Ep. 1071 - Democrats Deliver Death Blow To Religious Liberty
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Today on the Matt Walsh Show, Democrats in the Senate sign religious liberty's death warrant, with 12 Republicans obediently going along with it. Also, Disney retreats from the culture war. New York City pledges to start getting violent crazy people off the streets. Will Smith begins his redemption tour, just in time for his new movie. And the US men's team wins a big cash prize for its recent victory at the World Cup. And now they have to split it with the women's team, all in the name of equality.
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Today on the Matt Wall Show, Democrats in the Senate sign religious liberties death warrant with 12 Republicans obediently going along with it.
Also, Disney retreats from the culture war.
New York City pledges to start getting violent, crazy people off the streets.
There's an idea.
Will Smith begins his redemption tour just in time for his new movie.
And the U.S.
men's team wins a big cash prize for its recent victory at the World Cup.
And now they have to split it with the women's team all in the name of equality.
All of that and more today on The Matt Walsh Show.
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Yesterday was, we're told, an historic day in the U.S.
Senate, a landmark occasion.
With 61 votes, including every Democrat, plus 12 obsequious, pathetic, lickspittle Republicans, the Senate officially passed the inaptly named Respect for Marriage Act.
And the bill will, of course, repeal the Defense of Marriage Act, codify gay marriage into law at the federal level, Officially redefining marriage and reshaping it in the image of left-wing ideology, and despite assurances from the aforementioned obsequious pathetic lickspittles, it will in fact set the stage for an all-out assault on religious liberty across the entire country.
Now, there can only be two reasons for legislation like this to be introduced in the first place, and that's one of them, to destroy religious liberty.
It's why Democrats were celebrating the bill as a consequential moment in American history.
Here's Senator Tammy Baldwin yesterday afternoon, after the bill was passed, talking about how historic it all is.
You know, a lot of people have asked me in recent days what the passage of this historic bill would mean to me as a member of the LGBTQ plus community.
What I said to people who asked me a similar question back in 2012, when I was first elected to the United States Senate, still rings true today.
I didn't run for the Senate to make history.
I ran for the Senate to make a difference.
And we are not pushing this legislation to make history.
We are doing this to make a difference for millions upon millions of Americans.
It's a historic day.
Sorry, I should have specified.
Tammy Baldwin actually argues that the bill does not make history, but it is historic.
What exactly is the distinction here?
This is like the greatest humblebrag I've ever heard.
You should try that in a job interview, maybe.
You know, I'm not interested in making history.
I just want to make a difference.
What's the difference between making history and being historic?
There really isn't one, but Democrats are simply determined to never speak clearly about anything.
They are allergic to clarity, it would seem.
And yet, in spite of the obfuscation, it's clear what is actually happening here.
As I said, there are only two reasons why this bill was written, introduced, and now passed, and will certainly be signed by Biden.
The first reason is to virtue signal, you know, and to give Democrats something to do that doesn't involve solving any of the many actual problems that we face as a country.
This is reason enough to oppose the bill also, and it ought to have been reason enough for every Republican to vote against it.
Because even if you agree with the Democrats on the subject of marriage, you should still see this bill at the very best, as in some ways similar to, say, the anti-lynching law that Biden signed last year.
In that case, I of course agreed with the Democrats that lynching is bad, but I oppose the law Because lynching is already illegal, it's already a felony, and it's already a hate crime.
So before Biden signed the bill, anyone who lynched a black person would be certain to spend the rest of his life in federal prison.
After the bill, anyone who lynches a black person is certain to spend the rest of his life in federal prison.
Nothing has changed.
The bill was a waste of time designed to help generate the false impression that Democrats in D.C.
are actually working to solve problems, when in fact they aren't working on solving any real problems at all.
In a similar way, the so-called Respect for Marriage Act was pushed through in response to a totally imagined threat.
The backers of the bill have imagined a hypothetical scenario where some undetermined, unspecified state somewhere passes a law banning same-sex marriage, and then that law is upheld by a federal court, and then it winds its way through the court system and ends up at our nation's highest court, where a majority of justices side with the unknown state and gay marriage is overturned.
Every part of that scenario is a fantasy.
No part of it will actually happen.
There is no state in the union attempting to ban same-sex marriage.
There is no federal court that would uphold such a law.
And there's only one, maybe two, but certainly not a majority in the Supreme Court that would side with the state in such a situation anyway.
So, this law to begin with is not needed.
And therefore, again, at the very best, it's designed to give Democrats an opportunity to stand in front of the press and congratulate themselves on a historic victory over an imagined enemy.
They are once again solving a made-up problem because they don't have the interest or the will or the ability to solve any of the real problems.
And in fact, most of the real problems they don't even see as problems.
And that's the first problem.
And that's issue number one here.
But it's worse than that.
Because I wish the legislation was merely pointless.
I wish that it was merely meant to virtue signal.
It was merely a waste of time.
But it is, in fact, far more troubling than that.
As it turns out, the law will accomplish something.
Namely, it will accomplish the further destruction and degradation of religious liberty and free speech in the United States.
And if you were among the oblivious conservatives who didn't see this or understand it before, hopefully you've now been jolted awake by the fact that three attempts to include amendments protecting religious liberty all failed.
There were attempts to put religious liberty amendments on this thing, guaranteeing that religious liberty would not be, this bill would not be used to attack religious liberty, and all those amendments failed.
Reading from the Daily Wire, it says, Oklahoma Republican Senator James Langford, who proposed an amendment addressing religious liberty concerns, warned that the language fails to place any restrictions which would cause entities, such as non-profits or faith-based organizations, to choose not to provide those services or to abandon their faith.
I encourage everyone in this body to ask a very simple question to themselves.
Is today about respecting the rights of all, Langford said on the Senate floor, or is it about silencing some?
Senator Mike Lee called on his Republican colleagues in favor of the legislation to include protections for anyone with a religious belief or moral conviction that marriage belongs to one man and one woman.
Lee introduced an amendment prohibiting federal bureaucrats from discriminating against individuals, organizations, and other religious entities by stripping away tax-exempt status, licenses, contracts, or other benefits.
Quote, instead of subjecting churches, religious non-profits, and persons of conscience to undue scrutiny or punishment by the federal government because of their views on marriage, we should make explicitly clear that this legislation does not constitute a national policy endorsing a particular view of marriage that threatens the tax-exempt status of faith-based non-profits, he wrote.
As we move forward, let us be sure to keep churches, religious charities, and religious universities out of litigation in the first instance.
But neither Langford Lee or Senator Mark Rubio's amendment to the bill passed.
So that tells you what you need to know.
There were multiple attempts to add specific, strong, clear language guaranteeing the religious rights of individual Americans, and those attempts were all rebuffed.
Here is Senator Lee explaining more about the purpose of his amendment.
Listen.
In the hope that we can come to a place where we respect each other, I have offered an amendment to this legislation that would explicitly minimize the threats to these religious organizations and individuals.
I'm at the table.
I'm willing to compromise.
And in the spirit of compromise, I've publicly stated, and I reiterate here again today, that I will support the legislation if my amendment is adopted.
My amendment simply prohibits the federal government from discriminating against schools, businesses, and organizations based on their religious beliefs about same-sex marriage.
That's all it does.
My amendment prevents the Internal Revenue Service, among other things, from revoking the tax-exempt status of these charities and organizations simply because they act according to their beliefs about the divine purpose of marriage.
It prevents the Department of Education from targeting schools with honor codes.
Based on the fact that they've got provisions in their honor codes based on religious beliefs.
It protects individuals from being denied business licenses or grants or other statuses based on their views about marriage.
It protects Americans who wish to act according to their religious beliefs from being forced to abandon their God-given mandates to love, serve, and care for the poor, the orphan, and the refugee.
If we allow the government to threaten their ability to do so, then the religious liberty of every American is in peril.
Well, that argument was not persuasive to those assembled.
That amendment failed.
We're told that the amendments weren't needed because the so-called Respect for Marriage Act already protects religious liberty, and that, of course, is a lie.
Here's what the bill actually says on the subject of religious liberty.
Here's what it says.
Here's the language in the bill.
Diverse beliefs about the role of gender in marriage are held by reasonable and sincere people based on decent and honorable religious or philosophical premises.
Therefore, Congress affirms that such people and their diverse beliefs are due proper respect.
Well, that means exactly nothing.
Notice how it does not specify, it doesn't mention any specific belief about marriage.
It doesn't say anything that, you know, belief in traditional or biblical or man-woman marriage.
No word like that or term like that is used.
It only says that diverse beliefs are due respect.
Which beliefs?
And what does do respect even mean?
I mean, we don't need the law to grant vague and unspecified respect to certain beliefs.
Yes, people are free to believe whatever they want.
So when you hear from a government, you know, from these people, we're not going to stop you from believing what you want to believe.
Well, I know that because you can't stop me from believing something, even if you wanted to.
And I think you do want to.
Because a belief is something that I carry around in my head and in my heart.
There's no law that can govern that directly.
So the issue isn't belief per se, but action.
The government must protect your right, not simply to believe what you want to believe, but to live out and act out your faith.
And this is precisely what the bill does not protect.
It's what the amendments that were voted down were supposed to protect, but the bill does not.
Also, note that the supposed religious liberty protections in the bill only apply to religious institutions, like churches, allegedly protecting their right to not directly participate in the solemnization of a same-sex marriage.
I'm skeptical that those protections will be meaningful in practice, but they also don't include the people who actually need the protections.
As recent history shows, the left is far more interested In imposing its will on small-town bakers and photographers and florists who prefer not to lend their services to gay weddings.
But a bakery is not a religious institution.
And yet the baker still has First Amendment rights, or at least he ought to.
You shouldn't need to work for a religious institution in order to have the right to live and operate according to your religious beliefs.
In fact, if you're only allowed to live by your religious beliefs at church, then you don't have religious liberty at all.
And that is the goal here.
The left's goal is to contain religious expression, relegate it to certain assigned areas, and then once it's been entirely walled in, that's when they set out to eradicate it completely.
This is how it has always worked historically.
And now we're seeing it play out again.
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That's what it is.
There's just no way around it.
And don't listen to any conservative who says, oh, it's okay.
It's no big deal.
Because these are very often the same exact conservatives that every single massive defeat conservatives have suffered.
They're the ones saying, yeah, it'll be fine.
No, it's fine.
We didn't need that anyway.
Religious liberty, what do you need that for?
They said you can still have it at church.
Just go to church and have all the religious liberty you want inside those walls.
Until a few years from now when the government comes along and says, you know what, people have the human God-given right to, a man has a human right, this is a basic human right that a man has to marry another man, and who are you, even in a church, to deny someone their human rights?
So that's the argument that we are going to start hearing.
And then when we start hearing that argument, and they actually move finally in a really serious way against the churches, these same conservatives again will say, well, it's fine anyway.
It's, you know, in your home at least, what do you need to gather together for to express your religious faith?
Just stay at your home.
Zoom church, you can do it on Zoom.
Well, no, you don't have access to Zoom anymore because we took that away because they're not going to let you use it for those bigoted purposes.
So just stay at your house.
Gather together in your home, not too many of you, just individual families.
That's a defeat.
But there was yesterday a victory, you know, much smaller scale, I have to say, but also important.
So Chris Ruffo has this report.
It says, in recent years, the Walt Disney Company has become embroiled in America's culture war.
As I've reported, the company has pushed critical race theory in its employee training programs and radical gender ideology in its children's programming.
Last week, Disney's board of directors fired CEO Bob Chapek, who lost a high-profile fight with Governor Ron DeSantis regarding legislation restricting radical gender theory in schools, and brought back former CEO Bob Iger to right the shit.
Rufo reports, I have obtained exclusive video of Iger's first town hall meeting with Disney employees in which he retreats from the company's most controversial political positions and moves toward neutrality in the culture war.
So I want to go through some of these videos as he's talking to his employees about his vision for Disney going forward.
And we'll start with this.
Here's Bob Iger answering a question about whether Disney will stay out of- what's Disney going to do about politics?
Are they going to stay involved in politics?
Are they going to get out of politics?
Here's what he says.
This is a virtual question.
Many cast members had wished that Disney stayed out of politics.
Will Disney stay out of making political statements?
You know, I think there's a misperception here about what politics is.
And I think that some of the subjects that have proven to be controversial
as it relates to Disney have been branded political, and I don't necessarily believe they are.
I don't think when you are telling stories and attempting to be a good citizen of the world that that's political.
Just not how I view it.
Do I like the company being embroiled in controversy?
Of course not.
It can be distracting, and it can have a negative impact on the company.
And to the extent that I can work to kind of quiet things down, I'm going to do that.
But I think it's important to put in perspective what some of these subjects are, and not just simply brand them political.
Okay, so that's a little bit, yes, on one hand he's saying we're retreating from politics, but then he does also offer this qualification that, well, I don't consider some of this stuff to be politics.
So that's a classic move on the left, is to say, well, this isn't political or ideological at all, right?
To have gay romance storylines in films for kids, nothing ideological or political about that.
So, you can't tell based on that.
Is this just his way of actually doubling down and saying we're going to continue in this direction?
I think it becomes more clear when he's asked specifically about the battle with Ron DeSantis in Florida and how he feels about that now, you know, upon reflection.
Here's what he says.
Bob, have you given any thoughts on how to tackle the Reedy Creek situation in Florida?
No.
I have to get up to speed on that completely.
Obviously, I followed the news.
That development occurred after I left the company.
I was sorry to see us Dragged into that battle.
And I have no idea exactly what its ramifications are in terms of the business itself.
What I can say is the state of Florida has been important to us for a long time and we have been very important to the state of Florida.
That is something I'm extremely mindful of and will articulate if I get the chance.
But I don't have the details at all yet about what the ramifications are of the decision that was made by Okay, and finally, one other clip to play.
This is more specifically asked about the Don't Say Gay Bill.
And remember, this is what this all traces back to, as Disney came out against the Don't Say Gay Bill and had this whole battle with DeSantis over it.
All right, another virtual question.
the Don't Say Gay Bill, a bill that we must remember that that bill never
actually existed, that was invented by the left, just to be clarified. It was
actually the anti-groomer bill that they had a problem with, but here's what he
says about that. All right, another virtual question. What is your stance on
the Don't Say Gay situation? Well, first of all, our LGBTQ employees are very
important to us and we care deeply about them.
That is a given.
Secondly, this company has been telling stories for 100 years, and those stories have had a meaningful, positive impact on the world.
And one of the reasons they've had a meaningful, positive impact is because one of the core values of our storytelling is inclusion and acceptance and tolerance.
And we can't lose that.
We just can't lose that.
I think about Black Panther.
I mean, I could go on and on, and how we actually change the world for the good.
It must continue.
We also, when you tell stories, it's a delicate balance.
You're talking to an audience, but it's also important to listen to an audience.
It's important to have respect for the people that you're serving, that you're trying to reach, and not have disdain for it.
We're not going to make everybody happy all the time, and we're not going to try to.
We're certainly not going to lessen our core values in order to make everybody happy all the time.
So it's complicated, and there's a balance.
At one point, I said, we do what we believe is right.
And then someone criticized me for saying, well, who are you to say that that's right?
Well, when you're in a job like mine, or you are responsible for the storytelling that many of you are responsible for.
OK.
So you're talking to an audience, but you want to listen to them and not have disdain for them.
That's quite an interesting revelation.
Don't have open contempt for your audience, is what they're realizing over at Disney, or at least is what they're saying publicly.
You know, gee, I don't know, maybe we shouldn't be, maybe we shouldn't openly hate.
We can still hate them, but just don't, let's not be so open about it.
So a few things about this.
Obviously, it would be quite naive to believe that this is a sign that Disney is anti-woke now and that everything he said about, you know, politics, don't want to be too involved in that, that they're going to withdraw completely and it's going to go back to, you know, they're going to start making content like they made in the 1950s, right?
That's not going to happen.
Disney is run by the people it's run by.
It is a woke leftist corporation, and that's probably not ever going to change.
If it ever did change, it's not going to happen overnight.
That's decades-long change, if it ever happens at all.
Just like it took decades for Disney to be overrun by these types of people.
So, it would be incredibly naive to think that, that this is, they're just, you know, next thing you know, Disney's like gonna be modeling itself after the Daily Wire.
That's not gonna happen.
However, this is also a victory.
It's a victory for Ron DeSantis, that's for sure.
He went up against Disney, and this is Disney backing down.
They're backing away from it.
Which by the way, if you're one of these people that's out there claiming now that somehow Ron DeSantis is an establishment Republican, this completely absurd notion, well this should put that notion to rest.
Okay, establishment Republicans, and there are a lot of reasons why Ron DeSantis is not an establishment Republican, okay?
But established Republicans, they're not going to go to war with major corporations.
Established Republican, who's a governor, is not going to go up against, he's not going to pick a fight with the most powerful corporate interest in his state.
And if ever the established Republican pretends to be doing that, he's going to be the one who backs down quickly.
That's one of the defining features of the establishment, is that at the end of the day, they're going to bow before corporate America and do as they're told.
So, this is not what the establishment does.
It's not just a victory for Ron DeSantis, though.
It's also a victory for conservatives.
This is a cultural victory.
Because even though Disney is not now going to become conservative, They are actually responding to public pressure.
That's what they're doing.
And now they're going to look for more subtle ways to inject this stuff into their programming, which you could argue is even more dangerous if they're more subtle about it because you have to look out for it more.
And that's true.
So we kind of enter a new phase here.
But even so, they are responding to pressure.
They are backing away.
They are crumbling a little bit under pressure.
And that's important.
And it's important for us to see that we can do that.
Like, we have that power.
We can put pressure even on these major corporations and we can force them to respond to it.
All right.
From the Daily Wire, it says, New York City Mayor Eric Adams said the city will begin to involuntarily hospitalize mentally ill residents.
In a press conference Tuesday, Adams announced that first responders in the city would be able to remove people who appear to be mentally ill and pose a danger to themselves.
First responders will be able to remove individuals and take them to a hospital for evaluation, and the individuals will be held until a treatment plan is established.
Adam says it's not acceptable for us to see someone who clearly needs help and walk past.
For too long there's been a gray area where policy, law, and accountability have not been clear and this has allowed people in need to slip through the cracks.
This culture of uncertainty has led to untold suffering and deep frustration.
It cannot continue.
We need to change that culture and clarify our expectations.
No more walking by or looking away.
No more passing the buck.
Going forward, we will focus on action, care, and compassion.
If severe mental illness is causing someone to be unsheltered and a danger to themselves, we have a moral obligation to help them get the treatment and care they need.
It begins with an immediate shift in how we interpret our obligation to those in need and calls upon our outreach workers to take deeper actions and more intensive engagement.
We can no longer deny the reality that untreated psychosis can be a cruel and all-consuming condition that often requires involuntary intervention, supervised medical treatment, and long-term care.
So there's a lot of revelations going on here on the left today.
On one hand, we've had Disney saying maybe we shouldn't openly hate our audience, and then we've also now got The mayor of New York saying, we can't deny reality.
Maybe we shouldn't be denying reality.
Maybe to some extent we should confront reality.
Because when there's uncomfortable realities out there, like for example, the existence of violent and dangerous crazy people, it's an uncomfortable reality.
But when we just ignore it and pretend it doesn't exist, it just causes more suffering for everybody involved, including the violent, dangerous, crazy people.
So maybe we should confront that reality.
And that's what they're claiming they're going to do here.
Once again, on this story too, I'm kind of of two minds about it.
On the one hand, and what I see from most people on the right is that they are applauding this, and they're saying, thank you, finally.
This is what we used to do with violent, dangerous, crazy people.
We had things called insane asylums, and that's where we put them.
Okay, if you couldn't get through to them, if they wouldn't respond to therapy and counseling, if they were that, you know, off their rocker, if they were completely disconnected from reality, and they were a danger to themselves or others, then you had places that you put them, because what else are you supposed to do?
The only other option is to just leave them out on the street, where they're going to victimize themselves and other people.
And this used to be what we did.
So, on the one hand, you might think it's a good thing we're returning to that.
And it is, looked at a certain way.
Because again, what else are you going to do?
This other option of just leaving them on the street is obviously not working.
Because next thing you know, they're walking down to the subway and just like throwing a random woman in front of the train.
You know, these are the kind of things that are happening.
So that's That's good if we're taking them and involuntarily hospitalizing them.
But then on the other hand, this is New York, and it's a city run by leftists, which means that there's always, even when they appear to be doing something good and making the right choice, there's always going to be the flip side of the coin you have to worry about.
In this case, there's two things.
Number one, If you're putting cops in a position now of taking crazy people and involuntarily committing them, that means that it's involuntary, so they're not going to agree to it, right?
If they agree to it, then it's a voluntary commitment.
We already have that.
But the thing about violent, dangerous, crazy people is that they're oftentimes not going to—they're crazy, so they don't understand.
They're not going to agree to go and seek help.
Involuntary means that you're going in many cases and you are physically detaining them and against their will bringing them to the mental hospital.
Okay, fine.
But what happens when the cops start using force on the crazy people?
And then you've got the very helpful crowd standing around and filming it.
And then cutting it in a way that makes it look as brutal as possible, with as little context as possible, and then they put it on Twitter and it goes viral.
What happens then?
So it's one thing to tell the police to do this, and say this is how we're going to handle these sorts of people from now on, but are you going to have their back?
When we start seeing all of the viral videos and the outrage and everything else?
When BLM starts marching in the street?
About it?
Are you going to have their back?
Are you going to stick by them?
That's one of my first concerns.
When I first heard this, my first thought.
What happens when we start seeing the videos of this?
Because this is not a pretty thing.
There's no easy way to do it.
As we said, it's an uncomfortable reality that you have violent, dangerous, crazy people.
And when you're dealing with them, it's not pretty.
It's not going to be pretty.
It's going to be a rough thing to see.
And we live in a society now where we get to see everything.
So how is that going to work?
That's my concern.
Second concern is what counts as a mental illness?
We know that the category of mental illness is being increasingly expanded.
Every new iteration of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, they add a bunch of new ones.
And we're already at a point where anyone, I mean you could pick up the DSM and you could find 15 mental illnesses on there that apply to you.
Even if you're not crazy at all.
So this is happening within the context of the mental health industry sort of categorizing and cataloging and medicalizing every aspect of the human condition.
So as to make everybody mentally ill, even if we're not.
So what counts as dangerously mentally ill?
Do you get to a point where just being a conservative is a mental illness and also a danger to the public?
You tweet something that makes people uncomfortable.
You tweet a criticism of the trans community, of the trans agenda.
We've already been told that's terrorism, that's dangerous.
So you worry about these kinds of measures being abused in that way as well.
And what do we end up with?
Is this the right move or not?
I don't know.
It's just the problem.
When you have these crazy leftist running cities, it's a no-win situation.
But what I will say is, in theory, this is the right approach.
In theory.
If it's done exactly the right way and if it's done responsibly.
Alright.
So I've had this for a couple days I want to play for you.
NBC News, they had, this is last week, they had a story, quite a tragic story, about one of the Twitter moderators who lost his job, or as they say, her job.
And it's quite revealing to see who was actually in charge of moderating content, who was making the calls on these things, like what counts as inappropriate content.
And here's one from NBC, watch.
In her San Francisco home with some moral support from her dog, Biscuit, Melissa Ingle follows the rapid-fire changes at her former employer.
On the current path, I just, I'm really, really worried about Twitter's future.
On November 12th, she learned she'd been let go, first by losing access to her accounts, then an email.
She says other former full-time employees have told her they had to sign an NDA to get their severance benefits.
But because she was a contract worker, that doesn't apply to her, so she's speaking out.
I'm not giving a severance package.
They can't take that away from me.
And I think people need to know about this situation.
The layoffs, followed by an employee exodus, came just days before Elon Musk reinstated former President Donald Trump's account Saturday evening.
Cal State East Bay Professor Grant Keehan says the move appears strategic.
He gets to say that he's rescuing democracy and reintroducing a certain type of political discourse on Twitter.
Even while it overshadows, for the moment, some of the really tough news that people at Twitter have had in the past couple of weeks.
While the focus might be on Trump's account now, Qian notes that the absence of employees like Engel, who checked content, will shape users' experience on Twitter.
Those losses of personnel are going to be felt.
Just over time, these things build up and the site will become More abusive, more extreme, and less reliable over time.
Alyssa Gord, Today in the Bay.
Look, just keep that screenshot up there.
Does anyone, you see that person, does anyone think that that individual was fairly, even capable of fairly assessing, you know, what qualifies as offensive content and what doesn't?
And of course when it comes to offensive content, it's subjective.
So Twitter is run according to what that person, what offends that person.
Does anyone think that this could be, that that person's capable of any kind of like objective, rational analysis?
Obviously not.
If someone is confused about their own identity, how could they possibly be able to do anything worthwhile when it comes to content moderation?
Of course, you could simplify the content moderation thing and make it a lot easier.
Michael Tracy tweeted this yesterday, and Elon Musk responded to it, saying that it makes sense to him and he likes it.
So Michael Tracy tweeted, Twitter policy in 2015, and there's a screenshot of what the Twitter policy was back in 2015, before media slash activists lobbied for the company to become a giant online daycare center.
No direct threats of violence.
Beyond that, Twitter doesn't mediate disputes between users or remove offensive content.
If you feel a law was broken, contact police.
And, like I said, Elon Musk responded and said, that makes sense.
And it does make sense, and that's what the moderation policy really should be.
It's actually pretty simple.
And it was simple on social media in the early years of it.
Yeah, we hear that in the early days of Twitter and Facebook, it was like the Wild Wild West of the Internet.
It's not really, because in the Wild Wild West, you know, people get shot and killed.
That's not happening on the Internet.
It just means that people can share their opinions.
And we can try to complicate it and make it seem much more complex than it is, but there's no reason to do that.
Like, if I'm in charge of a social media platform, For me, it's very simple.
You cannot directly threaten to kill people, right?
Direct threats of violence, that's a crime, it's against the law, you can't do that.
So, that's out the window.
You cannot dox people, and doxing means publishing personal, private information about them, like their address.
Can't do that.
That falls under the death threat category.
And then the only other thing that I would add is pornographic content.
Starting, of course, with child pornography, with which Elon Musk has already done a really good job of getting rid of a lot of that.
You know, he's been able to clean almost all that stuff out in just a few weeks, which makes you wonder about the people that were in charge.
You're going back to that Twitter moderator that we saw.
If it was so easy for Elon Musk to get rid of a lot of this, the child exploitation images, and all this stuff was able to proliferate for years, it makes it seem like Twitter really wasn't trying that hard to get rid of it.
Because at a minimum, they weren't worried about that.
They were more worried about protecting the feelings of that Twitter moderator that we saw.
Men who dress up like women.
That was their primary concern.
So, child pornography, obviously, should not be allowed.
And then, if I were in charge, I would also include all other forms of pornographic material as well, I wouldn't allow.
But those are, you know, definable categories, pretty easy to enforce.
Anything outside of that qualifies as an opinion that somebody is sharing.
And you should be able to share your opinions, no matter how stupid they may be.
And if you really got into the business of saying we're not going to allow stupid and objectable opinions on this platform, then almost nobody would be allowed to post on any platform.
It would be a platform with nobody on it.
You want a social media platform with no stupid or objectionable opinions?
Then it's just, it's a platform just with nothing.
It's just a blank screen and nothing is happening.
All right, do we have time for this?
Maybe we do.
So CBS has this report.
Actor Will Smith says that he would understand if audiences are not ready to see him on the big screen so soon after the infamous Oscar slap earlier this year.
On Monday, Smith spoke to Fox 5 DC's Kevin McCarthy about his new film, Emancipation, which is set to be released in theaters on December 2nd and starts streaming on Apple TV on December 9th.
It's his first major project since he slapped Chris Rock on stage at the Academy Awards.
And this is a movie, as the title suggests, it's a movie about slavery.
Emancipation centers around Smith's character Peter, an enslaved man who escapes a Louisiana plantation and makes his way north.
The film was inspired by 1863 photos of a man whose bare back was mutilated from whippings by his enslavers.
Well, even before we talk about Will Smith specifically, I will say that I'm just, I'm glad we finally have a movie about slavery.
And finally, finally, Hollywood is telling this story, because I think the story has never been told, and we haven't heard about this, and it's just really good.
I mean, at the very least, it had been 17 seconds since the last slavery movie, and we know that if there's going to be a movie about American history, as far as Hollywood's concerned, this is the only thing that happened in American history.
Certainly the only thing that you can tell a story about.
So that's great.
But Will Smith is kind of on this publicity tour where he's claiming that, ah, I don't care.
I understand if you don't, if you're still upset.
He's pretending to be apologetic.
But then if you listen to what he's saying, it actually doesn't sound very apologetic to me.
Here he is with Trevor Noah a couple nights ago.
Listen.
I guess what I would say, you just never know what somebody's going through.
You know, in the audience right now, you're sitting next to strangers, you know?
And somebody's mother died last week, you know?
Somebody's child is sick, you know?
Somebody just lost their job.
Somebody just found out their spouse cheated, you know?
It's like there's all these things, and there's strangers, and you just don't know What's going on with people, you know, and there's I was going through something that night, you know, and not that that, you know, justifies my behavior at all.
I would just say, you know, you're asking what did I learn?
And it's that.
We just got to be nice to each other, man, you know, it's like it's hard.
I'm not justifying or excusing my behavior, but here's my justification and my excuse.
I was going through something.
So this is really what he's doing.
Really, Will Smith is doing the victim routine, and if you listen to him, he's just making a whole bunch of excuses.
I don't even think that he's actually apologetic at all.
Because if you're actually apologetic, you're not going to get into this, I was going through something.
No one gives a damn what you were going through.
You got up, what you did was so unbelievably, it's like, it goes beyond inappropriate, it doesn't begin to cover it, okay?
And yes, was it worth all the headlines and everything?
No, nothing is ever worth all the attention the media gives to it.
But at the same time, it's still the kind of thing that, yeah, that's going to destroy your career.
Now, look at it this way.
Because there is now this.
This move online, it actually seems to me, anecdotally, there's a lot of sympathy for Will Smith.
And people say, well, we should forgive him, and he's one of these, putting him in the category of these cancelled, he's been cancelled.
No, this is not actually being cancelled.
This, in fact, is just, this really is just a natural consequence for your actions.
Like getting banned from the Academy Awards, where you physically, you committed assault in the middle of the ceremony.
Of course you're gonna get banned, that would happen to anybody.
So just imagine if you were, like, what if you were at your job and it's, and you have some kind of banquet at your job, maybe an awards, you know, like some kind of awards banquet at your job and they're awarding employee of the year and all these kind of things.
And they bring someone up and the emcee at this banquet and he makes a mild joke about you or about your wife or something.
And you get up and you physically assault the guy in front of all your co-workers at this employee banquet.
Would you even bother begging for your job back?
Like, you would sit down and know, okay, well, I'm getting fired for that, and I'm also going to go to jail, by the way, because that's a felony assault that I just committed.
And that would happen to anybody.
And any normal person.
So the fact that anyone's even talking about, like, accepting Will Smith back into the fold, that's just privilege that no one else would get.
If that was you, you're done, you're fired, you're not getting another job either, when people find out about that.
And also, again, you are going to be criminally prosecuted for it, which you never was.
So, no, I actually don't think that, I'm all about people make mistakes, and I'm 100% against cancel culture, but there is, you know, not everything is cancel culture.
Sometimes someone just acts in a way, this is physical assault you committed in the middle of, and sometimes it really just is a consequence of that.
All right, let's get to the comment section.
[MUSIC]
Jeremy's Razors, The Daily Wire's answer to woke corporations, is more than just shaving now.
We've launched new hair, body, and skincare products just in time for the holidays.
But for me, the most exciting member in the new lineup of products is Jeremy's beard kit.
I've been waiting for this day to finally arrive when all the anti-beard bigotry in this company will come to an end.
And it has, because now we have the Jeremy's Razors Beard Kit.
Each kit includes, as you can see right here, beard oil, beard balm, beard shampoo, and a boar's hairbrush to tame your beard, not your masculinity.
All the products are made with natural ingredients.
They're sulfate-free, paraben-free, whatever.
That is woke-free, and they're made in the USA, so your health and conscience will thank you.
All you gotta do is head over to Jeremy'sRazors.com to kick woke companies out of your bathroom, get 30% off all Jeremy's products.
MB says, this idea that only easy lives are worth living is paradoxically going to bring about a pervasive misery in society, unlike anything the world has seen before.
Well, you summed it up quite well.
That's exactly the point I was making in the opening yesterday.
It's not that it's going to bring about misery, pervasive misery in society, it already has.
This myth that life is not supposed to include suffering, That's not what life is supposed to be.
And then people experience suffering because it turns out that actually life is suffering in many ways.
And they experience it and then they think, well, there's no point in living anymore.
They think that or they think there's something wrong with me.
I am broken somehow.
The same is why I'm always talking about the way that we've medicalized anxiety and depression.
And it sends the message that people are not supposed to experience anxiety.
And so if you do, then it's a sign, it's a symptom that something is broken in your mind.
It's actually the other way around.
If you would never experience any anxiety at all, then you're not even human.
That means you're not a conscious human.
You don't have consciousness if you don't experience anxiety, because anxiety comes with consciousness.
It comes with our awareness of ourselves and of our place in the world, right?
And of the state of the world.
If you're aware of those things, it will cause anxiety.
All right.
Let's see, Wider says, quoting me, suffering is a part of life, like it or not.
And he says, yeah, some people don't like that, and so they use their freedom to choose the other option.
Why wouldn't they?
I know there were a lot of comments like this, so people, anytime we talk about euthanasia, assisted suicide, whatever euphemism you want to use, there are always people saying, well, it's just freedom.
It's freedom.
It's the freedom to destroy yourself.
I think one thing we learned from that is that's why freedom, freedom understood as simply the ability to do whatever you want, that is not the be all and end all.
And that cannot be what our lives revolve around and what society revolves around.
And that kind of freedom also doesn't exist, by the way.
That kind of freedom cannot exist in any society.
It wouldn't be a civilized society.
Obviously, you're not able to do everything that you want.
And when it comes to someone killing themselves, you know, what I would ask you, and for anyone who says, well, this is someone's right, the right to, okay, well, what if you saw, you know, you were driving along and you saw someone, some distraught suicidal man about to jump off of a bridge to his death?
Would you just keep driving and say, well, that's his freedom, it's his choice.
He doesn't want to live anymore.
Godspeed, sir.
Wave to him as you drive by?
Is that what you would do?
Or would you stop and pull over and try to persuade him not to jump and tell him that life is worth living?
I mean, would you at a minimum call the police as you drive by?
I'd hope you'd do more than that, but would you at a minimum do that?
Or would you simply wave as he jumps?
I think any decent person would try to persuade the person not to do it.
Because although you recognize that someone has the freedom, as in has the physical ability to destroy themselves, you also recognize that this is not a good choice.
And that life is worth living.
And the other thing about assisted suicide too, by the way, is that we're not just talking about the choice of the suicidal individual.
We're also talking about what the medical profession is doing.
So this is first and foremost a question of, should the medical profession be in the business of directly and intentionally ending human life?
Should the end of human life be a treatment option for human suffering that the medical establishment will potentially provide?
It's not a question of, should people kill themselves?
My answer to that is, no, they should not.
And I hope that that would be your answer too, again, if you were in a position where you saw someone about to do it.
But before we get to that question, it's really a question of, should the medical establishment be killing people?
And my answer to that also is, most certainly not.
Alright.
I cannot neglect this.
You all know about the hideously stupid deal that I made, the agreement to watch a season of anime, and I've been quite worried about this, distressed about it.
But then, someone, a valiant member of the SBG, tweeted to me this morning, and this is Joshua Laster.
He tweeted, Hey Matt Walsh, you're officially the star of the shortest ever anime season, one episode, 16 seconds total.
You're welcome.
This individual has created an anime series.
He's completed an entire season of this series.
And technically, if I watch this right now, live on the air with you, then I will have fulfilled the terms of my deal.
So let's watch it.
Anime is satan.
That was extraordinary, I thought.
I thought that was really...
You know, some people said if you sit down and watch an anime, you might discover that you like anime.
And I will say, I don't know if I like anime in general, but that particular show I found to be quite, quite, well, it was efficient.
I'll say that.
It was quite efficient.
The season started a little bit slow, really picked up in the middle, I thought.
And by the end, I was worried that the finale might let us down a little bit.
How are they going to wrap the whole story together like this?
And they found a way to do it at the end that I thought was quite fantastic.
Yeah, really.
I thought that was great.
And that's my reaction to it.
And so I have watched.
That's a season of an anime.
That's an anime season.
Technically.
Okay?
So, that's it.
The deal's complete.
Well, the Sweet Baby gang came out with a vengeance over at my swag shack this past Cyber Week.
Johnny the Walrus and its plush companions were flying off the warehouse shelves, but the Sweet Baby album tee, ripe with the smell of Sweet Baby spirit and 90s nostalgia, sold out faster than mimosas at a Drag Queen brunch.
Many of you probably weren't able to get the shirt.
However, because I am so widely revered for both my wild generosity and the propensity to champion equity, We've decided to restock.
Now everyone can have another chance to buy the gift of the year to give to yourself or any other worthy member of the gang.
So head over to my collection over at dailywire.com slash shop and get the Sweet Baby album t-shirt or any of the other amazing holiday offerings at the new Daily Wire Plus store.
Take advantage of free shipping for orders over $75 and get a free Leftist Tears tumbler with all orders over $100.
Also, last Friday we released the first two episodes of the brand new biblical series by Dr. Jordan B. Peterson.
The series is called Exodus, and in it, Jordan Peterson sits down with other scholars to read the Book of Exodus and discuss what it means and why it remains significant thousands of years after it was written.
Scholars at the table include Dennis Prager, Jonathan Begode, and many more.
There will be new episodes releasing weekly, and trust me, you don't want to miss this series.
Check out the trailer.
In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.
Turns out that a book is more durable than stone.
It's more durable than a castle.
It's more durable than an empire.
You don't get away with anything.
And so you might think you can bend the fabric of reality and that you can treat people instrumentally and that you can bow to the tyrant and violate your conscience without cost.
You will pay the piper.
It's going to call you out of that slavery into freedom, even if that pulls you into the desert.
God is ethic-centered, not ethnic-centered.
Well, do you want the Pharaoh on your side or do you want God on your side?
That's kind of the question.
There's a profound sense here that what is going on with the Israelites is the contrast to Pharaoh, right?
Like, under no terms will you go, and the Israelites had to say, we will go under any terms.
And we're going to see that there's something else going on here that is far more cosmic and deeper than what you can imagine.
The highest Yes, exactly.
I want villains to get punished.
your beholden is presented precisely as that spirit that allies itself with the cause of freedom
against tyranny.
Yes, exactly.
I want villains to get punished.
But do you want the villains to learn before they have to pay the ultimate price?
That's such a Christian question.
Well, you gotta be a member to watch, so head over to dailywire.com/subscribe
to become a Daily Wire member and watch Exodus today.
Now let's get to our daily cancellation.
You know, I actually tried to watch some of the World Cup this week.
As a red-blooded, patriotic American, it's of course my general preference to ignore soccer and pretend it isn't real.
And yet, for some reason, soccer continues to insist on existing.
So I decided to finally give it a fair shake.
I turned on the game or the match or the whatever they call it.
And I watched as one team kicked the ball towards the other team's goal.
And then I watched as the other team kicked it towards that team's goal.
And then the team that was originally kicking it, what happened was that they started kicking it again.
And the other team, they started kicking it once more, and they were kicking it back and forth.
At this point, I wasn't sure what the opposing team would do.
Would they begin kicking the ball also again, or would something else happen?
And I sat in rapt fascination, waiting to find out.
Yes, as it turns out, they did kick it.
Everyone was kicking it.
They kicked it, and they kicked it, and they kicked it, and I truly had never seen so much kicking in my life.
And I said to myself, wow, these fellas sure love to kick.
All they did was kick.
This way and that.
And at one point, one of the teams, I think it was our team, they kicked the ball into the goal.
And this was tremendously exciting because it was the first time that anything actually happened during the competition.
And it was also the last time.
Because for the rest of the match, neither team would make the mistake of doing anything interesting again.
Instead, they would simply kick, and they would keep kicking, and people in the audience would cheer, yes, great job kicking, and all the kicking enthusiasts were quite pleased with the spectacle.
I cannot say that I was nearly as satisfied.
I bring this up because the Daily Cancellation today has to do with soccer, and I cannot in good conscience discuss a soccer-related topic without taking time first to make fun of it.
So now that I've fulfilled my duty in that regard, we can move on to the topic at hand.
Our friends, speaking of kicking, our friends at OutKick have the story.
Here it is.
Quote, the USMNT, US men's team, answered the call against Iran on Tuesday to advance to the knockout stage of the World Cup.
For the first time since 2014.
It wasn't just a historic day for the men's national team, however, it was a monumental day for the USWNT, the women's team.
By advancing to the knockout stage, the USMNT earned a payout of at least $13 million.
Only half of that money will go to the men's side, while the USWNT will get the other half.
The USMNT and USWNT recently signed a new collective bargaining agreement that states that the prize money from the World Cups is pooled together and split evenly between the two teams.
The total prize money for the 2022 World Cup in Qatar is set at $440 million, which is $310 million more than the
women's 2019 World Cup prize pool.
The USMNT will earn money if it shocks the Netherlands on Saturday to continue its World Cup dream, and the USWNT
will again get half of that number.
If the USMNT stuns the World Cup and wins the World Cup, it will earn $42 million, with $21 million of it immediately going to the women's side.
Now, in fact, the women's team will earn more money from sitting on their couches and watching the men's team play than they earn from winning the World Cup themselves in 2019 and 2019.
2015 and 2019.
The bargaining agreement they signed with the men's team, of course, cuts totally in their favor.
So this is not equality at all.
The prize money comes from revenue generated through TV contracts and ticket sales and merchandise and marketing and licensing.
The men get more prize money because their sport earns more revenue, because there is greater public interest in their sport, because they are better and more impressive athletes.
By soccer standards, anyway.
There was never any conspiracy to deprive female soccer players of fair compensation.
They just generate less revenue.
It's as simple as that.
And now they're being given a cut of revenue they did not generate, revenue that they lifted not a finger or a foot to earn, all in the name of equality.
And I could not think of a better way than this to reveal the fundamental absurdity of gender equality as a concept.
Because as we discover again and again, no matter how hard we try to deny it, the sexes are not actually equal.
They are different.
They have different capacities, different strengths and weaknesses.
They thrive in different areas.
Inequality between the sexes is natural.
It is not then unjust.
There is nothing unjust about the fact that men have greater physical strength than women.
There's nothing unjust about the fact that women have the power to conceive and bear children and men do not.
This is simply the way it is.
It's the way nature is designed.
Justice is giving to each what they are due.
Which means that injustice is giving to someone what they are not due, or not giving them what they are due.
But nobody can be due something that falls outside of the natural order.
Injustices are perpetrated by willful actors, right?
Nature itself cannot be guilty of an injustice.
Because nature just is.
It's the state of things.
So if the natural inequality of the sexes is not unjust, then the injustices will come with our attempts to ignore or rectify or subvert this natural inequality.
It is not unjust that only women have the power to give birth, but much injustice is created when society pretends that men also have that capacity.
And there is nothing unjust about the fact that men are superior athletes, but injustice is created when a professional sports league decides to treat men and women as though this inequality does not exist.
And yet, in this case, we are not actually going to cancel the female soccer players for being the recipients of this sweetheart deal.
Because in some ways, I mean, you might even call it old-fashioned.
The men are making the money and bringing it home to the female soccer players.
The men are the breadwinners, and Megan Rapinoe and the female soccer players, they are now like the housewives of professional sports.
I might even applaud such an arrangement if the women were holding up their end of the bargain by doing the men's laundry and keeping their houses in order.
But they are required to do nothing, which again is what makes this unjust.
And yet, who can blame them for taking the deal?
I mean, if I could get the soccer team to split their earnings with me, I'd take the money.
It's not fair, but if they would agree to it, I would take it.
No, the group that really deserves to be cancelled is the men's team.
Because they agreed to this arrangement.
Because they were afraid to say no.
And they were too intent on virtue signaling, too fearful of upsetting the feminists that they, you know, they want to upset.
So they signed the collective bargaining agreement to forfeit half of their own money and give it to the least sympathetic and needy charity in the world, known as Women's Soccer.
The men's team, they even pretended to be excited when this deal was signed several months ago.
A lot of the men's soccer players, they were like cheering it on.
Yay!
They cheered on their own robbery.
They got mugged by Megan Rapinoe in a back alley, and they responded by hailing her heroism and courage.
The women's team doesn't deserve the windfall that they will now receive, but the men's team certainly does deserve to be on the losing end.
It is a fitting penalty for their cowardice.
And so they are the ones who are today cancelled.
That'll do it for this portion of the show as we move over to the members block.
