The Matt Walsh Show - Ep. 1756 - Everything is Fake Now — And it’s Worse Than You Think

00:00:00.000 When you let aero truffle bubbles melt,

00:00:02.280 everything takes on a creamy, delicious,

00:00:04.840 chocolatey glow, like that pile of laundry.

00:00:07.760 You didn't forget to fold it.

00:00:09.160 Nah, it's a new trend, wrinkled chic.

00:00:11.960 Feel the aero bubbles melt, it's mind bubbling. 0.97

00:00:15.240 Today on the Matt Wall Show,

00:00:16.120 we're living in a world where it's getting harder

00:00:17.960 and harder to tell what's real and what's manufactured.

00:00:20.640 Everything seems fake from the content you scroll past

00:00:22.960 to the systems you're told to trust to the food you eat.

00:00:25.760 So if that's the case, how did we get here?

00:00:27.640 And is there any way to get back from here?

00:00:29.720 we'll discuss. Also, Fox investigates the problem of foreign, non-English-speaking truckers on the

00:00:34.520 road, and it's worse than you think. Also, the internet melted down over a post by a Christian 1.00

00:00:39.360 husband revealing his wife's promiscuous past. I'll weigh in on that, all of that today on The Matt

00:00:44.440 I'll show.

00:01:10.680 Outside of the Revolutionary War period, it would be hard to find another period in American history when Americans have been more reluctant to pay their taxes, and justifiably so. 1.00

00:01:19.780 I mean, at this point, it's understandable if your eyes start to glaze over when you hear about yet another massive fraud scheme that's been engineered by foreigners to steal millions of dollars worth of your money. 1.00

00:01:31.020 We're talking about billions of dollars in Medicaid fraud in just the state of Minnesota alone every single year.

00:01:37.320 Think about that for a second.

00:01:38.560 And in just one state, Medicaid fraud all by itself, which is enabled by insurance companies and the Democrat Party, accounts for billions of dollars in theft.

00:01:48.440 In response, the Trump administration has launched an anti-fraud task force led by J.D. Vance to prosecute some of the worst offenders.

00:01:55.800 But the truth is, an anti-fraud task force can't actually solve the problem.

00:02:00.300 Playing whack-a-mole with fraudsters isn't going to work.

00:02:03.020 they're too creative, and our system of taxpayer handouts is effectively based on the honor system.

00:02:09.580 In order to understand what I mean, we'll start with a fun little exercise where we all play

00:02:13.600 detective. So I want you to watch this footage from an alleged armed robbery in Georgia and try

00:02:19.800 to identify what, if any, type of fraud might be occurring here. Also, for your own amusement,

00:02:26.720 watch very closely when they zoom in on the alleged attack on the store clerk, but here it is.

00:02:33.020 Security video captures what looks to be a Georgia cashier being held up by an armed robber.

00:02:38.700 But police say the whole thing was fake, and the duo staged the armed robbery to steal $5,000 from the register.

00:02:45.900 The incident happened in January at a Duluth, Georgia Shell gas station.

00:02:50.120 Surveillance video from January 20th shows the cashier, who was later identified as Raj Patel, behind the register.

00:02:56.580 He then walks over toward the cash register, opens it up, and takes a stack of bills.

00:03:00.600 Then a man in a black hoodie is seen charging toward Patel before throwing what looks to be a punch.

00:03:06.780 It's unclear if the robber's fist actually connected to Patel's face, but he collapses to the floor.

00:03:12.200 Then the suspect takes off.

00:03:13.940 Once outside, that's when the officer encounters a man later identified by police as Danny Curtis, who tells them he works at the gas station.

00:03:22.080 Hey, come out right now.

00:03:26.420 You work here. Come here. Come here.

00:03:29.600 Come here!

00:03:30.600 I work here. 0.98

00:03:31.440 Right now, I don't give a f***. 0.98

00:03:32.800 Come here. 0.98

00:03:33.460 He works here?

00:03:35.280 Yeah.

00:03:35.680 All right.

00:03:36.380 It's not him?

00:03:37.520 No, no, no.

00:03:39.160 All right, do you not know what just happened?

00:03:41.220 No, I'm picking the trash out.

00:03:42.860 All right, he just got robbed.

00:03:44.940 I just got robbed.

00:03:45.680 All right.

00:03:46.300 When police question Danny again, that's when officers begin to notice the employee might be the suspect.

00:03:52.060 Hey, buddy.

00:03:52.940 Hey, do you have a key to the dumpster?

00:03:54.900 Oh, yeah, the dumpster, yeah.

00:03:56.660 Let's need that key real quick.

00:03:57.680 what you got in your pocket there what's that what's all that that rustling around

00:04:11.720 yeah hey come here Danny come here come here stop Danny stop stop stop stop look

00:04:22.540 Now, first of all, if you're going to stage a robbery to steal $5,000 from the store, you've got to make it look more convincing than that.

00:04:34.560 I mean, LeBron James would be embarrassed by the flop there.

00:04:38.040 For $5,000, you've got to make contact.

00:04:40.140 I mean, you've got to just take the punch, all right, at the very least.

00:04:43.420 And it would probably be smart to have your eclopolis leave the premises for a bit 1.00

00:04:48.560 instead of sticking around and pouring the cash all over the ground when the police show up.

00:04:55.040 That's another thing you could do.

00:04:57.020 That's all beside the point.

00:04:58.040 The point is, if you were a detective assigned to this case,

00:05:01.500 what are the possible motives that you would come up with?

00:05:04.800 Besides the cash, what would somebody named Patel possibly have to gain by staging a robbery like this?

00:05:10.780 Well, to answer that question, we need to go back to a much different time in America, the year 2000.

00:05:17.000 Now, that was before we imported tens of millions of foreigners and transformed the entire country. 1.00

00:05:21.320 By some estimates, 38% of all immigrants currently living in the U.S. arrived after 2010, and 21% arrived between 2000 and 2009.

00:05:31.840 Before all that migration, America was a very high-trust society, and that's why in 2000,

00:05:37.040 and the Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act passed the House and Senate

00:05:41.660 with only one no vote. The entire House and Senate, just about, agreed on this legislation,

00:05:48.420 and the only holdout was upset about the deficit. He didn't actually object to the bill.

00:05:52.200 So what did the legislation do? Well, it created a new U visa, which allows illegal immigrants in 0.90

00:05:58.720 the United States to obtain legal status as long as they're the victim of a serious crime,

00:06:03.960 including a violent assault. Now at the time, no lawmaker in either the House or the Senate

00:06:09.940 even considered the possibility that large numbers of foreigners would stage their own

00:06:15.040 violent assaults in order to qualify for this new legal status. That's exactly what's happening

00:06:21.880 at this moment in the United States. This is a recent press release from the DOJ and bear with

00:06:27.600 me here as I try to read these names. Quote, 11 Indian nationals have been charged in connection

00:06:32.280 with a conspiracy to carry out staged armed robberies

00:06:34.580 of convenience stores for the purpose of allowing store clerks

00:06:37.800 to falsely claim they were crime victims

00:06:39.720 on immigration applications.

00:06:42.480 The following defendants have been charged

00:06:44.040 with one count of conspiracy to commit visa fraud.

00:06:48.960 Jitendrakamur Patel, Mahesh Kumar Patel,

00:06:53.820 Sanjay Kumar Patel, Dipikaban Patel,

00:06:58.040 Ramesh Bhai Patel, Amitabhan Patel,

00:07:02.280 Rana Kumar Patel, Sangeetha bin Patel, Minkesh Patel, Sonal Patel, and Mitul Patel.

00:07:11.480 I actually nailed that. I think I nailed that. You didn't think I would. You thought that was

00:07:17.580 going to be a total massacre, but it really wasn't. I think I nailed it. Anyway, yes,

00:07:22.860 every single one of them is named Patel, which incidentally is the same name as the cashier in

00:07:27.140 the video I just played. Although to be clear, that particular guy hasn't been accused of visa

00:07:31.460 fraud. He was supposedly just after the insurance money. And as for these 11 others, according to

00:07:36.280 the DOJ, quote, Rambai Patel and his co-conspirators set up and carried out staged armed robberies of

00:07:41.560 at least six convenience slash liquor stores and fast food restaurants in Massachusetts

00:07:45.160 and more elsewhere. It's alleged that the purpose of the staged robberies was to allow the clerks

00:07:49.220 present to claim falsely that they were victims of a violent crime on an application for

00:07:54.180 U non-immigration status. Now, as you might imagine, this kind of fraud is very difficult 0.92

00:08:00.100 to detect so we can assume that this is happening constantly all over the country. Unless these

00:08:06.060 people are monumentally dumb, they won't get caught. They're taking advantage of laws that 1.00

00:08:11.120 were passed when America was a very different place. And unless we repeal all these laws,

00:08:17.000 we're going to see a lot more fake crimes and a lot more fraud. Every other day, we're learning

00:08:23.000 about a new scam. The New York Post, along with Nick Shirley, have just uncovered rampant hospice

00:08:27.560 fraud in California to the tune of a hundred million dollars. Uh, for example, take a look

00:08:32.160 at the empty building below. And, um, according to the, to the post, a, a, a grand total of 12

00:08:40.540 hospice and home healthcare agencies are registered to operate from that one vacant

00:08:46.720 strip mall in the San Fernando, San Fernando Valley. And there's plenty more where that came

00:08:51.920 from quote, San, uh, St. Rita's home health, which data shows build Medicare about $4.3 million

00:08:57.520 between 2019 and the first half of 2025, was registered to a vacant Van Nuys strip mall with

00:09:05.040 a for rent sign outside. The Post contacted several of the companies allegedly operating

00:09:09.580 inside the building. One hung up when asked to confirm its location. Another said that it moved,

00:09:13.980 despite still being listed on the California government database at the North Hollywood

00:09:18.140 address. And a third went to a voicemail for Alexander from Southern California Auto.

00:09:23.180 One alleged hospice fraudster had the audacity to show off her $4 million Carmel-by-the-Sea home for a news outlet just days before being arrested and charged with stealing $3.2 million from Medicare.

00:09:37.340 Now CBS did its own investigation and they found the same watch.

00:09:42.000 An update on a CBS News investigation following our recent report on fraud in the hospice system in California.

00:09:49.580 House Republicans say Congress is now looking into it.

00:09:52.480 Our team found that more than 700 hospice programs in Los Angeles County triggered red flags for potential fraud, according to the state's own definition.

00:10:02.880 The House Oversight Committee, citing our reporting, called it, quote, alarming evidence of fraudulent activity.

00:10:11.280 700 fraudulent hospices, and those are just the ones CBS found.

00:10:16.220 Obviously, if journalists and YouTubers can uncover fraud like this, there's no excuse for state and federal regulators.

00:10:22.480 They're clearly complicit in an unprecedented fraud on the taxpayer, and unless we simply turn off the funding, the looting will continue indefinitely.

00:10:30.920 It's not enough to just look into it. We need to turn off the funding entirely.

00:10:36.260 At the same time, as disastrous as this fraud is, it's important to understand that it's really just one symptom of a much larger problem, and it's one that I think every American at some level recognizes.

00:10:50.140 So today I want to move past, for now, the issue of immigrant fraud, which we talk about all the time and we'll certainly return to.

00:10:57.260 But I want to see if we can get to something deeper, a problem that has been on my mind for a long time, a problem that I think, as I said, everyone has noticed.

00:11:05.680 And that problem is that basically forms of fraud are everywhere. Virtually everything is fake now.

00:11:12.500 You know, in high trust society, there's societies, there's a general expectation that people tell the truth and everything is transparent.

00:11:20.520 But in the society that we have now, partially as the result of foreign migration, the opposite is true.

00:11:26.760 You can't get a straight answer on anything and very little of what you see, whether online or in the real world, is authentic.

00:11:34.760 So take as something as fundamental as food, for example.

00:11:39.500 Okay, Johns Hopkins recently found that more than half of calories consumed at home by adults in the U.S. come from ultra-processed foods.

00:11:47.500 These are foods with ingredients that are often impossible to pronounce, contain no nutritional value, and significantly increase your risk of cardiovascular disease, obesity, colon cancer, which, as we all know, is now dramatically more common in young people.

00:12:00.680 One of these ultra processed ingredients is called TBHQ. I won't even try to pronounce that full. I'm on a roll. I'm not going to, I don't want to ruin it. But it's TBHQ is short for something. It's found in a large variety of shelf stable foods because it prevents the fats and oils from breaking down.

00:12:17.180 And common products with TBHQ include microwave popcorn, potato chips, pretzels, frozen meals, putting prepackaged dinners and frozen pizzas, fast food, cooking oils, peanut butter, packaged cookies, pastries, and so on.

00:12:31.340 In high enough doses, TBHQ has been found to cause liver enlargement, convulsions, tumors, weakened immune systems.

00:12:38.100 While the FDA has classified TBHQ as safe for consumption, there's a caveat.

00:12:42.240 It can only account for 0.02% of total fat or oil content in a product. And in that respect, TBHQ is similar to aspartame, the fake sugar that's found in Diet Coke and many other diet products.

00:12:57.160 In moderation, it's generally considered to be safe, allegedly, but several studies, including one published in 2023 from an agency of the World Health Organization, classified aspartame as possibly carcinogenic to humans if consumed in large quantities.

00:13:13.000 Some previous studies had found that it could cause cancer in rats in high doses, but in moderation, it's supposedly okay, just like cell phone use.

00:13:21.160 but most people don't realize any of that. They don't understand that food is intentionally made

00:13:26.040 to be more dangerous and more artificial because it needs a longer shelf life. That's not even

00:13:31.460 getting into foods that are fraudulently labeled in the first place. Something like 50% of Parmesan

00:13:37.320 cheese is not authentic, for example. The outlet Food & Wine just reported on the extensive fraud

00:13:42.720 that affects a variety of food products in the grocery store. Quote, in 2024, The Guardian

00:13:47.160 reported that olive oil fraud reached an all-time high in the European Union, with most of the

00:13:51.280 fraudulent olive oil mixed with cheaper alternatives and several labeled with misleading

00:13:55.760 origin labels. In Turkey, one of the world's largest honey-producing nations, authorities

00:14:00.340 seized nearly $30 million worth of fraudulent honey over the course of just a few months in

00:14:05.140 2025 alone. Spices are another concern, with the FDA explaining that not only do people sometimes

00:14:10.560 mix in other plant parts to bulk up production, they may also use dyes to give spices and

00:14:17.080 certain color, especially when the color strongly impacts the perception of the quality. It added

00:14:22.140 lead-based dyes and other industrial dyes that can cause adverse health problems such as cancer

00:14:27.420 have been found in spices such as chili powder, turmeric, and cumin. Even cheese is often

00:14:34.000 misrepresented. A few months ago, we talked about how one company, Leprino Foods, makes roughly 85%

00:14:40.180 of the cheese that goes on pizza. Whether you buy it frozen or at a restaurant, you're getting the

00:14:45.680 same thing. Some more fraud there. And they have a variety of patents for making cheese as

00:14:52.200 efficiently as they can. But most companies that supposedly sell cheese in this country

00:14:55.440 aren't bothering with that. So take Cheez Whiz, for example. Here's the label. You can see it

00:15:00.820 there. It's an incredible list of ingredients. You've got your whey, your canola oil, corn syrup,

00:15:06.900 protein concentrate, mustard flour, garlic powder, sorbic acid. Less than 2% of the product,

00:15:12.820 according to this label, is cheese culture. So they add a microscopic element of cheese in the

00:15:16.980 product, and that gives them the go-ahead to claim that their product is made with real cheese and

00:15:21.540 real dairy. There's nothing real about any of it. It's all fake. You know, what you want in actual

00:15:27.440 cheese is a much simpler list of ingredients, pasteurized milk, cheese culture, salt, some

00:15:31.940 enzymes. This is one area where federal regulators have actually made authentic products easier to

00:15:37.020 identify. Watch. In America, the Food and Drug Administration, or FDA, has very specific

00:15:44.760 definitions for what can legally be called cheese. Real cheese must be made directly from milk,

00:15:50.920 with limited processing. So when it came to processed products, regulators had to create

00:15:56.800 a new vocabulary. That's why you'll notice some labels don't say cheese. Instead, they say things

00:16:02.900 like pasteurized processed cheese food, cheese product, or imitation cheese.

00:16:08.440 These aren't just marketing terms, they're legal categories.

00:16:12.620 Pasteurized processed cheese equals at least 100% cheese but melted down and reformed.

00:16:18.580 Cheese food equals at least 51% real cheese, the rest is dairy additives.

00:16:23.800 Cheese product equals anything with less than 51% cheese.

00:16:28.400 cheese equals well you don't even want to know so yes that slice on your burger might technically

00:16:34.500 be less than half cheese surprise now what's interesting about the video i just played is

00:16:42.880 that it's probably not real either i mean the facts are real i verified them but i have no

00:16:47.560 idea if there's an actual person narrating that footage i don't think there is or if it's ai

00:16:52.320 sounds like it is uh no narrator ever appears on camera he maintains the same cadence throughout

00:16:57.400 this entire thing. All of the footage is stock imagery. No one has left a comment. And the script

00:17:01.920 is all based on information from government websites like the FDA. So for all I know,

00:17:05.780 an AI wrote the script too. I mean, that's probably what happened. And that brings me to

00:17:08.720 yet another area of life that's becoming almost entirely fake, which is social media.

00:17:14.200 Bots and AI have overrun pretty much every social media platform. Go on Facebook and you'll get

00:17:19.340 bombarded. I mean, if you haven't been on Facebook in a while, with a lot of people my age or younger

00:17:24.420 have not, go check it out. I mean, you'll be bombarded with AI videos everywhere you look

00:17:31.060 and people interacting with them who don't know that they're AI. Some of the most popular genres

00:17:36.600 involve fake stories about celebrities complete with sob stories or some other lazy emotional

00:17:42.620 hook. So here's Peyton Manning going to a funeral for a fan that he's never met. People love that

00:17:50.540 one, even though it didn't happen, it's not real. There's a whole genre of apparently of

00:17:55.740 Peyton Manning AI slop along these lines. And then you have videos like this one, which will

00:18:03.360 play for you. Apparently, you know, an awful lot of people think that giraffes are rescued with

00:18:09.500 cranes. You see a lot of, there's a lot of giraffes are also popular in these AI slop videos.

00:18:14.240 See a lot of them for whatever reason. And by the way, the reason is that the algorithm just

00:18:19.880 sort of like this stuff is all generated by, you know, it's AI generated and it's all

00:18:23.520 algorithmic. And so it's just kind of like picking up on these trends and then creating

00:18:27.840 videos based on it. But then the videos also influence the kinds of content that people

00:18:34.400 are watching and looking for. And so then it becomes a self-perpetuating cycle so that

00:18:41.080 you could say that, well, we've got all these Peyton Manning and giraffe videos because

00:18:44.360 apparently people are into that, but people are only into it because that's what's getting

00:18:48.800 served by the algorithm. So the algorithm is not just picking up on the taste that people have,

00:18:52.800 but it's shaping those tastes and then serving you based on the taste that it has created for you.

00:19:00.640 There's something like 23,000 likes on that video that we just showed you there. And

00:19:05.240 it's not real, by the way, just in case you didn't know. And that sounds pretty bad,

00:19:10.660 but then you realize that those 23,000 likes might not be real either. A lot of them are

00:19:16.260 probably bots, which drive up the engagement for the video. And when engagement goes up,

00:19:20.500 the algorithm is more likely to show the video to more people. That means more ad revenue for

00:19:25.400 the creator or whoever is ultimately behind the account, whatever person, if there is a person.

00:19:30.800 So social media is full of artificial content generated by bots and liked by bots and commented

00:19:39.200 on by bots. So it's bots talking to bots. It's layer upon layer of fakeness all the way down.

00:19:44.340 as a result of fraud like this the truth is you really can't tell how many people are actually

00:19:50.160 watching any particular piece of content it's also hard to know if you're debating a real person when

00:19:56.340 you respond to a comment or you get into a back and forth and the flip side of this problem is

00:20:01.740 that very often legitimate channels and outlets will be accused of buying fake engagement when

00:20:06.480 there's actually no evidence that they're doing it you'll see accusations that ai was used to

00:20:10.360 create artwork just based on a hunch some people have. And so there's so much AI stuff and so many

00:20:15.640 bots that even the stuff that's not fake, well, you don't know if it is or not. And you start

00:20:21.520 seeing that as also fake potentially. I don't need to belabor the point. Most people who watch

00:20:27.140 my show are already aware of AI slop and how I feel about it. What's important is recognizing

00:20:31.720 that as much as we like to dismiss AI slop as a unique phenomenon, it's actually part of a broader

00:20:36.760 trend. We're surrounded by fakeness and reality becomes much harder to discern.

00:20:46.400 And this again is everywhere, even if you put your phone down. A few weeks ago, we talked about the

00:20:51.240 home buying process and how many new homes are in very poor condition, even though they were

00:20:55.940 advertised as move-in ready. Many homes also have fake wood and fake wood exteriors now to the point

00:21:01.600 that it's hard to buy a home with natural wood. You're likely to get stuck with luxury laminate

00:21:06.380 flooring or vinyl flooring instead. And that vinyl flooring is a lot cheaper, doesn't scratch easily,

00:21:11.920 it's waterproof, looks like wood at a distance. The problem is that you're almost certainly going

00:21:16.920 to have to replace it in 20 years once the top layer is damaged, starts to fall apart very quickly

00:21:20.860 after that. You can have genuine hardwood floors that last a century, or you can have the imitation

00:21:25.460 that falls apart in a decade, but it's cheaper and quicker and all that. And increasingly the

00:21:30.540 fake option is winning out. A decade ago, according to one survey, vinyl flooring accounted for just

00:21:34.600 6% of all new home flooring. Now it accounts for 30%, making it the second most popular option

00:21:39.540 behind carpeting. On the other hand, real hardwood was used in around 37% of new builds back in 2017.

00:21:45.620 Now it's down to less than 7%. And these are estimates, but they give you an ideal.

00:21:51.200 People's homes, the single most important purchase of their lives, the place where they spend the

00:21:55.560 majority of their time, the place where they raise their children, are becoming demonstrably

00:21:59.840 faker along with everything else. What do you lose as a country when inauthenticity runs that deep?

00:22:08.320 And in the same vein, what happens when fake jobs are created solely for the benefit of women and 1.00

00:22:14.440 so-called people of color? There's an awful lot of those fake jobs, as you might have noticed, 0.97

00:22:18.160 around 80% of government employees at the local, state, and federal levels are just as incompetent

00:22:22.940 as the DMV or the TSA. And they have the same demographics, which is almost certainly a

00:22:27.960 violation of federal civil rights law, by the way. It's just that you never see these government

00:22:32.500 employees and they never show up to work. They're basically in a jobs program. It's all fake.

00:22:38.660 Not that the private sector is much better in some cases. 90% of HR departments serve

00:22:43.040 no purpose, really. They exist to discriminate against white men and foster a culture of 0.83

00:22:46.660 constant paranoia. Meanwhile, Silicon Valley is full of project managers who are ripped straight

00:22:52.020 from office space. Supposedly, they're good at talking to engineers or whatever, but in reality,

00:22:56.320 they spent half their day posting TikToks about all the perks they get at work, like the free

00:23:00.420 lunches and spa days. Now, thankfully, ever since Elon Musk fired 90% of Twitter employees, these

00:23:05.600 videos have been a little harder to find. But just in case you forgot, here's one of those videos

00:23:10.080 from 2022, just before Elon took over. Watch. Welcome to a day in the life of a UTC grad working

00:23:18.280 at Twitter. Hey guys, my name is Kayla Santos. I graduated May of 2021 and now I work at my

00:23:26.760 dream job. I work for Twitter of Atlanta and here is just a normal day in the office.

00:23:36.620 I definitely have UTC to thank for my confidence professionally.

00:23:41.760 Everyone there taught me to be myself and strive for anything that I wanted.

00:23:48.280 If there was one tip that I could give you, it's definitely to put yourself out there and make connections and network because you really never know who you will meet on the outside.

00:23:59.540 And that is all, folks. I hope you liked it. And go Mocs. 1.00

00:24:06.840 So it's a day in the life video and she doesn't say a word about her actual job.

00:24:11.120 She doesn't have one. She just strikes a bunch of poses, plays with some pillows, gets lunch, shows off the kitchen and gives cliched life advice. 1.00

00:24:17.940 with the maximum possible amount of vocal fry.

00:24:20.760 It's not a job.

00:24:22.240 It is, as it has been described, adult daycare for women,

00:24:25.200 which is what a lot of these jobs are.

00:24:26.500 They're totally fake.

00:24:28.080 It's a phenomenon that you see

00:24:29.340 when interest rates are extremely low

00:24:30.780 and investors want to maximize their return,

00:24:32.620 so they send all their money to tech companies

00:24:34.160 who effectively get billions of dollars in free money.

00:24:37.180 Now, now that the economy has changed

00:24:38.560 and Elon's philosophy is more common in Silicon Valley,

00:24:41.160 you see a little less of this,

00:24:42.120 but that just means that the women 1.00

00:24:43.320 have stopped bragging on TikTok

00:24:44.540 about their six-figure tech jobs doing nothing.

00:24:47.140 Based on the employment numbers, many of them are still working, quote unquote, somewhere in some capacity.

00:24:52.380 They're just wasting some other employer's time and some other fake job.

00:24:57.020 And we can go on and on. You know, we know people adopt fake genders now. 1.00

00:25:00.260 They chase fake money and fake art, which is what the NFT craze was all about.

00:25:04.700 Various scam cryptocurrencies are what they're still all about.

00:25:08.900 Fake friends and girlfriends are more common than ever as well.

00:25:11.800 In fact, one of the most popular scams right now involves getting a text message that appears to be a wrong number situation.

00:25:17.340 And then when you respond that the person has the wrong number, they'll text back, try to get to know you, and then they'll convince you to log on to their scam crypto website so they can steal your money.

00:25:27.420 One guy in California lost a million dollars in a scam like this.

00:25:30.560 This is a longer video, but we'll play it because it's a very common situation.

00:25:35.100 Watch.

00:25:36.780 This is a heartbreaking loss for a longtime Bay Area businessman.

00:25:40.340 And instead of a comfortable retirement in his quiet Brentwood neighborhood, he lost all his savings, and now he may lose his home, too.

00:25:50.060 Larry Sorensen returns home to an empty house each day, still feeling the loss of his wife of 35 years.

00:25:57.760 Losing her was tough.

00:25:58.980 Then amid his grief, life took an unthinkable turn.

00:26:02.640 Yes, in July, early July.

00:26:05.760 A text from someone named Tina said,

00:26:08.500 Hi, Caitlin. I'm back from my trip to Napa Valley.

00:26:11.460 Can you drop off my dog by tomorrow afternoon?

00:26:14.180 Larry replied, You have the wrong person here.

00:26:16.920 Tina wrote back, Aren't you Caitlin, the owner of the L.A. pet store?

00:26:21.080 Larry said no.

00:26:22.460 Tina replied, I'm so sorry. Maybe Caitlin gave me the wrong number. 0.97

00:26:26.020 I hope I didn't disturb you.

00:26:27.940 And then I just said no worries.

00:26:29.620 Then another reply, Thank you. You are so kind.

00:26:32.800 I am Tina from LA. Are you also a dog lover? Larry texted back, I like dogs, but don't

00:26:38.980 currently have one. And she started going on about, you seem like a nice guy. And the next

00:26:44.280 day, more texts. She got up in the morning, apparently felt like the conversation was great

00:26:48.600 the day before. So she was excited. She wanted to talk to me again. Tina told him she ran a

00:26:52.780 small energy firm. He said he was a retired roofing company owner. She said she invested

00:26:57.780 in real estate, ranches, wineries, and crypto. Larry was intrigued. You have drawn my interest,

00:27:04.120 he replied. I told her a little bit about my life and losing my wife. She suggested they talk over

00:27:09.800 WhatsApp instead. Because it's encrypted, it's safer. And then she said, would you send me a

00:27:14.760 picture of yourself so I can see who I'm talking with? So they exchanged photos. And then she

00:27:20.200 explained her whole beginning of her life being abandoned by her mother. You know, and you start

00:27:24.840 feeling like you want to comfort her a little bit. So it just kept growing and growing to where you

00:27:29.800 started really having feelings for this person. And she would show me on the screenshot which

00:27:35.360 one to click. It looked like the money was coming in in large amounts. She kept trying to get me to

00:27:41.380 put more money into this account because it could get like 50% return. So he tapped his $1 million

00:27:47.120 dollar IRA account, putting in $500,000 at first, then days later, another 500 grand. It wiped out

00:27:55.060 his retirement savings, but it appeared his $1 million had grown to $2.4 million. Tina said,

00:28:02.300 put in more. She wanted me to get money out of my house, money for my kids, anywhere I could get it,

00:28:06.980 friends, relatives. Banks turned him down for loans, so he asked his stepdaughter for money.

00:28:11.720 I said, Megan, you don't have a couple hundred thousand dollars you'd be able to throw in this 0.67

00:28:16.020 if you knew you could make a profit of it, right?

00:28:18.320 She goes, Larry, this is a scam.

00:28:20.400 This is a scam.

00:28:21.320 And she started crying.

00:28:22.380 Frantically, he and Megan tried to pull money

00:28:24.540 out of the crypto account.

00:28:26.100 But there's no money.

00:28:26.980 And it gives you this window.

00:28:29.820 So if you're following along,

00:28:30.740 his wife dies in December of 2024.

00:28:32.500 And then less than a year later,

00:28:33.900 he's madly in love with a girl he's never met,

00:28:36.500 who's much younger than he is.

00:28:37.900 And at her direction, he's emptying out his retirement.

00:28:40.680 And now he's lost a million dollars.

00:28:42.340 And on top of that, he owes $300,000 in taxes

00:28:44.560 for all those withdrawals.

00:28:45.600 so he might lose his house. Now, it's easy to say, well, he's just an old boomer,

00:28:49.560 doesn't understand technology. Well, the problem here is not technology. It's that he can't discern

00:28:54.060 reality from fantasy. And that's a problem that's only going to get worse because everyone from a 1.00

00:28:59.500 very young age is exposed to a wildly distorted perspective on reality. And it's totally

00:29:07.240 ubiquitous everywhere. Take music, for example. Auto-tune used to be a gimmick that one or two

00:29:13.420 performers used like t-pain uh they they even had a t-pain app on the iphone so you could sound like

00:29:18.980 him it was just like a gimmick but now all the performers use it use it i mean it's it's they

00:29:24.500 all use it it's just part of the production now here's a couple of before and afters just to give

00:29:29.400 you an idea

00:29:30.280 Do you ever feel like an outcast? You don't have to fit into the format.

00:30:00.280 I was running from my brother and his friends.

00:30:07.600 Now, in the first case, she clearly has no talent. 0.55

00:30:10.740 The autotune is intended to compensate for that.

00:30:12.740 So the autotune is just basically creating a voice that doesn't even exist.

00:30:17.840 In the second case, Ed Sheeran can sing, at least to an acceptable standard,

00:30:21.600 but they autotune him also.

00:30:23.720 And, you know, so none of it is real.

00:30:25.400 None of it is authentic.

00:30:26.120 And by the way, the musicians don't even look like real human beings. Take like Sabrina Carpenter or Nicki Minaj, for example. After the apparent lip injections, Botox, hair dye, they're unrecognizable.

00:30:38.040 cosmetic procedures are are more popular now than they've ever been speaking of fakeness even if

00:30:44.320 pop stars are leading the charge when it comes to turning their bodies into a mesh of silicon and

00:30:49.400 plastic it's it's not just rich pop stars millions of normal women are doing the same thing 1.00

00:30:56.740 so the epidemic of fakeness extends not just to social media or food or your fake wood floors but

00:31:02.560 even to the bodies of the people who are interacting with this stuff and it's not just

00:31:07.740 women either. Instead of encouraging people to look the way they naturally look, the most popular 1.00

00:31:12.300 influencers are pitching, you know, double jaw surgeries and looks maxing just to make the

00:31:17.960 inauthenticity problem even worse. Watch. They basically make a cut on the lower jaw and then

00:31:24.480 move it forward and apply screws. And same with the upper jaw. It's like a, it's called a Laforte

00:31:30.360 osteotomy. They cut along your interior nasal spine and then advance your jaw forward. It's

00:31:36.040 Like they actually have to break your jaw.

00:31:37.960 Why?

00:31:38.520 How many points do you think you're going to go up

00:31:40.480 on the one through 10 scale after getting that surgery?

00:31:43.300 1.5.

00:31:44.200 1.5 points.

00:31:44.920 How did you come to 1.5?

00:31:47.340 What do you rate yourself out of 10?

00:31:48.780 I don't, I don't.

00:31:50.280 But if you move up one and a half,

00:31:52.360 is that like out of 10?

00:31:53.960 Yeah, I would say that that's generally

00:31:56.000 how much people improve from BIMAX.

00:32:00.480 From what I've seen.

00:32:02.140 How much is that going to cost?

00:32:03.640 35,000.

00:32:04.480 And what's the recovery like?

00:32:06.640 It's pretty brutal, I'd say, for the first three weeks.

00:32:09.300 Then after that, you just have residual swelling that kind of subsides over like a three to six month period.

00:32:17.980 You know, getting back to my point about bots and fake engagement, there's another point to be made about this guy, Clavicular.

00:32:24.900 Now, to be clear, I'm not accusing him of buying viewers or anything like that.

00:32:27.740 But you have to remember how he rose to fame.

00:32:32.080 It happened very suddenly out of nowhere.

00:32:34.480 in December of last year

00:32:36.240 when he supposedly ran somebody over

00:32:37.780 with his cyber truck.

00:32:39.400 The story was the guy was harassing him,

00:32:41.320 got in front of his car

00:32:42.180 and clavicular ran him over.

00:32:44.760 Was that staged?

00:32:45.800 We have no idea.

00:32:47.460 Certainly reasonable to ask.

00:32:49.280 Why didn't the police charge anyone?

00:32:50.800 Why did they immediately determine

00:32:52.260 that no criminal act had taken place

00:32:53.920 and drop it entirely?

00:32:54.760 Why was there no follow-up

00:32:55.660 to that story at all?

00:32:57.540 Whatever the case,

00:32:58.200 he clearly has a very good PR team behind him.

00:33:00.280 They use those viral incidents,

00:33:01.920 real or not,

00:33:02.520 to promote his brand, and now he's everywhere. In the span of three months, he's gone from a

00:33:08.080 complete nobody to the alleged voice of a generation. A voice that's saying what exactly?

00:33:14.340 Who knows? He turned a stunt into a social media domination. But just a few years ago,

00:33:20.180 that kind of stunt wouldn't be anywhere near as effective. A lot of podcasters got an audience

00:33:25.400 by talking to people, by presenting ideas. I mean, I got to start in my car, but I wasn't

00:33:33.960 running somebody over. I was talking to people in the car. But this is the winning strategy now.

00:33:42.260 And now we have fake influencers giving fake advice about how you can make your body

00:33:46.300 even faker, just like they do. Now, it's important to understand that at some level,

00:33:51.660 People find this to be a very unsettling state of affairs.

00:33:56.640 Now, I'm not convinced that people have any desire to live in a fake world, even if that's the world that we now inhabit.

00:34:03.120 It's a good sign that Mark Zuckerberg just canceled his metaverse after spending $80 billion on it.

00:34:09.380 He also changed the name of his company from Facebook to Meta on the theory that people were really into the fake universes that they could control in virtual reality.

00:34:17.080 that didn't pan out. Possibly because when you spell it out for people, it's not appealing.

00:34:23.260 And there's something really interesting about that. I mean, we're surrounded by fakeness

00:34:26.640 everywhere. And yet when Zuckerberg built a fake world that we could go pretend to live in

00:34:31.940 and spent $80 billion on it, nobody took him up on the invitation. Is that because deep inside,

00:34:38.320 we still yearn for authenticity? Or is it because the real world is already so fake

00:34:42.420 that the metaverse seemed redundant? Or is it a bit of both? I think it's probably both.

00:34:50.520 So what is the antidote to fakeness? It's clear that everything around us is fake. The food is

00:34:56.220 fake. The houses are fake. The music is fake. The movies are fake. Social media is fake. The people

00:35:00.800 are fake. What's the cure? I mean, how do we break free from this overwhelming, choking fog

00:35:07.920 of fakeness. Well, it isn't something that a government can mandate. It's not a policy that

00:35:14.300 can be instituted on a mass scale at this point. It has to be done on an individual, personal level,

00:35:20.980 and at the risk of oversimplifying things, the antidote amounts to something of a cliché, which

00:35:26.500 is touch grass. Put the phone down, immerse yourself in things that are real and immediate,

00:35:32.960 take on challenges that require you to work within reality rather than construct a fake one for

00:35:39.960 yourself. And that could be anything. Exercising, shooting, hunting, anything at all. It's one of

00:35:47.320 the reasons why I personally love to fish. It gets me out in nature and something that is real,

00:35:51.040 doing something that is also real and ancient in an environment that I can't control, a place that

00:35:57.260 was not constructed by an algorithm specifically to appeal to me. So find your version of that.

00:36:04.140 Find your thing that immerses you in what is real and establish real human connections. This

00:36:10.060 is why you should get married and have children and focus on the deeper meaning in life. I mean,

00:36:15.060 all this fakery basically carries with it the message that nothing matters. Nothing means

00:36:19.980 anything. Just make up your own reality and sort of amuse yourself, which is what a lot of these

00:36:24.700 influencers like the claviculars of the world are basically saying that is their to the extent that

00:36:29.020 they have a philosophy of life that's it it's like nothing matters doesn't mean anything reality

00:36:34.220 doesn't matter the truth doesn't matter make yourself fake go get surgeries do all this stuff

00:36:39.740 present yourself in a way that's fake because it doesn't matter because the truth doesn't matter

00:36:42.480 if truth doesn't matter then life doesn't matter and that's what they believe

00:36:46.060 this is why humans need faith because the only other option as we've discovered

00:36:53.280 is artificiality and nihilism, despair.

00:36:58.880 This was basically Kierkegaard's point,

00:37:00.920 as I understand him,

00:37:01.740 which is only barely, I admit.

00:37:03.940 And while you're at it,

00:37:05.080 read novels, listen to good music,

00:37:07.600 watch good films.

00:37:08.880 Even though they're telling made-up stories,

00:37:10.320 in some cases,

00:37:10.860 they're still speaking to truths

00:37:12.180 about the human condition

00:37:13.260 that can't be said any other way.

00:37:16.100 This is why I hate AI art so much,

00:37:18.100 because it can't possibly speak authentically

00:37:20.440 about the human experience,

00:37:21.680 which is the whole point of art.

00:37:23.280 And these are the things that keep us tethered to reality, nature, family, faith, art.

00:37:29.540 These are the sources of authenticity, the streams, the tributaries that fill your life

00:37:35.080 with what is real, with what has meaning.

00:37:39.420 Now imagine the life of a godless, childless liberal who lives in the city, works some

00:37:49.240 fake job in marketing somewhere, or in HR, surrounded by buildings and plastic and glass

00:37:56.300 and concrete, and spends all their free time ingesting brain rot from the algorithm.

00:38:03.780 And there's millions of people living a life like that. And they are living a life,

00:38:09.800 literally a life of fakeness. This is the matrix. The matrix is a real thing, but this is it.

00:38:17.980 It's a life that is totally fake, surrounded by things that are artificial all the time.

00:38:26.020 A life totally devoid of anything real.

00:38:29.320 There is nothing tethering them to the deeper realities of existence.

00:38:34.180 And as depressing as that life is, it's easy to fall victim to it.

00:38:38.340 That's especially true for children who are growing up in a fundamentally different world than any previous generation.

00:38:43.520 We're talking about a world in which deception is ubiquitous.

00:38:46.940 The armed robberies are fake.

00:38:48.620 The social media platforms are fake.

00:38:50.180 The insurance claims are fake.

00:38:51.360 The music and streamers are fake.

00:38:52.740 The crypto is fake.

00:38:53.580 The houses are made of fake materials.

00:38:55.580 The text messages are fake.

00:38:56.780 The Facebook posts are fake.

00:38:57.820 The jobs are fake.

00:38:58.540 The cheese is fake.

00:39:00.580 Can you control any of that?

00:39:03.200 No, you can't, but you do have the power to control whether you become fake as well,

00:39:07.620 whether you become a vessel for all of this deception.

00:39:11.760 And no matter how popular doomerism may be, no matter how intoxicating it may be to say that there's no way out of this particular doom loop, that's actually a lot of power.

00:39:24.860 Every one of us should make the conscious decision every day to use it.

00:39:32.780 Now let's get to our five headlines.

00:39:34.120 small businesses have always been the backbone of this country the shops and trades that keep

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00:39:55.040 fads and young men with real drive are told to play it safe the truth is we need more builders

00:40:00.720 Men willing to take ownership of their lives and create something real.

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00:41:01.460 Thanks to HomeServe for sponsoring this episode.

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00:42:15.080 Here's a post from Fox News.

00:42:16.360 Fox News cameras captured the moment that a Florida transportation official pulls a big rig trucker of service after the driver struggles to understand English and read road signs.

00:42:27.120 Florida DOT is making a major push to enforce commercial licensing rules after several deadly crashes involving illegal immigrants. 1.00

00:42:35.280 This comes as Florida troopers reveal a shocking statistic.

00:42:39.100 Nearly 50% of truckers pulled over on one major highway do not speak English.

00:42:44.580 So here's some footage of that. Watch.

00:43:14.580 the sign what does that mean what do you have to do okay if you don't speak enough english

00:43:27.380 to be operating a commercial vehicle okay you also don't have enough knowledge of the signs

00:43:32.900 so you can say it okay so this right now right now you're going to be placed out of service okay

00:43:38.580 Okay, so this is something we've been covering here for a while.

00:43:43.200 Our roads are littered not just in Florida, but everywhere with truck drivers who don't speak English.

00:43:49.720 This is something the Trump administration has been cracking down on, but it's a huge problem.

00:43:54.500 And it will take a long time to sort out.

00:43:56.900 And it's impossible to know exactly how many of the CDL drivers are not proficient in English.

00:44:02.720 Florida says, you know, 50% on one highway that pulled over didn't speak English.

00:44:07.000 that indicates the number is very high. Now, if you look at official estimates,

00:44:13.200 estimates that were published, provided by the government, especially during the Biden

00:44:17.820 administration, they would say that it's like 4%. They claim that 4% of truck drivers are less

00:44:24.980 than proficient in the English language. Now, even if that drastic undercount were true,

00:44:30.580 Well, there are 3.6 million professional truck drivers in the United States.

00:44:36.480 So 4%, do the math, that's like 140,000 who don't speak English.

00:44:42.760 So that's like, imagine 3,000 non-English speaking truck drivers in every state in the country driving around.

00:44:51.680 Obviously, it wouldn't actually be divided up that way, but you get my point.

00:44:55.180 It's a lot, even if it's only 4%.

00:44:58.560 But it's a lot more than 4%.

00:45:00.580 Because if we're only 4%, you wouldn't have 50% of your truck drivers over on, you know, pulled over on one road on a highway in Florida who are non-English speakers.

00:45:11.400 And if you listen to the truck drivers themselves, they will tell you that this is a much bigger problem.

00:45:17.760 And that's also been recorded.

00:45:19.340 So St. George Insurance Brokers, an agency that provides insurance for truck drivers, and they have this report on their website.

00:45:26.040 A recent survey conducted by the digital platform Overdrive reveals information about the current state of CDL drivers on U.S. roads regarding English proficiency.

00:45:35.520 While most responses were collected before the FMCSA updated its ELP verification guidelines, the results suggest a concerning disconnect between the regulation and the industry's reality.

00:45:46.960 Respondents estimated the percentage of fellow CDL drivers with whom they directly interacted who failed to meet the English language requirements in the survey.

00:45:56.040 40% of participating truckers selected the highest available option, more than 25%.

00:46:01.940 So in other words, they surveyed truck drivers. They asked them how many of the other truck

00:46:10.860 drivers that you have interacted with could not speak English. And 40% of those truck drivers

00:46:17.200 said that more than 25% of the truck drivers that they interact with don't speak English.

00:46:22.880 um and uh then another 21 said that it was 15 to 25 percent of uh of truckers

00:46:31.880 lack english proficiency so you know and this is and this is what you hear

00:46:37.460 um it's the pattern we see you know we get the official estimates but then you talk to the

00:46:45.060 people on the ground and they say almost uniformly uh no it's way worse than that

00:46:51.040 And I've also, I've personally heard this from truck drivers. I've heard, I've heard many of

00:46:55.660 them tell me, as we've talked about this issue, that a huge number of their fellow truck drivers

00:47:01.180 not only don't understand English, but also don't understand really how to be truck drivers.

00:47:06.540 And you can't teach them because they don't understand you.

00:47:10.640 And keep in mind that many of these drivers, you know, we know that like 20% of truck drivers

00:47:15.660 on the road right now are foreign-born, which again is a huge number. You know, it's hundreds

00:47:23.220 of thousands of truckers, and many of them come from countries where traffic laws basically don't

00:47:27.420 exist. The road system is total pandemonium. Anything goes. There's no rules. There's no

00:47:33.840 traffic enforcement. A lot of times there's no traffic lights. There's no speed limits.

00:47:40.020 It's just a road, if even that. Like the most that the government, to the extent that you have

00:47:45.200 one in a third world country, the most they'll do is maybe they'll provide a road, probably won't 0.98

00:47:50.600 maintain it, but maybe they'll at some point pave one. And then they say, okay, you're on your own.

00:47:58.280 Here you go. Best of luck. Best of luck. Good luck. So they're coming from places like that.

00:48:07.460 And then you add in no, no, you know, they're not able to speak English, therefore not able to read

00:48:13.980 the signs or understand anyone who's trying to advise or help or teach them. And you have

00:48:19.340 a recipe for carnage, which is what we're getting. You would hope that we could ask

00:48:27.080 for a bare minimum. A bare minimum is, hey, can we at least make sure that the drivers

00:48:34.960 on our roads who are driving around these, driving inside a huge metal weapon, a huge

00:48:44.780 metal battering ram going 75 miles an hour down the highway, can we at least make sure

00:48:49.600 that those people are capable of reading the signs on the road? Can we at least have that?

00:48:58.480 and the message we've gotten for years is uh no you can't even have that that's too much to ask

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00:51:10.560 All right, I guess I'll chime in on this discourse, the discourse that everybody is

00:51:16.880 discoursing about right now. There's a viral post on X, 30 million views, maybe you've seen it or

00:51:25.740 heard of it, from a Christian pastor or influencer of some kind. He might not be a pastor,

00:51:33.260 but he's some kind of Christian, you know, influencer type person. And this guy's name is

00:51:39.440 Trevor Sheets. And a couple of days ago, he posted about his wife, along with a picture of them at

00:51:45.360 their on their wedding day, which was apparently five years ago. And the post has not exactly

00:51:51.280 resonated with a large portion of the public. And here's what he said in part.

00:51:57.100 My wife was formerly promiscuous. I was a virgin. She was then radically born again,

00:52:03.700 committed to church, evangelized constantly, Puritan books in her bedroom, prayer journals,

00:52:07.600 grief over past sexual sin, etc. We got to know each other well over a year, dated for four months,

00:52:13.620 engaged for two and a half, didn't sin sexually with one another. Our first kiss was with each

00:52:18.700 other. It was at the altar on our wedding day. We've been married for over five years now and

00:52:23.980 she's been the most wonderful and godly wife, mother to our three children, and homemaker

00:52:27.660 that you could imagine. She's more pure than most virgins as biblical purity has less to do with 0.97

00:52:34.240 past sin, though they certainly matter, and more to do with one's current posture of the heart

00:52:39.220 and daily decisions to honor the Lord. And then it goes on. You can read the whole post if you

00:52:47.700 haven't seen it. Now, it should be noted also that this post is a response to a different post

00:52:54.020 from a guy named Tom Buck that says, if somebody argues that a former promiscuous woman has damaged

00:52:59.500 goods and questions whether a Christian young man should marry her, remember Rahab. She was a

00:53:06.700 Canaanite prostitute, but became a mother in the lineage of Jesus. Now, so that was the original 1.00

00:53:13.720 post and then you had Trevor Sheets who was responding to it. As I said, a lot of commentary

00:53:18.740 on this post, much of it quite negative, some of it positive. And much of the commentary around

00:53:24.860 this post is focusing on trevor's wife and the sexual sins of her past and um whether he should

00:53:32.000 have married her at all and all of that there's people who are making fun of her looks and you

00:53:37.100 know all the things you would expect from the internet um and i don't think the post was a

00:53:43.020 wise decision and i'll explain why but i also have to say that i do feel bad for the guy and for his

00:53:49.280 wife, because much of the commentary has just been absolutely vicious. Even if posting this

00:53:56.560 was an unwise decision, and I think it was, I don't think that being ripped to shreds viciously

00:54:03.340 by 50 million people is a proportional response. I mean, there's no sense of proportion anymore.

00:54:10.980 So you could make the argument that, yeah, you shouldn't have posted that, but is it a just

00:54:16.920 punishment that millions of people are going to say the most awful things they can about you

00:54:21.840 and about your wife. So I don't think that it is. I mean, it's just not, it's not a just

00:54:28.200 response, especially from Christians. It's, it's obviously not just or charitable. 0.72

00:54:35.180 So, you know, I feel bad for them, but also a disproportionate response.

00:54:42.500 That's what the internet is for. I mean, it's all you're ever going to get.

00:54:46.920 And that's exactly why the post is foolish. So let me offer this thought. 0.98

00:54:54.240 You know, people these days are obviously far too quick to publicize information about their

00:54:59.020 personal life. We all know way too much about each other to quote a headline in the New York

00:55:04.300 Times. I think it was New York Times a few years ago. We know, and it's true, we know way too much

00:55:10.140 about each other. We share too much. We make ourselves into products, into content to be

00:55:15.100 consumed by strangers. And I realize the irony in me saying that. I realize what I do for a living.

00:55:22.680 And yes, I do this for a living. But even though I speak publicly and create content for a living,

00:55:29.220 I don't, you'll notice, I don't reveal personal details about my family or about my personal

00:55:35.140 life. I mean, if I'm having a dispute with my wife because she wants to buy another goat or

00:55:40.580 some other random barn animal. Uh, I might tell you that, but I'm not going to tell you anything

00:55:49.520 really personal. Um, and certainly nothing, nothing embarrassing. If she had, what was it

00:55:56.780 that she just recently was trying to pitch me on another barn animal. Was it like a donkey? I can't

00:56:01.020 remember. Alpaca maybe. Maybe it was a, it was a giraffe. I don't know. She's always got some

00:56:09.820 other animal she wants us to go by. So I might tell you about that, but there's nothing personal

00:56:16.000 about that at all. And I think people are too quick to do that. And that's the first thing

00:56:23.080 that jumps out about this to me. I have no opinion or don't want to have an opinion about

00:56:30.500 this guy's marriage or his wife or her personal life or her past. I don't know them. I don't know

00:56:35.300 anything about them. But when you offer up the personal details about your life and your marriage

00:56:40.880 and your spouse, you are inviting strangers to have an opinion about it. When I told the world

00:56:49.260 that my wife wants to buy goats, a lot of people had an opinion about it. And it was really annoying

00:56:55.880 because a lot of them were taking her side. But that comes with the territory. You offer something

00:57:02.260 to the public. Now, as I said, a lot of the reaction is unsharitable and unkind, and I feel

00:57:06.860 bad seeing it. This is not how we should treat people, but this is what happens. This is why

00:57:11.660 you don't do this. When you put it in front of the public, like you imagine whatever it is you're

00:57:16.960 saying. I mean, it's like your parents should have taught you, right? It's like whatever you're

00:57:21.040 saying on the internet, imagine standing on a stage in front of 50 million people who are

00:57:27.320 somehow all gathered in the biggest stadium on earth and just saying to them,

00:57:31.800 hey, everybody, I want you to know this about me. Here goes.

00:57:38.240 You probably would not go on a stage in front of 50 million people and say, hey, everyone,

00:57:43.440 excuse me, excuse me, everyone settle down, please listen. Okay, here it is.

00:57:46.720 My wife was promiscuous. You probably wouldn't do that. 1.00

00:57:52.820 And if you wouldn't do it, then you shouldn't put it on the internet.

00:57:57.320 and so you have to ask yourself do i want 10 million strangers 50 million strangers to have

00:58:03.420 an opinion about this if the answer is no and i can't possibly see how it could be anything but no

00:58:10.440 then keep it to yourself because actually it's worse than actually what it is it's not just

00:58:14.420 announcing it on the stage what it actually is is i'm going to announce i'm going to announce this

00:58:19.260 on the stage and then we're going to break out into discussion groups so that you can all talk

00:58:23.100 about this thing that I'm going to tell you, because that's what the internet is. First you

00:58:28.240 announce it, and then there's going to be the discussion about it, which is going to last for

00:58:32.860 hours, if not days. So we should exercise great discretion with the kinds of personal details that

00:58:39.660 we publicize about ourselves, but even more discretion, considerably more, when it comes to

00:58:44.660 the things we share about our loved ones, especially our spouses. I mean, there could be

00:58:48.740 occasions, there could be exceptions to the rule when it's necessary or justified or worth the cost

00:58:54.060 or whatever to reveal something intimate and potentially humiliating. I mean, it's possible

00:58:58.960 there are justified occasions for that, but everyone is doing it all the time. So the exceptions,

00:59:05.420 whatever they are, and honestly, I can't even imagine what they would be, but the exceptions

00:59:09.000 can't be all the time for everybody because that's what's happening. And that brings me to

00:59:15.200 point number two or maybe point one A here. And this is something that may be unpopular. It might

00:59:21.060 be an unpopular opinion among some Christians. I don't know. But, um, I think it's my view that

00:59:28.220 these days in the modern and modern culture, Christians are, you know, speaking generally

00:59:36.140 far, especially on the internet, far, far too eager to share the stories of their sinful ways

00:59:46.320 and their shameful past. You know, it feels like everybody wants to tell their prodigal son story

00:59:52.760 to the point where it almost feels like a competition. It feels almost as though there's

00:59:57.180 a kind of pride in it. It feels like there's a competitiveness. You know, it's like many

01:00:02.520 Christians today think that their sinful past, their history of grave sin, of sexual 1.00

01:00:07.420 sin, of being worldly, of whatever, makes them more sort of interesting and credible

01:00:13.380 and even holier. In fact, Trevor basically says that. He says that his wife is more pure

01:00:19.860 than most virgins. Even if you're inclined to be sympathetic to what he's saying and

01:00:27.960 why he's saying it, that's the part that you cannot justify. If you're going to tell this

01:00:33.480 story of past sin, you don't include, well, but now she's holier than most of you. No. 0.98

01:00:41.340 Sorry, no. That's pride. That is pride. I mean, you shouldn't be announcing that you

01:00:49.800 or your loved one is more pure than most people. There's really no occasion where you should say

01:00:55.660 that, uh, because it's nothing but pride. And it's also, you know, you're, you're making a

01:01:01.020 judgment about the, about the souls of other people. You couldn't possibly know that,

01:01:05.940 but especially to do it in the context of, of revealing this information. I mean, yeah,

01:01:12.960 I believe that people can be forgiven and can be reformed and can change the ways. I believe all

01:01:16.900 that. But no, I mean, someone who succeeded in making it through young adulthood and had the

01:01:28.320 self-discipline to not fall into sexual sin and then went and got married, I'm not saying they're

01:01:33.720 better than you, but to suggest that you're more pure than them is like, what? That's obviously

01:01:43.920 not true. I mean, if you want to get into the purity contest, which maybe we shouldn't be in

01:01:49.460 that contest, but you brought it up. This is a contest you're starting. Why are you starting

01:01:54.420 that contest? C.S. Lewis actually talks about this in the Screwtape Letters. And I thought of

01:02:00.140 this immediately when I read this particular, especially that line. C.S. Lewis writes, and

01:02:05.640 remember, in the Screwtape Letters in the book, the enemy is God, because this is a demon writing

01:02:12.600 to his nephew. And he writes, he has not been anything like long enough with the enemy to have

01:02:18.820 any real humility yet. What he says, even on his knees about his own sinfulness, is all parrot

01:02:23.700 talk. At bottom, he still believes he has run up a very favorable credit balance in the enemy's

01:02:29.240 ledger by allowing himself to be converted and thinks that he is showing great humility and

01:02:33.940 condescension in going to church with these smug, commonplace neighbors at all. Keep him in that

01:02:39.920 state of mind as long as you can. And I think there's a lot of that, to be frank. I think

01:02:47.260 there's a lot of that when I see the conversation among Christians online and the people who

01:02:53.260 announce that they've been reformed or they were past sinners or maybe they just came into the

01:02:59.620 faith and already they're sort of like putting themselves in a position to preach to others.

01:03:04.940 they're already like putting themselves above you just got here five seconds ago you just got here

01:03:11.580 and and you're already on a stage like presenting yourself as an example um no as c.s lewis says

01:03:20.720 have some humility have some real humility and real humility is hey you know i i was a sinner

01:03:27.960 i was fallen i've seen the light i've come to the faith all of that is great we celebrate you

01:03:33.280 But real humility says, hey, I just got here.

01:03:35.240 I've still got a lot to learn.

01:03:36.360 And so I'm going to be silent.

01:03:38.480 I'm going to listen for a while.

01:03:44.000 You know, when the prodigal son returns and he's embraced by his father, but you notice the prodigal son, the prodigal son shows up to his father in a state of abject, total humiliation and humility.

01:03:56.020 He doesn't show up and say, hey, dad, I'm back.

01:03:58.500 And let me, why don't you all sit down for a second?

01:04:01.680 Let me tell you a few things now.

01:04:03.560 Let me tell you.

01:04:04.200 Everyone sit down, everybody around the farm,

01:04:06.660 gather all the servants around from the estate.

01:04:11.820 And let me get up on a stage here.

01:04:14.440 And why don't you all sit and listen to me for about five hours?

01:04:18.820 They didn't do that.

01:04:22.800 So that's what I'm talking about.

01:04:24.320 This kind of pridefulness that you find, I think,

01:04:26.380 in many Christians who are so eager now

01:04:29.320 to talk about their sinful wayward past.

01:04:31.340 And look, again, there are occasions where that could be appropriate.

01:04:34.740 There are also people I will acknowledge who are maybe uniquely called to use their personal story, their sinful past, their misguided youth as a tool, as a teaching tool in their ministry.

01:04:47.760 There are some people who are called to that, but it can't be that everybody is called to that.

01:04:54.580 It can't be that 100 million Christians on social media are called to that.

01:04:59.220 Most people are not.

01:05:02.160 Most people, if you live a sinful past and you come to the faith, your calling is to now, okay, go and live a humble life away from the limelight.

01:05:10.480 That's what most people are called to.

01:05:13.520 If you have a really dramatic story and it would be really inspiring and you're an incredibly gifted communicator, then maybe you're called to that.

01:05:24.160 you know most people most of us are called to keep our sins to ourselves to confess them to

01:05:30.980 be absolved to work out our salvation with fear and trembling and um and exercise much

01:05:38.680 discretion and keep the intimate details of our lives private that's what most of us are called

01:05:43.080 to do and i would humbly suggest that that's the case here you know it's clear that trevor

01:05:50.400 is not called to use his, much less his wife's, personal intimate details as a ministry because

01:05:55.320 this post did not help in any ministry. It had the opposite effect. And the line about more pure

01:06:02.280 than most virgins is not the spirit you would have if this was actually your calling. That is the

01:06:08.420 pride of somebody bragging about past sins. It is not the humility of somebody revealing them,

01:06:13.940 who is revealing the sins

01:06:18.580 for the glory of God.

01:06:20.780 Here's the thing also.

01:06:22.500 You should be embarrassed

01:06:23.760 of the bad things you've done in the past.

01:06:27.580 Even if you've been converted, 0.96

01:06:29.740 even if you've repented,

01:06:30.860 even if you've changed your ways,

01:06:32.780 you should still be embarrassed.

01:06:36.100 Now, I'm not saying that you should live your life

01:06:37.680 with this crushing, incapacitating shame

01:06:40.140 because that is also self-indulgent.

01:06:43.940 to walk around all day, oh, I'm so ashamed. It's self-indulgence, like get over yourself.

01:06:49.000 That's narcissistic. So I'm not saying that you should do that or hate yourself or anything like

01:06:54.380 that. But when you think about your past sinful behavior, which you shouldn't be thinking about

01:06:58.320 it all the time, you should be dwelling on it. But when you do think about it, you should be

01:07:02.840 embarrassed. And we all have sinned and we should all be embarrassed. And going around announcing

01:07:11.220 it to the world, casually talking about it, signals to me that often you're not embarrassed,

01:07:19.280 which actually signals that you haven't repented as much as you think you have.

01:07:24.720 It's the unrepentant sinner who feels no embarrassment for their sins. To repent 0.98

01:07:29.100 is to be embarrassed by them. People want to give their testimony, and I get that,

01:07:35.880 but if you get to the point where you can just sort of casually tell the world about the evil

01:07:39.220 things you did, as if it wasn't even you who did them, as if it was just some sort of like

01:07:43.160 stranger, then if you get to that point, then I would suggest that you don't have a penitent

01:07:48.920 heart. You should never be casual and offhanded and easygoing about your sinful past. And some

01:07:54.140 of the defenders of this post have pointed out that the wife herself has for years shared her

01:08:01.640 testimony about her own sexual sins, which apparently is the case. And that's supposed

01:08:07.420 to be a defense of the guy because it's supposed to be like, it's like, well, it's not like he

01:08:11.520 posted this against her will or something like that. And okay, fine. But that's exactly my

01:08:18.680 point. I mean, that makes it worse, really. I mean, they're both going around telling the world

01:08:23.500 about it. If you're a woman and a mother, I don't think that... Again, there can be exceptions to

01:08:32.140 every rule in a very unique sort of vocation, but as a general rule, as a grown woman and

01:08:40.000 a mother, I don't think you should be going on social media and announcing to the world

01:08:42.800 constantly about your sexual misbehavior in the past. It's also just not appropriate to

01:08:51.540 talk about. Can we get back to a sense of that too? This is not appropriate conversation for

01:08:58.080 the public. It just signals a lack of not only discernment, but also frankly of true repentance.

01:09:08.380 And it's not good for your kids either. Parents do this too.

01:09:12.900 It's like, think of your kids also are going to hear this. And parents do this with their kids

01:09:16.380 all the time. They want to tell their kids because they want to relate to their kids.

01:09:19.300 And they want to say, oh, you know, when I was your age, here's what I did. Here's all the things

01:09:23.060 that I did. It was so much worse. And they want to tell their kids that because they think that

01:09:27.560 it's going to relate to their kids. It's going to show that they kind of, they understand where

01:09:30.580 they're coming from. But also I think there is a, there's a hint of bragging to it when people do

01:09:35.740 it with their kids. Also there is, it was like a hint of bragging. They want, they want their kids

01:09:39.300 to know that I was cool when I was younger, actually. But all that you're really telling

01:09:44.140 your kids, here's, here's what, if you understand the psychology of a child, which you should,

01:09:47.720 because we were all children once here, here's what they're actually thinking. When you go to

01:09:52.040 your kid and you tell them that, Hey, I, you know, I was promiscuous. I drank all the time. I did

01:09:56.120 drugs. I did whatever. I don't know if she drank into drugs, but whatever it is, you tell your

01:10:00.120 kids that. And here's what they're actually thinking. They're thinking, oh, wow, well,

01:10:05.920 you did all that and you turned out great. Oh, you did all that and now we live in this nice

01:10:11.680 house and we have a great life and everything is fine and you got married and you have kids and

01:10:15.440 okay, well, awesome. That's what kids are thinking.

01:10:21.280 they're not thinking that oh well i my parents went through that and now they say it wasn't worth

01:10:29.220 it that's not what they're thinking they're thinking okay so all right well so you went

01:10:35.820 through that phase for about you know six years or whatever and so so can i in fact you who are

01:10:41.800 you to tell me i can't you do the same thing um and so there's that too i think i think especially

01:10:51.260 as a parent. If you have a vocation to go around talking about your testimony and your past

01:10:59.540 misdeeds, I think if you have young children at home, that's a pretty good indication that that

01:11:03.780 is not your vocation because it's not good for them. It is not good for them to have their

01:11:07.700 mother's sexual misdeeds talked about openly. Obviously it's not. Come on. And we shouldn't

01:11:17.540 be building platforms and social media followings off of the stories of our sins, honestly. There

01:11:23.660 are just some real perverse incentives at play. So that's my take on it. All that to say,

01:11:33.140 I still feel bad about it. I feel bad that it has to be talked about at all, but this is the

01:11:39.920 kind of conversation you start when you offer these things up to the public. And so there it

01:11:43.500 is all right we will wrap it up uh there today i did want to i wanted to talk about they just

01:11:48.480 announced the new lord of the rings sequel written by stephen colbert which it sounds like the kind

01:11:54.220 of thing when you hear that it's it sounds like fake ai rage bait that's what i thought it was

01:12:00.080 when i saw this story trending on so stephen colbert is writing a sequel to lord of the rings

01:12:04.800 that it's that's that's slop that's third world algorithmic ai so it's got to be but no it turns

01:12:10.820 out it's real. So maybe we'll talk about that tomorrow instead. That'll do it for the show

01:12:16.020 today. Thanks for watching. Thanks for listening. Talk tomorrow. Have a great day. Godspeed.

01:12:27.940 I do believe that if people have committed treason against the United States of America,

01:12:33.700 their statues should not be in the Capitol. History is written by the victors. And since

01:12:39.400 Since the 1960s, we've been told mostly by people whose ancestors didn't even live here

01:12:43.400 during the war that the South committed treason.

01:12:47.180 But if the Confederates were traitors, then why was Jefferson Davis never put on trial

01:12:53.540 for treason?

01:12:54.540 What were Abraham Lincoln and Andrew Johnson afraid of?

01:12:58.900 Do they know something they're not allowed to say today?

01:13:03.880 It's time for the truth.

01:13:04.880 So here it is.

01:13:05.880 Robert E. Lee was a military genius

01:13:07.800 and a man of immense honor.

01:13:09.440 He was beloved by Americans from the North and South

01:13:11.980 for a century after the war.

01:13:14.300 This is the real history of the Civil War.

The Matt Walsh Show - March 25, 2026

Ep. 1756 - Everything is Fake Now — And it’s Worse Than You Think

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