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May 28, 2020 - The Michael Knowles Show
02:02:27
Daily Wire Backstage: Memorial Day Edition
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Hey, Michael Knowles here.
The latest episode of Daily Wire Backstage Memorial Day Edition is right around the corner and you don't want to miss it.
Join me, Ben Shapiro, Andrew Klavan, and the God King, Jeremy Boring, along with awesome guests on this special Memorial Day episode.
Take a listen.
Sometimes fake laughs are better than others.
Welcome to the Daily Wire Backstage Memorial Day edition.
I am Jeremy Boring, God King around these parts.
I'm rich, handsome, powerful, beautiful, and a coward.
Which is why we don't celebrate me this time of year.
We celebrate actual men who actually sacrificed for their country.
And today we will be talking about Memorial Day.
Here to help me with that endeavor, Ben Shapiro, Andrew Clayton, Michael Knowles, and, that's right, she's lovely, Elisha Krause.
Elisha, how are ya?
I'm good.
I'm good to see you.
Apparently now I work for a fake news organization because I think most of the way that you introduce yourself is not true.
Just saying.
You're right.
I'm brave.
I'm so brave.
We are going to be taking subscriber questions and how do you become a subscriber?
Everyone always wants to know.
they have to head over to dailywire.com.
And if, of course, they are fans of the Tumblr, we have that special happening.
So you can get a his and her Tumblr or a COVID neighbor Tumblr.
I really think that we should be making masks.
I don't know why we haven't done this yet, but the double Tumblr deal is back.
And of course, that's it when you become an all-access member for things like the fun discussions that we have.
We're gonna be having a discussion with me and the guys after the show.
I'll be doing another one on Friday as well about the slow reopening of America, thank God.
So head on over to dailywire.com.
If you're not an all-access member, go to dailywire.com slash subscribe.
So you'll get your two Tumblrs and 15% off using the coupon code DWACCESS right now.
And if you're already a subscriber, be sure to head over to dailywire.com slash shows and find the chat box for Backstage and I'll be taking your questions from the comfort of my lovely office.
Thank you, Alicia.
We actually were going to turn out a Daily Wire COVID mask, but then I asked her to send me over the first draft, and it was crocheted.
And I thought, what kind of dog and pony show do you think we're running here, Klavan?
We're going to be talking about Memorial Day.
We're going to be joined in that discussion by our friends Jocko Wilnick and Gary Sinise later on in the program.
Before we get to all of that, though, today is an amazing day.
Not as amazing as it could have been.
Hopefully Saturday or Sunday will be more amazing still.
I still want to talk about it, though, and that is the greatest American, Elon Musk, is right on the precipice today of returning Americans to space from America on an American rocket for the first time in over a decade.
And since we won't be together to talk about it Saturday or Sunday, and it's so momentous, I thought it would just be fun to talk about something positive.
I see this as the greatest moment of innovation that's happened probably in my lifetime.
I couldn't be more excited about it.
I worship at the feet of Elon Musk.
I think he's the only living person with a true vision for the future who's willing to put his money where his mouth is and to take responsibility.
Very dangerous thing to put people in space.
The two astronauts who are going up in the Dragon capsule, very brave people.
There's a chance of failure.
Anytime you strap yourself basically to an exploding rocket and hurl yourself out of the atmosphere It's a very high-risk endeavor.
It's not a joke.
It's not TV. It's the real world, real stakes.
And yet, you have these brave men and you have this amazing innovator.
The thing about Elon Musk is, if you saw this story today, he said, listen, I am the chief designer for SpaceX.
So if things go according to plan, everyone at SpaceX and NASA deserves the credit.
If it fails, only I get the blame.
And you think, that is so refreshing in this day and age.
There's almost no one who's willing, especially in corporate America, who's willing to just step up and say, yep, Humans are risking their lives.
Their lives and the success of this mission are 100% my responsibility.
Because of that and because of his vision, I'm confident the guy's going to succeed here.
Are you guys tracking the story the way I am?
Jeremy, I can't believe Elon Musk fooled you like that.
That's obviously a Oh, just coincidentally, whoopsie-daisy, they couldn't do the launch today.
Elon Musk, he's a great innovator, sure.
He's the greatest marketer of his generation.
Frankly, he probably doesn't even have a rocket.
This was probably just a big publicity stunt to sell more cars.
Okay, he's probably selling monorails to Springfield.
No, I think he actually is one of the greatest marketers of his generation.
Absolutely.
But he is pretty amazing.
I like that he's one of the few people in America that still just does what he wants to do.
In not just a licentious way, but in like an actually productive, creative way.
He doesn't let politics interfere with him.
He just goes ahead and does it.
So I think probably the conspiracy theories are not true, and he will launch it on Saturday.
Yeah.
I think going into space is everything.
I really do.
I think human life depends on frontiers.
I think that the idea that the marketplace can be a frontier, the idea that we're going to go inward and get smaller and smaller is going to do it.
I just don't think so.
We're physical bodies.
We've got to go somewhere.
We've got to expand.
I believe that the solar system is colonizable.
I think that we'll do it over time, but we've got to be working on it all the time.
And without vision, the people perish.
And if you don't have an actual vision outward, your vision turns inward and everything curdles.
I personally am looking forward to living in my basement wearing a mask, but that's just me.
I mean, I think that not everybody can do that.
Not everybody's set up for that.
The rest of us have got to get on the move.
Well, when you look at the sort of videos that trend and get everybody together, it is amazing today.
We all sat down, waited for the SpaceX launch, and obviously it didn't happen, so now we have to wait.
But when I was sitting there, I thought, wow, this hasn't really happened in the last, what, 20 years or more?
That we're all looking at something positive.
We're all actually excited about something, whereas the day before, all of us were also looking at the same video, but it was of some crazy lady who...
And some crazy man yelling at each other in Central Park.
And then we're all yelling at each other about that.
I think much better to have that positive vision looking outward that maybe we can all get behind together.
Yeah.
We'll find a way to screw it up.
We'll definitely find a way to screw it up.
I mean, there will be racial divisions over SpaceX.
Within the next five minutes, somebody will have done something with this rocket that turns it racist.
Why is the rocket so white, man?
I mean, there are only two astronauts on that capsule, and that means that we are not being racially representative.
I mean, it's physically impossible for us to be racially representative with just two people.
That's just not the way that actual human representation can work.
We're going to need at least 10,000 people, and it's going to be mostly representative, not down to the percentage points, but we'll find a way to screw it up.
Shuttles are also very phallic.
Do you think that's a coincidence?
Of course not.
It's the patriarchy, Pam.
LAUGHTER Even that I admire.
You've got two astronauts and they're both men, which is just evidence that the game Elon is playing is nothing like the game that most people at home are playing right now.
He's not playing the game of political correctness.
He's not playing the game of feelings.
He's thinking, all right, these are the two guys that NASA put up for the job.
All right, done.
Those are the guys that go into space.
with this thing where we all stare at each other on a little screen and point our fingers and call each other names.
This thing with those two people in Central Park was as dispiriting as anything that's happened in this country for weeks and weeks.
The idea that we have to care because one person may be a little bit racist and the other person has a pain in the butt.
I don't care about either of them.
They live 3,000 miles away.
I've never met them.
I don't have anything to do with them.
Why I'm involved in a discussion about their behavior in Central Park of all places, where everybody behaves badly, I have no idea.
And those are actually the options.
The options are we build stuff, we go places, we do new things, or we sit around and point at each other until we've all got our hands around each other's throats.
Yeah, I actually had a thought about the two people.
It's not an angle I've heard discussed.
I mean, obviously, the situation for anyone who has been living under a rock and doesn't know, you have a woman walking her dog off leash in Central Park, by all accounts, a left-wing New York woman.
She's approached by a black man in the park who's offended that she has her dog off leash.
There's signs up that say you have to have your dog on the leash.
He encourages her to put the dog on the leash.
She says no.
So he pulls a dog treat out of his pocket and lures the dog and says you're not gonna like what happens next.
So she says to him, I am going to call the police and tell them that a black man is threatening me.
Then she proceeds to actually call the police.
She doesn't say a black man is threatening her, but she does say a black man is threatening her dog.
Ben, you made the point on your show that what she actually says she's going to do is much worse than what she actually did.
And now she's lost her job.
She lost the dog.
Yeah.
Apparently the people who sold her the dog say by pulling on the dog's collar to restrain the dog, she was abusing the dog.
And all I could think is, what do you think the leash does?
Like if she had had the dog on the leash, the leash connects to the collar.
She was making the dog racist though.
Dogs are naturally colorblind, but she was teaching that dog about color.
The whole thing is stupid beyond words.
Everybody is garbage.
And that basically sums up all the politics right now.
All of it.
Everyone is stupid and everything is garbage.
And now we're seeing this basically imported into every single scenario.
Every single scenario has to be read in the deepest possible way.
This scenario, actually, at least you got a tinge of this...
The lady said something kind of racist.
What she actually said, the part that I thought was actually quite despicable that nobody else picked up on, was her actual implication was, if I call the NYPD and say a black man is threatening me, they're going to come here and just shoot you with no evidence.
Her actual belief system was obviously, her kind of implicit threat was, I think the NYPD is racist, you think the NYPD is racist, so I'm going to call up the NYPD, and I'm going to say this thing to get you shot.
That's the part that's really disturbing.
Don't make me call the racists.
Yeah.
Exactly.
And that's really what it was.
And you've seen this with a bunch...
What you've seen on Twitter lately is in the aftermath of the Arbery shooting, which was a bad shooting in Georgia, again, it is not clear to me whether that shooting was racially motivated or whether that was just a couple of vigilantes being vigilantes who were doing stuff they shouldn't be doing, and then an insider game with the DA who happened to know the vigilantes.
It seems more likely that that was the case than that these guys were just vicious racists who were going around looking for a black guy to shoot.
And the same thing seems to be true in Minnesota.
People are suggesting this is obviously a race-based case because the cop was white and the guy who died was black.
It could also be the case that the cop is just a jackass and was doing something terrible, and that it wasn't because of race.
It was just because the cop is a jackass and doing something terrible.
It seems to me that it's kind of weird that now in America, because racism is and should be sort of the highest form of sin in America, we immediately conflate all other forms of sin with that form of sin.
So we can't just say, okay, maybe the cop in Minnesota was a jackass who should go to jail for what he did to this guy.
It has to be that he hated black people, and that's why he's doing it.
And this is indicative of broader American racism.
It can't be that Barry's shooting.
Ben, I have a question first.
You guys are in the news more than I am.
Do we know for a fact that the cop's behavior...
That video is difficult to watch.
But do we know for a fact that that despicable behavior actually caused the death?
No, we don't.
We don't yet.
We don't know that.
They're still waiting for, I believe, the medical examiner report to determine the actual cause of death.
So it could look a lot like Eric Garner.
Whatever it is, I mean, obviously, moral of the story, don't sit on a dude's neck for four minutes, you jackass, you POS. I mean, that's just not something that you do.
But again, the rush to everybody virtue signal that we have to all suggest that this is racism and indicative of broader American racism.
And like last week, there was another one of these cases where you saw these two guys who work for FedEx put up a story suggesting that there was a white homeowner who came out and was racially profiling them and yelling at them.
And nothing from the video actually showed the white homeowner being racist.
And this trended number one.
People saying we should boycott FedEx after these guys got fired.
And now today there's another story like this where there are these black guys who posted a video of a guy in Minnesota who apparently was asking them to leave what is a private gym.
He was asking for their IDs.
They wouldn't show their IDs.
They're saying this is racially profiling.
And at no point does he say, like, you guys should leave because you're black.
He just says, like, I don't know who you are and I'm in this building a lot and I really don't know, like, what you're doing here.
And so now he's also trending on Twitter.
So this is the rule now.
Is that if somebody is rude or annoying or if somebody decides to act like a jerk, that we are immediately going to attribute racism to that person because this underscores the Joe Biden message that America is a deeply racist, horrible place in every aspect.
Now, again, any or all of these or none of these situations may actually be racist.
I'm just waiting for the evidence.
And as soon as you say you're waiting for the evidence, this means that you are now a great defender of racism.
I actually think that you're missing what's actually happening because I don't think that this is just the rule in America now.
I think it's the rule in America every four years when there's a presidential election.
But before we get to that, I want to tell you guys about my trip to Texas that I just took.
You know, I was gone for 10 days back in America, out of L.A., back in America.
The land of the free, where you could go sit down in these interior box-like buildings and other humans would come up to you and ask you if you would like anything to eat or drink.
And then you would tell those people, yes, and what you would like to eat or drink, and they would just bring it to you.
You gotta try it.
It was unbelievable.
While I was there, I met up with one of my best childhood friends, David, with whom I've traveled the world, and he has this beautiful piece of land that he and his family own.
We went out in the country with 22 rifles, and we shot metal things and listened to them go...
And we did this for an hour in the most beautiful country on God's Earth with no masks, no fear, a little bit of fear probably on his part because I'm not the best shot.
So he stayed to the right and slightly behind me.
But basically, we just had fun with firearms all afternoon.
And it made me think about our pals over at Bravo Company Manufacturing, because they make the best and most fun firearms.
They don't do it for recreation.
Of course, they do it because of the Constitution.
When the founders crafted the Constitution, the first thing they did was to make sacred the rights of the individual to share their ideas without limitation by government.
The second right that they enumerated was the right of the populist to protect that speech and possess their own firearms so that they could do it with force.
You know how strongly everyone here believes in the Second Amendment.
We're all gun owners.
The difference between all of you and all of me is I was a gun owner first and I got to shoot metal things this week and listen to them go pink while all of you were holed up here in Southern California.
Bravo Company Manufacturing builds a professional-grade product which is built to combat standards.
That's because they're not building these guns so that I can shoot metal pigs.
They're building them so that every American can have access to the same kind of consistent and predictable firearm for personal protection that anyone in the military or in law enforcement might have.
Ben, you know these guys pretty well.
Bravo Company Manufacturing.
These are solid, solid dudes.
Everybody loves Bravo Company Manufacturing because their stuff is incredible.
I mean, it is the best.
Bravo Company Manufacturing.
You should go check out all of their videos at youtube.com slash bravocompanyusa.
bravocompanymfg.com is their website.
You can check out all of their products over there.
Again, that's bravocompanymfg.
Solid dudes.
I mean, these are military guys, great background.
And again, they're making the weapons that you need.
And If ever you thought that maybe there might come a time when the government started to just infringe your freedoms and do so in extraordinary fashion, and maybe you might want at some point to have the ability to defend yourself against that sort of thing, then you might want to check out BravoCompanyMFG.com today.
Great dudes making a great product.
If such a thing were even possible.
You know, there is one aspect of this whole video cancel culture racial politics thing that we're missing out on.
And that's the difference between the narrative and the reality.
What we're being told is that there is this epidemic.
It's happening every time.
According to LeBron James, every time People of color walk out of their door.
They're being hunted down.
And that just simply isn't the case.
Statistics show that's not the case.
The reason that these stories become such media sensations is precisely because they're so rare.
And you can see this even in this kind of ridiculous altercation in Central Park.
There's a piece in the New York Times written by someone whose name I don't know with some points that I don't even care to really read.
But the one point they make, the central thesis is that this woman knew she could just give a couple distressed cries and bring the weight of white supremacy down on this man's body.
That's almost the exact words she used.
And the fact is, that's not what happened.
That's not what happened at all.
Actually, she made her distressed cries.
She got her job taken away.
She got her dog taken away from her.
And this guy, this weirdo who goes up to women in parks and has treats just to lure their dogs away...
It's fine.
I'm glad he's fine.
I'm glad that he's going on with his life.
But the reality of what the left is pushing every four years, as Jeremy says, and the reality of the situation, those are totally different.
There are only race riots essentially in years when it can benefit the Democrats in presidential elections.
You had riots going on in...
St.
Louis, wasn't it?
In Ferguson during the 2012 election.
It wouldn't have been beneficial to have had the same thing happen in 2016.
So it didn't.
Now it is beneficial again in an election against Donald Trump here in 2020.
So we're going to go through it again.
We'll go through it again the next time it's beneficial to them in a presidential election.
Although I will say, the Ferguson riots, though, happened in 2014.
So I don't think it's entirely electoral.
I do think that it is worthwhile voting.
How dare you destroy me with facts and logic?
I mean, I just...
I think it's important.
Again, I think that it does back a particular political narrative.
And I think that the media right now, I think we're coming up with ersatz instances of racism right now because it does support a particular narrative.
And that's been a consistent pattern.
I think that it's been alleviated for a couple of years now because the media didn't feel the necessity to go to broad-based American racism.
They could just point at Trump and scream racist at him.
And they were all distracted by Trump Russia for a couple of years there.
And I do think that as the election approaches, obviously, there's going to be more focus on the sort of 1619 project angle that Joe Biden is trying to exacerbate in the run up to the election.
I mean, that is reflective of the Joe Biden.
You're going to put us all back in chains or put them all back in chains.
You're not really black if you vote for Republicans.
And again, that narrative is a pretty simple narrative for Democrats, because what people weren't commenting on is when Joe Biden said you're not really black if you're if you're thinking about voting Republican.
What he meant by that is no black person would vote for a party that seeks to exterminate black people.
That's really what he means by that.
And so the underlying implication is that Republicans seek to exterminate black people.
Well, there's only one problem.
Republicans obviously do not seek to exterminate black people.
In fact, until very recently, the black unemployment rate was at an all-time low.
Republicans across the country condemn racism and hate it.
And so you have to come up with an alternative set of facts.
And so if you need to manufacture a controversy, then you manufacture a controversy.
Again, I'm not saying the instances are manufactured.
A lot of these are bad cases.
I'm saying the controversy is a little manufactured because I'm wondering who exactly is defending racism.
There's 330 million people in the country right now.
You don't have to look very far to find some example of any bad behavior.
And Drew, isn't that what's really happening here is the media selectively choosing what we talk about.
That's exactly it.
The problem is always the narrative.
And the problem with race is the narrative.
You know, I don't believe that race is the worst thing that people do.
I think it's one of a range of many low qualities that we all have that we're trying to get past.
This is an amazing, you know, the whole thing about this country is how amazing and new and fresh this idea is that we can have a multi-ethnic country where we somehow live in all our differences on some kind of even keel.
This is a completely original idea, not since ancient Rome, really, literally, not since ancient Rome, has there been a country that has tried to meld this many ethnicities under one government, under one set of ideals.
It's kind of an amazing thing that we're doing here and that every now and again, someone somewhere acts like a clown in Central Park becomes a racial touchpoint.
That's the problem.
The problem is the narrative.
The thing about what Jeremy was saying about election years, the entire Obama presidency was run on a race-baiting status where every distraction, everything that he did wrong, everything that he did which didn't work, which was everything, we were distracted by race narratives.
And the fact is, you know, Donald Trump, the idea...
When you read the New York Times, you would think that really Donald Trump was wearing a hood, was sitting there, you know, on the top of Mount Racism, plotting against the black race, where in fact he's been as good a president as Americans of color have ever had.
And I think that that's the problem is the story we're being told.
You know, right this minute, one of the most amazing things that's going on is the popularity of Andrew Cuomo.
And when I look at Andrew Cuomo, who ran the state where this Chinese virus got started, where it spread, where a huge number of the people died, and he's got an 80% rating, we know that something is wrong with our communication system.
And when something is that wrong with our communication system, where we're calling good evil and evil good, I think we have to start asking questions about every story we hear and every kind of narrative that we're being sold, because we're being sold a lot of lies.
But there's one other aspect of this that occurred to me, and I haven't heard anyone else talk about it.
And that's the fact that this woman in Central Park had to make a public apology.
To the world, right?
For her behavior.
I find that interesting.
It's a little nuanced because the four of us are, to varying degrees, public figures.
We live life, we live public lives.
We do this show, for example, and people are able to watch it.
And so it makes a certain amount of sense that if we say the wrong thing or if we engage in a bad behavior, we might have to speak publicly about that.
And we may have to give a public apology to our fans or a public apology to the people who've supported us.
Isn't it interesting, though, that we live in a time where private individuals would feel compelled to give public apologies?
I can imagine a world where this woman does what she does.
It's discovered she might offer an apology to the gentleman in the park.
She might offer an apology to her friends and family.
She might offer an apology even to her employer for making them look bad.
Why does she feel compelled to give a public apology?
I feel like if this happened to my father, for example, I would tell him, yeah, that was a bad thing you did, apologize to the person you hurt, and then disappear back into private life as quickly as you can.
But that isn't the impulse, Drew.
You know, I think I have at least a partial insight into this.
I'm reading this book, and Ben, I know you read this book, The Age of Entitlement by Chris Baldwin.
Oh, I'm reading it now, actually.
It's excellent.
It is an amazing book.
It really is an insightful, clear-headed, truly intellectual book in the real sense of that word.
And one of the points he makes is that Race law, racism law, has become so constructed by both law and precedent that a business can be sued for things that its employees did, or the things that its employees did can be used as evidence against them.
So if somebody wants to prove that the God King of the Daily Wire is somehow doing a racist practice, evidence can be brought that Clavin said on his show or in his private life.
That as a dinner party, he got drunk and started saying racist things, and that can be used as evidence against Jeremy.
You are in big trouble, Jeremy.
That's right.
That's right.
Anybody who's been at my house, know that's a big problem for you.
But seriously, I think we have frequently, all four of us have asked, why has corporate America lost its nerve?
Why has it lost its guts?
Why do they cancel people the minute anybody says anything?
Why do they pull their sponsorship?
And this is the reason.
They've constructed a law by trial by lawsuit.
nailed for so many different things and lose money over so many different things that essentially we're being policed.
Our speech is being policed through our corporations.
And that is, uh, to me, that's a real problem because everybody has stuff in their hearts that they, you know, can't answer for.
We all do.
And I just don't think we can live in this world where if you get caught, that somehow gets me off the hook until everybody turns on me.
I mean, that's the system we're in now where if we can all gang up on person X, then person X won't gang up on us.
And that's not a good system for preserving freedom, basically.
Ben?
Yeah, I mean, I think there's something else happening here, too, and that is the weaponization of niceness.
So it used to be that when it came to corporate America, well, corporate America has always been known for, was the sort of man in the gray flannel suit, right?
The idea that you had a sort of corporate cutout and that the corporation was risk averse, right?
They were going to create a bunch of nice, uncontroversial people, and those people were going to work for them.
This has been true going back to the stereotypes all the way back to the 1920s.
All these babbits were going to be nice and middle class, and they were all going to act nice to each other.
Well, that's actually not a horrible aspiration is that we should be nice to each other.
But one of the things that's happened is we have weaponized niceness to basically mean anything I don't like is not nice, and therefore I'm coming after your corporation.
You no longer fit in, and you have to be excised.
I think that actually has some ramifications for the mask debate, actually.
Because there's an attempt now to basically suggest that we can tell whether you're a virtuous person based on whether you are wearing a mask all the time.
We're going to determine whether you're a nice person based on whether you're wearing a mask all the time.
And what this means is that if you are perceived to be a not nice person, there's not an actual hard moral standard as to what line you've crossed, but if you've crossed our vision of niceness, then this means you must be excised from the community of man.
And so you see that this woman lost her job.
Even the guy...
Who originally released the tape, right?
And he came out, he's like, I'm not sure she should have lost her job.
So first of all, dude, you probably should have considered that before you dumped it onto Twitter, the place for dunking and being dunked upon, and the place where everybody gets points for trying to get people fired.
It's whose line is it anyway, except the points mean you get fired.
Maybe you should have thought about that like five minutes beforehand.
But the weaponization of the idea of niceness has been thoroughgoing.
And the substitution of niceness for morality is an ongoing American problem that goes back quite a ways.
And you see it being used in nearly every argument from the transgender pronoun debate to things like the mask stuff.
Whoever grabs the mantle of niceness is now perceived as the moral person, even if sometimes the person who's not nice is the person you need in a given situation.
But Both of those are great points.
There's also this aspect that's just technological.
It's actually not primarily social, which is that all of us now fancy ourselves public figures.
Even the most private person, if you've got an Instagram and you've got a Twitter, then very often people don't have a thought that passes through their mind without expressing it.
So they feel the need to make public statements themselves.
And what's even more insidious than that, I mean, that's probably corrosive for our souls that we all feel like we're public figures, but what's even more insidious We have the power to make other people public figures.
This random guy in the park who thought it was a good idea to film some woman walking her dog, he made her a public figure whether she wanted to be or not.
And so, again, whether she wanted to or not, she sort of did have to make this public apology.
It's a bad thing.
And social media plays to this because it keeps us online.
I mean, they play to our outrage, they play to our anger, and they play to our divisiveness because it keeps us coming on.
It makes money for them.
But they also play to our vanity.
To Michael's point, they play to the idea that we all are public figures.
That we all, instead of being individuals operating in a community, we're performers operating for an audience.
And I think that that actually is part of the corrosion of our country.
But before we talk more about that, I want to talk about our friends over at Ring.
Our pal, Dave Rubin, has had his house robbed like three times.
There's a lot of crime going on out there, especially in cities right now, because of certain policies that have been put in place.
And people are just stealing the mail left and right.
I've had the same problem at my house, and I think even worse things have been happening around town.
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There was one friend I didn't give it to, and he just had his laptop stolen.
I'm not going to say which friend it was, but it's a very sad situation.
I should have given him a ring.
And the laptop was actually stolen out of his car while he was at work, but it made for a good plug.
Ring.com slash backstage.
Elisha is joining us now from the bunker at her home.
We usually keep her in a bunker here at the office.
But at her house, she's built...
There's a fake light.
It looks like she has a window of people.
She's in the basement.
Believe me, that's the only place we allow Elisha to be.
Fake blinds and...
Yeah, fake blind.
Special art for my kindergartner over here on the desk.
Not sure if you can see that.
So don't forget, if you are a Daily Wire subscriber, if you're an All Access subscriber, you can chat with me and the guys after the show on our discussion.
And right now we're going to start taking the subscriber questions.
I think that this is an interesting one.
I know a lot of you guys have touched on this on your shows recently, but somebody wants to ask the whole game.
They're observing that recently Trump seems to be more Trumpy or spewing more Trump-isms.
And then people on the right He immediately jumped to his defense and said that his behavior is totally okay.
This subscriber thinks, is the right becoming like the left, that as long as the guy is quote-unquote our guy, we're going to defend whatever they do and say?
Yeah.
I'm not going to let Ben or I answer this question because I just think it's bad for business.
I'd like to go to ruin Michael's group.
All right.
Well, you know, I think what is happening to Trump is part of what is happening to the entire country.
When there's a crisis, everybody immediately girds their loins and gets their mind set and kind of plants themselves and is ready for what's coming.
As the crisis starts to alleviate, as we open up and as the doors come open and the wind comes in, you start to let down your guard a little bit and everybody gets a little crazy.
I think this thing in Central Park, I think the vileness and meanness that is now apparent on Twitter is all part of this.
We're talking to each other in ways that no one should talk to anyone.
And I think it's part of the fact that we've just kind of had it with the situation that we're in.
And Trump is a human being and a very big human being with not a lot of impulse control.
And he's doing some things that are very hard to defend.
I will not defend the stuff that he's doing to Joe Scarborough.
You don't accuse a person of murder, even if it's Joe who probably did it.
But I mean, you don't know.
I'm not just joking.
You know, you do not accuse people of murder.
However, however, we do have to put Donald Trump in the context of the communication system in this country.
We've had a judge accused of rape on the public record.
We've had him accused of being a Russian spy on every channel on Earth.
We had Mitt Romney accused of essentially killing somebody with his business by Barack Obama.
He cannot be the only person whose bad behavior matters.
The only person whose bad behavior stands out.
And that's the only thing I will say about this in his defense.
And I'm not I'm not going to defend what he's actually doing.
But I will say that when we have a communication system, a press that basically says, oh, if you make a sexual charge against a conservative, it will be the headline for the next six weeks.
And if you make one about a Democrat, dead silence.
Nothing's going to happen.
We're not going to pay attention to it.
You can't have that kind of double standard, which is why the people sent Trump to Washington.
It's why they said we have no voice.
Nobody's listening to us.
Nobody cares what we think.
We're sending this guy to tell you what we think.
You can't then turn around on him and say he alone is the problem.
He is part of a problem.
He is part of a kind of meanness that has seeped into our political conversation and maybe into all our conversation.
And so I will not look at him independent of that situation, even though I do condemn this particular thing that he did to Scarborough.
I think that's fair.
I think one of the problems that Donald Trump has is that he may engage in behavior that other people engage in and get away with, but he does it so much more grotesquely.
And that gives people the opportunity, a sort of visceral reaction.
And so what people like Barack Obama are very, very good at is smiling while they slide the knife in.
And Donald Trump, you know, he comes right in the front door.
He doesn't sneak up behind you.
And he stabs like this, right?
That does create a reaction from us.
In other words, it's bad politics.
It makes what he's doing less effective than what they've been doing.
So I don't disagree with you, Drew, on either count.
What the president said about Scarborough is despicable and can't be defended.
At the same time, it is part and parcel with the kind of accusations that the left makes against conservatives all the time.
They're just better at it because they're not grotesque It is a grotesque thing to do, but they are not grotesque in the delivery of it.
I think that that's where he gets himself in the most trouble.
Jeremy, you've said it's indefensible.
You haven't even allowed me to try to defend it, which I actually don't want to do.
I don't want to defend it per se, but I agree with Drew.
I don't think Joe Scarborough is a murderer.
I think it is just as plausible that Joe Scarborough is a murderer...
It may be more plausible that Joe Scarborough is a murderer than that Donald Trump was a secret Manchurian sleeper cell for Russia all these years, or that Brett Kavanaugh, a milquetoast jurist, is actually a gang rapist.
I think it is at least as plausible.
And I think what Trump is doing here, and you could say it's dark humor, you could say it's mean and nasty and rotten and no good, but he is being funny.
That's why in the tweet, what he said was, Joe's crazy future ex-wife, Mika, That's a joke.
That's actually a funny joke.
It's not funny in the long term to joke about people murdering other people.
That's a little much for the President of the United States.
But the issue here is that when Donald Trump does it, it's the end of the world.
And when James Comey and John Brennan and James Clapper and the entire media complex and the entire Obama administration make equally absurd charges at Trump, then it goes by the wayside.
And people are sick of that.
And Trump is making a joke about that.
And then on the point of defending Trump, which, again, I'm not defending the Joe Scarborough murder charge, but I am defending Trump.
I do think that it is perfectly right for people on the right to give a little more grace to Donald Trump than they would to Barack Obama.
That doesn't make us just like the left.
It's simply admitting that we're not neutral.
I'm not neutral.
I want certain things for the country.
I have a certain vision of the world.
Donald Trump's not neutral.
Barack Obama's not neutral.
And so I'm going to give him a little more grace.
I'm going to laugh a little bit more at his jokes.
And maybe more tacitly, more quietly, I would encourage him not to keep accusing Joe Scarborough of murder.
I do think this is one of the places where Ben and I differ from you and Drew.
Because you just articulated, I think, very well your position, which is we should have more grace for our side when they're wrong than we would the other side.
And I think the other point of view, which is the one that Ben and I hold to, is that we should hold our side more accountable Because they're the only ones we can hold accountable.
They're the only ones from whom we can even hope to affect any kind of change that might result in a better future where this isn't the standard, where we're not just in a battle, a race to the bottom, as people might say.
I can't do anything about the candidates that the left puts up or how terrible they are.
We can defeat them.
And we can empower our guys to defeat them.
Well, I love my child more than I love other children.
If my child does something wrong and another child does something wrong, I will punish my child.
Right?
I mean, that's my child.
And I love my child.
And I want to make sure that my child doesn't do immoral things.
I love my side and I want my side not to do a moral thing.
And by the way, I think that it is worth noting here that it's one thing for Trump to sideswipe Mika and Joe.
He sideswipes Mika and Joe every five seconds, and he talks about Mika's face lips.
I mean, this is not the first time that he has gone after Mika and Joe by any stretch of the imagination.
He sideswiped a dead Catholic woman who was married at the time and basically suggested she was having an affair with Joe Scarborough, and then he murdered her.
I mean, that's really bad stuff, guys.
Like, I understand that you're saying it's bad, but I think I should underscore it.
That's really, really bad, right?
That's a bad thing to do.
And by the way, her family's like a nice Republican family from Panhandle, Florida.
So that's not something I think that we should simply gloss over.
The double standard is apparent.
It's glaring.
And it will continue to be apparent and glaring.
Nothing has changed there.
I think one of the places that we're differing is that you're suggesting that the new information to be added into the mix to sort of, you know, let us move on from this thing is the double standard.
To me, that's always the standard, right?
The double standard is the norm.
The new information that was added to the mix is that President Trump, you know, it's not new information, but he tweets viscerally.
He doesn't have limits.
Like, we know that.
And then he's basically willing to spew out any conspiracy theory he feels like.
I mean, he already went after Rafael Cruz for killing John F. Kennedy.
The man is basically Sherlock Holmes at this point.
He's solved all of the outstanding crimes in the United States.
But the thing that I think is necessary here to point out, and this is the part where I think there is like an actual deep and abiding conflict, is not about Republicans defending him or not defending him.
I think all four of us are going to vote for Trump.
Is that fair to say?
I mean, Knowles is going to commit fraud to vote for Trump several times.
He's going to find every mail-in ballot in the state of North Carolina, and he is going to find all the mail-in ballots and check them off, doesn't matter whose name is on them.
So we all get this.
I do not think that the way that you win votes is by doing this.
And I understand that there's a bunch of people out there who are pretending that votes don't shift based on this sort of behavior.
The reality is that there is only one stat that in the end is probably going to matter a lot here that is impacted by this.
And that is people who don't like either candidate.
In 2016, people who didn't like Hillary and didn't like Trump broke for Trump.
In 2020, by poll data, people who don't like Biden and don't like Trump are breaking for Biden.
And they're breaking for Biden in fairly large numbers.
And there's a reason for that.
And again, we can talk till the cows come home about the double standard, which does exist and which is ugly and which is terrible.
And Democrats are never held responsible for the garbage that they say.
Although I will say that, you know, just like the reason I was angry at the Democrats over the Brett Kavanaugh stuff is because they were doing it.
Right.
I'm allowed to be angry at it.
It was bad that they were doing that to Brett Kavanaugh.
Accusing a man of gang rape without any evidence turns out to be a bad thing.
You know what else is a bad thing?
I've got another example of a bad thing for you guys.
You can root for your side and you can recognize the importance of of your side winning, particularly when it comes to policy.
You can also recognize it does great damage to your side when the leader of your side, and he is the leader, I mean, he's the president of the United States, when the leader of your side goes off script like this, and by the way, does so in the middle of a time when people are worried about their lives and their livelihoods.
I mean, let's not forget that all of this was kind of frivolous nonsense.
Well, the economy was good and we had 3.5% unemployment.
Now we have 20% unemployment, 100,000 people dead in the last three months.
And so it just underscores the kind of frivolity and silliness.
I want him to win.
Okay, this is not me running him down because I want him to lose.
I want him to win, and that means he has to be a little more disciplined.
Fur, last thought.
The part where you and I completely agree, Ben, and Jeremy, I think, also agrees, is I don't think this is good politics.
I think this is bad politics.
Sometimes he does this stuff, and you think it's going to go wrong, and somehow he pulls it out.
But this one, I think, is just bad for our side.
I do have to agree with Knowles, though.
This is politics.
It's not some kind of moral battleground.
You've got to win.
You've got to win.
And I'm willing to turn a blind eye to certain things that I think will help us win.
And I don't accept, I will not accept this double standard.
I was looking at the Pulitzer Prizes for 2017.
They were given to a series of false stories by the Washington Post and the New York Times that were fed to them by the intelligence community to cover up Their illegal spying on the Trump campaign and their dirty take on Trump colluding with the Russians.
That's the Pulitzer Prize.
That is the gold standard of journalism.
It's being given for lies, just like it was with the 1619 Project.
I can't accept that that can't be reformed.
That has got to be reformed.
I don't mind a little bias tilt toward the left on any organization, but I really do mind this complete attempt to transform this into a leftist country by virtually every communication arm in the country.
And we can't accept that.
We cannot lie down for that, and we can't let guys like Chris Wallace sit around and say, oh, that Kayleigh McEnany, she's being so mean.
It's ridiculous.
I can't accept that, and I do think that Trump acts as a brace against that.
That he's doing it badly right now, and he's doing it in a way that truly is immoral and can't be accepted.
That I totally accept.
But that it has to be done.
It does have to be done.
So you were right about more of what you said just then than you've been at any other point in the last three years.
So I'm going to let it stand, even though you were still completely wrong about a few parts.
Alicia, we're going to check back in with you in a few minutes.
And here's some more questions from our Daily Wire subscribers.
But first, I want to tell you guys, it's an update on what's been going on with me and Policy Genius.
You know, I told you the last time we were together that I actually decided to protect my family, protect my wife, and take out a life insurance policy on myself because, as you all know, I've become incredibly successful and the loss to her, if I were to die, would just be staggering.
The emotional loss...
I want to take issue with that.
The emotional loss, she'd be fine.
But the money?
The money would be a real problem.
So I went over to Policy...
This is absolutely true.
I went over to Policy Genius.
Unbelievable.
Policy Genius, it is buying insurance in the future.
They understand the way that we work now.
They understand the way that we like instant information.
We like to compare rates.
You go over to Policy Genius, lightning speed, you get tons of quotes.
And I think I told you guys last time, I also went somewhere else besides Policy Genius and got a quote so that I could compare this.
Policy Genius served me up the best one, so I went through the process.
When last we spoke, they had sent someone out to my home to do all the medical exam because, you know, you can't actually go anywhere and do medical exams in L.A. anymore because of the times in which we live.
They sent someone to my house, painless, 20 minutes, done, all these quotes.
Where are we now, you might be asking.
I have high cholesterol and high triglycerides.
That's where we are now.
I didn't know that until Policy Genius sent this person to my house.
So I got to go see my doctor.
But the quest for life insurance is going incredibly well.
Policy Genius is an amazing service.
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And this is true.
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A person from PolicyGenius I've made sure that I got my medical records delivered to me.
They check in by email.
They've taken incredible care of me.
And honestly, the fact that I now know that I have high cholesterol and high triglycerides, maybe I'll be able to do something about that.
I owe Policy Genius for that.
If you're one of the many people looking to buy life insurance right now, but you're not sure where to start, head over to policygenius.com.
Benjamin, you've used them.
Oh man, policygenius.com, let me tell you.
If you need insurance, the best place you can get insurance of all types, disability, auto, home, life, policygenius.com.
I mean, Drew, it's almost impossible to insure for you.
I mean, it's basically like insuring your house after it's burned down.
I have to pay them.
I have to pay them, yeah.
The only person who it's harder to buy life insurance for than Andrew Klavan is Joe Biden.
I mean, it's literally the only person.
And yet, Drew has been able to use Policy Genius with alacrity because it is indeed an incredible service that allows you to use the wisdom of the online gods in order to competitively shop your life insurance rates.
So go check them out at policygenius.com and be a responsible person, which means, you know, actually go get the life insurance your family needs.
And I'll keep you updated on whether or not they're actually ever able to get coverage for me when next we meet.
Our guest today, Jocko Willink, is a decorated retired Navy SEAL officer, co-founder of Echelon Front, which offers leadership training based on combat leadership lessons.
And is the author of Extreme Ownership and Leadership Strategy Tactics, his latest book.
He just did a video for Prager University.
You know, Prager is basically a sister company of ours.
Michael and I work with Prager founder Alan Estrin on the scripts week to week.
Our animation team here had the privilege of animating Jocko's video.
It really moved me.
And since it's Memorial Day, I'd like to share a little bit of it with our audience before we welcome Jocko onto the show.
Here's the video.
I am the fallen soldier, sailor, airman, and marine.
Remember me.
I am the one that held the line.
Sometimes I volunteered.
Sometimes I went because I was told to go.
But when the nation called, I answered.
In order to serve, I left behind the family, friends, and freedom that so many take for granted.
Over time, I used different weapons.
A sword, a musket, a bayonet, a rifle, a machine gun.
Often, I marched into battle on foot.
Other times, I rode to battle on horseback or in wagons, sometimes on trains.
Later, in tanks or jeeps or Humvees.
In early wars, my ships were made of wood and powered by the wind.
Later, they were made of steel and powered by diesel fuel or the atom.
I even took to the air and mastered the sky in planes, helicopters, and jets.
The machines of war evolved and changed with the times.
But remember that it was always me, the warrior, that had to fight our nation's enemies.
On that distant battlefield, amongst the fear and the fire and the bullets, or in the sky above enemy territory filled with flak, or on the unforgiving sea where we fought against the enemy and against the depths of the abyss.
There, in those awful places, I held the line.
I did not waver and I did not hesitate.
I, the soldier, sailor, airman, or marine, I stood my ground and sacrificed my life, my future, my hopes, my dreams.
I sacrificed everything for you.
This Memorial Day, remember me, the fallen warrior, and remember me not for my sake, but for yours.
Remember what I sacrificed so you can truly appreciate the incredible treasures you have.
Life.
Liberty.
The pursuit of happiness.
You have the joys of life.
The joys that I gave up so that you can relish in them.
A cool wind in the air.
The gentle spring grass on your bare feet.
The warm summer sun on your face.
Family.
Friends.
And freedom.
Never forget where it all came from.
It came from sacrifice.
The supreme sacrifice.
Live a life that honors us.
The fallen heroes.
Remember us and make every day Memorial Day.
Unbelievable.
Jocko, welcome to the show.
Thanks for having me on.
I appreciate it.
This idea that we should treat every day like Memorial Day really resonated with me.
And I want to say it didn't just resonate with me.
The animation staff here who got the opportunity to work on this video, they actually brought the script to me even before the video was shot.
And Alexia Garcia, who was heading up the department at the time, had tears in her eyes telling me how much this video moved her as an immigrant to the country.
It's such a great, powerful thing that you've created here.
So thank you very much for doing it.
Well, thanks.
And I appreciate the folks over at Prager wanting to take those words and do the animation behind them.
And I think they did a great job.
You know, it's obviously for someone like myself, every day is Memorial Day because every day, you know, we think about the friends that we lost and that's what we have to live with.
And I think it was, I tried to share that message and get everyone to kind of think about that as well.
You know, it's an amazing country that we live in.
One of the reasons is because we've separated out these holidays in a way that others haven't.
We have Veterans Day where we celebrate everyone who served in combat in the country's history.
We have Armed Forces Day where we remember everyone who's served Regardless of whether or not we actually took the country to war during that period of time, but Memorial Day is unique.
Memorial Day is the day that we remember those who didn't come back.
We very specifically remember the people who made that ultimate sacrifice so that we can sit here and talk about nonsense on the internet so that we can go home and raise our kids.
As someone who did come back but knows those who didn't, what sort of special way do you recognize Memorial Day when it comes along every year?
Well, you know, I live here in San Diego, California.
And in San Diego, California, at the top of a place called Point Loma, there's Fort Rosecrans National Cemetery.
And I've got three of my friends are buried up there, three of the guys that worked for me.
Two of them died in the Battle of Ramadi, and one of them died later on in a training accident.
And there's a lot of other SEALs, and then obviously thousands of other servicemen are buried up there.
So, you know, that's what I do.
I go up there on Memorial Day, and I go see my old friends.
So I don't want to make the segment political Memorial Day is not a political holiday.
It's a day where all Americans of all persuasions can come together and honor the sacrifice of those who allowed us to engage in political debate on other days.
But there is one thing that happens in a democratic society.
Society that's somewhat unique, and it's that we re-litigate all of our past decisions and we make them political after the fact.
You see it happening right now as the president contemplates a withdrawal from Afghanistan, as we see the Taliban perhaps becoming partners in a negotiated peace settlement in Afghanistan after warring against them for maybe the longest war in the history of the country.
You saw it during the previous administration when there was a drawdown of our forces in Iraq.
We've obviously all lived through Some version of the shifting political narrative around the Vietnam War.
As a soldier, as someone who was there, who sacrificed on the ground, who saw other people make even greater sacrifices, what does a soldier make of their sacrifices in the face of those sort of changing political narratives over time?
For me, I think what's different for folks that served and went into combat is that We actually know what it was like on the ground.
And so for me, having served in Baghdad and in the Battle of Ramadi, I got to see what it was like for the local citizens of Ramadi to know that they were living under the most heinous and sadistic group of people that you could ever imagine, that they cheered when we would kill insurgents, that they helped us to try and root out the insurgents.
And so from that perspective on the ground, I know that we were doing the right thing.
And if I had to do it again, I'd do it again in a heartbeat.
Can you tell us a little bit about the work that you're doing now and taking some of those lessons that you learned in the service, in the SEALs, and helping other people learn about leadership and how to make their lives better with some of those same principles?
Yeah, you know, when I got home from the Battle of Ramadi, One of the most important things that I brought back was the lessons that we learned, the lessons we learned in combat.
And I ended up taking over the training for the West Coast SEAL teams.
And the training that I took over wasn't the training where you see guys carrying logs on their shoulders and carrying boats on their head.
The training that I took over was the tactical training where we teach them to shoot, move, and communicate, and where we teach SEALs leadership, combat leadership.
I immediately started teaching the principles that I had learned throughout my career, but really that I had solidified and crystallized in the Battle of Ramadi.
I started teaching those to the young SEAL leaders.
When I ended up retiring from the SEAL teams, I worked with a civilian company and immediately realized that everything that I had learned about leadership in the SEAL teams applied to Any aspect of leadership in any environment, leading any kind of team.
And the translations are universal.
And it doesn't matter if you're leading a group on the battlefield trying to capture or kill a bad guy, or you are, you know, leading an organization that's trying to produce something or sell something.
Leadership is leadership is leadership.
And so now I have a company called Echelon Front, and that's what we do.
We work around the country and around the world, teaching people leadership and helping them get their leaders and their organization aligned so they can lead and win.
What do you think would be most interesting to people who've not served in the military?
One of the things that's always interesting to me about Tier 1 operators is that nothing like them has ever existed in all of human history, right?
We have this idea of what a soldier's life is like.
Like we might even have an idea of what special forces are like.
But you get these guys now who are the most lethal, the most highly trained, the most capable.
I think of them as like the pro athletes, like, you know, everybody could play ball in high school.
Only the best could go play in college.
Only the very best could make the pros.
And then there's that top echelon, the guys, you know, the Tom Brady's or whatever.
And those wind up being these sort of tier one guys who exist.
We've never seen their like, I don't think, In the history of warfare, what kind of people does it take?
What are the special qualities that those people have?
Well, I'm not here to get into a bunch of disagreements with you, but if you look at the tradition of the American fighting man, this is an unmatched tradition of men that are braver than you could ever imagine.
If you look at the guys that stormed the beaches of Normandy, if you look at the people that went through the Pacific campaign, if you look at the frozen mountains of Korea, you can go to any war and you can find people that are unbelievably brave and courageous and very, very lethal.
I know that the video is edited down a bit from the original form, But, you know, the main point of that Memorial Day video was to remind people that the soldier, sailor, airman, and marine that we refer to, they're not just warriors.
They're actually human beings.
They're actually people.
And if there's anything that I would say people...
I would try and, you know, how you phrased the question, what would people want to know?
People should know that these soldiers at every level, soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines, they're human beings.
And they have families, they're brothers, they're sisters, they're fathers, they're sons, they're husbands, they're wives.
They have hopes and dreams.
They have things that they want to accomplish in their life.
And they're willing to put all that on the line for the freedom and the way of life that we have in this country.
Well, feel free to disagree with me on those topics anytime.
Obviously, I know nothing, and it's a real privilege to get to hear from someone who has those insights.
Thank you for everything that you do.
Thanks for coming on the show.
Thanks for helping us all think a little bit more clearly about this Memorial Day.
Thanks for having me on.
I appreciate it.
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Can you talk masks so that it can be like all three of you versus me?
Let's do it.
I'm in.
I think that's the way this goes, right?
Wait, wait, wait.
Wait just a minute.
Just a minute.
I actually retweeted you today, Ben, on masks.
I think we actually may agree on this.
You turncoat!
I know.
I can't stand this idea that masks are a symbol of anything.
That somehow we're fighting the American Revolution.
Yeah, we're somehow fighting the American Revolution.
I think what is truly bad is the overbearing, fascistic, in-your-face approach of some of governors that I won't mention, like Gretchen Whitmer, who have just gone out of their way to offend everybody's sense of freedom and independence.
But that doesn't mean you shouldn't be polite and wear a mask when you go into a crowd.
I think that's pretty reasonable.
The violation is the violation of the governors and the mayors who are overstepping their bounds.
It's not that the mask is no good.
Well, you know, to use a phrase that Ben uses a lot, I think two things can be true at once.
And I hate to make my opinion more reasonable here, but it is the case...
There obviously is a use for masks, right?
That's why masks exist in the first place.
It's a little odd that the Surgeon General told us that masks are terrible and no one should ever buy them.
And then two seconds later, he said, we all have to buy them.
But putting that political aspect aside, obviously there's a use for masks.
But when you look at someone like Mayor Eric Garcetti, who I think might be the most foolish mayor in America, including Bill de Blasio, at least it's close, you know.
Eric Garcetti the other day was giving an address in the center of empty Dodger Stadium.
So not just an empty baseball stadium.
He's standing actually in the center of it and he puts the mask on.
Does he think that there's going to be a heat-seeking guided missile of coronavirus that's aimed at him?
No, I don't think so.
That obviously is a political statement.
When Joe Biden puts a mask on in his backyard far away from everybody and then makes that picture his avatar on Twitter, that makes the mask a political statement.
And so I think the left has politicized it and they're asking us to wear masks in a way that is unreasonable.
That doesn't mean we shouldn't wear masks when it is reasonable, but I think we do have to accept that they are making it a symbol.
So I agree.
I think that one of the dangers here, though, is being sucked into the sort of reactionary moment that we are in.
And that is, you've got these Democrats, many of whom are basically suggesting that unless you duct tape your face, like your entire head, like you just take the roll of duct tape and go all the way around your head until you suffocate, that you are doing something deeply wrong and endangering the elderly or some such.
And then, in response, you have a bunch of people who are like, well, guess what?
I'm never wearing a mask, because masks don't do anything.
And all those surgical masks that people wear in the operating rooms, they're useless.
Completely useless.
I'm just going to go into the supermarket and lick all the milk cartons, because that's the way things get...
Herd immunity, baby!
Go for it!
So, this is where, you know, I think that we ought to be pretty careful.
I actually think that it's sort of a bit of a clever stratagem by a man who is legitimately comatose in Joe Biden.
Like, I wasn't aware that lack of brain activity could actually create cleverness of this sort.
In that, by polarizing the debate and making it into, I'm a responsible citizen and responsible citizens wear masks.
Versus willy-nilly, everybody is out there not wearing a mask and partying it up at the Lake of the Ozarks and all.
It's actually a smart pitch for the security moms from 2004.
Because security moms are basically like, okay, well, how about this?
How about we be reasonable?
We'll wear masks where we're supposed to wear masks.
I'm a little worried about this.
I want to make sure that our leadership is worried about this.
So the open virtue signaling of wearing the mask that Biden is doing right now, and then sort of taunting Trump into taking the position that masks are inherently a sign of cookery, that you are less masculine and you don't actually...
You've never eaten a steak if you ever wear a mask.
That's...
That's a foolish move and there's no reason to fall into that trap because there's a perfectly reasonable response.
You're right, Joe.
We should wear masks.
But also, you should probably not do that when you are just in your backyard by yourself or in your basement by yourself, which are apparently the only two places that you ever go.
So, I obviously have a slightly different take on the mask issue.
I mean, I largely agree with what you guys are saying.
My problem is the government has been wrong about every single thing that they've said about the virus from minute one.
The virus targets people who are already retired.
Let's shut down all the jobs.
The virus in no way affects people who are under the age of 20.
Let's shut down all the schools.
Everyone who goes on a ventilator dies.
Let's make 50,000 more of them.
Masks.
No, nobody should wear a mask.
If a mask could be useful, then everybody should wear a mask.
At every turn, whatever they say is wrong.
So I got to thinking, if they've been wrong about everything, I bet they're wrong about this mask thing, too.
It's just statistics.
It's a probability.
And what are they saying about the mask?
They're saying the mask is only effective at preventing transmission.
It is not effective at preventing infection.
And I think to myself, I think...
That is absurd on its face.
It's absolutely absurd to say that if I sneeze into a piece of cloth at high velocity, a sneeze, high velocity particles go into it, it will successfully prevent all of those particles from going out into the world.
But if you, the person who's worried, are wearing the same mask and I'm not, and I sneeze five feet away from you, the low-velocity, highly diffused particles that make it all the way to you will not be stopped by the exact same mask that you're wearing.
It's a way, the mass controversies that currently exist, in my view, it's a way of making healthy people act like they're sick instead of doing what we should be doing, which is isolating the vulnerable and the sick, the actually sick, the demonstrably sick, not the you could be sick and don't know, the demonstrably the demonstrably sick, not the you could be sick and don't know, the demonstrably sick and the vulnerable and
The left can't win on a narrative of if you are at risk or if you're particularly concerned, take special precautions because that doesn't give them electoral advantage.
That doesn't give them narrative advantage.
And so we've allowed them to convince us that the answer is that every human, the vast majority of whom are perfectly healthy and not at risk, even if they weren't, has to modify their behavior.
Meanwhile, they, the same government, are shoving as many sick people into nursing homes as they can possibly.
Meanwhile, by the way, they initially told us we had to wear the masks because you could catch the coronavirus from infected surfaces.
So you wear the mask so that your particles don't land on tables and things like that.
But then, you know, five seconds ago, they say, actually, you're very unlikely to contract the virus from contaminated surfaces.
So the case, as the case for constantly wearing masks all the time falls apart, they seem to double down on it, which seems to make it so much more political.
I think that we have to say that we have actually achieved top Shapiroism and that everything is now stupid.
I think that is what we have managed to achieve.
We've managed to achieve Ben Shapiro's America.
I think it's amazing.
Listen, of course there's a time and a place for masks.
There is a reason that they wear masks.
Halloween!
I knew you were going to hear it.
I can see that punchline coming like three miles away, like a slow train moving down the track.
Good night, everybody.
Thanks for tuning in to our...
It's like the lady at Walmart that I saw online today who her mask was just a scuba mask and a snorkel.
Whatever helps.
Of course, there's a time to wear a mask.
There's a reason that you wear a mask in surgery.
That is to prevent transmission because you've got someone slayed out on a table who can't do anything to take care of themselves to guard against what you might transmit.
And therefore, you, the potential transmitter, have to be the one to take care That particular precaution.
But I don't think, generally speaking, that it's a good thing that we've bought into this idea that the healthy must act as though they are a threat to the also healthy.
That that's the only way that we can declare victory here.
I just think it's a losing profit.
You know, I've actually made my own custom masks.
I designed them today.
And on the front of the mask, it's just that tweet from the Surgeon General that says, stop buying masks, people.
And I'm going to have that on there.
I'm going to wear it all over.
And I think that's a compromise.
Is that what passes for compromise now?
I have nothing more here.
Thank you.
Now, I'm going to re-intro our friend Gary Sinise, because I just spoke at length for like eight minutes about how great Gary is, and then Gary wasn't ready to go on the show, and no one would just do me the simple courtesy of coming in my ear and saying, hey, Jeremy, you're getting a little ahead of schedule.
You know, Gary was on.
He just wants to hear it again, I think.
He was another...
I think what I said was that our friend Gary Sinise has been a humanitarian looking after veterans and first responders since all the way back in his days at Steppenwolf Theater in Chicago, when he really, even in those days, was doing events honoring veterans of Vietnam.
After 9-11, he expanded his work to include not only our nation's heroes in uniform, but also frontline responders, firefighters, police officers, and more recently, He's been doing enormous work for the people who are on the front lines of the pandemic.
I think we have a little video before we bring Gary on the show of the terrific work that the Gary Sinise Foundation has been doing these last several months while the nation has been facing these difficult times.
In the past few weeks, the Gary Sinise Foundation's Emergency COVID-19 Combat Service has donated more than 4,000 pieces of equipment to first responders across the country.
Johnson County Med Act has a new tool to help prevent the spread of coronavirus.
The county received three new ozone decontamination units for their ambulances and other vehicles.
It sterilizes the areas that would be much harder to get to with just a surface wipe.
This organization is providing PPE equipment and essential gear that the first responders need while they're out there working on the front lines.
We'd like to thank the Gary Sinise Foundation for the grant they gave us to help us purchase this much-needed personal protective equipment.
This new program of the Foundation has become a gateway to providing relief on many levels.
I have to say that we're actually supporting, or we have supported, 45 different first responder stations in 21 states that are serving a population of 2.8 million people across the country.
And we're covering the cost of groceries, utility bills, moving costs, rent, and mortgage payments to many affected by COVID-19.
I can't even explain how much that means.
You know, I can't even Thank you.
The list of contributions goes on, yet our work is far from over.
More help is needed and more help is on the way.
When I heard about the COVID-19 campaign, I wanted to offer my full support.
I learned about the foundation through Gary's book, Grateful American.
His story just resonates with me and his dream of giving back to those who give so much and ask so little in return.
To be able to help out and donate is just an honor of mine.
During this extraordinary time, the generosity of thousands of Americans continues to enable the Gary Sinise Foundation to ensure our nation's heroes and their loved ones are receiving the support and resources needed to overcome the crisis facing our country.
For over six decades, my father Bob Hope entertained the troops around the world while also supporting first responders.
The foundation my mother and father created carries on his legacy today.
And during these challenging times, we are proud to contribute to the work Gary and his foundation are doing.
Supporting our heroes on the front lines who are doing so much during this COVID-19 pandemic is paramount.
Thank you to those of you on the front lines making a difference every day.
Thank you to those of you on the sidelines cheering them on, offering your support in whatever way you can.
And thank you to all of you.
From one grateful American, God bless you as you go.
Please welcome to the show, Gary Sinise.
Gary, thanks for coming on.
Hey, thanks for having me.
Hi, everybody.
That was great.
Thank you for playing that.
Well, thank you for the work that you do.
The Harrison East Foundation does so much for the nation's veterans.
And one of the things that, one of the reasons we wanted to have you on is sort of recognition of Memorial Day and to get perspective from you on the work that you and the foundation have been doing.
But when the team said that you were also doing this amazing work for our first responders during this pandemic, we thought, well, that's a really important thing.
That we should be able to support.
So we'd encourage everyone to go over to the Gary Sinise Foundation and make a donation to support the work that you guys are doing right now.
Thanks, Jeremy.
I appreciate that.
We kind of jumped in in March.
We started to get various requests coming in from around the country, from departments around the country that were in need of this personal protective equipment and what not.
And then we saw kind of a storm brewing and all of that.
So we launched this campaign, the COVID-19 combat service campaign, April 1st.
And since then, we've raised over a million dollars.
We've passed much of that on so far to first responder departments all around the country.
We're working with 80 different VA hospitals, supporting them in various ways around the country.
Just sending out a lot of support where it's needed, and we're getting more and more requests in all the time, so we can use the help, that's for sure.
So, with Memorial Day having just passed, Gary, one of the things that's been on my mind is the country sort of moves away from the active part of the war on terror.
We fought the war in Afghanistan.
That seems to be winding down.
We fought the war in Iraq.
That ended during the last presidency.
We dealt with ISIS more recently.
As we move further and further from that sort of time period where everyone's thinking about combat all the time, does the work of the foundation get harder as that sort of becomes a more distant memory for the donors?
It doesn't, no.
Well, I mean, the ongoing work is always difficult.
We're trying to rally support for the men and women who defend our country.
And there's a lot of need out there in a lot of different ways.
So people always ask, well, why should I We're good to go.
The challenge and the effort to support the men and women who serve our country and defend us, that's just a daily.
Memorial Day is every day.
We've got to remember the fallen.
We've got to remember that we have people on the front lines.
We've got to remember the children of our fallen.
We've got to remember our wounded.
These people are sacrificing each and every day.
And my foundation, you know, from the very beginning has also been focused on supporting our first responders from the very beginning of starting the foundation.
I have been involved with supporting, you know, the FDNY and firefighters in New York after 9-11.
And once I started the foundation, I wanted to make sure that we were outreaching across the country to the people that defend and protect our cities.
And now more than ever, or not maybe more than ever, but certainly right now, these first responders are right in the thick of this deadly enemy that we're facing.
And now we've begun supporting our nurses, our doctors, our healthcare workers, the staff members that are working in these hospitals, dealing with all these patients that are coming in.
So there's a lot of need out there.
I don't think it's going to stop.
We're just part of the team here trying to get something good done.
So we met for the first time in 2007.
I know that your work with first responders and your work with veterans really has gone back long before Forrest Gump, all the way back to your Steppenwolf days.
And just in the time I've known you, though, I can only imagine that you've interacted with Probably with more of our nation's first responders interacted with more of our nation's veterans interacted with more of our nation's active duty military than probably just about any other living American.
What is it about that group of people that draws your heart the way that it does?
Well, I appreciate you saying that.
I mean, I don't know if it's more than any other living American, but that's kind of you to say that, Jeremy.
Well, Toby Keene.
Toby Keene is out there.
He's done some tours, yeah, for the USO and been supportive.
Look, there's other people that are out there doing it, but I've just decided because of the veterans in my own family and the work that I've done in the past with Vietnam veterans and And with our wounded post-Forrest Gump and all of that, and then September 11th, I just decided that this was kind of a calling and that there was a role for me to play and there was a way that I could support.
And the more I did, the more I saw the benefit of getting out there and putting my boots on the ground and going out there and Visiting our troops and supporting multiple military charities out there who were, you know, supporting them in various ways.
And I felt by supporting a lot of different charities, I could help a lot more people.
So I was raising money for multiple charities and raising awareness, doing PSAs, whatever I could do, showing up at events, playing concerts to raise money, whatever it was.
And then when I started my own foundation, it was because I'd been involved with so many other organizations and I was I just saw a great need out there.
And I saw what these people were doing.
And I was inspired by their work and I wanted to help them.
And I felt that, you know, at the time I started my foundation, I developed a pretty good track record for supporting the troops out there.
And people knew I was in this game.
So why not call it the Gary Sinise Foundation?
Just, you know, start raising money to do more good.
And since then, I mean, we've raised hundreds of millions of dollars to support the men and women who serve our country and our first responders.
And we'll continue to do that.
We're a growing foundation.
You've been over the office, guys, and you've seen some of the stuff that we're doing over there.
We continue to grow and we continue to expand and we continue to reach more people because there's a need out there.
Gary, you know, I think I read somewhere that the number of Americans or the percentage of Americans who have served, I think maybe at an all-time low, it's certainly very low.
And so in your work in the foundation, do you find that there is an education gap maybe that Between the civilians and those who have served?
Is that an aspect of what you're seeing as well?
I think so, Michael.
I felt like from the beginning of really, really getting actively involved post-September 11th, that one thing that I could do as an entertainer, as a person with a public platform, is to Shine a spotlight and to go where the troops were and see what they're doing and try to talk about it on television and radio and try to encourage other people to focus on our defenders and why it's important to support them.
And I did, you know, I did find if you don't have a personal relationship with anyone who's served in the military or you have a family member that you, you know, have who's served in the military and understanding of what military life can be like, you're really disconnected from our military.
And there are a great number of Americans out there that are just, they don't have that personal connection or personal relationship.
They're not around military bases or they're not around soldiers.
They just don't interact with them.
So somebody like me who's on television or radio or whatever, I've made it a kind of a mission to just try and talk about what I see and what I experience.
That's why I wrote my book, Grateful American.
It was all about just trying to help people understand how I got involved, why I got involved, what motivated me to get involved, the types of people I was meeting that were inspirational to me.
And I put it all in the book and tried to encourage people, hopefully, to read the book and see what happened to me.
And what happened to me was I was inspired by a lot of incredible people that I've met over the years.
And I've tried to talk about those incredible people so that other people understand why we should be so grateful as Americans and that we have such a dynamic force out there and people that are willing to go out there and do the heavy lifting to defend us.
Gary, how can people support the work of the Foundation?
Well, the best thing to do is go learn about it at garrisonesefoundation.org.
Pick up my book.
The whole book is called A Journey from Self to Service.
Ben and I spent a good hour talking on his show about the book, and I was very grateful, Ben, you had me on.
But the whole book is about kind of going from sort of a self-focused life My acting career and movie business and TV and all that stuff to a different focus, which was service and service work.
And so I write about that in detail in the book.
And the whole last part of the book is all about the Gary Sinise Foundation and how most of the book just manifested itself into the creation of that.
So I encourage people to go to the Gary Sinise Foundation website, GarySiniseFoundation.org.
You can check out our program page and see just multiple initiatives in many different spaces that we're covering.
A lot of people, when I started the foundation, the legal guys said, well, what's your thing going to be?
You know, what are you, you know, do you, Are you a home builder guy?
Are you working with the wounded?
What is your thing?
And I said, well, my thing is a lot of different stuff, because that's what I've done.
So that's why the Gary Sinise Foundation covers a lot of ground, including first responders.
And right now, we're in the midst of a very good campaign to help the people that are fighting this fight against COVID-19.
Well, and the best thing about your book, Gary, is that both you and Ben, in the same three- or four-month window, held live book signings with Premier Collectibles.
And we're getting ready to have a second book signing for Ben's new book, which is about to come out.
And I was on the phone with Premier Collectibles the other day, and I said, oh, are we all ready?
Is everybody excited?
And they go, Oh, yeah, we love you guys so much.
People just love Ben.
Ben is, well, you know, he's one of our best-selling authors ever.
I said, well, what do you mean, one of?
And they said, well, I mean, Gary Sinise, his book, just absolutely destroyed you guys.
And that actually gives me some hope for America.
I'll give you a little secret, Ben, there.
You just have to be willing to sit there hours after hour after hour and sign those little stickers.
And if you're willing to do that, you can beat me.
I also have to be an iconic American of my generation.
I'm a little behind in that department, Gary.
Give me a few more decades.
Gary, thank you for coming on the show and thanks for the great work that you do at the Gary Sinise Foundation.
I appreciate you having me on, guys.
Thank you.
Take care.
So, we all know, Gary, that one of the most fun things about knowing Gary is getting to vicariously feel like you're a good person.
Because you're like, I've never had that experience.
You're like, what have you done lately?
I mean, I said some encouraging things to Gary.
I'd like to think that while he's out there doing all of it, that he might think that when it gets hard.
It's like when you show up to a party with somebody, you know, and the somebody bought the gift, and then you kind of show up and you're like, yeah, this one's from both of us.
That's how I feel about Gary.
It's like, yeah, all this good stuff, that's from both of us.
But I will say...
I want to know if he's moved from self to service, are they going to kick him out of Hollywood?
That's what I want to know.
That may actually be illegal in the city.
They didn't know there was anywhere after self.
One beautiful thing about the Gary Sinise Foundation that I will say, you know, when people, a lot of people want to support our first responders, they want to support our veterans, and they...
And you see all these organizations out there, and you don't know if they're legitimate.
You don't know if this is a scam or people are going to take my money.
One of the beautiful things, each one of the four of us knows, Gary, and knows the work of the foundation.
We've all been to the foundation.
We've supported the foundation in very small ways, obviously.
It is such an amazing organization.
And the beauty of Gary is Gary isn't like some guy who had one hit back in 1973, and he actually needed to make a living, and so he started a charity, and he's really funneling about half of that money into his pocket.
Gary was a guy, at the time that he starts the Gary Sinise Foundation, he has one of the hit shows on television.
He has this lengthy, unbelievable career of being in some of the greatest movies ever.
He's not a guy who needed to do this.
He's not a guy who's filtering money into Gary Sinise.
This is a guy who has legitimately devoted himself in a very selfless way to serving others.
And you could not do much better than to support the Gary Sinise Foundation.
I want to hear from some of our DailyWire.com subscribers.
I believe we have Alicia here to ask us a few questions on their behalf.
Yeah, and absolutely.
Along the lines of those who have decided to voluntarily serve, there is a Daily Wire subscriber that wonders, would it actually be better, though, if the United States moved into a system like Israel has that requires everyone to serve?
Because he thinks that that will create more innovation and success for the American economy than them wasting hundreds of thousands of dollars on higher education, aka college, aka liberal propaganda.
No.
I mean, I think everybody should weigh in on this question, but I'm decidedly no.
Israel is in a very unique situation.
It's an incredibly small country with a proportionally small population surrounded on all sides by active, violent, hostile neighbors.
And so they have to make special considerations for how to defend a country in that position.
They need every one of their citizens to be able to defend the nation.
America is much different.
We're surrounded by the two largest bodies of water on Earth and Canada, somewhere to the north of us.
We live in a hemisphere where we basically control the hemisphere.
And we have a very diverse population, most of whom will never know any sort of hostile action from a foreign adversary.
To use conscription in a country like this I think actually breeds malcontent.
It actually breeds hatred of government instead of in Israel where conscription actually breeds a kind of sense of common struggle because there is struggle.
In America, it would only breed a sense of common resentment because you're not actually bringing people into the struggle.
You're only bringing people into an institution that they don't actively want to serve in.
One of the beautiful things about our country and one of the reasons we've been So successful, I think, during this sort of American century is because at least for the second half of that century and beyond, our military has been a voluntary military force.
And that means that it actually draws people who want to be there.
It draws people who want to serve.
And that is a certain caliber of people that a draft or a conscription, a conscripted army requires.
You know, though, Jeremy, I see that point.
And there is, though, a sense that right now, increasingly, we are all funneling our 18-year-olds into a certain path.
And that path is college.
We are now telling 18-year-olds they must go to college.
They have to go to a very particular kind of college, even if it won't help them, even if it won't give them much of an education, even if it won't set them up to have a prosperous life.
And there's no law saying you have to go to college yet, because Elizabeth Warren didn't win.
But, you know, there is a big social force.
So I do wonder if there were a social force that said, hey, do two years at least of service, if that would give us some kind of common culture, common love of our country, some firearms training, which wouldn't be the worst thing in the world, to defend our cherished political traditions and freedoms.
I just notice increasingly in the country, there's so little that binds us together.
We don't even have a common TV culture anymore.
We don't even have a common movie culture.
I mean, we're becoming so isolated that perhaps a common sense of service, Might be a better alternative than the other kinds of common institutions we're being pushed into that probably won't serve the country that well.
True.
I actually agree with that to some extent.
It doesn't have to be military service.
I've been disturbed during this kind of lockdown or crisis or whatever it is.
I've been disturbed at the kind of childish view of liberty that we've developed.
I mean, liberty is not a point unto itself.
It is a way of living life.
It's a way of pursuing happiness.
It's a way of preserving the idea of the individual as a key actor and as an end in himself.
And I don't think that asking everybody to serve in some way is such a bad idea.
I have to agree with Knowles on this.
I don't like this idea.
Liberty is not like just you're not the boss of me.
Liberty is a way of respecting one another.
It is a way of looking at it, not just at yourself, but looking at the other guy.
And it wouldn't be such a bad thing if we could inculcate that a little bit through service, through action, instead of sending people off to colleges where guys who've never done anything for anybody teach them about systems that have never worked anywhere and basically, you know, brainwash them into nonsense.
If you have to do something, if you have to do something useful for everybody, I don't think that's such a bad thing.
And I think that really the only thing that's ever stood between us and that have been unions and the fact that they don't want us to find out that we could do their jobs for them.
I have problems with the basic idea of national service, as Jeremy does, namely because we do have a form of national service in this country, which is called public school.
Whenever you put people in the position in this country of being drafted into public institutions, it typically doesn't go well, because it turns out that the same people you guys despise at the college level tend to run the public institutions into which we inculcate people, unless we are talking explicitly about the military.
And as Jeremy sort of suggested, I mean, the founders were not super comfortable with the idea of a standing military altogether in the first place.
And then the idea that we are going to be drafting presumably tens of millions of Americans into military service where they live in barracks under the harsh rule of government without any consent of their own.
This used to be a fairly controversial idea.
It was pretty controversial throughout the Civil War.
It was controversial in World War I.
It was less controversial in World War II because there was an active threat against the American homeland after Pearl Harbor.
But the draft became so controversial again that we did away with the draft, and I think to good effect.
The big problem that you guys are talking about solving is a problem I don't think that can be solved by government.
What you're talking about is, again, a lack of social fabric, which I've talked about a lot, the lack of feelings that we owe one another.
And those things have to exist outside the bounds of government.
Government cannot really create that.
And in Israel, it does exist outside the bounds of government, but it's also a different thing, again, because Israel is under existential threat at literally all times.
I mean, at all times, even people who are no longer serving the military are basically off duty.
I mean, if you're up to the age of 50, then you can be called back into the military, pretty much, if there's any sort of emergency at any time.
And for good reason.
The place is a postage stamp, and it's surrounded on all sides by hundreds of millions of people who want to wipe it off the map.
Thank God we don't have that situation in America.
I'm always not eager to give more authority to government to place us into institutions that we don't voluntarily go.
It usually doesn't go all that great.
Yeah.
The revolution is beautiful because there wasn't conscription during the revolution.
It was the people who wanted a free country who went out and got us a free country.
And I would also, Ben, I really would reinforce what you just said.
The people who run...
Coercive organizations are always coerced.
It's the coercers, people who want that, who are drawn to that.
And Drew, I would disagree a little bit with you about the nature of liberty.
I think it's very popular right now to speak against liberty.
Liberty isn't just being free.
No, it pretty much is.
American liberty is the cowboy.
American liberty is leave me alone to do what I want.
Leave me alone to pursue my own interests.
The fact that sometimes we see...
Obviously, as with anything in a fallen world, in an imperfect world, liberty sometimes breeds bad attitudes.
Liberty sometimes breeds bad behaviors.
I think that we run a risk sometimes of pointing to those bad attitudes or bad behaviors and saying, that's not liberty, but it is liberty.
That is just...
One aspect of liberty, the worst aspect, as opposed to the better aspect.
But the idea of stay off my yard, leave me alone, let me do what I want, let me pursue what I want.
The idea of I'm going to leave this behind and go to the frontier where I can be free.
That is the animating idea behind There is a difference, though, and one could have a debate about liberty for a long time, but the kind of old idea of liberty that we had until very recently actually ties in with education.
It ties in with the liberal arts.
The idea was that when you're born, you're not exactly free.
A little baby needs his mother.
Little children are slaves to their passions.
And only through learning how to tame your passions, tame your appetites, practice the virtues, do you acquire freedom and you can have an exalted freedom.
Whereas there's this kind of new idea that liberty is the same as libertinism, that actually when you go and just pursue your own appetites willy-nilly, then you're really free.
But actually what we find, like any drug addict, you can go and shoot up all the drugs, but then you find out you're a slave to those drugs.
And this is an older idea of freedom.
And to Ben's point, Ben, you said that Government rules or policies cannot encourage this kind of culture, but you certainly can see it discourage a common unity.
So just to give the instance of this libertinism, during the sexual revolution, you had something like no-fault divorce.
You had things like abortion on demand, which we all oppose.
You had things like the sexual revolution, which we would oppose.
That encouraged this isolation that has destroyed our common culture.
Presumably, if you reversed some of those decisions, if you made it a little bit more difficult to get divorced, if you made it a little bit more difficult to just follow our own passions, then you would be able to regain those sorts of issues.
I know that we like to draw this big distinction between culture and politics, and it's a worthy distinction, but it's a little bit blurrier than I think some of us want to believe.
And I don't think any of us wants to pursue a liberty that is just doing whatever we want all the time, even when it's very harmful to us.
I mean, obviously nobody wants a liberty that is not restricted in any way.
I think that the big question, this goes back to a debate that we've been having in an ongoing fashion for the last several years at this point, is this sort of Adrian Vermeule government as great educator and government as virtue inculcator.
And I'm very uncomfortable with that idea because historically government has been much more of an oppressor than it has been a great inculcator of virtue.
The fact is that religious institutions typically have been that which filled the gap.
And I agree with you.
The government can wreck all of that.
But I think that if you give government more power, it's more likely to wreck more of it.
Meaning that the big story of the 1950s and 1960s was not that government decided to re-educate everybody in a particular direction.
It's that government decided to undermine all of the institutions that allowed the education toward virtue in the first place.
It was government undermining church.
It was government undermining marriage.
It was government incentivizing bad behavior.
Government gained power during the 1960s.
It didn't give up power during the 1960s to control your behavior.
Government decided instead it was going to pay people to be single mothers.
If you're going to talk about the destruction of marriage in America, I think you'd be much better off focusing...
I mean, listen, I think no fault divorce is idiotic.
But with that said, I think that no fault divorce is less of a problem in American life than the government actively incentivizing women to give birth to children out of wedlock, just as a matter of statistics.
I just think it cuts a little bit both ways, because you're absolutely right.
In a certain sense, in a huge sense, the government gained a lot of power in the 60s.
But you also got this idea that what happens in a person's bedroom is no business of the government when that was not true in the United States for a long time.
I mean, just to use one debate that keeps coming up on this topic, which is porn.
You know, we've had laws against pornography in this country from the very, We still have laws against pornography in this country, even if they are not enforced.
But some were enforced relatively recently during the Bush administration.
That would be an instance where the government is actually, in a certain sense, ceding power, saying, we have nothing to say about this issue.
And by ceding that power, it gave people a kind of libertinism that I think has made our liberty situation a little bit worse.
I just think that the whole idea that there is a relationship between the liberal arts and liberty, of course, that we were trying to instill in people the virtues that made for liberty.
But I think the idea that it was all people, educated people with liberal arts educations who were the real bulwark for liberty in this country is just not true.
I think that we always talk about this question in the context of the 50s and the 60s.
And that's 20 years of the 200 plus year history of the country.
The vast majority of the time that people in this country were free.
No one could know what was going on in your bedroom because it was a frontier nation.
because people were out away from government and they were having, therefore, to rely on things like small community.
They were having to rely on their neighbor, even though their neighbor might be miles away from them.
They were having to rely on their religion and their faith.
And they weren't relying on things like education or forced service.
There was no education and there was nowhere to serve.
You were a free person, not being shaped by government, and instead you had to, therefore, be shaped by reality, by nature.
You had to be shaped by more local institutions.
I have to take issue with some of this.
You and I, Jeremy, have a lot of sympathy on this issue of liberty being left alone.
I mean, I think that you're absolutely right about this.
But liberty has always been generated by ideas.
And it really was ideas that filter into the common, that become common property, even of people who don't have the education.
It's those ideas that really have made people free.
And key to that one of those ideas has been the idea of the interior life of an individual as being an end of itself.
The fact that you are you and I'm me and that we we experience a life that that is something that doesn't need any explanation, doesn't need any defense.
And I think in order to have that idea in operation, we do have to have a sense of respect for one another.
I mean, you just, you cannot have liberty for me and not for thee.
And that's one of the reasons that, for instance, these rights that people suddenly have, the right to gay marriage, where you can then go and sue somebody if he doesn't accept your vision of life, if he doesn't accept your behavior as good, you can then sue him.
That is damaging to liberty, that actually is not extending liberty.
But to this point, that's a product of government.
No, no, wait.
These are two separate conversations, though, that we're having.
They kind of got melded together.
The threat of government, which Ben is talking about, obviously, obviously always a problem.
And it is definitely a drawback to any idea of common service.
And I completely accept that.
I'm not sure whether it can be gotten around, but I think that's true.
But it is not the same thing as the way we behave and where those ideas are going to come from.
We're in a very, very damaging and dangerous situation where we have lost our religion to some degree.
We've certainly lost any kind of binding sense of religion.
Government cannot replace that.
We have a constitution that was built for religious people.
And that is something we're really going to have to address.
And I think that the thing that Knowles is talking about, which is now this...
Bubbling debate on the left of how are we going to reinstill these common ideas of good without doing it through the iron fist of government?
This is a difficult debate, but we better be having it because we cannot survive as a free nation without an idea of virtue, without a common sense that there's something bigger than each of us.
And I think it's a very, very difficult thing.
Libertarianism is not going to do it, but obviously neither is theocracy.
Somewhere between those two ideas, there's got to be some way of restoring some sense of unity because we are really a daggers drawn and we can't continue that way for very long.
Yeah, I guess I'm just curious.
I don't disagree that we're a nation that's lost its religion.
I don't disagree that our constitution is for a religious people, that our way of government is for a religious people.
I guess what I'm not sure about is what is the alternative that's being proposed?
Well, I can give you a little bit of the alternative, because there's one vision of America, which is that it's only the Wild West, and it's John Wayne in a saloon with a pistol.
But that isn't only America.
It's not even the oldest version of America.
You know, America begins, really, in New England and on the East Coast, and those are decidedly less Wild West places, and part of Western expansion was expanding across the country and spreading out a little bit.
In those New England towns and cities in particular, there was intense social cohesion.
There was a real authentic politics where people thought they could make their own political decisions, that we didn't simply have to pursue our own individual ends ad infinitum without any sense of having a common purpose.
But I think the key here is the localism of it, You could call it localism or federalism or subsidiarity.
The idea that these kinds of decisions are absolutely within the scope of politics, and they should be.
But when you make those decisions at the national level, or the federal level, or even worse, the international level, that those decisions are going to be heavy-handed, they could become tyrannical, that it's good for us to have a politics and a sense of common virtue, but it's probably safer for us to make those decisions more locally.
That's very much in the American tradition.
On that note, can I just chime in, since we went after Trump for going after Joe Scarborough, I have to wave the Trump flag here for just a minute.
This thing that he brought out, I've loved during this Chinese flu epidemic that he has remained a federalist, whether he knows what that word means or not.
He has just said, let the states do what they're going to do.
And it has revealed where the states are badly run and where they're well run.
I think that that...
That is a brilliant thing that he's done.
I cannot remember in my lifetime anyone ever meeting a crisis by dialing back the power of government.
That's insane.
And I just think it's something that we can celebrate in the midst of the mourning of the people who have died and the complete difficulty of our economic situation.
Only Trump would have done this.
I mean, with all the stuff that he does that's crazy, He then does these wonderful golden things that I just think we have to pause for a minute and recognize because it is something that conservatives, it's a holy grail that conservatives have gone after of don't let the crisis be used to oppress us.
And Trump has actually done that.
Alicia, we have time for a few more questions.
Oh, thank God.
And I got to say, my answer to the draft question, pull this in case I ever run for office, the only draft that I am interested in is the beer one.
So, moving on.
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I would highly suggest it because then you get to not only hear the guys blabber for two hours on backstage, but you can also chat with them and hear them blabber some more via their keyboards right after this when we have a discussion that's available only for all access members.
Don't worry, I will be there too.
You're going to be blabbering too.
Yeah, don't.
It's not too horrible.
Strong pitch there from Alicia.
Yeah.
We know that men are from Mars, women are from Venus, but how many of you would actually pay to go to space?
You touched on this a little bit.
Like, would you pay to go to space?
Would the Shapiro family, instead of, I don't know, going to Hawaii, end up going to Mars?
Well, as you can tell, we're pretty risk-averse here in the Shapiro household.
So it depends on the safety level acquired.
In current modulation, where you are strapped to the front of a bar, I'm going to go no on that.
But if we got to the point where you could actually fly into low orbit, then absolutely.
That's one of the coolest things ever.
And I'm hoping that's something that we will actually achieve during my lifetime.
I know that Virgin was talking about doing something like that.
And you could pay, what was it?
It was like 50.
It was something that was extraordinarily expensive, but not so crazy that if you got extraordinary money, you wouldn't think about it.
It was like 50 grand to fly into space, to fly into low-level space.
And I thought, that's kind of badass, right?
I mean, like, you actually take a picture of yourself in space.
That seems like that would be worth it, I feel like.
Yeah.
I'd do it if I had the kind of money that it would take.
Ben's right.
In the lifetimes of the people here, it will never be possible to go to space safely.
It's a dangerous thing.
It requires people who are willing to take a risk and strap themselves, as Ben says, to an exploding bomb.
I think, though, that if I had the money and I didn't have young children at home at the time, I would seriously consider it.
I just can't imagine, at this moment, What else is there for a man to account?
What other experience is available to us as mortals on this rock that is greater than to go up into orbit, experience weightlessness, look down at the blue marble?
I think it would be hard to pass up.
I think I would be deathly afraid.
By the way, I think it's a fairly miserable experience.
Space is not for the faint of heart.
Your muscles start to atrophy immediately.
You get terrible motion sickness.
You have headaches and muscle cramps and all kinds of digestive issues the whole time you're up there because it turns out the body was made for gravity and not for weightlessness.
But I just think, man, yeah, the...
The experience of that would be very difficult to pass.
Honestly, I get all of those symptoms every time I hang out in a room with gnolls.
I get all of those symptoms every time I hang out in a room with gnolls.
I may as well get the space as well.
Ben's going to strap me to a rocket ship and then we're going to go straight up.
You know, I don't want to go somewhere.
You know, Alicia, you mentioned about going to Mars.
I don't want to go to Mars.
Mars looks terrible.
I have no interest in that.
Earth is really nice.
It's like the one nice place in the whole universe, so I want to stay on Earth.
That we know of.
Yeah, look, if I were a gambling man, I'd put my money on Earth.
But I would love to, as you gentlemen say, I would love to go up into orbit.
I would love to be up there for three to five hours.
I think that would be great.
I would do it tomorrow.
Ben, I know you haven't paid me in years, but I know you say the check is in the mail.
Whenever the check arrives, I'm giving it to Elon.
I want to go up and do that, but I want to come home to Earth right afterward.
Amen.
I have to say, I love flying.
How much would it cost to actually pay Elon Musk to get him to send Knowles to space?
Is this on the table?
Because I will say that you are an absolute money suck.
I feel like a one-time payment to Elon Musk to murder you by sending you to space might absolutely be worth it.
I have to say, I love flying.
I have flown planes.
I had a pilot's license.
I've paraglided.
I've done all this stuff.
I just love being in the air.
The two things that I would do is I'd go into low orbit for a couple hours, and I would go to a planet or the moon someplace, a destination.
But the one thing I would not be interested in is going to that space station, which just looks unpleasant and boring and not that exciting.
So, I mean, once you're Once you're in orbit, you've kind of seen everything.
You're no closer to the stars than you are here.
It's just the perspective that you get on the Earth that would be so spectacular.
But I would definitely love to walk on the moon or see Mars or something like that.
I just think that that would be an experience worth having, and I definitely would do it.
I definitely would take the vomiting...
The sickness and for the experience.
But the idea of going to...
Every time I see people in that space station, I think, eh, that's too much like being in a tin can for me.
You have to be in that space station for like 150 days at a time, which is also why I wouldn't go to Mars, because it takes months and months to get to Mars.
What Ben is talking about is suborbital, which is where you go up, you experience weightlessness, you see the curvature of the Earth.
This is like a 90-second experience, right?
What you guys are talking about, actual low-Earth orbit is...
You know, it's basically the range of where the space station is.
You're 250 miles above the Earth.
You make a couple laps.
You come back down.
The moon, I think, is as far as I would ever go.
Drew, I'm with you.
You know, even the moon, you're dealing now with probably a week-long trip.
But, yeah, to step foot on a celestial body and you don't have to be in space for, like, 20 months to pull it off, it'd be hard to say no.
Pretty cool.
Hard to say no.
Alicia.
I think whoever comes up with the marketing, which probably will be Elon Musk or one of his oddly named children in the next couple of generations, that comes up with a space spa is going to make it really big.
All right.
The last question of the night is actually an interesting one, especially as we're heading into summer, which typically has lots of outside and public recreation.
I'm a huge fan of going to the Hollywood Bowl.
Do you guys see large outdoor events like sports or outdoor concerts at Red Rocks, etc., coming back anytime soon?
And would each of you be comfortable participating?
I would 100% be comfortable participating.
I'm furious because the L.A. Phil canceled their season.
And the L.A. Phil, I don't like to go necessarily because I know anything about classical music, which I don't.
I like to go because it is the cheapest, best entertainment in L.A., You bring a bottle of wine.
You listen to great musicians.
It's outdoors.
It's the summer.
It's so wonderful.
They've already canceled it because L.A. has been totally hysterical on this lockdown.
Other states, though, have not been hysterical.
And I would not be surprised if while California, New York, and other places remain closed for better or worse for the near future, I could see other states where politics are a little more normal reopening.
And maybe I'll have to hop a flight and go check out a concert.
I completely agree.
Particularly the Hollywood Bowl or baseball outdoor events in warm climates in the middle of summer.
There's no reason that these events shouldn't be taking place.
You're not going to get the Rona sitting at Dodger Stadium in the 96-degree heat watching what was promising to be the best season of Dodgers baseball probably in the last 50 years.
I mean, I think that the whole...
I thought at first that the coronavirus, because it's the royal disease, right?
The corona, the crown...
I thought that it was actually just God's way of keeping Prince Charles from ever becoming King of England.
But then Charles survived it and I realized there is no God.
And since there is no God, I now believe that it was just a conspiracy to keep the Dodgers from actually winning the World Series this year.
And I think that that's a real tragedy.
That's good logic.
Should we just clarify for Media Matters that that was a joke?
No, we shouldn't.
We absolutely should not.
Are they going to support the monitor?
That's a good point.
My feelings about these public events are slightly different.
First of all, here's the reality.
Young people will end up going back to rock concerts and rap concerts and all that stuff will happen within the next four months.
Because we're already starting to see that.
The Lake of the Ozarks tape is going to be the reality for a bunch of people who are 25 and under because their risk is zero.
I mean, effectively speaking, statistically speaking, it is very, very close to zero.
If you're under the age of 25, you ain't dying from this thing unless you have some very serious underlying conditions.
So it would not surprise me at all to see people go to concerts that are specifically aimed at younger audiences.
The L.A. Phil, it's going to be a while because the audience is Michael Moles and a bunch of people who are 60-plus, so it's going to be a while until those people...
Want to hang out in coordination with each other.
As far as baseball stadiums, I think that it'll probably be early next year.
Bottom line is, I think once we hit early next year, and they either have or have not developed the vaccine, people are going to be like, okay, well, whatever it is, it is.
And that includes older people.
They're going to be like, okay, this is just a new risk of life.
I'm either willing to do it or I'm not willing to do it.
I think that you could see some baseball games come back, even in the fall, based on the possibility of blocking off So it seems to me...
inside and zero space between each other.
But, you know, that's movie theaters are going to be big ones, right?
Movie theaters are going to be shot for a while.
Small spaces, lots of older people, not a lot of good air circulation.
And classical music concerts, unfortunately, are going to go away for a while.
But they should open the Hollywood Bowl and they should just restrict the number of people who can come in because it wasn't like they were making bank off the thing anyway.
You know, I called my doctor to ask if I was particularly vulnerable and he was shocked to find out I was still alive.
And he's like, I was a little concerned about it.
But I've got to be honest with you, I've reached a point now where I'm starting to think like...
You know, I don't necessarily want to be in an airplane.
If I go to a restaurant, I would like them to be a little bit cautious, a little bit of social distancing.
But I agree with Jeremy on this.
Going to a baseball game in an open stadium, certainly going to a college game where the kids aren't in any danger whatsoever.
Those are things that I'm getting ready to do.
I mean, I'm not all that worried about it.
I think that when you really do look at the statistics, this has killed off people, even if it's possible to imagine older than I am.
And I think that...
I don't know.
I just think you have to live.
You really have to live.
There is no point in not being dead if you're not living.
And so I think, yeah, I think people are just going to come back.
I don't think they can stop it.
I think the guys who are trying to keep their state shut down are going to end up looking very bad.
It's a very bad look for a leader to say, follow me and turn around, have no one behind him.
I think people are ready to go back and it's time.
Let me say this to close the show.
I mentioned that I went on a road trip this weekend.
I was actually at the Grand Canyon at the same time as young Spencer Clavin.
No, we didn't see each other there because I think he was on a date and I was just with my wife.
Totally different.
Totally different.
I was willing to see anybody.
He was actually hiking, I think.
But my trip was not just to Arizona.
I went all the way to the ancestral homeland of West Texas.
And while I was there, my grandfather, who's in his mid-80s, has pretty late-stage Parkinson's and diabetes.
He's a really heroic figure in our family, a true patriarch.
He has an eighth-grade education, worked for the man for very low wages, doing brutal blue-collar work most of his life.
Then, in his 40s, decided to go on his own and start a business and created a very successful He's a spiritual guy.
He's a really inspirational figure, as I say, in our family.
Nevertheless, his health is terrible.
And if you've ever seen someone go through Parkinson's, it's just a tragedy.
It just takes your body away from you.
And so the first day that we're there, my papa, as I call him, called me and said, you want to go golfing?
And so I thought, Parkinson's makes your body go, but I didn't know it made your mind go.
I am the least athletic human that has probably ever walked the earth.
I'm blind in one eye.
I'm terrible.
But he wanted me to go golfing with him.
I'm not going to say no to my papa while I'm there.
So I went out to the golf course.
It was 102 degrees.
It was Miserable.
And the thing about golf is it's hard.
So it was just humiliating.
You know, I think the reason my papa wanted to be there is because he's like, you feel sorry for me.
Wait till we get you on a golf course.
We got out there and I thought, this is amazing.
Here I am.
If anyone in LA witnessed this, they'd say that I was murdering my grandfather.
Keep in mind, we're outside and it's 100 degrees, but nevertheless, he is at high risk.
He's in his mid-80s.
He has a very advanced version of diseases that...
I'm not speaking ill of my grandfather.
He will die from these.
He will not win his battle with Parkinson's disease and diabetes.
And it could be that we have him with us for five more years.
It could be that we have him with us for five more months.
It could be that we step off of this stage and they hand me my cell phone and there's bad news.
None of those three outcomes would be surprising.
And then I realized, oh...
My papa isn't ignorant to the risk that's taking place.
He's been watching TV every day for the last two months like everyone else.
He's an intelligent man who built a business and employed people and raised children.
He just sees the world different, and I actually think his perspective is better.
He's not godless.
He doesn't live his life in fear.
He's not reckless, but he also realizes he's only got so many more chances to spend time with his grandson, and he's only got so many more golf games ahead of him one way or the other.
And I think, I didn't ask him, I think that if I were to ask him, and I think his actions demonstrated...
He would rather spend time with his grandson and get in a few more golf games and live for a shorter end of what life is potentially left to him than be locked up in his house, not play golf again, not see his grandchildren, and eke out 6 or 8 or 12 or 24 extra months.
And it's yet another one of the important, meaningful lessons that I think that I've learned from my papa.
And Drew, you said it well.
The purpose of life is to live.
It doesn't mean to be reckless.
It doesn't mean to treat life as though it's a frivolous thing.
But I do think, particularly as people of faith, that we are to hang on to our lives somewhat lightly.
We're not to hold on to our lives as though the length of life is the ultimate victory.
And so I'm hopeful that, in particular, as it warms up around the country, we all start to take a little bit more of that attitude.
Thank you, everybody, for hanging out with us.
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Ben will be there.
Drew will be there.
Michael will be there.
I'll be there.
And yes, she's lovely.
Elisha will be there too.
Thank you guys for hanging out with us and we'll see you next time.
Daily Wire Backstage is produced by Robert Sterling and directed by Mike Joyner.
Executive producer is me, Jeremy Boren.
Our supervising producer is Mathis Glover.
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Editing is by Jim Nickel.
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