The Matt Walsh Show - Ep. 421 - The Collapse Of Identity Politics

00:00:00.000 Welcome into the show, everybody. I have to say I'm glad that this impeachment saga is over. I

00:00:05.020 think I probably speak for lots of people right now. And I put so much effort into covering

00:00:10.560 the impeachment thing on my show that it was getting exhausting, and that's why I'm grateful.

00:00:17.580 And by so much effort, I mean that I almost completely ignored it. I mean I put in almost

00:00:22.280 zero effort in covering it, which I actually consider to be perhaps my greatest professional

00:00:27.860 achievement, ignoring impeachment this entire time, and the greatest kindness that I could

00:00:32.720 have possibly bestowed upon you, the audience. So you're welcome for that. Trump is now acquitted,

00:00:38.840 of course, as a result that was absolutely ensured from the very beginning of this extremely pointless

00:00:46.120 spectacle. The only person to vote for conviction, of course, was Mitt Romney. The only person in

00:00:51.860 Trump's party to vote for conviction, I should say, was Mitt Romney, along with every single Democrat.

00:00:56.300 A decision by Romney that I don't personally find especially objectionable. I know that I'm

00:01:07.180 somewhat, maybe not entirely alone, but I know probably most people don't feel that way, at least

00:01:11.500 on the right. I think Mitt Romney did what he thought was the right thing to do, and that's what

00:01:16.120 he's supposed to do. He's supposed to follow your own conscience and judge these things according to

00:01:21.860 your own, according to your own judgment. The idea that he did it for some self-serving reason

00:01:27.420 is, I think, plainly ridiculous, even though I disagree with him. But considering he probably 0.68

00:01:36.280 guaranteed he's going to be voted out of office, and he's now persona non grata in his own party,

00:01:41.640 I'm not saying that makes him a hero. So I think we have two versions of Mitt Romney that are being

00:01:50.100 put forward now by either side. You have Mitt Romney, the scum, scoundrel, coward, traitor. And 1.00

00:01:58.480 then you have Mitt Romney, the knight in shining armor, the hero, and that's coming from the left.

00:02:04.440 And of course, the irony here is that these are the very same people that when he was running for

00:02:07.680 president in 2012, said that he was racist and sexist with his binders full of women, and so on

00:02:13.080 and so forth. So we know that that's hypocritical, and we know that it'll change on a dime the moment 0.98

00:02:17.760 that Mitt Romney does something they don't like. So we understand all of that. My point, though, is

00:02:22.840 I don't really think he's either of those things. I don't think he's a hero, but the accusation that

00:02:28.540 he's a coward or an opportunist is preposterous, unless I completely misunderstand what the word

00:02:36.380 opportunism means, because I don't know what the opportunity is here for him, other than 0.97

00:02:40.420 he's ruined his own, his own, at least the latest iteration of his political career.

00:02:48.480 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

00:02:54.500 as I will. And there's a lot to discuss today, but before I do, I want to tell you about my friends

00:02:59.680 over at Noom. Look, it's good to take care of other people, obviously, and think about other

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00:03:39.840 Noom's been great for me personally, and the app has been a lifesaver because my health goals have

00:03:45.020 really been sort of broad in that I want to get healthier. I want to feel healthier. It's very

00:03:50.680 important. And one of my challenges in that regard has always been keeping track and keeping

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00:04:00.200 psychology, Noom teaches you why you do the things you do and empowers you with the tools you need

00:04:05.440 to break bad habits and replace them with better ones, because that's really what it's all about.

00:04:10.660 I think if you can manage to do that, if you could just form good, healthy habits, then

00:04:16.100 it's almost game, set, match right there. And that's the biggest challenge, is getting out of

00:04:21.780 those bad habits into good ones. And that's why you need Noom. You don't have to change it all in

00:04:27.200 one day. Small steps make big progress. Sign up for your trial today at Noom, N-O-O-M dot com slash

00:04:33.740 Walsh. What do you have to lose? Visit Noom dot com slash Walsh to start your trial today. That's

00:04:38.860 N-O-O-M dot com slash Walsh. Well, if we could go back to very ancient history here, way back to a

00:04:46.880 period of history that archaeologists are just now discovering and uncovering and learning about,

00:04:51.840 that would be this past Tuesday, the State of the Union address. During his State of the Union

00:04:57.160 address on Tuesday night, President Trump called for a ban on late-term abortions. Played that clip

00:05:02.100 yesterday on the show. This plea was made all the more vivid and powerful by the presence of a two-year-old

00:05:08.100 girl in the audience who was born at 22 weeks gestation. And I thought that was a great illustration

00:05:13.580 of what we're talking about here. When we're talking about late-term abortions, we're talking

00:05:18.140 about aborting this child who was born at 22 weeks, which is now viable. Medical advances have

00:05:26.260 made pregnancies, quote, viable well before the third trimester. And there's no reason to think

00:05:32.540 that this trend toward early and earlier viability won't continue. This is yet another example of the

00:05:36.980 way that pro-abortion people are anti-science and anti-medical advancement. Of course, the argument

00:05:44.720 for banning late-term abortion is morally unassailable. There is no clump of cells dodge

00:05:52.460 available to the defender of this practice. Babies in the second trimester are at least the size of an

00:05:58.340 adult's hand. So we're not talking about a microscopic embryo. Okay, we're talking about a child, you know,

00:06:04.920 that's at least that long. And despite what pro-aborts would like to imagine, like us to imagine,

00:06:13.720 of this microscopic, tiny, infinitesimal little thing, no. And midway through the second trimester,

00:06:20.640 they could be safely delivered with all of their limbs intact and other recognizable human features.

00:06:27.340 Abortions at this stage are, therefore, necessarily brutal.

00:06:35.660 The cervix is, and this, as I say, it's brutal, so I'm, I, some content warning here, but I think

00:06:45.320 it's important for us to understand exactly how these, these, these procedures, these quote

00:06:49.120 procedures are done. So I'm going to explain it, if you don't already know. And if you don't want to

00:06:54.020 hear an explanation, you're welcome to mute the show for the next minute. The cervix is pried open,

00:06:59.880 the amniotic fluid around the child is sucked out. The victim, the child, is then ripped apart

00:07:05.920 limb by limb with something called a sofa clamp, which is a, which is a long clamp, almost looks

00:07:12.000 like a long pair of pliers with, with a sharpened edge, with little teeth that allow it to attach

00:07:20.180 itself to the limbs of the child and the child is ripped apart while still alive. Okay. Third,

00:07:25.960 that's second trimester. This is what Donald Trump says we should ban. Third trimester abortions, 1.00

00:07:33.100 even more barbaric. A poison needle is stabbed through the mother's abdomen into the baby's skull. 1.00

00:07:40.440 Now, humans at this stage obviously have fully developed, fully functioning nervous systems.

00:07:46.120 So this is agonizingly painful for the child. Just imagine how it would feel for you to be stabbed

00:07:54.140 in the head with a poison needle. That's how it would feel for the child. There's no effort made 1.00

00:08:00.720 whatsoever to limit the child's suffering because such efforts would acknowledge the humanity of,

00:08:08.060 or at least the life of the child, which is something the abortion industry can't do. 1.00

00:08:11.360 And then the mother, and after the child dies, the mother is forced to carry the, the dead baby 0.71

00:08:17.340 around in her womb for two days, at which point she will deliver the corpse. Um, and they, they hope 0.95

00:08:25.840 in the abortion office, but, uh, oftentimes it ends up, ends up happening in a bathroom at a hotel

00:08:31.940 or something where they're staying. In some cases though, the baby survives the initial injection

00:08:36.700 and so has to be given another. Now I want you to think about the pain that child is in for the two

00:08:42.880 days after he's been stabbed with the poison needle, still alive, suffering in agony, and then two

00:08:50.720 days later, poisoned again. Unless of course you have a Gosnell situation, in which case the baby

00:08:59.580 would just be delivered alive and then killed at that point, which by the way is what Ralph Northam

00:09:06.000 was famously, infamously advocating for. I describe all of that because number one, this is happening

00:09:13.080 in the world and we should know about it. It's happening in our country, not just the world.

00:09:17.220 And I don't think we have the right to turn away from it and say, oh, I don't want to hear about

00:09:20.700 that. That's, that's hard to hear. Yeah, it is hard to hear. That's the point. How hard do you think

00:09:26.480 it is to go through for the child? But also this is what when, this is what Donald Trump is trying

00:09:31.860 to ban. But the abortion industry's minions in the media can't accept any restrictions on abortion

00:09:39.080 at all. And lacking any ethically sound argument in favor of literally tearing viable children apart

00:09:45.200 limb from limb, they resort to lies that are so, so absolutely shameless that they'd be funny if not

00:09:52.240 for the subject matter. In response to Trump's comments last night, a number of abortion advocates

00:09:58.620 went on social media, or two nights ago rather, went on social media and, and, and spread the,

00:10:04.860 the bizarre claim that there's no such thing as late-term abortion. Late-term abortion is quote,

00:10:10.720 not a thing, is what abortion advocates, prominent abortion advocates on social media were saying.

00:10:15.800 This, it would not be any crazier or more delusional for me to rebut Elizabeth Warren's

00:10:24.000 billionaires are evil shtick by claiming that billionaires don't exist. It's, it's the same

00:10:29.540 kind of thing. On the contrary, late-term abortions are most certainly a thing. 0.99

00:10:38.160 Even estimates in liberal publications tell us that this quote, very rare, read, existent procedure

00:10:45.260 accounts for, quote, only 1.3% of abortions. This was in, I think the Guardian had an article

00:10:50.960 about it. Liberal publication in the context of advocating for abortion is, oh, it's only

00:10:59.100 1.3%. Okay. Well, 1.3% of abortions, that amounts to over 5,000 babies every single year

00:11:07.020 that are ripped apart limb from limb. 5,000. Now, I want you to think about how we react

00:11:14.200 when there's a school shooting and nine kids are killed, let's say, or 10 or 12. And it's

00:11:23.720 horrific. It's evil. It's terrible. It's a tragedy. It's all of those things. We react exactly as we

00:11:30.440 should to it. My point is, though, 5,000. Think about a mass attack, a mass slaughter of some

00:11:41.800 kind that killed 5,000 people. We wouldn't see that as such a small number. It's only small in

00:11:48.000 comparison to the gargantuan body count that the abortion industry racks up every year. It's all,

00:11:54.380 it's, that's the only reason it seems small. The fact that that's a small number only tells you,

00:11:58.780 it tells you a lot more about the total number of abortions and how large that number is than it

00:12:04.500 does about the actual number of late-term abortions. Now, also, rape and incest account for less than

00:12:15.960 1% of abortions. Yet, pro-abortion people try to bring every abortion discussion back to this

00:12:22.380 minority of cases. Well, you can't have it both ways. Either the 1% of cases are relevant

00:12:27.880 or they aren't. The other lie that is only slightly less egregious is that these abortions

00:12:36.400 are only carried out to save the mother's life. Yet, even former abortionists and current OBGYNs

00:12:43.040 have come out in the past and said that this is simply not true. There's no such thing as a

00:12:49.160 life-saving abortion. To borrow a phrase, that is not a thing. It is never necessary to kill a

00:12:56.480 viable baby in order to save his mother's life. How could it be? If there's a potentially fatal

00:13:02.720 complication with the pregnancy, the child needs to come out of the mother, but he could be simply

00:13:07.620 delivered. In fact, either way, the child has to be delivered, alive or dead. The only thing you're

00:13:13.860 doing with an abortion is you're adding in an extra step of killing the child before you deliver 0.99

00:13:17.740 him. There is no reason why that could have any medical value for the mother. In reality,

00:13:26.300 late-term abortions can happen because the mother decides she doesn't want the child. They can happen 1.00

00:13:30.240 for the same reason that earlier-term abortions happened. These are not all extreme situations.

00:13:35.960 The procedure, quote-unquote, is extreme, extremely brutal, but it's not always that some extreme

00:13:44.100 position that the mother finds herself in is what leads to the late-term abortion. That's not the 0.99

00:13:51.900 case. It could just be that she decides at 25 weeks that she doesn't want to have a kid. Things have

00:14:03.960 changed in her life. She loses a job. She loses a relationship. Okay? Those certainly can be

00:14:11.000 reasons. And there are plenty of, in those 5,000 every year, a not small number of them are going

00:14:16.880 to be situations like that. And then there are going to be other situations where, let's say,

00:14:23.120 the child has some serious ailment or disability of some kind. Or we're often told that, you know,

00:14:31.860 these late-term abortions only happen when the child's going to die anyway. Well, it's simply

00:14:36.540 not true that that accounts for all or even a majority of cases. But that does happen sometimes.

00:14:44.280 But killing a person because he's disabled or because he's going to die anyway is not medically

00:14:53.180 necessary. That's not medicine. And if we call that medicine, if we call that a medical procedure,

00:14:59.860 then we have ventured fully into eugenics territory. And the implications extend far beyond the womb. 0.59

00:15:08.820 You know, you simply can't call that a medical treatment. You know what it is? It's a mercy killing,

00:15:15.880 is what it is. And that's a euphemism in itself. And I hate that phrase. But if you're looking for

00:15:22.640 a euphemism that's at least closer to the reality, it's not medical treatment. It's mercy killing.

00:15:31.540 And go ahead and advocate for that. Advocate for the, quote, mercy killing of disabled children. 1.00

00:15:41.540 Advocate it for if you want. You're not going to be alone. I mean, there's a long history of you, 0.97

00:15:45.880 even in this country. And back 100 years ago, the people who advocated for eugenics were a lot more

00:15:51.840 open about it. And they would have and did, Margaret Sanger being one of them, come out and

00:15:57.540 explicitly advocate for it and say, no, these people, their lives aren't worth anything. It's

00:16:02.020 not worth living. So we should just kill them. You're arguing for the same thing. You're just using 1.00

00:16:09.380 different words. So you may as well confront what your position actually is and see if you can stomach

00:16:17.320 it. No matter how you look at it, the talking points offered by the pro-abortion side are

00:16:23.540 ridiculously false. President Trump is right to call for a ban on this barbarity. And I think all

00:16:30.620 decent people in the country agree with him. And that's really what it comes down to.

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00:17:52.440 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

00:18:02.380 bbc.com. It says, Jamila Jamil has announced she is, quote, queer after receiving criticism for being

00:18:10.480 cast in a new LGBT interest show. U.S. broadcaster HBO announced on Tuesday that the actress and model

00:18:17.180 will be a judge on its new unscripted voguing contest, Legendary. I confess I have no idea what

00:18:23.160 voguing is. The news prompted an online backlash from people who said the Good Place star was not

00:18:29.060 representative of the black LGBT community. That prompted her to issue a statement addressing her

00:18:36.200 sexuality, opening with Twitter is brutal. She explained that she identified as queer and had

00:18:41.440 previously struggled to discuss the topic because it's not easy within the South Asian community to be

00:18:45.400 accepted. She mentioned that nobody in her family was openly out and that, quote, it's also scary as an

00:18:51.220 actor to openly admit your sexuality, especially when you're already a brown female in your 30s. 0.67

00:18:57.500 Yes, I'm sure it's really scary to be in the LGBT community in Hollywood. 0.99

00:19:03.360 Right. Jamil went on, this is absolutely not how I want her to come out. And adding that she's 0.99

00:19:13.700 logging off of Twitter. Oh, and hold on. They actually explain what voguing is. All right. It

00:19:18.760 says, voguing is a genre of dance that originated in New York in the late 1980s. It was founded by

00:19:23.820 black and Latino LGBT people, many of whom were disowned by their families for their sexuality and

00:19:28.600 gender. It came to mainstream attention through Madonna's 1990 hit Vogue and the accompanying video, 0.59

00:19:35.140 as well as the documentary Paris is Burning.

00:19:40.600 Okay, hold on a second. But first of all, Madonna is not in the LGBT community, is she?

00:19:47.020 Not as far as I know.

00:19:48.100 No. And so she's the one who started this voguing thing? And now you're not allowed? So it was started

00:19:55.940 by a straight woman and now a straight woman isn't allowed to be involved in it? Or not started by a 0.99

00:20:03.520 straight woman. It was popularized, okay? It was brought into mainstream attention through a straight 1.00

00:20:08.540 woman. And now we're saying if you're straight, you're not allowed in. All right. So there's a lot

00:20:12.960 that's still mysterious here. And maybe it would be cleared up if I kept reading, but I've lost

00:20:18.900 interest. I don't understand why you need to be gay to go voguing. Are you telling me that I can't 1.00

00:20:25.300 Vogue? I could get up in Vogue right now if I wanted to. It's one of my greatest passions after I

00:20:31.560 learned about it 10 seconds ago. In any case, the upshot here is that this Hollywood actress was

00:20:38.140 getting criticized for the crime of hosting a show while straight. She was being attacked for

00:20:43.320 not being gay. And so she came out and said, oh, you know what? Funny thing actually turns out I am

00:20:49.180 gay. Or not gay, but, quote, queer. This actually gives me an idea for what I might do the next time 1.00

00:20:57.060 I'm being attacked. I get attacked all the time, as you know. And maybe this is a good way out of it.

00:21:02.880 But notice the brilliance of this move by Jamil here. She comes out as queer, right? Not gay, 0.99

00:21:12.600 but queer. So what does queer mean? Well, nobody really knows. It's entirely undefined.

00:21:17.180 It means whatever you want it to mean, basically. So you can claim that the LGBTQ... Now, I believe 0.94

00:21:24.760 Q can also mean questioning. So you can be queer, you can be questioning. Anyone can claim that.

00:21:31.760 There's no way to confirm it. You can just wear that label and go about your day like you were

00:21:37.380 before. Don't change anything. So it was a smart move. And nobody's allowed to question her

00:21:44.260 self-identification. Just like when a man comes out as a woman. You can't question it. It's a 0.78

00:21:48.880 checkmate. They win. That's all it is to it. Notice also here how my victim pyramid is illustrated

00:21:54.940 once again. Remember on the left, victimhood is currency, right? Whoever has the most victim

00:21:59.700 token wins. But the uber victims, the chief victims, those who have the greatest wealth of

00:22:06.540 victim currency by far are the LGBT folks. Women, even ethnic minority women, are beneath the LGBT 1.00

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 1.00

00:22:30.040 who shouts her abortions. You would think that that would get her to the top. 1.00

00:22:36.420 But no. She still is beneath the LGBT camp. It doesn't earn her enough identity token points to 1.00

00:22:44.520 even host a dancing competition on HBO. Because the LGBT camp decided that she shouldn't be allowed to do 0.99

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

00:22:59.440 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.

00:23:07.160 If they say to women, hey, these dudes are going to be coming into your locker rooms now. 1.00

00:23:11.260 That's just how it is. They're going to be on your sports teams too. No, no. And it... No, shut up.

00:23:17.720 Shut up. You're not allowed to protest. You bigot. Shut up. They can do that. The LGBT people can do 1.00

00:23:23.080 that. They can talk to women like that. And they do talk to women like that. So what does Jamil do?

00:23:30.600 She says, oh, funny story. This is the problem that the left is running into. On one hand,

00:23:38.040 everything comes down to identity politics, right? All that matters is the demographic you fall into.

00:23:43.660 That will determine what you're allowed to do, what you're allowed to say, what you're allowed to

00:23:50.760 think, the reality shows you're allowed to host. It determines everything. It determines what kind

00:23:57.280 of person you are. It determines the value of yourself as a person. But they've also made identity

00:24:05.180 into this nebulous, hazy thing. They blurred the lines of distinction, relativized identity,

00:24:11.020 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 0.92

00:24:35.740 become sort of a ruling class without anybody to rule. Kings and drag queens without any subjects. 1.00

00:24:43.380 You've got a bunch of pharaohs and no peasant class, no slaves to maintain the pyramid. 0.80

00:24:49.440 Which is quite a predicament. Except you still have white men, for the most part. 0.97

00:24:53.600 Okay? We could still all agree that white men like myself are scum. Problem, though, 1.00

00:24:57.840 is that a white man like myself, I'm all the way at the bottom of the pyramid.

00:25:01.060 I could, in one fell swoop, leapfrog all the way to the top, just with a simple phrase,

00:25:08.300 I'm a woman. I say that, and now I'm at the top.

00:25:13.580 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.

00:25:24.740 Even that's not so reliable.

00:25:30.480 Because we can escape this ghetto any moment, just by saying, oh, you know what? 0.91

00:25:35.140 Turns out I'm a woman. Yeah. 0.96

00:25:37.680 Oh, I don't look like a woman. I don't have any of the parts of a woman. 0.92

00:25:40.580 I've never said I was a woman before. Doesn't matter. Doesn't matter.

00:25:46.620 Just got to take my word for it, I'm afraid.

00:25:48.360 We're going to go to emails in a second, but first, what a year this month has been,

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00:26:38.920 So, if you have a question, you can get an answer.

00:26:42.480 But first, you've got to download the Daily Wire app, a member exclusive,

00:26:46.520 so you can get push notifications straight to your phone.

00:26:48.900 Again, that's promo code DW2020 for 20% off.

00:26:52.460 Trust me, you don't want to miss it.

00:26:54.260 All right, this is from Rodolfo, mattwalshowatgmail.com.

00:26:59.680 It says, Hi, Matt.

00:27:00.360 I really need your advice on how to navigate the situation.

00:27:02.520 My sister who was in a same-sex relationship,

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 0.64

00:27:30.160 are human beings and deserving of life.

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?

00:27:38.560 Do I tell my daughter?

00:27:39.700 Do I pretend I approve when other families around?

00:27:42.820 Thank you for all you do, Rodolfo.

00:27:45.560 Well, what you tell your daughter really depends on how old she is,

00:27:50.080 and I don't think you mentioned that.

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,

00:29:17.460 and embrace them as family members.

00:29:21.420 That's what acceptance would mean here.

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

00:29:39.040 that everybody in their family does.

00:29:41.420 That's just not how families operate.

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.

00:30:09.420 So it really doesn't come up.

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.

00:30:25.280 This is from Abigail. Abigail says,

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,

00:30:31.800 so please don't answer it hastily.

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?

00:30:46.600 Who says ray-man noodles?

00:30:48.220 Ray-man noodles? Is that a thing?

00:30:50.460 I hope you're not in the ray-man noodle camp. 0.94

00:30:53.020 Ray-man noodles sounds like the name of a party clown or something.

00:30:56.620 No, it's definitely ramen noodles. 0.85

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 1.00

00:31:06.780 and to lose all your friends for an infraction such as that.

00:31:10.540 This is from Ian, says,

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, 1.00

00:31:38.400 and that's too bad because the never-Trumpers are grifters and cowards. 0.98

00:31:41.940 I hate to think the same about you, but you make me wonder, and I'm not the only one. 0.98

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.

00:31:53.540 I was applauding his performance.

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.

00:32:13.120 Not an insult, though.

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?

00:32:45.060 Is that your position?

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 0.97

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.

00:34:13.940 Okay.

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.

00:34:29.580 There's nothing to be gained from that.

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.

00:35:04.620 Fine.

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.

00:35:17.780 You could choose one or the other.

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.

00:35:38.440 So, A and B, right?

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,

00:36:14.780 and give popular conservative opinions.

00:36:17.780 Don't go too far, right.

00:36:20.480 Don't go left.

00:36:21.640 Don't go in the middle.

00:36:22.420 Don't go off in that direction.

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.

00:36:38.300 It's a good business.

00:36:40.300 Profitable business anyway.

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?

00:37:14.400 No.

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.

00:37:24.740 But I just want to be, just so you understand.

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

00:37:46.660 or they got into social work for the money.

00:37:49.520 You know, I mean, it's, it's, it's, the accusation is exactly the opposite of the reality.

00:37:55.120 Okay.

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.

00:38:15.880 Everything is, is, is appealing to the crowd.

00:38:18.400 Everything is, is, uh, you know, everything is crowd pleasing all the time.

00:38:24.000 Look at those people.

00:38:25.200 Now I'm not saying that all of them are grifters and opportunists.

00:38:27.760 I don't know.

00:38:28.100 I can't see inside their heart.

00:38:29.040 It's possible that their views really do just happen to line up.

00:38:33.560 With what most of the audience wants to hear.

00:38:36.040 Extremely unlikely, but it's possible.

00:38:38.320 I can't say for sure.

00:38:41.060 Uh, but those are going to be the potential.

00:38:43.080 That's where you want to look for, for suspected grifting.

00:38:45.840 You want to look over there.

00:38:47.080 Okay.

00:38:49.120 All right.

00:38:49.860 Um, what else here?

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.

00:39:01.940 And, you know, I really enjoyed it.

00:39:04.100 I think it got, a lot of people, um, loved it.

00:39:07.180 Speaking of getting away from normal talking points, this is something entirely different.

00:39:10.320 It's not politics.

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

00:39:50.340 never happened.

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.

00:40:04.600 So this is a perfect time to go catch up.

00:40:06.520 Just go to dailywire.com slash cold war and start listening to this incredibly important story.

00:40:11.480 Uh, that's dailywire.com slash cold war.

00:40:15.500 All right.

00:40:15.960 One more email.

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

00:40:24.040 any restrictions on free speech.

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.

00:40:29.600 It's the inciting of a stampede.

00:40:31.000 That's the problem.

00:40:31.800 In the case where the girl convinced her boyfriend to kill himself, it's not the words she said

00:40:35.660 that need to be restricted.

00:40:36.700 It's the act of causing someone to kill themselves.

00:40:39.120 That's illegal.

00:40:40.440 Same thing with Charles Manson.

00:40:41.720 You could repeat every word that Charles Manson ever said, and you would have the right

00:40:44.480 because you have a right to free speech.

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

00:41:04.820 to free speech.

00:41:05.900 Anyway, I think you understand my point.

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.

00:41:29.880 Yes, but how is the stampede incited?

00:41:34.080 How are the people brainwashed?

00:41:36.040 With speech.

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.

00:41:55.560 You could be shooting in self-defense. 0.98

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.

00:42:10.700 Just like our right to speech is restricted.

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

00:42:24.140 besides.

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

00:42:37.800 free speech.

00:42:38.940 Not in an absolute sense.

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?

00:42:55.440 And yeah, that is the uncomfortable truth.

00:42:57.820 But it's truth nonetheless.

00:43:00.120 Free speech is, as we've been talking about, a very imprecise phrase.

00:43:03.920 More of a symbolic phrase.

00:43:06.880 Not one that can be taken totally literally.

00:43:09.680 And that goes for all freedoms, really.

00:43:12.200 Because none of them are absolutely absolute.

00:43:15.020 Because anyone can think of exceptions.

00:43:17.240 You have the freedom of religion.

00:43:18.720 I believe in that.

00:43:19.480 Absolutely.

00:43:20.100 But, or not, I certainly believe in that.

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.

00:43:33.660 Now, you can say all you want.

00:43:37.040 Oh, well, that's not really restricting freedom of religion.

00:43:40.120 That's different.

00:43:41.200 No, it is.

00:43:42.500 That's a religion.

00:43:43.300 And that's a religious practice.

00:43:47.220 And we're saying you shouldn't be allowed to do it.

00:43:49.120 So, it's a restriction on freedom.

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.

00:44:02.540 It is a restriction on religion. 0.81

00:44:05.340 There's no way around it.

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

00:44:13.520 that there are restrictions on freedom.

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

00:44:28.260 on free speech.

00:44:29.440 So, maybe slander isn't really speech.

00:44:31.600 Where, you know, we try to adjust the word speech rather than the word free.

00:44:37.260 But that doesn't, that doesn't work.

00:44:38.680 And I don't think it really convinces anybody.

00:44:40.420 I think we all know the truth.

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.

00:45:01.560 It's never been legal to do those things.

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.

00:45:16.240 At least in this country we do.

00:45:17.360 Maybe not in Canada.

00:45:18.020 So, I don't know if the free, if the slippery slope has really, um, has really panned out

00:45:25.340 exactly as you're saying.

00:45:27.140 Which doesn't mean we shouldn't be vigilant.

00:45:28.760 I think we still have to be vigilant.

00:45:30.520 Because there are people who would like to infringe even on our ability to express political

00:45:37.780 views and that sort of thing.

00:45:39.260 And that, that certainly is a problem.

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.

00:45:54.380 When free speech absolutism is nonsensical.

00:45:57.820 Okay, we'll leave it there.

00:46:00.840 Thanks for the, um, thanks for the email.

00:46:02.940 I did have another email I was, I was going to read.

00:46:05.260 I think I'll save it for tomorrow.

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.

00:46:47.620 Godspeed.

00:46:50.640 If you enjoyed this episode, don't forget to subscribe.

00:46:52.960 And if you want to help spread the word, please give us a five-star review and tell

00:46:56.180 your friends to subscribe as well.

00:46:57.460 We're available on Apple podcasts, Spotify, wherever you listen to podcasts.

00:47:01.460 Also be sure to check out the other Daily Wire podcasts, including the Ben Shapiro show,

00:47:05.680 Michael Knowles show, and the Andrew Klavan show.

00:47:08.200 Thanks for listening.

00:47:08.840 The Matt Wall show is produced by Sean Hampton, executive producer, Jeremy Boring, senior

00:47:14.400 producer, Jonathan Hay, supervising producer, Mathis Glover, supervising producer, Robert

00:47:18.940 Sterling, technical producer, Austin Stevens, editor, Donovan Fowler, audio mixer, Robin

00:47:24.240 Fenderson.

00:47:25.120 The Matt Wall show is a Daily Wire production, copyright Daily Wire 2020.

00:47:29.520 If you prefer facts over feelings, aren't offended by the brutal truth, and you can still laugh

00:47:33.820 at the insanity filling our national news cycle, well, tune in to the Ben Shapiro show.

00:47:37.680 We'll get a whole lot of that and much more.

00:47:39.800 See you there.

The Matt Walsh Show - February 06, 2020

Ep. 421 - The Collapse Of Identity Politics

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