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Feb. 13, 2019 - The Matt Walsh Show

47:32

Ep. 197 - It’s Time To Get Rid Of The ‘Hate Crime’ Category

Today on the show, Jussie Smollett’s possibly faked ‘hate crime’ story yet again demonstrates why the ‘hate crime’ category shouldn’t exist. Also, people are freaking out because their tax refunds are smaller. I’ll explain why you shouldn’t want a big refund. Date: 02-13-2019 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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	Today on the Matt Wall Show, we'll talk about why we need to get rid of hate crimes as a category.
	There is no reason why crimes motivated by hate should get special treatment from the legal system, and I'll explain why.
	Also, a lot of people are whining because their tax refunds are smaller, and they're blaming Donald Trump for it, of course.
	But we'll talk about why it's incredibly foolish to complain about a smaller tax refund.
	A lot of people don't understand, apparently, how taxes work.
	So we'll talk about that today as well on the Matt Wall Show.
	Well it had been snowing here for the last several days and then to top off all the snow we got about a day's worth of freezing rain so there was probably an inch of ice on top of the snow.
	So yesterday I was the one who suggested to my kids Hey, let's go out and sled down the big hill outside out back because with all the ice, we'll be able to go super fast and it'll be fun.
	So we went out and and then I was the one who suggested, hey, let's build a ramp out of the ice because we'll be able to go really high off of the ramp and it'll be awesome.
	Now I'm told that in most situations, um, at least my wife tells me that usually it's the, the, the children who suggest dangerous things and then the responsible adult being the responsible one says, no, let's not do that.
	But I find that in my case, sometimes it's sort of the opposite.
	So we built the ramp and, um, anyway, the end of the story is that my back is really hurting today badly.
	Uh, my kids are fine, but I'm, I'm, I am not.
	So I would like to say I learned my lesson, but I didn't.
	All right.
	Welcome to the Matt Wall Show, by the way.
	And remember that if you want to get the whole show, if you're watching on Facebook, you only get 15 minutes.
	If you want to get the whole show, go to iTunes and subscribe to get the whole show there, or you can become a premium member of The Daily Wire.
	OK, I want to talk to begin with about hate crimes.
	Following up on something we discussed yesterday, With this alleged hate crime against Empire actor, uh, Jussie Smollett or Smollett.
	That actually not sure how to pronounce his last name.
	I'm going to say Smollett because it sounds better.
	Um, now look, there is, as I said yesterday, there's a chance there is a technically a chance that he really was a victim of a hate crime as he claims.
	We cannot at this point conclusively prove the negative, and maybe we'll never be able to.
	It is notoriously difficult and oftentimes impossible to prove a negative, to prove that something did not happen.
	But we can use our faculties of reason, and we can use our common sense.
	And we can look at the available evidence, and we can arrive at a plausible conclusion.
	And I think the most plausible conclusion with this story is that it is a hoax.
	It is fake.
	Um, in fact, absurdly fake fake, actually.
	So just to review the claim briefly, Smollett says that he was walking back from a Subway restaurant at 2 a.m.
	in Chicago in the middle of winter, and it was subzero temperatures, but he was going for a nice walk back from Subway.
	And he was suddenly attacked by two racist assailants.
	And he says that they assaulted him.
	They poured a mysterious chemical on him that apparently was bleach.
	They tied a rope around his neck and they shouted, this is MAGA country.
	Along with anti-black and anti-gay slurs.
	Smollett says that he fought off his assailants and he was able to attack.
	Um, able to get away from the attack and impressively, he made it home with his Subway sandwiches, tuna sandwich still intact.
	And he still had the rope that they put around his neck.
	He still had it.
	He was wearing it around his neck like a necktie.
	Um, eventually he called the police.
	Although according to the police report, he was hesitant, hesitant to call them, but he did call them.
	And eventually he went to the hospital and he took a selfie in the hospital bed, which is when everyone found out about this.
	And the selfie shows a small scratch under his eye, but not much else in the way of bodily injury.
	Now, there are many reasons to doubt this story.
	Number one, I think the first reason is just that it's absurd.
	It's a crazy story.
	And it would be hard to believe No matter where it was supposed to have happened, but in Chicago?
	Chicago is most certainly not MAGA country.
	When you think of MAGA country, I don't think you think of downtown Chicago.
	Not only is it Chicago, but it's one of the most liberal areas in one of the most liberal towns in the country.
	So you may as well claim that you were assaulted by MAGA terrorists at like a Vegan convention in, uh, in Portland or something.
	It's just, it's the last place in the world that you would expect to encounter a roving band of homicidal Trump loving bigots prowling the streets.
	You just, you, you wouldn't expect that.
	Um, I, you, I, you wouldn't expect to run into them anywhere, but least of all in Chicago.
	And the question is what were these alleged Violent bigots doing out in sub-zero temperatures in the middle of the night in the first place.
	And why did they have a noose and a bottle of bleach ready on hand?
	A bottle of bleach which, by the way, would have frozen within minutes, so they couldn't have been out for very long.
	And if this is supposed to be a random attack, well then how did they know that Smollett was gay?
	They say that he says that's part of the reason he was attacked.
	Well, you know, he's just a guy walking down the street with a Subway sandwich.
	If it's a random attack, how would they know that he's gay?
	There's no way they could have known that.
	Or was it supposed to be targeted?
	And is he saying that, well, they knew him because he's a celebrity?
	Were they out searching the streets and risking hypothermia in order to find and attack a relatively obscure supporting character from a show that they've almost certainly never seen?
	I can tell you one thing.
	If these people exist, They are certainly not the kinds of people who are going to be watching the show Empire.
	I think that's, um, there's a pretty good certainty of that.
	But even if we allow for the possibility that these attackers exist and we overlook all of the questions about why and how they were out in the middle of the night in Chicago in the first place, that still leaves us with the very odd fact that Smollett went home with the rope still around his neck, which just, um, You know, if that were to happen to you and you were assaulted in the middle of the night, someone put a rope around your neck.
	As soon as you escape, the first thing you do is take the rope off, right?
	And then the second thing you do is call the police right away.
	You don't wait 45 minutes.
	You don't go home and talk to your friend, finish your tuna sandwich.
	Uh, you, you call them right away.
	So it just doesn't make any sense.
	Um, and it couldn't have been, and I think he claimed that he wore the, he wore the rope to preserve evidence.
	Well, no, you could still preserve it if you take it off.
	And anyway, he wasn't even sure if you wanted to call the police right away.
	So if you're not even sure you want to call the police, you're not going to be worried about preserving evidence.
	Second thing is the video footage doesn't support the claim that he's talking about.
	Police have been able to piece together most of his jaunt to and from Starbucks or a subway and through security camera footage because it's a big city and there are security cameras everywhere.
	There's only a 60 second gap that they can't see.
	So there's no footage of the attack and there's no footage of the assailants either.
	And Smollett says that conveniently the attack happened in that 60 second span, which is possible.
	You know, it is, police say that it's possible that the assault as described could have began and concluded within one minute.
	He could have had this fight for his life against two psychotic racists in the span of one minute, 60 seconds.
	It's possible.
	Possible.
	Uh, it's also possible that he was assaulted by a unicorn.
	Um, it's, it's possible that, that, uh, he got into a fight with a leprechaun.
	It's possible that, you know, uh, a giant climbed down Jack's beanstalk and, and kicked him in the face.
	I mean, it's possible.
	I can't say it's impossible.
	60 seconds that we can't see.
	I mean, literally anything could have happened, right?
	But possible and plausible are two different things.
	Third thing is Smollett has not been eager to help the investigation, which is suspicious.
	He didn't want to hand over his phone records or his phone.
	Finally, he did hand over his phone records after about two weeks of stonewalling them, but they were heavily redacted.
	So redacted as to be useless.
	Fourth thing is Smollett is not acting like the victim of a vicious beating.
	Just a couple of days after suffering, he says bruised ribs.
	He was on stage singing and dancing and not showing any sign of physical impairment whatsoever, which doesn't make any sense.
	I mean, if you've ever bruised your ribs before, now broken ribs.
	Okay.
	It's not as bad as a broken rib, but if you've ever, if you've ever bruised your rib before, you know, that it hurts to breathe or move, uh, let alone get up and, um, and perform a musical number.
	It's just a couple of days later, you're at the very least, you're going to be in visible pain, right?
	And then the fifth thing is that his neighbors don't even believe him.
	His neighbors have come out and said that, in fact, quoting one of his neighbors, Agent Muhammad, who lives in the same building as the supposed victim, told the New York Post, I don't believe it.
	Not around here.
	Half the people are gay and the other half are black.
	So it's just, that's significant because if this, look, if his neighbors came out and said, yeah, this kind of stuff happens all the time.
	Um, that would be kind of strange.
	It's the first time we're hearing of it.
	But if, if, if the neighbors were saying that, then I would say, okay, well, okay, well, that's, uh, the plausibility dial just picked up a few notches then in that case, but no, they're saying the opposite.
	They're saying this kind of stuff never happens around here.
	Um, so.
	All we can do is just use our heads and decide if this seems like something that actually happened, even if we can't totally disprove it.
	As I said, it's hard to disprove anything.
	There have been many alien abduction stories that people have claimed over the years, and we can't really disprove any of those alien abduction stories.
	If some guy says that he was getting out of his pickup truck one night, heading, heading to his house and he was abducted by an alien, we can't really disprove it.
	It could have happened.
	But again, we can use our heads and look at the evidence and decide whether or not it's plausible.
	But here's the thing.
	Okay.
	So that's the specifics of that case.
	Hate crime hoaxes are pretty common.
	And that's the other thing we have to weigh here with this case.
	We know that hate crime hoaxes happen.
	We know that that's a thing that happens.
	But two Trump-supporting racists wielding bleach and a rope in the middle of downtown Chicago in 2019, we don't know of anything like that happening.
	So that's something that's completely unknown.
	Versus the other explanation, which is a hate crime hoax.
	Well, that kind of stuff happens all the time.
	And I think there are many reasons why hate crime hoaxes happen.
	But one reason that I think we need to look at is certainly that these things happen because of the designation of hate crimes themselves.
	The very fact of the hate crime designation seems to encourage this kind of thing.
	So hate crime hoaxes happen because the category of hate crime exists.
	That's one way we can get rid of hate crime frauds.
	It's just getting rid of the category and then there are no more fake hate crimes, right?
	Of course, that won't stop people from making up stories.
	He still could have made up the same exact story, but it wouldn't be a fake hate crime.
	They were treating this and still are treating this as a potential hate crime.
	Um, which they shouldn't be because that category should not exist.
	The problem with, with hate crimes is, um, first of all, not every kind of hate counts for a hate crime.
	Um, not all the crimes that are done out of hatred count as a hate crime, which is absurd and arbitrary.
	So for instance, if somebody slashes a black man's tires because they hate him personally, they have some sort of grudge against him as an individual and they hate him.
	They hate his guts personally.
	Well, that's a crime and that's a crime committed out of hate.
	But it wouldn't be treated as a hate crime.
	Now, if somebody were to slash the same black man's tires, let's just say he's, this guy's having a bad week and his tires got slashed.
	You get new tires.
	Now they're slashed again by somebody else.
	And, um, and this time they're slashing his tires because they hate the demographic, the category he belongs to.
	They hate him because he is a black man.
	Not because he's that particular black man, because, but because he's a black man.
	Now, in that case, that's a crime, same exact crime, also committed for hate.
	And now all of a sudden we're going to call that a hate crime.
	That's going to get the special little tag of hate crime.
	But why, why though?
	Why that distinction?
	Is it really somehow not as bad to be targeted because, because, um, the person targeting you hates you personally?
	I mean, would it make you feel better as a victim to know, oh no, he doesn't hate my race.
	He just hates everything about me personally.
	That's all.
	Well, nevermind then.
	I mean, that's okay.
	That's so much better.
	No, I don't think so.
	If anything, wouldn't it be worse?
	I mean, wouldn't it, wouldn't it feel worse?
	Wouldn't it make you feel even more violated to know that this, this crime happened out of a special disgust and hatred for you as a person?
	Um, look, there are many crimes that are motivated by hate, but we have this completely frivolous ranking of the kinds of, of the kinds of hate that really count.
	And to rank them is ridiculous in the first place, but I don't even think we rank them correctly.
	Not only that, but the second problem with the whole hate crime idea is that hatred isn't even the worst kind of motivation to have for a crime.
	Hate crimes, most of the time, aren't as bad, in my mind, as other kinds of crimes.
	Like, take a crime of indifference.
	So, if you kill a guy for his shoes, it's probably true that you don't hate him.
	In fact, not only do you not hate him, but you don't feel anything for him at all.
	You were just totally indifference to his existence as a person.
	You were willing to throw away his life for a pair of shoes, because his life meant nothing to you.
	Or someone who goes in, robs a liquor store, and shoots the clerk in the face and kills him, right?
	Or, you know, someone who gets mugged and killed for their wallet.
	I mean, these are crimes of indifference.
	You are killing somebody because you want their money, or you want whatever they have, and you just do not care about their life.
	The fact that they are a living human being does not register with you at all.
	Now, I would say that that attitude, an attitude of violent indifference, is not only worse, not only more vile, less human, more animalistic, but it's also far more dangerous.
	It is far more dangerous to have somebody who is totally indifferent to human life, as opposed to someone who's filled with hate.
	I mean, neither are ideal, but look, I'll tell you this.
	If I had to choose between sitting next to one of them on a bus, I guess I'd take the hateful person over the person who just has no regard for human life whatsoever, because you never know what someone like that's going to do.
	There was a case in Baltimore a few years ago.
	A white tourist was down in, I think it was Fed Hill, which is the part of town with all the college bars and stuff.
	And it was St.
	Patrick's Day.
	This was back in 2012 or 2013.
	And the guy was drunk, you know, as people tend to be on St.
	Patrick's Day in the middle of the night.
	And so there's video of this guy.
	Maybe you remember this guy.
	This guy was walking down the street.
	And he was assaulted, beaten, knocked down, stripped naked, and robbed by a group of black people.
	I think it was four black people did this.
	Now the culprits were eventually arrested and they were sentenced.
	I think they each got like a year in prison with time served and all that kind of stuff.
	Pretty light sentence considering the crime.
	But the reason why the sentence was so light is that it was not considered a hate crime.
	Even though the victim was white and the assailants were black, and we obviously know that if you reverse the races, I mean, can you imagine?
	Can you imagine a video footage of the races reversed?
	Of four white people doing that to a black guy?
	There would be hate crime charges.
	There would be riots in the street.
	There would be laws being passed.
	It'd be the only thing we talked about on the news for days at a time.
	Except this happens that hardly anyone hears about it.
	And, you know, they get a year in prison or whatever.
	But it wasn't a hate crime, the police said, because, well, they said, well, it's just an opportunistic crime.
	It was a crime of opportunity.
	Okay, so they beat him, humiliated him, stripped him naked and robbed him just for the hell of it?
	Just for fun?
	Well, that's so much better!
	Or is it?
	Why is that somehow better?
	Why is that somehow not as bad as attacking him for his race?
	Attacking him because they have a total disregard for him as a person and they're just looking for a quick thrill so they strip him naked and beat him and take his money?
	And you're telling me that's less egregious?
	And those people are less of a threat to society?
	No, if anything, it's more egregious.
	At least if they'd beaten him because they hate him for his race, at least that's a reason.
	It's a bad reason, but to attack someone for no reason is just, is just animalistic.
	It's, I mean, it's, as I said, it's, it's subhuman.
	Think of serial killers.
	Think of serial killers who kill.
	Just for the sake of killing.
	These are the most dangerous kinds of criminals and also the most vile and savage and vicious kinds of people because of that.
	Because they have no reason.
	They just do it for the sake of it.
	So we need to get rid of the hate crime designation.
	But I will say that if we're going to have hate crimes, which we shouldn't, but if we are, then I think hate crime hoaxes False hate crime reports should be treated as hate crimes themselves.
	Much in the same way that I think a false rape accusation that someone who makes a false rape accusation and is proven to have made a false rape accusation should get the same sentence that the rapist would have gotten.
	And I think the same thing for hate crime hoax, because think about what you're doing.
	You're engendering, you're fostering suspicion and hatred against an entire group of people who you made this story because of the story that you made up.
	You know, if Smollett made this up, then he's trying to paint white people as a dangerous, psychotic, you know, violent racist.
	And that in and itself should be treated as a hate crime.
	But it won't be because again, the hate crime designation is arbitrary, politically charged, ideological, um, and, um, and totally absurd for that reason.
	All right.
	What else?
	Uh, okay.
	I wanted to, a lot of people are, are whining.
	Uh, I guess I could just leave it there.
	A lot of people are whining.
	That's all.
	Uh, No, in this case, a lot of people are whining because they're getting a smaller tax refund this year.
	And there have been a lot of stories about this in the news, including this headline from the New York Times, Smaller Tax Refunds Surprise Those Expecting More Relief.
	And so it's just a kind of sob story about all these people that thought they were going to get a bigger tax refund, and now they're not.
	And they're blaming Trump, saying that the tax bill screwed them over because they're getting a smaller refund and so forth.
	So this is one of my great pet peeves.
	And, uh, and speaking as someone who has a lot of pet peeves, I just, let me just explain something here very, very simply.
	A smaller refund is a good thing.
	Okay.
	You should want a smaller refund.
	You should not want a big refund.
	A smaller refund just means that the government took less money from you during the year, so it owes you less at the end.
	A big refund means that you gave the government too much money, and they held onto your money without interest, and then just gave it back to you.
	A tax refund is not a gift.
	It's not a bonus.
	It's not a winning scratch-off ticket.
	It's a refund.
	A re-fund.
	They are re-funding you.
	The government is giving your own money back to you.
	The goal here should be to only give the government what you owe the government.
	And I hate even using that word, what you owe them according to the law.
	So that should be the goal.
	To give the government what you owe during the year and not much more than that so that you can keep the rest for yourself and save it or invest it or do whatever you want with it.
	You know, build a deck or do whatever you want to remodel, whatever you want to do.
	Go to Disney World.
	I mean, it's your money, right?
	To give them more than you owe just means that they're going to hold on to your own money.
	They're going to hold it hostage and they're going to pay it back without interest.
	Okay?
	That's not a good thing.
	That's not something to be excited about.
	When people are excited about their tax refunds, it's the most pitiful thing.
	Our founding fathers are getting heartburn in the grave when they see these foolish Americans celebrating their tax refund.
	Oh, I got a tax refund!
	That's your money that was taken from you!
	You could have had that months ago!
	That should have been in your pocket all along!
	What are you excited about?
	They took that from you, and you didn't even owe it!
	Complaining about a small tax refund, it's like if you lend somebody 50 bucks, and then they give you the 50 bucks back, and then you're upset because you wish it was a thousand.
	Well, wait, so you wish that you had lent them a thousand dollars?
	Why?
	Wouldn't you rather only lend them 50 and then you could keep the other 950 for yourself?
	It's your money after all.
	No, you see, it's better to not be owed money.
	Unless people are paying you interest.
	Okay.
	And if you're a loan shark and people are paying you interest on it, then I guess you're going to make a profit.
	But to have, to have people who owe you money and aren't paying you interest, that's not a, that's not a good thing.
	I mean, that's not a ideal sort of situation.
	And this is why.
	The withholding system is one of the most brilliant and most insidious and most deceitful devices ever conceived by the government.
	I think the withholding system might be the best trick the government has ever pulled.
	It really is brilliant and evil.
	The withholding system, where the government takes your money automatically with each paycheck, And then holds on to it if they take too much and pay it back at the end.
	The withholding system has made it so that the government can take even more than it's owed and people are grateful for it.
	People are grateful to have the government take too much money.
	In fact, they're disappointed if the government doesn't take too much.
	You know, they only get back a hundred bucks or something at the end of the year and they say, oh no, that's a, oh no, that means that the government didn't take that much, too much money from me.
	I got to keep my own money.
	Oh no, I got to keep my own money throughout the year.
	This is a tragedy.
	Uh, we have no concept of how much we're really paying or how much it really affects us and how damaged we really are by the waste in government.
	Tax day.
	Should be a painful, miserable, horrible experience for everyone.
	We should all hate tax day the same way we all hate the dentist and we all hate going to the DMV.
	We should all hate tax day.
	But again, because of this brilliant and insidious ploy on the part of the government, people are excited for tax day.
	Not because the government isn't taking their money, but just because of the way that now they get their money back on tax day and they feel like it's a profit.
	I was self-employed for one year.
	I still have self-employed income, but I'm primarily paid through my job now.
	But I was solely self-employed for one year, and being self-employed was utterly eye-opening.
	I mean, everyone should experience it, at least for a short time.
	It was eye-opening.
	It was shocking.
	It was traumatizing.
	I still have PTSD from it.
	Now, I always hated the IRS like any good American, but never more so than when I actually had to sit there.
	And like pull out a checkbook and write a check for X amount of money and I had to watch my money march out the door and into the coffers of a wasteful, bloated, behemoth, monstrous government.
	I'm telling you, that will make a libertarian out of anybody.
	Just actually pay your taxes for one year and you'll be a libertarian.
	You will be a radical libertarian bordering on anarchist by the end of it.
	I guarantee it.
	But with the withholding, and so if everyone had to do that, if everyone had to write a check to the government, You're not getting any money back.
	They're not going to take it out automatically.
	You have to sit there and write the check.
	It's still the exact same amount of money.
	So the same thing is happening.
	It's just you are actively involved in the process.
	And if everyone had to do that, they would understand, they would be able to conceptualize and get their minds around how much money they're paying.
	It would become palpable and tangible and accountability.
	There would be real accountability.
	People would be really upset by government waste and by, you know, a $22 trillion, uh, you know, national debt.
	And by, by all of this stuff, people would be really upset about it.
	But the system now is meant to insulate you from the pain of being bilked by the government.
	It doesn't insulate you from the bilking.
	The bilking is going on.
	There's bilking either way, right?
	But in this case, you just don't feel it because that's how they've structured it.
	And that's bad.
	It's bad to not feel it.
	For the same reason that, you know, it would be bad To take a bunch of Oxycontin and then press your face against a hot stove.
	Now, yeah, the Oxycontin, the drugs will insulate you from the pain, but they're not going to insulate you from the damage being done to your face.
	And so the withholding system insulates us from the pain of paying all this money, but it doesn't insulate us from the actual damages, the actual effect of having all this money taken from us.
	You know, the system now reminds me of, um, I don't know if you've ever, if you've ever been on a cruise before.
	And, uh, I don't know if I would even recommend it.
	I went on one cruise once for, it was on our honeymoon.
	We went on a cruise and, um, and I, I don't, I assume this is how most cruises work, but at this cruise, they, they, they give you, uh, this little card at the beginning of the cruise.
	And this is what you use to get drinks.
	So you're not using your own credit card.
	You don't pay with cash.
	You just, they just give you this nice little, you know, it's a nice little, uh, cute little card.
	And it's really easy.
	Like you go and you get your, your drink and, um, you give them the card.
	It takes two seconds and you're not paying any money right away.
	But then at the end of the week, they give you your bill, uh, for, for all that, all that drinking you've been doing.
	And then it's okay.
	Now I owe 700 bucks.
	But the fact that they made the process, the whole reason they give you that card, I mean, they could just as easily have you use a credit card, a debit card, pay with cash, but they give you their own little card because they just want to kind of separate you from the realization of what you're doing.
	They want to make the process of buying drinks as easy and painless as possible so that you'll buy more and you won't notice it.
	Um, similar thing with the government.
	Although in this case, again, there's really, uh, you know, at the end of the cruise, you do have to write the check.
	And, but with the government for a lot of people, they never write the check, but imagine, imagine a system.
	Imagine something like, um, if you went on a cruise and they give you a card, but it's more of like a debit card so that the money does come automatically out of your account, but you don't feel it.
	You don't realize it's happening.
	And imagine, imagine this, imagine if a cruise, I don't want to give anyone any ideas, but imagine if they gave you a little debit card thing.
	And, um, but for every drink, they charge you 5% more than it really costs.
	And they take that out of your account.
	And then at the end of the cruise, they give you a refund.
	They pay you back the extra that they took.
	Well, then you would feel like you're getting paid to drink.
	Then you'd buy twice as many drinks because you get that nice check at the end, even though it's your own money that they just took from you.
	Um, so it's, that's basically how it works.
	So please stop complaining about your small refunds and be grateful.
	That just means the government didn't take that from you in the first place.
	All right, let's answer a few emails here.
	You can email the show, mattwalshow at gmail.com, mattwalshow at gmail.com.
	So this is from Colin.
	He says, Hey Matt, I've come up with a drinking game for your show.
	One shot for having to defend a tweet from yesterday.
	One shot for having to explain a position you stated on your podcast from yesterday.
	Okay, so you've already had to take a shot for this episode.
	One shot for defending having a beard.
	One shot for reading hate mail from your inbox.
	One shot for making fun of Ben Shapiro.
	Now, I don't really do that a lot, do I?
	I don't think I've been.
	I mean, except for the time when Ben said that strawberry daiquiris are better than whiskey.
	And I threatened to resign because of it.
	But I think in that case, he certainly deserved the criticism.
	One shot for a sarcastic comment.
	Okay, well then you'll just be dead within 90 seconds if you're doing that.
	One shot for quoting your own employer, The Daily Wire, and one additional shot if the article is written by Amanda Prestigiacomo.
	Yes, I do steal a lot of her content for this show, that's true.
	You're doing great work, but I'm not since starting to participate in this drinking game.
	I like that, Colin.
	That's a great, in fact, if anyone else has suggestions for a Matt Walsh show drinking game, you can make them.
	But yeah, I would say that, uh, it's, it's pretty dangerous because I do a lot of this multiple times every single day.
	So, you know, but I'll tell you this, maybe one day we can all do a Matt Walsh show drinking game together and I'll participate.
	I don't know if I'll get the approval for that from the higher-ups, but I can ask anyway.
	This is from Chris.
	Hi, Matt.
	Love the show.
	Yesterday, when you were commenting on the Case for Christ, the book Case for Christ, that you would hope to have the other side's point of view, I was curious if you've seen Bill Maher's Religulous movie and think this may be the other side's point of view.
	Prior to finding my way to Christ, I believed a lot of what was in that movie.
	I am curious if you could speak on this in depth.
	Thanks for all you do.
	God bless you and your family.
	Hi, Chris.
	I have seen it.
	I found it to be extraordinarily worthless and pointless.
	It definitely was not any sort of serious, thoughtful counterpoint to biblical claims.
	I wasn't really expecting it to be because it's Bill Maher after all.
	It is nothing but one long snide sneer at religious people.
	That's all it is.
	It doesn't, it does not, I'm not just saying that because I disagree, it just does not advance any serious arguments at all.
	It doesn't take, because it doesn't take religion seriously at all.
	And so the whole, if you've never seen the movie, the whole movie consists of Bill Maher just going around the country laughing at religious people.
	That's it.
	Around the world, actually, not just the country.
	Um, now, so it's, it's, I have, I have, I really, I've never, it's kind of incredible.
	I've never seen someone pluck so many low hanging fruits one after another, after another, because he interviews two, maybe three intelligent and knowledgeable and kind of scholarly Christians, um, and them only very briefly.
	And for the rest of the time, he goes out and he purposefully finds Christians who clearly haven't thought too deeply about these kinds of things.
	Now, that's stupid.
	He finds Christians who just, they're not experts and they haven't thought much about this.
	The very first scene in the movie, if I remember correctly, is him at a truck stop chapel in a chapel that's literally in the back of a truck.
	And that's his first stop, right?
	He's trying to find out about religion, talk to religious people, and that's the first place he goes is to a truck stop?
	Okay, this is clearly somebody who's not interested in having a serious conversation.
	Then he interviews a Jesus impersonator at some kind of biblical theme park.
	He interviews a guy who runs a pawn shop or something, and this guy claims that he made it rain once by sticking a cup out a window.
	Okay, so this is the level of argumentation that Bill Maher is interested in engaging with.
	And it's just designed to generate cheap laughter at the expense of normal, decent people who maybe don't have the best religious education.
	So, I honestly hated the movie.
	Okay, last email.
	Again, you can email the show mattwalshow at gmail.com.
	This is from Josh.
	It says, Hi Matt, I have a two-part question.
	One, do you think that the sexual exploitation in the Christian church is caused primarily by either leaders with good intentions who succumb to sin or wolves who enter the church because they recognize a way to easily gain trust from vulnerable congregants?
	Two, in either scenario, the result is a person in power who exploits the trust of church members.
	This got me thinking about my own church.
	Up until now, I've had nothing but absolute trust in our church leadership and elders, but in light of the recent scandals, I can't help but feel that no one can be trusted.
	I have no reason to believe that anyone in my church would ever do a thing like this, but I'm sure that's exactly what every other victim thought.
	Must we as churchgoers be ever-present with our children, never letting them alone with any church leader or member for that matter?
	Love the show.
	Josh.
	Hi Josh, I definitely don't think that the first option is the case.
	The people who commit or help to cover up or ignore sex abuse definitely do not have good intentions.
	That doesn't mean that every bishop or church elder or whoever who looks the other way on sex abuse necessarily actively wants there to be sex abuse.
	For most of them, it's simply cowardice and self-interest, but I wouldn't call self-interest a good thing.
	And that also doesn't mean that every single sex predator in the church necessarily join the church in order to have access to victims.
	Although I think that's probably the case for a lot of them.
	Um, and it, you know, it also depends on, there are different levels of abuse, different kinds of abuse, you know, so it's, it's sort of, to try to talk about what leads to this and motivations to talk about it in such a general way is a little bit difficult to do, but.
	Either way, these are evil scumbags.
	As to your second question, that is tough, because of course we have to keep in mind that sex abusers are still a very small minority in the church, very small, yet it is a problem that exists, and we have to account for it.
	We can't ignore it.
	We can't be untrusting and suspicious and paranoid all the time, but we should be cautious.
	So there is definitely a fine line between caution and paranoia and that is, and I admit as a parent, that's a sometimes a very difficult line for me to draw.
	Here's what I would suggest.
	We should treat church leaders or pastors or priests like we would anyone else.
	We shouldn't implicitly trust them with our kids completely and automatically any more than you would trust a stranger because If somebody's a member of a church, leader of a church, and you don't know them, well, then they're still a stranger.
	But as you get to know someone better, then you're more equipped to make judgment calls about them.
	Of course, those judgment calls can be wrong, can be tragically wrong, but that's the best we can do, really.
	We can only make judgment calls about people and then go from there.
	The only other option is to keep our kids locked in their rooms until they turn 18, which obviously we can't do.
	I think the main point is that we can't trust a person just based on the office or position they hold.
	If there's any practical lesson that we can take from all of these sex abuse problems and all these different institutions, that's it.
	Just because someone holds a certain position or they have a certain title or a certain office or whatever else, that does not mean they can be trusted.
	Which isn't to say we can't trust any of them.
	But we can only trust people really through getting to know them on a personal level.
	That's how we can trust them.
	We cannot assume that, oh, he's a fill-in-the-blank position and therefore I can trust him.
	Or he's a, you know, he does this and so therefore he would never do that.
	It would be nice if we could say that about pastors and priests and church leaders and church members, but we can't.
	And that's the mistake I think a lot of people have made.
	I think back in the Catholic Church, back when the abuse situation was really, really bad, back before it had been exposed, back in the 70s and 80s, many parents would leave their kids alone with priests who they did not know, but they didn't think anything of it because it just didn't occur to them that a priest, a priest of all people, would do something like that.
	Now, after these kinds of things come out and it's big news and everything, well, then it's easy to have more caution.
	But before that happens, I think people just, it's, they don't even, it doesn't occur to them.
	This is true of other positions as well.
	It's true of any position.
	Think of doctors.
	There's a big sex abuse problem in the medical field, which doesn't, which it doesn't, isn't talked about very often.
	And we are conditioned to trust doctors, and many doctors are worthy of trust, but no doctor is worthy of implicit trust just simply because he is a doctor.
	There's nothing about becoming a doctor that necessarily requires you to be a trustworthy person.
	There's nothing about any position.
	There's nothing about the position of pastor or priest that inherently weeds out untrustworthy people.
	Same for police officers, same for teachers, everybody.
	So think of, for instance, the worst pedophile.
	You know who the worst pedophile in American history?
	The worst pedophile in American history?
	There's a guy named Earl Bradley, and he was a pediatrician in Delaware.
	He molested hundreds and hundreds of his patients.
	He was, he was like the, the pedophile version of Kermit Gosnell, basically.
	And in fact, his story, this story came out around, around the same time as Gosnell, within a few years, I think.
	He molested hundreds of his patients, small children.
	He got away with it because parents would leave him alone with their kids.
	Uh, parents would send their, you know, four or five year old kids back with this pediatrician and, uh, and then these terrible things would happen.
	And, and I'm sure those parents, it just never occurred to them.
	It never occurred to them that a pediatrician would be a child molester because he's a doctor after all.
	And of course it's very easy for us now to say, well, how could you do that?
	I mean, as a parent, it's so reckless, but look, I remember I lived not far away when this happened and I was much younger.
	I didn't have kids at the time myself.
	So I'd never had to really think about this issue very much.
	But, um, Yeah.
	I remember when that happened, I was talking to my mom about it and she said, Oh yeah, you'd never send your kid back with a doctor and you never leave a kid alone with a doctor.
	And I remember what you said.
	I said, really?
	I didn't, is that, I guess I hadn't really thought I didn't have kids.
	I didn't really think about it, but, uh, but, um, yeah, it hadn't occurred to me at the time.
	And I think that's just how it is with a lot of people.
	People say, well, he's a doctor.
	Of course you can trust him.
	And the same kind of mistakes are made in regards to teachers and, you know, scout leaders and any other similar kind of position.
	So again, the point is, well, the point is not that we have to suspect everybody and we have to think that everyone's a child molester.
	The point is simply that we can't put our absolute trust and faith in someone just because of the position or office they hold.
	And sad to say, uh, this is also true in families.
	Most abuse happens within families.
	That is the tragic and disgusting fact.
	Now, hopefully you trust your family, but you trust them because you know them.
	That's why hopefully you can trust your family uniquely because you're in a unique position to really get to know them because they're your family.
	But you don't trust them just because they're family.
	So you don't trust, say, your uncle or an uncle with your kids just because he's an uncle.
	That doesn't mean anything.
	Probably most child molesters in the world are uncles of someone, right?
	So just because you're an uncle doesn't mean anything.
	But you trust an uncle with your kids if you know him.
	And you have the opportunity to know him well because he's a close family member.
	Um, I think there are many, many cases of abuse by family members where the other people in the family, I think maybe, maybe probably do get kind of a weird vibe from this person.
	They, they hear stories, they catch a whiff of something.
	And, uh, but they say, no, no, no, he's their uncle.
	You wouldn't do that.
	In fact, there are many cases you talk to people who were abused when they were younger and you hear their stories and they'll tell you that sometimes they, they even told their parents or they told people, or they at least hinted at it very strongly.
	And everyone said, no, he wouldn't do it.
	No, he's a, he's a, he's a family.
	He would never do that.
	So that logic just doesn't work.
	Um, you know, all of my, my, my brother and my brothers-in-law, I trust them absolutely with, with the kids, but not because they're uncles only because I know them very well.
	And I know that they're, they're very good, decent, uh, virtuous, trustworthy people.
	So that's the reason.
	Um, that, that sort of position or office, if we want to call it of family member in and of itself means nothing, unfortunately.
	All right.
	So we will leave it on that somewhat depressing note.
	Um, have a great day.
	Everyone talk to you tomorrow.
	Godspeed.
	President Trump waxes philosophic on his beautiful wall.
	We will analyze the long tradition of astute conservatives and Philistine liberals.
	Then, Howard Schultz calls the Green New Deal immoral.
	Cory Booker says poor people shouldn't eat meat.
	And we ask, do animals have feelings?
	How about white teenage boys?

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