Ep. 528 - When The Media Says An "Unarmed" Man Was Shot By Cops, It's Usually A Lie
Today on the Matt Walsh Show, we are told that many unarmed black men are being murdered by police. But this claim is extremely misleading on multiple levels. I’ll give you the real facts today. Also Five Headlines including Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez having a temper tantrum on the House floor because someone called her a mean name. And in our Daily Cancellation we’ll cancel the football team in Washington. They got rid of “Redskins” but replaced it with a name even more offensive than the old one.
Get your copy of "How to Destroy America in Three Easy Steps" here: https://utm.io/uHjZ
If you like The Matt Walsh Show, become a member TODAY with promo code: WALSH and enjoy the exclusive benefits for 10% off at https://www.dailywire.com/walsh
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Today on the Matt Wall Show, we're told, of course, that many unarmed black men have been killed by police, are killed by police every year.
This is a claim that is extremely misleading on multiple levels, and today I want to give you the real facts about that claim.
Also, five headlines, including Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez having a temper tantrum on the House floor because someone called her a mean name.
She decided to take quite a bit of time to talk about the mean name she was called.
And in our daily cancellation, we're going to cancel the football team in Washington As they are now known.
They got rid of Redskins because it was offensive, but they replaced it with a name that is even more offensive.
And that's why they're cancelled.
We'll talk about all that coming up.
You know, I've already made the case that systemic racism in law enforcement is a myth.
The claim that racist police are prowling the streets searching for black men to murder is absurd on its face, and then even absurder when you look at the facts.
It's now, I think, been pretty well publicized, at least in some corners, that despite all the panicking and rioting over race-based police brutality, allegedly race-based police brutality, only a very small number of unarmed black men are killed by police each year.
But an even closer look at the data and a study of each quote-unquote unarmed killing reveals that The real number of unjustified police shootings of actual unarmed people, black, white, or any other race, is much, much smaller than it even first appears.
Now, first of all, because this is important to put everything into perspective, I think it's helpful to begin with, and I haven't seen enough people do this.
Let's begin with the overall number of arrests.
Now, according to the DOJ, they do keep track of this information.
And from what I found on the website, they don't have the exact information for 2019 yet, but you can go back over the last, I don't know, 20 years or more and look at it.
So, based on that, you look at an average, you can see that police make about 10 million arrests every year of black, white, All races.
As a rough average, 7 million whites and 3 million blacks are arrested, or I suppose I should say, because there are going to be repeat offenders, so there are 7 million arrests of white suspects and 3 million arrests of black suspects.
Now, black apparently includes Hispanics, by the way, just by the way they tabulate this information on the DOJ website.
And that's how you get most of the 10 million figures.
Now, out of that number, Last year, 25 unarmed whites were killed by police, compared to 14 unarmed blacks killed by police, according to the Washington Post database of police shootings.
This means that about 0.0004% of all blacks arrested were killed while unarmed.
And that percentage for whites is pretty much exactly the same.
It's definitely comparable.
In total, you've got a thousand people who were shot and killed by police in 2019, the vast majority of whom were armed.
But still, that's a mere 0.01% of all arrests that lead to the killing of the suspect.
Now, the numbers aren't going to be exactly the same every year, of course.
For example, the Post says that 22 unarmed blacks were killed in 2017, compared with 31 whites, but the percentage doesn't change very much.
So that .0004% is basically where we're at every year.
Now, also, we should acknowledge that the numbers vary depending on what source you use.
Not everybody's going to say the same thing.
USA Today, for example, cites a crowdsourced database that has 25 unarmed black killings in 2019.
The post says 14, this database says 25.
However, you look at the individual cases, which is what you have to do, and most people don't have the time or don't take the time to do it.
This is one of the reasons why the media so easily can mislead us.
But you take that 25 number, you look at the actual cases, which I did, and you find that they count as police shootings, any shooting involving a police officer, on or off duty.
Violence stemming from domestic disputes or, you know, an off-duty bar fight between two guys, this is going to make it onto their list.
I think that clearly is not how you determine whether there is a systemic problem of racial bias in law enforcement.
We need to look at cases of uniformed police officers shooting unarmed black people in the line of duty.
We know that number is already quite low.
But a closer inspection of the actual cases shows that it's even lower than we think.
And this is really important because it reveals that the whole category of unarmed shootings is extremely misleading, and I think intentionally so.
Now, I read into all 14 cases included in the post-2019 database.
A few of those cases were straightforwardly unjustified.
Atatiana Jefferson was shot while sitting inside her mother's home.
We talked about this case, actually, when it happened a few months ago.
And the officers were responding to a call from a neighbor who was concerned that there might have been a break-in at the house.
The door was left open.
It was the middle of the night.
I'm not sure if the neighbor saw anything else that made them think there was a break-in, but Officer Aaron Dean shows up.
He's peering into the windows in the dark, spots Jefferson, screams for her to show her hands, doesn't identify himself as a police officer, so who knows what she's thinking.
She could think that this is, you know, who knows who it is.
Just someone outside of her window with a gun telling her to put her hands up.
She doesn't respond right away, so he shoots her.
Now, Dean has been charged with murder.
It's a, as I think as well, he should be.
It's a horrible case.
It's outrageous behavior by Dean.
But it hardly amounts to systemic racism all on its own.
And there's no reason to think that this is even an isolated case of racism.
There's no reason to think that Dean did this because he's racist.
It seems that he could hardly even see who he was shooting, which makes his behavior all the more egregious, because he couldn't even see what he was doing and he's still shooting into a house.
But also, it means probably not racism.
Officer Carmen D'Cruz in Texas fatally shot a man named Michael Dean.
Body cam footage apparently shows that D'Cruz accidentally discharged his firearm while he was trying to confiscate Dean's car keys during a traffic stop.
Stopped him, told him to turn the car off.
I guess he was hesitant to turn it off, so then D'Cruz tried to reach in.
He had his gun drawn, tried to reach in, take the car keys, and accidentally discharged.
The weapon and killed Dean.
And he's being charged with manslaughter for that.
Both of these cases are clearly unjustified.
These are obviously people who should not have been killed.
It's a horrible tragedy.
Both of the officers receive criminal charges appropriate for the offense.
Most of the rest of the cases, however... So those are the pretty clear-cut ones.
And there are two.
Two.
Okay?
The entire year.
Out of three million arrests, two that were clearly absolutely unjustified.
And then when you go on from there, you get to some cases that are questionable but not quite as clear cut.
Christopher Whitfield was shot allegedly during a scuffle with police after trying to steal from a convenience store.
The sheriff's office claims that the shooting was accidental.
Police came, they chased him, there was a scuffle, and then Whitfield was killed.
A grand jury cleared the officer of any criminal wrongdoing in that case.
Joseph Richardson of Louisiana was shot by Officer Vance Matrenga Jr.
during a no-knock raid at a motel, a Budget 7 motel.
This was a drug raid.
They come in.
Richardson was unarmed.
He was shot in the back of the head.
Deputies on the scene said that Richardson turned and reached for his waistband.
The officer in that case was not charged with a crime.
Officer Giovanni Crespo was indicted for aggravated manslaughter for shooting Gregory Griffin
during a car chase.
Crespo says that he thought Griffin pointed a gun at him, Body cam footage shows Crespo actually jump out of his police cruiser on multiple occasions.
Somebody else was driving, his partner was driving, and fire multiple shots at the fleeing vehicle, killing Griffin eventually.
Officer Sung Kim shot and killed Jimmy Atchison while trying to arrest him for allegedly stealing a cell phone at gunpoint.
Atchison was backed into a broom closet and then came out and was killed.
Okay.
So then we have six shootings.
They range from outrageous, the Jefferson shooting, to questionable.
But these are still only six out of the approximately three million black suspects arrested in 2019.
Half of the officers have been charged with crimes, so it's not as though cops are given legal license to kill on a whim, despite what we're told.
That's not the case.
When you've got a clear-cut case of a cop murdering somebody or committing manslaughter, most of the time, there's gonna be criminal charges.
Only one of these cases, though, is murder.
Two might be manslaughter.
You could potentially make an argument for manslaughter in the other three cases, though the officers weren't charged or were cleared.
By comparison, 48 police officers were victims of felony murder in the line of duty during the same year.
So you've got one felony murder of an unarmed black person and 48 felony murders of police officers in the line of duty.
And at any rate, whatever else you say about those six cases, in none of these cases is there any reason whatsoever to suspect racial bias.
The last officer I mentioned wasn't even white.
But there were 14 unarmed shootings, remember?
So far, we have accounted for six.
What about the other eight?
This is where the unarmed designation really confuses matters, and this is the important part.
We'll talk about it in just a second, but first, the show today brought to you by Rock Auto.
You know, there's no point in wasting hours of your time getting into your car, going to a Auto parts store. You don't need to do it. It's a waste of
time There's no reason for rock out of calm is just so much
easier than walking into a store And then you know you're gonna get questioned
You're gonna have to have quick answers for all of your questions
You're not gonna have time to look stuff up if you need to without being embarrassed
Anyway, you have to ask this is why you have access to rock out of calm at your desk or in your pocket
you just pull it out pick it up and and
You could solve all your problems that way with your car rock out of calm always offers the lowest prices possible
rather than changing prices Based on what the market will bear they're gonna give you
the lowest price They possibly can and you know, you can trust them because
rock out of calm is a family business They've been doing this for a long time for 20 years
And you could go to rock out of calm to shop for auto and body parts from hundreds of manufacturers
The rock out of calm catalog is unique Very easy to navigate.
You could quickly see all the parts available for your car or vehicle.
And you could choose the brands, the specifications, whatever you have.
You can do it all there.
Easy.
Affordable.
Great selection.
What more can you ask for?
Go to rockauto.com right now.
See all the parts available for your car or truck.
Write Walsh in their How Did You Hear About Us box so that they know that we sent you.
Okay.
14 unarmed shootings.
We talked about 6 so far.
There are 8 more.
And this is where, this is the really important part because it shows that when you hear unarmed person killed by police, many times, perhaps most of the time, at least in 2019 this was the case, most of the time the person is not really unarmed.
Melvin Watkins was shot by a sheriff's deputy after Watkins' family called 911 to report that he'd become violent and they feared for their safety.
Watkins' family was gathered in a home for some sort of party, some sort of gathering.
They didn't want Watkins to come because they knew he was volatile and violent, apparently.
From what I understand, he tried to get into the house with a screwdriver.
They called police.
Police came.
Officers arrived on the scene.
At that point, Watkins allegedly tried to run them over with his car and was shot.
Multiple witnesses and video support this version of events.
Knoxville police officer Dylan Williams was cleared of any wrongdoing by the DA after fatally shooting Chinera Feap last year.
Five eyewitnesses, plus video evidence and dash cam footage, confirmed that Feap assaulted Williams, choked him, grabbed his taser and used it on him, and then was killed.
Ryan Twyman was shot by police attempting to arrest him for possession of illegal firearms in June of 2019.
There's security camera footage of this case too.
It shows Twyman.
They go to his apartment complex.
They're looking to arrest him.
Illegal firearms.
He's in his car trying to get away.
They catch him in the parking pad.
They're trying to get him out of the car and he starts to drive while one of the officers has his door open and is trapped behind his door.
So he's driving and the officer is backing up quickly because he's trapped behind the door.
The other officer on the scene, fearing for his partner's life, opens fire and kills Twyman.
Kevin Pudlick.
Killed by police during a car chase.
The driver of the car that Pudlik was in, Pudlik wasn't driving.
His friend or cohort, Christopher Lee Calvin, was driving.
Nearly pinned an officer between the car and a concrete wall at one point.
At another point, he was gunning for an officer, and the other police officers on the scene believed that he was intentionally trying to hit them.
Cops on the scene finally opened fire, and Pudlik was killed.
Christopher Lee Calvin is the one being charged with Publix death, not the police officer.
Isaiah Lewis, who the media would call an unarmed black teenager, shot by police.
Only in this case, he pounced on an officer and knocked him unconscious.
And at that point, was shot by another police officer.
Marcus McVeigh, called by a local news article that I found, described him as a renowned criminal.
And I guess because he had a bevy of criminal offenses, you know, a rap sheet as long as the Bible, including assault on a public servant.
He'd committed many crimes in the past.
He was killed by police after assaulting an officer during a foot chase.
They tried to pull him over.
He got out of the car, ran into the woods.
He was pursued.
When the officer followed him into the woods, he assaulted the officer and was shot in the struggle.
Marzous Scott can be seen on body cam footage attacking a female police officer who was trying to arrest him after he assaulted a store clerk moments before.
The footage clearly shows that the officer was knocked to the ground by Scott and that she tried to use a taser but that didn't stop him and she had no choice but to resort to her firearm.
Finally, Kevin Mason of Baltimore ...was shot by police responding to a domestic violence call.
A woman in the house feared for her safety because of Kevin Mason called the police.
The police show up.
Mason sent dogs after the officers.
When that didn't scare them off, Mason called 9-1-1, threatened to blast them, quote-unquote, and, quote, kill every last one of them, talking about the police officers.
Then when Mason emerged from his house a second time, an officer justifiably believing Mason to be a lethal threat because he said he was a lethal threat opened fire.
They didn't find any firearm in the house when they looked later, whose fault is that?
You called 911 and say, I'm gonna kill all these police officers and then come out of your house, you're gonna get shot.
Now, so those are the other eight.
No reasonable person could describe, no reasonable person could describe any of the eight cases I just listed as cold-blooded murder, much less racist murder.
These were violent criminals who were shot, in most cases, while in the act of physically attacking and threatening the lives of police officers.
None of them were truly unarmed, either.
Some of them were using cars, one used a dog, others used their hands and nearly succeeded in arming themselves with the officer's weapon.
This is what the media and BLM activists mean when they scream about the epidemic of unarmed black men being killed by police.
They mean that a very tiny fraction of black people arrested by police are killed in the process.
A very tiny fraction.
And that an even tinier fraction are unarmed at the time.
And that an even tinier fraction of that fraction of the fraction actually had no weapon of any kind.
Because the majority of the unarmed did in fact have weapons.
It's just they don't count as weapons in the official reports.
And the media don't count them as weapons either.
Now, when you look at it like that, it doesn't seem like there's much of an epidemic here at all, does there?
In fact, there are a couple other things that you think when you read about these cases.
Number one, I think, again, if you're reasonable, which is a big if these days, you come away very impressed with police officers for the incredible restraint they so often She's trying to apprehend a man who's violent and a danger to others.
He assaulted a store clerk.
The clerk called the police.
is a perfect example of this.
She's trying to apprehend the man who's violent and a danger to others.
He assaulted a store clerk.
The clerk called the police.
What else are you going to do?
The officer is like pleading with this man to just listen.
She does everything she possibly can, putting her own life on the line to preserve this man's life.
She does not run up hoping to kill somebody.
This is not how most police officers operate.
She only finally resorted to lethal force because she had no choice.
Because the violent criminal gave her no choice.
He was determined.
Either he's gonna die or she is.
That's the way he was looking at this.
Why?
I mean, what was the point?
He assaulted a store clerk for no reason.
Why did he have to do that?
And then the police show up.
I mean, I think that should be a felony, but these days, he probably wouldn't even have been charged with a felony for it.
He probably would have gotten off with a misdemeanor.
All he had to do was cooperate.
He did commit a crime, after all.
It's not like it's unreasonable for the police to show up and try to arrest him.
What else are you going to do?
He assaulted someone.
Are they going to say, oh, you're fine, go for it?
This man did everything in his power to get himself killed.
And this, as you can see, is pretty common in these cases.
And most of the time, the officers do everything they can.
The other officer, the one, I think it was the Isaiah Lewis case, that officer there Was so reluctant to use lethal force that he got knocked unconscious.
Thank God there was another officer nearby to save his life.
I mean, what do you think Isaiah Lewis is gonna do after he knocks the police officer unconscious?
What do you think he's gonna do next?
You know, put a blanket on him and tell him night-night?
No.
He's gonna kill him.
But that officer, so reluctant to use lethal force, doing everything he can that he ends up getting knocked unconscious in the process.
I mean, he should have used lethal force earlier, didn't he?
So that's what you take away from this, is actually being very impressed with the restraint that police officers usually show.
And when there's a police officer who is way on the other end of the spectrum, who has an outrageous lack of restraint, that is pretty damn rare.
And in those cases, there's universal condemnation, and those officers end up going to jail most of the time.
Just like the officer that shot Jefferson is probably going to go to jail, as well he should.
One other quick thing that you take from this is when you hear about these cases, what do you think is going to happen when we defund police?
Who's responding to these calls?
In these calls, the eight that I just read especially, most of the time these are relatively run-of-the-mill They begin as run-of-the-mill calls for police, you know, a domestic violence thing.
Unfortunately, that's run-of-the-mill.
Shouldn't be, but it is.
Trying to pull someone over for a traffic violation.
You know, just responding to an assault or a scuffle or something like that.
Just run-of-the-mill.
Cops show up.
Turns into a deadly encounter just like that.
And not because the cops want it to, but because the criminal, the violent criminal, has decided to take it there.
What are you gonna do if they're not, what are you gonna have, social workers?
What's gonna happen?
All those officers, in the Isaiah Lewis case, let's say those were social workers responding and not officers.
Rather than having one dead violent criminal by the name of Isaiah Lewis, we'd probably have about four or five dead social workers.
So, when you look at the actual facts, you see that the leftist narrative across the board, Utterly falls apart, which is why we have to look at the facts and not take their word for it.
Okay, now we're going to go to Five Headlines.
Five Headlines sponsored by Benham Brothers.
Learn how to own a business without it owning you.
Get a 15% discount on the Benham Brothers new course, Expert Ownership at www.benhambrothers.com.
So Representative Yoho of Florida a few days ago got into a bit of a heated exchange
with Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez outside of the Capitol building in Washington.
And in this exchange, Yoho was mad at Cortez specifically for some of the stuff she's been saying
about the rioting and chaos and the violence and how she tried to claim that all this is happening
because people just want bread for their families.
And he said, Yoho said to Cortez, you're out of your freaking mind, which you could see
why he would think that.
And then she called him rude, and as they left, parted ways, Yoho said, of Cortez, but I don't think to her, but said it sort of under his breath as he was walking away, effing B-word.
Only he didn't say effing B-word, he said the words himself.
That was overheard by a reporter, so you may not believe it, but we should note that Yoho was asked about it, and his response was no comment.
And then the guy he was walking with, another lawmaker, was asked what happened.
And here was his response.
He said, I was actually thinking as I was walking down the stairs, I was thinking about some issues I've got in my district that need to get done.
I don't know what their topic was.
There's always a topic, isn't there?
That's a good, that's a good friend, folks.
That's, uh, he ain't snitching.
Um, I just love that his excuse is that he didn't hear the argument because he was just so immersed in thinking about his district and wanting to help the folks back home.
Um, you know, totally believable.
Of course.
Great stuff there.
Now, This is all a setup to tell you about the only part of this that concerns anyone, really.
Cortez decided to spend time on the floor of the house, pandemic going on, chaos in the street, country in turmoil.
She decides to waste taxpayers' time on the house floor complaining about the mean words that someone said to her.
Here she is.
I walked back out, and there were reporters in the front of the Capitol.
And in front of reporters, Representative Yoho called me, and I quote, a f***ing b****.
These are the words that Representative Yoho levied against a congresswoman.
The congresswoman that not only represents New York's 14th congressional district, but every congresswoman and every woman in this country.
Because all of us have had to deal with this in some form, some way, some shape, at some point in our lives.
This issue And that went on for almost 10 minutes.
Get over it.
He said a bad word.
This isn't 9-11, okay?
culture of lack of impunity, of accepting of violence and violent language against women,
and an entire structure of power that supports that.
And that went on for almost 10 minutes.
Get over it.
He said a bad word.
This isn't 9-11, okay?
It's not a national tragedy.
We don't need your 10-minute speech about someone saying something mean to you.
Thank you.
This doesn't concern anyone but the two people involved.
No one else cares!
Why should anyone else care?
What possible relevance is it?
You guys got into an argument, he called you a bad word.
Okay, you know, sorry.
What do you want?
And no, Yoho was not using abusive language towards women.
You know, she's trying to turn this into an attack on all women.
It's not an attack on all women.
He wasn't abusing, he wasn't using abusive language towards women.
He was using abusive language towards one particular woman.
It was an attack on one, it was a personal attack on one particular individual.
It was not an attack on all women everywhere.
A personal attack.
And that's relevant because personal attack means deal with it on your own time.
Deal with it on your personal time.
Go talk to him and tell him that you hurt your feelings.
That's fine.
It's not something that everyone needs to hear about.
I mean, this whole thing that we get, especially from liberal women, anytime they're insulted or attacked, this is an assault on all women everywhere.
No, it's not.
He just doesn't like you.
I'm not defending what he said.
I'm not saying it was the right thing to say.
But this concerns you and him.
You're not a representative for all women everywhere.
In fact, I'm guessing that well over half the women in the country, or at least half, would say that you don't quite represent them or their values.
I feel pretty safe saying that there are millions of women in this country who do not consider Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to be a representative of them.
And then of course, you know, during this soliloquy, she proceeds to act as though, you know, this never happens to men.
You know, this happens to women far too often.
Yeah, okay.
Men get insulted too all the time, okay?
Men get called sexually degrading names also.
And, you know, it's even actually more acceptable in society to do that.
So, you know, it really happens to everybody.
Not a huge deal.
Deal with it on your own time.
Number two, President Trump at a press conference yesterday said something that people, of course, are upset about, as usual, but tell me what's wrong with this.
Take a listen.
If schools do not reopen, the funding should go to parents to send their child to public, private, charter, religious, or homeschool of their choice.
The key word being choice.
Yeah, you want to talk about defunding things.
Well, if it's, if There is a certain service that the government refuses to render, then we shouldn't be funding that service.
Money shouldn't be going... I shouldn't be paying for a service that the government will not provide.
Now, as a homeschool parent and a taxpayer, I'm already paying for educational services that I don't use, which is bad enough as it is.
But if it's a service that no one can use because the government refuses to fully provide it, then it shouldn't be funded.
We shouldn't have to pay for it.
I think that's pretty simple.
Number three, a horrible case in Florida.
Three friends out on a fishing trip were murdered by a man named Tony Wiggins.
Tony T.J.
Wiggins.
Wiggins had two accomplices, but it seems that he's the one who Lead this thing and pulled the trigger.
Now, this is pretty chilling.
There's CCTV footage, not of the murder, but of what happened 10 minutes before.
Okay?
Damien Tillman, one of the victims, along with two of his friends, were killed on a fishing trip.
Ran into a convenience store on the way to, you know, to their fishing spot.
Pick up a few things.
And there, Tillman ran into Wiggins.
And they had an exchange, and you would think that, okay, this is going to be an exchange of them having an argument or some kind of fight or something, and then that led to violence.
But no, that's actually not what happened.
Watch this.
You can't hear what they're saying, but you can see the exchange there.
So you see, this appears to be, and I believe the store clerk confirmed, just a friendly conversation they're having.
They had a friendly exchange, no argument, completely polite and normal, or so it seemed.
But as Tillman left, Wiggins and his brother and his girlfriend followed them in their truck, tracked them to a spot in the woods where they were going, and then murdered all three of them.
Apparently there was some story Wiggins had about how one of the friends had stolen a car engine or something like that.
That was the pretense for the murder.
I don't know if there's any evidence.
That any theft occurred, not that it matters at all.
This was cold-blooded execution for no real reason.
Now here's the point to take home from this, aside from how evil and tragic it is.
Wiggins had 230 felonies.
No, that's not... I'm not misreading that.
230 felonies on his record.
15 convictions, had already been to state prison twice.
And many of his convictions were for violent crimes.
These weren't all drug crimes, okay?
These were assaulting police officers, assaulting the elderly, among others.
And yet, here is this scumbag, this evil, satanic filth, out again, on bond, I believe, and he murders three people.
So, you know, I say again, we talk about criminal justice reform.
Oh, we need criminal justice reform.
We do need criminal justice reform, but that is reform that keeps dangerous criminals in prison.
That's the real problem we have with our justice system.
It's not that a bunch of innocent people are going to jail.
Now, that does happen, but it's not happening on a large scale.
I'll tell you what is happening on a large scale.
Dangerous parasites Are sent to prison because they commit, you know, violent crime.
And then are let go.
And then they commit another crime.
Let go again.
Commit another crime.
They just keep, they keep filtering them back into the community until eventually they do something so horrible that now the system has no choice but to keep them behind bars.
You shouldn't get 15 chances, okay?
Number four, America Magazine, which is a Jesuit publication, has this article today, an article which proves my point that all Jesuits should be excommunicated.
The article is titled, The Crucifixion of George Floyd.
Yes, Crucifixion of George Floyd.
Let me give you a little sampling, a little morsel of this.
It says the parallels between particulars of the crucifixion most familiar to us as reported in the New Testament and that of George Floyd are haunting.
No, it's not haunting, because there are no parallels.
There are zero parallels.
But let's see the argument they make here.
It should be stressed at the outset that in 33 AD, crucifixion was not reserved for those who claimed to be the Son of God or the King of the Jews, or who posed other threats to the civil authority.
It was the great show-no-mercy lesson to thieves, murderers, and other criminals the authorities wanted to punish in the most degrading way possible.
Jesus was laid on the ground and nailed to the cross.
George Floyd was laid down on the ground and pinned by Derek Chauvin's knee on his neck.
As time passed, Jesus suffered from thirst.
George Floyd asked for water.
Both Jesus and George Floyd were repeatedly mocked by their killers.
Jesus cried out to his father, and George Floyd called for his mother.
Shortly before he lost consciousness, he said, I'm through, I'm through.
In other words, it is finished.
The story of Christ's crucifixion was not written down for almost half a century.
In our time, to a great credit, the crucifixion of George Floyd was instantaneously touched and galvanized the nation and beyond.
Daddy changed the world, his six-year-old daughter said.
At the funeral service for George Floyd in Houston, Texas, Sam Cooke's great civil rights anthem, A Change Is Gonna Come, rang out.
Seeing it through, all the way, whatever it takes, now falls to us, the living.
I mean, this is... What else can be said about this kind of thing that I haven't already said?
Literal canonization and more of George Floyd.
And by the way, I know I have to, I shouldn't have to tell, this is, you know, supposed to be a Christian magazine, but these are Jesuits, so I do have to say that George Floyd, when he said, I'm through, I'm through, yeah, he meant, I'm gonna die.
When Jesus said, it is finished, He meant his saving act was finished.
So this had a much deeper meaning than just, I'm gonna die.
And many other differences as well.
That's just one difference between the crucifixion of Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior, and the death of George Floyd, which I think has been well established by now, is a sad thing and unjust.
And fortunately, it's in the courts now.
It's in the hands of the court, as it should be.
All of that is true.
It's also true that George Floyd was not a good man, to put it mildly.
This was a man who forced his way into a woman's home, robbed her at gunpoint, in her home, in front of her child.
An unspeakably violent, Evil act George Floyd committed, among other crimes.
Does that mean that he deserved to die?
No.
Okay?
But it does mean that we should be very reluctant to canonize him or turn him into Jesus Christ or, you know, to memorialize him in a way that celebrates the man he was, because there's not a lot to celebrate there.
So it requires a certain restraint that I think a lot of people these days are not capable of.
If you're capable of just saying, he didn't deserve to die, this was a terrible thing, and you want to leave it at that?
Fine.
Agreed.
You start going into this nonsense?
Okay, now we have an issue, and now it becomes necessary to bring up that, oh, by the way, this was a man who committed a horrible act against a woman.
Again, among other crimes.
Number five, finally a swarm of bees descended onto a beach in New Jersey.
This is bee news, you know I have to hit it.
The bees gathered on the back of a chair, on a beach towel, so there's the picture of it.
And here's a local news report about this incident, watch.
New video showing a different kind of beach overcrowding in Cape May.
That big brown blob on the back of the beach chair is a swarm of bees.
This stinging insect stormed the sand yesterday.
They were swarming around until they landed on a towel.
A beekeeper wrapped them in a towel, placed them in a box, and word is around there that the bees took flight when somebody knocked the queen out of her nearby nest.
So you mess with a queen, you mess with them all.
That's right.
And you see there, that's why when we talk about first responders, we should be talking about beekeepers too.
I've always said this.
My community.
We are also first responders.
We are the first people who are called in any bee-related emergency.
And we save many lives every year.
Thousands of lives.
Mostly bee lives, but still, lives are lives.
Alright?
We're all equal.
I believe that.
And can I just say, also, there's some misinformation in that report.
They didn't swarm because someone knocked the queen out of a nest, alright?
Bees swarm when the original hive is overcrowded, so the queen will take about, you know, a third or so of the workers.
They go off to start a new hive.
They were looking for a new home.
That's why they were there, okay?
They had every right to be there, just like anybody else on the beach.
The bees at the old hive will appoint a new queen, and actually they select a few larvae, and they convert them into queens by feeding them royal jelly, which is the substance they secrete from their heads.
And then whichever queen emerges will then go and murder the other baby queens, seizing power and beginning her reign of terror.
And that's the whole reason I like bees, really, because I can relate so much.
To that, and to their experiences in general, in many ways.
So, a little bit of B-news.
That's good.
Let's go to our Daily Cancellation.
Before we do, you know, if you haven't gotten your reader's pass yet from dailywire.com, you gotta go to dailywire.com slash subscribe.
It's hard to get the real story these days without the leftist spin.
Very difficult to do.
And if you want to make sure that you always have access to great op-eds, to great analysis, interesting insights, exclusive op-eds from your podcast hosts, as well as guest writers, in-depth analysis from our Daily Wire reporters, all of that, you got to get, go to dailywire.com slash subscribe and get the reader's pass.
Usually it's $3 a month, but we're starting it now at 99 cents a month.
So, you know, less than a dollar a month.
Hard to beat that.
You can't beat it, really.
Mobile, ad-free access to all of our Daily Wire news, exclusive op-eds, all of our podcasts, plus you can join the community of Daily Wire members who comment on and discuss all of these articles.
So head over to dailywire.com, slash subscribe, and join today.
Okay, today for our daily cancellation, I will be canceling the football team in Washington, and I'll explain why.
First of all, you know that in this cultural moment that we currently are in, where the racist origins of many things, of everything, is finally coming to bear.
We talked a few days ago about the racist origins, for example, of sleep.
Okay?
Sleeping is systemically racist.
I don't know if you knew that.
So, in that environment, naming or renaming a sports team is a hazardous pursuit that must be handled with the utmost care.
This is gonna be very difficult to do without being racist.
Obviously, the professional sports team in Washington had to get rid of the Redskins name.
It was deeply offensive to white liberals and even a few Native Americans, perhaps.
But the fear was always... Here was my great fear, and I think I said this.
This was a case that I made.
Okay, get rid of the name.
I'm worried that the new name might be more dehumanizing than the old.
That's the thought that's kept me up at night.
And finally, my nightmare scenario has become a reality.
ESPN reports that the team formerly called the Redskins will, at least for the 2020 season, officially call itself the Washington Football Team.
That's the new name, at least for now.
And their logo is just a red background with yellow letters that says, the Washington Football Team, established 1932.
Now, needless to say, when I saw this for the first time, I vomited.
What they had before was merely degrading, racist, and offensive.
This new name is traumatizing to a nearly lethal extent.
I almost died when I first saw this.
First of all, let's go through the problems here.
Right off the bat, obvious one here.
Washington was a slave owner.
His name should not be found on a football helmet or anywhere else on earth.
Also, the word foot is inherently otherizing to those who identify as disabled.
It invalidates their lived experience, and it relegates them further to the fringes of mainstream society.
The word ball obviously brings to mind anti-trans stereotypes, not to mention it marginalizes those who identify as two-dimensional.
Now, it's hard to even know where to begin with a slur like team.
I can't believe that it's the year 2020 and anyone is calling themselves a team, which for one thing is an anagram for meat, so are we just pretending that vegans don't exist now?
So we're just erasing their existence also?
Also, the concept of team has sexist and patriarchal roots, evoking a time when women were not able to participate in team sports because they were considered too fragile and weak.
Now, 1932.
So you think, you know, it's bad enough Washington football team, that's the worst part.
No.
1932, perhaps the most atrociously offensive aspect of the entire revamped logo.
Remember that Arabic numerals were appropriated from Arab culture.
And now they bring to mind the West's history of colonization and violence against black and brown bodies.
1932 also happens to be the same year that Charles Lindbergh was kidnapped.
Making the memorialization of this year very traumatizing for trafficking victims.
And of course, as everybody knows, I don't have to tell you, 1932 is also the year that Mahatma Gandhi began his hunger strike against the British new caste separation laws, which is an event that Hindus still solemnly remember and celebrate today, I assume.
By claiming 1932 on their logo, Washington is ruthlessly appropriating from Indian culture and erasing Gandhi's legacy at the same time.
Now, on the plus side, of course, the Great Depression did impoverish a lot of white people in 1932, so that's good, but it's not nearly enough to balance everything out here.
If Washington wants to pick a name that will not minimize, marginalize, otherize, dehumanize, patronize, problematize, criticize, villainize, or vaporize any protected class or minority group, it could go with something like the Saris, with a mascot of a tearful white man prostrating himself in humiliated submission.
Okay, that would be good. If they're not ready to take a very socially conscious step like that,
then I think the next best option would be a name that is nothing more than incomprehensible sounds
mixed together. Like, you know, I mean really anything, just as long as it's not a real word,
just like the Afushmigliers, for example, or even the Flindershins, you know, which I kind of like
actually. The Flindershins has a ring to it.
Just something that there's no word, it's not associated with anything.
And then people can create their own associations with it.
Really anything would be better than the old name or the new one.
Though I fear that whatever name they ultimately choose, whatever it is, the emotional damage has already been done.
And so that's why they are cancelled.
With great prejudice.
We'll leave it there for the week.
Something for us all to think about and reflect on Thanks for watching, everybody.
Thanks for listening.
Godspeed.
If you enjoyed this episode, don't forget to subscribe.
And if you want to help spread the word, please give us a five-star review.
Tell your friends to subscribe as well.
We're available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, wherever you listen to podcasts, we're there.
Also, be sure to check out the other Daily Wire podcasts, including The Ben Shapiro Show, Michael Knoll Show, and The Andrew Klavan Show.
Thanks for listening.
The Matt Wall Show is produced by Sean Hampton, executive producer Jeremy Boring.
Our supervising producers are Mathis Glover and Robert Sterling.
Our technical producer is Austin Stevens, edited by Danny D'Amico, and our audio is mixed by Robin Fenderson.
The Matt Wall Show is a Daily Wire production, copyright Daily Wire 2020.
If you prefer facts over feelings, aren't offended by the brutal truth, and you can still laugh at the insanity filling our national news cycle, well, tune in to The Ben Shapiro Show, where you'll get a whole lot of that and much more.
