The Matt Walsh Show - Friendly Fire： ICE. Ice. (And The Oscars) Baby.

00:00:00.000 From Amazon MGM Studios comes Melania. Every protocol, every precaution, every move coordinated. 0.86

00:00:06.420 This new film takes you inside the 20 days leading up to the 2025 presidential inauguration

00:00:11.480 through the eyes of the first lady herself. The briefings, the planning, the private conversations

00:00:16.540 witness what it takes to secure her return to one of the world's most powerful roles. Melania

00:00:20.780 only in theaters January 30th. Don't take your guns to town, Bill. Leave your guns at home.

00:00:27.160 When I listen to Michael Moles sing Johnny Cash, it makes me think of my own mortality.

00:00:31.180 This could be the whole show. It's just puns. I'm in a bad mood.

00:00:33.760 Should not have been nominated, by the way. Here we go.

00:00:36.200 You know what? That is the most offensive thing you have said in this entire episode.

00:00:40.400 Yeah, save it. Save it for the show.

00:00:42.300 Friends like these, who needs enemies? Friends like these, who needs enemies?

00:00:49.660 Three days ago, Tim Walz compared the ICE officers to Nazis.

00:00:54.220 And then yesterday, he collaborated with them.

00:00:59.420 So I guess Tim Walz is now a Nazi collaborator.

00:01:02.140 It's very unclear what's going on between Washington and Minnesota right now.

00:01:05.480 We will get into it. We will get into all of the Oscar movies that you haven't seen.

00:01:11.080 We haven't seen them either, but we have very, very strong opinions.

00:01:14.120 This is Friendly Fire.

00:01:16.300 Guys, do you know what that is called?

00:01:18.660 That's called a cold open, and I can tell you, speaking from Nashville, it's a very cold open here.

00:01:24.200 It's a real chilly, hence my sweater.

00:01:27.120 Matt, you're always kind of lumberjacking, wearing all of your flannel, etc.

00:01:32.400 But Drew, Ben, you're in relative warmth.

00:01:36.940 No, no, no. Wait, it snowed here.

00:01:38.640 I'm close to D.C., and we had enough snow that I had to go out twice and shovel my walks, and now my entire body hurts, and I have a cold.

00:01:48.300 So I think that's my contribution to the weather.

00:01:50.740 Are you still corporeal, or is it just a ghost?

00:01:53.500 What's that?

00:01:54.420 Is that the ghost of Drew, or is that real physical Drew?

00:01:57.260 By the time the show is over, I will be transparent.

00:02:00.220 That is, yeah.

00:02:01.620 Well, you're always transparent, Drew.

00:02:02.920 But, you know, down here in Florida, it's cold also down here.

00:02:07.540 It was, like, in the mid-60s today.

00:02:10.320 It's vicious.

00:02:11.320 It was, like, a biting wind.

00:02:12.640 Got it down to, like, windchill factor, down to, like, 58.

00:02:15.760 Brutal.

00:02:16.240 Just vicious.

00:02:16.880 Michael, are you doing this show by candlelight?

00:02:19.200 What's with the lighting in your office?

00:02:21.180 I'm so fortunate.

00:02:23.500 So I would have just been Jack Nicholson at the end of The Shining, speaking of Oscar movies right now,

00:02:28.580 had I not been rescued by my buddy and put up in a beautiful Airbnb with a podcast studio across the street.

00:02:36.120 So I'm actually, I'm feeling great.

00:02:38.080 And because it's not Candlemas yet, I'm still wearing my Christmas decorations.

00:02:41.260 I'm feeling good.

00:02:42.740 I think I might do the show from here forever.

00:02:45.700 Matt, have you survived the snowpocalypse?

00:02:48.880 I'm in my element, man.

00:02:50.440 Cold, dark, no one around, no one can access me.

00:02:55.600 Like, this is, I love this.

00:02:57.060 I would do this every, I would do this all year round.

00:02:59.880 One question I have, I know, you know, with the power going out in a lot of places,

00:03:03.100 some people are trying to figure out things to do.

00:03:05.080 Have you guys been sitting around with your family playing the new Pendragon board game?

00:03:11.600 If you, yes.

00:03:12.600 If you would send me a Pendragon board game, I would actually play the Pendragon board game.

00:03:18.160 Well, you can, if you want to get your own copy, I'm not sending it to you.

00:03:21.320 You can go to dailywire.com slash shop, and you can watch the seven-part series,

00:03:26.060 which is getting rave reviews, by the way, all over the internet.

00:03:29.120 And my favorite part of it is, it's getting rave reviews from people who like the Daily Wire.

00:03:33.180 It's even getting rave reviews on the internet from people who don't like the Daily Wire,

00:03:37.240 people who probably hate conservatives, all over the place.

00:03:41.060 It's very, I was actually, I'm never gratified to look at Twitter because it's just a cesspool 0.96

00:03:46.100 of villainy and scum, but actually people really seem to love Pendragon because it's a great story.

00:03:51.320 It's getting rave reviews from everybody all over the internet, people who love the Daily Wire, 0.58

00:03:55.200 people who hate the Daily Wire, people who probably hate conservatives, they love it.

00:03:58.540 The only way that you can watch it is to become a Daily Wire Plus member, and this is what you're going to get.

00:04:04.100 What was it like, Merlin, to be alone with God?

00:04:09.480 Is that who you think I was alone with?

00:04:11.700 There is a new power at work in the world. I've seen it.

00:04:14.440 A God who sacrifices what he loves for us.

00:04:16.620 I learned of Yazoo the Christ, and I have become his follower.

00:04:19.760 Trust in Yazoo.

00:04:20.800 Great light, great darkness.

00:04:22.860 Such things mattered to me then. 0.84

00:04:24.560 What matters to you now, mistress of lies?

00:04:26.420 The Pendragon Cycle, Rise of the Merlin, a seven-part series.

00:04:30.680 Premieres January 22nd, only on Daily Wire Plus.

00:04:34.340 There's a Hollywood Reporter story, did you see this, about how people are angry because they want to watch Pendragon,

00:04:38.700 but they can only do it if they're Daily Wire Plus subscribers.

00:04:41.760 There's a whole fantasy contingent to people who are like, this looks fantastic, and I can't wait.

00:04:45.740 Oh, no.

00:04:47.080 No, I can't. No.

00:04:49.440 No, here's my credit card. No.

00:04:51.740 So speaking of the freezing cold, another shooting in Minneapolis.

00:04:55.780 Some people are pretending to be shocked.

00:04:58.300 Maybe some people really are shocked. I don't know.

00:05:00.580 It kind of reminds me, you know, it's that very sad shooting of Renee Goode.

00:05:04.100 And then the lesbian partner comes out, and she says, why did the guns have bullets in them? 1.00

00:05:08.400 Yeah.

00:05:08.560 And I just thought, man, you guys have, you just don't understand reality at all.

00:05:13.220 You don't understand that their consequences follow from actions.

00:05:16.920 I have the Andrew Breitbart question here. I don't mean to be cruel. It's tragic the guy was killed. But so what? Let's say you examine this film from every possible angle, and it turns out the ICE agent was in the wrong. Does that mean we shouldn't deport people who are here illegally? 0.93

00:05:33.340 I mean, they're here illegally. ICE is there to get rid of people who are here illegally. No one is above the law, as we know, because they were charging Trump with, like, you know, littering and sending him away for planning to send him away for life.

00:05:45.480 So what difference does it make? I mean, let's say it was a bad shooting. They're just enforcing the law.

00:05:50.100 Why are these people who are organized by Marxist, you know, thugs all around the country and taking, like, nine counties out of all the counties in America and turning them into battle zones? Why are they justified by a bad shooting?

00:06:02.440 I don't think there's also a question. I'm not saying it was a bad shooting, but even if it was, who cares?

00:06:06.580 On your point, Drew, so was it a bad shooting or not? Because there's all this stuff and a lot of misinformation going around the Internet.

00:06:11.980 One of the questions was, well, maybe he had been disarmed before the ICE agent shot.

00:06:18.420 And but even in that case, would it necessarily have been an unjustified shooting?

00:06:24.280 Only one of us went to Harvard Law School. I'm loathe to turn to him for an answer on this.

00:06:28.120 But then is there any does that mean it's a bad shooting? The cops got to go to jail or something?

00:06:32.340 I mean, so not necessarily. So the basic legal standard is the same in all of these cases, which is does a reasonable officer believe that he's an eminent threat of grave physical harm?

00:06:41.120 And so the question becomes, did the officer who shot him know that he had been disarmed?

00:06:45.880 Because there's this kind of scrum. And then you can see that the gun appears to be removed by one of the agents, but not the agent who shot him.

00:06:51.820 And then somebody yells gun. And there may, in fact, be an accidental gunshot, an accidental discharge from Freddie's gun by the officer or the gun just went off.

00:07:00.800 So if you're an officer and you're standing there and you hear someone yell gun and then a shot goes off and you don't know that the gun has been removed from the guy,

00:07:07.780 then you absolutely could fear for your life. You could fear imminent threat of grave physical harm.

00:07:12.780 And so the shoot could absolutely be good. That's typically why you have full investigations under under these circumstances.

00:07:17.840 You know, as to Drew's question as to why this shapes the underlying sort of policy, the answer is that it doesn't.

00:07:24.040 But this has been a chaos operation from the beginning for Democrats in an attempt to obstruct federal law.

00:07:28.640 I mean, that's really what this is. This has been driven by Democrats from the very start.

00:07:31.840 The idea is that enforcement of federal law is some sort of grave sin. And you can see it in the statistics.

00:07:37.100 So very early on, the administration was deporting nearly all criminally legal immigrants because they were starting in red states and they're working with cooperative precincts.

00:07:45.720 And they're going to jails and taking people who are criminals and then deporting them.

00:07:48.740 And then all of the Democrats decided they were going to obstruct that. And now ICE still has a job, which is to deport people.

00:07:54.480 And so the people they're deporting are not getting they're not getting them from jails. Right.

00:07:58.840 They're actually going to the streets. They're having to, like, round people up.

00:08:01.580 And when they do that, the percentage of criminal illegal immigrants, I mean, they're all criminals, but people who have committed independent crime aside from being an illegal immigrant, that percentage has dropped from something like 87 percent early on to about 50 percent today.

00:08:14.100 And it's going down pretty rapidly. That's because of sanctuary city status. It's because of sanctuary state status.

00:08:19.240 And so what that means is here's the thing. Americans don't like ugly pictures on their TV.

00:08:23.500 This is one of the great problems with media generally is that there's greater information that's wonderful.

00:08:27.920 But the ubiquity of ugly pictures on your TV makes it nearly impossible to do the things that have to be done in ugly areas.

00:08:33.900 And that's true when it comes to military operations. And it's true when it comes to policing.

00:08:37.300 And it's true when it comes to the craziest part. So the craziest part on the ugly pictures, I didn't think this was real.

00:08:42.520 I had to go back to the tape and check it 10 different times.

00:08:45.960 They so the the guy in this case, his name is Alex Priddy.

00:08:49.400 And we have an expression. We who like the Latin language, nomen est omen.

00:08:55.560 And so and the guy is not to beat up on the dead. He isn't all that pretty.

00:09:01.200 MSNBC changed his picture.

00:09:04.080 They ran with an AI generated picture to make him look like a supermodel or something.

00:09:08.560 And they did it completely straight faced. And what it made me think is, look, maybe it was some editor didn't know what he was doing.

00:09:13.920 Maybe it was intentional for some bizarro reason. But it made me think, look, when when the MSM, the establishment media put these images on TV,

00:09:22.580 they're obviously working in concert with the Democrats who are trying to cause chaos, who are trying to undermine law enforcement.

00:09:28.000 And so I'm always skeptical of that. I would say you can't really believe anything on the establishment media.

00:09:32.020 Now, I can't I literally can't believe the pictures they are running a different picture, even of the guy who is at the center of this case.

00:09:40.340 This to me seems like something actually has changed.

00:09:43.300 And to Ben's point about ugly pictures, you know, I've worked with police a lot as a reporter,

00:09:47.500 and it takes a lot of cops to bring a person down without just killing him.

00:09:52.120 Most cops, if they want to take you down, they can do it single handedly, but they're going to break your legs.

00:09:56.060 You know, if they swarm people in order to keep them from being hurt.

00:10:00.400 And this guy, you know, once you shout, once you shout gun, I've seen this with my own eyes a number of times.

00:10:05.660 Once somebody shouts gun, everything is different.

00:10:08.140 You know, everything is like I do know this.

00:10:10.120 We cops do not want to go home with a bullet in their head.

00:10:12.320 You know, they don't want to go back to their wife, say, sorry, honey, I'm dead, you know, because I didn't react fast enough.

00:10:17.540 And when they take these videos and they look at them frame by frame, it drives me crazy because they didn't happen frame by frame.

00:10:23.900 They happened all at once.

00:10:25.080 And we can we can hold our police to high standards, but we can't hold them to robotic standards where they can see everything in slow motion.

00:10:32.800 The whole thing is, to me, you know, it's as you say, it's a chaos operation.

00:10:37.340 We already know that George Floyd, a drug addicted thug, you know, who's elevated to the point of being a saint by the media.

00:10:45.060 And then we were told that the riots that came out of his were mostly peaceful.

00:10:48.720 We already know it's all lies.

00:10:50.080 You know, we know it's all lies.

00:10:51.080 And if in this case the cop was in the wrong, if he did something wrong, that's one thing.

00:10:55.200 But it has nothing to do with the overall story, which is these guys came in 20 million strong.

00:10:59.940 They all have to go.

00:11:00.980 They all have to go.

00:11:02.080 And also, to me, it's not even a close call.

00:11:06.160 Like, you took a gun.

00:11:08.160 OK, this is another point that really annoys me.

00:11:10.020 I see even some people on the right saying, well, hey, you know, we believe in the Second Amendment and we got to be consistent here.

00:11:14.920 I've seen some people draw a comparison between this and Kyle Rittenhouse.

00:11:18.640 Hey, man, let's let's be fair to completely actually diametrically opposite situations.

00:11:26.520 Kyle Rittenhouse was there, was not interfering with any police officers, was not sabotaging police officer operations, was not resisting police.

00:11:33.200 He was there because police officers weren't there and weren't doing anything.

00:11:36.280 In this case, Alex Pretty took a gun.

00:11:39.940 OK, that part is fine.

00:11:40.940 Like, yes, you can carry a gun in the United States of America.

00:11:43.820 I believe in the Second Amendment.

00:11:45.740 But you took a gun explicitly to go commit crimes.

00:11:49.800 OK, interfering with with the police, sabotaging police operations, obstructing what the police are doing, obstructing law enforcement is a crime.

00:11:59.240 He brought a gun to do that.

00:12:01.420 And maybe his intention was not to go kill the officers, but his intention certainly was all these people.

00:12:07.400 None of them are protesters.

00:12:08.420 This is not a legitimate protest.

00:12:10.200 Well, it was not at all.

00:12:11.140 I mean, it's worth establishing this was not a protest happened afterward, but this was not a protest.

00:12:15.840 He was there.

00:12:17.340 They are coordinating.

00:12:18.780 I mean, we talked about this on my show.

00:12:20.580 Now, other people have gone into these signal chats where they coordinate with each other.

00:12:24.200 They give license plates.

00:12:25.580 They show up.

00:12:26.460 And it is explicitly to obstruct law enforcement.

00:12:28.920 So if you take the gun and then your intention is to go commit crimes and then you end up getting shot in the in the process.

00:12:35.360 To me, it's not even a close call.

00:12:37.580 It's not even controversial.

00:12:38.720 I mean, it might be controversial to a lot of people, but the substance of it, it's not controversial.

00:12:42.420 This is clearly all on you.

00:12:44.100 And I agree with what Ben said that this is to the to the people, especially on the right.

00:12:50.420 Again, there are some on the right who are saying, well, I believe in enforcing immigration law, but I don't like the way this is happening.

00:12:57.900 Well, there is no way to do it that won't be ugly because it's easy enough to say, let's let's enforce our immigration laws. 0.99

00:13:05.540 But the problem is we have millions of people here illegally. 0.99

00:13:09.280 And so we need them to leave.

00:13:11.600 And the problem is, well, they don't want to leave.

00:13:13.420 That's why they're here.

00:13:14.460 And so the only way to get them to leave is to grab them physically and drag them while they're kicking and screaming.

00:13:20.960 There is no nice way to do it.

00:13:23.040 And so if you're not in favor of us enforcing immigration laws in an ugly way, then you're not in favor of us enforcing immigration law at all because there's no way to do it that isn't that isn't ugly.

00:13:34.000 By the way, a crucial point on this on this gun Second Amendment argument from the libertarians who, you know, look, I love my libertarian friends.

00:13:42.560 You can always count on them to undermine the right exactly at the moment that it really matters.

00:13:47.660 But but I get the point in principle because I'm a Second Amendment supporter.

00:13:50.520 I'm a gun owner, a lifetime member of the NRA.

00:13:52.080 There is a deep conservatism to the wisdom of Johnny Cash.

00:13:57.480 Don't take your guns to town, Bill.

00:13:59.780 Leave your guns at home.

00:14:01.300 So look, you can take your guns to town.

00:14:03.640 But if you are going to obstruct law enforcement, you're going to put yourself intentionally in a very provocative situation where you will be committing crimes.

00:14:11.540 Probably not the best idea to roll up with your cig in two magazines.

00:14:14.560 By the way, his parents were interviewed by CBS News, a generally liberal news outlet, and they made the point.

00:14:21.620 Probably they shouldn't have admitted this, that he was not a regular carrier of guns.

00:14:25.840 You know, he had his CCW, but this was a guy who never took his gun out, really.

00:14:29.560 And all of a sudden he rolls up there with a with a weapon that has a hair trigger.

00:14:33.520 The New York Post just reported that he had a broken rib from his last conflict with ICE agents.

00:14:39.540 So he was already out there doing getting into violent scuffles.

00:14:42.920 Yeah.

00:14:43.220 When I listen to, you know, when I listen to Michael Moles sing Johnny Cash, you know, it makes me think of my own mortality.

00:14:50.180 And that makes me think of policy genius and the necessity for life insurance.

00:14:55.320 It actually is very important that you get life insurance, obviously, because there is one thing that is going to happen to all of us, aside from paying taxes and maybe being deported.

00:15:04.860 And that is we're all going to plots.

00:15:07.260 Drew can speak to this more than I can, because as he as he sees that that road shortening before him off out the door.

00:15:13.360 Yeah, exactly.

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00:16:03.840 You know, I have to say, I'm thankful.

00:16:05.520 I'm thankful to Knowles for singing like Johnny Cash because it made death seem not so bad.

00:16:10.520 That's really nice.

00:16:11.440 Oh, listen, as we're all here, we're stewing because it feels like we're all in Minneapolis right now.

00:16:17.640 Not Ben, but the rest of us, it's pretty chilly.

00:16:19.980 I think this is really actually just a trial run for Mother Nature for our colonization of Greenland.

00:16:25.320 But we're not actually in Minneapolis right now.

00:16:28.280 A Daily Wire reporter is, however, and we are joined by Jenny Tehr,

00:16:32.680 who can infect our opinion with some actual facts that she is seeing on the ground. 0.71

00:16:37.740 I hate that.

00:16:38.020 Jenny, I know, this is not something we're used to around here.

00:16:41.400 Jenny, what are you seeing in Minneapolis?

00:16:43.600 Yeah, well, you know, we've been out with ICE in Minneapolis on a ride along with them.

00:16:51.120 And we saw just the chaos unfold the second we went down there.

00:16:56.240 So just to give you an idea is we started out the day going to the ICE office where agitators were already outside.

00:17:04.060 The second any of those vehicles came out, anytime ICE officers were going out to make arrests,

00:17:09.440 there was what they call the spotter standing on the corner waiting for them, monitoring their movements,

00:17:15.820 reporting things like their license plates, what the cars look like, what those agents and officers look like.

00:17:21.340 And then the second we were hearing an arrest site, so we were maybe within five blocks of an arrest site,

00:17:30.040 you started to see people just gathering on every street corner.

00:17:34.460 And by the time we got to, let's say, the apartment complex where one of the arrests they were trying to make was happening,

00:17:42.160 it was already so loud.

00:17:44.500 Everyone was already alerted to ICE's presence in the area that that target didn't come out that day.

00:17:51.120 So this is what they're up against.

00:17:52.400 They're up against people who are exposing their whereabouts, their locations, getting in their way.

00:17:57.800 On top of that, because as we were leaving, we saw a situation unfold that thankfully didn't get as intense as some of these stories we've seen about these shootings,

00:18:07.040 but could have gone that way with those agents trying to deescalate vehicles who were blocking them in the roadway.

00:18:15.020 So they didn't want them there.

00:18:16.280 But when they tried to leave, they didn't want them to leave.

00:18:19.300 It was very ironic.

00:18:21.220 And then as they were leaving, one of those vehicles, a driver behind the wheel of a Tesla, hit one of our cars in the convoy

00:18:28.540 and then exited the area before they can make an arrest.

00:18:34.660 This is what they're seeing on the ground.

00:18:36.220 This is what they're up against.

00:18:37.040 So not only were they not able to make an arrest, and we saw a similar situation unfold before that,

00:18:42.840 this is also just an assault on their ability to go out there and...

00:18:49.300 Conduct these operations safely.

00:18:51.940 They're coming home with the trauma of all this, but also physical injuries now.

00:18:58.520 Jenny, did the guy in the Tesla hit them intentionally with the car?

00:19:02.480 Yeah, it appeared so, because as he was driving by those officers, he was taunting them.

00:19:07.900 So he rolled down the window at one point, and he said,

00:19:10.840 I'm illegal, come and get me.

00:19:13.240 That's how brazen these people are. 0.87

00:19:15.560 They know that this is a crime.

00:19:17.320 They know they can't impede law enforcement.

00:19:20.580 I mean, there was this whole media narrative going around that ICE is just arresting U.S. citizens indiscriminately.

00:19:25.940 No, they're arresting people who are here, who are getting in their way, who are assaulting them,

00:19:31.860 who are committing federal crimes in doing so.

00:19:35.520 And they have the right to.

00:19:38.000 Those officers are given the power to make arrests of U.S. citizens who are trying to get in the way of

00:19:43.260 their own arrests of illegal immigrants.

00:19:46.320 And then, of course, you know, they're not put into immigration detention.

00:19:49.600 They're handed off to people like the U.S. 0.94

00:19:51.620 Marshals and the U.S.

00:19:52.700 Attorney prosecutes them.

00:19:55.260 So, yes, they have the authority to do this.

00:19:57.520 And they're they are making arrests of people who are openly getting in their way.

00:20:02.160 You know, Jenny, what do you think is the even riding along with the ICE officers and what is the morale like given the situation?

00:20:08.840 And what are their thoughts on ICE leadership?

00:20:10.820 Because obviously we've seen some turmoil inside ICE leadership or patrol leadership.

00:20:15.240 The president has deployed Tom Homan to Minneapolis.

00:20:17.560 It seems that he is moving Greg Bovino at least out of the out of this realm, you know, to another area of the country.

00:20:23.960 What are people feeling down on the ground there?

00:20:26.960 Right. So I think this was perfectly, you know, came to light when I had Border Patrol agents messaging me yesterday.

00:20:35.800 Some of my sources saying that they're happy that some of them are getting to leave because this has been really hard for them to go through to be in these environments where

00:20:49.140 they're they're not only just having to assess the threats that are present when you're making an arrest already.

00:20:56.040 But now there's this added threat of outside organized agitators who are communicating on radios or 3D printing whistles.

00:21:05.160 I mean, I saw some of that, too, that they're handing out to try to obstruct these arrests.

00:21:09.000 So they're happy to see a change. And that change has been that the Trump administration has taken figures like Border Patrol commander Gregory Bovino out of Minneapolis and had sent him back to the border.

00:21:23.000 He's been relieved of his duties as the commander of at large operations.

00:21:27.000 He was the face of these aggressive immigration operations in cities like New Orleans, now Minneapolis.

00:21:33.900 He was in Chicago and he was representing Border Patrol, which Border Patrol has a role in immigration enforcement.

00:21:40.900 Traditionally, it's been along the border and border towns. They're not used to operating in these urban environments and they're more indiscriminate.

00:21:48.900 They were brought in when Secretary Noem, according to sources and her close aide, Corey Lewandowski, decided that the operations should focus more on numbers, that they should have more of a quota than going than the focus being on quality arrest and getting the worst of the worst.

00:22:09.740 So we saw that shift. And that's when Border Patrol really came in to boost the numbers, to get more people off the streets who are here illegally, not necessarily going after people with the worst criminal histories first, which was how the mass deportation campaign started.

00:22:26.740 Holman, however, Tom Holman, the border czar, who's now been brought in to replace Bovino, is in the camp of wanting more of those quality arrests.

00:22:36.240 He wants us to get those really hardened criminals off the streets. And he's an ICE guy. He was head of ICE before this.

00:22:43.240 And so Trump brought him in and said, report directly to me, which is interesting because he's not asking him to report to the DHS secretary.

00:22:51.240 And he's saying, you know, possibly we're hearing that they could be looking at changing the target list, saying maybe we should shift and go after more of the worst of the worst.

00:23:04.240 And then also a lot of this depends now on is Mayor is Governor Walz going to deliver on letting people be handed over from the jails into ICE's hands for arrest rather than continuing to perpetuate these really dangerous sanctuary policies.

00:23:24.240 I'm hearing that the local police are also helping now finally helping ICE keep the protesters back. Have you seen any of that?

00:23:31.240 So we've seen some state police that are keeping back riders who were trying to go into a hotel. They said Gregory Bovino was staying.

00:23:42.240 We saw just one instance of that. And that could be a glimpse into what this deal was that Trump had discussed with the governor there.

00:23:53.240 But we're still waiting to see what comes to fruition. We know Homan himself met with the governor this morning.

00:24:00.240 And so there's still ongoing talks. There's still ongoing negotiations into what access ICE will have when for years and years and years, Minnesota has been releasing illegal immigrant criminals out of jails and hasn't been cooperating with ICE, hasn't been sharing immigration status at all with them.

00:24:21.240 And when they're lodging detainers, when they're putting a formal request in with a let's say county or city jail saying you have this person in your custody that we're aware of who is an illegal immigrant who's committed a crime.

00:24:34.240 When you are going to release them, please give us a call. Hold them for a short period of time. We'll come and get them. They haven't been doing that.

00:24:43.240 Now, Jenny, if we do shift focus here and we only go after the most hardened face tattooed, you know, murderers of the rapists of the murderers kind of people, can we send you since you're already there to go round up all the other ones?

00:24:57.300 I don't know if that's in your job description. I know you're more doing like journalism and stuff, but in any case, you're doing great work out there.

00:25:03.140 Thank you very much for the report. And we'll we'll look forward to an update next time.

00:25:08.240 Well, that is our reporter, Jenny, who's on the ground in Minneapolis. Obviously, we've been expanding our reportage and our reportorial base pretty extensively.

00:25:15.500 And that's only because we have supporters like you, people who are members and we need more members so that we can do more reporting on the ground in places like this.

00:25:22.720 Head on over to Daily Wire Plus. Get your membership right now. You won't just be getting all the great stuff we have over here.

00:25:27.000 You'll also be helping us bring actual great reporters to the places that need reporting on.

00:25:31.900 So I want to hear about what this change in strategy means from the red blue political level.

00:25:37.980 Is this a win for Trump? Is this a loss for Trump? Did Walsh get something?

00:25:41.620 But before we talk about the present, Mr. Walsh, I want you to tell us about the past.

00:25:46.960 Yeah, we have a new show that I'm really excited. I'm obviously very excited about, you know, it's called Real History.

00:25:52.380 So we just debuted last week, the first episode of this series where we just look at historical episodes that are much, much talked about, but not talked about honestly, especially by the school system and the media and all of our institutions.

00:26:08.180 And the first episode, we talked about slavery, giving the real kind of history of slavery, the real context for it and what slavery in America looked like as opposed to other parts of the world.

00:26:20.480 And we've just filmed a couple other episodes as well that I'm even more excited about, and that might prove to be even more controversial, which I think is great.

00:26:31.620 So stay tuned for all that. Can we just jump right into back to the subject at hand?

00:26:36.500 Because you asked about, is it a political win for Trump?

00:26:40.220 I think that for sure, and this cannot be stressed enough, it is a massive, massive, massive loss and failure if Trump scales back at all in the slightest bit in response to what's happening in Minneapolis.

00:26:55.680 You can't, I mean, I don't think it's exaggerating to say if he does that, it's the end of his presidency.

00:27:01.020 It could very well be the end of any hopes for Republicans in 20, you know, even in the next presidential election.

00:27:06.600 You can't, what is that, what message does that send?

00:27:08.760 The only message that sends to the left is like, okay, well, here is the, here's the formula.

00:27:13.680 If you don't want, if we don't want deport, if we don't want actual deportations, mass deportations, if ICE shows up in your city and you think they're doing too much, well, just get all your buddies together, show up and get out there in the street, start rioting, cause chaos.

00:27:28.940 Yeah, bring your gun with you, go out there and sabotage, and that's the way to get what you want.

00:27:34.500 We saw what happened in 2020 when the left was just allowed to basically run roughshod over the entire country.

00:27:42.460 That's exactly what they did for months, and many people died and billions of dollars of damage, and that's all that we are ensuring.

00:27:50.240 And also keep in mind that, as many other people have pointed out, it's the wintertime right now.

00:27:55.760 And so one of the reasons why this hasn't completely exploded, like powder keg style, the way that it did in 2020, I think is that it's because of the weather.

00:28:03.980 And as we get into the summer months and it gets warmer, if Trump doesn't clamp down on this, and that means not only keeping up the deportations, keep ICE, keep doing what you're doing, but also, you know, we need mass deportations.

00:28:18.160 Now we also need mass arrests of the people who are doing this.

00:28:22.000 You know, the only thing about this, though, that bothers me, the administration has made some missteps, and missteps cost you politically.

00:28:28.400 I mean, the minute these things happen, they come out and say this guy was a terrorist or he was, you know, gunning to massacre, you know, ICE agents, which does not seem to be the case.

00:28:37.540 And it's not wrong for him, for Trump to correct that, to correct that trajectory, to bring in Tom Homan, who seems much—I saw him just on Morning Joe, and he was great.

00:28:47.220 You know, he's the only guy in the administration who knows how to communicate what they're actually trying to do and what they're thinking.

00:28:52.580 So I don't think it's a complete disaster.

00:28:54.880 I agree with you in the general point, Matt, but I think it's not a complete disaster if he corrects the way the administration is handling these incidents in order to communicate what it is we're doing.

00:29:05.960 Homan was great about saying, this is what we're doing, this is who they're stopping us from arresting. 0.97

00:29:09.860 These guys are rapists, they're murderers, they're killers, we want them out. 0.98

00:29:12.240 And it does seem like they were kind of—I don't know, it did seem a little strange. 1.00

00:29:15.600 Correct it in what way? What do they need to correct?

00:29:18.520 Well, first of all, when a guy gets shot in a demonstration in a free country, you don't immediately come out and say that he was doing things that he may not have been doing because it makes you look like you're—it makes the administration look untrustworthy.

00:29:30.820 So now you've got an untrustworthy press on the left, and then you've got an untrustworthy administration.

00:29:36.260 It becomes an equal battle.

00:29:39.180 It shouldn't be an equal battle.

00:29:40.160 The administration should be saying, okay, we're going to look into this, we'll examine what happened, but it doesn't change the fact that we are getting illegals out of the country. 0.73

00:29:47.200 That's the message, and they didn't do that.

00:29:49.440 I totally agree with this.

00:29:50.180 And to this point, obviously, Christy Noem is under serious fire as head of DHS.

00:29:55.360 I think that fire is completely appropriate, frankly.

00:29:57.460 This is the second straight incident in which she has completely mischaracterized the events that we can see with our own eyes.

00:30:03.700 She first suggested that Renee Goode was attempting to run down not one but multiple police officers, 1.00

00:30:09.680 and then she claimed that Alex Preddy was attempting to massacre, like, murder police officers, showed up with a gun in order to do so,

00:30:18.780 which, again, that is not what the tape seems to show to, I think, most people.

00:30:21.400 Again, that is not to suggest that this shooting isn't a legally justifiable shooting.

00:30:25.940 That is to say that her literal job is to say the process is going to take place.

00:30:30.180 We're going to uncover everything.

00:30:31.280 We are going to abide by the law, and we're going to keep abiding by the law.

00:30:33.780 Well, I know that's the way to do it because Tom Homan has been doing that consistently.

00:30:37.000 He did it with Renee Goode.

00:30:38.020 He then did it again with Alex Preddy, which is why he should be the person in charge of this whole effort.

00:30:42.660 I frankly think that Christy Noem has outstayed her welcome already. 1.00

00:30:46.420 The Calci markets, by the way, they are one of our sponsors.

00:30:49.200 They suggest 50% of people think that she's out by May.

00:30:53.020 I don't think that would be inappropriate.

00:30:54.060 It seems to me that the vast majority of things that Christy Noem has done involve headlines in which she is spending certain amounts of money on either transportation or getup.

00:31:03.780 In order to take photos in front of particular situations, she works at the pleasure of the president and for the president.

00:31:10.700 And part of that is making the president's agenda more palatable and understandable to Americans.

00:31:15.820 And if you're not going to do that, then really you shouldn't be the person in charge of that department, which is the reason I think why Gregory Bovino was moved out of his position as well.

00:31:23.520 Because he went out there and suggested that Alex Preddy was attempting to massacre people.

00:31:27.240 And then he went on all the shows on Sunday and had to walk that back or pretend that he never said it.

00:31:31.340 And this sort of thing undermines public support for a very important mission, which is the mass deportation that the Trump administration is trying to pursue.

00:31:39.220 Political capital matters.

00:31:40.740 Support for ICE matters.

00:31:42.820 So the polls have shown that back in 2019, ICE was basically even with the American people.

00:31:47.280 Today, they're 27 points underwater.

00:31:49.140 That is not because ICE is doing things differently than they've ever done it.

00:31:52.120 It is because of two factors.

00:31:53.100 The gas operation run by Democrats and the bad PR job that has been done by members of the administration in the aftermath of that. 0.62

00:32:01.140 If the administration looks like the adult in the room and Democrats look as though they are basically the abolish ICE, let everybody run free party, that's a political win for Republicans.

00:32:10.480 Now, as far as where this ends up, I think the Democrats could very easily win the battle and lose the war.

00:32:15.440 Meaning I think that they could set up these domains of utter lawlessness.

00:32:20.080 And it turns out they did this in 2020 and it worked for them a little in 2020.

00:32:23.880 By 2024, Donald Trump was president again because it turns out people do not like abolish the police.

00:32:28.700 They also do not like abolish ICE.

00:32:30.800 And so we have this kind of temporary gut level reaction to seeing, again, those ugly pictures on our TV.

00:32:35.600 But then if the policy that accompanies the ugly pictures is even worse than the policy that was present before the ugly pictures, then you end up with a backlash.

00:32:44.500 So I think the Democrats could step too far on this the other way.

00:32:47.600 But, again, I think that I think Noam has not done a good job as DHS, frankly.

00:32:51.560 So, OK, so if the point is that the only real errors here have been in certain messaging.

00:32:57.440 OK, fair enough.

00:32:58.280 That happens.

00:32:58.920 I mean, look, these are very difficult operations.

00:33:01.240 We haven't seen a massive national push for mass deportations, really, as far as I'm concerned, since the 1950s, since Operation Wetback.

00:33:09.620 You know, Obama would sometimes gloat when it was convenient that, you know, they call me the deporter in chief or whatever.

00:33:14.500 But it was really just turnaways.

00:33:16.080 He wasn't he wasn't leading full scale operations to get rid of these guys.

00:33:19.180 So I'm willing to give the administration a little grace here.

00:33:21.620 But but my question then is, OK, if it's a PR issue, then who is going to win the PR war?

00:33:28.480 Because, you know, maybe Walls and the Democrats in Minnesota say, ha, we got Bovino's skull, his scalp.

00:33:35.620 He's out of town now.

00:33:36.920 And see, Trump is talking to Tim Walls.

00:33:38.880 But then I look at the sequence of events.

00:33:40.980 Tim Walls comes out.

00:33:41.860 He says these face tattooed gangsters are basically Anne Frank and federal law enforcement are the Nazis.

00:33:47.540 And they're going to write a book about this someday.

00:33:49.880 Then that was one.

00:33:51.060 That was Sunday.

00:33:52.040 Monday, Trump speaks to Tim Walls on the phone.

00:33:55.960 Tuesday, Tim Walls's troops, Minnesota State Patrol, go in and start arresting actual protesters.

00:34:02.240 By the way, not even like Alex Pretty fake protesters, like real protesters, albeit the kind who get violent because that's what happens in Minneapolis.

00:34:09.300 So then I see, OK, you lose Bovino.

00:34:11.360 And then who are they inserting instead?

00:34:13.080 Tom Homan, who is much more the face of the mass deportations.

00:34:16.820 I'm looking at this.

00:34:18.480 Maybe it's rose colored glasses, but I don't really think it is.

00:34:21.140 I agree with Matt.

00:34:22.040 They can't they can't scale back even one little bit.

00:34:25.060 I agree with you guys.

00:34:26.380 Yes, the messaging needs to be tight, of course.

00:34:28.640 But if they don't scale back and all we get is, OK, Tom Homan's leading it now and Walls backs down and in his own words, says that he's a Nazi collaborator.

00:34:38.360 That looks like a political win to me.

00:34:40.600 I'm looking I'm looking at this and seeing a potential political win, too.

00:34:43.920 I think you're actually right about this. 0.98

00:34:45.720 I mean, what I what I'm seeing is that in this conversation with Walls, Trump must have said something that that got his got him to cooperate, possibly threatened to expose the fact that he's obviously a homosexual serial killer. 0.94

00:34:58.400 In his spare time, allegedly, allegedly, allegedly, allegedly, just judging by his body language. 0.94

00:35:04.300 I mean, that's all I'm going by.

00:35:05.840 But but I mean, something he must have said something to get him on board because it does look it does look different to me today and it looks different in a good way.

00:35:13.680 And I think it's a good thing to have Homan in there because of his messaging and also because he's just good at this.

00:35:18.540 He just does a good job.

00:35:19.660 And he's a typical American guy.

00:35:20.940 Yeah, I think, Drew, your point here, I think, is well taken.

00:35:24.400 And I think that, you know, the the Tim, my guess is that what Trump said to him is something like, OK, we're going to keep enforcing federal law.

00:35:31.800 What is your recommendation for how we do this differently?

00:35:33.900 He probably put it back in his lap and said, you're saying you don't want us to do this.

00:35:36.880 So what so what do you recommend?

00:35:38.260 Because we can't stop enforcing federal law.

00:35:40.180 And if you get in the way of us enforcing federal law, I will declare the Insurrection Act and then you will have a real problem on your hands inside your state because it's going to look like you're going up against the federal government.

00:35:49.380 And that has a long and inglorious history in American law.

00:35:52.940 By the way, it won't just look like that.

00:35:54.220 He invoked 1863, Tim Walls.

00:35:56.400 He threatened to call up Minnesota troops to fight the federal government.

00:35:59.520 I mean, this is as clear an insurrection as there is.

00:36:02.440 A hundred percent.

00:36:03.240 And so I think that Trump probably said that.

00:36:04.660 I think Walls backed off of the thing.

00:36:05.920 I think he's probably going to claim some sort of titular victory by getting Bovino out of there.

00:36:09.600 But the reality is also this.

00:36:11.900 And I think it's something that everybody ought to keep in mind about just the way our politics are done.

00:36:16.220 If you ask Americans, would they like to cut the federal government dramatically?

00:36:20.240 They always say yes by huge numbers.

00:36:21.920 And then if you ask them what specific programs they want to cut, the answer is none of them.

00:36:25.720 And if you ask Americans, would you like to deport 20 million illegal immigrants?

00:36:28.760 They all say yes.

00:36:29.660 And then they say, would you like to spend billions upon billions of dollars deporting Abuela? 0.98

00:36:33.080 Then they say, no, we only want the criminal illegal immigrants. 0.79

00:36:35.300 So you have to drill down into what Americans kind of revealed preferences are on this thing.

00:36:40.380 And again, I'm not saying that that doesn't mean that we should pursue massive mass deportations.

00:36:44.600 I'm just saying that there's a reason why Tom Homan and the rest of the administration keep saying the phrase criminal illegal immigrants, because that's the area where you have 90 10 approval. 0.95

00:36:53.340 When you're talking about people who have already committed other crimes, if you start with those people, you're never going to run into political headwinds.

00:37:00.160 You're just going to win from beginning to end.

00:37:02.640 Where things are going to start to get much dicier is in situations in which you are unleashing tens of thousands of federal agents in areas and doing these sort of mass deportations, because then you get the ugly pictures on your TV again.

00:37:15.660 So we would just do well to acknowledge political reality as much as we acknowledge the reality of reality, which is that mass migration has done tremendous damage to the country and needs to end.

00:37:25.580 And there's also the fact that we can get rid of a lot of people in quieter ways just by making it impossible for them to work.

00:37:31.920 Then they'll self-deport.

00:37:33.400 There is, though, you know, just to give a little grace to these guys, including Bovino, there are a lot of clips going around from Minneapolis of the protesters, the agitators arguing and saying, you know, you're just rounding people up, you know, indiscriminately.

00:37:49.000 And you'll have the ICE officers say, we are targeting this guy, you know, this guy who's wanted for domestic violence, this guy who's got, you know, a felony or a misdemeanor or whatever.

00:37:57.320 And so I actually do think that these raids are clearly quite targeted.

00:38:01.440 It's not like they're just showing up to Home Depot, though they would be justified in doing that as well.

00:38:05.860 So, yes, as there there has been a PR failure.

00:38:09.220 There's no question about that.

00:38:10.540 I think we all have to grant, though, there was always going to be some kind of PR failure.

00:38:14.500 It was always going to be very difficult.

00:38:16.140 And it's always Minneapolis.

00:38:18.460 You know, it's always Minneapolis.

00:38:20.080 It seems to be only Minneapolis.

00:38:21.880 So what's the difference in the United States where they're where they're sanctuary cities, which is a city basically in violation of federal law.

00:38:29.400 You know, I mean, yes.

00:38:30.300 And so when you look at that, look, this is clearly they're trying to do a repeat of the summer of love, albeit, thankfully, to Matt's point in the winter, which makes it better for us.

00:38:38.780 But they're trying to do that.

00:38:40.240 It worked for them last time.

00:38:41.600 If Trump scales back now that he will have taken every wrong lesson out of the summer of love.

00:38:45.880 So you've got to keep the pressure up.

00:38:47.380 But it looks to me like this is a political operation.

00:38:51.120 And then you get all these reports that the lieutenant governor of Minnesota was allegedly in the signal chats helping to direct some of this stuff.

00:38:57.920 You have state representatives who are calling for resistance, actively obstructing law enforcement.

00:39:03.360 You know, at what point do we bring the hammer of the law down on the officials who are helping to conspire for all of this?

00:39:09.640 To include the mayor of Minneapolis.

00:39:12.040 That's one of the reasons why, you know, when Trump said he had a good conversation with Jacob Fry.

00:39:16.560 And I get this, you know, this is how Trump does business. 0.99

00:39:20.900 He talks to someone, even if they're a huge scumbag and they have a nice conversation. 0.99

00:39:24.500 And then Trump likes him for like 24 hours and hates him again. 0.99

00:39:27.320 I get that.

00:39:27.860 But Jacob Fry, I mean, this guy, like we can't look past the fact that this is the same guy who was fomenting and facilitating mass rioting in 2020.

00:39:38.280 And now he's doing it again.

00:39:40.500 He just did this exact same thing again.

00:39:43.260 We're repeating it five, six years later.

00:39:45.820 And that's why I think that if, yeah, we could talk about honing the PR message a little bit.

00:39:52.120 That's one thing.

00:39:52.920 But to scale back in the slightest and also for there to be no consequences at all.

00:39:58.660 To your point, Michael, if there are no consequences for any of these actual public officials at all who've been involved in this,

00:40:04.580 then I think it's a it's a massive, massive loss in the end.

00:40:08.840 And it only is only just going to guarantee more in the future.

00:40:11.300 Walsh has already been chased out of office by his own corruption.

00:40:13.500 So there's that, you know, he's not really right.

00:40:15.400 He's not really running for anything ever again.

00:40:18.260 I mean, I don't know what I don't know.

00:40:19.680 I mean, I could say I could see walls trying to transition this into a presidential run.

00:40:23.380 The person who's most grateful for honestly, the person who's the most grateful for all of this is Tim Walsh.

00:40:28.140 He was in the middle of a fraud scandal when all of this erupted.

00:40:31.540 And now he's going to look like a hero to a huge segment of the Democratic Party base.

00:40:35.780 So there's that.

00:40:36.960 One thing that is worth noting here is, again, the last 10 years have just proved that a huge swath of our population is unbelievably bored

00:40:44.060 and also susceptible to the idea that there is great fun to be had in making trouble.

00:40:48.340 Really, I mean, when you watch people out in the streets blowing whistles to obstruct ICE operations,

00:40:53.620 whether it's that or the summer of love or any of the rest of this kind of idiocy in the streets that we've been watching,

00:40:59.440 and it seems to be becoming more and more common, I think we do have to ask ourselves the question,

00:41:03.180 what the hell is wrong with this society in which large swaths of working age people are finding the time and effort

00:41:09.300 to go out in the middle of the freezing cold in order to agitate?

00:41:13.340 And that speaks to a sort of unwellness that I think is pretty astonishing.

00:41:19.000 And it seems to be, you know, relegated to certain populations.

00:41:23.960 And here it seems like white liberal ladies in the suburbs are one of those populations. 1.00

00:41:29.500 It seems to be disproportionately attending some of these some of these operations in Minneapolis.

00:41:33.720 I mean, I wonder what the sort of societal problem that we're experiencing that is generating all of this is.

00:41:38.480 I think the three words, it's it's Marvel movie morality.

00:41:44.420 It's this extremely simplistic view where the liberals are always the good guys and the conservatives are always the bad guys.

00:41:50.740 And worse than that, it's a Marvel movie anthropology.

00:41:54.080 Did you see this video?

00:41:55.120 One of these agitators picks up a flashbang, one of these non-lethal grenades.

00:41:59.460 Like clearly she saw it in some movie and she goes to throw it, blows her finger off.

00:42:03.420 It's going around on the anti-ice social media pages right now.

00:42:06.200 Or the idea that you can drive your car into a cop and then when the cops pull their guns out, the lesbian partner says, why did why did the gun have bullets in it? 1.00

00:42:16.620 After Alex Pretty was shot, the woman who was filming this whole thing, who could have tried to intervene, who could have tried to pull him off the cops when they shot him?

00:42:24.140 She goes, what?

00:42:26.100 Shocked like she had never been more surprised by anything in her life.

00:42:28.700 These are people who who take their entire view of history, anthropology and morality from comic book movies, and they go out and they they meet reality.

00:42:38.900 And the part that I feel sorriest for them about is they seem genuinely surprised by it.

00:42:44.260 That's how divorced from reality they are.

00:42:45.900 You know, I have to say, too, though, I was reading an article about our pal Nick Fuentes and what what the complaints are, people who go and look at him.

00:42:55.660 One of the things that really bothers me about Fuentes is I keep hearing people say how talented he is and how funny he is.

00:43:01.360 I like the reason this bothers me is one of my few talents is spotting broadcast talent.

00:43:05.900 He's a he's a moderate third level broadcast talent.

00:43:09.180 He's got a sense of humor and he says things that are outrageous and it makes you makes you laugh.

00:43:13.240 But but he's not really he's not a real talent like I've seen people be like some even some of the people in this very room have tons more talent than than he does.

00:43:22.820 But he is speaking to something that is bothering people, which is this kind of, you know, trans valuation of all values where where men are penalized for being men, where women aren't women, where women are actually encouraged not to be like women.

00:43:38.080 It's something is really strange in this country that is the left seeping through our media, which, in my opinion, is 100 percent corrupt.

00:43:46.760 I mean, you've got like you've got poor Barry Weiss.

00:43:49.500 She's like this fleck of dust in the machine and they're all getting together to get rid of her.

00:43:53.480 You know, it's like this one middle of the road lefty.

00:43:56.340 It's like too much for them to take because she's going to make people play fair. 1.00

00:44:01.180 You know, this this media machine, which is crumbling around us as we see The Washington Post getting rid of all its people.

00:44:06.620 It's crumbling, but it's not crumbling fast enough.

00:44:09.320 And we still have a generation of people who were schooled in this machine, schooled in the academies and actually believe the values of the left are values, which they're not.

00:44:18.260 They're just an agitation, as you call it, a chaos operation.

00:44:21.080 And I think that that is a serious problem because they don't have churches to go to.

00:44:24.320 They don't have synagogues to go to and they don't have any other set of values to to hook themselves to. 0.85

00:44:29.060 And they have the churches that they can invade in violation of federal law.

00:44:32.540 They do have synagogues. 0.99

00:44:35.540 Isn't that why you're going to churches to scream at children to Lake Bryant?

00:44:38.040 Do we think there's going to be any political consequence even for that stuff?

00:44:42.900 Because to your point, Matt, you brought it up.

00:44:45.120 Yeah, we we want the illegals out. 1.00

00:44:46.860 People voted for mass deportations in 2024.

00:44:49.080 We want that operation to continue.

00:44:50.720 What about the agitators?

00:44:52.480 Are they going to be rounded up?

00:44:53.820 Are these people going to be held to account for violations of the FACE Act, say, or maybe other federal law?

00:44:59.920 Or is Tim Walz?

00:45:01.000 I mean, just to use the Tim Walz example, Scott Besson, Treasury Secretary, came out.

00:45:04.480 He said, I went to investigate fraud in Minnesota.

00:45:06.900 Tim Walz would not give me a security detail amid all this craziness in Minnesota.

00:45:11.300 It's been going on for five years.

00:45:12.440 He wouldn't give me a security detail that no longer looks like all just some little knucklehead.

00:45:16.840 You know, that looks like thuggery. 0.92

00:45:18.140 That looks like deep corruption.

00:45:19.620 That looks like he might have been conspiring in some of this fraud.

00:45:22.580 Are any of these people going to be held to account?

00:45:24.420 Okay, that's what I thought.

00:45:28.240 Okay, great.

00:45:28.820 Yeah, I agree.

00:45:29.540 So far for the church thing, I think they've arrested two people who also were out of jail within 24 hours.

00:45:40.180 And we know how that would go.

00:45:41.440 We know how it would go if they were outside of an abortion clinic and got arrested.

00:45:45.140 They would not be out of jail even right now pending the trial and all that.

00:45:49.580 But, and then we know the situation with Don Lemon who still has not been arrested.

00:45:53.920 So, it doesn't, there should be, it should be that there are many people suffering very severe consequences.

00:46:00.360 But it doesn't appear that that's going to happen.

00:46:02.640 And if we're, and that's why I think the church thing, I don't know how many people invaded the church.

00:46:06.920 It was dozens it looked like or at least a dozen or around there.

00:46:09.980 It was a lot.

00:46:10.400 But if that's it, like if it's just those two and they end up getting slapped with a fine or they got to do a few days in jail or something, Don Lemon never goes to jail.

00:46:19.680 If that's it for that, then I think that is a very bad sign, you know, going forward.

00:46:26.380 Yeah, I don't understand why we treat these guys so leniently either.

00:46:29.880 I don't get it.

00:46:32.020 Ben, is there any, my only thought was, is it just going to be hard because he can pretend to be a journalist?

00:46:36.240 And that's why they don't want to do it because they don't want to lose because they're not going to get all of it.

00:46:40.400 Yeah, I think that's right.

00:46:42.100 I mean, I think, I think that he will escape the, the, the claws of justice once again.

00:46:46.300 Don Lemon has thwarted, thwarted the mechanisms.

00:46:49.300 He's like, he's like the Joker, you know, so yeah.

00:46:51.980 Exactly.

00:46:52.580 He's, he's doing it for you, the people.

00:46:56.860 Ever since he allegedly groped that guy at Murph's bar in the Hamptons, he just gets away with it every time.

00:47:03.560 Deeply, deeply frustrating.

00:47:04.960 Well, I mentioned the Marvel movie Morality.

00:47:07.660 I haven't seen any of the movies this year.

00:47:09.480 I don't, I don't think I've seen a single one.

00:47:11.300 I guess it's Oscar season.

00:47:13.080 I've heard about some of the movies and certainly my lack of knowledge will not stop me from opining on it.

00:47:19.020 Have any of you seen any of the actual movies?

00:47:20.980 I've seen a few of them.

00:47:22.080 I have to, before we talk about the Oscars, in, in my business of crime writing, the Oscar is the Edgar Award named after Edgar Allan Poe.

00:47:29.060 I've won two of them and I've just been nominated for my sixth one for my book, Kingdom of Cain, which is nominated in the critical biographical category.

00:47:37.580 So I just wanted to announce that, but, but I've seen, I've seen some of the, the, uh, it's amazing that, you know, on the form that I had, the PR form I had to fill out, it asked my pronouns.

00:47:47.060 So, you know how, uh, what a great chance I have of winning, but still the nomination was a shock.

00:47:51.400 Uh, you know, I, the films that I have seen sinners and that one, one battle after another and Frankenstein, uh, we're all, all have the exact same problem, incredibly brilliant technical, uh, talent went into making them look beautiful.

00:48:10.080 But because the people have no philosophy that makes sense in the second half, they just completely unravel because they don't know what they're saying.

00:48:17.580 The only thing that Guillermo del Toro can say is monsters are nice.

00:48:21.680 You should sleep with them. 0.95

00:48:22.480 Girls should sleep with monsters. 1.00

00:48:23.920 And that's, that's all he says in every movie. 0.94

00:48:25.480 You just think like, you know, get a psychiatrist, just work that out and come back and make a movie that makes some sense.

00:48:30.500 You know, sinners, sinners the same way.

00:48:32.640 It's a steal from that Tarantino movie where everybody turns out to be, it was dusk till dawn.

00:48:37.020 And then, yeah.

00:48:38.040 And the second half of the first half of it, it's beautiful.

00:48:40.840 The music, fantastic.

00:48:42.320 Acting is pretty good.

00:48:43.360 But, but the second half of it makes absolutely no sense. 0.96

00:48:46.620 And it ends up with this scene of murdering mean white people as a means of getting into heaven. 0.98

00:48:53.040 You can't forgive people. 1.00

00:48:54.380 You have to kill them before you can get, actually get into heaven. 0.96

00:48:57.120 And, and the same is true of that, uh, of that one about the one battle after another. 0.99

00:49:01.680 It's just left violent left-wing propaganda, basically, uh, romanticized.

00:49:06.340 And at this point, I just kind of thought like, yeah, no, I mean, how can you, you can't say anything bad about DiCaprio as an actor.

00:49:14.520 He's a good actor.

00:49:15.320 All these people are really talented and the talent is there, but each film unravels in the second half because the philosophy behind it or the outlet behind it makes no sense.

00:49:24.400 I wonder about the timing though, because you mentioned these movies that promote left-wing political violence and they're the really hot movies this year.

00:49:31.000 And then I think back, what was it now, almost nine, eight, nine, 10 years ago when the big hot movies were Moonlight and Shape of Water.

00:49:39.560 So at that time, the weird sex stuff was in vogue and they, they pushed a movie about pederasty and a movie about having sex with a fish.

00:49:46.020 And now left-wing violence is in vogue and they, they pushed one, one battle after another, whatever, all these other movies.

00:49:52.100 And I think, okay, there's very little connection between the popular zeitgeist and the movies that win Oscars, but there seems to be a very tight connection between the zeitgeist in Hollywood, you know, the kind of fashions of the elite liberals and the movies that they put up.

00:50:07.360 And so I think, okay, well, that's a tell, you know, that's, they're just pushing left-wing political violence.

00:50:11.040 Now they've been celebrating it at least since Charlie was assassinated and, uh, okay, at least that's a decent metric on where we are, on where our elites are.

00:50:19.100 Uh, it just, does it have any connection to the actual popular culture?

00:50:22.800 I sort of hope it doesn't.

00:50:24.340 So, I mean, I was trying to counter that as I was being distracted, not just because I couldn't deal with whatever Knowles was saying, but I was trying to write down the names of the, of the, uh, the best picture nominees.

00:50:34.820 I believe that I have seen of the 10, cause they, they expanded this category when Dark Knight wasn't nominated way back when, uh, they expanded the category.

00:50:42.500 So now it's 10 and of the 10, I believe it should not have been nominated by the way.

00:50:47.740 Here we go.

00:50:48.880 You know what?

00:50:49.940 That is the most offensive thing you have said in this entire episode, Matt Walsh.

00:50:53.900 That is, that is a horrifying statement.

00:50:55.560 And I hope that you enjoy your, your, your being frozen in darkness, getting, getting no less than you deserve for that, for that comment.

00:51:04.240 Uh, just, just, I, dang it.

00:51:06.000 Well, that didn't work.

00:51:06.680 Anyway, there, there are 10 films that have been nominated.

00:51:09.280 I believe I've seen six of them.

00:51:10.900 Um, the, the ones that I've not seen yet are Begonia Hamnet, the secret agent, which is not available on streaming yet.

00:51:16.040 I'm already Supreme, which is not available on streaming yet.

00:51:17.940 One of the big problems here is that I've seen none of these films in a movie theater because of course movie theaters are basically dead.

00:51:24.260 Uh, and so the, the notion that you, that anyone is seeing a lot of these movies in the theater is, is just not true.

00:51:30.800 Um, yes.

00:51:31.680 I mean, the, the thematic of the Oscar is which movie is most likely to foment anti-right-wing violence.

00:51:37.940 That, that is clearly the theme.

00:51:39.340 The two movies that are currently being touted as the front runners for Best Picture are One Battle After Another, which is an Antifa fantasy flick about how a group of rebels decide multiracial radicals.

00:51:53.380 Uh, and their, their kind of hapless white friend, Leonardo DiCaprio, uh, decide that they are going to engage in anti-ice operations, right?

00:52:00.980 They're going to free a bunch of illegal immigrants. 0.99

00:52:02.380 They're, they're going to, the big hero of the film is, uh, Benicio Del Toro, who is the only competent terrorist in the film who, who basically runs an underground railroad for illegal immigrants. 0.98

00:52:11.720 Uh, the great villain in the film is Sean Penn, who's a guy with a black lady fetish, uh, and works for law enforcement and is gross and violent, obviously. 0.85

00:52:20.120 And the entire United States is run by a secret group of white supremacists who wear polo shirts, right? 0.91

00:52:24.240 That, that's, that's the basis for One Battle After Another.

00:52:26.660 Uh, and I wish I were joking, but that's actually the plot of One Battle After Another.

00:52:29.800 Uh, it is, it is, it is so subtle, so subtle, subtle as a brick.

00:52:33.700 Uh, the, the acting in it, I thought, was actually not particularly good.

00:52:37.140 DiCaprio is fine.

00:52:38.220 He doesn't have much to do, is the truth, uh, in the film.

00:52:41.020 And so, the, the film is basically a, a giant fail.

00:52:43.240 The other one that people have been touting now is Sinners, because Sinners got so much, so many nominations.

00:52:48.960 It is now the most nominated film in Oscar history, which is kind of watered down, considering they've added a bunch of categories.

00:52:54.980 And also, absurd on its face, because Sinners is a B-level movie, at best.

00:52:59.400 Uh, just, just in terms of the, the direction, it's, it's beautiful to look at.

00:53:03.300 I mean, I will say that the, the, the, the first hour of it is, is, I think, beautifully directed.

00:53:08.020 It looks, it looks great.

00:53:09.760 The acting is good.

00:53:11.260 Uh, the music, uh, there are a couple of songs that really, that really kind of move.

00:53:15.700 Uh, it's kind of like a musical.

00:53:17.060 It's basically a musical, um, but it's a musical about how black people need to break away and form their own country. 0.91

00:53:23.140 And any white imprint on black people is actually white people attempting to steal their blood and their soul. 0.92

00:53:27.680 That is the basic idea of the movie. 0.96

00:53:29.140 Uh, that is why the vampires are led by a white Irish group, musical group. 0.94

00:53:34.660 It's supposed to be, I assume, some sort of commentary on white people stealing black music and then living off of the lifeblood of black people. 0.88

00:53:41.400 There's a lot of anti-Christian commentary about how Christianity, uh, is a religion that is, that is foisted upon black people. 0.95

00:53:47.720 But true blackness is animism and paganism from, from Africa. 0.99

00:53:52.540 That's, that's where the real black spirit lies. 0.98

00:53:55.200 It's an incredibly racist film. 0.98

00:53:57.060 It's a really racist film. 0.64

00:53:58.440 It's also incredibly reductive of the black experience in America in kind of bizarre ways.

00:54:02.200 Uh, and also reductive of the, the actual development of, of music.

00:54:06.800 Like if you're going to look at the blues and, and the, the, the kind of basis of it is it all takes place in the 1930s.

00:54:11.460 And they, these black guys decide they're going to create a blues bar, essentially, and this blues bar is where black people can be free.

00:54:17.620 This is the, the basic premise of the film. 0.98

00:54:19.380 And, and the entire idea, and the big kind of ballyhooed scene is a scene where one of the guys is a black singer, and he's strunging the guitar, and he's singing the blues, and it really is, it, it kicks ass. 0.98

00:54:28.900 It's great. 0.92

00:54:29.500 And then it goes into this fantasy where he's uniting all of the black influences of the past and all black people in the future. 0.60

00:54:35.960 And so you have people playing the electric guitar, and you have people from Africa who are walking around a drum, and all of this.

00:54:41.360 And then you have a ballet dancer, a black ballet dancer who moves through, and you think to yourself, wait, hold up a second. 0.71

00:54:45.400 I feel like that is not a historically black art form, the ballet.

00:54:49.220 And also the guitar was not invented in Africa.

00:54:51.660 And also the chord progression of the blues was not invented in Africa.

00:54:55.220 And actually music, as it turns out, is a group event, just like culture is a group event, meaning that it is, it is pulled from a number of different influences.

00:55:03.740 You can't take a single cultural thing that exists.

00:55:05.960 And not find cultural imprints from a dozen different cultures on it, some more than others. 0.95

00:55:11.540 But to pretend that there's no white cultural influence in the blues is, of course, silly, any more than to not acknowledge that there's huge black influence in rock and roll would be, would be really, really silly. 0.97

00:55:19.680 And so this kind of reductive ideology is really dumb, but that's exactly why it's being celebrated. 0.96

00:55:24.380 You know, the point on the religion, Ben, is just so funny that, because you hear this a lot. 0.99

00:55:28.600 This is the whole point of Kwanzaa is like black people shouldn't celebrate Christmas. 1.00

00:55:32.440 Christianity isn't for black people. 0.99

00:55:33.800 I just pulled up, I'm happy to have my computer here. 0.98

00:55:36.720 There is a saint in the church who goes back to the year 330 AD, who was so black that his name is Saint Moses the Black.

00:55:46.580 That's that guy.

00:55:47.380 So it, like, this is not some new thing.

00:55:49.920 Like, you know, Christianity just came to black people yesterday.

00:55:52.940 You know, it's been around black people basically from the beginning, but don't tell that to Hollywood.

00:55:57.200 Isn't that the first, isn't he the Ethiopian, one of the first people to convert the Bible?

00:56:01.220 I mean, North Africa, North Africans had a lot to do with the early development of the church.

00:56:06.900 Just just a few of them.

00:56:08.280 So, and by the way, the Kalshi markets, again, they're one of our sponsors.

00:56:11.360 They suggest that sinners is way up in the in the markets.

00:56:14.560 Now it's up like it was five or six percent a week ago.

00:56:16.600 Now it's up to twenty five percent.

00:56:18.300 One battle after another is still leading that.

00:56:20.620 But yeah, I mean, the the you know, it is it is a deeply racist. 0.96

00:56:24.560 It also kind of sucks, meaning the first half of it is good. 0.98

00:56:26.580 And then the second half of it is a mess. 0.98

00:56:28.080 Once the vampires come, the whole thing really, really falls apart in pretty significant ways.

00:56:32.100 It's not as racist as the Academy Awards, I think, lost all credibility.

00:56:38.320 I mean, if there's a moment you can point to, it's when they gave.

00:56:40.880 I think it was seven nominations to Black Panther, including Best Picture.

00:56:45.620 Terrible. 0.82

00:56:45.940 And so at that point, and by the way, you know, when that happened, I said, this is ridiculous.

00:56:50.840 People said, well, have you even watched the movie?

00:56:52.900 And the answer is, no, I never watch.

00:56:54.300 Like, I don't need to watch the movie.

00:56:55.640 I can just tell you that it's ridiculous that Black Panther is this critically acclaimed film.

00:57:01.620 So it's kind of lost all credibility from that point on.

00:57:04.160 Although I will say there are a couple of movies that were nominated that it's not all bad.

00:57:08.060 Like, I actually do, I'm not as down on modern filmmaking as maybe some of the rest of you guys here.

00:57:14.620 Because I do think they're interesting movies and even really good movies that come out every year.

00:57:19.280 I thought, I actually, Begonia, I think, was nominated as a Best Picture, right?

00:57:23.480 And I saw that.

00:57:24.960 And I thought I would hate it because I figured, because I knew it was this story about this conspiracy,

00:57:30.300 you know, it was implied to kind of like right-wing, basement-dwelling conspiracy theorist

00:57:35.020 who kidnaps this female CEO. 0.96

00:57:38.060 And, like, holds her hostage in the basement.

00:57:40.240 And so I thought it would just be this kind of broadside against right-wing conspiracy theories.

00:57:47.780 And it wasn't quite that, or at least I think it was a little bit more complicated than that,

00:57:52.000 the point they were making.

00:57:52.800 And I thought it was an interesting movie.

00:57:53.960 So that was one as well.

00:57:55.820 And I thought Train Dreams was, if you get, there's a little, there's some woke racial stuff

00:58:00.160 in the beginning of the movie.

00:58:01.640 You know, they got to show some of that.

00:58:03.220 They got to cover that base.

00:58:04.200 But then once you get past that, I thought it was a beautifully made movie that had really

00:58:10.320 no plot at all.

00:58:11.560 But I enjoyed it anyway.

00:58:14.340 Okay, so this is my big problem.

00:58:15.880 Okay, so I saw Train Dreams.

00:58:17.380 No plot.

00:58:18.340 F1 is just a popcorn flick.

00:58:20.080 It's kind of a warmed over Top Gun.

00:58:22.140 It's fine.

00:58:22.940 It's fine.

00:58:23.740 It's a warmed over Top Gun Maverick.

00:58:25.520 Yeah.

00:58:25.680 Right, Top Gun Maverick is just a better version of F1.

00:58:29.840 And it's fine.

00:58:32.480 Sentimental Value is another one of these arthouse flicks about how artists suffer in pursuit

00:58:37.440 of their art.

00:58:38.200 And we should all care because they're artists.

00:58:39.640 And that means they're very, very important.

00:58:41.380 Sinners, we've discussed.

00:58:42.420 One battle after another.

00:58:43.280 Frankenstein, I was really disappointed by because, again, the source material, the reason

00:58:46.560 people keep getting the source material wrong is the whole thing is about how secular

00:58:50.300 atheism robs people of their meaning.

00:58:53.240 That's the entire basis of the Mary Shelley book.

00:58:55.820 I'm reading it to my daughter right now.

00:58:57.920 She's a little young for it, but we're doing it anyway.

00:58:59.340 She's 11, and I'm reading it to her.

00:59:01.260 And the entire thing is about how once you dispense with God, what you end up with is

00:59:08.260 basically meat and how that robs people of their soul.

00:59:12.580 And not just the monster, but the people who actually build the monster are robbed of their

00:59:16.020 soul by treating people as though they have no soul and they are just pieces of meat,

00:59:20.080 essentially.

00:59:20.380 And because Guillermo del Toro doesn't understand that, it's just a monster flick.

00:59:24.300 It's a beautifully made monster flick, but it's a monster flick.

00:59:27.280 And there's also this thing with sleeping with the girls want to sleep with the monster.

00:59:30.820 It's like the guy's got a mommy.

00:59:32.380 He's got some kind of Freudian thing, like a throwback to Freudian problems.

00:59:36.560 And by the way, you should read the chapter in The Kingdom of Cain, which was nominated

00:59:40.760 for an Edgar, I may have mentioned.

00:59:42.120 You should read the chapter in Frankenstein and Kingdom of Cain.

00:59:44.160 It's a totally original take on Frankenstein.

00:59:46.160 It's really good.

00:59:47.180 I think that what this speaks to, and again, this is what drives me up a wall.

00:59:50.740 The writing in Hollywood has declined markedly.

00:59:53.160 This to me is the biggest problem because the pictures are beautiful.

00:59:56.300 The pictures are more beautiful than they've ever been.

00:59:58.580 Right.

00:59:58.700 The sound quality is better than it has ever been, right?

01:00:02.220 The quality of the camera work is better than it has ever been.

01:00:04.780 You can do things with cameras you couldn't do.

01:00:06.580 And the movies are not as good because the writing is just not good.

01:00:10.160 And maybe that's because people have become too reliant on all of the rest of it.

01:00:14.380 You know, they don't know what to do.

01:00:15.400 No, it's because they don't know what they think, Ben.

01:00:17.000 I think that's really it.

01:00:18.260 Yeah.

01:00:18.620 Yeah.

01:00:18.820 I mean, and the beginning of Frankenstein is so beautiful that I thought, oh, I love this movie.

01:00:24.180 I thought I was going to love it.

01:00:25.400 The same thing was true of Nosferatu.

01:00:27.060 God, it was gorgeous.

01:00:27.740 And I saw these, I saw Nosferatu in the theater and it was unbelievably gorgeous, but they

01:00:32.400 don't know what they believe because they're not allowed.

01:00:34.300 And the guy who makes Nosferatu, the director's name is obviously looking for God, but he

01:00:38.120 can't quite, you know, find him or he can't quite admit it.

01:00:40.940 This is why I, this is why I think that the only two top contenders, they do know what

01:00:45.540 they think, what they think is bad and wrong, but they know what they think.

01:00:48.600 Right.

01:00:48.960 But it doesn't make any sense, you know.

01:00:50.560 Well, yes.

01:00:51.300 I mean, internally it makes no sense, but they, but there's at least there's a through line. 0.98

01:00:55.120 The through line is bad and stupid, but it is the through, but it is, but it is a through 0.99

01:00:59.280 line. 0.99

01:00:59.620 And a lot of these other movies are sort of wandering around in search of a, in search

01:01:02.340 of a through line.

01:01:03.300 Yeah.

01:01:03.860 And you can watch them around.

01:01:05.320 Go ahead.

01:01:05.980 So what we can look forward to is that the winners in the big award for our popular culture

01:01:11.680 will either be meaningless and completely inverted from reality, or we'll know what it believes 1.00

01:01:17.760 and just be really bad and stupid. 0.99

01:01:20.240 Yeah, I think that's fair. 1.00

01:01:21.020 That is good.

01:01:21.600 Great.

01:01:22.040 Okay.

01:01:22.480 Well, anyway, it's been fun, guys.

01:01:24.040 I hope you all stay warm, Ben.

01:01:25.300 You will be staying warm.

01:01:26.440 And I guess I'll be able to join all of you for another chipper episode of Friendly Fire

01:01:30.560 next time.

The Matt Walsh Show - January 29, 2026

Friendly Fire： ICE. Ice. (And The Oscars) Baby.

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Transcript