Ep. 421 - The Collapse Of Identity Politics
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Summary
Trump is now out of office, and we can finally move on from the impeachment process. I talk about why I don t think Mitt Romney is a hero, and why the accusation that he was a coward or a traitor is preposterous. I also talk about a new app I'm using to help me keep track of what I'm doing and where I'm going.
Transcript
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Welcome into the show, everybody. I have to say I'm glad that this impeachment saga is over. I
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think I probably speak for lots of people right now. And I put so much effort into covering
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the impeachment thing on my show that it was getting exhausting, and that's why I'm grateful.
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And by so much effort, I mean that I almost completely ignored it. I mean I put in almost
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zero effort in covering it, which I actually consider to be perhaps my greatest professional
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achievement, ignoring impeachment this entire time, and the greatest kindness that I could
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have possibly bestowed upon you, the audience. So you're welcome for that. Trump is now acquitted,
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of course, as a result that was absolutely ensured from the very beginning of this extremely pointless
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spectacle. The only person to vote for conviction, of course, was Mitt Romney. The only person in
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Trump's party to vote for conviction, I should say, was Mitt Romney, along with every single Democrat.
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A decision by Romney that I don't personally find especially objectionable. I know that I'm
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somewhat, maybe not entirely alone, but I know probably most people don't feel that way, at least
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on the right. I think Mitt Romney did what he thought was the right thing to do, and that's what
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he's supposed to do. He's supposed to follow your own conscience and judge these things according to
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your own, according to your own judgment. The idea that he did it for some self-serving reason
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is, I think, plainly ridiculous, even though I disagree with him. But considering he probably
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guaranteed he's going to be voted out of office, and he's now persona non grata in his own party,
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I'm not saying that makes him a hero. So I think we have two versions of Mitt Romney that are being
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put forward now by either side. You have Mitt Romney, the scum, scoundrel, coward, traitor. And
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then you have Mitt Romney, the knight in shining armor, the hero, and that's coming from the left.
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And of course, the irony here is that these are the very same people that when he was running for
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president in 2012, said that he was racist and sexist with his binders full of women, and so on
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and so forth. So we know that that's hypocritical, and we know that it'll change on a dime the moment
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that Mitt Romney does something they don't like. So we understand all of that. My point, though, is
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I don't really think he's either of those things. I don't think he's a hero, but the accusation that
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he's a coward or an opportunist is preposterous, unless I completely misunderstand what the word
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opportunism means, because I don't know what the opportunity is here for him, other than
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he's ruined his own, his own, at least the latest iteration of his political career.
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In any case, that's the end of it, and I'm very happy for it to be over, and we can all move on
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as I will. And there's a lot to discuss today, but before I do, I want to tell you about my friends
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Noom's been great for me personally, and the app has been a lifesaver because my health goals have
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really been sort of broad in that I want to get healthier. I want to feel healthier. It's very
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important. And one of my challenges in that regard has always been keeping track and keeping
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organized, keeping track of what I'm doing. And Noom has helped me with that a lot. Based in
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I think if you can manage to do that, if you could just form good, healthy habits, then
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it's almost game, set, match right there. And that's the biggest challenge, is getting out of
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those bad habits into good ones. And that's why you need Noom. You don't have to change it all in
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one day. Small steps make big progress. Sign up for your trial today at Noom, N-O-O-M dot com slash
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N-O-O-M dot com slash Walsh. Well, if we could go back to very ancient history here, way back to a
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period of history that archaeologists are just now discovering and uncovering and learning about,
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that would be this past Tuesday, the State of the Union address. During his State of the Union
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address on Tuesday night, President Trump called for a ban on late-term abortions. Played that clip
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yesterday on the show. This plea was made all the more vivid and powerful by the presence of a two-year-old
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girl in the audience who was born at 22 weeks gestation. And I thought that was a great illustration
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of what we're talking about here. When we're talking about late-term abortions, we're talking
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about aborting this child who was born at 22 weeks, which is now viable. Medical advances have
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made pregnancies, quote, viable well before the third trimester. And there's no reason to think
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that this trend toward early and earlier viability won't continue. This is yet another example of the
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way that pro-abortion people are anti-science and anti-medical advancement. Of course, the argument
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for banning late-term abortion is morally unassailable. There is no clump of cells dodge
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available to the defender of this practice. Babies in the second trimester are at least the size of an
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adult's hand. So we're not talking about a microscopic embryo. Okay, we're talking about a child, you know,
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that's at least that long. And despite what pro-aborts would like to imagine, like us to imagine,
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of this microscopic, tiny, infinitesimal little thing, no. And midway through the second trimester,
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they could be safely delivered with all of their limbs intact and other recognizable human features.
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Abortions at this stage are, therefore, necessarily brutal.
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The cervix is, and this, as I say, it's brutal, so I'm, I, some content warning here, but I think
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it's important for us to understand exactly how these, these, these procedures, these quote
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procedures are done. So I'm going to explain it, if you don't already know. And if you don't want to
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hear an explanation, you're welcome to mute the show for the next minute. The cervix is pried open,
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the amniotic fluid around the child is sucked out. The victim, the child, is then ripped apart
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limb by limb with something called a sofa clamp, which is a, which is a long clamp, almost looks
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like a long pair of pliers with, with a sharpened edge, with little teeth that allow it to attach
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itself to the limbs of the child and the child is ripped apart while still alive. Okay. Third,
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that's second trimester. This is what Donald Trump says we should ban. Third trimester abortions,
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even more barbaric. A poison needle is stabbed through the mother's abdomen into the baby's skull.
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Now, humans at this stage obviously have fully developed, fully functioning nervous systems.
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So this is agonizingly painful for the child. Just imagine how it would feel for you to be stabbed
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in the head with a poison needle. That's how it would feel for the child. There's no effort made
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whatsoever to limit the child's suffering because such efforts would acknowledge the humanity of,
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or at least the life of the child, which is something the abortion industry can't do.
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And then the mother, and after the child dies, the mother is forced to carry the, the dead baby
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around in her womb for two days, at which point she will deliver the corpse. Um, and they, they hope
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in the abortion office, but, uh, oftentimes it ends up, ends up happening in a bathroom at a hotel
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or something where they're staying. In some cases though, the baby survives the initial injection
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and so has to be given another. Now I want you to think about the pain that child is in for the two
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days after he's been stabbed with the poison needle, still alive, suffering in agony, and then two
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days later, poisoned again. Unless of course you have a Gosnell situation, in which case the baby
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would just be delivered alive and then killed at that point, which by the way is what Ralph Northam
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was famously, infamously advocating for. I describe all of that because number one, this is happening
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in the world and we should know about it. It's happening in our country, not just the world.
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And I don't think we have the right to turn away from it and say, oh, I don't want to hear about
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that. That's, that's hard to hear. Yeah, it is hard to hear. That's the point. How hard do you think
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it is to go through for the child? But also this is what when, this is what Donald Trump is trying
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to ban. But the abortion industry's minions in the media can't accept any restrictions on abortion
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at all. And lacking any ethically sound argument in favor of literally tearing viable children apart
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limb from limb, they resort to lies that are so, so absolutely shameless that they'd be funny if not
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for the subject matter. In response to Trump's comments last night, a number of abortion advocates
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went on social media, or two nights ago rather, went on social media and, and, and spread the,
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the bizarre claim that there's no such thing as late-term abortion. Late-term abortion is quote,
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not a thing, is what abortion advocates, prominent abortion advocates on social media were saying.
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This, it would not be any crazier or more delusional for me to rebut Elizabeth Warren's
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billionaires are evil shtick by claiming that billionaires don't exist. It's, it's the same
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kind of thing. On the contrary, late-term abortions are most certainly a thing.
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Even estimates in liberal publications tell us that this quote, very rare, read, existent procedure
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accounts for, quote, only 1.3% of abortions. This was in, I think the Guardian had an article
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about it. Liberal publication in the context of advocating for abortion is, oh, it's only
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1.3%. Okay. Well, 1.3% of abortions, that amounts to over 5,000 babies every single year
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that are ripped apart limb from limb. 5,000. Now, I want you to think about how we react
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when there's a school shooting and nine kids are killed, let's say, or 10 or 12. And it's
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horrific. It's evil. It's terrible. It's a tragedy. It's all of those things. We react exactly as we
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should to it. My point is, though, 5,000. Think about a mass attack, a mass slaughter of some
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kind that killed 5,000 people. We wouldn't see that as such a small number. It's only small in
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comparison to the gargantuan body count that the abortion industry racks up every year. It's all,
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it's, that's the only reason it seems small. The fact that that's a small number only tells you,
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it tells you a lot more about the total number of abortions and how large that number is than it
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does about the actual number of late-term abortions. Now, also, rape and incest account for less than
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1% of abortions. Yet, pro-abortion people try to bring every abortion discussion back to this
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minority of cases. Well, you can't have it both ways. Either the 1% of cases are relevant
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or they aren't. The other lie that is only slightly less egregious is that these abortions
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are only carried out to save the mother's life. Yet, even former abortionists and current OBGYNs
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have come out in the past and said that this is simply not true. There's no such thing as a
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life-saving abortion. To borrow a phrase, that is not a thing. It is never necessary to kill a
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viable baby in order to save his mother's life. How could it be? If there's a potentially fatal
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complication with the pregnancy, the child needs to come out of the mother, but he could be simply
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delivered. In fact, either way, the child has to be delivered, alive or dead. The only thing you're
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doing with an abortion is you're adding in an extra step of killing the child before you deliver
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him. There is no reason why that could have any medical value for the mother. In reality,
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late-term abortions can happen because the mother decides she doesn't want the child. They can happen
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for the same reason that earlier-term abortions happened. These are not all extreme situations.
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The procedure, quote-unquote, is extreme, extremely brutal, but it's not always that some extreme
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position that the mother finds herself in is what leads to the late-term abortion. That's not the
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case. It could just be that she decides at 25 weeks that she doesn't want to have a kid. Things have
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changed in her life. She loses a job. She loses a relationship. Okay? Those certainly can be
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reasons. And there are plenty of, in those 5,000 every year, a not small number of them are going
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to be situations like that. And then there are going to be other situations where, let's say,
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the child has some serious ailment or disability of some kind. Or we're often told that, you know,
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these late-term abortions only happen when the child's going to die anyway. Well, it's simply
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not true that that accounts for all or even a majority of cases. But that does happen sometimes.
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But killing a person because he's disabled or because he's going to die anyway is not medically
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necessary. That's not medicine. And if we call that medicine, if we call that a medical procedure,
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then we have ventured fully into eugenics territory. And the implications extend far beyond the womb.
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You know, you simply can't call that a medical treatment. You know what it is? It's a mercy killing,
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is what it is. And that's a euphemism in itself. And I hate that phrase. But if you're looking for
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a euphemism that's at least closer to the reality, it's not medical treatment. It's mercy killing.
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And go ahead and advocate for that. Advocate for the, quote, mercy killing of disabled children.
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Advocate it for if you want. You're not going to be alone. I mean, there's a long history of you,
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even in this country. And back 100 years ago, the people who advocated for eugenics were a lot more
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open about it. And they would have and did, Margaret Sanger being one of them, come out and
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explicitly advocate for it and say, no, these people, their lives aren't worth anything. It's
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not worth living. So we should just kill them. You're arguing for the same thing. You're just using
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different words. So you may as well confront what your position actually is and see if you can stomach
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it. No matter how you look at it, the talking points offered by the pro-abortion side are
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ridiculously false. President Trump is right to call for a ban on this barbarity. And I think all
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decent people in the country agree with him. And that's really what it comes down to.
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Write Walsh in there. How did you hear about us, Box?
00:17:54.640
So that they know that I sent you. Okay, here's a story. This is a story, all right. Reading from
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bbc.com. It says, Jamila Jamil has announced she is, quote, queer after receiving criticism for being
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cast in a new LGBT interest show. U.S. broadcaster HBO announced on Tuesday that the actress and model
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will be a judge on its new unscripted voguing contest, Legendary. I confess I have no idea what
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voguing is. The news prompted an online backlash from people who said the Good Place star was not
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representative of the black LGBT community. That prompted her to issue a statement addressing her
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sexuality, opening with Twitter is brutal. She explained that she identified as queer and had
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previously struggled to discuss the topic because it's not easy within the South Asian community to be
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accepted. She mentioned that nobody in her family was openly out and that, quote, it's also scary as an
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actor to openly admit your sexuality, especially when you're already a brown female in your 30s.
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Yes, I'm sure it's really scary to be in the LGBT community in Hollywood.
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Right. Jamil went on, this is absolutely not how I want her to come out. And adding that she's
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logging off of Twitter. Oh, and hold on. They actually explain what voguing is. All right. It
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says, voguing is a genre of dance that originated in New York in the late 1980s. It was founded by
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black and Latino LGBT people, many of whom were disowned by their families for their sexuality and
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gender. It came to mainstream attention through Madonna's 1990 hit Vogue and the accompanying video,
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Okay, hold on a second. But first of all, Madonna is not in the LGBT community, is she?
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No. And so she's the one who started this voguing thing? And now you're not allowed? So it was started
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by a straight woman and now a straight woman isn't allowed to be involved in it? Or not started by a
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straight woman. It was popularized, okay? It was brought into mainstream attention through a straight
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woman. And now we're saying if you're straight, you're not allowed in. All right. So there's a lot
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that's still mysterious here. And maybe it would be cleared up if I kept reading, but I've lost
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interest. I don't understand why you need to be gay to go voguing. Are you telling me that I can't
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Vogue? I could get up in Vogue right now if I wanted to. It's one of my greatest passions after I
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learned about it 10 seconds ago. In any case, the upshot here is that this Hollywood actress was
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getting criticized for the crime of hosting a show while straight. She was being attacked for
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not being gay. And so she came out and said, oh, you know what? Funny thing actually turns out I am
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gay. Or not gay, but, quote, queer. This actually gives me an idea for what I might do the next time
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I'm being attacked. I get attacked all the time, as you know. And maybe this is a good way out of it.
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But notice the brilliance of this move by Jamil here. She comes out as queer, right? Not gay,
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but queer. So what does queer mean? Well, nobody really knows. It's entirely undefined.
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It means whatever you want it to mean, basically. So you can claim that the LGBTQ... Now, I believe
00:21:24.760
Q can also mean questioning. So you can be queer, you can be questioning. Anyone can claim that.
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There's no way to confirm it. You can just wear that label and go about your day like you were
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before. Don't change anything. So it was a smart move. And nobody's allowed to question her
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self-identification. Just like when a man comes out as a woman. You can't question it. It's a
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checkmate. They win. That's all it is to it. Notice also here how my victim pyramid is illustrated
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once again. Remember on the left, victimhood is currency, right? Whoever has the most victim
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token wins. But the uber victims, the chief victims, those who have the greatest wealth of
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victim currency by far are the LGBT folks. Women, even ethnic minority women, are beneath the LGBT
00:22:13.780
people in the hierarchy. So Jamil is a woman, ethnic minority, a feminist. She was just... You may
00:22:21.940
recognize the name because we talked about it on the show last month. She was just last month
00:22:26.140
bragging about her abortion. She was shouting her abortion. So she's an ethnic minority woman
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who shouts her abortions. You would think that that would get her to the top.
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But no. She still is beneath the LGBT camp. It doesn't earn her enough identity token points to
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even host a dancing competition on HBO. Because the LGBT camp decided that she shouldn't be allowed to do
00:22:52.780
that. And what they say goes on the left. If they say it, that's it. They're in charge. If they say
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you're not allowed to do that, that's it. If they say we're going to do this, we're going to do it.
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If they say to women, hey, these dudes are going to be coming into your locker rooms now.
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That's just how it is. They're going to be on your sports teams too. No, no. And it... No, shut up.
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Shut up. You're not allowed to protest. You bigot. Shut up. They can do that. The LGBT people can do
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that. They can talk to women like that. And they do talk to women like that. So what does Jamil do?
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She says, oh, funny story. This is the problem that the left is running into. On one hand,
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everything comes down to identity politics, right? All that matters is the demographic you fall into.
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That will determine what you're allowed to do, what you're allowed to say, what you're allowed to
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think, the reality shows you're allowed to host. It determines everything. It determines what kind
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of person you are. It determines the value of yourself as a person. But they've also made identity
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into this nebulous, hazy thing. They blurred the lines of distinction, relativized identity,
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thrown out all the objective categories, leading now to a mad dash to the top of the hierarchy.
00:24:18.120
Because anyone could be there. All you have to do to be considered a part of any particular category
00:24:23.220
is simply say that you're in that category. And that's it. No other steps required.
00:24:30.080
So now everyone can say they're LGBT, and the hierarchy becomes very top-heavy. So now it's
00:24:35.740
become sort of a ruling class without anybody to rule. Kings and drag queens without any subjects.
00:24:43.380
You've got a bunch of pharaohs and no peasant class, no slaves to maintain the pyramid.
00:24:49.440
Which is quite a predicament. Except you still have white men, for the most part.
00:24:53.600
Okay? We could still all agree that white men like myself are scum. Problem, though,
00:24:57.840
is that a white man like myself, I'm all the way at the bottom of the pyramid.
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I could, in one fell swoop, leapfrog all the way to the top, just with a simple phrase,
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I'm a woman. I say that, and now I'm at the top.
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So even the most reliable, you would think, you would think that at least they can rely
00:25:22.040
on having the white men down there, that they can all turn in hate.
00:25:30.480
Because we can escape this ghetto any moment, just by saying, oh, you know what?
00:25:37.680
Oh, I don't look like a woman. I don't have any of the parts of a woman.
00:25:40.580
I've never said I was a woman before. Doesn't matter. Doesn't matter.
00:25:48.360
We're going to go to emails in a second, but first, what a year this month has been,
00:25:54.020
and the election race is unfortunately just getting started.
00:25:56.360
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00:26:54.260
All right, this is from Rodolfo, mattwalshowatgmail.com.
00:27:00.360
I really need your advice on how to navigate the situation.
00:27:06.860
whose partner conceived a baby through IVF, I assume.
00:27:11.260
Before they broke the news to us, she asked me what my thoughts were.
00:27:14.820
I calmly explained how the baby is entitled to a father and mother
00:27:17.480
and how the two contribute different needs to the child.
00:27:20.280
She refused to acknowledge that they provide different needs
00:27:22.500
and kept insisting as long as they have loving parents, they're fine.
00:27:27.100
I completely forgot to insert how the extra frozen fertilized eggs
00:27:31.720
But now that her partner has been blessed with a child,
00:27:34.100
I don't know how to go about day-to-day interactions.
00:27:36.580
Do I attend the baby shower pretending I approve of this?
00:27:39.700
Do I pretend I approve when other families around?
00:27:45.560
Well, what you tell your daughter really depends on how old she is,
00:27:51.500
If she's very young, if she's like my kid's age,
00:27:54.160
then I would not tell her anything because she wouldn't understand it anyway.
00:27:57.960
Anyway, as for approving of it, look, obviously you're going to accept the child, right?
00:28:07.500
And you're going to love the child as a niece or nephew.
00:28:09.620
You're not going to spurn the child and say, no, you're not going to do that.
00:28:14.260
And you love your sister, even if you don't approve of her choices.
00:28:18.420
So I think on a day-to-day basis, your approval is kind of irrelevant, right?
00:28:23.800
You don't have to act like you approve or you don't approve.
00:28:28.400
You just act like they're family, which they are, and you go about your business.
00:28:34.960
You aren't going to ostracize or disown them, right?
00:28:37.420
I think we would agree that's not going to be an option.
00:28:40.860
And that wouldn't be the right response at all.
00:28:44.120
So what other option is there but to love and accept them?
00:28:47.500
Now, when I say accept, okay, this word acceptance can be a problem
00:28:52.580
given that it has such a broad meaning now to a lot of people.
00:28:57.440
But really, accepting someone as a person and as a family member
00:29:03.080
is not the same thing as approving of their choices.
00:29:06.700
We tend to think of those things as the same, but they're not.
00:29:09.200
So we should accept our family members, accept them in the sense of love them,
00:29:23.860
It doesn't mean approve of everything they do, which is good
00:29:29.540
because I don't think anyone has a family where they approve of everything
00:29:43.980
So I think all of us, or at least many of us, have family members
00:29:47.260
who have made choices we disagree with, maybe that we strongly disagree with.
00:29:51.240
But unless that choice makes them a physical danger to you and your child,
00:29:55.720
I think you still treat them as family because they are.
00:29:59.540
I don't think you should pretend to approve, as you say,
00:30:03.540
but the point is 99% of what you do with your family and how you treat them
00:30:06.700
has nothing to do with approval or disapproval anyway.
00:30:14.580
I'm not trying to dodge your question, but I think you were asking mainly
00:30:18.760
what do you do on a day-to-day basis, and she's your sister.
00:30:22.040
That's it. That's what you do on a day-to-day basis.
00:30:27.100
Hey, Matt, I have an incredibly important question for you.
00:30:29.020
In fact, it may be the most important question you've ever answered,
00:30:33.820
My reputation as a college student and relationship with my peers depends on this.
00:30:38.100
Is the correct pronunciation of ramen noodles ramen or ray-man?
00:30:44.580
Well, I guess I already answered that, didn't I?
00:30:53.020
Ray-man noodles sounds like the name of a party clown or something.
00:31:01.440
And if you were in the ray-man camp, Abigail, I'm afraid to say that you deserve to have your reputation destroyed
00:31:06.780
and to lose all your friends for an infraction such as that.
00:31:11.740
Why can't you support our president without throwing in your little insults?
00:31:15.120
You said you liked his State of the Union. Great.
00:31:17.580
Why did you need to go on about how he's no good off the script?
00:31:20.980
Trump off the script is exactly what won him the presidency, so your point makes no sense.
00:31:26.040
It seems like you try to play both sides of the fence,
00:31:28.020
sometimes throwing in anti-conservative opinions to appeal to the left.
00:31:31.440
Hey, anything for ratings and acceptance, I guess.
00:31:33.520
It seems like you're really a never-Trumper at heart, and you try to disguise it,
00:31:38.400
and that's too bad because the never-Trumpers are grifters and cowards.
00:31:41.940
I hate to think the same about you, but you make me wonder, and I'm not the only one.
00:31:46.620
Well, Ian, first of all, I didn't say anything yesterday that could possibly be construed as an insult of Donald Trump.
00:31:55.660
It's my opinion that he's better on the script than off,
00:31:59.600
that his rambling routine on the campaign trail and his tweets are, at best, kind of stale at this point,
00:32:05.900
and at worst, extremely off-putting to a lot of people.
00:32:08.860
That's my view, and I've been very consistent about that this entire time.
00:32:14.540
Criticism, yeah, but not all criticisms are insults.
00:32:18.120
And anyway, insult or not, how is that anti-conservative?
00:32:24.580
It's anti-conservative now to criticize a Republican president?
00:32:28.500
So the entirety of the conservative cause comes down to your personal feelings about a dude, a guy, the president?
00:32:35.860
He is now the embodiment of everything that it means to be conservative,
00:32:39.200
and all you have to do to be conservative is just to agree with him all the time about everything?
00:32:45.880
Now, I'm being somewhat intentionally obtuse here because I know that is exactly the position that some quote-unquote conservatives have
00:32:56.460
and have had this entire time with regards to Trump, but I find it to be ridiculous, empathetic.
00:33:02.420
And I also think that, at least for me, if being a conservative means anything,
00:33:10.940
one of the most crucial aspects of being conservative is to have a healthy skepticism of the government,
00:33:21.160
which means being critical of the government and not being afraid to criticize the government.
00:33:25.660
Donald Trump runs the government, so he's part of that.
00:33:32.320
So my point is, in my view, to say that you shouldn't criticize or even insult, quote-unquote, the president
00:33:38.220
is one of the most anti-conservative, unconservative positions you could possibly take.
00:33:43.060
And let me just clarify something for you, just so you know.
00:33:48.280
You say that I throw in these little anti-conservative opinions, as you put it.
00:33:53.040
And from the sound of it, you mean more than just the Trump stuff.
00:33:57.060
You are saying that the times when I venture from standard, accepted, right-wing talking points,
00:34:01.940
I'm doing it for ratings, and appeal, and acceptance, and so on.
00:34:08.360
And you say the never-Trumpers, whatever that means, whoever they are, are also in it for personal gain.
00:34:15.060
Just so you know, in my position as, I guess, a conservative media person,
00:34:23.380
there is nothing at all to be personally gained from straying from the party line.
00:34:31.940
Now, unless you have a full-scale conversion to leftism,
00:34:36.340
and you decide to start parroting left-wing talking points across the board,
00:34:40.580
as some former conservatives like Jen Rubin have actually done under Trump.
00:34:45.540
Now, if you do that, it's still kind of a gamble,
00:34:47.960
because there's no guarantee you're going to be accepted by the left.
00:34:51.800
But if you do that, then yes, that could be a calculation for personal gain.
00:34:55.880
It might earn you a spy gig on MSNBC or CNN as their token, quote, reasonable conservative.
00:35:05.740
But there is no business advantage, no opportunistic benefit at all to doing anything other than
00:35:13.860
parroting right-wing talking points or left-wing talking points.
00:35:21.880
But if you choose option, you know, C, D, E, or F, or X, or Y, or Z, you know,
00:35:27.840
if you go anywhere besides those two options, there is no real benefit to it
00:35:35.740
other than you're just being honest about what you think.
00:35:42.480
Parrot right-wing talking points, left-wing talking points.
00:35:45.080
In my business, those are the safest and most profitable things.
00:35:50.280
Outside of that, however far you venture outside of that, you sacrifice money in ratings.
00:35:57.180
The most profitable thing for a conservative media person by far is to be a diehard Trump fan,
00:36:02.260
to never criticize him, always defend him, and to just sort of put your finger in the air,
00:36:09.040
see which way the wind is blowing with your base, and talk about popular conservative topics,
00:36:23.420
Don't go in any direction except just right there, in that lane.
00:36:28.340
And if you have an audience as a conservative and you stay in that lane,
00:36:32.260
you're guaranteed a job in perpetuity, you're guaranteed an audience, you're guaranteed money.
00:36:45.860
My point is, anyone who does anything other than that, anything other than that,
00:36:51.300
there could only be one reason why they do it, and that is they're just being honest.
00:36:56.180
Now, does that make, it's kind of like I was saying about Mitt Romney, not that I'm comparing myself to him,
00:37:06.660
but am I saying that when I stray outside of the normal talking points, I'm doing something heroic and selfless?
00:37:16.220
You know, I'm still doing fine for myself and taking care of my family.
00:37:19.900
It's not like I'm, it's not like I'm making some huge sacrifice, not at all.
00:37:28.940
I think there are a lot of people who don't understand how this works.
00:37:33.880
Um, you know, saying that someone who strays outside of the talking points is doing it for the money
00:37:40.320
would be like saying that a person became a trash collector because they're a germaphobe
00:37:49.520
You know, I mean, it's, it's, it's, the accusation is exactly the opposite of the reality.
00:37:56.640
If you want to know who the potential grifters and opportunists are among conservative media figures,
00:38:03.560
all you have to do is look at the people who never, ever, ever challenge their own audience
00:38:10.320
and are always just right in line with what most people think on the right.
00:38:18.400
Everything is, is, uh, you know, everything is crowd pleasing all the time.
00:38:25.200
Now I'm not saying that all of them are grifters and opportunists.
00:38:29.040
It's possible that their views really do just happen to line up.
00:38:43.080
That's where you want to look for, for suspected grifting.
00:38:53.300
I wanted to tell you, you know, back in July, um, friend of daily wire, Bill Whittle hosted this
00:38:58.120
excellent four part series podcast called the Apollo 11, what we saw.
00:39:07.180
Speaking of getting away from normal talking points, this is something entirely different.
00:39:11.520
And this was, uh, Bill taking you back in time, living through it, experiencing the space age again.
00:39:16.980
Now Bill has a new season of a show all about the cold war.
00:39:20.240
Uh, be sure to check out the cold war, what we saw, not only is it a very compelling story,
00:39:24.220
but it's also an important reminder of what it is like to, to live, uh, in back, you know,
00:39:32.000
in those times and to live through that with no future, which is where we all end up.
00:39:35.440
If the far left makes it to the presidency as, uh, the host, Bill captures what it was like to live
00:39:40.460
through major events like the Berlin airlift, the Korean war, the Cuban missile crisis, space race.
00:39:45.580
And the story ties all these milestones together to create this picture of the apocalypse that
00:39:51.020
The story is so well told and the setting is so brilliantly descriptive that as you go through
00:39:56.200
these events, you start to understand, uh, the battle, not only for capitalism,
00:40:00.480
but for civilization itself, they've released two episodes of this 12 part series already.
00:40:06.520
Just go to dailywire.com slash cold war and start listening to this incredibly important story.
00:40:17.460
This is from Henry says, Hey Matt, I take the issue.
00:40:19.460
I take issue with the idea that there, that there are not any restrictions or that there are
00:40:25.380
You mentioned that you can't yell fire in a crowded theater.
00:40:27.660
In this case, it's not the speech that's illegal.
00:40:31.800
In the case where the girl convinced her boyfriend to kill himself, it's not the words she said
00:40:36.700
It's the act of causing someone to kill themselves.
00:40:41.720
You could repeat every word that Charles Manson ever said, and you would have the right
00:40:45.880
However, you don't have the right to cause someone to commit murder.
00:40:48.940
The slippery slope that I'm afraid of is that once you can see that there are some restrictions
00:40:52.600
to free speech, why can't we also restrict hate speech?
00:40:55.780
For example, I'm from Canada where we have hate speech laws.
00:40:59.380
And comedians get fined for making offensive jokes.
00:41:01.720
And this is where I think you will inevitably end up if you believe there are restrictions
00:41:08.440
Well, Henry, I think you're trying to play a semantic game to get around the reality that
00:41:12.000
we do and must restrict speech and we always have.
00:41:15.060
But you say it's not speech that's the problem, but the inciting of a stampede or the brainwashing
00:41:24.300
of people to kill people or, you know, or what have you.
00:41:36.920
So, this would be like if I murdered someone and you said, no, it's not the shooting that's
00:41:44.880
illegal, but the causing of someone to be dead.
00:41:49.460
Yeah, well, that's a distinction without a difference.
00:41:51.760
It's true that shooting people isn't always illegal.
00:41:57.040
But shooting someone to kill them is, you know, to murder them is illegal.
00:42:04.860
So that, the right to shoot, as it were, is restricted for obvious reasons.
00:42:13.300
Not that I'm comparing saying words to shooting someone, but I think hopefully you get my point.
00:42:18.880
And it must be restricted in the situations I've described and in many other situations
00:42:24.440
Now, I understand your revulsion to and discomfort with the idea that free speech can be restricted
00:42:32.380
because that means, as you seem to realize, that there actually isn't any such thing as
00:42:41.780
And if it's not, if speech is not absolutely free, then it's not really free at all.
00:42:46.740
If we're not talking about freedom in an absolute sense, then why are we even using the word?
00:42:51.020
It seems like a, it seems like a word that misses the point, right?
00:43:00.120
Free speech is, as we've been talking about, a very imprecise phrase.
00:43:23.400
But what if you belong to the ancient Aztec religion and you want to perform human sacrifices?
00:43:29.620
Well, you better get a job at Planned Parenthood.
00:43:32.040
Otherwise, you're not going to be allowed to do that.
00:43:37.040
Oh, well, that's not really restricting freedom of religion.
00:43:47.220
And we're saying you shouldn't be allowed to do it.
00:43:52.020
Yes, the reason you can't do it is because it's going to kill another person.
00:43:56.400
Nonetheless, it is a religious practice that we are saying you cannot do.
00:44:06.400
I know we want to find ways around it so we can phrase it a different way.
00:44:09.560
Or maybe start, a lot of times what people will do is they'll, they don't want to admit
00:44:15.040
So, instead, they'll say, well, maybe we need to think about the word religion.
00:44:20.840
Maybe this Aztec religion isn't really a religion.
00:44:23.380
Or maybe the, you know, we don't want to admit that laws against slander are a restriction
00:44:31.600
Where, you know, we try to adjust the word speech rather than the word free.
00:44:44.060
Now, the good news is that these restrictions on speech have always been in place.
00:44:52.240
It's never been legal to slander somebody, to libel someone.
00:44:56.920
It's never been legal to tell someone to go kill another person.
00:45:04.180
And yet, we still live in a country where you can basically go out and say what you want.
00:45:11.020
Or at least express any idea, any political idea that you want.
00:45:18.020
So, I don't know if the free, if the slippery slope has really, um, has really panned out
00:45:30.520
Because there are people who would like to infringe even on our ability to express political
00:45:43.640
Um, but I don't think, I think we have to meet those challenges.
00:45:48.760
I don't think we meet those challenges by pretending to be free speech absolutists.
00:46:02.940
I did have another email I was, I was going to read.
00:46:06.540
But somebody, well, somebody writes me with, I often get, just like the one from Rodolfo,
00:46:13.000
I get, I get questions from people about, uh, family dilemmas where they want my opinion.
00:46:19.300
And on one hand, I'm not sure my opinion really means anything.
00:46:23.580
I don't, you know, I, I, I don't know that I have any insight that's really going to be
00:46:26.900
helpful to people with these situations, but I get the emails anyway.
00:46:29.560
Someone wrote me with a dilemma involving their family.
00:46:34.580
That is certainly the most difficult dilemma anyone's ever emailed me before.
00:46:40.800
And so I think, uh, I was, I'm going to save that for tomorrow because that's going to
00:46:44.080
be a longer conversation and, uh, have a great day.
00:46:50.640
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00:46:52.960
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00:46:57.460
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00:47:01.460
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00:47:08.840
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00:47:29.520
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00:47:33.820
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