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Feb. 19, 2021 - The Matt Walsh Show

57:30

Ep. 662 - The Media Creates Another Fake Scandal

Today on the Matt Walsh Show, the media goes wild over a supposedly major scandal involving Ted Cruz. But I think they’re focusing on this story for a different reason. Also Five Headlines including NASA’s successful mission to Mars, school board members caught on camera insulting parents, and the White House attempting to appease the people begging for student loan forgiveness. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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	Today on The Matt Walsh Show, the media goes wild over a supposedly major scandal involving Ted Cruz, but I think they're focusing on this non-story for a different reason.
	Also, five headlines including NASA's successful mission to Mars, school board members caught on camera insulting parents, and the White House attempting to appease the people who want student loan forgiveness, plus our daily cancellation.
	I'll read the comments and much more today on The Matt Walsh Show.
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	So perhaps you heard about the big political scandal that broke yesterday.
	This was major news.
	Big, big deal.
	The media was going crazy over it.
	It was all that anybody was talking about on Twitter.
	There were calls for resignations and investigations.
	It was a big, big deal, right?
	Massively important story.
	At least that's what I have been assured repeatedly and loudly over the course of the past 24 hours.
	The scandal, get ready for this if you haven't heard yet, the scandal is that Ted Cruz Went on vacation with his family.
	That's... I'll pause right here and let you collect yourself for a moment because I know it takes a minute to recover from hearing something as shocking as this.
	Yes, Ted Cruz went on vacation.
	I'll say it again so that the severity of this situation can sink in.
	I repeat, Ted Cruz went on vacation.
	Why does this matter?
	Why is it important?
	Why should it garner all the headlines and so much controversy?
	Well, you know, you'll have to ask somebody else, frankly, because I don't see it.
	But it does matter.
	That's what I'm told.
	It matters a lot.
	You should care.
	You must care.
	Now, let's back up and let's try to figure out why we should care so much about this.
	We'll back up for a minute.
	As the story goes, Ted Cruz was spotted at the airport Thursday morning with his family boarding a plane for Cancun.
	This is scandalous, supposedly, because Texas is in the midst of a crisis with millions of its citizens without power and stranded because of the winter storms.
	As the scandal broke and Texas Democrats called for his resignation about it, and every media outlet turned the whole thing into Pearl Harbor, Cruz announced that he would be returning immediately from Cancun and that he was only going there to escort his family, implying that he always planned to bring them and then turn around and fly back and come back home.
	He later admitted, though, that he actually cut his trip short, that he was planning to go for the week or however long, and he decided to turn around and come back.
	That night, the New York Times had an exclusive report featuring private text messages between Cruz's wife, Heidi, and her friends.
	And they published these private text messages.
	Here's the Times.
	Here's what they reported.
	Like millions of his constituents across Texas, Senator Ted Cruz had a frigid home without electricity this week amid the state's power crisis.
	But unlike most, Mr. Cruz got out, fleeing Houston and hopping a Wednesday afternoon flight to Cancun with his family for a respite at a luxury resort.
	Photos of Mr. Cruz and his wife Heidi boarding the flight ricocheted quickly across social media and left both his political allies and rivals aghast.
	A guest at a tropical trip as a disaster unfolded at home.
	The blowback only intensified after Mr. Cruz, a Republican, released a statement saying that he had flown to Mexico, quote, to be a good dad and accompany his daughters and their friends.
	He noted he was flying back Thursday afternoon, though he did not disclose how long he had originally intended to stay.
	Text messages sent from Ms.
	Cruz to friends and Houston neighbors on Wednesday revealed a hastily planned trip.
	Their house was, quote, freezing, as Ms.
	Cruz put it, and she proposed a getaway until Sunday.
	Ms.
	Cruz invited others to join them at the Ritz-Carlton in Cancun, where they had stayed, quote, many times, noting the room price this week, $300 a night, and its good security.
	The text messages were provided to the New York Times and confirmed by a second person on the thread who declined to be identified because of the private nature of the text.
	Okay.
	So that gets us up to speed on the controversy.
	Now, a few things here.
	Number one.
	This is not a scandal.
	There's no actual reason why Ted Cruz should stay in Texas.
	He's not going to be pulling out his toolbox and going to fix the power grid himself.
	Is it a good look to leave?
	Is it good optics?
	No, obviously not.
	It was a political blunder, a political mistake.
	But that's another way of saying that there's nothing actually wrong with taking his family to a warm place.
	It only looks wrong.
	It's not actually wrong, it just looks bad.
	So if you want to slam him for doing something that looks bad, if you want to hit him for being politically careless, then fine.
	But if you pretend that there's some deeper scandal here, some actually corrupt behavior involved, and this guy taking a vacation at Cancun, then you're being absurd.
	You're being ridiculous.
	In fact, to hit him on the optics is to admit.
	That's the point about optics.
	If we say that something is bad optics from a politician, what we're saying is, it's not actually bad, it just looks bad, but we know it's not actually bad.
	Well, if you know that it's not actually bad, then stop pretending, like, stop acting as though you think it is.
	Um, you know, that said, he obviously was not planning to fly with his family down to Cancun and then turn around and come back, as he seemed to imply initially, so he shouldn't have implied that.
	So he's handled this badly, there's no question about it.
	Still, it's not a major scandal, or a scandal at all.
	It's a gaffe.
	Okay, there's a difference between a gaffe and a scandal.
	A gaffe is when a politician does something that looks really stupid and bad, But there's no corruption, no crime, no real unethical behavior taking place.
	So it's a gaffe.
	Number two.
	Given that this is not a real scandal, publishing private text messages with Cruz's wife and her friends is scummy behavior.
	Almost as scummy as whatever quote-unquote friend sent the text to the media in the first place.
	Imagine what a scumbag you have to be to do that.
	You've got your neighbor inviting you on a trip, and what do you do?
	You immediately contact the New York Times to throw her husband under the bus?
	Now, there may be a scenario where it would be ethical for the media to publish text messages between a politician's wife and her friends.
	There may be a situation where that would be ethical.
	If there is, this is not that situation.
	A trip to Cancun is not that situation.
	Maybe if there was criminal behavior taking place and you had text messages that proved it, then okay, that might be a reason to publish them.
	This is not criminal behavior or anything close to it, so there's no excuse to publish text messages.
	Number three, people on social media, especially on the left, have been drawing comparisons between this and the Democrats like Newsom who went to restaurants or hairdressers during the lockdowns.
	And many were claiming that this thing with Cruz is in fact worse somehow than the stuff with Nancy Pelosi at the hairdresser, or Newsom at the restaurant, or the mayor of Chicago going to the hairdresser.
	Saying that at least it's on par, if not worse, the Cruz thing.
	That's the claim.
	Which is utterly ridiculous.
	The outrage over Newsom and others, it wasn't that they were off having a good time during the pandemic.
	That's not the problem.
	Nobody cares that they have a good time.
	I don't care if they have a good time or not.
	That makes no difference to me.
	The scandal was that they were doing what they had forbidden the citizens of their state from doing.
	They were breaking their own rules and laws and policies.
	They were passing rules saying, you guys cannot do this, and if you do it, we'll fine you or arrest you, and then they turned around and did that thing.
	That's the scandal.
	And that's a real scandal.
	That's real corruption.
	That's abuse of power.
	So that's the difference.
	So there you have a scandal as opposed to a gaffe from Cruz.
	From Cruz, at best, bad optics, not an abuse of power.
	It's not Cruz violating laws that he helped to pass or any other law.
	He's not violating any law or rule at all, in fact.
	To equate these two things is obviously misleading in the extreme.
	Number four, most importantly, however you feel about Cancungate.
	You should understand why the media was focusing so intently on this.
	You can argue that it was a bad thing for Cruz to do, a stupid thing, but you cannot reasonably or credibly argue that it deserves all the headlines and the attention that it got.
	So why did it get that attention?
	Well, I submit that it probably had something to do with this.
	The Times Union, the paper in Albany, several hours before the big Cruz news broke, had this report, quote, The FBI and the U.S.
	Attorney's Office in Brooklyn have launched an investigation that is examining, at least in part, the actions of Governor Andrew Cuomo's Coronavirus Task Force in its handling of nursing homes and other long-term care facilities during the pandemic.
	The probe by the U.S.
	Attorney's Office in the Eastern District of New York is apparently in its early stages and is focusing on the work of some of the senior members of the Governor's Task Force, according to a person with direct knowledge of the matter who is not authorized to speak publicly.
	Okay.
	There is an FBI investigation.
	There's a lot more to this report, by the way.
	You can go to the Times Union and read about it.
	There's an FBI investigation into Andrew Cuomo, the governor of New York, who was hailed as the COVID hero.
	Now he's being investigated by the FBI for a scandal, an actual scandal, that led to the deaths of thousands of people.
	Right as news of this investigation was beginning to spread, suddenly the major story is Ted Cruz going to Cancun.
	I don't think this is a coincidence.
	Now, you could argue that even without this story from Cuomo, the media would still be making hay with the Cruz quote-unquote scandal because it's a Republican and it's their opportunity to embarrass a Republican.
	And that's probably true, too.
	I think all of these things are related.
	What we do know, though, is that the Cruz story does not deserve the attention that it got.
	And yet, you know, you go on social media and you find even conservatives who are joining in the outrage bandwagon.
	Willfully being manipulated by the media.
	The media wants you to see this as a much bigger deal than it is.
	They want you to see, they are telling you to see it as on par with Newsom.
	They want you to focus on this instead of the Cuomo thing.
	And even now, so many conservatives are happy to go along, even now, are happy to say, well okay, if you tell me this is what I should care about, it's absolutely absurd.
	And by the way, just to reiterate, reinforce what I said at the very top here, Ted Cruz is not going to be going and fixing the power grid.
	Now, maybe what you want him to do is to do the photo ops and to go out and hand out cups of soup or whatever.
	And that's what a lot of politicians, in fact, do in these circumstances.
	Why do they do that?
	You know, if there's some sort of natural disaster and the politicians are there themselves, personally, you know, handing out the soups and waving to the cameras, why are they doing that?
	Is it because they care about their citizens?
	No, it's because it's a political opportunity.
	They don't act—nobody needs them.
	In fact, it's better for them not to be there.
	Because when they're there, then there's media, there's security.
	It's actually better, logistically, to not have them.
	They can delegate that.
	I'm not saying that a senator should be doing nothing in response to a crisis like this in his state.
	But he can delegate it.
	He can get on the phone privately, make phone calls, send people out to do things.
	He doesn't need to personally be there himself.
	And in fact, it's probably better, all things concerned, if he's not.
	The reason why the politicians themselves personally want to be there is for the photo op.
	I don't understand why they, the politician, wants to do that.
	Why do citizens want that from their politicians?
	Why do you want a politician to do the photo op?
	I don't need that, personally.
	It's not something that I need to see.
	And I'd prefer if not, if we didn't see it.
	Now, if there's evidence that Ted Cruz, even behind the scenes, is doing nothing whatsoever, hasn't delegated anything, hasn't made any phone calls, hasn't sent any of his people out to, you know, to go hand out the soup and to go to the warming stations, you know, if there's evidence that he's done absolutely nothing behind the scenes, then fine.
	You can get him on that.
	But I don't see any reason to assume that.
	All we know is that he was not originally going to be going himself for the photo op.
	Now he is going to go for the photo op, and I guess a lot of people feel more comfortable, and they feel comfortable now.
	Oh, thank God.
	We've got the politician doing the photo op.
	I don't get it.
	Being manipulated by the media.
	Let's all try to be better than that.
	Let's get to our five headlines.
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	You know, I wanted to mention, I know I'm way behind the times here, but I finally saw the movie I watched with my wife a couple nights ago.
	We watched Hillbilly Elegy.
	And I hadn't read the book, but I'm sure the book was better.
	Books are always better in the movies, in almost every case.
	But I finally saw the movie.
	Which is, you know, that's the movie based on the book written by J.D.
	Vance about his experiences and I think most of it is set in kind of middle class, working class Ohio and with his family and his mother's struggle with drug addiction, kind of his memoir.
	And I thought it was a really solid movie.
	It's not going to be in my top ten of all time, but it was a solid movie with powerful
	performances.
	A couple of the performances were weak, some of them involving kids.
	You know, you can't really hit the kid actors for not being the greatest.
	But particularly the main adult actors, Glenn Close, Amy Adams.
	Really powerful performances.
	And overall, just a solid, well-made movie and a well-told story.
	And telling a story that many millions of people can relate to, unfortunately.
	Especially having family members that struggle with drug addiction and that kind of thing.
	But then you go to Rotten Tomatoes, and the critics absolutely panned this movie.
	They hated it.
	And it's, it's, this is one of, at least from the movies that I've seen, this is one of the greatest disconnects I've ever seen between what the critics say about a movie's quality and the actual quality of the film.
	Because in reality, this is a solid, like, B+, good movie.
	Like I said, not a cinematic classic, but a solid, really good movie.
	Critics panned it, and I can only assume, whenever you see that, Critics are panning it, but it's a good movie.
	Meanwhile, the audience and the audience reviews are, it's kind of like Run, Hide, Fight, our Daily Wire movie, but the audience reviews are like 80, 90% while the critics are giving it a 25, 30%.
	Anytime you see that, there's always a reason behind it.
	It's always a political reason.
	And in this case, I can only assume that the reason, number one, is that J.D.
	Vance is, you know, I think basically right-wing slash conservative-ish.
	I'm not overly familiar with his politics, but I think that's kind of where he lands.
	And also, I think the other reason is that The movie kind of makes the white privilege narrative seem absurd because here you have a story, a not unusual, a pretty typical story about, you know, a white family in a white working class neighborhood and what they went through.
	You can't watch that movie or read the book and come away thinking, well, yeah, those people were privileged.
	In fact, the guy in the movie, J.D.
	Vance himself, who eventually becomes, if you want to say privileged, because he goes to Yale and he becomes a lawyer, but he had to earn that.
	He had to work very hard.
	He didn't start with any advantages.
	He had to claw his way up and go get that.
	And I can only assume that's why the critics didn't like it.
	But, if you haven't seen it, I will give it my recommendation.
	Okay, number one, NASA's Perseverance rover landed on Mars yesterday, yesterday afternoon, to begin its search for signs of life on Mars.
	I don't think they're looking for intelligent civilizations, let's say.
	But they're looking at least for signs that there was life at one point on Mars.
	They were aiming for and hit a big crater called the Jezero Crater, which was a big lake 3 billion years ago.
	And they're thinking there might be evidence that life used to be in the water there.
	Evidence of organisms billions of years ago.
	So, this thing traveled 293 million miles.
	Okay, think about that.
	293 million miles.
	What?
	293 million miles the craft did over six months.
	And it hit not only the planet it was aiming for, but the specific crater that it wanted on the planet.
	Meanwhile, It takes me like six tries to toss a Skittle in the air and catch it with my mouth.
	That's... So, an incredible achievement, overall.
	The rover, I mean, not me and the Skittles.
	We've already seen some pictures from the rover.
	It's easy to take this for granted, and we've seen a lot of pictures of this kind, but even so, we're looking at pictures of another planet.
	That's a remarkable and profound thing.
	We should stop and appreciate that.
	Of course, these pictures come in, And the first thing that happens is that the internet makes memes out of them.
	And they photoshop Bernie Sanders into the photo of Mars.
	Which I understand.
	I get it.
	But still.
	Damn it, internet.
	Can you be serious about something for five minutes?
	Anyway.
	Well, I guess we should say thank you to NASA.
	Thank you for sending that rover 290 million miles so that it could send us back some awesome meme templates.
	Because that's all that we're going to use it for.
	You want to hear something really insane?
	Maybe you don't, but I'm going to play it anyway.
	This is Democratic Representative Katie Porter.
	I want you to listen to her take on the school closings and when she thinks we can get the schools back open again.
	Listen.
	I think there's two issues.
	One is, how do we get them back?
	I think the good thing that President Biden has done is he's pushing.
	He's pushing, he's asking the right questions, he's setting deadlines, and he's mobilizing agencies like the CDC to issue guidance.
	Guidance that then-Senator Kamala Harris and I called for back in the summertime.
	The other part of this, though, that I think we're not planning enough is about what's going to happen when they do all go back to school.
	And that's where Senator Michael Bennett from Colorado and I have authored a letter to the Department of Education pointing out to them that we can't just put kids back in school as if their learning and social and emotional development has not been severely interrupted.
	And this problem is particularly acute with regard to math and science education.
	So it's a workforce issue and a workforce development issue as well.
	So did you get that?
	We can't put kids back in school until we figure out how much harm we're doing to them by not putting them back in school.
	We can't put them back in school until we figure out how much damage we're doing by continuing to not put them in school.
	That is such a classic government answer.
	Before we stop doing this thing that we're doing, we have to file some reports and do some, you know, have some commissions to look into, see how much damage we're currently doing by the thing we're doing, and then we'll figure out if we should stop it and go back.
	So that's the strategy.
	Uh, more audio related to the school issue I wanted to play.
	First, here's the report from the Daily Wire.
	It says, California parents are calling for the resignation of the Oakley Unified Elementary School District Board of Trustees after board members made disparaging remarks about the parents in an online meeting.
	In a video obtained by Fox News, school board members can be heard cursing and claiming that parents with children at home are using marijuana at increased rates.
	The board members believed that they were alone and were unaware that they were broadcasting the meeting live to parents.
	Uh, let's listen to, this went on for several minutes, but let's listen to just a little snippet of this.
	Just to encourage you.
	Yeah.
	People, it's easy to hide behind a screen and put it on now, but when you're face to face with people, it's a whole different, it's a whole different ball game.
	Well, what's funny is that, uh, she's friends with who I went to Idol Tower and It's like whatever, I wasn't doing anything bad.
	I honestly don't care about that part, but you know what?
	It's like whatever, I wasn't doing anything bad.
	I honestly don't care about that part, but you know what?
	Are we alone?
	Yeah.
	(laughing)
	Bitch, if you're gonna call me out, I'm gonna fuck you up.
	(laughing)
	Sorry, that's just me.
	You know, they forget that there's real people on the other side of those letters that they're writing.
	Yes.
	We're real community members.
	We have kids or have known kids that have gone to these schools.
	Right.
	Having a vested interest in this process, and they don't know what we have behind the scenes.
	And it's really unfortunate that they want to pick on us.
	because they want their babysitters back.
	So she calls the parents the B word, says she's going to F them up, which no she won't.
	And then there's a comment about how the parents only want their babysitters back.
	And that's all that school is.
	And that's, this is revealing in a certain way, but in another way it's not surprising
	that this is what the school board thinks of parents.
	This is the antagonistic view, the hostile view that they have of parents.
	And this is what they think of their own job and of school itself.
	It's nothing more than babysitting.
	Another thing to keep in mind about, as maybe you consider going into next year, You want to get your kids back into the school system, or do you want to try out homeschooling?
	Maybe a reason to lean towards the latter.
	The idea is this.
	Number three, more from the Daily Wire, it says a Baltimore activist who had spent 18
	years in prison then turned to efforts to stem violence in the city has an idea for
	combating massive numbers of homicides in the city.
	The idea is this, pay people not to kill others.
	Tyree Moorhead, who was jailed at the age of 15 for 18 years after a second degree murder
	conviction told Fox 45, "I can relate to the shooters.
	Guess what they want?
	They want money.
	I've talked to these people.
	I've seen the shooters.
	It's a small city.
	I know who the hustlers are.
	I can't stop the shootings.
	No one in this world has proven to stop the shootings, not even the church.
	But what we can do is put them in compliance."
	[BLANK_AUDIO]
	Fox News reported that as of 2019, he had painted, this is the activist, had painted nearly 200 no-shoot zones throughout the city.
	In 2020, the city eclipsed 300 homicides for the sixth year in a row, while recording more than a thousand shootings.
	So this, Moorhead, this activist, Along with advocating that we pay people not to kill others.
	He's also going around the city and painting Actually like spray-painting.
	I think he has a permit or something to do it.
	I'm pretty sure but And he paints no-shoot zone around certain areas of the city.
	I don't know why.
	I don't know why nobody ever thought of that before.
	Well, I guess we have thought about them before.
	It's kind of like the gun-free zone, no-shoot zone.
	And so I guess the hope here is that if some, you know, two rival gangs were about to get into a fight over turf, over, you know, whose corner belongs to whom, and maybe they're about to start shooting each other, and then they would look, and one of them would see the sign on the wall saying no shoot zone, and they would say, hey guys, look, it says no shoot zone.
	But yeah, let's not do it here.
	No chutes zone.
	Let's respect the no chute zone.
	And what do you say we reconvene down the street if there's not a no chute zone?
	That's the hope, that it'll work that way.
	I don't know if it actually does work that way.
	I tend to doubt it.
	More from this, it says, I'm trying to read where he explains how this program would actually work.
	But, I'm not sure where that is.
	Anyway, that's the basic idea.
	Maybe all the details aren't quite fleshed out yet.
	We haven't ironed out all the kinks, but the idea is to pay people not to kill each other.
	Hey, if we're doing that, I would just like to say that I have gone my whole life and not killed anybody.
	So, I don't know how much I'm owed for that.
	I've gone my whole life and never killed anybody.
	I never robbed anybody.
	Never set anything on fire.
	So every day that I've not done those things, I guess I'm owed some money.
	We can laugh at this idea, but it's certainly no more absurd than defund the police or any of these other ideas.
	Because what you can't get around is the idea of punishment Justice.
	Segregating.
	Here's what you... At the end of the day, probably the only thing that really works for a lot of the really bad guys, the kinds of people who would think nothing of going out and just killing somebody because they want to sell drugs in the same corner or killing someone, you know, going to rob a liquor store and just shooting a guy so that you can steal $87 from the till.
	Those kinds of people, the only thing that really works Is to segregate them from society in a prison cell.
	That's, that's what works.
	That's how you keep, whether or not they can be reformed while they're in prison, if they can, great.
	Most of the time they can't.
	But the first job of the justice system and the court system is to protect society.
	The innocent people.
	To make sure that the next liquor store clerk is not shot in the head.
	And that means you take these people and you put them in a cage.
	That's what works.
	Number four, at his town hall a couple days ago, Biden was asked if he would increase his student loan debt forgiveness plan from $10,000 to $50,000, and here's how that conversation went.
	Student loans are crushing my family, friends, and fellow Americans.
	Me too.
	The American dream is to succeed, but how can we fulfill that dream when debt is many people's only option for a degree?
	We need student loan forgiveness beyond the potential $10,000 your administration has proposed.
	We need at least a $50,000 minimum.
	What will you do to make that happen?
	I will not make that happen.
	It depends on whether or not you go to a private university or public university.
	It depends on the idea that I say to a community, I'm going to forgive the debt, the billions of dollars of debt for people who have gone to Harvard and Yale and Penn and schools, my children.
	I went to a great school.
	I went to a state school.
	But is that going to be forgiven rather than use that money to provide for early education for young children who come from disadvantaged circumstances?
	But here's what I think.
	I think everyone, and I've been proposing this for four years, Everyone should be able to go to community college for free.
	Okay, so he's trying to take an unreasonable and bad idea, which is student loan forgiveness, and find the most reasonable version of it?
	But that's not good enough.
	And so the White House has experienced a lot of backlash from the left on this.
	People like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez who say that's not good enough, you need to bail out $50,000.
	And now the White House is trying to navigate their way around this.
	And here is Jen Psaki trying to finesse Biden's answer a little bit the following day.
	Here she is, listen.
	The President said pretty clearly that he doesn't think he has the authority to cancel $50,000 in student loan debt.
	Today, Senators Schumer and Warren said in a statement that they were told the administration is still working on figuring out if it has the authority.
	So if your lawyers would determine that canceling this is legal, would the President go ahead with this?
	And if not, why not?
	Well, first, on last night's town hall, for those of you who didn't see the whole thing, he was reiterating his previously stated position, which is he doesn't favor $50,000 in student loan relief without limitation.
	And he used some examples of the types of schools or when it should be Reimbursed or refunded.
	He said previously that relief above $10,000 should be targeted based on the borrower's income, based on the kind of debt in question, public schools versus private schools, graduate schools versus undergraduate.
	Obviously, there's a lot of considerations at play.
	Yeah, the problem for the White House is that anything other than we're simply going to forgive everyone's student debt, up to at least $50,000, anything outside of that is not going to be acceptable to their own base, to their own constituents on the left.
	And it's a terrible idea.
	Like we talked about a few days ago, we could spend another hour going through all the reasons, but a couple quick reasons.
	Number one, $50,000.
	Student loan forgiveness.
	That is a bailout.
	Make no mistake about it.
	That's a bailout for the upper class.
	It's not primarily poor people who have $50,000 of student debt that they're dealing with.
	This is upper class families, many of whom have the means to pay it back.
	They might not want to.
	It's not fun to pay it back, but they have the ability to do it.
	You know, I have plenty of I've got debt myself, not student loan debt, but I've got car payments, I've got mortgage.
	I've even got my, not my own student debt, but my wife's student debt that I have been paying for the last ten years.
	It's not, I don't like it, it's not fun, I don't enjoy doing it.
	We can do it.
	We do pay it because we're the ones, you know, we took on the debt for the car or the house.
	And my wife took on the debt for the student loans.
	So, we pay it back.
	Not fun, I don't like it, but we do it.
	The point is, this is... We hear about a lot of the extreme scenarios.
	People who are destitute, working four jobs, they've got $80,000 of debt they're trying to pay back.
	And there are situations like that.
	There are also a whole lot of situations of upper class families with a lot of student debt that they chose to take on and they do have the ability to pay it back, even if not the actual student, then the family.
	I mean, if you're a, if you're a, you know, upper class parents and you pushed your kid to go to college, You know, in large part, because you couldn't imagine any other situation, and you didn't want to have kids who don't go to college, because you'd be embarrassed by that.
	So you pushed them to go to an expensive school, and now they've got all this student debt taken on.
	That's on them to pay back, and also you.
	If they can't do it, then you should do it.
	Because I agree, you know, 18-year-old kids, even if they're legal adults, they don't understand what they're getting themselves into.
	That's the part of this student loan debt forgiveness debate where I guess I agree with a lot of what you hear on the left.
	That part I agree with.
	That the people taking on this debt at 18 or 19 years old, just out of high school, they don't understand what they're doing.
	And we can't really expect them to understand.
	The difference, though, is that for me, the blame falls on the parents.
	Okay?
	And it falls on the schools.
	Falls on the actual universities.
	Somehow, in all this conversation about student loan forgiveness, the schools themselves escape punishment, escape blame.
	They get off scot-free.
	And they can continue doing, with all these plans, they can continue doing what they're doing right now, which is to pay, is to charge exorbitant amounts for an education that is not worth that.
	And they're doing it by bilking these kids.
	So the government wants to come in and fix it, but you're not really fixing the problem.
	You're not fixing it for the future.
	So I put the blame primarily on parents who push their kids into this.
	They should be talking some sense into kids.
	Into their kids.
	They should be saying to their kids, listen.
	You don't need to go to a four-year university right out of high school.
	Take a year.
	Take two years.
	Get a job.
	Work a little bit.
	Save up some money.
	Get some life experience.
	You can always go to college anytime.
	You can go to college when you're 40 if you want.
	You don't have to.
	There's no reason to go to college right out of high school.
	There's just no good reason to do it.
	Whatever you want to do with your life.
	You don't need to go right from 13 years of grade school, K through 12, right into more school.
	Take a couple years.
	What's the downside?
	Who are you racing?
	You gotta make sure you get that college degree before who?
	Who are we racing?
	And oh yeah, when you do go to college, in most cases, you can go to community college for two years.
	It's a lot cheaper.
	Transfer those credits to the four-year institution.
	Why not that plan?
	I think there are a whole lot of people, millions of kids, who are going to college and shouldn't be going at all because they don't need to go.
	And they're going to ultimately end up doing something with their life where that college degree is useless.
	So there are a lot of people in college who don't need to be there, and there are many more who are in college and maybe do use the degree, but they didn't need to go right out of high school.
	They didn't need to pay as much as they did, and they didn't need to go to four years of a four-year institution.
	They could have gone to two.
	So, whose job is it to communicate this to the kids?
	It's the parents.
	And it's the schools.
	The public schools, the grade schools should be telling the kids this.
	The universities should be saying this.
	The university should be saying to an 18 year old kid who shows up and says, yeah, I want to go to your school.
	Uh, I don't know what I want to do with my life.
	I have no idea, but, uh, you know, you know, I'll, I'll, I'll plunge myself into debt just so I can go to school right at, right at the age of 18 and, you know, be with all my friends so we can go and party.
	The school should be saying, no, you know what?
	Not right now.
	Maybe go take a couple.
	I know the schools will not say that because they're not going to turn down the money, but that's my point.
	They're the real villains here.
	So, I don't think the government can solve that problem.
	There should be real accountability with the people who are actually at fault.
	Schools, parents, they're the ones at fault.
	Okay.
	And also, if we're assigning guilt and fault, then I would also say a lot of employers.
	A lot of employers who require a four-year degree for jobs that don't actually need it.
	It is an artificial necessity.
	There are jobs where you really need the extra education.
	Obviously, if you want to be a doctor or an engineer or an architect or something, or a lawyer, then you need that extra education.
	So that is an actual need.
	There are a lot of other jobs where, entry level, you're going to be sitting in a cubicle typing to a computer all day.
	And whatever you need to know about the job, you're going to learn on the job.
	That's the case for so many other millions of situations.
	But even in those situations, the employers require the degree for no real reason other than it's just an artificial need.
	It's a way of weeding out applicants.
	It makes it easier, a little bit easier on them because they're too lazy to do the real work and find candidates who have the skills and the ability and the qualities needed for the job.
	And so as a way of kind of weeding out, kind of dwindling down the pack, they throw out all the people who don't have college degrees.
	They deserve some of the blame, too.
	Okay.
	Number five.
	Dolly Parton sent out a statement yesterday, and the statement reads, let's see here.
	She says, "I want to thank the Tennessee legislature for their consideration of a bill
	to erect a statue of me on the Capitol grounds.
	I'm honored and humbled by their intention, but I have asked the leaders of the state
	legislature to remove the bill from any and all consideration.
	Given all that's going on in the world, I don't think putting me on a pedestal is appropriate
	I hope, though, that somewhere down the road, several years from now, or perhaps after I'm gone, if you still feel I deserve it, that I'm certain I will stand proud in our great state capital as a grateful Tennessean.
	Dolly Parton get a lot of credit for this, and for good reason.
	I like that, too.
	Dolly Parton may be, and I bring that up because I've raised the question before, especially after the death of Alex Trebek, who was a universally beloved American and I know he wasn't really American, but I'm I'm claiming him as our own as an adoptive son of America So he was universally beloved and now and now he's tragically gone.
	So how many?
	People do we have left?
	Famous people who are universally beloved almost across the board both political aisles No matter where you stand ideologically.
	Everybody loves you There aren't many I think Dolly Parton maybe One of the only ones.
	Dolly Parton, Betty White, I don't know.
	Keanu Reeves, maybe?
	But this is one of the reasons why.
	It's smart, too.
	I think it's a good idea in general with statues.
	We know statues have become contentious issues.
	And I'm all about building statues to our historical icons.
	I'm all about that.
	I think it's a great thing to do.
	But you should at least wait until they're dead.
	We could call this the Joe Paterno rule.
	It's, even if someone is, you know, towards the end of their days and they're older
	and you know they're gonna be dead in the next 10, 15 years anyway,
	even so, it's not a good idea to build the statue while someone is still alive.
	Just wait until they're gone and you alleviate the risk of having to tear
	that statue down if things go wrong.
	All right, we're gonna go now to read the comments.
	This is from April.
	She says, hold up, Matt, you're 35?
	Interesting.
	No, actually, I'm 34.
	I said yesterday on the show that I'm 35.
	I'm actually 34.
	I said I'm 35 because I can't remember my own age, and my wife was not here to tell me.
	Usually when someone asks me how old I am, I turn to my wife and say, how old am I?
	And she tells me.
	And that's not a joke either. That's not a bit. I really do forget my age
	Already, so I'm and I'm what am I right? I just said I'm 34 I'm 34 and I'm already forgetting how old I am. I cannot
	imagine what I'm if I make it to 70 It's me bad news
	Jess says, about the ADHD thing.
	You know, it's an actual disorder, right?
	There's a physical difference in our brains.
	We have a lack of dopamine that makes us lethargic and inattentive and twitchy and a lot of other nasty things.
	ADHD isn't just hyper or inattentive.
	There is a model brain, as you put it, and we don't have it.
	But yes, I agree, a lot of young kids probably get misdiagnosed.
	Well, Jess, first of all, I don't know that you're right about a lot of what you're saying here.
	The issue of whether or not ADHD is reflected physically in the brain, or rather how exactly it's reflected physically in the brain, that is a very controversial, contentious, that's something that scientists and neurologists and neurobiologists have been looking at for decades now.
	I don't think it's nearly as simple as you're putting it.
	It's kind of like people will sort of blithely say that, well, depression is a chemical imbalance in the brain.
	And that's the common narrative because that's what we've been grown up, we were told growing up, that it's a chemical imbalance.
	Well, that's actually not true.
	There's not a lot of evidence for that.
	So, which isn't to say that it's not reflected in the brain.
	It's not as simple as you put it.
	That's the first thing.
	Second thing though, It doesn't actually matter to me whether or not it is reflected in the brain.
	Let's just say, for the sake of argument, there is such a thing as an ADHD brain.
	Which, as I told you, if there is an ADHD brain, I've got it.
	I am a model case for ADHD.
	I can tell you that right now.
	So, let's say there is such a thing as an ADHD brain.
	Okay.
	The question, though, is whether our brains should not be that way.
	So what I would put it to you is, okay, maybe there is an ADHD brain.
	Who's to say that your brain is not supposed to be like that?
	You say there's a model brain.
	Well, on that one, I can surely tell you you're wrong.
	There is no one single brain that we can pull out of someone's head and say, this is what your brain is supposed to look like.
	Now, we could do that on a real general sort of basis, okay?
	We could speak very generally about how the human brain functions and what it looks like.
	But when you get into the real specifics of it, everyone's brain is different because we all have different personalities, different proclivities, different experiences, different emotions, all these things.
	Everyone's brain is different.
	And all our brains are going to be different also in ways that we can't even fully detect yet because we don't have the science for it.
	So only in the most general sense can you talk about model brains.
	When you get started getting more specific and talk about individual personality traits, I don't think that exists.
	I don't think there is a model brain all the way down to the personality types.
	There is no personality trait or way of thinking that we can point to and say, that's the right personality, that's the right way of thinking.
	The ADHD brain, I would say, or the ADHD personality, the ADHD type, I would say, is not a disorder.
	It's a way of thinking.
	It's a mode of thinking.
	Now, that mode of thinking doesn't work very well in certain circumstances.
	In other circumstances, it does.
	There are other circumstances where having the, quote, ADHD brain is going to help you.
	But just because it doesn't work as well in certain circumstances, that does not mean that it is disordered.
	That's my point.
	That's why I say my issue is with the disorder part of it.
	I don't think that it's right to call it disorder.
	I don't think there's evidence for that.
	It's not like a neurological disease, like dementia.
	We can look at dementia and obviously say that this is a disease, that your brain is not supposed to do that.
	We can say that for one thing because you can physically see it destroying the brain and it will kill you.
	It's a pretty good giveaway that that's not how the brain is supposed to be.
	There's something wrong here.
	It's not the case for ADHD.
	The person with the ADHD brain can function very well in society.
	They can be wonderful, well-adjusted people.
	They can be very successful.
	All of that.
	It's just in certain circumstances they're going to struggle.
	Who is to say that every person is supposed to succeed in those circumstances?
	Let's see.
	We'll go to one more.
	Kenneth says, no Matt, you lost the Aquaman question.
	You can't just name a character and have whoever you're with pick a power and oh yeah, he does.
	Just pick Superman every time.
	Someone who can go back in time.
	Hey, you win.
	Super strength, hey you win.
	Flight, you win, etc.
	You're a cheater.
	You need a full confession of acknowledgement that you are a game scammer.
	Shame.
	Well, Kenneth, I went through this yesterday.
	Didn't you see me?
	I pulled up the evidence.
	Okay, I've done my research.
	You didn't do your research.
	The question was, what superpower would you like to have?
	I said I'd like to have the superpowers of Aquaman.
	Okay?
	Then my wife says, oh, he wants super strength.
	What does Aquaman have?
	Super strength.
	So that is, I fairly won and I was robbed.
	And the fact that you would sit here and take the side of the people who have scammed me and rigged the game against me when I'm the victim is just more reason why you are banned from listening to this show.
	How dare you?
	How dare you, sir?
	We talk about the problems in the education system all the time.
	We talk about it again today.
	It's a common theme on this show because it's a major problem in our culture today.
	And you look back and you kind of ask, what the heck is going on in our schools?
	Critical race theory, choosing your own gender, climate change, doom and gloom.
	The attack on American history, all this stuff, this left-wing nonsense is now taught from kindergarten through grad school.
	And it's turning kids into left-wing activists.
	It's brainwashing millions of kids.
	Because millions of kids have to attend these schools and be subjected to it.
	That's why we need to fight back.
	My friends at PragerU know exactly what we're up against and they're doing something about it right now.
	Several of us here at The Daily Wire are featured in PragerU videos.
	PragerU knows how to educate millions of young people like no other non-profit.
	They've been doing it for a long time.
	Now, PragerU is taking on K-12 education with PragerU resources for educators and parents known as PREP.
	If you're a parent or a teacher, you need to join this group today.
	This is the most powerful community of conservative parents and educators in America.
	Now's the time to join.
	You can join PREP at PragerU.com forward slash PREP.
	That's P-R-E-P.
	With PREP, you'll save our children from this leftist brainwashing.
	Best of all, you'll join thousands of members already working together to make sure education reflects our values.
	We need you on our side.
	The strength is in numbers.
	We have the numbers.
	Now we all have to come together.
	So you can join PrEP today by going to PragerU.com forward slash PrEP.
	As I'm sure you know, actress Gina Carano has been making her way through the news cycle recently.
	She was the star of Disney Plus.
	She was Disney Plus' Mandalorian.
	She was cancelled for being conservative.
	And usually that would be the end of the story.
	Someone's cancelled.
	That's it.
	We don't see them again.
	We don't hear from them.
	But that's not how it works now because The Daily Wire is fighting back.
	And that's why we just announced a movie deal with Gina.
	She'll be developing, producing, and starring in an upcoming film that will be released exclusively to Daily Wire members.
	We've all said it.
	Conservatives need to do more than complain.
	We need to actually engage and fight.
	And that's what we're doing now.
	And that's why we need you.
	Disney Plus has $8 billion to throw around.
	We have you.
	And so that's why we need you in the fight to take back our culture.
	Go to dailywire.com slash subscribe and use promo code Gina.
	That's G-I-N-A to get 25% off of your membership today.
	Now let's get to our daily cancellation.
	Now today for our daily cancellation, it really pains me to do it.
	I hate to do it.
	I don't want to do it, but I have to once again cancel my wife.
	She is now the most cancelled person on The Matt Walsh Show, beating out AOC, though the contest remains close.
	The reason I'm cancelling her is this tweet here that she sent out yesterday.
	This is what she tweeted.
	She says, "The moment when you can't stop laughing because Matt tried to run and slide with the storage lid sprayed
	with Pam and instead makes a hard stop and his face bounces off the snow covered, off the snow covered cement.
	And then there's a picture of me on the ground clutching my side and in obvious great agony."
	Now a few things here.
	[BLANK_AUDIO]
	First, I was using a storage lid and a cooking spray because we don't own sleds.
	I was spraying down a lid with cooking spray because we don't own sleds.
	As I explained a few days ago, the stores around me, all out of sleds too.
	I had to stop on my way home on Wednesday at the store for some necessary supplies like diapers and of course bread and milk.
	And I noticed that all of those kinds of supplies, this was like in an ice storm, and I'm on my way home from the hotel where I'm shooting this week, and it's in an ice storm, roads are untreated as I've documented, head to stop, and I go in, and all of those kinds of like diapers, milk, bread, you know, all that kind of stuff, that's all fully in stock.
	But what the store is out of is beer and sleds.
	Those are the two things that it's out of.
	And I had this moment of pride in my community that we all have our priorities in order.
	You know, running out in an ice storm to buy beer and sleds.
	You've got to make sure you have the essentials.
	That's the first thing.
	Second, my wife's recounting of the events is accurate.
	I did indeed take a plastic storage lid, spray it with cooking oil, and then attempt to slide down our cement driveway.
	And I did in fact take a running head start and then actually dive.
	This is what I did.
	Okay, I want you to understand this.
	I made a running head start and dove intentionally, chest first, onto the cement and ice.
	All of these things happened.
	Why is my wife cancelled for that?
	Well, because for one thing, I probably broke my ribs.
	I was in pain.
	I'm not even necessarily joking about having broken ribs.
	I really might have broken ribs.
	I just refused to go to the doctor for it, because I don't want to have to explain this story.
	But all my wife did was laugh and take pictures.
	Like, she's literally standing above me, taking pictures, laughing.
	Well, I can barely breathe.
	And then my daughter, as I'm on the ground, my daughter runs over and jumps on top of me.
	She actually yells, yay, jump on daddy!
	And just jumps right on top of me, with my broken ribs.
	It wasn't until several minutes later, several minutes, until all the pictures had been taken, and the laughter subsided for a moment, and then my wife asked me if I was okay.
	Only then, which for the record, I wasn't, not physically or emotionally.
	So that's the first reason she's canceled.
	The second reason, Is that she allowed me to do this in the first place.
	And the escapade on the concrete driveway was right after I went sledding down our ice-covered stone steps.
	I mean, what sort of self-destructive idiot behaves this way?
	And I'm a grown adult, apparently 34 years old.
	Who does this?
	More importantly, though, what sort of wife sits back and films while her husband behaves this way?
	See, I take no personal responsibility here at all.
	I'm not responsible for this.
	I am not responsible for my own behaviors.
	Wives should know that husbands are usually quite rational when it comes to most things, but when it comes to balancing the risk of physical harm against the reward of having fun, we have a short circuit in our brain.
	Something goes haywire and it just doesn't work.
	It's not our fault.
	It's a condition.
	We're born with it.
	We can't do anything about it.
	This is why this all falls on my wife, who is not only morally, but I think legally liable for my behavior.
	I could sue her for this.
	I really could, and I still might.
	This is almost as bad as the time a few years ago when I went sledding off a massive ramp.
	We went to a school to go sledding down this hill, and some kids had made a ramp that they were snowboarding off of.
	And I went sledding off of it, and I nearly broke my tailbone.
	And yet again, guess who's standing off on the side laughing her ass off?
	While mine is broken into seven pieces.
	That's right.
	My wife.
	So you're starting to see the pattern here?
	You might say that the pattern is me acting like a moron.
	And yes, that is one pattern.
	I don't deny that.
	But the other pattern is my wife exploiting my idiocy for her own sick amusement.
	And that's why my wife is, once again, cancelled.
	And that's going to do it for us today.
	We'll leave it there.
	Have a great weekend, everybody.
	Stay safe out there.
	Godspeed.
	Well, 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.
	Also, 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 Knowles Show, 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 director is Austin Stevens, production manager Pavel Vodovsky.
	The show is edited by Danny D'Amico.
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	The Matt Walsh Show is a Daily Wire production, copyright Daily Wire 2021.
	Hey everybody, this is Andrew Klavan, host of The Andrew Klavan Show.
	You know, some people are depressed because the republic is collapsing, the end of days is approaching, and the moon's turned to blood.
	But on The Andrew Klavan Show, that's where the fun just gets started.

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