The Matt Walsh Show - May 01, 2021


Interview With Gov. Scott Walker

Topics
YAF events and campus restrictions sports part of it limited government
Hosted by
Matt Walsh
Mentioned
Michael Knowles Rachel Campbell Baskin Robbins Alicia Krauss Katie Pavlich Scott Walker Hutchinson Austin Noem
Ep. 712 - It's Time To Get Over Your White Guilt Ep. 713 - Eradicating The Cancer Of Critical Race Theory

Episode Stats


Length

24 minutes

Words per minute

185.29

Word count

4,452

Sentence count

235

Harmful content

Misogyny

3

sentences flagged

Toxicity

1

sentences flagged

Hate speech

2

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Former Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker joins Jemele to discuss YAF and the recent shutdown at UC Berkeley, as well as YAF events across the country, and how they plan to fight back against the "Vocid Lockdown" movement.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 Joined now by Governor Scott Walker, of course, former governor of Wisconsin, current president of YAF.
00:00:05.340 And we're very good friends with with YAF. You know, first of all, Governor, thanks for joining us.
00:00:11.960 My pleasure. Thanks for having me on.
00:00:13.960 I was just at I did a YAF event at UT Austin last week, and it was really good turnout.
00:00:21.040 Of course, we had a problem with the covid restrictions where they were turning, you know, school was turning people away and they wouldn't let us have overflow rooms and all that kind of stuff.
00:00:30.000 What are you are you worried that, you know, with YAF, that maybe these schools have been given a tool to restrict and shut down events and they're going to be hesitant to give up that that that tool in the future?
00:00:46.320 Well, we're going to have to watch to make sure that whatever policies each campus has are done uniformly.
00:00:52.260 You know, a couple of years ago, one of your colleagues was at UC Berkeley and through one of our YAF events, and they tried to effectively stop us from happening.
00:01:03.780 They didn't put an outright barrier, but they put a requirement.
00:01:06.400 It couldn't be after three. It couldn't be advertised.
00:01:09.700 And most ridiculously, they were going to charge fees for us and the students there that were three times what they charged the left leaning group to have a U.S. Supreme Court justice.
00:01:19.140 And so we won that case. They had to settle. So we're going to be watching right now.
00:01:25.300 Obviously, most left wing groups are, you know, sitting in their basement, still panicked over something.
00:01:30.880 Even a world filled with people are vaccinated. So it's more likely a burden on conservative voices.
00:01:36.320 But we're going to make sure it's pushed uniformly. And if they don't, we're going to fight back just like we did at Berkeley.
00:01:42.040 I'm also curious, have you do you think there's been and it's kind of hard to tell because of the covid shutdown and everything and how that plays into this.
00:01:51.940 But you think the left wing activists on campus have are you noticing any kind of shift in tactics where they're a little bit less likely to, you know,
00:02:02.600 have these huge protests and a huge reaction they used to have to conservative speakers and are maybe smartening up a little bit.
00:02:08.720 And now now they realize, well, that calls attention to it. So instead, we're going to try to distract people or shut down the voices another way.
00:02:16.780 Well, smartening up and liberal activists are never words I would use together.
00:02:21.960 But that's yeah, they're aggressive. I mean, they're not on on campus with speakers in that regard right now.
00:02:28.860 But clearly, you know, we've seen the hysteria that they generate towards, you know,
00:02:34.940 a couple of folks showing up an outdoor barbecue without a mask on, even when, you know, times have changed dramatically in the last few months.
00:02:43.560 And yet when they had these Black Lives Matters, these other protests, universities, for that matter,
00:02:51.320 municipalities and others kind of giving people a pass as though covid only applies if you're right wing.
00:02:56.240 But if you're out promoting some radical Marxist cause, it doesn't.
00:03:00.580 So I do think, though, they're they are still pushing.
00:03:05.020 And I would imagine, you know, there'll be future protests where the left will be hypocritical as well.
00:03:11.680 One minute not wanting to be out and about without masks on, socially distanced, hovering away from others.
00:03:17.100 And the other moment, out raising a fist in defiance of some other policy.
00:03:20.900 So, again, it's one of those where campus by campus, we're going to be monitoring that, pushing back and making sure they don't make us live up the standards.
00:03:29.680 They're not applying to those on the left.
00:03:31.740 Yeah, absolutely. Well, I wanted to the main thing I want to talk to you about as as a former governor yourself.
00:03:37.460 It's been it's been it's been an interesting year for governors in general, Republican governors, some of them with respect to the covid lockdowns.
00:03:49.660 I think I've been quite impressive, obviously, DeSantis in Florida, Nome in South Dakota and others pushing back against it.
00:03:56.240 Others, other other Republican governors, not not so willing to to push back and have sort of gone along with the so-called experts and done whatever they were told.
00:04:03.460 And then and then that kind of gives way to this issue with gender.
00:04:08.140 We've seen a push across the country on a statewide level of trying to pass bills to kind of put a halt, if only temporarily, to the march of the left's gender madness in their states.
00:04:24.200 And so there's been bills banning males from competing against females and female sports.
00:04:29.980 And then in Arkansas, there was a bill that was supposed to stop children from having their genitals mutilated or being drugged, you know, because they're gender confused.
00:04:41.540 But in both of those cases, we know Governor Nome in South Dakota and Governor Hutchinson in Arkansas rejected or vetoed those bills.
00:04:50.540 And I first just broadly speaking, I'm interested to get your thoughts on that.
00:04:55.660 What do you think there's is there any defending this?
00:04:58.720 You know, they had their reasons.
00:05:00.240 They thought it was government overstepping its bounds and it was kind of a rejection of our limited government principles and so on.
00:05:06.800 What's what's your take on that?
00:05:08.040 No, I don't think so.
00:05:10.700 I mean, I think the fundamentals I tell kids on campus all the time beyond just this issue, the difference between the left and the right is the left wants the government to tell you what to do, when to do and how to do it and everything in every way.
00:05:21.900 Our view, at least my view, as I articulate, is as long as you don't hurt the health and safety of your neighbor, go out and do your own thing, live your own life, pursue your own dream in the larger context.
00:05:32.040 But we're talking about minors.
00:05:33.160 That's a whole different ballgame.
00:05:35.460 There's the obvious reason why all throughout society we have protections for children, for those under the age of 18.
00:05:42.160 And so it only makes sense.
00:05:43.320 My kids are now 25 and 26.
00:05:45.240 I got nieces who are 17 and 14.
00:05:47.760 I think any of us who are parents know, particularly in the teen years, how our kids will change their mind 20 times a day, let alone, you know, over the period of a month or a year or, you know, early on in their lifetime.
00:06:01.220 So I do think it makes sense that we're protecting particularly against these supposed woke, radical parents who are allowing kids to go to great extremes to try and show how accepting they are, not understanding that.
00:06:16.360 When you're talking about physical changes, when you're talking about physical changes, when you're talking about things involving medical procedures, medications, other things, those are things that are almost irreversible.
00:06:27.040 And, again, kids are going to change their minds on any number of things.
00:06:30.660 Let's be careful what happens there.
00:06:33.380 And on the larger context on what happened in South Dakota and what's being proposed and advocated for in other states, I think anyone who's ever watched high school and junior high and even earlier sports know there's a reason why boys and girls don't compete against each other.
00:06:50.340 It wouldn't be fair.
00:06:51.240 There's other levels where young women are actually far ahead of their male counterparts when it comes to their development intellectually in the classroom and other areas that boys will take some time to catch up on.
00:07:03.640 But physically, it makes no sense for boys and girls to be competing against each other.
00:07:09.980 And no matter what you think about the larger issue of transgenderism, the bottom line is there's no way that someone who was physically born a young man should be competing against a girl.
00:07:21.020 And I think governors of any party, but particularly Republican governors, should recognize that and stand up for that.
00:07:26.740 Yeah, on the sports part of it, you know, one thing we're hearing from the left now is that, well, and they're trotting out their experts and they're pulling out various studies and saying, oh, it says here that actually testosterone doesn't give you any real advantage in sports.
00:07:43.940 And that this is a perfect example of what of how the left of their tactic, how they how they get their their agenda through, because, you know, they're making a claim that is number one false.
00:07:54.440 Of course, obviously, testosterone gives you an advantage, but also basically irrelevant because testosterone is only one and one of the less significant advantages that boys have.
00:08:07.700 I mean, this this goes all the way down to bone structure, muscle mass, every, you know, every part of us is is if you're a man, every part of you is a man.
00:08:16.720 And so there are dozens of biological advantages.
00:08:20.480 And what they're trying to do is is is is make it only about this one thing, testosterone.
00:08:25.900 And then they start trying to confuse the matter by saying, oh, well, actually, testosterone doesn't always give you an advantage.
00:08:30.720 Now, on the on the issue of the logical pushback, yeah, the logical pushback on that to me, it's a simple question back in return and saying so are are they advocating to end women's sports?
00:08:43.480 Because that's the logical conclusion to that sort of science, not unscientific argument that they're making is they're saying, well, then they're making the case for not having women and men's sports.
00:08:54.380 I think most of us, regardless of political or ideological belief, would say, well, that's ridiculous.
00:08:59.380 Well, then they've kind of made our point. Right. 0.63
00:09:02.180 Exactly. Well, how about why have a WNBA in an NBA? 1.00
00:09:05.380 Just get rid of the WNBA, invite the women to come try out for the NBA teams. 1.00
00:09:09.460 And if they can make it, then then, you know, we can all be together and be one big happy family on.
00:09:16.680 Specifically in Arkansas. So there's the the sports part of it, which is important.
00:09:21.020 But I think you'd probably agree. I know I certainly feel that the drugging and mutilation of children, even more important than the sports.
00:09:30.240 So I'm curious. I know you can't read anybody's mind, but this it's it's so clear and so obvious.
00:09:36.420 Like, of course, you're going to pass a bill protecting kids from this.
00:09:40.420 And yet you have a Republican governor in the south who says that's a bridge too far and is now coming out effectively in favor of mutilating and drugging kids.
00:09:51.600 Do you have any theory on why he he or any other Republican would come to that conclusion?
00:09:59.200 No, I know he's I mean, he's a good man overall.
00:10:02.280 I work with him other things when I was a governor and I like Governor Noem as well.
00:10:06.140 It was obviously a different issue just on the sports side of it things.
00:10:09.100 But I think this is a classic example.
00:10:11.240 In fact, our mutual friend Michael Knowles and I were just talking about this in preparation.
00:10:16.940 I read in advance his new book.
00:10:18.980 And one of the problems he outlines is it's not just that conservatives are fighting is that we see the ground.
00:10:24.780 We we see ground.
00:10:25.820 We don't just not engage in the fight.
00:10:27.460 We see ground with language and theory.
00:10:29.620 And I think this is a prime example where people like Governor Asa Hutchinson and others seating ground, not wanting to be discriminatory or whatever phrase they might use.
00:10:40.660 No, that's not the case at all.
00:10:42.500 Again, if someone is an adult, I may not necessarily like it or agree with it.
00:10:46.020 But, you know, someone wants to be transgender.
00:10:48.460 There's nothing that people are advocating that as an adult that they can't do that.
00:10:53.280 Obviously, debates about where and how are certainly valid.
00:10:58.180 But but this idea that with children, I go back to the point I was making before, that any of us who are parents, particularly if we've had kids go through their teenage years, know how frequently they change their minds on issues here.
00:11:09.980 And I think having a certain level of protection for the same reasons why there's all sorts of other protections written in state laws all across the country to protect the interest of minors.
00:11:21.420 It's why even at its core, the debate we have about protecting the unborn, because an unborn baby is a human being who cannot survive on its own without protection.
00:11:33.200 And so that's why in society we protect what the unborn or it's at any age, particularly up till 18.
00:11:41.920 And then obviously there's protections even for adults from violence and threats from others.
00:11:47.780 But but we particularly look at minors in a unique way.
00:11:50.820 And I think it's only makes sense that the lawmakers in Arkansas sought to do that as well.
00:11:55.640 Yeah, I'm I'm you talk about kids not being able to make choices.
00:12:00.280 What I always say is if you don't understand this concept of kids not being able to, you know, we shouldn't entrust kids with these kinds of choices.
00:12:07.820 Like try taking a six year old to Baskin Robbins and telling him that he can get any flavor ice cream he wants and see how long it takes him to.
00:12:18.160 Because he's going to he's going to give you 14 different answers and then collapse on the ground in tears because he can't you can't finally decide that's that's kids or they're indecisive.
00:12:26.560 And we don't have your prefrontal cortex, which controls discernment, long term planning and all that.
00:12:31.180 That isn't fully online until 25.
00:12:33.720 So, you know, what what what hope does a six or seven year old have?
00:12:36.820 I'm wondering one one thing that was mentioned, you know, by these not just the Republican governors, but oftentimes conservatives when they're taking the the other side of this issue and saying, well, we don't want laws banning men from women's sports or we don't we don't laws dealing with with transgender, quote unquote, medical care.
00:12:57.620 They cite limited government and they say, you know, our fundamental principles conservatives is limited government.
00:13:03.920 And so that means the government shouldn't get involved.
00:13:07.260 This may be this may seem like a heterodox opinion among a lot of conservatives, but I'm increasingly starting to think that maybe we need a better slogan than limited government.
00:13:17.260 Not because I favor big out of control government, but limited government is such an ambiguous and vague sort of term.
00:13:26.420 And I'm not really sure that the problem is that government is too big necessarily.
00:13:31.080 I think it's that oftentimes government is doing the wrong things and it's directing its power in the wrong direction.
00:13:37.020 What do you think?
00:13:38.080 Am I off on on the wrong path here?
00:13:40.160 What do you think?
00:13:40.720 No, I think you're right.
00:13:41.960 I've said for some time, you know, the people absolutely love everything by the government and their people hate the government.
00:13:47.040 My view is somewhere in between in the sense I think government by and large has gotten too big, too expansive, too much part of our life.
00:13:52.760 Too much is pushed up to the federal government, whereas the founders intended it to be closer to the states and to the people.
00:13:59.620 But that doesn't mean there isn't a role to play in government.
00:14:02.740 I hate government that's too big and ineffective and inefficient.
00:14:07.200 What it should do is focus on the things that it should be responsible for doing and then do it well, which government historically has not done.
00:14:14.620 And again, protecting the difference between what's right and what's wrong.
00:14:18.480 I mean, this is a very clear case.
00:14:20.860 We know what's right and we know what is wrong.
00:14:24.340 It's worth protecting.
00:14:25.540 And again, when you're talking about a minor, I don't think it's an overreach.
00:14:28.760 If not, I mean, to me, again, I go back to one of the great things to do in debates like this is ask people questions.
00:14:34.340 Just as we ask, should women's sports be gone and the question of the athletic issue. 0.96
00:14:38.600 Similarly, here the question should be, well, if you think, you know, this is too much government, so are they advocating we get rid of all laws and rules regarding children?
00:14:49.460 Just let them decide if they want to go to school or not.
00:14:52.240 Let them decide, you know, what else they want to do with their life.
00:14:55.040 No, there are certain protections that are put in place here.
00:14:58.660 And if the people around these kids aren't smart enough to say, you know, you shouldn't be making these sorts of decisions until you're an adult and then you can decide on your own, then I think it's only right that the government play a role in that regard.
00:15:11.680 For the same reason, we have all sorts of other protections.
00:15:15.120 And these are, and as you point out, kids are not able to advocate for themselves.
00:15:19.580 So someone has to step up and protect them.
00:15:21.340 And there's a great video that went viral last week of a mother at, I think it was a Georgia school board meeting, and she was speaking out against the mask mandates.
00:15:31.500 And, you know, little kids at school, six, seven hours a day have to wear masks, no matter how young they are, even though they're obviously, we know, a very low-risk group.
00:15:39.260 And she said, you know, I have to be here advocating for my child because he can't do it himself.
00:15:45.060 And so that is a role where government should step in.
00:15:48.640 If you've got a kid whose parents are bringing him in to be mutilated or drugged, well, who's going to step, if the government doesn't step in on his behalf, then who will?
00:15:58.520 That's the question.
00:16:01.560 Exactly right.
00:16:02.140 And we have a, I mean, just remember, this is part of a bigger agenda by the left out there.
00:16:07.740 We have a tip line at our website, yaf.org, yaf.org slash tips.
00:16:12.960 People can see our campus tip line.
00:16:14.980 And most of our tips, as you can imagine, are things about wild left-wing professors and, sadly, increasingly stories of segregation on campus, not what we thought of in the 60s and the 50s before that, but these weird sorts of segregated things on training or graduation or other issues.
00:16:32.600 But one of the tips came from Iowa State, not from the coast, but from the middle of the country, where they gave us a tip not about their campus and college, but the local school district in Ames, Iowa, who partnered with BLM for a week of action during February for Black History Month, had literally nothing to do with black history.
00:16:50.000 And instead was this radical indoctrination curriculum that started from preschool to 12th grade, where preschoolers and kindergartners were actually given coloring pages with transgender figures and told that they could decide where they wanted to pick to be a boy or girl or somewhere in between.
00:17:06.600 This is just wrong.
00:17:08.140 This is just fundamentally wrong, not only in the premise itself, but the idea that they're introducing this at that young of an age.
00:17:14.160 But that should be an eye-opener to everyone listening and watching, that this is how far the left is seeking to go.
00:17:21.140 We have to expose that, push back on that, because if they can be doing it in Ames, Iowa, they can be pushing this anywhere in America.
00:17:28.900 Right. That's the thing.
00:17:30.220 I think still a lot of conservatives like to think that this is regulated to the crazy coastlines, but no, this stuff is everywhere, both gender and race.
00:17:38.900 It's the left agenda in both of those areas.
00:17:42.100 It's everywhere.
00:17:42.780 Now, I did want to ask you about a new YAF campaign called The Long Game, and this sounds exactly in line with what I'm always preaching about, so I'm happy to hear about it.
00:17:55.960 But could you explain what it is exactly and what the purpose is?
00:18:00.640 Yeah, it fits in actually very well what we were just talking about, seeing just how far the left has gone.
00:18:06.180 This didn't happen overnight.
00:18:07.560 We're under siege in America in our schools, in our college campuses, heck, in our culture, even in our communications with the censorship we increasingly see from big tech.
00:18:16.840 All these things didn't happen yesterday.
00:18:18.980 They've been at this for decades.
00:18:20.500 You go back to Saul Alinsky's work and writings back in the 1960s.
00:18:24.520 They have systematically tried to take over our colleges and universities.
00:18:28.780 They've seeped into our schools.
00:18:30.040 We see this all throughout the curriculum, and so my argument is not that we see the battles of today.
00:18:36.240 We've got to be involved in every one of those for sure, but that we have to have a long-game approach to retake major parts of our culture, our schools, our colleges, our universities, our communications.
00:18:48.260 And so we spell out, in fact, if people want a free copy, we'll send it to you, yaf.org slash longgame.
00:18:55.380 It's a 12-point action plan.
00:18:58.220 Not only expand our scope and our reach and our college campuses, to get to every campus and every student across America to step up our free speech efforts for what we were just talking about in terms of college administrators and student government officials trying to block conservative thought through cancel culture on campus,
00:19:15.140 but also to go younger ages, to not only go into high school, but now to aggressively go into junior high, and where necessary, like that example I gave in Ames, Iowa, to go out and support the parents of even elementary school students,
00:19:29.760 to give them a counter not just to that radical transgender coloring page, as we just talked about, but increasingly this whole 1619 project and all these programs and curriculum that are teaching our children to hate America. 0.76
00:19:42.560 We need to counter that. The good news is, our data, our research shows that as liberal or progressive as students are today, particularly in high school and college,
00:19:53.500 if we just give them access to basic facts, to basic information that's counter to what they've been hearing, they dramatically shift our direction.
00:20:02.280 And so that's why the left's pushing cancel culture, and that's why we've got to have a long game to push back.
00:20:06.700 So I know you describe all this on the website, but when we talk about the education system specifically, and especially in the younger ages, K through 12,
00:20:17.200 I tend to take a more doomsaying approach on this and really all issues, but especially in the education system,
00:20:26.220 I tend to think there is, I don't know if there's any way to take it back.
00:20:31.080 It's just so fundamentally, you know, the left-wing agenda is so fundamentally ingrained in the public school system.
00:20:39.740 I don't know if there's a way to do it. Do you think there is a way to actually, you know, even from a long term,
00:20:45.900 obviously it's not something we can do overnight, but do you think there's actually a way to take that education system back?
00:20:52.960 Well, I do, and I think it's in stages.
00:20:55.380 I'm obviously an optimist, but I'm a realist as well, so I'm not naive to what we're facing.
00:21:01.440 It's a huge block out there, and more than just the entrenched indoctrination we see in colleges
00:21:07.600 and now increasingly in our government-run schools, for sure.
00:21:11.500 But the bigger concern I have immediately is just literally this cancel culture.
00:21:15.720 It's not just liberal bias. It's not just political correctness.
00:21:18.480 It's wiping out, not only amongst professors and educators, but even amongst fellow students,
00:21:24.040 the ability to even speak out and have a counter-opinion to this radical, woke agenda that's out there.
00:21:31.360 So first and foremost, it's why a big part of our long-game plan is to aggressively step up our efforts,
00:21:36.940 work with partners like Alliance Defending Freedom to push and advocate for free speech,
00:21:41.440 to win cases like we did at UC Berkeley and elsewhere,
00:21:43.920 but to even go not just on college campuses but into our schools so that conservative voices,
00:21:50.100 whether it's speakers, students, parents, and others, don't get shut down.
00:21:54.220 That's the first step because, again, the data we've shown, we just released a poll about a week ago
00:22:00.200 that showed in a number of key issues that when we introduce facts, when people start to hear,
00:22:05.440 when young people, students particularly, start to hear the facts, there's a dramatic shift out there.
00:22:11.220 So that's the first step.
00:22:13.560 The other part of it is, again, getting to every campus.
00:22:18.100 In high school, it's being able to organize and get information out.
00:22:22.320 It's even simple things like stepping up our YouTube efforts because our data overwhelmingly shows
00:22:27.660 the number one way young people get their information isn't the way the media, in many cases, think with Twitter.
00:22:34.960 I mean, there's some of that, but it's overwhelmingly YouTube.
00:22:37.660 And so whether it's you, it's Shapiro, it's Knowles, it's Alicia Krauss, it's Rachel Campbell's Duffy,
00:22:43.640 or Katie Pavlich, or whoever we have speaking on campuses, getting that content up on our YouTube page,
00:22:49.020 promoting that, growing from about a half a million subscribers we have now at over five million,
00:22:53.820 is our goal, with one billion views of our content.
00:22:58.080 We know there's ways of getting around the indoctrination that people are getting in their schools.
00:23:02.600 And then another interesting point that we include is not only student-focused,
00:23:07.640 but providing a network for educators, for teachers and professors, not only conservative ones,
00:23:13.280 but there's a really significant number of educators who just want to teach the facts,
00:23:18.460 but they're so overwhelmed by their colleagues, they're so overwhelmed by the bias they see in their curriculum guidelines
00:23:24.620 and their textbooks that we need to provide assistance to correct that as well.
00:23:29.360 So it'll happen, but not overnight.
00:23:30.660 Yeah, well, I think this is the right approach.
00:23:33.800 I'm happy that you're focusing on the long haul.
00:23:37.880 I think oftentimes as conservatives, we're looking for the quick win.
00:23:42.240 We're looking for that, at most, a one, two, three-step plan, do that, that, that, and everything's better.
00:23:47.840 And it's just not going to work that way.
00:23:49.300 But this is a fight we have to be willing to fight over the course of generations, really.
00:23:54.380 So I appreciate your efforts, and thanks for joining us today, Governor Walker.
00:23:57.940 My pleasure. Good to be with you. Thanks.
00:24:01.280 Thank you.
00:24:01.580 Thank you.