The media launches incredibly dishonest attacks against a Trump immigration official. I'll sort through the lies today on the show. Also, is there anything wrong with denying immigrants who only come here to take advantage of the welfare system? Of course not, and I'll explain why. And a Harvard professor claims that white supremacists are pro-life. The exact opposite is the case. Date: 08-14-2019
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I apologize for beginning the show by saying okie dokie.
But we can't go back now.
We can't undo it.
It happened.
And we now both have to live with that.
All right, so moving past that, what's the latest fake stupid controversy that we can waste our time talking about?
For that, we go to Ken Cuccinelli, who is one of Trump's top immigration officials.
A little background here, before we get to the fake stupid controversy, a little background.
Recently it was announced, in the past couple of days it was announced by the Trump administration that they would be taking steps to better enforce public charge policies.
Now these are policies that Trump did not invent.
They don't originate with him.
Nobody in the administration came up with this.
These are policies that have existed in some form or another for a hundred years.
It's just that they haven't been enforced very well or at all.
And what the Trump administration is saying is, hey, let's actually enforce these laws.
The idea behind public charge policies is that we don't generally want to accept immigrants into the country.
Even legally, who are or are likely to be on public assistance.
In other words, we don't want to bring people here just so that they can live off of the taxpayers who are already living here.
Why don't we want that?
Well, because we can't afford it, for one thing.
Our nation is already famously in a lot of debt, and we just can't keep adding to it.
At a certain point, you have to cut it off.
And it's not fair to the taxpayers.
The taxpayers have their own families to take care of, first and foremost, and so to keep adding more and more people from all across the world, say, yeah, take care of them too, and them, and them, and them.
As I said, we got to cut it off somewhere.
And there's no real benefits to the nation or to society, to our society.
Immigration should not be a one-way street.
It's always been, the idea has always been, you benefit because you get to come here, and we benefit because you come here.
It should be a two-way beneficial arrangement, and it's not, if you're just coming here to live off of us.
And we want people motivated by a desire to come and contribute, not to come and exploit the system.
So, it makes a lot of sense.
A lot of sense.
To encourage immigrants who will be able to care for themselves and to discourage immigrants who are not able to care for themselves or are not interested in caring for themselves.
America is not a giant daycare center.
It's not a big boarding school.
It's a country.
And countries only function when people are caring for themselves and standing on their own two feet.
Now, we do have Things like soup kitchens in America, which is great, but America itself is not a soup kitchen.
And it can't be one.
And that goes for every other country on Earth.
The only difference is for every other country on it, well, I should say every other non-Western, non-predominantly white country, it's understood that they have the same attitude about immigrants.
In many cases, they have much harsher attitudes towards immigrants.
And nobody criticizes that.
Everyone understands, hey, it's your country, do what you want.
It's only with our country that, well, we're not allowed to see it as our country.
It's not ours.
So we just have to throw the doors open to anybody who wants to come.
Well, Cuccinelli was on NPR talking about this perfectly logical, unassailably sensible policy when he was asked how this policy squares with the poem on the Statue of Liberty.
Of course, this is irrelevant anyway.
We don't make laws based on poetry.
The Fish and Wildlife Service It doesn't make its laws based on what it says in, I don't know, The Raven by Edgar Allan Poe.
Individuals may be inspired by poetry, but that's not how we make laws.
The poem on the statue is not a law, but he was asked about it anyway, and so we'll play.
This is from NPR.
This is how that little conversation went.
Watch this.
Would you also agree that Emma Lazarus's words etched on the Statue of Liberty, give me your tired, your poor, are also part of the American ethos?
They certainly are, given you're tired and you're poor, who can stand on their own two feet, and who will not become a public charge.
That plaque was put on the Statue of Liberty at almost the same time as the first public charge law was passed.
Very interesting timing.
Although, you mentioned the American Dream is built on this idea that this is a place where you can come and build your life.
Okay, so what's his point?
Well, it's pretty obvious.
He's simply saying that this policy of looking for immigrants who can contribute rather than ones who will drain our resources and give nothing in return is, in fact, perfectly consistent with the poem.
Not that, once again, not that it really matters, but it is consistent with what the poem says.
That's his argument, anyway.
That's what he's trying to say.
Well, then what happened?
After Cuccinelli was asked about the poem, remember, he didn't bring it up.
He didn't come in and say, hey, listen, I've been thinking about this poetry and this poem.
No, he was asked about it, he answered the question.
Well, then the media headlines start pouring in.
Let me read a couple headlines.
These are headlines referring to that little tidbit you just listened to.
From CNN.
Cuccinelli rewrites Statue of Liberty poem to make case for limiting immigration.
Politico.
Trump immigration official offers rewrite for Statue of Liberty poem.
Washington Post.
Historians bash Ken Cuccinelli's revised Statue of Liberty poem.
Time Magazine.
Trump Immigration Head Rewrites Iconic Statue of Liberty Poem to Justify New Immigration Restrictions.
And so on.
This is, I feel like a broken record, but this is just utterly, utterly dishonest and fraudulent.
The media is lying as usual.
This is fake news.
Here it is.
This is total fake news.
He didn't rewrite anything.
And he isn't the one who brought it up.
He was asked a question and he answered it.
This is one of the most, this is one of the pettiest little tricks that the media pulls, and you gotta watch out for this, because they do this all the time.
This is one of their favorite things to do, and a lot of times people miss it.
What they do is, they ask somebody a weird and irrelevant question, that person answers the question, and then they report the answer to the question as if that person had brought it up on his own, unprompted.
So based on those headlines, those headlines are wrong, number one, because he didn't rewrite anything.
There's no rewrite.
Based on the headline, you would think, if you didn't know any better, that he literally rewrote it and they're gonna, you know, attach that to the Statue of Liberty instead.
He didn't rewrite anything, so that's not true.
But you would also think Based on the headline and the way these stories are framed, that, you know, he had this idea on his own, and then he went to the media and said, hey, I've been thinking about the Statue of Liberty poem, here's my thought.
No, he was asked about in any answer.
So it'd be like if the media asked me, if they came to me and they said, Matt Walsh, if you had to choose, would you bash a baby kangaroo to death with a shovel, or would you drown an old lady in the ocean?
And then I said, I mean, I guess I would, if I had to choose, I guess I'd bash the kangaroo.
But then the headline is, Matt Walsh goes on unhinged rant, fantasizes about bashing baby kangaroos to death with a shovel.
It's such a lame move, but it works.
It works on people who are too dumb or too lazy to read past a headline or sometimes even to read in between the lines, which is what you need to do.
And we're not done yet.
Okay, so that's just how the day started, with Cuccinelli making his point and then being disingenuously, intentionally misinterpreted, mistranslated.
Cuccinelli then goes on CNN to talk about this little dust-up and to clarify what he actually meant, and so let's watch how that went.
You say this is about self-sufficiency, and you say that proudly.
You heard me play you this morning when you quoted the Emma Lazarus poem on the Statue of Liberty.
Oh, I wasn't quoting it.
I was answering a question.
Right, okay.
I'm sorry, but you were giving your version of what you thought the poem should say, right?
No.
No, I was not.
You said, give me your tired and your poor who can stand on... I was answering the question.
I'm not rewriting poetry.
Okay, well, what you said is, give me your tired and your poor who can stand on their own two feet and who will not become a public charge.
I just played you saying it.
Right, I listen.
Okay, okay, so I'm just making sure you're not disputing that.
Okay, so obviously the actual poem is quite different.
I'm gonna read it.
Right, I was answering a question.
I wasn't writing poetry, Erin.
Don't, don't change the facts.
I'm not changing the facts, I'm just saying... You're twisting this like everybody else on the left has done all day today.
No, no, no, because I think it's important.
You're saying that it's very important to be able to stand on your own two feet.
Yes, self-sufficiency.
A lot of people may support you and respect your saying that, but the poem doesn't say that.
I didn't bring up the poem.
I didn't bring up the poem.
An NPR reporter did and now you have.
I didn't bring it up.
I'll answer your substantive intelligent questions, please ask one.
Okay, stop there for just a minute.
I have to say that this isn't really the point, but I have to say I kind of love this guy.
Because he's really calm, he's collected, while calling her out on her bullcrap at the same time, which is great.
That's exactly what needs to be done. And where he says, you know, I'll answer
your subjective and intelligent questions. Please ask one. That's that's that's see, this
is exactly this is this is like a training manual for how to deal with these hacks in the
media. But let's go let's get let's get to the point here. Let's go back to the back to the clip.
However, it came up. You said, give me your tired and your poor. OK, who can stand on
their own two feet and who will not That's what you said.
I just played it.
The poem reads, give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of the teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless tempest tossed to me.
I lift my lamp beside the golden door.
Wretched, poor, refuse, right?
That's what the poem says America's supposed to stand for.
So, what do you think America stands for?
Well, of course, that poem was referring back to people coming from Europe, where they had class-based societies, where people were considered wretched if they weren't in the right class.
And it was introduced, it was written one year, one year after the first federal public charge rule was written, that says, and I'll quote it, any person unable to take care of himself without becoming a public charge, unquote, would be inadmissible, or in the terms that my agency deals with, they can't do what's called adjusting status, getting a green card, becoming legal permanent residents.
Same exact time, Aaron, same exact time.
In the year it went on the Statue of Liberty, 1903, another federal law was passed expanding the elements of public charge by Congress.
Okay, we can cut it there, because then Erin Burnett goes into some irrelevant story about her grandfather coming to this country or whatever.
Can I just say, as a side note, I'm so tired of people doing this with the immigration thing.
Yeah, we get it.
Everybody's grandparents came here, and I'm sure that they, blah, so on and so forth.
I'm not trying to diminish what your grandparents did or the struggles they had, but can we just, every conversation about immigration turns into, well, it turns into some, you're spinning some yarn about your grandparents coming over here.
It's not relevant.
Okay, great.
Good for you.
It's just, what does that have to do with anything?
It has nothing to do with anything.
But that's, that's how she wastes the remaining minutes of this, of this interview talking about her grandparents.
Who cares?
No offense.
Who cares?
But you notice what Cuccinelli said there.
In an effort to explain why the Statue of Liberty has that language about wretched refuse, which is pretty harsh language, actually, and it makes you wonder why liberals love this poem so much.
They were referring to immigrants as wretched refuse.
That's calling them trash, basically.
That's what it is.
Refuse is trash.
Wretched garbage is what this poem refers to immigrants as.
I mean, can you only imagine if Trump If Trump were to even quote the poem, if Trump were to quote that poem, the headline would be, President Trump Calls Immigrants Wretched Garbage.
But in an effort to explain why that language is in there, what that is referring to, where that comes from, in an effort to explain that, he says that it refers to the class-based societies of Europe.
That's where the language comes from.
So then what are the headlines about this interview?
USA Today.
Immigration official Ken Cuccinelli.
Statue of Liberty poem refers to immigrants from Europe.
Another headline.
Cuccinelli.
Statue of Liberty poem refers to people from Europe.
Huffington Post.
Ken Cuccinelli.
Statue of Liberty poem about people coming from Europe.
And then subheader.
Trump's citizenship and immigration chief followed up his earlier comments about the famous Emma Lazarus poem with a racist clarification.
Oh my gosh.
These people.
These are such dishonest hacks.
It's amazing.
It's amazing that a person can be this dishonest.
When you're writing that headline, you know that you're lying.
You know what you're doing.
Don't you ever catch a glimpse of yourself, a reflection of yourself, maybe in a rearview mirror on occasion, and just stop and say, what am I?
What kind of person am I that I'm doing this?
This is what I do.
I just slander people with dishonest headlines.
Obviously, and Huffington Post was pretty explicit about it, these other headlines though, and there were dozens of them across mainstream media, saying that Ken Cuccinelli claimed that the Statue of Liberty poem refers to immigrants from Europe.
Well, yes, that is what he said, but obviously the implication, which Huffington Post made clear, what they're trying to imply is that Cuccinelli was saying that only European immigrants are welcome.
Which isn't what he was saying.
He was trying to explain why that kind of language is in there, which derives from the bigoted class-based societies of Europe.
Now, as for the poem itself, is our immigration policy, including, you know, this stuff about public charges, Does it conflict with the poem?
Again, for the fourth time, it doesn't matter because we don't make laws by engraving them in bronze and putting them on a statue.
That would be a pretty interesting legislative system when I am the theocratic dictator of the hemisphere.
That's probably how I will make laws.
But the thing is, no one else, just me, I'll engrave things in stone, put them on a statue of myself.
And probably in every town, there will be big statues of me holding the tablet with all the laws.
And there'll be a lot of laws.
A lot of laws.
So we're going to keep adding to it and adding to it.
So that's going to be the legislative process for me.
But right now, that's not how it works.
We have a legislative branch of government.
They have a process by which bills become law.
You can watch the Schoolhouse Rocks video if you want clarification on that.
So this has no bearing on anything.
With that said, if we want to say that, well, the poem is much like the Declaration of Independence.
The Declaration of Independence is not law either, but it is a poetic document sort of talking about the philosophies that underpin the American system.
And so it's sort of aspirational in that way, talking about what we aspire to.
And so you could make the same case as the poem is to say, yeah, it's not a law, but it's kind of like, that's, that's the, that's how America's basically, that's our philosophy.
It's what our philosophy is supposed to be.
Okay, fine.
Well, let's look.
Here's the full poem.
Okay, here's the full poem with both verses.
It says, not like the brazen giant of Greek fame, with conquering limbs astride from land to land, here at our sea-washed sunset gates shall stand a mighty woman with a torch, whose flame is the imprisoned lightning, and her name, mother of exiles, from her beacon hand, glows worldwide welcome, her mild eyes command the air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
Keep ancient lands your storied pomp, cries she, with silent lips.
Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me.
I lift my lant beside the golden door.
Okay, it's a beautiful poem.
Nobody, no, I think it's a beautiful poem.
I don't think anyone denies that.
And as Americans, we can be proud of that.
But the reason I read the full poem Notice something in the poem.
It says, give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.
So there is sort of a qualifier in there, isn't there?
It's not just, hey, you know, dump all the wretched refuse on our shore.
No, it's give us those who yearn for freedom.
And I totally agree.
That's exactly who we want.
Those are exactly the sorts of immigrants that we want.
Those who yearn for freedom.
Those are the kinds of citizens we want.
Even if they were born in this country.
As far as I'm concerned, even if you were born here and you don't want freedom, we don't need you.
I wish you would leave.
Okay?
You're not helping.
If freedom isn't what you want, then I think this country isn't for you.
You should seriously leave and go somewhere else.
Well, and that's the point.
We're looking for people who are yearning to breathe free, yearning for freedom.
How does this relate to the whole public charge thing?
Well, if you're coming here with the primary intention of living off of the government, and being on these social welfare programs, and being a charge of the government, then you're not yearning for freedom.
What you want is actually the opposite of freedom.
And that's really the main problem, even aside from the financial burden of having to care for all of these people from all across the globe.
Even aside from that, it's just sort of philosophically, it shows that someone comes here for that purpose, they're not buying into the American idea.
And that's the biggest problem.
I think we want everyone who comes here and everybody who lives here, we all need to buy into the basic American idea.
We can disagree in so many other ways and that's great, but the basic principles and the most basic of all is that of liberty and freedom.
If you're not buying into that, then this country is not for you and that should be our message.
And again, if you're coming here because you want to live off the government, that's not freedom.
So, I think Cuccinelli had it exactly right.
Okay, moving on here.
There's a prominent Harvard professor named Lawrence Tribe, who maybe you've heard of, he recently attempted, he sent out a tweet where he attempted to draw a connection between the pro-life movement and white supremacy.
And he's not the first leftist to try to pull this move.
It's pretty common, especially recently.
But in a tweet that he posted on Sunday, he said, white supremacists oppose abortion because they fear it'll reduce the number of white infants and thus contribute to what they fear is non-white replacement.
Never underestimate the way these issues and agendas are linked.
This turns intersectionality on its head.
Now, I wanted to address this because you'll notice that abortion advocates frequently, this is what they do, they malign the alleged motives of pro-lifers rather than engaging with the actual arguments that pro-lifers are making.
That's because the pro-life argument, which very simply is that human babies are human and thus directly killing them is murder, and because directly and intentionally killing any innocent human life is murder, That's our argument right there.
It is logically, morally, and scientifically airtight.
To defeat it, you have to either argue that humans aren't always human, which science disproves, or you have to argue that intentionally killing an innocent human isn't always murder, which is morally abominable.
Whichever option you choose, you're walking out onto a very precarious limb.
And I think therefore it's much easier for abortion proponents to forgo arguments altogether and to simply declare that pro-lifers really hate women, or they really hate poor people, or according to Tribe's variation of the theme, they really hate black people.
This is an easy claim to make, but it is, unfortunately, an exceedingly stupid one as well.
And so I just want to, for a moment, reflect on the stupidity of this claim.
First of all, It should be noted that avowed white supremacists are famously pro-abortion.
Okay, among white supremacists, white nationalists, whatever, these are not people who feel passionately pro-life.
It's quite the opposite.
And as someone who myself has been labeled a cuckservative by many an alt-right person for my pro-life advocacy, I can personally attest to this.
I have encountered this argument from that crowd many times.
I mean, at most among white supremacists, what you're going to hear is, well, abortion's irrelevant, we shouldn't be talking about it.
That's the most pro-life they'll get.
But very often, in fact, they will be explicitly pro-abortion.
Richard Spencer has endorsed abortion, arguing that, quote, smart people use it to get rid of Down syndrome babies or to protect the life of the mother.
And in that way, his argument for abortion is pretty indistinguishable from just the standard leftist argument for abortion.
And he has explicitly disavowed the pro-life movement and has told his supporters to be suspicious of anyone affiliated with it.
Indistinguishable rhetoric from what leftist pro-aborts say.
It's not difficult to see why white supremacists would support rather than oppose the practice of murdering children in the womb.
Black babies comprise a grossly disproportionate number of abortion victims in this country.
Black people make up only about 13% of the overall population, yet they account for close to 40% of all abortions.
In some, in some major US cities, okay, black children are more likely to be aborted than born.
That's, that's how, that's, that's the way this is working out.
Now, a white supremacist may not prefer to see white babies aborted, but he will certainly support legalized abortion because he knows that the black population would be significantly larger today if not for the work of Planned Parenthood and its ilk.
More black people have died by abortion than by cancer, heart disease, accidents, violent crime combined.
Why would a white supremacist want to give up a tool as potent as that?
He wouldn't.
Now, speaking of Planned Parenthood, its founder, Margaret Sanger, was a passionate eugenicist, as I think most informed people know.
She once presented her ideas at a Klan meeting.
There's a picture floating around out there of Margaret Sanger speaking to a Klan meeting.
That picture is fake.
It's a Photoshop.
Um, but she did speak to a plant.
Claiming it's just that there's no picture of it, but she did in fact.
So what it's depicting is true, but the picture's fake.
Historically, Planned Parenthood has been, has been quite open about its real intentions.
It's only in recent years that they've gotten shy about their goal of, uh, exterminating society's supposed undesirables.
In 1969, a lot of people don't know about this, even pro-lifers.
The vice president of Planned Parenthood, Frederick Jaffe, In 1969, he produced a memo called the Jaffe Memo, outlining his organization's long-term goals.
He was asked by the government to come up with a way of limiting the population and staving off the supposed overpopulation crisis, which is a myth.
But the government at the time wanted to do that, and they knew who to talk to.
Talk to Planned Parenthood.
And so Planned Parenthood came up with this memo, suggesting some things that should be done.
These things include reduce-slash-eliminate paid maternity leave, compulsory sterilization, compulsory abortion of out-of-wedlock pregnancies, limit-slash-eliminate public finance, medical care, scholarships, housing loans, housing and loans for families who have too many children, and it goes on from there.
Now, the JAIF memo doesn't specifically mention black people or racial minorities, but the goal is very clear, to reduce the population of the poor and economically disadvantaged by any means necessary, and it just so happens that a disproportionate number of people who are poor and economically disadvantaged are black.
So, on this point, as on so many others, white supremacists are in substantial agreement with Planned Parenthood and with the abortion industry.
And it should also be noted that, um, Jaffe's and Margaret Sanger's plans have been carried out with great success by the abortion industry in that, you know, over half of all abortions are had by, by, uh, by people who are, uh, you know, below the poverty line or near the poverty line, at least.
So to support abortion here, I think this is what it comes down to in order to support abortion.
You must see life on a hierarchy, where some life is less important and more expendable than others.
That's the only way to support abortion.
It has to, in some way, be based on that idea, that not all life is equal, some life is less important, more expendable, especially if it's dependent and weak and vulnerable, then it's going to be especially expendable.
Now, it just so happens, again, that's exactly how racists see the world.
Which is why racism and abortion have always fit together so perfectly.
To oppose abortion, on the other hand, you have to see life as possessing inherent worth and dignity.
That's really the only reason to oppose abortion.
And it's a pretty good reason.
You have to see that life is inherently valuable.
But a recognition of all human life as inherently valuable, having inherent worth and dignity, is not a good place to start if you want to be an effective racist.
That's not the view that racists are going to have.
And that's why this idea that there's any relationship at all between so-called white supremacy and racism and pro-life advocacy, it could not be more wrong.
These are literally two opposite views of the world.
Alright, before we get to emails, let's check in briefly with...
With Jeffrey Epstein, and I haven't even, I just saw this article on the Daily Wire, I haven't even read it myself yet, but just quick, quick, quick details on this.
The report on the Daily Wire says, the two prison guards in charge of monitoring convicted pedophile and alleged sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein on the morning that he committed suicide reportedly fell asleep, did not check on him for hours, and then falsified prison records to hide their actions.
The new developments in the investigation into Epstein's suicide come after the Justice Department announced on Tuesday that the two guards had been placed on administrative leave and the warden of the prison was being temporarily reassigned.
The New York Times reports, the two correctional officers in the housing unit where Mr. Epstein was held, 9 South is the housing unit, falsely recorded in a log that they had checked on the financier who was facing sex trafficking charges every 30 minutes as was required.
But they lied.
Such false entries in an official log could constitute a federal crime.
All right, so that's the latest.
We've got these people.
The people surrounding this issue are being sent away.
And now we're told that the two prison guards simultaneously fell asleep.
They both fell asleep and just so happened not to check on Epstein.
I find that hard to believe.
Now, you tell me one of them fell asleep.
The idea that they both fell asleep is difficult to believe.
So I don't expect that this update will do much to quell the other theories of the case.
All right, mattwalshow at gmail.com.
mattwalshow at gmail.com is the email address.
This is from Nick.
Says, Matt, you are the Fredo of The Daily Wire.
Well, you know, at least that means I make it to the end of the second movie.
So I'll take it.
This is from Ryan, says Matt, if your take on what happened with the Cuomo heckler is the way it actually happened, then I agree with you about defending Cuomo's reaction.
However, there's a crucial element to the story I believe you are overlooking.
The heckler was an admitted avid listener to Rush Limbaugh.
Rush has been calling Chris Cuomo Fredo for years.
A term of endearment, as he puts it.
In fact, Rush basically never uses Cuomo's real name, nor does he often explain why he calls him that.
The heckler actually stated in the video that he really thought Chris Cuomo's name was Fredo.
I'm sure you just overlooked that, as Cuomo also did, as some sort of BS claim, but I believe there's a high likelihood the heckler was actually telling the truth.
And if that's the case, the way this all started wasn't heckling at all, but simply a guy who saw a famous person and asked him for a photo together and called him by the name he genuinely thought was Cuomo's name.
If that's the case, the whole thing was just a big misunderstanding and the heckler was not really heckling or trolling at all.
Ryan, I admire your optimistic view of this person, but I just don't believe for a second
that he really thought the guy's name was Fredo.
I don't believe that for a second.
I mean, come on.
If the only way he knew about Chris Cuomo was because he listens to Rush Limbaugh, how did he know what Chris Cuomo looked like?
If he knew what Chris Cuomo looked like, that he could even pull him out of a crowd when Cuomo was there, he had a hat on, you know, I've seen Chris Cuomo plenty of times.
I'm not even sure that I would immediately recognize him if he walked down the street in a ball cap.
Maybe I would, but if you picked him out of the crowd and recognized him, how did you do that if you've only ever heard him referred to by Rush Limbaugh on the radio?
That would seem to imply that you've seen the show, and if you've seen the show, you have seen him identified as Chris Cuomo many times.
Isn't that even the name of his show, Chris Cuomo Live or something like that?
Maybe it isn't, I don't know.
I don't really, I don't watch it that often, but that's the thing.
I don't, I'm not sitting around watching Chris Cuomo, but I know what his name is.
I know that it's not Fredo.
I mean, that would be like if, you know, there was some celebrity out there Who's who's, you know, whatever got who people think resembles Frodo from from.
from Lord of the Rings, and people called him Frodo, and then you went up to him and said, hey, Frodo.
Oh, no, I thought that was really your name.
I'm sorry.
I thought your name really, I thought your parents actually named you after the fictional Dorf from Lord of the Rings.
I mean, come on.
No, no, no.
I don't believe that for a second.
That's absurd.
There's no way.
Again, he would not, if he recognized him, it means he's seen him, and if he's seen him, he's probably seen the show, and so he's heard Chris Cuomo.
Not to mention, he actually said, or one of the guys in the video said something like, you're much more reasonable in person than you are on TV.
Which, what does that tell us?
Number one, this is someone who's seen Chris Cuomo on TV.
Number two, this is someone familiar enough with Chris Cuomo to have this notion that he's not reasonable.
Number three, this is someone who doesn't like Chris Cuomo.
If you think he's unreasonable, you don't even like him.
So the idea that he was just a fan is, hey, let me get a picture with you.
I'm not, I'm just a fan.
I mean it in a friendly way.
He insulted him.
That's an insult.
Oh, you're much more reasonable in person.
That is, of course, an insult, which would imply that you're not a big fan of this person.
But it's an insult based on, apparently, your impression that you've gained from watching him, which means you know his name.
So, no.
I don't believe that for a second.
He's lying about that.
Which just makes me...
Want to take this guy's side even less.
This is not about taking Chris Cuomo's side.
This is about not taking the side of a trolling heckler who's coming up to a guy when he's out in public with his family and bothering him.
Just leave people alone.
Just leave him alone.
You don't need to go up to the guy.
He's out with his family.
Leave him alone.
But you go up to him when he's with his family and you call him Fredo and then you don't even have the guts to stand by it and say, yeah, I called him Fredo.
This guy's such a coward.
You don't even have the guts to stand by what you said.
Now you're back, he goes, oh no, I really thought that's what he meant.
And then he attacked me, oh boo hoo!
Come on, man up, for goodness sakes.
You know what you did, at least admit it.
No, that's the thing.
People accuse me, oh, you're taking Chris Cuomo's side.
No, I'm just not gonna take, I don't take a heckling troll's side.
I never ever will.
I don't care who's, I don't care what their politics are.
You go up, you harass a guy, and he's with his wife, and you would try to emasculate him by saying, hey Fredo, come here and take a picture.
That's obviously an attempt to emasculate the guy, and if you do that when a guy's with his wife, when he's with his woman, you're gonna get an aggressive response.
Any guy would respond that way.
I mean, any self-respecting guy would respond with some level of aggressiveness.
Not necessarily physically assaulting him, but like, if a guy comes up to you with your wife and tries to emasculate you, No.
No, no, no, no.
Are you just going to take it?
You're just going to sit there and say, oh, gee, yeah, I'll take a picture, sir.
You can call me whatever you want to call me.
No, no, no, no, no, no.
Okay.
From Audrey says, Hey, Matt, my name is Audrey, a long-ish time listener.
I'm in need of some advice.
My brother's getting married soon.
And we, uh, me and my five month old and two year old went to visit him recently.
While we were there, I asked about what they plan for family wise.
And his fiancee replied, having kids is the worst thing you can do for the environment.
I sat there absolutely dumbfounded while nursing my youngest.
I honestly didn't know how to respond to her.
Any words of advice, seeing how this is a topic that will likely come up again.
Thanks.
And thanks for all the wonderful podcasting.
Well, okay, how would you respond to that?
How would I respond?
How should you respond?
I would say smile, nod, and slowly back away.
Well, in all seriousness, that is kind of the right response, I think, actually.
Of course, if you wanted to get into a philosophical debate with your soon-to-be sister-in-law, you could.
Point out that this view of the human person is grossly materialistic and reductionist, making people into simple commodities like vehicles, and assessing their impact on the environment in that way, which doesn't take into account the transcended aspects of human nature and of humanity itself, things like love and beauty, things that make all life worthy and worthwhile, regardless of their supposed impact on the environment.
So you could make that point if you wanted to, but If you don't want to have a philosophical debate with this person about their decisions on whether or not they're gonna have kids, then maybe the best thing is just to say, oh, okay, well, good for you.
Because really, look, if someone doesn't want to have kids because they're worried about the environment, then, I mean, that's their choice and whatever.
Maybe it's best if they don't.
If their primary concern is, you know, CO2 levels, I wonder if this is meant as a joke or if you really find the vegetarian argument absurd.
All right, somewhat related question here.
This is from Sarah, says, Hi Matt, you tend to mock vegetarianism on your show.
I wonder if this is meant as a joke or if you really find the vegetarian argument absurd.
I'm a vegetarian myself and I think you should take our point of view
more seriously than you do.
No, sorry, I don't mean it as mockery.
You know, when I say that vegetarians are communist, sociopathic, anti-American lunatics, that's not an insult.
You see, I don't mean it as an insult at all.
In fact, I mean it as a compliment.
No, I... No, I don't really think that about vegetarians.
That is a joke.
Here's what I'll say about the... And when you say the vegetarian argument, I assume you mean the moral argument, because there are two parts of it, right?
There's the moral argument, there are people who are vegetarian because they think it's wrong to kill animals, and then there are people who are vegetarian because they think it's the healthiest thing, and then I'm sure there's a lot of crossover there.
But I'm not going to address the health aspect of it.
The moral aspect, here's what I'll say.
No, I don't think, in all seriousness, I don't think that the vegetarian moral argument is crazy or absurd.
Of course it's not absurd.
It would be absurd to say that it's absurd.
Now, I don't agree with it, obviously, because otherwise I'd be vegetarian, but it's not absurd.
Your point is that, you know, animals are human, or not human, animals are life.
And so to, they are complex life.
And so to take a life like that when you have other options and you could live without it, as many people do, is wrong.
That's basically your argument, right?
And I think that that's a perfectly reasonable argument.
So that's my answer to that.
What I would say though, in response, is it seems clear to me that human beings are meant To have animals as part of their diet, just as many other animals have animals as part of their diet.
Now, it doesn't really matter how you approach this.
If you believe in God and if you are a follower of the Judeo-Christian Tradition.
Then you could point to the Bible and you could see that clearly we were given domain over the animals and the plants and so that gives us not the license to abuse animals or to be cruel, but certainly to use them in a certain way, including for fuel, for ourselves, biological fuel.
Or, if you, let's say, are not a theist and you approach from a secular evolutionary perspective, then it's even more the case that it's clear that we evolved to eat other animals as omnivores, just like there are plenty of other animals in the animal kingdom who do as well, and so we're no different from them.
Either way, I don't see how... I think the absolute moral, the absolutist moral argument vegetarians make, although it's not absurd, there is a certain sense to it, I don't agree with it for that reason.
It's just clear to me, whether you're coming from a theistic, theological perspective, or just a biological evolutionary perspective, either way, it seems clear to me that we were meant to eat animals.
Now, on the other hand, if you want to get into talking about factory farming, And how we just produce animals now by the billions simply to eat them.
And we have them locked in these tiny little cages and they live lives of suffering and misery and just utterly pointless and they're only there to be eaten.
You look at how animals are treated in the factory farming environment.
Now, there I think you have a very, very good case.
In fact, even though I eat food, I readily admit that I eat food that is produced by factory farming, I couldn't make a moral argument to vindicate factory farming.
I don't see how anyone could.
I mean, it's pretty clear that animals in that environment, this is cruel and not right to treat animals that way, because it's just a total disregard.
Now, I do believe there's a hierarchy here, and human life is more important than animal life, but we can't say that animal life is utterly meaningless, and it has no value at all, but in the factory farming environment, their lives are treated as totally meaningless, No point at all except to be eaten by us and that their own experience is completely irrelevant and there's a complete disregard for that.
And I think that that's wrong.
So, yet I continue to eat that food.
Does that make me a hypocrite?
Yes, it does.
All right.
Let's see.
This is from Mark.
Says Matt, I was having this discussion with a friend and thought you'd maybe have something interesting to say about it.
What is a genius?
How would you define the word genius?
Well, first of all, Mark, I love that you're sitting around with your friends, having an abstract discussion like that, which I, which, which is much better than small talk in my view.
I think that's great.
Um, what is a genius?
That is an interesting, you know, I think, well, I think a genius is not simply someone who has a high IQ.
I think that IQ tests do tell us something.
It's probably unlikely that a person would get, say, a 50 on an IQ test and yet be a genius.
So I think IQ tests do measure something, but I don't think they get the whole story.
And of course, being a genius also has really almost nothing to do with how much stuff you know.
You know, what information you have in your head.
That has nothing to do with genius whatsoever.
There can be, probably are, and certainly have been, Geniuses across the world who knew very little just because they had little access to information.
So knowing something just what that reflects is how much information you have access to.
We live in a culture today where we all know a lot of stuff.
Our knowledge doesn't go very deep but we have access to a ton of information so we're ingesting information all the time.
Yet most of us are certainly not geniuses.
And in fact, I think there are quite a lot of very stupid people in the modern Western world.
Stupid people who know a lot of stuff just because they can't help but know it.
So those things have nothing to do with genius.
I think that genius really is someone who doesn't take his reality for granted.
I think if you had to really find what's the common thread between all the great geniuses of history, these are people who don't take their reality for granted.
What I mean is a genius is someone who doesn't just passively accept everything that's told to him.
He doesn't just accept things as they are presented.
A genius truly appreciates What is really remarkable in the world doesn't take that for granted and has an ability to think beyond our current reality, has an ability to think in revolutionary terms.
That, to me, is a genius.
So we could see this, for example, in music.
What's the difference between a really talented musician and a musical genius?
Are they the same?
No, I don't think so.
I think there are a lot of talented musicians who aren't geniuses, but guys like Elvis Presley, Bob Dylan, even Kurt Cobain and Tupac.
These were geniuses because they changed music, because they were able to do something different with it.
They didn't take it for granted.
They were able to go in a different direction.
I'm trying to avoid the outside-the-box thinking cliche, but that's basically what I'm talking about here.
Einstein was obviously a genius.
Newton was a genius.
Da Vinci was a genius.
These were men who were beyond smart.
They thought about the world differently and they changed the world because of it.
Einstein, with his relativity theory, he just thought of that.
That was the crazy thing about Einstein is that he was building on prior research and things too, but more than that, it was just pure thought.
He just came up with things about the world by thinking about them and changed our view of the world immeasurably through his own thoughts.
That is genius.
So, I think that's what genius is.
I mean, if you think about it, Every smart person you know, maybe not all historic geniuses, but certainly the people who are maybe minor geniuses or at least intellectually gifted, one of the main ways that you know they're very smart is that they're able to say things or present things that make you go, oh man, I never thought of it that way.
I think that's the mark of, at least an intellectually gifted person, if they have the ability with whatever they're doing or saying, whatever they're presenting, whatever idea they're presenting to you, if they have this ability to make you go, I just never thought of it like that.
When you read a book from an author and you think, wow, that's an interesting way of thinking of it.
I never thought of it that way.
In fact, I'm reading a book now.
Not... I don't know what I did with it.
It's a... Oh, it's down there.
It's a book called Sapiens by... Hold on a second.
I forget the guy's name.
A book called Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari.
And I picked this up at the airport and I'm almost through it.
I think that, and I'm not going to call it a work of genius, and the thing is I disagree profoundly with a lot of the stuff in the book that I'm reading now, which is kind of supposed to be a history of humankind going from primitive days to today.
I disagree profoundly with a lot of it.
And this is someone who is certainly anti-religion for one thing, and that becomes very clear.
But there are some sort of genius elements of it, because in the book, for instance, a lot of the book is basically almost a polemic against the agricultural revolution.
So I'm reading that and I'm saying, I don't really agree.
I think the agricultural revolution 10,000 years ago was a good thing and it made human civilization possible, which is no small perk either.
But I don't think I've ever heard anyone actually criticize the agricultural revolution.
That's just something we all take for granted.
Well, yeah, agriculture, of course that's good.
We need that.
So in this book, at least through part of it, he's basically arguing that we'd be better if it never happened and giving his reasons.
Again, I don't agree with all the reasons, but I think that's sort of a genius move in a way, to be able to take something that everyone else takes for granted, make some observations about it that other people hadn't thought of, and then make people go, oh, I hadn't thought of it that way.
All right.
So we'll leave it there.
Thanks, everybody, for watching.
Godspeed.
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The Matt Wall Show is produced by Robert Sterling, associate producer Alexia Garcia del Rio, executive producer Jeremy Boring, senior producer Jonathan Hay, our supervising producer is Mathis Glover, and our technical producer is Austin Stevens.
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In the wake of Fredo Cuomo's meltdown, many prominent conservatives are taking CNN's side, and President Trump is furious about that.
Then, another CNN scandal, this time involving Don Lemon, and it takes place at one of my favorite bars in New York.
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An evangelical musician loses his faith, and finally, more details emerge in the Jeffrey Epstein saga.
