Ep. 318 - The Suicide Conspiracy Theory
Episode Stats
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Summary
Jeffrey Epstein was found dead in his Manhattan jail cell on Saturday at the age of 76. The cause of death has yet to be determined, but multiple bones were found in his neck, raising questions about the circumstances of his death.
Transcript
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Well, curiouser and curiouser. We get more and more strange details about the Epstein case every
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day, it seems. And here's the latest. Reading now from the Daily Wire's report, it says,
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an autopsy of convicted pedophile and alleged sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein reportedly found
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that the wealthy financier had multiple broken bones in his neck, which deepens the speculation
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surrounding his death last Saturday. Among the bones, this is the Washington Post now being
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quoted, among the bones broken in Epstein's neck was the hyoid bone, which in men is near the Adam's
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apple. Such breaks can occur in those who hang themselves, particularly if they're older,
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according to forensic experts and studies on the subject, but they are more common in victims of
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homicide by strangulation, the expert said. The New York Post reported on Monday that Epstein was found
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hanging in his lower Manhattan jail cell with a bed sheet wrapped around his neck and secured to the
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top of a bunk bed and apparently killed himself by kneeling toward the floor and strangling himself.
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The revelation about the broken bones that were found in Epstein's neck followed the revelation
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on Tuesday night that the two guards who were supposed to be monitoring him fell asleep for three hours
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and allegedly falsified prison records to cover up their actions.
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Okay. Now, I don't want to get too graphic here, but let's imagine this for a moment. Let's try to wrap
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our heads around it. The official preliminary story is that Epstein hung himself by, as I just read there,
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tying a bed sheet around his neck, tying the other end to a bunk bed, and then leaning forward on his knees.
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So, he was about six feet tall, 200 pounds. He obviously couldn't have jumped from the bunk bed to hang himself,
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but they're not claiming that. They're telling us that he leaned forward. This is already hard to imagine.
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I mean, just really, try to imagine for a second a 200-pound man trying to hang himself by leaning forward
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with a bed sheet around his neck. The body's natural reflex is to save itself.
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No matter how much you, in your mind, want to kill yourself, your body does not want that.
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And so, your body's going to just, there's a natural reflex there.
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I mean, that's one of the reasons why you can't kill yourself by just literally strangling yourself
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with your own bare hands. And this is why people usually hang themselves by jumping from a chair or
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something so that they're, you know, dangling there. Again, not to be gratuitous about it, but
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they won't be able to do anything to regain control of themselves and save themselves.
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The point is, to successfully kill yourself the way Epstein supposedly did would require just,
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I think, an immense amount of determination and effort for lack of a better term.
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But then you throw the broken bones in there. Bones, plural, not just one bone.
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There's been a lot of focus today on this, the one bone underneath the Adam's apple that's
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mentioned in the report. But it's not just that, but there are multiple bones broken in his neck.
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Now, you heard that this happens in a small minority of cases.
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I didn't read that part, actually. The Washington Post noted that varying studies
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of those who have committed suicide have found that 6% to 25% of them break the hyoid bone,
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which is one of the broken bones in Epstein's neck. So 6% to 25%.
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Well, that's just the one bone. It would be an even smaller percentage that break multiple bones.
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And keep in mind that most of those hangings, presumably, involve someone who was dangling,
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someone who jumped from something. But even in most of those cases, there aren't any broken bones.
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In this case, though, leaning forward with a bedsheet around his neck,
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I just, I don't see, I don't see how that's possible. I just, I don't see it.
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I suppose I can't say it's impossible, but it's, that's, that's a really hard thing to imagine.
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Now, let's take this and review all of the alleged information as we currently know it.
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And let's, let's, let's see what explanation as it stands right now seems to be the most reasonable.
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for more information. All right. So Epstein, um, so we have these mysterious broken bones in his neck.
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You add this revelation to reports that Epstein was taken off a suicide watch as, as we already knew.
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His cellmate was transferred out of his cell. The prison guards both simultaneously fell asleep,
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supposedly. Um, the records were falsified. And according to some reports that were shrieking
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heard from Epstein's cell, although it didn't specify when the shrieking was heard in relation
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to when the suicide happened, the alleged suicide happened. And, um, in fact, if we're tabulating
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strange details here in this case, I think the very fact that he killed himself is itself arguably
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strange. Now, as I said earlier in the week, you could easily see why somebody would kill
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themselves in this situation facing a life behind bars as a child rapist, especially in comparison
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to the life he was leading before private jets and private islands and everything else. Um,
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so you could, you could see that, but then on the other hand, he had all the leverage in the world,
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really. I mean, there are, um, there are people more empowered, powerful and important than him
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who he could have flipped on and leverage that for something. Plus he'd spent decades of his life
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compiling blackmail on people just for this very reason as an insurance policy
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for just this occasion. Then the occasion arises and he kills himself. I don't know.
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Yeah. You could say, well, it's hard to know what prison would do to a man. You know,
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if you'd never been to prison, it's hard to imagine how it changes you. Not that I've been,
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you know, I sound like Morgan Freeman and Shawshank Redemption. Uh, you can't imagine
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what prison would do to a man, but I mean, really you can't. So there there's that also it's possible,
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but, but still all of these things, it's, it's a cumulative effect. Now, when you look at all these
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factors together, you look at the totality of thing, it's beginning to seem to me that the suicide
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explanation is still possible, obviously, but it's beginning to look like the most implausible
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conspiracy theory. You know, I originally said that the idea that, that someone offed him
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was perfectly reasonable and plausible, but, but originally at the beginning of the week,
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anyway, based on what we knew at the time, it seemed like the most plausible explanation was
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the more banal one, which is that he really just killed himself and was enabled to do that
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by the incompetence of the government. But that was before we knew about the shrieking,
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about the guard supposedly falling asleep, about the falsification of records,
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and now the broken bones in the neck. And this to me, the broken bones in the neck to me is very,
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very significant. And if we're following Occam's razor, which says that the explanation,
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which requires the fewest number of strange coincidences, really the explanation that, um,
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requires you the fewest, uh, it requires the fewest number of additional explanations is probably
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correct. You have an explanation where there are a lot of other elements in that explanation that
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you also have to explain. And then you have another explanation that has fewer of those. Well,
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then that other one is probably correct. That's kind of how Occam's razor works. And according to that,
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it seems that not suicide, something other than suicide is beginning to appear to be the most
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plausible option. Uh, because the suicide explanation at this point requires a whole lot
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of coincidences. You know, it requires us to believe that a lot of different factors
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just sort of coincidentally all lined up with each other possible, but hard to believe,
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you know, in fact, if you had told me when this story came out that the prison guard,
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both the prison guards fell asleep for three hours, both of them, um,
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that, that was a big red flag to me. If you had told me that, well, no, they were there and,
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um, they were checking every 30 minutes like they're supposed to, but Epstein hung himself
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in between that 30 minute stretch. I would have found that a lot more plausible. It doesn't take
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30 minutes to hang yourself. I don't know how long it takes a couple of minutes, right? So if you had
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told me that, then I would say, Oh, you know, okay. But no, now you're saying they both fell asleep
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for three hours, both of them. That's, you know, that's, that's, that's, uh, that's tough.
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And then they falsified the records. I don't know, but you know, uh, my, my, my fear is that
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whatever happened, we're never going to find out for sure, especially with our illustrious media,
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which seems to be losing interest in this, this story. I mean, this to me is definitely the
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biggest story going on happening right now, uh, in America anyway, when you consider the
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implications, this should still be headline news. I mean, this should be leading the news
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broadcasts. It would seem, but it's not the media is already trying to move on from it.
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Um, and I think we all know why that is when you consider the political leanings of some of the
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people potentially who could have potentially been implicated by, uh, by Epstein. All right. Um,
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and, uh, you can look better in the process. Okay. Um, the website pink news is a prominent
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gay news site, uh, based in the UK. I believe they had an article in a video up yesterday
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celebrating the story of Mark and Caleb. Mark is 55 and Caleb is 22 and they've been in a quote
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unquote relationship for six years. And now they're, now they're getting married. Now I'll let you do the
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math on that. Caleb is 22. Mark is 55. They've been dating for six years.
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Dating again, quotes, just imagine the scare quotes around many of the words I'm saying
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here, dating relationship. Um, uh, because this discourse is not relationship and it's not dating.
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This is grooming and, and sexual abuse. This means that they started this, uh, interaction
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when Mark was a 49 year old man and Caleb was a minor. Now pink news has since taken down the,
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the video and the news article, but here's a screenshot for you. I'll show you, I'm sorry
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to subject you to this, but, uh, but there you go. There it is. Totally normal, right? Totally
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normal for a man in his fifties to be dating a boy who was in high school at the time when they met,
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um, uh, you know, a guy who even now looks to be about 12 and wears makeup. Totally normal,
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you know, for, for a grown man to be right. Completely normal. Nothing we could say about
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that. Well, no, it's not normal. Uh, and it's not okay, but the goal is to make this normal.
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And I've been warning about this for years. I keep, and I'll keep warning about it because I truly
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believe that the normalization of pedophilia is the next frontier for the left. We're already there.
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They're all, they're doing it right now. That's what this is. Not in those words. Okay. They're
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never going to get to a point. There will never be a point where the left is saying, yeah, pedophilia
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is okay. They're going to use different words. That's what they always do. But these kinds of
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stories here, they're the perfect tool for the normalizers of this kind of thing, because
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technically, uh, and I was informed of this when I was posting about it yesterday on Twitter,
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some people say, well, you know, technically this is legal, but I mean, you put up the picture
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again, let's, let's watch, let's look at that picture one more time. Um, technically you see
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this right here, technically is legal. Technically, apparently they started quote dating when Caleb
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had reached the age of consent, technically legal, legal. Now we all know though, that even
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if that's technically legal, it's still sick and gross and morally deranged and evil and,
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and just awful. We know that. We also know that if you're a 49 year old man, sexually attracted
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to 16 year old boys who look about 10, that probably means that your attractions, well,
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it's unlikely that your sexual attraction just automatically happens to cut off at the age
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of, uh, at the legal age of consent. You know, if you're a 49 year old man attracted to 16 year
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old boys, it's pretty unlikely that, oh, 15, 14 year old boys. Oh, no way. 13. No. If your
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attractions go in that direction and that young, um, it, it, it probably extends further than the
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legal age of consent is what I'm saying. So this kind of story, the reason why pink news presented
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it to us in such a happy and cheerful way is that it moves society in the direction of seeing these
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kinds of things as normal and okay. Of course, pink news is not going to show us a story
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you know, about a, about a 50 year old man in a quote unquote relationship with an eight year old
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boy. They're not going to do that. Um, even if the people who run that site would personally have
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no problem with that, uh, there's, there's still not going to show us that, but they're going to
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do something like this where they could say it's legal. It's just like the video I played earlier
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in the week of a drag queen at a drag queen story hour, teaching kids how to twerk, technically legal,
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I guess. Uh, or the thing a few weeks ago of, of little kids at a story hour who were crawling
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on a drag queen while he laid on the ground and little children were crawling on him or the thing
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where the, uh, the 11 year old drag queen danced at a gay bar while grown men threw money at him.
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All of that technically legal. It shouldn't be by the way, it definitely should not be legal for a
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child to dance at a gay bar. Uh, I don't think it should be legal for a drag queen to go to a bunch
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of kids and start twerking for them. I, I think that's sexual harassment of children. That should
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be illegal too, but it's not apparently. So the normalizers can always hide behind that and say,
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it's legal, man. Yeah. So what? It doesn't change the fact that it's evil
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and that doesn't change what, what they're trying to condition us for. Um, and I, I would,
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when we talk about normalizing of, of pedophilia and child sexual abuse, um, the biggest example,
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which I haven't, I haven't even mentioned is, is, is the very fact that we're told that three-year-old
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children can choose their own gender. You know, the fact that we have eight-year-old quote unquote
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transgenders, that's, that's part of this too, because what are we saying? We're saying, oh,
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well, kids are old enough to make these kinds of decisions for themselves. If an eight-year-old boy
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is old enough to decide his own gender, then, uh, then, you know, the next thing we're going to be
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told eventually is that eight-year-old boys are also old enough to consent to sexual relationships.
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We need to, I mean, the main thing I think that has hampered the conservative movement for years
00:18:38.740
now is an inability among so many of us to see where things are headed, which isn't to say that
00:18:46.240
we all need to be prophets. Uh, I'm certainly not. And we don't need to see the future, but we should
00:18:53.720
have a sense. We should be able to look at where we are now and, and, and we should have an intuition
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of where, what's going to happen next. And I think for a long time, many conservatives, especially the
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so-called thought leaders, uh, at the head of the conservative movement movement have not been very
00:19:10.680
good at that. And so we're constantly being blindsided by things like this. The whole transgender
00:19:18.480
thing kind of blindsided the conservative movement, where it seemed like all of a sudden they're saying
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that, you know, everyone's lost their sense of what a man or woman is and people can choose their
00:19:27.600
own gender. And, and, uh, I think for a long time, conservatives were kind of fumbling around like,
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what's going on? How did this happen? Well, if you've been paying attention, that shouldn't have
00:19:35.240
surprised you. So 10 years from now, you know, 10 years from now, I don't want to hear conservatives
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throwing their hands up and say, what's happening? How did this happen? Now that pedophilia is totally
00:19:47.300
normal and okay. And you have, you even have Democrats openly arguing to legalize it.
00:19:51.500
Don't be surprised. Especially if you're not saying anything about it now, don't act surprised
00:19:59.140
when it actually happens. All right. Uh, before we go to emails, uh, at mattwalshowatgmail.com's
00:20:08.400
email address, before we do that, I wanted to make mention of this as well. Um, and I've had this on
00:20:13.560
the, on deck to talk about for a few days now, Marty Sampson, who is, uh, well, was, I guess,
00:20:19.980
a songwriter for the Christian band Hillsong United, very popular Christian band recently
00:20:25.880
announced that he's losing his faith. Uh, he's questioning things. He's beginning to suspect.
00:20:29.860
It seems that Christianity is false, that Jesus is not the Messiah, that I guess God doesn't exist.
00:20:35.260
Um, and this is just the latest prominent Christian to leave the faith or, or to consider leaving the
00:20:41.460
faith in the last few months. That's why this is sort of, um, you know, to have one guy who comes out
00:20:47.180
and says, this is not terribly shocking, but this is, this is part of the pattern now.
00:20:52.740
Um, it's really becoming a trend where you've got prominent pastors. There was the guy who wrote the,
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uh, why I kissed dating goodbye. What was his name? Joshua Harris. I believe he, he, he left the faith.
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So there'd been a number in the last few months. And now we have Marty Sampson.
00:21:09.760
Here's let me read part of what he said. He posted this to Instagram. He deleted the post,
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which I'm, I am somewhat surprised he deleted it because you said it. We all know it. I don't
00:21:21.040
know what deleting it's going to do. But, um, so he said in part, he said, time for some real talk.
00:21:26.140
I'm genuinely, I'm genuinely losing my faith and it doesn't bother me. Like what bothers me now is
00:21:30.740
nothing. I am so happy now. So at peace with the world, it's crazy. This is a soapbox moment. So here I
00:21:37.000
go, uh, the grammar's here a little bad. So little, the grammar here is a little tough. So I'm,
00:21:44.440
I'm going to stumble through this. Okay. Um, how many, how many preachers fall? Many. No one talks
00:21:50.880
about it. How many miracles happen? Not many. No one talks about it. Why is the Bible full of
00:21:56.400
contradictions? No one talks about it. How can God be love yet send 4 billion people to a place all
00:22:03.260
because all because they don't believe a place. I assume he's talking about help. No one talks about
00:22:08.880
it. Christians can be the most judgmental people on the planet. They can also be some of the most
00:22:13.020
beautiful and loving people, but it's not for me. I am not in anymore. I want genuine truth. Not the,
00:22:19.660
I just believe it kind of truth. Science keeps piercing the truth of every religion. Lots of things help
00:22:24.860
people change their lives. Not just one version of God got so much more to say, but for me, I'm keeping
00:22:29.980
it real. Unfollow if you want. I've never been about living my life for others. Okay. Now a lot
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of what he says, um, and I think, uh, since that post, he's, he's posted other things saying that,
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you know, he hasn't left the faith, but he's struggling and he's looking into various apologists
00:22:47.520
and so on. Um, now a lot of, a lot of what he's, of what he says, no one talks about. In fact,
00:22:56.560
we do talk about those things. I know I do. And I have on this show, the failure of, of pastors
00:23:01.960
were the first thing that he mentioned said pastors fall. I assume he means all these various scandals
00:23:06.340
involving pastors and priests, um, and other Christian leaders. That is a regular topic of
00:23:12.840
conversation among many Christians. It's something I've talked about many times. So I think that's
00:23:17.620
just not true that we don't talk about those things. Alleged Bible contradictions. Well, with that,
00:23:23.300
I think I actually agree with him that, that, um, that I think there isn't a lot of talk about,
00:23:27.880
about that. Um, it's not something that pastors generally address from the pulpit. It's not
00:23:32.860
something that Christians generally will talk about in my experience. If you're into apologetics and you
00:23:37.740
like reading apologetics and, and, and, and listening to theologians and apologists as they talk about
00:23:43.940
these things, well then sure. Then you've, you've heard these, those kinds of matters discussed and
00:23:48.140
addressed and explained, but, um, not on a popular level. And most Christians, even though I think
00:23:54.240
they should, most Christians aren't really reading apologetics and, and they're not really into
00:24:00.440
theology. And so they're getting, their, their helping of Christianity is going to come from their
00:24:07.300
church, from their pastor, from the people around them on the more popular sort of level. And on that
00:24:13.380
level, I think that there is a failure to address some of this stuff, uh, including the issues with
00:24:19.300
the Bible. Um, for example, why aren't pastors getting up on the pulpit? And I, and maybe you'll,
00:24:28.120
I'm sure I'll get emails, people saying, Oh, my pastor does talk about it. Okay. Well then,
00:24:31.280
but I think your pastor is an exception for the most part. Why aren't, why aren't pastors getting up
00:24:36.740
on the pulpit and talking through, uh, say the infancy narratives and talking about the differences
00:24:43.580
and challenges there and, and how to reconcile them? Because if you don't talk about it now, I
00:24:49.400
know the infancy narratives in the Bible are talked about from the pulpit quite a bit, especially around
00:24:53.840
Christmas time. But usually what happens is that the pastor or priest is up there and he's, and he's
00:24:58.400
just giving you the sort of standard story of Jesus that we're all familiar with, which is a
00:25:02.520
harmonization of Luke and Matthew. What you don't usually hear is a pastor get up and say, okay,
00:25:07.240
this is what Luke says. Here's what Matthew says. Let's, you know, here's, here are the differences.
00:25:12.200
Let's talk through this. The fact is, uh, you know, Matthew and Luke tell, seem to tell wildly
00:25:19.200
divergent stories. Um, Luke has the Holy family going to Bethlehem for a census. Matthew has them
00:25:26.300
already living there to begin the narrative. Luke has them returning home after a visit from the
00:25:31.840
shepherds and then going to the present, uh, Jesus in the temple. Then he goes, they go home,
00:25:36.500
um, to Nazareth. Matthew makes room for a years long flight to Egypt to escape the slaughter of
00:25:44.300
the innocents in Bethlehem, an event that Luke never mentions. And then Matthew says that they were going
00:25:48.660
to go back to Bethlehem, implying that that was their home originally, but then they decided to go
00:25:52.960
instead to Nazareth when, uh, Joseph was warned in a dream that, you know, it wouldn't be safe to go
00:25:58.580
back there. So, and, and so on and so on. Now I think there are ways of dealing with this,
00:26:03.180
uh, ways of, of understanding it. But the point is I, I had to go on my own and first discover these
00:26:11.580
difficulties and then hunt down answers to them. And it, and it had, you know, when I've struggled
00:26:19.340
with some of the stuff or looked at it, looked into it, I've had the experience of trying to talk to
00:26:23.840
other Christians about it. And either they have no idea because they've never studied this.
00:26:28.380
Yeah. I can't tell you how many Christians don't actually know the story of Jesus's birth.
00:26:34.440
And they couldn't tell you what Luke says, as opposed to what Matthew says.
00:26:38.940
That's, I mean, that's pitiful. And I admit that I was in that camp for a long time
00:26:42.780
because I hadn't actually sat down myself and said, let me study this myself rather than just
00:26:49.320
taking whatever version is given to me by someone else. It's, it's, it's pathetic.
00:26:55.680
Um, so there are, there are ways of, of, of going through this, but I think that these are issues
00:27:07.200
that should be addressed head on from the pulpit. These are not issues that we should be afraid of.
00:27:13.000
Um, so what, what Samson is saying here, I think we should take it more seriously than a lot of
00:27:19.940
Christians seem to be. Also, you know, I'll just say this. I've been watching the reaction among
00:27:26.660
Christians to the, to this, you know, latest Christian leader questioning his faith and the
00:27:30.860
reaction among some Christians, unfortunately, very loud ones, not all of them, probably not the
00:27:35.420
majority, but, but some has been, in my opinion, horrible, you know, screaming at the guy that he was
00:27:42.480
never a true Christian, that he's an apostate, et cetera, et cetera. That's not the right response
00:27:47.100
here. All you're going to do is scare him away forever. When you react to him, I mean, what do
00:27:51.420
you think when someone says, look, I'm really struggling, you know, I'm questioning these
00:27:56.160
things and you say, ah, you, then you were never a real Christian to begin with. Get out of here.
00:27:59.940
Like, what do you, how, what do you think that's going to accomplish? It makes you feel better
00:28:05.060
because he had a temper tantrum, but is that going to help save his soul? Especially because he didn't
00:28:11.100
say exactly that he's leaving Christianity. He said he was having doubts, serious doubts.
00:28:15.820
He was, he was struggling. His faith is dwindling. Um, and, uh, I mean, he claimed that he was at
00:28:22.440
peace and happy, but I, that, that, that, that's, I don't really believe that, um, you know, to have
00:28:29.060
your whole world upside down and questioning the fundamental truths that you, that you were raised
00:28:34.200
on. I mean, there's no way you're happy with that. That's not, you don't get happiness out of that.
00:28:37.480
That's a, this is obviously someone who's in a lot of emotional turmoil. The guy opened up,
00:28:41.420
he was honest about his struggles. And our response to that is what, to accuse him, to yell at him,
00:28:46.340
to get angry, try to invalidate everything he's saying as if there's no validity to it at all,
00:28:51.040
as if he's, as if, as if he's just imagining it, which is what some, I, I, you know, I've read a few
00:28:55.980
more lengthy responses to this Marty Sampson thing from some, you know, supposed Christian,
00:29:00.820
you know, leaders and, and, and apologists. And some of it has been Bible contradictions.
00:29:05.700
What are you talking about? That's ridiculous. If you knew the Bible, you would know that there
00:29:09.180
are no contradictions, you idiot. I mean, paraphrasing, but that's kind of been the
00:29:12.500
reaction. That's not right. Um, and what he's saying, you know, some of these issues here in
00:29:17.920
the Bible, it's, it's, it's, it's not crazy to notice them. There are some real serious issues that,
00:29:24.520
that are very difficult to understand. And it's not as simple as, oh yeah, well, you know,
00:29:30.180
you can't just wave it off. I mean, you, and there have been, you could spend your whole life
00:29:35.780
studying just the, the, these issues with the infancy narratives, which, which some people have,
00:29:40.240
you could write, I mean, whole volumes have been written about it. That's how complex the issue is.
00:29:46.760
So when someone says, you know, man, I'm struggling with this, I really, to wave it off and say,
00:29:52.060
what are you talking about? You can't see how it fits together. You idiot. That's not the right,
00:29:57.340
not the right response. I think when someone opens up like this and is honest about their
00:30:01.420
thought process, our response should be, okay, thank you for being honest. Let's talk about it.
00:30:06.520
Let's talk through this because, um, I'll tell you this. If someone, if people are shouted at
00:30:11.960
for opening up about their doubts and their issues, they're going to stop opening up and instead they're
00:30:17.980
just going to drift away. You know, if, if that's the reaction they get, I mean, I think that's probably
00:30:23.460
why he took down the Instagram post because the reaction was so hostile.
00:30:27.340
And so he, but then what's going to happen? He's just going to say, you know what? Screw
00:30:30.460
these people then in that case, I can't talk to them. I can't be honest with them.
00:30:35.600
I think as, as Christians, as Christians, our religion cannot function like a cult.
00:30:42.960
I mean, that, that's the accusation to hear from atheists is that we're a bunch of cultists.
00:30:47.380
Well, we're not. I mean, some, by some definitions of cult, that technically every religion is a
00:30:54.680
cult by some definite, but you know, in the pejorative sense, when they, when, when, when
00:30:58.800
someone says, oh, you're a cult, what they mean is just a bunch of mindless drones. You're being,
00:31:03.120
you know, you're, you're brainwashed, um, and all that kind of stuff. And that of course is not
00:31:08.960
true fundamentally about Christianity, but it is true that some Christians do operate that way
00:31:14.360
where they don't, you know, questioning is not welcome. If you have any doubts, then you're,
00:31:21.800
you're, you're screamed at for them. Um, people who, you know, stray are, are treated like the enemy.
00:31:29.740
I mean, there is some of that. And then also the, the hesitancy of a lot of pastors to address some
00:31:37.360
of these theological issues head on from the pulpit, like the Bible, you know, like the difficulties with
00:31:43.540
the Bible and so on that. The problem is if you don't address it and you're not upfront. Um,
00:31:51.700
and then, so a lot of people just don't even know that these issues exist. Well, when they go on their
00:31:57.000
own and discover the issues, they're going to feel like they were lied to. They're going to feel like
00:32:02.380
you were keeping a secret. And then they're going to start to feel like, oh, I was, I was, you know,
00:32:08.040
they're going to start to feel like maybe someone from Scientology who wakes up one day and realizes
00:32:12.200
this stuff is crazy. That's how they're going to feel. If you're not upfront about it.
00:32:18.220
Um, he, he brings up the issue of, of, uh, you know, a loving God sending people to hell.
00:32:22.960
Well, again, I mean, this of course is, he's certainly not the first person to raise this
00:32:26.880
issue. Obviously people talk about it, but this is another one in my experience. That is not the
00:32:33.400
kind of issue that pastors will generally talk about from the pulpit. They're not going to talk
00:32:39.700
about that. They're not going to talk about things like how could God allow children to
00:32:44.140
die of cancer? You know, things like that. Yeah, it's discussed, but I think sort of out
00:32:49.560
on the peripherals. And if you want to engage in a discussion like that or to get those answers,
00:32:55.520
you have to really pursue them because you're not going to get it on the mainstream level.
00:33:01.880
What you're going to get in a lot of churches is just shallow surface level talking points,
00:33:08.220
self-help, life advice, that kind of thing. You're not going to get these deeper, more complex
00:33:15.400
discussions where these really difficult issues are faced head on. And I think that's a huge mistake.
00:33:22.960
And I think that's one of the reasons why people like Marty Sampson end up leaving.
00:33:33.400
So we should all pray for him. All right, mattwalshowatgmail.com, mattwalshowatgmail.com.
00:33:41.180
This is from Arthur, says, I've lost all my respect for you as a person. Frodo from Lord of the Rings
00:33:45.740
is a hobbit, not a dwarf, which you incorrectly identified on yesterday's show. I demand that
00:33:50.680
you apologize for your clear prejudice against hobbits, that you recant your pro-dwarf extremism,
00:33:55.160
that you denounce elves for existing. You know, Arthur, I've gotten so many emails from people
00:34:00.900
scolding me because I incorrectly said that Frodo is a dwarf. And of course, I know that Frodo is a
00:34:08.640
hobbit. Okay? I am an expert on Lord of the Rings. Just because I misspoke doesn't mean I'm not an
00:34:14.680
expert. So you don't need to lecture me. I mean, there are so many great scenes from Lord of the Rings.
00:34:19.740
You know, I can't even, I couldn't even begin to tell you my favorite, but one of my favorites,
00:34:25.100
I really liked that scene when Frodo was fighting Voldemort in the Millennium Falcon. But then Captain
00:34:32.140
Kirk comes in and he has his lightsaber. But then the Hulk is there and punches him and he knocks him
00:34:38.000
into Batman. That was a great scene. One of the classics. Just great, great stuff there.
00:34:45.980
All right. This is from Nicholas. Hi, Matt. Nick B from Denver. I understand the vegetarian argument.
00:34:53.660
However, it is absurd when you think about it. Two weeks ago, I was camping slash fly fishing
00:34:58.080
on a remote mountain lake with my wife. There were thousands of mosquitoes everywhere and more
00:35:04.120
dragonflies than I've ever seen in one place eating them. Each dragonfly can eat hundreds of
00:35:08.400
mosquitoes per day. While cleaning our fish, I checked their bellies and they had dozens of insects in
00:35:12.480
them as well. And when I removed my waders, I found hundreds of larvae around my boots. The fish were
00:35:20.440
eating them as well. The point is between fish, birds and insects, the amount of life ended at this
00:35:27.940
single remote mountain lake down to the microscopic level is on an unfathomable scale every day.
00:35:33.000
I thought of Buddhists who wouldn't harm a fly, probably only for that fly to get eaten in 20 minutes
00:35:38.280
later by a bird. A single cow has 500 pounds of meat on it. That's 2,000 quarter pounders.
00:35:44.660
When they abstain from eating meat, it has virtually no impact on anything other than their own feeling
00:35:48.800
of self-righteousness. It has no impact on life or the environment or the planet. Even if all humans
00:35:53.920
gave up eating meat, it would not change the way life works. One last point about bringing kids into
00:35:57.760
the world, being bad for the environment. What is the purpose of the environment or the planet
00:36:00.900
without sentient life? Without human beings, there's only an endless circle of death on the planet,
00:36:04.800
doomed to be consumed by the sun eventually. And I agree with you there. And the idea
00:36:08.200
that we shouldn't have kids because it's bad for the environment, there's nothing redeeming about
00:36:17.800
that argument at all. But the vegetarian argument, as I said yesterday when someone wrote in and was
00:36:24.040
mad that I'm always so dismissive of the vegetarian argument, I said that I don't think it's a crazy
00:36:31.680
argument, the idea that we shouldn't eat meat. I don't agree with it. And I made a similar point
00:36:38.100
to the one that you just made, which is that this is part of the cycle of life and animals kill each
00:36:41.460
other all the time. And if you're saying that we are animals ourselves, that's what vegetarians
00:36:46.040
often say. They say, well, we have no right to go around killing animals. We're not better than
00:36:50.620
them. Well, I happen to disagree with that. I think we are better than them and superior to them.
00:36:54.260
But if it's true that we're not, then we're just part of that cycle and why shouldn't we engage in it?
00:36:59.740
To blame a human for eating a cow would be just as absurd as blaming a lion for eating a gazelle.
00:37:04.780
So I agree with you there. And no matter if you're looking at it from an evolutionary,
00:37:09.760
Darwinistic, materialistic perspective or theological, theist perspective, either way,
00:37:15.140
it seems like we were made or we evolved to eat meat. And so that's fine.
00:37:22.620
But I think a vegetarian would respond. And as I said, it's not a crazy response to say that, okay,
00:37:29.980
but yeah, there's a difference between killing an insect or even a fish and killing, say, a cow or pig.
00:37:42.760
And it all comes down to the ability, an animal's ability to suffer. And if these are
00:37:49.920
beings that have some sort of internal life, some sort of consciousness, and they're able to suffer,
00:37:58.540
then it's, then we shouldn't kill them. And I think that's, I think that would be the vegetarian
00:38:02.480
argument. They would say, well, I think we all know that a mosquito is not capable of those kind
00:38:06.120
of thought processes. However, you know, a pig or a cow probably is. And so, and so, you know,
00:38:13.300
how do you square that? And I also think there's, there's also a, there's a, there's a, an inconsistency
00:38:20.340
here because most people who say it's okay to eat meat, we would be horrified if someone went and shot a
00:38:27.420
dog, unless the dog is being put down because it was suffering, but to kill a dog, certainly kill
00:38:31.840
and eat a dog. If someone were to kill and eat their own dog and they weren't starving, but they
00:38:36.620
just felt like having it for dinner because they were curious about how it tastes or something,
00:38:40.580
we would all be horrified by that. But what's really the difference between a, between a dog
00:38:45.940
and a cow? I don't know. I can't really, what, why really objectively is it wrong to kill a dog,
00:38:51.980
but not a cow? I know subjectively we tend to bond more with dogs than cows, but as far as
00:38:57.100
the dog and cow itself, their ability to suffer, their ability to feel things and so on. Are we
00:39:03.400
sure that the, you know, the dog really, I don't know. So there is, that's what I'm saying. I think
00:39:07.720
there is sort of an inconsistency. I haven't worked it out completely, but I guess I just, it's not an
00:39:13.480
issue that I care overly much about. I don't spend a lot of time thinking about it. And at the end of the
00:39:19.080
day, I think it, as I said, it's perfectly fine to eat animals. Although, um, as I said yesterday,
00:39:25.640
when you talk about factory farming and when you talk about basically producing animals just so we
00:39:31.100
can eat them and, and, you know, they spend their whole life basically on a, on a, on an assembly
00:39:35.620
line, um, you know, cooped up and cramped and everything. I think some of the stuff you hear about
00:39:40.960
factory farming is probably exaggerated, but, uh, it, it, it isn't all exaggerated. Um, and it does seem
00:39:46.560
like rather a miserable life to be, you know, a pig living in a slaughterhouse, right? So that
00:39:53.660
becomes more difficult, I think also to, um, to justify what you're talking about here, Nick is,
00:39:59.980
you know, you're out in nature, you're, you're fishing, you're camping, you know, it's a very
00:40:03.780
sort of natural, you're in nature, you're part of nature, right? So that's, it's, it's much easier
00:40:09.560
to justify killing animals in that environment as you are sort of part of that circle of life.
00:40:14.200
But, but when you think of it more as where we are just producing animals to kill them and that's
00:40:20.660
the only point and we have no concern for their suffering or anything, then I don't know, it
00:40:24.420
becomes harder to justify it. So, uh, but I will continue to eat meat because it tastes good.
00:40:33.680
That's my, that's my moral argument. It's not good, but that's it. Listen, we can't all,
00:40:39.680
I try to be consistent intellectually, but we all have inconsistencies. And, uh, this is one of mine.
00:40:46.140
I admit it. You asked me to give up hamburgers. I just can't do it. I can't. It's as simple as that.
00:40:54.200
You know, I'm sorry for the cows that they happen to be so delicious and so slow and so dumb.
00:41:01.480
I am sorry for them. You know, I'm glad that I'm not one, but, uh, what can I do?
00:41:08.660
All right. We will, with that very intelligent argument on my part, we will leave it there.
00:41:13.920
Thanks everybody for watching and listening. Have a great day. Godspeed.
00:41:16.900
Hey everyone. It's Andrew Klavan, host of the Andrew Klavan show. So now we hear there was
00:41:33.900
shrieking coming from Jeffrey Epstein's cell before he died. And sources say he suffered
00:41:39.260
injuries more indicative of strangulation than suicide. But we can trust our authorities and
00:41:45.160
elites to get to the bottom of this, right? Right. We'll talk about it on the Andrew Klavan show.