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Aug. 13, 2019 - The Matt Walsh Show
45:45
Ep. 316 - Fredo Is Furious

Today on the show, the latest in the Epstein case. Also, Chris Cuomo is under fire for cussing out a guy who heckled him in public. I'll explain why Cuomo is in the right on this one. Plus, a drag queen teaches children how to twerk at a library and an alleged science teacher hands out a "gender unicorn" worksheet. Date: 08-13-2019 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Okay, important news here.
The FDA has announced that, well, they're claiming anyway that drinking bleach won't cure cancer or autism, which, you know, that's what I have to say to that.
I've been drinking bleach for years and I don't have cancer.
So what, I mean, what other proof do you need?
Sure, my internal organs sometimes leak out of my nose, but I mean, that's just part of growing up, really.
That's part of getting older.
To clarify, kids, that is a joke.
Definitely don't drink bleach.
I had no idea that drinking bleach to cure disease was a thing.
Apparently it is.
Definitely don't do that.
I'm not sure why we needed the FDA to announce this.
I guess maybe next they'll announce that.
You know, drinking out of a public toilet won't cure diabetes.
I mean, there are a lot of things that won't cure things, so it's just general advice there.
All right, let's look at the latest briefly here in the Epstein case before we move on.
We're now being told that Epstein was found, and this was the news last night, he was found hanging with a sheet, a bed sheet, around his neck.
They say that he tied the sheet to the top of a bunk bed Made a noose and then somehow hung himself that way.
Now, it's a little hard to picture, I guess, because Epstein was, what, six feet tall and the bunk... I mean, how tall could the bunk bed have been?
Couldn't have been... I mean, it's a jail cell.
I'm assuming this isn't a 20-foot tall bunk bed, so... But that's what they say.
That's how they say they found him.
This is still confusing for a number of reasons.
First of all, there was a former inmate at this particular prison who came out a couple days ago
and said that, well, he said that it was impossible, that Epstein could have killed himself in
his opinion because there would be no way to do it. He said that the sheets, the bed sheets
are like paper thin, so you wouldn't be able to, it would break if you tried to use it for that
purpose. Though this guy didn't factor in a bunk bed. You know, he was imagining a cell without a bunk
bed, but this had a bunk bed.
And that's the other thing that doesn't make sense, is you've got the most important inmate in the federal prison system in your custody, the most important inmate because of the testimony he could provide, and he's attempted suicide before, supposedly, and so then you leave him alone with a bed sheet and a bunk bed?
I mean, and you don't check on him for hours?
That just makes no sense to me.
So I have a feeling that the latest report here will not do much to quell the conspiracy theories, especially because nobody has any faith in our governing institutions, like we talked about yesterday.
Nobody trusts anything they tell us.
And so that's also going to make it not much better.
But still, it just doesn't make any sense.
Even if he wasn't important because of the testimony, even if this was just an average, ordinary All right.
Now, let's take a look at this as we move on quickly.
recently, it's not like it was two years ago.
He's attempted suicide in the last month and you leave him with a bed sheet and a bunk bed.
That doesn't really make any sense to me at all.
All right, now let's take a look at this as we move on quickly.
CNN anchor, Chris Cuomo was out, I think, to dinner with his family a couple nights ago
when somebody decided to heckle him and secretly record Cuomo's reaction.
There's video which I'll play for you in a second.
But of course the video only shows Cuomo's reaction.
It doesn't show what was said to him.
So we should always We should always keep that in mind when you see video like this and you're only seeing one side.
It picks up in the middle of the conversation and somebody is reacting to something.
Anytime you see a video that begins with a person's reaction to something but you don't see what they're reacting to, that should be a red flag.
Uh, but we know that whatever this guy said to Cuomo to set him off, it included calling him Fredo.
And Fredo, of course, is one of the brothers in the Godfather.
kind of the flunky, stupid brother who gets passed over to become the Godfather in favor of Michael.
And then eventually, spoiler alert, Fredo is killed by Michael Corleone at the end of the
second movie. Which, as far as I'm concerned, the end of the second movie is the end of the
Godfather series because Godfather 3 doesn't exist. My truth is that Godfather 3 doesn't exist.
Anyway, Cuomo didn't take too kindly to this bit of mockery, and so here's how that unfolded.
Watch this.
I thought, I thought, I thought that's who you were, I don't remember.
No, fucking bitches from the right call me Fredo.
My name is Chris Cuomo.
I'm an anchor on CNN.
Fredo is from the Godfather.
He was our weak brother.
Isn't that your brother though?
And they use it as an Italian aspersion.
Any of you Italian?
Are you Italian?
It's a fucking insult to your people.
It's an insult to your f****** people.
It's like the n-word for us.
Is that a cool f****** thing?
You're a much more reasonable guy in person than you seem to be on television.
Yeah, but if you want to play, then we'll f****** play.
If you've got something you want to say about what I do on television, then say it, but don't be gonna call me a f****** insult.
Hey, man, hey, listen.
I don't want any problems.
Yeah, you're gonna have a big f****** problem.
What's the problem?
It's a little different on TV.
Don't f****** insult me like that.
I didn't insult you.
You called me Fredo.
It's like I call you punk f******.
You like that?
You want that to be your nickname?
I didn't call you that.
You called me Fredo.
You know my name's not f****** Fredo.
You did not think my name was Fredo. Don't be a liar. You want to be a man, stand up like a man. I'm standing up, man.
You want to be a man up here. Then own it. Then own what you said. Then own what you said. Listen, I don't have a
problem with you, man. You're going to have a problem. What?
What are you going to do about it? I'll ruin you. I'll throw you down these stairs like a fucking punk. Please do.
Now, judging by social media, a lot of conservatives are giving Cuomo a hard time about this, painting him as the
bad guy in the situation, acting offended.
Like a bunch of wilting little flowers traumatized by the fact that Cuomo used bad language.
Oh, he used bad language!
He threatened violence!
Oh my goodness!
I've never seen such a thing!
I'm so traumatized!
They've got their fans out and they're fanning them.
That's how a lot of right-wingers are on social media right now.
That's how I imagine them.
I imagine them typing and on the other hand they've got a fan and they're fanning themselves.
to prevent themselves from fainting.
They just can't believe the language, the language used.
There are also, you know, there are people acting offended that Cuomo claimed Fredo is an ethnic slur against Italians.
And obviously that is absurd.
Fredo is not an ethnic slur.
It's an insult, yeah.
It's a personal insult, usually used against someone who is considered the dumb or weak one in the family.
So if someone's calling you Fredo, they're not making any reference to you being Italian because that's an insult that can be used whether you're Italian or not.
Just to be clear, just so you know how you're being insulted, what they're saying is that you are the dumb, weak, irrelevant one in the family.
That's just so you know what they're saying about you.
Fredo doesn't refer to Italian heritage.
It refers to family dynamics.
So Cuomo obviously was wrong to call it an ethnic slur.
Of course.
With that said, I firmly believe, and have always believed, and have always said, that heckling a public figure and secretly recording their reaction to try and get clicks is a punk move.
It is a punk move.
An absolute punk move, and I hate it.
I really hate it.
I don't care who the target is.
Okay?
To me, the politics of it don't matter.
I just absolutely hate it.
To harass this guy... I mean, he's not doing anything to you.
Okay, you don't like his show.
You think he's a biased news... All right, whatever.
Who cares?
He's out with his family.
And you come up to him and start mouthing off.
You know, the guy filming it deserved to be treated exactly as he was treated.
And again, I don't see how the politics matter here.
This is just man-to-man, right?
And that's what Cuomo thought this was.
He didn't realize he was being filmed.
He didn't realize this was a bit that was gonna end up on YouTube.
He thought this was man-to-man, and that's how he was treated.
He'd say, look, man-to-man, you know?
You need to back down.
And I respect Cuomo more for that.
I guess I'm apparently in a small minority.
I respect him more after seeing that.
My respect actually went up.
I didn't have a lot of respect before.
I still don't have a ton, but the respect at least has gone in the upward direction on the bar graph.
Yeah, the ethnic slur thing was dumb, but whatever.
That wasn't a public claim that he was making.
He didn't know he was being reported.
The main point is that Cuomo manned up, he handled his business, he called the troll out on his crap, and he made the troll back down.
And I respect that.
Look, trolls are accustomed to being loudmouthed jerks online.
and running their mouths to whoever they want, saying whatever they want without repercussion.
That's what trolls online are used to doing.
I mean, they are weak, spineless cowards.
And on the rare occasion that a troll tries that garbage face-to-face with someone, I am always happy to see them slap down for it, rhetorically.
Maybe even physically.
Just because, I just think you treat someone like that, you deserve what comes.
Man to man, you deserve it.
Now, as I said, a lot of people on the right are acting scandalized by this, but we all know, here's the thing.
Again, man to man, or man to woman, whoever you are watching this right now, if you're a conservative, we don't need to lie to each other.
We can be honest, all right?
It's just me and you.
There's no one else here, except for all the other people watching, but let's be honest with you.
If that was a Fox News host, then you would be defending it.
So if you're pretending to be outraged by it, or offended, or say, oh, that was way overboard.
I mean, yes, to respond is okay, but to threaten violence, well, that's just going too far.
You know you wouldn't be saying that if this was Tucker Carlson.
In fact, there was a video of Tucker Carlson responding in a similar way to someone who was heckling him.
And with that, I took Tucker Carlson's side.
I said, yeah, he deserved... You're coming at a man when he's out with his family.
This isn't the internet anymore, you punk.
I mean, if you come to someone like that, this is how you might get treated.
Don't go crying about it.
Be a man.
And don't put a video online and say, look at what this mean man said to me.
Just stop that.
Man up.
So with Tucker Carlson, I said, I'm fully on board with it.
Tucker Carlson, from what I remember, I forget all the details of that, but he was using foul language.
Good for him.
You know, good for him.
But again, as a conservative, if you're pretending to be offended by this or whatever, with Tucker Carlson, you defended that.
I know you did.
And if this was Sean Hannity or I mean if this was if this was Donald Trump who was caught on video it take that exact video.
Everything the same.
I mean, the Fredo comment would make less sense because Trump's not Italian.
But take that video.
Everything's the same.
But it's Trump caught on camera responding to a heckler that way?
Or in fact, forget about that.
If he was on if he was on stage in front of millions responding to a heckler like that, you would be applauding it.
And you know you would.
You and I both know that.
OK, you don't need to lie to me or lie to yourself.
So this is a double standard.
And this is what I just can't, when we all, you know, when there's a double standard and people are doing this performative fake outrage thing, you know, we all know that it's fake.
So I, the performative, the performatively outraged mob, how do they, when they're all looking at each other, like they all know that they're faking it, that they don't really care.
And that if this was someone else, they'd be defending it.
So let's just cut the crap.
It's so boring.
I'm so bored by it.
That's the main thing.
My main problem is not even an ethical problem, although there's that, because it's dishonest.
But my main thing is I'm just so bored.
I mean, everything that happens, I know exactly what everyone's going to say, depending on, okay, what's the politics?
Whose side is this guy on?
Okay, let's pretend.
Oh, geez, just stop already.
This was a man.
This is how two men, oh, he threatened violence.
That's how guys talk to each other.
I got news for you.
When two guys, when they think that, you know, especially when they don't know that they're being filmed secretly, This is how two guys talk to each other when they're pissed off.
It's not a big deal, you know?
If you go harassing a guy, especially if he's out with his family, he might say that.
Yeah, I'm gonna throw you down the steps.
He's not really gonna do it.
It's just how guys talk.
Why are we pretending we don't know that?
Why are there men online pretending, well, I never, I would never talk to a person like that.
This is so inappropriate.
Shut up.
That's really, I'm at the point now where I don't even know how I can do this job anymore because my main reaction to like 90% of the controversies on either side, now my main reaction is just shut up already.
Please just stop.
We all know.
But then of course, what I've been told is that I've been informed This morning, as I was trying to make this point on social media, and I've been informed, as I always am, that if you don't join in the fake performative outrage with conservatives, then you're a traitor to the cause.
This is why we lose, I was told.
I don't even know who we is anymore.
What do you mean, we?
And what are we trying to win?
I don't even know anymore.
All right, let's go from a video I will defend, which you just saw, to a video I most definitely will not defend.
Here, I hope we can all have agreement.
At least on the right we can agree on this, that what you're about to see here is despicably disgusting.
Disgustingly despicable, however you want to put it.
We've discussed plenty of times these crazy, gross, demented drag queen story hours, which are now officially a thing.
They're a thing all across the dying western world.
Men in dresses come to read stories to children, but sometimes they do more than read stories.
I mean, reading the story is bad enough because they're dressed up like some cartoon, some macabre cartoon of a woman.
But here's a drag queen story hour that went much further than that.
Devon Library in the UK had one of these events recently, and a drag queen, a dude who goes by the name Mama G, Um, which is, by the way, totally normal, right?
I mean, for a guy to dress up like a woman and call himself Mama G, totally normal.
Yeah, we can't criticize that.
God forbid we suggest that there must be something, you know, mentally out of sorts with a man who spends his time... No, no, no.
We could never suggest such a thing.
It's totally normal, completely... And to want to, as a man, to want to dress up as a woman to read stories to children, you know, to say, oh, I want to dress up like a woman so that I can be around kids.
Totally normal.
Nothing we could possibly say to criticize that.
So here's Mama G. He decided to take things in an even creepier direction than usual.
I warn you that what you're about to witness is extremely disturbing.
Would you like to do some of those funny little dances from Fortnite?
Does anybody know any of the dances from Fortnite?
Oh, then you are a credit to your community.
But most of all, Michael likes to twerk.
Now, does anybody in this room know how to twerk?
Right, well it's quite important to the story, so I will just give you a very quick demonstration.
All you need to do is you just stand with your feet sort of shoulder width apart, like so, okay?
And I'll show you at the side so you can get a better view.
There we go.
And you crouch down into this sort of position here, so your bum's sticking out.
I hope you're taking this all in.
And then you just move your bum up and down like that.
And that's twerking.
Now.
Yeah, so there you go.
That is, yes, that is exactly what it looks like.
That is a man in a dress at a library teaching young children how to twerk.
I don't have to explain, probably, so I won't go into much detail explaining that twerking is meant to be a sexually suggestive, a very sexually suggestive dance move.
That's what it is.
And so this guy is giving a demonstration to children.
And to make it so much worse, you know, if this was Just some crazy psycho lunatic who ran into a room where there were a bunch of kids and started twerking.
I would be much less angry about it, because then I could say, okay, well, this is an isolated incident.
This is a psycho.
Let's get him off the streets, lock him in a loony bin, get him away from kids.
And so then I could say that.
It's an isolated thing.
It's one guy.
I know crazy people are out there, but this guy's crazy.
We got him off the streets now.
Okay.
What makes this so infuriating on such a deep level and so disgusting Is not even the behavior of this guy who clearly is mentally disturbed, but it's the parents who are sitting there chuckling and laughing while a grown man teaches their six and seven year old kids how to twerk.
What kind of a man?
Imagine the fathers that are in that room.
Just sitting there laughing.
Oh, isn't that adorable?
That grown man's teaching my four-year-old daughter how to twerk.
This is so charming.
Imagine... I can't imagine it.
Well, it's what's happening, so I don't need to imagine it, but I can't wrap my head around that mentality as a father.
You know, I'm just waiting to see one of these drag queen story hours or something like this is happening and to have a father come in and pull a Chris Cuomo.
Not that I'm advocating violence, but I'll put it to you this way.
If I walked into a room and there was a man in a dress sexually harassing, because that's what this is, sexually harassing my six-year-old daughter, I wouldn't be chuckling along.
I'll put it that way.
I would respond in a way that would not include applauding or expressing my approval.
I would express my disapproval in a very unmistakable way.
That's all I'm going to say.
But you never see that.
Instead you just see these henpecked dads and moms sitting around the sidelines watching this happen.
If we lived in a sane world, that man who is, again, sexually harassing, sexually abusing, to me that's sexual abuse.
You know, I see that as sexual abuse.
What you just witnessed there.
And if we lived in a sane country, even though this wasn't our country, but if we lived in a sane world, that guy would be arrested, and all of the parents would be arrested.
For, at a minimum, parental neglect.
If not active parental abuse.
All right, on a related note, The Daily Wire, if I can pull it up, has a story that is on the website right now.
I'll read a little bit of this to you.
It says that a teacher at a middle school in Northern California triggered outrage from parents after he handed out a gender identity graphic, allegedly to explain why he preferred to be called M-X rather than Mr. on the first day of school.
So he wanted his, you know, prefix to be rather than Mr. M-X.
How do you, how do you say M-X?
So M-R is Mr. M-X is what?
What is that?
Mix-ter?
Mix?
Is it mix?
So stupid.
Luis Davila Alvarado, who teaches 7th and 8th grade science at Denaire Middle School, used a gender unicorn graphic from Trans Student Education Resources to explain his choice of preferred pronoun to a group of children between the ages of 12 and 14.
And then it goes on from there.
He gave out this graphic.
Now, much to the credit of the principal, the principal happened to come into the classroom
while this was going on.
And she took one look at the gender unicorn graphic.
And she said, no, no, no, we're not doing this.
And she had him take all of the worksheets back.
So good for her on that.
But parents were upset, as rightly they should be.
Let's take a look at this gender unicorn.
The gender unicorn is related to the gender bread person, which is a similarly creepy worksheet that schools give out sometimes.
So I'll put this up on the screen so you can see.
Here's the gender unicorn.
And as you can see, well, there's the gender unicorn right there, teaching us about all kinds of things about gender.
And so You know, it's not just that there's, there isn't just one spectrum, okay?
As you can see here, there's like four different spectrums.
There's the gender identity spectrum at the top there, there's the gender expression spectrum, and then there's the spectrum of who you're sexually attracted to, and then also who you're emotionally attracted to.
So, according to this, and this is science, this was handed out in a science class, You could be a man who identifies as a woman, yet has a masculine gender expression, who is sexually attracted to women, but emotionally attracted to men who identify as women.
Like, that's a combination that's possible here.
Now we're differentiating between sexually attracted to and emotionally attracted to?
But this science, this is supposed to be science.
Now listen, years in the future, hundreds of years from now, thousands of years, when archaeologists of the future are digging up the remains of our pitiful civilization, and they come across something like this, the gender unicorn, Now of course this is on paper so they probably wouldn't find it, but if this was engraved on a stone tablet somewhere and they came across this, they would look at that and anthropologists would study this and they would come to the conclusion that this is part of the religious activity of some kind of religious cult.
They would look at the gender unicorn and all this stuff about spectrums and gender identity, and they would assume that this was the worship activity of some kind of cult.
And of course, they would be correct, because that's what this is.
I mean, this is superstition.
This is religion.
And I don't mean to use religion as a pejorative, but that's what this is.
And, you know, there are crazy religions out there.
Not all religions are crazy in my view, but some are.
And this is a crazy religion.
It's got nothing to do with science at all, obviously.
None of this has any relationship at all with biology or anything scientific, or even psychology.
This is superstition all the way through.
And it's being taught, at least in some schools, All right, let's go to emails, mattwalshow at gmail.com, mattwalshow at gmail.com.
This is from, Mackenzie says, my husband and I have been thinking about the whole Epstein situation, and we have a theory.
Not sure if it's a conspiracy theory or not, but we think that Epstein is not really dead, but that he's in protective custody.
There are a lot of people who would want him dead, and it just seems too convenient that he had the chance to kill himself.
I personally haven't heard anything about seeing a body, thoughts.
Yeah, Mackenzie, I've seen this.
I guess, As we talked about yesterday, the sort of normal conspiracy theories with the Epstein case are totally reasonable and justified.
So to wonder if maybe someone got to him and staged it to look like a suicide, I don't think that's crazy at all.
I think that that's certainly a possibility.
But because the normal conspiracy theories are normal, then I guess people, we need to come up with, you know, even crazier conspiracy theories, and that's where this comes from.
And no offense, I don't mean it as an insult, but this is, the idea that he's still alive and he was, you know, they shuffled him off somewhere to hide him.
I've heard two versions of this theory, which is, it's a theory, there's no evidence for this theory, Mackenzie.
This is just something that, you know, you and others have sort of come up with in your heads.
So the two versions of the theory that I've seen are, OK, maybe the powerful people in Epstein's sex cult, maybe they found a way to rescue him and bring him to some island somewhere.
So there's that.
And then the other version is maybe it's the government did this so that they could put him in protective custody and hide him somewhere while they get information from him.
Both of these things are, no, that didn't happen.
Again, there's no reason to think that.
There was a body, first of all.
In fact, there are even pictures of his body out there.
If you really want to go see him, you can.
Although, I don't recommend it.
So there was a body.
There's no evidence for this at all.
See, anytime something happens...
You can come up with a theory.
You can come up with a million theories that fit the facts as we know them.
But just because you've invented a theory that fits the facts, that doesn't mean that there's any real justification.
It doesn't mean that it's a reasonable theory, that there's any reason to actually think that.
I mean, I could say that Epstein was abducted by aliens.
That fits the facts as we know them.
But that doesn't mean that's a reasonable theory.
Or plausible.
And this just isn't plausible at all because, first of all, certainly the people in Epstein's sex cult, which that is a real thing, but they would have no interest in keeping Epstein alive.
If they could get to him, they would kill him.
They wouldn't bring him off somewhere so he could live out the rest of his days.
No, he's a liability and so they want him dead.
The idea that the government would do this, well, there's no reason for them to do that.
They could have easily kept him safe in prison.
All they had to do was actually keep an eye on him, which they didn't do.
So there's no history of our government faking someone's death so that they can then keep them safe somewhere and protect them.
We have ways of keeping people safe.
You can do it.
You just have to actually put them in protective custody and then protect them.
That's all you got to do.
Not to mention, I mean, I imagine Epstein's lawyers and the lawyers of the other famous and rich people out there would have a field day with this.
If the government tries to use the testimony of someone whose death they faked There are all kinds of legal problems there, I would imagine, because that is not following proper legal protocols.
What good would the testimony be if it came from someone who you claimed is dead?
What are you going to say?
That we had a seance and we resurrected his ghost and that's how we got this information?
No, there's no reason to think that at all.
This is from KL, says, Matt, you and the rest of the Daily Wire crew are pathetic, parroting the official line on Epstein.
I'm disgusted and done with you and the rest of them.
If I wanted mainstream media talking points, I know where to get them.
So KL is not the, I actually got several emails like this from people who are mad at me, saying that I was parroting the official narrative or whatever yesterday.
I don't even know where this is coming from.
I said on the show yesterday, repeatedly, That the so-called conspiracy theories in this case are perfectly plausible and justified.
Now, the idea that they faked his death and that he's hiding out somewhere on an island, that I don't think is plausible.
But the idea that someone got to him and made it look like a suicide, sure, it's possible.
Perfectly possible.
Now, as I said, if Occam's razor Or the mundane principle, which I just made up yesterday, but I think it's true, that usually the most boring and mundane explanation is correct most of the time.
So according to that principle, probably he did kill himself.
But, you know, I don't know.
And my whole point of the show, I spent 15 minutes yesterday talking about it, repeating myself, as I tend to do, that there is nothing at all crazy or unreasonable about the so-called conspiracy theories.
So how that amounts to me parroting the official narrative, I have no idea.
Unless what you mean by that is that I guess my fault is I can't just say that the conspiracy theories are plausible.
I have to pretend that I know that the conspiracy theories are true.
So I didn't have certainty.
Forgive me for that.
How dare I?
I'm a part of a wonderful church at the college I attend.
for a while, love your show. I'm 19 years old, I've been a Christian for about
eight months now. Congratulations, Trevor. I'm a part of a wonderful church at the
college I attend. They are very traditional and conservative in their
conduct, meaning that they discourage watching movies and listening to music
that may be too explicit. Plus I have a pretty dark sense of humor, so I'm afraid
to joke now about how I've normally, I'm afraid to joke how I've normally done.
I understand it's inappropriate in a church setting, but I'm not real sure about just in my life outside of church.
I couldn't help but think about this when you mentioned Pulp Fiction in your episode on Monday.
When I was an atheist, I always loved watching Tarantino films, or just watching any movie that told a good story, despite any violence or profanity.
I also really like a lot of stand-up comedy.
I still do.
Lastly, there's a lot of good music out there that is not Christian music.
I guess I'm just wondering if it's acceptable to still watch extreme movies, listen to stand-up comedy, even if it's pretty profane, and then listening to good music that may be a little vulgar at times.
It's not like this makes or breaks my faith.
If I have to give it up, then so be it.
I understand the rationale of it, but I just feel like a lot of the good parts of life I'll be missing out on.
I'd love to get your thoughts on this.
You're the best show on the daily wire.
Keep up the great work.
There we go.
Trevor.
Yeah, well, I think, first of all, for you to be doing an inventory of the way you spend your time recreationally and the music you listen to, the movies you watch, to do that inventory is a good thing.
And so you should be commended for that.
And we should all be doing that inventory.
And yes, there are, I think, movies and shows out there that are morally objectionable, and there's nothing really good that can come from watching them.
And I don't say that like I've seen plenty of that kind of stuff myself.
In fact, I was just talking about that on the show yesterday, which is what you're referring to.
But we should still challenge ourselves.
I think.
And then same with music.
I mean, there's a lot of music out there, obviously, that is just pure trash and garbage.
And all it does is just drag you down into the gutter mentally, emotionally, spiritually.
And so, again, nothing really good can come from it.
Even if you kind of like the sound of it, whatever the music is, it's still garbage.
And so when it comes to that, you have to just use your own judgment.
A judgment that you hone over time, as we all do as we grow and mature.
So I think you have to, it's good to do that.
And if you, in your judgment, if you know in your heart of hearts that what you're watching is pure trash, pure junk, then yeah, you shouldn't watch it.
Doesn't mean you're going to go to hell if you do, or that you're automatically a bad Christian, or something like that.
It's just, it's not helping.
It's not edifying, it's not helping you in your own walk.
And so there's really just no reason to do it, other than you're just looking for something to watch, which probably isn't a good enough reason.
So there's that part of it.
So that's the judgment call that you have to make.
On the other side of it, though, I definitely don't think, Trevor, that just because you're a Christian now, You can't watch any secular shows or movies.
You can't listen to secular music.
I don't think that now that you're a Christian, all the music you listen to has to be corny Christian music.
Not that all Christian music is corny, but a lot of it is.
And that every show you watch has to be, you know, every movie you watch has to be God's Not Dead or something like that.
Heaven is for real.
No, you don't have to limit yourself to that.
In the so-called secular world, there's a lot of Despite what you may hear, there's a lot of good music, there's a lot of good art, but you have to be discerning.
And I think, especially just focusing on movies for a minute, just as an example, I think it's perfectly okay for a movie to deal with difficult things, to deal with violence, To have elements to the story that are sad, disturbing, whatever, scary, suspenseful, that's fine.
But I think what we have to ask ourselves is, what's the point?
Is there a point to this?
Now, if it's a movie that it appears the only point of the movie is just to drag you down and just to depress you for the sake of depressing you, and the only point the movie's trying to make is that there is no point in life and everything is terrible, it's nihilistic filth, well then that's probably a movie you don't need to watch.
But we were talking about The Godfather, so using The Godfather as an example.
I mean, The Godfather is...
Not what we would call a Christian film, and it's probably the kind of movie that some Christians would say, oh, that's totally, that's terribly inappropriate for a Christian.
You shouldn't watch that.
Just watch the latest Kevin Sorbo movie instead.
No, nothing against Kevin Sorbo.
I think The Godfather, yeah, there's violence in that movie, there's vulgarity, there's evil, a lot of bad stuff.
It's not for kids, okay?
It's definitely for adults.
But it's kind of a Shakespearean tragedy, and I think what the movie shows you, if you watch at least the first two, it shows you this, it gives you first a man, a basically virtuous, good, decent man, who's Michael Corleone, a war hero, in the beginning of the first movie, and it shows, step by step, as he is dragged down into evil, and he sort of collapses in on himself.
In his lust for power and money and prestige.
And in the meantime, he loses everything else that's important and that's real and that's good in life.
And that's why I think the last scene in Godfather 2 is so powerful.
Because he's at the point, you know, for the first two movies, he always told himself that he was doing everything for the family, for the sake of his family.
That's what this was all really about.
Even though he knew in the back of his mind, this isn't really for the family, it's for him.
But then at the end of the second movie, he kills his own brother.
So now the idea that he's doing it for the family is gone.
And so he's just kind of standing there, staring out the window.
And it's in this nice, beautiful house, but having lost everything.
His wife hates him.
He's lost his kids.
He's killed his brother.
All his friends are all dead now, and he's got nothing.
He's got this beautiful house.
He's got power.
He's got nothing else.
And it was all for nothing.
And then in the very last scene, it flashes back to this scene, you know, from years before where he's sitting around the dinner table with his family.
And, uh, and you kind of see like, that's, that was real.
That was good.
And he lost that.
So anyway, um, so that's a, that's a good positive message actually, in a movie like the Godfather, which you can find in those kinds of movies.
But, um, I think you just have to be discerning.
So, so just a long way of putting that.
All right.
Let's, uh, let's see.
We have one more.
This is from Carl, says, Hi Matt, one of my favorite things you do is poke.
Oh, this is going to be a long one.
Maybe I should say this one.
One of my favorite things you do is poke holes in Christian apologetic arguments.
I actually really appreciate this coming from a Christian like yourself.
You help me strengthen my arguments by pointing out where the weaknesses are.
It sometimes seems to me that Christian apologists these days will throw any argument against the wall.
I think a much better strategy is to hone a few strong arguments and really make them airtight.
But in order to do that, we must first find its weak points.
I think you're good at that.
So with all that said, I believe a fine-tuning argument is not the best argument for God.
Is, if not, the best argument for God, at least a very good one.
Now, can you put on your naysayer hat and tell me where the problems are with that argument?
Also, what do you consider to be the strongest arguments for God?
It actually says the strangest arguments, but I assume that was a typo and you meant to say strongest.
The strangest arguments for God.
Okay, can I answer this quickly?
I can't answer anything quickly.
I'll try to do it briefly.
The fine-tuning argument says that That there are certain, when you look at physics, there are certain universal constants.
The universe has been tuned, has been kind of programmed a certain way to make life possible.
And that if you look at any of the, if you look at the tuning, the universal constants, if any of those were off by just the slightest minuscule degree, it would make life in the universe impossible.
And so the fine-tuning argument says, well, who tuned it that way?
The probability that it would just tune itself that way on its own accidentally is so
miniscule that you could be could basically say it's impossible
and therefore you need God.
And I think that's a strong argument.
In fact, Christopher Hitchens, who was no friend to theists, said that he thinks that's the strongest argument
for theism and that coming from an atheist of his caliber I think is a pretty strong testament in its favor.
So I think it's a good argument.
My only criticism of it is I think maybe it needs a different label than fine tuning.
The problem is, to me it seems like The fine-tuning argument is just a variation of the
argument You know, there's the first cause argument, going back to Thomas Aquinas and before Thomas Aquinas, saying really on a very basic level, like, this all had to start from somehow, this all began somehow.
How did it begin?
At a certain point, you need a first cause.
You need an uncaused cause.
And that uncaused cause would be God, by definition.
A cause that can cause other things but does not itself need to be caused is God.
That's what God is.
God is other things as well, but He's also that.
So it seems to me that the fine-tuning argument is basically an extrapolation of that argument, saying that this tuning of the universe, it couldn't have done it on its own.
Something or someone had to do it.
So I think we need to frame it that way.
The problem is when we say fine-tuning...
It makes it sound like what we're arguing is that, you know, the entire universe is so remarkably hospitable to life that we know that God must exist, when that's not really the argument.
And the problem is, if it sounds like you're making that argument, then the atheist can say, well, hold on a second.
You know, 99.9999999999 whatever percent of the universe is lethal to life.
The vast majority of the universe pretty much Essentially, the entire universe consists of radiation-filled vacuum that is lethal to life.
Nothing can live in it.
And if you were to condense the entire universe to scale down about the size of a house, the entire house would be filled with a radiation-filled vacuum and you'd have one little atom, one little proton that would be Earth.
And obviously, if you were to walk into a house where the entire thing, except for one little atom, is lethal, you would not say, oh, this house was built especially for life.
No, you would say the opposite.
You would say, this house was built to kill me.
So that's the problem, is that the universe is a very, very, very, very, very big place.
And as far as we know, all of it is lethal to life, except for the little speck of dust that we're on.
So now that fact doesn't really debunk the fine-tuning argument, because that's not what the fine-tuning argument is.
But when you say fine-tuning, it kind of sounds like that's what you're saying.
So maybe that's my point.
Maybe we just need—that's my only qualm with the fine-tuning argument, is that I think we need a different name for it, to make it clear that we're not claiming that the universe is completely hospitable to life everywhere you go, because that's obviously not the case.
Even Earth is mostly inhospitable to life.
Most of the Earth is water.
You can't live on it.
Even on land, a lot of the Earth is Arctic wastelands and deserts where either you can't live or it's very difficult to live.
So, again, we're not really saying that.
We're just saying that those constants at the beginning of the universe, the way the universe was set up, was set up in such a way that it was possible for something like Earth to exist, even if it is one speck of dust in a...
In a giant vacuum.
Alright, we will leave it there.
Thanks everybody for watching.
Godspeed.
You know, there are plenty of problems facing our country today, but there's one problem making all the other problems worse.
It's a news media that has lost its way in a vendetta against Trump that is rapidly becoming a vendetta against half the country.
We'll talk about it on The Andrew Klavan Show.
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