Daily Wire Backstage: Now With Even More Dystopia!
Episode Stats
Length
1 hour and 33 minutes
Words per Minute
215.02348
Summary
Ben Shapiro, Andrew Klavan, Matt Walsh, and the God King, Jeremy Boring, discuss the latest news and cultural events, all while enjoying some fine whiskey and cigars. The latest episode of Daily Wire Backstage is right around the corner, and you do not want to miss it. Don t miss it! Subscribe today using our podcast s promo code POWER10 for 10% off your first pack!
Transcript
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Hey, Michael Knowles here, and do I have a treat for you. The latest episode of Daily Wire
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backstage is right around the corner, and you do not want to miss it. Don't miss me,
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Ben Shapiro, Matt Walsh, Andrew Klavan, and the God King, Jeremy Boring, as we discuss the latest
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news and cultural events, all while enjoying some fine whiskey and cigars. It is going to be all
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Welcome to the Daily Wire backstage. Joining us tonight, Andrew Klavan. Accused hospital
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Palmer, Matt Walsh, and keep it straight. Michael Knowles, and I'm very sorry. I know
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it will cause you great harm and pain that will always be with us. Ben Shapiro, I'm Daily
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Wire, God King, lowercase g, lowercase k, Jeremy Boring. Listen, we're doing things completely
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different around here, and we've started adding a members block to every show. This show is
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no exception, so you'll be with us for the next 90 minutes, and after that, we hope you'll
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head over to dailywire.com and become a member. You'll get 35% off with code PLUS, because we
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are, after all, Daily Wire Plus, and we'll be bringing you the members block of Backstage,
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which is just more of us doing the same thing that we're doing here, only you pay for it.
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It actually is really important, and as we've made this transition to Daily Wire Plus, we're
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trying to bring more and more value to our paying subscribers there who make it possible
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for us to do all of this, and so the members block is just another way of us giving them
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a little bit of extra access, and we'd love for you to become a member if you are not
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So, I don't know which one of the two threats to civilization that we're going to be today.
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Hey, Jeremy, in fairness, so it's true, we've got, you know, the hospital bomber and the
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podcast convention beer adder, but in fairness, according to Joe Biden, all of us are terrorists
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because, statistically, the entire Republican Party poses an extreme existential threat to
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Well, you make a fine point, and undoubtedly, he'll be sending F-15s to remedy the situation
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I want to start by talking, Matt, about your situation, apparently.
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You know, the whole thing is just, it's obviously completely absurd.
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I mean, the story is that after a couple of weeks of, not just me, by the way, lots of
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us talking about the fact that Boston Children's Hospital performs gender surgeries on minors,
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which they do, that is a fact, after talking about this, because what we've been told is
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that if you even acknowledge this reality, then you are inciting violence, even if you don't
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And then, what do you know, last night, there was supposedly a bomb threat, and immediately
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the left realized that it's me and also Libs of TikTok as the others.
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We got together, and we put this bomb threat together, I suppose.
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You have her number because of her being doxed recently.
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Libs of TikTok is an Orthodox Jew, by the way, so the Catholic-Jewish alliance rides
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The thing is, even, of course, like, even if there was a bomb threat, there's no connection
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you can draw to the fact that we are simply talking about something that the hospital
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does, and then somebody called in a bomb threat.
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And I also don't feel, you know, when I first heard about this last night, I didn't go on
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Twitter and say, I unequivocally condemn bombing hospitals.
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Again, not to, I mean, unless there are brave right-wing patriots in there trying to fight
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their government, and then it's just F-15 the hell out of that children's hospital.
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But then, of course, it comes, it turns out this morning that it's like, was there even
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Because we're hearing it from the media to begin with.
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But, you know, the police apparently showed up.
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The first indication is that the media, last night, they're all over this.
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This morning, I woke up, I thought there was going to be headlines all over the place
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about bomb threats at the children's hospital, and there's nothing, they're not talking about
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And then you realize that the police showed up, they were gone, they cleared the scene
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And then the post-millennial gets a hold of the police report, they put it out there.
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On the police report, it never even says there was a bomb threat, just that there was a
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call about one, and then they showed up, and there was nothing on the scene, and they
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left, which makes you wonder, was there even a threat?
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Or did someone at the hospital see that someone left a bag and just, and call and freak
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This is an absolute true story, that we had an employee quit one time, and they filed
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a series of sexual harassment complaints against the company.
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When I say a series, I mean an exhaustive series of sexual harassment complaints.
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And one of them was that one of our employees had been listening to porn on his computer in
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And I couldn't, my very first thought was that in the long-storied history of man's fall
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and sin, no one has ever used the term, listened to pornography.
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And this is kind of that way, like, what is a call about a bomb threat?
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Like, that language, no one has ever used this language before.
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Somebody called the hospital, like, somebody just called the hospital and they said, hey
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Have you heard of this thing called a bomb threat?
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You know, whether the bomb threat, there was no bomb, but whether someone actually called
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And even if they did, there's no way, was that someone on the left?
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It seems more likely to me it's someone on the left.
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The left gains more from a bomb threat than the right does.
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Well, beyond that, the left has this stupid game, which is that if they can any way tangentially
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connect anyone to an act of violence who is prominent on the right, they will do it.
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And meanwhile, they will openly bail people out of prison in the middle of riots and then
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declare that they are in favor of funding the police, which is what Joe Biden did this
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So like, they're never responsible for any of the violence that they help.
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Because on this particular issue, what the left wants to say is that there are no gender
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And then if you speak up and say, well, no, I have evidence that it is happening.
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You're not allowed to prevent, present evidence against them without.
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It's even a little more insidious because what they will say, it's what Mike Anton calls
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They will say, hey, we're doing gender surgeries for minors.
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And then we will say, wait, wait, you're doing gender surgeries for minors.
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And so they're allowed to celebrate what they're doing.
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The minute you repeat their words back to them with any criticism, you're a conspiracy
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I noticed this, by the way, this week about Lizzo.
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You're like, you are a fat, sex positive woman.
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You know, I'll tell you, when I see all these kinds of headlines, it makes me want to crawl
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So I want to talk about the second big Daily Wire controversy of the last week, and that
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I think we have video here of Ben's assault on podcast movement.
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Yeah, I just want to say exactly what happened.
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I haven't really spoken about this yet, but I actually do think it's an important story.
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And that's that podcast movement is the premier gathering of podcasters.
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It's an industry conference that happens every year.
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And this year, because the Daily Wire is selling more and more of our own shows as we bring
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more and more of our sales infrastructure in-house, we sponsored podcast movement.
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You can go to their website, look under sponsors, there's Daily Wire, and we purchased a booth
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Well, a very good friend of ours, someone who's been very good to the company, who in the podcast
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space was also having a retirement party that evening, the evening of podcast movement.
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So Ben and I flew into Dallas to attend this guy's retirement party, slap him on the back,
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thank him for everything that he's done for the Daily Wire over the years.
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While we're there, we stopped by the conference that we are sponsoring to visit the booth that
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we paid for and our employees who have been there all week working and doing the important
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You know, it's kind of a lightly attended conference.
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This isn't like, there's not like 25,000 people or something, but the people who were
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there, people came up, they wanted to get a picture with Ben.
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We were probably on the floor for all of five minutes, five minutes, yeah, maybe 10.
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We made a loop, walked around, went to the retirement party, came home.
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I wake up the next morning and I see these tweets.
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And I'm going to read the tweets in their entirety because I think that they're so remarkable.
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This was put out by the official podcast movement Twitter account.
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Hi folks, we owe you an apology before the sessions kick off for the day.
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Yesterday afternoon, Ben Shapiro briefly visited the PM22 Expo area near the Daily Wire booth.
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Though he was not registered or expected, we take full responsibility for the harm done
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At least they didn't shuck off the responsibility.
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We agreed to sell the Daily Wire a first-time booth based on the company's large presence in
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The weight of that decision is now painfully clear.
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A drop-in, however unlikely, should have been considered a possibility.
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Many in our community are appalled, not just by this incident, but by our choice to take
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As a Twitter user said, this was signed off on by a human.
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Yes, during event planning, the dangerous nature of the company's messaging was overlooked.
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Many in our community are appalled, not just by this incident, but by our choice to take
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Those of you who called this unacceptable are right.
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In nine wonderful years growing and celebrating this medium, podcast movement has made mistakes.
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The pain caused by this one will always stick with us.
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We promise that sponsors will be more carefully considered moving forward.
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Just to clarify, the Daily Wire representatives were scheduled, no Daily Wire representatives were
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scheduled to appear on panels, and Shapiro remained in the common space and did not have a badge.
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Thank you for reading, and we hope you'll continue to join us from here on out.
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I have to tell you, when I first saw this, I had my usual reaction to everything, which is I cracked up.
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And then, first of all, I started to feel resentful because I haven't received an apology.
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But the other thing is, it actually isn't as funny as it could be, you know?
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I mean, whenever anybody attacks George Soros, who is actually an evil plotter trying to destroy
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America, everybody said, well, you're anti-Semitic, you know, because George Soros passed through
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a kind of fog of Jewry at some point, you know?
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And here we have, you know, like the incredible shrinking man, he went through this kind of
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You know, an actual Jew is harming us simply by existing.
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And I have to say, I thought about that for a minute, and I thought, well, what's the
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You know, it's not, I want a final solution to this.
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I thought, like, this actually isn't as funny as I thought it was for the first half
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If Ben's mere presence does harm, then the only way to prevent harm is to ensure that
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The joke's on them, because honestly, I didn't tell anyone, but I did leave some of my aura
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So, well after I had left, I still lingered there.
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Well, I appreciate that you have a sense of humor about it, but it's not funny.
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If someone's presence causes harm, then the obvious conclusion is that they must not have
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The second thing is, we gave these people our money.
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So, I immediately read these, and I go to DM the president of podcast movement to figure
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He's preemptively blocked me on Twitter, so I call some of our pals around the movement,
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you know, people who we've done business with, and ask them to apply some soft pressure.
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I say, listen, I'm going to have to go to war with podcast movement.
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It is an outright expression of bigotry, but I don't want to do that.
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Please apply some soft pressure and try to get these guys to retract this statement and
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issue an apology and commit to having the dominant podcast conference in the country be inclusive
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of the sixth largest podcast company in the world and one of the 10 largest podcasts in
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It seems like maybe we should be present at podcast movement.
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So, people made a few phone calls, and then I hear later that evening from one of the owners
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of podcast movement, and I'm going to tell you what the guy said, and I'm going to say
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something about myself that I'm actually a little embarrassed about, which is I cried
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I've never gotten emotional over one of these things before.
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Obviously, Ben's got a great perspective on it.
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The guy calls me, and I'm just going to hear him out.
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I'm going to hear what he has to say, hoping maybe that this is the resolution we've been
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And he says, Jeremy, you know, so-and-so gave me your phone number, and I just wanted to
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let you know that we have a policy here in podcast movement that the talent not appear.
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And you'll notice, like, Joe Rogan has never appeared on our stage.
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And so Ben showing up caused some of my other sponsors to be angry because they want to
00:17:03.580
know, why can't our talent be here if Ben can be here?
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And so I just want you to know this statement is a reaction to other sponsors being angry
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And I just started reading from the tweets, the danger of this company, the dangerous-
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The pain that will be with us forever, the harm caused by his very presence.
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You're saying that that's because he showed up?
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By the way, podcast hosts appear on all of their panels.
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The whole fracking conference is for podcasters, for people in podcasting.
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I said, you're going to tell me this isn't political?
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You sent us an email that said we can't be here anymore.
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Because I told them to ignore your stupid email and go to our booth anyway.
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I said, there's no one else in the world who would be subjected to this kind of bigotry
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You could not treat anyone on the left in any way.
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Disney would have walked out of the conference, right?
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Like, iHeart and Westwood One, Cumulus, all would have walked out of the conference.
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But you can treat a conservative this way with unadulterated bigotry on the page.
00:18:41.260
Anyway, what I told the guy, well, I didn't say all that.
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What I said to the guy was, take down the tweet, apologize for the tweet,
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and commit to keeping this conference a neutral place for all podcasters.
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And he said, well, now the problem with that is that just makes it political on the other side.
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And I said, yeah, I can't unstep on the fucking rake for you, pal.
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I said, well, I'll have to talk to my people about whether or not we can do that.
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Then I get a call from the guy, and he says, hey, we're going to have a meeting.
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The conference is over now, and we're going to have a meeting on Tuesday.
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Everybody needs Monday off because we put in a hard week's work, you know, showing prejudice to Jews.
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He said, but I'm going to get the team together and see if maybe we can make a new policy, he said.
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We had paid $30,000 or something like that for the booth.
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I care about my $200 million business that you injured.
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I care about my 250 employees whose jobs you put at risk by using your leadership position in the podcast movement
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to communicate that our very existence causes harm and that the words that we speak are dangerous
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Maybe we'd like Ben to be on stage with somebody from the left next year.
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Maybe we'd like you guys to help us with the policy.
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Or maybe we'll decide in our policy just not to have politics from either side going forward.
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But one way or the other, we'll let the new policy be our statement.
00:20:29.480
And I said, well, I'd love to work on that policy if you take down the offensive tweets that call for the annihilation, essentially,
00:20:36.300
the rhetorical annihilation of one of my close friends and business partners, and commit to not doing that in the future.
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I said, and while you're at it, make sure that your apology is just as groveling as the apology that you put out for taking our money.
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Because a bigot who commits bigotry really should grovel a little bit for all of our forgiveness.
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Like, that's a thing that actually causes harm, that actually causes pain.
00:21:01.960
So he says, well, I'm going to call you on Tuesday if you'll hold off on hitting us until Tuesday.
00:21:12.160
So yesterday at 6 p.m. our time, I get a call from the assistant of the man who preemptively blocked me on Twitter,
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And she says, you know, the president of the movement would really like to talk to you.
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So we returned the call, probably within a half hour.
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They got back to us today and said, very much would like to talk to you.
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Our first availability is September 14th at 3 p.m.
00:21:39.220
September, two weeks from now, at 3 p.m., I can finally get on the phone with a guy who preemptively blocked me
00:21:44.520
after apologizing for taking my money and saying that the existence, the mere presence of my friend and business partner causes harm.
00:21:53.920
This is, again, I've said it before, this is a kind of bigotry that could not be expressed against any other kind of person that exists in our country today.
00:22:08.200
And there will be essentially no consequences for these sons of bitches.
00:22:15.040
They'll talk to us in a few weeks, and maybe they'll write a policy.
00:22:21.580
They've already lied to you when they said this is not political.
00:22:26.920
And I'd like to point out here that, again, there are a lot of podcast companies there,
00:22:31.240
and they are all supposedly in favor of things like open debate and talking about things.
00:22:35.460
And I can guarantee you this, if they had said about, say, John Lovett at Pod Save America
00:22:40.480
and coming and visited the Crooked booth, and they had said that his very presence caused harm,
00:22:45.020
and therefore he was banned, I would have been openly mocking them, as would you.
00:22:51.320
We would have threatened to take our booth off the floor for that sort of thing.
00:22:54.460
We would have said that we would not co-sponsor the event.
00:23:01.480
From Oxford Road, who put out a statement saying this is unacceptable and ridiculous.
00:23:04.080
Because not a single other company, including companies that make tens of millions of dollars
00:23:13.500
Our own representatives in this space who have made tens of millions of dollars
00:23:17.620
could not be bothered to validate our right, to publicly validate our right to exist.
00:23:23.280
Plus, when they do this to people like, what's that guy's, Alex, what's his name?
00:23:28.220
The guy's at least a loon, whereas you're pretty much a conservative.
00:23:32.700
But again, this isn't based on anything Ben said.
00:23:37.040
I didn't have a conversation with anyone about politics.
00:23:47.900
You've never come on and said anything that made the rest of us move away.
00:23:53.020
As I've said before, I am not sure that it's bewildering to me on a personal level, because
00:24:01.760
The gap between me and the perception of me as highly dangerous human and then me in
00:24:06.680
reality is maybe the greatest gap between supposed dangerous human and person in reality
00:24:12.760
But it's the fact that people listen to the show and people watch what we do, and that's
00:24:17.460
And so what they are actively attempting to do now is cast an entire side of the political
00:24:28.140
This is so indicative of, there were some people online who aren't part of the podcast
00:24:34.760
Ryan Grimm at The Intercept, who's on the left, or Yashar Lee, who's on the left, who
00:24:37.880
came out and said, this is insane and ridiculous.
00:24:47.960
The day before, actually not the day, the day this happened, we had a meeting with one
00:24:53.640
And somebody at that company said, you know what I'd love to do?
00:24:55.780
I would love to broker a joint show between you and the people of Pod Save America.
00:25:01.060
And I said to them, that's never going to happen.
00:25:03.720
And the reason it's never going to happen is because these people do not want us to be
00:25:12.320
I mean, Dan Pfeiffer from Pod Save America literally went on MSNBC and said that we should be quashed
00:25:18.160
I've said many times, I say on my show routinely, I say, if you want to know, people always ask,
00:25:22.540
how do I discern the fact in an opinion podcast from the opinion?
00:25:25.300
And what I always say literally every time is, listen to my show, listen to Pod Save America,
00:25:29.260
the stuff where we're saying the same stuff, that's the core of facts.
00:25:38.080
They would never in a million years say that anyone should listen to the show.
00:25:41.860
In fact, they would say that the show should come off the air.
00:25:43.920
And so the whole predicate of us having a functioning republic is the idea that there
00:25:47.700
are a bunch of people I disagree with who should be allowed at things like a neutral
00:25:53.700
And no one out, literally no one at that event filled with these companies that do free
00:26:00.460
No one except for Dan, literally no one said a public word to chastise podcast movement
00:26:08.620
But this is, they take down libs of TikTok for basically putting the left on video.
00:26:13.720
It's just holding a mirror up to what they are.
00:26:17.120
When you're a vampire, you don't want to look at them.
00:26:18.500
But you hit the nail on the head, Jeremy, which is that they're going after Ben because
00:26:24.360
He's the big dog in the space and you have giant reach Ben.
00:26:26.720
And so this is what really spooks me about this.
00:26:30.300
You have giant reach because you are as mainstream as it gets.
00:26:35.440
So when they say Ben Shapiro is too far, I say, you ever listen to my show?
00:26:45.780
So what they're really saying is the entire right is gone.
00:26:50.080
This is when Joe Biden says, listen, some Republicans are good Republicans, but the MAGA
00:26:55.100
Republicans, by which he means everyone, by which he means statistically everyone other
00:27:00.060
than Bill Kristol and his like four friends who have tea together, you know, 100% statistically
00:27:05.600
of the Republican Party is in a sort of sometimes kind of way, MAGA Republicans.
00:27:10.380
But I'm not saying get rid of half the country.
00:27:13.040
Here's what really worries me is like the combination of things happening because on
00:27:17.080
one hand, there's an escalation of it's not just your opinions that are harmful, it's
00:27:21.420
And then we're being told that all MAGA Republicans, which is most Republicans, are extremists and
00:27:25.900
a threat to democracy for voting as a threat to democracy.
00:27:29.360
We're being told that if conservatives simply speak and present arguments or actually present
00:27:35.180
facts that were terrorists, stochastic terrorists is the phrase now that they like to use.
00:27:39.480
Libs at TikTok, as you point out, she got kicked off of Twitter.
00:27:44.940
And then on top of that, so that's what's happening.
00:27:48.240
And then also there's another escalation in just the total lack of accountability on the
00:27:52.840
And we're sort of used to that, but it's, it seemed to be worse now than it's ever been
00:27:56.040
where there's just, they can do whatever they want.
00:27:58.240
I mean, I've been having this back and forth with this person on Twitter who's been like
00:28:04.200
openly organizing this drug running operation to minor children with hormone drugs.
00:28:13.180
Committing felonies, breaking probably 50 laws all at once.
00:28:18.300
And, you know, you contact the DEA, you contact everyone, you can't, nobody cares.
00:28:25.520
First of all, it, it, it creates an environment where they're basically setting the stage here
00:28:31.220
to start essentially rounding people up and I don't know, throwing them in prison.
00:28:34.340
But then on the right, it also has this radicalizing effect because people get desperate.
00:28:38.740
I mean, they're, they're accusing us of being radicals and being dangerous.
00:28:44.860
And they're going to create that because people, when they look around and see there's no
00:28:48.340
accountability, these people can do whatever they want to us.
00:28:56.920
And it's the, it's the end game of something that's been going on for 50, 60 years, though.
00:29:01.000
This idea that we, that they are the people who determine what virtue is, who determine
00:29:08.560
I mean, they call, they call us racist, not because we're racist.
00:29:12.020
I don't actually know that many racists, but they call us because we disagree with them.
00:29:16.580
And so if they set the standard, our ideas are the non-racist ideas.
00:29:20.300
If you disagree with us, then ultimately we are going to be, you know, basically demonized.
00:29:26.960
A lot of people, one of the things I really loved about this whole episode, the only thing
00:29:29.900
I really loved about this whole episode is that on Twitter, I must've read 200 reactions
00:29:35.320
that were, I guess they're going to start their own podcast movement now.
00:29:42.300
Like we've established a reputation at the Daily Wire as we don't take this stuff lying down
00:29:47.800
and we don't just complain about it, we challenge.
00:29:49.860
And so, you know, a lot of people want to know what we're going to do.
00:29:52.100
It took a minute to come up with IHateHarrys.com, like Jeremy's Razors wasn't like an overnight
00:30:00.560
But I will say this, we will not allow podcast movement to continue to present itself as a
00:30:09.340
If you're a conservative podcaster, they don't want you there.
00:30:12.620
If you're a conservative podcaster and you're with any of the major podcasting companies,
00:30:18.920
They want to make money off of your success while your political foes try to destroy you.
00:30:27.180
And then they will watch you die when the left finally does land the kill shot.
00:30:31.560
And then they will shake their heads, find another conservative talent and go extract
00:30:38.820
It's the minute, not that they step out of line, this conservative who goes,
00:30:42.580
it's the minute they get anywhere near as big as Ben Shapiro.
00:30:46.600
The minute you're a little too successful, that's when you're at it.
00:30:50.860
I mean, if you guys watch Netflix, I mean, Netflix fired a lot of its social justice warriors.
00:30:57.160
But if you watch the stuff that they say is their top shows, for a while after George
00:31:06.200
And I was sitting there going like, nobody's watching this.
00:31:07.860
They're telling us this is number one, two, three.
00:31:12.720
And I just thought like, yeah, because, you know, it's basically a, it's still basically
00:31:18.660
Black people are as conservative as anybody else.
00:31:21.440
The Hispanic group, whatever they want to call them now, they're drifting over to the
00:31:26.980
They're losing, they are losing the people who have supported them all these years because
00:31:31.220
they're saying, you know, this doesn't represent me.
00:31:32.880
It doesn't represent most people to have their kids told that they're the wrong state.
00:31:36.760
But they, it might be a center-right country, but we, our vote doesn't really count culturally.
00:31:41.680
Whereas if you're in a protected class, your vote counts times 10, which is, which is another
00:31:45.560
important point here about this, uh, about the podcast conference is that from what I
00:31:49.420
saw, there certainly was, it wasn't like they were getting, because Ben showed up, they
00:31:54.220
were getting all this pressure for publicly, people were coming out and blasting them.
00:31:57.680
I saw one person, it was, it was a trans person, right?
00:32:00.800
I think one, one person, it was a woman, it was in the tweet, it said uterus.
00:32:13.840
So one, one person that we could tell complained, they're in a protected class.
00:32:19.020
They, they, they have the LGBT thing that they can claim.
00:32:21.660
And, and because of that one complaint, that's the power that they wield.
00:32:25.740
The, the, at the time that podcast movement put out their groveling, bigoted bullshit tweet,
00:32:30.420
I believe that that original post had 15 likes.
00:32:33.740
And I said to the guy on the, on that first phone call, you chose, you, you made a calculated
00:32:39.680
risk assessment and concluded that the higher risk to your company was to get on the wrong
00:32:46.420
side of a person with 15 likes, as opposed to expressing bigotry to a company with 50 million
00:32:54.920
You made that calculation, but, and you probably, he probably isn't wrong.
00:32:58.220
That is where the great risk is the left, because they are so totalitarian because they're so
00:33:03.080
unforgiving because they're so tyrannical right now.
00:33:06.800
I mean, what if, what if people just stood up to them?
00:33:09.500
Well, then it would go away like anything else, right?
00:33:11.640
That would be the end of it, which is why the fact that people who actually profit off
00:33:15.020
of us couldn't be bothered to acknowledge our right to exist is the most deeply offensive
00:33:20.340
And I will turn this into a promo because it is a direct attack on our business.
00:33:24.160
I mean, we derive a great percentage of our revenue from ads on our shows.
00:33:30.060
And this is a direct attack on our ability to function in the podcast ad space.
00:33:34.700
And that's another reason to be grateful to our Daily Wire Plus subscribers.
00:33:39.560
Please go over to Daily Wire Plus, become a subscriber.
00:33:41.720
If you're not one, if you are one, please stick with us.
00:33:44.940
That is the only safe revenue that we have as a company, is the people who want to be in
00:33:51.820
That's why we're adding things like members block.
00:33:53.500
It's why we have been bringing all access back online now that we're recovering from
00:33:59.600
And there are still a few wrinkles, but it's all, you know, we're moving forward and trying
00:34:04.240
to make this community part of the Daily Wire Plus really come to the fore.
00:34:08.420
Because at the end of the day, it's the only thing we've got.
00:34:11.640
Even the people who make eight figures a year off of us will not acknowledge publicly our
00:34:17.120
This is why the right has ignored, the right ignoring the culture for so long has gotten
00:34:25.520
Always talking politics, but this is pure culture.
00:34:28.040
It's pure culture that he feels that a 15-like tweet from some, you know, protected class person
00:34:33.960
is more dangerous than losing your audience, losing our audience.
00:34:37.740
It's an amazing thing what happens to the mind when a narrative takes over, when a narrative
00:34:43.640
It's about the right being nice and the right saying we don't want to engage in tactics.
00:34:52.420
If you guys don't push back, then it's asymmetric.
00:34:55.860
It means that they do, in a certain sense, have more to fear.
00:34:59.720
Until we existed, until Daily Wire existed, they did have more to fear from the idiot
00:35:03.920
with 15 followers on Twitter than they did from multi-million dollar or even billion dollar
00:35:09.900
Because those conservative companies would just sit back there and they would take it.
00:35:12.960
They would sit there and they'd say, okay, well, you know, we exist at your sufferance.
00:35:17.040
And so, you know, we understand what you're doing.
00:35:24.560
Because the reality is that we're not nice anymore.
00:35:27.160
If you're going to seek to destroy us, then we are not going to sit here and be destroyed.
00:35:30.460
That is not something that I do not acquiesce to the erasure of my own existence.
00:35:38.280
There are certain things I'm not willing to do.
00:35:39.640
And not existing is one of the things I am not willing to do.
00:35:42.340
But we don't even have to fight at their level.
00:35:44.760
All we have to do is speak out without fear because the things that we say make sense to most people.
00:35:55.820
The good news, I think, is that people on the right are hungry to mobilize and to get out.
00:36:03.060
That's one of the reasons why they love the Daily Wire so much is that we are out there doing things.
00:36:14.300
If they're upset about something, they're going to show up.
00:36:19.220
I mean, we could show up at the podcast movement conference next year and have 10,000 people picketing or whatever.
00:36:28.040
Hypothetically, I'm just saying, you don't want your thing to be political.
00:36:37.820
For a long time, there was a strain on the right where the right wanted to lose.
00:36:43.440
If we were going to lose, we were going to lose with dignity.
00:36:46.000
You know, we're just going to step back and lose with dignity.
00:36:48.460
And I think what you realize from that tweet thread from podcast movement, what you realize from them saying, yeah, Ben Shapiro shouldn't exist, that's not very dignified.
00:36:57.380
That doesn't feel, and so I have no interest in losing.
00:37:03.120
I'd rather win with dignity and honor and winning.
00:37:06.960
And that's why the Daily Wire is committed to building alternatives.
00:37:09.820
Because at the end of the day, one of the reasons that the right has gone along with this is because what else are you going to do?
00:37:17.540
If you're still shaving with a razor from a razor company that hates you, you're doing that by choice.
00:37:22.380
You're not doing that because you don't have alternatives.
00:37:24.400
If you're still getting your news from news companies that hate you, you're doing that.
00:37:32.360
That's why we're launching into this kids' content so that you don't have to put your kids in front of what the left wants to serve them up.
00:37:41.780
There are a few, of course, Dan Bongino and others in this parallel economy space.
00:37:45.140
But we have to create economic incentive to move.
00:37:49.180
Because at the end of the day, podcast movement is just a business.
00:37:51.960
It's a business that has made a risk calculation.
00:37:54.520
I want them to reevaluate that risk calculation.
00:37:57.460
And I want to make all of these—I think to have a free country, you have to have a largely neutral economic sphere.
00:38:04.720
The economic sphere needs to be—you don't need to have to think about the politics of your toilet paper company.
00:38:11.540
If you do, it is a real sign that your country is in trouble.
00:38:14.720
And until we have Jeremy's toilet paper company, or Dan Bongino's—I think I'll let Dan do that.
00:38:23.880
But until we have these things, we can't create the conditions for the left.
00:38:34.580
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00:38:43.160
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00:39:44.860
So we've talked a lot about the threat that we represent, obviously, in the world.
00:39:49.520
But we haven't talked about the great savior of the country against threats like ours.
00:39:55.020
And that's, of course, our fearless and absolutely still cogent president, Joe Biden,
00:39:59.560
who has declared us all to be renegades and scoundrels who need to be bombed from the air.
00:40:14.580
So he says that we are a threat to democracy itself.
00:40:17.500
We're also a threat to the future of human existence.
00:40:19.540
He said that because of climate change, of course, which makes us somewhere between Hitler and Thanos,
00:40:25.360
I mean, the phenomenal cosmic power we wield is just beyond compare.
00:40:29.920
I think Gina Carano was actually canceled by Disney for comparing Thanos to Hitler.
00:40:35.700
In any case, there was something that struck me when I heard Joe Biden suggesting that those
00:40:43.080
And that is, these people, people are so ignorant.
00:40:46.320
And when they hear fascist, they just hear Hitler.
00:40:48.160
And when they think of Hitler, they just think of the worst thing that Hitler did, the Holocaust.
00:40:51.400
And so what Joe Biden means when he says semi-fascist is that you want to perform holocausts or something.
00:40:57.360
But when you actually think about the history of fascism,
00:40:59.600
typically fascism begins with the usurpation of massive centralized power and executive authority
00:41:06.640
So I started thinking, can I think of any recent examples of massive usurpations of executive authority?
00:41:15.660
You know, things where people say, I don't actually have the power to do that.
00:41:20.600
Like, say, I don't know, $500 billion in student loan relief that you said one year ago
00:41:25.940
you did not have the power to do, the single largest expenditure by the executive branch
00:41:29.980
via an executive order in the history of the United States.
00:41:33.300
I mean, it would be, I could see why Joe Biden might forget about that since it was four days ago.
00:41:41.920
But the fact that we are all supposed to believe that true fascism lies in resisting
00:41:47.420
the centralizing impulse of a federal government
00:41:50.020
that has over the course of the last year and a half declared on an emergency basis
00:41:53.260
that you all have to vax, that you don't have to pay your mortgage, you won't be evicted,
00:41:58.920
and that we can get rid of all of your student loan debt.
00:42:00.980
You can do all of that on the back of emergency declarations.
00:42:03.900
It's so historically ignorant, and he counts on our ignorance,
00:42:11.320
what people don't understand if you actually want to look at the history of Hitler,
00:42:13.840
centralized power in a dictatorship existed pre-Hitler in Germany.
00:42:17.460
By 1930, Heinrich Brüning, who was the chancellor of Germany at the time,
00:42:20.560
was operating under Article 48 of the Weimar Constitution,
00:42:23.040
which is an emergency declaration making the legislature essentially an adjunct
00:42:30.140
And then it was just a matter of time until the really bad guy took over using that authority.
00:42:34.180
But that's been the pattern in the United States since Barack Obama said in 2014
00:42:37.360
he was just going to act with a pen and a phone if he didn't control Congress.
00:42:39.900
So if you're looking at threats to the American system and threats to democracy,
00:42:43.200
you might want to start with the doddering old fool in the White House
00:42:45.520
who can't string together two sentences out of his doddering stupid face hole.
00:42:48.380
Did you see the op-ed in the New York Times by the Harvard and Yale law professors
00:42:53.760
calling for the end of the Constitution for the simple reason that it got in the way
00:42:59.120
And they said, we've got to get rid of judicial review
00:43:01.060
because we've got to be able to pass laws permitting abortion and controlling energy
00:43:05.860
without this stupid Constitution stuff getting in our way.
00:43:09.660
You know, that would be one thing if it was a 17-year-old saying,
00:43:15.620
But a Harvard and a Yale professor, that's genius.
00:43:18.360
I've got to say, my favorite thing about that is that they have controlled the direction
00:43:27.480
And they've like a string of uninterrupted successes from the left in the judiciary
00:43:38.780
Since when is the Constitution getting in their way anyway?
00:43:44.120
But you know, when Biden said that, and when Corrine Jean-Pierre at the White House
00:43:48.160
doubled down on it, that we're all fascists, my first instinct was, I would bet my life
00:43:54.260
savings that neither Corrine Jean-Pierre nor Joe Biden have, forget about red, they've
00:43:58.820
never even heard of the doctrine of fascism, the Mussolini essay that defines what fascism
00:44:04.060
They would, I have, I studied history and Italian at college.
00:44:07.740
The one thing I think you have to study if you do both of those things is you have to
00:44:13.260
They've never read the early fascist manifesto by the founder of Futurism actually wrote it.
00:44:21.140
Fascism to them, and George Orwell made this point, fascism to the left means something
00:44:28.280
And if I don't like it, then you are, forget Mussolini, you're Hitler and you're a Nazi
00:44:32.660
and we're going to treat you like we would treat Hitler and the Nazis, and you have absolutely
00:44:39.200
So they'll change the definition like they change the definition of every other word.
00:44:43.860
All it means is we are going to shut you up and we are going to push you out of politics.
00:44:48.640
And then they say, well, you know, what we want is unity.
00:44:50.840
Tomorrow we're going to get Joe Biden's big unity speech on the heels of probably half
00:44:55.900
He's going to speak to the soul of the country.
00:44:58.280
Well, first of all, I think his soul left his body quite a while ago, so it's going to
00:45:01.600
He is proof positive that resurrection does exist because he's been dead for quite a
00:45:05.700
while and yet he's still ambulatory in some way.
00:45:13.600
We have right now, ideologically, this vast canyon that separates us and it's not bridgeable.
00:45:21.840
So the only way to have unity is for one side to either just throw itself into the canyon
00:45:26.560
and die or to join, you know, to join the other side.
00:45:31.620
It's just we're obliterated by either assuming ourselves with them or just dying or whatever.
00:45:37.520
I had a sad thought yesterday because Gorbachev died, you know, the last leader of the Soviet
00:45:45.260
I said, Gorbachev, what can we learn from history?
00:45:52.620
And it came to prominence in politics in the 70s.
00:45:58.260
This is right now checking out Gorby and Biden.
00:46:00.880
They presided over the decline and fall of their nations and empires.
00:46:04.560
I'm seeing a whole lot of parallels here, except for one.
00:46:08.860
Gorbachev tried to make his country freer and more transparent.
00:46:13.960
And he was sort of likable and friends with Ronald Reagan.
00:46:16.120
I thought, gosh, 30 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, how on earth do we, the
00:46:20.460
people who won the Cold War, how do we find ourselves in this really awful political...
00:46:27.000
It is really interesting that we defeat people and then take on their characteristics.
00:46:35.940
You know, it started with killing off people who were crippled or mentally ill and all this
00:46:41.120
And now we have actual headlines that say, you know, we've gotten rid of a syndrome through
00:46:49.080
3.3% of deaths in Canada in 2021 were euthanasia, doctor-assisted suicide.
00:46:58.900
By the way, it's going to spike way higher than that.
00:47:01.020
And right now in October, they're pushing for a bill that will legalize euthanasia.
00:47:10.140
You know they're going to kill the weakest children, the ones with problems, the ones with
00:47:15.220
And it's all going to be done with a smile, happy, happy...
00:47:19.500
There was a veteran that called the VA and they suggested to him, oh, have you thought
00:47:26.000
They're actually promoting it as an option if you're feeling down.
00:47:30.160
I mean, this is the thing that I think people forget.
00:47:33.080
And this was Jonah Goldberg's point in liberal fascism, which is that nobody actually shows
00:47:36.860
up at the front door making the case for fascism wearing the shiny boots.
00:47:41.060
I mean, it starts with all of the happy promises and all the wonderful things we can do with
00:47:45.660
If you just get rid of these moral standards here and these moral standards there, your
00:47:49.780
If you don't have to listen to that guy on the other side of the aisle, your life is
00:47:55.660
It makes it a lot less messy if you just give us the power to do whatever we want.
00:48:00.580
I don't think it's if you give up this moral standard and that moral standard.
00:48:03.580
I think it's if you accept this moral standard, it always comes in the guise of a higher morality.
00:48:10.500
It's actually wrong of you to want what you want that veteran to suffer.
00:48:14.820
You want children born with Down syndrome to have to live?
00:48:25.520
They frame all of this in a way that makes it seem like a virtuous thing.
00:48:30.220
You're going to let Ben Shapiro, who disagrees with us, you're going to let him speak and
00:48:35.920
Or you're going to let kids with gender dysphoria kill themselves.
00:48:44.820
It comes back to the idea of having a hierarchy of values.
00:48:48.020
What do you mean that a homosexual marriage isn't the same thing as a straight marriage?
00:48:52.960
What do you mean when you say being fat is less attractive than being fit?
00:48:57.740
What are you talking about, that you should have some kind of value system where you value
00:49:05.360
And I think that is actually an elimination of moral difference.
00:49:08.680
And I actually do think it comes out of the idea that we can all get together, we can all
00:49:14.640
have our own religions, and they're all going to be equal.
00:49:18.100
That's not, you know, it's one thing to be religiously tolerant, which, of course, I'm
00:49:21.560
But it's another thing to say that no religion is better than any other, which is absurd.
00:49:26.220
And, you know, and people actually make the argument, it's really wild, how can you say
00:49:30.680
that one religion is true when there are so many religions?
00:49:42.660
You know, so I think there is this kind of elimination of values, and it's put in terms
00:49:46.680
of the fact that if you hold to values, people suffer, which is true.
00:49:50.320
I mean, I think it's a very unpleasant thing to be fat.
00:49:53.480
I think that people who feel a tremendous amount of shame, they blame the shame on us, but it's
00:49:59.880
But it's incredibly unhealthy, and incredibly shameful, and shaming, self-shaming, and an
00:50:07.120
But just to say it is what makes you an evil person.
00:50:09.700
To say that there's a hierarchy of values is what makes you an evil person.
00:50:12.880
Well, I think that one of the things that they've done, and I'm thinking this through
00:50:15.360
in real time, is they've made the core of human behavior the emotion you feel in response
00:50:22.320
That's the thing that we're supposed to focus in on.
00:50:24.240
And so that means that the behavior is really secondary.
00:50:25.940
So if you feel pain because you're overweight, and then it really doesn't matter whether
00:50:30.560
you're overweight because you choose not to stop eating, or whether you're overweight
00:50:33.620
because you have an actual genetic anomaly that makes you fat.
00:50:37.500
And so therefore, we cannot tell people that they should exercise.
00:50:40.760
Because if we do that, well, you're ignoring the pain.
00:50:43.560
And so the core is always the emotional response.
00:50:46.140
It's not the behavior that leads to the emotional response.
00:50:48.380
And so that's just the difference in kind between how I think religious people who see
00:50:51.980
cause and effect in the world, and people who don't believe in cause and effect, and
00:50:54.680
only care about the emotional state in which you find yourself.
00:50:58.220
That's just two different ways of viewing the world.
00:51:00.560
And if all you're focused in on is the emotional state of people at all times, regardless of the
00:51:04.620
behavior that leads to the emotional state, number one, you're depriving people of their
00:51:07.440
Because the truth is that you can, in fact, in many cases, control your emotional state.
00:51:17.460
So the Bible very rarely, the Old Testament, very rarely commands emotion, right?
00:51:22.660
But there are certain times where the Bible literally commands emotion.
00:51:24.700
It says that you have to love God with all of your heart and all of your soul and all
00:51:27.980
So what does it mean when God says, I want you to love?
00:51:31.700
Or when God says, I want you to love your neighbor as your child?
00:51:35.500
How can you command somebody else to feel something?
00:51:40.780
Nothing you do can change your emotional state.
00:51:42.880
And what religion typically teaches is, fake it until you make it, essentially.
00:51:47.540
Treat other people as you would wish to be treated, and you will end up loving your neighbor
00:51:52.260
It's an absolute certainty that if you are sitting in a movie theater watching a scary movie
00:51:56.880
and you become afraid, if you turn on the light and take your eyes off of the screen, your
00:52:05.620
Because emotions are controlled by externalities.
00:52:08.200
It doesn't mean that every emotion, this is this whole cause and effect, and we've talked
00:52:12.420
about it on this show before, that some things can start in the physical and then infect the
00:52:16.980
spiritual, and some things can start in the spiritual and then manifest in the physical.
00:52:22.780
So you can have fear that isn't caused by an externality, certainly.
00:52:27.440
But in many, many, many instances, you can have, your fear can be caused by the externality.
00:52:37.000
Fear at a scary movie is actually an irrational.
00:52:39.980
You volunteered, and that's what you're there for.
00:52:42.460
But it's also true that, like, as you get, I think, a little wiser, you start to look at
00:52:47.060
your life and think, like, well, I feel this way, but that's not really the state.
00:52:50.800
The entire basis of the only area of psychology that has actually been proved over time to
00:52:56.400
Cognitive behavioral therapy is about the idea that you have an emotional response to a stimulus,
00:52:59.940
and maybe that's an irrational and unreasonable response to the stimulus, and you need to
00:53:03.480
change the way that you're responding to the stimulus.
00:53:08.200
And so what that means, again, because they focus in on the emotional state, this is how
00:53:11.500
you end up with, the right will say things like, wait, you took out a debt, and now you're
00:53:14.660
pissed off because you can't pay back your college debt.
00:53:18.120
You shouldn't have taken out a college debt that you couldn't pay, and maybe somebody
00:53:21.760
was predatory, and that person should be punished.
00:53:23.540
But if you take out a debt and you can't pay the debt, that's not my fault.
00:53:27.140
By the way, they keep saying that the student loans are predatory, but they offer absolutely
00:53:34.820
On the emotion thing, though, the piece that we're missing, because, yeah, they say emotion
00:53:42.340
Obviously, if they applied that across the board, it would still be bad, but it wouldn't
00:53:46.860
be nearly as bad as the actual situation, which is that what they're really saying is
00:53:51.760
that emotions have primacy for some people, but then if you're in the out group, your emotions
00:54:01.520
You could be in the utter depths of despair, and it doesn't matter.
00:54:05.100
That's why I ask this question all the time about the women's locker room debate, and they
00:54:08.840
tell us, well, they're a trans person, how are they going to feel if they're not allowed
00:54:13.440
And then usually the response from the right is about, well, what about safety?
00:54:16.920
I always respond, well, what about the emotions of the women?
00:54:20.340
And what you find is that, oh, their emotions don't matter at all.
00:54:25.860
Which makes you think that maybe in the end, it's all just, as always, a power game for
00:54:29.780
That the emotional veneer is all just, but the jackboot is behind the smiley face, right?
00:54:38.020
We're almost, we're making it, we almost sometimes make it, make it sound like they
00:54:47.100
I think they don't care, this is not empathy, this is, this is, I think, power.
00:54:49.840
And the power game obscures the fact that they are erasing truths, central truths about
00:54:55.200
human nature that have been handed down to us, you know, through long centuries of wisdom.
00:55:00.500
You know, what we're really talking about is we're talking about the flesh and the spirit.
00:55:03.660
You know, you're talking about the fact that your flesh feels things that your spirit
00:55:06.760
knows are false, you know, your flesh feels envy.
00:55:09.220
And then you sit and think about it and think, well, do I really want my friend to fail?
00:55:14.280
My flesh maybe has this kind of, you know, instant response.
00:55:17.740
Do I really want to sleep with that woman and destroy my family?
00:55:22.780
And this is where the cultural echo chamber really, that you're talking about, really
00:55:29.700
It is a path to misery for millions and millions of people.
00:55:33.020
I cut a video this week about Demi Lovato's new album.
00:55:35.440
And, you know, this is not my area of expertise.
00:55:40.880
As I said on the show, it's not that I'm a cultural snob.
00:55:45.160
But the real problem is that if you actually listen to her album, it's actually quite sad.
00:55:50.900
I actually feel terrible for this person, like really feel terrible for this person.
00:55:54.220
This is a person who alleges that she was raped at the age of 15 when she was on a set.
00:56:01.480
She was being dated when she was 17 by a man of 29.
00:56:04.680
And she was in rehab by the time she was 17 years old.
00:56:07.580
Hey, this is a person who has led an absolutely misery-ridden life.
00:56:10.900
And her entire new album, which is titled, unsurprisingly, Holy F, right?
00:56:15.800
And the cover is a picture of her in bondage gear on a cross-shaped couch, right?
00:56:23.020
But the whole idea of the album, she sings about being victimized when she's 17.
00:56:27.180
She has a whole song about her being 17, how terrible that felt.
00:56:30.060
And she has these songs about how it's terrible that she's a drug addict and she's had to fight that.
00:56:34.480
But the entire album is geared at the evils of traditional morality.
00:56:38.720
The one thing that she's never actually tried or been trained in or actually involved herself in.
00:56:45.380
And so the point that I was making is that what the media do, they churn out misery.
00:56:49.520
And then in order to alleviate your misery, they reward you for becoming a messenger of the misery.
00:56:54.800
You attack the system you've never actually tried as the thing that's held you back.
00:56:58.440
And the thing that actually has held you back, if you champion it, we will reward you.
00:57:01.680
This is a form of porn that the New York Times op-ed page has now brought to absolute perfection.
00:57:06.880
Whereas it's usually a woman, but sometimes a man, but it says,
00:57:12.060
And I defend to the death my right to have been this miserable.
00:57:16.100
I mean, you know, and we see it, our pal, Bridget Phetasy, who wrote a very touching piece about,
00:57:24.220
But even in that piece, she says, I'm not saying we should go back to Victorian era or the 1950s.
00:57:30.440
I would just tell my younger self, if you cherish yourself, then someone will cherish you.
00:57:34.660
I thought, well, that's what a woman in the 1950s would have told her daughter to, you know.
00:57:41.140
And it's why I think we've got to be a little careful about this neutral language.
00:57:45.520
Because some things can't be neutral, you know.
00:57:48.400
If you call the, the great example is you call the girl she or you call the girl he.
00:57:58.240
And there's this idea, it's lex irandi, lex credendi.
00:58:01.660
The way that we worship, the way that we, and really.
00:58:07.500
So the way that we worship affects the way that we believe.
00:58:09.960
And so these people who have been just trained in these rituals of leftism, liberalism, whatever you want to call it.
00:58:18.880
The practices that have defined their lives have ruined their lives.
00:58:26.220
That is the power because we have, we are bodies in many ways.
00:58:30.620
And so the things that we do every single day, our behaviors every day, are going to affect the way that we believe.
00:58:36.000
It's why we don't always succeed when we make total, we rarely succeed actually, when we make totally rational arguments for why our way is better than their way.
00:58:46.260
We also don't realize the tribal nature of some of this stuff.
00:58:49.020
There's, there's one, my favorite op-ed writer right now is this woman in the Times named Michelle, Michelle Goldberg.
00:58:54.080
Because Michelle Goldberg is constantly discovering that everything she believes is wrong.
00:58:58.660
And then by the end of the column saying, oh, but it's all true, you know.
00:59:01.700
So she suddenly finds out that like maybe, maybe the sexual revolution wasn't such a good thing.
00:59:06.380
But yeah, I'm not saying, I'm not saying, yeah, but it was great.
00:59:09.540
You know, the other day she wrote my favorite, one of my favorite of her columns, which is art is now boring.
00:59:18.360
In my lifetime, this is the lowest the culture has been because of woke, because their values don't, aren't conducive to art, because they're not conducive to life.
00:59:29.140
And I thought like, yeah, okay, I know the rest of this column.
00:59:31.840
Oh yeah, no, there's my favorite recent piece in the New York Times, as long as we're doing favorite recent pieces in the New York Times.
00:59:36.600
There's a woman who wrote this whole article about, I'm in a progressive marriage.
00:59:45.320
But that just demonstrates that progressive marriage is actually a wonderful, wonderful thing.
00:59:49.400
And we need to get past the morality of the past.
00:59:54.680
And that's why there's a study today that came out.
00:59:57.040
And it's a study that every sentient human being knew was going to be true, which is that religious people have better sex.
01:00:02.980
There's a study that says religious people have better sex, particularly women, having a more meaningful sexual life when they are in a long-term relationship with a person who shares their values.
01:00:12.980
Which is the least shocking piece of news that has ever been broken upon the American people.
01:00:20.060
Religious men tend to have better sex because it is in the context of a relationship that is actually fulfilling.
01:00:25.180
And it turns out married people actually have a fair bit of sex because they actually know the person they're having sex with.
01:00:33.580
And so this entire study is written in the realm of almost like Jeff Corwin, like in Australia, and he's going around in the outback.
01:00:51.740
And you're like, well, I mean, this makes perfect sense.
01:00:55.520
Why do you think, even if you're not a religious person, let's assume that you have a naturalistic explanation for religion.
01:01:00.620
Okay, then why do you think these religious rituals began in the first place?
01:01:04.260
And the answer is they're outgrowths of evolutionary biology, even if you're an atheist.
01:01:08.060
Because human beings are naturally driven toward a life of mating.
01:01:11.960
Women are naturally driven toward mating with people who are very specific so they can propagate their line with not the schmo down the block.
01:01:21.660
But if they are forced by circumstance, namely by women, into monogamy, they tend to lead healthier sex lives than people who are just outscrewing whatever is available.
01:01:35.060
And so, but the fact that we keep, there's so many, Christine Emba at the Washington Post, she keeps writing pieces about like, well, you know, it seems like the consent values that we've been promoting my entire lifetime, they're not sufficient.
01:01:45.960
There are so many women who are consenting and then they regret and is really consent enough.
01:01:58.100
I don't want to tell a tale out of school, but my friends and I, some male friends and I back in my wayward youth, we were discussing this one day and we had this kind of epiphany.
01:02:06.300
We said, you know, you know, fellas, I think, I just thought about this the other day.
01:02:10.220
I think sex actually is better with people that you know.
01:02:15.400
And furthermore, it's even better with people that you like.
01:02:20.780
And I'm not, I'm being somewhat, you know, hyperbolic here, but those are the exact words we said.
01:02:25.040
And we thought about that like an actual epiphany.
01:02:27.620
And then we thought, you know, maybe every person ever throughout history knew this except for us.
01:02:37.760
I was walking down the street one day and I said, you know what?
01:02:39.680
I'm not sleeping with women I don't like anymore.
01:02:41.500
I'm not going to pretend to like women I don't like.
01:02:43.120
Within six months, I met the woman who became my wife.
01:02:45.720
Within six, first of all, within six months, I was having the greatest dating experiences of my life.
01:02:49.720
Because I just thought, I'm not going out with women I don't like.
01:02:56.440
It's also, you're having sex with someone and you can embrace the totality of the act and all of its consequences.
01:03:03.760
And see those things not as this thing that must be feared, but as a great blessing.
01:03:09.080
So that's another part that allows us to enjoy it quite a bit more.
01:03:12.180
This is the thing about the, you mentioned the flesh and the spirit a little bit ago.
01:03:15.300
You mentioned, you know, people have, certain people have genetic predispositions towards being overweight
01:03:21.060
and other people have eating disorders and et cetera, et cetera.
01:03:24.220
All of this is sort of one thing, which is that in the battle between flesh and spirit,
01:03:37.960
And so it's like the fear of your spirit is a lie and the promise of joy of the flesh is a lie.
01:03:45.520
And so I've talked to, because we obviously, we've never had an obese society before until right now.
01:03:50.980
Like you look, you look at pictures from the beach in 1968, no one was overweight.
01:03:56.280
And when I mean not overweight, people who we think of as not overweight now would have been considered overweight then.
01:04:06.600
Side note, by the way, have you noticed that the sizes are changing?
01:04:11.400
Like it's bizarre over the course of my lifetime.
01:04:12.920
Okay, like I'm 5'9 and I weigh about 160, which puts me normally in the medium category.
01:04:17.800
And now I'm having to wear smalls because the mediums are for giants.
01:04:25.400
But the point I'm making is that I've had to have conversations with people about the fact that almost no one is overweight because of hormones and genetics.
01:04:38.820
I've had to have conversations with people who I have true affection for about the fact that most of the mental illness that we're dealing with is inflicted, not biological.
01:04:57.000
It doesn't exist in most places right now, by the way.
01:04:58.600
Even right now, most people aren't overweight in the world.
01:05:00.900
Even right now, most people in the world don't have mental illnesses, among other things.
01:05:25.000
All the places where I knew how to get the food that would still taste good.
01:05:32.700
Under this chair right now, there are biscuits.
01:05:41.020
Every few days, I start trying to go back to the thing that I know made me feel better.
01:05:45.280
And every few days, I'm tempted by the things that make me feel worse.
01:05:48.180
And in the moment, the things that make me feel worse come with the promise of joy.
01:05:57.020
The funny thing is it makes me feel worse immediately.
01:06:01.080
I actually feel bad from the sugar, bad from the dairy.
01:06:06.320
This is every single thing that we deal with in life.
01:06:09.200
Sex with a waitress is always better than sex with your wife.
01:06:12.700
Except that sex with your wife is always better than sex with the waitress.
01:06:16.900
It's not that one thing is true and the other is false.
01:06:19.260
It's that both things possess in themselves a kind of truth.
01:06:23.460
But only one of them is true, is fundamentally true, right?
01:06:26.380
It's almost as if there's a conscious power trying to destroy us.
01:06:31.780
You know, people write into my show constantly.
01:06:33.640
I would say this is the most frequent question I get on the show.
01:06:44.880
The question I get more than any other is from young men who say,
01:06:53.400
The thing, this is the biggest one because now we have these portals to hell in our pockets
01:06:57.280
and it's brand new really of the last 20 years.
01:06:59.760
But it really can be applied to any addiction or any kind of vice or any temptation.
01:07:04.800
And they'll write in and near desperation, they'll write in and say,
01:07:10.480
Is there any way to recover some lost innocence?
01:07:17.480
if you've ever disciplined yourself or recovered from any sort of addiction or anything,
01:07:33.440
They're not just, we're in the eternal present, so we want instant gratification.
01:07:38.000
When you have routine, when you have habits in virtue,
01:07:41.760
then the temptation gets to be a little less to vice and it's easier to do the virtue.
01:07:44.980
And then you go back to the biscuits and then all of a sudden it's harder to go back to the keto
01:07:52.320
you have to have a realistic assessment of your own limitations.
01:07:54.960
And this is something that society actively mocks.
01:08:00.520
you know what, I'm not going to have dinner with a woman who's not my wife
01:08:07.540
Do you think you're just going to have sex with her?
01:08:09.320
You're just going to cheat on your wife just like that?
01:08:11.020
Is that really what you think that it's just so you mock the notion that you have to set up
01:08:15.180
prophylactic rules, which is what most of life is,
01:08:17.660
setting up prophylactic rules around the innate fallen nature of yourself.
01:08:24.180
You have to set up these prophylactic rules around the things that you care about
01:08:28.020
so that you never come within 100 yards of actually violating the thing that you care about.
01:08:34.260
There's a section of the Talmud that's actually quite wonderful about,
01:08:37.260
essentially what I think is pornography addiction, really,
01:08:39.120
where it's talking about, it says it's a sin for you to walk near a river
01:08:44.240
and see women bathing, or it's a sin where to walk near a river where women are bathing
01:08:50.960
And so it's like, well, why is it a sin to avert your eyes?
01:08:53.740
It's a sin that you went near the river in the first place.
01:08:55.620
Because you're putting yourself in a position of temptation.
01:09:03.340
Well, I mean, if you can't resist the temptation, was it really worth resisting?
01:09:07.520
Are you really so weak that you can't resist the temptation?
01:09:12.820
And so we used to have a society constructed around the idea that you had to create all
01:09:17.400
of these fences in order to prevent a lot of people from falling into the chasm.
01:09:23.120
It's not really going to change your life if we get rid of those fences.
01:09:28.700
The occasion of sin is one of the great pieces of advice, like ever.
01:09:31.960
When I get this question about pornography addiction, the first thing I say is,
01:09:35.200
well, if you want to beat the pornography addiction, stop calling it an addiction.
01:09:38.840
Because I think that word in and of itself, there might be a sense in which it's true,
01:09:47.140
And when we say disease, we mean something you don't have any control over.
01:10:05.000
And so every time you look at the pornography, you are making a choice to do it.
01:10:08.920
And I think when you think of it like an addiction, then it gives you an out.
01:10:15.660
You're one step down, though, because it is an addiction, but an addiction is not a disease.
01:10:20.780
I mean, if you could give up cancer, you would.
01:10:28.920
I mean, the only thing I've ever been actually addicted to is cigarettes.
01:10:36.300
I do want to say, like, the apostles clear the things I don't want to do.
01:10:41.700
I don't think it's as simple as saying that everyone can simply choose to overcome any expression of sin.
01:10:52.240
I didn't understand exactly what you were saying before, but in the past, we had a society.
01:10:59.080
And we had a society that had a lot of rules meant to prevent the occasion of sin.
01:11:05.360
But in many ways, not all, but in many ways, it was a better behaved society.
01:11:09.760
And so it's challenging when you talk about these issues to make the distinction between the absolute nature of righteousness,
01:11:16.520
the absolute nature of virtue, and the sort of practical realities of life on earth.
01:11:22.680
When you say to a person that they can overcome, that they can kick cigarettes, that is absolutely true.
01:11:30.460
And sometimes telling them that is actually encouraging and helps them kind of realize that they're not just victims of circumstance.
01:11:36.680
Sometimes I think it can also be demoralizing to people because it almost obscures the other reality, which is that sin is very powerful, that sin can't be done away with.
01:11:49.220
I think that that's why the genius of beating addiction, I was off cigarettes for five years, was in Amsterdam, where everybody was smoking on a book tour.
01:12:06.540
So, like, if you get off it the next day, you're off it again, you know, and that's what you have to do.
01:12:16.260
The problem, when I was a kid, and cartoons actually taught you things.
01:12:23.980
The common meme in cartoons was that a person would have a decision to make, and a little angel would appear on one shoulder, and a little devil would appear on the other shoulder.
01:12:32.700
And this one would try to make them be bad, and this one would try to make them be good.
01:12:35.300
But the problem as you become adult is that you realize there is an angel on one shoulder, and there is a devil on the other.
01:12:42.460
And they're both you, and they sound exactly the same.
01:12:45.060
And that is one of the hardest things about life.
01:12:50.160
Yeah, the devil speaks to you in your own voice.
01:12:53.400
Soltzman, this is a great line, that the line between good and evil runs through the human heart.
01:12:57.940
You know, and it's not actually about political systems.
01:13:00.720
It's not actually about where you live or who you are.
01:13:02.560
It's right there, you know, and that's the battle you're in.
01:13:05.300
And, you know, the thing about it is I think Christians particularly have been very bad about depicting this as some kind of grim struggle.
01:13:17.640
And what you were saying before about the lies of the flesh and the truth of the Spirit is actually just siding with joy.
01:13:26.000
And it's a funny thing because in the end, you know, joy takes a little bit longer to get to.
01:13:30.340
You know, it's like the pleasure, the bliss of sin is there.
01:13:34.460
I mean, it's like there's no question about this.
01:13:36.700
I mean, people yelled at me in another kingdom for writing a scene about how great sex was when you lied to a woman that she was going to get a part in your movie and then slept with her.
01:13:50.380
You know, it's just that the joy, which is a deeper emotion, a much more global emotion, something that actually fills your whole life, takes longer to get to.
01:13:57.980
But there's also, this is why Jordan Peterson is so popular.
01:14:10.520
And it's the same reason that the Latin mass is exploding in the United States, especially among young men.
01:14:14.700
And it's exactly the same reason, because this lame, super lib thing that we've heard for 50 years, like, hey, man, you know, your spirituality, it's all just about peace, man, you know.
01:14:25.880
And all it is is just kind of acoustic guitars.
01:14:28.280
No, it's about, like, there are actual dragons trying to eat me all around me right now.
01:14:33.200
And I just want to just slay that dragon in pursuit of something greater, because the consequence of the spiritual combat that we're all in is not just that we're suffering a lot.
01:14:44.960
There's something actually worth getting out of it.
01:14:47.420
That's much more motivating than just, you know, eh.
01:14:51.240
I will say that the best thing about Jordan Peterson is listening to Knowles and my son Spencer do imitations of him.
01:14:59.560
And you better be sorry that you ever suggested we would.
01:15:03.200
It is one of the funniest things I've ever seen.
01:15:13.680
Yeah, having Jordan on Daily Wire Plus has been a real treat for me, because you guys kind of knew him better than I did, but I've gotten to interact with him a lot here lately.
01:15:27.700
I know it of myself, and I certainly know it of Andrew Clayton.
01:15:30.420
But Jordan is, like, one of the only guys in public life.
01:15:35.440
We're all contrarians, but we try to at least pretend to be good and decent and agreeable chaps.
01:15:41.200
But with Jordan, you'll say something like, here's a question from a Daily Wire subscriber.
01:15:45.640
Dr. Peterson, you know, how can I be more happy?
01:16:01.220
You know, everyone has a Bill Clinton impression.
01:16:02.760
By the way, that answer, actually, that you just gave in Jordan's name is the right answer.
01:16:08.720
But, you know, the Bible, the Old Testament, it does not really ever deal with the idea of happiness.
01:16:19.660
And then it promises you that there will be some good effects from the things that you do.
01:16:22.680
But at no point does it say you will experience more joy in your life if you do X, Y, and Z, just on a pure emotional level.
01:16:30.300
Because no one can guarantee that, up to and including God, I think.
01:16:38.800
What isn't up to you is that if you fulfill the duties, then you will be doing what you were established to do.
01:16:44.040
I do believe that the New Testament offers up joy as a good thing.
01:16:46.800
I'm going to take an issue between the Old Testament.
01:16:49.320
But using the word joy and happiness as synonyms is not the right thing.
01:16:54.540
You know, you're happy, you win the lottery, you're happy for a couple of minutes.
01:16:57.140
And, you know, you lose the lottery, you're not happy.
01:16:58.900
But joy is a state of mind that actually is there even when you're in grief.
01:17:03.220
You know, it is that vitality of life, the presence.
01:17:05.640
You know, I always compare it to a movie where you're watching some character die and you're weeping.
01:17:10.640
And then you come out and say, wow, it's a great movie.
01:17:14.180
You know, the vitality of all the things that happen in life is what joy is.
01:17:18.160
And I think you can achieve that if you side with the spirit.
01:17:22.220
I think it was C.S. Lewis who described it this way.
01:17:26.640
That joy is more akin to just about being able to answer a question.
01:17:33.500
Like there's just this kind of journey and this approach.
01:17:36.580
And this you're so close to the satisfaction, which is very different than just, you know, hey, that was a good drink.
01:17:44.500
Yeah, in there's this very cryptic sort of commentary in the book of Exodus, which I'm supposed to discuss with Jordan, actually in the interview with Jordan.
01:17:53.460
And it discusses how the Jewish people come to Mount Sinai, Tahr, Sinai, and they're at the base of the mountain.
01:18:01.500
And it says that they're, and it says that they're Tachat Ha'har.
01:18:04.000
So the actual Hebrew meaning of that is underneath the mountain.
01:18:10.180
And these commentaries, the Midrash, it suggests that what God actually did is he holds the mountain over the heads of the Jews.
01:18:16.560
And he says, if you don't accept the Torah, I'm going to drop this on you.
01:18:20.540
And so this raises all sorts of questions, telemetically.
01:18:22.920
Like, okay, so was the Torah accepted by the Jews under duress, right?
01:18:26.340
I mean, was this, if, and it's a full-scale conversation that goes on for a fair bit of time.
01:18:31.300
And the sort of conclusion is, the only way to rectify that sort of bizarre take on the narrative,
01:18:38.000
that God is literally threatening you with destruction if you don't take, is that that's not God threatening you.
01:18:43.460
That unless you undertake the duty of living as you were supposed to live, the mountain will fall on you.
01:18:49.220
That is not because God is threatening you that way.
01:18:53.220
Meanwhile, we've got the culture which cuts off all the pathways to joy, which is what's so sinister.
01:18:58.860
My favorite New York Times piece recently, since we're talking about it, I think this is the New York Times, was the maternal instinct.
01:19:14.120
But meanwhile, what she's really militating against is women fulfilling their duties as mothers and finding joy and happiness in it.
01:19:23.060
And it's the same sort of thing where she, I read the whole piece and it's very windy and circuitous.
01:19:28.140
She kind of, she seems close to acknowledging that, oh, maternal instinct does exist.
01:19:32.440
And by the end, she's like, no, it doesn't actually exist.
01:19:36.240
Another one that they're trying to sort of cut off.
01:19:38.080
Almost as good as Scientific American, which sent out seven tweets.
01:19:42.460
I know that the idea of two sexes was invented in the late 18th century to, to bring more, you know, bigotry into human life.
01:19:51.660
Right, there were less sexes in 1400 and 1700s.
01:19:54.840
But before that, there was only one sex, scientifically.
01:20:02.340
You know, I wish I could take credit for that, but like.
01:20:13.000
I did see that, and I don't see nearly as much as you guys do.
01:20:15.620
But I couldn't even really figure out how they could possibly have arrived at this.
01:20:21.740
And I have to say, I've been, whether I can get through this with a straight face, I don't know.
01:20:27.800
It actually makes me wonder if we're getting the gender conversation a little bit off.
01:20:32.340
Because our argument now, which is, you know, manifestly true, just looking around, is there's sex and there's gender.
01:20:38.960
And the libs say that gender expression and sex are divorced.
01:20:46.200
But in a sense, no, there is gender expression.
01:20:49.540
I mean, there is, first of all, and second of all, the very fact that they are expressing gender in these weird ways kind of proves that there is.
01:20:55.860
And really, what we're trying to say is there is sex and gender expression.
01:21:00.880
And the libs want them to be completely divorced.
01:21:03.620
And if you want to have a good life and flourish and, like, be in accord with reality, you've got to just bring them together.
01:21:10.380
That actually, when men do manly things, they'll do better.
01:21:14.860
And when women do womanly things, they'll do better.
01:21:21.320
But I also disagree because if reality has taught me anything here lately, it's that when men do feminine things, they do better.
01:21:31.860
They keep telling us that gender and sex are different.
01:21:34.300
But then they also say things like trans women are biological women, which is a…
01:21:44.140
It was a sleight of hand trick where they invented this distinction between sex and gender.
01:21:48.620
And then it was very useful for them for about three or four decades.
01:21:51.700
And then in the last five years, they got rid of it.
01:21:54.100
And they said, oh, it's actually the same thing again.
01:22:11.960
And when a man is behaving like a woman, that's womanish, and that's bad.
01:22:16.240
Like when your voice starts to wobble a little bit when you're talking to that guy from podcast.
01:22:34.000
I mean, I've mentioned many times that Brian Stelter missed a deadline in order to go to bed and cry.
01:22:38.700
And I think that may prove that you can change from a man to a woman.
01:22:47.680
Well, I was going to say, we have a few questions from our Daily Wire Plus members,
01:22:51.920
but I'm going to save them for the member block, which is coming up here in 10 minutes.
01:22:55.720
If you're watching on YouTube, head over to Daily Wire Plus.
01:22:59.780
If you're not a member, become a member, then log in.
01:23:02.080
We're going to continue the show for an additional half hour,
01:23:04.880
and we'll take a ton of member questions during that period of time.
01:23:09.200
But let's wrap up the show, Ben, with your thoughts.
01:23:11.260
Okay, so I want a quick roundtable here on what do you guys think is going to happen in the election,
01:23:15.500
considering the polls have narrowed considerably and people are getting very, very nervous.
01:23:21.000
I think the headlines are fake, and here's why.
01:23:22.780
We had a 10-point lead on the generic ballot in July, which is amazing.
01:23:26.580
I mean, that's when you talk about the red tsunami.
01:23:30.180
It's a five-point lead on the generic ballot, and they're saying, see, the walls are closing in.
01:23:34.380
The Republicans are going to lose it for all sorts of reasons, whatever.
01:23:37.280
But if you look back to 2018, the Democrats at this point had exactly the same lead as the Republicans did.
01:23:42.860
And by the way, it narrowed as the election got closer.
01:23:49.400
So I think the libs are just trying to discourage conservatives.
01:23:52.000
I think the numbers don't bear out this fear that we're all of a sudden going to lose our momentum.
01:23:58.040
I thought you, on your tweet thread about this, you made a really good point that focusing on Trump may hurt us with independence.
01:24:07.400
The people who attacked you immediately said, well, Trump is, you know, Trump's selections have won all these primaries.
01:24:18.860
Typically, summer polls are worse than autumn polls because they don't poll likely voters as much.
01:24:32.940
But the specials, 8% of people are showing up for those specials.
01:24:35.560
And I don't think, I think that the abortion question may serve the left more than we thought.
01:24:43.780
But I think that if Republicans can get their heads around the fact that they have to fight the culture war, that they have to fight the culture war, they can bring people out.
01:24:52.000
One place where I disagree with you is you frequently say that people vote against things.
01:24:56.040
But I think only conservatives vote against things.
01:24:57.660
I think women and other Democrats basically do vote for things because they want the government to do stuff.
01:25:04.840
But I do think you're right in terms of the numbers.
01:25:07.960
Right now, the numbers still favor Republicans.
01:25:11.340
And I think as the autumn continues, they're going to favor Republicans more.
01:25:15.260
And I actually think we still have an over 50% chance of taking the Senate.
01:25:23.780
I agree that the polls are fake and everything's fake, and that's probably correct.
01:25:31.560
I mean, I'm just nervous about what I see from Republicans, which is it does seem like they're getting off message.
01:25:37.440
When the FBI raid happened and there are all these predictions on the right that, well, this is what's going to lead to the red wave.
01:25:43.320
People are not going to the polls to protect Donald Trump.
01:25:48.580
Parents are not waking up in the morning and saying, well, how's Donald Trump doing today with the FBI thing?
01:25:53.040
And what Republicans need to think about is, what do people wake up in the morning worried about?
01:26:00.800
What are they talking about around the kitchen table?
01:26:09.020
They're really, really worried about the fact that it seems to them that our culture is plunging into insanity.
01:26:14.960
They're worried about what kind of culture we're leaving for our kids.
01:26:17.640
These are the things that plague people's minds every single day.
01:26:19.940
It seemed to me when Republicans were talking about that, that they were doing well.
01:26:24.860
And then when we went on this detour and we're talking about Trump and the FBI, then that's when the polls start to travel.
01:26:30.540
But the FBI raid, the issue with them raiding Mar-a-Lago is not Donald Trump.
01:26:34.320
The issue with them raiding Mar-a-Lago is that Biden himself is saying, it's about us.
01:26:40.120
I think, at least for me, the reason I care about the Mar-a-Lago raid is not because I'm upset about Donald Trump's furniture getting moved around.
01:26:47.940
It's that I think Trump is, it's like that meme he put out in the campaign.
01:26:52.100
They're going through him to get to us because they call us all fascists.
01:26:57.960
And eventually Biden, he keeps saying he's going to send F-15s to blow us up.
01:27:02.780
But they are fighting a proxy war against us by way of Trump.
01:27:09.040
That still doesn't make it a winning thing for us to talk about right now.
01:27:12.220
The average American is not sitting around today worried that the FBI is going to raid their houses and look for classified documents.
01:27:18.500
The average American today is not re-litigating 2020.
01:27:24.680
The average American today is trying to figure out how to pay for gas when it's so freaking expensive.
01:27:29.360
And when Joe Biden is saying, oh, I brought gas prices down 43 cents.
01:27:34.480
Like we, the average American is deeply concerned right now about what has happened to their kids over the last two years.
01:27:41.580
The fact that suicidality is up so high, that drug use is up so high.
01:27:45.220
The average American is worried about what their kids are being taught, about what kind of lives their kids should lead.
01:27:50.280
These are the kinds of issues that if we run on them, we win.
01:27:52.920
And the problem with President Trump is that he wants this election to be a referendum on him
01:27:58.540
because Donald Trump sees the entire world as a referendum on him.
01:28:02.180
He puts his name in gold letters on everything that he touches.
01:28:05.440
He is constitutionally, and I don't mean the document, he is constitutionally incapable of allowing the election to be about the things that matter to America
01:28:14.520
because he wants to be the thing that matters most to Americans.
01:28:17.960
And that may very well be fine in a presidential election.
01:28:21.900
It is not, I, I, even then I actually agree with Ben.
01:28:24.300
I think that all modern elections are referendums on someone and you should make sure it's a referendum on the other guy.
01:28:29.960
But even if it could work in 2024 with Donald Trump, it is a losing strategy for Republicans.
01:28:35.840
That's also what the Democrats, that's what the Democrats want too.
01:28:39.120
Think about, think about what, right, think about what your opponents want to talk about and then don't talk about that thing.
01:28:46.000
Think about the things they really don't want you to talk about and talk about that thing.
01:28:49.780
The trans stuff, they will call you a terrorist if you talk about it.
01:28:53.580
Desperately, they will kick you off of every social media platform if you talk about it.
01:28:56.900
Obviously, that's the thing we should be talking about.
01:29:00.560
They really, really want us to talk about Trump.
01:29:02.100
But that is enough reason in and of itself to not talk about it.
01:29:04.740
And, you know, the thing about Trump is I keep getting these letters every time I criticize them.
01:29:08.700
You know, like, oh, you're criticizing the great Trump.
01:29:18.200
I got into this business because of this country because I actually do love it.
01:29:22.960
And I think, like, if Trump can help, I'm for Trump.
01:29:25.860
If he's past his point, and I think he is past the point where he can help, I'm for somebody else.
01:29:30.040
You know, it's like it's not really about Trump.
01:29:32.500
And I think that this attachment to him, and as you say, Trump is a narcissist.
01:29:37.460
Nobody would, I don't think even Trump would deny that.
01:29:40.760
He may not know what a narcissist is, but if you give him the question of, Donald Trump, are you a narcissist?
01:29:48.180
You know, I just think that we should be thinking about how to win for the country.
01:29:54.820
The people who are on the ballot, we should support them because basically the alternative is, are these guys who put your children?
01:30:01.840
If Donald Trump's the nominee in 2024, I will almost certainly vote for him.
01:30:06.120
I'll never say certainly two years out from an election.
01:30:09.720
But most likely, if Donald Trump is the nominee, I will almost certainly vote for the guy.
01:30:13.560
Like you, he did an awful lot of good in the first three years of his administration.
01:30:17.520
I think it's very hard to say that he wasn't, his presidency in the fourth year was a failure.
01:30:26.320
Does that mean that he would be a failure in a second term?
01:30:29.380
I mean, if the guy gets a second term, undoubtedly, a lot of great things will happen that I really like from a policy point of view.
01:30:37.100
Alan Estrin, our dear friend and the founder of Prager University, has a theory.
01:30:40.800
And his theory is that narrative is sort of an actual force that exists in the world.
01:30:45.920
I'm actually somewhat persuaded by this argument, by the way.
01:30:49.740
In the same way that Bible, Ben often says of the Bible that it's not always prescriptive.
01:30:55.980
I think Alan Estrin's new theory is that narrative isn't our way of talking about, narrative isn't a human construct for understanding the world.
01:31:04.160
Narrative is something that humans have observed about the world.
01:31:10.040
He says, in the great narrative of our time, it is all about Donald Trump.
01:31:15.920
That it isn't even about whether or not Donald Trump makes it about himself, which of course he will.
01:31:20.000
It's that they have made it about Donald Trump.
01:31:21.900
And that in this sort of grand narrative sense, the fight of the century has to happen.
01:31:29.660
America will not be able to let go of this crazy moment in our politics until we see what happens with Donald Trump in 2024.
01:31:36.360
When people tell me, when people tell me, well, if only Trump would go away, if only Trump would keep quiet, if only we can move past Donald Trump.
01:31:43.820
I think, you know, if my aunt had testicles, she'd be my uncle, right?
01:31:56.120
The libs are targeting all of their fire on this guy.
01:32:04.680
The guy is polling 40 points ahead of anybody else for 2024.
01:32:07.960
He's playing an active role in the midterms, as would anyone who's going to run for president in 2024.
01:32:17.000
And I just don't think there's I don't think there's all that much use in saying, well, what if this fundamental fact of the political landscape were different?
01:32:25.780
I have made a executive God King like decision to let Michael Knowles have the last word for the first time in history, in the history of the Daily Wire backstage.
01:32:36.360
And I'm going to say that if you want to hear what we all think about how wrong Michael Knowles is, you have to head over to dailywireplus.com and become a subscriber.
01:32:48.900
If you use code plus, you will get 35 percent off and you can stick around for the next half hour.
01:32:54.700
We're going to be taking member questions and talking probably more about Donald Trump, because even when the message is it would be better electorally to stop talking about Donald Trump.