Ep. 208 - In Quest To Destroy Trump, Democrats Are Setting A Dangerous Precedent
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Summary
The left went fishing during the Michael Cohen hearing yesterday, and they came up empty. Also, a Democratic presidential candidate is accused of being horribly abusive to her staff, but her feminist defenders are saying that she's only being criticized for this because she's a woman.
Transcript
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Today on the Matt Walsh Show, the left went fishing during the Cohen hearing yesterday
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and they came up empty. So we're going to talk about that. And we're also going to talk about
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the fact that they're going to keep trying, obviously, until they find a way to rid themselves
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of President Trump. And that's what they've been intent on from the very beginning because
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they hate him so much. This is a very dangerous precedent that they are setting. And I want to
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talk about where it may lead. Also, a Democratic presidential candidate is accused of being
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horribly abusive to her staff. But her feminist defenders are saying that she's only being
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criticized for this because she's a woman. It's sexism. I think that's absurd. And we'll talk
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about that. And we'll also answer some of your emails today on the Matt Walsh Show.
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I got to tell you, something really, really terrible happened to me last night. I'm still
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recovering from it. Some leftists on Twitter decided that they wanted to hurt my feelings
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and damage my self-esteem by starting this hashtag, who is Matt Walsh? Hashtag, who is Matt Walsh?
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And I was so devastated by this hashtag. I guess the point of the hashtag is they don't know who I,
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nobody knows who I am. So it's, you know, it's insulting. It's like how, you know, it makes me
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feel obscure or something. I guess that was the point. So, but I was so devastated by the prospect
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of having my name trend nationwide on Twitter that I myself kept tweeting and pleading with people,
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please do not tweet hashtag who is Matt Walsh. The last thing I want you to do is tweet hashtag
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who is Matt Walsh. I'm begging, begging you, please don't tweet hashtag who is Matt Walsh.
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And I kept saying this over and over again and pleading with everyone to stop, but it didn't
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work. And so in the end, they got their way. And my name was trending nationwide on Twitter.
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But it was, it was, as I said, it was devastating. I mean, I was outraged. I was offended. It's the
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worst attack I've ever suffered. But seriously, that really did happen. Some liberals tried to
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hurt my feelings by making my name trend on social media. It was the weirdest form of attack I think
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I've ever suffered. I kind of liked it though. I don't know if that makes me a masochist, but I kind
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of liked the attack. Now, next I'm wondering if maybe they'll attack me by washing my car or making me
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some cookies or something. I mean, you know, who knows what's in store for me next? All right.
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Michael Cohen wrapped up his public testimony before a house committee yesterday.
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And the big bombshells, according to the media, and now I'm going to read now directly from a USA
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Today article, which lists the, what they call the biggest bombshells. And they are, according to USA
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today, that Trump knew in advance that WikiLeaks planned to release stolen emails damaging to
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Hillary Clinton and that Trump confident, uh, confidant Roger Stone confirmed it with WikiLeaks
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founder. As we discussed yesterday, this is not a crime. That's not anything. It's just Trump heard
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a rumor that these emails were going to come out and he said, oh, okay, well that's good. So there's
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nothing there. That's not, it's not a crime. Uh, it's not even, he didn't even do anything ethically
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wrong or morally wrong. If you're running against someone and you find out that there's going to be
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embarrassing information about them, uh, it's, it's, it's okay to be happy about that. Uh, and it's
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okay to, you know, not run to the phone to get on the horn with their camp and let them know, hey guys,
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listen, that, that, that would be a very sportsman like thing to do, I guess, but the best sportsman
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doesn't, uh, doesn't win elected office in America anymore. So that's not much of a bombshell.
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Uh, the other bombshell, the president personally reimbursed Cohen for an alleged, uh, for an
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illegal hush money payment to a porn star. Well, we already knew about these claims. So to call that
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a bombshell is, uh, is not much of anything. And it's also not at all a slam dunk as to whether it
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would constitute a campaign finance violation. So not much of a bombshell there. Um, Trump indirectly
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encouraged him to lie to encourage Cohen to lie to Congress about his pursuit of a Trump tower
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development in Moscow. Well, indirectly means that he never actually said, I want you to
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lie. Uh, Cohen thought that he was picking up hints that Trump was dropping with facial
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expressions and that sort of thing. But I will say that I don't think anyone has ever been
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brought up on obstruction of justice or perjury charges because of facial expressions. So I think
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Trump is, is fine there. And, uh, then the other bombshell Cohen brought documents that appeared
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to back up some of his claims, including a $35,000 check signed by Trump that Cohen called
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a hush money reimbursement, which doesn't prove anything. Of course. Um, the, the fact that he
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has a, that he, who was Trump's lawyer has a check from Trump, that doesn't prove anything.
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Uh, you know, rich men will often write big checks to their lawyers. And the fact that the check exists
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does not prove at all what the check was meant for. Now there were other claims that were made.
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Trump is a racist. Trump's a liar. He's a fraud. He's a bad guy. Um, he's, uh, you know, divisive
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and all these things. You can decide whether you think those claims are true or not, but those are
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not new claims, first of all, and they don't have anything to do with criminal conduct. And there's
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no reason why we need a house committee to investigate them. So I think the real bombshells
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can be found in the things that Cohen denied. So he denied, for instance, that Trump ever explicitly
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told him to lie. He denied that he had any evidence at all that Trump was colluding with Russia. Well,
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that's a pretty big one. Um, he denied claims about their being, remember, remember the, the P tape
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story is the, well, Cohen denied that there's apparently some other rumor going around about a,
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another, uh, tape of Trump doing something bad in an elevator or something. Cohen denied that he
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shot down a lot of these rumors. And he said that he never went to Prague to meet with Russian
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officials, which is, uh, which was a claim that was made in that famous dossier. So
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that really is the, those are the bombshells. It's what Cohen shot down. Uh, he undermined the,
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the Russian collusion case. He undermined the obstruction of justice case. He undermined all
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these things. And this was supposed to be the Democrats like star witness. Now just reflect on
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this for a moment. The Democrats have their worst enemies lawyer in their pocket. They have the guy
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who's been putting out fires for Trump for the last 10 years. Uh, the guy who they say knows where all
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the bodies are buried, whatever dirt there might be, whatever, um, skeletons lay hidden in whatever
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closets. This is the guy who would know about it. And this hearing, which exonerated Trump more than
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it implicated him is the best they could do with that secret weapon. That is quite incredible when you
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think about it. Uh, and I think it's incredibly favorable to Trump really. Now it's true that
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you're not going to, it's hard to argue that politically or from a PR perspective that Trump
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comes out looking better because of something like this. Um, because some of the claims that were made
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about them are, you know, they're not illegal, but they are embarrassing. They don't make them look good.
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And I found some of them to be quite believable. Like a Cohen told a story about Trump. Uh, there
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was some auction where a portrait of Trump was being auctioned off and Trump wanted to make sure
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that his, his portrait was the highest priced item. So he arranged to bid, um, through anonymously
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to bid on his own portrait so that it would be the highest price. Now I personally find that totally
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believable. I absolutely think that Donald Trump would do something like that. Uh, but it's not
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illegal and it doesn't really matter. And, uh, yeah, it's embarrassing, but I don't think it's
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going to sway anyone one way or another because we already know that about Trump. We know that he
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would do something like that, but the Democrats will continue. Uh, we, we have crossed some kind
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of Rubicon now and we're in a place where the opposition party is just going to keep investigating
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until they find a way to get rid of this guy that they don't like to get rid of this president.
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And this is a very dangerous place to be. Um, keep in mind that the left has had this attitude
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about Trump from the very beginning before there was any, you know, not because they suspected
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him of, of any crimes or anything, but just from the very beginning, they despised everything
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about him. Uh, and they just cannot accept, they cannot emotionally accept that he's president.
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And still to this day, uh, two, two years later, more than two years later, they still can't
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accept it. And, and I could tell you when we reached the point where the opposition party
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will not accept the results of an election, you are teetering very close to the edge of
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democratic collapse. And that's where we are. That's what this is all about is all the hearings
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and everything. They cannot accept it. They, they just can't, they can't allow this guy to actually
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serve out, uh, at least four years. They can't allow it to happen. And it's, it's gotten, that's
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why they're just throwing everything they can against the wall because it's really got nothing to do
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with. Okay. So we'll try Russian collusion. There was no Russian collusion. We'll look for
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something else. They don't really care about any of this stuff. The, uh, you know, all the hand
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wringing about, Oh no, our, our election was interfered with by Russia. And Trump is a secret
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Russian agent. They don't actually think that, uh, or care about it. It's just, that was, uh, well,
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that's one avenue we can explore to get rid of him. And that doesn't work. Let's go over here
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where there was the Trump tower thing. Okay. That's not really working out. Let's go over here.
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Uh, maybe we'll get a, maybe there's an obstruction of justice. Okay. Well, no, not really. So they're
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just looking for anything they can to, um, to rid themselves of, of this man. And no matter how you
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feel about Trump, that is, it's got nothing to do with Trump specifically. It's just, it's a dangerous
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place to be. And you can't, I, there's the, what about, what about ism thing that liberals are doing
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now where they're saying, yeah, but that's what Republicans did with, uh, with Obama. What about
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the Benghazi hearings that went on forever? Yeah. Well, yeah, you know what, but that's a little bit
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different because in Benghazi, Americans died. People died in Benghazi. People were left to die.
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Um, so something really bad happened. And not only that, but we know that the Obama administration
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lied about it after the fact they're on tape. They went out in front of the American people,
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lied about it, said it was because of a YouTube video or whatever. So when you've got something
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that happened while this person was in office, um, people died because of it. Well, then obviously
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you need to investigate that. But the stuff that Democrats are searching for, uh, it does not rise
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to that level. All right. Now the other big political news story today, or at least geopolitical
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in this case is Trump and Kim Jong-un in North Korea. And now that I've just defended Trump,
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I'm going to pivot to a criticism. The, um, the summit is coming to an end. Uh, he was in,
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he was in Vietnam with Kim Jong-un and they were supposed to be working out a deal and, uh,
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working out a deal for North Korea to de-nuclearize, but it's coming to an end in that no deal has been
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reached. Uh, Kim Jong-un is not agreeing to anything. Now this, I wouldn't blame Trump for
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that specifically. Uh, but this comes after Trump did his whole normal routine now of heaping lavish
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praise on Kim Jong-un, a man who runs literal concentration camps. Okay. This is to compare
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him to Hitler in this case, uh, to compare UN to Hitler is not, is not an exaggeration. He actually
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has concentration camps where he sends innocent people to die. Um, and Trump praised him as,
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as he has been doing over the last year or so. Uh, he praised him. I thought in a, in an especially
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bizarre way, he praised Kim Jong-un. And he said this kind of thing before where, um, he praised him
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for turning out so well, even though he comes from a rich family and a lot of kids grow up in rich
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families and they end up screwed up, but, uh, not Kim Jong-un. Now Kim Jong-un killed his family
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members to retain power, by the way. So I don't know if that compliment really applies. And, uh,
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right before Trump walked away from the meeting, he, uh, Trump covered for UN and said that UN didn't
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know anything about the imprisonment, uh, and torture of Otto Warmbier. Remember this was the American
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who was taken by the North Koreans and tortured to death. He was finally let go when he was on death's
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door and Trump covered for him and said, well, he didn't know about that. Uh, he says he didn't do it.
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Now, what do we get from all this? Uh, nothing but, nothing but international embarrassment and shame,
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really. I mean, nothing else come came of it. And, and this has been, uh, Trump's tact towards North
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Korea for a while now, and nothing is coming, but other than we're just embarrassing ourselves.
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Now, Trump's reflexive defenders will say that this is a brilliant diplomacy strategy and he knows what
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he's doing, but then again, see the problem is Trump's reflective, reflexive defenders said it was
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brilliant diplomacy when Trump was on Twitter, um, trolling Kim Jong-un at the beginning of his
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presidency, calling him little rocket man and stuff. So, uh, he's troll, he's trolling the guy on
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Twitter. That's brilliant. And then he switches strategies drastically and then goes over there
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and kisses his feet. And we say, well, that's brilliant too. Uh, they'd call it brilliant literally
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no matter what he does. If he, if he's, uh, if he's sucking up to him, it's brilliant. If he's mocking
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him, it's brilliant. If he stands on his head and yodels the theme song to happy days, that's brilliant too.
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Well, that actually would be brilliant to be honest, but, uh, so no matter what he does,
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it's brilliant. And, and I mean, and they know that, right? I'm not, I'm not breaking any new
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ground here. Uh, we know that that's, that there's a certain segment of, uh, conservatives who will
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just, doesn't matter what he, literally it does not matter what he does. They're going to say it was,
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it was the most, it was the smartest thing ever. Meanwhile, of course, again, this doesn't need to
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be said either, but, uh, it goes without saying that if Obama had publicly covered for a dictator who
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tortured an American citizen to death, every conservative in the country would explode with
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outrage and would not stop exploding for probably about 15 years over it. Uh, and rightly so.
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So it's all a game. It doesn't mean anything. Uh, the people who defend this performance from Trump,
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they very well know that they, uh, they're only doing it because it is Trump. And if Trump radically
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changes course, they'll defend that too. And, and, and just back and forth. I just,
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it is, I say this to everyone. I'll say to, I would say about Trump and his approach to Kim Jong-un,
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maybe there's a middle ground, right? Between, between trolling Un on Twitter and mocking him
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and kissing his feet. Like maybe there's in between somewhere you could, you could settle.
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Um, and then in regards to Trump for everyone else, it does seem like there are a lot of people
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who will criticize him no matter what he does. And a lot of people who would defend him no matter
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what he does. Is it so difficult to just look at each thing on a case by case basis and actually
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assess whether or not you think it was the right thing? It's just, it's very unlikely that a human
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being will always do something that you really disagree with, or that they'll always do something
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that you agree with. It's just, it's, it's not just unlikely. It's impossible. No human being is
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like that. No human being is going to line up with you like that. Uh, if you have your own brain in
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your head and your own opinions and your own perspective, it's just, you're not going to find
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anyone on earth who always does something you agree with or always does something you disagree with.
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So if you find when it comes to Trump, that you're always against him all the time, always,
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well, that probably is a hint that you're, you're not applying your brain. You're not thinking
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you're just being reflexive. But on the other end of it, if you find that you're always defending him
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and that over the last two years of him being in office and the last, I don't know, four years of
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him being on the political scene, you have never met an occasion where you think he, he deserves
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criticism. Then again, that's probably an indication that you're not thinking you're not using your head.
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You're just, you've just attached yourself to him like a barnacle and you'll go wherever he goes.
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And that, that's not right either. That's not, it's not even human. That's just, that's not,
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as human beings, uh, we're not meant to, we're not meant to just surrender our critical capacities,
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um, for the sake of always defending some other dude. He's just a guy, he's a guy, right? I mean,
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he's a president, but he's not Jesus Christ. He's not, he's just, he's just a guy. And, uh, it's okay
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to criticize him sometimes. And I think pretty clearly, look, when you've got an American president
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who is covering for a dictator who we all know tortured an American to death. And we all know
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that obviously the idea that Kim Jong-un didn't know, oh, he didn't know Kim Jong-un, the dictator
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of the country, didn't know that there was a, an American citizen, uh, in a, in a, in a concentration
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camp. He didn't know that. Come on, come on. We all know that's not true. So this to me seems like
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something that pretty obviously was, is not the right approach. Uh, so we should all be able to
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criticize that. No matter if you're conservative, liberal, it doesn't matter where you stand.
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You could love most of what Trump does, but, but I, but I think that's one thing that we all
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should be able to criticize. And if you find that you can't even criticize that,
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well, I think that's an indication that you're just not thinking critically.
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All right. Um, let's move on. So Amy, uh, Klobuchar, Klobuchar, never could figure out
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how to pronounce her last name. Uh, she's a Senator for Minnesota. She's running for president. She's
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been in the news recently, um, because former staff members of hers have come out, uh, many of them,
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not just one or two, but many of them have come out and have said that she's an abusive,
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unhinged tyrant to her staff. Um, and according to these reports, she berates them. She throws
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things at them. She cuts them down, insults them, screams at them, so on and so on. I won't get into
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reading the specific details. If you've ever had a boss like this, then you can kind of imagine,
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uh, what, what we're talking about here. Now, I think there are many reasons not to vote for this
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woman. She's a Democrat. First of all is, is one reason, but if she were a conservative,
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I still wouldn't support her because of these stories. And I'll tell you why, because I have
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noticed in my life that you can really tell everything you need to know about a person's
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character and what they're all about, um, based on how they treat their subordinates.
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That's, that will tell you everything you need to know about a person. Because if, if you treat
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people who have more power than you, well, well, then that's just self-interest. You're just,
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you're just protecting yourself. And if you're generally fair to those who are on your same sort
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of level, then that also is kind of self-interest. That's just networking. That's, uh, being diplomatic.
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It's like, the only people that you really can potentially get away with abusing are those under
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you. So we have to see, you know, we have to see how you treat those people to know what you're
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really all about. And, uh, if, if, if it happens that as soon as you have someone under you, you
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become this abusive time, and that just, that just tells us that you always were that way. You just
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never had an outlet for it. And now that you have an outlet, uh, well, you can let this part of you
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shine. And it just shows that you're not a very good person. Um, Klobuchar has tried to explain
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away these reports by saying, well, I'm a taskmaster master. I, I demand a lot. I demand
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perfection. Uh, I'm a hard worker. I want my team to be hard workers, you know, trying to cloak it
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in this sort of positive perfectionist type hue, but people who really demand perfection leaders who are
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really perfectionist, they aren't going around throwing temper tantrums because they demand
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perfection of themselves as well. That's what we're missing here. And to act this way, it means
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you're not being a good leader or a good person. Um, and good leaders have dignity. They have
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restraint. They have patience. That's good leadership. Any five-year-old can lead by screaming
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and crying constantly. Anyone can do that. That's not, that's not leadership, but the thing that
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really bothers me is, so there's, there's that deflection from her camp, which is ridiculous.
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But the thing that really bothers me is this deflection that I've seen from many of her
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defenders claiming that, uh, well, turning it into a man, woman thing and claiming that she's only
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getting this criticism because she's a woman. It's sexist. You see, if a woman acts this way,
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then she's crazy and she's terrible. But if a man does this, then, then we just say he's a go-getter
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and he's a tough guy, et cetera. That's, that's the line that I'm hearing from some of, um, Klobuchar's
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defenders. I find this line to be amazingly off base and completely disconnected from any reality that
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I've experienced. This idea, um, and you hear this from feminists a lot, this idea that women
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get more criticism for character defects, women get more criticism for being abusive in the workplace.
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Really? Women get more criticism for that. Isn't the opposite the case? If a man is a jerk,
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nobody has any problem calling him a jerk. And the other thing is you can call a man a jerk without
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anyone calling you sexist. Nobody, no one is ever going to call you sexist for criticizing a man,
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calling him a jerk or calling him something worse. There are other, there are worse, uh,
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labels we might use other than jerk that I can't use here. And if you do that, uh, probably people
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will agree with you and no one's going to call you sexist. No one's going to make it a gender thing.
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So only a woman can potentially cloak her jerkiness in this whole girl power routine.
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Only a woman can dress up her character flaws as some kind of feminist statement. Only a woman can
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be potentially celebrated for being a jerk. And only a woman can use the, you're only attacking me
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because I'm a woman excuse. So if anything, it seems to go the other way. And it seems to me that, um,
00:23:20.860
when we talk about abusive and inappropriate behavior in the workplace, generally speaking,
00:23:29.480
we're almost always focusing on men. We're just giving, we're letting women off the hook entirely
00:23:35.180
when we have this conversation. Usually, usually, even though anyone who's been in a working environment,
00:23:39.620
uh, in an office environment or whatever, anyone in that knows that there are plenty of women
00:23:44.920
who are also inappropriate, who engage in harassment, who are abusive. Uh, we all know that.
00:23:52.840
Yet these conversations in this particular case, yes, we happen to be talking about a woman, but usually
00:23:58.220
we're talking about men. So it seems to me that women are more likely to get off the hook
00:24:04.320
with these kinds of things because they at least have the potential of, uh, turning it into a feminist,
00:24:14.000
into an expression of their feminism, which is a potential that obviously a man, uh, a man simply
00:24:21.840
doesn't have. And, and by the way, if you, another example of this, not exactly the same thing,
00:24:29.540
but talk to a guy who's been through family court sometime, um, to see how this works, to see how
00:24:37.960
behavior that is condemned in men can oftentimes, especially in a family court situation, be excused
00:24:47.300
in women. So there are, there are plenty of situations where a man is held to, or men are held
00:24:54.840
to a higher standard, uh, and, and, and where women were excuses are made for women that would
00:25:01.240
never be made for a man. That's, that's just a simple fact of the matter. All right, before we
00:25:06.440
get to emails, I wanted to quickly mention this. Elizabeth Warren has rolled out a plan for universal
00:25:12.020
childcare, uh, reading now from Vox for some reason, Senator Elizabeth Warren has rolled out a sweeping
00:25:19.460
plan to provide all Americans with affordable childcare paid for with a new tax on multimillionaires.
00:25:24.840
Uh, this is the key part. Warren envisions a network of childcare facilities subsidized and
00:25:33.160
regulated by the government for all children too young to attend school. Facilities would charge
00:25:39.300
families based on their ability to pay. Now, uh, there are many ways of, of, of criticizing this idea.
00:25:48.840
The fact that it would be prohibitively expensive, uh, is I think what most people will, will point
00:25:55.920
to. And that's true. But the other thing with this idea is, you know, people, we already, many
00:26:05.360
Americans, millions of Americans, they already send their kids away to government institutions,
00:26:10.080
starting at the age of like five, uh, or younger, because now you've got pre-K. And I think now you
00:26:16.780
even have pre pre-K, pre-K two and pre-K three, whatever they call it. So at a very young age, a lot
00:26:24.640
of, a lot of Americans are sending their kids away to government institutions to essentially be raised
00:26:30.520
by the government. Um, and now with this universal government subsidized and regulated childcare idea,
00:26:40.880
and Elizabeth Warren is hardly the first person to come up with this, but with this idea, well,
00:26:46.300
now we're going to take kids away even sooner. So the objective seems to be, let's get kids out of
00:26:53.380
their parents' arms as quickly, as soon as possible and put them into the system. That's what this is
00:27:00.320
really about. It's about getting kids away from the family, pluck, tearing them away from the family
00:27:05.740
and plucking them into the system, uh, as soon as possible. That's the whole idea here.
00:27:15.560
And that's the thing that disturbs me the most about it. Even if, even if it wasn't prohibitive,
00:27:21.340
prohibitively expensive, even putting that aside. I mean, can we get, can, can we give a family,
00:27:29.480
you know, a few years, uh, you know, a few years to exist? Can we, can we give the children a few
00:27:34.440
years to be with their parents, to be in the home? Do we have to move them into the government system
00:27:41.620
right away? Well, yeah, that's what the left wants to do because the left has for a very long time
00:27:48.660
seen the family as a threat. And it is actually, the family is a threat to their agenda
00:27:54.120
because as parents, we can teach our kids what we want. We can instill in them the values that we
00:28:01.200
want to instill. And the left has no control over that. And they don't like not having control.
00:28:09.040
All right. Let's go check out your emails. MattWalshShow at gmail.com. MattWalshShow
00:28:18.500
at gmail.com. You can email with questions, comments, concerns, death wishes, whatever you
00:28:23.660
got. Um, some interesting emails today. This is from Michael. He says, Matt, just wondering your
00:28:28.720
opinion on women being eligible for the draft. Personally, as someone who served two combat tours
00:28:33.840
in Iraq, I think this is a huge mistake. I can't remember a worse day than when we lost women during
00:28:40.880
one of my tours. It was horrible when we lost brothers, but when we lost a sister, there are
00:28:45.300
no words for what, uh, for when that happened. It would be interesting to hear your opinion on the
00:28:49.800
matter. Hi, Michael. Well, uh, first of all, thank you for your service. I think your opinion on the
00:28:55.480
subject is much more interesting and important than mine. Um, so in a lot of ways, I could just leave
00:29:01.260
it there. You know, you've already given your opinion. Um, as someone who's been in the thick
00:29:08.020
of it for what it's worth, I completely agree with you. Uh, and when I say I agree with you,
00:29:14.320
it's more like what you're saying to me now, this is what I've heard from all from, I want to say
00:29:20.700
every, but I, that probably isn't true. So let's just say almost every person, every veteran,
00:29:27.040
every combat veteran I have spoken to about this. And I've spoken to a lot of them
00:29:30.300
almost every single one has said the exact same thing as you, that they do not think this is a
00:29:34.760
good idea. They don't want women drafted. They don't want women on the front lines of combat.
00:29:39.760
It is the only reason I want to say every single one I've talked to, um, has had that opinion,
00:29:46.340
but maybe there've been a few here that, but vast majority of, of combat veterans seem to agree with
00:29:52.700
you. Um, and so for one thing, who am I to disagree? If this is the, the people that have
00:30:00.540
been in that position, if this is their opinion, then I think we should defer to it. Um, so
00:30:08.400
on the other hand, I understand, you know, I can sort of under, there are some conservatives who say,
00:30:17.660
you know what? Yeah, let's draft women, uh, feminists. They want to be like men. They, they,
00:30:22.420
they say they're just like us in every respect. Well, let's hold them to it then. So yeah, go ahead.
00:30:27.600
Send them out to the front lines. All these feminists who say, I can do anything a man does.
00:30:31.480
Okay. Yeah, well go ahead. Send them out. And I get that instinct, right? Fair is fair.
00:30:38.300
But you know what? My daughter, uh, isn't a crazy feminist and I don't want her to pay the price
00:30:45.000
for the sake of, uh, you know, hoisting feminists on their own petard, giving feminists a dose of
00:30:50.660
their own medicine or whatever. I don't want my, my daughter to get caught up in that. That's not fair
00:30:54.400
to my daughter. That's not fair to all the other, uh, women and girls who are not feminists and don't
00:31:02.020
go around claiming this. And even aside from that, more importantly, the objective here, you know,
00:31:10.020
is not to make some sort of point and we can't make the same mistake that the left is making
00:31:16.720
for feminists and the left. If they would support something like this, then they support it to make
00:31:25.360
a point to make sort of an ideological point. And we don't want to make the same mistake on the other
00:31:31.140
end. This is not about making a point. This is about what's best, right? Just what's the best
00:31:40.640
thing morally. What's the best thing from a, from a perspective of military strategy.
00:31:45.900
And from those two perspectives, obviously drafting women is not the best thing.
00:31:51.420
So thank you. Uh, thank you for your email. This is from Heidi. She says, hi Matt. I had an
00:31:57.140
interesting argument with a friend recently. She was arguing that sometimes it can be morally
00:32:01.860
acceptable for a person to steal. If someone is in a desperate situation, it can be morally okay
00:32:07.460
for them to steal as long as they are not physically hurting someone else. What do you think is stealing
00:32:11.600
objectively morally wrong or is it only wrong depending on the situation? All right. This is a,
00:32:18.820
this is a fascinating question. And I've, I've, at least to me, I've argued about this with people
00:32:24.620
before. Here's how I deal with it. I think I would say that, yes, it is objectively wrong,
00:32:31.680
always wrong to steal. Um, stealing by definition is wrong. Just like murder by definition is wrong.
00:32:38.360
However, killing by definition is not necessarily wrong. All murder is killing, but not all killing is
00:32:46.380
murder. Um, there are situations where it's morally okay, even morally laudable to kill in defense of
00:32:53.880
someone else in defense of yourself. So can the same distinction be made with stealing as in,
00:32:59.440
are there times when taking someone's stuff without permission is not actually stealing?
00:33:06.020
And I would say, uh, yes. So in a sense, I think you and your friend are both right that, um, maybe it's,
00:33:13.460
maybe I'm just inventing this distinction right now, but it's, I think it's a necessary distinction.
00:33:17.480
So let's look at an extreme example. Uh, I recently watched a, a really depressing,
00:33:23.160
but powerful movie called first, they killed my father. And it's set during, uh, the Khmer Rouge,
00:33:28.280
uh, regime in, uh, Khmer Rouge regime in, in, uh, in Cambodia, back when the communists were wiping
00:33:35.960
out, you know, 2 million people. And it follows one family focusing, especially on, on a young girl.
00:33:42.660
So like I said, it's a very depressing movie. So I don't even know if I can recommend it, but
00:33:46.440
powerful. So it focuses on this family who like so many other Cambodians were, were taken by the
00:33:52.540
government, thrown in prison camps. Um, eventually her whole family was killed and she was forced to
00:33:58.240
be a child soldier. But in the labor camps, the prisoners were forced to, among other things,
00:34:03.940
they were forced to work the fields and, um, and harvest crops and they were being starved the whole
00:34:09.600
time. So you see these scenes where people, sometimes kids are stealing, um, vegetables and
00:34:17.200
crops and trying to sneak them into their pockets or whatever, so they can eat it or, or take it home
00:34:21.440
to their family and share it so they don't starve to death. And if they were caught, they'd be beaten
00:34:25.260
or killed, um, for stealing. Now it's true that the crops didn't belong to them legally speaking,
00:34:32.800
but was it stealing? Well, no, I would say, of course it wasn't. They have every moral right to eat.
00:34:39.600
Uh, stealing in that case, uh, stealing in that case was not stealing. Another way of looking at it is
00:34:45.180
they're starving. Um, you have food, you have no moral right not to share your food, I think is the
00:34:57.920
way of looking at it. Your moral obligation is to share your food with someone who's starving.
00:35:02.920
Uh, and if you don't, they have a moral right to take it. I mean, provided you're not starving also.
00:35:12.120
Um, now this is a slippery slope, of course, this, this principle can be abused. Certainly just like
00:35:18.080
the principle that killing is, you know, the, the, the, there's a principle that killing can be
00:35:22.380
acceptable sometimes. Well, that's abused all the time. Uh, there have been millions of murders
00:35:27.460
have occurred throughout in the world throughout history, um, by people who claim that they were
00:35:33.000
killing for the right reason and they weren't. So the principle can be abused, but that doesn't mean
00:35:38.260
that, um, that doesn't negate the principle itself. So I think the point here is really about ownership.
00:35:44.700
Uh, those kids in the prison camp were within their moral rights to take some grain or some corn or
00:35:50.560
whatever, because at the end of the day, the owner of those crops is not really the owner. Um,
00:35:56.760
God owns everything, right? We're, we're just renting everything that we have. And so if someone
00:36:02.660
legitimately has a greater moral claim to something, then they have a divine claim to it and, and they
00:36:09.140
can take it in that case. There was a saint who, uh, who said that we're, I'm paraphrasing, but there was
00:36:16.860
a saint who said words to the effect of, um, if you have two coats in your closet, the second coat
00:36:22.460
doesn't belong to you because there's someone on the street, um, uh, freezing to death and the coat
00:36:28.600
belongs to, it's that person's coat, not yours. And you have to give it to them. Um, now that's
00:36:33.800
kind of an extreme way of looking at it, but there's some truth to it, isn't there?
00:36:39.500
Is this an argument for communism? No, of course not. Because I'm not, communism is the government
00:36:44.400
owns everything. I'm not saying that that's communism. That's not me. Um, my argument is
00:36:49.280
God owns everything and God entrusts what we own to us. And so that means that we do own it in a
00:36:58.260
very real earthly kind of sense, but not in a totally absolute sense. Um, so if you're walking
00:37:08.660
down the street and there's a guy freezing to death and you have an extra coat or something,
00:37:13.360
yeah, you do have a moral obligation to give it to him. Um, God didn't give you the ability to buy
00:37:20.920
multiple coats so that you could amass a collection while, um, other of his children, you know, die of
00:37:27.960
frostbite. So I think that's the, again, I mean, you know, it's just, there is this slippery slope.
00:37:34.760
And, uh, I think the extreme examples we talk about where stealing isn't really stealing, morally
00:37:40.660
speaking, you're not going to find very many of those situations in the modern United States,
00:37:48.380
but they do exist. They, they can happen. Um, so interesting question. All right. Um,
00:37:56.900
let's see, how much time do we have? All right. We'll, we'll do this one. I, I've, uh,
00:38:02.720
I keep wanting to get to it and then I, and then I run out of time. So this is from, uh, Delia or
00:38:07.900
Delia. Sorry. I'm, I don't know if I'm not pronouncing your name right. It says, I'm a big
00:38:11.860
fan of the show. I've been a fan of yours since your days on your own blog before the blaze
00:38:15.360
back with the alpaca grooming tips, good times. And I've been trying to get this question in front
00:38:20.560
of you since then. I'm a Christian woman, clearly pro-life. What would your advice and thoughts be
00:38:26.580
in those extremely rare cases where the pregnancy does in fact threaten the life of the mother
00:38:31.480
in terms of law? Sure. But, uh, more importantly, from a moral, from a more personal level,
00:38:36.700
like if you were advising a friend, I'm not referring to the situations you've touched on
00:38:40.360
already, such as an expectant mother who has cancer and treatments may harm or kill the child,
00:38:44.980
but that is a tragic choice situation. I'm referring to cases like an ectopic pregnancy
00:38:49.780
where the egg and plants in the fallopian tomb, uh, I tend to think very far ahead. And when I realized
00:38:56.700
that there is even a tiny chance that I would find myself in that situation, I felt extremely torn
00:39:01.040
up about it and I would like your thoughts on it. All right. Um, so ectopic pregnancy,
00:39:07.680
that's a legitimately hard case. Let me give some thoughts on it. For those who aren't familiar,
00:39:18.560
as she mentioned, an ectopic pregnancy is when a fertilized egg does not implant in the uterus,
00:39:23.800
but implants somewhere else. And, uh, and usually in the fallopian tube, although it could be,
00:39:28.880
you know, there, there are other options, which is why an ectopic pregnancy, uh, is, you know,
00:39:34.420
often also called a tubal pregnancy. And in that situation, obviously a pregnancy cannot go to term
00:39:41.040
in the fallopian tube. Obviously, um, the tragically, the pregnancy is doomed at that point for certain,
00:39:48.640
nothing, nothing, there is not going to be a birth. It will end on its way on its own one way or another
00:39:56.140
and soon. Um, so, and that's an important point because when people try to justify late-term abortion
00:40:04.460
based on life of the mother scenarios, they can't use ectopic pregnancy, uh, because you're not making
00:40:11.580
it to 28 weeks with an ectopic pregnancy. What will happen much earlier than that is that the tube will
00:40:17.100
burst. Um, if you don't do something about it, the tube will burst and, uh, and it could very well
00:40:24.360
kill the mother. If she doesn't get to the hospital in time, she could bleed out. Um, now I've never
00:40:32.880
spoken to anyone who thinks that the mother has a moral obligation to just wait for her tube to burst
00:40:39.940
and potentially bleed to death. Uh, I've, I've, maybe that opinion exists out there. I've never
00:40:46.420
encountered it myself. Um, I think that such a, such a course of action would be extremely imprudent
00:40:54.020
and possibly actually immoral because it's just so, in that case, the woman would be so reckless with
00:41:01.660
her own life. Uh, I mean, it would almost be suicide. So then the question is, what do you do? Um,
00:41:09.100
how do you deal with it? Well, I can tell you that the, the classic kind of answer that moral
00:41:15.940
theologians and philosophers and so on, you know, the super smart Christians who spend their time
00:41:21.220
thinking about these kinds of stuff, this kind of stuff, what they've come up with, um, the answer
00:41:25.920
hinges on the principle of double effect. And the principle of double effect states that it can be
00:41:32.460
morally permissible to engage in an otherwise legitimate act for the sake of some morally
00:41:39.300
legitimate outcome, even if that act will also have an unintended and otherwise undesirable and
00:41:47.580
even tragic outcome. Now, this is not really important point here. This is not ends justify the
00:41:55.080
means. That's not what this is because ends justify the means is when you commit an objectively evil act
00:42:00.760
in the hopes of a desirable outcome. So ends justify the means that's like spreading rumors about, uh,
00:42:09.140
some rival in the workplace to try to get them fired so that you can win the big promotion. That's
00:42:14.860
ends justify the means. That's just evil. That's wrong. Uh, the promotion itself may be good,
00:42:20.380
but what you did to achieve it was evil. Um, double effect is not like that. So how does this apply to
00:42:25.960
an ectopic pregnancy situation? Well, it's going to seem to be like splitting hairs at this point? And
00:42:33.100
it is, but when you get to these really complex moral dilemmas, um, that's what you're left with.
00:42:38.300
You're left with this sort of moral hair splitting and there's no way around it. So most Christian
00:42:43.900
philosophers agree that double effect would apply if you were to remove the fallopian tube where the,
00:42:51.520
um, where the pregnancy has happened. Um, and thus you would end the pregnancy obviously kill the,
00:42:58.340
the, the life in the process, but your intent was to save the mother and the act was removing the
00:43:05.780
fallopian tube, um, which will inevitably kill the baby, but that is an unintended result. Uh, it's a bad
00:43:16.160
result, but unintended. And you were not directly bringing about that, um, that death. Now the thing
00:43:23.760
is though, uh, a doctor probably is not going, if you're actually in now you, what you were saying
00:43:29.520
is, well, okay, what if you're actually in this situation? Um, well, if you're actually in this
00:43:33.820
situation, your doctor probably is not going to recommend removing a fallopian tube. Um, from a
00:43:39.160
purely medical perspective, that would be an unnecessary step. Uh, and that would be a step that will,
00:43:44.220
for one thing, severely hinder your ability to get pregnant in the future. Um, that's kind of like
00:43:49.580
a major surgery, which a doctor will say it's totally unnecessary. We don't need to do that.
00:43:54.600
So what they'll, what they'll want to do, what they'll suggest is that we'll, we'll give you a
00:43:58.720
drug, um, which will, uh, for lack of a better phrase, it will flush out the fallopian tube and,
00:44:06.100
um, and the pregnancy and, you know, and, and that will be it. But the drug is an abortion drug and
00:44:13.420
there's no way around it. It's an abortion drug that they'll want to give you, which is why from
00:44:17.580
what I've read, um, most Christian thinkers have said that it would be, it would not be morally
00:44:21.980
permissible to take the drug because then in that case you are directly attacking that life and, um,
00:44:29.900
and you can't do that. So double effect doesn't apply. I actually disagree, uh, or I'm not sure that
00:44:37.660
I do agree. I'll put it that way. I don't personally see why the principle of double effect
00:44:43.800
wouldn't be able to kick in even if you were to take the drug in that situation. Um, because it
00:44:49.840
seems to me that the intention is to save the mother and the act is to take a drug, which clears
00:44:58.320
out a blocked fallopian tube. The fact that a human life is part of what is blocking the fallopian tube
00:45:04.520
is, uh, is, you know, and, and it too will be, will be cleared out. That is an unintended consequence.
00:45:12.840
So it, it seems to me that that's morally, it's not very much different from just removing the
00:45:20.120
fallopian tube entirely is again, splitting hairs, but that's what we have to do. I just, I don't see
00:45:26.440
really a distinction between those two things because either way, you're obviously doing something
00:45:30.840
that will end that life. Um, and I think in both cases, you could argue that that obviously is not
00:45:39.680
the intention. We know that. Um, and the, the ending of the life is not, is not what you, you're not
00:45:48.900
directly doing that. It's not your, because it's not your direct intention. So I don't know. There you
00:45:55.840
go. It's, it's a, it's a difficult case. Um, the point here is that pro-lifers, here's the really
00:46:01.120
important point. Pro-lifers do not have a cavalier attitude about these kinds of things. Um, we don't
00:46:08.660
think that a woman has a responsibility to die for the sake of a doomed pregnancy, but these kinds of
00:46:15.760
situations where a pregnancy has to be, um, has to be ended in this way for the sake of the mother,
00:46:22.840
they are extremely rare. Um, they're almost always very early on in pregnancy.
00:46:30.160
And as I've said, it would never be necessary in the later stages of pregnancy in a late term
00:46:34.740
situation, because in that case, if you got to get the baby out, there are plenty of situations where
00:46:39.640
that might happen, but then you just take the baby out and there's a very good chance the baby
00:46:43.360
will survive. There's no reason to kill the baby ahead of time. So it's only really with this ectopic
00:46:47.700
pregnancy situation where you've got, um, this kind of dilemma and there's simply, if you find
00:46:56.200
yourself in that kind of position, there is simply no easy answer. And there's absolutely nothing you
00:47:04.060
can do that's going to result in that baby being born and surviving nothing. So, you know, those are
00:47:11.360
the choices that you're, that you're left with, but it's a very interesting, very difficult question.
00:47:15.020
Very, very interesting question. Um, so thank you for that email and I'll be interested to,
00:47:19.020
you know, uh, get to field your emails after the show to see what you all think about
00:47:23.540
the ectopic pregnancy situation. Uh, and I'll leave it there. I will, by the way, see you at CPAC
00:47:30.020
today. If you're going to be at CPAC, I'll be, I'll be wandering around. I'm not speaking or anything,
00:47:33.240
but I'll be wandering around the hallways. Maybe, um, maybe just shouting. I'll be shouting a speech
00:47:38.620
to random people as I walk maybe. So I'll see you there. Godspeed.
00:47:55.300
I'm Michael Knowles, host of the Michael Knowles show. President Trump walks away from the North
00:47:59.320
Korea summit in Vietnam. The anti-Trump crowd assails him, but walking away was actually possibly the
00:48:04.780
best outcome. We will discuss why then of course the mailbag, check it out at dailywire.com.