Ep. 778 - Fleeing Taliban Runs For Cover As US Sends Sternly Worded Letters
Today on the Matt Walsh Show, already the clamoring has begun to accept thousands of Afghan refugees. Meanwhile, our own people — thousands of them — are still trapped in Afghanistan, and the Biden Administration is not guaranteeing that all will be rescued. This is another example of what an America Last policy looks like. Also, a top vaccine official in Tennessee said that she was mailed a dog muzzle as a threat from anti-vaxxers. You’ll never guess who really sent it. Meanwhile, New Zealand goes into full lockdown over one COVID case. Just one. And Australia has now instructed its people that they must not drink outside without a mask. And, the biggest news of all, Carrie Underwood has sparked controversy by liking one of my tweets. This headline-making news has caused lots of distress to lots of people, and it is all quite hilarious.
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Today on the Matt Wall Show, already the clamoring has begun to accept thousands of Afghan refugees.
Meanwhile, our own people, thousands of them, are still trapped in Afghanistan and the Biden administration is not guaranteeing that they will all be rescued.
This is another example of what an America Last policy looks like.
Also, a top vaccine official in Tennessee said that she was mailed a dog muzzle as a threat from anti-vaxxers.
You'll never guess who really sent it.
Well, you probably already have guessed, but still.
Meanwhile, New Zealand goes into full lockdown over one COVID case, just one, and Australia has now instructed its people that they must not drink outside without a mask.
And the biggest news of all, of course, is Carrie Underwood sparking controversy by liking one of my tweets.
This headline-making news has caused lots of distress to lots of people, and it's all quite hilarious.
We'll talk about that today and more on Matt Walsh's show.
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We began the show yesterday with a spokesman for the State Department standing in front of the press and bravely demanding that the Taliban become an inclusive and equitable organization.
Our government has been unequivocal about this.
The bloodthirsty, cave-dwelling goat herders, frozen in time since the year 750, must immediately and without delay adopt the value system of a 20-year-old women's studies major.
Last night, Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield appeared on CNN to again drive this point home, and they just sound dumber and dumber every time they do it.
So, here's the latest.
Listen.
We are hearing from people in Afghanistan that they are getting threats from the Taliban and we have expressed in no uncertain terms here at the United Nations through a very strongly worded press statement from the Security Council that we expect the Taliban to respect human rights including the rights of women and girls.
We have also indicated that they have to be respectful of humanitarian law And that we do not expect to see that Afghanistan will become a safe haven for terrorists.
A very strongly worded press statement.
Not just a strongly worded press statement, a very strongly worded press statement.
The Taliban must be shaking in their Birkenstocks.
I mean, you can imagine them fleeing for cover, running and screaming, take cover!
A press statement!
They issued a press statement!
Get down!
Hopefully there will not be a need to use this kind of force again, though, as the Taliban has promised, pinky promised, as I understand, to behave themselves and be very respectful of women and minorities and all protected classes of people.
The UN, for its part, is ready to take the Taliban at its word.
Here's this from Reuters.
They say the chief of field operations of the UN Children's Agency expressed cautious optimism about working with Taliban officials following their seizure of power in Afghanistan, citing their early expressions of support for girls' education.
Quote, we have ongoing discussions.
We are quite optimistic based on those discussions, UNICEF chief of field operations in Afghanistan told a UN briefing, adding that 11 out of 13 field offices were currently operational.
We have not a single issue with the Taliban in those field offices.
Well, it's good that they're optimistic.
The people clinging to the outside of a C-17 to get out of the country did not appear to be quite as optimistic, however.
And there is reason to lend more credibility to their assessment than to the UN.
One reason is just that the UN is a scourge on this earth and nothing they say about anything is true.
But also, and here's a basic fact that seems to be incomprehensible to so many people in the West, but we have to understand this.
If you want to understand anything about how the world works, You need to know this.
Members of the Taliban, like so many non-Western people, do not believe in women's rights.
In fact, they don't believe in rights at all.
I know that seems shocking to people these days.
How could you not believe in rights?
Well, they don't.
They have no concept of human rights.
They have no language for it.
Things like humanitarian law and human rights, these are uniquely Western and uniquely modern.
They are not universally recognized truths, but rather dogmas.
They're part of a religious creed which is peculiar to our age and our civilization.
As it turns out, history did not begin 10 years ago, and the Earth does in fact expand beyond our local boundaries.
Just because we have a certain way of looking at things, that doesn't mean that everyone has always looked at it that way, either in the past or the present.
Now, that's not to say that all beliefs are valid and everyone's perspective is true in its own way.
I'm not making a pitch for relativism here, but for realism.
I believe that we have God-given rights, understood a certain way, though even we don't really understand what we mean when we talk about rights, which is why none of us can agree about what our rights are or where they come from.
Yet I believe there is a truth here, an objective truth.
The point simply is that in order to see this truth, you need a certain philosophical and religious framework.
Yes, religious framework, which does not exist in that part of the world.
Human rights are, at root, a Christian theological concept.
That's what they are.
That's what they will always be.
So in order to get anyone to really recognize and respect human rights, you first have to convince them to adopt the entire framework upon which human rights are based.
But that's not a project that can be accomplished in 20 years or double that time or triple that time.
And it's not a goal that our government is capable of achieving in any length of time, because our government is now, and has been for a long while, run by people who also reject the human rights framework.
Most of the people, like those in the UN or the State Department, who demand that the whole world respect human rights, they don't themselves respect human rights, and worse still, they can't articulate any reason why anyone actually ought to respect them.
Nor can they explain what human rights are or where they come from.
The people proclaiming this gospel of human rights have not read it, don't agree with it, don't like it, which is all the more reason to abandon our colonial ambitions and return home, to rescue our nation from its own collapse.
Now, of course, when I say return home, I mean everyone.
All of the Americans in Afghanistan need to be brought home, which is a point that the Biden administration apparently thinks is negotiable.
Jen Psaki, when asked about the Americans trapped in Afghanistan and asked if she could guarantee that all of these people would be able to leave, well, she very noticeably did not issue that guarantee.
Here she is.
Do you offer any guarantee to the Americans and Afghan allies that if they remain there past the end of the month, U.S.
troops will help them evacuate past the end of the month?
Weijia, our focus right now is undoing the work at hand.
and on the task at hand. And that is day by day, getting as many American citizens, as
many SIV applicants, as many members of a vulnerable population who are eligible to
be evacuated to the airport and out on planes. And we're going to do that in an expeditious
fashion. That is the focus of the president, of our secretary of defense, of our secretary
of state, and everybody on our national security team. So that is where we will keep our efforts.
Go ahead.
So no guarantee, in other words.
And the government has been more explicit about this elsewhere.
According to The Atlantic, an email was sent out to Americans stranded in Afghanistan, telling them they should make their own way to the airport.
They're on their own for that part of the trip.
Like, get yourself here.
That's up to you.
And during that process, their safety cannot be assured.
The email said, quote, please be advised the United States government cannot guarantee your security as you make this trip.
Meanwhile, as Jen Psaki stipulated, the focus remains on not just evacuating Americans, but also SIV applicants and vulnerable populations.
There are 10,000 Americans still in Afghanistan.
The government has gotten hundreds of people out of the country so far, not nearly fast enough.
And the vast majority of the people evacuated are not American citizens.
They're at the back of the line.
As it stands right now, based on the latest report, the non-American evacuees outnumber the Americans by like three to one.
It would be too generous to say that the Biden administration is treating Afghans and Americans equally in the evacuation process.
That would be bad enough.
It's more true to say that they are prioritizing non-Americans.
This was illustrated in stark detail when the first plane took off from the airport.
We know what the outside of the plane looked like, but if you look at the inside, check out the inside of the plane.
And what do you see when you look at this picture?
Not only are there easily ten times the number of men than women and children, but every single one of these people would appear to be Afghans.
The very first people we got out of the country, the first plane load, our first priority were Afghans.
I don't know how else to describe this other than the word diabolical.
We are leaving Americans to die while carting Afghan citizens out of the country by the plane load.
And now we have both Republicans and Democrats solemnly insisting that our first priority is to bring these foreign citizens into our country in a hurry all at once.
There are almost 200 countries on this planet, okay?
And for some reason, it has to always fall to us, always, to take in the refugees.
It's always our responsibility.
The UN has said that, too.
Well, you gotta bring them in.
What about everybody else?
What about the rest of you guys?
What are you doing?
What about the surrounding Muslim countries?
So these people can go to a culture that is familiar to them.
Why aren't you stepping up to the plate?
And many of the people who insist that we need to bring in the refugees, they also believe that America is a racist, oppressive dystopia, not that dissimilar from Afghanistan under the Taliban.
So you would think that they would want the refugees to go elsewhere for their own sake.
But then that would be to expect intellectual consistency from these people, which is always too much to ask.
I don't see why it should be our job, our responsibility, much less a safe and prudent plan, to accept an unchecked flood of fighting-age Afghan males.
And who knows how many of whom are Taliban, or at least sympathetic to the Taliban.
That's not a safe plan to begin with.
And if you trust the government to sift through these people and to go through the vetting
process and to do it well, if you trust them, then you just haven't been paying attention
at all.
But at any rate, we shouldn't even be having that conversation until all of the Americans are home.
Not one Afghan should be on an American transport leaving the country until every single American has been safely retrieved.
And the Biden administration, if it gave the slightest damn about its own people, would be on TV every hour of the day assuring us that they will move heaven and earth.
They will do whatever needs to be done.
They will drop whatever bombs have to be dropped.
They will kill whoever they need to kill in order to get our people out.
That's what they would be saying.
They would be saying, we're going to get our people out.
Anyone who stops us, we will kill them.
We will destroy them.
Instead, they yawn and say, eh, well, you know, we'll get a few of them out, maybe.
If they manage to survive the trip to the airport.
Because, by the way, we shut down our Air Force Base before we started the evacuation process.
Great plan there.
We have to understand that what we are witnessing now is not mere incompetence.
This is rather the inevitable result of an American government That doesn't put America first.
And that phrase, America first, should not be a partisan slogan or a slogan at all.
It shouldn't even need to be said.
Obviously, we should put our own people first.
We're Americans.
There are people.
Just as you shouldn't ever need to say or clarify that you put your own family above your neighbor's family.
It should be obvious, and your actions should never cause anyone to question whether you have that value system or not.
Yet, as far as America First, we do need to say it now because our country is run by people who don't understand the world they're operating within, don't care about the country they're in charge of, and don't even like the people they lead.
Incompetent?
No.
They're doing exactly what they mean to do.
Exactly how they mean to do it.
And that's the problem.
Now let's get to our five headlines.
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Um, all right, by the way, quick update on this, uh, for, for the people that have been asking, um, as you know, this, uh, psychological warfare that has been, is being waged on me by, uh, members of my family to try to convince me to get a dog.
And, um, I did find myself this just this past weekend, um, at a, uh, at an animal shelter looking at dogs and, Which again is not a smart move, but I was there, we were looking at the dogs.
And you have to understand, like...
First, my wife and my kids, a couple weeks ago, they were trying to convince me that we should adopt this little poodle, chihuahua, mangy-looking thing, totally useless dog.
And then we're at the animal shelter looking at some of the dogs, and now they're trying to convince me to adopt an enormous four-year-old Rottweiler and bring that into the house.
And what you have to understand, now I'm not an expert on these issues at all, but there's a reason why a dog is at an animal shelter, and if it's a Rottweiler at an animal shelter, there's probably a reason why it was there.
Now, if you look on all the cages and it says, like, how did this dog end up in the animal shelter?
And every single one of them says, oh, it was a stray that just wandered in.
They were all strays.
Yeah, I'm sure they were.
Right.
It's a lot of owners bringing their dogs in and saying, yeah, this is a stray.
It's not mine because they don't want to admit what they're doing.
So I get the feeling that my wife and kids, when it comes to the dog search, are motivated primarily by emotions here.
And their guiding principle is what's the cutest.
Let's just bring the cutest thing, even if it's useless or it could be a snarling, rabid death machine.
Doesn't matter as long as it's cute.
That's what I'm up against.
All right, so here's a fun story.
Michelle Fiscus was one of the top vaccine officials here in Tennessee.
She was fired, justifiably, after distributing a memo encouraging medical professionals to vaccinate children without their parents' consent.
Or, excuse me, let me clarify.
Rather, she shared information about how they could do that, not that she was suggesting it.
All she was saying, she distributed the memo saying, hey, I'm just saying you could vaccinate kids without their parental consent.
I'm not encouraging you, but by the way, here's the law, and by the way, you could do that.
Hint, hint, wink, wink.
And in the middle of that backlash, because this creep was trying to supersede the authority of parents, Encouraging people to inject these substances into kids without parents even knowing.
In the middle of that backlash, before leaving her position, she claimed to have received a dog muzzle in the mail as a threat of some kind from presumably an anti-vaxxer, probably a Trump supporter, one of those dangerous people, you know.
Here she is on CNN, this was a few weeks ago, talking about this terrible threat that she received.
Let's watch this.
I understand.
So just last week, before you were fired, you received a disturbing Amazon package at your office.
What was in it and what did you think when you received it?
Hi, Anderson, thank you so much for having me.
Yes, the week before I was terminated from the Department of Health, I received a package that contained a dog muzzle.
And at first I thought that was a joke and contacted a few friends.
And then when no one claimed it, realized that that was something that was sent to me as some kind of a message, I suppose.
I understand.
I think it was your husband who said, or you said something to your husband that he recounted.
What was it you said?
I said that they obviously didn't know me because they sent me a size 3, which is for beagles, and I'm obviously a pit bull, which requires a size 6.
Really clever.
She's a pit bull, alright.
Question, again, not being an expert on dogs, are pit bulls known for lying?
Are they a particularly deceptive breed of dog?
Maybe they are.
Because if so, she's a pit bull.
Because as it turns out, this was all, shockingly, a lie.
Now we have this from the Daily Wire.
It says, an investigation revealed the muzzle was actually purchased on Fiskus' own credit card.
Though she still denies that she sent the muzzle to herself as some sort of hate hoax.
According to Axios, an investigation from the Tennessee Department of Safety and Homeland Security revealed that the Amazon package containing the dog muzzle was traced back to a credit card in Fiscus's name.
So, no problem here.
Former government official in charge of vaccines in the state mailing a dog muzzle to herself.
And so stupid Here's the thing where you want to say... It's almost hard to believe.
You almost want to give her the benefit of the doubt because you say, would she really be so dumb as to perpetrate this hoax in the first place, but then to put it on her own credit card?
How stupid do you have to be?
Like, why wouldn't you go at least, if you're going to do this, go to a PetSmart or something, buy the thing in cash, And then mail it to yourself at a, you know, a mailbox somewhere in a shopping center.
A little bit harder to trace.
If you're going to do this whole thing, then, I mean, really go for it.
Instead, she just went on Amazon with her own credit card, sent it to herself, knowing it would be investigated and they could easily obtain this information.
So you want to give her the benefit of the doubt, but of course you can't because, um, These hate hoaxers, as we have learned time and time again, really are this stupid, or maybe not so stupid at all.
Maybe she realized that it didn't matter whether it was true or not.
All that matters is the initial headline, as we have also learned time and time again with these hoaxes.
All you gotta do is get the initial headline, you become a victim, you get all that attention, which you can profit off of and capitalize on, If a few weeks later, or even a few days later, if it turns out the whole thing was made up, no, it's... All of the people who are willing to accept you as a martyr, they don't care.
The truth doesn't mean anything to them.
So it might not be so stupid after all.
She realizes that the people this is meant to appeal to, for them, the truth is totally irrelevant, so... Who cares?
And that's exactly how it has turned out.
And she's still denying it.
She's saying, oh, I didn't send it to myself.
I guess the person who sent the dog muzzle first stole her credit card, maybe stole it from her purse, bought the dog muzzle, mailed it to her, and then snuck into her house in the middle of the night and put the credit card back in her purse.
You never know.
Could have happened.
All right, next we have Jack Jenkins, a religious news service reporter on Twitter, has this.
He says, Diocese of Lexington, Kentucky mandates COVID-19 vaccines for staff as a condition of employment.
Bishop John Stowe of the diocese says there is no religious exemption for Catholics to being vaccinated, and Pope Francis has repeatedly called this a moral obligation.
Yeah, it's a moral obligation to get vaccinated, he says.
Which is obviously nonsense.
But what makes this all the more frustrating and irritating is that this language of moral obligation, this is exactly the kind of language that many of us in the Catholic Church, many of the laity, have been calling on bishops to use for decades.
By and large, with some exceptions, The leadership in the Catholic Church, in America anyway, and beyond America, unfortunately, has given up the language of moral obligation.
They don't talk about it anymore.
And they certainly don't put their foot down about anything.
Taking a bold stand, drawing a line, and saying, you cannot cross this line.
Here's what it means to be a Catholic.
Here are your moral obligations.
Here are your responsibilities.
For decades, they've abandoned this language.
They don't want to talk about it.
And now, finally, these bishops, these weak, whimpering bishops, with no spine, no courage to stand up against any evil at all, to call out any sin, now they have finally found an evil and a sin and a villain that they're willing to call out, and that would be the unvaccinated.
They finally discovered, these people, a moral obligation.
And it is the obligation to get vaccinated, just as the government tells you to.
That's the moral obligation.
I mean, the moral obligation to, you know, care for your own children rather than killing them in the womb?
A lot of these bishops, they don't even talk about that.
They don't want to talk about that.
The moral obligation to chastity?
They don't talk about that.
Any virtue?
They're not going to discuss that.
Because that would be otherizing, right?
That would be... That would turn people off.
That would upset people.
That's not welcoming.
You know, the focus in the church has been on, let's welcome in, let's throw open the doors and welcome everyone.
Even if they're not Catholic and have no interest in being Catholic whatsoever, they're opposed to the Catholic faith and everything we stand for, let's welcome them in.
Let's put them in positions of leadership, even.
It doesn't matter.
Let's have priests who don't even believe any of this stuff.
It doesn't make a difference.
Now they have finally, now after decades of this, and the church in the midst of a full-scale collapse in this country and across the West because of this, now they have finally closed the doors a little bit and said, okay, we're not going to be welcoming of everyone.
Who aren't we going to welcome?
The unvaccinated.
And also this from CNN says New Zealand's Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has announced a nationwide lockdown after the country confirmed... Well, we'll get to that in a second.
Let's listen first to Jacinda Ardern and then we'll talk about what prompted this.
But here is Jacinda Prime Minister announcing this lockdown and instructing her citizens on how they are to behave from henceforth.
Here she is.
Stay local and do not congregate.
Don't talk to your neighbours.
Please keep to your bubbles.
It comes down again to those very simple principles.
We know from overseas cases of the Delta variant that it can be spread by people simply walking past one another.
So keep those movements outside to the bare minimum, wear a mask and make sure you keep up that physical distancing.
They're very concerned.
We heard this from the health official in Australia last week.
Don't talk.
Don't talk to anybody.
Don't even pass by anyone on the street.
She claims that we know that the Delta variant can be spread by walking past someone on the street.
Really?
We know that?
How do we know that?
Where's that data?
Show me any data at all to support that.
Where has it been proven that you can spread COVID to another person by walking past them?
So we're talking about One or two seconds of being within the general vicinity of another human being, that's enough to infect them?
Really?
Even if they're vaccinated, still.
Where's the data on that?
Well, there's no data on that at all.
That is, she made that up.
She's standing in front of her people, making things up.
Doesn't matter, nobody's gonna call her on it.
And why are they going into this?
This is a full national lockdown.
Stay in your homes.
Don't talk to anyone.
Don't even pass by someone on the street.
And why is that?
Because of one case.
One case in the whole country.
One dude in New Zealand has COVID.
No reason to think it's even a severe case, but he has it, and now the entire country shuts down.
Do you know how many deaths New Zealand has had from COVID this year?
Zero.
The white supremacist symbol?
Zero.
They have had zero deaths since, I believe, last spring.
And since COVID began, they have less than 30 deaths in a year and a half.
And now one case and they shut down the whole country.
And as I always say with this, the really disturbing thing Is how many people will look at this and say that makes sense to me?
It does not shock me or surprise me that a person in charge of a country, a politician, would want to exercise this kind of power if she can get away with it.
The thing that is kind of shocking and very upsetting is that she can get away with it.
In fact, just talking about this, seeing some of the social media reaction, there are a lot of people in this country saying, she's setting an example for the world.
Why can't we do this?
It's obviously working, they say.
That's what we're told, is that this is a good idea to shut down the entire country for one case of a disease that has hardly been deadly at all in your country.
Hardly anyone has died of COVID in New Zealand this entire time.
But they say it's working, so let's do it.
Well, here's the problem with that.
First of all, there isn't a lot of reason to think that it's working in the first place.
This is New Zealand.
It's one of the most isolated, populated places on Earth.
In terms of populated land masses, it's hard to get more isolated than New Zealand.
Okay, they're an island nation.
Their closest neighbor Which you have to travel across an ocean to get to, is Australia.
And their closest neighbor to the south is Antarctica, okay?
Their closest neighbor to the south is a barren, frozen wasteland.
So, there are a lot of advantages there already.
They don't get a ton of tourism to begin with.
It's certainly not like us.
Where we are an international hub of people coming and going.
We've got refugees coming in.
We've got this and that.
We've got people flooding across the southern border.
I tell you, New Zealand doesn't have anyone coming across the southern border unless it's penguins from Antarctica.
So there's no reason to think that any of the measures they're putting in place have made all that much of a difference.
For all of those reasons, their isolation, they were never going to get hit by this very hard in the first place.
But anyway, let's pretend for a second that it is working.
Well, okay.
Yeah, big shocker.
If you shut down your entire country because of one case of an illness that's not all that deadly, yeah, the illness probably won't spread.
Yes, it works in that sense.
But if you also care about things like having a functioning society, living an actual life, Being a functioning human being?
If that matters to you, then no, this doesn't work.
If the only thing that matters is stopping COVID, and it is literally the only consideration, is stopping people from getting COVID, if the number one priority and the only priority is stopping COVID, then sure, it works.
But if you care about literally anything else, then no, this solution does not work.
We also have to play this.
Here's a guy in Australia.
I'm not even sure who this guy is, but someone in a position of leadership.
Oh, the Victoria Premier, Daniel Andrews, is who it is.
And here he is explaining some more of the COVID measures and telling you some more things that you cannot do in Australia.
Let's listen.
There will be no removal of masks to consume alcohol outdoors.
So you will no longer be able to remove your mask to drink a cocktail at a pop-up beer garden on a footpath as part of a pub crawl.
You cannot take off your mask to drink outside.
But notice he doesn't say you can't drink outside.
Which would be absurd enough on its own, obviously.
What he's saying is there will be no removing of masks to drink outside.
Which would clearly seem to imply that you could still drink outside, but keep your mask on.
I guess what he's saying is the safest thing, if you gotta drink outside, no, we certainly are not going to be drinking inside.
But if you're going to be drinking outside, if you want to drink at all, if you want to consume any liquids at all, the safest thing is to waterboard yourself with your beer and your mask.
Throw your head back and dump the beer onto your mask and hope you don't suffocate in the process.
Many, many, many a Taliban have been through that process themselves, you know, and many of them survived.
And now they're running Afghanistan.
So who knows?
Maybe you will too one day.
Okay, I also want to hit this from the Daily Wire.
It says, Naomi Osaka's return to taking questions in a press conference setting did not go well.
She was the tennis star who dropped out of the French Open, you may recall, a few months ago because she didn't want to take any questions from the press because it hurts her mental health and she doesn't like having to answer questions.
She doesn't like experiencing, you know, talking to anyone who doubts her or questions her in any way.
It's very traumatizing to her.
And she finally returned to answering some questions.
I'm going to skip ahead here, because there was an interaction between her and a reporter.
And after that interaction, Osaka starts crying and eventually leaves the press conference.
And then this from the Daily Wire.
They say, after the press conference, Osaka's agent, Stuart Duigid, lashed out at the Cincinnati Inquirer reporter, calling his behavior appalling.
Ben Rothenberg said, quote, Or rather, Duguid said to a reporter named Ben Rothenberg, the bully at the Cincinnati Enquirer is the epitome of why player-media relations are so fraught right now.
Everyone on that Zoom will agree that his tone was all wrong and his sole purpose was to intimidate.
Really appalling behavior.
Okay, so... That's the context.
It was bullying, it was intimidating, it was horrible.
Now let's play the video of that interaction with this bullying, intimidating reporter.
And you tell me if this seems intimidating to you.
Let's listen.
You're not crazy about dealing with us, especially in this format, yet you have a lot of outside interests that are served by having a media platform.
I guess my question is, how do you balance the two?
And also, do you have anything you'd like to share with us about what you did say to Simone Biles?
Um, when you say I'm not crazy about dealing with you guys, what does that refer to?
Well, you've said you don't especially like the press conference format.
And yet that seems to be the, obviously the most widely used means of communicating to the media and through the media to the public.
Hmm, that's interesting.
I would say the occasion, like when to do the press conference is what I feel is the most difficult, but...
Hopefully it's okay if I ask a couple of tennis questions.
The first one is just how the training has been and how your preparation has been for the summer hardcourt swing.
Okay, so you see at the end there, especially if you're only listening to this and you don't have the visual cues, this has to be very confusing.
I'm sure you're listening to that and waiting.
It's like, when do you talk?
When does the bullying reporter show up?
Well, that was it.
What you just heard there.
The guy asking the question was bullying, and then at the end, Osaka's kind of stumped
by the question, can barely even speak, and then she starts crying, wiping away tears,
and she covers her face with the brim of her ball cap, and eventually ends up leaving the
press conference.
She's so distraught, and then sends her agent out, sicks her agent on this guy, calling
him a bully.
All he did was ask a question.
That's all.
There was nothing remotely contentious about it or hostile.
Even if there was, you're a grown-ass woman.
Deal with it.
Okay, you're a professional athlete.
Even if someone comes at you with a little bit of hostility, you should be able to handle that.
But there's no hostility.
It was a very fair, very basic question.
And she could barely speak in response to it, and then starts crying.
This is... And yet again, the reaction has mostly been to her defense.
And the irony here is that people say, well, this is all about mental health and everything.
No, the message to Osaka should be, this is mental illness.
Like, you have serious problems.
And I don't say that To insult you.
But if you, as a grown person, as a grown adult, cannot handle the most basic kind of question, you are reduced to tears at being questioned at all.
At being forced to justify your behavior to any extent at all.
If that reduces you to tears as an adult, then you've got serious issues.
If my own kids If one of my eight-year-olds couldn't handle any line of questioning at all without collapsing into tears, I would think that they've got some serious problems.
And they're only eight.
You'd say, well, a little bit of this is the fact that they're eight years old, but they should still have more maturity at this age than that.
You're an adult.
You've got serious mental problems.
Serious.
That should be the message.
Is anyone really concerned about Naomi Osaka and her mental health?
The message should be, listen lady, you got serious mental problems here and you need to get into some kind of counseling because this is unreasonable.
Your response here is totally unreasonable and frankly insane.
Instead, they affirm it and justify it.
And say this is a completely reasonable way to respond as an adult.
Which only means, and this is the common theme, that she will not get help for her mental health problems because she is being affirmed in her insane behavior.
Where else have we seen that in the culture?
All right, moving on now to reading the comments.
This is from Rogue Leader, says, How can the Taliban include women when the State Department can't even define woman?
Yet another contradiction.
You're exactly right.
And yet another reason why our State Department and our government is not equipped, you know, to be spreading this kind of message abroad.
Another comment says, wait, there's going to be a panel of judges for the SBG song.
Shouldn't there be only be one judge?
Our well-loved SBG Daddy Walsh?
Well, to be clear, yeah, there is going to be a panel of judges, an American Idol-style judging will go on of the Sweet Baby Gang anthem.
The only reason the other judges will be there is just because it'll make them very uncomfortable, and that will be funny.
The fact that anyone else here at The Daily Wire is going to be roped into this completely ridiculous thing that makes no sense at all, that's why they're there.
Josh says, all I got from this episode was Matt misgendered Lizzo and just glossed over it.
I'm so morally outraged.
And I apologize for that, Josh, and you're exactly right.
Very rare that I apologize, but you're right.
I did assume her gender, and you held me to account for that, and you did the right thing.
But you're still banned from the show.
Zach says, we know Matt isn't a white supremacist because he hates all races and people equally.
Well, thank you, Zach.
That's my point.
Another comment says, Matt Walsh and Ben Shapiro have opposing views on Afghanistan.
Michael Knowles too.
That's one of the nice things about The Daily Wire.
They can respectfully disagree.
You'll never see opposing views on mainstream media outlets.
CNN will have three people on who are all in agreement.
Yeah, that's why it's funny to me when I hear the accusation from people.
Anytime I express my views on anything, there's always gonna be someone saying, someone in the peanut gallery saying, oh, you're, what, did Ben Shapiro pay you to say that?
But Ben Shapiro told you to say that, didn't he?
And in a way, yeah, he does pay me to say the things I say because he's, you know, he's signing the checks, but we actually disagree, and we'll disagree publicly on issues like this.
And you're not going to find that in very many other outlets.
And that's because, you know what?
It shouldn't be shocking at all.
Oh my gosh, Matt Walsh and Ben Shapiro disagree?
Yeah, we're both human beings with our own brains and we form our own opinions on things.
That shouldn't be surprising.
That should be the norm.
In any organization, any media outlet, where you have people employed there and their job is to give their opinions, there should be a wide range of opinions.
There should be a lot of disagreement.
Because these are not Siamese twins joined at the brain.
And it's not a problem.
You disagree with someone.
It's not offensive.
It doesn't hurt my feelings.
If Ben Shapiro disagrees with me, it doesn't hurt my feelings.
I think I could speak for him and say it doesn't hurt his feelings if I disagree with him.
It's okay.
It's fine.
In fact, it's good.
It's interesting.
Okay, this is from Eric, says, Matt, I loved your school board speech and wish that I could do something similar in my local school board.
The problem is that I'm terrified of public speaking and really bad at it.
Do you have any tips?
How did you become so polished as a public speaker?
Well, okay, a couple of tips.
None of this is going to blow your mind, but first of all, as far as nerves go, when you're getting up there to speak, and I hear this from people a lot, that, you know, they want to be able to give a speech or speak in front of public, but they get so nervous.
I think it might help you to realize that before you get up in front of any audience to deliver a speech, to realize that almost everyone on earth is terrible at public speaking.
Almost everyone.
So there's no reason to be too afraid.
You know, most of the people in the audience are bad at it, too, and the ones who are good at it won't judge you for being bad at it because they know that most people are bad at it.
I mean, just think about all of the speeches you've heard in your life, all of the public addresses you've heard, whether a president on TV or a politician or, you know, a sermon at church, you know, at a fundraising banquet, at school, I mean, anywhere.
All the different times you've heard someone addressing a public audience.
How many of the Of those speeches and addresses were remotely interesting or compelling.
Very, very few.
You could probably count on one hand the number that were good.
The rest of them were, you know, kind of bad.
So it's a normal thing.
Nothing to be worried about.
The bar is really low.
And I think there's some comfort to be found in that.
And then as far as giving a good speech, the only two things I would say is, first of all, you want to write it.
Write the speech.
Like you would say it?
That's my method anyway.
I don't know if this is what they would tell you in public speaking school, but that's what I think you should do.
Certainly you don't want to write it like a book report, and that's what a lot of people do.
They write speeches like they're giving a book report in fourth grade, and they get up there and they say, today I'm going to give a speech about yada yada.
The dictionary defines yada yada as No, imagine yourself, you're passionate about this issue, and you're having a conversation with somebody one-on-one.
What are the kinds of things you would say?
How would you address it?
What sort of tones would you use?
And try to emulate that.
That's why when I write a speech, I write it very quickly.
And then I go back and I kind of juice it up a little bit and add in some more descriptive language and that kind of thing.
But my first pass, the basic framing of the speech will be very quick because I want it to be sort of stream of consciousness.
This is how I would sound if I was saying it without a script.
Then you go back around.
And then the second thing is, of course, to practice.
And the point of practicing is not memorizing the speech, by the way.
I think memorizing a speech is a waste of time.
And memorized speeches often end up sounding more like you're reading them than if you just read them.
So I never memorize a speech.
It's just a matter of getting used to using the words and all of that.
You just heard us talking about the Sweet Baby Gang anthem.
If you don't know what the Sweet Baby Gang is, then you're outside of the gang, and we're not going to explain it to you.
But if you don't know about the Anthem Challenge, I will tell you a little bit about that.
The Sweet Baby Gang is in need of a Sweet Baby Anthem, and The Daily Wire is opening up for submissions.
So I'm looking for an original song that embodies exactly what the Sweet Baby Gang is.
Whatever that is exactly.
All submissions should be in the form of a YouTube video.
All you need is the link.
And you want to submit it to dailywire.com slash sbg.
These videos are going to be, these songs are going to be judged in an American Idol style sort of competition with me and some of the other Daily Wire hosts who are going to be subjected to this.
And that is going to be so great.
I'm excited for that.
Submissions end on August 25th.
So you only had a few days to take advantage of this and get your submissions in.
Okay, you will go down in history, much like Francis Scott Key.
You will go down in history for the Sweet Baby Gang anthem.
And this is an anthem that I'll tell you one thing for sure, nobody is going to kneel while it is playing.
I will make sure of that.
So go to dailywire.com slash SBG right now.
Also, the Morning Wire, we've been telling you about that because you deserve to wake up to the facts every morning, which is why we started our newest podcast, Morning Wire, which has been topping the Apple and Spotify charts since its recent release.
It's the only daily news podcast that values your time and the truth.
And while we're working overtime to bring you the news you need to know, we need your help to get this out to more people.
So.
Go and subscribe.
Tell your friends.
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Now let's get to our daily cancellation.
You've probably noticed that there is not much going on in the world these days.
Certainly no major crises, either at home or abroad, which ought to attract our attention.
The Earth is a serene, utopian Garden of Eden.
No significant problems to be solved at all.
And this explains why thousands and thousands of people had both the time and energy to become deeply outraged yesterday over Carrie Underwood liking a tweet.
The country superstar was trending on Twitter, and still might be, actually, and the mob was all riled up because she had apparently, at some point in the last few days, made the unconscionable decision to hit the little heart button in reaction to a tweet from a conservative commentator who was criticizing mask mandates for children.
And worst of all, perhaps, is that the conservative commentator was yours truly.
It was my speech to the school board that Underwood was expressing her approval of, and I feel quite guilty, as though I am responsible for all of this controversy.
Or at least I would feel guilty if it wasn't so damned hilarious.
So perusing some of the outraged comments, you find lots of people claiming to have been betrayed by the Twitter-like I can't imagine what it must be like to feel betrayed by a pop star liking something on Twitter, and that's mostly because I'm not mentally ill, so I don't know what that would feel like.
Many others accused Underwood of being a MAGA extremist and an anti-vaxxer, even though my video made no mention of vaccines, much less Donald Trump.
And I saw at least one comment from somebody implying that they might kill themselves because Carrie Underwood liked my video.
Totally normal and rational response.
Another person tweeted this.
They said, quote, absolutely gutted by the Carrie Underwood news.
I used to wear a bracket that said, what would Carrie Underwood do to remind me to always do the right thing?
I can't believe such a kind, caring person would be against wearing a mask to save lives.
My heart is broken.
Yes, it's quite tragic.
His heart is broken.
His brain was obviously broken years ago.
He's running out of internal organs.
This is a problem.
And many comments were just like this.
People utterly devastated to discover that their favorite singer has at least one viewpoint that differs from their own.
This is a reality that many people today, especially those on the left, cannot handle.
And needless to say, however, not one outraged person attempted to explain why the bad speech from the scary conservative was wrong.
None of them bothered to defend their assumption that my anti-mask views, and now presumably Carrie Underwood's, are incorrect.
There's no need to defend it.
All they have is their emotions, and that's all they need.
Next, the media got onto the case.
Articles were published in rapid succession, like this from Yahoo, headlining, Carrie Underwood Blasted for Liking Anti-Mask Tweet.
And the Toronto Sun, Carrie Underwood Slammed by Fans for Liking Anti-Mask Post.
And Radar Online, Carrie Underwood Facing Backlash After Liking Tweet Supporting Right-Wing Commentator's Anti-Mask Speech, Calling School Mandate Child Abuse.
In the Daily Mail, Carrie Underwood faces backlash from fans after liking anti-mask tweet made by a conservative commentator.
Perez Hilton posted to Instagram explaining that the main controversy, in his opinion, is not Underwood liking the tweet, but rather who made the original tweet.
He then prompted his followers to swipe up for the details about me.
Now, originally I didn't swipe up for the details because I figured I already know everything I need to know about myself.
But later it occurred to me that Perez Hilton, wise sage that he is, may have crucial context about me that I myself am not aware of.
So I went back and I swiped.
And here's what I found.
Quote, the video saw Walsh making a slew of blatantly false statements at a Nashville school board meeting, claiming that masking students was child abuse, pushed by adults experiencing Munchausen syndrome by proxy, and that COVID-19 poses almost no threat to our kids at all, which is just plain bull.
The Delta variant has actually led to a spike in child hospitalizations.
Carrie has not denounced Walsh or even commented on the uproar that her like has caused.
While she's previously voiced support for progressive issues like gay marriage in the past, the songstress said that she likes to stay far away out of politics, at least in the public, because nobody wins.
Well, that's all very disappointing, and I was hoping for some real dirt on myself.
Instead, once again, we have someone claiming that my claims are wrong while providing no evidence at all to actually debunk my claims.
The bit about a spike in child hospitalizations links to an article in the New York Times, and that article says right at the top, because this is something that I do, kind of a radical thing, where when someone links to something claiming that the link provides evidence for whatever statement they're making, I will actually click on the link.
And read it.
And I did that here, and what I found is a New York Times article that says, in italics, right at the top, in the subheading, I quote, it is not yet clear whether the Delta variant causes more severe disease in children.
Translation, all of the data shows that COVID is not a serious threat to children, and there is no data right now at all to suggest otherwise.
But maybe there will be one day, in the future, the media hopes.
But back to the Twitter like, which, again, is the most important issue here.
And also the most important issue on Earth.
As we know, the final step in any controversy of this type is the fact check.
And dutifully, the media fact checkers leapt into action.
Newsweek published this that says, fact check, did Carrie Underwood's Twitter account like an anti-mask mandate video?
Now, this is something that you'd think you could check in four seconds by going to her account and looking, but Jacob Jarvis at Newsweek somehow managed to wring an entire lengthy article out of this subject, presumably describing his entire investigative process.
It was a bold and daring journey, no doubt.
He was like Indiana Jones, hacking through the jungle, battling Nazis, navigating through ancient temples, running from boulders, all to find out whether Carrie Underwood liked my tweet.
And it turns out, yes, she did.
The legends of old are true.
As for the identity of the dastardly villain who posted the original tweet, Jarvis discovered this.
this, he wrote, "Walsh has more than 620,000 Twitter followers and describes himself as
a theocratic fascist, philanthropist, and beekeeping influencer on his profile."
It's true, I do.
Though I've also added "style icon" to my profile, a fact which did not make it
into this Newsweek article.
Newsweek has delegitimized and erased my identity as a fashion guru.
And for that, I can't forgive them.
But Jarvis goes on quoting me.
He writes, quote, in another tweet, Walsh said, quote, all of you pathetic dummies having a hissy fit are driving thousands of views to my video that you're mad about.
So yeah, it's great.
Now, wait a minute.
That doesn't sound like something I would say, does it?
Well, I guess it does.
And it does also sound kind of rude when you reprint it in an article like that.
And you might argue that grown adults reduced to tears because a pop star has one opinion they disagree with certainly deserve a rude and insulting response like that.
These are indeed pathetic dummies and they probably haven't been called pathetic dummies enough in their lives.
It's important for them to know that they're pathetic dummies so that perhaps one day they might have a chance of becoming something other than a pathetic dummy.
You might argue that but you might see it from the other side too.
In fact, the more that I've reflected on this issue, the more that I've come to see, really, that the outrage mob is right.
I am an extremist.
A radical.
Frankly, a scoundrel.
I'm a dangerous man, and my opinions are dangerous, and my tweets are a hazard to your health.
Who knows how many people I've killed with my tweets and my statements and my opinions?
The streets are riddled with the bodies of my victims.
People who were walking along, looked at their phone, encountered one of my opinions by accident, dropped dead on the spot.
It's happened more times than I can count.
Carrie Underwood should know better than to agree with anything that I say, much less to publicly agree.
Her lack of judgment in being at all associated with me, even indirectly, is appalling.
I'm the most appalled and the most offended because I know better than anyone what a horrible monster I am.
Look, if you're offended by my opinions, imagine how I must feel.
I'm the one who has to think them.
They're in my head.
I gotta live with this every day.
And if you hate the opinions I say out loud, you cannot fathom the opinions I don't say out loud.
Admittedly, I say almost all of them out loud, but still.
The point is, I am just as traumatized as everyone else.
And even more so.
I consider myself to be, in many ways, the primary victim.
Carrie Underwood's behavior is repugnant.
I have never been more disappointed.
And that is why, in the end, the more that I've thought about this, I have to join with the mob in saying to Carrie Underwood, you, madam, are cancelled.
You should know better.
Disappointing.
And we'll leave it there for today.
Thanks for watching.
Thanks for listening.
Have a great day, everybody.
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.
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The Matt Wall Show is produced by Sean Hampton, Executive Producer Jeremy Boring.
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Today on the Ben Shapiro Show, President Biden tells Americans in Afghanistan they're supposed to rely on the mercy of the Taliban, America's enemies accelerate their aggressive behavior, and the hard left signals that conservatives are the real Taliban.
