Today on the Matt Walsh Show, President Trump has unveiled his plan to re-open the economy. We’ll take a look at it and analyze. Also, an extended Five Headlines today, the Emperor of Michigan claiming that abortion is “life sustaining” and a couple of famous TV doctors getting themselves into hot water for comments they made about the virus. And today it brings me no pleasure to cancel my favorite butter manufacturer. I’ll explain why.
Check out The Cold War: What We Saw, a new podcast written and presented by Bill Whittle at https://bit.ly/2z2j1NB. In Part 1 we peel back the layers of mystery cloaking the Terror state run by the Kremlin, and watch as America takes its first small steps onto the stage of world leadership.
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Today on the Matt Walsh Show, Trump has unveiled his plan to reopen the economy.
We'll take a look at it and we'll analyze.
Also, an extended five headlines today, including the Emperor of Michigan claiming that abortion is life-sustaining, she said, and that's why they have to keep the abortion clinics open even during the shutdown.
And also, a couple of famous TV doctors have got themselves into some hot water over comments they made about the coronavirus.
But I think they're getting a raw deal.
I think I'm gonna defend, I'm gonna defend both of them.
Which I wouldn't normally do with TV doctors, but I will here.
And today it brings me no pleasure at all to cancel my favorite butter manufacturer.
But there's a very good reason for that, and we'll talk about it.
All of that coming up.
But starting with, as I mentioned, President Trump yesterday unveiled his plan for getting the economy going again.
So we're looking at a gradual process.
And for most people, it won't start for a few weeks.
And this really depends on the individual states and governors agreeing to it, which is another big part of this.
Because despite what Trump has famously said about him having total control and power, of course, he doesn't really.
So if they don't want to open, they're not going to.
But here's the general outline.
And I'll read as reported by the AP.
It's in three phases.
And I'm going to read those to you.
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Okay.
Now, three phases of opening the economy.
And we're not going to spend a lot of time on this because I want to get to the news segment.
I've got a lot packed in there that I want to talk about.
But reading from the AP report, it says, in phase one, for instance, the plan recommends strict social distancing for all people in public.
Gatherings larger than 10 people are to be avoided and non-essential travel is discouraged.
In phase two, people are encouraged to maximize social distancing and limit gatherings to no more than 50 people unless precautionary measures are taken.
Travel could resume.
Phase 3 envisions a return to normalcy for most Americans with a focus on identification and isolation of any new infections.
Trump said recent trends in some states were so positive they could almost immediately begin taking the steps laid out in Phase 1.
The guidelines recommend that states pass checkpoints that could look at new cases, testing and surveillance data over the prior 14 days before advancing from one phase to the other.
Governors of both parties make clear they will move at their own pace.
Alright, this raises a question.
That people who are still supporting the shutdowns have not provided a sufficient answer to, as far as I can tell.
The reopening plan, you know, it sounds good to me, except for the timeline.
I think it's way more drawn out than it needs to be.
But the basic idea of being cautious as we open up the economy, we still have social distancing, you know, but we let people get back to their lives and everything.
That's good.
I like that.
And this was always inevitable, right?
It was always inevitable that we would open up the economy at some point, because we're not going to keep it closed forever, and that it was also inevitable that we would do it before there's a vaccine available.
Because a vaccine, if one ever comes, now the way people talk about the vaccine, they talk about it as if it's an absolute definite that there will be one.
There won't necessarily be one.
You know, there are plenty of contagious diseases out there that we don't have vaccines for.
So, that by no means is a guarantee.
But even if one does come, and if you listen to the doctors, they sound pretty confident that there will be one.
So, okay, fine.
But I haven't heard anybody who knows what they're talking about say that they think the vaccine will be ready within a year.
Like, less than 12 months.
Okay, you don't turn around vaccines that quickly.
So we're talking about a year or more.
Possibly a lot more.
So the idea that we would stay locked down that entire time for over a year is obviously insane.
We can't do it.
It's not possible.
Society would be totally destroyed in the meantime.
And besides, people won't do it anyway.
So they're just not going to.
And they shouldn't.
They won't comply.
It's not going to happen.
You cannot keep people locked in their homes for a year.
Now, what that means is...
What we're doing right now, and there are plenty of Trump's critics that are going crazy about this, that he wants to reopen the economy.
Okay, again, this was going to happen.
Did you want to never open it?
I mean, obviously we're going to do this.
And if we're opening before the vaccine, which we have to do, it means you're going to be opening the economy.
When the virus is still out there.
Not just out there, but more widely spread now than it was before the shutdown started.
And you could say that the curve is flattened.
Okay, well, the curve doesn't magically stay flattened forever.
Just because you flatten a curve once... I'm not an epidemiologist, but I'm pretty sure that just because you flatten a curve once doesn't mean that it's going to stay flattened forever.
The virus isn't going to say to itself, okay, they beat us, folks.
Let's pack it in and go home.
It doesn't usually work that way.
Now, viruses can, if you listen to what Dr. Fauci said, he was on Fox News I think last night, and he was asked about SARS, for example, and he said that SARS basically disappeared on its own, okay?
But he's the one saying that he doesn't think that's gonna happen with this.
So it's still gonna be out there without a vaccine when we open the economy.
There are two ways this can go in that case.
Either we open the economy, And people are smart, and precautions are taken, and we still have social distancing, and we still keep vulnerable populations maybe isolated for a time.
I mean, we're not going to throw open the doors of the nursing homes right away.
I don't think anyone is advocating that.
That would be crazy to do.
We use masks in certain situations and in certain industries.
So maybe we do that.
That's one scenario where we do that.
And we avoid the worst case scenario of the virus spreading uncontrollably, many thousands more dying, and so on.
Or, the other possibility...
Is that we don't do that.
That we're not smart and that, you know, people just go right back to exactly how they were living before.
No social distancing.
They don't take precautions.
They don't practice good hygiene.
They're not washing their hands.
They're going to visiting nursing homes.
They're never wearing masks and so on and so on.
And then the virus picks up again and then we have, you know, the worst case scenario with the death toll and everything comes to fruition.
But here's the thing.
If the latter occurs, the bad scenario, Then it would seem that the shutdowns were pointless.
All they did was make us go broke before killing all those people.
All we will have done in that case is put off the bloodbath.
But the bloodbath still happens.
So, I'm not sure what the point was in the delay.
You're not really saving lives.
In this case, the, uh, we're saving lives thing goes out the window.
You didn't save any lives.
All you did was temporarily, and for a very short time, delay those lives being taken.
And for that delay of a month or two, we have to pay with a Great Depression.
And that, to me, just seems crazy.
Now, if the former scenario plays out, which I'm very hopeful that, in fact, this will be what happens, The optimistic scenario, where we open the economy, get people back to work, get people back to their lives, but we still social distance, we take precautions, people are smart about it, you know, and worst case is avoided, and in that scenario, then it would seem that even then, the shutdowns also proved to be pointless, because we could have done that to begin with.
So when I read about phase one and phase two of opening the economy, the first thing I think is, why didn't we just do that to start with?
We could have done that in the beginning.
Again, if it works, when we reopen the economy, then it would have worked to begin with.
And if it doesn't work, then we were always screwed to begin with anyway, unless we stayed shut down until the vaccine, which again, we cannot do.
So either way, it would seem to me, If we're opening up when the virus still exists and there's no vaccine, then the shutdown proves pointless.
And certainly the we're saving lives thing is moot.
This isn't about saving lives, but merely at most delaying the death for a few weeks, which is certainly not the same as preventing it.
Which is why now, and they're not going to admit that this is what they're doing, but now what they're doing is they're moving the goalposts.
We are watching in real time as the goalposts are uprooted and moved all the way across the field.
Because we were originally told we're saving millions of lives and so on.
Well now the reality is, this is an inescapable reality, that we have to open the economy, the virus is still going to be there.
So now they're saying, well, no, okay, maybe we didn't save lives, but we gave ourselves some time, we were able to study the disease, we were able to learn about it, we were able to educate the public.
I mean, even though the government originally was mis-educating the public, telling people, for example, not to wear masks, okay?
But that's what they're saying now.
That's a very different thing from saving millions of lives.
Okay, considering the cost.
We're going to pay with an economic collapse for the sake of delay and learning and educating.
Now, I think learning and educating is a good thing, but is it worth an economic collapse?
That's a very different argument than we're saving millions of lives.
But what we've seen is they've just quietly, you know, the people in this camp have quietly abandoned that and moved on to this other justification.
And yet they'll still continue by saying that if you want to reopen the economy, you're in favor of killing millions of people.
So they still stay with that narrative, but if you listen to the justifications they're given, they've completely shifted the goalposts.
All right, I want to move on to headlines a little bit earlier than usual.
Starting with this, number one, Emperor Whitmer of Michigan was on David Axelrod's podcast.
She's been all over the media, all over all the cable news shows.
She's been on Comedy Central.
Now she's running through all the podcasts.
She's loving the attention.
You can tell she loves it.
And on the show, she was asked about her decision to keep abortion clinics open, even while she closes all these other things down.
And this is the reasoning that she provided.
As we speak, in Texas and a couple of other states, I think Ohio may be another, the state has asked to suspend abortion services as part of this COVID-19 protocol.
This is probably going to go to the Supreme Court.
What is your reaction to that?
You're a governor.
You have to make these decisions as well.
There are other procedures that have been suspended.
You know, we stopped elective surgeries here in Michigan.
And some people have tried to say that that type of a procedure is considered the same.
And that's ridiculous.
You know, a woman's health care, her whole future, her ability to decide if and when
she starts a family is not an election.
It is a fundamental to her life.
It is life-sustaining, and it's something that government should not be getting in the middle of.
Life-sustaining, she says.
So according to the Emperor of Michigan, abortion, that is the direct and intentional destruction of human life, is life-sustaining.
Meanwhile, planting seeds or visiting your relatives is life-threatening.
So directly taking human life is life-sustaining.
Planting a seed in an indoor planter is life-threatening.
Okay.
Number two, Dr. Phil has gotten himself into a lot of trouble for something he said on Fox News a couple days ago.
Lots of backlash over this.
250 people a year die from poverty, and the poverty line is getting such that more and more people are going to fall below that because the economy is crashing around us.
And they're doing that because people are dying from the coronavirus.
I get that, but look, the fact of the matter is, we have people dying, 45,000 people a year die from automobile accidents, 480,000 from cigarettes, 360,000 a year from swimming pools, but we don't shut the country down for that.
But yet we're doing it for this, and the fallout is going to last for years because people's lives are being destroyed.
First of all, Dr. Phil really needs to get himself some professional lighting in his office there,
or his study, because the lighting just makes him look undead.
But anyway, a few other things, more importantly.
As you can imagine, obviously, the backlash he's getting here is intense.
And on the critical side of it, I do have to say that, first of all,
I agree with the critics on a few points.
The first one being 360,000 people a year definitely don't die from swimming pools, okay?
It's not 360,000.
That would be like, that's the entire population of Lexington, Kentucky, drowning in a swimming pool
every single year, and that's not the case.
I think he probably, I haven't looked up the number myself, what he probably did is he added a zero, and so I'm thinking the real number is probably like 3,600 or something like that.
Also, I agree with the people asking why Dr. Phil is being brought on Fox News to talk about the virus in the first place.
You know, we don't really need to hear from TV doctors on this thing at all, and besides, Dr. Phil isn't even that kind of doctor.
He's not a medical doctor.
Now, if you want to talk to him about the psychological effects of the shutdown, that could be interesting.
Maybe they did talk about that.
But to get him pontificating on these other things, it's a little bit embarrassing.
But in his defense, the point he's making here is actually perfectly reasonable.
And it's a point that one side of the discussion is just utterly determined to misinterpret, mischaracterize, misconstrue, The one thing they won't do is actually listen to the point being made and respond to it.
Yes, swimming pools are not the same as a virus.
Swimming pool deaths are not contagious, for one.
And yes, many more people have died from the virus than will die in a swimming pool, assuming the number isn't really 360,000, which I'm pretty sure it isn't.
So yes, that's all true.
That is true.
But that's not the point.
That is not the point of the comparison.
The point is not to compare swimming pools to viruses.
Not the point.
What Dr. Phil is trying to do here is make a point about the concept of shutting stuff down to save lives.
That's all.
And he's correctly saying that, hey, and it's an interesting example when you think about it, because he's saying, hey, if we shut swimming pools down, if we ban them, which we could do, right, there is no doubt that we would save lives.
And not a few.
Probably not 360,000, but we would probably save thousands of lives.
There's no denying that.
Nobody can deny that.
Two things.
We could, every state in the union could pass a law banning swimming pools.
Both private swimming pools and public swimming pools.
That could happen.
And if it did happen, you would save thousands of people who would have otherwise, many of them children, who would have otherwise drowned in those pools.
But we don't do that.
We could do it, and it would save lives.
We don't do it.
Why?
In the case of swimming pools, what we're saying as a society, apparently, is that the death the swimming pools cause is a price worth paying for the fun and enjoyment we get from them.
We are not, another way of putting it, we are not willing to sacrifice the enjoyment we get from pools in order to save thousands of lives.
We don't put it that way.
We would never phrase it that way.
We don't think of it that way.
You know, when you're taking a dip in the pool in the summer, you don't think to yourself, oh, you know, I don't care about those children who are drowning.
You know, you don't think that.
But if you would oppose any measure to ban swimming pools across the board, then you do think that the enjoyment you get and people get from swimming pools, swimming pools is worth the price of people dying.
That is what you think.
That is your argument, whether you say it or not.
And if we say that about swimming pools, is it really so unreasonable to say that we don't want to sacrifice the whole economy and the livelihoods of millions and millions of people for the sake of this threat from the virus?
Even though the threat is much more substantial.
Even though it's contagious where swimming pools are not.
Even though more people are dying.
I get all that.
But the thing that we're sacrificing is also much more significant than a swimming pool.
And that's it.
And it's a good response, and it's a good question anyway.
It's not a definitive sort of debunking of the other side's argument, but it's an interesting ethical question for them to grapple with.
If you're saying that you're in favor of shutting things down to save lives, then why not this?
How about just answer the question?
Rather than getting all smarmy about, oh, you idiot for asking, swimming pools aren't contagious.
Yeah, I know that.
We all understand that.
How about just answer the ethical question, if you can.
Meanwhile, speaking of outrage at TV doctors, Dr. Oz was also on Fox.
So in the span of two days, they had both of these guys on.
And again, why is Fox having all these TV doctors on instead of actual practicing doctors?
That's a good question.
And I'm certainly no fan of Dr. Oz, to put it mildly.
He is a licensed doctor, but he's not a practicing doctor.
And he's also, through his show and over the years, has promoted all kinds of quackery.
So I'm not a fan of Dr. Oz.
But he's suffering his own backlash because he allegedly said
that we should send kids back to school because only 2-3% of the children will die
from the coronavirus if we do that, and that's acceptable to him.
Allegedly, he said that.
And also, according to leftists all over social media, and in the media, this proves that pro-lifers are hypocrites.
Okay, so lots going on here.
Let's first go and take a look at the segment.
Dr. Oz, help us.
Well, first, we need our mojo back.
Let's start with things that are really critical to the nation, where we think we might be able to open without getting into a lot of trouble.
I tell you, schools are a very appetizing opportunity.
I just saw a nice piece in the Lancet arguing that the opening of schools may only cost us 2-3% in terms of total mortality.
And you know, that's any life is a life loss, but to get every child back into a school
where they're safely being educated, being fed, and making the most out of their lives
with a theoretical risk in the backside, it might be a trade-off some folks would consider.
We need to get industry back, supply lines.
I mean, things that we can do without putting the nation at risk.
So a good example of how this is being used by the left is this viral post from a Facebook group
for a group called The Other 98%, which is a socialist far-left organization and website.
Look at their description of what he said.
They said there are 56.6 million children in school in the U.S.
That's 1.1 to 1.6 million dead kids.
This is considered an acceptable trade-off for pro-life Republicans.
Now, as I said, this has been all over social media, this particular talking point of blaming this on pro-lifers and all.
And it just shows you the level of dishonesty that we're dealing with here.
To begin with, Dr. Oz did not say that 2-3% of children dying is acceptable.
He did not say that.
He wasn't talking about children.
He said very clearly, total mortality.
Not child mortality.
The mortality rate for children is vanishingly small, so there's no scenario at all where a million kids die from this.
Even if we intentionally infected every single kid in the country with this, still a million of them would not die.
And I'm not saying that we should do that.
I'm just saying that that could not be the point Dr. Oz was making, because it doesn't work with the mortality rate anyway.
But he said, total mortality.
He's talking about not childhood mortality, total mortality.
That's what he was referring to.
And, second of all, what the hell do pro-lifers have to do with this?
Dr. Oz is pro-abortion.
He had a celebrity on his show not too long ago to brag about her abortion and sell her book about it.
Okay?
He's pro-abortion.
He is not a pro-life Republican.
So a pro-abortion TV doctor says that the uptick in total mortality could be low enough to justify opening up schools, and from the left, that becomes pro-lifers arguing that a million dead kids are okay.
Just think about the dishonesty of that.
It's wrong on every level.
Number three.
And yet more proof that our fundamental human rights are under attack.
The Tonnytown Police Department in Maryland just put out this tweet.
It says, please remember to put pants on before leaving the house to check your mailbox.
You know who you are.
This is your final warning.
Of all the onerous and draconian measures, this has to be the worst, easily.
And it's unconstitutional.
If a man cannot even leave his home pantless to check his mailbox, then, I mean, what's the point of anything anymore?
Although on the bright side, at least they didn't say that we have to wear pants to answer the door for the pizza delivery person, because that would just be certainly going several steps too far.
Number four, the World Health Organization has already given us enough reasons already, really, to call for it to be defunded and even disbanded.
But now, here is the proverbial back-breaking straw.
Who is advocating for restrictions on alcohol?
During the pandemic.
Reading now from the New York Post, it says, the group called for measures to limit the amount of alcohol that can be consumed during lockdowns.
The organization's Office of Alcohol and Illicit Drugs Program said, during the COVID-19 pandemic, we should really ask ourselves what risks we are taking in leaving people under lockdown in their homes with a substance that is harmful both in terms of their health and the effects of their behavior on others, including violence.
You have to like how Leaving people locked in their homes with this dangerous substance.
Talking about us like we're children.
The way that I would talk about, you know, having a little kid in the house when you've got chemicals under the sink and you don't have a child safety lock.
Well, you don't want to do that.
That's how the experts over at WHO see regular adults.
But, second of all, Are we really gonna take away another thing that people enjoy?
They've already removed our sources of enjoyment outside the home, and now they're saying, let's go into the home and make sure nothing is being enjoyed there either?
Can't have people enjoying things during a lockdown.
Can't happen.
Besides, by the way, look, I've had an alcoholic beverage every single day of lockdown, okay?
And I'm proud to report.
And I have not gotten sick.
So, and this is just how you do science, folks.
Scientifically, I can conclude from that correlation that alcohol actually makes you immune from the virus.
That is a scientific conclusion.
Number five.
The day I have long feared has finally arrived.
God help us.
Hollywood is doing an adaptation of one of my favorite books of all time, Brave New World, and they put out a teaser trailer.
Here it is.
Welcome to New London.
You are an essential part of a perfect social body.
Everybody in their place.
Everybody happy now.
Everyone belongs to everyone else.
There's no pain there, John.
No fear.
I want that for you.
A virus enters a cell.
That's how it begins.
You know, I've been watching you people.
You gotta ask yourself, if this place is so perfect, why is it upside down?
We're at the beginning of something, something necessary.
Just aesthetically, that looks nothing like what you imagine when you read the book.
But that's because Hollywood, when it does a dystopian movie, this is actually not a movie, it's a series they're going to do for NBC's streaming service.
But anytime they do a dystopian show or movie, it always looks exactly the same.
It's like they hire the same characters, the same actors, the same wardrobe.
In every dystopian Hollywood movie, they're always wearing the same stuff.
It's like they have one outfit that they keep in a closet somewhere in Hollywood, and then anytime there's a dystopian movie or show, they go and they take it out.
And beyond that, just the whole feel of it.
They're trying to make it into something epic and action-packed, when the story is far more cerebral, subtle, understated even, creepy.
That's maybe the main thing that's missing from this, is that in the book, there's a real element of creepiness that pervades every single page of it.
Even in the scenes that don't seem that creepy, there's just something there, and that's missing from this.
But the bigger problem is that, and this is the irony of it, is that This is modern-day Hollywood making an adaptation of Brave New World, when modern-day Hollywood is one of the things that Brave New World warned us about.
So the book is all about entertainment being used as a means to control the masses, make them passive, make them accepting.
It's all about sex being used as a method to keep people controlled and distracted, which is exactly what Hollywood does.
So it's basically about them.
So I'm a bit skeptical of Hollywood's ability to handle an adaptation like this.
It's kind of like the government funding an adaptation of 1984.
It just doesn't make sense.
Or, I don't know, if SeaWorld did a remake of Jaws.
It just kind of doesn't work.
Six, finally a bonus story here, but I have to play this for you.
It's making the rounds on the internet.
I don't know when this is from.
I assume it's not...
From the last month or so.
Unless this sports league is exempt from social distancing regulations, which I think it should be.
But either way, here's a highlight from a sport that is easily a million times more exciting than soccer.
Watch this.
Final throw of the match.
Get in there!
Yeah!
He played well.
Hit some gigantic shots along the way.
You want me to try to knock that off or not?
Hey!
I'm good.
So what he's gonna try to do is hit this back lip and then cause this bag to go off while the airmail goes in.
One of the most difficult shots in Cornhole.
Dennis.
Goodness!
Oh my word.
What. My. Word.
This wouldn't even be on the mind of an elementary player.
That's the coolest thing I've ever seen, man.
Wow.
Scott Phillips just looked at Damon Dennis and said, that's the coolest thing I've ever seen.
That's extraordinary.
Wow.
I mean, I can pull off that shot, and I have, because I am a cornhole expert myself, but still a very amazing play.
But I don't know if you noticed this.
Here's the real thing, the real reason I'm playing this clip.
I don't know if you noticed this, but the real drama in that clip unfolded in the background.
So I want to go back and we're going to watch this again, but I want you to focus on the guy in the gray shirt in the background.
So let's play this.
Okay, so he makes the shot.
He's celebrating.
Look at the guy in the back standing up.
He's going for the high five.
Look at that.
He's left hanging.
And that's bad because he stands up to go for the high five.
I think the guy, the athlete, and he is an athlete, It looks like he sees him, and that's a power move.
He sees him and just looks the other way.
He says, get out of my face, okay?
You're not even on the court, okay?
You're not a cornhole player like us.
But that's bad, because he's in the front row.
Everybody sees it.
He's on TV.
I don't know what channel he's on, but he's on some channel.
And now it's all over the internet.
There's no coming back from that.
There's no recovery.
All right, let's move on to our daily cancellation.
But before we do, we've been telling you about this new deal we have over the Daily Wire and that I'm excited to tell you about it because you don't want to miss out on this.
When you become a Daily Wire Insider Plus or All Access member, then you will get not one, but two of the highly coveted Leftist Tears tumblers.
And this is a tumbler that is unlike most Beverage vessels.
This is one where if you put a liquid in it...
And you drink from it, it will make you less thirsty.
And that's not something that most cups can say for themselves.
But that's the thing with Daily Wire.
Daily Wire members get many amazing benefits, including, of course, aside from the magnificent and irreplaceable Leftist Tears Tumblr, you also get ad-free website experience, access to all of our live broadcasts and a show library, the full three hours of the Ben Shapiro Show, access to the mailbag, now also exclusive Election Insight op-eds.
And again, there's those two Leftist Tears Tumblrs, not just one, but two.
Okay, so you didn't know what two means.
It means not one, there's two of them, when you become a DailyWire member, a DailyWire Insider Plus or All Access member.
All right, today in our daily cancellation, I never saw this coming, but I have to cancel Butter.
Not all Butter, I would never do that.
I would rather die, frankly, than live a life without Butter.
So I would never, but at least one Butter company, that is Lando Lakes, which prior to this cancellation, has been my favorite Butter brand.
And yes, there is a difference, and I can tell the difference.
But now they're cancelled for removing the Native American woman from their packaging on the basis, apparently the basis, that her presence on the package was somehow inexplicably racist.
Now I want to read a New York Daily News report about this, because the stupidity is on so many levels.
It's like, there are so many layers of idiocy to sift through.
That you really have to listen and focus, okay?
So, New York Daily News says, the image of the Native American woman who has been the face of a popular brand of dairy products is getting the heave-ho.
Lando Lakes is removing the racially charged imagery that has appeared on its container of butter and margarine since 1928.
Okay, let's stop here for a moment.
How is it racially charged to simply have an image of a Native American woman on a package?
To merely depict a person of another race.
How is that racially charged?
It's not like it's a picture of a Native American woman holding aloft the severed scalp of a captured settler or something.
Now, I would admit that such an image would be at least a little bit too aggressive for a box of butter.
I could see something like that maybe on a package of beef jerky or something.
But that's not what this was.
It was literally just a picture of a Native American woman sitting there.
But somehow it's racist.
But wait a second, though.
I thought the whole thing was... I thought we needed representation, right?
Minorities need to be represented, they need to be shown, they need to be depicted more.
But now we need to depict them less?
So I'm confused about that.
Isn't it more racist to take off the image rather than to keep it on?
So what are the rules here exactly?
I don't understand.
Okay, back to the article.
It says, instead the company announced that future packages will showcase photos of real Land O'Lakes farmers and co-op members along with the phrase, proud to be farmer owned.
Okay, wait a second.
So we are replacing the Native American woman with white men, mostly.
And that's the more progressive choice?
Again, I don't get it.
The article says, for years, the image has rankled many of the Native American community.
North Dakota State Representative Ruth Buffalo called the image racist, telling the Grand Forks Herald it goes, quote, listen to this, it goes, hand in hand with human and sex trafficking of our women and girls by depicting native women as sex objects.
Okay, wait a second.
Hold the phone.
Sex trafficking?
That's what you get from your butter package?
What kind of degenerate weirdo goes to the butter aisle of the grocery store, picks up a box of butter, and thinks, wow, this reminds me of sex trafficking?
And how is this woman on the package a sex object?
She's not nude on the box.
Okay, if it was a naked woman, a pornographic image on the box of butter, I would say, all right, fine, you have a point.
It's a fully clothed woman.
Sitting there.
Now, look, I know I don't want to be insensitive.
I know we've been in quarantine for a long time and all of that, and people are lonely.
But if you're looking at a picture on a dairy product and thinking about sex, well, I think that might be a reflection of some underlying issues that you have.
That's all I'm saying.
In any case, that's why Land O'Lakes is cancelled.
And I think Representative Ruth Buffalo is also cancelled.
And also she's banned from the Dairy Isle because Lord knows what she might do there.
Alright, let's go to emails as we wrap things up for the week.
This is from... let's see here.
Ruth, or sorry, not Ruth, not Ruth Buffalo.
This is from Kelsey, says, I just wanted to email you and give you the perspective of a person who would be in a very high-risk group for COVID-19.
I'm a Midwestern woman in my mid-30s with severe allergies, asthma, and stage 2 renal failure, among other pre-existing conditions.
To give an example of severity, for years I have frequently had to wear masks to protect myself.
People at work would call me Bane and eventually stop noticing.
They would just say, oh, that's just her life when asked about my ailments.
Do they really?
You're someone with an illness and you're going to work with a mask and they called you Bane.
Wow.
Given those conditions, I am one of the few people our age who would actually be more likely to have catastrophic outcomes if I caught COVID-19.
I am tired of people trying to use me to justify their draconian orders.
It is not the responsibility of everyone in my state to stay inside for me.
It is my job to protect myself, and it's my family's job to fill the gaps if needed.
People need to take control of their own outcomes and assist neighbors who might be in need.
They do not need people in governor's mansions to act like the parent and order all the kids to be in timeout.
Let those of us who are high-risk work from home and stop using us as an excuse.
Sorry for being long-winded.
I thought my future theocratic dictator might appreciate the take of someone you're protecting at home.
Well, I have to say, Kelsey, this is... I admire your attitude.
You are... You're one of my favorite people already in the country, just based on this alone.
First of all, there's the Bain comment, which you're just taking... You got thick skin.
You're just taking that in stride.
We just got through with a woman who's crying over the picture on a box of butter and then here what you are on the other end of the spectrum.
So I appreciate that.
And yeah, I think your attitude is, is exactly right.
And I have to say, you're not the only person I've heard this from, um, both people who have preexisting conditions.
And also I've heard from a lot of older people who are in, you know, just by the, by the fact of their age, including my own parents, by the way, you know, who are in their sixties and what I've heard, Over and over again is, look, you don't need to shut down the whole economy for me.
I can protect myself.
I can stay home.
I can... Especially when you're talking about older people who are retired and don't need to go to work anyway.
So that's what makes it all the more absurd.
That many of the people we're trying to protect here by shutting the whole economy down, many of the people we're trying to protect by shutting the workforce down aren't even in the workforce in the first place.
They can stay home and they should.
We don't need to shut everybody else down.
So, yeah, I appreciate that attitude.
All right.
And I've also said, you know, when I have advocated for a different plan, You know, opening the economy, but still taking preventive measures.
And I think that, you know, there are going to be people who have pre-existing conditions or are in that vulnerable group, but who do usually need to work.
They're not retired, like yourself, for example, maybe.
I don't know if you... Yeah, you said you have a job.
Okay, so you're somebody in that group.
And I think people like that, we should help.
I think the government should.
I think these stimulus checks we're sending out, it would be a lot easier to help people and to do that if we could be more targeted.
And so we let people who do not have pre-existing conditions, who are young and healthy, and so the risk for them is very, very low when it comes to mortality and even hospitalization.
We let them go to work.
And then we can kind of see what's left, and the people who need to work aren't retired, but can't go because of their pre-existing conditions.
Now it's going to be a lot easier, I would think, to sort of target them, people in your group, and give them help if they need it.
Rather than sending these stimulus checks to everybody, including people who don't need it, who are still working, and all of that.
Okay, this is from Shuki, I think.
S-H-U-K-I.
Hi Matt, I'm a big fan from Melbourne, Australia, but I ardently disagree with your position about racism equals power plus prejudice.
I've heard you dismiss the equation out of hand a few times before, but I think you're missing an insight that's quite helpful to the conservative cause.
I don't see anyone else talking about it, and I don't quite understand why.
The argument from the left normally goes something like this.
1.
Racism equals power plus prejudice.
2.
Black people have no power in America.
3.
Therefore, black people can't be racist.
This is the formulation I hear often from leftists and that you rightly dismiss on your show.
Aside from two being ludicrous, as you pointed out, everyone is getting the equation wrong.
When power equals zero, racism equals prejudice.
It's not power times prejudice, it's plus.
Conservatives should be clinging to that equation, not dismissing it.
It's stating that racism is magnified by power, which we all agree with to an extent.
A racist act by a government like Jim Crow is far more harmful than an individual racist incident.
But inherent in the equation is that in the absence of power, racism is simply prejudice.
So, the exact argument leftists use to deny the possibility of racism by non-white people actually states the exact opposite.
The only thing I find objectionable about it is that it implies that racism equals power when there is no prejudice.
I'm very interested in your thought and thanks for all you do.
Your show a while ago on introversion has changed the way I understand myself and my energy levels and has improved my life immensely.
Okay, well, I think I understand what you're saying, but I don't agree because the issue here is one of definitions, right?
The left wants to redefine racism, make the matter far more complicated than it really is, as a means of absolving non-white races of racism while laying the blame entirely at the feet of white people.
But I think making it complicated, as I said, is the main thing for the left.
They love to do this.
They love to take very simple and straightforward, easy-to-understand concepts and make them artificially complex and ambiguous and impossible to understand.
Because then it allows them to position themselves as the arbiters and experts on this topic.
And they can say to the average Joe Schmo, who claims to not be racist, they can say, oh, you think you're not racist?
You don't even know what racism is!
Okay?
It's too complicated for someone dumb like you to understand.
I went to college and studied racism.
I know.
Another obvious example of when they do this would be with the issue of gender.
Any common sense person knows that, okay, somebody has a penis that makes them a man.
Pretty simple.
But the left wants to come in and of course, as I've covered many times, they don't, it's not like they have a new definition for man and woman.
They have no definition.
All they've tried to do is just complicate it and muddy the waters and convince you.
So they don't need to convince you of their new definition because they don't have one.
They just need to convince you that the matter is far too complicated for you to really understand anyway.
And so just, so just let them handle it.
Okay.
Go with whatever they have to say because you don't understand it.
That's the move.
That's the ploy.
But, just like sex is actually not complicated, this is not complicated either.
And racism and prejudice are not two distinct things.
Prejudice is simply having a preconceived, often negative, preconceived notion about something or someone.
That's what prejudice is.
Now, and it's not always prejudice against a person.
It could be prejudice against, it could have all kinds of different prejudices.
Racism is the belief that a certain race is inferior to your own in some way.
So, racism is racial prejudice.
It is a form of prejudice.
It's not two different things.
And you notice how power has nothing at all to do with it.
It is totally irrelevant.
Yes, a powerful racist is more dangerous than a racist with no power, but that doesn't make the powerful racist more racist.
He's just as racist.
He's equal in racism.
He just has a greater ability to act in harmful ways based on his racism.
But that's all racism is.
Very, very simple.
If you think that a certain race is inferior to your own, you're racist.
And if you don't think that, you're not racist.
And yes, that means that you could even have a negative attitude, or you could believe negative stereotypes about groups of people and not actually be racist.
You could be rude, it could be insulting, there are other negative words we could use to describe you, but if you don't think that this other race is actually inferior to your own, then you're not racist, because that's what racism is.
It's a very simple concept.
Now, the other thing about trying to make it complicated is that we also know the left, not only do they say that only white people can be racist, what they also say, even more absurdly, they say that all whites actually are racist inherently.
Which can only make sense to you if you believe that racism is, again, this ambiguous, complicated, complex thing, when it's not.
If you understand that racism is simply the belief that a race of people is inferior to your own, you realize that the idea of it being inherent, based on the color of your skin, is nonsense.
No, people don't inherently believe that other races are inferior to their own.
They don't.
You have to be conditioned to believe that.
That's a belief that has to be instilled in you by the culture, by your parents, by your family.
I think kids, if you leave kids to their own devices, especially in modern America, look, in modern America, in many places of the country, in many areas in the country, where there's a lot of racial diversity, and I can think about my own experience growing up, you know, going to public school on the East Coast, living in a very racially diverse community, And so from the age of four or five, I'm in school, and I'm in school with kids of all different races, and it just never occurred to me to see it as anything strange or weird.
I mean, obviously, I noticed that people look differently from me, but it would never have even occurred to me to be racist or to think that they're inferior because they look different or because they have a different color skin.
You don't think of it.
Most kids in a modern kindergarten or first grade class, you know, they're friends with all different kids of different races and it's fine.
There's no problem.
It's only society has to come in and complicate it and start dividing, which our society actually does do that.
Now, it's not socially acceptable anymore to come out and to, you know, tell kids that certain races are inferior, so you don't have that anymore.
But you do have race baiters and race hustlers in the media and in academia and all over the place who are trying to divide and make different races suspicious of one another and sow this kind of discord and contempt and suspicion and everything else.
Which is a damn shame.
Because if you just let it alone and let people live, there wouldn't be an issue.
I think about that famous clip from Morgan Freeman.
Where he was asked on, I think it was 2020, you know, years ago, and he said, what do we do about racism?
How do we solve racism?
And his answer was, stop talking about it.
Just shut up about it and let people live and it'll be fine.
Now that wasn't always the solution, but nowadays it could be.
All right, let's leave it there.
All right.
Hope you guys have a great weekend.
Find a way to get out of the house at least, if you can do so without getting arrested.
And I'll talk to you next week.
Godspeed.
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The Matt Wall Show is produced by Sean Hampton, executive producer Jeremy Boring.
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