Jason Whitlock is a writer for Outkick.io and fills in for Glenn Beck on The Blaze and has been filling in for the right-leaning media outlet for years. In this episode, Whitlock talks about his faith and how important it is in his life.
00:05:28.560And so, a conversation in the media about faith has virtually been eliminated.
00:05:35.940And, you know, I'm having this debate and conversation with my family all the time, because, so now I'm not really political.
00:05:47.500I've never voted, but, and so I'm someone that tries to evaluate the world through my religious faith.
00:05:56.960And, and, again, I'm certainly a sinner, and I'm certainly a flawed person, and I acknowledge all that.
00:06:04.720But I'm struggling with my family a lot, because I'm asking them all the time, well, how does that jive with what we were taught in church?
00:06:14.360How does that jive with our religious faith?
00:06:21.780And, and so, I just look at, you know, so my upbringing in the church and my upbringing as an athlete was all tied to faith.
00:06:31.900And, you know, there was pre-game prayer, there was post-game prayer, the values taught in sports were somewhat consistent with the values taught in the church.
00:06:42.900And, you know, we're so used to, I made this point in a column a couple of weeks ago about, when I was growing up as a kid, the number one sign you would consistently see at a sporting event was someone in the stands holding up a John 3.16 verse.
00:07:05.100You know, God so loved the world, gave his only begotten son, blah, blah, blah.
00:07:08.720That was the number, it was a religious thing about Jesus Christ and the sacrifice he made and the sacrifice God made.
00:07:17.040And now, the number one sign you'll see at a sporting event is related to Black Lives Matter.
00:07:56.560And I just looked at what they've done to the sports world, taking something that was very patriotic, very faith-based, and turned it anti-American and anti-faith.
00:08:13.200And I just wonder if the whole country hasn't gone that way.
00:08:17.040And so, you know, I'm constantly talking and writing about it because it's critical and it's important.
00:08:24.660And I'm trying to show other members of the media, you can actually gain audience if you lean into these values.
00:08:31.880Because I think a lot of people are thirsting for these values to be prevalent again in American society.
00:08:37.740I mean, I can say on Fox, when Roger Ailes was running it, it was always a priority to not dump on people of faith or their expression of faith.
00:08:48.880And to remember that this is still, in large part, a faithful country.
00:08:55.180And that's why, you know, Fox gets a lot of crap for covering, quote, the war on Christmas.
00:08:59.860But what are those stories really about?
00:09:01.840It's about pushing faith out of the public square, making it verboten to wish somebody a Merry Christmas.
00:09:07.820It's not about the words Merry Christmas.
00:09:09.980It's about the shaming of connection when it comes to faith.
00:09:16.540And honestly, if there were some phrase that summed up, you know, good religious tidings for every faith, the Fox would have done that and they would have supported it.
00:09:27.200But I think what these leftists want is no religion.
00:10:35.400And he was a faith-based leader and wanted all of us to be judged by the content of our character.
00:10:42.720And now we're making so many judgments on people based on their sexual orientation, their skin color, things that have virtually nothing to do with the content of our character.
00:10:56.280And certainly, you know, I think when you prioritize religious values and you try to come together underneath, you know, under our shared faith, that is more powerful and more unifying and more fair and promotes the United States of America, promotes freedom, justice, and fairness.
00:11:25.480When everybody's being asked to come together under their skin color, division is the only outcome.
00:11:33.300And obviously, the wokeism that you're talking about is just Orwellian in terms of the controlling of speech and how if you win control of speech, you basically win the control of ideas and you win control of people and their thoughts and what they're allowed to think and what they're not allowed to think.
00:11:55.480And it's why we've reached this point where I look around at a lot of Americans and I just ask myself, do they even value freedom?
00:12:07.540And have they just like, freedom is just unimportant right now in America.
00:12:14.240I, you know, the Chris Rock, not Chris Rock, I'm sorry, Dave Chappelle went on Saturday Night Live shortly after a few days after the election.
00:12:25.680And, you know, he gave his opening monologue 16 minutes.
00:12:31.660It was very divisive and inconsistent with Dave Chappelle's values.
00:12:36.360He talked about his great-grandfather who was born into slavery, became emancipated and free, and eventually met with President Woodrow Wilson, led a delegation of black people meeting with President Woodrow Wilson.
00:12:53.600And Dave defined his great-grandfather three ways, said that he loved Jesus Christ, he loved education, and he loved pursuing freedom for black people.
00:13:07.100And when I heard that, I was like, how much more American can you be, loving Jesus, loving education, and loving freedom, and promoting that?
00:13:18.740And I'm like, we've moved away from all of that.
00:13:21.660And I thought, Dave Chappelle, does he even understand what he's saying by referencing his grandfather and his grandfather's values and how inconsistent they were with the things he said on that Saturday Night Live stage,
00:13:36.120where, you know, he basically promoted racial division and demonized white people in America.
00:13:47.380Those things are all inconsistent with the things that his great-grandfather stood for and the things that I don't even think Dave Chappelle stands for.
00:13:55.420If you look at the way he lives his life, he's married to an Asian woman.
00:14:00.340His comedy has been most popular with white people.
00:14:06.660Dave was doing a performance that he felt like he had to do to please the people that run Hollywood and Saturday Night Live and all the entertainment industry.
00:14:19.960I didn't see the piece, but I loved his Sticks and Stones Netflix piece where he just ripped woke culture a new one.
00:14:27.820And I thought it was so cleverly done.
00:14:30.840And he went down some lines, you know, on abortion where I think he was telegraphing to the left, I'm with you, I'm with you until the end.
00:14:39.940He wasn't explicit, but he was clever in the way he attacked some of this wokeism.
00:14:43.940But faith, faith can still sadly be bashed with impunity and not just by the citizenry.
00:14:52.360I mean, we saw this here in New York State when Governor Cuomo tried to limit religious gatherings purportedly to protect people from the spread of COVID.
00:15:02.460But the bars and the liquor stores could stay on open.
00:15:04.720Like you can have as many people as you want in the liquor store and the bar.
00:15:07.320Um, but the, the, the churches and the synagogues had to be limited to 10 people or 25 people.
00:15:16.760They filed a legal challenge saying you're discriminating against us.
00:15:19.240And the Supreme Court in a five, four opinion that included Amy Coney Barrett, uh, said, no, you, you may not do that.
00:15:26.620There still is religious freedom and you cannot discriminate against churches and synagogues because they're religious places to gather.
00:15:33.500And then of course, Governor Cuomo said, well, they're just being political.
00:15:35.940But I do think unless people of faith start fighting back, um, for their right to express what's important to them, right?
00:15:43.380Under the first amendment, it's just going to get worse and worse.
00:15:46.300The country is becoming slightly less religious, even though more than three quarters of Americans still, they still identify with a faith.
00:15:52.540I mean, more than, more than three quarters of the country still says I'm Catholic or I'm Jewish or I'm Presbyterian or I'm evangelical, whatever it is.
00:15:58.500But slowly but surely, or maybe quickly and surely, it's, it's getting demonized.
00:16:04.160It's getting sort of tagged with a not cool, not okay, not progressive, not forward looking label.
00:16:10.400Whereas it's exactly the opposite of how it used to be.
00:16:12.580Well, let me ask you this, Megan, because my contention is that, you know, people do still loosely identify with their religious faith, but it's not their priority.
00:16:24.200And so, and I hate to use Twitter as the example, but I, but I will go look at people's bio and, and then go look at how they list themselves is, is Christian or Catholic or whatever Buddhist.
00:16:40.620Is that the first thing they list on their bio or is there, oh, I'm progressive, I'm liberal, I hate Trump, uh, I'm conservative.
00:16:50.240Is their political affiliation, the first thing they want to be identified by.
00:16:58.180And that's the conversation I keep having with my family about, Hey, you can't let politics be your religion either.
00:17:05.120You can't, if you're spending most of your day talking about Trump or Obama and, and virtually none of your day talking about God and, and what the Bible says about how we should view the events in the world, you're probably making a mistake.
00:17:24.740And so that, that, that's what I, I think people still have their faith, but they're afraid to let that be their number one priority and how they identify themselves.
00:17:39.140I wouldn't describe that as my number one label or the, the primary lens through which I view life, but my faith is part of who I am.
00:17:48.520And I think the greatest gift it gave me was an ethical imprint through which to behave, you know, to use in any tough decision throughout my life that was given to me by my parents and taking me to church, uh, on Sundays when we were growing up and just by espousing the principles in our home and living by them.
00:18:08.240And I, like I, as we lose that, and you know, just the, just the general principle of do unto others, right.
00:18:14.360That, that can encompass most of what BLM and the transgender act, all these people are pushing for, which is a massive sort of campaign against anti-bullying and anti-demonization of anybody based on immutable characteristics.
00:18:28.680Well, we covered that the Bible covers that, you know, and, and now they're, they're going as they've removed or try to remove those imprints from us.
00:18:37.840They're trying to make them much more cutting, much more negative, much more divisive.
00:18:44.360It's terrifying to me to see all of these, you know, as you point out, BLM messages on the courts at basketball games and in the stands of NFL football games and so on and so forth, when they don't even know what that organization really stands for.
00:18:57.940They don't know what they're, what they're promoting.
00:19:00.180They're not promoting racial harmony to the contrary.
00:19:05.200You're a thousand percent right, Megan.
00:19:07.160I want to challenge your listeners here and yourself.
00:19:12.840I would not be afraid of making your faith your primary identifier.
00:19:20.360Because I think the left has done a great job of saying like, oh, if you're not perfect, if we catch you doing anything, we can throw all your faith out and we can say you're a hypocrite.
00:19:33.540And I think people live in fear of like, well, if I say I'm a Christian, then that gives the left and people over social media, when they catch me doing something unchristian, they can say I'm a hypocrite.
00:19:52.440And these people down here and these liberals have set themselves up as God, as if there are judges.
00:20:01.180The most high, Jesus Christ, he's going to judge me at some point.
00:20:07.960None of these people here on this planet, I will ever bow to their judgment.
00:20:12.580And so I'm not and trust me, I am far more imperfect than you and probably anybody, you know, I am a sinner, not a proud one, but I am a sinner.
00:20:28.280I don't I'm not afraid of interpreting, asking myself all the time about, well, how do I feel about this based on my religious faith and principles?
00:20:44.880If we're ever going to save this country, if we're ever going to unify again, we're going to have to prioritize our religious faith and come together under our religious faith, not as perfect human beings.
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00:22:48.880If we have one upside to the pandemic, it's the old, there are no atheists in foxholes belief, right?
00:23:01.020That when you're facing down a deadly virus that really has taken hundreds of thousands of lives here in the U.S., maybe it does connect you with your faith.
00:23:33.200And I want to ask you about that, too, because there was a really interesting article in City Journal recently talking about how we seem to have gotten really permissive of mob violence in the country.
00:23:47.860Something we were never really in favor of.
00:23:50.280But that people are now finding justifications to avert their eyes from violence rather than condemning it.
00:23:55.800And the author was talking about the MAGA march in Washington recently and how the Trump supporters were being attacked.
00:24:04.440They were being attacked by counter protesters.
00:24:06.140And it was violent and saying, look, this is this is no surprise when you've been calling Trump a racist, a fascist, a bigot for four years.
00:24:13.660You've got they cited Jamal Bowie, formerly of Slate, now The New York Times, as having written a piece that reads, there is no such thing as a good Trump voter.
00:24:23.740And these people do not deserve your empathy.
00:24:26.920So do you think we've gotten to the point now where mob violence riots will be given a pass as long as they're in favor of the right quote, the right cause?
00:24:38.980You know, I've tried to explain to people that if you go look at the history of the KKK and it started up shortly after the Emancipation Proclamation,
00:24:51.960there was the violent arm of the Democratic Party to impose their will and intimidate people into supporting Democratic Jim Crow segregation.
00:25:01.920And it was the backlash to the Emancipation Proclamation.
00:25:06.420And again, I think Black Lives Matter, Antifa, the violence we've seen is the violent arm of the Democratic Party trying to impose their will.
00:25:17.720If you do not submit there because look how many cities boarded up thinking that President Trump was going to win re-election and everybody like calculated in, OK, well, Trump's going to win and they're going to burn down buildings and loot and terrorize.
00:25:36.160And and we've built that into the cake.
00:25:40.860And that's why many of us are like concerned, like, are we really just going to be a banana republic?
00:25:48.040Are we really just going to be a third world country where our expectations have been so lowered that we factored in, well, the left is going to kill, rob and loot if things don't go their way.
00:26:00.500But let me ask you, let me ask you a follow up on that.
00:26:03.400I was recently asked in an interview about the mob violence we saw over the summer.
00:26:08.100And the question was, can you understand that things may have to get messy before they get better in in improving black lives was essentially the question.
00:27:29.960Derek Chauvin more than likely did it out of an abuse of power, incompetence, frustration.
00:27:37.000There's no proof that there was some racial animus there.
00:27:40.780And so the media, and particularly social media, have set up, uh, this dynamic or this belief, this false narrative, like, oh, things are so horrible for black people here in America.
00:27:53.560And, and, and they must go out and riot and loot and anything for things to get better because the police are just out randomly killing, uh, black people.
00:28:11.800They're not executing a mass plot to kill black people.
00:28:15.400Police violence has actually gone down over the last 30 years.
00:28:19.300You're far less likely to be killed by the police.
00:28:22.400And we all know, or any of us with any curiosity have seen videos of the police through incompetence, through an abuse of power, killing white people that the media never talks about, killing more white people by raw numbers than black people.
00:28:41.100Now, people will say, oh, but a black person's two times more likely, uh, to be killed based on, you know, we're only 12% of the population.
00:28:50.060But again, we all know you can play with numbers.
00:28:53.220If, if you live in a high crime, high violent neighborhood, you're going to have more encounters with the police, therefore increasing the likelihood that that encounter could spin out of control and have a violent conclusion.
00:29:07.220And so I just, I reject the whole notion that America is somehow gotten so bad that this kind of random violence, is America worse right now than it was in the 1950s and 60s?
00:29:28.220When Dr. King and that greatest generation dealt with unquestioned racism, again, when they put up a sign that says black people can't eat here, can't live here, can't drink water here, can't go to school here, that's clear cut racism.
00:30:10.200Obviously my parents were born much, long 30, 40 years before me.
00:30:15.120They experienced racism without ever resorting to this type of violence and not only not ever resorting, producing results in the way they fought back, that this generation isn't coming close to producing the results.
00:30:34.180And all of this, and all of this, and I hate to go back to this because it sounds like I'm a broken record, but all of this is related to the removal of God.
00:30:44.780And again, the more secular you become, the more violent you become.
00:30:49.500The more, you don't, look at the whole, Martin Luther King and that generation, the theme was we shall overcome.
00:31:29.260It can only lead to the kind of racial division and consistent violence we keep seeing here in America.
00:31:37.740And so under their no justice, no peace plan, they're right.
00:31:45.600This type of violence and messiness and racial division has to happen so that we, and so literally the end game with the result of it, so that we can install socialism, communism, and Marxism in America.
00:31:59.340And they're right to get, to reach their goals, they're right.
00:32:54.280And Al Sharpton, by the way, when my cousin died, he called me.
00:32:58.880And, you know, I've had some engagement interaction with Al, limited.
00:33:05.020But I will say in the moments, in the 24, 48 hours after my cousin was killed in Indianapolis, it was a good feel.
00:33:13.400Al Sharpton calling with concern was a good feel.
00:33:17.000But in reality, Al Sharpton has been, had a negative impact on race relations in America, has had a negative impact on African-Americans in our journey overall.
00:33:31.560I don't regret calling him a domestic terrorist.
00:33:34.400This is stirring up racial animosity and grievances is his job.
00:33:54.840And I'm not, you can't find any of my work where I'm some harsh critic of President Obama or any president.
00:34:03.800But I do blame Obama for elevating Al Sharpton, bringing him into the White House, concerning one of his confidants, one of his counselors.
00:34:12.480He, he, he justified and put a stamp of approval on Al Sharpton's race baiting, undignified, unmanned approach to, to race relations.
00:34:25.940And I, it's funny, uh, Candace Owens keeps taking all this heat for talking about bring back manly man.
00:34:33.200And, and she did it talking about Harry Styles and the way that he dresses, but it actually has a much bigger theme and point than just how people dress.
00:34:45.400And because I, I, I look at Al Sharpton and a lot of the leadership right now, it's cowardly.
00:35:04.360And, and again, this is where it goes back to, uh, the importance of faith because faith removes fear.
00:35:12.380Faith is the, the antibiotic for fear and, and people have reason to be fear, fearful, like, oh my God, we got COVID, you know, we got all this racial unrest, but faith is what it should get you beyond your fear and get you to stand up as a man or a woman and stand on your faith.
00:35:33.300And the principles and, and the principles and, uh, integrity and, and the values that were instilled in you through your faith or through whatever your parents or grandparents or somebody, teacher coach, someone put in you.
00:35:48.480And so everybody thinks they're smarter than God and they got the solution and the ways of the things taught in the Bible and the church, they're all outdated.
00:35:58.240And we're going to go, no justice, no peace.
00:36:02.620We're going to go to war and we're all, you know, Breonna Taylor.
00:36:06.800And, uh, what was the woman that he first got in trouble with in New York a long time ago?
00:38:05.520You know that I don't have to tell you that.
00:38:09.420A black man speaking like that about Al Sharpton or George Floyd or Jacob Blake,
00:38:14.680that you get called an uncle Tom, that, um, you, as you once wrote, the stewards of the zeitgeist do not love me or any other black person who would dare object to their racist manipulation of black consciousness and black culture.
00:38:29.280And you say these stewards would see George Floyd as 100 times blacker than Ben Carson.
00:38:38.060I mean that the highest level of blackness is victimhood.
00:38:43.040But there's no, if you're a victim, and again, this is why people are staging incidents.
00:38:50.380Jussie Smollett was like, well, if I'm going to reach the highest stage of blackness, I need to be beat up by white racists and, you know, nearly lynched.
00:39:01.680You look at LeBron James with, without ever offering any credible proof.
00:39:06.180This guy is worth a half billion dollars, but in order to reach the highest level of blackness, he had to pretend like someone spray-painted the N-word on his Brentwood mansion.
00:39:16.780That he was, and he was in Ohio at the same time.
00:39:19.480And he somehow used it as proof that whether you're LeBron James or just a guy on the street, if you're black, you know, America is just terrible or it's tough.
00:39:31.160And I mean, this guy has been pampered since the age of 12.
00:40:06.480The conversations, the things that I say in my column, the things I'm saying now, conversations I've had with black people my entire life and still have.
00:40:18.640Where no one, when it's said, and I hear black people say the same things.
00:40:22.980They just don't have the courage to say it publicly because, and particularly for entertainers and influences, the people, the liberals controlling the zeitgeist don't allow it.
00:40:35.640They, they actually define blackness, not black people.
00:40:41.820The liberals controlling Hollywood, the music industry, the social media apps, they define blackness.
00:40:53.880Let me ask you, because this is something I have observed over the past couple of years as I've looked at racial incidents that get blown up by the media or otherwise.
00:41:02.280To me, I think you just hit the nail on the head.
00:41:04.680To me, what's happening in the country right now is not a black white issue.
00:41:10.180It is a liberal conservative issue because I have yet to meet a more conservative leaning black person who agrees with my white liberal neighbors on the upper west side about where relations are between races and what black people need to do to get ahead.
00:41:29.000The black conservatives talk about these issues and even more centrist liberal blacks talk about these issues in a very different way than white progressives do.
00:41:40.720And I, I wonder if that's, if we've been sort of, if we've been fooled into believing this is about a difference between race relations as opposed to yet another divisive political issue in which these white liberals cloak themselves in sort of the righteousness of standing up for an oppressed minority.
00:42:00.580And conservatives retreat to the country and conservatives retreat to the individualist, you know, self-empowerment, personal responsibility.
00:42:07.480America is a great place, place that they usually go.
00:42:11.480To me, it feels much more like the latter.
00:42:13.520I think you're right, but I would say, I would go a step further in terms of we've allowed so much foreign influence in America.
00:42:26.280And this is where, and again, I'm sorry for the fear of people.
00:42:31.260This is where I agree with President Trump and America first.
00:42:33.860We've, we've, we've given our country over to foreign influence, China, the money that they spend in Hollywood, the money that they spend in American sports has totally perverted our country.
00:42:48.860There is a long history of communist run countries using race as the tool to smear America.
00:43:01.220This has been going on for a hundred years or more that, oh, okay.
00:43:07.280You know, the West is fine, but the West is racist.
00:43:10.480We're not, we're all comrades over here in Russia and blah, blah, blah.
00:43:18.440And so once you let the NBA be taken over by China and the NBA is number one interest becomes protecting their relationship with China.
00:43:29.580Nike's number one interest becomes protecting their relationship with China to have access to that market and that much cheaper labor.
00:43:41.140When you allow China to dictate the movies and the tone and even, again, there's been plenty of stories written about how dark skinned black people can't be in movies because of China.
00:43:52.660And so I see all of this as trying to influence American culture.
00:44:00.340They're using race to divide us and destabilize us.
00:44:04.220They have us all focused on race, race, race, and how we're all at each other's throats over race.
00:44:12.980And we're missing the bigger picture, that they're trying to remove our todayo-Christian values as a way to limit our freedom, destabilize our country, and make America fall.
00:44:26.240And that's why my message, and I keep coming back to it, is those of us that are believers, regardless of race, we have to come together.
00:44:36.500Because if you're a believer, you also believe in freedom.
00:44:41.640Religious freedom, a founding principle in this country, is being eroded.
00:44:46.300And if those of us that are believers, if we don't come together and stand on our faith, and again, that does not mean that we have to be perfect.
00:44:56.580You're going to have to ignore the idiots that point out, oh, well, you had an affair, or your marriage didn't work out, or I caught you at a strip club.
00:45:11.040So I have to ignore all of that, and I'm just keeping it real, and stand on your faith, and say, you know what?
00:45:44.920We're being portrayed as if we're in last place, when we actually have been the leaders on these issues.
00:45:51.480And the founding fathers have been demonized.
00:45:54.500They were imperfect, and this is, again, but they weren't ashamed that they were Christians.
00:45:59.560And that's why I think if somebody can claim to be a Christian and own slaves, well, I damn sure can claim to be a Christian and like to gamble and have a cocktail or two.
00:46:13.440So I think you might be beating yourself up too much about the strip clubs, too.
00:46:17.920I personally don't see anything wrong in celebrating a beautiful woman's body if she's showing it to you consensually and making some money off of it.
00:47:56.560Okay, I want to bring you this feature now that we call the Devil May Care All-Stars.
00:48:01.200You know, my company name is Devil May Care Media, which is sort of a middle finger to the mainstream media.
00:48:07.780And that's exactly what I intend it to be.
00:48:09.880In any event, we try to celebrate people who have the same attitude we do when it comes to these incessant rules and restrictions we've been told we must follow,
00:48:18.520but we never consented to, whether it's in the way we speak or the way we live, what have you.
00:48:24.120And basically, we just want to shine a light on the people in America who embody the spirit of our company,
00:48:29.240standing up, speaking truth to power, no matter the consequences.
00:48:32.300And today, that brings us to Holly Susie from Providence, Rhode Island.
00:48:37.380Susie's mother, Janet, sadly died this month after contracting COVID-19.
00:48:41.040And Susie wanted to hold a small private outdoor burial for her mother, but she was told it's against the regulations of her state.
00:49:22.540Holly says she's always been a rule follower, and her mom would be proud of her by going public to speak out.
00:49:27.800She would have wanted to fight this, she said.
00:49:30.240That's what she told the Providence Journal.
00:49:31.800And just again, a word on my friend Janice Dean, who's been through the same thing.
00:49:34.860Her, both of her husband, our friend Sean's parents died.
00:49:38.640During the COVID-19 crisis, they were in New York nursing homes, where our governor thought it would be wise to send 6,000 COVID-positive patients.
00:49:47.800And they were forced to bury Mickey and Dee with no funeral.
00:49:51.380They didn't get to say goodbye to their own family members.
00:49:54.620They followed the rules and then sat and watched in horror as the same doctors who said that would be unsafe okayed the Black Lives Matter protesters out in the streets by the thousand.
00:50:08.140She felt the way Susie feels, which is Holly Susie feels, which is, I follow the rules and I want to follow the rules and I want to do what's responsible, but let's be reasonable.
00:50:18.040Like, this is ridiculous to tell this woman she can't be outside having a socially distanced funeral.
00:50:24.100She said she was going to have maybe 17 people all six feet apart in the outdoors.
00:50:43.460I want to talk to you about sports because I don't know a lot about sports, but I love OutKick.
00:50:48.060I love Clay Travis and you and your columns, and they help me understand the news items in the sports world.
00:50:54.400I don't really follow the athletics themselves, but I want my kids to participate in sports, and I think it's an important sort of backbone in building character.
00:51:02.640And, you know, I get your point on China.
00:51:05.180Of course, I had that interview with Mark Cuban where I pressed him on China and the NBA.
00:51:09.040Meanwhile, the NBA is Black Lives Matter, Black Lives Matter, but they won't condemn China.
00:51:13.980But it's not just China because what we've also seen in the NFL and NBA is like Colin Kaepernick, you know, and now he's led this whole movement and been very well rewarded for it financially in the wake of George Floyd with his deal with Nike.
00:51:29.400You know, he's not, I don't think, controlled by China.
00:51:31.400Now, this guy's out there being celebrated as a national hero because he takes the knee when the national anthem gets played.
00:51:38.620And I've had battles with this guy on Twitter and Ava DeVernay, who's constantly defending him and attacking me, because I don't agree with this.
00:51:46.660And I don't agree with players having to explain now why they won't kneel.
00:51:53.020It's flipped in the wake of George Floyd.
00:51:54.800And now you have to explain why you've chosen to stand, which is just nuts.
00:52:00.600And so you explain that to me because that that doesn't appear to be a manipulation by China.
00:54:12.660It doesn't take live sports, you know, really popular on all the television networks.
00:54:19.660It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out, oh, if we can promote division within sports, we can destabilize America and get them at each other's throat.
00:55:47.780It's just a little symbolic moment that's important for national unity.
00:55:54.840Megan, if you just – pride in America has been demonized.
00:55:58.380I mean, how could you have a country when people make you feel bad about taking pride in the country?
00:56:10.000You can't have a country if everybody's like, well, everybody's running around taking a knee and begging, oh, forgive me for my privilege or American privilege, white privilege.
00:56:31.500Well, I don't have a disagreement with that, but I don't think Colin Kaepernick, when he took the knee a couple years ago, was thinking about China.
00:56:39.420I think he was thinking about himself as a victim, you know?
00:56:43.000And even LeBron, as you point out, he somehow has convinced himself that he is a victim of a systemically racist country that made him 100 millionaire multi-times over.
00:56:54.340You know, it's like, even, you know, even Michelle Obama talking about it.
00:56:59.540Let me say this, Megan, and this will be probably the most controversial thing I'll say on here, or most misunderstood.
00:57:06.000It's, look, the left always promotes black idiots.
00:57:12.680The left will have you believe that LeBron James is more accomplished and smarter than Ben Carson.
00:57:21.800Any time – any black man who is really intelligent, really accomplished in the educational field, tends to get demonized.
00:57:33.180And so, Colin Kaepernick – and again, I'm not speculating – this guy was my favorite football player before he took the knee.
00:57:43.020Been following his career, you know, coaches and players that played with him.
00:57:47.980Colin Kaepernick just isn't very smart.
00:57:51.460He's been manipulated by his girlfriend, Ness Nitti, or Ness, or whatever her name is.
00:58:56.560But you're oversimplifying, of course.
00:58:58.540I mean, you've got amazing black intellectuals who are on the other side of this as well.
00:59:01.980And I, in passing, mentioned Michelle Obama, who's very well-educated, very smart.
00:59:06.720You may not agree with her, but you can't say she's not smart.
00:59:09.360And, I mean, Henry Louis Gates, you could go down the list of smart black people who feel differently about this issue.
00:59:15.820I don't know LeBron James or how smart he is.
00:59:17.840Let me give you my knock on those guys, though.
00:59:21.040The people that want to cut $100 million deals with Netflix, they know what they have to say.
00:59:29.040The people, because this is the point I didn't get to make about my criticism of Al Sharpe just because I forgot.
00:59:35.240Listen, the 1960s, when John Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Bobby Kennedy, and Malcolm X got killed, that really elevated the stakes for leaders.
00:59:48.140And most people just don't have the courage to be leaders.
00:59:53.480And that's how you get guys like Al Sharpe.
01:03:38.280In today's society, I'm not sure if he would ever take that chance to call me the P-word out in front of everybody because that would be bad.
01:03:45.760But I just think sports are being emasculated.
01:03:51.780I think men are being made to feel bad for expressing any kind of masculine energy.
01:03:58.280And that is, you know, we just had something in the news cycle recently.
01:04:05.180The kicker at Vanderbilt, Sarah Fuller, got a big participation trophy.
01:04:11.140She was named SEC Special Teams Player of the Week for kicking a ball 25 yards and running to the sideline.
01:04:21.240And she allegedly broke the gender barrier in major college football.
01:06:31.300This woman competing in a sport that isn't her strong suit to where literally someone could argue she's the worst player that's ever played in the SEC.
01:06:43.260But now that's a moment of achievement.
01:07:01.900I sat and watched that with my daughter.
01:07:04.220And it was a moving moment and blah, blah, blah.
01:07:07.480And I was like, hey, I'm not sure if you should be messaging to your daughter that, you know, her highest level as an athlete is playing men's football.
01:07:18.580Or even if she got there and she did something extraordinary.
01:07:24.800If she, you know, kicked a field goal under difficult circumstances, maybe.
01:07:28.440I just don't think it's sending the wrong message to her and little girls, too, which is this is what you have to do to be celebrated.
01:07:35.740You can be celebrated in your female sport, in your female competition.
01:07:39.700And if you want to cross over to the men's world, you should only be celebrated if you compete at that level, if you do something that would be extraordinary for a man.
01:07:47.020Otherwise, there is some sexism built in.
01:07:49.100I feel the same way about this, Jason, as I do about when, you know, we're told like the Smithsonian telling us that terms like personal responsibility are are white supremacist terms that if you believe in that, you're a white supremacist because that doesn't apply to black people.
01:08:05.300Well, that's racist and it's sexist to say that somehow it's toxically masculine to be pro achievement, pro risk, pro competitiveness, pro the wanting to avoid appearing weak.
01:08:21.560Well, I feel all of those things and it doesn't make me masculine.
01:08:26.500Those can be feminine attributes, too.
01:08:29.140And the people who are now trying to reverse all this, whether they're talking about toxic masculinity or white supremacy, are themselves engaging in sexism or racism by trying to co-opt these terms for one group and not the other.
01:08:42.140There's no question that they're trying to fix racism with racism.
01:08:47.040And I'm not even sure if they're trying to fix racism.
01:08:50.240I just think they're trying to install racism.
01:08:52.480And I've been saying this for the last month that the ideological descendants of slave owners are the people on the left.
01:09:06.880This whole notion that black is a special category in America that requires a capital B because you can lump all black people together and they're a special group and they're different than everybody else.
01:09:22.480Well, that's the same thing they were saying three or four hundred years ago when they determined, hey, you're black.
01:09:29.520Therefore, you're a slave here in the South.
01:09:32.140Your skin color makes you different than everybody else.
01:12:43.940This is the show I told you about a month ago where I was like, oh my God, my team just told me, like in an email, like, oh, we've got the following guests lined up.
01:12:51.760And they just threw these two in here like it was nothing.
01:12:53.920And I said, I'm going to keep it a secret, but I'll tell you soon who it is.
01:12:57.280And it happens to be the two star actors of the only movie I've ever deeply cared about.
01:13:03.820I don't have star envy or sort of that, you know, thing with celebrities for anyone.
01:13:09.880A little bit Judge Judy, but other than her, I just, I don't know.