Ep. 1376 - Trump's Showdown At The Libertarian Convention
Today on the Matt Walsh Show, Donald Trump showed up to the Libertarian Party Convention, where he proceeded to taunt them right to their faces. It was a wonderful moment in the history of American politics. Also, Robert De Niro holds a press conference outside of Trump's trial in New York, for some unknown reason. It does not go well. Police in Florida are on a manhunt to track down the dangerous criminal who left tire marks on a rainbow-colored crosswalk. And, one of the hit songs on TikTok right now is a cheerful ode to the meaninglessness of life and the pointless nature of human existence.
Ep.1376
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Today on The Matt Wall Show, Donald Trump showed up to the Libertarian Party Convention where he proceeded to taunt them right to their faces.
It was a wonderful moment in the history of American politics.
Also, Robert De Niro holds a press conference outside of Trump's trial in New York for some unknown reason.
It does not go well.
Police in Florida are on a manhunt to track down the dangerous criminal who left tire marks on a rainbow-colored crosswalk.
And one of the hit songs on TikTok right now is a cheerful ode to the meaninglessness of life and the pointless nature of human existence.
We'll talk about all that and more today on the Matt Wall Show.
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When cable news channels announced the results of the 2016 election, for the most part, they displayed the vote totals for the two major party candidates side-by-side, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump.
They simply left out the Libertarian Party ticket, which was led at the time by Gary Johnson.
It was as if Gary Johnson didn't exist.
Now, in a normal election year, that wouldn't be a very notable omission.
Outside of Ross Perot's run in 1992, third-party candidates don't exactly put up very big numbers on election night, so they're not worth talking about.
That's been especially true for Libertarian Party candidates who are mostly known for taking off their shirts at conventions and debating the merits of driver's licenses.
But in 2016, it was a very different story.
Libertarians had their best ever showing in a presidential race, racking up nearly 4.5 million votes.
In 11 states, the Libertarian Party vote total exceeded the margin of victory, meaning that you can make a case that Libertarians affected the outcome of the 2016 presidential election by siphoning votes from Hillary Clinton.
And you don't hear that discussed very often.
It's a lot easier for Democrats to blame Russia or whatever, but it's true.
And eight years later, once again, there are signs that Libertarians might have a relatively, by their standards, strong showing in the upcoming election.
Polls show that most Americans are ambivalent about this presidential race, in part because both candidates have already served as president, so there's not as much enthusiasm as there normally is.
And that gives an opening to third-party candidates to attract some new support.
Both the Trump campaign and the Biden campaign understand this dynamic very well.
They're looking at the same poll numbers.
But only Trump has decided to appeal to these libertarian voters directly.
So on Saturday night, Trump spoke at the Libertarian Party's National Nominating Convention in the nation's capital, becoming the first former president to ever do so.
And the speech marked another moment of stark contrast between Trump and Joe Biden, who, the latter of whom, would never walk into a venue where he knew that a large portion of the audience would oppose him.
I mean, we're at the point where Joe Biden isn't even allowed to give press conferences anymore, much less deliver speeches before a hostile crowd.
But Trump had no problem facing his detractors at the convention, who, as predicted, heckled him at various points during his address.
That was the side of the story that the media ran with.
There were dozens of headlines about how Trump was booed and jeered at the convention, but there were quite a few Trump supporters in attendance as well.
And there were several moments where the Libertarians in attendance were clearly on Trump's side.
That makes sense, because Trump didn't deliver his typical stump speech.
Instead, he tailored his remarks for a Libertarian audience, hitting topics like lower taxes, cryptocurrency, reducing the size of the federal government, keeping America out of foreign wars, and so on.
Trump even promised to commute the sentence of libertarian hero Ross Ulbricht, the founder of the defunct dark web marketplace Silk Road.
And Ulbricht is serving a life sentence for facilitating the sale of narcotics, but Trump said he'd let him out of prison on day one of his second term.
And Trump made a host of other promises as well, including a vow to appoint libertarians to his cabinet.
Watch.
Why isn't Joe Biden here speaking to you tonight?
You know why?
Why isn't he?
Because he can't put two sentences together.
That's why he's not here.
And I am proud to be the only president in 70 years who started no new wars.
I took on the military-industrial complex.
I broke the stranglehold on neocons and warmongers on the Republican Party.
And I will also stop Joe Biden's crusade to crush crypto.
We're going to stop it.
I will ensure that the future of crypto and the future of Bitcoin will be made in the USA, not driven overseas.
I will support the right to self-custody to the nation's 50 million crypto holders.
I say this with your vote.
I will keep Elizabeth Warren and her goons away from your Bitcoin.
And I will never allow the creation of a central bank digital currency.
I will also immediately end the humanitarian disaster on our southern border.
We will end it quickly.
You cannot have capitalism and also have open borders because you will soon be turned into a socialist nation, then a poor nation, and finally you will be a failed nation.
Now as you can hear during some of those clips, the crowd reaction was mixed at some points, and very positive at other points.
It was a lot more interesting than the traditional stump speech, and the response was unpredictable at various points.
But for their part, the media pretended that it was an unmitigated disaster.
NBC News ran this headline, Trial taking its toll.
Trump booed and heckled at Libertarian National Convention.
The Washington Post reported Trump loudly heckled at Libertarian National Convention.
Politico reported that Trump had been jeered, and CNN said he was loudly booed, and on and on and on.
Now, as you just saw from the clips I played, this is obviously a total misrepresentation of what happened.
The media desperately does not want the Trump campaign bringing in new voters from the Libertarian side, so they're lying.
The so-called defenders of democracy want to shame a presidential candidate for reaching out to people who disagree with him, which is what you think political candidates are supposed to do.
But the truth is that even when there was booing during Trump's speech, it didn't always relate to what Trump was saying.
There was, as others have pointed out, the equivalent of a Jerry Springer episode occurring in the crowd at one point as Trump spoke.
Apparently, a libertarian delegate by the name of And this is apparently the name he uses.
Starchild was holding up a sign calling Trump a dictator, and then security dragged him away for some reason, and Starchild's associates were not pleased by that development.
Watch.
We're losing health care expenses.
Trump signed "Break and Try"
Terminally ill patients are not getting treatment.
Free Starchild!
Free Starchild!
Sir, he's not causing you to stay over.
He's a delegate!
He's a lobbyist!
No, I'm not.
He's a delegate at our convention.
He's a member of the government.
Sir, he's not causing issues.
They are.
He's a delegate.
What administration? Star Child is a delegate at the Libertarian National Convention.
He belongs there now.
Kick them out of this room.
We can't grab like that.
Not there.
These fascists don't get to kick out Star Child.
So you can hear at the end there, he says, "These fascists don't get to kick out Star Child."
fascists don't get to kick out Starchild.
Free Starchild.
Presumably that's Starchild's father, Star, but it's hard to say.
Meanwhile, Starchild's wig falls off as he's dragged away while a very confused Secret Service agent looks on.
And, you know, is this what Ludwig von Mises had in mind back in the day?
Probably not, but it's the state of Libertarian Party in America right now, and if nothing else, it's entertaining.
During a speech, Trump apparently recognized that and had some fun at the party's expense.
Watch.
Who I've become friends with through his writings in the American Spectator and numerous other places.
Wrote an article yesterday in which he mentions just some of the things that make me a libertarian without even trying to be one.
That's nice.
D. Roy wrote, Donald J. Trump will address the Libertarian Party at his National Convention on Saturday.
The Libertarian Party should nominate Trump for President of the United States.
Whoa!
That's nice.
That's nice.
Only if you want to win.
Only if you want to win.
Maybe you don't want to win.
Maybe you don't want to win.
Thank you, D. Roy.
Thank you.
No, only do that if you want to win.
If you want to lose, don't do that.
Keep getting your 3% every four years.
Now, again, this is something that Joe Biden wouldn't have the balls or the brainpower to do.
It certainly wasn't written in the teleprompter to taunt libertarians to their faces at their own convention about the fact that pretty much no one votes for them.
That's not the kind of outreach that a campaign advisor would have come up with.
But it was honest and hilarious, which is why it works, and also a moment of, again, just completely distinguishing Trump from Biden.
Trump, Biden would, if you could imagine Biden in that exact situation, with all that noise, getting, you know, heckled by some people, applauded by others, he would be, I mean, he's flustered when he's in a room and everyone's on his side and they're being very quiet and listening to him respectfully.
Can you imagine how flustered you'd be in that situation?
But that was maybe one of my favorite Trump moments of all time, making fun of the Libertarians to their faces.
That might actually be my favorite moment ever.
Now, Libertarians, except for Starchild maybe, are under no illusions that they're going to win the White House.
What Trump is doing is something the left normally excels at, which is transactional politics.
He's basically saying, vote for me, even though you don't like me, and I'll give you more than the other party will.
We can assume that Trump isn't passionate about Ross Ulbricht, for example, but he knows the crowd is, so he says he'll get him out of prison.
And in that context, it makes sense for Trump to embrace the adversarial relationship that he has with the crowd.
Trump knew going into the convention that he wasn't going to win the Libertarian Party's nomination.
Instead, his plan was simply to present a viable alternative to the Libertarian Party's eventual nominee.
And in that respect, Trump's speech succeeded more than you probably even thought possible.
It now appears very likely that Trump will indeed win a very large share of the Libertarian Party vote, and that's because on Sunday, after Trump was determined to be ineligible for their party's nomination, Libertarians nominated an HR representative named Chase Oliver to be their presidential nominee.
Now, already right away, this is a win for Trump, because nobody in their right mind would ever want an HR representative in the White House.
It's probably the least sympathetic and appealing profession for a politician that you can imagine, but it gets even worse once you start looking at what Chase Oliver believes.
For example, earlier this year, Oliver shot a video at the southern border.
Watch.
First, if you ask people who live here or know the community here, people who are coming to this country just want to work, for the most part.
They are not seeking to take our welfare, and in fact, you're three times more likely to go into a welfare program as a native-born citizen than as a migrant.
And so the truth is, is a lot of these folks are actually working.
They use a fake social security number because they don't have documentation, so they pay into the system, and they never get those benefits back.
And so when we're talking about immigration here, we need to understand this, that these
people are just trying to seek a better life.
And when you see fences like this, these kinds of things belong more in dystopian, totalitarian
states like East Germany that would separate East and West Berlin.
These walls prevent commerce, these walls prevent peaceful people from being able to
move freely about and spend their money or their labor or their time either in Mexico
or here in the United States.
States and I think it's wrong to be denying anybody the ability to move
freely unencumbered without you know much difficulty.
So according to Oliver the United States has no right to enforce its borders
against anybody we have to be open to illegal migrants as well as hostile
invading armies presumably because otherwise we're basically erecting
another Berlin Wall. Never mind the fact that the Berlin Wall was intended to
lock people inside and prevent them from escaping while the southern border wall
is intended to keep foreigners from entering the country illegally.
But that's not important to Chase Oliver.
The point, in his mind, is that walls are always bad for some reason.
Except, presumably, the walls that form his own home and keep intruders out.
Now, in that video, Oliver also lies and claims that illegals don't use more welfare benefits than American citizens, which is just completely made up, as the Center for Immigration Studies has found, quote, in 2018, 49% of households headed by all immigrants, naturalized citizens, legal residents, and illegal residents, used at least one major welfare program compared to 32% of households headed by the native-born.
So this guy doesn't understand the impact of open borders on the economy, but he wants to open borders anyway.
This is one of the least popular positions a politician can have right now, but the Libertarian Party just picked a candidate who firmly believes in unrestricted illegal migration.
As it happens, Chase is also a big supporter of pretty much every other left-wing agenda item.
He doesn't want the government to prevent adults from getting naked in front of kids, for instance.
Watch.
You're not into it, Chase, but should it be legal to be naked in front of children?
I mean, it happens at every Mardi Gras, but no, I don't really think you should be supporting kids with nudity.
Does that make it OK?
But, you know, I think that ultimately a lot of states and cities have public indecency laws that basically say you can be nude so long as you're not trying to be sexually suggestive.
And, you know, there's been naked bike rides that have happened over the last 50 years.
It's not.
And the main thing I want to say is this is not just gay pride parades.
That's the biggest thing that I have a problem with, is that people are like, oh, gay pride parades are where there's public nudity.
There's public nudity in a lot of places.
Right, but it just feels like it's trying to deflect.
So Oliver goes on to say that he doesn't prefer to see nudity at pride parades where children are attending, but only because it's not helpful to the message of the parade in his view.
He doesn't think it should be prohibited.
Then the interviewer asks a few follow-up questions about drag shows for children, and once again, Oliver pretends that there's nothing sexual about these shows, and we've all seen the footage of these shows and what kids are forced to watch, but apparently Chase Oliver hasn't, or at least he's pretending he hasn't.
Watch.
Why do you think that the drag queens want to read to children?
Because I think that they are performance artists and they want to be able to have different levels of performance art.
It's the same reason as why do the Wiggles sing to children?
Because they want to have a marketplace to kids.
The Wiggles is made for children.
They wanna be able to-- - The Wiggles is made for children, it's obviously family-friendly material.
Drag queens are not what you call family-friendly kind of entertainment.
But a man in a dress is what drag is, right?
I mean, let's just be real.
A man in a dress or a woman in a suit is what drag is.
That is not inherently sexual.
There is inherently sexual drag.
And you're not going to convince me.
I mean, I'm not going to defend otherwise.
There absolutely is.
But there's also there's also the ability to perform as a man in a wig without being sexual.
And that is what this is.
I guarantee you, if you act like I said, I went for myself because I was like, why are there people protesting this thing?
I want to see what this drag queen story time is myself.
And I want to see what it is.
And nothing sexual was going on.
And I think that is the truth for 99% of this.
And I think you would.
Would you take your kids to a drag drag queen story hour?
Or would you drop them off at a Drag Queen Story Hour?
I don't think that's what happens.
Most of the time the parents are right there with the kids.
But I'm asking you, would you drop your kids off at a Drag Queen Story Hour and come back an hour later?
I mean, would you drop your kids off at a movie?
Yeah.
I think if there's nothing inherently sexual going on, yeah.
So as the joke goes, the Libertarians wanted Ron Paul, but they got Ru Paul instead.
But it's actually disturbing to listen to his reasoning.
He compares the Wiggles, the kids' music group, to grown men with a fetish for wearing women's clothing.
And he says he has no problem leaving children alone with these grown men.
Parents, he says, always know best, and if parents want to leave their children with These kinds of people, then who are we to disagree?
He says.
His only defense is that these drag performers are engaging in performance art, quote unquote.
Therefore, we have to accept it.
Now, once again, it just so happens that Chase's positions comport perfectly with mainstream Democratic Party orthodoxy.
There's plenty more where that came from.
Chase Oliver also has voiced his support for banning Donald Trump from social media, as well as for vaccine mandates, as long as they're implemented by private companies and not the government.
He also supports legislation that would overrule the Supreme Court on abortion.
So, to recap, the Libertarian Party nominated a leftist, essentially.
They've picked a pride-flag-waving progressive who supports open borders, has no problem with nudity at pride parades, loves seeing kids alone at drag queen story hours, supports vaccine mandates for millions of Americans, and also supports abortions on the grounds of bodily autonomy.
This is pretty much the DNC's platform, word for word.
It's yet more evidence that Libertarians are just basically pot-scented Democrats.
They fundamentally agree with Democrats on most things because Libertarians and Leftists both subscribe to a consent-based morality where anything is okay as long as the people involved choose to do it.
And they both make exceptions even to that flimsy moral framework when it comes to children who are often exposed to drag queens and public nudity without their consent because they cannot consent because they're kids.
Now, Chase Oliver wouldn't be remotely out of place as a Democrat on San Francisco's City Council.
Then again, of course, Republicans are also just Democrats driving the speed limit, to use Michael Malice's phrase.
Both parties agree on major issues, like funding foreign wars, and they both tolerate open borders.
What this means is that there really is no real, true, significant political alternative to leftism, at least not right now.
Even the third party doesn't really provide it, as Chase Oliver demonstrates.
During his appearance on Saturday night at the Libertarian Convention, to the dismay of Starchild, Donald Trump didn't promise his audience everything they wanted.
But Trump did demonstrate that he's willing to break with the Republican Party establishment to win over voters who have been ignored for decades.
He's made it clear that he's willing to make promises that Mitch McConnell won't be happy about.
In order to secure more votes and political power, which is what the point is.
Now is that a tactic we normally see from the right?
Absolutely not.
But ultimately, especially in this election year, it's what building a viable alternative to leftism will require.
Now let's get to our five headlines.
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The Biden campaign held a press conference outside of the Trump trial in New York today and their featured speaker was, for some reason, Robert De Niro.
This is the legal expert that they brought in to pontificate on the subject and We'll start with this.
We have two clips here.
We'll start here.
As Robert De Niro is struggling, he's got something to say, but he's struggling to get it out.
Let's listen.
Thank you.
I mean, this is really... Even these people over here are kind of... It's kind of crazy.
It's really crazy, and this...
Donald Trump has created this.
He should be telling them not to do this, but he's just... He wants to sow total chaos, which he's succeeding in some areas and places to do.
Anyway, beside all that, this is my neighborhood, downtown New York City.
I grew up here and feel at home in these streets.
I feel comfortable.
Some great insights there.
Wow.
It's really crazy.
It's kind of really crazy.
It's just crazy.
The whole thing.
The whole thing is crazy.
Just a crazy thing, this thing is.
They brought Robert De Niro in for that kind of analysis.
Trump is sowing chaos, he says.
Full-on chaos.
And meanwhile, there are like two people shouting in the background.
That's the chaos?
Two people?
That's assuming that the people shouting are actually Trump supporters, which they could easily, it could be the other way too, of course, as we know.
But that's what he says chaos is.
Now, did Robert De Niro ever accuse the BLM rioters of sowing chaos?
I'm guessing not.
Burning and looting isn't chaos.
A guy shouting on a street corner is.
Okay then.
Overall, you know, a great strategy by the Biden campaign because you've got Joe Biden who's a geriatric president, a guy who rambles incoherently, and so they choose as his spokesman at this press conference a geriatric actor who also rambles incoherently.
Now the question is why?
I mean, why Robert De Niro?
Like, if for some reason you feel like you need to get a famous celebrity actor to show up at this thing, which I'm not sure why you need that, why him?
You couldn't even get a young, like, relevant celebrity?
Instead, they got a guy that nobody cares about.
A guy who has only been in maybe two good movies in the last 30 years.
Which, this is sort of a side note, I guess, but it really is remarkable how far this guy has fallen artistically.
Like, leaving aside the fact that he's a woke Looney Tune, I mean, putting that aside entirely, he was once, obviously, a tremendous artist.
He's made some of the greatest films of all time, and then that just stopped suddenly, and everything he's done for the last three decades has been schlock, just awful, with a few bright spots here and there, and those are movies that he's not the lead role in.
And most of those movies are overrated, too.
But this is who they decide to bring in.
I was going to say his star has faded, but it's faded.
It just doesn't exist anymore.
Nobody cares.
Not only do we not care about Robert De Niro's political opinions, If he has the lead role in a movie, no one is going to the theater to see a Robert De Niro movie because it's Robert De Niro.
But there was another great moment where De Niro offered a dire warning to America.
You're going to want to hear this because, well, this is pretty shocking.
Listen.
Under Trump, this kind of government will perish from the earth.
I don't mean to scare you.
No, no, wait.
Maybe I do mean to scare you.
If Trump returns to the White House, you can kiss these freedoms goodbye, that we all take for granted.
And elections?
Forget about it.
That's over.
That's done.
If he gets in, I can tell you right now, he will never leave.
He will never leave.
You know that.
He will never leave.
This government will perish from the earth, he says?
Well, don't threaten us with a good time, Robert.
But nobody believes this.
No one actually believes this.
No one actually thinks that Trump will bring an end to the government and install himself as a military dictator.
No one thinks that.
Okay, it doesn't even... Even January 6th, Okay, of course, Robert De Niro would tell us it's the darkest day in American history, and it was an insurrection.
He'll say all this crazy stuff.
But guess what?
Trump left office, didn't he?
He's not still there right now.
They didn't have to send the military in to drag him out.
He did, in fact, leave.
How would that even work?
How would it work for Trump to say, if he wins again, then it's not like he's going to lose.
He's term limited, so he's done.
And he's just going to say, I'm not going to leave.
I'm going to remain president.
How does that work?
And then everyone says, OK, well, I guess he's still president.
It literally can't happen.
And Trump also, as I've said many times, Trump has shown no interest in being a dictator.
Leaving aside jokey comments here and there, when you look at what he's actually done, he's shown no interest in being anything approaching a dictator.
If anything, he has been shy about wielding, when he was in office, he was shy about wielding the legitimate legal authority he actually had.
I mean, this is someone who, he didn't even fire Fauci when he could have.
He could have, he didn't.
So that is the actual criticism, the legitimate criticism of Trump's first term in office.
Is that he would not wield his power in pursuit of what his agenda is, the agenda that he was elected to enact.
So it's the opposite of what these people keep saying.
And nobody believes this.
You have people on the left that pretend to, but it's all performance.
No one actually thinks this.
And by the way, you talk about incitement, In reality, when you say this kind of thing, that he's not going to ever leave, he's going to be a dictator, it's going to be the end of life as we know it, the end of our freedoms, everything, you are actually trying to incite violence against Trump.
You're basically trying to encourage someone to assassinate him.
That's what you're doing.
You are providing an argument for someone to go and do that.
And you're doing it intentionally.
And I can't think of any other reason to say this sort of thing.
Because you don't believe it.
The idea that he's going to bring an end to the government... De Niro, as kooky as he is, doesn't actually believe that.
The American public doesn't buy it.
It's not politically persuasive.
Because no one buys it.
So why are you even saying it?
I can only come to one conclusion.
Which is that there's a very small smattering of people out there who are crazy enough to actually think that's true.
And you are trying to inspire them to take drastic action.
That's what it would seem to me.
Alright, there's a major manhunt happening in Florida right now.
Police are pursuing a dangerous criminal.
And just prepare yourself for this, because I'm going to show you this news clip, and you will see, I'm warning now, just a warning ahead of time, you're going to see footage of this terrible, violent crime happening, and it's very, very disturbing, but here it is.
Police are searching for the driver caught doing donuts, damaging the Progressive Pride street mural.
Just after 2.40 Wednesday morning, a vehicle is caught on a security camera doing donuts, damaging a Pride mural on Central Avenue in St.
Petersburg.
Tire marks still visible on the street.
My reaction is disappointment, not surprise.
I think anytime we're in a situation where we have public displays of pride or authentic selves, people are going to have a reaction to it.
Dr. Byron Green Collish is president of St.
Pete Pride.
He feels someone targeted the mural.
He says the mural is visual representation that everyone is welcomed here.
The mural is really a public love letter to the residents of St.
Pete.
Being able to collaborate with the city and other pride organizations here in the city really feels like love and home.
St.
Pete police say over the past week, two different vehicles have left tire marks on the mural.
One where a driver accelerated on Friday, May 17th at around 930 in the morning.
The second incident, that vehicle doing donuts.
Officers do not believe the two cases are connected.
Mayor Ken Welch posted on Instagram saying, in light of the recent vandalism targeting the Progressive Pride flag mural, there is no place for hate in St.
Petersburg.
St.
Pete Police say the person responsible faces a criminal mischief felony charge since it will cost the city $1,100 to restore the mural in time for Pride Month festivities.
A massive thank you to the city and being able to jump into action as quickly as they did.
Anyone with any information regarding the driver in the blue vehicle is asked to contact St.
Pete Police.
Yes, anybody with information, any information about this crime.
I actually do have information.
From what I understand, based on my sources, the suspect has fled all the way down to Antarctica and is now hiding deep in the interior of the continent.
What I would suggest is that you send as many officials down there as possible.
Send the whole city government to go find this guy.
This is the most important thing you could do.
Just go all the way down there and don't come back until you find him.
That's my recommendation.
Because this is obviously a serious crime.
I mean, tire marks?
Tire marks?
On a street of all places?
How could that happen?
How could this happen?
This is like, um, next thing you know you'll tell me that you found, uh, I don't know, traces of water droplets in a sink.
Anything's possible.
Now, I will admit, based on the video, the tire tracks do appear to have been left rather intentionally in this case.
Uh, the car is, is, uh, doing doughnuts, or doughnuts, according to the reporter who kept pronouncing it doughnuts.
So the car is doing donuts, but do we know that he was doing the donuts in a targeted way?
Like in a negative way?
Do we know that?
Maybe they were donuts of celebration.
Maybe he was trying to celebrate the LGBT community.
Maybe he saw the pride flag and was overwhelmed by feelings of happiness and pride and he just started driving in a circle in a state of ecstasy.
That's possible, isn't it?
You know?
I mean, maybe he was trying to add a design to it.
Maybe he had an idea because they keep updating the pride flag and adding weird new designs to it.
Maybe this was him.
This is like street art.
He's adding another design to make... You know what he's doing?
He was actually making the pride flag more inclusive.
That was his objective, I think, from what I understand based on the assumption I'm making right now.
At least if I was that guy, which I'm not saying I was, well, I wouldn't put it past me.
No, it wasn't me.
But if I was that guy, that's what I would say.
That would be my argument.
I'd say, let's make the pride flag more inclusive.
What are you talking about?
And the circles represent, I don't know, represent Polysexuals, if they're not already on there.
There's got to be some kind of sexual that isn't on there.
Whatever's not on there, that's what I was trying to do.
Polyamorous.
Are the polyamorous people on the pride flag yet?
LGBTQIA.
I don't think there's a P. Is there a P?
There's probably a P. I don't know.
That's what I would say.
Oh, so you're telling me that the polyamorous community shouldn't be on the flag?
Is that what you're saying?
Who's committing the hate crime here?
Me or you?
Maybe he wanted the, you know, the, maybe, maybe he was, he was, maybe the, look, there are plenty of LGBT people who, uh, who sell tires for a living that, that are in the tire selling community, that are in the tire industry, you know, work at Goodyear or whatever.
And so maybe this was his way of rep, of representing those people, the gay people who sell tires by putting tire tracks on the pride flag.
Think about it.
That makes a lot of sense.
Now, or maybe, sure, like God forbid, God forbid, maybe, to me it's a far-fetched, but maybe, maybe this is someone, maybe, who had a problem with the pride flag being painted in the middle of the street.
That's also, it's possible.
It is possible.
Anything's possible.
And I'm sure I'll be told that it's not unreasonable to pursue this guy for criminal charges, given that they aren't charging him with a hate crime, but with criminal mischief.
And doing donuts on a public street is illegal.
And yeah, that's true.
But of course, we all know that if this guy had done the same thing anywhere else on the road, there wouldn't be any manhunt underway.
And police would not be looking for tips to catch the suspect.
In fact, this guy could have committed a crime against an actual person, rather than a crosswalk, and they wouldn't be putting the same effort into finding him.
He could have robbed someone.
He could have committed burglary.
He could have stolen a car.
And there wouldn't be anything close to the same effort and the same emphasis on catching this guy.
And we all know that.
And that's the case in every city in the country.
Like I had my own, this is not in Nashville, I had my own car stolen a couple years ago.
And the people that stole it crashed it into a light pole.
And the cops basically told me up front, like, yeah, we're probably not going to catch the guy.
We're probably not going to catch them.
And I never heard another word about it from the cops ever again.
It's like it never happened.
So, because that's the kind of thing that gets put to the bottom of the stack.
And stays there forever.
It's just not emphasized.
So, somebody leaving tire tracks on the street?
Under normal circumstances, that wouldn't even be at the bottom of the stack.
That's not even in the stack.
Okay, that's in the circular filing bin, as the saying goes.
This is not a crime that anyone would care about or any resources would be spent on pursuing, ever, under any circumstance, unless There happened to be an obnoxious rainbow flag painted on that spot.
And then they treat it like they're hunting for Bin Laden, right?
Because, as that one guy said, the pride flag is a love letter to the gay people of the city.
Well, here's a question.
Should the city government be sending love letters to any community?
Is that what the government should be doing?
Should taxpayers be funding love letters But of course we know that the pride flag is the symbol of the state religion.
That's what's really going on here.
The guy in the truck committed an act of blasphemy against a revered religious symbol.
And that's why they're pursuing him.
All right.
So the account EndWokeness posted this video, originally from NYU, actually NYU Gallatin, featuring some graduates telling us what they studied.
And that is, you know, what did they spend many thousands and thousands of dollars on?
Thousands of dollars they don't have.
And they had some very interesting answers.
Let's listen.
My name is Jacob and my concentration is environmental science and sustainable business.
Hi, my name is Lex, and my concentration is the performance of self.
Hi, I'm Gabrielle, and my concentration is creative direction, production, and narrative through the arts, performance, and written work.
Hi, my name is Karina Gomez, and my concentration is in journalism and Latin American studies with an emphasis in human rights, collective memory, and political violence.
Hi, my name is Stephanie Lee and I studied the Sociology of Environmental Communication.
Hi, my name is Reid and I study Music Business and Gender Studies.
Hi, my name is Dominique and I studied Care Politics with a minor in Disability Studies.
My name is Elliot Wright and my concentration is Art as a Social Mechanism.
Hi, I'm Georgia and my concentration is Dramatic Writing and Theatrical Adaptation.
My name is Noah Loyacano and my concentration is Equilibrium or Negotiated Paradox.
Hi, my name is Sophie Lopez and my concentration is titled Queering and Decolonizing Theater Practice.
Hi, my name is Maya, and my concentration is Journalism, Postcolonial Studies, and Psychoanalysis.
Hi, I'm Eloise.
I'm graduating with a concentration in Philosophy of Science and Theatre.
My name is Amina, and my concentration is titled The Criminal Mind, which is surrounded on Criminology and Applied Psychology.
Hi, my name is Juliana.
My concentration is International Business and Fashion through Sustainable Development.
Yay!
There you go.
Hi, my name is Rainbow Skylight and my concentration is the queerification of decolonization practices among lesbian dog walkers in the vegetarian community from 1972 to 1975 on Jupiter.
And the funny thing is that, you know, I can't even like make fun of these people in a way that makes them sound any more ridiculous than they already sound on their own.
And just to be clear here, the issue is not that these subjects are obscure.
There's plenty of value in learning about obscure subjects.
It's possible that a subject is obscure, but shouldn't be.
There are lots of fascinating and important things that are obscure these days, and their obscurity is not really a reflection of the subject so much as a reflection of our society and what it values.
So obscurity is not the problem.
The problem is that this stuff is totally fake.
It's just completely fake and meaningless.
Disability studies That's not anything.
It's not obscure, it's nothing.
It's not a real subject.
It's not a real area of academic inquiry.
Queering and decolonizing theater practice?
Again, that's fake.
Doesn't mean anything.
Performance of self?
Again, meaningless.
And here's another important stipulation.
You'll hear that a lot of college students, especially those college students, but so many others, You'll hear that they're spending their money on, or their parents' money, earning an education that's useless, you know, that can't be used.
But we should be clear about what we mean by that.
Because useless doesn't just mean that they won't be able to find a job with that degree.
Although that is also the case.
Doesn't matter how woke our society becomes, there will never be very many job openings for experts In how to decolonize theater practices, okay?
You could become a DEI consultant with that, and that's pretty much it.
There's nothing else for you to do.
Or you can go and teach that same useless subject.
Those are your two options.
We have nothing to do with you.
There's nothing for you to do.
And most jobs, when it comes down to it, But they can't exist unless there's some kind of function, some sort of justification for its existence, unless it's DEI, or in academia, or I suppose, well, I suppose also the federal government, which opens up many more opportunities as well.
So, that's the third area.
So, a few people with these kinds of degrees will get jobs in one of those three areas, but everybody else, you're really in trouble.
But it's not just about the job.
Education is supposed to be useful in a deeper way.
It's supposed to make you a better, more well-rounded, more interesting person.
That's what education is supposed to do.
But this stuff does not improve you as a person or make you more interesting or more intelligent.
In fact, it has the opposite effect, very much so.
You'll come out dumber and shallower and less insightful, less wise, less interesting than you already were when you went in.
So it's like worse than useless is what this kind of stuff is.
You know the saying, blood is thicker than water?
Well, this week on Judged, we find out the ink on a lease agreement is more powerful than both of those things.
These siblings bring their case to my courtroom because, let's face it, if I can't mend the broken family bonds, nobody can.
They're totally screwed.
Something else that's extremely difficult is working with magicians.
Are they actually standing there?
Is it an illusion?
What words are deception?
What are truth?
It's these kinds of issues that only yours truly, the most honorable judge of the highest court in the land, can solve.
Watch the new episode of Judge by Matt Walsh exclusively on DailyWirePlus to see how a lease agreement breaks up two sisters and what happens when a magician breaks the sacred magician's code of conduct.
An all-new episode of Judge is streaming now on DailyWirePlus.
Now let's get to our Daily Cancellation.
[MUSIC]
One of the hit songs on social media right now, especially TikTok, of course,
is a nihilistic ode to the supposedly meaningless nature of our empty and
pointless lives.
I know you're probably thinking, wait, isn't that literally every pop song that's been made over the past 35 years?
And yes, you're right.
The difference is that this song is much more explicit, and I would even say, arguably, perhaps eloquent.
And it's Nihilism.
The song is from TikTok singer Ian McConnell, and it was posted, or seems posted again, actually, only a week ago.
It already has nearly 2 million views, tens of thousands of shares, and thousands of very supportive comments.
This is in spite of the fact, or probably more because of the fact, that it sounds like a very manic, depressive episode of high school musical.
Listen.
I'm pretty sure that life doesn't have a meaning And if there's a god, then he doesn't look like me And I'm just a member of the current apex species But there'll be another when the humans go extinct We've only been around 200,000 years Of 13 and a half billion years How can we think the pinnacle is here?
Isn't that arrogant?
There's a couple hundred billion trillion suns And we act like it all was made for us There ain't no way that we're the only ones I'm not important, and neither are you, so let's do whatever we wanna do.
Bask in our cosmic insignificance, soak up this blip we're living in, cause nothing matters anyway.
Isn't that great?
So there you go, it's a great song if you want to lament your very existence in a cheerful kind of way.
As I said, this song seems to have struck a chord on social media.
That's no surprise, as nihilism is the dominant worldview in our culture.
The belief that life has no inherent meaning is shared by millions of people in our country, especially in the younger generations.
Now, anyone, in fact, anyone we would call a leftist is a nihilist by definition.
And many more that we would not call leftists are also nihilists, whether they know it or not.
Recently, a new twist on this belief system has emerged.
Although, like most new things, it's not really new at all.
It's called optimistic nihilism.
And TikTok is full of explainers on this particular brand of nihilism, a brand that already has its theme song, as we just heard.
So here's this random woman explaining what optimistic nihilism is.
Listen.
Have you ever heard of the phrase optimistic nihilism?
No?
Well, let me rewind just a little bit.
Nihilism itself is the belief that nothing has any meaning in this life.
Life is meaningless and without purpose.
Honestly, it's like a little bit of a buzzkill, but when weren't we thinking that in 2020?
Now, optimistic nihilism is the belief that if nothing matters, well then, nothing matters.
And if nothing matters, then it doesn't matter what you should or shouldn't wear.
You wear whatever the f- You want.
If nothing matters, then whatever those bullies said to you in high school, it doesn't matter.
And if nothing matters, why do we care what society thinks or tells us what we should be doing?
Why does it matter what our bosses, our enemies, and our family thinks?
The only thing that matters is you.
And when I stumbled upon this new way of thinking, I felt freed.
As someone with chronic people-pleasing problems, as well as chronic anxiety, this has been a hard one to learn, but it has been the best thing for me.
Now, I'm not really sure why we have to throw out all meaning, the very concept of meaning itself, in order to arrive at the conclusion that the opinions of bullies in high school don't matter.
I'd arrived at that conclusion about pretty much everyone in high school while I was in high school, and I didn't need to drain the universe of all meaning to do it.
But there's something else she said there that may have caught your ear even more.
She said, nothing matters except you.
Now, that's one hell of a qualifier.
But the thing is, nothing matters except me is the mantra of a narcissist.
Are narcissism and nihilism the same thing?
That would certainly explain why this worldview is so popular, but we'll return to that point in a moment.
The first and foremost problem with nihilism is that it's not true.
In fact, the universe was made with a purpose in mind, and each of us individually were made with purpose by an all-loving and powerful God who imbues every moment of our lives with more meaning than we could ever comprehend.
Life is bursting with meaning.
There is meaning everywhere you look and everywhere you don't look.
Nothing is meaningless.
Everything you do or say brings you closer to God or farther away.
And so, you have never done or said anything that's truly meaningless.
So the depressed high school musical guy says that our lives are meaningless because humans will one day go extinct and haven't been on Earth all that long in the grand scheme, and Earth itself is just one planet orbiting one sun out of the trillions of other planets orbiting trillions of other suns.
But even taking his argument on its own terms, it doesn't make any sense.
Like, why should the fact that we live for so short a time on such tiny a planet in one solar system out of so many countless solar systems mean that our lives aren't important and don't have meaning?
Why shouldn't it mean precisely the opposite?
Life is short.
All the more reason to cherish it deeply.
Humanity itself will one day go extinct.
All the more miraculous that you got to exist before it does.
The universe is incomprehensibly vast and awe-inspiring.
All the more amazing is life, then, than the fact that you get to be a part of it.
I've never looked up at the sky at night and felt anything like nihilism.
To me, that's like looking at a sunset over the ocean and feeling disgust.
Or looking at a newborn baby and feeling hatred.
Like it's a sickness to feel that way.
Something is deeply wrong inside of you.
Now, of course, we know that a horrifying number of people have felt something like that last emotion about the baby, so perhaps it is no surprise that the night sky makes them feel like life is pointless, when it should inspire them in the opposite direction.
But nihilism's falsehood is not even really its biggest problem.
Its biggest problem is its dishonesty.
You know, it's one thing to be false.
It's another thing to lack the integrity to be honestly false.
After all, I guarantee that every single one of these TikTok nihilists, especially the optimistic variety, would very earnestly insist that racism is a major problem, and homophobia is a terrible thing, and quote-unquote transphobia is an epidemic, and the patriarchy must be smashed, and all the rest of it.
But if they were really nihilists and really have the courage of their own convictions, they would happily say that racism, homophobia, etc.
don't matter any more than life itself matters.
And if life doesn't matter, then who cares about racism?
White supremacists could stage a violent overthrow of the country and enslave every racial minority in existence, and it wouldn't matter.
Because nothing matters.
If nothing matters, then nothing matters.
You cannot say that nothing matters and then turn around and condemn any form of bigotry, real or imagined, or engage in any kind of activism at all of any sort.
Because condemnations and exhortations all rest on the assumption that stuff matters.
And if no stuff matters, then there is nothing to condemn and no reason to exhort anyone to do anything or not do anything.
Nothing matters, remember?
I wonder.
What if one of these supposed nihilists heard a conversation like this playing out in the world?
Person A says, black people are oppressed in this country.
Person B says, eh, doesn't matter.
Person A says, what do you mean?
Black people are suffering.
Person B says, yeah, but black people don't matter.
Now, the nihilist must agree with Person B. You're not a nihilist if you don't agree.
So if you claim to be a nihilist, you must wholeheartedly concur with Person B's conclusions.
And yet we all know that the shirtless ginger guy with the keyboard sure as hell isn't making a cheerful little tune called Black People Don't Matter anytime soon.
Or gay people don't matter, or trans people don't matter.
Even though he allegedly believes none of these people matter.
Their lives don't matter at all.
Like, at all.
They could not exist.
They could all cease to exist.
Even a genocide that wiped all of them out wouldn't matter at all in the slightest.
A genocide of a million people is like stepping on a bug.
That's the true nihilistic viewpoint.
If you don't have that viewpoint, you're not really a nihilist.
A real nihilist would have to shrug his shoulders at all that.
It doesn't matter.
They don't matter.
Nothing matters.
Who cares?
And yet these nihilists certainly would not shrug their shoulders at that, and I'm not saying they should.
I happen to actually oppose genocide and persecution and slavery and bigotry.
But I'm allowed to oppose those things because I think human beings do matter.
I think they have inherent worth and dignity.
That's the fundamental basis for having any opinion about how any human being is treated, including yourself.
And that brings us to the greatest contradiction here of all, which was illustrated by that nothing matters except you line.
Because if nothing matters, then you don't matter either.
And if you don't matter, then nothing that happens to you matters.
You have no reason to ever feel offended, insulted, persecuted.
You shouldn't really care if you're mistreated.
You shouldn't care if your rights are taken away.
In fact, you should recognize that you don't really have any rights to begin with, at least not any rights that should matter to anyone, because nothing matters.
Yet the very act of making a song to promote nihilism is a refutation of nihilism.
You can't even argue for it without refuting it.
Because if nihilism is true, then it also doesn't matter whether anyone knows that it's true.
Like, taking your time to convince anyone to believe it is absurd.
It's totally meaningless.
Putting your energy into anything at all under nihilism is absurd, but putting your energy into the pursuit of advancing any sort of idea is especially absurd.
Indeed, if there can be any sin in this nihilistic worldview, the only sin is to care whether anyone else is a nihilist.
Because if nothing matters, then what could possibly matter less than convincing other people that nothing matters?
But hardly anyone actually believes that nothing matters.
The nihilist is, in the end, just a loser, disappointed in his own life, too lazy to pursue anything better, and so narcissistic that he seeks to make himself feel better by pulling everyone else down into his misery alongside him.
That's what nihilism really is.
And that's why Nihilists, optimistic or not, are today cancelled.
