Today on the Matt Walsh Show, the Senate trial of Donald Trump continues and we continue to be told about the “deadly” riot in which five people were killed. But is it true that five people were killed by the riot? How did that happen? What are the details? We have been told very little. We’ll take a look at what we do know. Also Five Headlines including Joe Biden’s plan to raise the minimum wage, which the Congressional Budget Office says would wipe out thousands and thousands of jobs. And one of the greatest videos in the history of the internet goes viral yesterday. Plus our Daily Cancellation, where we will discuss the insane left wing conspiracy theory surrounding Cracker Barrel.
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Today on the Matt Wall Show, the Senate trial of Donald Trump continues, and we continue to be told about the deadly riot in which five people were killed.
But is it true that five people were killed by the riot?
How did that happen?
What are the details?
We've been told very little about that.
We'll take a look at what we do know today.
Also, five headlines, including Joe Biden's plan to raise the minimum wage, which the Congressional Budget Office says would wipe out thousands and thousands of jobs.
And one of the greatest videos in the history of the internet goes viral.
Yesterday, we'll play that.
Plus, our Daily Cancellation, where we will discuss the insane left-wing conspiracy theory surrounding my favorite restaurant, Cracker Barrel.
All of that and much more today on The Matt Walsh Show.
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We've been told time and time again that the ride in DC on January 6th was deadly or fatal or lethal, as it has been variously described.
By the media.
This point is being hammered with extra enthusiasm during the Senate impeachment trial of Donald Trump this week, and it's a point that the media has embedded into the public consciousness over the course of the last month.
Five deaths.
You know, that's the number we've been given.
In fact, all in all, a total of seven deaths have been tied to the riot.
Four citizens and three police officers.
And when I say these deaths have been tied to the riot, I mean that the connection has been made by the media.
And by the political class.
By Democrats.
Not really by any official source.
See, the odd thing is that these deaths are only discussed in the most general and vague terms, if you haven't noticed.
We're told that people died, and we're given the approximate context of their deaths, but very little is said about how it happened.
But the how seems rather important, doesn't it?
Don't you wonder that when you hear five people died in a riot?
Isn't your first question, how the heck did that happen?
It's important for the families who have a right to know exactly how and why their loved ones perished, and it's important to the American public which has a right to know the full truth about an event that's been used to justify the indefinite militarization of our capital, the impeachment of a former president.
I think we all have a right to know what happened.
It's important most of all because the truth simply matters.
It matters for its own sake, putting everything else aside.
If we're going to be told so often and in such dramatic terms that the riot claimed the lives of five people or even seven people, then we should be told how exactly that occurred.
And if the people making the claim don't themselves know how it occurred, then they shouldn't be making the claim at all.
If they do know and they aren't telling us, then that opens up a whole new realm of problems.
So, based on the available information, let's take a closer look at these deaths and the circumstances surrounding them.
Out of seven deaths in some way tied back to the riot, and out of the three police officer deaths, we know that two were tragic suicides in the days and weeks following the chaos.
Acting Metropolitan Police Chief Robert Conte said that officers Jeffrey Smith and Howard Liebengood, quote, took their own lives in the aftermath of that battle.
Now, does that mean that the trauma of the event pushed them over the edge?
Did they leave notes or make statements indicating that the riot itself had caused that kind of psychological damage?
Or did they have other things going on internally or in their personal lives that led to this tragic conclusion?
Is there any evidence at all that the events of January 6th played any role in their suicides?
If anybody knows the answers to those questions, they aren't telling us.
All that we can say for sure is that two men who were serving in the line of duty when a riot broke out later went on to take their own lives.
Anybody who connects these two facts is making an assumption.
And I would say a rather cynical and inappropriate and actually outrageous assumption.
As for the civilian deaths tied to the riot, we know at least their names.
Here are their names.
Benjamin Phillips, Ashley Babbitt, Roseanne Boylan and Kevin Greeson.
It was reported by Chief Conte himself immediately after the riot that three of the victims, Phillips, Boylan, and Greeson, died from, quote, separate medical emergencies.
Kevin Greeson's family later confirmed that he had high blood pressure and died of a heart attack, quote, in the midst of the excitement.
Even fewer details have been given about Benjamin Phillips' death, but we do know that he suffered a stroke at some point on January 6th, and then later was taken to a hospital and died in the hospital.
For Roseanne Boylan, the story is even murkier.
It was initially reported by the media that Boylan was trampled to death.
Now, this would certainly qualify, unquestionably, as a death caused by the riot.
Yet a more in-depth examination of her death in the New York Times shows that she collapsed while amid a flood of people near the Capitol building.
Others in the crowd tried to revive her, gave her CPR, but she eventually died anyway.
The chief medical examiner of Washington, D.C., as of January 21st anyway, said that her cause of death is pending.
Was she indeed trampled to death?
Or did she suffer some other medical emergency?
Like the two other fatalities I just mentioned.
Did she have trouble breathing because of the crush of people?
Did she have any kind of pre-existing condition?
We're left only to speculate.
Ashley Babbitt is the clearest case of all.
She was certainly killed by violence during the riot.
No question about that.
But she was killed by a police officer.
Not a rioter.
She was killed while trying to climb through a broken door inside the Capitol building.
Babbitt was unarmed, and she was shot through the neck, and she died quickly.
That leaves Officer Brian Sickman.
Now, in many ways, the circumstances surrounding his death are the murkiest of all.
Immediately following the riot, the Capitol Police issued a statement saying that an officer had, quote, passed away due to the injuries sustained while on duty.
We were told that he, quote, returned to his division office and collapsed, and then he was taken to a hospital where he died.
The Times and others reported that the officer, soon identified as Brian Sicknick, was bludgeoned with a fire extinguisher by someone or multiple people in the crowd.
And this is the story that stuck, that he was bludgeoned to death.
As prominent human rights lawyer Kasim Rashid put it on January 8th, he said Sicknick, quote, was beat to death by a fire extinguisher to his skull by right-wing terrorists.
And that was the narrative.
That's been the narrative all along.
That's what most people think happened.
The problem with the narrative is that it doesn't appear to be true.
Now, little has been officially revealed about Sicknick's cause of death.
Common theme here emerging.
And the autopsy results, for whatever reason, have not been made available to the public.
But in a report that didn't receive much attention or emphasis last week, CNN reveals this.
And I'm going to quote from their article.
It's kind of long, so just bear with me.
But all this information is important.
And I want to give it to you exactly how they put it.
So they say, quote, Investigators are struggling to build a federal murder case regarding fallen U.S.
Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick, vexed by a lack of evidence that could prove someone caused his death as he defended the Capitol during last month's insurrection.
Authorities have reviewed video and photographs that show Sicknick engaging with rioters amid the siege, but have yet to identify a moment in which he suffered his fatal injuries.
Law enforcement officials familiar with the matter said, Continuing.
To date, little information has been shared publicly about the circumstances of the death of the 13-year veteran of the police force, including any findings from an autopsy that was conducted by D.C.' 's medical examiner.
Findings from a medical examiner's review have not yet been released, and authorities have not made any announcements about the ongoing process.
According to one law enforcement official, medical examiners did not find signs that the officer sustained any blunt force trauma.
So investigators believe that early reports that he was fatally struck by a fire extinguisher are not true.
One possibility being considered by investigators is that Sicknick became ill after interacting with a chemical irritant like pepper spray or bear spray that was deployed in the crowd.
But investigators reviewing video of the officer's time around the Capitol haven't been able to confirm that in the tape, which has been recovered so far.
The case could also be complicated if Sicknick had a pre-existing medical condition.
It could not be learned if he did.
All right.
What this all means is that Sicknick's death, while obviously tragic, no matter what caused it, ...was not necessarily the result of any direct action taken by anyone in the crowd.
There is, to date, according to these reports, no evidence at all that Sicknick was murdered.
There is no evidence, at least none provided to the public, that his death was caused by the riot, even indirectly.
All we actually know, all we've been told, is that Officer Sicknick was at the riot and then he died later.
That is the full extent of the information officially given to the public.
That's it.
This officer was there, and he died later.
Now, I'm not joking with you when I tell you that is literally all we've been told.
Officially.
Overall, based on the available evidence, we can say conclusively that one person, not five, one, was directly killed by violence in the riot.
That's what we can say conclusively.
One person directly killed by violence in the riot.
And that's the person who was killed by a Capitol Police officer, as she was unarmed.
We can say with relative certainty that two others died of medical emergencies stemming from underlying health concerns.
So that leaves two, Sicknick and Boyland, whose deaths are still a relative mystery.
Again, a mystery to us in the public.
Now, presumably the autopsy results could lend quite a bit of clarity, but those results are being withheld.
I'm no doctor, I admit, but I would guess, and anyone can correct me if I'm wrong, but I would guess that an autopsy and medical examination could rather conclusively determine whether a person was or was not trampled to death in one case or beat to death in the other.
It would seem to me that that's the kind of thing That through doing a medical examination and autopsy, you'd be able to tell.
Yet, if those determinations were made, we're being kept in the dark.
What this means is that anyone who connects five deaths to the riot is spreading misinformation.
They're making these connections based on assumption, rumor, and speculation.
Now, I don't want to engage in my own speculation, so I'm not going to speculate About why we are not being told the autopsy results of Officer Brian Sicknick.
You know, if we are ever told, it seems that it is going to be after the Senate trial of Donald Trump.
I'm not going to speculate about whether those two things are connected.
But at a certain point, common sense has to take over on that end anyway.
But there's a lot we still don't know.
And for anyone who says, how dare you even talk about this?
People died.
That's all that matters.
It's a tragedy.
Yeah, it is a tragedy.
But the fact that people died is not the only thing that matters.
How they died also matters.
And we deserve to know the truth.
Now let's get to our five headlines.
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All right.
You know, I don't mean to air my marital dirty laundry or anything like that, but I got a little bit of a tense moment with my wife last night because I told her my plan And I had the scissors in my hand and I said, my plan is to trim my beard down to make it pointy, like a wizard, you know, like a wizard sort of point.
And I really, I've been giving this a lot of thought.
I thought pointy beard is the way to go.
She was very unaccepting of that idea.
And this is one thing, you know, you realize as a married man, And I get a lot of beard related questions.
And this is one thing I'll just tell you before we move on here.
Um, one, one tip here is that when you're, you think as a, as a, as a man, when you grow a beard, it's your beard, right?
But what you realize is that your beard is not your own and your wife is going to have a lot of opinions about what you can and can't do with your beard.
I've had so many beard related plans that have been shot down by my wife, you know, different times, goatee, handlebar, mustache, all these things.
And she feels entitled.
Women feel entitled to stop you.
My body, my choice.
Those are my words to her exactly, and she was not convinced.
All right.
Now, speaking of the Senate impeachment trial, from the Daily Wire it says, former President Donald Trump is reportedly furious with the way that his impeachment defense team performed on day one of his Senate trial.
Two sources, this is from Fox News correspondent Kevin Cork, two sources, in fact, who spent time with the former president today described him as, quote, being furious and beyond angry with his impeachment defense team.
He was especially upset with attorney Bruce Castro in his rambling opening argument, the former president spending the day watching the trial from inside his private quarters at Mar-a-Lago, no golf with the very same plan for tomorrow.
And so he's very upset.
Now we have, I think we have some of the, this is Bruce Castor, by the way, not Castro.
So Bruce Castor, he's the, one of Trump's defense attorneys.
And his performance yesterday, anyway, was roundly panned by everyone.
It was bipartisan, right, left, and center.
And here's a little bit, I guess you could decide how compelling you think this is, but here's a little bit of what Bruce Castor said on the floor of the Senate yesterday.
This trial is not about trading liberty for security.
It's about trading, it's about Suggesting that it is a good idea that we give up those liberties that we have so long fought for.
Uh, what?
And that was much of what he had to say was along those lines.
And when I say along those lines, I mean indecipherable.
Hard to understand what he was even trying to say.
I mean, it appears that Trump's defense team went in to this trial with no plan.
There's no defense strategy at all.
It's not just that they had a bad defense strategy.
They had no strategy.
They just woke up.
It seemed like they woke up that morning and, like me in high school so often, they woke up that morning and they said, oh crap, is that Senate trial?
Is that today?
And so in the car on the way over, they're just frantically putting together opening statement and everything.
You know, I know that there's people in the audience who don't want to hear this.
Even now, after all this time, you know that there are some people who simply have no tolerance for any criticism of Donald Trump whatsoever.
But I will say that for my money, perhaps the most untrue thing that Donald Trump ever said in his whole life Most false thing that he ever said was when he said that he hires the best people.
And we have seen time and time again that he does not hire the best people.
In fact, perhaps his greatest weakness is in personnel and the people that he hires.
Just a parade of incompetent clowns.
Through his administration and after.
Oftentimes hiring the worst people.
So he's providing the worst people possible.
You tell me there are no lawyers?
You're a former president.
You're a billionaire.
That's the best you can find?
And I know there are a lot of lawyers who don't want to touch it with a 10-foot pole, but really?
You couldn't find anybody with all your money?
Hard to believe.
Okay.
From NBC News, it says, raising the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour, a proposal supported by President Joe Biden, would result in the loss of 1.4 million jobs.
Okay, so, $15 an hour minimum wage.
1 million people out of poverty over the next four years.
The study conducted by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office
was also found that increasing the minimum wage would raise the cumulative budget deficit
from 2021 to 2023 by $54 billion and would drive inflation,
resulting in higher prices for goods and services.
The CBO evaluated a proposal that would gradually increase the minimum wage
reaching $15 an hour by 2025.
Okay, so $15 an hour minimum wage.
The stuff about the deficit increasing by $54 billion.
That's the kind of thing that should disturb us.
We should care.
That's an argument that should be effective.
It's pointing out the increase in deficit.
But what we've discovered is that really nobody cares about the deficit.
Nobody cares about spending.
This is just the truth.
Both sides of the aisle.
We take turns pretending to care when the other When the other side's person is in office.
I mean, how many conservatives over the last four years of Trump said a damn thing about too much spending, deficit?
All that was out the window.
Very little was said about that.
And that's just the way it goes.
And of course, but on the left, there are people that sort of became all of a sudden budget hawks under Trump and now it goes the other way.
So this is the way it goes.
That is not going to be, it should probably be an effective line of argument against any plan is by saying how to increase the deficit, but it's not.
Now, the part about losing a million jobs, there you go.
I mean, that's something people do care about, should care about and do.
And in fact, speaking of it, related news, I think.
This is from Biz Journals.
It says, Kroger is about to test its first store that offers only self-service checkout lanes using enhanced capabilities.
Downtown Cincinnati-based Kroger, the nation's largest operator of traditional supermarkets, plans to launch the pilot test of the all-self-checkout store in Dallas on February 17th.
It's converting one of its smaller stores on Cedar Springs Road for the pilot.
Now this is not, they're not directly making a connection here, but I think we can see the connection.
If you try to force these companies to pay people $15 an hour to do labor that just isn't worth that, especially when it's labor that can be replaced with machines, then that's what's going to happen.
I don't like it.
Personally, I would much rather have the people there having, you know, even as an anti-social person myself, I will use the self-checkout lane just on anti-social grounds.
So I guess I'm part of the problem as far as that goes.
I mean, if you give me that option, then I'll take it.
But I recognize that in reality, it'd probably be best if I didn't have that option.
It'd probably be best if there were actual people doing those jobs.
So that is better.
But you force these companies to pay $15 an hour, and this is what's going to happen.
As I've said many times, the minimum wage should be zero.
That's where you start.
That's the minimum.
Or maybe a penny.
That's the actual minimum of what labor could possibly be worth.
And you go up from there.
And one thing that gets lost in this discussion is not only are you wiping out jobs, But if you're forcing the employer to pay everyone $15 an hour, effectively giving a raise maybe to some people who have not actually earned that and aren't doing a job that's worth $15 an hour, then there could be a lot of other employees at that store who could be worth $20 or $25 an hour, very worthy of promotion and raises, and now won't get it.
Because the government is forcing the employer to give a raise even to people who haven't earned it.
That to me is also a problem.
We've all had this experience, right?
When you go to a fast food place, you're interacting with customer service.
We've all gone into a grocery store, to a fast food place, and we've interacted with a customer service representative who, basically, just when you look at them, it's like they're trying to visibly murder you.
You can see visible hatred in their eyes.
It's not even just bad customer service, it's hateful.
They hate you for being there.
So we've all experienced that.
And then we also experienced customer service people, someone working at a register or working at a test route, who's just wonderful, delightful.
They put a smile on your face.
They're absolutely on top of it.
The idea that they should be paid exactly the same, or that person who hates you just for being there is automatically worth 15 bucks an hour.
All they do is show up, put in absolutely zero effort whatsoever, and they're automatically worth $50 an hour.
No, I would rather free up these companies to pay someone like that, like five bucks an hour.
I mean, you're putting in zero effort, zero.
The only effort is just to walk in the door.
So pay them five.
And then that really awesome customer service representative who's really on top of it and makes you feel good.
And, you know, they're just really, really good.
Pay them 30 bucks an hour.
That, to me, seems the most just, the most fair.
All right, number three, Pete Buttigieg, for some reason, is Secretary of Transportation, and he wants to bring equity to the roadways, his plan for social justice and equity.
He wants to bring it to the roadways where it does not belong, and here he is explaining his plan.
What's the biggest way that transportation has been permanently changed by the pandemic?
It's too soon to know for sure, but I think it's safe to say that our old patterns of life, the 9 to 5, Monday through Friday commuting patterns, are not going to be exactly the same.
Yeah, and so how might that change what your staff does?
You know, we think trains, planes, and automobiles, but what about bikes, scooters, wheelchairs for that matter?
Those are things you plan to pay more attention to?
Absolutely, yeah.
Look, roads aren't only for vehicles.
We've got to make sure that pedestrians and individuals and bicyclists and businesses can all coexist on the same roadway.
Yeah, what about scooters and bikes?
What about pogo sticks?
What about unicycles?
You know, what about big wheel bikes?
What about those?
We'll put them all on the roadways.
Wheelchairs.
Wheelchairs on the roadway.
Now, if what you mean is a wheelchair crossing the street in the crosswalk, then sure, yeah.
Okay, but if you're talking about... When you say share the road, it makes it sound like you're talking about people in motorized wheelchairs actually just driving down the street, which I have seen.
In fact, I've seen it in Nashville more than once.
It's extremely dangerous for the person in that wheelchair.
That should not be encouraged.
Now, I'm not going to go into my whole rant again.
I did a whole daily cancellation on it weeks ago, and I think it's one of the most important segments I've ever done on this show.
About cyclists, specifically, on the roadway.
Now, my stance is very clear.
The road, modern roads, modern paved roads, are actually built for vehicles, and vehicles are what belong on those roads.
Not people on bikes, holding up traffic, getting themselves and other people killed.
Certainly not wheelchairs, not even pedestrians.
See, we have something called a sidewalk, okay?
And I think sidewalks are great inventions.
And it sounds like maybe that's what Buttigieg is reaching for here.
He's thinking about inventing sidewalks, again.
Sidewalks are fantastic.
Yeah, put all the things you just mentioned, scooters, bikes, wheelchairs, pedestrians, put them all on sidewalks.
Cars go on the road.
I think that's a great system.
It really has worked pretty well, hasn't it?
I don't think we need to reinvent the wheel here, so to speak.
Cars on the road, everyone else on the sidewalk.
Great.
No problem.
You want to build more sidewalks?
Go ahead and do that.
Number four, mask shaming is a favorite pastime of some people in America, as we've noticed.
And those are people who are, you know, cowards and proud of it.
And here's the latest incident.
Here's a man, I think it's one of the worst we've seen, because it's a man harassing and filming a woman and her elderly mother at a store for not wearing a mask.
And here's how that went.
Say cheese, you're in Costco not wearing your mask, refusing to wear your mask.
Yes, call the police.
And here's her mother.
Yes, here's my mother.
[BEEP]
[INAUDIBLE]
Can you call your manager?
Sorry?
Can you call your manager?
He's taking pictures of me.
Okay, so there we go.
I mean, we've seen this play out many times.
The guy sees these two women, one of whom, again, is an elderly woman in a, speaking of, you know, she's in a motorized scooter, speaking of which, and you look at her there in that video, see, that is a vehicle that does not belong on the roadway, and it's not in this case.
That's very good.
That's one that belongs in a store or in a sidewalk.
But here's an elderly woman and her, you know, daughter, who's older as well, and he's afraid because she's not wearing a mask.
And so his response is to put her on film.
Go right up in her face and get her on camera.
Pull out his phone and start tattletailing.
Start snitching.
Calling for a manager.
Once again, if you're that afraid that this person is going to spread a disease, then maybe just keep on walking.
Just keep moving your ass and go to a different part of the store.
I will never understand this.
If I was afraid that someone had a deadly disease and they were going to spread it to me, the last thing I would do is take out my camera to document it and get right up in their face.
Say, hey, you're endangering people's lives right up in their face.
No, I wouldn't do that.
Never have cowards been so eager to advertise their own cowardice.
This guy is more afraid than that elderly woman.
The elderly woman, you know, she's She is in the most vulnerable category.
And she's not that concerned.
He's more afraid than she is.
And he's happy to advertise that to the whole world.
Pathetic.
All right.
Here's something that's not so pathetic.
I have to play this for you, because honestly, I believe it's one of the Internet's greatest gifts to mankind.
You've probably already seen it.
If you spent any time on the Internet, then you probably couldn't escape yesterday without seeing this.
But we're going to play it again anyway.
And because I think it's in the running for maybe the funniest internet video of all time.
And unfortunately, if you're listening to the audio podcast and you haven't seen this video, you're not going to be able to fully appreciate it.
You have to see the visual.
So I apologize for that.
But you can always come to YouTube and check out this segment at least, because you need to see this.
You need to appreciate all of the subtlety of the humor.
You have to actually see it.
But here we have A hearing with a few lawyers and a judge.
I don't know what the hearing was about.
Doesn't matter.
And apparently some of the backstory here is that one of the lawyers in this hearing with the judge is a Zoom.
You know, we do everything on Zoom now, so it's a Zoom hearing.
And he was using his secretary's computer.
And the secretary has a young daughter who had previously been on Zoom and was using a certain filter.
And this filter had not been taken off.
And so then, this is what happened.
I believe you have a filter turned on in the video settings.
You might want to... Can you hear me, Judge?
I can hear you.
I think it's a filter.
It is, and I don't know how to remove it.
I've got my assistant here.
She's trying to, but I'm prepared to go forward with it.
I'm here live.
I'm not a cat.
I can see that.
[BLANK_AUDIO]
I'm here live.
I'm not a cat.
This is why I say you have to see it, okay?
Because the facial expressions of the cat are what really sell this.
There's one moment in particular when he first realizes that he's a cat and he kind of looks down and he's got this shocked, confused expression.
The cat has a shocked, confused expression.
The cat just nails the feeling.
I didn't know that the filters were this advanced.
Because there's this, there's this, oh crap, I'm a cat moment.
And look, I've never seen that look.
Especially on a cat.
It's like his cat's having an existential crisis.
And that in particular, when he lets out this kind of like groan, that's the part that really sells.
And then the whole thing, where he has to clarify that he's not a cat.
Which I have to say, as many people on the internet said yesterday, you know, that's what a cat would say.
If you find yourself in a situation where you have to actually say out loud, I'm not a cat, that means you might actually be a cat.
So who knows?
We don't know what actually happened.
There's a lot we don't know in this situation too, but that's great.
Now, the other hilarious video that has graced the internet this week, which we played yesterday,
was the Gorilla Glue Girl, as she has come to be known.
That is Tessica Brown.
You remember, she's the woman who sprayed industrial glue in her hair because she ran
out of hairspray.
And so she just figured, well, you know, this is an adhesive kind of substance, might as
And so she did that, and then her hair ended up just being crusted into place for a whole month, as you might expect.
Ended up going to the ER, they couldn't do anything about it.
Now she's thinking about filing a lawsuit against Gorilla Glue, and like I told you yesterday, and I hate to be the bearer of bad news, she will Well, if she doesn't win the lawsuit, they'll probably settle with her and she's going to make a lot of money.
She shouldn't, but that's the way things go now.
Because all she's going to need to prove is that there was nothing on the bottle specifically clarifying not to use it in your hair.
And there wasn't.
All the bottle said was don't spray it on your skin and your eyes or on your clothes.
Didn't say anything about hair.
You would think you would need to say that, but apparently you do.
This woman, Tessica Brown, has actually gotten a lot of sympathy online.
There's been a lot of sympathy for this woman.
And she has a GoFundMe, of course.
And that GoFundMe is up to $17,000, almost $18,000.
We're talking $18,000 people are donating to a woman because she put glue in her hair.
And you read some of these comments, like here's some of the comments on the GoFundMe page for the Gorilla Glue girl.
So it says, believe in God.
You're in my prayers and I pray the doctors can clear this all for you with complete healing now and in the future.
Be encouraged to know that all things are possible with God.
All things are possible with God.
You can get the glue out of your hair.
All things are possible.
That's true.
God could get the glue out of your hair.
I kind of think God's going to make you, but this is one where God's going to say, you know, you're on your own on this one.
And someone else says, praying that it all turns out well.
Someone else says, I pray that she'll be okay.
Someone else says, I know the road ahead is not going to be easy, but hang in there and just ignore the negativity.
I hope you find healing on the inside as well as on the outside.
And there was another comment that I really liked.
Oh, we all make mistakes.
You're still smart, beautiful, strong, and courageous.
I guess I have to appreciate how generous these people are being.
But first of all, yeah, we all make mistakes.
We don't all make that mistake.
In fact, nobody in history, as far as we know, has ever made that mistake but her.
She's totally alone.
She is in an arena all by herself here.
She's in a league of her own, and not in a good way.
Are you really praying?
People went home last night, and they got on their knees, and they prayed for the woman who had glue in her hair.
Now, again, all things are possible with God.
God is omnipotent and omniscient.
He can hear all prayers.
He can respond to all prayers.
So, you know, you can't, like, overtax God.
But at the same time, so many things to pray about in the world, and you made time to pray about the woman with glue in her hair, and to give her money.
What would really make me angry, so I'm not even going to look, you look at her $18,000 on GoFundMe for glue in her hair.
Compare that to like people with cancer who have GoFundMes or people whose kids have cancer.
I bet you're going to find a lot of GoFundMes for cancer stricken children that have not raised $18,000 on GoFundMe.
So let's get our priorities straight would be my suggestion.
Okay, now moving on to the newest segment and the greatest.
Which we call reading the YouTube comments, where I, in fact, read the YouTube comments.
Here are a few comments left on the show yesterday.
KS Hutter says, Matt, give us a list of a few people who you think could actually be president in 2024.
I personally wish Ron Paul would run again, but he's way too old now.
Yeah, I would say he's, what is he, like 97 now?
I'd say he's probably too old.
Ron DeSantis is the guy that I've been mentioning, and I think others are gonna, I think there are other potential Candidates that maybe you could mention right now.
I think that four years is a long time and other people, hopefully it's enough time to find other candidates and draft them and find talented people.
You know, the mainstream Republican Party on a national level, if we look at Republicans in Congress, there may be a lot of incompetent clowns there.
But on the right, generally, plenty of very talented, incompetent people.
So if I had to cast a vote right now for 2024, it would be for Ron DeSantis.
But I think there are many other potential candidates as well.
The only thing is, if Trump runs again in 2024 as a 78-year-old man, and we have to do all this all over again, then I really don't think he's going to win.
But I don't think he'd win the general.
He would win the primary for sure, and he would suck up all the oxygen.
And all of this up-and-coming talent, these really talented guys like Ron DeSantis, would suffocate from the lack of oxygen.
Which is why I really think we need to start moving forward and thinking about who's going to be the next generation.
All right.
Matthew says, Matt, I love your new segment appropriately named Reading the YouTube Comments, but I think it'd be better if you read comments from the Daily Wire website.
It would add a layer of exclusivity if you read comments from your live stream chat or the comments on your articles on the DW website.
This way, only those who are behind the paywall can participate and would entice the YouTube freeloaders to get a membership.
Matthew, how about you stop trying to micromanage me?
Stop telling me what to do.
How about that?
You're banned from listening to the show.
Done.
Get out.
But thanks for the comment anyway.
Diana Vega says, I just want to thank Matt for being one of the main voices to steer me away from the left last year.
I may not agree with everything he says, but his dry and sarcastic demeanor and logic are what the world needs right now.
Well, thank you, Diana.
And this really, and I mean that sincerely, you know, being able to, because I can say whatever I want, present whatever arguments I want, but you have to be willing to think critically, to listen to the arguments, think critically about them.
You have to be willing to adjust your entire worldview.
You have to be willing to consider the possibility that you've been wrong about a lot of things for a long time.
And most people in this country today are simply not willing to do that.
Thanks a lot of intellectual courage, so I'll give you credit for that.
And CowaFungus, really I'm just reading this because I love the username, CowaFungus says, in case you didn't notice, it's time for secession.
There simply aren't any other choices.
Now, I've said many times, I think the idea of a national divorce is good.
I would be in favor of a, I think it's, I can't think of another solution anyway.
I don't see us all coming together and unifying magically, as much as it would be nice if we would.
I don't see that actually happening.
But I also haven't seen a plan for secession that seems feasible.
So you draw that up and let me know, and we could talk.
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Now let's get to our daily cancellation.
You know, there are only a few corporate chains whose honor and dignity I will defend to my dying breath.
Bass Pro Shops is one, Arby's is another, and rounding out the trio is that realm of culinary delight known as Cracker Barrel.
I maintain that you simply will not find a better meatloaf dish with three sides for under $12 anywhere in the world.
I dare you to try.
Maybe a low bar, but still.
Also, across the entire American Southeast, there are like 46 Cracker Barrels per square mile.
It's become such a part of the landscape that you either develop an affection for it, or you become deeply depressed.
And I have chosen affection in this case.
And so, it may be partly because of this deep affection that I take personally the recent efforts by some on the left to turn Cracker Barrel racist.
This is one of the weirder trends among progressive race hustlers.
They notice a lot of white people congregating in buildings, in these Cracker Barrel buildings, disappearing inside for hours at a time, re-emerging with a fatter stomach and carrying a scented candle and a bag of hard candy from the gift shop, and they figure that something sinister must be happening inside.
Something racist.
And that's why a few months ago Cracker Barrel, you may remember, made headlines because there was a, quote, noose Hanging from the ceiling in one of their restaurants.
And this sparked outrage until it was discovered that the noose was actually not a noose, but the cord of an antique soldering iron.
But no worries, said the media.
You know, they simply changed their headlines and reported that a, quote, here's CNN's phrasing, a, quote, noose-like cord was found in a Cracker Barrel.
Yeah, so if you can't get away with calling it a noose, just call it noose-like.
And the great thing is that literally any rope, string, or cord can be called noose-like.
Now, if you thought that would be the most desperate attempt to racist-ify Cracker Barrel, you were wrong.
Yesterday, the chain was trending again, this time due to a meme posted by some random Twitter account, which makes the following claim.
This is the claim.
Cracker was a slang term for whip.
That's why blacks called whites crackers, from the crack of the whip.
A cracker barrel is a barrel that held the whips for sale at the country store.
You see the whip going from the R to the K in the logo?
Racism in your face.
Now, this claim that Cracker Barrel was named after barrels of whips sold at the country store for plantation owners to use on their slaves, this claim was amplified and repeated and immediately unquestioningly accepted by thousands of people.
Sophia Nelson, who's a self-described award-winning journalist, Retweeted this claim with the caption, heavy sigh.
I really like Cracker Barrel, but now that I see this and I get it, I sadly no longer can eat there.
And she passed this along to her 74,000 followers.
And this is what award-winning journalists do now.
They see a meme, accept it absolutely and on face value, and then promptly spread it as a fact to the public.
The backlash was so intense that eventually Cracker Barrel actually had to issue a statement addressing it and denying.
The racist origins of their name.
Now, an intelligent person, of which there is a dwindling supply in this country, upon hearing this claim about barrels of whips might immediately suspect that something isn't right.
First of all, why would you sell whips in a barrel of all things?
Wouldn't they get tangled?
Isn't that the most impractical way to sell whips?
You can go to Lowe's or Home Depot and find all kinds of ropes and cords for sale.
Noose-like items, CNN would say.
And what you'll find is that they're all hanging or placed neatly on shelves.
If you walk into a Lowe's and say, excuse me, can you point me to your barrel of ropes?
They're going to look at you like you're insane.
The other problem with the claim is that it's completely made up.
Maybe that's the main problem with it, is that it's just completely, totally made up.
This is a thing that somebody on the internet simply invented out of whole cloth and posted.
There is zero truth to it.
As it turns out, and shockingly even Snopes did a fact check on this, the term cracker barrel comes from literal barrels of crackers that used to be sold at country stores.
Now, a barrel of crackers seems itself sort of impractical and unsanitary.
But, you know, this was a different time.
People back in those days thought nothing of sticking their hand into a huge barrel and pulling out a wad of crackers.
And then they buy the handful of crackers for a nickel, or whatever it was, and that's where the name comes from.
The Cracker Barrel origin story that went viral yesterday was essentially a conspiracy theory.
And this is what we have to understand.
This is a conspiracy theory, and this is how left-wing conspiracy theories often work.
We know about the conspiracy theories on the right, QAnon, Sandy Hook trutherism, and so on.
We hear plenty about those.
But the left has its own.
They just look a little different and are built on different background assumptions.
The most basic background assumption for the left-wing conspiracy theory is that everything is racist.
Every institution is racist.
And racism, that is bigotry by white people against non-white people specifically, is embedded into everything in our culture.
See, conspiracy theories are all about finding patterns where they don't exist.
Or finding patterns where they do exist and then inventing extravagant and fantastical explanations for those patterns.
This happens on both sides of the aisle.
It is very far from an exclusively right-wing phenomenon.
Claiming that the Cracker Barrel logo is a racist dog whistle from a store with mysterious nooses hanging in its gift shop is a conspiracy theory every bit as ridiculous and invented as the claim that a pizza shop in D.C.
is the staging ground for a child sex trafficking ring.
The only difference, again, is the background assumption that goes into it.
And so, Cracker Barrel is not cancelled.
It will never be cancelled on my watch.
As long as it keeps serving that delicious meatloaf.
But the conspiracy theorists smearing its good name are absolutely cancelled.
That's going to do it for us today.
Thanks for watching.
Thanks for listening.
Have a great day.
Godspeed.
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Today on The Ben Shapiro Show, we review day one of the Democrats' impeachment trial against President Trump.
Plus, the Biden administration, they continue to push radical policy right under everybody's nose.
