The Matt Walsh Show - Ep. 1846 - The New ＂Primetime＂ Movie Is Evil Propaganda. Here's Why Hollywood Resents The Truth.

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00:00:27.960 standard message and iterates may apply. Chris Hansen's show To Catch a Predator went off the

00:00:32.800 air in 2007, nearly two decades ago. It was never replaced or rebooted for a primetime audience.

00:00:38.620 Outside of a fringe syndicated show, the entire concept disappeared from major networks afterward.

00:00:44.600 Now, the idea, setting up a decoy house, wiring it with cameras and luring predators inside so

00:00:50.440 they could be exposed and arrested, went from extremely profitable to verboten basically

00:00:56.320 overnight. If you want to watch a similar show today, you either need to subscribe to a niche

00:01:01.320 streaming service like True Blue or follow journalists like Alex Rosen, who, while they

00:01:05.960 do brave and important work, have a tenth of the budget and a tenth of the viewership and an even

00:01:10.680 smaller portion of the cultural impact of the old NBC production. And that's remarkable when you

00:01:16.820 think about it. At its peak, To Catch a Predator was pulling in more than 7 million viewers an

00:01:20.920 episode on average, with some episodes approaching 11 million viewers. Its ratings were consistently

00:01:27.540 high. And then after a phony scandal that we'll discuss in a moment, To Catch a Predator was

00:01:32.800 abruptly canceled, much like Cops was during the BLM craze. But it was not forgotten, especially

00:01:39.320 in the entertainment industry. The show left apparently a lasting impression among Hollywood

00:01:44.200 elites. A bit of a grudge, really, for reasons you could probably imagine. They never forgave

00:01:51.240 Chris Hansen for making the show. To Catch a Predator was the closest the industry came to

00:01:56.160 a Harvey Weinstein moment for the worst predators of all, the ones who target children. And that's

00:02:02.100 why just the past two years, there have been two big budget productions that have been designed

00:02:07.620 from the ground up to destroy Chris Hansen's legacy and the reputation of his show, which,

00:02:13.280 again, has not been on the air in nearly 20 years. The first hit job was a production streaming on

00:02:19.960 Paramount Plus called Predators. It's a documentary. And the more recent one, which is out now in

00:02:25.600 theaters, is the Robert Pattinson thriller called Primetime, which is directed by a guy named Lance

00:02:31.160 Oppenheim. Now, admittedly, from a purely strategic perspective, you do have to wonder, why are they

00:02:37.940 doing this now? I mean, why would Hollywood and an up-and-coming director like Lance Oppenheim

00:02:42.980 suddenly be so transfixed by Chris Hansen, who's now 67 years old and far removed from any kind of

00:02:50.900 mainstream celebrity or influence? Why are they so hell-bent on portraying him as a villain along

00:02:56.060 with everyone else who's followed in his footsteps? I mean, the timing seems almost random, even if

00:03:02.200 you know why these people despise him. I have some theories about what's going on here, but

00:03:07.360 But first, I want to talk at some length about these two productions, these two films.

00:03:13.460 We're going to start with Primetime, which is truly a breathtaking film in terms of its abject dishonesty.

00:03:21.280 In case you haven't seen it, here's part of the most recent trailer to give you an idea of how they're portraying Chris Hansen.

00:03:28.300 Watch.

00:03:30.200 Get out of here.

00:03:31.960 I want something that matters.

00:03:33.600 No more bottom feeders.

00:03:35.060 All on a whale.

00:03:37.360 Don't you ever just want to bleed them?

00:03:43.240 Maybe what I do is a little worse.

00:03:47.120 This could be our greatest segment yet.

00:03:52.520 We're going to hell.

00:03:54.420 Don't do that.

00:03:55.500 They come to us.

00:03:56.760 I don't understand what I'm doing here.

00:03:58.380 What you're doing is more than acting.

00:04:01.100 You're cleansing the world of an ancient evil.

00:04:04.780 let's get just a predator don't give you permission to do this you have no plan

00:04:11.800 i have to put him on television you're gonna be so proud of me i don't want to be a bad person

00:04:16.200 your definition of bad and my definition of bad are vastly different

00:04:21.580 what would have happened now by the way that shot of him uh if you're if you're watching the

00:04:31.980 the video podcast the shot of him shirtless like hunched over um is right out of the of the you know

00:04:37.900 the joker film with joaquin phoenix so they're not exactly being subtle about how they're portraying

00:04:42.900 chris hansen in this movie and it was obvious from the trailer the film would present hansen as a

00:04:48.000 you know tortured uh unstable figure which is why he's staring ahead into psychedelic monochromatic

00:04:56.240 red lighting at one point as if he's having a mental breakdown he even jokes with a guy on the

00:05:01.120 plane about how he enjoys torturing predators rather than simply killing them. He's screaming.

00:05:06.280 He's looking insane. He's out in the rain. He got the Joker shot. He has a savior complex.

00:05:11.920 He's freaking out his wife. And all this comes through in a two-minute long trailer.

00:05:16.760 So what's the message of the actual film? Which you might be interested in as I was in this

00:05:22.360 question, because by itself, the trailer made no sense. And as far as I knew, Hanson wasn't known

00:05:28.240 to be a lunatic. He certainly didn't come across on his show as someone who was prone to emotional

00:05:33.660 outbursts or even hostility. Even when he was in objectively dangerous situations, staging face-to-face

00:05:40.320 meetings with complete strangers who were in the process of committing serious crimes against

00:05:44.680 children, he was always very calm, actually. To provide some contrast with the trailer you just

00:05:51.660 saw, here's an example of one of his sting operations, just to refresh your memory. This

00:05:56.580 is from riverside california california and this is one of the shows where he provides commentary

00:06:02.120 from the studio after the fact which he didn't always do um i think this was early on in the

00:06:08.220 show this is how they did it but here it is watch i'm really like a conscious person i mean look at

00:06:13.580 me i'm so dirty like i know well i'll tell you what's dirty is this conversation you know what

00:06:18.720 yeah i know i i really should not have done this i felt absolutely yes don't take my blank out of

00:06:23.480 your mouth till I'm done. Yeah, I know. Look, if somebody's telling me in the interview that

00:06:28.580 they've got an addiction or a compulsion that led them to this situation, you have to say,

00:06:35.220 look, you're an adult. Having recognized that, perhaps you should have done something about it

00:06:39.840 before you ended up walking into this house. Yeah, I was not fantasizing about a 13-year-old,

00:06:43.840 for God's sake. You know, that it's not right to do everything. Would you ever have two guys all

00:06:48.640 over you uh it's just like i said fantasy type what would you do with two yeah it's just wanting

00:06:54.420 to hear and now do you know that it's illegal i figured it had the parent no i didn't know that

00:06:59.400 it was illegal to send this kind of material i did not know that

00:07:01.860 so he doesn't exactly come across like a raving lunatic here and um all of the clips from the

00:07:09.560 show are like this but this footage in particular is important because it shows why hollywood

00:07:14.600 really, truly hated this show. It wasn't just that he exposed predators, which, of course,

00:07:21.900 bothers the predators in Hollywood, although that was a very big part of it. He was also rejecting

00:07:27.080 the entire mental health victimization framework that's now so fundamental to the left's ideology.

00:07:33.160 To an audience of millions of people in primetime, he was explicitly saying that even if you have some

00:07:39.520 mental health diagnosis or an addiction or whatever, it does not give you a license to

00:07:45.300 commit unspeakable acts of evil. Sorry about your sob story, but that's your problem.

00:07:52.560 There's a limit to what society has to tolerate. Once you start victimizing the rest of society,

00:07:58.300 once you start victimizing other people, especially children, then there's no longer

00:08:02.640 any room for sympathy. Your sob story is then irrelevant. At a certain point, people have to

00:08:09.040 be responsible for their own actions. Now, if this approach had taken hold in America,

00:08:15.700 it goes without saying that, for example, Lindsay Clancy would have been convicted of first-degree

00:08:20.360 murder in about five seconds. Her case would not have made the national news, or at least it would

00:08:25.820 not have been a national controversy, because a controversy requires two coherent and opposing

00:08:31.220 sides. But we would have recognized that there's only one coherent side to the Clancy case. She's

00:08:37.000 evil scum and deserves the gas chamber. That's all there is to it or all there should have been

00:08:43.780 or would have been to it. And more to the point, if Chris Hansen's position had gone mainstream,

00:08:48.320 there's a chance that violent black criminals would actually have to serve meaningful prison

00:08:52.320 sentences instead of getting released immediately so they can stab a random white woman on the

00:08:56.600 train or sucker punch a random white woman walking down the sidewalk or stab police officers or

00:09:01.500 mow down a random white guy running in the street or rip off a random convenience store in

00:09:06.220 Minneapolis before resisting arrest. Instead, under the left's ethos, all of these criminals

00:09:11.080 were victims of circumstance, of systemic racism and oppression, and therefore none of them are

00:09:15.720 ever held accountable for anything. This is the way it goes. If you're in a preferred demographic

00:09:21.320 and you have a sob story, then you get off scot-free. But To Catch Predator rejected the

00:09:29.300 whole sob story thing entirely. The assumption going in with the show is that you're responsible

00:09:35.540 for your own actions. You initiated this conversation with someone you thought was a

00:09:39.500 child. You walked into this house thinking you were going to meet a child. And so that's on you.

00:09:47.620 You put one foot in front of the other and you walk through the door and that's on you.

00:09:52.740 So on the other hand, Hansen, in a very rational and calm manner, told viewers directly and

00:09:57.520 unapologetically that some crimes simply cannot be excused. Along with the investigators he was

00:10:04.800 working with. He documented all of his work exhaustively. There was never any allegation

00:10:10.340 that he fabricated evidence or provided any kind of, you know, illicit incentive for any of these

00:10:16.020 predators to show up to his decoy house or was misrepresenting, you know, why they were really

00:10:21.780 there or anything like that. So where exactly was the movie Primetime getting this idea that

00:10:30.220 Chris Hansen was losing his mind while he was producing To Catch a Predator? Why are there

00:10:36.040 these psychedelic, monochromatic red lights swirling around his head in the trailer? Why

00:10:42.500 is he acting like a nutcase in the rain? Why are they making him look literally like the Joker?

00:10:47.920 Lance Oppenheim provides two answers to these questions, and both of his answers are total

00:10:51.920 fiction to the point that Chris Hansen should sue the filmmakers and the studio for defamation.

00:10:57.120 I mean, this is character assassination to an unbelievable degree.

00:11:02.220 For starters, they claim that Hansen was worried about his ratings going down and he was under a lot of pressure as a result.

00:11:09.520 That's clearly not true. The show was always wildly popular throughout its entire run.

00:11:15.560 And more egregiously, in no uncertain terms, the film also asserts that Hansen was losing his mind because he was supposedly worried about an upcoming tabloid article, which was going to expose the fact that he was having an affair.

00:11:26.480 So we're told that the journalist was extremely rattled by the prospect of his infidelity coming to light.

00:11:33.360 And we're told that this caused immense strain in his marriage once his wife learned that the tabloid article was imminent.

00:11:39.660 There's even a scene where Hansen's producer watching him on air states he's off or something to that effect,

00:11:45.200 illustrating that he's rattled by the reporting on his affair and that it's affecting his work.

00:11:51.100 And then at the film's climactic moment, when Hansen's team is about to bust an assistant

00:11:55.560 district attorney by going to his house, Hansen is still fielding calls from his wife about his

00:12:00.460 infidelity. The implication, which is laid on really thick, is that Hansen has become so deranged

00:12:06.880 that he's now hunting down the predators at their own homes, as opposed to luring them to decoy

00:12:11.240 houses. And we're told that Hansen is now throwing caution to the wind and ignoring protocol.

00:12:17.220 All because, or at least in part because, he's furious about the reporting on this affair.

00:12:22.720 Well, the problem here, other than the fact that, you know, there's no moral equivalence

00:12:26.500 whatsoever, obviously, between Hanson's behavior and the Predator's, as much as the film would

00:12:31.360 like to pretend otherwise, but the problem is that the timeline is completely off, okay?

00:12:36.340 Hanson did not even meet this other woman until 2011, which is several years after his show went

00:12:41.880 off the air. In other words, there was no connection between Hansen's affair and his

00:12:48.220 behavior on the show, on set or off. Never mind the fact that, again, as much as I condemn adultery,

00:12:56.360 there is no comparison between child predators, on one hand, and a man in a sexual relationship

00:13:03.200 with an adult woman. I mean, frankly, I don't care how many mistresses Hansen had. I mean,

00:13:10.080 it's bad. He shouldn't have been doing that. But the work he was doing in exposing these predators

00:13:14.120 was still important, noble work. And in any event, there was certainly no connection between

00:13:21.300 Hansen's affair and the raid on the district attorney's house in 2006. So the whole premise,

00:13:27.140 the whole sort of theory behind the film, that Hansen was losing his mind at the height of his

00:13:31.560 popularity because his dark secrets were being exposed, is completely unequivocally wrong.

00:13:37.380 And before anyone says, oh, well, they're taking poetic license.

00:13:41.680 They're telling a story.

00:13:43.080 Yeah, well, they're telling a story about an actual guy who's currently living.

00:13:47.240 It's not like this is a historical figure from 200 years ago.

00:13:54.040 This is about currently alive people.

00:13:58.960 And they're inventing details that aren't true.

00:14:03.460 And they're doing it deliberately, too.

00:14:05.400 You know, there's a point to this deception. They're trying to sell a narrative that Hanson committed some egregious crime by taking his production crew and going to the home of Assistant District Attorney Bill Conrad in Terrell, Texas.

00:14:19.740 They had already established that Conrad was a predator with chat logs, but he was refusing to come to the decoy house.

00:14:27.680 So the police, who determined that he had already committed a crime with his chats, which he did, decided to go arrest him at his home.

00:14:36.380 Which police often do, by the way.

00:14:38.180 If you commit a crime, they'll go to your house to arrest you.

00:14:40.920 They'll often do that.

00:14:42.020 It's not that surprising.

00:14:44.980 And then here's what happened next.

00:14:46.900 This is from a Dateline broadcast in 2006.

00:14:50.700 Watch.

00:14:52.420 Murphy Police Chief Billy Myrick and his team make a plan to arrest Assistant District Attorney Bill Conrad.

00:14:59.900 He was caught chatting online with a perverted justice decoy posing as a 13-year-old boy.

00:15:06.280 We're the ones that are supposed to be setting the standards and making examples out of things and enforcing the law, and he's not doing that.

00:15:13.200 Just how graphic were the prosecutors' conversations?

00:15:16.620 Remember, he pretended to be this 19-year-old.

00:15:19.720 In his chat with the perverted justice decoy,

00:15:21.880 he talked about wanting to watch the boy masturbate

00:15:24.800 and holding each other and feeling all over.

00:15:27.380 He sent pornographic pictures.

00:15:29.340 Hmm, maybe we could take some pictures of ourselves.

00:15:32.960 He also had a phone conversation with this decoy,

00:15:35.920 from which he asked if they were going to have sex

00:15:38.460 and agreed to bring condoms.

00:15:41.040 He wants me to call him back.

00:15:42.180 But for some reason, Conrad abruptly stopped chatting, and perverted justice discovered he deleted his MySpace page.

00:15:50.600 Although he was invited by the decoy, the DA never showed up at our undercover house.

00:15:55.660 A sergeant who's known the prosecutor for more than 20 years knocks on the door.

00:16:02.540 We really hoped, as they knocked on the door, that Mr. Conrad would peer out through the peephole, through a window or whatever,

00:16:08.240 and he would see a face that he would recognize

00:16:10.620 and that he would easily open the door and talk

00:16:13.340 and then we could approach at that time and say,

00:16:16.000 this is why we're here.

00:16:19.080 But Conrad never comes to the door.

00:16:22.100 The police, however, can tell that he's inside.

00:16:25.120 They can see a TV and a computer are both on.

00:16:28.840 So it appeared as though someone was right there just a short while ago.

00:16:32.780 Maybe watching television, working computer at the same time.

00:16:35.320 Since police suspect he's inside, refusing to answer the door, the Terrell police call for backup.

00:16:41.880 We're on the phone now calling the attack team out to get them in line.

00:16:45.380 Okay.

00:16:46.140 We're apparently going to have a little bit of waiting period.

00:16:48.020 The officers line up in formation and head to the back of the house.

00:16:55.900 Then we hear a faint crack as the officers force their way in.

00:17:01.360 for almost five minutes we don't see or hear anything then lieutenant adena barber of the

00:17:10.020 murphy police department comes out and tells us what happened as they made entry they confronted

00:17:15.740 the suspect i believe he's in the hallway and he told them he wasn't going to hurt them

00:17:19.700 and then shot himself in the head and he had a pistol in his hand small caliber

00:17:23.640 It was a devastating tragedy, a shock to all of us when the 56-year-old, a man who has prosecuted criminals for more than two decades, shot himself.

00:17:34.940 Okay, so no rational person, certainly one that you would ever trust around your children

00:17:48.740 can watch that and feel any sympathy for the predator here. Okay, there's no universe in

00:17:57.500 which Chris Hansen or NBC or the police did anything wrong. This was not a case where they

00:18:04.120 were going after some random schizophrenic homeless guy who had no idea what he was writing or

00:18:10.160 whatever, you know, it was hallucinating. This was precisely the kind of case that all reasonable

00:18:16.100 people would agree is a matter of public interest. They caught a public official, a prosecutor no

00:18:21.360 less, engaging in serious criminal behavior against children. You can't have a predator

00:18:29.680 working in the DA's office. I mean, this is obvious. So obviously they were correct to go

00:18:35.400 to his home and execute the search warrant. What else were they supposed to do? I mean,

00:18:42.560 is the idea that he was trying to meet children online, but then he didn't show up? And so

00:18:49.160 what are you supposed to say? Oh, okay. Well, nevermind. He didn't come. So no harm, no foul.

00:18:55.260 just go about your job as a DA. We'll pretend that never happened.

00:19:02.120 No, to be attempting to solicit minors in the first place online is already a crime.

00:19:07.880 So, and a very serious one. And at that point, if the prosecutor chooses to, you know, off himself

00:19:14.580 as he did, rather than face accountability for his actions, that's his problem. You know,

00:19:21.920 it's not Chris Hansen's fault.

00:19:24.320 Personally,

00:19:24.840 I have no sympathy for the guy

00:19:26.500 and neither should you.

00:19:29.540 And if you do have sympathy for him,

00:19:30.940 I wouldn't go admitting that out loud

00:19:32.260 because it says something about you.

00:19:33.960 He was a total scumbag

00:19:35.280 and he was a coward

00:19:36.000 and he was selfish

00:19:36.720 and he died in the most cowardly

00:19:38.280 and selfish way a person can die.

00:19:41.160 You know,

00:19:41.320 the suicide is just one more mark

00:19:42.860 against him,

00:19:43.860 not against Chris Hansen.

00:19:47.820 It's just underscoring

00:19:48.920 what a scumbag he was.

00:19:51.920 But a child predator kills himself, and now we're supposed to feel sorry for him? No. That's you cowardly avoiding. Especially, again, as Chris Hansen points out, he's a prosecutor, so he's spent 20 years putting other people in prison for the crimes they committed.

00:20:13.680 and the moment that it's time for him to face the music

00:20:18.900 as he has, you know, forced all these other people

00:20:21.160 to face the music, he would rather just shoot himself.

00:20:25.800 Total coward, total scum, that's it.

00:20:29.060 Doesn't even deserve a, you know,

00:20:30.860 he should be just thrown in a pit,

00:20:33.140 don't even give him a gravestone, okay?

00:20:35.540 That's what he deserves.

00:20:37.220 And you have to be very morally confused

00:20:39.080 to come to any other conclusion.

00:20:41.260 Your Uncle Dale is the undisputed king of hot takes.

00:20:44.240 Buffalo, they're a lock because his barber said so.

00:20:46.960 Don't listen to Dale.

00:20:47.980 Go with the score bet.

00:20:49.220 Breaking news, live odds, and real-time stats right at your fingertips.

00:20:52.860 Everything you need for game day is one tap away.

00:20:55.320 Don't go with hot takes.

00:20:56.340 Go with the score bet.

00:20:57.780 19 years or older, Ontario only.

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00:21:11.420 That's especially true because, as Chris Hansen notes, the DA was not simply guilty of soliciting a minor on the Internet, although by itself that should be a death penalty offense.

00:21:22.100 Detectives who searched the DA's computer went on to find evidence of, you know, unsurprisingly, other more serious crimes as well.

00:21:29.860 Watch.

00:21:30.900 So we're in the street. They go in.

00:21:35.060 Break down the door. He doesn't answer.

00:21:36.900 And they get to the hallway, and he's got a pistol pointing to his head.

00:21:40.740 Guys, I'm not going to hurt you.

00:21:42.400 And he shoots himself in the head.

00:21:44.720 He later dies.

00:21:45.560 There's a helicopter in the backyard.

00:21:47.380 It's horrible.

00:21:49.080 You never want to see anybody do that under any circumstances.

00:21:52.560 And it's jarring, and it's dark, and it's sad for a lot of reasons.

00:21:57.180 But why did he do it?

00:21:59.800 Ultimately, his sister sued NBC for millions and millions of dollars.

00:22:03.200 The case was settled.

00:22:04.080 Right.

00:22:04.400 for a lot of different reasons a settlement comes out of insurance policy you go to trial

00:22:09.660 which i'm confident we would have won it comes out of the news budget it ties up months and

00:22:14.700 months of my time i'm sad for the sister i truly am but the reason more likely than than him worried

00:22:22.880 about dateline being involved was that ultimately when they did the forensic examination of his

00:22:27.740 laptop they found multiple images of child porn and in a recent episode of my podcast predators

00:22:33.720 I've caught with Chris Hansen, we learn from one of the police officers, who then was working

00:22:37.800 for Murphy, that also what was found on that computer was evidence that helped convict

00:22:43.340 Conrad's boss, the DA of that county, for financial mismanagement of the office and

00:22:50.800 theft of money.

00:22:51.840 He ended up doing federal time.

00:22:53.600 He's the one who got on TV and criticized everybody involved in the investigation.

00:22:57.520 And, you know, and he then goes to federal prison?

00:23:03.720 Okay, so at this DA's office, you have a guy who's committing financial crimes, fraud, you have a fraudster, and you also have this child predator who not only was trying to meet a child, but had child pornography on his computer.

00:23:21.480 Again, that was guaranteed to be the case.

00:23:25.240 And, you know, that's a massive scandal that all came to light thanks to Chris Hansen, and yet he's the bad guy?

00:23:33.720 What?

00:23:36.700 Now, Primetime and Lance Oppenheim, they never bothered to mention the other crimes that this DA committed

00:23:41.400 for the same reason they spend the entire movie lying about Hansen's motivations.

00:23:45.660 Hollywood's goal is transparent.

00:23:47.060 They want to make it seem like Hansen was behaving recklessly when he investigated this DA,

00:23:51.260 so they made up a fake motive, his affair, which didn't actually happen for several years,

00:23:54.820 and his allegedly declining ratings, which were actually very good.

00:23:58.360 The point is to make sure that no one else investigates powerful people who are engaging in behavior like this.

00:24:03.720 If you do, if you bring down somebody important, they will defame you.

00:24:07.520 They'll make multiple big-budget movies in which they lie about you.

00:24:12.740 Oh, and as you just heard, they'll also sue you as well.

00:24:16.140 In that clip, Hanson mentions the settlement that NBC reached over this case,

00:24:19.160 which was truly one of the low points in this country's modern history.

00:24:22.940 To be very clear about what happened, this scumbag, worthless DA,

00:24:28.620 who the world is better now that he's dead,

00:24:30.920 Although I'd prefer if he was

00:24:33.040 Able to go to prison or better yet executed

00:24:35.460 But there's nothing

00:24:36.940 There's no reason to grieve the fact that he's no longer

00:24:39.300 On earth

00:24:39.620 It's better that he's dead

00:24:41.680 I'm glad he's dead

00:24:43.360 But he commits multiple serious felonies

00:24:47.320 Involving children

00:24:48.140 He then shoots himself

00:24:50.060 Instead of facing the consequences of his own actions

00:24:52.980 Because he's cowardly scum

00:24:54.400 And then the DA's family

00:24:56.640 Decides to sue for $100 million

00:24:58.420 And in the end

00:25:00.480 she extracts a massive settlement from NBC in the process. We can assume it was tens of millions of

00:25:05.500 dollars easily, although I don't think we know the exact amount. So she got enormously wealthy

00:25:10.140 because her brother was the absolute scum of the earth. And the people who exposed her brother,

00:25:17.300 meanwhile, have to shut down their show and pay millions of dollars. I mean, the more you think

00:25:21.480 about this case, the more you'll genuinely feel like you're losing your mind. You're going to feel

00:25:27.620 like they portray Chris Hansen in the movie, like you're going insane. I mean, it's easily

00:25:33.120 one of the greatest miscarriages of justice from a legal perspective in the history of television.

00:25:38.420 What happened is that a Clinton-appointed judge named Denny Chin refused to dismiss the lawsuit

00:25:43.120 on the grounds that NBC might have applied some kind of indirect pressure on the police to bring

00:25:48.180 a SWAT team to arrest the DA, which even if they had, so what? Okay. Now, the idea is that the

00:25:55.720 police wanted to put on a show for the cameras. That's the claim. And in doing so, they somehow

00:26:01.120 became responsible for this guy shooting himself. This is from an article that CBS published at the

00:26:05.480 time. Quote, U.S. District Judge Denny Chen said a jury might conclude that the network crossed the

00:26:11.020 line from responsible journalism to irresponsible and reckless intrusion into law enforcement. In

00:26:16.000 the lawsuit, Patricia Conrad said NBC steamrolled police to arrest her brother after telling police

00:26:20.620 he failed to show up at a sting operation 35 miles away. Chen said the lawsuit contained

00:26:24.220 sufficient facts to make it plausible that the suicide was foreseeable, that police had a duty

00:26:29.700 to protect Conrad from killing himself, that the officers at NBC acted with deliberate indifference.

00:26:35.020 In his ruling, Shin said that the network placed itself squarely in the middle of a police operation,

00:26:40.500 pushing the police to engage in tactics that were unnecessary and unwise, solely to generate more

00:26:45.280 dramatic footage for a television show. Shin wrote that a reasonable jury could find there was no

00:26:49.880 legitimate law enforcement need for a heavily armed SWAT team to extract a 56-year-old prosecutor

00:26:54.860 from his home when he was not accused of any actual violence and was not believed to have a

00:26:59.740 gun. A reasonable jury could find that by doing so, NBC created a substantial risk of suicide or

00:27:04.380 other harm and that it engaged in conduct so outrageous and extreme that no civilized society

00:27:08.960 should tolerate it, Chin said. In her lawsuit, Patricia Conrad claims a police officer at the

00:27:14.220 scene of the shooting told a Dateline producer, that'll make good TV. Well, we just watched the

00:27:21.760 relevant part of the Dateline episode. As you saw at first, the police did not bring a SWAT team to

00:27:25.960 arrest the DA. That only became necessary when he refused to come out of the house, creating a

00:27:30.500 barricade situation. At that point, they had reason to believe that if they walked into the house

00:27:35.560 without a ballistic shield and body armor, they might get shot because this guy was clearly

00:27:40.980 refusing to comply with their commands to exit the house. And secondly, as Hansen pointed out,

00:27:45.840 arresting him at his home was actually seen as the moderate humane option because the alternative

00:27:50.620 would be to make a big show of arresting him at the DA's office, which would have humiliated him

00:27:56.520 even more, and he would have deserved it. Then he'd have even more reason to kill himself

00:28:01.820 if we're taking their reasoning at face value. And keep in mind, the claim that they're not

00:28:10.500 making here. Okay. No one is even pretending that this guy was falsely accused. In fact,

00:28:18.060 no one's pretending that any of these guys were falsely accused. I mean, the way that you would

00:28:23.240 have a legitimate, serious critique of the show is if they claimed that someone was trying to

00:28:31.660 meet a child and they were just completely wrong. They got the wrong guy. Okay. Someone showed up

00:28:38.540 at the house because they're delivering a pizza. And next thing you know, their face is being

00:28:43.620 broadcast all over NBC as a child predator. And then that guy goes home and kills himself out of

00:28:49.860 shame from being, you know, falsely accused of something he never did. Okay, well, now you have

00:28:54.820 a case. That didn't happen, though. It didn't happen in this case. This guy was a child predator.

00:29:02.740 and they're not even pretending that he wasn't.

00:29:07.440 So there is no case or there shouldn't be.

00:29:09.000 But most importantly, even if you buy into all these arguments

00:29:11.320 and even if you believe that a cop said, you know, that'll make good TV,

00:29:15.180 the logic still falls apart when you realize that the presence of a SWAT team

00:29:18.760 and the statements of the officers after the fact

00:29:22.040 doesn't have any logical relationship to the question of whether or not

00:29:25.780 someone should or will kill himself.

00:29:28.920 I mean, these are two totally unrelated concepts.

00:29:30.660 If NBC wants more dramatic footage and the cops want to look really badass with their SWAT vans, then at most you can accuse them of being, what, you know, immature or something.

00:29:40.220 You could throw around the word unprofessional if you wanted to.

00:29:43.940 But it makes no sense to say that the police shouldn't bring a SWAT team to a criminal's house on the grounds that it might freak the suspect out and make him shoot himself.

00:29:51.240 And by the way, the fact that he shot himself is, if anything, after the fact justification for bringing the SWAT team.

00:29:59.360 he did have a gun and he was on the verge of doing something desperate and violent

00:30:06.520 and we know that because he shot himself with a gun i don't know how you could say that if a guy

00:30:12.860 you know refuses to leave and pulls out a gun and shoots himself that that somehow proves that

00:30:17.960 it was that you didn't need to have a SWAT team there that proves that you should have it it was

00:30:23.960 good you had a SWAT team so the whole thing is absurd on its face i mean the reason this

00:30:28.180 prosecutor was suicidal, had nothing to do with NBC or the SWAT team, had to do with the fact

00:30:33.300 that he had just been exposed as a predator and his entire life and career, which depended on

00:30:38.000 his reputation, were about to fall apart solely because of his own crimes and depravity.

00:30:43.620 That's the reason he shot himself. He was probably thinking to himself, oh no,

00:30:47.560 I'm about to go to jail. Okay. Prosecutors in jail don't fare very well. Child predators in

00:30:53.900 jail don't fare very well. What's going to happen to me? Checking both of those boxes. That's what

00:31:01.080 he was thinking to himself. And he made the decision that he's made and he's solely responsible

00:31:07.160 for that decision. Even if the police had gotten on the bullhorn and mocked him for being a

00:31:13.980 disgusting degenerate pervert, which they didn't do, but I wouldn't care if they did, they still

00:31:20.440 would not be liable in any way for the decisions that he made. And neither would NBC or Chris

00:31:26.500 Hansen for the simple reason that people are responsible for their own actions. That's kind

00:31:31.680 of the central message of To Catch a Predator. And that's why these people hate that show so much.

00:31:39.260 And the point of films like Primetime is to defame and destroy anyone who spreads that message.

00:31:46.340 There's a host of other fabricated details in this film as well, including the idea that Hansen's

00:31:50.420 producer demanded that the SWAT officers outfit their rifles with cameras for the raid on the DA,

00:31:55.400 which apparently didn't happen. There's a scene where a cop who's organizing the raid says

00:31:59.960 something like, let's get this Democrat DA or something, which makes it seem like a political

00:32:04.340 operation. Again, that didn't happen. They also have one of the decoy actors on the phone with

00:32:08.480 the DA during the raid, where he sings a song from the musical Rent over the phone to the DA,

00:32:13.820 which is also totally made up in the film the raid happens at night during a storm when in reality

00:32:20.780 it took place in broad daylight it's all designed to make the operation look as unprofessional and

00:32:24.760 cruel and just sort of nefarious as possible and obviously the fact that they have to lie

00:32:30.580 constantly about what actually happened is a pretty big clue that the operation was completely

00:32:34.820 legitimate it's also a sign that the demons who made this movie very clearly are sympathetic to

00:32:40.660 some of the worst people in society. There were many other malicious fabrications throughout the

00:32:46.360 film. For example, in the real show, Hanson and NBC partnered with a group called Perverted Justice,

00:32:52.380 which was staffed by people who were committed to the mission. But the film portrays Hanson as a

00:32:56.880 cunning trickster who whines and dines the decoy and inflates his ego and promises him that he'll

00:33:02.340 be a real actor one day, even when the decoy has to endure all kinds of psychological trauma

00:33:07.220 as a result of the show. Again, that's all fabricated. There's a ridiculous scene where

00:33:12.340 after Chris Hansen is told by NBC president Jeff Zucker, who bizarrely plays himself in the film,

00:33:19.200 tells that he'll be moving to primetime, which also didn't happen since the show was always in

00:33:23.940 primetime. Hansen goes home and forces his children to watch an episode of his show

00:33:27.900 while he brags to them about his new time slot, even as the kids are visibly disinterested in the

00:33:33.760 whole thing. And none of that happened. And not only that, in the scene, he shows his children,

00:33:40.040 it's extremely graphic and inappropriate. So they're portraying Hansen as this kind of weirdo

00:33:45.140 who doesn't care about his own children's innocence to try to make him a hypocrite here.

00:33:51.320 And it's all totally made up. Hansen spoke specifically about these scenes in a recent

00:33:55.820 interview watch the scenes of him dealing with you know stone phillips for instance ridiculous

00:34:03.420 never happened the scenes of him dealing with jeff zucker the head of nbc at sometimes during

00:34:08.860 this investigation period uh never happened zucker plays himself by the way yeah in the movie

00:34:15.020 but the conversation that the real jeff zucker being portrayed by jeff zucker has with robert

00:34:22.540 Pattinson playing Chris Hansen never happened never happened in all honesty what bothered me

00:34:27.120 most was it portrayed me as an aloof detached father to my sons which is so far from reality

00:34:35.880 and for them to do that really is just a cheap shot with no entertainment literary or benefit

00:34:46.260 to any viewer or society it's just mean-spirited untrue and unworthy of of the viewers time and

00:34:55.140 they didn't want to hear that chris hansen's a good guy they didn't want to hear that this work

00:34:59.460 is important this director had a dark image of what he wanted to do he wanted to create a horror

00:35:06.260 like film with interesting photography and and didn't want to hear anything else didn't want to

00:35:13.300 have his mind polluted by anything positive that this actually achieved over the last 22 years.

00:35:18.800 I bet it changed the way you look at Hollywood. It does.

00:35:24.320 Now, the way the film is structured for about the first half, Hansen is portrayed as this

00:35:28.680 ratings-obsessed narcissist. And then once his affair is exposed and his ratings supposedly

00:35:33.440 begin to slip, he convinces himself that he's really on some sort of a spiritual quest

00:35:37.800 to rid the world of evil.

00:35:40.400 There's a scene where Pattinson overacts

00:35:42.740 in a flamboyant fashion,

00:35:44.660 which you can see here,

00:35:46.100 and they kind of play it for laughs.

00:35:47.700 Again, the point is to portray him

00:35:49.080 as a highly unstable, unsympathetic,

00:35:52.360 kind of mentally deluded figure.

00:35:54.080 But if you actually watch the show

00:35:56.140 Chris Hansen made,

00:35:57.020 you'll find that over and over again,

00:35:58.380 he demonstrates extraordinary restraint,

00:36:01.260 even in some very difficult circumstances.

00:36:03.640 Here's one of them, watch.

00:36:04.760 yeah looks like he's gonna park on the street can you hear me though he gets out and goes to the

00:36:13.080 rear passenger side we think maybe he's gonna get beer pizza stuff that we see these guys bring all

00:36:18.800 the time instead he grabs the hand of his five-year-old son and leads him out of the car

00:36:24.980 and up the driveway and i hear frag say oh no he brought his son with him he brought his son with

00:36:31.960 He's got his child with him.

00:36:34.020 Apparently, the mother of the child, his wife, was working that day.

00:36:38.640 He was in charge of the child and figured he'd just bring him along.

00:36:42.080 And there was a collective gasp that you could hear in the house.

00:36:47.700 He's going up to the front door and he has his child with him.

00:36:50.500 Go on to the back. The store doesn't open.

00:36:54.180 He's one of these guys who had a very short online chat,

00:36:58.340 But then on the phone is graphic about what he wants to do.

00:37:02.960 And he has this conversation with Del, who's posing as the 14-year-old boy.

00:37:07.880 Making the turn, coming in the back door, coming through, walking into the living room, holler up.

00:37:16.420 And so I'm thinking, all right, how do I handle this?

00:37:19.420 And so he comes in, he's got the kid by the hand, and I walk out, and he's startled.

00:37:25.420 I've got to tell you something.

00:37:27.540 And I'm going to tell you just straight up right now.

00:37:30.780 I'm Chris Hansen with Dateline NBC.

00:37:33.680 We're doing a story on adults eating children.

00:37:38.620 And since you have your child here, I'm not going to pursue this.

00:37:43.460 But I think you know what you were doing here, don't you?

00:37:48.940 Take a boy out to lunch you met on the Internet.

00:37:52.960 My point is, because your child is here,

00:37:55.920 I think it'd be best if you just went ahead and left.

00:37:57.900 Yeah, you're right.

00:37:58.720 And then we're going to do this, you know.

00:38:01.080 And, of course, Frag is talking to the police saying, you know,

00:38:04.300 this has got to be a different sort of arrest.

00:38:07.620 Rob, we're going to send this guy out.

00:38:08.920 We're not going to interview him because he got his kid.

00:38:11.180 Sir, right there.

00:38:12.480 You come here.

00:38:13.760 You come here.

00:38:14.920 Let go of the child.

00:38:15.720 You're right.

00:38:17.380 As gently as the female officer scooped him up,

00:38:21.200 he still had to see his father get arrested.

00:38:25.860 Please give me my son, please.

00:38:31.360 Now, keep in mind that this is the kind of thing that they were exposing on this show,

00:38:38.720 and we're supposed to believe that Chris Hansen's the bad guy?

00:38:42.380 I mean, if the only thing the show ever did through all of its seasons,

00:38:45.960 if the only thing it ever did was just to catch that one guy,

00:38:52.300 then it would be worth it.

00:38:55.020 but of course it did a lot more than that. Now, if Chris Hansen were sort of demonically

00:39:02.020 obsessed with ratings, he could have let this whole thing play out, right? I mean,

00:39:07.920 he could have milked that situation much more than he did, but he recognized what a horrible

00:39:13.540 situation it was. And he also recognized that there was an action, not just a decoy,

00:39:19.380 there's an actual child here now in the situation. And so he shut the whole thing down immediately.

00:39:25.020 And most importantly, he helped the police arrest a man who was very clearly a danger to society and to children.

00:39:37.560 And that is heroic.

00:39:40.040 That's the kind of thing an honest movie about Hansen would celebrate.

00:39:44.780 Instead, in primetime, they have a scene where they bust some quadriplegic who we're supposed to feel sorry for.

00:39:50.480 I mean, it's embarrassingly obvious what these filmmakers were trying to do.

00:39:55.820 It's also strange at a fundamental level, which explains Chris Hansen's reaction the moment he left the theater.

00:40:01.960 Watch.

00:40:03.480 Chris, what did you think of it?

00:40:04.980 I don't know. It was so bizarre and so in and out of reality.

00:40:09.520 It's hard for me to, you know, obviously I'm not objective because the character is, you know, me.

00:40:14.640 but it was so detached from reality or anything I've ever experienced then or now doing the

00:40:19.920 investigations. I just think it's, I'm not sure what the point of it was.

00:40:24.880 You know, if you want to make the case that Hanson's personal motives aren't entirely pure

00:40:30.040 and that he might've made some mistakes in the process of making the show, you know, fine. I'm

00:40:36.580 open to the possibility that he had, he had unfortunate character traits. You know, everyone

00:40:41.700 does. Most successful people who are obsessively committed to anything are going to have some parts

00:40:46.720 of their character and personality you can criticize. It comes with the territory. And

00:40:52.320 anybody who works in front of a camera for a living is susceptible to becoming vain and greedy

00:40:56.540 and self-obsessed. Anyone who doesn't work in front of the camera is also susceptible to those

00:41:02.160 things. That's called being a human. But when someone is doing good and noble work, as Chris

00:41:08.300 Hansen was, and then also turning that work into entertainment to be consumed by the masses.

00:41:15.680 Yeah, there's a natural tension that arises between those two goals, right? And trying to

00:41:23.320 do something good, but you're also making it into quote unquote content,

00:41:26.960 which doesn't make it evil, doesn't make it wrong, but there's a tension there. There's a tension.

00:41:32.840 And you can make an interesting film that explores that tension.

00:41:39.020 Maybe someone will make that film, but this is not it.

00:41:42.820 Because this is just a character assassination.

00:41:45.040 This is turning into a cartoon.

00:41:48.580 And the fact remains that these kinds of predators typically don't get harsh prison sentences if they get sent to prison at all.

00:41:56.280 You know, often they don't suffer any significant consequences, even when men like Alex Rosen managed to prove that they're guilty on camera. So the idea, as you know, one of the criticisms of Hanson is that you hear this a lot, you know, the idea that Hanson and other predator hunters should just let the cops handle everything doesn't really hold up.

00:42:15.720 Right. That's one of the one of the more plausible criticisms is that when you're not busy trying to make him out to be the Joker, a cartoon villain is, well, actually, you're you're he's interfering, actually, with our ability to catch these predators because of the because of everything that comes in, you know, comes with turning it into a television show.

00:42:36.380 that's just not the reality you know police departments were not sufficiently addressing

00:42:43.180 this problem still aren't that's not entirely their fault um but they weren't doing much of

00:42:48.260 anything in in many cases and even when they do do something and now you have you catch a predator

00:42:55.080 and you send them to the DA you send to the prosecutor and you put them now it's up to

00:42:59.720 prosecutors and judges and juries and we know how that process falls apart very often

00:43:03.680 So if Hansen comes in and gives the system an incentive to actually do their jobs, that's a good thing.

00:43:12.920 And, and this is the crucial point in my mind, if these predators are not going to be thrown in prison for life, and most of them will not be, right, whether they're caught on TV or not, you know, whether they're part of a televised sting operation or if they're caught some other way.

00:43:31.740 The vast majority are not going to be getting lengthy prison sentences.

00:43:36.800 They're just not.

00:43:39.160 Well, then at least if they're on the show, they could be publicly exposed and shamed.

00:43:45.480 And for some of them, like that DA, as we saw, the public exposure alone is a fate worse than death.

00:43:54.520 So again, what Hanson was doing was objectively noble and necessary and just.

00:44:00.800 This is also justice.

00:44:03.280 These people should be publicly exposed, publicly shamed,

00:44:08.180 so that even when they get their slap on the wrist, which is inevitable,

00:44:13.900 that's how it almost always works out, still, this is immortalized.

00:44:19.140 For as long as you live, millions of people have seen this

00:44:23.560 and have seen you for what you are.

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00:45:35.980 code Walsh. You know, going to bed on time is supposed to be the responsible thing to do.

00:45:41.220 Yeah, you could still lie there half the night replying a conversation from 20 years ago that

00:45:45.880 nobody else on earth remembers happening. Then the alarm goes off and apparently you're expected

00:45:50.460 to function like a normal person. I've got six kids. Quiet is not necessarily a resource that

00:45:57.080 I have access to during the day, to put mildly. So by the time I actually get to lie down, my brain

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00:47:05.680 slash Walsh right now. That's shopbeam.com slash Walsh. And besides, of all the attention-seeking

00:47:13.620 fame whores on TV, and there are a lot of them to choose from, it's very revealing that Chris

00:47:19.340 Hansen is the guy the media and Hollywood have decided to single out. Why him? If you want to

00:47:26.920 tell the story about someone who was famous on TV 20 years ago or decades ago and exposed that

00:47:34.280 they were really some kind of monster behind the scenes, why is he the guy? As I mentioned earlier

00:47:41.980 though, it's not just primetime. There's a whole campaign to take down Hanson and everybody like

00:47:45.760 him. The documentary Predators, which is streaming on Paramount+, broadens the attack to the whole

00:47:50.840 predator-hunter genre, which has become popular online in recent years. It also features interviews

00:47:56.780 with Hanson's weepy decoys, two of whom now sympathize with the Predators, saying they

00:48:02.560 couldn't tell the difference between fantasy and reality. The documentary also features some of the

00:48:07.380 more sympathetic interrogation footage of the Predators. I mean, which is sympathetic in

00:48:12.800 compare, like relative to the other stuff that they show, although still not sympathetic at all.

00:48:18.280 But the stuff where they cry and, you know, apologize for what they did. This is footage

00:48:23.000 NBC didn't air. And the implication is that the show was deliberately offering a dishonest portrayal

00:48:28.120 of the Predators to dehumanize them. Of course, if you actually watch the show, you'll recall

00:48:32.440 plenty of examples where these people would break down, start apologizing. This was often

00:48:37.700 shown on camera. And some of them are depicted in primetime. The documentary Predators also

00:48:45.760 demonizes police officers for voluntarily wearing cameras during the production of some episodes of

00:48:50.620 To Catch a Predator, not for the DA raid, but other episodes. Even though pretty much every

00:48:55.900 police officer wears cameras today, they're called body cameras, and they're universally

00:48:59.500 recognized as a good thing or at least they were recognized as a good thing universally until the

00:49:04.540 left realized that it you know often portrays black criminals in an unflattering light but anyway

00:49:08.640 um there's also this sequence which tries to make the point that the show was presented as

00:49:14.240 entertainment rather than serious journalism watch also tonight something that has never

00:49:20.640 happened before police move in on a surprising suspect and there are deadly consequences

00:49:28.160 We all knew who he was.

00:49:29.600 Nobody anticipated the kind of outcome that resulted.

00:49:32.820 And I talked to Dateline's Chris Hansen about this tragic turn of events,

00:49:37.520 and this was his reaction to what unfolded that day.

00:49:40.960 Everybody on the scene would have rather have had Bill Conrad tell his side of the story

00:49:46.960 and, if necessary, have his day in court.

00:49:49.540 But that's not the choice he made.

00:49:52.480 No, it certainly wasn't.

00:49:54.160 Make sure you catch Dateline's next Predator Investigation Tuesday night.

00:49:58.480 And coming up, oops, she left it again.

00:50:01.660 Brittany's second stint in rehab is over and done with,

00:50:04.540 so can anyone or anything convince her to get the help she so desperately needs?

00:50:10.240 But first, Jay Leno shows us the latest hero to hit NBC's Must See FC.

00:50:16.280 It's coming up next.

00:50:19.240 I'm a hero!

00:50:21.960 I'm holding up!

00:50:25.160 Good God.

00:50:29.700 So that was supposedly their grave sin over at NBC.

00:50:32.480 Instead of treating this dead predator with the reverence that he supposedly deserved,

00:50:38.620 maybe with a moment of silence.

00:50:41.100 Let's have a moment of silence for the dead scumbag predator who shot himself.

00:50:46.580 What a tragedy.

00:50:48.080 Instead of doing that, they previewed a lighthearted Britney Spears segment instead.

00:50:51.240 Instead of pretending like they killed this guy

00:50:54.420 Who was the absolute scum of the earth

00:50:55.640 They had the audacity to talk about Britney Spears instead

00:50:58.960 Can you imagine?

00:51:01.440 Actually that's exactly what this guy deserves

00:51:03.040 This predator who killed himself

00:51:05.780 Deserves for his death to be treated like

00:51:07.540 Like a joke

00:51:09.780 Like his life had no meaning

00:51:11.760 He deserves that

00:51:12.940 As I said he should just be buried in a hole somewhere

00:51:16.780 Without a gravestone

00:51:17.600 That's what he deserves

00:51:18.400 now i'll concede that in some very extreme cases these predator hunter videos uh the ones that

00:51:27.620 spawned from chris hansen can verge into vigilantism and mob justice which is bad and

00:51:35.120 irresponsible largely because it jeopardizes and undermines the mission of exposing these guys

00:51:39.580 and hopefully having them prosecuted prosecuted predators include some of that kind of footage

00:51:44.260 as well. By and large, though, these videos are doing the same thing Chris Hansen did. Actually,

00:51:50.780 in some cases, they're producing even more remarkable footage. And just a few weeks ago,

00:51:55.560 Alex Rosen says he identified an alleged predator on the faculty at the University of Houston.

00:52:00.680 He was briefly put in a police car on camera in front of students who were visibly stunned. This

00:52:05.360 is from the local ABC station, quote, the University of Houston faculty member and graduate student

00:52:10.020 has been suspended after being confronted on campus by a child predator fighting group.

00:52:14.760 UH confirmed the suspension Thursday afternoon after Eyewitness News inquired about a

00:52:18.780 kick live stream showing him confessing to buying child porn and messaging minors

00:52:23.600 in a conversation with Alex Rosen on the group poaching predators.

00:52:28.220 Sources told Eyewitness News that UH police have turned the case over to HPD,

00:52:33.380 which will investigate the educator for online solicitation of a minor. HPD has yet to return

00:52:37.880 request for comment. He's a danger to society, Rosen told Eyewitness News. Now, I don't know

00:52:44.900 whether this professor is guilty or innocent. That'll be adjudicated in a court of law, as it

00:52:48.340 should be. But I do know that it's extremely disturbing to think about the number of teachers

00:52:53.380 who are actually predators. And there's a lot of them. And men like Alex Rosen, who are risking

00:52:59.960 their lives every day to conduct investigations like this, deserve enormous credit for what they

00:53:05.260 do. Instead, documentaries like Predators are demonizing them. They actually managed to

00:53:10.620 interview Chris Hansen for this documentary. And as you'd expect, they tried to make him look as

00:53:16.280 morally bankrupt as they possibly could. But as even The New Yorker admitted in a recent article,

00:53:21.780 it backfired. Hansen held his ground. This is footage from his interview at the end of the

00:53:26.220 documentary. Watch. People watching this may feel like you have something to answer for.

00:53:33.400 that this genre of TV you've helped make doesn't deter criminals

00:53:39.120 or get to the bottom of their crimes.

00:53:41.860 It just helps us enjoy it.

00:53:44.080 And I make documentaries too, so I'm not just coming after you here.

00:53:48.400 But we make TV and we point cameras at something

00:53:51.220 and the trauma continues.

00:53:53.980 What do you say to that?

00:53:56.280 I understand your point.

00:53:59.020 And it's a valid point.

00:54:00.260 But you don't know how many times someone has come up to me at a store, at a restaurant,

00:54:14.300 on the street, and said to me, thank you for what you do.

00:54:19.020 I was victimized by an adult when I was a child, traumatized in a way that has forced

00:54:27.640 me to be in therapy to this very day.

00:54:29.860 And every time you confront a predator, it makes me feel better.

00:54:35.700 I understand people saying, you push it too far.

00:54:41.800 You take a man at his worst and you put him on television.

00:54:49.020 You shame him.

00:54:51.100 I'm okay with that.

00:54:52.100 I'll take that criticism.

00:54:53.680 But for every human being who comes up to me to tell me their story about being a survivor,

00:54:59.780 This particular investigative franchise is for them.

00:55:05.480 And I'm okay with that.

00:55:07.460 And if that's my legacy, very comfortable.

00:55:13.360 So again, he's the exact opposite of how they want to portray him.

00:55:16.260 He concedes those critics of a valid point, in a sense.

00:55:19.540 It's true that many people who watch these kinds of shows at some level

00:55:23.020 are often trying to feel better about their own lives.

00:55:26.980 That's true.

00:55:27.620 It's one of the reasons people watch Cops and Live PD, which is now called On Patrol Live, post-BLM hysteria, or the reason people watch the 600-pound life about the really fat people on TLC, or intervention about people who have drug problems.

00:55:47.140 That is a motive that a lot of people might have in watching, a partial motive in watching some of this kind of stuff.

00:55:54.800 But the question is not, are some members of the audience getting the wrong message here?

00:56:01.800 At least that's not the interesting or important question.

00:56:05.320 You know, if that's the only issue we care about, then nothing would ever get done.

00:56:09.300 You're not responsible for what's going on in the minds and hearts of other people who are viewing what you're doing.

00:56:17.720 The real question is, does the content serve an important and morally righteous purpose?

00:56:22.780 And the answer to that question, in the case of nearly all of these kinds of videos, whether it's Chris Hansen or someone else, is a resounding yes.

00:56:35.720 Now, it's anyone's guess as to why Hollywood elites like Lance Oppenheim, seemingly out of nowhere, are now reviving their campaign against Hansen and the other predator hunters.

00:56:45.180 It could be related to the mass migration of the past decade, which has led to a new wave of abuse, most notably in the UK.

00:56:51.260 Certainly the left has a vested interest in running cover for this abuse and the people who commit it.

00:56:56.420 Alternatively, this could also be related to the rise of AI content that these predators are using.

00:57:01.740 Maybe we're seeing an effort to normalize this kind of behavior in the eyes of the public by demonizing anyone who objects to it.

00:57:09.460 Fundamentally, though, it's clear that these people simply do not believe that these predators are doing anything wrong.

00:57:15.220 You know, for similar reasons that they support abortion, they truly believe that adults should suffer no consequences whatsoever for harming children.

00:57:26.180 Now, we've mentioned Lindsay Clancy earlier. It's no coincidence, I don't think, that we have this campaign against Chris Hansen at the same time you've got people rallying around Lindsay Clancy.

00:57:36.740 The message from these people is that, you know, it's okay to harm children.

00:57:43.760 if you have a good sob story if you feel like you had a reason to do it it's okay to harm children

00:57:48.680 that is it's it's hard for us normal people to wrap our heads around like how could that be

00:57:52.760 anyone's actual view how could it be how could anyone really think that but they do

00:58:00.000 that's the unspoken evil underlying the attacks on chris hansen and the cottage industry of of

00:58:07.120 predator hunters that he helped create now you can mock pizzagate and the conspiracy theorists

00:58:12.000 all you want. But the fact remains that Hollywood just put out a big budget movie that exists for

00:58:16.800 the sole purpose of defaming and destroying a man who exposed how common this evil is.

00:58:24.180 The day they set up their first sting operation, they had more than a dozen people walk into their

00:58:28.300 decoy house in just two days in one local area. It was like moths to a flame. And in every

00:58:35.480 neighborhood Chris Hansen went, it was the same story again and again. Even after a show became

00:58:39.340 a nationwide phenomenon. People knew Chris Hansen might be lurking in the home, even after it became

00:58:44.380 a meme, before memes even existed. Still, there are people showing up by the hundreds.

00:58:50.720 This is why Hollywood and people like Lance Oppenheim want to ruin Chris Hansen. It's the

00:58:55.960 same reason they want to ruin anyone. He was effective. He still is effective. And with

00:59:01.440 primetime, like predators before it, they've tried and failed to take him down. All they've accomplished,

00:59:07.960 and this is clear to anyone who watches these films is to demonstrate that they are deathly

00:59:14.500 afraid of this evil being exposed and maybe for them afraid of them being exposed for who they

00:59:22.200 are you know they saw what happened to Weinstein and Epstein and you know they don't want it to

00:59:29.140 happen to them the fact that they're desperately producing hit pieces like this is the strongest

00:59:33.180 proof yet that after many years of waiting, they might soon get exactly what they deserve.

00:59:41.760 That'll do it for the show. I also want to remind you and announce that on Wednesday at noon

00:59:47.740 central time, I'll be doing an All Access Live on Daily Wire. This is your chance to, if you're

00:59:53.320 an All Access member, to come and ask questions, and in particular about the real history of

00:59:59.600 Colonization Africa, which is also

01:00:01.580 releasing for all Daily Wire members on

01:00:03.680 Wednesday. So that'll be going up

01:00:05.680 the same day as the All Access. We can talk about that.

01:00:07.580 We can talk about anything else.

01:00:09.680 That'll be on Wednesday.

01:00:12.640 And that'll do it for the show today.

01:00:13.900 Talk to you tomorrow. Have a great day.

01:00:15.600 Godspeed.

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The Matt Walsh Show - September 28, 2026

Ep. 1846 - The New ＂Primetime＂ Movie Is Evil Propaganda. Here's Why Hollywood Resents The Truth.

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