Ep. 1352 - Biden Administration Declares That Criminal Background Checks Are Racist Against Black People
Today on the Matt Walsh Show, the Biden Administration is suing a major corporation for its racist practices. What is this racist practice? A criminal background check for job applicants. Also, self-immolation is beginning to become a trend among left wing protestors. Democrats wave Ukraine flags in congress. Gavin Newsom puts out a fear mongering ad so cartoonish that you might think it's intentional satire. And universities across the country are now offering classes on Taylor Swift.
Ep.1352
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Today on The Matt Walsh Show, the Biden administration is suing a major corporation for its racist practices.
What is this racist practice?
Well, a criminal background check for job applicants is apparently racist.
Also, self-immolation is beginning to become a trend among left-wing protesters.
What does that say about the future of the country?
Democrats wave Ukraine flags in Congress.
Gavin Newsom puts out a fear-mongering ad so cartoonish that you might think it's intentional satire, but it isn't.
And universities across the country are now offering classes on Taylor Swift.
We'll talk about all that and more today on the Matt Walsh show.
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Well, here's a statistic that if you have a job in corporate America, it may be the single least surprising piece of information you'll hear all year.
It turns out that every single one of the Fortune 100 companies, 100% of them, have made a public commitment to DEI on their website.
There isn't a single outlier in the top 100 companies in the entire country.
Every single one has done this.
Chris Rufo looked into this and he found that they all have a stock DEI page on their website, whether you go to Amazon or Target or Dell, or Verizon, or Home Depot, or banks, or insurance companies, or anywhere else, you'll find the same platitudes.
Boilerplate about the importance of the alphabet people, parental leave for birthing folks, outreach to historically black colleges, and so on.
Now, this total uniformity took hold relatively quickly, as you may remember, within the last few years.
Publicly, the explanation for this change is that all of these companies are suddenly very concerned about racial justice.
They're upset about George Floyd, and so on.
But privately, there's another very clear reason for it.
The leadership of all of these companies understand very well that if they stop practicing DEI, if they, let's say, start hiring all of their employees based on merit instead of skin color, then the federal government will try to destroy them.
This is a dynamic that normally plays out behind the scenes, away from public scrutiny, so we don't really know everything that's going on.
But this week, in one very dramatic case, it's spelled out into the open.
The convenience store chain Sheetz, which has more than 700 locations all over the country, was just sued by the Biden administration after they rejected the federal government's attempt to shake them down with a settlement.
And what was Sheetz's crime, you may ask?
Did they sell bad gasoline?
Did they sell poisoned hot dogs?
Did their name violate communications decency laws?
Well, no.
According to the Biden administration, Sheetz broke the law by refusing to hire applicants who failed a criminal background check.
Now, apparently the Biden administration believes that this is a racist policy because many of the people who fail these background checks happen to be non-white.
And to be clear, That is the entire accusation.
So if you want to give the Biden administration the benefit of the doubt, I don't know why you'd want to.
And you think, well, there must be more to the story.
There must be some.
No, the Biden administration is not claiming that she's intentionally discriminated against anybody on the basis of race or any other, quote unquote, legally protected characteristic.
They're not claiming that Sheetz used these background checks as part of some explicit, intentional, racist, white supremacist scheme.
They're not saying that.
Instead, the Biden administration is using a theory of discrimination known as disparate impact, which was enshrined into civil rights law many years ago.
And under this theory, A lack of discriminatory intent doesn't actually matter.
All the government has to show is that a policy disproportionately affects members of certain racial groups without a clear business purpose in a manner that could be reasonably avoided, according to them.
Now, in a moment, I'll get into the lawsuit and I'll explain why it's a complete farce, even if you buy into the whole disparate impact theory.
But we'll get into disparate impact theory also and why that is a farce as well.
But first, I want to contrast two local news reports about what's happening to Sheetz.
The first one is from WCNC in Charlotte, North Carolina, and the second one is from CBS in Durham.
Watch.
This week, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission filed a lawsuit against the sheets convenience store chain.
Officials claim the chain violated civil rights law by sorting out job applicants who felt a criminal background check resulting in alleged discrimination against minority applicants.
Sheets operates more than 700 stores across six states, including North Carolina.
In a statement, the company says it quote does not tolerate discrimination of any kind.
Sheets is being hit with a discrimination lawsuit.
Yeah, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission is accusing the convenience store chain of discriminating against black, Native Americans, and multiracial people looking for jobs at the store.
The EEOC filed a suit in Baltimore against Altoona, Pennsylvania-based Sheets.
Now you'll notice that the CBS News report doesn't even mention what Sheetz is accused of actually doing.
They don't talk about the background checks at all.
They just lead you to believe that Sheetz is accused of discriminating against black, Native American, and multiracial people with no context whatsoever.
So you're allowed to just sort of fill in the blanks.
So maybe you're starting to see how the shakedown works.
The federal government shows up to a major corporation.
They accuse them of racism based on no evidence whatsoever.
And then they demand millions of dollars, including back pay for a bunch of employees, and if the company doesn't comply, then the administration sues them, and then the media is aware of it, and they basically accuse the company of racism, and that's the way that this whole, uh, this extortion racket works.
And this is why many companies choose to just head off the whole problem, in the first place, by openly discriminating against white people.
Because if you do that, the Biden administration will not bother you.
They won't touch you.
So let's get into specifics of the case, because that's the only way to truly understand how insane this is.
Within the last few months, apparently, a couple of job applicants at Sheetz filed complaints with the EEOC, saying that they've been discriminated against under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and the EEOC, which is a federal agency, agreed with them.
And here's what the Biden administration wrote in their lawsuit.
Sheets committed a continuing company-wide practice in violation of Title VII with respect to a class of Black, American, Indian, Alaska Native, and multiracial job applicants who did not pass Sheets' criminal justice history screening by failing to hire them for all positions because of race.
For instance, Black job applicants have failed defendants' criminal justice history screening and consequently are denied employment At a rate exceeding approximately 14.5%, while white job applicants have failed the criminal justice history screening and consequently are denied employment at a rate of under approximately 8%.
The complaint notes that the number of Indians and multiracial applicants who are denied on this basis is roughly the same.
Now, a few points here.
First, given what we know about black crime rates, these numbers are actually a lot closer to each other than you would expect.
There's less of a disparity than you would expect.
Nationally, according to FBI data, black people make up more than 26% of total arrests, and the imprisonment rate for black Americans is over five times the rate for whites.
But the Sheets data only shows a disparity of around 7%.
And according to the EEOC, Sheetz is looking at both convictions as well as arrests when it runs its background checks.
And more importantly, you notice what's being conflated here.
The complaint states that Sheetz is failing to hire these applicants because of race, but what they're really saying is that Sheetz isn't hiring applicants who failed a criminal background check.
They don't want criminals working for them.
Any reasonable person can see that these two are very different rationales.
And indeed, on its website, the EEOC makes this distinction clear.
They state, quote, the lawsuit does not allege that Sheetz was motivated by race when making hiring decisions.
I mean, and that should be the end of it.
Even the people filing the lawsuit are saying that race was not a factor.
But it's not the end of it, because this is the sort of madness that the legal theory of disparate impact breeds.
You know, the left knows that it can't find any examples of actual direct discrimination against black people in this country, certainly not at sheets.
They know they're not going to find any example of any company or any major corporation or company of any size that has a policy in place saying, we're not going to hire you because you're black.
They're not going to find that.
So, but they're also not going to say, well, okay, well then I guess the anti-black discrimination isn't really a problem.
We'll move on.
They're not gonna say that either.
So instead, the left has invented this notion of disparate impact to create discrimination
where it doesn't really exist.
And the problem with the disparate impact idea, and of course disparate just means different, distinct,
right, the problem is that literally everything, every policy, every rule, every standard in every context
will have a quote unquote disparate impact.
Because the impact felt by any individual or group will vary according to their situation.
If we cannot have standards that create a disparate impact, then we can't have any standards at all, which of course is the point.
And by the way, another thing you notice, This disparate impact idea, it's only applied in very specific circumstances and to very specific groups of people.
So they'll apply it, as we heard, to black people as a group, quote-unquote multiracial people, whatever that means, Native Americans and so on.
But you notice something, they don't apply it based on sex.
Because there are many laws where men are much more likely to be found guilty, to be arrested, to go to prison, than women.
And yet we never hear about disparate impact there.
Even something like speeding tickets.
We never hear about the disparate impact of speeding tickets because men are much more likely to get them than women.
So, they're very, very targeted in their application of this disparate impact idea.
Now, supposedly there are limits to this legal theory of disparate impact.
The DOJ lists these exceptions on its website.
For example, it's acceptable to have a policy that yields a disparate impact if the policy is quote-unquote important and if it's justified by the organization's mission.
And this is an exception that, of course, is completely subjective, but clearly applies to this situation.
There is a blindingly obvious reason why a convenience store wouldn't want to hire criminals.
And the reason is they don't want to get robbed.
This is a point that should not need any elaboration whatsoever in a sane society.
We don't live in a sane society anymore, so I will elaborate.
Also, it's an excuse to show one of the best videos to come out of Georgia this year.
This is footage of a robbery at a convenience store that may be the single worst inside job ever recorded on camera.
But it does show why you might not want to hire criminals to work for you.
Here it is, watch.
Security video captures what looks to be a Georgia cashier being held up by an armed robber.
But police say the whole thing was fake, and the duo staged the armed robbery to steal $5,000 from the register.
The incident happened in January at a Duluth, Georgia Shell gas station.
Surveillance video from January 20th shows the cashier, who was later identified as Raj Patel, behind the register.
He then walks over toward the cash register, opens it up, and takes a stack of bills.
Then a man in a black hoodie is seen charging toward Patel before throwing what looks to be a punch.
It's unclear if the robber's fist actually connected to Patel's face, but he collapses to the floor, then the suspect takes off.
Patel's co-worker found him on the ground where he supposedly regained his conscious before getting up.
Then within minutes of the first apparent robbery, a second supposed robbery occurs.
But this time Patel is seen holding his hands up as the robber scrounges through the register before making off with the cash.
Let me see that key real quick.
What you got in your pocket there?
What's all that rustling around?
Hey, come here, Danny.
I'm here.
I'm here.
Stop, Danny.
Danny, stop.
Stop, stop, stop, stop, stop, stop.
Stop.
So they say it's unclear if the robber's fist actually connected to Patel's face.
That's a polite way of putting it.
I mean, I've seen more convincing violence in, like, professional wrestling matches.
Which, by the way, if you're gonna do this, you gotta sell out for it.
I mean, you gotta go all the way.
Have him actually hit you in the face.
If you're going to do it, then you've really got to be willing to take the black eye if you're going to try something like that.
It takes the cops a little while, but they eventually blew the whole scheme wide open, mainly because the accomplice was hanging out right outside the store when they arrived and cash started falling out of his pocket when they questioned him.
In any event, the point is that if this clerk applies to Sheetz, they should be able to reject him because of his criminal history.
His ethnicity doesn't matter.
The fact that he's a criminal matters.
Convenience stores get robbed all the time, including by their own employees.
It's clearly important to the business of a convenience store to root out criminals so they don't get robbed.
Now, I read the entire complaint from the Biden administration, and I couldn't find a single argument to the contrary here.
Instead, they fault sheets for failing to contact applicants to request additional information after they fail their criminal background checks.
The Biden administration doesn't say what additional information might be relevant, but they say that Sheetz is racist because they don't request that additional information.
I mean, I guess they see someone has a criminal history, they committed a bunch of crimes, they're supposed to call them and say, why did you commit these crimes?
What were you feeling?
What were you feeling when you committed the crimes?
I don't know exactly.
But the Biden administration faults Sheetz for failing to name the specific condition that's the basis for their decision when applicants have multiple criminal convictions.
And apparently, Sheetz doesn't have a whole committee making these decisions, nor is there a procedure for appeals.
They just sort of see that there's a criminal history, and they move on to the next application.
That's what they do.
None of this, of course, is remotely relevant to racism, nor does it disprove the obvious fact that hiring criminals is a bad idea for a convenience store.
So it doesn't really address the relevant legal issues in any way.
Now, you get the sense that Sheetz was stunned by the Biden administration's claims to the contrary.
The federal government's complaint goes on to state that quote the commission engaged in communications with defendants
to provide a defendants an opportunity To remedy the discriminatory practices, but the commission
was unable to secure from defendants a conciliation agreement
acceptable to the Commission In other words sheets didn't back down in the face of this
blackmail So now they have a massive lawsuit to deal with along with
defamatory media coverage Obviously, this is one of the more egregious examples
You'll ever see of the sort of soft bigotry of low expectations or the soft bigotry of no expectations in this
case Because, look, if I were black, I would be highly insulted by the idea that a criminal background check presents some kind of insurmountable hurdle for me specifically.
It's a lot like saying black people can't possibly obtain voter identification, which of course is another claim that you hear from the Biden administration.
What the left is effectively saying is that There's simply no chance for black, Indian, or multiracial job applicants to stop committing a disproportionate amount of crimes.
So instead of doing anything to get them to commit less crime, we have to pretend that business owners are somehow the real villains in all of this.
If they refuse to hire non-white applicants for any reason, they'll get a lawsuit.
But of course, they can continue to discriminate against whites all they want.
Now, Sheetz seems to understand that, and they're already giving signs that they're going to cave, unfortunately.
In response to this lawsuit, Sheets issued a statement saying, quote, "Diversity and
inclusion are essential parts of who we are.
We take these allegations seriously.
We have attempted to work with the EEOC for nearly eight years to find common ground and
resolve this dispute."
So it's not exactly a full-throated defense of their position, which is obviously the
correct one, their position is.
As their statement notes, this has been going on for a long time.
Eight years, in fact.
They've been getting harassed by the federal government because they don't hire criminals.
So, there's some history here that we know about.
I looked into it, and it turns out that this isn't the first time the EEOC has filed a lawsuit like this.
Back in 2019, the EEOC, under the Trump administration, sued Dollar General for, quote, denying employment to African Americans at a significantly higher rate than white applicants for failing the company's broad criminal background check.
What was the result of that?
Well, a $6 million settlement and a three-year consent decree.
According to a top EEOC attorney at the time, quote, this case is important because Dollar General is not just providing relief for a past practice, but for the future as well.
If the company plans to use criminal history, it must retain a criminologist to develop a fair process.
Unlike other background checks based on unproven myths and biases about people with criminal backgrounds, Dollar General's new approach will be informed by experts with knowledge of actual risk.
Now, it's hard to believe that's a real quote, but it is.
They're saying that it's an unproven myth and bias to believe that somebody with a previous history of criminal behavior is more likely to commit other crimes in the future.
Now, you don't need any statistics to know how absurd that is.
You just need common sense.
But here are the statistics anyway.
According to DOJ's own numbers, quote, at least half of citizens released from incarceration will recidivate in some way following release.
And according to other estimates, including a survey from Prison Policy, roughly a third of people who are arrested report that they are re-arrested for another offense within a year.
And there are about a million other data points that you can find, but suffice it to say that it's not a myth That criminals are more likely to re-offend.
If you've committed one crime, it's more likely that you will commit another one.
This is an extremely basic and obvious fact that everybody understands, and yet the EEOC pretends they don't understand it.
And now Dollar General needs an expert to tell them that they're being racist if they reject a black guy with five prior convictions.
How did that go completely unnoticed at the time, you might ask?
Why didn't the Trump White House override what the EEOC was doing and fire everybody involved?
Who knows?
I mean, the most likely answer is that the White House wasn't aware of it.
And if that's the case, which I think it probably was, it's hard to think of a better argument that the federal government needs to be cut in half immediately, for starters.
That's just for starters.
And most of these unelected bureaucrats need to find new jobs.
They have gone rogue, and they're implementing policies that defy all logic, and they should be fired en masse.
That should be the first executive order if, in fact, there is a second Trump administration.
With the Sheetz case, the Biden administration is trying to shake down yet another company in order to erase the distinction between criminals and non-criminals.
This is economic sabotage.
And it simply cannot be allowed to succeed.
Now let's get to our five headlines.
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Well, a lot happening in the news, obviously, but I wanna start by briefly going back to Friday,
something that happened shortly after I finish my show on Friday.
Here's the latest from Post Millennial on this incident.
Max Azzarello, the man who lit himself on fire in New York outside of Donald Trump's trial on Friday.
Representative Tommy Suozzi, who's a Democrat, worked for his campaign in New York in 2013.
The now-deceased Azzarello's LinkedIn page shows that he worked briefly as the operations director for Friends of Tommy Suozzi from August 2013 to November 2013.
He, Congressman, told the New York Post for a report.
So, this is all stemming from a second self-immolation on Friday, as you probably heard.
2013 as part of the field staff, even though I haven't seen or talked to Max since then,
I recall him being very kind, smart, and hardworking.
It's tragic that he has succumbed to his injuries.
I keep Max and his family in my prayers, according to the congressman.
So this is all stemming from a second self-immolation on Friday, as you probably heard, the second
time in the last couple of months that someone has lit themselves on fire in an act of protest.
And this guy, like the last one who did it, apparently is a crazy leftist.
And this guy did survive initially, but then died in the hospital over the weekend.
You know, there's not much to say in analysis here except that You might say it's not a sign of a healthy country when this sort of thing becomes a trend, right?
I mean, I can't remember any cases of people in this country self-immolating as a method of protest in this country for like the first 37 years of my life, and now in the last two months it's happened twice.
So, not a good sign.
But I also want to make special mention, or give I guess a dishonorable mention, let's say, to CNN for its coverage of this incident.
And I'm going to play this clip for you if you haven't seen it.
I want you to watch as the CNN reporter, and this is the reporter they have obviously on the scene to report on Trump's trial, and then this thing happens.
And I want you to watch and listen to how she covers this event as it unfolds.
Listen.
What do you say?
We also are seeing an active shooter.
An active shooter is in the park outside the court.
We have a man who has set fire to himself.
A man has emblazoned himself outside of the courthouse just now.
Our cameras are turning right now.
A man has now lit himself on fire outside of the courthouse in Manhattan where we are waiting for history to be made.
A full jury panel is gone.
We are watching a man who was fully emblazoned in front of the courthouse today.
We are watching multiple fires breaking out around his body and person.
We have seen an arm that has been visible that has been engulfed in total flames.
There is chaos that is happening.
People are wondering right now if people are in danger.
I'm looking across the courtyard.
There is a man racing to his aid.
There is codes coming off to try to put out the fire.
We have members of securing details.
NYPD is rushing to the scene.
Okay, okay, okay.
trying to come out. Officers are on the scene. A fire extinguisher is right now present being
put on this man to try to put out. People are climbing over barricades to try to separate
the public to put out the flame on this man. He has lit himself out in fire in front of
the courthouse right now. We are watching as the plane we can smell the air. I can smell
the burning of some sort of a flash. I can smell the burning of some sort of agent being
used as well as the. Yeah, we can turn off. I can smell the burning of some sort of flesh.
At least we found out that his body and his person are both on fire, she said.
You see, his body and his person, so it's the two separate things.
Now, look, I understand that when you're reporting live, you aren't necessarily prepared for something like this.
You might be taken a bit off guard by a guy lighting himself on fire.
It's not something that you necessarily expected.
I get it.
I get that.
But even so, that was perhaps the single worst performance by a national media reporter That I've ever seen.
That's like the worst two minutes of reporting, I think, maybe ever.
First of all, she initially blurts out, for some unknown reason, that there's an active shooter.
I don't even understand how you make that mistake.
How do you misinterpret self-immolation as an active shooting?
I don't get that.
Did she think that somebody was running around with a flamethrower?
This was an active shooter with a flamethrower?
Is that what she thought?
I don't know.
And then to make matters worse, she repeatedly says that the man has emblazoned himself, but again, I'm not trying to be pedantic, but emblazoned is not the correct word in this situation.
Emblazoned means that you are marking or inscribing something, you know, if something's emblazoned, so you might say that The Nike emblazons its emblem on the side of a shoe.
So, if this guy was emblazoning himself, it would mean that he was writing something on himself.
Maybe he was getting, like, a tattoo.
When you hear a reporter shouting, he's emblazoning himself!
If you speak fluent English and you hear that, your mind immediately conjures an image of a guy getting, like, a tattoo on his forehead or something.
But this reporter apparently doesn't speak fluent English, and so that's why we have this.
But even apart from those problems, The bigger issue is that this woman is narrating a guy burning to death as if she's Jim Nance giving a play-by-play of a touchdown during the AFC Championship game.
Like, you listen to that, you honestly expect Tony Romo to chime in with color commentary.
It's just an utterly bizarre performance.
And because, by the way, we can see that the guy's on fire.
We don't need a second-by-second description Where you are restating over and over again, the guy's on fire, he's currently on fire, there's fire all around him, he's on fire, we can see there's fire, emblazoning, fire.
And if you are going to do that, at least try not to sound so excited about it.
It would be my other tip.
In her tone and her demeanor, there's not even like a hint of her being concerned that someone is burning to death right in front of her.
It's just she's very obviously excited about it.
And in her excitement, she forgets how to speak English if she ever knew.
All right.
You know, we're used to seeing politicians fearmonger.
And most of them do it to one extent or another.
But over the past few years with Democrats, we have seen them take fear-mongering to absurd,
never-before-seen levels.
We've watched as they've claimed, for instance, that Florida has made it illegal to say the
word "gay" in the state.
They've claimed there's a genocide being carried out against trans people.
They've claimed that, um, the Earth is being incinerated by climate change.
We need to pass bills to stop the weather from being the weather.
Uh, they've said that Donald Trump is a fascist dictator in league with Putin, right?
So many things like that.
And it's also hysterical and over-the-top that it all kind of bleeds together, and it's hard for any one fear-mongering campaign to stand out amidst all that.
Yet Gavin Newsom has managed to stand out somehow with the latest ad put out by his political action committee, and the committee's called Campaign for Democracy.
And he posted this on Twitter this weekend, and here's the caption with the video.
It says, Alabama's abortion ban has no exceptions for rape or incest.
Now Republicans are trying to criminalize young women's travel to receive abortion care.
We cannot let them get away with this.
So, Republicans are criminalizing young women's travel.
What does that look like exactly?
I mean, what does that mean?
Well, the ad will show us what it supposedly means and what it supposedly looks like.
Let's watch.
You're gonna make it.
Trump Republicans want to criminalize young Alabama women who travel for reproductive care.
Miss, I'm gonna need you to step out of the vehicle.
Take a pregnancy test.
Stop them by taking action at righttotravel.org.
Campaign for Democracy group is responsible for the content of this advertising.
Uh, I, honest to God, I know I say this a lot, but this is another one.
I saw the video without any, I, you know, I originally saw the video.
It was not posted by Gavin Newsom.
I saw someone had reposted it and I honestly thought it was a joke.
I really did.
I thought this was some kind of right-wing satire of what the left thinks of us.
But I had to go to Gavin Newsom's page to find that.
No, this is real.
We're supposed to take that seriously.
So, according to Newsom, women who try to get abortions in Alabama are being pulled over on the road and arrested on the spot.
Never mind the fact that this has never happened one time.
You know, what he's claiming, in fact, has never happened.
But what he's actually saying is that women are being pulled over and given random pregnancy tests on the side of the road.
How does that work, first of all?
Do they, like, are they supposed to pee on the stick right on the shoulder of the road?
Or do they sit in their car and get pee all over the car?
Where does this happen, exactly?
I don't know the specifics, but in this Fantasyland scenario, women are given random pregnancy tests in the same way that, you know, you might get a random DUI test if you go through a DUI checkpoint.
So maybe that's what they're Maybe that's the idea that they have created here, that maybe in Alabama, they'll have pregnancy checkpoints where if you try to drive through it, they'll stop you and just see if you're pregnant.
And then what happens?
Well, if you test positive for pregnancy, they automatically arrest you under the assumption that you're going to get an abortion.
Well, how does that work?
So yeah, she's pregnant, but why would she automatically get arrested?
Couldn't she just say, oh yeah, I'm pregnant.
I'm just out for a drive.
I'm not getting an abortion.
Is Newsom claiming that Alabama has actually criminalized pregnancy too?
How does that work?
So we've criminalized abortion and pregnancy.
Or maybe the idea is that Is that if a woman is found to be pregnant in Alabama, she'll be arrested automatically and then kept in detainment for nine months to make sure she doesn't get an abortion and then she'll be released once the baby's born.
Maybe that's the way it works in this fictional scenario that Newsom has cooked up.
Now, you know, you watch that and you think to yourself, well, come on.
I mean, surely, surely nobody's going to fall for that.
Surely.
Like, no one will watch that ad and actually believe that this is a real thing that's really happening.
No one's gonna fall for that.
But sadly, I think you have too much faith in the intelligence of the intended audience here, if that is what you think.
Because remember, plenty of people have fallen for the ludicrous fear-mongering that I mentioned a few moments ago.
The average Democrat voter right now, I would bet you, He really does believe that if you go to the state of Florida and you say the word gay, you could be arrested for that.
The average Democrat voter actually believes that.
And if you look at the, and this is, you kind of bear this out just by going to Gavin Newsom's Twitter page, finding that ad, reading the comments, and yeah, at this point there's a ton of comments from people on the right mocking it, and rightfully so.
But then there's a lot of comments too from people on the left.
Saying, yeah, this is what... You know what?
If you elect Trump, it's gonna be this way across the entire nation.
Women getting pulled over across the entire country.
And given random pregnancy tests.
This is what they actually believe.
Or at least what they all have decided to pretend they believe.
All right, next, we talked on Friday about the foreign aid package that was just approved by the House of Representatives in a horrific, though predictable, betrayal of the American people.
And we are now going to be shipping billions of dollars, billions more, to foreign countries, with Ukraine getting the lion's share and then Israel and Taiwan also getting billions.
Well, to make this betrayal even more clear, to kind of rub it in our faces even more, House Democrats celebrated the approval of the bill in a very revealing and symbolic way.
Daily Wire has the report.
Quote, many House Democrats waved Ukrainian flags on the floor of the House of Representatives on Saturday as members voted to pass a series of spending packages designating $95 billion in foreign aid to Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan, while failing to address President Joe Biden's border crisis.
A separate vote was taken on each aid proposal with $60 billion allocated for Ukraine, about $17 billion for Israel, $9 billion for humanitarian aid, and $8 billion to support Taiwan.
And then to celebrate it, they chanted Ukraine while flying the flag.
I think we have a video of that.
that. Let's watch.
Just reprehensible.
Needless to say, all of these lawmakers should be expelled from Congress.
They should be expelled and exiled to Ukraine.
Because if you want to fly Ukraine's flag, you can go do it in Ukraine.
We don't need you here.
No lawmaker should be allowed to fly any foreign flag inside the Capitol building, you know, while operating in their capacity as an elected official.
That should not be allowed.
It should be illegal.
Now, frankly, I would be in favor of banning them from flying foreign flags anywhere as long as they are in office.
If it were up to me, I wouldn't let them fly it even at their house while they're in elected office, while they're still serving their tenure.
Because, you know, if you are elected to represent America, you need to show that you are solely loyal to America.
But even if you think that extending that prohibition to their homes goes a little too far, as you might, we should all be able to agree that they should at least be prevented from doing it in the Capitol while Congress is in session.
This is just an obnoxious and intentional slap in the face, and it's meant to send a message.
And the message has been received loud and clear.
But if you need it to be any clearer, well, then listen to what Representative Gerald Connolly of Virginia had to say as he was arguing in favor of giving more money to Ukraine.
Here's his reasoning.
Listen.
Some say, well, we have to deal with our border first.
The Ukrainian-Russian border is our border.
It's the border between depraved autocracy and freedom-loving people seeking our democratic way of life.
Do we have a stake in that outcome?
Yes.
Undeniably yes.
Will we rise to the occasion?
Will we stand shoulder-to-shoulder with our Ukrainian brothers and sisters who for 1,151 days have been holding off the depraved, thuggish dictator
Vladimir Putin, who has respected no norms of warfare.
He's targeted children in hospitals and schools.
He's bombed apartment blocks, killing thousands.
Okay.
Well, no.
No, Ukraine's border is not our border.
In fact, Ukraine's border is about 5,000 miles away, at the closest to our border, to our easternmost border.
And it's separated, you know, for anyone who's not familiar with the geography, I guess Gerald Connolly is not familiar with the geography, so a little quick geography lesson.
That the United States is separated by an entire ocean, and then some, from Ukraine.
So, no, we do not share a border.
We don't even come close to sharing a border.
And even if it was true that our fate as a nation is somehow wound up with the fate of Ukraine, that still wouldn't mean that their borders are our borders.
That still would not, it still wouldn't follow.
It wouldn't follow that Ukraine and our country are, you know, the same.
But of course, it isn't even true.
Our fate is not wound up with them, and they are not our Ukrainian brothers and sisters.
I mean, brothers and sisters, how so?
What have our brothers and sisters done for us, our supposed brothers and sisters?
What is Ukraine doing for us, exactly?
What have they ever done for us?
In what way has Ukraine helped us, or fought for us, or made sacrifices for us?
It's that last point that I'm really interested in.
When do we ever ask any other country to make any sacrifices for us?
In what context is a resident of a foreign country, a citizen of a foreign country, making any sacrifices on our behalf?
It never happens.
We're always the ones making sacrifices for other countries.
We hear this language about brotherhood, sisterhood, friends, allies, whatever.
It's always pretty one-sided, though.
And I think probably the response will be, well, Ukraine, when they're fighting to defend themselves, they're fighting for us, because they're holding back the tide.
Putin's march, his coming march across Europe, they're holding him back.
And if they didn't hold him back, then Putin would just run roughshod over the entire continent.
I guess that's probably going to be the argument, but it's an absurd argument.
And I can tell you one thing, that Ukrainians, when they're fighting the Russians, they're not thinking to themselves, oh, we're doing this for America.
I wouldn't expect them to think that.
Ukrainians value their own country, and they put their own country first, and they don't really care about our country.
And yeah, they'll accept whatever free money we give them.
Because it's coming out of our pockets, You know, it's robbing your family, but they don't care about your family.
And I don't expect them to.
Because they put their own country first.
That's what the citizens of every country on the Earth do.
They do it instinctively.
We're the only ones who are expected to value the safety and prosperity and security of citizens of other countries over our own.
All right.
Before we move on, I guess I'll... I was thinking I might save this, but I guess we'll play this now.
So, Tucker Carlson was on Joe Rogan, on Joe Rogan's show a couple days ago, and it's worth watching.
The entire interview is very interesting.
There's one piece of this discussion that has, well, several pieces, actually, that have gone viral, but I'll talk about just one because I thought it was interesting.
It's a discussion about the dropping of the atomic bomb, or bombs.
And let's listen to what Tucker says and then we'll talk about it.
Well, you could say the same about the atomic bomb, right?
Yes, you could.
And you could say that we have to develop it like Oppenheimer felt before the Nazis did.
I'd love that!
How'd that work?
I love, by the way, that people on my side, I'll just say, I'll just admit it, on the right, you know, have spent the last 80 years defending dropping nuclear weapons on civilians.
Like, are you joking?
Right.
That's just like prima facie evil.
If you can't, well, if we hadn't done that, then this, that, the other thing, that was actually a great savings.
No, it's wrong to drop nuclear weapons on people.
And if you find yourself arguing that it's a good thing to drop nuclear weapons on people, then you are evil.
Like, it's not a tough one, right?
Is that a hard call for you?
It's not a hard call for me.
So, with that in mind, like, why would you want nuclear weapons?
It's like, just a mindless, childish, sort of intellectual exercise to justify, like, oh no, it's really good because someone else will get it.
How about no?
How about, like, spending all of your effort to prevent this from happening?
Would you kill baby Hitler?
You know, famously?
Right.
So, I don't know why we're sitting back and allowing this to happen if we really believe it will extinguish the human race or enslave the human race.
How can that be good?
Okay, so that's his take on nuclear weapons.
Now, I'm a big Tucker fan, as you know.
I disagree with him on this one.
I'll admit I've kind of been back and forth on this question, the historical question of whether it was morally justified to drop nuclear weapons on Japan.
You know, over the years I've kind of been on either side of it, because I think that there are There are perfectly reasonable rational arguments on either side.
I don't think you can listen to the argument.
Now, there are also bad arguments on both sides, but I don't think you can listen to intelligent people argue on one side or the other and think, well, that's completely insane.
Because I think it's one of those, it's one of those things.
And oftentimes in war, you're presented with those sorts of things where there's not a clear Answer and the the right or wrong thing to do is not entirely clear and one thing I think we should acknowledge is that The people who are faced that you know the The question about whether or not to drop the bombs One of the most complex moral dilemmas that mankind has ever faced is
And the people who had to make that decision were, you know, balancing things and factors that we can't even imagine, right?
I mean, like, literally millions of lives hanging in the balance.
And they know that if we, you know, no matter what we do here, it could result in millions of people dying.
And the question is, what will save the most amount of people?
And I think I think I can state without even knowing the specifics of every person or even any person watching me right now, but I think I can say that none of you have ever had to make a decision where millions of human lives were hanging in the balance.
I certainly never have.
That's why I give, for one thing, I give a lot of leeway to people in history that were faced with dilemmas like that because it's just something, like it's so beyond anything I've ever had to deal with that I can't, it's hard for me to judge too harshly.
But I think ultimately where I land, even waffling back and forth a little bit, but where I land is that dropping the bombs was the right move because I think it's, I think it's pretty obvious, and yeah, there are other things you have to take into account, but it's pretty obvious to me that if not for dropping the bombs, more American lives would have been lost.
Now, you could make a very compelling argument that actually if you hadn't dropped the bombs, more Japanese lives would have been lost too, and not to mention lives of many other people across the world.
In a war, your primary goal has to be to protect and defend your own people.
In fact, that should be your primary goal all the time, if you're a leader of a nation, as we were just talking about.
Your primary goal, in all circumstances, should be to protect and defend your own people.
Now, that doesn't automatically mean that everything you do in the name of protecting and defending your own people is automatically right, but that should be your guiding principle.
It should be the first thing you think about before you consider any other factors.
So, and as far as that goes, on that first most important factor, did it prevent the deaths of many more American lives?
I think the answer is almost certainly yes.
It's hard to imagine a scenario where they don't drop the bombs, but then the same number of Americans die.
We don't see any increase in the number of Americans who die.
It's hard to imagine that.
At least I can't imagine it.
And that's what I think justifies it.
You have to do what is necessary to defend and protect your own people.
But war is a brutal, awful, terrible thing.
And I think we all acknowledge that intellectually.
We all will say that.
But then sometimes when we're confronted by the brutality of war, we're kind of overtaken by it.
As I think Tucker is in this case.
But when you realize it, you realize it's a brutal, terrible thing.
You are killing mass amounts of people on purpose in a war, no matter what weapons you're using.
But that's the way wars are fought.
There's no way around it.
And so when you're in a war, your objective should be, let's end this as quickly as possible, and let's protect as many of our own people as we can.
And I think that's what the bomb did there.
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Now let's get to our Daily Cancellation.
Granting forgiveness, of course, means having our own pockets picked to pay back a debt that we as the taxpayers never agreed to and had nothing to do with.
And this type of forgiveness would be wholly untenable from an ethical, moral, and constitutional perspective, even if colleges were providing young people with a quality education.
Like, I wouldn't want to pay back some stranger student loans, even if they had taken their education seriously and spent their four years acquiring useful knowledge.
But it's far worse than that, because a great many of the people who now demand forgiveness, that is, demand that the government steal from you and give to them, forcing you to pay their debts, many of these people whittled away their university careers learning absolutely nothing of value.
And any dubious argument that it's in the public interest to pay for their college education is entirely destroyed by the hollowness and superficiality of their education.
I didn't agree to the loan.
It isn't my financial responsibility.
And also, I don't benefit at all from you going to school and learning about gender studies or something even dumber than that.
And speaking of things dumber than that, or at least as dumb, which is extremely dumb, Let me show you just one example of thousands that could help prove the point, as reported by CBS Saturday morning to mark the release of the new Taylor Swift album.
Now, that album has already been streamed and downloaded 45 billion times, or whatever the exact number is.
It's called The Tortured Poets Department, is the Taylor Swift album.
You know, I assume that it will win 96 Grammys, even if it doesn't deserve any at all.
But one thing it certainly does deserve, at least, is the award for the cringiest album title of the century.
Taylor Swift has announced that she is now entering her tortured poet era, as the kids would say.
Because, of course, nobody is more tortured than a billionaire pop star worshipped by throngs of fans all over the world.
What a torturous life she leads.
Let's not be so distracted by her tortured self-identification that we forget to also laugh at the idea that Taylor Swift considers herself to be a poet.
And the whole thing is absurd, but as CBS tells us, it has nonetheless been incorporated into university courses.
Watch.
All the marketing strategies in the world will only work if you have a good product to market.
You might not expect a business school course to begin like this.
But at UC Berkeley, Taylor Swift is not just a tortured poet.
She's a case study in how to build an empire.
Nothing about Taylor Swift is an accident.
Sophia Lindahl and Miad Bushala are student teachers of a course called Artistry and Entrepreneurship, Taylor's version.
It's just like everything from her music.
Each era is kind of like its own brand.
Today's focus?
Swift's literary devices and her song as the product.
I think that Taylor is so strategic in all the things that she does and that's why I'm so interested in the course.
Kind of like unraveling how she's been able to be such a relevant figure for so long.
Berkeley is hardly alone.
Universities nationwide are teaching the Swift Effect in departments from English to political science to gender studies.
What do you think the proliferation of Taylor Swift courses at universities and colleges say about your generation?
People are becoming more and more interested in people who do bigger things in the world and people who give back.
So people have done bigger things in the world.
And yes, I agree that those kinds of people are interesting to learn about in a college environment.
And you should learn about people who've done bigger things.
So then why aren't you taking a class on, I don't know, Thomas Edison or Magellan or Isaac Newton or Napoleon or...
Michaelangelo, or James Cook, or Aquinas, or Tesla, or Alexander the Great, or even Genghis Khan or somebody.
Any of the hundreds of other historical figures who have done, as you say, very, very big things.
People who have shaped the very world we live in, for better or worse, or some combination of better and worse.
If you're going to spend a portion of your exorbitant tuition fees on a class that focuses on the life and work of one single individual, how in God's name is Taylor Swift the person you choose?
And why are schools offering that as an option?
Now, I can see a Taylor Swift course that examined the prevailing cultural and psychological conditions that have allowed somebody so vapid and uninteresting to become a powerhouse billionaire mega celebrity in the first place.
That could be extremely enlightening and worthwhile.
But that doesn't appear to be the focus of this course.
Instead, the focus is on rigorously examining the fact that Taylor Swift is a badass girl boss.
Watch.
So we had to ask, with all that tuition money on the line... What did your family think when you said, I'm taking a Berkeley course on Taylor Swift?
Everyone was super supportive and they loved it.
They were like, you have to take this class.
My mom actually is the one who sent me a link.
She was just like, well, if, you know, it's been approved by the university, I'm sure it'll be worthwhile.
My parents were thrilled.
They've both wanted to learn more about her ever since I started showing an interest in her.
And they're taking a page from Swift's playbook for their own futures.
I've been very interested in media law and policy.
I'd love to apply those sort of concepts that apply to law and policy and media and art all together in the professional world.
Taylor Swift is a phenomenon.
Her tour has essentially revitalized so much of the economy and boosted the local economy everywhere she goes.
There's a reason top institutions are studying that.
Most of these students are all admittedly diehard Swifties, but they're also approaching her canon with a critical eye.
We do talk about her failures and how she's kind of navigated them.
When we dive into the more businessy aspects, I guess it helps answer some of the questions I have about why she'll make certain decisions that, you know, maybe I wouldn't be making.
What's one of those questions?
Well, Taylor's a billionaire, right?
Big question, are there ethical billionaires in this world?
Ah, there you go.
They do turn a critical eye, a critical eye with Large, bushy eyebrows towards the woman that they confess to worship.
But it's only to ponder the dumbest, least interesting possible question, which is, is Taylor Swift bad because she's rich?
Now, I haven't taken the course myself, but maybe I'll audit the course just out of curiosity.
But I can't already tell you what the answer to that question will be in the course.
And the answer is going to be, no, Taylor Swift isn't bad because she's rich.
Most rich people are bad for being rich, but not Taylor.
She's different.
After all, she's giving back to the community in a number of non-specific, invisible, and mostly imaginary ways.
Now, it's true that Taylor Swift is extremely successful, but being successful does not automatically make her an artist worthy of in-depth study.
There's not much here to study.
I mean, this woman is not creating artistic work of such profound density that you need a college course to unravel its complexities.
Taylor Swift is not exactly Dante.
So just to illustrate the point, bear with me as I share some actual lyrics from a song on Swift's new album.
The song is called So High School, and here are the lyrics.
Truth, dare, spin bottles.
You know how to ball, I know Aristotle.
Brand new, full throttle.
Touch me while your bros play Grand Theft Auto.
It's true, swear, scouts honor.
You knew what you wanted, and boy, you got her.
Now let's leave aside the fact that Taylor Swift definitely does not know Aristotle.
You ask her about metaphysics and she'll probably tell you it's the full name of the company that owns Instagram or something.
But more to the point, these lyrics about spin the bottle and truth and dare and making out with her boyfriend while his bros play Grand Theft Auto, these are written, I should remind you, by a 34-year-old woman.
This is a nearly middle-aged woman, still singing about high school.
She graduated 18 years ago, by the way.
And all of her lyrics are like this.
And if she's not being embarrassingly juvenile, she's instead rambling in a way that barely resembles song lyrics at all.
So, for example, here are some lines from the title track on her new album.
This is what the tortured poet came up with for her song about being a tortured poet.
Here's what it says.
And who's going to hold you like me?
And who's going to love you, if not me?
I laughed in your face and said, you're not Dylan Thomas.
I'm not Patti Smith.
This ain't the Chelsea Hotel.
We're modern idiots.
Who's going to hold you like me?
Nobody.
No effing buddy.
Nobody.
You smoked and ate seven bars of chocolate.
We declared Charlie Puth Puth?
Who is that?
We declared Charlie Puth should be a bigger artist.
I scratch your head you fall asleep like a tattooed golden retriever.
Now, I do enjoy the attempt to make the words chocolate and artist rhyme.
And I'll also admit that it works a little better than I thought it would have worked, but it's still very stupid.
And meanwhile, it appears that Taylor Swift has finally found a man that she likes, I guess, and her way of expressing affection for him is by comparing him to an obedient dog.
I think we're beginning to see why she can't get a relationship to last for more than four months.
And we're also seeing from these lyrics, and all of her other lyrics, that this woman is no poet.
These read like these stream-of-consciousness ramblings of a teenager scribbling her feelings down on loose-leaf paper, you know, during third period or whatever.
She has not grown as an artist or a person.
So there certainly isn't enough here to fill out a college course on her writings, I would think.
And that's why the real problem here is not Taylor Swift, per se, Who continues to be shallow and boring and ridiculous, yet still, I will also continue to insist, no worse than the vast majority of degenerates in the mainstream music industry these days.
She's probably even less objectionable than most of them.
The problem is the university system, which churns out the sort of students who think that Taylor Swift lyrics are worthy of deep academic analysis.
A system that will even offer classes to perform that analysis and charge thousands of dollars for the opportunity.
A cost that will then, of course, be shifted to you and me.
And it is for that reason that the universities offering these Taylor Swift courses, and every other university too, for good measure, are all today cancelled.