The Michael Knowles Show - Daily Wire Backstage： Turning Of The Tide

00:00:00.000 Hey, Michael Knowles here. The latest episode of Daily Wire Backstage is available now.

00:00:03.960 Don't miss an episode of your favorite Daily Wire hosts pouring a glass of whiskey,

00:00:08.100 lighting up fine cigars, and relentlessly owning the squishes and the libs.

00:00:14.500 This is an episode you do not want to miss. Take a listen.

00:00:30.000 Welcome to the Daily Wire Backstage. Today's show is sponsored by ExpressVPN.

00:00:45.220 Protect your data from big tech with a VPN I trust. Visit expressvpn.com slash backstage.

00:00:51.420 Joining me tonight, we have Ben Shapiro, Andrew Klavan, Matt Walsh, Michael Knowles, and, well, me.

00:00:57.240 I'm joining me. We want you to head over to dailywire.com slash do not comply.

00:01:03.060 Listen, we don't do this very often, but I'm going to be serious on the show for a minute.

00:01:06.780 We need your help. We need your help because we're in the fight of our lives against the Biden administration

00:01:11.360 on behalf of medical freedom for all Americans.

00:01:14.080 As you know, the president in September gave a big speech in which he said he had lost patience with the American people,

00:01:19.340 as though we care. And then he said that he was going to sick the bureaucracy on anyone who didn't get a vaccine

00:01:25.540 by way of threatening your livelihood. His new mandate came down last week, and it made good on his promise.

00:01:31.140 He basically said that any company with more than 100 employees, and that includes the Daily Wire,

00:01:35.540 is going to be required beginning on January 4th to say to our employees, are you vaccinated?

00:01:41.200 Give us that fundamental private information about your private medical decisions.

00:01:45.180 If the answer is yes, then you are welcome into our company. You're a fully realized citizen.

00:01:50.420 If the answer is no, oh, that's fine. We just have to test you every week and require you to wear a mask to work.

00:01:56.720 It's not, of course, that surprising that the Democrats are passing basically segregation legislation.

00:02:02.220 Discrimination has always been part of their playbook, but it's never been part of ours.

00:02:05.740 We said no, and we immediately filed charges, filed a lawsuit, excuse me, in the Sixth Circuit to try to put an end to this.

00:02:12.820 You've probably been following the news.

00:02:13.940 You know that the Fifth Circuit issued a stay against President Biden's unconstitutional order a day or two after we filed our suit in the Sixth Circuit.

00:02:22.280 But that doesn't mean that the fight is over.

00:02:23.860 In fact, President Biden somewhat audaciously, I think, said to businesses,

00:02:30.040 hey, ignore the stay and continue prepping for my order to go into effect on January 4th.

00:02:35.740 Why does this matter? Does it matter because I hate vaccines?

00:02:38.400 You know I don't. I'm vaccinated. I'm pro-vaccine.

00:02:40.620 If I were a dictator, I'd make sure that you were vaccinated, too.

00:02:43.600 See, that's the point. I'm not dictator, and neither is Joe Biden.

00:02:47.480 I'm pro-vaccine, and that's my choice. That's my opinion.

00:02:51.020 You don't have to share all of my opinions, and you don't have to choose everything that I choose.

00:02:55.680 That's not only a fundamental American principle, but it's a fundamental right that you have as a human being not to have to do what I want.

00:03:02.680 So we're fighting on your behalf, and, of course, we're fighting on behalf of our employees.

00:03:06.220 Nobody really talks about this aspect, but we're also fighting for our business.

00:03:09.400 If Congress had claimed the authority, which I don't even believe Congress has,

00:03:14.380 but if they had claimed the authority to make a rule like this,

00:03:17.520 then they could have at least mitigated against the downside risk for employers,

00:03:21.840 as is since Biden is doing this through the unelected bureaucrats at the Department of Labor.

00:03:26.640 They aren't able to actually mitigate against all those risks.

00:03:30.120 Here's just an example.

00:03:31.300 Let's say that an employee of mine doesn't want to be vaccinated.

00:03:33.960 Let's say that they tell me they don't want to be vaccinated.

00:03:35.780 Let's say that I now start subjecting them to costly tests and requiring them to wear a mask to work when I don't require that of other employees.

00:03:43.860 And now let's say that, for whatever reason, I have to part company with that employee in the future.

00:03:48.440 Have I not discriminated against them?

00:03:50.500 Have I not retaliated against them for not doing what I want or putting the company?

00:03:54.440 Of course, that's not why I'm letting them go.

00:03:56.520 But how do I prove that in court?

00:03:57.620 I've just opened myself up to so many liabilities by doing the wrong thing and discriminating against my employees.

00:04:03.780 So we have to say no.

00:04:04.920 We have to say we do not comply, Mr. President.

00:04:07.700 And we have to have your voice added alongside our own.

00:04:10.680 This fight that we're in has already cost us hundreds of thousands of dollars.

00:04:13.400 It's going to cost many hundreds of thousands more.

00:04:16.200 Of course, we couldn't do that without our DailyWire.com subscribers.

00:04:19.620 And we're very grateful to them.

00:04:20.740 But we know not everyone can become a DailyWire.com subscriber.

00:04:24.040 So we're asking you instead to join us by adding your voice to our petition.

00:04:27.960 We think it's important for the president to hear from millions of Americans.

00:04:31.740 No, no, we will not comply.

00:04:33.640 You can add your voice to ours at DailyWire.com slash do not comply.

00:04:38.080 We've set an ambitious goal for tonight of 500,000 signatures on our petition.

00:04:43.600 We're 315,000 signatures along that path already.

00:04:47.960 So we're only looking for that extra 185 tonight.

00:04:51.400 Of course, that's just the start.

00:04:52.420 The president's order affects over 85 million American workers.

00:04:55.760 We think he needs to hear from millions of Americans.

00:04:57.700 But our ambitious goal for tonight, 500,000 signatures.

00:05:01.540 Send a message to the administration that you won't comply.

00:05:04.360 DailyWire.com slash do not comply.

00:05:08.640 We're suing the government.

00:05:09.780 We're suing the government.

00:05:10.880 And by the way, I think a part of this that people are missing is we were right about this

00:05:16.260 from the beginning.

00:05:16.880 You know, I hate to say I told you so.

00:05:17.980 But from the beginning, when Biden reversed his opinion on mandates and said we are going

00:05:22.180 to push this mandate, I said, many of us said, this is a bluff.

00:05:26.720 He doesn't really have the right to do this.

00:05:28.620 This is not constitutional.

00:05:30.120 I asked our pal Ted Cruz.

00:05:31.600 I said, you're a constitutional lawyer.

00:05:33.120 He said, it's bogus.

00:05:34.400 It's going to be struck down in court.

00:05:35.820 But it doesn't matter because by that time, by the time it's struck down in court, the

00:05:41.300 government will already have pressured the businesses to pressure the workers to take

00:05:44.400 the Fauci ouchie.

00:05:45.580 And so people really need to stand up right now.

00:05:47.820 It's so corrupt.

00:05:49.380 It's so it's such a sneaky way to do it.

00:05:52.540 But as you said, this fight doesn't come cheap.

00:05:56.420 You know, it costs a lot of money to do it.

00:05:58.500 But someone's got to do it or we're all just going to roll over.

00:06:00.880 And then when when it is struck down in court, Biden will say, whoopsie daisy, we got exactly

00:06:05.420 what you also have to draw the line somewhere.

00:06:07.660 And I think that what people are neglecting and is that this is the first step.

00:06:12.020 It's not the last step because things seem to be getting better in terms of how many people

00:06:15.980 are vaccinated and how many people have already had covid.

00:06:17.960 And because the numbers are going down a lot in the south, for example, a lot of people

00:06:21.020 seem to think that the government is now going to leave them alone.

00:06:23.360 I even hear this from some conservatives.

00:06:24.900 Well, you know, if we just get past this, then everything will go back to normal.

00:06:27.940 Well, I see no evidence whatsoever that blue state authoritarians have any interest in

00:06:32.780 ever allowing this to go back to normal.

00:06:34.300 They've already started changing their their rhetoric about masking up forever.

00:06:37.420 They've already talked about openly forcing five year olds to get this vaccine.

00:06:41.280 They're already doing it in San Francisco.

00:06:42.500 Whatever starts in San Francisco goes to L.A., then it goes to New York, then to Chicago

00:06:45.380 and then national.

00:06:46.620 They've already talked in that OSHA regulation, which is four hundred and ninety pages long.

00:06:50.440 Great, great piece of law.

00:06:51.940 Yeah.

00:06:52.140 In that in that regulation, they have pages dedicated to if we want to make this rule permanent, what

00:06:57.460 should we do?

00:06:57.960 And some of the things that they are are proposing are things like no exception.

00:07:02.920 If you are if you have natural immunity, no exception.

00:07:05.300 If you're going to get tested, you must get vaccinated.

00:07:07.460 No testing out of it.

00:07:08.860 They propose the possibility that face masks have to be KN95s or N95s, not cloth face masks

00:07:14.460 anymore.

00:07:15.060 They talk about fully vaccine, fully masking everybody who's already vaccinated.

00:07:18.700 But that is what they're talking about for their permanent rule.

00:07:21.140 They want this to be forever.

00:07:22.820 Remember, there's a whole thread from Andy Slavitt, who used to be a he's a very covid

00:07:26.940 hawkish guy, to say the very least.

00:07:28.540 And he was an advisor to Obama about this long thread yesterday talking about how so

00:07:33.920 many people think the pandemic is over.

00:07:35.280 But just because you think the pandemic is over for you doesn't mean it's over for everybody.

00:07:38.840 What he means by that is until I say it's over for everybody, it's not over for you.

00:07:42.940 And they are not going to allow this thing to end.

00:07:44.740 Not with vaccines, not with kids getting vaccinated, not with masking, not with mandates, not with

00:07:49.160 anything.

00:07:49.480 They have to maintain the control.

00:07:51.560 Also, people aren't talking about this.

00:07:53.280 The OSHA rule, for the first time ever, essentially says that a worker at a company, OSHA was created

00:07:59.140 to protect workers from externalities.

00:08:01.620 Now they're saying the worker is the externality.

00:08:03.880 The worker is the threat.

00:08:05.180 The worker is the safety violation.

00:08:07.700 That's a complete redefinition of the role between OSHA and workers around the country

00:08:13.900 and a redefinition of what a human being is in the eyes of the government.

00:08:16.920 And don't be fooled, by the way, they're declaring climate change a public health emergency now.

00:08:21.660 So if you say that on the basis of a public health emergency, they can seize these extraordinary

00:08:25.800 powers.

00:08:26.720 Well, now everything is going to become a public health emergency.

00:08:29.180 I think it's important to point out that when we ask people to join us, we actually

00:08:32.280 ask people to join us in the fight.

00:08:34.500 You know, so many people on the Internet are fundraising, asking for money.

00:08:37.740 I'm doing this.

00:08:38.380 Give me some money.

00:08:39.180 I get I've gotten a lot of emails already.

00:08:41.680 How can how can I donate?

00:08:43.360 And I give my personal address, of course.

00:08:45.000 But your initials, C.A.S.H.

00:08:48.680 Yeah.

00:08:49.140 But we but we actually ask people to join us and become part of what we do and to and to

00:08:54.100 get all the benefits of membership.

00:08:55.380 We actually are fighting back through capitalism, which I think is a double fight because there's

00:09:00.340 just so many guys, even on the right.

00:09:02.380 And I hate to pick on our own people, but there's so many people who are not running capitalist

00:09:05.860 organizations like we are.

00:09:07.860 And I think that this is this is what the fight is about.

00:09:10.160 It's not about give us give us some dough and we'll go out and do this fight for you.

00:09:13.540 It's join what we do here and become part of it.

00:09:16.140 Receive value.

00:09:17.220 Yep.

00:09:17.640 And also empower the creation of new value.

00:09:19.860 And it really doesn't it doesn't mean anything because you're going to find a lot of there

00:09:22.740 are a lot of conservatives now who will complain about it, but they're still going to go along

00:09:27.180 with it.

00:09:27.460 So if you're if you're complaining about it, that's that's the thing with compliance.

00:09:30.020 You can comply begrudgingly, but the government doesn't care about that as long as you're

00:09:34.500 doing what they want you to do.

00:09:36.580 And so, you know, here we're actually doing something about it.

00:09:38.880 And I think to Ben's point, if it was Rochelle Walensky, CDC this week said that talking about

00:09:45.080 masking and said, hey, you know, by the way, masks also are great for the common cold and

00:09:49.960 the flu.

00:09:50.620 And I'm old enough to remember the last, I don't know, 18 months to two years where if

00:09:56.240 we suggested that, hey, they're going to make this connection between COVID and the cold

00:09:59.880 and the flu soon.

00:10:00.880 If we said that we were a conspiracy theorist.

00:10:02.600 And of course, we see the trajectory here now that we're because it makes sense if you

00:10:07.340 can require masking for this communicable disease, then why not any other?

00:10:10.940 This is the fundamental problem that the squishes fell into.

00:10:15.360 This is the thing they missed.

00:10:16.740 They thought if I just give them this, they were so desperate to get back to normal.

00:10:21.300 OK, I'll give them the mandate.

00:10:24.280 OK, I'll give them this.

00:10:25.580 OK, I'll give them that.

00:10:26.680 But then it's OK.

00:10:27.720 Finally, we'll get back to normal.

00:10:29.500 It's day 600, folks.

00:10:31.100 It was 15 days to slow the spread.

00:10:33.040 And it's going to go on for six days.

00:10:33.820 And they're getting something really important about this.

00:10:36.660 They're getting fear.

00:10:37.880 And fear they now sell as a virtue.

00:10:40.180 If you're not afraid of the climate, you're a bad person.

00:10:42.260 If you're not afraid of racism, which they've also declared a health issue, a health emergency

00:10:46.160 in some states.

00:10:47.100 If you're not afraid of racism, if you're not afraid of COVID, you're a bad person.

00:10:50.760 When Trump tore off his mask, remember that?

00:10:53.320 Afterwards, he stood up on the balcony, tore off his mask.

00:10:55.480 There was a round table on every single network, every single news network saying, no, be afraid,

00:11:01.440 be afraid.

00:11:02.260 And, you know.

00:11:02.540 Meanwhile, if we don't like something, they call us phobic.

00:11:05.020 That's right.

00:11:05.480 That's right.

00:11:05.980 We're phobic.

00:11:06.380 And, you know, this is something C.S. Lewis talked about.

00:11:09.360 He said that courage is such a beautiful virtue that you can't trick people out of it.

00:11:13.540 So you have to keep them afraid.

00:11:15.080 And he has a description in the screw tape letters, I think, of exactly what they're doing,

00:11:19.660 of precautions getting bigger and bigger and bigger.

00:11:21.780 You mean the how-to novel.

00:11:23.660 The how-to novel for the devil.

00:11:24.900 For the devil.

00:11:25.460 Yeah.

00:11:25.760 Exactly.

00:11:26.400 I think that the biggest thing that we're fighting back against, obviously, is not just a

00:11:30.600 VAX mandate.

00:11:31.060 I think there's an entire mentality that is set in in the American public over the course of the

00:11:35.080 last hundred years, and a huge percentage of the population has bought into it, but not

00:11:38.200 the people who tend to watch shows like this one.

00:11:41.020 And that is that the government has a giant magic button that they can hit at any time

00:11:44.120 and end all your problems.

00:11:45.160 And that giant button exists somewhere in the executive branch.

00:11:47.880 It's hidden somewhere deep in a regulatory agency.

00:11:50.140 And they can smash it at any time.

00:11:51.660 And they can fix all your problems.

00:11:52.700 And so with COVID, the problem that Biden has is that he made that promise.

00:11:55.520 I will be elected and I will end COVID, right?

00:11:57.280 I won't shut down the economy.

00:11:58.240 I won't shut down your life.

00:11:59.840 I will shut down the virus.

00:12:01.380 He can't do that because nobody can do that because no one is capable of doing that.

00:12:04.700 But this is part and parcel of the entire left-wing pitch, which is government is God

00:12:08.520 and government is capable, if you give it enough power, of fixing all your problems,

00:12:11.740 economic, racial, disease, death.

00:12:14.540 All of these things can simply be ended if you give them enough power.

00:12:17.020 And then when people see through it, which is what we've seen, right?

00:12:19.720 Because a huge percentage of the population in this country, on the other side, is we've

00:12:23.260 been living like normal for months, right?

00:12:24.940 I mean, some of us for a year, right?

00:12:26.520 We've been going out.

00:12:27.560 We've been doing what we want to do.

00:12:28.860 Some people who have already had natural immunity, they're all doing it.

00:12:31.380 As soon as I got the shot, I was like, done, okay?

00:12:33.500 And that's a huge number of people in this country.

00:12:36.380 Those people are seen as heretics, and they must be seen as heretics by people like Joe

00:12:41.340 Biden, because once people see through the myth, once they realize there is no magic

00:12:45.080 button that fixes everything, now the people in power have two choices.

00:12:47.620 One is admit they were lying to you the entire time.

00:12:50.000 And the second is, if it were only for those people, if they would shut up, I would show

00:12:54.680 you the magic button.

00:12:55.460 If those people would just do what I said, then the magic button would present itself.

00:12:59.320 It's these people who are standing in the way of me achieving utopia.

00:13:02.140 It's your neighbor who's the problem, not me lying to you.

00:13:04.640 Yeah, it's like all faith healers, right?

00:13:06.440 Anytime a faith healer comes around, they say, don't talk to anyone who doesn't have

00:13:10.380 faith, because that will somehow undermine your faith.

00:13:14.420 God wants to give you this great gift, but if someone else tells you he doesn't, then

00:13:19.240 he definitely won't.

00:13:20.780 But God is dependent on that guy?

00:13:23.480 I don't understand.

00:13:24.160 I don't know the math.

00:13:25.220 I'm not a Democrat.

00:13:26.520 They're also literally redefining all the terms now.

00:13:29.020 So I don't know if you saw Dr. Fauci arguing with Rand Paul.

00:13:31.940 Rand Paul is destroying him again.

00:13:33.500 And what they're doing is retreating into nominalism, to use a technical phrase.

00:13:38.020 What they're trying to do now is just define all of these things.

00:13:41.280 He says, Senator Paul, we do not do gain of function.

00:13:44.980 We do, you know, increase of utility.

00:13:49.800 Yeah, that's it.

00:13:50.560 It's not gain of function.

00:13:51.700 And they literally took the webpage down off of NIH.

00:13:54.920 Are you the people's front of Judea?

00:13:56.100 Ah, the people's front of the people's Judea in front.

00:14:00.140 They're doing this with everything, right?

00:14:01.420 Did you see that whole argument online over the last 24 hours about whether people should

00:14:04.760 continue to use the word woke?

00:14:05.840 I know.

00:14:06.260 I saw it.

00:14:06.660 And then a bunch of people on the left saying, Republicans, conservatives, they're racist

00:14:11.420 for using the term woke.

00:14:12.320 We didn't make up that term.

00:14:13.980 It's your word.

00:14:14.520 You guys made up the term.

00:14:15.720 They keep doing this over and over.

00:14:16.960 They coin a term.

00:14:17.980 We notice that their term is terrible and that it represents a terrible set of thoughts.

00:14:21.440 And then they go, how dare you use that term anymore?

00:14:23.620 Critical race theory.

00:14:24.500 Critical race theory.

00:14:25.260 There's no such thing.

00:14:26.680 Liberalism became progressivism.

00:14:28.160 It was progressivism.

00:14:29.960 They said progressivism is bad.

00:14:30.920 They're like, no, no, no.

00:14:31.380 It's liberalism.

00:14:32.580 Liberalism is bad.

00:14:33.260 They're like, no.

00:14:33.780 It's progressivism.

00:14:35.160 And then it was leftism.

00:14:36.180 And the funny thing is, it never occurs to them.

00:14:38.820 It's the actual ideas.

00:14:40.040 You can call him Fred and it's still going to be a bad idea.

00:14:42.140 Well, this is Steven Pinker, who is now, by the way, according to the conservative.

00:14:45.660 He is the most right-wing conservative.

00:14:47.040 He's the liberal professor at Harvard.

00:14:48.180 It's funny because he is a free thinker.

00:14:50.040 I don't agree with a lot of what he says, but he is a free thinker.

00:14:52.620 That makes him a conservative.

00:14:53.320 So Pinker has this idea of the euphemism treadmill that you can, the left, he doesn't only apply

00:14:59.040 this to the left, but that you just change the words.

00:15:01.740 You change the euphemisms.

00:15:03.220 And the thought is that it will change the, you know, the reality is so ugly that you just

00:15:07.500 have to change all the words.

00:15:08.880 But eventually, the reality catches up with the words.

00:15:11.300 The crazy thing is, the crazy thing is, they've taken this to an extent now.

00:15:14.140 They say, black lives matter.

00:15:15.420 And you say, but you're killing people.

00:15:16.840 Yeah, but black lives, you don't believe black lives matter, but you're killing black people.

00:15:20.020 Yeah, but black lives, it's like, I want to start a movement called Cats Are Nice, you

00:15:23.700 know?

00:15:24.060 And then it's just, you give me money because cats are nice.

00:15:28.080 So head over to dailywire.com slash do not comply.

00:15:32.300 If you'd like to add your voice to ours, we'll keep it kind of posted throughout the night

00:15:35.220 on how our petition is doing.

00:15:37.160 We'll make it very public and send a loud message.

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00:17:26.040 tonight.

00:17:26.420 An ambitious goal, 500,000.

00:17:27.760 That's what we're chasing.

00:17:28.400 Join us in this fight for bodily autonomy against the Biden administration.

00:17:33.680 Of course, this isn't the only fight that the Daily Wire has picked recently.

00:17:37.340 We also basically elected a governor in Virginia.

00:17:40.060 I wasn't going to say it.

00:17:40.680 Thank you so much.

00:17:41.720 Andrew Klavan now lives in a red state.

00:17:43.340 I do.

00:17:43.920 So does Matt Lallis.

00:17:46.040 We have two Virginia red spots.

00:17:47.360 The Virginian, as we call him.

00:17:48.760 No, I voted before anybody else because I was leaving town on election day and I just said,

00:17:52.900 follow me, folks.

00:17:53.720 It was just this incredible wave of, yeah.

00:17:56.360 It was actually, I mean, we contributed in a lot of ways.

00:17:59.040 Obviously, we weren't the only ones.

00:18:00.000 Chris Ruffo played an important role.

00:18:02.120 The Virginian himself, Matt Walsh, making an appearance down in Loudoun County to fight

00:18:06.600 on these issues.

00:18:07.860 But then I really think you cannot give enough credit to Daily Wire investigative reporter

00:18:12.360 Luke Rosiak.

00:18:13.100 I said the last time we were together, it was on stage at the Ryman Auditorium, and

00:18:17.040 I pointed out in front of 3,000 people in the live audience that no one would ever say

00:18:22.640 Luke Rosiak's name again, that being an investigative reporter will never earn you applause.

00:18:27.220 I'm going to prove that I am a liar because this son of a gun broke the most important story

00:18:32.240 of 2021, and it had an immediate impact in helping to elect Youngkin as governor of Virginia.

00:18:38.280 By the way, I have to say, being an actual Virginian, I'm not mentioning anything.

00:18:42.240 What are you implying?

00:18:44.920 Trans-Virginians are Virginians, Chris.

00:18:48.480 You know, the thing about where I am, which was a pretty blue area, compared to L.A., it's

00:18:55.320 a different blue.

00:18:56.040 It's a different color of blue.

00:18:57.020 A lot of Marines, a lot of service people, they are patriots.

00:18:59.820 They hear this woke stuff, and I hate to use the name, but they hear this woke stuff,

00:19:04.560 and they don't like it.

00:19:05.560 And some of them are afraid to say so, but when they start messing with their kids, they're

00:19:09.000 not afraid.

00:19:09.320 That's what struck me at the rally, talking to people there, and it was not, I mean, certainly

00:19:16.040 if you were to do a political poll, probably the majority are lean conservative, but I talked

00:19:21.940 to, there were teachers there, and of course, just a lot of normal parents, and a great number

00:19:27.280 of them were not, didn't identify themselves as Republicans or right-wingers, but they're

00:19:32.600 concerned about their parents, about their kids, rather.

00:19:35.040 And the other thing is also, we've talked a lot about how critical race theory has had

00:19:41.740 this great effect on the Virginia election, and it did.

00:19:45.680 But there's another theory in the school system, which is more pernicious, much more harmful,

00:19:50.440 more insidious, and more widespread.

00:19:51.560 And I think it's going to be the next big theory that we're all talking about, which

00:19:54.900 is gender theory.

00:19:55.760 And that's, you know, that plays into the rape case there.

00:19:58.340 That's what I would say a majority, not to speak for them, but a majority of the people

00:20:04.140 at the rally, anyway, that I attended were most concerned about, because there, with gender

00:20:09.360 theory, you know, with critical race theory, it's a terrible thing, because you're foisting

00:20:13.640 white guilt on white children, and you're dividing people by race, and it's a horrible

00:20:18.520 thing.

00:20:19.280 Even worse than foisting white guilt on white children, by the way, is foisting victimization

00:20:24.040 victimization on all the other children, and self-loathing, and on everybody, and it's

00:20:28.960 just a terrible thing.

00:20:30.000 With gender theory, though, you are fundamentally altering the way a child's identity.

00:20:35.820 I mean, you are reshaping.

00:20:37.080 You are corrupting children.

00:20:37.860 You are reshaping who they are.

00:20:38.980 There was just a poll that was released, a survey that was released a couple weeks ago

00:20:43.640 that found that in Gen Z, 40%, 40% identify now as LGBT, and we could look at that and say,

00:20:50.760 oh, it's a fad, or maybe that's an exaggeration.

00:20:52.440 Maybe something's in the water.

00:20:53.360 I don't know.

00:20:54.100 You know, there have been...

00:20:55.560 They are turning the frogs.

00:20:57.660 You've got to check the frogs.

00:20:58.900 But this is not just a fad.

00:21:01.480 This is a very real...

00:21:03.200 Well, it may very well be a fad, but it's a fad with consequences.

00:21:06.320 Well, it's a fad.

00:21:06.960 I know people...

00:21:07.360 I've heard people say, well, this is...

00:21:10.000 You know, when I was a kid, it was emo or goth or whatever, but yeah, that was a fad.

00:21:14.220 But the thing is, if you identified as a goth kid, adults were not going to sit you down.

00:21:19.580 Adults would say to you, this is a fad.

00:21:21.260 You're going to get over it.

00:21:21.940 You look ridiculous.

00:21:23.360 But now, with this fad, adults are going to say, well, this is who you are.

00:21:27.440 Here's a flag.

00:21:28.060 Go march in the street.

00:21:29.120 This is your truth.

00:21:30.380 This is the most important thing about you.

00:21:32.160 And so it sets in and it cements...

00:21:33.720 I think this is the biggest problem facing the Democrats right now.

00:21:38.640 What Virginia brought up, and it's true in New Jersey also, which was not about critical race theory, but it's true nearly everywhere.

00:21:44.140 The minute people start thinking generationally, Democrats are toast.

00:21:47.900 The minute people start thinking beyond their generation, they start thinking about what happens with the kids, Democrats have a real problem on their hands.

00:21:53.980 There's a really telling headline from the Huffington Post right after Virginia, and the headline said something to the effect of, Republicans want to make parents angry.

00:22:02.120 Democrats want to give them money.

00:22:03.820 And I thought, this is it.

00:22:06.340 This is the whole thing.

00:22:07.220 Because what Democrats really think is that all parents want is to be given money.

00:22:11.940 They don't care about the future of their children.

00:22:13.560 They do not care about the lessons their kids are being taught in school.

00:22:17.020 They want to just hand off their kids to the government-sponsored daycare and then to the government teachers, and they just want to take the money from the feds, and then they're going to be happy.

00:22:24.940 And the reality is that people who have kids do not think like that.

00:22:28.120 If you have children, you don't think like that.

00:22:30.260 You are thinking honestly, like all the time, about how do I want to bring up my kids?

00:22:34.180 What kind of world do I want to bring up my kids?

00:22:35.920 What kind of bubble do I want to create for my kids to protect them from the predations of a set of values that are likely to not only confuse, but corrupt them and make them into deeply...

00:22:44.020 Deeply, in some cases, kids who are not only confused about identity, but participate in behaviors that harm them, that actively harm them.

00:22:52.220 And parents have every right to think that way.

00:22:54.620 And Democrats, if they call those parents intolerant, which is what they're going to do, that'll be the next step, just like they called everybody who pointed out critical race theory racist.

00:23:00.680 The next step is going to be, if you say to your child that there are things like two genders and that your girl is a girl and not a non-binary eight-year-old, that if you say that, you're an intolerant bigot.

00:23:09.980 Good luck with that argument.

00:23:11.060 That one's going to go way worse than critical race theory.

00:23:12.700 This is the thing. Your children are always your softest point.

00:23:15.680 And all of these ideas are luxury ideas for all of human history in every society, everywhere.

00:23:21.260 Men and women have been considered different, have been assigned different roles.

00:23:24.640 Some of those roles have become elaborately performed, but they've always had different roles.

00:23:29.080 There is no new science.

00:23:30.280 The first thing that a doctor used to say to you when your child was born, it's a boy, it's a girl.

00:23:35.480 This is universal.

00:23:36.580 And there's no new science that has changed this.

00:23:38.580 There is not a single discovery that anyone has made that suddenly says, oh, no, all of this was wrong.

00:23:43.880 It was there to observe.

00:23:45.700 It was, as Matt was saying, it's the first thing children come to terms with is that they are a boy or a girl.

00:23:51.240 And we have this luxury where we think we can do anything because we're so safe.

00:23:55.200 Our armory is so powerful.

00:23:56.720 Our oceans are so broad.

00:23:58.160 We're so rich.

00:23:58.600 We're so rich.

00:23:59.380 It's so hard to do anything, but your kids are always vulnerable because you love them and you want them to.

00:24:04.120 This point, I think it's very important to take this fight to the Dems.

00:24:08.940 We've got to make sure that the establishment Republicans, the leadership of the Republican Party, gets this.

00:24:14.040 Because right the day after the Virginia election, when our Virginian friend over here and our investigative reporter helped elect a governor,

00:24:21.340 the big tweets from the official Republican accounts were, Virginia proves Americans don't want socialism.

00:24:28.720 I don't think Americans want socialism.

00:24:30.820 I hate socialism.

00:24:31.560 I think socialism is evil.

00:24:33.700 Socialism had nothing to do with Virginia.

00:24:36.260 Terry McAuliffe is a regular old corporate Democrat crook, Clintonite.

00:24:40.740 He's not a socialist.

00:24:42.360 And Glenn Youngkin didn't really run against socialism.

00:24:45.380 People went out to vote not to stop the workers from seizing the means of production.

00:24:48.700 It was to protect their kids.

00:24:50.780 And if these freaking Republicans don't get the message and don't run on that winning issue, they deserve to lose.

00:24:56.240 But this is, you know, to speak the unspeakable word, this is the purpose of Donald Trump.

00:25:00.800 His purpose, I think, is now served.

00:25:02.600 But if the Republicans do not pick up that this was his power, this was his superpower, this is what made people follow him, right and wrong.

00:25:10.020 If they don't get that, Youngkin got it.

00:25:11.940 Youngkin got it.

00:25:12.480 He would not have had the temerity to fight the culture fight that he did because he's a typical old Republican.

00:25:19.920 It took him some time.

00:25:20.720 Youngkin got it eventually.

00:25:21.800 He started his campaign as a kind of standard cookie cutter corporate Republican type.

00:25:26.380 And then there was a definite shift, a definite change.

00:25:29.160 I like to think that the Daily Wire had something to do with convincing him to make that change.

00:25:33.980 But, yeah, as soon as he – this has been the lie that conservatives have been fed from the Republicans for so long that, you know, we don't need to engage in the culture war, the so-called social issues.

00:25:45.440 It's all about business.

00:25:46.000 All people care about is their wallet.

00:25:48.980 That – no, your wallet is not what drives you at the deepest level of your being.

00:25:53.340 You're – well, some of us.

00:25:55.920 Present company, present company, et cetera.

00:25:57.540 Thank you.

00:25:57.800 Very much.

00:25:58.540 It gets very close to deepest level.

00:25:59.800 Well, but there are – you know, for a lot of us, your values and also your kids.

00:26:03.540 And that's something that the Democrats are going to learn, maybe are learning, is that with your children, that's – here's one thing.

00:26:09.500 There are Americans who are willing to give up their own freedoms.

00:26:12.520 They shouldn't be, but they're willing to do that.

00:26:14.340 They're willing to comply.

00:26:15.700 They shouldn't be, but they are.

00:26:17.200 But even many of those Americans, when you come for their kids, because that's something that almost all parents – I mean, you'll die for your kid.

00:26:23.800 You might not even die for your own freedom, but you'll die for your children.

00:26:26.480 And if we won't – if we reach a point as a population where we don't, then civilization's dead and there's no point.

00:26:33.580 Yeah, I mean, that's exactly right.

00:26:35.140 And I think that it's important to note here that you can chart this even with regard to Joe Biden and his presidency.

00:26:41.460 So the moment that broke Joe Biden's presidency was not all this inflation.

00:26:44.760 What broke his presidency was Afghanistan.

00:26:46.640 Look at the polling data.

00:26:47.720 He was around 50 percent.

00:26:49.020 Afghanistan happened.

00:26:50.100 Americans saw that as a core attack on our values.

00:26:52.760 They saw his surrender and his abject cowardice as a core attack on how we think of ourselves, and he's not been able to recover from that since.

00:27:01.460 The economic downturn harms him for sure, but the culture war issues are the places where the progressive left is the most separated from the rest of the American population, and that's where – honestly, just from a political analyst point of view, I have to say, I think that Joe Biden might be insane.

00:27:17.280 I don't mean like senile.

00:27:18.660 I mean crazy because he ran as a moderate who is going to bring people together, and now he is running this government like he's a member of the squad.

00:27:26.740 The furthest left president in my life.

00:27:29.140 By far.

00:27:29.780 By far.

00:27:30.300 It's not close.

00:27:30.860 He makes Obama look like a moderate.

00:27:32.040 It's insane.

00:27:32.680 And he's also – can I just say he's also farting all over Europe.

00:27:37.380 No one wanted to bring that, according to reports.

00:27:39.400 But this goes to that separation between the elites – I mean this really is an elite democratic party that is run for the wild progressive left.

00:27:45.960 There's a Pew study that came out today.

00:27:47.200 It says 6 percent of the American population about is what they call the progressive left.

00:27:51.320 Okay, and actually, I'm sorry.

00:27:53.060 Six percent of the Democrats are what they call progressive left.

00:27:55.940 Like three percent.

00:27:56.420 Okay, it's like a very small percentage of the population is progressive left, and that's the wing that they have chosen to placate with their equity talk.

00:28:04.020 They've got – they're sending out Pete Buttigieg to talk about how the roads are racist.

00:28:06.840 They're sending Nancy Pelosi over to Europe in the middle of a gas spike price spike to talk about how oil and gas are the worst thing that's ever happened.

00:28:17.200 One thing I love about American progressives – and this has always been true, right?

00:28:20.560 All throughout the Cold War, this was true.

00:28:22.460 American progressives lag Europe so far in terms of the ascendancy of their values that Europe has already learned the lesson and moved on before the American –

00:28:33.200 They're still saying we should be like Norway.

00:28:35.100 Norway's going, no.

00:28:35.840 No matter what.

00:28:37.820 Here's a question from a DailyWire.com member.

00:28:41.140 Given what happened in Virginia, do you think there's any hope in California of voting out Newsom during the next election?

00:28:46.940 People thought the recall would never get as far as it did, so I still have some hope we can moderate things here.

00:28:51.600 Well, this is very interesting.

00:28:53.080 My friend Owen Brennan, we all know Owen, he does a great –

00:28:55.960 Generous of you.

00:28:56.820 Call him a friend.

00:28:57.380 He has a great organization called Madison McQueen where they make videos for candidates.

00:29:03.700 He told me, and he follows this stuff very carefully, and he believes in winning back California.

00:29:07.740 He believes it is possible to win back California.

00:29:09.980 Gavin Newsom, his numbers, which were negative, never changed during the course of the recall.

00:29:15.340 They never got better.

00:29:16.100 What happened was our friend – another friend, Larry Elder, came in and was just too far for a blue state like California to go.

00:29:23.660 If a moderate Republican had come in who was prepared for questions like should transgender whatever bathroom and all that stuff, I think he could have been toppled, and I think he can be toppled now.

00:29:34.840 There is always – and you've pointed this out – there is always in California a little bit of the American dream alive.

00:29:40.220 People don't come to Hollywood because they're cowards.

00:29:42.900 They don't come to Hollywood because they want to be socialists.

00:29:44.880 They come to Hollywood because they want to make a fortune off their creativity.

00:29:48.560 And so there's still a strain of libertarian conservatism in California that can be tapped into, but it's not going to be tapped into on the culture side because it is a culturally left state.

00:29:59.840 Well, can I – I generally agree with that, but I do think there is a little nuance here that you can learn from Virginia.

00:30:05.740 And it's to Matt's point.

00:30:06.800 Matt says, you know, the culture wins and just running on taxes is going to lose, and I agree with that too.

00:30:12.200 But not all culture war issues are the same.

00:30:15.160 So if Glenn Youngkin in Virginia had run on a strong pro-life, you know, let's outlaw abortion campaign, I would have loved it.

00:30:23.920 He probably wouldn't have won.

00:30:25.140 If he had run on overturning Obergefell and returning the traditional definition of marriage, I would have loved it.

00:30:31.640 He definitely wouldn't have won.

00:30:33.140 But he picked a culture war issue that had broad appeal that really, really mattered.

00:30:37.920 You know, it's not – it wasn't just opportunistic or cynical.

00:30:40.620 It really, really mattered, and he tailored the campaign to that.

00:30:43.200 So I do think there's a sliver of hope.

00:30:45.300 There's another political nuance, though, that's important, which is, you know, we talk about the squishes.

00:30:49.360 I'm very upset with the infrastructure bill passing, very upset that Republican congressmen bailed out the squad.

00:30:56.320 Basically, the squad was going to kill this thing, which would have been a terrific moment for the country, and Republicans bailed them out.

00:31:02.520 But it's also naive of us to say that all conservatives across the country have to be the same.

00:31:07.620 It is simply not possible for California to elect Ted Cruz.

00:31:15.340 That cannot happen in California because that's not the demographic makeup, the political demographic – I'm not talking about racial – but the political demographic makeup of California.

00:31:23.500 That's not what people think in California.

00:31:25.540 Even conservatives in California don't think the way that Ted Cruz thinks.

00:31:28.820 They don't think the way I think.

00:31:29.640 You know, California is – you say the American dream is alive there, and that's true.

00:31:34.940 California is a giant state.

00:31:37.640 San Francisco is as far left as it's possible to be.

00:31:41.220 L.A. isn't.

00:31:42.440 But L.A. is culturally left.

00:31:44.000 L.A. is a place that's almost like the inverse of what we say about America.

00:31:47.580 L.A. is a place where people are very left on social issues and pretty right on economics and liberty.

00:31:57.040 And so you have to just realize that, you know, politics does sometimes make strange bedfellows.

00:32:04.000 And we do live in a two-party system, necessarily.

00:32:07.660 Someone who is to the right of Gavin Newsom in California is going to be a Republican because them's the options.

00:32:14.040 But while they are – they should be our allies and we should be – I'd be very happy to see a moderate Republican win in California, even though I might be very unhappy to see that same moderate Republican win in Tennessee.

00:32:25.380 So I'm just going to say, no, get out.

00:32:27.720 Leave.

00:32:28.620 Seriously.

00:32:29.160 Like, we've all made this decision.

00:32:31.060 We've all left.

00:32:31.960 And it's a little hypocritical for us to be here like, yeah, California is going to go great.

00:32:35.180 No, it's not.

00:32:35.660 It's going to suck.

00:32:36.220 You should leave.

00:32:36.880 I agree.

00:32:37.540 California is toast.

00:32:38.820 It's been toast for a while.

00:32:40.120 It is not like Virginia.

00:32:41.280 Virginia had a Republican House, Burgesses, not all that long ago.

00:32:45.900 It wasn't that far in the past.

00:32:48.200 Virginia was a much more purple state than California.

00:32:51.160 Virginia went by 10 to Biden.

00:32:52.560 California went by, what, 20-something to Biden, probably.

00:32:55.940 I mean, it was just a massive blowout state.

00:32:57.620 But California had a fake Republican governor not that long ago.

00:33:00.480 Yes.

00:33:01.200 A lifetime ago.

00:33:02.460 I will say on this infrastructure bill, you know, first of all, I don't believe that the squad would have sat it out if the Republicans – the Republicans gave them cover to sit it out.

00:33:10.740 But if three of them had gone along and three of them had sat it out, they could have still made –

00:33:14.720 Either way, it would have broken the squad.

00:33:16.920 If they had voted in favor of the Infrastructure Act, it would have broken them, and if they had voted against it, it had gone down.

00:33:21.280 No, I think that's better political thinking than our Republicans are capable of doing.

00:33:24.620 I agree with that.

00:33:25.440 I'm just saying that the bill still would have passed.

00:33:27.820 I think that we have a serious problem.

00:33:29.880 Nancy Pelosi has created – Pelosi and the Democrats have created this structure where they elect moderate Democrats in blue – in red districts or purple districts.

00:33:38.900 And then Pelosi bullies them into voting with her, and then they lose, but it doesn't matter because the left-wing ratchet only goes one way.

00:33:46.400 We have a problem that a lot of these Republicans who went along were in purple states, might have lost their position if they had voted against the infrastructure bill, which was very popular.

00:33:56.140 And now they'll get primaried by some right-wing crazy who can't win in their district.

00:34:03.260 So we have a structural problem because freedom is always under threat, but leftism sticks because you give people free stuff, you buy them all.

00:34:10.640 On California, there's also a question of who cares.

00:34:15.580 Let's say we could elect a Republican governor in California.

00:34:18.080 What difference does it make?

00:34:19.100 I kind of like the idea at this point.

00:34:21.120 I mean, I'm with Ben on the cynical view of this, no surprise.

00:34:24.720 I think there's no saving it.

00:34:26.640 Also, why should we try to?

00:34:28.660 I kind of like the idea at this point of being able to point to California and say, look –

00:34:33.280 Correct.

00:34:33.560 I totally agree.

00:34:34.020 This is what it is when the left runs something, and having a Republican on top of that, how does that help us?

00:34:38.560 I agree.

00:34:39.000 I'm the joker about California.

00:34:40.380 I'm like, we're out.

00:34:41.500 Whatever happens to you guys next, that's your business.

00:34:44.340 You decided that you want to govern yourselves this way?

00:34:46.420 Enjoy, right?

00:34:47.440 As Hellman says, the people are going to get what they deserve good and hard, right?

00:34:51.800 And by the way, my preferred strategy is if you are a Republican in California, which is still the most popular state for Republicans because it's such an enormous state,

00:35:00.720 move to Arizona, move to Georgia, move to New Hampshire, move to Florida, move to Tennessee, move to Nevada,

00:35:07.160 any place that is purple or close to purple, move there and help shift the state.

00:35:11.980 Do that.

00:35:12.380 Can I ask a question about the strategy, the Leninist strategy of destroy California?

00:35:15.880 A serious question.

00:35:16.880 Let it destroy itself.

00:35:17.920 Let it destroy itself.

00:35:19.060 I'm not going to go in and parade the place.

00:35:20.760 But isn't the purpose of Leninist to destroy itself that eventually people wake up and shift over?

00:35:26.220 Or is that not the purpose?

00:35:26.960 No, it's also to serve as an example of failure for the rest of the nation.

00:35:31.140 Some, you know, like, really, like, I think it's, by the way, I think that's what this election mostly was.

00:35:36.220 I agree with you, Drew.

00:35:37.300 Yes.

00:35:37.960 Right now, California is a good cautionary tale.

00:35:40.700 I want the caution to be well told.

00:35:42.320 Yeah.

00:35:42.980 Eventually, in the cycle of history.

00:35:44.600 Right.

00:35:44.840 I want people to go, oh, that didn't work.

00:35:46.120 Oh, yeah.

00:35:46.440 But let's maybe try.

00:35:47.560 But the way this is actually going to work is this has been my hundred year theory of California for many years now.

00:35:52.020 My hundred year theory of California is that every good state starts with a bunch of conservatives moving to a place, building a thing.

00:35:58.260 A bunch of leftists follow them there, make the thing significantly worse, drive the conservatives out.

00:36:02.200 The conservatives leave and go to an uglier area of the country.

00:36:04.740 And then the left has to follow them there because they have to go where all the money is.

00:36:08.800 And so they follow the conservatives there.

00:36:10.260 And so eventually, California will be completely cleaned out and the Republicans will move back in and take over Robert Strachan's house on the beach.

00:36:14.680 We'll take it back.

00:36:15.200 This is why I support gays, because the Republicans should have the gays because they make the best restaurants.

00:36:19.420 And why should why should the left have all the good restaurants?

00:36:22.600 You always have.

00:36:23.560 You're so helpful, Drew.

00:36:25.440 There's another aspect of this that we haven't really talked about.

00:36:27.860 I don't hear anyone talking about it.

00:36:29.240 And it's reconciliation.

00:36:30.540 Yeah.

00:36:30.760 In Congress.

00:36:31.520 That basically, if you remember all the way back to the heady days of 2009, and, you know, we had just given the Massachusetts Senate seat held by a Ted Kennedy to a Republican.

00:36:45.820 Scott Brown.

00:36:46.240 Scott Brown, so that we could overturn Obama's attempts to get Obamacare through Congress.

00:36:51.580 And Nancy Pelosi came up with this novel strategy.

00:36:53.980 And her novel strategy was, we will deem the bill to have been passed.

00:36:58.040 We won't actually do what has historically happened, which is a bill starts in the House.

00:37:02.600 Then the bill goes to the Senate.

00:37:04.420 Then they have to come together and figure out how to make that into one bill.

00:37:08.100 Nancy Pelosi said, we'll do the opposite.

00:37:10.180 This thing started in the Senate before the seats turned over.

00:37:12.800 They passed something in the Senate.

00:37:14.800 Totally different.

00:37:15.860 Now, we'll vote on something in the House.

00:37:17.080 By the way, the infrastructure thing ended in the House.

00:37:21.400 It didn't end in the Senate.

00:37:22.780 You say, well, what about that part where they have to come back together and vote again to make it one bill?

00:37:27.880 They just don't do that anymore.

00:37:29.500 They've just decided that the Senate and the House can vote on completely separate pieces of legislation.

00:37:35.520 And then, by sleight of hand, they'll just deem that it was one bill.

00:37:40.360 That's one of the tricks that they're doing.

00:37:41.860 And the other is using reconciliation to pass sweeping, which is where you do come together and make the math work,

00:37:47.900 to pass sweeping changes into how the government actually functions.

00:37:52.840 The idea that we even have a legislature at this point is basically untrue.

00:37:58.180 It's very scary end of Roman Republic stuff.

00:38:01.140 It's essentially this vestigial.

00:38:02.780 This is why I really feel that laws should be legally short enough for us to read.

00:38:08.200 And they should have to pass 50 of them if they want to get 2,000 pages of them.

00:38:11.900 Yeah, I agree.

00:38:12.200 So we can see the bills.

00:38:13.540 Which, even though we've always passed bloated bills in this country.

00:38:17.920 But this idea of these sort of monstrous...

00:38:21.420 Even the Supreme Court doesn't read them.

00:38:22.980 That's why the infrastructure bill, honestly, because we passed bloated bills, I'm...

00:38:26.020 Listen, I think the infrastructure bill sucks.

00:38:27.500 I think that we are dumping money into a spiral of inflation that's already occurring.

00:38:31.340 I think the vast majority of it's waste.

00:38:33.100 I think that even the stuff that we think is not waste is waste.

00:38:35.280 Whenever we say things like, oh, we need to spend on roads and bridges.

00:38:37.760 What people should understand is that every single year in the United States,

00:38:40.620 the local, state, and federal government spend upwards of $300 billion

00:38:43.120 upgrading roads and bridges in the United States

00:38:45.000 because the vast majority of roads and bridges in the United States

00:38:47.340 are not run by the federal government.

00:38:48.840 The federal government runs the dams.

00:38:50.360 The roads and bridges are run by states and localities.

00:38:52.280 So even the stuff they're spending now is just crap.

00:38:54.240 But with that said, a big bloated spending bill that basically just throws money at things,

00:38:58.660 that's what Congress does for a living.

00:39:00.260 I'm much more concerned.

00:39:01.220 Build back better.

00:39:01.680 Build back better.

00:39:02.300 You know, the roads and bridges, though, make a big problem for us.

00:39:05.080 And it gets to this problem of, well, just let California die and be a bad example.

00:39:09.340 Or to your point of there are different conservatives, you know,

00:39:12.740 different kinds of states, to Drew's point to.

00:39:15.540 That was certainly true in the past.

00:39:17.480 I mean, the states were very, very different.

00:39:20.420 All politics was local.

00:39:21.760 That's what Tip O'Neill used to say.

00:39:22.980 But increasingly, since we built the interstate highway system, since we had TV, since we had radio, since we have the Internet,

00:39:27.960 since we have this gigantic federal government that homogenizes everything, all the politics seems to be national.

00:39:34.000 And so you said it too, Ben.

00:39:35.540 It starts in San Francisco.

00:39:36.780 It goes to L.A.

00:39:37.420 It goes to Chicago.

00:39:38.060 It goes to New York.

00:39:38.480 Then it's for the whole country.

00:39:39.600 And so there is this fear.

00:39:41.140 As goes California, so goes the nation.

00:39:43.680 Yeah, but I think that that's a little different.

00:39:45.640 And the reason I say that is I will say my mind has changed radically in terms of optimism, which is a rare thing for me,

00:39:51.880 having moved from California to Florida.

00:39:53.340 Because when you're in California, you grow up and you think of yourself as Californian kind of culturally.

00:39:57.900 Like I was born there.

00:39:58.600 So you think of yourself as like you're culturally California in the same way you're culturally New York.

00:40:02.340 But you don't think of yourself as like a citizen of a state that is sometimes in opposition to the federal government.

00:40:07.760 When you're in California, what you mostly think of yourself as is an adjunct of the federal government who likes beaches in Hollywood.

00:40:13.920 That really is how you think of yourself.

00:40:15.360 It's not like you're a separate citizen of California.

00:40:18.020 The federal government is never something that is radically opposed to you.

00:40:21.820 It's something that's doing most of the things that you would be doing in your own state anyway.

00:40:25.200 But now you're a Florida man.

00:40:26.220 Now I'm a Florida man.

00:40:27.060 And let me just tell you, Florida is damned incredible.

00:40:29.660 And it's one of the reasons that Florida is so great is because Florida does oppose a lot of what the federal government is doing.

00:40:35.400 And so you start to think of yourself as, of course, I'm an American.

00:40:38.260 Of course.

00:40:38.980 But I'm also a Floridian.

00:40:40.560 And my state does not agree with the federal government.

00:40:43.200 325,000 signatures over on our petition.

00:40:46.200 We really appreciate the extra 5,000 people who've come on since the last time we updated.

00:40:49.840 That's at dailywire.com slash do not comply.

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00:42:28.700 We have a question here from a DailyWire.com subscriber.

00:42:31.860 And I think it's an important one.

00:42:33.800 It kind of goes to what we've been talking about here.

00:42:35.600 They say, I believe the Republican Party is dead.

00:42:38.380 I don't consider myself a Republican anymore.

00:42:40.500 I'm a starch conservative.

00:42:42.320 I'm very right-wing and I'm very Christian.

00:42:44.980 My question is, should we give up on the Republican Party but still vote Republican because it's all we have right now?

00:42:51.440 And because the Democratic establishment is evil?

00:42:53.760 And should we start a new conservative movement like the traditionalist conservative or something like that?

00:42:57.480 I think they mean a party.

00:42:58.520 Should we start a new party?

00:43:00.200 I'm going to take a crack at this one and say you're just a Republican.

00:43:03.260 I know you hate the Republican Party, but we do live in a two-party system.

00:43:07.600 And our two-party system gets a bad rap.

00:43:09.980 It's good that we have a two-party system.

00:43:11.820 Generally, the two-party system has served us well in this country for a long time.

00:43:16.060 It actually has a mitigating effect against the worst kinds of extremism.

00:43:20.740 If you go to Europe, even in the most conservative countries in Europe, there are communist parties with elected representatives in their parliaments.

00:43:31.860 And those parties can, over time, wield real political power.

00:43:36.400 In, obviously, many parts of Europe, there are very far right-wing parties.

00:43:41.320 This is how you get real radical right-wing movements like the National Socialist in the late 20s in Europe, which rose up and became the Nazi Party.

00:43:49.760 All of this happens because of a multi-party parliamentary system.

00:43:55.220 And one of the reasons I think that we all think that a parliamentary system would be better is because we don't know much about it.

00:44:00.160 And because it's easy not to like what you've got because there are constraints, right?

00:44:03.540 The Republican Party lets us down all the time.

00:44:06.320 But the other reason that we like parliamentary systems is because the left loves them.

00:44:12.160 And they're constantly in this sort of low-grade propaganda campaign to erode our trust in the two-party system because they know that they would be the ultimate beneficiaries if we move to a parliamentary model.

00:44:22.660 That's my conspiracy theory.

00:44:23.840 And to your point, though, historically, the left has to go further and further to the left.

00:44:29.600 Everything they touch turns to crap.

00:44:31.460 Yes.

00:44:32.100 Ultimately, even the left starts to come back to the center.

00:44:34.800 So you get a Reagan who turns everything around.

00:44:37.320 And when Clinton comes in, he's actually a very conservative, middle-of-the-road president.

00:44:42.080 Bloomberg in New York, the same thing.

00:44:43.700 When Giuliani turns the city around, Bloomberg kept it alive until this communist crazy came in.

00:44:48.920 And now even the Democrats.

00:44:50.640 You likely would not have had Ronald Reagan as president.

00:44:53.400 You likely would not have had Donald Trump as president.

00:44:55.340 You wouldn't have had Youngkin win in Virginia if we had a more parliamentary system because they could just fracture off the moderates into these coalitions.

00:45:04.080 See, in multi-party systems, you build coalitions.

00:45:07.440 And so you could go and say, well, yes, we agree with you a little bit about that and we'll compromise here, but we'll pull everything over with us toward the left.

00:45:14.700 There's also, there's just a numbers problem here.

00:45:17.480 You know, the listener is writing in and saying, I'm a traditional conservative.

00:45:21.180 And so I assume that means he's not a neoconservative, libertarian, populist.

00:45:26.300 This, I mean, I could probably name half a dozen other factions of the right.

00:45:29.500 And I agree.

00:45:30.320 I'm with you, buddy.

00:45:31.020 I'm a traditional conservative, too.

00:45:33.000 I don't think 50% of the country plus one would call themselves traditional conservatives in that way.

00:45:38.140 And so, yes, I would like for the traditional conservatives.

00:45:40.020 I'm not sure 50% of the people on backstage tonight would.

00:45:42.440 Well, right.

00:45:42.940 This is sort of my point.

00:45:44.140 You know, fusionism gets a really bad rap and it kind of failed and fell apart after the Cold War.

00:45:49.240 But it did a pretty good job during the Cold War.

00:45:51.020 And what was fusionism?

00:45:51.940 It was this plan to bring together traditional conservatives and libertarians and some warhawk Democrats and bring them all to fight communism.

00:45:58.780 And it's whether you support fusionism or not, it is just a fact of politics.

00:46:03.020 You need to include enough people that you can win elections so that you can do things.

00:46:08.080 We also know that conservatives and the grassroots and voters, conservative voters, can force the Republican Party to do things it wouldn't otherwise want to do.

00:46:17.620 Of course. It's just a vehicle.

00:46:18.040 We, you know, Donald Trump is one example and and and and Virginia is sort of another example as well.

00:46:23.780 So and, you know, there's the Tea Party.

00:46:26.200 I mean, the problem a lot of times I do put some of this back on us as the voters where we sort of lose track of the ball and let things kind of dwindle away.

00:46:36.340 And so it's not it's not all you know, I put a lot of the blame on the establishment of the Republican Party, but we have to continue holding them accountable.

00:46:42.740 And I think very often we end up getting distracted by other things.

00:46:45.580 There's a great point. I mean, I think that the tendency for Republicans tends to be we think that an election means we can go back to our regularly scheduled programming.

00:46:52.840 Right. An election happens in Virginia. It's like, OK, I'll go back to my regular life and I won't pay attention to what's happening anymore.

00:46:57.640 Whereas for the left, this is the business. The business is there was an election and then you wake up the next morning and the next business is there's an election.

00:47:04.680 Yeah. And for the right, because politics generally is seen as a distraction from more important things like family and business and community.

00:47:10.820 It's like, OK, we did a great thing in Virginia. Let's go back to sleep for three years and find out how things are in three years and we'll tune back in.

00:47:16.480 And it doesn't work that way. If you go to sleep, then you're going to lose control of the party.

00:47:20.020 The people who are the professional politicians and the professionals do not sleep at this.

00:47:23.280 You know, a friend of mine pointed out.

00:47:24.480 I also think it's a positive thing that, like, to have a party that includes sensible people like me and Ben and Jeremy and theocratic fascists.

00:47:33.300 No, that actually is a positive thing that we take ideas from one another and we see where our ideas are weak.

00:47:39.300 And, you know, it's a good thing.

00:47:40.380 A friend of mine pointed out that for the right, obscure political monikers are the right wing version of gender pronouns.

00:47:47.460 You know, we've got like 10 million of them and we get really focused on them.

00:47:50.500 But look at the Democrats. Terry McAuliffe and AOC are not the same thing, but they do somehow all kind of play basically well together.

00:47:59.680 And they're politically much more effective generally than Republicans are.

00:48:03.220 Then you look in Virginia, you get this one breakthrough issue.

00:48:06.300 Education brings in people who are not traditionally Republicans.

00:48:09.720 Good. Let's do more of that.

00:48:11.460 And also, also Republicanism, conservatism works.

00:48:14.480 So God willing, Youngkin will do a better job.

00:48:17.220 So there's a question from a DailyWire.com subscriber.

00:48:21.080 And the question is, do we believe that private employers have the right to have vaccine mandates for their employees?

00:48:30.200 That's a separate concept from should they give in to the government's demands that they have, that they that they follow with the government's vaccine mandate.

00:48:38.940 I think this is an interesting question.

00:48:40.120 I want to quickly get everybody's answers.

00:48:42.220 And then I think it's a it's a nice segue into another thing I want to talk about.

00:48:45.180 Michael, I think it depends on the state.

00:48:47.180 So I'll go back to federalism and subsidiarity here.

00:48:49.800 I think that the people of a state have the right, have a broad political right to craft laws about exactly what the limits are on corporations and exactly where where the rights of the corporations and the rights of the individual begin, the rights of the state government begin as well.

00:49:02.820 And so I think right now, if you were to ask that question state by state, you'd get different answers.

00:49:07.500 In Florida, the answer is no.

00:49:08.860 In other states, the answer might be yes.

00:49:10.200 I basically agree with what Knowles just said, except I just want to add that personally, I don't think employers should have the right.

00:49:19.080 You know, if I if I if I'm in the state I'm in where I cast a vote, I would say no.

00:49:24.280 Individuals, Trump.

00:49:25.480 I would actually say it slightly differently and say, I mean, I kind of agree with you about the states.

00:49:29.500 I also think it depends on the employer.

00:49:31.340 And so an example of this is if you work in health care, you probably or if you work in nursing homes, you probably have different sorts of criteria that you can ask your employees to meet in order to work in those environments.

00:49:43.620 And this is true.

00:49:44.500 I'm sure if we were to get now, I haven't given this a lot of thought today, but if we were to give this a little more expansive thought that there are other kinds of rules like that that might apply in very particular circumstances.

00:49:53.680 But obviously, as a general rule, not only do I think that it's sort of morally and philosophically wrong for your average employer to enforce to insert themselves into the private health decisions of their employees.

00:50:05.360 I actually think that it's illegal, that it's against federal law, that it is basically discriminatory, that it is basically retaliatory.

00:50:13.300 I think that it's increases your liability in some ways, violates things like the ADA.

00:50:17.740 I mean, there are questions about private health that you simply, HIPAA, you aren't allowed to ask these questions until suddenly now we're all pretending those rules don't exist.

00:50:26.220 We're in violation of many of those regulations, rules, and laws, and we're just all going along with it because the left wants it.

00:50:32.460 But it is a good chance for me to talk a little bit about what we're doing here at The Daily Wire.

00:50:36.880 By the way, 340,000 signatures on our We Will Not Comply petition.

00:50:42.060 You can go over to dailywire.com slash do not comply.

00:50:44.880 Add your voice to our own.

00:50:45.960 We're trying to get 500,000 people to sign our petition tonight, and then we hope to get millions more over the next few weeks as we continue to sue the Biden administration to block this mandate.

00:50:55.700 And we should be clear, the Biden vaccine mandate isn't a vaccine mandate.

00:50:59.380 The Biden administration isn't mandating that American citizens get vaccinated.

00:51:03.180 They're mandating that employers force their employees to get vaccinated.

00:51:08.480 Not only are we suing the Biden administration to stop that, but you know we announced last year that we're going to launch into entertainment.

00:51:14.720 And we dropped our first film in January, Run, Hide, Fight.

00:51:18.940 We wrapped production on our second film, Shut In, in the spring, and that'll be coming out next spring.

00:51:24.600 And just this weekend, we wrapped our second feature film, which is the film that we produced with Gina Carano after her horrible cancellation by Disney.

00:51:33.620 We made a deal with Gina, very thrilled to be able to announce that we've wrapped production on the film, Terror on the Prairie.

00:51:39.240 And the thing you may not know about this is that after Gina came on board, she came to us and said, you know, when we make movies, there are all these union-enforced rules that say we have to test people for COVID.

00:51:52.000 People have to wear masks.

00:51:53.200 There are all these different zones, these concentric circles where, you know, if you're in the special zone, you can take your mask off.

00:51:58.220 If you're in the not special zone, you have to have your mask on.

00:52:00.300 You know, SAG was talking a lot in the weeks leading up to us making the film about implementing their own direct vaccine mandate.

00:52:07.740 And Gina said, listen, I've taken all this flack, right?

00:52:11.820 I was beat down by Hollywood.

00:52:14.300 I was essentially kicked out, kicked to the curb for being moderate, not even right.

00:52:19.300 It's true.

00:52:19.960 Being moderate.

00:52:20.660 They kicked me all the way out.

00:52:21.760 She said, why would I, having gone through that, now turn around and force the people who want to work on a movie with me to be vaccinated, force the people who want to work on a movie with me to wear masks, force the people who want to be on a movie with me to be tested in all these horrible ways.

00:52:38.200 Why would I participate in that?

00:52:39.800 She said, I'm just not going to do it.

00:52:41.100 She put her money where her mouth was.

00:52:42.360 She left SAG and became what they call FICOR and insisted that we make the movie Terror on the Prairie in a way that allowed our, not our direct employees, but the people employed by the film that we're producing to have dignity and bodily autonomy.

00:52:56.560 And that's exactly what we did.

00:52:58.280 And to talk about that, I've invited on the villain for the film, a friend of ours.

00:53:03.220 I'm loathe to say it.

00:53:04.600 A friend of ours named Nick Fury.

00:53:05.740 A villain in real life.

00:53:06.680 A villain in real life.

00:53:07.300 In fact, what happened, our producer Dallas Sonnier called me and he said, you know,

00:53:10.680 who do we cast as the villain in the film?

00:53:13.260 I mean, we need like, who's the low down, dirtiest son of a, Nick Searcy.

00:53:17.600 You haven't even read the script.

00:53:18.820 Nick Searcy, I say.

00:53:20.140 And sure enough, here he is joining us by Skype.

00:53:23.700 Nick Searcy.

00:53:26.680 Yeah.

00:53:27.240 And I'm the good guy in this movie, by the way.

00:53:30.340 I just want to set the record straight.

00:53:32.520 You know, I'm trying to avenge my daughter who was murdered.

00:53:35.820 So, you know, it's just, I'm not the villain.

00:53:37.700 So, tell people a little bit about the film because we actually haven't shared very much

00:53:41.780 with the audience.

00:53:43.680 It's kind of a throwback Western in that sense of like, it's about revenge and it shows life

00:53:49.360 on the prairie and how isolated and how hard life was back then.

00:53:55.320 And it's, it's action packed.

00:53:59.940 And it also, to me, hopefully, the, the, the outlaws are, are understandable.

00:54:07.500 You can kind of, if not sympathize with them, you can at least understand their motives.

00:54:12.760 And I think that makes it for a much richer story.

00:54:16.380 And, and it makes it a little bit more unexpected.

00:54:19.720 You know, you're, it's not so predictable what's going to happen in this, in this movie.

00:54:24.640 Honestly, I think it's the best role I've ever had in a film.

00:54:27.660 I've, I've done some things on stage that maybe were of a, of a, a similar kind of scope

00:54:33.960 and size, but there's something Shakespearean about the character.

00:54:37.640 And it really, it, it was just an honor to get a chance to play that role.

00:54:42.940 And the whole production really is kind of an F you to the Hollywood establishment and

00:54:46.720 the left more generally, which is just demanding that everyone comply with all of these totally

00:54:51.000 unscientific rules and, and comply with the president's absurd mandate.

00:54:58.160 Yeah, it's all about power.

00:55:00.180 It's never been about health.

00:55:01.380 I mean, I don't know where we got, where everybody's just convinced that the government

00:55:04.980 cares about your day-to-day health.

00:55:07.500 I mean, you know, when I grew up, it was distrust the government.

00:55:11.600 And I don't know how it, how it came to be that suddenly it's now do everything the government

00:55:16.920 says, or you, you need to be segregated from the rest of society.

00:55:22.060 It was quite difficult to do a film that didn't have to comply with all of the absurd vaccine

00:55:27.900 mandates.

00:55:28.300 And that in order to do that, actors had to take some risk, step outside of the union.

00:55:33.240 This is very important to Gina that we not require the people who she was working with

00:55:37.580 to vaccinate or mask or test.

00:55:39.200 And in order to do that, she was willing to leave the Screen Actors Guild and become what

00:55:43.600 they call FICOR.

00:55:44.920 And we had to find other actors who were willing to take that sort of risk.

00:55:49.060 Of course, you were one of them.

00:55:50.480 What, what was it like working in this environment?

00:55:52.600 Do you feel, do you feel that the risk was worth it?

00:55:55.860 You know, I did a movie last, last year.

00:55:58.360 I won't say the name of it because I don't want to get anybody in trouble, but I did a movie

00:56:01.840 last year that was a SAG film in Oklahoma, all the SAG rules.

00:56:07.060 And it was just absurd.

00:56:08.620 I mean, you could barely get anything done.

00:56:11.000 Somebody tested positive.

00:56:12.620 They had to shut down production for two weeks and quarantine the star.

00:56:16.860 And then it turned out that it was a false positive.

00:56:20.580 And you're, you're going in and you're doing scenes.

00:56:23.380 I did a scene where they were supposed to be about 75 extras.

00:56:26.200 And the scene was supposed to be in 1975.

00:56:29.660 And I go in and everybody's in costume and they've all got their masks on and they're

00:56:33.380 standing shoulder to shoulder.

00:56:35.620 And the, the first AD says, okay, everybody, when we say rolling, take your mask off and

00:56:41.720 put it in your pocket.

00:56:42.520 Make sure that none of the loops hang out.

00:56:44.320 And as soon as the scene's over, we'll cut and you can put your mask back on.

00:56:49.280 And I'm like, yeah, because we're acting like it's 1975.

00:56:53.140 The virus didn't exist then.

00:56:54.920 So as long as you're acting as good, you're going to be safe.

00:56:58.020 So when the camera's rolling, you cannot catch COVID.

00:57:01.020 But as soon as the camera cuts quickly, you have to mask up.

00:57:03.980 You're contagious again.

00:57:07.000 Right.

00:57:07.480 And, and just sort of having to not deal with that madness.

00:57:11.040 I mean, it was really such a pleasant set.

00:57:13.020 It's, it's, it's the most pleasant production I've worked on crew wise, everything actor

00:57:20.220 wise in so many years, it was just a relief not to have to put up with the nonsense.

00:57:26.760 Well, Nick, thank you for joining us.

00:57:28.380 And thank you for making a stand out there and doing our film with us.

00:57:31.940 Jeremy, thank you for the opportunity to do that film.

00:57:34.700 It was really a great experience.

00:57:36.140 And I'll stand with you guys anytime.

00:57:38.580 That's the only way we're going to win this.

00:57:40.580 We've all got to stand up for our freedom.

00:57:43.120 That's absolutely right.

00:57:44.220 Got to stand up for our freedom.

00:57:45.760 And we're thankful to Gina and to Nick, not only for being in our film, being great talent

00:57:50.480 and choosing to work with us, but also being with us in this fight against these horribly

00:57:55.120 unwell thought through to say the very least unscientific tyrannical vaccine mandates.

00:58:00.440 Again, I think it's worth pointing out every now and then that I don't hate the vaccines.

00:58:04.120 I hate tyranny and because I hate tyranny, I'm willing to fight against it.

00:58:09.380 And I think that's how we all feel to some degree.

00:58:11.800 I mean, some people in our company hate the vaccine itself, but I thought there was this

00:58:15.400 wonderful text by our friend and colleague, Candace Owens.

00:58:18.780 Ben, I believe it was in response to one of your tweets.

00:58:20.620 And she said, you know, I'm proudly unvaxxed and Ben Shapiro is proudly vaxxed.

00:58:25.040 The thing we agree on is freedom.

00:58:27.120 And I'm proud to work for a company that'll stand for freedom.

00:58:29.420 So that's what we're trying to do.

00:58:31.240 Join us over at dailywired.com slash do not comply.

00:58:34.760 We're at 345,000 signatures.

00:58:36.980 Very grateful to you guys.

00:58:38.040 Sign our petition.

00:58:39.060 Help us send a message as we sue the Biden administration to stop their unconstitutional

00:58:43.520 and horribly conceived mandate.

00:58:47.120 I want to talk a little bit about Kyle Rittenhouse.

00:58:49.880 I think it's taken us 50 minutes to get here.

00:58:52.660 The story that obviously everybody in America is talking about today and rightly so.

00:58:57.040 So, Ben, fill us in a little bit on what's happened over the last two weeks.

00:59:00.220 So, essentially, the prosecution made the defense's case.

00:59:04.580 I mean, that is basically what happened in this trial.

00:59:07.120 So, as soon as the testimony started being given, it became perfectly obvious that the

00:59:10.380 prosecution witnesses were actually witnesses for the defense.

00:59:12.440 So, there was testimony by the guy who was shot and didn't die that he had been approaching

00:59:19.340 the defendant with a gun, right?

00:59:21.820 That he had actually been raising the gun at the defendant, and that's when he shot.

00:59:24.400 We may have a clip of that, actually.

00:59:25.440 Here's the clip, actually, yeah.

00:59:27.040 It wasn't until you pointed your gun at him, advanced on him, with your gun, now your

00:59:33.260 hands down, pointed at him, that he fired, right?

00:59:37.640 Correct.

00:59:38.900 Well, that is director verdict territory.

00:59:41.380 I mean, that is the...

00:59:43.340 And you can see the prosecutor.

00:59:44.380 The prosecutor's like, oh, my God.

00:59:45.580 Look what just happened here.

00:59:47.260 He's doing...

00:59:47.740 He's the full face bomb.

00:59:49.220 And it was like that throughout the entire trial.

00:59:52.260 There were witnesses who were there who were testifying.

00:59:54.260 The prosecution kept trying to say, so there were three people who were shot.

00:59:57.340 The first person who was shot was chasing Rittenhouse through a parking lot.

01:00:01.720 He threw a bag at him, but there was another guy who was chasing who fired a shot in the

01:00:04.920 air.

01:00:05.140 Rittenhouse turned around because of the shot, and the guy who threw the bag in the air

01:00:08.400 started lunging forward to try and grab his gun.

01:00:10.280 All of this is on video, and there's witness testimony to this.

01:00:12.400 As he's leaning forward to grab the gun, Rittenhouse shoots him.

01:00:15.420 They tried to make it seem as though Rittenhouse had shot him.

01:00:18.900 He was shot in the back because he was reaching forward to get the gun, and Rittenhouse shot

01:00:21.520 him over his shoulder in the back.

01:00:23.480 They tried to make it seem as though Rittenhouse had shot him while he was running away or something.

01:00:26.140 It's just obviously untrue.

01:00:27.560 Then the second guy who was shot and killed, there's tape of this, right?

01:00:30.680 It's all on tape.

01:00:31.380 That's the thing that's unbelievable about this.

01:00:32.880 It's all on tape.

01:00:33.940 The second guy who was shot tried to attack Rittenhouse and hit him in the face with a skateboard,

01:00:37.300 right?

01:00:37.440 Which could kill you.

01:00:38.780 And Rittenhouse shoots him for his trouble.

01:00:40.300 And then the third guy who gets shot is the guy you just saw in the testimony right there.

01:00:43.660 Who had a gun pointed at.

01:00:44.200 Yeah, who's literally carrying a gun, and he lied to the cops.

01:00:47.060 The cops said, what happened?

01:00:48.000 He said, oh, the gun came out of my pocket because I dropped it.

01:00:50.220 I dropped the gun.

01:00:51.100 And then he was asked, no, he didn't drop the gun at all because it's all on tape.

01:00:54.580 Okay, so the question is why this was even brought in the first place.

01:00:57.920 That really is the big question because the prosecution had no case.

01:01:00.440 The judge has been pissed about it literally since the first day because it was obvious to the

01:01:03.940 judge they had no case.

01:01:05.480 The judge just reamed the prosecutor today.

01:01:07.200 And then finally today, Rittenhouse took the stand, which frankly, as a lawyer, I'm scared

01:01:11.900 to death of, right?

01:01:12.520 If you're a lawyer, first rule is you don't put your client on the stand if there's no

01:01:16.500 reason to put your client on the stand.

01:01:17.740 And because the prosecution had not made the case, there's a very solid defense case that

01:01:21.480 Rittenhouse doesn't have to take the stand at all.

01:01:23.780 And so I'm really interested, I'm sure we'll hear later, what the logic was in terms of

01:01:27.180 putting Rittenhouse on the stand.

01:01:28.260 But Rittenhouse gets up there on the stand and he essentially has a panic attack on the

01:01:33.780 stand, which you can understand.

01:01:35.160 He's still a very young man.

01:01:37.240 He's 17 years old still.

01:01:38.740 And he's on trial essentially for his life in a very clear cut case of self-defense.

01:01:43.780 And the entire media world goes insane.

01:01:45.660 How could he cry?

01:01:46.420 How could he?

01:01:46.680 It's all fake.

01:01:47.560 There are a bunch of blue check marks essentially suggesting that.

01:01:50.340 And the prosecutor, again, has nothing on him.

01:01:53.400 The prosecutor starts asking him questions about whether he plays Call of Duty.

01:01:56.380 That's literally one of the exchanges.

01:01:57.740 He starts saying, in Call of Duty, don't people carry around AR-15s and shoot everybody?

01:02:01.600 And Kyle Rittenhouse says, you mean in a video game?

01:02:03.900 They carry all kinds of guns in the video game.

01:02:05.740 Right.

01:02:06.020 And he says, so we're talking about a video game here.

01:02:08.220 The prosecution has nothing.

01:02:09.500 And so what this really raises, and I think everybody who's watched this knows this, what

01:02:12.400 this really raises is, how can you say that we live in a system of justice when prosecutors

01:02:17.320 who have the discretion whether or not to bring cases are so clearly, in many cases,

01:02:21.340 driven by public media pressure to bring the case in the first place?

01:02:24.120 Can we take, like, look at the whole picture here.

01:02:26.500 Because this happened, it was on video.

01:02:29.700 We saw, from the very beginning, some of the video, but not all of it.

01:02:34.160 And all the video evidence that we saw was very clearly self-defense.

01:02:38.200 And then all the big tech companies, Twitter and Facebook, they say, you're not allowed

01:02:43.980 to say that you think Kyle Rittenhouse is innocent.

01:02:47.360 You're not allowed to raise any money for his defense.

01:02:49.300 So he's got all the big tech companies against him.

01:02:51.980 And then we go, and then the DA brings these charges in like 48 hours with no evidence

01:02:56.580 whatsoever.

01:02:57.560 And then during the trial, they start coming out with other video.

01:03:00.340 Oh, the FBI had a drone out.

01:03:02.560 And they didn't share the video with the police?

01:03:04.800 And no one saw.

01:03:05.520 There's actually two videos of the first shooting.

01:03:07.900 Because the first shooting, we had the second shooting on video from the very beginning.

01:03:11.440 The first shooting, it was a very good circumstantial reason to believe that it was self-defense.

01:03:14.640 But we didn't actually see the shooting itself.

01:03:16.320 The FBI had that.

01:03:17.260 They never showed us that.

01:03:18.340 And then we find out, at least according to a witness who testified in the trial, I

01:03:21.380 think it was today or yesterday, yesterday, that according to him, the prosecutor tried

01:03:26.820 to suborn perjury.

01:03:27.600 Tried to convince him to testify that he knew the name of somebody he didn't really know

01:03:30.860 the name of.

01:03:31.240 And then you've got the prosecutor up on the stand today, you know, insinuating that,

01:03:36.680 well, Kyle Rittenhouse, he didn't want to talk to the police.

01:03:39.760 And if you didn't want to talk to the police, what were you hiding?

01:03:42.020 Insinuating that if he was silent, that he might have been guilty.

01:03:45.880 He should give up your rights.

01:03:46.660 Right.

01:03:46.880 And he got reamed out by the judge for that.

01:03:49.960 What I'm saying is...

01:03:50.260 Then he did it again.

01:03:51.280 He got reamed out by the judge.

01:03:53.200 The judge said, don't do that.

01:03:54.400 He said, yes, your honor.

01:03:55.600 Then he did it again.

01:03:56.480 The judge actually sent the jury.

01:03:57.440 What I'm saying is because...

01:03:59.480 What?

01:03:59.660 And then he tried to readmit evidence the judge had already ruled out of evidence.

01:04:04.200 Right.

01:04:04.500 And so you hear from some people that, well, prosecutors, they do this kind of stuff all

01:04:09.020 the time.

01:04:09.740 Maybe some of it they do.

01:04:11.240 But this is so out in the open that there is a real conspiracy by the most powerful forces

01:04:16.820 in our society to send this boy to jail as a blood sacrifice who is not only innocent,

01:04:23.960 but I believe acted heroically that night.

01:04:26.440 He went to his community where he worked.

01:04:27.900 He crossed state lines.

01:04:29.060 Who gives a damn that he crossed state lines?

01:04:30.540 He went 20 minutes to where he worked and he was there to help his community.

01:04:35.880 He was cleaning up graffiti.

01:04:37.560 He had a gun, which I think was smart to have a gun given where he was.

01:04:41.640 He tried everything he could to preserve the lives of these people who were chasing him.

01:04:45.420 He only fired the shot at the very last moment.

01:04:48.580 And they have nothing on him.

01:04:50.420 And they are trying to, in front of everybody, send him to jail.

01:04:54.100 This is corruption.

01:04:54.800 This is like the death of the justice system.

01:04:56.880 This is the most, this is the scariest part about it.

01:04:59.360 When you watch the footage and forget the media coverage, which was just a complete lie.

01:05:03.560 But when you listen to him speak, when you look at the prosecution fall apart, you realize this

01:05:08.300 kid did not take a bad shot.

01:05:11.380 This kid, this kid is 13 years younger than I am.

01:05:14.220 I have some amount of firearms training.

01:05:15.960 I don't think that I necessarily would have been as controlled as he was.

01:05:19.500 He doesn't take a bad shot.

01:05:20.840 He takes the stand today.

01:05:21.960 Can you imagine that?

01:05:23.180 And his answers were absolutely on the, he had a panic attack and his answers were still

01:05:27.260 on the money.

01:05:27.900 The prosecutor said, you had the intent to kill this person.

01:05:30.920 And he said, I intended to stop the direct threat to me.

01:05:34.520 And he said, by killing him.

01:05:35.660 He said, no, it's like the law of double effect.

01:05:37.600 I was just stopping the threat at the very last minute.

01:05:40.020 This, everything, this kid was so tightly controlled, including his testimony.

01:05:44.460 And it's still up in the air as to whether they could get him.

01:05:47.660 I mean, it is so scary.

01:05:49.100 I have to say, because in my youth, I was a courtroom reporter.

01:05:52.380 I was a reporter, you know, a reporter who covered courts.

01:05:55.120 I've always really slow to second guess juries and to say, they say the people who, oh, I saw

01:06:01.280 the video, so I know what happened.

01:06:02.720 No, I agree with this.

01:06:03.380 This is an exception.

01:06:04.420 This is an exception.

01:06:05.180 Walsh is right.

01:06:05.820 This is a complete miscarriage of justice.

01:06:07.860 This is a lynching.

01:06:09.240 It's a lynching.

01:06:09.820 And it reminds me of trials that happened in my youth, where they put some poor black

01:06:14.640 kid on the stand with his all-white jury that hated him, and he never stood a chance.

01:06:19.660 Why is this guy on trial?

01:06:21.220 I do not understand why he's on trial.

01:06:22.000 Well, because the left believes things about him that are simply not true, that were fabricated

01:06:27.180 by the media.

01:06:28.060 So, this whole, he crossed state lines.

01:06:30.960 They say he carried a weapon across state lines.

01:06:33.600 He didn't.

01:06:34.500 He did not carry a weapon across state lines.

01:06:36.180 It's more than that.

01:06:36.460 They say that he's a racist.

01:06:37.700 That's the thing.

01:06:38.220 He only, he didn't shoot any black people.

01:06:40.360 Not a single person who was shot in this situation.

01:06:42.000 They called him a white supremacist.

01:06:42.980 They called him a white supremacist.

01:06:43.980 But this is the other thing.

01:06:44.720 They also said that these riots, which were happening all over the place, over every little

01:06:48.720 thing, were mostly peaceful.

01:06:50.460 Anti-racist protests.

01:06:51.560 They were riots.

01:06:51.840 And so, the whole narrative, he swept up into this narrative, he's in this mostly peaceful

01:06:56.420 riot, and somehow he's not supposed to defend that.

01:06:58.480 I swear, it's as though there's a conspiracy to destroy the institutions of our country.

01:07:01.780 Yes, there it is.

01:07:02.540 It really is, because what you said earlier is right.

01:07:04.580 So, I've said about nearly every criminal trial that I've ever covered on my show, that

01:07:08.880 I will wait until I see all the evidence, and then I will make a judgment as to whether

01:07:11.760 this prosecution was properly brought.

01:07:13.600 Right.

01:07:13.800 And so, I waited on all the evidence to come out in the Chauvin trial, and then I still

01:07:17.660 think that Derek Chauvin should not have been convicted on the murder charge, at the

01:07:22.540 very least.

01:07:23.440 Okay, but I waited until all the evidence was brought out, because my faith in the justice

01:07:27.140 system is such that when all the evidence is presented, I assume that people aren't making

01:07:30.140 completely insane decisions.

01:07:31.100 In this case, I waited for the prosecutor to come forward.

01:07:34.220 Maybe he knew something that I didn't.

01:07:35.800 And when it turns out that not only does he not know anything that I don't, he's just

01:07:39.660 lying about the stuff that we do know.

01:07:41.580 Yeah.

01:07:41.740 It's the most disquieting thing.

01:07:43.860 And we've seen this over and over.

01:07:45.220 I mean, it feels similar in effect to what we just learned, for example, about the Steele

01:07:50.080 dossier.

01:07:50.760 Right?

01:07:50.960 You have some faith.

01:07:51.720 That's right.

01:07:52.040 That the people at the FBI and the DOJ aren't complete political hacks or just doing what they

01:07:55.820 are told in order to achieve a particular political purpose.

01:07:58.220 And then you find out it's exactly what conspiracy theorists thought it was in the first place.

01:08:02.060 It's enough to make you a conspiracy theorist.

01:08:03.440 But this is exactly what's happening with the mandate from the Biden administration.

01:08:07.520 Joe Biden knows that this mandate is unconstitutional.

01:08:09.840 They could have, even if you believe that it's unconstitutional, as I do.

01:08:13.340 They could have gone through the process.

01:08:14.140 If you believe it's constitutional, they still could have gone through the process.

01:08:16.480 Yep.

01:08:16.840 Right?

01:08:17.300 They skipped all the administrative procedures because he actually wants the court to strike it

01:08:21.680 down.

01:08:22.220 He knows that the policy is wrong.

01:08:24.060 He wants credit with his base for having done it anyway, and then he wants to be able to

01:08:28.860 turn the American people against the institutions that stand between them and leftism.

01:08:33.340 So when the court strikes it down, he'll be able to run against the court.

01:08:37.180 He'll be able to say that the court is the problem.

01:08:38.980 They do want to undermine our trust in the American system because they want to replace

01:08:42.980 the American system.

01:08:44.020 And you can't replace a system that people believe in.

01:08:46.400 I really think that that is correct.

01:08:48.620 And what it does lead to is if you're a person who wishes for the system to be upheld, it

01:08:54.160 puts you on really shaky ground because we live in a society where the first person to

01:08:58.760 shout conspiracy, if it turns out that the conspiracy was right, ends up getting a lot

01:09:02.240 of credit because they were the first off the line.

01:09:05.600 And I tend to be the last person to shout conspiracy because, frankly, I think that conspiracies

01:09:09.700 tend to be rare.

01:09:10.460 People tend to be stupid.

01:09:11.400 I usually attribute to stupidity rather than malice.

01:09:14.060 But when you see that you keep attributing to stupidity rather than malice, and then it keeps

01:09:17.420 being malice, at a certain point, you have to start rethinking how these institutions

01:09:21.020 are working.

01:09:21.580 We have to realize, too, that for the left, it's this very Machiavellian ends justify the

01:09:25.940 means thing.

01:09:26.420 And so they believe they are willing to cut down all the laws and destroy all the institutions

01:09:31.160 for the sake of what they consider to be the greater good.

01:09:33.480 And they know.

01:09:35.060 And by the way, when we say they, they were saying this and that about Kyle Rittenhouse,

01:09:38.140 that includes the current president of the United States, all the high-ranking Democrats.

01:09:41.920 All of them came out right away and called him a white supremacist.

01:09:43.920 They know that it's not true, but he represents something that, to them, they have fashioned

01:09:48.880 him as a sacrifice.

01:09:50.460 Even if it's not true, it gets to a greater.

01:09:52.420 Right.

01:09:52.780 It does.

01:09:53.460 And that's how they say.

01:09:54.280 Did you see a piece in 538 today about how, in Virginia, when they elected, why white

01:09:59.360 supremacists are electing black people?

01:10:01.420 Because they're stupid, I guess.

01:10:02.900 No, no, no.

01:10:03.600 It's because they like black people who agree with their political ideas.

01:10:07.900 That's the problem.

01:10:08.480 No, no, no.

01:10:08.800 It's because they're black white people.

01:10:10.800 Yeah, they're black.

01:10:11.240 No, that's what it is.

01:10:12.860 It's because the white supremacists like black people who are actually white people.

01:10:16.000 That's the case they can make on MSF.

01:10:17.100 This is a question from a DailyWire.com subscriber that I think is best for you.

01:10:21.120 Watching this case, could there be legal repercussions for the prosecution if Kyle is acquitted?

01:10:26.520 I mean, if he's acquitted, it wouldn't be about the acquittal.

01:10:30.600 The legal repercussions would come for violation of particular standards of activity in the courtroom.

01:10:38.000 It'd be with the bar.

01:10:38.580 Right, he could be disbarred.

01:10:40.600 The judge could theoretically hold him in contempt.

01:10:42.340 There are certain things that could certainly be done.

01:10:44.160 And his behavior, I think, would warrant a lot of it at this point.

01:10:47.940 So here's something that we've never done before, but I want to talk about a new story.

01:10:51.520 And in order to do that, I have to bring a pizza onto the set.

01:10:56.320 This is...

01:10:56.920 Oh, boy.

01:10:57.460 Thank you, thank you.

01:10:58.600 Very good.

01:10:59.400 We should do this all the time.

01:11:00.080 We should talk about this story all the time.

01:11:01.340 So this is a one-bite, everybody knows the rules, cheese pizza.

01:11:09.480 This is from Dave Portnoy, the founder of Barstool Sports.

01:11:12.020 You can buy it at Walmart, and you should go buy some of these frozen pizzas at Walmart.

01:11:16.360 I'm going to review the pizza, because apparently that's what CEOs do, is they review pizzas.

01:11:21.380 Let me see here.

01:11:23.100 The undercarriage is on the bottom.

01:11:24.980 There's melty cheese on the top.

01:11:27.820 Looks like a pizza, right?

01:11:29.760 Yep.

01:11:30.920 That is a pizza.

01:11:32.780 If I had to give that a rating, I'd say that it's very pizza.

01:11:37.400 I don't know anything about pizza.

01:11:39.340 I'd like to say that it's because, you know, I'm a god king and rich and snobby, but it's

01:11:45.740 actually because I only eat Pizza Hut, because in the small town I grew up in, we only had

01:11:49.360 one restaurant, and that restaurant was pizza.

01:11:50.540 It's snobby, yeah, yeah.

01:11:51.320 Here's the thing.

01:11:52.440 That's a good frozen pizza, and you should buy it, and you should buy it, because this guy,

01:11:56.300 Dave Portnoy, is being railroaded by the media, and when somebody stands up against a good

01:12:02.140 media railroading, they deserve our support.

01:12:04.720 I'm going to tell you the story.

01:12:06.260 I'm going to monologue about it for just a second, because I want to get one piece of

01:12:09.640 it out of the way so we can talk about what I think is the pertinent piece of the story

01:12:14.220 for our purposes.

01:12:16.020 Dave Portnoy, who, you know, I sometimes say he's my spirit animal.

01:12:20.000 I like him as a CEO.

01:12:22.120 I like him as a media figure.

01:12:23.520 I like the character that he's cultivated online.

01:12:26.760 He has this sort of devil-may-care attitude.

01:12:29.940 I get a big kick out of him.

01:12:31.180 He is, nevertheless, I think it is fair to say, a scoundrel.

01:12:34.900 A lovable scoundrel.

01:12:35.860 A lovable scoundrel.

01:12:36.880 And by scoundrel, I mean that Dave Portnoy has three sex tapes that are out in the wild.

01:12:42.180 Wow.

01:12:42.640 Dave Portnoy, yeah.

01:12:43.820 Prolific.

01:12:44.640 Yeah.

01:12:45.040 You don't accidentally have three sex tapes out.

01:12:48.380 One sex tape, maybe.

01:12:50.320 Chalk it up to luck.

01:12:51.280 That's right.

01:12:52.100 Dave Portnoy is a scoundrel.

01:12:53.480 He's a rogue.

01:12:54.240 He talks openly about the fact that he likes to have sex with lots of women.

01:12:59.900 And what happened here is that Business Insider did a story, apparently eight months in the

01:13:05.220 making, where they just started tracking down people who had had sex with Dave Portnoy

01:13:09.160 and talked about it in social media.

01:13:10.760 Well, they started by saying that the story was about his finances, right?

01:13:13.420 That's right.

01:13:13.720 It was about his business and it was about not this.

01:13:15.480 They were just investigating his business growth.

01:13:17.340 And then randomly it turned into a story about all the women he had sex with.

01:13:19.860 That's right.

01:13:20.180 Now, since the dawn of time, rich, powerful, and famous men have had sex with lots and

01:13:26.780 lots and lots of women.

01:13:27.660 It is because...

01:13:28.620 Except for me.

01:13:30.480 Literally except for me.

01:13:31.540 I'm the only exception in all human history.

01:13:33.440 This is because there is a certain subset of women who want to have sex with rich, powerful,

01:13:40.040 and famous men.

01:13:40.920 A subset?

01:13:41.600 A subset.

01:13:42.280 This goes back all the way to like the first rich, powerful, and famous man, Andrew Clavin,

01:13:47.880 in the long time ago he did.

01:13:49.740 The way long time ago he did.

01:13:51.540 But my point is, you may morally disagree with Dave Portnoy's behavior.

01:13:55.540 I think everybody on this panel probably does think the morality piece of this story doesn't

01:14:00.680 air in favor of Dave Portnoy.

01:14:03.380 Anyway, nevertheless, you can't act sort of traumatized or scandalized by the fact that

01:14:10.000 a rich, powerful, famous man is having sex.

01:14:12.160 Solomon had 1,000 wives.

01:14:13.920 Between his wives and his concubines, King Solomon had 1,000 women whom he could officially

01:14:19.500 have sex with.

01:14:20.620 I want to put that in context because those numbers don't mean anything when you hear numbers

01:14:23.600 like that.

01:14:23.880 If King Solomon only had sex with one of his wives or concubines a day, he would not repeat

01:14:30.480 for almost four years.

01:14:32.200 Wow.

01:14:32.680 In a different context, he's one-tenth of a Wilt Chamberlain.

01:14:37.920 King Solomon got to build the first temple and write three books of the Bible.

01:14:41.160 Like, the world is a messy, complicated place, and while morality is a very interesting topic

01:14:45.860 and important for us on this show to talk about, it's not what I want to talk about today.

01:14:49.600 What I want to talk about today is Business Insider writing a story about two women in

01:14:55.500 particular, both of whom reached out to Dave Portnoy on social media, DM'd him, knowing

01:15:00.400 that he's a scoundrel, knowing that he has sex tapes, knowing that he's a rogue, and began

01:15:04.600 flirting with him, said that they would like to have sex with him, sent him provocative

01:15:09.680 direct messages.

01:15:11.840 In one case, one of the women actually said that she wanted to play out her rape fantasy

01:15:15.500 with him, then flew themselves to his home, went into his house, hooked up with him, and

01:15:22.820 then felt bad about it.

01:15:24.440 I don't want to talk about the morality of Dave Portnoy because that's an obvious question.

01:15:27.520 What I want to talk about is two things.

01:15:29.040 One, we live in a society.

01:15:31.580 We live in a society where young women have not been taught that if you DM a rogue, a well-known

01:15:38.800 rogue and scoundrel, lovable though he is, great CEO though he is, who has three sex tapes,

01:15:43.020 if you send him topless pictures of yourself, if you tell him that you would like to have

01:15:47.280 sex with him and live out your rape fantasy, if you get on an airplane and fly to his

01:15:50.560 house, if you have sex with him, it may be the case that after this, you don't feel

01:15:55.960 great about it.

01:15:56.720 It may be that while you have always looked up to Dave Portnoy, Dave Portnoy has never

01:16:01.980 thought about you one single time.

01:16:03.620 And never will again.

01:16:04.080 And never will again.

01:16:05.060 And that that may cause you to feel some regret.

01:16:07.860 And unfortunately, in the moment in which we live right now, the left has concluded, you can

01:16:12.540 do any sexually deviant thing that you want.

01:16:14.860 You can say anything you want.

01:16:16.240 You can do anything you want.

01:16:17.200 You can be anything you want.

01:16:18.700 But regret is rape.

01:16:20.400 If someone, if a woman regrets a sexual encounter, that is almost definitionally rape in the eyes

01:16:25.320 of the left.

01:16:26.140 That's, that's a horrible thing.

01:16:27.560 I feel bad that these women were not taught better.

01:16:30.480 I feel bad that they made bad choices all around.

01:16:33.480 Yep.

01:16:34.320 Why is this a story for Business Insider to cover?

01:16:37.460 Because they hate Dave Portnoy.

01:16:38.320 Because they hate Dave Portnoy.

01:16:39.740 Dave Portnoy is not the only rogue, rake, or scoundrel among the rich, powerful, and elite.

01:16:44.380 I would probably guess that there are ragues, rogues, and scoundrels who work for Business

01:16:49.700 Insider if they have fame, money, and power.

01:16:51.760 I would also say that Dave Portnoy has suggested that since this story broke, the same reporters

01:16:59.160 have started calling his advertisers because they would like the follow-up story of finding

01:17:03.880 out that the advertisers reacted to their first story and dropped Dave Portnoy.

01:17:08.420 So it's not just, it's activism.

01:17:10.240 It's activism.

01:17:10.900 Yeah.

01:17:11.640 It's activism masquerading as journalism, people feigning outrage at behaviors that they actually

01:17:17.380 encourage in other contexts, that they actually.

01:17:19.640 And I think it's important here for you to remind people that no rape charges have been

01:17:24.080 filed.

01:17:24.420 No rape charges of any kind have been filed.

01:17:27.000 And we were talking off air about this a little bit earlier.

01:17:29.400 And you make a good evidentiary point.

01:17:31.800 Even if a woman claims that something happened that she was not into.

01:17:35.260 And that is certainly possible, that you do all of these things and that you go up to

01:17:38.380 the bedroom.

01:17:38.920 Nevertheless.

01:17:39.400 And something bad happens.

01:17:40.560 Yes.

01:17:41.180 There is literally no way for anyone outside of that circumstance to tell what happened

01:17:46.520 in that room.

01:17:47.400 And it's particularly difficult to tell when you have a trail of evidence that suggests

01:17:50.400 consensuality all the way up to the time the door closes.

01:17:53.380 And in some cases, he shared some DMs on Twitter.

01:17:56.360 Post it, like afterward.

01:17:57.520 Yeah, that's right.

01:17:57.960 And by the way, not only have no rape charges been filed, there's no claim of rape.

01:18:03.020 In that article, which we see the title right there.

01:18:06.800 Now, the headline, of course, they put it behind the paywall.

01:18:09.600 So most people weren't reading the article.

01:18:11.940 They were just sharing the headline.

01:18:13.280 And the headline says, you know, I was literally screaming in pain.

01:18:16.340 Dave Portnoy has violent and humiliating sex.

01:18:19.460 Now, that right there should be a red flag because violent and humiliating, screaming in

01:18:23.560 pain sounds really bad, but if this was a rape claim, that would be in the headline.

01:18:28.580 Yeah, the word rape would appear.

01:18:30.100 And that's not it.

01:18:31.200 I mean, and when you talk about, you know, young women and men, you know, don't realize

01:18:37.620 that regret is not rape.

01:18:39.840 One of the reasons for that, we've talked about this before, is that when it comes to

01:18:43.320 sexual morality, the only, we've boiled it all down to consent.

01:18:47.220 And there's nothing more than consent to sexual morality these days.

01:18:50.480 So we have no language to describe a feeling of, you know, I just, I, I, I did this.

01:18:56.140 I don't, I feel like my dignity, like I've sacrificed my dignity.

01:18:59.180 I don't, I, you know, I feel like I've been dehumanized.

01:19:02.360 We don't really have that language anymore because that's not supposed to happen with

01:19:05.280 consensual sex.

01:19:05.640 And in part, we don't have that language because we did a search before the show because

01:19:09.940 of places like Business Insider, which ran headline after headline, praising 50 shades

01:19:14.680 of gray.

01:19:15.800 Like, so exactly what is the charge here against Dave Portnoy from this publication?

01:19:20.480 But what matters to me, the thing that makes this story, none of that makes the story

01:19:24.560 novel.

01:19:25.200 That's just how they treat anyone who goes against their narrative.

01:19:27.860 Dave Portnoy's great crime is being successful, having a bad attitude, which I think is a

01:19:32.800 very hilarious attitude, and going on Fox News, coming on the Ben Shapiro show.

01:19:36.920 They hate him because...

01:19:38.020 Talking about Trump.

01:19:38.960 Talking about Trump.

01:19:39.720 They hate him because he's, because he's not walking the party line.

01:19:44.140 Therefore, he must be destroyed.

01:19:45.000 But what makes this a novel story is not that.

01:19:47.240 They'll do that to anybody.

01:19:48.080 What makes this a novel story is that Dave Portnoy is telling him to pound sand.

01:19:52.860 Yeah.

01:19:53.020 What makes this story interesting is that you can go to Walmart and buy a one bite, everybody

01:19:56.960 knows the rules, frozen pizza, and put money directly in Dave Portnoy's pocket, and they

01:20:01.680 can't take this advertiser away from him because this advertiser is him.

01:20:05.300 And this actually shows us, sort of like the Gina Carano coming over here and doing a movie

01:20:09.180 with us.

01:20:09.620 They can't cancel you if you don't quit.

01:20:12.460 Dave Portnoy, they have no actual power over Dave Portnoy.

01:20:16.260 And in that way, this rogue, this rake, this scoundrel, this hero of mine in many ways,

01:20:21.060 is actually fighting a fight on all of our behalf and showing us how you're supposed to

01:20:27.240 fight it.

01:20:27.700 Well, there's the story, and then there's the story about the story.

01:20:32.280 And that's what's most interesting to me because, just as you say, Jeremy, the left encourages

01:20:37.480 this exact behavior among everybody at all ages and across every state.

01:20:44.060 All 97 genders.

01:20:44.940 All 97 genders.

01:20:46.340 And they do it until you cross them on anything.

01:20:51.220 That's right.

01:20:51.380 And it's like they're just trying to get compromise on everybody.

01:20:53.980 Well, that's right.

01:20:54.780 It's like all cults.

01:20:55.980 The left is a religion, and all religious cults practice this same kind of thing, where

01:21:00.960 they build confidence and cause you to behave in certain ways.

01:21:05.520 But they know about the ways that you behave.

01:21:07.340 Right.

01:21:07.640 And now, if you want to leave them, they can bring up the ways that you behaved around

01:21:11.460 them.

01:21:11.580 They also exist arbitrarily.

01:21:13.120 But this is why we, on the right, get into trouble when we talk about morality, which

01:21:16.700 we all believe in.

01:21:17.640 We all actually believe that women should be treated.

01:21:19.840 I believe in gentlemen and ladies.

01:21:21.320 That's what I believe in.

01:21:22.280 Right.

01:21:22.540 And I think that's a good thing.

01:21:24.860 However, you know, Brett Kavanaugh was accused of attacking someone in his teens by a woman

01:21:30.300 who could not even prove that she had ever met him.

01:21:32.760 You know, Molly Hemingway traced this out in her book.

01:21:35.180 She couldn't prove that she ever met him.

01:21:36.480 This was weeks and weeks of stories.

01:21:38.020 People cornered Senator Flake in the elevator and wept, saying, you're approving of my

01:21:42.980 rape because you're approving of this rape.

01:21:44.760 Joe Biden was plausibly accused of hurling a woman up against the wall and penetrating

01:21:49.100 her with his fingers.

01:21:50.160 And the New York Times didn't cover this for 20 days and then buried it on the Easter Sunday

01:21:53.880 edition.

01:21:54.560 And when they asked Dean Becke about this, he said, well, you know, Kavanaugh was up for

01:22:00.680 an important position.

01:22:02.900 That's what he said.

01:22:03.820 That was his act.

01:22:04.480 I mean, it had the corruption.

01:22:05.680 It had the arrogant corruption of a boss tweet, that interview that he gave.

01:22:10.520 It's never about the morality.

01:22:12.180 And we, because we're interested in morality, because we care about it, we end up discussing

01:22:15.900 that.

01:22:16.320 But that's not the question.

01:22:17.460 When it comes to behavior, we also tend to look for standards.

01:22:20.960 And then when somebody violates the standard, we say, OK, that was a violation of the standard.

01:22:24.300 And our standards happen to be higher than the standards of the left.

01:22:26.420 So we can look at behavior that we don't like and we can say we don't like that behavior.

01:22:30.060 The left has completely arbitrary standards.

01:22:32.340 And so the person who comes to mind here is not somebody who crossed the left, but got

01:22:36.140 this treatment anyway.

01:22:36.780 And that's Aziz Ansari.

01:22:37.580 You remember the story about Aziz Ansari?

01:22:38.760 That's right.

01:22:39.080 Same, very, very similar story, right?

01:22:41.880 He goes on a date with a woman.

01:22:43.060 The woman comes back to his apartment.

01:22:44.200 They have sex, I think, twice.

01:22:45.640 And then later, she claims that he treated her poorly.

01:22:48.460 And then he wasn't very nice to her.

01:22:49.580 Even though the story literally said, it's like a 10,000 word story, said that when she

01:22:53.180 asked him to stop doing anything, he stopped doing the thing.

01:22:55.600 Yeah.

01:22:55.760 And this was somehow a major story.

01:22:57.880 And Aziz Ansari came out and he did this kind of mewling, pathetic sort of apology routine

01:23:01.580 on his show.

01:23:02.380 I should have dealt with her sensitivities.

01:23:04.540 Well, I mean, I actually agree that you should deal with people's sensitivities regardless.

01:23:08.280 Like, as Matt says, their consent is not the only question as to your activity, right?

01:23:12.560 If somebody consents to activity that is degrading to them, that does not mean that you must

01:23:16.260 now go forward with the activity.

01:23:17.640 But that's our standard.

01:23:18.920 That is not their standard.

01:23:20.100 Their standard does not exist.

01:23:21.180 And consent is the appropriate legal standard.

01:23:22.920 Right, of course.

01:23:23.540 Of course, they're not even making a legal claim, though.

01:23:26.360 They're just trying to smear them in the air.

01:23:27.660 I think what, to Jeremy's point, what's really important about this story, we talk about

01:23:31.940 consent.

01:23:33.080 What Dave Portnoy is proving is that at least if you're a powerful person in a position

01:23:37.480 like he's in, you have to consent to being canceled.

01:23:40.400 You have to go along with it.

01:23:41.980 And so what he's saying is, I don't give my consent to this.

01:23:44.380 I am just not going to be canceled.

01:23:45.820 And it's so important for him to do that because not everybody's in that position.

01:23:48.740 I mean, we can think of so many, you know, there's a million crazy, think about

01:23:52.540 that truck driver, I think, in California last year who lost his job, lost everything

01:23:56.540 because he was making this motion outside of the window while he was driving a truck.

01:24:01.160 And, you know, his life was just destroyed.

01:24:03.200 He had no ability to defend himself.

01:24:04.580 And that's it for him.

01:24:05.520 So he didn't consent to that.

01:24:06.560 And there's nothing he can do about it, which is why people like Dave Portnoy, who are in

01:24:10.980 a position to say no, have to say it because they have to start drawing that line there.

01:24:16.260 If you're not going to draw it there, then it's not going to...

01:24:17.480 And that's why I say the morality piece of this is uninteresting to me.

01:24:20.480 It's not that I'm not interested in the morality of the situation.

01:24:23.880 Of course I am.

01:24:24.620 It's that we actually do a good job of talking about these issues on backstage all the time.

01:24:29.040 It is not the unique aspect of this story that a rich, powerful, famous man is kind

01:24:35.820 of a louse with ladies.

01:24:36.940 That isn't novel.

01:24:38.000 That's if you like an actor, they behave, whoever it is, unless it's Kurt Cameron, they

01:24:43.300 behave worse than Dave Portnoy.

01:24:44.700 If you like a politician, you know, eight out of ten of them probably behave the same

01:24:49.680 way that Dave Portnoy.

01:24:49.700 And by the way, the ones who aren't get ripped up and down by the media, right?

01:24:51.880 If Mike Pence has a stand, it's the opposite.

01:24:53.900 Or by the way, Henry, you remember there's this whole story about Henry Cavill having the

01:24:57.640 same issue, right?

01:24:58.180 He said, I won't go on.

01:24:59.100 It's hard for me to get a date because if I have a date with a woman and I take her home, I

01:25:02.380 don't know what she's going to say the next day.

01:25:04.520 And the media went nuts.

01:25:05.180 How could you not trust women enough to just bring random women back to your apartment?

01:25:08.740 Like, there are no stands.

01:25:10.380 So that is an interesting topic, but it's not what's interesting about this story.

01:25:14.440 What's interesting about this story is that we live in an age when they can cancel anyone

01:25:18.240 anytime, and most people, immediately upon being canceled, come out and grovel before

01:25:24.700 the left in the vain hope that they will be reestablished to their former glory.

01:25:29.280 They never are because the left is graceless.

01:25:31.280 The only thing that keeps them from just having t-shirts made that say, don't bother, we are

01:25:34.680 graceless, is that they want you to grovel.

01:25:36.700 So they dangle the idea of grace out in front of you so that you will humiliate yourself

01:25:40.320 and they can fully put their boot on your neck.

01:25:42.180 And Dave Portnoy, because he's the stool presidente, says, uh-uh, no.

01:25:48.540 And that's what we're doing with these vax mandates?

01:25:51.620 Uh-uh, no.

01:25:52.520 We don't care if we run afoul of your virtue.

01:25:57.120 We don't accept your virtue.

01:25:58.500 We don't acquiesce to your virtue.

01:26:00.240 And we're not going to accept a rebuke from people who are worse than us.

01:26:03.340 Because the left's virtue is vice, actually.

01:26:05.160 Yeah, their virtue is vice.

01:26:06.100 You know, the story here is not even the bad date or the many bad dates or whatever.

01:26:10.480 No.

01:26:10.600 That's not right.

01:26:11.300 I would be more interested in that discussion.

01:26:14.100 As you say, we all have these discussions.

01:26:16.320 If the story were that there was this bad date and the woman came out and said this was so terrible,

01:26:21.420 that's not what happened.

01:26:22.240 What happened was Business Insider hates Dave Portnoy, spent eight months looking for anything to get this bad.

01:26:28.100 By the way, the New York Times has had a reporter for the last four months calling every single person

01:26:33.700 who used to work for the Daily Wire and, according to their own LinkedIn, now says they don't.

01:26:38.740 For four or five months now, I've gotten call after call at least a dozen former employees.

01:26:43.600 Hey, you should know this New York Times reporter called me because they saw on LinkedIn that I'd stopped working there.

01:26:48.320 And they want to know, are you going through financial hardships?

01:26:51.100 You know, what's the culture like?

01:26:52.240 Just a fishing expedition.

01:26:54.360 For all I know, listen, if ladies had any care for me whatsoever,

01:26:58.880 one could only hope that he could be accused of being a rake roger scoundrel.

01:27:03.480 But they will find something.

01:27:04.640 If you dig on somebody long enough, they'll find something.

01:27:06.680 This is why I believe in making jokes.

01:27:08.620 Seriously.

01:27:09.440 I make jokes about black people.

01:27:11.260 I make jokes about gay people, transgender people, white people, all people.

01:27:14.780 Not because I hate any of them, because I actually don't.

01:27:16.740 You had me right up until that white people.

01:27:18.840 I'm trying to give Shapiro a heart attack.

01:27:20.780 That's the first thing.

01:27:21.400 That's kind of the purpose of my life.

01:27:25.400 But also because I think, like, where did they get the right to take away my right to make jokes?

01:27:30.540 I like jokes.

01:27:31.620 I think jokes expose the absurdity of life and make us happier in living in this absurd life.

01:27:37.100 They also demonstrate love and companionship.

01:27:39.740 You know, you actually make jokes about people you like.

01:27:42.060 You're just making the Chappelle point now.

01:27:44.120 And I think that we are starting to see major cultural figures.

01:27:46.380 That's right.

01:27:46.720 I was making my point, actually.

01:27:48.000 Yeah, that's fair.

01:27:48.900 You are old.

01:27:49.960 But the sight now of major cultural figures starting to say, we're not going to go along with this sort of stuff is really a fantastic thing.

01:27:59.400 Yeah.

01:27:59.600 And I think that's why you're also starting to see so much of the top-down communications infrastructure trying to crack down on alternative sources of media.

01:28:06.740 I really believe that this is all connected.

01:28:09.700 When they lose the monopoly in the conversation, the next step is, where are these people available and how do we get them shut down?

01:28:15.380 You see it with Joe Rogan, too, right?

01:28:16.860 I mean, when the attempt to go after Rogan because he didn't take the vaccine and then he got COVID.

01:28:21.540 And then he took ivermectin.

01:28:22.800 And the entire media decided that not only was he worthy of getting COVID, he should probably die from it because he was taking, quote-unquote, horse dormer.

01:28:29.200 And Rogan was just like, screw you.

01:28:31.000 He's not a horse dormer.

01:28:32.560 As he said, I can afford people medicine.

01:28:36.600 His refusal to just go along with the narrative is scary to these folks.

01:28:41.260 And so the next step is going to be elevating it to the next level of censorship, which is if they refuse to acquiesce to the social pressure, then we get into how do we go after the advertisers?

01:28:51.000 How do we go after the places that platform these people?

01:28:53.540 How do we shut them down and prevent them from being able to talk?

01:28:55.600 People ask me all the time, what can we do to fight back against cancel culture?

01:28:59.020 I mean, I get tweets, I get DMs, I get emails.

01:29:02.420 What can we do to fight back against cancel culture?

01:29:04.320 And the answer is you actually have to support the people who fight against cancel culture.

01:29:08.580 And that sometimes means people who you don't necessarily like everything about them.

01:29:13.400 That's right.

01:29:13.780 And you have to actually focus on the parts of conversations that matter.

01:29:17.060 So, for example, I think what Kyle Rittenhouse did was dumb.

01:29:21.380 I don't think Kyle Rittenhouse should have been out there defending those buildings.

01:29:24.160 Not because there isn't virtue in defending those buildings.

01:29:26.560 There is, but because I think that a 17-year-old young man arming himself with a rifle and going and standing in front of that business was not wise.

01:29:38.420 I think it showed a lack of judgment.

01:29:40.260 The kind of lack of judgment I expect from a 17-year-old doesn't mean that I think he's of low character.

01:29:44.300 It certainly doesn't mean that I don't think he's great.

01:29:45.920 Might be too high a character.

01:29:47.020 Might be too high a character.

01:29:48.120 I don't think he should have been there.

01:29:49.180 That would be a fun debate for you and I to have on a backstage.

01:29:52.800 We'd probably engage in that debate if they weren't trying to destroy Kyle Rittenhouse.

01:29:57.360 Because they're trying to destroy Kyle Rittenhouse, I'm not going to get hung up on should Kyle Rittenhouse have been there?

01:30:02.860 That's not the interesting part of the story.

01:30:04.880 Kyle Rittenhouse deserves, he merits our defense because of what the left is trying to do to him.

01:30:10.720 And similarly, Dave Portnoy, with his delicious one bite, everybody knows the rules, frozen pizza available at Walmart, deserves our support in this fight.

01:30:20.180 Not in every fight, in this fight.

01:30:21.800 It's kind of funny that it's called everybody knows the rules.

01:30:23.260 Everybody knows the rules.

01:30:24.080 Sort of the point here, right?

01:30:24.800 You should go to Walmart and you should buy this pizza.

01:30:27.100 I think that Dave Chappelle, I realize that this is like blasphemy.

01:30:31.400 I don't think Dave Chappelle is funny.

01:30:33.100 He's not even close to me.

01:30:33.880 I think that he used to sometimes be funny.

01:30:35.640 And then I think he essentially got into the, whatever the opposite of claps not laughs is.

01:30:39.680 Like he is essentially a preacher who preaches through something that is loosely a joke.

01:30:46.520 I think he was a lot funnier before he did that.

01:30:48.740 And I think 50% of what he's preaching about, I disagree with.

01:30:51.920 But by God, he deserves our support.

01:30:53.580 You should go watch that Netflix special.

01:30:55.160 Of course, of course.

01:30:55.300 You should, you have to stand with the people who are standing.

01:30:58.020 It's not always going to be the guys we love who make a stand.

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01:31:22.240 We'd love for you to.

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01:31:48.220 Daily Wire Backstage is produced by Mathis Glover.

01:31:57.840 Executive producer is me, Jeremy Boring.

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01:32:17.820 Daily Wire Backstage is a Daily Wire production.

01:32:20.180 Copyright Daily Wire 2021.

The Michael Knowles Show - November 10, 2021

Daily Wire Backstage： Turning Of The Tide

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