Ep. 445 - On The Coronavirus, Don't Listen To Pundits Like Me
Today on the show, everyone in the media is spouting off about scientific and medical issues they don't understand. This makes it hard for people to know who to trust and where to go for information. We'll try to sort through that fog today. Also, Five Headlines, including the grumpy old men debate last night. And a former Democratic gubernatorial candidate was busted with drugs and a male escort. Will this hurt or help his political future in the Democratic Party?
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Today on the Matt Wall Show, as the coronavirus pandemic grows and the government response to it becomes even more severe and extreme, there's another crisis happening that's fueling some of the panic and division that people are feeling.
That is a crisis of trust, I think.
People don't know Which sources of information to trust, which is a big problem in a time like this.
And meanwhile, pundits and commentators and media personalities like myself feel perfectly entitled to issue proclamations and opinions and analysis, even though none of us have any idea, actually, what's going on, and very few of us have any expertise on the subject of viral pandemics.
We don't understand the science or the medicine behind it.
Yet, we're still talking about it and telling you what you should think and how you should feel about it.
It's a mess.
And so today, we're going to try to sort through it on our way to attempting to answer the question of who should we trust about this issue?
Where should we be going for information?
What should our sources of information be?
It's a very important question that we will try to answer today.
Also, five headlines, including the grumpy old men debate last night that happened, and a former Democratic gubernatorial candidate was caught in Florida in a hotel room with drugs and a male escort.
And lots of people think this is the end of his political career, but he is a Democrat, so is it possible that this would help his political chances going forward?
We'll discuss that.
And a couple of emails from listeners, including one from Grant, who is very upset about some of the things I said on my show on Friday, wants to tell me why I'm wrong about them, and we'll get to that as well.
All of that coming up, but first, Here's possibly the best news you'll hear all day, and there's a lot of bad news, so it's not a very high hurdle to get over.
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Okay.
Coronavirus.
So this is tough.
But you're not.
Trying to figure out exactly what I... It's kind of a tough job to do right now.
And, I mean, not nearly as tough as the job done by almost anybody else on earth right now.
I work from home.
I do this show.
I write.
The only time my job takes me out of the house, really, is if I'm doing a speech, but those have all been cancelled, as you might expect, through April and possibly beyond.
So I have it really easy, and I'm very fortunate.
We also homeschool our kids, so it's easy for us to lock down and stay in the house and do the sort of self-quarantine deal.
So don't let me get all melodramatic and weepy about the plight of a podcaster during a pandemic.
Podcasting in a pandemic.
Maybe I'll write, maybe that'll be a book I write one day.
But in my own little sheltered world, within that rather shallow context, There is the difficulty of the coronavirus being obviously on everybody's mind, the thing that everybody is talking about, the thing everyone's thinking about, and something that, whether we like it or not, and none of us do, has begun to take over our lives.
Both the thing itself, the disease, and also, even more so at this point, the reaction to it.
The governmental response and things being shut down and all that.
So, I'm not going to ignore it.
I have no problem ignoring big news stories and talking about other things, usually, but with this one, at least for now, at this point, I feel compelled to discuss it.
And yet, like almost any other pundit or commentator, I'm basically clueless about all of this.
I don't know anything about viruses, except for the very basic information that everybody knows.
But if you ask me, you know, if you even ask me, what is a virus?
You know, I'm always asking people, what's a woman?
When they talk about women, I'm always throwing the left, that curveball.
Well, when I'm talking about pandemics and giving my opinions, you could throw me a curveball and say, what's a virus?
What is a virus exactly?
Can you explain it?
I could give you maybe three sentences, maybe, talking about viruses.
And of course, it's a bit of a trick question because scientists don't even know exactly what a virus is.
Is it alive?
Is it a living organism or not?
There's some debate about that.
But that only goes to show how complex this subject is.
It's very complex.
People spend their whole lives studying it and working with it.
And they still don't have it figured out.
So somebody like me, who's never studied it, never worked in the field, never really thought about it, what the hell could I possibly have to offer?
On the subject.
As for pandemics, again, I'm not an expert.
Most pundits and show hosts and commentators are not experts.
Not even just not experts, but we've never really even thought about it.
Maybe we've read some books about it, maybe, but what are we, historians of pandemics?
We could sit here and compare, well, this pandemic compares to the Spanish flu in the following ways.
No, we never really, we never thought about it until now.
None of us thought that this would be the issue.
At the start of 2020, this would be the thing we would be talking about.
We thought it would be, you know, one of Trump's tweets or something would be the news of the day.
So what real insight can we offer on this?
What are our opinions?
What are they based on exactly?
I've already admitted I was wrong about this issue in the early going.
I thought it would be no big deal for the rest of the world.
When this first started in China, you started hearing about it.
I thought it would remain a far away thing.
I thought the threat of a global pandemic was media hype, and I said so.
That's what I thought.
And I was very confident in that.
When we first started hearing about the coronavirus in the news, I was not worried about it at all.
I didn't for a second believe that it would lead to this.
I didn't see this coming at all.
And I was wrong.
Lots of other pundits and commentators and hosts and cable news personalities were also wrong.
I'm not trying to deflect by saying they were wrong too, but they were.
A lot of people were very wrong about this.
See, the thing is though, most of them won't admit it.
I'm not going to say any names, but they're just continuing along, issuing their prognostications.
Delivering their opinions with feigned authority, even though they've been completely wrong every step of the way.
Everything they've said has been wrong.
But they keep adjusting, keep pivoting.
It goes from, you know, oh, this is nothing but hype.
It's nothing at all.
Don't worry.
Okay, well, it is something, but it's not any worse than the flu.
Okay, well, it is worse than the flu, but the panic is the real problem.
The panic is the real threat.
On and on.
No acknowledgement, no accountability, not taking a second to say, hey, you know what?
I've been wrong on this, so take a grain of salt with everything I'm about to say, but here's my opinion.
Just continuing to spew these half-baked theories, continuing to provide analysis that's based on a near total lack of underlying knowledge on the subject.
Whatever you think about what's happening, whether you think it's overblown or not, Whatever you think, there's no denying that we are in the middle of something very serious.
Something that is certainly not unprecedented in the life of mankind collectively, but it is unprecedented in the experience of modern Americans.
Mostly because we have lived a sheltered, comfortable life.
And we have collectively experienced very little hardship.
With a few exceptions, of course.
Notable exceptions.
9-11 being one of them.
And when I say unprecedented, I refer both to the disease and the reaction to it, the whole thing.
This is not just an issue to be argued about.
This is not something that lends itself to talking points.
It's much bigger than that.
We're dealing with something much bigger.
The problem is that we have so many streams of information, so many people screaming at us, so many sources of fact and opinion, and opinion masquerading as fact, That it's difficult to know who to believe, who to trust, who to turn to, and you're tempted to turn it all off and say, I'm going to tune it all out.
I don't want to, I don't want to hear any of this stuff, which maybe ultimately is not a bad idea.
But if you're like me, you don't want to do that because you want to know what's happening.
You want to be prepared.
You have a family.
You feel like you have a responsibility to know, to be prepared.
But that brings you back to the question of who do you listen to?
Now, we in the media, Many of us are really arrogant.
Profoundly arrogant.
Again, myself included.
I'm not going to keep saying myself included, but just insert that into everything I say.
We think we're experts on everything.
We've taken the fact that people listen to us about everything as evidence that people should listen to us about everything.
So without any real thought to the consequences, without much reflection really, we start spouting off as if with expertise about the virus, about the severity of the threat, about the government response, the reasonableness or unreasonableness of it.
Governments started shutting down businesses en masse yesterday.
New York, California, schools shutting down across the country.
Well, that happened last week, but yesterday we heard about New York and California, Los Angeles shutting down restaurants, bars.
And this happened, and the commentators and pundits and media people, they all chimed in immediately, quite confident that this was either the wrong move or the right move.
They had it figured out immediately.
They heard about it two seconds later.
I know if this is right or wrong.
Meanwhile, this is an incredibly morally complex issue.
We're weighing the risk of economic collapse, which is a very real risk when you start shutting down businesses across entire cities and states for weeks at a time, if not longer.
So we're weighing that.
Against the need to save lives, which is a very real need, and the threat to human life is also very real.
So if these drastic measures have a good chance of saving 100,000 lives, or more, and there are experts who say that that's the case, then is it worth it?
I mean, even if it leaves the economy in shambles, you saved all those lives, isn't human life more important than the economy?
Then again, economic collapse could threaten human life.
People aren't going to be able to support themselves.
But what if it only saves 10,000 lives, potentially?
A thousand?
I mean, how do you balance these things?
What's the right call?
That's a very difficult question.
I don't have the answer for it.
I don't know.
I really don't.
Lots of people in the media, they think they do know.
They've got it figured out, like I said, right away.
They thought about it for two seconds, boom, they know.
And they'll tell you all about it, right?
Now think about that for a second.
Think about this.
Something big happens.
New York City shuts down schools, restaurants, bars in response to a viral disease threat.
And within seconds, the pundit class, the media members, know exactly if it was wrong or right.
And they issue that opinion with total confidence.
A decision that a group of people in high levels of state government agonized over, presumably, debated.
A decision that presumably was informed by intelligence on the spread and nature of the disease, probably some of which we are not privy to.
A decision that experts in the field were involved in.
That decision, within 12 seconds of being announced, was immediately categorized as simply right or simply wrong.
The people who made it agonized over it, but the peanut gallery had it all figured out right away.
Well, good for them.
They're geniuses.
I'm not saying it was the right decision, by the way.
I don't know.
I also don't know exactly what went into it.
I'm sort of assuming that all of those things went into these decisions.
It's possible that that isn't the case.
I don't know.
I just don't know.
I don't think you know.
I don't think most of the people talking into microphones and talking into cameras today, I don't think most of them know.
I don't know if we'll ever know.
The thing is, if these measures do prevent a catastrophe on a scale of millions infected and many thousands dying, it would seem that, well, then it was worth it, right?
But how will we know what could have been?
We won't know.
Lots of people, especially the media, We'll pretend that they know what could have been or what can be or what will be, but they don't.
They won't.
They can't.
They never will.
And so if the worst is avoided and it doesn't become what a lot of people worry it will become, the disease that is, you're going to have folks in the media saying, see, I was right all along.
See, I told you.
How the hell do they know?
What if these measures weren't taken?
What would happen?
They don't know.
They're just pretending they do.
They're playing a game.
Here's my point.
In a time like this, you know, it's difficult to know who to trust.
It's also really important to figure that out, though, because the information is important and you need to know where to get it.
What I'm saying to you, what I'm telling you, is don't listen to me.
Don't listen to any media personality, any cable news host or talk show host, any internet celebrity, any opinion giver on Twitter or Facebook or anywhere else.
And not just media people either.
I mean, I'm putting it on the media, but these days we're all pundits to some... We all have an audience, might be a small one, but we're all on social media giving our opinions.
It's not just people who are paid to do it.
And if you browse through Twitter or Facebook or wherever, whatever social media site you're on, you're going to see a lot of very ignorant opinions issued with confidence by people who have no idea what they're talking about, haven't the slightest clue.
People who have never thought about this ever in their life.
They've never thought about what's the right response to a pandemic.
Uh, you know, how do these things spread issues like exponential growth and, and, uh, and all of these, they never thought about it ever in their life.
Not once.
And now it happens, and I know exactly what's going on here, I'll tell you.
And so it's not just from the media, it's everybody just talking at each other.
And then we all end up in this haze of contradictory, conflicting opinions, and we feel like we have to choose a side.
And we're looking around and thinking, well, I gotta be on someone's side.
Am I on the side of this isn't a big deal, or am I on the this is a big deal side?
Meanwhile, we're dealing with something that, I mean, this is one of mankind's oldest enemies, a virus.
If something like this isn't enough to make us kind of put all this BS to the side and see how petty and ridiculous it is, and just try to be reasonable adults about it, I mean, if this can't do it, then what can?
So, I think when you see an opinion, or hear one, from a media member, like myself, or really any Joe Schmo on Twitter or Facebook, in your head you should preface whatever they just said with, an individual with no related expertise and no base of knowledge on the subject, and who couldn't even tell you exactly what a virus is, has the following opinion.
I'm not saying that we have to have a PhD or a degree in a related field to have an opinion about anything.
In fact, many times I have railed against that mentality.
The idea that, you know, in order to have an opinion on any subject, you need to be able to present your resume to prove that you have a right to an opinion on it.
I don't think that, but when it comes to analyzing a specific medical and scientific issue that has lots of complexities and everything else wrapped into it, like the spread of a virus, the threat level it poses, its growth rate, etc., when it comes to predicting what will happen next, what could happen with this specific thing, the virus, when it comes to that, I think you really do need to have some kind of base of knowledge, some expertise, or else why should anyone listen to you?
Why should anyone care what you have to say?
The trouble is that the media is a one-way forum, right?
So we talk and you listen.
If you could respond in real time and ask follow-up questions, when you see a talking head on cable news, I mean, just turn on cable news sometimes, and see the talking heads, the analysts that are brought in to discuss the coronavirus.
They bring in some real experts, but they also bring in the same kinds of people they would bring in to analyze a Trump tweet.
Just their roster of talking heads.
These people have no idea what they're talking about.
Why are they, why do you have this, why do you have this political operative giving opinions on a virus?
Now if you could respond in real time, you might ask the pundit who's giving his opinion, you might say
Bye.
If the pundit is saying, oh, this virus isn't as bad as everyone thinks, or this virus will wipe out mankind, or whatever it is, you could say, oh really?
Why do you think that?
What's your source?
What's your reason for thinking this?
And if you could ask that, you would quickly discover that they have no very compelling reason to think it.
Or else they're echoing, and probably mangling, what they heard from a scientist or a doctor.
And if that's the case, your next follow-up should be, okay, if you got this from a scientist or a doctor, somebody who knows what they're talking about, why don't you just point us in their direction?
Rather than giving us your mangled, tortured, politically-flavored version of what they said.
Why don't you just shut up and point us to wherever you got this from so we can read that instead?
And that brings me to my conclusion.
I, for the remainder of this event, for lack of a better word, I'm not going to give you my opinions on the nature of the virus itself, the threat it poses, what will happen with it next, or anything like that, because I don't know.
I really don't.
I'm as clueless as you.
I just don't know.
In my mind, I hear all the stuff about how bad it could get, thousands dead.
Could be.
Could go that way.
There's also another part of me that says, ah, you know, maybe this is all, maybe, maybe three weeks from now we'll be looking back on this as ancient history and saying, you know, well, we really lost our minds over that, didn't we?
I don't know.
So instead, what I will endeavor to do is point you in the direction of sources that are more worthy of trust than me because they're backed by knowledge and expertise and experience, which I lack.
Doesn't mean you should trust any source implicitly, but you do have to at least partially trust someone, some source, or else there's no point in pursuing information.
There's no point of being online.
There's no point of turning on the news.
There's no point of listening to this show or any other.
If you're doing that at all, it must mean that you think you can trust at least partially someone.
So, you know, Dr. Fauci from the NIH has been a great source of information, it seems like.
The CDC, the World Health Organization, other health organizations have plenty of information.
ER doctors who have worked with this disease have seen it up close and personal.
You know, I'm not talking about somebody's pediatrician who hasn't seen it yet and hasn't dealt with it.
But there are plenty of ER doctors, nurses, who have been in this, whether in Italy or in California or elsewhere.
They're great sources of information.
Might take a little bit of digging to find what they have to say, but they've written letters and emails that have been published and they've articles and op-eds and everything, and you can go and find that.
I've shared a few of them on this show.
Virologists, epidemiologists, doctors with specialties in related fields.
I mean, this is where I'm going to get my information, and if I pass it along to you on this show, I'm just going to quote them verbatim.
I'm not going to give you my dumb analysis of what they said.
I'm not going to tell you, well, this epidemiologist says this, and here's what I think about that.
Who gives a damn what I think about it?
But you can pursue these avenues of information yourself, of course, just like I can, and I very much urge you to do that.
And I also urge you to tune out, as much as possible, the analysis and opinions and prophecies of people who don't understand this issue, have no experience with it, and who spend most of their time thinking about and talking about political and cultural issues.
That's their lane.
That's our lane.
This doesn't mean that I'm going to stop talking about issues related to the pandemic.
This is something happening in the world right now.
It's on everyone's mind.
It matters.
Of course, I'm going to talk about it, but I'll try as best I can to steer clear of offering opinions or analysis of the disease itself and its trajectory and that sort of thing.
An opinion like this is overblown.
is an opinion that can only have value or meaning if it's informed by a deep understanding of viral pandemics and the science behind them, and exponential growth rates, and all of that.
If you lack that knowledge, your this-is-overblown opinion is itself overblown ignorance.
And opinions on the other side are the same.
So, I'm gonna try, try, emphasis on try, to avoid doing that, And instead talk about issues surrounding it, issues that I may have something to offer on, things like the cultural implications and, you know, those sorts of things.
Trying to stay in my lane while still providing content that's relevant to your experience as we all go through this together.
That's my goal.
I'm just putting it out there right now.
And I really think that this is something we all need to consider.
Because you want to talk about panic and hysteria.
It's only going to get worse if we keep listening to every dumbass sharing his ignorant, ill-informed, or rather totally uninformed opinion about a subject he doesn't understand.
All right.
Now, we'll move on.
Let's go to emails.
Or no, actually, I'm...
I'm all screwed up here.
Let's go to, uh, see, I don't even understand my own show.
I can't even do my own show.
So what could I tell you about a pandemic?
Five headlines is what we're going to do instead.
Number one, there was a democratic debate last night.
I don't have much to say about that either, but it was, it was mostly two old men yelling at each other.
They held it in a studio, no audience.
So it was just because of the, they were trying to practice social distancing.
I will say, I like that format.
Having two people talk to each other.
And without the brain-damaged hyenas in the audience making all the noise, and without the moderator cutting in every 12 seconds, but just having them in a room, no audience, just talking and arguing and debating, actually debating.
That was the crazy thing about the debate last night.
There was actually a little bit of real debating, which we very rarely see in a debate.
So I like that.
As far as the substance of it, it was what you would expect.
I guess the pundits are saying that Biden won because he escaped without injury.
He escaped without injury because he only made about five embarrassing mistakes rather than his normal 27.
And so because of that, it's essentially a huge victory for him.
One of the mistakes was when he, and Bernie did this also, they both kept forgetting which disease is in the news.
So they went through SARS, swine flu, Ebola.
Couldn't remember.
I mean, if you've been living in a cave for the past few weeks and you turned on this debate, you would be really freaking out right now because you would think that there's a SARS, swine flu, coronavirus, and Ebola epidemic happening all at the same time.
I was kind of expecting by the end of it, they would be promising to make sure that we finally come up with a vaccine to defeat this polio epidemic once and for all.
I thought that's where this was going, but didn't quite get there.
Bernie was Bernie.
He had a few great lines, such as, When he said, um, I've got Ebola in my head.
That was a direct quote from Bernie Sanders.
I've got Ebola in my head.
At another point he starts bragging about all the soap he uses.
Says, I use lots of soap.
Uh, both are real quotes that he uttered.
But I think his best was this.
Have you been on the floor of the Senate?
You were in the Senate for a few years.
Yeah.
Time and time again talking about the necessity, with pride, about cutting Social Security, cutting Medicare, cutting veterans programs.
No.
You never said that.
No.
All right.
America, go to the website right now.
Go to the YouTube right now.
This guy, I'm telling you, I can tell why the youths love him.
He's very in touch.
With the youth of today, he just understands.
Later on the debate, he said that he stays in touch with America's youth by listening to his Christina Aguilera CD on his Walkman while he's rollerblading.
Super relevant stuff.
And that's it.
I have nothing else to say about the debate.
I hope you enjoyed that analysis.
Number two, interesting story here about a guy who, earlier in the month, went to stores all over Tennessee and bought up all the hand sanitizer because he saw what was coming.
Bought up nearly 18,000 bottles of hand sanitizer, and then he planned to resell it on Amazon, which he did.
Matt Colvin is his name.
He did manage to sell a few hundred bottles at prices between $8 and $70 for the hand sanitizer, but Amazon quickly shut him down saying that price gouging, especially during a pandemic, violates their terms of service.
Okay.
When this all came to the attention of the media, he was profiled in the New York Times and he was completely, originally anyway, he's changed his tune, but he was originally unrepentant about price gouging during a pandemic.
He never anticipated the struggle other families would go through because of a shortage.
Would you say you're sorry?
Sorry for buying all of this.
...
No, I don't think that I would.
I just like how he's asked if he's sorry.
And then he pauses for a while.
And you think he's going to get emotional and start apologizing, spill his guts out, but instead he says, nope, not sorry, not sorry.
Well, after quite a bit of, uh, let's say social pressure, including death threats, he did apologize and he decided to donate most of his hand sanitizer.
And then the state attorney's general attorney general office attorney attorney general's office, uh, came in from, from Tennessee.
They came in and they started confiscating the rest of it.
So I think he donated about 60% of it, and then the remaining 40%, the state government came in and just took it, saying that it's against the law to price gouge during a state of emergency.
But the thing is, he did this before there was a state of emergency declared.
So there's a question here about, I think a rather fascinating debate about what can the state, do they have the authority to just come in I mean, yeah, the guy's a jerk, no question about it.
Nobody would argue that.
And that's putting it mildly.
But does that mean the state can just come in and take what you bought?
I don't know.
Number three, Stephen King sent out a tweet over the weekend, focusing on the important stuff as always.
He said, Note that Trump's coronavirus team is all male, all old, and all white.
What is it with old white male liberals always complaining about old white males?
Now, they better get used to old white males because that's who their nominee is, in case they forgot.
I mean, either way, whichever one of them it is, and it's going to be Biden, but either way, it's an old white male.
And I'll never quite get over the irony that the people who complain incessantly about old white males had a chance to nominate a young white male, black woman, A black man?
An old Native American woman?
They had any of those choices.
And they decided, let's go with the old white male.
In fact, we got two really old white males here.
Let's narrow it down to one of those two.
Let's make those our only options.
But don't worry, because the old white males, they both said yesterday during the debate, that they would make a female their vice president.
So these guys who worked doggedly to kick all the females out of the race, ensuring that none of them would be president, now they're gonna make a female their number two.
They feel very strongly that a female right now shouldn't be president because they should, but a female should definitely get second place.
Hashtag feminist heroes.
Number four, Andrew Gillum, former candidate for governor in Florida, also former mayor of Tallahassee, considered a rising Democratic star.
Was caught in a hotel room a few days ago with drugs and an overdosed male escort lying naked on his bed.
Gillum is married with three kids, by the way.
So, you know, it's being said that this is going to destroy his political career, but I don't see that it does.
If anything, I think it might help him.
And I'm not actually kidding.
I think we're at the point now with Democrats where I don't know if he's ever going to win governor, But at least in terms of his future as an influencer on the Democratic side, I think this probably helps him.
Number five, here's some great news, at least for me.
A new study finds that people who are stubborn and argumentative are less likely to get Alzheimer's.
Does that sound like anyone you know?
Stubborn, argumentative.
I mean, if stubbornness and being argumentative protects your health, then I'm basically immortal.
And it gets better, though, because researchers are also saying that being stubborn, argumentative And combining that with an aversion to conformity is the best combo.
So, stubborn, argumentative, contrarian, don't get along well with others, check, check, check, check.
Now they just need to tell me that having a bad temper is the final trait you need.
And that's going to really tell me that I'm impervious to illness.
I will never die.
All right, let's go to your daily cancellation.
And today we'll be canceling, and this is for the sake of humanity, really for everybody.
This is for everyone.
I figure this is a treat I'll give to everybody at a time when I think we all really need it.
We will be canceling all mathematical statistics, especially those involving the number 500 million.
So you remember last week, the famous incident involving the 500 million statistic on MSNBC with Brian Williams.
And the woman who we later discovered was a victim of racism because people made fun of her that she can't do math.
We won't get into that again.
Well, there was another one, another incident like that involving a different leftist.
We're really on the verge of an epidemic here.
And the only way to stop it is to act quickly and take precautions.
Which is why I'm canceling statistics involving the number 500 million.
In fact, I think I'm going to cancel statistics in general.
I'm going to cancel mathematics in general.
I think it's the only safe way.
So here is Brianna Joy Gray, works for the Sanders campaign, and she tweeted the other day.
She says, it's great that everybody is coming together around this crisis, but people are in crisis every day.
500 million Americans go bankrupt from medical debt every year.
68 million are un- or underinsured.
We've been in a state of emergency.
We need a president who acts like it.
500 million Americans go bankrupt every year.
500 million Amer- Okay, that would mean either that there's 500 million people in America and every single one of them goes bankrupt every year, annually, or there are billions of Americans, possibly trillions, and 500 million of them go bankrupt every year.
In either case, there's a bit of a problem with accuracy here.
There are, in fact, 327 million Americans.
500,000 of them go bankrupt every year.
So she was only off by about, what, 499.5 million?
It's a slight, slight, uh, slight error, that's all.
But I don't blame her.
Blame her, really, because clearly there is a problem, and the problem is with math itself.
Math, we must remember, according to scripture, was invented by the devil, It took us many years to free ourselves from the chains of mathematics.
But we did.
With the invention of calculators.
And then the final blow to math came when we invented cell phones.
Um, so that we could carry calculators around in our pockets all the time without looking like dorks.
It was just kind of a way of, of really the, the cell phone originally, I don't know if you're familiar with the history, but originally it was invented just as a way, as a, as a cover, basically a cover story, uh, for an alibi for the calculator that we all carry around in our pockets.
So that any, and now anytime there's a math question, we come across any sort of math difficulty, just pull out your phone.
That's it.
That's all you need to do.
Use your calculator.
And if it's a more complicated question, like, you know, if somebody were to ask me to find the hypotenuse of a prime number of a trigonometry, then I could just Google it.
And if the calculator and Google don't work, then I can cry and tell you to stop harassing me.
That's the last resort.
Either way, math is not needed and is therefore cancelled.
Now, let's go to emails.
Remember, you can become a Daily Wire member and you get access to the mailbag, and I would encourage everyone to do that.
We're going to go right to a couple of interesting emails.
I'll save a few of them for later in the week, but we'll go right to Grant with our Why I'm Wrong segment.
Grant says, Hi Matt, I have to tell you, I was really angry about what you said about the president on your show.
I know that you're going for those clicks by jumping on the blame Trump bandwagon, but I really thought better of you.
I didn't start listening to your show to hear someone go along with the media narrative and say the popular things like any other grifter.
Extremely disappointed.
Okay, Grant.
So I guess it's time for the bi-monthly tradition where I explain how grifting and click hunting works in the age of Trump, because a lot of people don't seem to understand.
And since we're, you know, that's been the theme of the show, I'm talking about the media and how useless we all are.
Well, maybe this is a good way to cap it off.
So here's another explanation of how things work in media.
Yeah, I did criticize Trump on my show on Friday.
I criticized his response to the crisis.
At least his response up until Friday, when I did the show.
Because I thought it was worthy of criticism.
He's been better since then, but up until that point, it was bad, in my opinion.
So, I gave my opinion, I gave my reasons.
Agree or disagree with them.
But I'm being honest about it.
And I'm telling you my point of view, that's all.
I'm just telling you what I think.
Same as I would do for any president or politician.
See, to me, Trump is not a special case.
Trump isn't special.
He's just a man.
He's a politician.
He's not the devil.
He's not Hitler.
It's not like everything he does is wrong.
He's not plotting to destroy America.
He's not a fascist dictator.
But he's also not God.
So I'm not going to sit here and sing his praises at all hours of the day.
Right?
He's not all-knowing and all-wise and all-loving.
He can be wrong.
That's the way I look at him.
That's the way I look at every human being on Earth.
That's especially the way I look at politicians.
And so, why would he be any different?
That's the way I approach it.
Now, that's not to say that my praise or criticism is always right.
Maybe it isn't.
Maybe it's wrong sometimes.
Maybe it's always wrong.
Maybe I'm a total idiot and I'm always wrong about Trump.
That could be the case.
But that's not really the case you made.
You weren't explaining why I'm wrong.
Instead, you went to my motivations.
And you were trying to diagnose my motivations.
And this is what people often seem to do.
In your criticism, you claim that, for me as a conservative, with a mostly conservative audience, criticizing Trump occasionally is something I do for clicks.
And to make people happy.
And to get applause and adulation.
Now that is so hilariously wrong and off base and detached from reality that I can't believe you believe it.
But then again, like I said, a lot of people say this kind of thing.
Anytime I do criticize Trump, I get similar emails to this.
It seems like a lot of people do think this.
And so I will address it.
And I'll try to break this down for you.
I've explained it before.
I'll explain it again.
And this is an area where I have some expertise because I'm in conservative media.
And so I think I can speak to it.
Ever since Trump came on the scene, there have been two approaches to Trump that will get you clicks and make lots of people like you.
No approach is going to make everybody like you.
That's impossible.
So that's off the table.
But in terms of growing an audience, Building your own little amen chorus.
Getting clicks.
Making money.
There are two approaches.
Now, obviously, if you're on the left, there's one approach, and that is to criticize Trump at all hours, in all occasions, over everything.
Give him no credit for anything ever.
If you're on the left, that's what it is.
Very simple.
That's your approach.
Okay.
For conservatives, though, You can take the Jennifer Rubin approach, and that is to become, for all intents and purposes, a full-on Democrat, criticize Trump always, in every situation, make him out to be Hitler, try to get Democrats elected, start supporting Democrats openly and basically campaigning for them.
And the result of this, which is what some conservatives have done, some so-called conservatives, the result is that you're going to be despised by people on the right, but you might get a CNN contributorship.
You're going to grow a nice little audience for yourself.
You're going to be, you could be the token cable news conservative who criticizes Trump.
You can write a book, a book will probably do pretty well.
And it's going to get, you know, you'll get a lot of cable news hits to sell the book and, and all that kind of, you'll get good reviews.
Okay.
So that's, that's one approach.
Have I done that?
Do you think CNN is knocking on my door?
Am I on here spewing Democrat talking points every day?
No, obviously not.
Then there's the other option.
And this is the less risky option.
And it's the one that many, many more conservative media figures have taken.
This has been their approach.
And that is to become full-on Trump groupies.
Stopping very short of deification.
And in some cases, not even stopping that short.
Trump is never wrong, never worthy of criticism.
Everything he does is brilliant.
Everything he does is wonderful.
He's the best president ever.
He's a hero and a pioneer, the savior of America.
America is great now because of him and it will be less great when he's gone.
Literally no compliment is too elevated.
No action or statement by Trump is too absurd or wrong to be defended.
And if you go this way, which a lot of conservatives have, you'll gain a huge audience.
You can write a book about how Trump saved America, and it's guaranteed to be a bestseller.
And Trump will also himself retweet it, and you'll get some credit from that, and so you'll sell books that way.
You'll get the cable news gigs.
You'll speak at CPAC.
You'll be loved and adored by Trump's White House.
And because they pay very close attention to Twitter and to their supporters in the media.
And so it's going to get you close to power that way.
It's guaranteed to make you money.
And it's a very easy approach.
Now, I'm not naming any names, but there are people who are celebrities on the right now.
Who make a lot of money and have a huge audience.
And they do sold-out speaking events, and they sell books, when the only thing they have to offer is effusive praise for Trump.
That's all they have.
That's it.
They've got nothing else.
They have no other insights into anything.
They have no analysis to offer on anything.
They've never said anything interesting ever, ever.
All they ever do is just say, Trump is wonderful.
That's their answer.
And they go around saying Trump is wonderful, and they become celebrities.
They made a lot of money.
There are people like this.
Like I said, not going to name names.
I don't think I need to.
Now, I could have done that, you know, and I could have gone that route.
And if I did, my podcast would be 10 times more popular than it is.
I'd be on TV way more than I am.
I could charge a lot more for speaking gigs, and I'd be making a lot more money, and I'd get a lot more hits on my articles and everything else.
Now, the approach of treating Trump not like the devil or like God Not as always praiseworthy or always blameworthy.
The approach of criticizing him, sometimes harshly, when you think it's warranted, whether you're right or wrong, but when you think it's warranted, and defending him, sometimes passionately, when you think that's warranted, that is the very last approach that someone who is just in it for clicks and praise would take.
If there's a grifter going down that road, he is the dumbest grifter of all time.
He has taken the most difficult path to grifting.
There were much easier things he could have done.
Now, I'm not saying that those of us who take this approach, and I think here on The Daily Wire, this is the approach that we take.
I'm not going to speak for anyone else.
I'm speaking for myself, but I also think that that's a general approach as well.
I'm not saying that we're like heroes or something or martyrs.
We still do well for ourselves and we enjoy our jobs.
In fact, we don't really have jobs, and so we live comfortable lives that way.
So I'm not saying that you should build statues to us and honor us for our heroism.
I'm just saying That if you think that, you know, a conservative media person who on occasion issues a harsh criticism of Trump, if you think he's doing that because he wants clicks, you just have, you really, you honestly have no idea how this works.
When I said what I said about Trump on Friday, I knew I was going to get killed over it.
I knew it.
I knew I was going to get all kinds of angry messages.
People saying, I'm done with you.
I'm not following.
I'm not listening anymore.
There's going to be a lot of very angry comments in the YouTube section about how I'm the worst host in the Daily Wire.
I'm so terrible.
I'm the worst.
I'm awful.
I knew all that stuff would happen.
I would lose subscribers.
I would lose listeners.
And, uh, and, uh, that's, you know, it'd be much easier to just not say it.
And sometimes I think maybe that's the path I should take because it's maybe it's more prudent to just leave it alone and say nothing.
But I can't help myself, because I'm a loudmouth, and so I'm just going to say what I think.
Again, not heroic.
I mean, I'm still here, doing this very easy job, but I also just think you should understand how grifting and click hunting works.
And if I was interested in doing that, if I ever go that route, you'll know it.
Okay, because if I go that route, it's gonna be every single show is gonna become about how wonderful Trump is, or every show will be how evil he is.
If that's what this show turns into, then you'll know that I've sold my soul, and now I've gone full-on grifting.
And if I do that, just, you know, if you see me in public, just slap me in the face, please.
Do me a favor, slap some sensitivity.
Don't really do that, though, please.
That would be assault, and I would call the police.
Alright, we'll leave it there.
Thanks, everybody, for watching.
Thanks for listening.
It's been a very, hopefully, honest show.
We've accomplished that, at least.
Stay safe out there.
Godspeed.
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The Matt Wall Show is produced by Sean Hampton, executive producer Jeremy Boring, supervising producer Mathis Glover, supervising producer Robert Sterling, technical producer Austin Stevens, editor Danny D'Amico, audio mixer Robin Fenderson.
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