.

00:48:12.020 That's so awesome.

00:48:13.380 I'm so impressed.

00:48:15.620 And how perfect is it that a CNN anchor has a hobby of studying the great losers of history?

00:48:21.040 I cannot think of a more appropriate hobby for a CNN employee.

00:48:25.840 I can see why it resonated with him so much.

00:48:27.740 I can see why he related to it. 0.92

00:48:30.060 He reads about these losers and thinks, wow, that's just like me.

00:48:34.560 and uh then he's inspired he's inspired to go off and you know continue losing so that's great

00:48:43.160 and look i hate to be the killjoy here but for cnn but this is not going to work um this is not

00:48:49.900 going to revive cnn's ratings and in fact they're just making their situation worse

00:48:53.540 they're trying to compete with podcasts by resembling podcasts which just means more

00:48:59.320 informal, more casual, more opinion-based. But what they should do is go in the opposite

00:49:05.800 direction. Not to help CNN at all, okay? Not that they would take my advice anyway.

00:49:12.560 But what you should do is go in the opposite direction. But this is how unimaginative people

00:49:19.360 are these days, especially in media. It's also why marketing departments are worthless.

00:49:23.740 I guarantee this is an idea dreamed up by someone in marketing at CNN where they, they looked at popular podcasts and then they called a meeting and they said, Hey guys, we got it. We know what to do. You see this thing over here? That's popular. We should do that. This thing that's popular. Let's do the thing that is popular rather than the thing that is not.

00:49:48.840 that's what a marketing department is and everybody everybody you know is listening and

00:49:54.680 they're just blown away by the brilliance of the strategy everyone applauds they're wiping tears

00:50:01.840 away they were so inspired but you know another strategy is to see the trend see what everybody

00:50:08.780 is doing and actually go the opposite way present a real alternative now there's nothing wrong with

00:50:15.320 the podcast vibe. Okay. I mean, you know, look around me. I understand the podcast vibe, but I

00:50:21.820 have a podcast. Uh, so I'm a podcaster. God help me. Lord, forgive me. I am a podcaster. And so

00:50:27.700 that's why, you know, things look the way they do. If you're a news channel, be a news channel.

00:50:35.920 Like it's okay. Not everything has to be informal and casual. I know that that's ironic coming from

00:50:41.740 me, but still not everything has to be informal and casual. I mean, we were just talking about

00:50:50.200 this the other day with the, it was a CBS report and the guy was looking into fraud,

00:50:54.280 to Medicare fraud or something. And he's like in a t-shirt sweating, doing a selfie video,

00:51:01.480 giving this report. It's like, put on a suit, be a news channel, be a news, be a, be a journalist,

00:51:08.720 Be a professional. Not everything has to be like this. I mean, and just because it works in this

00:51:15.980 context, just because you could see something that works in a certain context, doesn't mean

00:51:19.620 it'll work in your context. And just because people are going to podcasts looking for a

00:51:24.400 certain thing, it doesn't mean that's the only thing they want. So give people an alternative.

00:51:31.600 You know, the market is saturated with one kind of thing. Give them a different kind of thing.

00:51:36.420 just doing what everybody else is doing is unimaginative. It's also not going to work.

00:51:44.240 So if I was running a news channel, I'd go the opposite way. I would say we're going to make

00:51:47.760 things more, even more formal. You're going to sit at the desk and you have your suit on

00:51:50.960 and people are going to be professional. They're going to be adults. We don't need to see your

00:51:55.640 stupid selfie videos. We don't need any of that. We don't need to see the background. 1.00

00:51:59.280 I think there's important stuff going on in the news. Why are you wasting time on air

00:52:04.680 showing us your posters.

00:52:09.500 I think there's important stuff happening.

00:52:12.000 And he just wasted two minutes of airtime saying,

00:52:14.420 hey guys, you want to see my posters?

00:52:16.340 Look at these cool posters in my office.

00:52:22.580 You know, I mean, that's the kind of thing I would do.

00:52:27.880 Like when I'm showing you my fish cam, for example.

00:52:29.740 We haven't done that in a while.

00:52:30.520 Let's check on the fish cam, actually.

00:52:33.300 Now that I'm, see, I can do, I can get away with this.

00:52:36.060 This is fine.

00:52:36.820 I'm doing a podcast.

00:52:38.820 And so no matter what's happening in the news,

00:52:40.440 I will make you stare at the wooden fish

00:52:42.420 on the mantle behind me.

00:52:45.400 And that's fine.

00:52:48.440 But you're the news, so be the news.

00:52:50.900 That's all I'm saying.

00:52:51.660 Okay.

00:52:53.520 All right, we can come out of that now.

00:52:54.540 That's a, checking in on old Bob the fish.

00:53:00.640 I named him, by the way.

00:53:02.400 Speaking of being imaginative, that's the name I came up with.

00:53:05.360 I spent hours thinking about it, and I came up with Bob.

00:53:10.000 Bob the Fish.

00:53:11.220 But it kind of works.

00:53:11.680 He looks like a Bob to me.

00:53:13.700 Legacy Media holds Americans like us in contempt.

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00:54:46.740 um all right finishing with some news out of uh hollywood positive news for change project hail

00:54:52.860 mary debuted in its opening weekend with 140 million dollars which is a pretty massive achievement

00:54:58.680 for an original film you know it's a good sign that an original film is performing this well

00:55:03.860 original as in not a franchise film not a sequel not a remake i mean it's adapted from a book

00:55:09.200 obviously so it's not original in that sense but it's original in the sense of not being

00:55:12.960 franchise slop. And, um, so on, um, so anyway, on Friday I did two things I rarely ever do.

00:55:22.100 And one is I went to see this movie on its opening weekend. I can't remember the last

00:55:27.180 time I've done that. And two, I took my wife and kids to the movie, which I don't think I've ever

00:55:31.760 done that. Now I've taken my wife to movies and I've taken my kids to movies, but we've never

00:55:35.860 gone to a movie as a family, all of us. And, um, and that's because Hollywood stopped making

00:55:42.500 family movies decades ago. Hollywood makes children's movies that are really hard to sit

00:55:50.900 through if you do take your kids to them, but you do because you love them. And so you endure it.

00:55:55.920 Um, and then they make adult movies, but they don't really make movies that are actually

00:55:59.580 intended to be enjoyed by the entire family. Project Hail Mary is that kind of movie,

00:56:03.720 which to me is its greatest achievement. You know, that's my, that's my, if I'm going to review it,

00:56:07.600 that's my, um, you know, I, I'd probably give it four stars out of five, mainly for this reason

00:56:15.380 is that it's a family movie and we all really enjoyed it. It's a solid, fun film. Uh, some of

00:56:21.920 the hype is a little bit overblown. Okay. It's not a, it's not a great film. It's not a cinematic

00:56:27.280 masterpiece by any means, but that's okay. It's an enjoyable, fun movie that, um, you can actually

00:56:32.960 watch as a family. It reminded me of the PG movies that, even though this is PG-13, I don't

00:56:38.640 know why, it could have been PG. But back in the 80s and 90s, they used to put out these PG movies

00:56:42.960 all the time that were family movies, in that they were a little bit more mature than just

00:56:50.500 a standard children's movie, but they weren't totally over the head of a child. And this is

00:56:57.960 very much a spiritual descendant of something like E.T., which is a movie I loved as a kid,

00:57:02.120 still do. And I can tell you for any parents out there that, so I will give this my official

00:57:08.100 parenting seal of approval. We brought our two 12-year-olds and our nine-year-old to it.

00:57:12.080 Didn't bring the six-year-old, but having seen it now, we could have brought her. We'll probably

00:57:16.140 let her watch it on streaming with us when it comes out. The really frustrating thing

00:57:20.380 about movies today as a parent, if you're a parent, you know this, is that very often

00:57:25.280 you'll see a movie that's like 95% appropriate for all ages, but then out of nowhere,

00:57:32.120 for reasons that don't serve the plot at all. They'll just have a random sex scene or they'll

00:57:36.860 sprinkle in, you know, three or four F-bombs where they didn't need to. And it's like,

00:57:41.860 you could have just not done that and expanded the reach of your film by, I don't know, 500%.

00:57:50.780 So what's the point? Now, I'm not saying that every movie has to be appropriate for kids,

00:57:56.220 but if your movie is already 95% appropriate and it's thematically appropriate, it's a

00:58:02.000 story that kids would like, why not take it all the way? If you've got 95%, this is a movie that

00:58:07.900 a family could watch and you could bring your nine-year-old to, why throw in the 5% that's

00:58:12.940 not appropriate for them? It doesn't... Now, if it's like 50% not appropriate, then I get it.

00:58:17.440 Trying to take the 50% out totally changes the movie. But if it's only 5% or 2%, just don't do

00:58:23.300 that. You're almost at a family movie. Take it all the way. And that's what this movie does.

00:58:31.140 and um and it was good i mean as to the quality of the film itself i i thought it was it was good

00:58:37.840 it was entertaining it's about 30 minutes too long and uh which oddly enough is really common

00:58:43.900 these days that's the it's it's kind of counterintuitive because everyone's attention

00:58:49.820 spans are dwindling and uh you know if you if you go online like the average amount of time

00:58:55.300 someone spends watching a video is like two and a half seconds and yet movies are getting longer

00:59:00.680 Blockbuster movies in particular, two and a half hours is standard.

00:59:03.260 It used to be 90 minutes.

00:59:04.560 They've added like an hour on to the standard runtime for a blockbuster film.

00:59:09.060 And I think most of the time that's unnecessary.

00:59:12.120 So 30 minutes they could cut from it.

00:59:15.100 I don't think they edited this one enough.

00:59:17.180 And this one does suffer a bit from the kind of like jokey, ironic detachment

00:59:22.000 that has plagued basically every blockbuster film for 15 years.

00:59:25.940 and in this movie the movie you know in this case the movie is kind of a quasi-comedy

00:59:30.360 and and many of the jokes land so i'm not going to hold it against it didn't ruin the movie by

00:59:35.520 any means but there are moments like for example spoiler well maybe i don't know if it's spoiler

00:59:41.900 probably it's not really a spoiler but i'll just say it uh in the very first scene of the movie

00:59:46.900 gosling's character wakes up on a ship and finds himself in space like in another solar system

00:59:55.480 and doesn't remember anything.

00:59:58.620 And the film kind of breezes through this sequence

01:00:01.160 in like three minutes and plays it partially as a joke,

01:00:03.720 which I think dulls the impact.

01:00:06.480 It could have been a really stirring

01:00:08.520 and suspenseful start to the film.

01:00:11.060 I mean, just imagine waking up on a ship

01:00:12.780 in another solar system alone

01:00:15.280 with no memory of how you got there.

01:00:18.060 It's the kind of thing that would bring you

01:00:19.620 very close to a psychotic break

01:00:21.120 and probably would break most people.

01:00:23.200 So it could have been a really intense scene,

01:00:25.060 but the movie plays it very lightly and Gosling's character acclimates to the situation very

01:00:29.740 quickly. He's kind of like cracking jokes the whole time. So there's that kind of thing. But

01:00:33.840 generally I found it entertaining and there are still moments of genuine emotion, heart in the

01:00:40.580 film. There's even some moments of tragedy and suspense. And that's another trend I'd like to

01:00:48.260 see you continue. That's what I liked is the sincerity of the film. We need not just original

01:00:55.720 stories, but films that are also earnest and sincere and have the courage of their convictions,

01:01:01.400 which isn't to say they can't be funny. I mean, you can be funny, but what I'm saying is that

01:01:08.560 one of the many things I absolutely hate about Marvel movies, hate them, is that they are all

01:01:16.640 so painfully self-aware and embarrassed to be what they are. So they constantly have all the

01:01:23.620 characters basically pointing out in the movie how dumb everything is. Anytime something ridiculous 0.99

01:01:29.820 happens in a Marvel movie, they'll have a character practically turn to the camera and go, 0.97

01:01:35.200 this is ridiculous. And then everyone's supposed to laugh like, oh, it's ridiculous. And the guy 0.91

01:01:41.160 said that it's ridiculous. That's hilarious. But the only reason they're doing that is because 0.71

01:01:45.060 they're embarrassed by what they're doing on screen. And that's supposed to absolve them of

01:01:50.000 the guilt of like putting a bunch of ridiculous nonsense on the screen, I guess. But it's like, 0.92

01:01:55.440 no, it's a superhero movie. If you think it's dumb and not worth making, then don't make it. 0.97

01:02:01.780 But if you're going to make the movie, then take it seriously. And, you know, embrace it and tell 0.93

01:02:07.940 the story. Stop apologizing for it. It's like I would tell my kids if they want to come out,

01:02:13.720 hey dad I wrote a story I wrote a poem and they want to kind of like apologize for it ahead of

01:02:18.200 time and start explaining no no don't don't apologize for it like you made this thing be

01:02:22.620 proud of it if it's bad you're gonna be in big trouble you know you're gonna have to go to your

01:02:28.740 room but but you know be proud of it I'm kidding but um that's so that's one thing that I that I

01:02:34.500 don't like and Project Hail Mary has a little bit of that but not much and um it's mostly an

01:02:39.260 entertaining, wholesome film with, uh, some moments of, you know, real tension and stuff

01:02:44.220 like that. I'd put it in the top five, probably space slash alien movies of the past 20 years.

01:02:49.580 It's a, it's a little bit like a family oriented arrival, um, which is a great film. It's a better

01:02:56.260 film, but this is still good. Also has shades of a Brad Pitt in, um, Ad Astra, which is a

01:03:03.340 criminally underrated masterpiece in my opinion. I love that movie that much more adult, more

01:03:08.160 contemplative, definitely a slower film. And, uh, so I'd put this below that, but this is above,

01:03:13.280 I'll tell you what, one thing I would do, I'd put it above Interstellar. It's kind of similar

01:03:16.720 to Interstellar. I'd put it above that, which was one of the most overrated movies of the century.

01:03:22.120 And the last thing I'll say about Project Hail Mary that I liked is that, um, and that I thought

01:03:27.160 was kind of thought-provoking is that the alien, again, spoiler, I guess, but I think this is in

01:03:32.860 the trailer. The alien, Rocky, is not at all humanoid. And I was thinking about this. It's

01:03:41.140 one of the, maybe the only sci-fi movie I've ever seen that features a rational, intelligent alien

01:03:47.240 that is not remotely humanoid. Because even in Star Wars, for example, they got all kinds of

01:03:53.000 aliens, but they're all still basically humanoid. And if he takes it like Jabba the Hutt even is

01:03:57.900 still looks humanoid, looks like a human that turned into a slug. But this film imagines an

01:04:04.240 alien creature that specifically does not resemble human beings at all. It doesn't have a recognizable

01:04:09.840 face, doesn't have any sort of human-like sensory organs. There's a few brief moments where it gives

01:04:18.480 you a first-person view of what this alien sees and how it sees the world. I thought that was

01:04:22.240 really interesting. Then it just sees the world maybe the way that a bat would see it or something.

01:04:27.900 and, uh, and I found that interesting. It makes you think about the vastness of the universe and

01:04:34.960 just how alien an alien species could be. You know, we can't help but think of aliens in human

01:04:41.740 terms, but if you think about it, a creature on a planet totally removed from earth,

01:04:46.900 separated by trillions of miles, there's no reason why it has to resemble us in any way

01:04:52.800 whatsoever. If you start thinking about that, like what, think about a creature that does not

01:04:59.000 resemble human life in any form at all. Uh, what could that look like? And that's sort of what

01:05:05.320 they presented in this film. So I thought that was imaginative and interesting. So overall,

01:05:09.600 give it a thumbs up. Like I said, four stars out of five. And I am, uh, I am grading it on a,

01:05:14.000 on a curve a little bit because it's a successful family movie. And so I'm giving it like an extra

01:05:18.180 star for that reason. But I'd recommend it. Go check it out. And that will do it for the

01:05:23.560 show today. Thanks for watching. Thanks for listening. Talk to you tomorrow. Have a great

01:05:26.940 day. Godspeed.

01:05:35.120 I do believe that if people have committed treason against the United States of America,

01:05:40.840 their statues should not be in the Capitol.

01:05:43.780 History is written by the victors, and since the 1960s, we've been told mostly by people

01:05:48.720 whose ancestors didn't even live here during the war that the South committed treason.

01:05:53.280 But if the Confederates were traitors, then why was Jefferson Davis never put on trial

01:06:00.680 for treason?

01:06:01.680 What were Abraham Lincoln and Andrew Johnson afraid of?

01:06:06.100 Do they know something they're not allowed to say today?

01:06:09.500 It's time for the truth, so here it is.

01:06:13.060 Robert E. Lee was a military genius

01:06:14.980 and a man of immense honor.

01:06:16.620 He was beloved by Americans from the North and South

01:06:19.160 for a century after the war.

01:06:21.480 This is the real history of the Civil War.

The Matt Walsh Show - March 23, 2026

Ep. 1754 - The Real Reason Your Airport Is Now A DISASTER ZONE

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