Ep. 646 - Ten Years In Federal Prison For A Meme
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
180.94666
Summary
The FBI is now arresting Trump supporters for posting memes. Yes, that s happening. Also, five headlines including the drama on the stock market, and Harriet Tubman replacing Andrew Jackson on the 20th, we ll discuss the expert who was doxed, harassed, and boycotted after it was revealed that she had committed the crime of donating to Donald Trump. That and a whole lot more to cover today on the Matt Welch Show.
Transcript
00:00:00.000
Today on the Matt Wall Show, the FBI is now arresting Trump supporters for posting memes.
00:00:05.200
Yes, that's happening. Also, five headlines, including the drama on the stock market and
00:00:08.700
Harriet Tubman replacing Andrew Jackson on the 20. And our daily cancellation, we'll discuss the
00:00:12.840
Instagram baby expert who was doxed, harassed, and boycotted after it was revealed that she
00:00:18.700
had committed the crime of donating to Donald Trump. That and a whole lot more to cover today
00:00:30.000
The FBI, apparently having finished its investigation into Bubba Wallace's garage
00:00:35.940
door pull and looking for a new dragon to slay, showed up yesterday at the home of a Trump
00:00:41.620
supporting former Twitter troll and took him into custody on charges of, as a press release from
00:00:47.000
the DOJ puts it, depriving individuals of their constitutional right to vote. The formal criminal
00:00:53.180
complaint alleges more specifically that the accused Douglas Mackey, aka Ricky Vaughn, that's
00:00:59.540
the name of his Twitter account, which has been suspended for years now. They say he conspired
00:01:05.500
to, quote, injure, oppress, threaten, and intimidate persons in the free exercise of a right and
00:01:11.560
privilege secured to them by the Constitution. The rest of the complaint makes it clear that
00:01:16.000
all of this supposed injuring, oppressing, threatening, and intimidating was conducted in the form of
00:01:22.800
memes. Mackey faces 10 years in federal prison for memes. Now, admittedly, it's not a great shock,
00:01:30.800
I guess, to find Joe Biden's government arresting and prosecuting people for posting memes. If there's
00:01:36.180
any surprise here, it's perhaps only that it took less than two weeks to get to this point.
00:01:41.640
The New York Times has some more details on the case. They say federal prosecutors accused Douglas
00:01:46.420
Mackey 31 of coordinating with co-conspirators to spread memes on Twitter, falsely claiming that
00:01:52.840
Hillary Clinton supporters could vote by sending a text message to a specific phone number.
00:01:57.080
As a result of the misinformation campaign, prosecutors said at least 4,900 people, or rather
00:02:02.480
4,900 unique phone numbers, texted the number in a futile effort to cast votes for Mrs. Clinton.
00:02:07.460
Their effort to misinform voters began after the group saw a similar campaign intended to deceive
00:02:12.440
voters in the 2016 referendum in Britain on whether to leave the European Union, also known as Brexit,
00:02:18.040
according to the complaint. Mr. Mackey and his associates created their own version, sharing
00:02:21.940
photos that urged Mrs. Clinton's supporters to vote for her on election day using a hashtag on Twitter
00:02:27.100
or on Facebook. To make the images look more legitimate, they affixed the logo of her campaign
00:02:32.300
and linked to her website. Some of their memes appeared to target Black and Latino voters.
00:02:38.100
One image had a Black woman standing in front of a sign supporting Mrs. Clinton,
00:02:41.760
telling people to vote for Mrs. Clinton by texting a specific number. Mr. Mackey shared a similar
00:02:46.640
image written in Spanish, according to prosecutors. Okay. Now, back when Mackey and his dastardly
00:02:52.900
co-conspirators first hatched this plan to oppress and injure the innocent through memes,
00:02:58.720
BuzzFeed published a report on the plot, which included a screenshot of what those 4,900 people
00:03:04.220
who texted the number apparently would have received in response. The Clinton campaign sent a reply text,
00:03:10.760
because this was a text going to the Clinton campaign. The Clinton campaign sent a reply text
00:03:15.780
informing them that the ad was not legitimate. So there is then no reason to think that all of
00:03:22.980
those 4,900 people or any of them actually did stay home on election day under the assumption that
00:03:28.540
they'd already voted through text. Because according to BuzzFeed's own report, they were given a message
00:03:33.460
back saying that was not legitimate what you saw in the meme. Words to that effect.
00:03:38.040
It would seem difficult for the federal government to prove that anyone was deprived their right to vote
00:03:43.820
when, for all they know, for all we know, the alleged victims did, in fact, vote.
00:03:50.400
That, of course, is all beside the point. The real question is whether it's actually possible for a person
00:03:55.660
to be deprived of their rights or to be injured, much less oppressed, through a meme.
00:04:00.920
And the answer to that would be seemed to be no. At least if there is a meme capable of persecuting
00:04:07.360
all who look upon it, like some sort of horror movie, you just look at the image and you're
00:04:11.940
oppressed. The ones that Mackie posted surely do not fit that bill. I don't know what that meme
00:04:17.040
would look like. I don't know what a persecuting oppressive meme would look like. I just know that
00:04:22.300
it doesn't look like this. A constitutional right is infringed, impeded, or removed when a person is,
00:04:30.360
through force or threat, prevented from exercising it. Nobody was prevented from doing anything in
00:04:36.920
this case. If there are any rights being infringed upon, it's the First Amendment right of Douglas Mackey.
00:04:43.480
And if any individual was so unfathomably stupid as to read a joke meme on Twitter and take its voting
00:04:52.540
guidance seriously without even doing five seconds of additional research, because that's all you
00:04:57.080
would need to do. If you're dumb, you need to be two levels of stupid here. Stupid enough to see that
00:05:01.940
and not immediately recognize it as a joke. And then also so stupid that you don't take five seconds
00:05:06.860
to just Google, can I vote through text message? That's all it would have taken. And if you couldn't put
00:05:12.900
in that effort and you were that stupid, then the fault lies with you. Now, you can't always
00:05:19.980
victim blame in cases of fraud. But when the supposed quote unquote fraud is a silly picture
00:05:26.600
on Twitter telling you to vote in a presidential election with a hashtag or a text message, yeah,
00:05:31.800
the victim does indeed deserve the blame. I am 100% victim blaming. I blame the victims, totally.
00:05:37.540
And I also have zero sympathy for them. If anything, the alleged oppressor has done us a favor by
00:05:44.880
weeding out the sort of terminal morons who shouldn't be voting in the first place.
00:05:49.760
I realize that's not a valid legal defense, however, but just on a personal note, I'm quite glad.
00:05:56.500
Anyone who's stupid enough to fall for something like that, I am happy if they don't vote.
00:06:00.100
Thank God they don't vote. Now, consider the precedent that's quite intentionally being set
00:06:07.080
here. You know, a very common joke on social media around the time of any election is for
00:06:12.260
supporters of one candidate to announce that the supporters of any other are allowed to vote a day
00:06:16.740
late or, you know, something like that. Those jokes are very common. You see them around election day
00:06:21.940
all the time. So is anyone who made a joke like that now guilty of a federal crime? If you've made a
00:06:28.000
joke like that on the internet at any point in your life, are you now liable to go to jail for 10
00:06:33.260
years? I mean, does 10 years in prison sound like a reasonable sentence? Even if you agree that it's
00:06:38.620
a crime, 10 years, which I don't, 10 years in prison for that? And if it's now a felony to post a meme
00:06:48.920
with disinformation that may influence voting behavior, how far does that go? I mean, there are many
00:06:56.580
false or dubious political claims made in the form of memes. Almost all memes have false or dubious
00:07:04.580
information. Almost everything on the internet does. Are we going to prosecute everyone who posts
00:07:10.320
or retweets one? I mean, isn't that the implication here? If you even retweet a meme that has false
00:07:17.440
information that may arguably influence the voting behavior of some people, it's a crime. Go to jail.
00:07:23.100
But if that's what we're doing, why are we not breaking down the doors of people
00:07:27.940
who posted claims about Donald Trump being a Nazi? Why are we frog marching them off to jail?
00:07:34.660
That's disinformation. And if believed, it could very well influence how somebody votes.
00:07:41.100
Of course, my question is rhetorical. Disinformation used against Republicans never has been and never
00:07:47.280
will be prosecuted. Mackey's crime is not that he posted information, disinformation,
00:07:53.400
or that he infringed on anybody's right, but that he did what he did in support of Donald Trump.
00:07:59.760
That's the crime. The only way around this conclusion is to, is, is the only way you could
00:08:04.400
get around this and prove me wrong is if you can point to leftist meme posters who have also been
00:08:11.540
arrested or else to claim that leftists never post dishonest memes. And so that's why they don't
00:08:16.440
get arrested for them. But there are no examples of the former and anyone who claims the latter is
00:08:21.840
guilty of disinformation themselves. In fact, just to prove my point here, here is one example that
00:08:28.080
this just came to my attention right before we went on the air. Christina Wong, she's an alleged
00:08:33.080
comedian. I think there's some disinformation in that claim alone. But let me show you a video that
00:08:39.200
she posted on Twitter. This is on November 8th, 2016. Here's what she posted. Watch.
00:08:44.600
Hey, everybody. This is Christina Wong. And I'm coming out. I'm a Trump supporter. And I just want
00:08:51.820
to remind all my fellow Chinese Americans for Trump, people of color for Trump to vote. Vote for Trump
00:08:57.920
on Wednesday, November 9th. Really important day. We're going to show this country who's boss. And
00:09:03.760
that's our man, Donald Trump. So don't forget to vote Donald Trump on November 9th.
00:09:10.440
Huh. Huh. See, as far as I'm aware, Ms. Wong has not been raided by the FBI. There are no 30-page
00:09:20.540
criminal complaints being filed against this woman. And that's all you need to know. I mean,
00:09:28.180
if there was any doubt in your mind whatsoever about whether or not this new policy, this new law
00:09:35.180
is being enforced equally, well, there you go. And we could sit here all day, post, give you similar
00:09:42.380
examples, similar jokes like that, all kinds of disinformation related to Donald Trump.
00:09:49.460
Much of it not even coming in the form of memes, but coming from the media, coming in the form of
00:09:54.540
headlines, news articles, stories, we're not prosecuting any of that. And that's because
00:10:01.300
there is, there has been for a long time and will especially be now a two-tiered justice system.
00:10:08.160
There's the justice system for the cultural heretics. And if you're on the right, then that's
00:10:14.500
where you belong. You're a cultural heretic. And there's just system for people like Ms. Wong there.
00:10:20.060
Someone who has the correct, who believes in the correct orthodoxy, who has the correct views.
00:10:28.140
There's a lot of things she can do that you cannot anymore because you'll go to prison.
00:10:36.140
And saying there's a two-tiered justice system where we have two-tiered justice, that's just
00:10:39.400
another way of saying we don't have justice in this country. There is no justice. There is no law.
00:10:43.720
There is but the whims of the elite. And that's the way it's going to go now.
00:10:52.500
Anyone who's not, who has not woken up to that reality, time to wake up. Now let's get to our
00:10:58.960
five headlines. Now you've no doubt heard what's happening with Wall Street, the stock market,
00:11:11.500
GameStop. If you haven't heard, well, unfortunately I'm too dumb to explain. So you're kind of out of
00:11:18.540
luck. But let me, I'll read, this is one of the latest, this is from Reuters. The latest on all
00:11:24.620
of this says that almost 60% surge in shares of American airlines led stellar gains for a series
00:11:31.440
of social media hype stocks on Thursday, broadening a battle between small-time traders and major
00:11:35.600
Wall Street institutions that has shaken U.S. and European stock markets. GameStop, the video game
00:11:40.540
chain, whose 1,700% rally has been at the heart of the slugfest the past week, retreated after
00:11:46.600
initially adding another 30% in early trading on Reddit. Now you can tell when I'm reading this, I
00:11:51.520
have very little idea what I'm even reading. I think that comes through, doesn't it? On Reddit,
00:11:56.280
on Reddit thread Wall Street bets, where calls to buy stocks have helped drive the extraordinary
00:12:00.520
moves. Some of its more than 4 million members reported trading platform Robinhood was now
00:12:04.720
preventing investors from buying new shares in GameStop and other companies. Robinhood,
00:12:10.900
one of the biggest of the easy access apps that has spurred the development of a huge online
00:12:14.720
community of amateur traders, did not immediately respond to requests for comment. So now they're
00:12:18.080
preventing it. Now, if I could just break this down, everything that's happening on the stock
00:12:23.200
market, if you don't understand, and I could really break it down for you. Just to simplify,
00:12:28.600
let me explain. So basically what's happening is, just to make it really simple, if I were to really
00:12:36.540
break this down and really simplify everything, and if I'm going to actually explain it, you know,
00:12:43.620
there's a number of things that I would say to explain it, because I totally understand. I do.
00:12:49.980
But in fact, it's too complicated. I can't explain it. I'm not going to bother. Let's go to the White
00:12:53.980
House press conference, though. The question was asked about all of this, and even though I admit
00:13:00.720
I don't understand much about the stock market or anything at all, really, I can listen to this
00:13:06.900
answer, and I can tell that this is completely bogus and ridiculous. Let's listen.
00:13:12.000
If the White House is concerned about the stock market activity we're seeing around GameStop,
00:13:15.920
and now with some other stocks as well, including the subsidiary or whatever, the company that was
00:13:23.940
Blockbuster, and have there been any conversations with the SEC about how to proceed?
00:13:30.520
Well, I'm also happy to repeat that we have the first female Treasury Secretary and a team that's
00:13:36.620
surrounding her, and often questions about market we'll send to them. But our team is, of course,
00:13:41.400
our economic team, including Secretary Yellen and others, are monitoring the situation. It's a good
00:13:46.080
reminder, though, that the stock market isn't the only measure of the health of our economy. It
00:13:50.900
doesn't reflect how working and middle-class families are doing. As you all know from covering
00:13:55.420
this, we're in the midst of a case-shaped recovery. America's workers are struggling to make ends meet,
00:14:00.000
which is why the president has introduced this urgent package to get immediate relief.
00:14:05.240
Yeah, like I said, I'm not a financial expert myself, but I'm pretty sure that the gender of the
00:14:11.140
Treasury Secretary has nothing to do with anything whatsoever. So I can point out that BS, at least.
00:14:18.940
This kind of goes back to what we were talking about before. You think about how stupid you have to be
00:14:22.460
to fall for the means, right? Even if you don't know anything about voting at all,
00:14:29.520
right, you should still be able to pick up on obvious BS, even if you know nothing about the
00:14:37.280
subject. If you have even just a moderately well-tuned BS detector, you should be able to pick
00:14:43.860
up on a joke meme. And so in this case, don't know anything about the stock market, I've got at least
00:14:49.820
a moderately tuned BS detector, so I can listen to that answer and know, okay, that's ridiculous.
00:14:57.840
Of course, it has nothing to do with anything. What I will say, if I were to give any analysis
00:15:01.960
whatsoever of what's happening on the stock market, I don't know much. I do think it's funny. As far as
00:15:07.500
I can tell, it seems pretty funny, and that's all I've got. That's all I can tell you. Let's move on to
00:15:12.060
something I know a little bit more about. Staying with the White House press briefing for a moment.
00:15:15.680
This is from a couple of days ago. I've been wanting to bring this up. The question being asked here is
00:15:20.020
about the plan to put Harriet Tubman on the $20 bill, which means taking Andrew Jackson off,
00:15:28.780
The Obama administration initially had wanted to put Harriet Tubman on the $20 bill. The Trump
00:15:36.300
administration dragged their feet on that. I wanted to see if the Biden administration has a
00:15:41.420
view of the timeline on whether or not she should be on the paper currency.
00:15:47.260
I was here when we announced that, and it was very exciting. It hasn't moved forward yet, which we
00:15:52.100
would have been surprised to learn at the time. The Treasury Department is taking steps to resume
00:15:56.640
efforts to put Harriet Tubman on the front of the new $20 notes. It's important that our notes,
00:16:03.880
our money, if people don't know what a note is, reflect the history and diversity of our country.
00:16:10.220
And Harriet Tubman's image, gracing the new $20 note, would certainly reflect that. So we're
00:16:15.180
exploring ways to speed up that effort. But any specifics would, of course, come from the Department
00:16:19.840
of Treasury. So this is the kind of thing that we're all supposed to simply support without any
00:16:26.420
protest. And of course, if you don't support it, then you're racist. And I have been disappointed,
00:16:32.500
though not surprised, to find so many conservatives, of course, going along with this and say, oh,
00:16:37.320
I don't, I would never object. I would, maybe some would object to this, but I certainly would not.
00:16:42.500
But Harriet Tubman, put her on all the money. Of course, go ahead. We should honor Harriet Tubman,
00:16:48.920
they say. Well, I agree. I'm all for honoring Harriet Tubman. There are many ways to do that.
00:16:55.860
There are many ways that we have honored her. There are many additional ways that we could.
00:17:00.600
The point here, the question, the issue at hand is not whether to honor Harriet Tubman.
00:17:06.360
On that point, I think there's probably almost universal agreement. The question is actually
00:17:13.180
whether to dishonor, to take the honor away from Andrew Jackson, because that's actually the point.
00:17:20.220
That's why the left wants to do this. It's not about Harriet Tubman. It's about Andrew Jackson.
00:17:26.100
And what is it about him? Well, it's about, it's about the fact that he was an old white guy that
00:17:30.600
lived a long time ago. And we have learned that if you belong to that category, or if you belong to
00:17:36.260
that category, then you have to be erased from the history books and you're not allowed to be
00:17:40.020
honored in any way whatsoever. It's not, it's not like Andrew Jackson is the only one they're
00:17:46.420
targeting. In fact, and we'll maybe talk more about this tomorrow, but San Francisco school board,
00:17:52.680
the latest one, it's decided to rename, I think it's something like 40 different schools,
00:17:58.340
including Lincoln High School, Washington. They got a school named after Washington,
00:18:02.940
taking those down too. So eventually, you know, eventually we're going to be taking all the other
00:18:09.540
money is going to be changed too, taking their faces off the money as well. But that's what this
00:18:15.480
is about. So when I say I'm not in favor of putting Harriet Tubman on the 20, what I really mean is I'm
00:18:21.580
not in favor of taking Andrew Jackson off because I believe he was a great and consequential American.
00:18:27.340
It doesn't mean I think he was a saint in all respects. It doesn't mean that I think he was a
00:18:32.940
perfect, but most great people are not. In fact, no great people are or were, except for Jesus Christ.
00:18:42.580
Anyone outside of that, not perfect. And in fact, the thing we know about great and consequential
00:18:48.000
people is that they often have great and consequential flaws as well.
00:18:52.520
When you are operating on a certain level, you know, your virtues are going to be magnified,
00:19:03.020
but your vices are also going to be magnified. That's the way it goes.
00:19:07.760
That's why I always talk about if we're going to hold, if this is the standard we're applying
00:19:11.280
to one person who lived back in history, to one historical figure, then really you have to apply
00:19:17.760
it to everyone, which means eventually there's going to be nobody left of any race, nation, creed,
00:19:21.680
or gender that we can honor. If they lived, you know, if they lived like 10 years ago or earlier,
00:19:29.560
there's no one left who isn't problematic. So no, this, this is something we should be against
00:19:34.580
and we should, we should protest. We should, we should be against, we should oppose this.
00:19:38.980
Taking Andrew Jackson off. You want to come up with a, with a, you know, a new, a new currency
00:19:45.960
for Harriet Tubman or really anything else. Build her, she's already got statues and monuments,
00:19:50.740
build another one, build 50 of them for all I care. Andrew Jackson should stay on the $20 bill.
00:19:57.680
To my mind. All right. ABC7 New York has this story. It says, target is the latest company to drop
00:20:03.420
Chalco. I think it's Chalco coconut milk over allegations of forced monkey labor.
00:20:10.540
PETA said the retailer will no longer sell the product because of its alleged ties to monkey labor.
00:20:17.120
Chalco's tie suppliers accused of forcing monkeys to pick coconuts from the trees.
00:20:22.100
In a statement to USA Today, Target said it takes those claims seriously and remove the product in
00:20:26.060
November. PETA said in a statement by dropping Chalco, Target is joining thousands of stores that
00:20:33.380
refuse to profit from chained monkeys misery. According to PETA, 26,000 rather stores, including
00:20:40.100
chains, Wegmans, Food Lion, and Stop and Shop have cut ties with the coconut milk brand.
00:20:45.640
A couple of things here. First of all, as I've made clear, coconut milk is not actually a thing.
00:20:50.040
Doesn't, doesn't exist. You don't, you don't get milk as a dairy product. You don't get that from,
00:20:55.160
from coconuts. Second thing is forced monkey labor. I never realized that was a thing until I read this
00:21:02.080
story. And also speaking of dairy products. Okay. So you hear, I don't know what exactly could be
00:21:09.900
entailed in forced monkey labor. How do you force monkeys to climb a tree and pick coconuts?
00:21:18.120
You know, I guess you could domesticate, domesticate monkeys like you do any other animal,
00:21:22.220
but that's the point. So forced monkey labor is, if that's what's happening here, forced monkey labor
00:21:30.180
is some sort of horrible crime. So you're not going to have coconut milk, but you'll still serve regular
00:21:37.020
milk, which comes from cows. What about forced cow labor? Cows, cows don't make the free choice to be
00:21:45.980
on dairy farms, do they? What about the forced labor of horses and pigs and dogs? All that forced,
00:21:56.780
it's all slavery, isn't it? We just, we have this hierarchy in our heads of animals. It's like,
00:22:03.120
there's certain animals you can eat, certain that you can't, certain you can domesticate, certain you
00:22:06.680
can't. A lot of it has to do with how cute we think they are or how much we have anthropomorphized
00:22:14.400
them in our own minds. How often they appear in Disney films. Like these, all these things factor
00:22:21.600
in, and this is what determines in our heads what we can do with these different animals. It's not
00:22:26.020
really based in anything though. So yes, I think I'm coming out in favor of forced monkey labor.
00:22:32.580
I think I'm, I think I'm okay with it. Honestly, I don't know a lot about the practice. I'm not in
00:22:37.340
favor of, you know, abusing monkeys. I wouldn't be in favor of abusing cows. And really when you think
00:22:43.520
about it, yeah, if, if, if you're, you know, a poor villager and you harvest coconuts for a living,
00:22:50.260
well, you got to get up. You might not have equipment to get up in those trees and you got to get up
00:22:56.000
pretty high in the trees, um, which is a dangerous job. And so someone's got to climb up in the trees
00:23:02.280
to get the coconuts. I think I'd rather a monkey be forced to do it rather than a person because a
00:23:06.520
person could climb up there and fall and die. Sure. That happens all the time. So yeah, you can put me
00:23:14.220
in the, put me in the column of pro forced monkey labor. Um, all right. This is from eater.com and says
00:23:21.480
in line with one of president Joe Biden's chief campaign promises, congressional Democrats
00:23:25.760
introduced historic legislation. This is from a couple of days ago that would more than double
00:23:29.840
the hourly minimum wage of the country's most poorly paid workers to $15 an hour. Uh, the measure would
00:23:36.860
also eventually eliminate the lower tipped minimum wage that most waiters, bartenders, and bussers earn
00:23:41.620
in New York and other States. Despite Republican opposition, a process known as budget reconciliation
00:23:46.040
appears to give the so-called raise the wage act, the chance of being signed into law.
00:23:49.540
So $15 an hour, this is just a, of course we've, we, we, we've known about this effort for a long
00:23:56.780
time. Will the Democrats actually manage to pass it through? Um, I would say yes, probably. And the
00:24:05.100
effects will be absolutely disastrous. You look at what the Democrats are doing here. Um, already they've,
00:24:13.160
they have, it was largely, we're talking about Democrat governors and mayors who have had the
00:24:17.800
strictest lockdowns in effect, still in effect in many places, uh, for almost a year now. And so
00:24:24.160
they've wiped out millions of jobs. And now we're just sort of trying to claw back, get the economy
00:24:29.580
back. People are trying to get back to work. Vaccines being rolled out. We're going to get into
00:24:33.660
spring in the warmer months. And now they're coming back and they're kneecapping all the economy.
00:24:38.980
Again, we're shutting down the Keystone pipeline. And now we're going to $15 minimum wage
00:24:50.880
That's why I really wish you talk about the effects of disinformation. I don't really care
00:24:55.520
about memes, but the kind of disinformation that I worry about is for example, the disinformation
00:25:00.100
that makes someone who's let's say a minimum wage worker. And they read about raising the minimum wage
00:25:05.560
because they have been influenced by disinformation from the media. They celebrate it. They say,
00:25:10.280
oh, this is going to be great. I'm going to make $15 an hour. No, what they don't understand is that
00:25:13.920
this probably means that you're not going to have a job. You're going to go from whatever you're
00:25:18.040
making now, $10 an hour, uh, to zero. That's, what's going to happen.
00:25:24.520
Whether you work for a big company or small company, small company, small businesses,
00:25:29.200
especially that have been, that have been in particularly devastated by the lockdowns,
00:25:33.100
they're not going to have the money to, to automatically overnight raise all these wages.
00:25:38.880
So they're going to have to cut down their labor force. If you work at a place like McDonald's
00:25:43.900
already, you go into a McDonald's and, um, the common experience now is that there are a couple
00:25:50.200
of people behind the cash registers and then they've also got the, the touchscreens.
00:25:54.400
And so what's McDonald's going to do? They're going to say, okay, well, we'll just, we'll,
00:25:59.640
we'll go to all touchscreen. What do we don't even need the people at the, you know, you can insert
00:26:03.180
the money or your credit card into the, into the, uh, the console there. What do we need? We don't,
00:26:07.300
we don't even need anybody there. All we need are people, some people in the back to, uh, cook the
00:26:12.460
food and maybe we need some people working the drive-through, but we don't need anybody. So these jobs
00:26:16.100
are just going to get eliminated. The other thing to keep in mind with, um, with the minimum wage,
00:26:21.720
and this is always lost in the conversation, but first of all, a very small number of hourly
00:26:29.680
workers in America are actually getting paid the federal minimum wage. Almost all people who are
00:26:37.060
hourly workers in America are getting paid more than minimum wage already. I don't have the numbers
00:26:43.140
in front of me. The percentage is small. It's like two or 3% of hourly workers that are getting paid
00:26:47.820
the minimum wage. Many of those workers are young. Many of them are teenagers. Uh, many of them at
00:26:56.140
least are under 25. It's not the way this, this, the, the minimum wage is, is, is talked about. This
00:27:02.760
issue is discussed. They make it sound like there are millions of, of, of families, you know, mothers
00:27:08.840
and fathers who've got kids to feed families of five that are trying to subsist on the minimum wage,
00:27:14.280
which is why we're told it has to be a living wage. We have to give them a living wage. That's not the
00:27:17.760
case. In, in, in many, many cases, this again is a small minority of hourly workers. And in many,
00:27:24.860
many cases, these are people, you know, these, these could be kids, college students don't even pay
00:27:29.820
their own bills. They have no dependents. Um, they're not even independent themselves.
00:27:35.680
They don't need a living wage. The companies can't afford them to pay a living wage.
00:27:40.500
The labor they're providing is not really worth $15 an hour.
00:27:48.480
But now you're going to say, Oh yeah, you got to pay $15 an hour to the sick, to the 17 year old
00:27:52.540
kid who lives at home and is working part-time at McDonald's. We got to pay him $15 an hour.
00:27:57.100
And the price is we're going to wipe out thousands of jobs. Great idea. All right. Uh, number five,
00:28:01.880
the Chicago's teachers union, which is refusing to go back to work has been, um, using its free time,
00:28:08.120
free time, free time, but paid time. Taxpayers are paying for it to do other things. And in this
00:28:14.920
case, interpretive dance routines. So they tweeted this out. They said, six of our rank and file
00:28:20.020
dance teachers come together to use their art form as a voice to express their desire to feel safe
00:28:25.620
amidst, uh, CPS's teacher return policy. They stand in solidarity with all educators at risk
00:28:31.520
because no one should have to choose between life and livelihood. I think we have that video.
00:28:35.640
So let's, let's play a little bit of this interpretive dance routine.
00:28:48.860
So these are, these are dance teachers. Now, you know what this is?
00:28:52.720
This is like some sort of hideous super organism where you've got a combination
00:28:56.040
of the dance. What we have now is a combination of the dancing nurses on TikTok
00:29:01.540
and the whiny teachers. And they've come together to form this super organism.
00:29:13.060
And I also have to say, these are, these are, this tells you something about the public school
00:29:16.160
system, I guess. Um, these are dance. First of all, why do we have dance teachers in the public
00:29:21.620
school system to begin with? And second question, if we do have dance teachers, who's that? What the
00:29:28.560
person in the middle? What are they doing? It's not a dance at all. I can do that. If we do have
00:29:34.040
dance teachers in the public school system, why is it that they can't dance?
00:29:39.980
Seems to me interpretive dance is, is, uh, kind of like slam poetry in that, you know, slam poetry
00:29:46.480
isn't poetry at all. Interpretive dance is not dance at all. Interpretive dance is just a mildly
00:29:52.340
artistic seizure from what I can tell people flailing their arms around anyway. So the teachers
00:29:59.440
did an interpretive dance to express their fear of going back to school. That's, uh, that's what
00:30:03.980
that's all about. And, uh, I will conclude by for the millionth time saying, get your kids out of the
00:30:11.100
public school system, folks. You know, there's no reason to waste your time. Nobody wants to waste
00:30:16.100
their time. There's no reason to do it. And when you waste time and money, time is money. So you waste
00:30:20.100
time you already spent, you're already wasting money. And what if you're wasting more money on
00:30:22.820
top of that? It's just a mess. What I'm trying to say is use rock auto rock auto.com is the way to
00:30:27.600
go. Uh, it's the way to save time and save money. It's just a win-win situation. Rock auto.com. If
00:30:32.300
you're looking for auto parts, much easier, much quicker, much cheaper than walking into an auto
00:30:36.540
parts store. A rock auto.com. They always offer the lowest prices possible. They're not going to
00:30:41.400
change the prices just because they think they can make more money off you. It's not nothing like
00:30:45.740
that. What, you know, you have the peace of mind when you go to rock auto.com, you know that
00:30:48.960
you're getting the cheapest possible price for this particular part that you're going to
00:30:54.360
find anywhere. And there's no reason to look anywhere else. This is the best you're going
00:30:57.000
to get. Uh, and often, you know, it's, it's really quite, quite affordable. Rock auto.com
00:31:01.740
is a family business. They've been serving auto parts customers online for 20 years.
00:31:05.200
Go to rock auto.com to shop for auto and body parts from hundreds of manufacturers.
00:31:09.020
Best of all, again, rock auto.com prices that are reliably low and they're the same for
00:31:14.040
professionals and do it yourselfers. And on top of all that great selection, everything you could
00:31:18.500
possibly need and very easy to find over at rock auto.com. So go to rock auto.com right
00:31:23.660
now. See all the parts available for your car or truck. And remember to write Walsh in
00:31:27.820
there. How did you hear about us box? So they know where you came from. All right. And also
00:31:33.060
daily wire of course is in this effort, uh, fighting to take back the culture. And a big
00:31:38.060
part of that is about entertainment. You know, it's about creating culture rather than simply
00:31:43.760
commenting on it. We want to do both over here. And that's where a run, hide fight comes
00:31:49.260
from. Run, hide fight is our movie. You've heard a lot about it. You've heard us talking
00:31:52.600
about it and, um, don't, don't trust us though. Don't listen to what we have to say. You can
00:31:56.900
go to rotten tomatoes. You can see it's got a 93% rating with over 2000 reviews. The audience
00:32:01.680
loves it. Mainstream critics. Maybe they don't like it quite as much. I think they're, they're
00:32:05.460
scandalized by it. They think it's distasteful. They don't like that we're attached to it,
00:32:09.720
but the audience likes it. So if you want to watch our latest film, our first film with many
00:32:14.300
more to come, use promo code RHF to get 25% off. That's RHF for 25% off again, RHF 25% off
00:32:21.420
become a daily wire member today. Now let's get to our daily cancellation.
00:32:29.140
So today we have another reverse cancellation. The cancelers will become the canceled. And as we get
00:32:35.040
into the story, if there's any sincere person left in America who still thinks
00:32:39.660
that cancel culture is a myth doesn't exist, they may want to pay attention and seriously consider
00:32:45.660
the case of Cara Dumoplin. She's a popular baby sleep training expert who, you know, I hadn't heard
00:32:52.400
of before this, but, uh, uh, apparently very popular. And she has been ruthlessly attacked,
00:32:58.580
boycotted, doxxed, and smeared over the past week after someone, we'll have more on that someone in a
00:33:04.380
moment, went through FEC records and discovered that she donated to Donald Trump. They went through
00:33:09.860
the records and found this out. Now, many media outlets have reported on the story, eager to
00:33:14.880
amplify the news of a non-political person's private campaign contributions. And most of the coverage
00:33:21.140
has been along the lines of this headline from the cut, which is a New York magazine publication.
00:33:25.960
They say, quote, a boycott is brewing against formerly beloved childcare consultant, Cara Dumoplin,
00:33:30.940
who has reportedly been funneling some of the profits from her pricey classes into the Trump
00:33:35.860
campaign's coffers. Now, this is disgraceful, of course, and also not true. Not only are they
00:33:43.080
straining to make donations sound sinister by using a phrase like funneling the profits,
00:33:48.960
but they assume that the money that was being given to the Trump campaign came from her childcare
00:33:54.960
consultant business. But we have no way of knowing that. We don't know where the money came from.
00:33:58.820
She has a husband, apparently, who works. He's a doctor. It's going to come from him.
00:34:04.340
And it doesn't matter anyway. Cara Dumoplin offers advice on how to care for infants. Very good
00:34:11.080
advice, I have been told. She never chose to publicize her personal views. The small amount
00:34:17.360
of money she donated to a political campaign, about $1,000 over the course of three years, which is what
00:34:22.920
she said in a statement to the Today Show, that's of no one's concern but her own. This is not a case
00:34:29.280
of a public person choosing to air their political views and then experiencing the divided response that
00:34:35.200
any sane person must expect at this point. This is rather a woman in a completely apolitical line of
00:34:41.080
work whose financial records, along with her address, have been dug up and published in order to
00:34:46.840
personally destroy her in an act of collective ideological vengeance. It's cancel culture.
00:34:53.700
That's what cancel culture is. Hit pieces in the media claim that moms across America have somehow
00:34:58.820
been betrayed. They feel betrayed because a woman who gave them advice on how to help their infants sleep
00:35:04.460
happens to hold political views that don't align with their own. Sophia Tesfay in Salon,
00:35:10.040
she wrote an article openly admitting that this is another case of cancel culture, but she says that
00:35:15.100
it's good. It's a good thing because it holds Dumoplin accountable for the sin of possessing a
00:35:20.560
mind and forming opinions of her own. By the way, if you're wondering, if you're not familiar with this
00:35:25.340
woman and you're wondering what sort of content this right-wing extremist was putting out there,
00:35:30.900
here, just as a quick example, to give you a frame of reference, this dangerous person who has to be
00:35:37.100
held accountable, this right-wing extremist, here she is, and this is sort of typical content that she
00:35:41.160
would put out, here she is explaining how to properly burp a newborn. This is the woman
00:35:44.800
that is right now the target of public rage. Let's listen.
00:35:49.660
Lots of times I see parents when they try to burp, they put her right here like this and they do this
00:35:55.340
and they're trying to burp, but she's just not burping. So here's what I want to show you.
00:35:59.960
Take her and put her little chest up and over your shoulder like this and then cup your hand,
00:36:06.040
make a C like this. You want to hear it. Hear that? That doesn't hurt her, but hear how you can hear
00:36:12.480
that noise. That's what's going to get your burp out. Sometimes parents do this and it just doesn't
00:36:17.540
get a burp out. You want to cup it so it doesn't hurt her back and just go like this. So that's
00:36:22.180
one method is up over the shoulder. Again, get her chest up and over your shoulder like that.
00:36:33.580
Good advice on the burping though, by the way. My favorite method is you sit the baby up. I think
00:36:38.100
she gets into this. You sit the baby up and hold them sort of by the chin and then pat them on the
00:36:41.300
back. I think he gets the burp out a little bit better. But anyway, that's what, that's the kind
00:36:45.700
of, that's it. That's what she does. She just tells you how to care for babies. I am not aware of
00:36:51.240
any video that she's ever put out advocating for a candidate or anything like that. Now the guy who
00:36:58.280
seems to have gotten the cancel ball rolling in this case, his name is Jamie Grayson and he's a
00:37:03.020
fellow parenting influencer on Instagram. And he quite clearly saw this as an opportunity to kneecap his
00:37:08.880
Instagram competition. He's the one who first published, or he's one of the original ones who
00:37:12.680
first published Dumoplin's FEC records, which include her address again, along with a lengthy screed
00:37:17.980
promising that he's a quote, very liberal homosexual male. He doesn't hold any of her heretical
00:37:23.060
views. Not me. I'm not, I'm not like her. And other vultures from the mommy and daddy blogger
00:37:29.760
sphere swooped in to get a piece of the carcass. And that's, that's how this all started. This is
00:37:34.860
one of the primary hallmarks of cancel culture. And it's how you differentiate it from your average
00:37:40.040
boycott or a genuine case of holding somebody accountable. The people who are looking to obscure this
00:37:45.600
issue, that's what they'll always try to equate these things with. And they'll say, well, you know,
00:37:50.680
it's just a regular boycott. It's holding someone accountable. Now this is how you tell the difference
00:37:55.080
because in cancel culture, it's always vindictive and contemptuous. And often the bus is being driven
00:38:02.600
by someone who stands to personally gain from the destruction of the person who's being thrown under
00:38:07.300
it. Now that's not to say that the average member of the outrage mob, you know, the moms claiming to
00:38:13.560
be betrayed and vowing never to use this childcare program again, have self-serving motivations. I
00:38:19.120
don't think they do. They're more like maniacs driven to the edge of insanity by hatred for their
00:38:23.900
fellow Americans and by their fear of people who think differently from themselves. Just consider
00:38:28.960
for a moment what they're actually doing here. I'm talking about the average person. And I was going
00:38:34.180
through some of the comments and it was a dark and twisted journey reading some of the comments of
00:38:38.540
former fans of this woman who now say, oh, I'm done. I can't, I'm not going to use the program
00:38:42.960
anymore. Um, assuming they follow through on their boycott threats, think about what they're doing
00:38:48.360
because Duma Flynn by all accounts is a miracle worker in the field of baby sleep training. That's
00:38:55.380
her expertise. Um, over the last day, I've spoken to a number of people who swear by her methods,
00:39:00.860
say it's a lifesaver. And then anyone who's had an infant who struggles to sleep knows that it can just
00:39:07.220
about wreck your life, at least for as long as the nighttime struggle sessions continue. We have been
00:39:12.100
through this with a few of our kids. It is, it is very, very difficult because it turns out that
00:39:16.680
sleep is a rather crucial human need. When you're being deprived of it, you become desperate pretty
00:39:22.080
quickly. There's a reason that sleep deprivation is considered a form of torture, according to the
00:39:26.320
Geneva convention, whether infants are therefore guilty of human rights abuses is a legal question
00:39:30.900
for another time. But, uh, what all this means is that these betrayed mothers will choose now to
00:39:38.520
suffer with a sleepless baby rather than use the methods and the advice of a woman who donated to
00:39:44.900
Donald Trump. They're choosing ideology over their own health and sanity, and they don't have much of
00:39:51.540
the latter to spare to begin with. It makes you wonder whether these people would intentionally die
00:39:56.700
of thirst if a Trump supporter recommended they drink water. As this episode shows, cancel culture itself
00:40:03.340
is not the underlying problem. It's real, but it's not the problem. It's not the problem. It is a
00:40:11.000
symptom. The disease is a worldview that cannot tolerate any form of dissent from anyone. It sees
00:40:19.360
all things in a political light. It sees all people as political entities. It sees anyone outside of its
00:40:25.500
tribe as an enemy worthy of condemnation and worse. It clamors for diversity, but seeks a world of
00:40:32.800
sameness. It demands tolerance, but never returns the favor. Cancel culture emerges inevitably from
00:40:40.440
this hateful ideology, otherwise known as leftism. And as we have seen, no one, not even this woman,
00:40:48.680
is exempt from its wrath. And that's why the cancelers are canceled. And by the way, quick pitch for her,
00:40:58.460
unpaid, uh, if you're looking for advice on how to get a baby to sleep, maybe this is a woman you
00:41:02.620
should support. And we'll leave it there for today. Thanks for watching, everybody. Thanks for listening.
00:41:07.980
Well, if you enjoyed this episode, don't forget to subscribe. And if you want to help spread the
00:41:16.820
word, please give us a five-star review. Also tell your friends to subscribe as well. We're available
00:41:21.520
on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, wherever you listen to podcasts. We're there. Also be sure to check out
00:41:26.180
the other Daily Wire podcasts, including the Ben Shapiro show, Michael Knowles show, the Andrew
00:41:30.020
Klavan show. Thanks for listening. The Matt Walsh show is produced by Sean Hampton, executive producer,
00:41:35.160
Jeremy Boring. Our supervising producers are Mathis Glover and Robert Sterling. Our technical
00:41:39.800
director is Austin Stevens, production manager, Pavel Vadosky. The show is edited by Danny D'Amico.
00:41:45.320
Our audio is mixed by Mike Coromina. Hair and makeup is done by Nika Geneva. And our production
00:41:50.040
coordinator is McKenna Waters. The Matt Walsh show is a Daily Wire production, copyright Daily Wire 2021.
00:41:55.840
Internet trolls bankrupt hedge funds for the lols. John Kerry tells fossil fuel workers to learn solar.
00:42:01.680
And most Republicans support Trump in 2024. Check it out on the Michael Knowles show.