The Matt Walsh Show - Ep. 466 - Our Rights Are Essential

00:00:00.000 Today on the Matt Wall Show, police in North Carolina broke up a peaceful protest and arrested

00:00:05.080 protesters who had gone to the state capitol to speak out against the governor's shutdown orders,

00:00:09.500 and the police department explained that they were breaking up the protest and arresting people

00:00:12.680 because protesting is, quote, not essential. I very much disagree with that, and I think there's

00:00:18.580 a discussion we need to have about this word essential, and what does it mean exactly, and

00:00:23.680 who has the authority really to decide what's essential and what isn't. So we're going to talk

00:00:27.660 about all that coming up. Also, five headlines, including Attorney General Barr, speaking of our

00:00:32.780 essential rights, is siding with churchgoers in Mississippi who were fined for attending a church

00:00:37.660 service on Easter. And at the end of the show, I want to tell you about the most incredible email

00:00:44.240 I think I've ever received from a reader. And this is, well, it's a story you're going to want to hear,

00:00:50.200 so stick around for that, all of that coming up. But to start with, like I said, a group of peaceful

00:00:55.940 protesters gathered in Raleigh, North Carolina on Tuesday to call for the reopening of the state.

00:01:01.220 They stood outside. They observed the guidelines of social distancing. They were more than six feet

00:01:07.320 apart. More importantly, though, they observed the guidelines of the First Amendment, which plain as

00:01:12.740 day protects, quote, the right of the people peaceably to assemble and to petition the government

00:01:16.600 for redress of grievances. That's what the First Amendment says. They were assembled, they were

00:01:21.660 peaceful, and they were petitioning their government for a specific and reasonable thing, namely the

00:01:27.380 right to go back to work and feed their families. That is their grievance, I think a very justifiable

00:01:33.260 grievance, and they were petitioning the government. So it seems like they had all of the First Amendment

00:01:38.960 bases covered, right? But they seem to have forgotten, as many of us, I guess, have forgotten that

00:01:44.980 our founding fathers apparently, when codifying our inherent human rights into the legal document known as

00:01:49.940 the Bill of Rights, included the important caveat that all of this stuff evaporates and is a moot point

00:01:56.640 if there is a virus and people are getting sick. So it's all, you know, you have a right to peaceful

00:02:02.100 assembly, you have a right to speech and religion and everything else, unless people are getting sick, in which

00:02:07.040 case this is all meaningless. Now, it's easy to forget that it's in there because it was apparently written

00:02:14.840 in invisible ink, and you can only read it if you have a special decoder lens that you're looking

00:02:21.660 through. And actually, I'm not sure if that's true or not. That at least appears to be the legal

00:02:27.060 theory of the governor of North Carolina and his law enforcement agents as Raleigh police descended upon

00:02:33.040 this peaceful assembly and instructed it to disperse. At least one of the protesters was arrested.

00:02:38.020 Now, when asked to justify their actions, the Raleigh police department explained on Twitter that,

00:02:45.240 and this is a direct quote, they said, protesting is a non-essential activity.

00:02:51.560 And in case you think that maybe this is just some intern or, you know, who knows, whoever is the

00:02:56.780 person who updates the Raleigh police department Twitter, I don't know who that is. And you might

00:03:01.520 think, well, that's just that person going rogue and making this statement. Lest you think that,

00:03:06.480 the Raleigh police department issued a statement in response to the backlash over all of this,

00:03:11.840 and they doubled down on this, the first amendment is not essential thing. This is what they said.

00:03:17.640 The goal of the Raleigh police department is to help residents remain as safe as possible during the

00:03:21.620 COVID-19 pandemic by reminding them to observe the Wake County State Home Proclamation and the

00:03:26.420 governor's executive orders. In these unprecedented times and unusual circumstances, both the governor and

00:03:31.160 the county have declared a state of emergency. Under these current and temporary declarations,

00:03:35.100 protesting is not listed as an essential function. Well, there you have it. The bill of rights,

00:03:42.060 the governor did not list the bill of rights as essential. And so therefore it is not because

00:03:49.760 the governor decides. Now I, I quite expect the bootlickers out there who have already supported the

00:03:57.780 government's right to arrest people for going to church. Um, I expect those, you know, that camp,

00:04:04.100 the bootlicking camp will find this reasoning totally acceptable, but good Americans who value

00:04:12.380 freedom. Um, and am I saying that you're a bad American if you support the government's right to

00:04:18.120 arrest people for peaceably, peaceably protesting? Uh, yeah, I am. I'm, I'm saying you're a very bad

00:04:22.800 American in fact. Um, and I'm ashamed to call you a countryman. I really am. Um, if you would,

00:04:29.980 if you would support this, I'm not saying you're a bad American if you support, uh, quarantines and

00:04:35.820 shutdowns in general, but if you're going to side with the government, arresting people for, for

00:04:42.400 clearly exercising their first amendment rights, then you're a bad American. Um, those though,

00:04:49.380 Americans who value freedom will recognize all of this as the Orwellian insanity that it is.

00:04:54.480 If a politician can unilaterally abolish our fundamental liberties simply by declaring them

00:04:59.960 non-essential, then we have no fundamental liberties. The whole idea becomes a farce or at

00:05:06.580 best it's a sort of symbolic concept that we sing about and we write poems about and that makes us feel

00:05:13.080 good inside, but really it has no practical applications. It doesn't matter. This is the point.

00:05:18.700 All this, all this stuff about essential, this word essentials being bandied about quite a bit.

00:05:23.640 It doesn't matter if a particular protest or church service is essential. That's a matter of

00:05:30.140 opinion anyway. And the opinion of a politician or a bureaucrat or the governor should have no more

00:05:36.760 weight on a matter like this than anybody else's opinion, because they're not supposed to be governing

00:05:41.400 based on their opinion. We are not supposed to be under the rule of our governor's opinion.

00:05:46.440 Um, but that, that's not the point when it comes to essential. The point is that the right to

00:05:57.040 protest, just like the right to practice our religion is essential. The government has claimed

00:06:05.440 absolute authority to decree what is essential and what is not. Um, but, but when it claims this

00:06:15.120 authority for itself, we have to remember that the word essential has two definitions that are related,

00:06:22.380 but not exactly the same. So the first definition is something is essential if it's necessary or it's

00:06:27.420 indispensable or, you know, if it's like a physical necessity. Okay. Uh, so that's like, we might say

00:06:33.620 drinking water is essential. And yes, it's true that in that sense, okay, going to a protest or

00:06:40.100 going to church is not like drinking water. It's not because you could, you could not do those things

00:06:44.840 and you're not going to die. But then there's the second definition. And under that definition,

00:06:51.160 uh, uh, uh, essential means pertaining to or constituting the essence of a thing. In other

00:06:57.500 words, inherent, something is essential if it's inherent. And in that sense, in the deeper sense

00:07:02.980 of essential, there is no doubt that our right to protest and our right to practice our religion

00:07:08.060 publicly is essential in that it is inherent to our nature as human beings. It is in our essence as

00:07:14.960 human beings. Essential. Governments across the country have used the fact that these rights are

00:07:21.800 not physical necessities as an excuse to deny the essentialness of these rights to our basic human

00:07:27.540 nature. They are based, they are, they are denying the doctrine upon which our, our country was founded.

00:07:35.760 And that should really concern us that the governor can overturn that in one fell swoop just by

00:07:44.820 issuing an executive order. The whole point, the whole point of our country, the reason it exists

00:07:51.600 in the first place is that you cannot overturn those rights. They are always there

00:07:57.220 and they're always essential. Um, now there's a, there's another important point about North

00:08:05.860 Carolina specifically in the situation that it's in. Uh, and we'll talk about that in just a second,

00:08:10.760 but first I want to give a thank you to this sponsor and all of our sponsors who are supporting the

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00:10:11.060 to 64,000. That's Matt M-A-T-T to 64,000. All right. One other point about North Carolina as they're,

00:10:19.920 as they're, uh, you know, trying to overturn the first amendment, North Carolina has,

00:10:24.720 5,000 confirmed cases of coronavirus and a little over 400 hospitalizations. That's in a state of 10

00:10:31.560 million people spread out over a hundred counties. So it's, it's, and it's coronavirus death toll is,

00:10:37.760 uh, as of yesterday, it was 108. So you're talking about an average of slightly more than one death

00:10:45.520 per county. Now those numbers equal a sad situation, uh, and a serious situation, but they do not equal

00:10:57.360 a cataclysmic emergency. North Carolina, like most of the States in the union has never had a

00:11:03.820 coronavirus emergency. And even if an emergency could justify the suspension of our fundamental human

00:11:10.260 rights, which it can't in my view, but even if it could, this for North Carolina would not be such an

00:11:17.480 emergency. So what the governor is doing is exploiting the virus and the fear that it generates

00:11:26.040 to seize unprecedented power. And this is what we're seeing across the country. And, uh, we absolutely

00:11:31.100 should not stand for it. All right, let's go on to, uh, headlines. Number one, as mentioned before,

00:11:37.540 headline from the Hill says, uh, uh, Attorney General Barr says government may not impose

00:11:42.480 special restrictions on religious gatherings. Reading now from the article, it says Attorney

00:11:46.420 General William Barr said Tuesday that the government, uh, quote, may not impose special

00:11:50.900 restrictions on religious gatherings as churches across the country raise eyebrows with large in-person

00:11:55.020 ceremonies conducted against the advice of health officials. A little bit of a, you could tell the

00:12:00.140 writer of this article, you could tell how they felt about it. Barr emphasized recommendations from

00:12:04.460 federal health officials that people practice social distancing and avoid large gatherings,

00:12:08.500 noting that the constitution does allow some temporary restrictions on our liberties that would

00:12:12.400 not be tolerated in normal circumstances. But even in times of emergency, when reasonable and

00:12:16.600 temporary restrictions are placed on the right, on our rights, the first amendment and federal

00:12:20.300 statutory law prohibit discrimination against religious institutions and religious believers.

00:12:25.300 Thus government may not impose special restrictions on religious activity that do not also apply to

00:12:30.120 similar non-religious activity. Um, and then he filed a memo in support of the, uh,

00:12:35.840 congregants who were fined in Mississippi $500 for attending a drive-in service. So I'm, look,

00:12:42.600 I'm glad for this letter from Barr. Uh, I'm especially glad that he came out in defense of the church

00:12:48.520 in Mississippi, but the problem with this caveat of may not impose special restrictions that don't also

00:12:57.340 apply to other places is that it clearly gives the government an out. All they have to do is claim

00:13:04.560 that they're restricting churches the same way they're restricting other quote non-essential places.

00:13:09.820 And that's why the real issue, again, the real thing that we have to talk about and that has to be

00:13:15.040 addressed is the government's authority to declare something non-essential in the first place.

00:13:19.820 Because that's what this comes down to. Number two, Barack Obama has finally come out

00:13:25.920 after all this time to endorse his quote, good friend, Joe Biden.

00:13:31.540 I'm so proud to endorse Joe Biden for president of the United States. Choosing Joe to be my vice

00:13:38.060 president was one of the best decisions I ever made. And he became a close friend. And I believe

00:13:43.200 Joe has all the qualities we need in a president right now. He's someone whose own life has taught

00:13:49.840 him how to persevere, how to bounce back when you've been knocked down. When Joe talks with parents

00:13:56.440 who've lost their jobs, we hear the son of a man who once knew the pain of having to tell his children

00:14:01.720 that he'd lost his. I know he'll surround himself with good people. Experts, scientists,

00:14:08.840 military officials who actually know how to run the government and care about doing a good job

00:14:16.140 running the government and know how to work with our allies and who will always put the American

00:14:22.220 people's interests above their own. Very interesting. So Biden has knowledge, experience,

00:14:29.420 empathy, grace. He's a great leader, close friend. Obama is one of his, the best things he's ever done

00:14:37.380 in his life, is appoint Joe Biden vice president. All of that. But you didn't endorse him until he

00:14:43.380 was the only option left on the table. So that's, he's the best guy. I mean, you couldn't ask for a

00:14:50.040 better guy. Great leader, everything. But yeah, I had to wait until he was the only. He's also the

00:14:54.620 only option I have right now. So that's like if the team captain picks you last in gym class

00:15:00.380 and then tells you later that he selected you for your great athleticism and skill. You know,

00:15:06.500 it just doesn't, it's not very convincing. Number three, headline on npr.com says,

00:15:12.080 New York City's COVID-19 death toll soars past 10,000. You know, it sounds, that sounds bad and it

00:15:19.160 is. But then you have to actually read the article and then you see this. New York City has drastically

00:15:25.400 increased its estimate of the number of people killed by COVID-19 to include probable victims

00:15:30.340 who were not tested. The new number is 10,367. It continues, for weeks, firefighters and paramedics

00:15:37.980 have been recording a massive spike in deaths at home around New York City. The deceased were

00:15:42.640 presumed to be victims of the coronavirus, but were never tested. Now city officials have

00:15:45.960 recalculated the toll that the virus has taken and reached a staggering number, adding nearly 4,000

00:15:50.560 to the total. So what they're telling us is that they reached this, this staggering toll

00:15:54.860 because they're adding in people who did not test positive for coronavirus. They're just assuming

00:16:02.120 that these people died of coronavirus. Okay. But, but we're still told, you know, you can't claim

00:16:09.080 that they're, that they are artificially inflating the death toll. If you claim that you're a horrible

00:16:13.860 person, you're a conspiracy monger, right? Even though they're telling us pretty much that's exactly

00:16:18.540 what they're doing. And on the basis that, you know, they say paramedics have recorded a massive

00:16:24.740 spike in deaths at home around New York City. Okay. I don't deny that there obviously is a

00:16:32.440 coronavirus outbreak in New York City and it's really bad. Okay. You don't need to inflate the

00:16:37.360 death toll. In reality, it's a very bad situation. And there obviously are going to be people who die

00:16:43.420 at home from this virus tragically. But if you think about why is there a massive spike of people

00:16:50.260 dying at home, what could be another contributing factor? Well, maybe it's that people are locked in

00:16:58.840 their homes. Okay. So when you lock people in their homes all day for weeks on end, you're going to

00:17:05.840 have more people dying at home. Whereas on a normal circumstance, maybe they would have died

00:17:10.340 somewhere else. Okay. So that also has to have something to do with it. And you're going to have

00:17:17.900 people who would have died anyway and died for reasons that have nothing to do with coronavirus,

00:17:24.180 die at home. And if you show up and just assume they died of coronavirus, then you're going to end

00:17:30.660 up with an artificially inflated death toll. Number four, a headline in the Daily Wire,

00:17:38.980 U.S. officials raised alarm about Wuhan lab researching bat coronaviruses in 2018,

00:17:44.500 military investigating. This is pretty incredible. So listen to this. It says a bombshell report from

00:17:49.060 the Washington Post on Tuesday revealed that U.S. officials sounded the alarm about the Wuhan

00:17:53.260 Institute of Virology back in 2018 over safety concerns as the lab researched coronavirus from bats.

00:18:00.140 The Washington Post says, in January 2018, the U.S. embassy in Beijing took the unusual step of

00:18:06.720 repeatedly sending U.S. science diplomats to the Wuhan Institute of Virology, which had in 2015 become

00:18:13.360 China's first laboratory to achieve the highest level of international bioresearch safety. What the

00:18:19.920 U.S. officials learned during their visits concerned them so much, they dispatched two diplomatic cables

00:18:24.560 categorized as sensitive but unclassified back to Washington. And I mean, you can go to Washington

00:18:30.800 Post and read the entire report. The point is, you know, there's very real concern here, obviously.

00:18:39.880 And I think about there were a lot of people, myself included, I certainly wasn't the only person,

00:18:46.840 a lot of just normal common sense people who weeks ago were saying, it's probably not a coincidence

00:18:55.580 that you've got this global pandemic that started in a place where sitting right there at the center

00:19:02.000 of it is this virus lab. You know, probably not a coincidence. There are coincidences in life,

00:19:11.480 but, you know, when something seems like it's probably not a coincidence, most of the time it's

00:19:16.340 not. And those of us who weeks ago were pointing this out and saying, hey, you know, what about that

00:19:21.560 virus lab? Does that maybe have something to do with this? Weeks ago, we were told by the experts

00:19:26.320 and the media that we're a bunch of conspiracy theorists and we're stupid and they scolded us.

00:19:32.220 And now we're being told that, oh yeah, you know what, actually, yeah, it might be that.

00:19:35.120 So there's been a lot of that happening, in fact. Also with masks. You think back a month ago,

00:19:43.100 there were people, just common sense, normal people, buying masks and saying, maybe we should

00:19:48.820 wear masks. And again, we were scolded by the experts, including the Surgeon General,

00:19:55.760 saying, no, you know what, masks isn't going to do anything for you, you moron. Stop wearing masks.

00:20:01.380 Fast forward a month and now they're saying, oh yeah, you know what, about those masks,

00:20:04.300 maybe you were right about that. Turns out that common sense once again prevails. Before we move

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00:21:48.780 there's an article in FiveThirtyEight making the rounds today. It attempts to explain and justify

00:21:56.520 why the world shut down for coronavirus, but, and this is a question, again, speaking of common

00:22:01.300 sense things, a lot of common sense people have been asking. We shut down for coronavirus. We didn't

00:22:06.440 shut down for Ebola, SARS, swine flu. There's been a lot of, there have been many different outbreaks

00:22:13.360 that have happened in modern times recently, and we didn't shut down for those. Now, this article in

00:22:18.960 FiveThirtyEight written by Kaylee Rogers tries to explain that, and basically to summarize her

00:22:26.560 argument, she says that the other diseases were either not as contagious, like Ebola, which is

00:22:32.780 extremely deadly, but harder to contract, or not as deadly, like the swine flu. And that's why she

00:22:40.020 argues the shutdowns make sense for coronavirus, but they wouldn't have made sense for these other

00:22:45.580 things. But I want to go to the, because there's a problem with the logic here, I think. I want to go

00:22:50.920 to the section on the swine flu in this article, and here's what she writes. In the spring of 2009,

00:22:56.440 a new version of the H1N1 influenza virus, the virus that caused the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic,

00:23:02.520 emerged and began to spread rapidly. The swine flu has killed anywhere from 151,000 people to 575,000

00:23:08.960 people worldwide since 2009, according to the CDC, and may have infected over a billion people.

00:23:16.220 The swine flu spreads easily person to person, just like COVID-19, and possibly even from people

00:23:21.540 who were pre-symptomatic. It goes on and says, so why didn't the swine flu overwhelm our healthcare

00:23:29.700 systems? The main difference is that it ended up being a much milder and less deadly infection.

00:23:34.100 There are a range of estimates, estimated case fatality rates for swine flu, but even the

00:23:39.400 highest, less than 0.1%, is much lower than the current estimates for COVID-19. And then it quotes

00:23:45.620 Fauci, who says that the fatality rate was quite low, and that's why it didn't get the same kind

00:23:51.380 of response. All right. But up to half a million people dying from a virus is still a lot, isn't it?

00:23:59.700 You're talking about half a million people. And here's the problem. Most of the rhetoric that's

00:24:09.560 used to justify the shutdowns centers around the value of human life and how we have to make

00:24:16.340 sacrifices to save people. And we can't sacrifice the elderly and people with pre-existing conditions

00:24:24.940 and so on. And people are more important than money and all this kind of stuff, which of course,

00:24:30.000 I agree with all of that. You can agree with all of that, that life is inherently valuable and people

00:24:38.980 are more important than money and all. We shouldn't be sacrificed. No, you can agree with that and still

00:24:45.320 think that the shutdowns are the wrong move. But that's the argument for the most part. We've all heard

00:24:52.040 this stuff a million times. And not just on Facebook and Twitter comments, but from the actual

00:24:58.060 government officials who are instituting these policies. They're the ones who are offering this

00:25:04.120 as a reason that we got to save human life. Human life is valuable, so on and so on and so forth.

00:25:09.800 All of that, all of it would clearly apply to the 5,000 or rather 500,000 people who died from the swine

00:25:18.880 flu. So you can say all you want that fewer people will die from this or fewer people will die from

00:25:25.220 the swine flu than will die from the coronavirus. And you may be right about that, but that has nothing

00:25:31.040 really to do with the justification that we're being given for these shutdowns. We are told,

00:25:38.400 point blank, it's about preserving human life. And if that's what it's about, then you have to explain

00:25:44.980 why, you know, yes, 500,000 people may be fewer people than will ultimately die from coronavirus

00:25:52.060 or could have died or whatever. I don't know if that's true or not, but I'll grant it for the sake

00:25:55.500 of argument. Yet, that's still 500,000 people. And so if we're doing shutdowns to save lives,

00:26:03.400 why not those people? And if you're saying that 500,000 people is not enough, if that's not enough

00:26:10.660 of a death toll to justify a shutdown, where is your line? And you have to be able to explain that.

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00:26:40.300 Plus or All Access member right now, this isn't how usually, usually you become a member, you get the

00:26:46.160 leftist tiers tumbler, right? You get one tumbler. Well, if you become a member right now, you get not

00:26:50.940 one, but two of our highly coveted leftist tiers tumblers. And I mean, if you know, look, I got one

00:27:00.640 tumbler and it changed my life completely forever. I was never the same again. And that's, and this

00:27:06.480 is what you hear from everybody who gets this tumbler. They all talk about the way that it

00:27:09.620 changed their life and made their life worth living in a way that it wasn't before. I know I wake up

00:27:15.240 every morning, especially in these times, and sometimes I'm very depressed. And I think, what's

00:27:19.040 the point of going on? And I look at my leftist tiers tumbler and I realize that's why I'm going on

00:27:23.440 for that tumbler. Okay. This is not an exaggeration. I've heard this not just from, I've heard this from

00:27:28.620 many people. If one tumbler can give your life meaning in this way, imagine what two tumblers

00:27:33.980 can do. That's all I'm saying. So become a Daily Wire Insider Plus or All Access member and you get

00:27:40.720 10% off with coupon code Walsh. Plus you get the, you get that, you get the two tumblers as well. So

00:27:47.120 you want to make sure you go ahead and do that. All right. Today, we're going to cancel all of the media

00:27:52.440 outlets, all of them who have been publishing headlines like this from Al Jazeera. Headlines

00:27:58.600 is dozens buried in New York mass grave as coronavirus deaths surge. So dozens buried

00:28:04.600 in a mass grave in New York. And then it continues, New York is burying some of its dead in a mass

00:28:10.100 grave as its daily coronavirus death toll reaches grim new records. And every major outlet that I've

00:28:15.420 seen has reported on these mass graves. And they do it with the kind of sensational rhetoric that,

00:28:22.100 you know, and tone that you might expect. And that on the surface seems justified. I mean,

00:28:26.360 they're using mass graves now. That's how bad it's gotten. The problem though, is that these mass

00:28:31.660 graves are not new. New York has been burying people in this mass grave since the 19th century.

00:28:38.900 In fact, they think over a million bodies have been buried there over the last century plus.

00:28:45.000 And not all from the coronavirus, of course. Now it's true that they're putting more people than

00:28:50.360 usual in these mass graves. We don't know how many of them are from the coronavirus

00:28:54.660 epidemic, but probably a certain portion of them are, you know, stands to reason.

00:29:00.740 But that means the real headline should read like this.

00:29:04.200 More people than usual being buried in New York's century-old mass grave site,

00:29:08.820 some of them might have died from the coronavirus. That's what the real headline is. It would be an

00:29:13.480 accurate headline. But it doesn't have the same kind of sensationalist flair to it. So instead,

00:29:17.980 they just report that people are being buried in mass graves. And I think the reason I want to

00:29:23.100 point to this is, first of all, just to clarify, if you've seen these headlines, I know a lot of

00:29:27.920 people, I've seen these stories being passed around online. And it's very startling, of course,

00:29:33.380 but just to give you the perspective on it. Also, I think it's a good lesson in how the media

00:29:41.560 manipulates. And it shows why I don't really like the term fake news. You know, I don't use it that

00:29:47.000 often. Because the term fake news, I think, misses the point. Is it fake news that people are being

00:29:53.780 buried in mass graves in New York? No, not at all. It's not fake news. People are being buried in mass

00:29:58.640 graves. Is it fake news that some of the dead are probably coronavirus fatalities? No, probably not.

00:30:04.540 So the fake news, quote unquote, comes from the emphasis and the lack of context and the sensationalist

00:30:16.080 framing on it. And it comes in the facts they decide not to report or not to emphasize or not

00:30:23.660 to put in the headline versus the facts that they do put in the headline. That's where it comes from.

00:30:28.840 And it still gives the media this plausible deniability. It can always deny the fake

00:30:34.640 news charge on the basis that what it's reporting is technically true. Yet it is misleading the public

00:30:41.540 and it's intentionally misleading. And they know that's what they're doing.

00:30:48.620 But they're not misleading the public by literally making up fake stories out of whole cloth.

00:30:53.280 The way people talk about fake news from the media, it's like people think the media just invents

00:31:03.580 stories. Like you've got a reporter sitting in his house making up a story as if he's writing a

00:31:09.480 fiction story. And that might happen sometimes, but vast majority of the time, that's not what they're

00:31:16.060 doing. And it's important for us to realize this so that we can detect the quote unquote fake news when

00:31:20.940 we see it. No, usually what they're reporting is probably basically true. But what we have to look

00:31:28.120 at is what are they emphasizing? How are they framing it? What details are they leaving out?

00:31:35.040 And what stories are they ignoring? Because I think that's where the bias comes in.

00:31:40.340 All right, finally, something a little different today. Usually this is where I would read

00:31:45.140 some emails from listeners. But today, instead of reading an email, I want to talk about an email

00:31:52.140 that I received. And I'm not going to read it because it has a lot of personal information

00:31:57.440 that I don't feel comfortable reading. But I do have permission at least to talk about the email.

00:32:03.320 So, and that's good because it's honestly the most incredible email I've ever gotten from a reader.

00:32:08.340 And that's not an exaggeration. So, for context, we have to go back five years. Five years ago,

00:32:15.800 I wrote an article. I was writing for The Blaze at the time. And the article that I wrote addressed,

00:32:22.580 it was addressed to and directed to a woman who had posted a goodbye letter to the child that she

00:32:29.380 was going to abort the following day. And from what I remember, she posted it on Reddit, I think.

00:32:33.740 And I still remember seeing this. And it was very disturbing. You know, this woman

00:32:40.480 wrote this letter to her child she was going to kill, calling the child a little one and saying

00:32:49.480 how much she loves the child and explaining why she has to go through with the abortion.

00:32:54.720 And I wrote my article to her, pleading with her not to destroy her child.

00:33:00.280 And because I figured that by posting this online, as she had done, she must have been at least

00:33:06.980 partially at some level hoping that someone would talk her out of it. Because that's the only reason

00:33:11.240 why you would post something like that. If you're very confident in what you're going to do, you're

00:33:14.860 not going to write this bizarre open letter to your child who, of course, is never going to read it

00:33:19.560 and post it online. So, I figured she was looking for someone to talk her out of it. And so,

00:33:26.660 I tried to do that. I have no idea if I succeeded. I never heard from the woman. Chances are she

00:33:32.980 probably never even saw what I wrote. And I knew that when I wrote it. Not many people did see what

00:33:37.520 I wrote. The post sort of faded into oblivion after getting just a few clicks, which was fine,

00:33:42.440 of course, because I didn't write it for clicks. And I did write it specifically to one person who I

00:33:46.260 knew would probably not see it. And so, you know, but it was worth a shot. Anyway, fast forward five

00:33:51.200 years. Two nights ago, I got an email. Actually, it was a message on Twitter, direct message from a

00:33:58.580 woman, a different woman who had quite a powerful story to tell, I thought. And I can only sum it up.

00:34:05.400 But she told me that she read my article when I posted it five years ago. And she had been wanting

00:34:12.020 to write to me for these past five years to tell me about this. And finally, she decided to.

00:34:15.320 She read the article after she had just gone to Planned Parenthood and taken an abortion pill.

00:34:22.060 So she had made the decision to abort her child and had begun the process of going through with it.

00:34:29.100 And I think with the abortion pill, it's usually multiple doses you have to take. So she had taken

00:34:34.100 one dose at least. After making that decision, she was at home that night and she was on the internet.

00:34:40.140 And she said that she was kind of scrolling through the internet, looking for something. She didn't

00:34:45.980 know exactly what she was looking for, but she was just scrolling and was distraught. She saw my

00:34:51.040 article. She read it. She was feeling profound regret and sadness and guilt and a million emotions

00:34:57.540 that I can't even fathom. Yet she read the whole thing multiple times, she said. And she began to really

00:35:04.420 mourn the loss of her child. I mean, deeply mourn again in a way that just going through something

00:35:10.900 emotionally that I, that I personally cannot even fathom. And then she saw an ad pop up for

00:35:17.740 abortion pill reversal. Long story short, her daughter turns five this year. My point in telling

00:35:26.500 you this, first of all, is it's just an incredible story, I think. And also I want to acknowledge

00:35:31.760 the courage of this woman. I mean, most people, myself included, you know, we can't bear to read

00:35:39.400 things or listen to perspectives that we simply disagree with, right? If we have a differing

00:35:45.200 opinion, we often don't have the fortitude to hear someone out who disagrees with us. We don't even

00:35:50.740 have the courage to do that. So imagine the kind of courage it must require if you can put yourself

00:35:55.740 in this woman's shoes after she'd already made the choice to get the abortion and she had gone

00:36:00.680 through with it. And she thought that it was a done deal. It was irreversible. Um, and yet to

00:36:06.740 listen to the other perspective and to be willing to confront her own decisions and think critically

00:36:14.380 about them and to be honest with herself, because that's the other thing we're all very good at doing

00:36:19.680 is lying to ourselves, especially to justify the things we've already done. But she didn't do that.

00:36:25.340 Um, and I think that, that, that just requires courage. Um, unlike what most people demonstrate

00:36:32.700 in their lives, uh, which by the way, reversing an abortion pill, that's my other point in bringing

00:36:37.780 this up. Reversing an abortion pill is possible. Um, it's by no means a surefire bet it's a, and it's

00:36:43.420 a somewhat involved process. Mostly it means taking, as far as I am aware, it means taking progesterone,

00:36:49.040 multiple doses. She told me that she had to go on bed rest for several days, just hoping,

00:36:53.760 hoping that it would work. And it did. Um, but you have to really be committed to reversing it

00:36:58.820 and to saving your baby, which she was. So, and she now has three kids. Uh, she's married. She has

00:37:05.620 since married the father of her children and they have a happy family. She sent me a family picture,

00:37:09.880 beautiful kids, beautiful family, happy ending. Um, I don't think for a minute that I played a central

00:37:17.000 role in all of this. I think it was her love for her child and her courage and her listening to

00:37:23.520 God's calling on her heart. Uh, God, I think moved her to go online, search for something.

00:37:29.660 She didn't know what, uh, she found the article and then most importantly, she, she saw the ad.

00:37:35.720 And, um, so this is really a story about her and God and her child. So something positive to end the

00:37:42.380 show with for a change. Um, I know that was very meaningful to me and, uh, and you know, it is also

00:37:50.000 nice, I guess on a, on a more, on a personal note, it's nice that, uh, you know, I've been doing this

00:37:56.020 for a long time, putting a lot of content out there and almost all of it is forgotten 10 seconds

00:38:00.720 later, including by myself. So to, to, to know that at least one thing made a difference for one

00:38:05.520 family is a special to me. So there we go. There's my, there's my happy, happy ending. I won't make a

00:38:10.480 habit of it. I promise. So we'll leave it there. Have a great day, everybody. Godspeed.

00:38:17.800 If you enjoyed this episode, don't forget to subscribe. And if you want to help spread the

00:38:21.460 word, please give us a five-star review. Tell your friends to subscribe as well. We're available on

00:38:26.300 Apple podcasts, Spotify, wherever you listen to podcasts. We're there. Also be sure to check out

00:38:30.880 the other daily wire podcasts, including the Ben Shapiro show, Michael Knowles show,

00:38:33.720 and the Andrew Klavan show. Thanks for listening. The Matt Wall show is produced by Sean Hampton,

00:38:38.160 executive producer, Jeremy Boring. Our supervising producers are Mathis Glover and Robert Sterling.

00:38:43.320 Our technical producer is Austin Stevens edited by Danny D'Amico. And our audio was mixed by Robin

00:38:48.980 Fenderson. The Matt Wall show is a daily wire production copyright daily wire 2020. A new study

00:38:55.420 shows Americans are worried, but they're not worried primarily about the coronavirus. They're worried

00:38:59.900 about something that poses a far more imminent risk to their lives and livelihoods. As the backlash

00:39:04.500 against our national lockdowns begins to brew, the response from mayors and governors separates

00:39:09.060 the politician wheat from the politician chaff. Then Joe Biden gets a major endorsement now that

00:39:13.880 there's no other choice. And the New York Times goes into full damage control mode to cover for

00:39:18.720 grab happy Joe Biden. All that and more. Check it out on the Michael Knowles show.

The Matt Walsh Show - April 15, 2020

Ep. 466 - Our Rights Are Essential

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