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Nov. 5, 2018 - The Matt Walsh Show

31:33

Ep. 136 - At The Polls, Remember Kavanaugh

As we head into the election, Democrats are really hoping you forget about their failed smear campaign against an innocent man. I'll talk about why you shouldn't. Also, we'll discuss SNL's mockery of a wounded vet, and I will offer a defense of a teacher arrested for assaulting a student. Date: 11-05-2018 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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	Today on The Matt Walsh Show, with the election tomorrow, there is one thing that everybody should remember when they go to the polls.
	We'll talk about that.
	Also, conservatives were offended this weekend by a joke on SNL, and so we'll discuss how partisanship is destroying comedy.
	And finally, a teacher in California was arrested for a physically assaulting student.
	I want to defend the teacher and explain why he should not be fired.
	All of that coming up on The Matt Walsh Show.
	Election day is coming up.
	It's coming up tomorrow, in fact, in case you didn't know.
	And I do have just one thing I would like to remind you of as you head into the polls.
	One relevant piece of history.
	Ancient history.
	Admittedly, this was a long, long time ago.
	That's why I feel like I have to remind you of it.
	But this goes all the way back.
	Way, way, way, way back to the beginning of October.
	Try to bring your mind back to the beginning of October and recall the orchestrated smear campaign of Justice Kavanaugh.
	Now, you may have noticed as we head into the election what Democrats have been saying about Kavanaugh, especially ever since his confirmation.
	Notice the things that they've been saying about him.
	That is, specifically, it should be easy to remember what they've been saying because they've said nothing.
	They aren't talking about him anymore.
	They don't bring him up.
	Have you noticed that?
	And that's weird, isn't it?
	Because according to them, according to them, he's a rapist.
	According to them, Republicans put a rapist On the bench.
	So isn't it weird that they haven't been citing that fact repeatedly, constantly, on the campaign trail?
	They talked about it while the confirmation process was going on, but as soon as he's confirmed, they stopped talking about it.
	You'd think it would be almost the opposite.
	Like, Republicans have now actually put this guy on the bench, he's a rapist according to them, yet they're not talking about that.
	Well, I think we know why.
	And I think we know why they stopped talking about it.
	There was a full report released by the Senate Judiciary Committee after they finished up their investigation on the whole Kavanaugh debacle.
	And they just released this report over the weekend.
	It's 400 pages long, but here's what it says in part.
	Let me just, this is how they kind of summarize it.
	It says, after an extensive investigation that included the thorough review of all potentially credible evidence submitted and interviews of more than 40 individuals with information relating to the allegations, including classmates and friends of all those involved, committee investigators found no witnesses Who could provide any verifiable evidence to support any of the allegations brought against Justice Kavanaugh.
	In other words, following the separate and extensive investigations by both the committee and the FBI, there was no evidence to substantiate any of the claims of sexual assault made against Justice Kavanaugh.
	What's more, the committee is also calling for charges against Julie Swetnick.
	She's the woman who alleged all those gang rapes, if you recall.
	There is, shockingly, reason to believe that she's a perjuring liar and a fraud, along with her, along with her pseudo lawyer, Avenatti.
	So, you know, it's interesting, we haven't heard anything from Swetnick either, after the, since the confirmation.
	According to her, Justice Kavanaugh is a serial gang rapist.
	But she suddenly has gone silent.
	Haven't heard anything from her.
	Have you noticed that?
	Well, I think we know why.
	And the committee also is calling for charges against another woman who now admits to making up allegations against Kavanaugh.
	And the committee is also investigating Monica McClain, who's the woman, the former FBI agent, who allegedly tried to encourage a witness to change her story so that it would support Christine Ford's story.
	On top of all that, the report details an interview that the committee conducted with another man who says that he had an encounter At the time in question, in the area in question, in a bedroom with a girl who had a one-piece bathing suit on under her clothes, and the encounter was, you know, and a girl who looked a lot like Christine Ford looked at that time, according to the pictures that you've seen, and that encounter was ended when another guy jumped on top of them.
	So there was another guy in the room, and it ended when someone jumped on top.
	He says the encounter was consensual, though, but There's every reason to suspect that this may in fact be the encounter that Ford was talking about, which would mean that she was wrong not only about the person
	Who she had this encounter with, but she was wrong about whether or not it was consensual, which would mean that this was, of course, on her part, would have had to have been more than just a lapsed memory situation.
	This, you know, this would be, in that case, just a lie and a fraud on her part.
	And it actually would kind of make sense, you know, because although her story was strangely vague, it was vague, especially about details that you wouldn't think she would be vague about.
	About things that you'd think she would remember, so it was vague in those parts.
	But then there were those few things that she was very detailed about and very descriptive about.
	And she was able, when talking about the story, to conjure up some emotion about it.
	So, if she took something that actually happened, And just kind of transplanted Kavanaugh into it, and then changed some of the details to make it non-consensual when it was consensual, then that would kind of explain how she was able to be detailed about certain things, but not others, and all that.
	So it's clear why the Democrats have stopped talking about this.
	The truth is coming out.
	It has come out.
	And it is completely, utterly damning to everyone involved in the attack on Kavanaugh.
	The man is being completely vindicated in remarkable ways, really.
	Because it's actually pretty impressive, when you think about it, that there could be so much evidence proving his innocence in relation to a made-up crime from 35 years ago.
	If an innocent man is accused of doing something three decades ago, The most he could usually hope to find to support his side, to prove his innocence, is a lack of evidence on the other side.
	So if you're accused of doing something 30 years ago, in most cases, the most you could hope for is that the other side just has no evidence.
	Because from 35 years ago, you're not going to be able to present your own evidence proving that you were innocent.
	But remarkably, Kavanaugh Kavanaugh has that.
	He has the lack of evidence against him.
	But he also has a ton of evidence actively vindicating him.
	Evidence like another man coming forward and saying, no, it was me.
	Evidence like the denials of all the alleged witnesses.
	Evidence like recanted statements from accusers.
	Evidence like his calendar showing all the things that he did during the summer in question.
	So it's just overwhelming.
	But Democrats knew that this would happen.
	The gambit for them was very simple.
	For them it was, throw everything at Kavanaugh.
	No matter how absurd and unsubstantiated, destroy him, keep him off the court, and then weeks later, when the truth comes out, and they knew that it would come out, but then they could just rely on the media to ignore it and bury it.
	All they cared about was, let's just keep him off the court now, destroy him, and then when the truth comes out three, four weeks from now, it's not going to matter anymore.
	The damage will be done, media won't report it, nobody will hear about it.
	And they were right about that.
	The media, of course, is ignoring this.
	But sadly for the Democrats, the gambit didn't work out because Kavanaugh is on the court.
	The only question now is whether the voters will make Democrats pay for this smear campaign, and I really hope they do.
	You know, I think, of course I'm biased, but I think there are many reasons not to vote for Democrats.
	But even if, you know, if you're someone who's on the fence politically or ideologically, This should definitely be enough to push you, if not towards voting for Republicans, at least staying home and not voting for Democrats, when you see what they did.
	I mean, this is, as I said throughout the entire thing, this is one of the most brazen smear campaigns and some of the most brazen dishonesty that we've ever seen.
	From politicians, especially when you think about it, it's not just one politician.
	It was many of them.
	It was the Democrat Party together deciding to engage in this campaign of destruction and lies and slander.
	They have to be punished for that.
	For the sake of common decency, for the sake of preserving, to whatever extent we still can, the integrity of our political process, they have to be punished for that.
	So please keep that in mind as you head to the polls.
	Okay, moving on.
	I want to touch briefly on something.
	Pete Davidson is a comedian on SNL.
	Maybe you heard about this over the weekend.
	He made a bad and stupid joke, very bad, very stupid, about a GOP congressional candidate named Dan Crenshaw.
	And Crenshaw is a veteran who lost an eye while fighting overseas, so he wears an eye patch now.
	And Davidson joked that Crenshaw looks like, he said, he looks like the hitman in a porno.
	Which, in my Innocence and naivete, I didn't even realize that was a category of person that you would find in a porno, a hitman, but leave that aside.
	Nevertheless, it was, as I said, a stupid and bad joke and offensive, as he was obviously mocking someone who's Suffering a disability from war.
	And to mock someone with a disability at all is bad.
	To mock their disability when they got it fighting for the country just makes it all the worse.
	But it was a joke.
	We can say.
	It was a joke from a comedian.
	Bad, stupid, offensive, but a joke.
	And conservatives are usually the first ones to say that, listen, you know, you've got to give comedians leeway here.
	We can't get overly sensitive about jokes that comedians tell, even when they're bad, stupid, and offensive.
	Yet many conservatives reacted to this joke with immense outrage.
	And almost immediately, there was a campaign being organized to put pressure on NBC's advertisers, and there were people calling for boycotts.
	And people calling for Davidson to be fired, and on and on and on.
	Now, Mr. Crenshaw himself, to his credit, did not engage in this, and I think this is really impressive.
	You know, he took it in stride, basically.
	And in fact, he decried the culture of outrage, where we demand apologies.
	And he said he's not going to do that.
	He thinks it's silly to demand apologies.
	And that's great.
	He did say that it was an unfunny joke, it was a bad joke, and it's not okay to make fun of wounded warriors.
	But he didn't call for a boycott.
	He didn't demand an apology, as I said, to his credit.
	But a lot of people did.
	A lot of conservatives did demand boycotts and firings and all the rest of it.
	And we know, of course, that if the person who made the offensive remark about wounded warriors was himself a Republican, most of these Republicans would not be reacting this way.
	And do you know how I know that?
	Because President Trump famously mocked a disabled war veteran and POW named John McCain.
	Not only mocked him, but mocked him for being a POW.
	And most of the people outraged by a comedian's joke actually defended the comment from Trump when you could easily make the case that the comment from Trump was ten times worse because Trump's not a comedian.
	He's a presidential candidate.
	This was a comedian.
	Which is just, it's such a blatant double standard that I would be shocked by it if I wasn't so jaded and cynical and completely used to double standards.
	But the people that defended Trump's comment, that are calling for boycotts because of this, they must know that they're being hypocrites.
	You must look in the mirror and say to yourself, I am being a total hypocrite and I know it.
	And we can't become comfortable with hypocrisy.
	Look, here's my point.
	First of all, there used to be a time not too long ago when comedians would make outrageously offensive jokes constantly.
	Jokes that would be several orders of magnitude worse than what Pete Davidson said.
	In fact, you don't even have to go back that far.
	There was a...
	There was a Comedy Central roast.
	I forget who was being roasted.
	It was only a couple of years ago.
	And Davidson himself, Pete Davidson, was at the roast, and other comedians were mocking him because his dad died on 9-11.
	They were not only making 9-11 jokes, but they were making 9-11 jokes about Pete Davidson's dad who died.
	Now, speaking of 9-11 and offensive jokes, Gilbert Gottfried, who is known for being outrageous and making jokes about the most horrible kinds of things, actually made a 9-11 joke in New York, like two weeks after the attack.
	He was in New York and he made a joke in front of his whole audience.
	And of course, he was booed off the stage.
	But this is the kind of stuff that comedians used to do.
	Someone reminded me yesterday of, and I remember seeing this when it happened, in 2005 or 2006, Norm MacDonald went on The Daily Show only a few days after Steve Irwin died.
	And he proceeded to joke about it for five minutes.
	He went into this extended riff where he was imagining how disappointed the crocodiles must have been that a stingray killed Steve Irwin and one of them wasn't able to.
	In fact, they were disappointed that a fruity fish killed Steve Irwin instead of one of them.
	I mean, these days, even to use the word fruity in that context would probably get him boycotted.
	But it's saying nothing of the fact that he was making fun of this guy who just died like two days before.
	And those are just a couple of recent examples.
	You go back decades.
	Go back to Richard Pryor, George Carlin, Don Rickles.
	I mean, all those guys.
	And you find comedians making absolutely outrageous jokes about really dark subject matter.
	And sometimes the jokes aren't funny.
	Like, Davidson's joke was not funny.
	Sometimes they're horrible, but you can't help but laugh.
	Sometimes they really do cross a line.
	And they're unfunny.
	Davidson's joke crossed a line, it was unfunny.
	I think the jokes directed at him about his dad dying on 9-11, those are not funny, and they cross a line.
	But we have to ask ourselves, would we rather live in a world where offensive comedians can be offensive without it turning into a boycott, or do we like living in this world where every outrageous joke becomes its own news cycle?
	Maybe another way of putting it is this.
	What was actually wrong with the original way of doing things?
	Was anyone being harmed by these jokes?
	I mean, if you lived through the dark times of, say, the 90s, when comedians would make horrible jokes all the time, constantly, about all kinds of things, and nobody batted an eye, But if you could go back in a time machine to the 1990s, would you look around and say to yourself, wow, you know, the fact that comedians can make offensive jokes, that's a big problem.
	We have to do, you know, this is a problem.
	Is our new approach, our readiness to be offended by any joke, is that solving some kind of problem?
	What problem was solved by this?
	I don't think it is.
	I think it's just And I think people get this wrong, because people say, well, we're so sensitive these days.
	And that is part of it.
	I mean, we are sensitive.
	Too sensitive.
	But it's even worse than that, because I think our sensitivity is often performative.
	It's theatrical.
	It's not really sensitivity that's ruining comedy, it's partisanship.
	Partisanship on the part of the comedians, Who are selective these days in their targets based on politics, and we all know how comedians, you know, we talk about what's killing comedy, we have to keep in mind that many of these comedians themselves killed comedy by the fact that even political satirists, people that, you know, SNL is supposed to be political satire, but for eight years they had no jokes to make about the president.
	Which was a death blow to comedy in and of itself.
	So, there's partisanship on the part of the comedians, and then partisanship on the part of the public, where we're just looking for any opportunity, any ammo we can find to throw at the other side.
	And so we look at comedy through that lens.
	It's not just that comedians themselves are presenting the comedy through a partisan lens.
	They are doing that, but we also are receiving the comedy through a partisan lens and deciding what we think is funny and what we think is offensive based on our partisanship.
	And that's just, I mean, it's fatal to comedy, first of all, and that's kind of a tragedy because who wants to live in a world without comedy?
	I think that's one of the For human beings, I feel like that's an essential ingredient to living a human life.
	You need humor, right?
	You need to be able to laugh.
	And I would say it's better to err on the side of laughing at too many things than not being able to laugh at anything, because there's always some partisan snowflake ready to get offended.
	And again, I'm not defending the joke.
	It was a horrible, stupid, unfunny joke.
	So, you know, we can all say that.
	It's okay to point that out, even.
	But what I'm talking about is the boycotts and firing him and let's make it into a news cycle.
	That's what I'm talking about.
	That's the problem.
	I think our reaction to those kind of jokes should be exactly the reaction that Crenshaw himself had, which was, it's a funny, stupid joke.
	Now I'm moving on with my life.
	Or unfunny, stupid joke, I meant to say.
	Okay.
	Finally, one more subject here that I want to talk about.
	There was a teacher by the name of Marston Riley in Los Angeles who was arrested for child abuse, I think it was last week, after punching one of his students.
	And the incident was caught on camera.
	And so you see the 14-year-old kid berating the teacher, cussing him out, taunting him, refusing to leave the classroom.
	Finally, he throws a basketball at the teacher and then really gets in his face, at which point Riley punches the kid and a scuffle ensues and Riley punches him several more times.
	And now Riley, the teacher, is being charged with a crime and will probably lose his job.
	You know, if you're familiar with me at all, you know that I am not a defender of the public school system and I am not at all hesitant to criticize teachers.
	I do it frequently, but I think it's absurd to charge this man with a crime of child abuse.
	Come on.
	And I don't think he should be fired.
	I have no problem saying that this young punk got exactly what he needed and deserved.
	I have no doubt that a beat down from the teacher may be the most, this, you know, I mean, I don't know, we can't make assumptions based on one video, but this does not seem like the sort of kid who's really getting a lot out of school, right?
	And so this may end up being the most important educational moment of his life up to this point.
	It also doesn't seem like the kind of kid who's getting a lot of education at home.
	So this may, this really may be the most important lesson he ever got.
	And it didn't come in a book, it came with a punch to the face.
	Now, yeah, obviously the teacher, the school cannot outright condone a teacher punching a student, even if the student was cussing him out and throwing objects at him.
	So what I think the school should do is they should suspend the teacher with pay for like a week, and then have him come back and get back to his job, and they should expel the student.
	Expel the student, give the teacher a paid one-week vacation while they investigate, and then have them come back in.
	And you know what?
	I think even the teacher should probably throw them a nice little private party in the faculty lounge, bring cupcakes and that kind of thing.
	Not in front of everybody.
	I'm not saying we throw them a party in the auditorium.
	I mean, that would be kind of nice also, but of course I know that won't happen.
	I have a lot of sympathy for the teacher in this situation, and absolutely none for the kid.
	None.
	And I think it's hard for some people to conceptualize just what teachers in certain districts deal with.
	Now, it's not like this in every school, but in some schools there are students who are just absurdly abusive to the teachers.
	Completely uncontrollable.
	No respect for authority at all.
	I mean, really, no respect.
	None.
	There are teachers who are verbally abused and berated and sometimes physically abused constantly, every day.
	And this is not how it should be.
	This is not normal.
	This is not what an educational environment is supposed to be like.
	And I think that we should tolerate our teachers being human on occasion.
	I'll tell you this, I would not be able to deal with that kind of behavior every day without smacking somebody in the face.
	I wouldn't be able to do it.
	And let me also say that this is not child abuse, okay?
	The moment that a teenager starts acting this way towards an adult, towards a grown man, he is not a child anymore.
	He clearly wants to be a man, and he wants to play a man's game, and he wants to man up and be a tough guy.
	So I say, let him face the consequences.
	Child abuse.
	Oh, the poor child was abused.
	No, the poor child wanted to be a man, and he was treated like one.
	And maybe he learned his lesson.
	The idea that a teenager, that a teenage delinquent is some kind of pure, innocent, helpless child is absurd.
	And I really think, in these kinds of situations, we have to consider the message.
	Now again, I'm not suggesting that there be a new policy at the school saying, you know, they put it in the handbook that if a kid gets out of line, the teacher's allowed to punch him in the face.
	I think there could be some value, possibly some value to a system like that, but it could get chaotic.
	So I'm not talking about a change in policy.
	I'm talking about the school being very, very lenient in their discipline of the teacher and very, very strict in their discipline of the student in this case.
	And I'll tell you why.
	Because, well, number one, like I said, we have to allow for a teacher to be a human being and react like a human being.
	And he reacted a way that, especially if you're dealing with this every day, I mean, eventually you just get worn down.
	You can't deal with this every single day.
	But we also have to think about the message.
	So if the teacher is fired, what's the message?
	The message is that delinquent kids can act like animals without any consequences.
	Or without any immediate consequences, I should say.
	The message is that kids can abuse teachers, and they will never have to worry about their own safety.
	They will never have to worry about any sort of retaliation.
	They can act however they want, Towards adults, and the adults will never defend themselves.
	Is that really the right message?
	Do you think that that doesn't embolden the delinquents?
	Do you think they don't realize that teachers are powerless, and then exploit that situation?
	Because I'll tell you, they do.
	The students in these schools, they realize that they can get in a teacher's face, they can even physically abuse a teacher, and the teacher cannot do anything.
	Without having to worry about going to jail and being fired.
	They realize that and they exploit it.
	Every day, constantly, they are exploiting that fact.
	So my point is, maybe a student should have to worry that his lip will get busted if he gets in a teacher's face.
	What's the downside to a student having to worry about that?
	I mean, really, what's the downside?
	What's the downside to a student having to think to himself, You know, if I act like a total animal to this grown man and I get in his face and I hurl an object at him, he might punch me in the face.
	What's the downside?
	What are we worried?
	Are we worried that the poor helpless child may be traumatized by that realization?
	He may feel unsafe.
	He'll feel unsafe in school.
	Well, he should feel unsafe when he's acting like that.
	That's the point.
	There's a limit.
	There's a limit on human actions, and if you act outside that limit, you should have to feel unsafe.
	You should have to think to yourself, you know what?
	If I keep carrying on this way, I might get punched in the face.
	I think that is a good calculation for a person to have to make, including kids.
	Now, obviously, it's different.
	If we're talking about a five-year-old, it's a totally different situation.
	But 14, 15-year-old, 15 years old, I'm sorry.
	I think now you've reached an age where if you want to puff up your chest and act like a man, you might be treated like one.
	And you can't complain about it.
	The school issued a statement, and from the statement it seems like they're definitely going in the wrong direction with this.
	The statement is, We are extremely disturbed by the reports of the events that occurred at Maywood Academy High School.
	We take this matter very seriously and do not condone violence or intolerance of any kind.
	Los Angeles Unified is cooperating with law enforcement.
	Crisis counselors and additional school police patrols will be at school on Monday to support our students and staff.
	We don't condone intolerance?
	Really?
	So intolerance?
	Well, you should condone that sort... There should be intolerance to that sort of behavior.
	What are you talking about?
	So their problem with what the teacher did was not only was it violent, but it was intolerant.
	Of course it's intolerant!
	The kid is acting in a completely intolerable way!
	So he should meet intolerance!
	Crisis counselors.
	I mean, come on.
	This is exactly the... I'm telling you, I know schools feel like they have to react this way, but you react this way all you're doing.
	You may as well write a written invitation to every delinquent at the school saying, please act like even worse animals than you've already been acting.
	Here you go.
	Here's an invitation.
	Please go and get in your teacher's face and taunt and berate him.
	And, you know, please RSVP by noon to let us know.
	You may as well.
	You may as well hand out invitations at that point, because that's how the kids take it.
	Whereas if we could just use a little bit of common human sense and say, you know what, we cannot Officially condone a teacher delivering a physical beatdown to a student.
	But the kid definitely deserved it.
	This is a good teacher by all accounts.
	Good man.
	And he just lost his cool.
	Go settle down.
	Little paid vacation.
	We'll call it discipline.
	It's not really.
	You'll come back in a week and everything will be fine.
	And that kid is going to be out of the school.
	So then the students have to say to themselves, you know what, if I act that way to a teacher, not only might I get my nose broken, but I'm going to get expelled and that teacher is going to get to stay.
	What's wrong with that?
	Isn't that exactly the message that the students should hear?
	Unless you want chaos in the schools, which is exactly what you get in many of these schools.
	In many of these schools, it's not an exaggeration to say there is just total chaos.
	Because when the kids don't respect the adults, and they have no reason to respect them, and the adults have their hands tied behind their back, it's just kids are going to exploit that.
	And so I think we have to rethink our approach in those cases.
	All right.
	We'll leave it there.
	Big day tomorrow.
	Voting.
	Please keep in mind what we discussed at the beginning of the show.
	And I'll talk to you tomorrow.

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