The Michael Knowles Show - Daily Wire Backstage Live at the Ryman

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00:00:37.660 Hey, Michael Knowles here, and do I have a treat for you.

00:00:40.040 The latest episode of Daily Wire backstage is right around the corner, and you do not want to miss it.

00:00:45.520 Don't miss me, Ben Shapiro, Matt Walsh, Andrew Klavan, and the God King, Jeremy Boring,

00:00:49.820 as we discuss the latest news and cultural events, all while enjoying some fine whiskey and cigars.

00:00:54.360 It is going to be all that and more.

00:00:57.120 Take a listen.

00:00:57.580 Nine years ago, notorious troublemakers Jeremy Boring and Ben Shapiro made a decision that would send shockwaves

00:01:24.580 shockwaves through the political and cultural landscape of the world.

00:01:28.580 They decided to found the Daily Wire.

00:01:31.580 A decision that would live in infamy, depending on who you ask.

00:01:40.600 From humble beginnings, they started filming the Ben Shapiro and Andrew Klavan shows out of Jeremy's pool house.

00:01:49.020 Which isn't that humble, if you think about it.

00:01:51.340 How many people have a pool house?

00:01:52.820 I've never had a pool house.

00:01:53.820 I'd love one.

00:01:54.280 The Daily Wire would continue to grow, adding Michael Knowles, Matt Walsh, and lacking diversity,

00:02:04.560 they decided to expand their roster to include a token Canadian, Jordan Peterson.

00:02:09.940 They later added Jake, Blaine, and David of Crane & Company, and the incomparable Brett Cooper.

00:02:21.660 And, and, Morning Wire.

00:02:27.220 And Morning Wire.

00:02:29.400 All the facts.

00:02:32.240 All the facts, none of the noise, the news you need to know in 15 minutes or less.

00:02:38.820 Join the internet news revolution.

00:02:41.500 That is Morning Wire.

00:02:43.860 It's a top ten show.

00:02:45.860 It brings you all the best type...

00:02:47.660 John, can you stick to the script, please?

00:02:50.880 Come on.

00:02:51.720 Morning Wire never gets any moment in the spotlight.

00:02:54.140 We're always in the recording booth.

00:02:55.480 Yeah, seriously.

00:02:56.100 And look, I'm going to ask the question that no one wants to voice, all right?

00:03:00.280 Why are the two best-looking hosts in the entire company in an all-audio podcast format?

00:03:06.920 Thank you.

00:03:08.300 Thank you.

00:03:11.960 It's outrageous.

00:03:14.540 Guys, we talked about this.

00:03:16.380 All right, listen, you're not going to just forget about Morning Wire and roll some stupid hype reel or something.

00:03:23.240 Yeah, they will.

00:03:24.760 At the Daily Wire, we have a mission.

00:03:28.220 Fight the left and build the future.

00:03:30.860 Am I racist?

00:03:32.260 Please leave.

00:03:33.240 We want to rename the George Washington Monument to the George Floyd Monument.

00:03:36.780 Stop giving your money to woke corporations who hate you.

00:03:39.860 It's ridiculously exciting to be here.

00:03:42.340 You can see why Americans do not trust the media.

00:03:46.960 Together, we kick the government's ass.

00:03:49.640 What is a woman?

00:03:50.660 Can you tell me that?

00:03:51.920 The Lady of the White!

00:03:56.500 Every step of the way, we are there with you.

00:04:00.580 Fight.

00:04:01.060 This is a battle of good versus evil.

00:04:07.420 This tragedy has only strengthened our resolve to expose the truth.

00:04:10.840 Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the historic Ryman Auditorium in Nashville, Tennessee.

00:04:36.080 Tonight, the greatest show at this time in this specific section of the country.

00:04:49.440 Right now, Daily Wire Backstage Live!

00:04:57.080 Now, please welcome to the stage the face of Mayflower Cigars, the man, Michael J. Knowles!

00:05:19.080 And now, score!

00:05:49.060 Of the upcoming blockbuster hit, Am I Racist?

00:05:56.340 Not You!

00:06:14.060 Thank you.

00:06:15.300 Thank you.

00:06:19.060 He's clever.

00:06:27.060 He's wise.

00:06:29.060 He's possibly older than this very building.

00:06:33.060 He is Andrew Clayman!

00:06:38.060 He's very clever.

00:06:52.060 Thank you.

00:06:52.980 Thank you.

00:06:53.300 And now, please welcome to the stage the undefeated, undisputed debate champion of the world,

00:07:17.440 and the tiny-hatted titan, the Hebrew Hammer, Ben Shapiro!

00:07:30.700 Thank you, guys.

00:07:47.520 And finally, Daily Wire co-founder and CEO founder of the legendary Jeremy's Razors,

00:08:08.920 Jeremy Boris!

00:08:23.920 What's up?

00:08:26.920 What's up?

00:08:28.920 What?

00:08:29.920 Come on!

00:08:30.920 Stand up!

00:08:31.920 Stand up!

00:08:33.920 Stand up!

00:08:34.920 What?

00:08:35.920 I can't hear you over here!

00:08:38.920 Oh, they're loud!

00:08:39.920 Come here!

00:08:40.920 Over here!

00:08:41.920 Yeah!

00:08:42.920 Woo!

00:08:43.920 Ha-ha-ha!

00:08:44.920 Welcome!

00:08:45.920 Welcome!

00:08:46.920 Oh!

00:08:47.920 So good today!

00:08:48.920 Watch you pee real quick, buddy.

00:08:49.920 What's up, brother?

00:08:50.920 Yeah!

00:08:51.920 What's going on?

00:08:52.920 Laha'em, brother!

00:08:53.920 Oh!

00:08:54.920 Great to see you, Clavin!

00:08:55.920 Looking clean!

00:08:56.920 Looking clean!

00:08:57.920 Woo!

00:08:58.920 The Raven!

00:08:59.920 Live here in Nashville, Tennessee!

00:09:01.920 Yeah!

00:09:02.920 Woo!

00:09:03.920 Woo!

00:09:04.920 The Raven!

00:09:05.920 Live here in Nashville, Tennessee!

00:09:07.920 Yeah!

00:09:08.920 Woo!

00:09:09.920 Woo!

00:09:10.920 Oh, my goodness.

00:09:11.920 I gotta tell you, I miss you guys so much.

00:09:14.920 I know last time you saw me, I wasn't as thick, but I put on some weight.

00:09:19.920 I gotta, I don't, are you just gonna do the whole backstage live?

00:09:26.920 Is that?

00:09:27.920 Wait, wait.

00:09:28.920 Backstage live?

00:09:29.920 I thought this was blackstage live.

00:09:32.920 I am at the wrong show.

00:09:36.920 Um, I'm supposed to be in East Nashville right now.

00:09:39.920 No, I gotta get out of here.

00:09:43.920 Hey, leave the grapes.

00:09:44.920 Grape stuff.

00:09:45.920 What's up?

00:09:46.920 What's up?

00:09:52.920 Unbelievable.

00:09:53.920 Unbelievable.

00:09:57.920 Oh!

00:09:58.920 Unbelievable.

00:09:59.920 Wait, wait, wait, one more.

00:10:04.920 Okay, hey, don't forget to buy all new razors at JeremyRazors.com.

00:10:08.920 At JeremyRazors.com, Amazon, and Walmart.com.

00:10:13.920 Black Jeremy, out!

00:10:24.920 I get absolutely no respect in this.

00:10:25.920 No.

00:10:26.920 Unbelievable.

00:10:27.920 Welcome to Backstage Live at the Ryman Auditorium.

00:10:35.920 We're absolutely thrilled to be with you guys again.

00:10:37.920 Of course, I'm joined as always by Andrew, Michael, Matt, Ben.

00:10:41.920 Jordan Peterson sends his regrets.

00:10:42.920 We couldn't afford him.

00:10:46.920 A lot's happened since the last time that we were here,

00:10:49.920 and we're so happy to get to be with you at this really critical juncture for the country.

00:10:53.920 It's 83 days until America votes for the next president of the United States.

00:10:58.920 If you go back in time a mere like seven minutes ago, Joe Biden was a Democrat nominee, and it seemed like we were going to be able to sail our way to victory in November.

00:11:15.920 We're not going to sail our way to victory.

00:11:17.920 We're going to have to fight for every inch, which is why we're glad to be with you guys today.

00:11:22.920 I hope in some ways this is a bit of a pep rally to remind all of us that we have to get out there now and win the game.

00:11:26.920 That's going to come down to every person here and every person watching at home.

00:11:30.920 I've said it before, but you don't win presidential elections by supporting candidates.

00:11:40.920 You win presidential elections by voting for candidates.

00:11:43.920 There's an actual step.

00:11:45.920 If everyone who said, well, I supported Donald Trump, had actually voted for Donald Trump, now you get a chance.

00:11:51.920 We all get to get back out there in just a few weeks' time and try to make Donald Trump the president of the United States again

00:11:57.920 and try to do something about this slow decline that our country has been in the midst of.

00:12:02.920 We do not have to tolerate it.

00:12:04.920 What the Daily Wire believes more than anything is that we have a mandate to fight the left and build the future,

00:12:09.920 that we must be optimistic and that we must be in action.

00:12:12.920 That's what we try to do every day, and we do it with your help, and we're so grateful to get to spend this time with you.

00:12:17.920 Thank you for being here.

00:12:18.920 So my least favorite thing to talk about at Backstage is politics.

00:12:29.920 I think we're—you guys talk about politics all day.

00:12:32.920 Every day, I think when we get together, we should talk about big issues.

00:12:36.920 You know, my favorite conversation—one of my favorite conversations we've ever had was on this very stage two years ago

00:12:41.920 when we got into that great discussion about marriage toward the end of the show.

00:12:45.920 And I hope to touch on some great topics like that throughout the evening tonight.

00:12:49.920 But I do feel like we have to address the politics of the moment.

00:12:53.920 We have to address the election and the changing dynamics in the election because that's the moment we live in.

00:13:00.920 So, Ben, why don't you give us your perspective on exactly where we are?

00:13:03.920 Well, I mean, I think that it's hard not to feel frustrated and outraged at this point in American politics.

00:13:09.920 Because if you go back a few weeks, it was clear exactly who the Republicans were running against.

00:13:13.920 The current sitting president of the United States who, despite all appearances, is still supposedly running the country.

00:13:18.920 And Kamala Harris and the Democratic Party decided that they were going to throw him out as the nominee

00:13:22.920 and then leave him as the president of the United States.

00:13:24.920 And so he's asleep on a beach somewhere in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware.

00:13:28.920 And the world continues to spin.

00:13:30.920 And somehow the media have decided this is no longer important.

00:13:33.920 They've decided it's not important to ask Kamala Harris any questions at all.

00:13:36.920 As I've been saying on my show, we are now on day 25 of Kamala Harris becoming the de facto nominee for the Democrats

00:13:42.920 without a single adversarial question.

00:13:44.920 Not one.

00:13:45.920 Not a single adversarial question.

00:13:47.920 And what this means is that Donald Trump is not just running, of course, against Kamala Harris.

00:13:51.920 He is, in fact, running against the legacy media.

00:13:53.920 Yeah.

00:13:54.920 For about three weeks there, there was this nice illusion that they were going to actually do their jobs.

00:13:57.920 And it's when Joe Biden basically pants them all on national TV.

00:14:00.920 They'd spent three years saying that he was not senile.

00:14:03.920 He was totally fine.

00:14:04.920 And then he went on national TV and he appeared to be a complete dullard, a senile, Alzheimer's-ridden old man,

00:14:10.920 which is what he is.

00:14:11.920 And it made them all look terrible.

00:14:12.920 And for about three weeks they had to do their job.

00:14:14.920 And then they forced him out and they went right back to the urine-filled kiddie pool they really enjoy with the rest of the Democratic Party.

00:14:20.920 And so they've been spending every day since Kamala Harris was put in place without a single primary vote as the nominee

00:14:26.920 just enjoying this kind of warm bath of adulation that they've been creating themselves from their own bodily orifices, perhaps, with Kamala Harris.

00:14:33.920 Kamala Harris.

00:14:34.920 And it is an amazing thing to watch them perform this incredible transformation of one of the worst candidates in presidential history

00:14:41.920 into a candidate of joy and happiness and love and unity.

00:14:46.920 And it's unbelievably frustrating.

00:14:48.920 It's incredibly frustrating.

00:14:49.920 And it's also frustrating, I think, because if you look back a few weeks, Donald Trump was going to win.

00:14:54.920 And now if you look at the polls, Donald Trump is, in fact, down in the national polling anywhere from two to five points.

00:15:00.920 He's down in many of the state polls in the real politics polling average.

00:15:03.920 He's now trailing in the blue wall states that he needs in order to win.

00:15:06.920 So what does that mean?

00:15:07.920 It means that the path forward for Donald Trump is to do something that he actually has not had to do in quite a while.

00:15:12.920 And that is define his opponent.

00:15:14.920 Even in 2016, he didn't really have to define Hillary because we'd known Hillary for a full-on 24 years before she actually ran for president in 2016.

00:15:21.920 When he was running against Joe Biden, he didn't have to introduce us to Joe Biden.

00:15:24.920 Joe Biden had been on the political stage since well before I was born.

00:15:27.920 And he was already president of the United States.

00:15:29.920 I think those of us in the room, you know, we're all very politically active, politically interested.

00:15:33.920 That's why we're here.

00:15:34.920 But that means that we think that we know Kamala Harris.

00:15:37.920 The American public does not know Kamala Harris from anyone.

00:15:40.920 They really don't know her.

00:15:41.920 They've never met her.

00:15:42.920 They've never seen her, which means the only way that Donald Trump can change the trajectory of this election right now is to define Kamala Harris.

00:15:48.920 That's the only thing he can do.

00:15:50.920 And let's, first of all, we have to stop starting with Ben when we have these conversations.

00:15:56.920 Because he, well, this is what, no, hold on.

00:16:00.920 This is what Jeremy does.

00:16:01.920 I don't mean to put, but he says, okay, Ben, let's get your take first.

00:16:05.920 He says all the things it's possible to say on the subject in like 20 seconds.

00:16:10.920 And the rest of them are like, well, there's, okay, let's just move on and not talk about it anymore.

00:16:15.920 But if I could add one note on that, I think that when it comes to defining Kamala Harris, the advantage that she has right now, because people are acting like it's a big mystery.

00:16:24.920 How did she go from 1% of the polls to being this popular?

00:16:27.920 Well, it's because the media, they could pull any random person off the street and say, we're going to make a star out of you.

00:16:33.920 Now, it won't last, but they could get about, you know, two to three months.

00:16:37.920 It's a fleeting thing, but they could do that with anyone.

00:16:39.920 They could pull someone out of this room.

00:16:40.920 They could make a star out of, out of one of us somehow, you know, if that's possible to do.

00:16:44.920 Like, look at the, uh, the hawk tour.

00:16:46.920 Lord knows I haven't been able to.

00:16:47.920 Right.

00:16:48.920 Kamala Harris is basically like the hawk tour girl of politics.

00:16:52.920 And I don't, no, hang on.

00:16:58.920 Get, get your minds out of the gutters.

00:17:00.920 I didn't mean it like that.

00:17:01.920 How did you mean it, Matt?

00:17:04.920 How did I?

00:17:05.920 I meant that she was a flash in the pan who became a star with, with very little substance.

00:17:12.920 And Kamala Harris is the same, same sort of thing.

00:17:15.920 Is that all you meant?

00:17:16.920 I'm skeptical that that is all, you know, on the reintroduction point, I think you're totally right.

00:17:21.920 Uh, but what's so crazy is Time Magazine.

00:17:24.920 You probably didn't see it cause no one reads Time anymore other than the liberals and the moderates.

00:17:29.920 But there was this new cover and it's Kamala looking so admirable and noble.

00:17:35.920 Into the future.

00:17:36.920 Into the future.

00:17:37.920 She's looking and it says, reintroducing Kamala Harris.

00:17:40.920 She is currently the vice president of the United States.

00:17:45.920 Before that, she was a senator.

00:17:46.920 Before that, she was the AG of California.

00:17:48.920 And then if you read the article, which I don't recommend it, you'll find out that Kamala was asked to do an interview for the article.

00:17:55.920 And she said no.

00:17:57.920 And she still got all that positive coverage.

00:17:59.920 So, the problem with defining Kamala Harris for us is, on the one hand, we want to point out she's the furthest left senator when she was in the Senate, to the left of Bernie Sanders, wants Medicare for all, for illegal aliens, totally open borders.

00:18:13.920 You go down the list.

00:18:14.920 However, she's also the most establishment of the empty suit Democrats there are.

00:18:20.920 She doesn't really believe anything.

00:18:21.920 She blows wherever the wind goes.

00:18:23.920 The really crazy problem is...

00:18:26.920 I actually didn't mean it like that.

00:18:29.920 He set you up to think that.

00:18:31.920 I did not...

00:18:32.920 This is the filthiest show I've ever known.

00:18:34.920 Get your minds out of it.

00:18:36.920 My dear Nana is in the audience.

00:18:38.920 I did not mean...

00:18:40.920 The point I wanted to make before you people intervened was, now you seem like you've got these two poles, the radical left and the establishment Dems.

00:18:51.920 Actually, they're the same.

00:18:53.920 Transing the kids is being pushed, not by just some crazy fringe street person, it's being pushed by the White House.

00:18:59.920 Abortion on demand, being pushed by the White House.

00:19:01.920 Totally open borders, being pushed by the White House.

00:19:03.920 So, is she radical left?

00:19:05.920 Is she establishment Dem?

00:19:06.920 Yes, she's both of those things.

00:19:08.920 How do you get that message across?

00:19:10.920 I don't know how Trump does it.

00:19:12.920 I have to say, we have to acknowledge that Kamala has certain advantages in this moment.

00:19:17.920 We were told one day that Joe Biden was the smartest guy in the room.

00:19:22.920 Then he got up and did that debate.

00:19:23.920 And then we were told, oh my God, this is a drooling idiot.

00:19:26.920 He's got to leave.

00:19:27.920 He's got to step down.

00:19:28.920 Then he stepped down and he was suddenly George Washington.

00:19:30.920 He was the most selfless person.

00:19:32.920 He was letting go of power by his own...

00:19:34.920 Just they were dragging him out the door, but he was letting go of the power.

00:19:38.920 And now suddenly Kamala Harris, somebody that everybody hated, including the news media,

00:19:43.920 is absolutely the savior of the nation.

00:19:45.920 If anybody who believes that, wants to believe it.

00:19:48.920 And if there are people, if there are people who are actually buying into that,

00:19:51.920 and there are, the polls show that there are, they must desperately want to believe it,

00:19:54.920 either because they hate Trump or they're just so thrilled that the candidate is actually alive

00:19:59.920 and not, you know, not a weekend at Bernie's.

00:20:03.920 And the other thing about this moment, and I think this is really important because we have all forgotten it,

00:20:09.920 is Donald Trump got shot in the head, which slows you down.

00:20:13.920 It's like, you know, I mean, the guy is such a bull.

00:20:16.920 He is such an absolute iron man.

00:20:18.920 He's been indicted.

00:20:19.920 He's been convicted.

00:20:20.920 He's been, you know, just absolutely reviled.

00:20:23.920 And he just keeps coming back and he won't move.

00:20:25.920 And then they shoot him in the head and he gets up and shakes his fist at them.

00:20:30.920 Still, still, we think he's untouched.

00:20:33.920 I think he's, he's lost a step in these last weeks.

00:20:36.920 I think he was taken aback perhaps by the completeness of the press,

00:20:40.920 the press's dishonesty, the media's dishonesty.

00:20:43.920 Yeah.

00:20:44.920 I think his game will come back.

00:20:45.920 I simply think the guy is just too tough to go down.

00:20:49.920 Well, I was speaking with Nate Silver, the poll analyst, and he was saying that the turning point for Trump,

00:20:59.920 if there is going to be a turning point, has to be the debate, right?

00:21:01.920 It has to be September 10th.

00:21:02.920 Now, Kamala is running away from the other two debates, right?

00:21:05.920 Trump is doing the right thing.

00:21:06.920 He said, I want three debates, not one debate.

00:21:08.920 And the truth is he should say I want to debate every single week on a different topic because she has been running away from cameras.

00:21:14.920 I mean, it's insane how fast she's been running away from anything that looks like a microphone or a camera.

00:21:19.920 And, and so it's his job to drag her into the limelight.

00:21:22.920 And that is his superpower.

00:21:23.920 His superpower is to direct the spotlight on things.

00:21:25.920 And then the media are forced to cover the things at which he directs the spotlight.

00:21:28.920 The problem is right now, as you say, the spotlight is pretty scattered.

00:21:31.920 He hasn't really decided on his line of attack.

00:21:33.920 I think that the, the joy line, this is a vibes election now, right?

00:21:37.920 That's what it is.

00:21:38.920 And the media are right when they say this.

00:21:39.920 It is a, because if we're on policy, there's no way in hell that a candidate who is the vice president of the most unsuccessful administration in modern American history could be running a winning campaign if this were on policy.

00:21:50.920 This is not about policy.

00:21:51.920 What happened is that the American people were largely depressed because they didn't really like either of these candidates unless they were a Trump fan.

00:21:57.920 But they certainly didn't like Biden.

00:21:58.920 And so you can see it in the polling.

00:22:00.920 Democrats went from 47% enthusiasm up into the 80s or 90s as soon as Joe Biden was out of the race because they felt the vibe.

00:22:07.920 They felt suddenly as though there was somebody who was not Joe Biden who was in the race.

00:22:11.920 So the question is not how do you reverse the policy discussion?

00:22:14.920 The question is how do you reverse the vibe?

00:22:16.920 It ends up sort of being the same discussion.

00:22:18.920 But he has to come up with the thing that Trump is best at, the thing he's a professional at.

00:22:22.920 He is a professional labeler, right?

00:22:24.920 This is the thing he's best at.

00:22:25.920 He's amazing at it, right?

00:22:26.920 You had Lion Hillary and Crooked Hillary and you had Sleepy Joe and you had Lion Ted and you had little Marco.

00:22:31.920 And we all remember all the nicknames because this is what he is best at.

00:22:34.920 He's literally a man famous for putting his name on giant shiny buildings.

00:22:37.920 This is the thing that he's amazing at.

00:22:39.920 And he has not yet come up with anything that remotely looks like a good moniker to hang on Kamala.

00:22:44.920 And I think that that is a symptom of his inability to come up with the right angle.

00:22:47.920 The scambla thing, it doesn't work.

00:22:49.920 Nobody even knows what it means.

00:22:51.920 I think he's trying to do a version of De Sanctis or something, but it doesn't work.

00:22:54.920 But in my opinion, the thing that he should be pointing out is that she is a damned liar.

00:22:59.920 She is a liar.

00:23:00.920 She lies about everything.

00:23:02.920 She lies about who she is.

00:23:03.920 She lies about what she stands for.

00:23:05.920 She has in the last three weeks reversed every single major policy position she has ever held.

00:23:10.920 But she's done it through surrogates without even saying it out loud.

00:23:13.920 And the media just swallowed this.

00:23:14.920 So it seems to me that the only thing that he can do here is point out that she is radically dishonest.

00:23:19.920 That this joy is fake.

00:23:20.920 All of it is fake.

00:23:21.920 And in the debate, the first thing he should say is he should say, listen, there's one thing we know about my opponent.

00:23:24.920 My opponent is dishonest.

00:23:25.920 And if you catch her in her dishonesty, she will laugh.

00:23:28.920 And that laugh is not a laugh of joy as the media would have it.

00:23:31.920 That is a laugh of awkwardness and discomfort because she is a liar.

00:23:35.920 But, yes, true.

00:23:39.920 I agree with the labeling.

00:23:41.920 He's very good at labeling.

00:23:42.920 He's lost a step on the labeling thing, as you point out.

00:23:45.920 And the nickname, you know, this has become a personal project of mine.

00:23:49.920 I have no influence and no power at all, but I'm trying to get some suggestions to the Trump camp because they're really flailing right now.

00:23:56.920 Kamabla is not it.

00:23:58.920 It's not doing it.

00:23:59.920 Lion Kamala, he's used lion too many times.

00:24:02.920 You go back to the whale too many times.

00:24:04.920 So my thing is, I don't know how you guys feel.

00:24:06.920 I think Kami, Kamala, or Kamila.

00:24:09.920 Right, Kamila?

00:24:11.920 Do we like Kamila?

00:24:13.920 My alternative proposal was Kamaliar.

00:24:17.920 Kamaliar?

00:24:18.920 It's too wordy, Ben.

00:24:19.920 Haktuala?

00:24:20.920 That's where I thought you were going.

00:24:22.920 That's where I thought you were going.

00:24:23.920 That's where I thought you were going.

00:24:24.920 It's good.

00:24:25.920 But there is the corrupt and Kami and corrupt.

00:24:29.920 There's an alliteration.

00:24:30.920 There's a labeling there.

00:24:31.920 Oh, now I get it.

00:24:33.920 Oh, now I get it.

00:24:34.920 I liked Kami.

00:24:36.920 Well, I got to slow things down so you guys can pick up what I'm saying.

00:24:39.920 I liked Kami law.

00:24:40.920 I thought Kami law.

00:24:41.920 And also, Trump has a real issue with his nicknames.

00:24:44.920 He never wants to do an alliteration.

00:24:46.920 It drives me nuts.

00:24:47.920 And he never does it.

00:24:49.920 He said that.

00:24:50.920 He said alliteration is not my thing.

00:24:51.920 He said that.

00:24:52.920 Yeah.

00:24:53.920 No, we didn't.

00:24:54.920 I'm sorry.

00:24:55.920 Well, I mean, what's interesting is when you look at the demographic breakdown, there's

00:24:59.920 some polling today.

00:25:00.920 And what it showed is that Kamala is actually gaining among white men, non-college educated

00:25:05.920 white men.

00:25:06.920 Now, I don't know how much to believe that because that seems ridiculous to me.

00:25:09.920 Like, it seems ridiculous to me on the face.

00:25:10.920 And the original sort of political hot take when she became the nominee was that she was

00:25:15.920 going to lose with that crowd to pick up minorities.

00:25:17.920 And it seems to me that, again, so much of this is media manufactured, that the only

00:25:22.920 thing he can do is spend money like water at this point.

00:25:25.920 He needs to be spending money like water.

00:25:27.920 The statistic that I saw, I don't know if you guys have been spending any time on the

00:25:30.920 YouTubes lately, but on YouTube, you cannot open, you cannot open a single video.

00:25:34.920 You can't open a Cocoa Melon video, not the trans one, the other Cocoa Melon videos

00:25:37.920 for your kids, without there being a Kamala Harris ad at the beginning of the Cocoa Melon

00:25:41.920 video.

00:25:42.920 Apparently, in the last three weeks, they have dumped in excess of $30 million on YouTube

00:25:47.920 ads.

00:25:48.920 In that same period of time, Donald Trump's campaign has spent less than $4 million on

00:25:52.920 YouTube ads.

00:25:53.920 This is the time when she is defining herself for the entire American people.

00:25:56.920 This is the time when he needs to be defining her for the American people.

00:25:59.920 So, I agree with you that he's not on his game and there are a lot of reasons for

00:26:02.920 that.

00:26:03.920 I think part of it is the almost being killed thing.

00:26:05.920 But I think a lot of it is that he had this election ripped out from under him.

00:26:09.920 I mean, everyone thought that this election was basically over because it was, and then

00:26:13.920 it wasn't.

00:26:14.920 And I think it takes him a little while to find the footing.

00:26:16.920 He doesn't have time.

00:26:17.920 That's the whole game.

00:26:18.920 I agree.

00:26:19.920 The voting starts in Pennsylvania in three weeks.

00:26:21.920 In three weeks.

00:26:22.920 But there was a moment that probably a lot of you saw on Stephen Colbert, I'm sure

00:26:26.920 you didn't see it on Stephen Colbert, but you probably saw it on X, where Stephen Colbert

00:26:30.920 told a CNN reporter, CNN plays it straight.

00:26:33.920 It's completely objective.

00:26:34.920 And Colbert's audience burst into hysterical laughter so that Colbert actually had to blush,

00:26:40.920 sort of, and say, I didn't think that was a laugh line, but I guess it is.

00:26:44.920 The people know.

00:26:45.920 The people have gotten the point.

00:26:47.920 And Trump is kind of waiting for the honeymoon to be over.

00:26:49.920 And I keep thinking, well, the honeymoon's not going to be over because the press won't

00:26:52.920 let it end.

00:26:53.920 But the press has not got the control that they had before.

00:26:56.920 They still are powerful.

00:26:57.920 They still exist.

00:26:58.920 They still create an atmosphere that we haven't quite learned how to counter.

00:27:01.920 But I think we're as powerful almost as they are because people will turn to it.

00:27:06.920 They know they're being lied to.

00:27:07.920 They know they're being conned.

00:27:09.920 And they will turn to places like X, like The Daily Wire, to find out what's really going

00:27:14.920 on.

00:27:15.920 And I think the honeymoon period will end, not because the press ends it, not obviously because

00:27:18.920 the Democrats end it, but because the people end it and come and listen to what we're saying.

00:27:23.920 That's a good point.

00:27:27.920 I agree time is short, but also we're in silly season.

00:27:32.920 So then what ends silly season?

00:27:33.920 The press is not going to end silly season.

00:27:35.920 They'd lock her up until election day if they could.

00:27:37.920 But she's agreed to do at least one debate.

00:27:39.920 And so it just seems to me they're not going to make her talk.

00:27:42.920 She's not going to voluntarily talk until then.

00:27:44.920 She's going to keep dumping zillions of dollars into these YouTube ads.

00:27:47.920 President Trump is going to be giving lots of interviews, many of which are extremely successful.

00:27:51.920 It's not going to be able to totally break through.

00:27:53.920 So we're all just waiting for the debate.

00:27:55.920 And the debate is going to end silly season.

00:27:58.920 In a normal election that would have been over this month.

00:28:01.920 But look, President Trump is pretty good at debating.

00:28:04.920 I'm not saying he's the greatest debater since Pericles, but he's pretty good at it.

00:28:09.920 In fact, he beat the last guy in the presidential debate so bad that that guy is not the nominee anymore.

00:28:16.920 So it just seems to me this is our opportunity.

00:28:22.920 And Kamala knows she's terrible at this stuff.

00:28:24.920 That's why she dropped out of that debate or out of the primary in 2020 before the first votes were cast.

00:28:29.920 The only line she had during that whole debate was that Joe Biden's a racist.

00:28:34.920 Then she ends up on his ticket.

00:28:35.920 Then, you know, her debate strategy against Mike Pence was just to interrupt him in an extremely obnoxious way.

00:28:41.920 I don't think that flies with Trump.

00:28:43.920 You don't do New Yorker obnoxious better than Donald Trump.

00:28:45.920 So he's going to beat her on that front by a long shot.

00:28:48.920 And so it's annoying.

00:28:50.920 It leads to apprehension.

00:28:52.920 I wish they were spending more money.

00:28:54.920 Absolutely.

00:28:55.920 But unfortunately, I think that's our chance.

00:28:58.920 The debate is the chance.

00:28:59.920 And we're basically putting all the chips on Red 23.

00:29:02.920 There's one more group of people that we're at war against right now and not just the media.

00:29:07.920 And, you know, to your point, Drew, that the media has, that the people now know, I agree that the people know that the press is corrupt.

00:29:14.920 But I don't think knowing that the press is corrupt is enough.

00:29:17.920 No, I agree.

00:29:18.920 The press still has such hegemonic power in the culture that even though you know they're corrupt, it is still the only thing you hear.

00:29:26.920 Yeah.

00:29:27.920 And so it's one thing to say, I don't trust them.

00:29:29.920 You still wind up agreeing with them a lot if you don't actually know alternative voices to listen to.

00:29:33.920 But again, that's not the only problem we have.

00:29:35.920 We have another problem, and that is the actual political institutions in the country.

00:29:40.920 You say that President Trump got hit in the head with a bullet.

00:29:44.920 And yet the director of the FBI said before Congress that he doesn't know if Donald Trump got hit by a bullet.

00:29:50.920 He may have gotten hit by glass or shrapnel or it may have been the vibrations in the air from the sonic boom that scratched his ear.

00:29:56.920 Or maybe the Secret Service nicked him on the way.

00:29:58.920 The head of the FBI said this, not in the hours after during the confusion, a full week after, when all of the facts were known.

00:30:06.920 And if you go back in time a mere four years, you know, I love to use the line 51 current and former intelligence officials say that Hunter's laptop is Russian disinformation.

00:30:17.920 And listen, in my opinion, if you're a former intelligence official and you knowingly lie to the American public, that's called freedom of speech.

00:30:24.920 I hate it, but it's called freedom of speech.

00:30:26.920 If you're a current functioning employee of the federal government and you knowingly lie to the American people, that's called treason.

00:30:36.920 And that's not legal.

00:30:37.920 And that's not covered by the First Amendment.

00:30:39.920 And Christopher Rice should be in prison.

00:30:41.920 Yeah.

00:30:42.920 Oh, he should be in prison.

00:30:43.920 There is no question.

00:30:44.920 But but the point, you know, this is absolutely true.

00:30:47.920 And since Obama are the top echelon of both the intelligence and the law community has been corrupted, it's no question that he planted people in there.

00:30:56.920 But the press, obviously, what you say about the press, I 100 percent agree with.

00:31:00.920 They agree with.

00:31:01.920 They still have the capacity to create an atmosphere of unknowing, if we will.

00:31:06.920 Here's here's an advantage I think Trump has in the debate, a big advantage I think he has, which is this.

00:31:11.920 ABC is one of the most corrupt venues of media information that there is.

00:31:16.920 I mean, George Stephanopoulos made his bones silencing rape victims so that the Clintons could get elected.

00:31:22.920 First Bill and then Hillary because he killed the Epstein story at ABC.

00:31:27.920 They will not have the restraint that Jake Tapper had at the last debate.

00:31:33.920 They he is going to be debating the entire network.

00:31:36.920 And Kamala has a very close friend in the executive echelons of ABC.

00:31:41.920 They're going to come at him with everything.

00:31:43.920 And I think if they pile on him and people are watching, first of all, he can take them.

00:31:47.920 He's like King Kong, you know, with the planes flying around him, you know, take them out of the sky.

00:31:52.920 But but secondly, I just think it's unfair and people are going to see and experience viscerally how unfair it is.

00:31:57.920 So I think there is another thing that's actually going to happen between now and the debate.

00:32:01.920 But we'll get to that in a moment.

00:32:02.920 First, it's time for our moment of good from Good Ranchers.

00:32:05.920 We went on a search for our longest active Daily Wire Plus member, and we found Nick Hauser, who's been with us in September 2015.

00:32:12.920 Nick became an All Access member on January 6th, 2021.

00:32:20.920 Yes, that January 6th.

00:32:22.920 While the left was losing their minds, he was investing in truth.

00:32:25.920 When we launched Jeremy's razors and Jeremy's chocolates, he bought both.

00:32:28.920 So he's got lots of razors and lots of chocolates.

00:32:29.920 All of this surprised us.

00:32:30.920 So we thought we owed him a surprise.

00:32:32.920 Let's take a look at how we surprised our ultimate fan, Nick Hauser, with a moment of good.

00:32:37.920 And now, for a moment of good, brought to you by Good Ranchers.

00:32:42.920 Hey, Nick.

00:32:43.920 Nice to meet you.

00:32:44.920 Good to meet you, too, Lee.

00:32:45.920 Yeah, absolutely.

00:32:46.920 I just want to ask you a couple of questions today, but I have my customer service assistant here, going to be taking some notes.

00:32:52.920 And so we'll just jump in and, you know, just get to know you a little bit.

00:32:56.920 And no way.

00:32:58.920 No.

00:32:59.920 How's it going?

00:33:00.920 Is that an avatar?

00:33:01.920 Is that an avatar?

00:33:02.920 Yeah, the AI is just getting this good, man.

00:33:04.920 Wow.

00:33:05.920 Pleasure to meet you.

00:33:06.920 Pleasure to meet you.

00:33:07.920 Yeah, it's great to meet you, too.

00:33:08.920 Well, I mean, as you know, you are our longest active subscriber.

00:33:11.920 You've been a member since September of 2015 and All Access member since January 6th, 2021.

00:33:16.920 And Jeremy's Razor's customer.

00:33:18.920 So we wanted to formally invite you and a guest to join us at the Ryman Auditorium August 14th.

00:33:24.920 And everybody's going to hang out with you.

00:33:25.920 It's going to be me and Matt and Michael.

00:33:28.920 God love him.

00:33:29.920 Andrew, Jeremy.

00:33:30.920 We'll take care of the flight, hotel, transportation.

00:33:32.920 You think you're up for that?

00:33:33.920 No way.

00:33:36.920 Well, yeah, I'm actually blown away by that.

00:33:39.920 I mean.

00:33:40.920 So that's awesome.

00:33:41.920 I can't wait to see you on August 14th.

00:33:44.920 That'll be great.

00:33:45.920 All right.

00:33:46.920 Sounds good.

00:33:47.920 Pleasure to meet you.

00:33:48.920 Thanks, Ben.

00:33:49.920 Hey, good to meet you.

00:33:54.920 All righty, let's give a big round of applause for Nick Houser.

00:33:57.920 That is what dedication to conservative values looks like.

00:34:15.920 Our pals over at Good Ranchers came to us and said, we want to do a moment of good backstage.

00:34:20.920 They explained the whole thing.

00:34:21.920 And I thought, I mean, it's cool.

00:34:23.920 We're, now we need a sponsor for like our kiss cam.

00:34:26.920 Because the whole thing feels like a sporting event to me.

00:34:28.920 Yeah.

00:34:29.920 Can I just say, I thought it was nice that we invited Nick.

00:34:32.920 The fact you still made him pay for a ticket, I thought was a little bit.

00:34:35.920 Yeah.

00:34:36.920 So.

00:34:37.920 We're trying to run a business.

00:34:38.920 I get it.

00:34:39.920 We're trying to run a business.

00:34:40.920 We are not a charity.

00:34:41.920 So the thing that I think is going to happen, obviously, between now and September 10th,

00:34:45.920 because that's still actually a fair bit of time, is the Democratic National Convention.

00:34:49.920 And there are a few things that can go wrong here for Kamala Harris in a pretty serious way.

00:34:53.920 Number one thing that can go wrong.

00:34:55.920 Joe Biden is really pissed off.

00:34:57.920 I mean, he is super pissed off in his waking hours.

00:34:59.920 When, when he is not, when he is not being cleaned by his night.

00:35:03.920 His waking hour.

00:35:04.920 Yeah, exactly.

00:35:05.920 When he is not being cleaned by the night nurse or spoon fed by Dr. Jill.

00:35:08.920 When she's not with Doug Emhoff golfing.

00:35:10.920 When, in any case.

00:35:13.920 When, I, no, he's doing that with the nanny.

00:35:16.920 Stop it.

00:35:17.920 Anyway.

00:35:19.920 When he is awake, he is ticked off.

00:35:21.920 He's been doing interviews.

00:35:22.920 More interviews than the actual current nominee for presidents of the United States.

00:35:25.920 He's actually done more interviews now as the non-nominee than she has done as the nominee.

00:35:29.920 And he is clearly ticked off at Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer and Kamala Harris,

00:35:32.920 because he believes that he was still going to win that election, and that he was ousted unfairly,

00:35:36.920 and that his record is excellent.

00:35:38.920 And so there have been rumors that he's going to show up for night one for his big tribute.

00:35:41.920 They're going to give him a gold wash.

00:35:42.920 They're going to shuffle him off to the hospice.

00:35:45.920 And he's not going to show up for the rest of the DNC.

00:35:47.920 So you could see a little bit of a rift open there and some negative media coverage.

00:35:51.920 The place where you're going to see a very serious rift is there are going to be probably 10,000 protesters who show up for their buddies in Hamas.

00:35:57.920 And they are very excited to be there.

00:35:59.920 They're excited despite the fact that Kamala Harris kind of likes them and is very much pro them.

00:36:04.920 Kamala Harris selected a vice presidential candidate who hobnobs with the pro-Hamas crowd.

00:36:09.920 Kamala Harris's only real public statement on policy since becoming the nominee was one where she was ripping into Israel for its supposed human rights violations.

00:36:17.920 It doesn't matter.

00:36:18.920 They're still protesting because they know that they've got the Democratic Party and they know that they can shove the Democratic Party even further left.

00:36:24.920 And so that is going to be a good news cycle for Republicans because it turns out you know what Americans don't like watching people wave Hamas flags in the streets of Chicago while burning.

00:36:32.920 People just generally don't like that.

00:36:35.920 And so the one area this I think is a place where Donald Trump really needs to mine a place where Republicans historically the Republicans have only won one popular vote election really in my lifetime almost.

00:36:50.920 I mean you have to go all the way back to 1988 before George W. Bush in 2004.

00:36:55.920 Right.

00:36:56.920 Other than that Republicans have not won a popular vote election in my lifetime.

00:36:59.920 And so that being the case, 2004 what made it different was that Americans felt a serious sense of insecurity.

00:37:06.920 This administration is making Americans feel insecure.

00:37:08.920 Insecure economically, insecure in terms of foreign policy, insecure from things like terrorism.

00:37:13.920 And that is where Donald Trump really needs to hone in because Kamala Harris is a weakling.

00:37:18.920 She's a weakling and she's terrible and her party is radical and they are dangerous and they endanger you and they endanger your family.

00:37:24.920 And Donald Trump, his world was a safer world.

00:37:27.920 There is no way to argue that.

00:37:28.920 Donald Trump was the best foreign policy president of my lifetime bar none.

00:37:31.920 By the way, we are absolutely going to see the return of the Democrat Intifada at the convention.

00:37:42.920 And there's no question that will happen this month.

00:37:44.920 But it won't just be the convention.

00:37:46.920 This is the moment that the schools open up again.

00:37:48.920 You are going to see the same keffia-clad, purple-haired, half-lesbian, leftist protesters going, waving not only the Palestine flag, but burning the American flag.

00:37:59.920 And this is a case where I think, look, I want to make sure that all the students on the campuses are safe.

00:38:04.920 I don't want Jewish students to be obstructed from going to class or anything, but short of that, let these people protest.

00:38:11.920 You've got leftists protesting leftists, burning the American flag, turning off leftists, and the first rule, the most basic rule of politics is when your opponents are fighting amongst themselves, don't stop them.

00:38:24.920 When they're showing the American people who they are, when they are lighting the symbol of the country on fire, that's a wonderful show, and I want that to be every YouTube ad that we see between now and November.

00:38:36.920 Yeah, that's right.

00:38:37.920 I'd say it's also a point of optimism, which is rare for me, but I think one of the good signs of this election that I'm kind of happy about, even though it's absurd to watch and it's infuriating to watch,

00:38:53.920 is the fact that Kamala Harris is attempting right now to run to the right on immigration, and she's attempting to present herself as all of a sudden a hardliner on immigration.

00:39:05.920 Well, she's never been a border tar, but she would like to be them.

00:39:09.920 Right, exactly. Exactly.

00:39:11.920 But that shows you something. That shows you that when even Kamala Harris, the most radical left presidential candidate of all time, feels the need to present herself as law and order, you know, the prosecutor type, putting the bad guys away,

00:39:25.920 when she feels the need to present herself that way, that means that we are winning on that issue.

00:39:29.920 And Donald Trump should embrace that. He should say, okay, if you want to have that competition, who's more right wing on immigration and crime? Let's have that conversation.

00:39:37.920 Yeah, and Kamala hasn't got Obama's advantage. Obama lived a shadow life. He actually kept his politics pretty well buried. He didn't vote on a lot of issues.

00:39:46.920 He, you know, kind of finagled answers to questions for a long time. Remember when he sat and told Rick Warren that marriage was between a man and a woman?

00:39:55.920 And then the minute Obergefell was decided, he lit up the White House with a rainbow flag. She didn't have that. We've got all the receipts. I mean, we've got video going forever of her saying all the things that she believes banning fracking.

00:40:06.920 I don't know. You know, this is a bad moment. This is a tense moment.

00:40:10.920 I was one of the people who said, along with Nikki Haley, that the first person to dump one of these candidates, Biden or Trump, is going to win.

00:40:18.920 I thought that that was something. Nobody wanted that election. Nobody wanted to see it. This moment makes me nervous. I would be lying if I said it didn't.

00:40:25.920 But I am kind of optimistic because I think that the onrush of lies, the wave of lies that hit the public staggered them back. You can't do that for 90 days. I'm sorry. I do not believe you can get away with that for 90 days.

00:40:38.920 There's another thing I think the Democrats. Listen, Democrats are professionals at this. I mean, they really are. This is professional level criminal behavior.

00:40:46.620 They took their president out back and they shot him like old yeller. And then they supplanted him with Kamala Harris.

00:40:52.020 And that's, by the way, what parties used to do. I mean, that actually is what a powerful system does.

00:40:57.620 And the Democrats just supplanted one member of the system with another member of the system.

00:41:00.880 And they're running the exact same program, except in the new face on top of it.

00:41:04.020 But they're doing something else that is quite clever, but it's a clue as to what they're afraid of.

00:41:07.980 And that is they are campaigning on two specific words, weird and joy.

00:41:12.380 Yeah. Right. They are filled with joy. So much happiness. Can you feel the joy?

00:41:16.700 That weird cackle that Kamala Harris does, that's not a weird cackle.

00:41:19.800 That's just what joy looks like when she's dancing all strange with those kids in the high school and then cackling about buses and Venn diagrams.

00:41:26.880 That's not strange. That's joy. Right.

00:41:29.240 And it turns out that it's not weird when she's hanging out with Tim Walls, who's busy transing the kids in Minnesota.

00:41:35.000 It's not weird when they're inviting every strange haired person with a bizarre facial tick to the Democratic National Convention.

00:41:42.280 You know, that's not weird at all. What's truly weird is J.D. Vance, who's married and has kids.

00:41:46.300 That's what's really weird. And that he thinks that it's good for people to get married and have kids.

00:41:50.520 That's the most weird thing of all is that he thinks that.

00:41:52.960 And so I think what they think is that the best defense is a good offense.

00:41:57.300 They know two things. Americans are actually quite depressed about this administration.

00:42:01.060 Americans hate this administration.

00:42:03.040 Americans are not optimistic about the state of the country or the future of the country under Biden-Harris.

00:42:08.020 And so what they're doing is they're shifting that question.

00:42:10.300 Are you better off now than you were four or five years ago?

00:42:13.180 They're shifting that into, can you see the joy on this one person's face?

00:42:17.300 She's a person, right? It's about her.

00:42:18.620 So it's about her joy, but not your lack of joy over 20% inflation over the course of the last four years.

00:42:24.160 And on the weird thing, the thing they're afraid of is that the normies in America, you know, 80% of Americans,

00:42:29.080 might notice that these people are weird.

00:42:31.460 They're weird. I'm sorry. It's a weird crew of people.

00:42:34.460 I mean, they're all the people that Matt is making fun of.

00:42:36.280 And what is a woman, right? Just by asking them simple questions.

00:42:39.240 It's people who legitimately believe that if you cut the penis off a boy, he becomes a girl.

00:42:43.220 I mean, that is what these people think.

00:42:45.020 And that is all strange and weird.

00:42:47.060 And so I think that this election could be, if Donald Trump has the, again, it's always if with President Trump.

00:42:55.340 But if he actually has the discipline to point out that this election is the normies versus the actual weird,

00:43:03.540 that this election is the people who want a joyous and optimistic country,

00:43:07.720 not a fake, nutrasweet joy candidate who's covering up an ugly policy agenda,

00:43:13.120 that's where they're vulnerable because they are weird and they are not joyous.

00:43:17.020 And I think your idea that it's a vibes election, it's dicey.

00:43:21.580 It's a vibes election right now because the entire force of the media has been poured into creating the vibes.

00:43:27.000 But if ever it should become an issues election, Kamala's finished.

00:43:30.460 Well, and this is the key.

00:43:31.420 It occurs to me now as we're talking about the weird,

00:43:34.260 and Tim Walls was the guy who started that attack even before he was picked for VP.

00:43:37.720 But don't the libs like weird?

00:43:40.720 Haven't we spent the last 30 years keep Austin weird?

00:43:43.600 The word queer means weird, and they've appropriated that as one of their favorite identifiers.

00:43:48.000 Well, but the word gay means joy too, right?

00:43:51.540 You're right.

00:43:52.660 They're weird and joyful.

00:43:54.620 And so at a certain point, you know, we get into this fight.

00:43:58.760 We degrade ourselves to their level of third grade.

00:44:01.720 You know, you're weird.

00:44:02.420 No, you're weird.

00:44:03.040 No, you're gay.

00:44:03.840 No, you're gay.

00:44:04.420 I'm going to give you a swirly.

00:44:05.300 But what's funny, to your point on the issues is, hey, hey, guys, the border's open,

00:44:11.620 and it's her fault.

00:44:12.700 She's the border's are.

00:44:13.980 I love there was that Politico article.

00:44:15.820 It said Kamala promises that she's going to go really hard on the border.

00:44:21.640 Today, she is the border's are.

00:44:23.860 She didn't stop being the border's are.

00:44:25.080 She is the border's are today.

00:44:26.300 So you think, hey, hold on.

00:44:27.380 Maybe all this weird stuff is like a trap, you know?

00:44:30.140 And if we point to the like zillions of foreign nationals and terrorists and drugs pouring

00:44:36.420 across the border, and you point to the horrible inflation, and you point to how the world's

00:44:39.900 about to go up and smoke in World War Three, and like every actual thing that's happening,

00:44:43.740 I think we win, right?

00:44:45.180 But we should but we should also point out that the stuff it's important for us to also point

00:44:49.200 at them and say, no, no, the stuff that you guys support is legitimately weird.

00:44:53.840 Putting tampons in the boys' restroom is a very weird thing.

00:44:57.440 I think it was CNN.

00:44:58.560 They were talking about MSNBC.

00:45:00.180 You can't tell them apart.

00:45:01.400 But one of them said that, no, well, Tim Walsh put tampons in the boys' bathroom.

00:45:07.240 That's great.

00:45:08.180 That's big dad energy.

00:45:10.480 Yeah.

00:45:10.960 I'm like, well, what the hell kind of dads are you hanging out with?

00:45:14.160 Because I'm a dad, and if my son comes to me and says they put tampons in the boys'

00:45:20.900 restroom, I'm going to walk into that restroom and pull the freaking thing off the wall and

00:45:24.740 throw it on the ground.

00:45:25.280 Like, that's what a dad does.

00:45:26.540 That's big dad energy.

00:45:27.960 That's big dad energy.

00:45:28.980 Pull that off.

00:45:29.900 Yeah.

00:45:30.420 But, you know, it's funny.

00:45:34.020 The left knows all this.

00:45:35.360 You know, the left says DEI.

00:45:36.820 What a great idea.

00:45:37.800 We're going to hire people according to the color of their skin and according to their identity.

00:45:41.380 This is a great, great thing.

00:45:42.500 So they say, we're going to appoint a vice president who's a female and black, and you

00:45:46.580 say, well, she's a DEI hire.

00:45:47.900 That's a terrible thing to say.

00:45:48.960 How dare you say that?

00:45:49.840 You know, you say, well, wait a minute.

00:45:51.520 You say, this is a wonderful thing.

00:45:52.500 We're going to put pornography in elementary schools.

00:45:54.560 It's going to be great.

00:45:55.380 Let me just read to you what's in there.

00:45:56.600 No, no, no.

00:45:57.080 Don't read it out loud because that would be terrible.

00:45:59.060 But I thought it was great.

00:46:00.280 They know, and they're just, you know, they continue this gaslighting of basically saying

00:46:05.500 we're doing it.

00:46:06.460 We're not doing it, but it's great that we're doing it, but we're not doing it.

00:46:09.100 You know, Mike Anton at the Claremont Institute, he has a name for this.

00:46:12.500 He calls it, a shout out for Mike Anton out there.

00:46:15.440 He calls it the celebration parallax, which is it's happening if you're talking about

00:46:20.620 it positively, but it's a crazy conspiracy theory if you're talking about it negatively.

00:46:25.460 And of course, we actually have Joe Biden in official White House transcript referring

00:46:30.560 to Kamala Harris as the prime example of a diversity, equality, and inclusion hire for

00:46:38.080 his administration.

00:46:38.780 His exact words.

00:46:40.600 If you say that, however, it's a terrible conspiracy theory.

00:46:44.180 We'll get to more on this in a second, but first we need to talk about something else.

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00:47:06.240 now.

00:47:11.060 I'm not saying the sky is falling, but would you jump out of a plane without a parachute?

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00:49:03.460 First one.

00:49:05.260 First one.

00:49:06.260 First one.

00:49:08.260 Republicans or Nazis, you cannot separate yourselves from the bad white people.

00:49:22.380 Growing up, I never thought much about race.

00:49:24.300 It never really seemed to matter that much.

00:49:26.140 At least not to me.

00:49:26.960 Am I racist?

00:49:28.140 I would really appreciate it if you left.

00:49:29.420 I'm trying to learn.

00:49:30.140 I'm on this journey.

00:49:31.420 I'm going to sort this out.

00:49:32.660 I need to go deeper undercover.

00:49:34.020 Joining us now is Matt, certified DEI expert.

00:49:40.640 Here's my certifications.

00:49:41.780 What you're doing is you're stretching out of your whiteness.

00:49:44.520 This is more for you than this for you.

00:49:45.520 Is America inherently racist?

00:49:47.060 The word inherent is challenging there.

00:49:49.020 I want to rename the George Washington Monument to the George Floyd Monument.

00:49:52.180 America is racist to its bones.

00:49:54.040 So inherently.

00:49:54.900 Yeah.

00:49:55.320 This country is a piece of...

00:49:56.680 White.

00:49:58.560 Folks.

00:49:59.020 Trash.

00:49:59.560 White supremacy.

00:50:00.340 White woman.

00:50:00.900 White boy.

00:50:01.340 Is there a black person around here?

00:50:02.700 What's a black person right here?

00:50:04.040 Does he not exist?

00:50:04.840 They don't say I'm racist.

00:50:06.820 Hi, Robin.

00:50:07.400 Hi.

00:50:07.740 What's your name?

00:50:08.680 I'm Matt.

00:50:09.200 I just had to ask who you are because you have to be careful.

00:50:11.800 Never be too careful.

00:50:12.660 They gonna say you racist.

00:50:13.620 Buy your tickets now.

00:50:14.720 In theaters September 13th.

00:50:16.020 Rated PG-13.

00:50:18.620 Back to sort of the weird conversation.

00:50:20.280 I actually do think that this is the biggest conversation in the country.

00:50:22.840 And you can tell, by the way, the media are focused laser-like on the cat lady comments

00:50:27.240 that J.D. Vance made, right?

00:50:28.620 Yeah.

00:50:28.740 So the attempt to turn J.D. Vance into the weirdest person in American politics because

00:50:32.900 he's a happily married man with children in a biracial marriage, by the way, and that

00:50:38.480 this is somehow symptomatic of him being a deep and abiding weirdo because he said on

00:50:43.780 Tucker Carlson that he believes, in essence, that it's very important for a civilization

00:50:47.780 to have children and focus in on children.

00:50:50.940 You know, the idea that that is somehow weird is in and of itself deeply strange.

00:50:56.280 Every society, every civilization, of course, has to have as its center childbearing and

00:51:00.640 childbearing.

00:51:01.180 Any civilization that doesn't do that is a fundamental failure on every level.

00:51:05.540 There's no way to sustain or grow a civilization without that.

00:51:08.180 And that is why they're so angry at J.D. Vance for having mentioned that thing.

00:51:11.480 They're not angry at the cat lady comment.

00:51:12.780 They're angry at the underlying actual issue that he was uncovering.

00:51:15.260 And they did that, let's remember, because the conservatives that look at the attacks

00:51:18.940 on J.D. Vance and say, oh, it was a mistake to nominate J.D. Vance.

00:51:22.520 I find that very annoying because what they don't realize is that the media and the left,

00:51:26.560 they'll do that to literally anybody.

00:51:28.420 Anybody that Trump happened to choose was destined to become a weird degenerate in the

00:51:34.400 eyes of the media.

00:51:35.420 Let's not forget that Mike Pence, okay, say what you want to Mike Pence.

00:51:38.700 Mike Pence, the most normal guy who's ever lived on earth, was made into a weirdo by

00:51:44.380 the media in 2016 because he didn't want to go on dinner dates with women who weren't

00:51:48.600 his wife.

00:51:49.860 And like, that was weird to the media.

00:51:51.940 So this is what they do to everybody.

00:51:53.220 It doesn't matter who they are.

00:51:53.940 That's 100% true.

00:51:54.720 The Mike Pence thing was particularly annoying because they had the simultaneous rule,

00:51:57.740 which was that if you were in a room alone with a woman and then she accused you of

00:52:00.900 something, she had to be believed.

00:52:02.460 And also, you must be in a room alone with a woman, right?

00:52:04.960 Because he said, I'm not going to do that.

00:52:06.420 And they're like, that's so weird that he won't do that.

00:52:07.720 But I think that this has to do with the fact that any cohesive society has to have

00:52:12.020 a center.

00:52:12.460 And that center has to be normality.

00:52:14.680 And normality has a definition.

00:52:16.340 And you can have people who are flitting around sort of the edges, who are in orbit around

00:52:19.880 the normal sun.

00:52:21.160 But when the normal sun begins to dissipate, when it begins to crack up, when it explodes

00:52:24.700 outward, which is what the left is actually attempting to do, then there is no center to

00:52:28.460 hold the civilization together anymore.

00:52:30.380 And the most fundamental, basic things that our civilization are about are the things that

00:52:34.700 are under attack.

00:52:35.460 It's why, again, I go back to the first comment I made, which is that I think we're all feeling

00:52:39.040 like gaslit and annoyed and angry.

00:52:41.260 And that's because when you're being lied to your, people are lying to your face.

00:52:44.280 They're telling you there's no such thing as truth, as Drew likes to say.

00:52:46.740 They're telling you there's no such thing as a man, no such thing as a woman.

00:52:49.320 That it's crazy to say that a civilization is dependent on people having kids.

00:52:53.860 Or, God forbid you say, that it is a morally superior thing for you to do to spend your life

00:52:58.320 having kids and raising them, as opposed to not having kids and not raising them.

00:53:02.060 And they should be asked the question, when in history has a sexual revolution taken place

00:53:07.940 and sexual freedom become the norm, and it has not marked the end of a period of civilization?

00:53:13.180 Right.

00:53:13.440 It is always the end.

00:53:14.660 I mean, all you have to do is go to the movies and you see, you know, the Hunger Games.

00:53:18.340 And what do they show you?

00:53:19.440 They show you that the society is oppressive and decadent.

00:53:21.860 They show you men dressed as women.

00:53:23.280 They show you effeminate men.

00:53:24.420 They show you, you know, absolutely a sort of rainbow of sexual difference.

00:53:29.840 But there's that one babe with a bow and arrow.

00:53:34.860 A girl with a bow and arrow.

00:53:36.340 It's like Diana, you know.

00:53:37.700 But, I mean, I think that this is the thing.

00:53:39.280 This is what civilizations look like in decline.

00:53:42.100 It doesn't mean that there won't be a new rebirth.

00:53:44.200 I think there will be.

00:53:45.240 But still, this is what they look like when they're declining.

00:53:47.420 So, I want to talk about the cat lady's comment from a different point of view,

00:53:50.480 which is something that I've seen a lot online in the comments on X.

00:53:56.960 And that's conservative women who are irritated by the cat lady comment

00:54:01.880 because it seems to be an attack, perhaps, on women who can't have children

00:54:06.360 for whatever reason, have not yet had children for whatever reason.

00:54:09.880 And it might be easy to say, well, they're reading a little bit into what J.D. Vance

00:54:15.420 was actually trying to say.

00:54:16.280 Well, he said it wasn't specifically.

00:54:17.820 But I think that the reason that they're getting to this actually is a problem

00:54:22.420 that we have in conservatism that we have to figure out how to deal with.

00:54:25.820 We've talked before about how one of the problems with the way that we frame

00:54:28.480 issues as a movement is, you know, you can say, well, as Ben does and rightly,

00:54:35.060 that, you know, in America we understand the steps that are necessary

00:54:38.340 to have a successful life.

00:54:39.400 Just, you know, finish high school, get married before you have kids,

00:54:43.000 don't do drugs.

00:54:43.620 Sometimes if you do those three things, your chances of having success in the society

00:54:47.020 go up exponentially.

00:54:48.640 But for a lot of people, they hear that and they say, well, I already had a kid

00:54:52.480 before I got married.

00:54:53.360 Or, well, I didn't finish high school.

00:54:55.340 Or, well, I have struggled already with drugs in my life.

00:54:57.760 It sounds like you might be saying that opportunity in our society is already

00:55:02.280 discounted for them in some way.

00:55:05.680 And the left doesn't put up any of those sorts of impediments when they present

00:55:09.560 their path for a person to have happiness.

00:55:11.160 So I think that sometimes the way that we approach issues seems like it doesn't

00:55:16.040 allow for actual people who've actually made mistakes in their life to live.

00:55:20.780 And I also think that because feminism has been so ascendant for so long in our

00:55:27.000 culture, there's a generation of conservative young men who are pushing back

00:55:31.520 against it and have pushed back against it to the point that they begin to express a

00:55:37.380 kind of hatred for women.

00:55:39.040 And so there are young women on the right who think, well, there are men on the right

00:55:42.960 who seem to hate us.

00:55:44.240 And there's a sort of absolutist rhetoric on the right that says if we haven't had

00:55:47.460 children yet, we're not, we don't have a possibility of happiness or possibility of

00:55:52.040 contributing fruitfully to civilization.

00:55:54.680 Where are we?

00:55:55.500 Where does that leave us?

00:55:56.540 You know, I think, though, it comes back to what Ben said about a center and the

00:55:59.720 surrounding area outside.

00:56:01.520 And this is something conservatives have been really bad about talking about.

00:56:05.320 When Harrison Butker made his speech where he said, you know, you young ladies, the

00:56:08.900 thing you're probably looking forward to most is family.

00:56:11.640 And all the young ladies said, yes, you, in fact, are telling the truth.

00:56:16.120 The media is always the left.

00:56:17.840 Let's just call it what it is.

00:56:18.820 The left is always going to portray that as bigoted and small minded.

00:56:22.680 But in fact, we all understand that there are women who don't want to have children or

00:56:26.380 can't have children or who are doing something else with their lives.

00:56:28.980 We understand that they're individuals, but all we're talking about is the center.

00:56:32.760 And maybe that is the kind of language we should start using more often.

00:56:35.960 There's also, though, there's a difference here.

00:56:38.620 You know, I was just listening to a great lecture at the Thomistic Institute on how to

00:56:42.460 resolve this exact question.

00:56:44.120 So I'm going to steal all of their ideas because they're better than ours.

00:56:47.920 You know, good writers borrow, but great writers steal.

00:56:51.960 I think it's true of podcasters, too.

00:56:55.140 Poor writers don't even use words.

00:56:56.780 That's right.

00:56:57.300 To use a word.

00:57:01.020 Reasons to vote for Democrats, available now on Amazon.

00:57:03.600 You can go get it right before, if you want.

00:57:06.400 Back to my point.

00:57:09.340 Aristotle, who a lot of conservatives love, he's kind of the main man in political philosophy,

00:57:13.660 especially for conservatives.

00:57:14.820 He would say that some people are just not capable of attaining virtue.

00:57:19.440 He uses this term natural slaves to not mean like chattel slavery, but just people who

00:57:24.220 lack the ability to have an education, they've screwed up so much, they're just not going

00:57:28.940 to be virtuous, they're not going to be free, they're total losers, right?

00:57:31.700 Which is the really, I think, unfair reading of what J.D. is talking about.

00:57:35.660 But, so for Aristotle, he's right about so much, but he would not be able to understand someone

00:57:41.540 like St. Augustine.

00:57:42.400 St. Augustine, who's a complete degenerate, who does all sorts of terrible things in his

00:57:46.200 life, and then has a radical conversion and becomes one of the most influential thinkers

00:57:50.380 ever in the history of the West.

00:57:52.140 What's the difference?

00:57:53.320 Well, the difference, which would be not knowable to Aristotle, is Christianity.

00:57:58.420 The difference is grace, and we happen to be a Christian country, we are of Christian

00:58:02.620 civilization, and so that's really what we're talking about, aren't we?

00:58:06.020 You know, the people who want to willfully misinterpret what J.D. is saying are going

00:58:10.260 to do so because they hate him and they're rabid partisan Democrats, but I think J.D.

00:58:15.260 is speaking of a caricature, which is a real problem, but obviously we're talking

00:58:19.920 with grace here, you know, if someone has made mistakes, has gotten hooked on drugs,

00:58:23.760 has had a bad education, look, society is pretty broken.

00:58:26.680 The education system is terrible right now, and it's never too late to repent and turn

00:58:32.140 your life around and make something of yourself, and, you know, that's America.

00:58:37.000 That's Christendom, you know, but that's the difference.

00:58:40.920 I think there's something else there, too, and that is that when I hear J.D. talk, and he

00:58:46.820 talks about this sort of stuff, I think that he's speaking in the terms that we

00:58:49.800 tend to use in our communities, and the United States, unfortunately, because of

00:58:54.920 feminism, because of the sexual revolution, and because of the fact that the government

00:58:58.760 has become so involved in every aspect of our lives, it has replaced community, which

00:59:02.880 is the place we used to have these discussions, the place where the social standards used to

00:59:06.120 be set, were in your community, and you can see this in the communities that have kids

00:59:09.680 versus the communities that don't have kids.

00:59:11.700 So, actually, tonight, some of our friends from Florida are here.

00:59:14.920 They have eight kids, which is a lot of kids.

00:59:17.200 It's a small, Orthodox Jewish family, I think.

00:59:19.920 Yeah, exactly.

00:59:20.880 They have a minion at their home.

00:59:22.660 Yeah, almost.

00:59:24.020 And the thing about our community is that everybody has at least four kids.

00:59:29.140 Like, you're not in the club unless you have four kids.

00:59:31.500 We came to the community, we had three, we're like, we don't belong here, so we had four.

00:59:34.840 And that's actually the way that communities tend to be built, right?

00:59:37.620 So, in the cat lady sort of lingo, there aren't a lot of cat ladies in the community, because

00:59:42.440 everybody wants to have kids.

00:59:43.560 Even the people who can't have kids, they want to, so they don't count as the cat ladies,

00:59:46.560 right?

00:59:46.740 The cat ladies that J.D. are talking about are people who are, like, militantly anti-having

00:59:50.740 kids because it is a superior way of life to not have children.

00:59:54.920 And so, but that conversation used to happen at the local level.

00:59:57.360 Because of the decline of church and because of the decline of community, there's been

01:00:00.020 an attempt to remake that at the national level.

01:00:02.500 And I'm not sure that it's actually possible to remake that at the national level.

01:00:06.680 I think that that has to be remade primarily at the local and then the state level.

01:00:10.780 And then you can try to have those conversations at the national level.

01:00:14.500 And I think that J.D. wasn't even speaking in the context of being a national politician

01:00:17.720 in 2021 when he said all of this.

01:00:19.820 It doesn't mean you can't say this as a politician.

01:00:21.460 It means that the things that the federal government can and cannot do or has a major and

01:00:26.100 minor role in are different from the things that your local community and your state have

01:00:29.920 a major or minor role in because this is an extraordinarily diverse and heterodox country

01:00:35.360 in which we have less and less in common at the top levels.

01:00:37.680 And that's why it's so easy to alienate huge numbers of people by saying something that

01:00:41.560 in any of our religious communities would be considered perfectly normal.

01:00:44.180 Can I also, I have to chime in on this because I win the contest with six kids at this table.

01:00:48.620 Here we go.

01:00:49.660 So I gotta, I have to have my peace.

01:00:53.240 I also think that what J.D. Vance is saying, what like all of us are saying, is not that every

01:00:59.540 single person on earth is supposed to biologically have a child.

01:01:04.020 We recognize that some people just can't because they have physical issues.

01:01:09.800 Some people want to get married and they never do.

01:01:11.740 It's a great tragedy.

01:01:13.160 Some people go into the religious life or some people have other vocations.

01:01:17.040 But what I would say is that every single person on earth, every adult, has a maternal

01:01:23.940 or paternal vocation.

01:01:26.360 And for most people, if you're a man, that means you're going to get married and have babies.

01:01:30.020 If you're a woman, you're going to get married and have babies.

01:01:32.800 But there are people that they're going to find that vocation in other ways, through

01:01:36.620 missionary work or the religious life or something like that, adoption.

01:01:40.040 But the point is that nobody is called to live a life totally in service to themselves.

01:01:45.940 Nobody is called to, right.

01:01:51.580 Nobody.

01:01:52.020 This is our response to the feminist girl boss stuff.

01:01:57.840 It's not that no woman should ever have a job.

01:02:00.140 It's that no woman is going to be happy if she tries to find her meaning and purpose in

01:02:05.680 life in, you know, going to a corporate job and earning a paycheck.

01:02:10.280 That is not supposed to be anyone's meaning and purpose in life.

01:02:13.720 And that's our point, I think.

01:02:14.940 Yeah.

01:02:16.540 Come on.

01:02:17.040 I'm just glad that we don't have to put all the women in those red dresses and white bonnets.

01:02:27.300 Yet.

01:02:27.760 I love those.

01:02:28.800 I love those.

01:02:31.240 That's a good visual to leave you with for intermission.

01:02:33.840 We're going to go back and use the restroom.

01:02:36.280 I'm not going to lie about what we're about to go to.

01:02:38.220 Hopefully, you can go out front and do the same thing.

01:02:40.120 We'll be back right after that.

01:02:43.060 What?

01:02:43.340 They just said something in my ear.

01:02:44.840 Right now?

01:02:51.400 That's how that goes?

01:02:53.120 Huh.

01:02:53.580 In front of all these people.

01:02:55.660 Hmm.

01:02:56.780 You really would have thought they would have put that in the teleprompter.

01:03:01.260 Well, everything I just said is a lie.

01:03:05.660 We are going to put women in the red dresses.

01:03:07.600 And apparently, I just have to pee myself sitting in this chair.

01:03:15.040 I really need to go backstage.

01:03:16.720 But what they tell me is that instead of this being intermission, it is instead an opportunity for me to introduce you to three more of our beloved Daily Wire contemporaries, our peers, our colleagues.

01:03:32.220 These three stronger than the rest, these three more athletic, certainly, than the rest.

01:03:40.760 These three look better in dresses than anyone else on this stage.

01:03:46.660 It's our very dear friends, Crane and Company.

01:03:49.300 Thank you.

01:03:49.800 Thank you.

01:03:50.440 Thank you.

01:03:50.660 Thanks.

01:03:52.160 Thank you.

01:03:53.840 Let's go!

01:04:20.640 Let's go!

01:04:22.140 Let's go!

01:04:24.140 Come on, let's go!

01:04:25.140 Let's go, man!

01:04:26.140 You're in the back!

01:04:27.140 What do you mean?

01:04:28.140 Let's go!

01:04:29.140 Let's go!

01:04:30.140 Come on!

01:04:31.140 Let's go!

01:04:32.140 All right!

01:04:34.140 All right!

01:04:36.140 I love it!

01:04:37.140 Can you feel it?

01:04:38.140 No, I can!

01:04:39.140 Welcome to the Crane & Company Almost Halftime Show, presented by Jeremy's Razors.

01:04:45.140 All right, gentlemen, first half of the show, a lot of excitement, a lot of enthusiasm,

01:04:49.140 some great analysis, we even had a choir.

01:04:52.140 How awesome is that?

01:04:53.140 Come on, come on, come on!

01:04:55.140 David, I know you're a former Michigan guy, but how do you think the first half went?

01:04:58.140 Look, very well executed in the first half.

01:05:01.140 How could it not be?

01:05:02.140 Four of the brightest minds in America, plus Michael Knowles.

01:05:06.140 It's so nice to bring.

01:05:07.140 Hey, look.

01:05:08.140 It's a nice day to bring.

01:05:09.140 Massive election coming up.

01:05:10.140 Huge implication.

01:05:11.140 Yeah.

01:05:12.140 There's nowhere else I'd rather be on a Wednesday evening than on the Ryman stage with a room

01:05:17.140 full of patrons.

01:05:18.140 That is true.

01:05:19.140 You get excited.

01:05:20.140 That is true.

01:05:21.140 I love it.

01:05:22.140 I love it.

01:05:23.140 Blaine, I've been watching you.

01:05:24.140 You've been staring unbelievably intently at all the gentlemen up here.

01:05:26.140 To be honest, it kind of creeped half of us out backstage.

01:05:28.140 Sounds like me.

01:05:29.140 What have you thought so far?

01:05:30.140 To be honest with you, I have no idea what these guys said the last hour.

01:05:34.140 All right, but there is one massive thing we haven't talked about yet.

01:05:37.140 And that is, am I a racist?

01:05:40.140 Hey, hey.

01:05:41.140 You're not a racist, man.

01:05:42.140 Not me, David.

01:05:43.140 David, not me.

01:05:44.140 No, for the thousandth time.

01:05:45.140 Nobody is calling anybody racist.

01:05:46.140 Come on.

01:05:47.140 We're talking about Matt Walsh's new movie.

01:05:48.140 The trailer just dropped.

01:05:49.140 Am I racist?

01:05:50.140 Yeah.

01:05:51.140 That's what we're talking about.

01:05:52.140 And please, David.

01:05:54.140 Yeah.

01:05:55.140 Check your privilege.

01:05:56.140 Please check your privilege, bigot.

01:05:57.140 Which reminds me, last season.

01:05:58.140 Yeah.

01:05:59.140 The Daily Wire released what some people are saying is the first ballot hall of fame.

01:06:03.140 All-time great comedy.

01:06:04.140 I don't know if y'all saw it.

01:06:05.140 Lady Ballers?

01:06:06.140 Yeah.

01:06:07.140 Maybe y'all saw it.

01:06:08.140 How do you top that?

01:06:10.140 Yeah.

01:06:11.140 The actors were unbelievable.

01:06:13.140 The production was incredible.

01:06:14.140 I know.

01:06:15.140 But do you got a play or something maybe they could scheme up?

01:06:17.140 First of all, I have a play for everything and I'm glad you asked.

01:06:20.140 You do.

01:06:21.140 We're going to start this off with little cute Matt Walsh here with his cardigan.

01:06:24.140 Remember this about Matt Walsh.

01:06:25.140 He didn't just fall off a coconut tree.

01:06:28.140 He exists in the context of making what?

01:06:32.140 And that is...

01:06:33.140 Show them.

01:06:34.140 What is a woman?

01:06:35.140 Right here.

01:06:36.140 There it is.

01:06:37.140 Boom.

01:06:38.140 Kind of looks like my ex, but you get it.

01:06:39.140 Yeah.

01:06:40.140 That's actually better looking than your ex.

01:06:42.140 But besides being unburdened, let's not forget that what is a woman is the second best movie

01:06:49.140 slash documentary traded at the Daily Wire.

01:06:52.140 Which second's not bad to Lady Ballers.

01:06:54.140 No, no, no.

01:06:55.140 But every single movie the Daily Wire puts out gets censored by the political left.

01:07:00.140 I'm talking about shadow bans.

01:07:02.140 I know.

01:07:03.140 DDoS attacks.

01:07:04.140 I don't know if you have a play for that, man.

01:07:05.140 Oh, I have a play for everything, David.

01:07:07.140 And what you don't know, what we have on our side.

01:07:10.140 And that is a horde full of base patriots.

01:07:13.140 There we go.

01:07:14.140 All right.

01:07:15.140 And right now.

01:07:16.140 All right.

01:07:17.140 Those base patriots are running a little screenplay.

01:07:19.140 But the Daily Wire has one more trick up their sleeve.

01:07:22.140 Do y'all want to know what it is?

01:07:23.140 A reverse.

01:07:24.140 Do y'all want to know what it is?

01:07:26.140 Leaf liquor.

01:07:27.140 It's movie theaters.

01:07:29.140 Come on.

01:07:30.140 Take it over the movies.

01:07:32.140 Come on.

01:07:33.140 Hey, but this is what needs to happen.

01:07:35.140 All right.

01:07:36.140 Lock in.

01:07:37.140 If you're a based American around this country, you have to go buy a ticket.

01:07:41.140 And when you do that, this is what will happen.

01:07:44.140 Matt Walsh with his great beard.

01:07:46.140 All right.

01:07:47.140 His cute little cardigan in the Daily Wire can slide in for the touchdown.

01:07:51.140 There we go.

01:07:52.140 And if we're going to talk about touchdowns, let's talk postseason awards.

01:07:55.140 I don't know.

01:07:56.140 Maybe the Oscars.

01:07:57.140 Look, it feels like it.

01:07:58.140 Maybe a best picture.

01:07:59.140 Hey, it feels like a Nickelodeon award to me.

01:08:01.140 I'm going to be honest.

01:08:02.140 A little Razzie.

01:08:03.140 Matt Walsh getting slimed is great for a man.

01:08:05.140 A hundred percent.

01:08:06.140 So, you heard it here first.

01:08:07.140 Go buy your tickets for Am I Racist?

01:08:10.140 It's available now.

01:08:11.140 You can get merch in the lobby.

01:08:13.140 Some really cool stuff out there.

01:08:14.140 We got a great second half of the show.

01:08:16.140 Let's get Matt Walsh to the Oscars because we know he's not going to a WNBA game.

01:08:19.140 And as well, for Crane & Company, we're going, going.

01:08:22.140 Gone.

01:08:23.140 See ya.

01:08:24.140 Gone.

01:08:25.140 Thank you.

01:08:26.140 God bless.

01:08:33.140 Hello, everybody.

01:08:35.140 I wish I could be there with you tonight.

01:08:37.140 I have exciting news.

01:08:42.140 Since I joined forces with the Daily Wire Plus two years ago, we've built a comprehensive collection of premium content.

01:08:48.140 We've developed these shows not only to provide you with a structure and framework for meaning, but to arm you against the sadistic troll demons.

01:08:55.140 My collection, which we've titled Mastering Life with Jordan B. Peterson acts as a guide to help you win at the series of games that make up life.

01:09:05.140 My series, Marriage, was designed to help you strengthen your relationship so that you can create the perfect date that repeats endlessly.

01:09:12.140 In the series on masculinity, dragons, monsters, and men, I outlined the way of discovering your purpose of slaying the dragons that stand in your path.

01:09:20.140 In Vision and Destiny, that will help you transform the chaotic potential of the future into the actuality that you need and desire.

01:09:29.140 This fall, we're adding even more exclusive content to my Mastering Life series.

01:09:33.140 My new series, Negotiation, offers a practical guideline to help you close a deal where both sides walk away with a win.

01:09:40.140 We're also offering a three-part series on success.

01:09:43.140 Strengthen your family and to strengthen your relationships and to aim up.

01:09:46.140 You don't want to deteriorate into an idiotic hedonism.

01:09:49.140 Two of the top things people are struggling with are depression and anxiety.

01:09:52.140 Well, we walk through that at the practical level and then right down to the neuroscientific level in my five-part series, Depression and Anxiety.

01:10:00.140 In addition to our Mastering Life series, we've explored biblical writings and their cultural influence,

01:10:05.140 including a deep evaluation of the books of Genesis and Exodus and how the biblical corpus, the biblical library itself, came into existence.

01:10:12.140 Our new ten-part series on the Gospels delineates the accounts of the New Testament writings.

01:10:17.140 And finally, join me on a journey through time to find out where we came from and how that formed who we are and what we believe.

01:10:25.140 Foundations of the West. The first episode is out now on Daily Wire Plus.

01:10:29.140 Rome, Jerusalem, Athens. Five-part series.

01:10:33.140 I had a blast making it and I hope you find it extremely useful to watch.

01:10:37.140 For those of you who have already subscribed, thank you very much.

01:10:40.140 Stay tuned. We're releasing new content now every week through the end of the year.

01:10:44.140 For those of you who have yet to sign up, use promo code JORDAN and save 35% on your annual membership.

01:10:51.140 It's a hell of a deal.

01:10:53.140 Visit dailywire.com to get the entire collection of Mastering Life plus all the new releases that are to come.

01:11:00.140 The work I'm doing in conjunction with The Daily Wire brings the spirit of adventure forward.

01:11:07.140 Join us on Daily Wire Plus today. Onward and upward.

01:11:13.140 All right, who's having a good time tonight? Let's hear it one more time for our gospel choir tonight.

01:11:24.140 And who's ready for more from The Daily Wire backstage lives?

01:11:31.140 We've got more coming. It's now time for more Michael Knowles, Matt Walsh, Andrew Klavan, Jeremy Boring, and Ben Shapiro!

01:11:46.140 Come on.

01:11:56.140 Keep going, keep going.

01:12:07.140 Andrew's almost old enough to be president. Please don't start away.

01:12:12.140 How about that choir?

01:12:18.140 They're so good.

01:12:20.140 Wow.

01:12:21.140 Oh my God.

01:12:23.140 I'm embarrassed. I'm embarrassed to follow them out.

01:12:26.140 That is the second best musical act ever to play a Daily Wire backstage.

01:12:31.140 Which is saying something. That's impressive.

01:12:33.140 Well, they couldn't get number one back together again.

01:12:35.140 Nope, they couldn't. They couldn't.

01:12:37.140 That's the whole problem.

01:12:38.140 So...

01:12:40.140 Gun show!

01:12:44.140 Not on the stage.

01:12:45.140 The people demand a gun show.

01:12:47.140 Not on the stage. It's not time for that.

01:12:50.140 What do you think I am? Running for president?

01:12:54.140 All right, folks, that's enough outbursts. Security.

01:12:57.140 Look for the troublemakers. Get them out of here.

01:13:02.140 So you look at the world right now.

01:13:05.140 It's very easy to focus on our domestic problems, which are immense.

01:13:09.140 But the world's actually a very frightening place everywhere you look.

01:13:12.140 And if you listen to our shows, it can be something of a discouraging experience in moments like this.

01:13:17.140 You know, you've got Ukraine is conducting offensive operations in Russian territory today.

01:13:23.140 The first time that in Europe there's been a war of any consequence since the Second World War.

01:13:30.140 You've got China on the move.

01:13:33.140 You've got massive political upheaval in huge percentages of the world.

01:13:39.140 I mean, the prime minister of Bangladesh just had to flee her office.

01:13:43.140 There's massive uncertainty happening, economic uncertainty.

01:13:47.140 We see our stock market doing things that no expert can actually tell us why it's doing the things that it's doing.

01:13:53.140 At the moment, you have people very unsure about their future.

01:13:59.140 And yet, the five of us are generally optimistic fellows.

01:14:04.140 The five of us are generally positive fellows.

01:14:09.140 Like two and a half of us are sort of optimistic.

01:14:11.140 Behind the scenes, behind the scenes.

01:14:15.140 I think it's no surprise that we're a fairly religious lot.

01:14:20.140 Each of the five of us has a pretty pronounced religious point of view

01:14:23.140 and very distinct religious points of view, one from another.

01:14:27.140 And while people listen to our shows and they know that about us, we've never...

01:14:30.140 Like, I don't actually know any of your stories other than Drew's because he wrote it in a book.

01:14:36.140 And then made me read the book.

01:14:39.140 It was good for you.

01:14:41.140 And so, I thought it might be an interesting way to kick off the second act to be a little bit more personal

01:14:46.140 and just kind of go around the horn and talk about...

01:14:48.140 Briefly talk about each one of our sort of religious journeys that brings us to where we are.

01:14:52.140 And then have a discussion about how...

01:14:54.140 Where's the commonality between our points of view and where are the distinctions between our points of view?

01:14:58.140 Drew, tell us about the great good thing.

01:15:01.140 Well, you know, it's been 20 years since I was baptized.

01:15:04.140 So, I was about 90, I think.

01:15:07.140 And it would almost be an understatement to say that in that time, Christ has moved to the very center of my life.

01:15:17.140 And there's just no question about this, that this is what I wake up, what I think about.

01:15:22.140 And more and more, I become convinced that the ways we talk about God need to change.

01:15:28.140 And the reason is simply this.

01:15:30.140 I think too often we talk about God, the results of faith.

01:15:34.140 Faith makes you happier.

01:15:35.140 Faith holds families together.

01:15:36.140 Faith makes a society better.

01:15:38.140 All of which is true.

01:15:39.140 But it's true for a simple reason that God actually exists.

01:15:51.140 And once you catch on to that stirring little fact, everything about your life changes.

01:15:57.140 What changes about your life is that you're actually seeing reality.

01:16:00.140 My big fear, if you read The Great Good Thing, which is my memoir of conversion, my big fear was that I would lose my sense of reality.

01:16:08.140 I would become one of these Jesus people who thinks everything's going to go great now.

01:16:12.140 And I'm, you know, chosen and favored and nothing can go wrong.

01:16:16.140 And there's no death.

01:16:18.140 I don't have to think about death anymore because all that's taken care of.

01:16:20.140 And I was afraid that that would just absolutely detach me from reality.

01:16:24.140 Instead, the weirdest thing has happened as this religion has become centered to my life.

01:16:30.140 One, my outlook on the world has gotten much darker.

01:16:33.140 I see it as a darker place than I used to see it.

01:16:36.140 So I've become more realistic in that sense.

01:16:38.140 And at the same time, I am far more joyful and serene than I've ever been in my life.

01:16:45.140 And what a strange paradox that is.

01:16:49.140 And I don't want to, you know, I don't want to talk forever.

01:16:53.140 But just what that means to me is that this moral vision that we get from the Bible is true.

01:17:01.140 We do violate it every day in the deepest, most evil, most corrupt possible ways.

01:17:07.140 The world is a corrupt, evil place.

01:17:10.140 But we are in touch with the doorway out.

01:17:14.140 You know, we're walking through the door and the doorway takes us out of history, out of corruption,

01:17:18.140 out of the world, as they say.

01:17:20.140 And I got to tell you something, guys, every day.

01:17:23.140 And obviously, I'm about 10 minutes from leaving the world, in fact.

01:17:27.140 But every day, I am just more at peace with the world as it is.

01:17:33.140 And optimistic at a level that goes way beyond the next election.

01:17:37.140 And I think it's a beautiful thing.

01:17:39.140 Not even optimistic, maybe you would say, but you have the theological virtue of hope, which

01:17:52.140 is one of the three theological virtues.

01:17:54.140 You know, I was not 50 when I got baptized, but I was a cradle Catholic, but I fell away

01:18:00.140 for about 10 years.

01:18:02.140 I was practically an atheist and explicitly an atheist for a lot of that.

01:18:07.140 And I had kind of a weird way back into religion, which is that this worked on C.S. Lewis, but

01:18:14.140 I haven't heard it work on other people.

01:18:17.140 A friend of mine presented me the ontological argument for God, which is one that even St.

01:18:23.140 Thomas Aquinas doesn't really like.

01:18:25.140 And the short version of it is God is the maximally great being, and it's better to exist

01:18:29.140 than not to exist.

01:18:30.140 Therefore, God has to exist.

01:18:32.140 That's pretty much it.

01:18:33.140 You know, there's fancy ways to say it, but that's pretty much the argument.

01:18:36.140 And the crazy part is I was 18, and it convinced me.

01:18:39.140 And then I looked into more robust and, I think, really irrefutable arguments for the

01:18:45.140 existence of God, St. Thomas' five ways, et cetera.

01:18:48.140 And so then I came to the conclusion, as the first Vatican Council did, that the existence

01:18:53.140 of God can be known with certainty by natural reason from the created world.

01:18:57.140 Not everything about God can be known from reason.

01:18:59.140 That's where revelation comes in.

01:19:00.140 That's where faith comes in.

01:19:01.140 But you can know that.

01:19:03.140 And so I still thought, because I was raised in a liberal New York, and, you know, if anyone

01:19:09.140 even believed in God, they were considered weird, weird like J.D.

01:19:12.140 Vance, that I still believed that reason and faith were opposed.

01:19:18.140 And actually, there are many people who call themselves religious who think that.

01:19:21.140 But then I just decided I might crack open a book one day.

01:19:25.140 You know, I might read.

01:19:27.140 And so this is all even before I really start praying.

01:19:30.140 Boy, prayer, highly recommended.

01:19:32.140 That really opens up your religious life.

01:19:34.140 But even just reading, you know, it turns out that all these questions that perplex us

01:19:40.140 today, it turns out that smarter people than we thought about them a long time ago, and

01:19:45.140 we've debated them for millennia.

01:19:48.140 And they've come to some pretty good answers that might be better than the ones that you've

01:19:51.140 come to.

01:19:52.140 So anyway, I broadly then agreed with Christianity.

01:19:56.140 I read the Gospels, and I believe that Jesus is who he says he is.

01:20:00.140 But I didn't know about Protestantism or Catholicism or Eastern Orthodoxy.

01:20:04.140 And anyway, I came to the conclusion that the historical claims of the Church are true,

01:20:08.140 of the Catholic Church are true.

01:20:09.140 And I also came to the, there we, I hear some mackerel snappers out there.

01:20:15.140 Even in the heart of the Bible Belt.

01:20:17.140 And so I came to that conclusion, and I came to the conclusion ecclesiologically that the

01:20:22.140 claims about authority that are made by the Catholic Church are true.

01:20:26.140 So that authority has to rest in an incarnational real institution with real men.

01:20:33.140 And this is the part that actually comes back to politics.

01:20:36.140 Because I know there are a lot of people who say, you can't legislate morality and you've

01:20:39.140 got to get religion out of politics or whatever.

01:20:41.140 I'm not one of those people.

01:20:42.140 I suspect many of you are not those people.

01:20:45.140 But I came to understand that what separates Christianity from other religions, especially

01:20:51.140 like the Dharmic religions, the non-theistic religions, is that ours is a faith that is

01:20:57.140 grounded not just in poetry, not just in philosophy, but in journalism, in fact.

01:21:02.140 You know, the claim of Christianity is God becomes man in a place in the fullness of time

01:21:08.140 under the Roman Empire, which is actually significant.

01:21:11.140 And he picks real people and he establishes a real church and he leaves us real sacraments

01:21:16.140 because we're not just floating spirits.

01:21:18.140 You know, in modernity, liberalism tells us that we're just kind of floating in the ether,

01:21:23.140 man.

01:21:24.140 There's no time.

01:21:25.140 There's no body.

01:21:26.140 I'm a man, but I could be a woman.

01:21:27.140 You know, whatever.

01:21:28.140 I could be whatever I want to be.

01:21:29.140 No.

01:21:30.140 What Christianity says is man is irreducibly historical.

01:21:34.140 Man has a body.

01:21:36.140 He lives in a place.

01:21:37.140 He's born to a family in a political community.

01:21:39.140 And that all means something.

01:21:41.140 And so that then informs one's political views because it means that, you know, this

01:21:47.140 is the moment that we're chosen for.

01:21:49.140 This is the country we were meant to be born in.

01:21:51.140 We have real bonds of kinship to people that points to something beyond the world.

01:21:56.140 We have a dual nature, a corruptible flesh and an incorruptible soul.

01:21:59.140 We have a mind that partakes of eternal and universal things, but we have a flesh that's contingent

01:22:04.140 and dependent on all sorts of other things.

01:22:07.140 And you can't separate those two.

01:22:09.140 St. Paul says, you know, if the resurrection is false, then we're all just a bunch of dopes,

01:22:15.140 basically.

01:22:16.140 You know, it has to be historically true.

01:22:19.140 The final point I'll make on this that's important to politics is if all of that is the case,

01:22:24.140 if the word is made flesh and dwells among us and actually the second person of the Trinity, like,

01:22:30.140 lives in time and is crucified by a legal authority with jurisdiction over the whole world,

01:22:34.140 it means that history is not merely literal.

01:22:38.140 It means that history has an allegorical meaning, that we interpret history.

01:22:43.140 The political events that we're in, this very moment that we're all in right now,

01:22:46.140 we can't understand the full meaning of this event in our lives as it happens.

01:22:50.140 We do that in retrospect.

01:22:52.140 We do that as we interpret history, which is just the record of the political events that have happened.

01:22:56.140 And that means that there is meaning, profound meaning, imbued in every single moment that we live.

01:23:01.140 It means that we encounter some random Joe on the street, to use a phrase from C.S. Lewis,

01:23:06.140 we're encountering an eternal being, and we cannot possibly overstate the significance of that.

01:23:22.140 So, obviously, I'm a little...

01:23:28.140 Yeah, bring it, Ben. We're for you.

01:23:31.140 It's okay.

01:23:33.140 You know, so, me and my five Jews in the crowd.

01:23:37.140 I'm not going to get a big shout out.

01:23:40.140 But, so, I mean, the story of my family coming to religion, both of my parents grew up in non-religious homes.

01:23:46.140 They became more religious when I was about eight years old.

01:23:50.140 They started going to a synagogue pretty regularly.

01:23:52.140 They were looking for a community to be a part of.

01:23:54.140 They'd always been interested in more authentic forms of Judaism.

01:23:58.140 For people who are Orthodox, reform and conservatism, like conservative Judaism, not political conservatism, are not authentic forms of Judaism.

01:24:04.140 Authentic Judaism takes the Torah, meaning the five books of Moses, seriously, as well as literally.

01:24:09.140 And takes it so seriously that we enact the commandments that are in the five books of Moses every day of our lives, from when we wake up to when we go to sleep at night.

01:24:18.140 And also, we wear these funny hats.

01:24:19.140 And so, my parents, when I was maybe eight or nine years old, they started going to a congregation down in Venice that was led by a guy named Daniel Lappin, who is friends with Jeremy as well.

01:24:30.140 A very interesting person.

01:24:32.140 They started becoming sort of ensconced in Orthodoxy.

01:24:35.140 We became fully Orthodox when I was probably 11 or 12 years old.

01:24:39.140 So, I remember eating a KFC in McDonald's.

01:24:41.140 Brutal.

01:24:42.140 Brutal that you have the memory of it.

01:24:44.140 Yeah.

01:24:45.140 I mean, I will say that...

01:24:47.140 Can I say that it's brutal every time I think about it, too?

01:24:50.140 I mean, I will say that I was envious of that until I went to Israel, where they actually have a kosher McDonald's, and I tried it, and I was like, what are you guys all talking about?

01:25:00.140 What's so great about this?

01:25:01.140 Anyway, the hash browns were really good.

01:25:03.140 In any case, we became Orthodox, as I say, when I was maybe 11 or 12 years old.

01:25:08.140 Unlike everybody else who's sort of, you know, religious, you go through a period of maturation in your religious viewpoint.

01:25:14.140 And I think that one of the big mistakes that people make when they grow up religious is not actually going through that struggle and trying to come up with good answers to solid questions about the things that they believe.

01:25:25.140 And the biggest step, I think, is there's an attempt when you are 11, 12, 15 years old to suggest that there are proofs for everything in life.

01:25:34.140 That anything can simply be proved by talking about it enough or thinking about it enough.

01:25:39.140 And me being a particularly rationalistic type of person who really enjoys the process of logic and reasoning.

01:25:44.140 It's why I like debate, for example.

01:25:45.140 It's why I love reading.

01:25:46.140 It's why I love writing.

01:25:47.140 But for me, that's a very sexy idea.

01:25:50.140 This idea that you can sort of logic your way to the proper conclusions about the world.

01:25:54.140 And you can theoretically.

01:25:55.140 But the reality is that in the end, the choice to believe is, in fact, a choice.

01:26:01.140 It is not merely a thing where logic compels.

01:26:04.140 Because for every proof that Aquinas gives, there are, in fact, sophisticated ways that you can argue against them.

01:26:11.140 I don't think they're fully convincing.

01:26:12.140 I agree with Aquinas' proofs.

01:26:14.140 But with that said, are they fully dispositive such that they demand that every person who reads them immediately convert to Catholicism or convert to belief in God at all?

01:26:23.140 Well, I don't think that's the case.

01:26:25.140 I think that the best proof of God, and the thing that I've really settled on, is that we live in God whether we believe in God or not.

01:26:33.140 And what I mean by that is we live by God's rules.

01:26:36.140 The reality of the world is a godly world.

01:26:42.140 So whenever we get up in the morning and we do a thing and we find that thing meaningful, that does not exist in a non-godly world.

01:26:47.140 In a world where we're just meatballs wandering through space, none of that has any meaning, nor are you making any choices in the world.

01:26:52.140 There's an argument that I had with Sam Harris where he was making the argument there is no such thing as free will, for example.

01:26:57.140 Sam Harris saying, well, then I don't understand why you find any of this discussion meaningful, interesting, or worthwhile.

01:27:02.140 And you're using an awful lot of active verbs for a person who doesn't believe in free will.

01:27:06.140 We think about X or we say X.

01:27:08.140 Well, you don't do anything.

01:27:09.140 I mean, it's a bunch of synapses that are doing that for you as the result of millions of years of evolution.

01:27:14.140 The reality is that if you believe that there is a relationship between the things that you do and the result that is obtained from those things, you are living in God's universe.

01:27:22.140 If you believe that there is a moral logic to the universe, you are living in God's universe.

01:27:26.140 And there's hardly a soul alive who doesn't believe those things deep down in the marrow of their bones.

01:27:31.140 And that's not something that can be proved through logic.

01:27:33.140 It's just a way that you live.

01:27:34.140 And that's why whenever we have discussions about what you believe, I think that no one really believes in God in the same way that you believe in a logical proposition.

01:27:42.140 You believe in God in the same way that you believe you love your wife, for example.

01:27:46.140 And the way that you believe that you love your wife is that you wake up every morning in the house with your wife and then you do things that are the love, right?

01:27:53.140 And this is where Judaism really speaks to me on a personal level.

01:27:57.140 Judaism is an action-oriented religion.

01:27:59.140 It's a thing where you are reifying concepts in the world via what are in Hebrew called the mitzvot, via the commandments.

01:28:05.140 And they are very complex and they're very abstruse.

01:28:08.140 And that's the point.

01:28:09.140 You don't understand all of them.

01:28:10.140 You try to understand as many of them as you can.

01:28:12.140 But the reality is that any system that tries to bring the profound down to real life has to meet with reality.

01:28:19.140 And that has to be done in a system of rules and laws that govern your behavior and help you achieve what Aristotle is trying to achieve, actually, when he suggests that you actually build virtue through repetition.

01:28:30.140 That is what the commandments are for.

01:28:32.140 And so, you know, when I think about my own Judaism, what I think about is the fact that I'm a link in a chain that carries back thousands of years into history.

01:28:39.140 As Brooke talked about as far as what an actual social contract looks like, it's not just a contract between people who are living.

01:28:45.140 It's a contract between the dead and those who have yet to live.

01:28:47.140 And to me, that's what religion is.

01:28:49.140 That's what Judaism is.

01:28:50.140 I'm carrying down a tradition that was held by my ancestors thousands of years ago with the help of God.

01:28:56.140 It's a tradition that will be held by my descendants thousands of years from now.

01:29:00.140 And it is a testimony to God in history, the continuation of the Jewish people.

01:29:05.140 That is a testimony to God.

01:29:07.140 That's not my point.

01:29:08.140 That's Mark Twain's point.

01:29:09.140 That's Arnold Twainby's point, despite himself.

01:29:10.140 You know, the reality is that the continuation of the Jews as a people who are keeping the same biblical religion that was brought by Moses on Mount Sinai, 1300 BCE or BC.

01:29:22.140 You know, that that is a testament to the fact that God does speak to humanity and speaks to humanity in the terms of history.

01:29:29.140 And we see this history play out in our own time.

01:29:31.140 You know, when I think about October 7th, the meaning of October 7th to me is different because I'm a religious person than if I were a non-religious Jew.

01:29:38.140 The fact that I'm a religious person means I look at October 7th and what I see is an age-old hatred that is directed against my people, against a people that I belong to on the basis of my religion.

01:29:48.140 And that is never going to go away.

01:29:50.140 That is always going to be a part of humanity.

01:29:53.140 And the best parts of humanity, Jews and Christians alike, fight that.

01:29:57.140 And they fight for it together.

01:29:58.140 Because in the end, when I say Judeo-Christian religion, I'm not doing that to denigrate Christianity.

01:30:02.140 As a Jew, I'm doing that because I have such respect for Christianity.

01:30:05.140 Right?

01:30:06.140 Understand, when I say Judeo-Christian, it's not me trying to water down Christianity in some way.

01:30:09.140 That's me saying that Christianity is a wonderful outgrowth for the world that has its roots, obviously, in Judaism because Jesus was a Jew.

01:30:16.140 And so, you know, that reality is what religion means to me.

01:30:20.140 It's what I hope to pass down to my children.

01:30:22.140 And it's how I find meaning in the morality that I think that we all, I hope, draw from the same wellspring.

01:30:27.140 You know, there's a very beautiful point.

01:30:35.140 I love when you said we reify something, meaning, you know, to make manifest, to make it real and tangible.

01:30:43.140 Because this is a point that one of my main men, kind of my main man in all of literature is Dante.

01:30:48.140 And Dante makes this point.

01:30:49.140 What?

01:30:50.140 Love Dante.

01:30:51.140 I don't know if you heard of him.

01:30:52.140 He's a medieval Florentine who wrote a poem.

01:30:53.140 Wait, you like Dante?

01:30:54.140 A little bit.

01:30:55.140 A little.

01:30:56.140 Three Italian authors, so I had to pick one.

01:30:58.140 And Dante makes this point in a letter to his patron, Congrande della Scala.

01:31:03.140 He says there are four layers of meaning in his poem and he really thinks in the Bible and throughout literature.

01:31:10.140 And the example he uses to demonstrate this is the Exodus.

01:31:14.140 He quotes from Psalms and he says the Lord leads the people, the Jews, out of Egypt into Jerusalem.

01:31:22.140 And he says this has four meanings.

01:31:24.140 There is a literal meaning, which is the Israelites leave.

01:31:27.140 You know, Old Testament Israelites are leaving Egypt, going to the Promised Land in Jerusalem.

01:31:33.140 The allegorical meaning is the salvation won for us in Christ.

01:31:37.140 This is the Christian reading of it.

01:31:38.140 The moral meaning is the turning from sin through grace into a good life.

01:31:46.140 And then the anagogical meaning, meaning from the perspective of the end times, is the leave-taking of this corrupted world for heavenly glory.

01:31:55.140 The four layers of meaning all in one line of Scripture.

01:31:58.140 And so, when you discuss this, you say, look, my people are a literal instantiation of this thing.

01:32:08.140 There is something really beautiful about that idea because, you know, we write our stories in sounds and scribbles.

01:32:15.140 We use words and sounds in writing.

01:32:17.140 But God writes his story with us.

01:32:19.140 Another writer, more eloquent than I, has said that we are the syllables in God's story.

01:32:24.140 And that's obviously the case.

01:32:26.140 And so, to focus in and say, you know, I like the allegorical and the moral and the anagogical too.

01:32:32.140 But to say, no, there's actually a lived and historical thing that is going on that is telling God's story.

01:32:39.140 Well, yeah, that's how the story is told.

01:32:42.140 Michael, it was not your turn to go again.

01:32:45.140 Were you going to use the term anagogical?

01:32:54.140 I was.

01:32:55.140 What?

01:32:56.140 I had a whole thing about anagogical.

01:32:58.140 Like, Michael's that kid in school that does the homework and the extra credit.

01:33:03.140 If I could just and I also just want to say that before we went on on air today, I asked Jeremy, what are we talking about?

01:33:16.140 And he said, I don't know.

01:33:18.140 And because right before we walk on on air, we have no idea what we're going to talk about.

01:33:22.140 But in his head, he was planning that we go around in a circle and I'll talk about our faith journeys.

01:33:28.140 And I would go after the guy who wrote a spiritual autobiography and two Ivy League people.

01:33:40.140 So I'll just give a much more simplistic I'm a simple man story of my faith journey, which is actually it is.

01:33:47.140 It's quite a simple thing because I was born into a very Catholic, very religious family.

01:33:51.140 And I had the yes, I had the blessing of of not really not having a conversion story, per se,

01:33:57.140 because I was brought up in the faith.

01:33:59.140 And I, you know, I have five brothers and sisters.

01:34:01.140 One of my sisters is now a cloistered nun.

01:34:03.140 So there we go.

01:34:05.140 Cloister.

01:34:06.140 We got some Cloister fans in the audience.

01:34:08.140 Good.

01:34:09.140 Just to give an idea of how Catholic our family is.

01:34:13.140 So we were brought up in the faith and we were we were not just told to, you know, believe it because that's what we believe.

01:34:19.140 But we were we were equipped with the intellectual tools to understand why we believe these things.

01:34:23.140 And so for me, it was more a process of not so much learning the truth because that had been because we did learn that it was learning to stand in the truth boldly and proudly.

01:34:38.140 And that was a process that I had to learn.

01:34:40.140 You know, I was raised in a very liberal area, went to public school for all 13 years, K through 12.

01:34:47.140 And, you know, going into an environment and it's much worse in public schools today than it was even 20 years ago.

01:34:54.140 But it still wasn't great back then.

01:34:56.140 And you're going into an environment, a hostile environment of people who ridicule you for your faith.

01:35:01.140 And I would go home, you know, and we would all sit around the dinner table as a family.

01:35:07.140 And we would I would sometimes talk about these experiences of talking about my religion in school and being made fun of.

01:35:15.140 And and the answer from my parents was always, oh, people made fun of you for that.

01:35:20.140 Well, well, good, good.

01:35:22.140 Look, that's because you're standing for the truth.

01:35:24.140 And that's what happens.

01:35:25.140 That's how you know that you're standing in the truth.

01:35:27.140 In high school, we had a I went to a high school that had an abortion clinic, not in the high school, but that would be extreme.

01:35:36.140 Not quite.

01:35:37.140 We weren't there.

01:35:38.140 Be efficient.

01:35:39.140 There was an abortion clinic that might as well have been because it was in a parking.

01:35:42.140 It was practically in our parking lot.

01:35:44.140 It was literally a stone's throw away was the abortion clinic.

01:35:47.140 And my mom and my sisters used to go and pray outside this abortion clinic on Saturday mornings.

01:35:52.140 And and I wouldn't and I at first I didn't go because I was I was, you know, as a 14 year old boy, I was sort of embarrassed.

01:35:59.140 And especially Saturday mornings, you know, you have buses of kids that were coming to school for practices and football players that were going to games and stuff on Saturdays.

01:36:09.140 And there was one time in particular that some friends of mine happened to they were going into school on a Saturday morning for something.

01:36:18.140 And they saw my family standing outside of the abortion clinic holding rosaries.

01:36:22.140 And they asked me about it.

01:36:23.140 They said, was that your family doing that?

01:36:25.140 That was weird.

01:36:26.140 And I kind of didn't respond because I was embarrassed.

01:36:29.140 And then I went back and I told my mom about this and she said, you you were embarrassed that your family is there standing against the murder of babies.

01:36:40.140 That's embarrassing to you.

01:36:41.140 Why is that embarrassing?

01:36:42.140 And of course, I couldn't explain it.

01:36:44.140 And it was sort of like from that moment on, I realized that this is that if anyone should be embarrassed, it should be them for not understanding why that is wrong.

01:36:57.140 And that is also that's also how I learned to enjoy being a contrarian.

01:37:04.140 So, you know, I really want to hear Jeremy's religious journey.

01:37:13.140 But first, because we're just getting all this religious talk out here, I want to bring the choir back out here.

01:37:20.140 Can we get the choir back out?

01:37:22.140 All right.

01:37:23.140 Please.

01:37:24.140 Thank you.

01:37:25.140 All right.

01:37:28.140 Because I really want to talk about something.

01:37:32.140 Thank you, fellas.

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01:41:21.140 This is-

01:41:30.140 When they go through all that vocal training, this is what they dream of.

01:41:31.140 training. This is what they dream of. My religious journey started with

01:41:37.080 a commercial. A commercial for gold and meat. Those guys are unbelievable. My journey is a bit

01:41:47.160 like yours, Madden, that I don't have a conversion story. I didn't grow up in a church-going family,

01:41:53.740 really, but I grew up in a faithful family. And I think we thought we went to church probably more

01:41:59.640 than we did. But, you know, we were a Christian household. We read the Bible together and we,

01:42:10.540 you know, all the sort of things that kids in the 80s and 90s had in America from Salty the

01:42:16.260 Singing Songbook through… That guy loves Salty the Singing Songbook. It's a little creepy at this

01:42:26.400 point, I have to say. But we always had religious conversation. My maternal grandfather was sort of

01:42:35.600 a spiritual leader of our family. When I got to college, I would say that I started having somewhat

01:42:42.960 more independent thought about theology. I have a friend, Jay Lemon, who was being paid to teach me

01:42:50.420 piano. I'm not a very good piano player now, but I had very good religious conversations with him

01:42:54.440 throughout college that became really sort of definitive for me. And then I got to LA. And LA

01:43:02.020 is a city, as I've said before, that's always trying to kill you. And because it's always trying

01:43:07.000 to kill you, it forces you to be whatever it is that you're going to be. But, you know, you have to

01:43:11.800 decide who you are in LA. And you can decide to be what the city wants you to be. That's one way you

01:43:17.440 can survive it. Or you can decide to be as securely what you are apart from it as possible so that you

01:43:24.820 can withstand it. That's the other way that you can survive it. And I picked the latter and wound up

01:43:29.280 sort of teaching this home church for a little over 15 years in one form or another.

01:43:38.560 And like many people, I would say that I learned best through teaching. I mean, that's just a way of…

01:43:43.440 It's just another way of approaching it. It gives you responsibility. Now you have to learn something.

01:43:48.460 Like, you're going to have to say something on Sunday, so you better learn something between

01:43:52.140 now and then. But my…the particulars of my journey, probably like all of you, the particulars of my

01:44:01.260 beliefs just continue to evolve with time as you live in this world and you realize

01:44:08.340 that everything is trying to kill you. Like, I had this great realization. I've been talking

01:44:14.840 about it a little bit lately, that the sun kills you. That the one thing that all things on earth

01:44:19.680 have in common, they don't have it in common measure, but they all have it in common, is that

01:44:25.280 everything in the world is bad. That you can be the best parent possible. Like, you can look back and

01:44:33.020 say, my parents traumatized me and I'm going to be the best parent possible. And yet you will

01:44:37.060 traumatize your child. One of the things that your six children will have to overcome in their life

01:44:41.980 is you. Oh yeah, especially. And one of the things that your three children will have to overcome in

01:44:50.320 this world is mad. I tell them all the time. And I only say that to say, I'm not saying that all

01:44:59.220 things are equally bad. That's certainly not true. There are some things that are genuinely terrible,

01:45:04.180 right? And there are some things that are very, very, very good, like the sun. But the sun,

01:45:08.780 the source of life on earth, will, in fair measure, it will also kill you. That all things in a fallen

01:45:14.640 world, all things in a corrupted world are corrupt, except for the thing that isn't corrupt and isn't

01:45:19.060 corruptible, and that's God. That God is the… Shout out to God. That guy loves God.

01:45:26.820 Big ups. Big ups to God. It's Salty the Singing Songbook guy and God guy. They're sitting very close

01:45:32.100 to each other. That God is the incorruptible thing. He's the only thing that in any measure

01:45:38.560 is only good for you. And for that reason, I've been thinking of late about our Vice President,

01:45:47.280 Kamala Harris, and this saying that she has that she repeats over and over and over.

01:45:54.040 Did you fall out of a coconut tree?

01:45:56.000 Is that the one you mean?

01:45:58.680 Among others. She likes to say, you know, that what might be unburdened by what has been.

01:46:08.120 And at first, that sounds like just an inanity, right? It just sounds like another one of these

01:46:12.140 gobbledygook things that she says, which are of a kind with the gobbledygook things that her

01:46:18.460 predecessor likes to say… Come on, Jack. Come on, Jack. Yeah. But it isn't inane at all. It's

01:46:28.040 actually an incredibly evil philosophy. It has real meaning, and she means it. And it's the opposite

01:46:35.080 of my worldview. Because I'm a bit of an idealist as well. I'm not big on dogma. Part of my religious

01:46:42.440 experience is when I realize that all of the claims of the Catholic Church aren't true.

01:46:46.520 Yeah, wait a minute. I kid. I kid. I kid.

01:46:49.580 He's not kidding. He's not kidding.

01:46:51.740 Some of them are true.

01:46:53.900 I'm just going to sit over here, guys.

01:46:56.580 Some of them are true. No, but that like all other things on earth, our dogma and our doctrine

01:47:04.200 also contain the corruption of the fall, that all of them which can be used for good can in measure

01:47:10.520 be used for bad as well. And yet, my idealism about what can be is not unburdened by what has been. It's

01:47:20.120 decidedly built on what has been. And I think that part of our job as human beings is to look to the

01:47:26.380 wisdom of the past, identify the flaws, because humans are flawed and our institutions have been flawed,

01:47:33.020 and to try to take the best things about what we've inherited and to give correction to the

01:47:42.740 worst things we've inherited. And we will, in doing that, create things which contain good and

01:47:49.000 which in certain measure will kill you. And so, a thousand years from now, people will look back on

01:47:52.820 the things that we've bequeathed to the future. And we'll have done so for very good reasons,

01:47:57.320 faithful to God, prayerfully, you know, not cynically. We'll have done them for very, you know,

01:48:02.920 hopefully for as pure a motive as possible. And yet, even in those will be contained flaws.

01:48:10.100 Our children will have to overcome the trauma of us, right? And yet, the thing, the ultimate

01:48:15.660 foundation that we're trying to pass along is the incorruptible foundation. The real wisdom of the

01:48:20.740 past is what our ancestors and forebearers all knew, which is that our life is rooted in the

01:48:27.980 incorruptible. And one last thought, and then I'll stop, which is, you know, listening to Michael,

01:48:32.480 you were talking about the proofs of God. And Ben, you were suggesting that God, while you agree with

01:48:41.060 many of the proofs, there are no conclusive proofs of God. And I think that brings us ultimately to the

01:48:47.700 most important of the theological… well, I suppose the most important is love. But there is one other

01:48:53.400 of the three, and that's faith. That faith is the thing that lives between what proofs we can have

01:49:01.200 and what proofs we cannot have. And our ultimate experience of God is through faith. That's where

01:49:07.520 we live in this material world, in this time and in this place. Our experience of God is primarily

01:49:14.460 an experience of God through faith. And that's not an accident. That's the exact way that God wants us

01:49:21.200 to experience Him, is by way of faith. It's a very important point you're making, too, on the ubiquity

01:49:28.100 of at least some modicum of corruption, and usually more than a modicum of corruption in this world,

01:49:34.020 because it gets to… this would be our disagreement about the church, which is, you know, when Christ says,

01:49:41.740 I'll be with you even until the end of the age. I'll send the Holy Spirit to guide you. That's a

01:49:48.280 special claim because of all this corruption. And so this is why we say the Bible is inerrant. This is

01:49:55.840 why Catholics believe that the church is preserved from error on dogmatic teaching, though on certain

01:50:01.720 other teaching, you know, there are all sorts of debates. But it gets to a political problem then,

01:50:06.480 too. And this is something I think that everyone on stage, and I suspect everyone in the audience,

01:50:11.280 will agree with, which is this matter of authority, political authority. Where does political

01:50:17.740 authority come from? Does political authority come from some piece of paper? Not really. There are

01:50:23.200 plenty of great pieces of paper in America. We like the Constitution. We like all sorts, but that's

01:50:27.200 not really… Political authority comes from claims of authority that are accepted by the people. You

01:50:33.620 know, we don't like that Joe Biden's the president. Some of us doubt that he's even still alive,

01:50:37.280 but we still acknowledge him as the president right now. He has…

01:50:41.660 Salty guy, God guy, Joe Biden.

01:50:44.400 Biden might be a live guy.

01:50:46.460 They're all sitting right here.

01:50:47.940 We… But where… How does the government get to say,

01:50:53.660 where the government do what we say? The way they get to do that is they make a claim of authority.

01:50:58.740 They claim to speak for justice. They claim to be an enactment of justice.

01:51:03.560 But in order to make that claim, you have to believe in God. You have to implicitly believe

01:51:09.220 in God because you have to believe that there's such a thing as justice. You have to believe that

01:51:13.200 there's such a thing as a moral order that you can put into practice and enforce and legislate.

01:51:18.400 And so even our hideous liberal elites who say that they're atheist or secular, we can live with a

01:51:25.980 total separation of church and state, they don't believe that because they're making claims about

01:51:31.040 justice. They never shut up about justice and…

01:51:33.620 I actually… I don't agree with that entirely. I mean, I think that the line,

01:51:37.700 you know, in Paradise Lost was another poem.

01:51:42.320 I think I've heard the ripoff of Leontes.

01:51:45.140 No, in Paradise Lost, Milton is trying to work out why it was okay for him to rebel against the King

01:51:53.440 Charles I, a human king, and why it was wrong for Satan to rebel against God, a godly king.

01:51:59.400 And what happens to Satan when he separates himself from God is he separates himself from reality.

01:52:05.460 This is my whole point about God being real. And Satan starts out by saying, well, I can make reality.

01:52:10.740 I can turn heaven into hell and hell into heaven. The mind is its own place.

01:52:15.020 And he ends up realizing that because God is reality, and not just reality, but the goodness of reality,

01:52:20.900 he ends up saying, myself am hell. Whichever way I fly, there is hell, because he can't reattach himself

01:52:28.540 to the reality, the good reality. And I think that some of our friends on the left have reached this point,

01:52:34.280 which that Satanic theory is passed down to us through Nietzsche, who said, there's no God. God is dead.

01:52:41.520 Therefore, we have to make the moral order. And then to Foucault, an amazing, he is like the hero

01:52:46.980 of the left. Foucault is the hero of the academic left. A guy who said, there's no such thing as truth.

01:52:53.820 Everything is just a power structure. So I'm going to destroy all the power structures in myself,

01:52:58.740 and proceeded to go on an orgy of sadomasochistic sex until he got AIDS, killed everyone he was in

01:53:04.240 contact with, and himself. And the academics think, that's my guy. I'm with him.

01:53:08.760 And so I think they do believe, they do believe that there is no God, and there is no truth,

01:53:15.300 and there is no morality. And my only point about this is that we all know deep down,

01:53:20.880 here's where I agree with you, we all know deep down that that's nonsense, but they are willing to

01:53:25.100 actually follow the king of death into his territory. This is a great point. And so I guess

01:53:31.800 what I mean to say, because I agree with that entirely, what I mean to say is when the left says,

01:53:36.780 you know, we're the government, listen to us. They're making a claim of authority, which implies

01:53:41.020 some claim about justice, which implies that God exists. But sure, they don't really believe in God.

01:53:46.060 So I guess this would be…

01:53:48.340 Well, but here's the distinction, I think, and it goes all the way back to the first pages of that

01:53:52.740 one book, that they are speaking in a God framework, but they have replaced God with them.

01:53:59.620 They are God.

01:54:01.140 This is the difference between making a claim about authority and a claim from totalitarianism.

01:54:07.260 You know, in one, the government is actually being kind of humble because you're saying there's this

01:54:11.780 moral order that I'm enforcing. In totalitarianism, it's just whatever I want. So in one,

01:54:17.260 the reason is mediating between the appetite and the divine will. In the other, it's just pure will.

01:54:23.060 And that means that it's bound to fail. Because if you go back to the original biblical structure of

01:54:27.440 how government was supposed to work, if you go back to the five books of Moses, before we actually

01:54:31.460 get to, you know, the breakdown of the judges and the kings, when there's a first discussion of what

01:54:37.320 the king is supposed to do, it says that he actually is supposed to write his own copy of the Torah,

01:54:41.140 and he's supposed to carry it around with him, right? Because he's subject. He's the only person

01:54:44.800 in the entire Bible who has to write two copies. So everybody's enjoying to actually participate in

01:54:48.640 the writing of a Torah in Judaism. My family's been lucky enough to do that. It's a really cool thing.

01:54:52.400 But if you're the king, then you actually have to not only write, you have to carry it around all day

01:54:56.120 because you're subject to the law. So the idea is that even God's king is subject to God's law.

01:55:01.660 What the left decided to do was take away God and leave the law. And when they did that,

01:55:07.460 what they became was satanic. What they became were representatives of these free-floating ideas

01:55:12.980 that are no longer connected to the roots of the ideas. So they're speaking in language.

01:55:17.180 It's actually very reminiscent of nearly all of the left's political campaigns. They use buzzwords

01:55:21.580 of the right, empty them of all meaning, and then proceed to weaponize them against the right. So

01:55:26.220 they'll do this with things like weird or joy. They'll empty them of meaning, refill them with

01:55:29.800 a different meaning, and then use the cut-out husks of those things as their props. And they do that

01:55:33.680 with justice, by substituting social justice in favor of justice. Or they'll say law.

01:55:38.540 Or woman, for instance.

01:55:39.680 Or woman. Or law. I mean, like, very, very bit. Truth. These very basic concepts. They'll empty them of

01:55:44.320 content, and then they'll use them. Because in the end, the only concepts that human beings have to work

01:55:48.780 with are religious concepts. There are no other concepts. All of these concepts are religious.

01:55:53.400 The backing for science is reliant in a very deep and profound way upon certain basic religious

01:55:58.560 truths, like the predictability of the universe, like the idea that there is a cause and effect,

01:56:02.620 like the fact that your human brain, your meatball of the brain, can understand actual absolute truths

01:56:07.520 that exist out there. These are all faith principles. And you mentioned before the importance of faith.

01:56:12.300 In Hebrew, the word for faith is emunah. Okay, that word actually doesn't mean faith. Really,

01:56:16.720 it means trust. It's also the source of the word amen, right? Or amen in English. The basic idea

01:56:21.740 is that when somebody says a blessing and you say amen, what you're really saying is that you trust

01:56:26.200 that that's true. When you say you have faith in God, you don't mean that, again, that you sort of

01:56:30.740 have faith in a random concept out there. God doesn't care, in my opinion, too much about your

01:56:36.120 opinions. I think God cares very much about his opinions. But what that really means is that you

01:56:41.300 have trust, if you're a smart person, in that what God says is true. And what the left keeps

01:56:45.600 running up against is that reality. They keep doing stupid things and running directly against

01:56:49.960 a brick wall and then being angry that the brick wall of reality exists. And so they're constantly

01:56:53.940 at war with reality. And they're bound to fail. They're bound to fail. And so what they've decided

01:56:58.500 as their system of government in response to this is a risk-free existence. Because the only person

01:57:03.080 who can take a risk is the person who's willing to jump knowing that there is another side to that

01:57:08.020 cliff, right? That you can jump off the cliff and on the other side there's going to be a gap.

01:57:11.020 And then on the other side there's something there, right? Not necessarily knowing. Every

01:57:14.180 person who's taken a risk, which is to say Americans. Because we are a risk-taking people

01:57:18.040 above all else. If there's one thing that characterizes America, it's that we are a place

01:57:21.400 of risk-takers. We're people who came from all over the world with nothing, literally nothing,

01:57:25.640 to a place where there was nothing. I understand, yes, there were Native Americans who lived here,

01:57:29.860 but there was no Western civilization. There were no buildings. There was no system. There was no

01:57:33.880 government that was capable of spanning the vast territory. And then they were told by the

01:57:38.740 government not to cross mountains. They crossed the mountains. They went there. They lived in the

01:57:41.540 middle of nowhere. They got shot at. They got scalped. And then they built a civilization.

01:57:45.320 They're all risk-takers. Americans are risk-takers. How can you take that risk? You can only take that

01:57:49.000 risk if you have trust that there is a system of reality. That when you take that risk, you land on

01:57:54.240 the other side. And what the left has decided to do is eliminate risk in life and give you, in

01:57:58.300 compensation, the only risk you're allowed to take is sexual risk. So they give you sexual risk and

01:58:03.280 they took away all the other risks. Economic risk and faith risk and all the risks that actually make life worth

01:58:07.000 living. Because it turns out that actually one of the least important things in life is sexual

01:58:11.360 risk-taking. It's actually not a very good thing for you. But it turns out that entrepreneurship is

01:58:15.880 quite good for you. Creativity is quite good for you. The ultimate leaps that we all take in our

01:58:19.440 lives, the leap of faith, the leap of family. Okay, the leap of family is a massive leap of faith.

01:58:23.620 No one knows what the hell it's going to be like when you have kids. I mean, Matt has six of them.

01:58:27.140 And every time, sure, I won't speak for you. I'll speak for myself. Every time we have another kid,

01:58:31.300 we have four, it is a risk because it's like, I don't know what this kid is going to be like.

01:58:35.580 Even now, I don't know what my kids are going to be like tomorrow. I don't know what they're

01:58:38.080 going to be like in 10 years. It's a huge risk. And we are a people being robbed of our initiative

01:58:42.580 and robbed of our risk-taking abilities because the ground upon which we walk, which is a faith-based

01:58:46.860 ground, has been ripped away from us by a secular life. And the thing about it is,

01:58:59.300 they say this is because of science, because science has revealed that all the things in the Bible are

01:59:04.660 untrue. My brilliant son, Spencer Clavin, no relation to me, has written an actual book about

01:59:13.220 this, about the fact that you come to places in science where it suddenly seems that the human

01:59:17.280 mind cannot actually conceive of reality. So you start to make up things like multiverses and,

01:59:24.740 you know, we're in a simulation, things like this. But in fact, every time a scientist has taken that

01:59:30.140 leap of faith and said, you know what? My mind and God's mind are not disconnected. Every time

01:59:35.960 science has advanced and you've gotten a renaissance and a renaissance of science. There's a wonderful

01:59:40.120 book coming out about this in a couple of months, so I won't plug it now. But still, it's a brilliant

01:59:44.480 insight that science itself depends on just the kind of risk you're talking about.

01:59:47.840 That God is still God on the other side of the mountain.

01:59:49.980 That's right.

01:59:50.320 Amazing idea.

01:59:50.800 Yeah. So we have a few minutes left and I want to talk about the most important thing

01:59:54.680 happening at the Daily Wire right now, and that is Matt Walsh's movie, Am I Racist?

02:00:06.620 It is fair to say that it's the biggest risk that we've yet taken as a company. We're putting the

02:00:13.180 film in theaters. It's our first major theatrical release and tickets go on sale right now.

02:00:19.620 So, at this very moment, as we all sit here, tickets are officially on sale for Am I Racist?

02:00:26.660 And because you made a point to come see us today and spend your Wednesday night with us,

02:00:31.760 we're going to give you an exclusive look at the first scene that we're releasing publicly

02:00:37.180 of the film.

02:00:42.640 The white participants in the group feel that there's something in themselves that they have

02:00:47.560 to overcome when all that's being requested of you is that you be.

02:00:53.720 Hello.

02:00:54.720 Hi.

02:00:55.720 How are you?

02:00:56.720 How are you?

02:00:57.720 I'm sorry about that.

02:00:58.720 Oh, no problem.

02:00:59.720 You good?

02:01:00.720 Yeah.

02:01:01.720 Yeah.

02:01:02.720 Remind me of your name again.

02:01:03.720 Uh, uh, Steven.

02:01:04.720 Steven?

02:01:05.720 Yeah?

02:01:06.720 Okay.

02:01:07.720 Um, do you want to come up?

02:01:10.720 Come up?

02:01:11.720 Yeah.

02:01:12.720 Do you want to come up and share anything?

02:01:14.720 Sure.

02:01:15.720 What do you want me to share?

02:01:16.720 Whatever's on your mind.

02:01:17.720 I just want to know that, like, my physical safety and yours and everybody else's here

02:01:21.720 is okay.

02:01:22.720 Why would your physical safety not be okay?

02:01:24.720 Did I miss something?

02:01:29.720 I don't feel comfortable.

02:01:31.720 What?

02:01:32.720 Can you guys catch me up to speed on what's going on here?

02:01:35.720 You don't need to be caught up.

02:01:36.720 We're going to be silent.

02:01:38.720 Is it because I said I had 17 black friends?

02:01:40.720 It might have been 15.

02:01:41.720 It depends on how you count them.

02:01:46.720 I would really appreciate it if you left, so that the people who actually want to be

02:01:49.720 here and deserve to be here can get what they need.

02:01:51.720 I do want to be here.

02:01:52.720 Can you please leave?

02:01:53.720 I would like it if you left.

02:01:55.720 I'm trying to learn.

02:01:56.720 I'm on this journey.

02:01:57.720 Come with me.

02:01:58.720 Well...

02:01:59.720 Thank you.

02:02:00.720 I didn't consent to be touched.

02:02:02.720 I'm not offering to touch you.

02:02:04.720 I'm offering to walk you out.

02:02:05.720 Will you walk with me and I'll answer your questions?

02:02:07.720 Okay.

02:02:08.720 I'll admit it.

02:02:09.720 I'll admit it.

02:02:10.720 My name's not Steven.

02:02:12.720 Maybe you already knew that.

02:02:14.720 My name is Matt Walsh.

02:02:16.720 Mm-hmm.

02:02:17.720 We know.

02:02:20.720 I just was here on this journey that I'm just starting, but I see that I'm not wanted.

02:02:26.720 If you were on your journey, then you would have told us who you were, your real name, but you didn't.

02:02:30.720 Are you saying I needed a better disguise?

02:02:32.720 Is that what you...

02:02:33.720 I don't know.

02:02:34.720 Maybe.

02:02:35.720 You can figure that out as you walk out the door.

02:02:38.720 Maybe.

02:02:39.720 Yeah.

02:02:40.720 Maybe.

02:02:42.720 Thank you so much.

02:02:43.720 I really had the transformative experience myself.

02:02:46.720 And my pronouns are he, him.

02:02:48.720 I did everything I could to fit in.

02:03:01.720 I opened up.

02:03:02.720 I was raw and emotional.

02:03:04.720 I told them about my black friends.

02:03:07.720 It was no use.

02:03:08.720 They rejected me.

02:03:09.720 And they called the police.

02:03:12.720 My mere presence in the room caused them pain.

02:03:16.720 I'll never be accepted if I look like this.

02:03:19.720 If they know that I'm Matt Walsh, I'll always be an outsider.

02:03:25.720 I need to go deeper undercover.

02:03:27.720 A whole new identity.

02:03:29.720 If I want to be an ally, I need to look like one.

02:03:32.720 Like someone who is progressive, tolerant, enlightened.

02:03:37.720 Let me think.

02:03:38.720 Have I ever met anyone like that?

02:03:42.720 Ah, yes.

02:03:43.720 Yes, I have.

02:03:46.720 What is a woman?

02:03:52.720 Why do you ask that question?

02:03:53.720 Am I racist?

02:04:10.720 Rated PG-13.

02:04:11.720 Buy tickets.

02:04:12.720 No.

02:04:13.720 Thank you.

02:04:14.720 I feel like I need to back up here for a second.

02:04:28.720 Explain a little bit of what you just saw there.

02:04:31.720 So that was a, I don't want to explain it too much because I want you to go pre-order the tickets and go watch it when it comes out.

02:04:37.720 But that was a white grief support group, which is a real thing that exists.

02:04:42.720 All this stuff is very, very real.

02:04:45.720 And that was a support group for white people who are grieving the fact that they have privilege.

02:04:51.720 Yes.

02:04:53.720 And so we started this journey of making this film.

02:04:56.720 And we found out about this group and we said, well, of course, I have to go.

02:05:00.720 This is a good place for me to start my journey.

02:05:01.720 And when we walked in there, they, the first thing they told us, so this became a theme with some of the other people we talked to in the film, that they said that you're not allowed to have white tears.

02:05:15.720 And if you cry, if you're a white person and you're crying, you need to leave the room.

02:05:19.720 We have a cry room for you outside of the room for you to cry your hideous tears.

02:05:24.720 And so I go into the white groups, the white support group.

02:05:31.720 I'm very emotional.

02:05:33.720 I get very, I get quite emotional up to this point, revealing my, my struggles as a white man to the group.

02:05:40.720 At a certain point, I had to leave and go to the cry room.

02:05:42.720 I was so emotional and the problem is that while I was in the cry room, apparently one or two people in the group realized who I was and they talked to everybody else in the group.

02:05:57.720 So that when I came back from the cry room, that's what happened.

02:06:00.720 So, so you, you also have to understand how, how hard that is for me that I was already emotional.

02:06:07.720 And then I come out and that's what happens.

02:06:12.720 And they did.

02:06:13.720 Did they actually call the police?

02:06:14.720 They did in fact call the police.

02:06:18.720 Now I was, I was long gone at that point.

02:06:21.720 I, I, in fact, our camera crew was calling me and saying, they're calling the police.

02:06:24.720 I don't know what to do.

02:06:26.720 I said, well, I'm leaving the state.

02:06:27.720 You guys just stay there.

02:06:31.720 I was in New Jersey by then.

02:06:32.720 I'm like, that's your, just, just get it on, on tape is all, all that matters.

02:06:35.720 Um, but they were very, very upset about it.

02:06:37.720 And, uh, and all I'll say is that, you know, that's just the beginning of the movie.

02:06:41.720 That's what starts the journey.

02:06:43.720 And that's, that's where we realized that I need to don some kind of disguise.

02:06:47.720 And, you know, lots of people that have seen the trailer have, have said, like, it's not much of a disguise.

02:06:51.720 How did that fool people?

02:06:53.720 That I don't know, but I mean, I, it's like a man bun will do wonders is what we do.

02:06:59.720 So the movie is, is a great successor to what is a woman, but it, it is an evolution.

02:07:11.720 It's not another sort of documentary where Matt, the every man goes in and has conversations with these people.

02:07:17.720 It really is something that we haven't seen before from the right, which is, it's a genuine comedy in which you allow these people to be the butt of the joke.

02:07:29.720 In a way that we've historically only seen from, uh, Sasha Baron Cohen or even Jon Stewart in sort of the, the heyday of, uh, uh, of the daily show where you just, you both mock and allow these people to mock themselves in a way that I don't think we've ever, that we've ever seen on the right.

02:07:52.720 It's a truly special, uh, film and a true risk, which is why just to, uh, just to reiterate, that's why it's so important that, uh, pre-ordering tickets is so important.

02:08:12.720 And I know that if you're like me, I've never pre-ordered a movie ticket in my life because I don't know, like I get to see one movie every 10 years.

02:08:21.720 I don't know when that time will come when it comes, we go.

02:08:24.720 Um, but it's so important in this case because, uh, that determines a lot determines how many theaters get to show the movie.

02:08:32.720 And, uh, it determines the success of the movie in a, in a, in a big way.

02:08:36.720 And if we want more films like this to make it into theaters, then, uh, that's why we need all of your support.

02:08:42.720 And the thing is, we're not just asking for charity here.

02:08:44.720 I promise that when you go watch the movie, uh, you're in for a really, uh, fun time at the movies as well.

02:08:50.720 Friends, we're so grateful to you for spending your Wednesday night with us at the Ryman Auditorium.

02:09:03.720 Thank you for being a great audience.

02:09:10.720 Remember to get out there, buy those advanced tickets for Am I Racist at amiracist.com.

02:09:15.720 Let's show Hollywood that Nashville is now movie city.

02:09:18.720 Special thanks.

02:09:20.720 Special thanks to the gospel touch choir for making this a beautiful show for us.

02:09:25.720 Special thanks to our sponsors, Birch gold and good ranchers to all of our daily wire plus subscribers to make it possible for us to do the work that we do.

02:09:40.720 And to you guys for being here tonight.

02:09:42.720 Thank you very much.

02:09:43.720 God bless you.

02:09:44.720 And we'll see you next time.

02:09:45.720 Thank you.

02:09:46.720 Good night, guys.

02:09:47.720 Good night.

02:09:48.720 Hey.

02:09:49.720 There we go.

02:09:50.720 Thank you, guys.

02:09:51.720 Let's be clear.

02:09:52.720 What's happening in this country?

02:09:53.720 It's Nazi-ism.

02:09:54.720 Republicans are Nazis.

02:09:55.720 You cannot separate yourselves from the bad white people.

02:10:04.720 Growing up in the 90s, I never thought much about race.

02:10:08.720 Sure, you noticed.

02:10:09.720 But I'm sure I'm not sure what's happening in this country.

02:10:13.720 The Russians are Nazis.

02:10:14.720 Nazis. You cannot separate yourselves from the bad white people. Growing up in the 90s, I never

02:10:21.400 thought much about race. Sure, you noticed, but never really seemed to matter that much. At least

02:10:26.100 not to me. Being a white, straight, cisgender man, it's the top of the pile. I'm on the top of the

02:10:30.700 pile. That's me. Am I racist? I would really appreciate it if you left. I'm trying to learn.

02:10:35.640 I'm on this journey. Can you please leave? I'm going to sort this out. I need to go deeper

02:10:40.200 undercover. If I want to be an ally, I need to look like one.

02:10:44.720 What is racism? Martin Luther King said not to judge people by the... Martin Luther King

02:10:53.620 said a lot of stuff. Is America inherently racist? What the hell is that? The word inherent is

02:10:58.940 challenging there. America is racist to its bones. All of the... So inherently. Yeah. The entire

02:11:04.740 system has to burn. And I'm not going to even use save this country. This country is not worth

02:11:08.220 saving. This country is a piece of shit. Oh, sorry.

02:11:14.720 They're going to say I'm racist. Joining us now is Matt, certified DEI expert. Here's

02:11:20.900 my certification. Where are you guys in your anti-racist journeys?

02:11:25.420 So I'll look around the room and point to who we believe is the most racist person in the

02:11:30.620 room. We want to rename the George Washington Monument to the George Floyd Monument. Would

02:11:35.320 you mind signing it? You will? What do you think about this issue of heteronormativity and how

02:11:40.140 it intersects with the broader structures of racism in society?

02:11:45.240 Oh. What's up with white people?

02:11:49.240 What are you doing to decenter your whiteness? Who's making it the center? Why are they doing

02:11:53.100 that? And what you're doing is you're stretching out of your whiteness. This is more for you

02:11:57.480 in this field.

02:11:58.320 White folks. White supremacy. White woman. White boy. White entitlement. White. Centering. White. Silence.

02:12:05.340 Is there a black person around here? There's a black person right here. Does he not exist?

02:12:13.920 Hi, Robin. Hi. And what's your name? I'm Matt. Matt. Hi, Matt. Thanks to meet you.

02:12:19.620 I just had to ask who you are because you have to be careful.

02:12:24.000 Never be too careful.

02:12:24.940 In theaters September 13th. It's rated PG-13. Buy tickets now.

02:12:54.940 That's BollandBranch.com to save 20% off and unlock free shipping. Limited time only. Exclusions do apply.

The Michael Knowles Show - October 13, 2021

Daily Wire Backstage Live at the Ryman

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