Ep. 1590 - This Man Was Just Arrested For Murdering A Retired Cop. Now He’s Being Hailed As A Hero.
Today on the Matt Walsh Show, this will sound like a rerun. A guy committed cold-blooded murder, and now the social media mob is rallying around him. In this case, the victim was a retired police officer. This is the third killer in the past few months to find a cheering section on social media. What the hell is going on? Also, Trump delivers a perfect response to the totally fake “AI Pope Trump” controversy. And the state of Virginia passes a law restricting social media use for kids. I'm told this is a slippery slope and "government overreach." I'm not persuaded.
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Ep.1590
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Today on the Matt Wall Show, this will sound like a rerun.
A guy committed cold-blooded murder, and now the social media mob is rallying around him.
In this case, the victim was a retired police officer.
This is the third killer in the past few months to find a cheering section on social media.
What the hell's going on?
Also, Trump delivers a perfect response to the totally fake AI Pope Trump controversy.
And the state of Virginia passes a law restricting social media use for kids.
I'm told this is a slippery slope and government overreach.
I'm not persuaded.
We'll talk about all that and more today on The Matt Walsh Show.
The Matt Walsh Show.
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Around 10 o 'clock in the morning on Friday, a man named Rodney Hinton went to his lawyer's office in Ohio and watched body camera footage of his son's death.
And in particular, the footage shows Hinton's 18-year-old son, Ryan, emerging from a stolen vehicle while carrying a handgun.
At one point, Ryan drops the gun and then picks it up.
And soon afterward, he's shot and killed by a police officer.
None of these facts are in dispute.
The video makes it all very clear.
Watch.
In a matter of seconds, it all began with a stolen vehicle, a Kia from Edgewood, Kentucky.
GPS tracking led the investigation here, a condo complex in East Price Hill.
Officers arrived, and Chief Terry Fiji explains what happened next.
All four individuals get out and start running.
Some in different directions.
So officers decide which individual they're going to pursue.
One officer decides to pursue the individual who we now know had a firearm in his hand.
At some point, the person with the gun slips.
They heard the metal from the firearm hit the concrete.
This individual gets up, still has the firearm in his hand, and continues to run through the dumpster.
Now, the reason the Hinton family was watching this footage in an attorney's office is that, of course, they were contemplating a lawsuit against the city for wrongful death.
That was certainly what their attorney was thinking about.
In fact, even after viewing this footage, the family's lawyer, who incidentally works for the Cochran firm, as in the late Johnny Cochran's firm, maintained that they had a case.
And here's what the family's lawyer said as a way of arguing that the police officers were somehow responsible in this scenario.
Being in a stolen car, having a firearm, firearms, we're in Ohio, you know, so you can open carry in Ohio.
That's not a death penalty.
Now, admittedly, it's not quite as catchy as if the glove doesn't fit, you must acquit, but it's still a pretty remarkable line of argument from the Cochran firm, all things considered.
After watching the footage of Ryan Hinton exiting a stolen car with a handgun, then dropping the handgun and picking it up as police chased him, and then turning towards the officers, the conclusion from these lawyers is that Hinton...
He got the death penalty for doing nothing wrong whatsoever.
Even though his gun wasn't holstered, and even though he was waving it around while committing a felony, and even though all of this is recorded, we're supposed to conclude that Ryan Hinton was open carrying, and that's why he was shot.
Now, this is a level of shamelessness that...
In another era would lead to a flurry of lawyer jokes on late night television, but it's not a joke to millions of people at the moment.
It certainly wasn't a joke to Rodney Hinton, the father of the teenager who was killed.
Just hours after he viewed the body camera footage of his son's death, Rodney Hinton got in his car with the intent of executing a police officer.
He saw it as an act of revenge, and ultimately he found a target.
He ran over.
A recently retired sheriff's deputy who was directing traffic outside the commencement ceremony at the University of Cincinnati.
The slain officer, a Hamilton County deputy named Larry Henderson, had never met the killer before.
They'd never exchanged words.
Watch.
Recently retired sheriff's deputy is dead after police say a driver intentionally hit him.
Thanks for joining us tonight.
I'm Trisha Mackey.
And I'm Rob Williams.
Cincinnati police say the driver...
is the father of an 18-year-old who was shot and killed by police yesterday.
Cincinnati police say the father of the 18-year-old who was shot and killed by Cincinnati police on Thursday was driving the car that hit and killed a deputy Friday afternoon.
Ronnie Hinton Jr. is now charged with aggravated murder for the deputy's death.
It's a miracle.
It's a miracle.
We need to shut down right now.
Offer down, offer down.
Cincinnati police say the deputy was directing traffic ahead of UC's graduation ceremony when he was struck by a vehicle entering the intersection.
It happened around 1 p.m. at the intersection of Martin Luther King Drive and Burnett Woods Drive near UC's campus.
Now, Ronnie Hinton knew that the police were justified in killing his son because they had just watched the body camera footage.
He knew that the police did nothing wrong.
If the father wanted to take revenge on anyone for causing his son's death, well, he should have taken revenge on himself.
I mean, if your 18-year-old son is out with a gun stealing cars, it means you failed as a father.
Even a minimal amount of fatherly guidance would avoid a situation like that.
Kids make bad decisions doesn't always mean that it's an indictment on the parents.
But if kid's only 18 and he's already out with a gun committing felonies, then, like, yeah, you failed in the most basic way imaginable.
So blame yourself.
You know, it's on you.
But instead of taking revenge on himself, Rodney Hinton decided to kill a police officer who was directing traffic.
So this should be an open and shut case in every sense.
The father is a murderer.
His revenge, obviously, cannot be justified legally.
And any hope of defending it morally is destroyed by the fact that, I mean, it's murder, it's destroyed by that.
But also, the shooting of Ryan Hinton was justified, so it's not even like, you know, he's taking revenge on someone who murdered his kid.
And also, the cop he killed had nothing to do with it anyway.
So this is not like a Gary Plochet situation where a father ambushed and killed a man who kidnapped and molested his son.
This is an act of premeditated, cold-blooded murder against a random white cop who is entirely innocent and had nothing to do with the situation at all.
And yet, stop me if you've heard this one before, this murderer is being lionized and defended on social media.
The father who just executed a sheriff's deputy in order to avenge his criminal son who flashed a gun to the cops is the latest...
Celebrity in certain corners of social media.
The viral clips defending this murderer are all over TikTok.
I mean, you can go to TikTok if you want and see it.
Just type in his name and you'll see nothing but these kinds of videos.
So here's just one example.
And mind you, the kid is only 16 years old.
You know, they said he had a gun.
This is what they said.
But in that picture, it looked like he was running away.
So I don't see the threat.
Sad as it may sound, when this happened, they actually showed his father the video of them unloving his son.
And that's what led to this.
As you can see, it's a bunch of officers.
It's a bunch of them in the courtroom surrounding the father while he's in an orange jumpsuit.
Now, why is this father in an orange jumpsuit?
Police didn't shoot him.
You might ask, right?
Because the very next day, He took justice in his own hands and went and unlawed a police officer.
Well, he gets the age of the so-called kid wrong as he's showing these sympathetic photos in the background.
Ryan Hinton was 18, not 16, when he jumped out of the stolen car with a firearm.
But the bigger issue with the video is the claim that the father, quote, took justice in his own hands by murdering a random police officer.
Notice how there's no pretext here about how the officers did something wrong or violated procedure or any of that.
There's no explanation of how it's justice to kill a random traffic cop or to unalive a traffic cop, as this guy puts it.
It's just assumed that killing a random white police officer is an appropriate response to the death of a black criminal.
And millions of people find this reasoning persuasive at the moment.
I mean, that's the situation we're in right now.
You know, for the past half century or so, every aspect of American civic life has been devoted, at least superficially, to preventing a situation like this.
I mean, if you spend trillions of dollars enacting a regime that rigidly enforces the seemingly laudable goal of racial equality, and then, you know, surely, eventually, you know, you'll arrive at a point where all men are judged based solely on the content of their character.
I mean, that was supposed to be the idea, anyway.
That's the grand experiment we've all been participating in for our entire lives.
And with each passing day, it's becoming more and more clear that this experiment is crashing down all around us.
We are heading very directly towards open and overt racial conflict.
And to that end, here's another similar video, which has more than 20,000 likes on TikTok.
We'll mute the audio because it's just obnoxious rap music, but here's what it looks like.
It shows Rodney Hinton in court in a jumpsuit, surrounded by a bunch of police officers.
And there's the caption that the uploader has added, quote, They really tried to use over 30 deputies to intimidate Rodney Hinton, but he kept his head up.
Close quote.
Again, this post has more than 20,000 likes.
It's not some random troll that didn't get any attention.
It's one of the most popular posts about Rodney Hinton's arrest, and people are responding to it because they genuinely believe that Hinton is a hero, or at the very least he was justified, or at the very least he's a sympathetic figure.
There's no rational argument that he's innocent or that he was actually justified or that his son was innocent.
So this is just pure racial resentment spilling right out in the open.
I mean, that's all it is.
Another post with roughly 70,000 likes on TikTok describes Rodney Hinton as a mourning father, complete with somber music.
uh we'll play part of that Now, you look around any social media platform and you'll find plenty of posts like this.
It's not just TikTok.
On X, here's a post with roughly 700 likes, quote, Rodney Hinton had no criminal record before he killed an Ohio cop in retaliation for the cops killing his son.
The police department brought 30 cops to his hearing to intimidate him, close quote.
So apparently you get to kill a cop if you have no prior criminal record and the police aren't allowed to guard you either, even after you've just murdered somebody.
Then there's this post with more than 1,000 likes, quote, All I'm saying is, if a cop killed my son, I'm airing out the precinct.
Rodney Hinton Jr. is a saint and a hero.
Close quote.
Now, yesterday we discussed the story of Shiloh Hendricks, the woman who has now raised hundreds of thousands of dollars after using a racial slur at a playground.
What's happening now with Rodney Hinton is yet another example of why Shiloh Hendricks raised all that money.
If you're saying that justice is somehow served by the execution of a random white police officer in the name of defending a thug who stole a car and flashed a gun, and many people are saying this, then you don't get to clutch your pearls because of Shiloh Hendricks.
I mean, the standards are so wildly out of whack that it's just not sustainable.
That's what we're experiencing right now.
Okay?
Like saying...
It's okay if we kill people, but not okay if you use naughty language.
That's not just a double standard.
That's flat-out madness.
That's a kind of moral schizophrenia.
And again, it's an unsustainable approach.
It can't continue this way.
And with every day, it becomes more and more apparent that we simply cannot continue on this trajectory.
You know, people are tired of it.
If large numbers of black people are openly defending and cheering for actual murderers who kill white people in cold blood, then you cannot tell white people that they have to make a big show of condemning a woman who said a bad word.
And that's especially true as more and more white people are executed without any media attention whatsoever.
For example, you probably haven't heard of this story of a 22-year-old woman named Logan Federico in South Carolina.
Here she is on the left.
And according to the authorities, Logan Federico was, quote, randomly murdered by a career criminal who was on a spree of thefts, break-ins, and credit card fraud.
And that career criminal named, a 30-year-old named Alexander Dickey, allegedly broke into a neighboring home around 3 a.m., stole a firearm, credit card, and debit cards, and keys to a vehicle.
He then allegedly entered the house where Federico was staying, entered a room, shot her before fleeing the scene in a stolen vehicle, close quote.
So this is yet another person that has committed multiple crimes, given chance after chance after chance, because what the justice system says to people like this is that we're going to keep putting you on the street, keep putting you back on the street, until you do something so heinous that we have no choice but to put you in prison for an actual significant length of time.
That's been the approach.
It's basically like, we're going to let you keep going and victimizing people until you kill someone.
We're just going to wait for that to happen, and then we will deal with you.
Now, somehow that story didn't get much national attention, and neither did this one involving the execution of Tara and Taylor Jones in front of their home in the affluent neighborhood of Wellington, Florida, last year.
Surveillance footage shows that Tara and Taylor Jones were shot to death by a 63-year-old mechanic named Norman Scott without any provocation of any kind.
Again, there was no outrage.
There was no public show of support for these victims.
Instead, we're now at the point where three Count them, three cold-blooded killers in the span of a few months have found large cheering sections on social media, including Rodney Hinton, Carmelo Anthony, and Luigi Mangione.
In fact, one of these viral TikTok videos supporting Rodney Hinton with more than 20,000 likes actually brings up Luigi Mangione in this context.
Watch.
There's silent rage, and you know, people mistake.
Black Americans sitting out.
People mistake that.
Black Americans sitting out doing line dances and stuff.
That's a dangerous thing.
When I tell you, that's a dangerous thing.
And this happened with more than just black Americans months ago.
Yet, this happened with Luigi.
Silent, never been in trouble.
Just like Mr. Rodney Hinton Jr.
Silent rage.
That's some serious stuff.
The laws.
Of this country and what's going on in this country pushing things to the brink.
People can say it started with a stolen car.
People can say, oh, listen, no, it didn't start there.
It didn't start there at all.
It doesn't start on the streets.
Mm-mm.
It didn't start on the streets when Luigi did it.
It didn't start on the streets when Mr. Hinton did it.
Mm-mm.
It started right with the lawmakers and the rich folk.
Who are always putting too much pressure on everybody else for decades and decades.
And when that pressure has nowhere else to go, it points back to set itself free.
It's a dangerous game.
The lawmakers are responsible.
So what, the law against stealing a car?
Is that what we're blaming?
The law is what pushed Rodney Hinton, because that's the law.
The law is you can't steal a car, and this guy did, and that's why the cops were there, and then you can't brandish your gun at the cops when they're trying to arrest you for committing a felony.
So those are the laws that are responsible for this.
The law that says you can't steal a car, and also the law that says you can't brandish your gun at the cops.
Right.
Well, there is one useful aspect of this.
A totally inane video that we just watched, which is that it makes the point that the situation isn't all about race.
Luigi Mangione was obviously white, and plenty of people justified his actions too.
In fact, as you probably recall, some people who call themselves conservatives also justified Luigi Mangione's actions.
And that tells us that we're witnessing a general breakdown of law and order on top of the racial violence.
You know, decades of justifying and excusing criminality have led us to a point where people who commit blatant first-degree murder are celebrated, at least if they're viewed as allies of the political left.
And again, we've had now three of these cases in five months.
So as you continue to hear the high-pitched outrage over Shiloh Hendricks, keep in mind that nothing she did in any universe could ever end your life or the life of anyone you care about.
The people cheering the execution of an innocent police officer or a CEO or a white high school student at a track meet, on the other hand, are actually dangerous.
They're the ones you should be hearing about nonstop.
They're the actual threat to you and your family.
They're the ones who are trying to bring about a complete breakdown in law and order.
They're the ones who want racial conflict.
And as the execution of this police officer in Cincinnati once again demonstrates...
Even if they can't destroy somebody like Shiloh Hendricks, they will still do everything in their power to destroy you.
Now let's get to our five headlines.
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Let's begin with this clip, the conclusion to the Trump as Pope saga that we discussed yesterday.
Trump himself was finally asked about it, and here's what he said.
The Catholics were not so happy about the image of you looking like the Pope.
Oh, I see.
You mean they can't take a joke?
You don't mean the Catholics.
You mean the fake news media.
The Catholics loved it.
I had nothing to do with it.
Somebody made up a picture of me dressed like the Pope, and they put it out on the Internet.
That's not me that did it.
I have no idea where it came from.
Maybe it was AI, but I know nothing about it.
I just saw it last evening.
Actually, my wife thought it was cute.
She said, isn't that nice?
Actually, I would not be able to be married, though.
That would be a lot.
To the best of my knowledge, popes aren't big on getting married, are they?
Not that we know of, no.
I think it's the fake news media that they're fakers.
My question, though, sir, was about...
The fact that it was put out on the White House account, even though it was AI-generated, it was a joke, it was a meme, does it at all diminish the substance of the official White House account to have it go out on that?
Give me a break.
It was just somebody did it in fun.
It's fine.
You have to have a little fun, don't you?
Well, that's exactly the right response.
Give me a break.
It's fine.
That about sums it up.
That could be the response to about 85% of the questions that the media asks Trump.
Or, I mean, actually, probably 99%.
Give me a break.
Just give me a break.
And that's all that really needs to be said.
And he's also right, of course, that the Catholics were not offended.
Catholics are not easily offended, in my experience.
Certainly not by jokes.
I mean, as I said yesterday, Catholics tend to have a kind of morbid, pretty edgy sense of humor.
And this AI Pope thing was neither morbid or edgy.
So you've got to try a lot harder to offend Catholics.
I mean, actual believing, practicing Catholics.
I'll tell you what does offend us, though.
It's not that nothing can offend us.
I'll tell you one thing that offends us deeply is, for example...
Seeing a Democrat politician on the one or two occasions when they go to church in a year, all for show, of course, when they do show up, like on Easter and Christmas, if they even go then.
But on those occasions, when they go up and receive communion, that offends us.
Because that's sacrilegious.
Someone who is not actually a practicing Catholic, who rejects church teaching, who promotes...
Mortal sin, who is guilty of the sin of scandal, their entire public existence is scandal.
Existing as someone who calls yourself Catholic and yet promotes and supports the murder of babies and the destruction of marriage and so on, that is scandal.
Receiving communion and desecrating the Eucharist in defiance of church teaching, we're offended by that.
That's what offends us.
Not a meme.
Okay?
A Democrat politician receiving communion, Joe Biden or Nancy Pelosi or Kathy Hochul, who we just found out yesterday because she was pretending to be offended by this thing.
I think it's the first time she's mentioned allegedly being Catholic.
But any of them receiving communion is approximately 10 billion times more offensive than a Pope meme.
I mean, it's infinitely more offensive.
But when it comes to that, of course, the media doesn't...
So it's always this weird, and this happens like every once in a blue moon when it's convenient to them.
So it's one of these weird occasions where...
The media, not only do you have Democrats who are Catholic pretending that they care about their faith, but the media pretending to care about how Catholics feel, pretending to care about the feelings of Catholics, pretending to stand up for their Catholic brothers and sisters is very funny.
But they're not going to care.
When it comes to this issue, which this is something Catholics, again, actual practicing, which is to say real Catholics, This is something we've been complaining about and talking about and outraged about, you know, outraged in a real kind of deep, justified sense, you know, forever, which is these Democrat politicians receiving communion when they shouldn't be.
According to church teaching, they shouldn't be.
According to church law, they should not be.
But when it comes to that, the media, like, that's what we're actually offended about.
The media in that case would, you know, just scoff at us.
Speaking of people who like to scoff, David French was on MSNBC doing his whole shtick.
And there's a couple of things here that I want to respond to, but let's first watch David French on MSNBC if we can bear to watch it.
Here it is.
Barbarians are at the gate.
You need a barbarian to fight back against you.
And what I'm getting from you is you don't really believe that, that the barbarians aren't.
You know, the traditional barbarians.
It's just, I don't like the left.
Oh, it's very anti-left.
I mean, look.
So Donald Trump wouldn't be a barbarian in this scenario.
And think about how contrary this is to the example of Jesus.
Because Jesus comes to ancient Israel when it's under Roman occupation, where the people of Israel are deeply oppressed.
And he doesn't come and overthrow the government.
He doesn't come and rule in the way that these Christian right...
People want to rule.
He comes in and he loves other people.
He serves other people.
He even forgives the people who are executing him as they're executing him.
And yet you look at this Christian right, the MAGA Christian right.
It is will to power.
It is cruelty.
It is dominance.
Look how they applaud as Trump is cruel to immigrants, just vicious, depriving them of their constitutional rights.
Nothing about this is drawn from historic Christian theology.
Alright, so a few things here.
Speaking of things that are actually offensive to Catholics and Christians generally, here's another one.
When you're using the name of Christ as a, you know, when you're using the example of Jesus allegedly to make some inane and false political point, That misrepresents Christ's actual teachings.
That's outrageous to us.
And that's what David French does here.
Because he says, well, Jesus didn't come to be a political leader.
He didn't come to rule in a political sense.
And that's true.
That part's true.
But then he's applying that To Donald Trump and the MAGA movement and saying that somehow that means that Donald Trump and the MAGA movement aren't following the example of Jesus.
Okay, but Donald Trump is a political leader.
The MAGA movement is a political movement.
So, of course, we want to rule in the sense of governing, in the sense of controlling the government, in the sense of enacting our agenda through law and policy.
Yeah, you're correct, David, that Jesus was not interested in that.
But that doesn't mean that we can't be.
Jesus did not come to be a political ruler of the earth.
Jesus did not come to run for office or to be a political ruler.
So what are you saying?
Nobody can?
Is it anti-Christian?
Somehow, if you want to have political control, if you want to run for office, it's incoherent.
We have a government and we have elections.
So if conservatives will not rule, then the left will.
Those are the options.
And meanwhile, you'll sit on the sidelines and not get involved in any meaningful way in that struggle, and then you'll exclusively criticize the people on the right who are in the fight.
I mean, exclusively.
These guys like David French, they don't even pretend to do the both sides thing anymore.
That's how it started, right?
It started with when you got these guys that used to be basically conservative and they were defending conservative ideas and promoting conservatism.
And then they moved away from that.
They started moving left.
And for a while, on their way to just being full-blown left or left this way, on their way to it, there was a while where they were like in the middle, sort of pretending to be in the middle.
It was both sides are wrong.
We're going to call out both sides.
Not even pretending to do that anymore.
He's exclusively focused on criticizing one side and one side only.
And it's not the side that...
Actively despises Christianity and wants to see it wiped from the face of the earth.
It's not that side.
That's not the side that he's talking about.
And that's the part that David always leaves out.
And I'm using him as an example.
But he also represents this kind of...
What still identifies itself as conservatism would pretend to be a kind of, I guess, moderate...
Above it all, conservatism, but it's not conservatism at all.
But, you know, he takes exception to the way that the quote-unquote Christian right fights for power.
He wants us to not fight for power.
He wants us to be peaceniks and pacifists.
And then what?
Okay, what's the result?
Utopia?
Global harmony?
No, if the Christian right doesn't fight for power, then the anti-Christian left will remain in power.
Because that's the other option.
The other option is that the side that has murdered 60 million babies and castrated thousands of children, and that opposes every single bit of Christian moral doctrine, the side that sees the institution of the family as the enemy, as a thing that must be destroyed, as a patriarchal, oppressive construct, that's the side that will have power.
But David doesn't contend with that at all.
Doesn't even contend with it.
And then we hear him, of course, lamenting cruelty, cruelty to immigrants.
And what is that cruelty exactly?
It's the cruelty of enforcing the border, the cruelty of defending our national sovereignty, the cruelty of law and order.
I mean, none of these things are actually cruel.
Cruelty means, by definition, that you're sadistic, that you take pleasure in causing pain and suffering.
That's cruelty.
Cruelty is doing something.
Cruelty is not...
Okay, here's the distinction.
Cruelty is not doing something that causes pain and suffering.
That's not necessarily cruel.
You can do things that cause pain and suffering that aren't cruel.
If you're doing it in order to cause pain and suffering, if you're doing it because you enjoy the pain and suffering, if the pain and suffering is the end that you're trying to attain, then that is cruelty.
Well, that's not...
Nobody who supports America having borders and laws does so because they enjoy causing pain to immigrants.
If you think that Americans want strong borders and immigration laws just because they enjoy seeing immigrants in pain, then first of all, you have no understanding of these issues at all, and you obviously harbor a deep, deep resentment and hate towards a huge number of your fellow Americans.
You're assuming the absolute worst in them.
Is that what Jesus would do, David?
Is that the example of Jesus?
Assuming the absolute worst in people who disagree with you.
And again, what's the other option?
The other option, as we've seen, is a country flooded with criminal aliens, gangs, drugs.
The other option is untold misery, death, violence, destruction.
But David doesn't contend with that either.
These people never do.
He just wants to sit on the sideline and nitpick and criticize the people who are actually in the fight.
And there's a lot of that going around.
I've dealt with a lot of this in the last days.
We talked about the Shiloh Hendricks case yesterday.
And of course, as you would expect, I've been getting plenty of grief about it from people.
Many of them, the left obviously is upset about it because But I don't even care about that.
That's irrelevant.
I'm not paying attention to them.
I've also been getting a lot of grief from people ostensibly on the right who were shocked and appalled by my position.
If you watched yesterday, you know it's bad to use a racial slur to a child.
To say a racial slur to a child is a bad thing.
We shouldn't do it.
I don't condone it.
I wouldn't do it.
However, the fundraiser is a good thing, and I'm glad that you raised all this money, and you know my argument.
I went into it in great detail for 20-25 minutes.
The main thing is that this is repudiating cancel culture, that if you want to destroy cancel culture, there have to be disincentives attached to it, because that's how human beings work.
Human beings operate based on incentives.
And that's how the mob works, too.
The mob especially works that way, and so you have to disincentivize it.
If the mob knows that making someone famous, as they say, putting their name and likeness all over the place, finding all their personal information, publishing it, if they know that that might actually have a positive impact on the person's life in the end, then they're going to be less likely to do it.
So that's the main thing, to me, is that the fundraiser, part of it, was...
You know, going on the offense against cancel culture.
And also going on the offense against these utterly insane racial double standards.
So that's the two things to me.
It's the cancel culture and racial double standards.
That's what this is awarded.
That's what it's about.
It's not even about what happened on a playground.
But in any case, plenty of so-called conservatives that took issue with it.
But my question to them, and I noticed a lot of them obviously didn't even listen to the whole monologue.
They weren't engaging with the argument.
And some of them did.
There were a few people that tried to thoughtfully engage with my arguments.
But the one thing that was missing was, okay, what would you have us do instead?
So what I'm saying, and what a lot of people are saying, is that this is an effective and really devastating way to fight back.
Against cancel culture and racial double standards.
Which are both great evils in society.
That have harmed people and harmed society in immeasurable ways.
So that's our argument.
You don't like that.
You don't feel right about it.
As I said yesterday, it feels icky.
It's an icky thing to you.
Okay, so what's your plan?
What's your plan?
How are you going to destroy cancel culture?
What are you going to do about these racial double standards that we've all been complaining about forever?
What are you going to do?
You don't want to do this.
This to you is not, you don't like it.
It doesn't make you feel right.
It makes your tummy hurt.
Fine.
So what's your plan?
What would you do?
And from these people, there's really no answer to that.
The answer is always something like, well, you know...
This just shouldn't be happening.
Right?
No one should engage in a cancel culture.
There should be no racial double.
Well, yeah, we know that.
Talking about the way things should be is not a plan, okay?
What's your actual plan?
And that's why, to me, this is the dividing line.
People have a lot of different ways of...
Dividing conservatives, different labels that they use for the type of conservative that they don't like.
Woke right, for example, is one label that's used now by certain people on the right or ostensibly on the right towards other people on the right that they don't like.
As far as I can tell, woke right, what it really means, I don't even know exactly what they want it to mean, but what it really means is this person is too far to the right.
You know, I'm on the right.
They're farther to the right than I am.
That makes me uncomfortable.
They're a woke right.
That's basically what it means.
But to me, so that's not a useful category.
It doesn't mean anything.
To me, there are two groups, generally speaking, among conservatives.
And I would borrow from Teddy Roosevelt to explain these groups.
The groups are, on one hand, the men in the arena, and on the other hand, the critics.
As Roosevelt said, it's not the critic who counts.
It's not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles.
The credit belongs to the man who's actually in the arena.
And that's the dividing line.
The dividing line really is between the people who are in the fight, who have actual influence, who are trying to cultivate and wield actual influence, who are shifting the culture to the right, who are doing the hard, sometimes ugly work.
Of shifting the Overton window by force of will.
There are people on the right doing that.
There are those types.
And then there are the people standing on the sidelines and going, eh, I don't know about that.
That makes me uncomfortable.
I don't really like that.
Can we not do it that way?
I don't like how you're doing it.
Can we do it?
Oh, what way do you want to do it?
Well, I don't know.
I just don't like that way.
You know what?
It reminds me of when your wife asks you to carry some really heavy piece of furniture up the steps.
And then inevitably you get to the top of the steps and she sees what it looks like in the room and says, never mind, I actually wanted it downstairs.
But anyway, as you're carrying this big bulky thing and she's standing there saying, oh, don't hit the wall.
No, no, don't hit the banister.
Don't put it down too hard.
It'll scratch the floor.
It's like, okay, this isn't helpful.
I know not to hit the wall, but I'm the one actually carrying this thing.
So just let me do this, right?
And you check back in once it's done.
And David French is the equivalent of that, really, on a cultural level.
And all these people are.
People complaining about woke right and all this.
They're the equivalent of that.
They're not carrying the heavy thing.
They are not going to actually roll their sleeves up and get in there and say, okay, let's carry this thing.
Let's do it.
They're not going to do that.
Instead, they're going to stand on the sideline and they're going to criticize the way those people are doing it.
They're not going to help, but they don't like the way you're doing it.
And so to me, that's the dividing line.
And when I...
When I think about who I respect among conservatives and who I would consider my friends and allies, it's the former group, the men in the arena.
That's who I care about.
And all the critics who are on the sidelines who have not done anything, who have no real influence, who are just talking to themselves, who have no wins under their belt at all.
I mean, the right has some real wins, especially in recent years.
The fight continues.
Obviously, there's still a lot to be done, but we have some real wins.
There are some real successes.
Things have changed in the culture, and the culture has, I think, generally shifted to the right in some areas, and significantly in some areas.
And so when you look at that, there are certain people you can point to and say, okay, well, those people had something to do with that, clearly.
There's not one person you can point to and say, well, they did it all, obviously.
There are certain people you can look at and say, yeah, well, they really had something to do with that.
And then there are a lot of other conservatives.
And now, and by the way, I'm talking about all the, this is exclusively talking about the conservative sort of commentariat, the pundits, the influencers, the people in the public eye.
So in that group, there are certain people in that group you can look at and say, okay, well, they clearly had something to do with that.
And then there's another group who had nothing to do with it.
They could have never existed.
They could have never gotten into public life at all.
They could have just gotten a job somewhere else, not on the public stage.
And the culture would look exactly the same as it does right now because they have done nothing at all to help.
And so I have no use for those people at all.
Absolutely no use for them because they are useless.
Just useless.
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Our friend and colleague Andrew Klavan has a brand new book out, and it's a must-read.
It's called The Kingdom of Cain, Finding God in the Literature of Darkness.
Only Klavan could take Cain and Abel, Dostoevsky, and Hitchcock and pull out a powerful case for faith in a fallen world.
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Book's out right now.
Get your copy today at store.dailywire.com.
Now let's get to our daily cancellation.
Our daily cancellation today begins with the news of a new law just passed in Virginia.
The Daily Wire reports Republican Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin signed a bill into law on Friday to limit the social media use of minors under the age of 16 to one hour per day.
The Consumer Data Protection Act, supported by both Republican and Democrat state lawmakers, will require social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram to limit minors' time on social platforms.
Platforms will use neutral age screen mechanisms to determine the age of users and then limit their screen time accordingly.
Parents, per the law, will be required to give verifiable consent if they want their child's time on such apps increased or decreased.
Now, to be clear about my own position, I'm in favor of this law.
It won't surprise you.
I think laws like this should be passed in every state.
Kids are addicted to social media.
They're addicted to screens.
The average 11-year-old kid in America spends nine hours a day on a screen.
The average five-year-old spends three hours a day.
Children of all ages spend on average five hours a day just on social media.
And keep in mind that these are averages, and the numbers are skewed by the minority of kids who have mean parents like me who won't let them use any screen but a TV, and then only sparingly.
You know, nine hours a day of screen time, on average, means that millions of kids are on screens for 10, 11, 12, 13, 14 hours a day.
And it means that a huge number of kids are quite literally spending every waking moment staring at a screen.
And all of that is bad enough.
A childhood dominated by screens, a childhood lived in a digital world rather than the actual physical world, a childhood spent sitting and staring into a little glowing box, that is a tragedy with immense and terrible consequences.
And that's without considering what these kids are actually doing on the screens.
And among the worst things they can do, second only to watching, is social media.
The impact of social media on kids is widely, but I still think only partially understood.
We know that it makes kids more depressed, more anxious, more miserable, less healthy.
We still don't have the full picture because the first generation of screen children, children of the screen, we might call them, have only just hit adulthood.
I mean, these are kids who were born into a world where everybody walks around with screens in their pockets.
Many of them have been raised on the screen from birth.
And we're only just beginning to see the consequences of that.
And the early returns are quite bad.
I mean, it's clear beyond any dispute that a child using a screen for hours every day, especially if he's on the Internet, can only harm him.
I mean, there is zero chance that your 10-year-old child's life will be improved by social media.
It can only damage him mentally, emotionally, psychologically, spiritually.
It's only bad.
It's just a question of how bad.
And yet, whenever there's an attempt to pass any kind of law to deal with this problem, there will always be people, many of them again conservatives, panicking about government overreach and slippery slopes.
And I've seen a lot of commentary along these lines in response to this legislation in Virginia.
You can take a glance at the comments under that Daily Wire article I just read about this law.
And you'll see many of these sorts of objections.
So here's just a quick sample, just as an example.
Quote, seems like a slippery slope of government control doesn't end well.
Start with something good that everyone agrees on, but the box has been opened.
Another comment says, this is stupid.
This is a parent's job, not the government's.
How could this be enforced?
I agree.
Screen time should be minimized, but it's up to the parents how it's done.
I don't like making laws just to make laws.
It's also a slippery slope, as other feel-good laws have been.
Another one says, freedom means having the ability to make bad choices and hopefully learn from them this is really bad.
Another one says, this is the parent's job.
I don't want the government raising my kids.
Even if they agree with their decisions, the government should not control this.
And also, it says, this type of government overreach will get a Democrat back as governor of Virginia.
Very unwise.
On a political note, who are you to tell anyone how to raise their kids?
Another comment says, there are many things that could cause mental illness in children.
I believe that this is something.
That parents should control and not the government.
So, these are all the expected objections.
You hear them any time there's any attempt to use the force of law to protect children from the manifold harms found on the internet and social media.
And I find the arguments extremely unpersuasive.
I don't see any overreach here.
Multi-billion dollar companies are selling products, smartphones, social media platforms, that basic common sense, and also every study on the subject, tells us can and does cause Deep and significant harm to children.
It's not overreach for the government to put up minimal guardrails in the interest of protecting kids.
The alternative is what?
To have no relevant laws at all?
And what is the slippery slope exactly?
You know, a slippery slope into what?
Into kids not using social media at all?
The horror.
Just imagine a dystopian future where an 11-year-old boy isn't spending any time on TikTok.
What will you do then?
Go outside, run in the grass, play some pickup basketball in the driveway, make actual friends in real life, learn how to talk to actual physical people?
What a nightmare.
I can only hope that this is a slippery slope.
I hope we slip and slide our way into a world where a child spends much more time engaging with the physical world than the digital one.
Now, it's true that this is something that parents can and should do themselves.
But we need laws.
You know, just like we need laws protecting kids from...
Because the reality is that a lot of parents are not doing it.
I mean, if your solution to a problem is parents should do it, then you don't actually have a solution.
Talking about what people should do is not a solution.
People don't, in fact, do what they should do.
That's the entire reason we have laws in the first place.
Now, if we could totally rely on parents to do their job, we wouldn't need any law against 12-year-olds buying liquor.
We wouldn't need any law against 9-year-olds driving or smoking cigarettes.
I mean, my 12-year-old kids, my 12-year-old twins, they are not buying liquor.
They are not getting cigarettes.
They're not driving.
And even if it was legal, they still would not be doing any of those things.
The thing stopping my kids from doing that stuff is not that it's illegal.
That's not the thing stopping them.
The thing stopping them is me.
Right?
And yet, we still have laws against that stuff.
And as a parent, I don't take exception to that.
I don't think, well, you're trying to parent for me.
No, I recognize that, yeah, I mean, I'm an attentive parent, so my kids aren't doing that stuff.
But, like, yeah, obviously we should...
If a kid has a bad parent, if a 10-year-old kid has a bad parent and walks into a liquor store...
You know, to buy some vodka.
The fact that he has a bad parent shouldn't mean that now we're just going to accept the fact that he's going to get alcohol poisoning.
Right?
So, I don't hear people panicking about slippery slopes when it comes to that stuff.
We understand, in those contexts at least, that children are not adults, and so there need to be different kinds of laws protecting them.
We also understand that people don't always do what they should do, including parents.
That's why laws exist.
Every law exists because people don't do what they should do.
Saying that we shouldn't pass usage restrictions on social media or age limit restrictions on pornography because parents should do that is like saying that we shouldn't have laws against murder because people should just not murder.
Well, the statement is correct.
People shouldn't.
I mean, it's the job of every individual to not murder.
You shouldn't need the government to tell you not to do it.
You should just not do any murdering regardless.
And yet, a lot of people do.
Which is why we have the laws.
Just like a lot of parents actually do give their young children unfettered access to the internet.
They shouldn't.
Parents should not be doing that.
But they do.
So what then?
So don't...
It goes back to what we said in the five headlines.
Just saying, well, people shouldn't do that.
That's not a solution to the problem that we're talking about.
Is it?
Because they're not.
And they're not ever...
Like, there's never going to be a time when...
Everyone just does everything they should do.
So that's just a fantasy.
It's not a solution.
All that said, I do agree that protecting children from the harms of social media and screen addiction is a job that should be handled by parents.
And if you do handle it as a parent, then the law will be irrelevant to you.
It won't matter.
It makes no difference.
Which is what it should be.
And if you're one of these parents who lets your 10-year-old use social media, then you should be ashamed that legislation is required to do what you should be doing yourself.
And so ultimately, it's the parents who've made these kinds of laws necessary who are today canceled.
