Piers Morgan Uncensored - Matt Walsh: On Trump in Court, Taylor Swift & Morality of Atomic Bomb

Episode Date: April 23, 2024

Two of the world’s biggest cultural figures have dominated digital debate in recent days - albeit for very different reasons. Taylor Swift’s new album, The Tortured Poet’s Department, is smashing sales records. Andrew Tate, meanwhile, is on a promotional spree for his online “university.” So which philosophy - Swift's feminism or Tate's masculism- offers the best hope for the future relations between the sexes? Or are both as bad as each other?  The Daily Wire’s Matt Walsh joins Piers to debate. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Andrew Tate is on a promotional spree for his online university. You are lazy, you're entitled, you're arrogant, but you're not actually stupid. I think often he diagnoses the problems correctly. I disagree with him is in the prescription. What do we do about the problem? Taylor Swift's new album, The Tortured Poets Department, is smashing sales records. This is someone in kind of a state of arrested development. She's not a positive influence.

Fascinating conversation between Joe Rogan, and Tucker Carlson. And if you find yourself arguing that it's a good thing to drop nuclear weapons on people, then you are evil. If we hadn't dropped the bombs, that many more American lives would have been lost. What's going to happen here with this case? There are hundreds of murders all over the city.

They know who they are, they don't pick them up. They go after Trump. The problem is that it's impossible to believe that this is a fair trial. If you were to put that same effort into Clinton or in the Bush or Obama, you find much worse. Two of the world's biggest cultural figures have dominated digital debate in recent days,

albeit for very different reasons. Taylor Swift's new album, The Torture Poets Department, is smashing sales records as everything else she touches, smashes. Andrew Tate, meanwhile, is on a promotional spree for his online university. Taylor's offering her predominantly female audience a menu of big ballads and a bit of ex-boyfriend bashing. Song titles on her new album include the smallest man who ever lived. My boy only breaks his favourite toys.

I can fix him, no really I can. Andrew Tate, meanwhile, wrote this open letter to his overwhelmingly male audience. Dear white men, you're being replaced because none of you have children. All you white boys lost control of your women, and now they won't accept multiple wives anymore. They don't want to do their God-given job anymore, so your genetic potential is stumped by the whims of some singular female. Other races have multiple ovens for bread. We're not cut, etc. So whose philosophy?

Swift's feminism or Tate, masculineism, offers the best hope for the future relations between the sexes or are both in their own way equally bad. We're better to pass judgment

on this and much more than the Daily Wires Matt Walsh, his new series, Judge by Matt Walsh, promises to settle disputes, squabbles and differences of opinion. Well, Judge Matt, welcome to uncensored.

Good to see you again with your elevated title of Judge. The Honorable Matt Walsh, that's my title. Yeah, thank you. Thanks for having. We're going to come to your your new show in a bit. It sounds great. But first of all, this great cultural debate of our week,

Andrew Tate and his brand of feminism, which Ben Shapiro, one of your colleagues of course, Daily Wire, hammered Andrew Tate, called him a filthy grift, whose message to treating women like trash and is evil. What does you think of that assessment of Andrew Tate? And is he a force for good, for bad, for a bit of both? How should we view him? I think it's a bit of both. I think what I've always thought about Andrew Tate is that I think often he diagnoses the problems correctly. He notices a lot of the problems in society and his sort of observation of those problems can oftentimes be correct.

I think where I disagree with him is in the prescription. What do we do about the problem? And so the tweet that you just read is a perfect example of what I'm talking about, that there is an issue with, especially in the West, we're not having babies, we're not having it, we're not, you know, reproducing. The family has become sort of impotent. I don't think that the solution to that problem is polygamy. So I think that's the, I guess, entirely the wrong solution.

And there are a bunch of reasons why I don't think polygamy is the right solution. But one of the big ones is that, you know, children need fathers. And so we have a problem in the West, not just in the family. that children aren't being produced in the first place, but when they are produced, they're not being raised by a mother and a father in the home. And it's very clear, I think, history tells us, also science tells us, based on the fact that every child has a mother and father. Pretty good, good indication that every child is supposed to have a mother and father and be raised by a mother and father. And when a man has multiple wives and a bunch of kids all over the place, the idea that

he could be there to raise them, I think, seems absurd. And, you know, I would also say that what we have in our society right now is sort of a, it's a form of polygamy, but we do it in succession, where we have, you know, you have a spouse, and then you divorce them and get another spouse, and then you'll end up with a man that ends up having, like, five wives, and a woman who has five husbands, just one at a time, as opposed to in other societies where they have all those spouses at the same time. I think both of those setups are wrong.

I think the right way to go about it is to get married, have a bunch of kids, if you can, and stay married and raise those kids because kids need a mother and a father in the home, attending to them, loving them, you know, instructing them all the while. So where does this leave us with Taylor Swift? I'm a self-aclaimed Swifty. I think she's an extraordinarily successful and dynamic young woman.

But she's obviously, she's not married. She's not had kids yet. She's incredibly influential to millions of young girls, including my own 12-year-old daughter. Her brand of feminism, as articulated through her albums, is, I don't know, I mean, how would you categorize it? I would say that she's incredibly honest, searingly honest on occasion. Yes, she does whack ex-boyfriends,

but they kind of know what they're getting into, I think, at the stage, if they get into relationship with Taylor Swift, because she writes about everything in her life. But also she wax herself. She's very self-critical. This is not somebody putting themselves on some great peerless pedestal. So how do you view her brand of feminism?

Well, I will, first of all, I'll confess, I'm not exactly a Taylor Swift scholar, although I do understand they're doing college courses on Taylor Swift now in universities across America. So there are going to be Taylor Swift scholars. She is now bigger. She's now bigger than the Beatles.

I was told by a great record company legend in L.A. very recently that she now, is a bigger cash generator, even pro rata, than the Beatles at the height of their power, which is quite extraordinary. That is extraordinary. She's obviously, certainly these days,

she's the most famous, one of the most famous people in the world, period, and the most powerful and influential pop star by a mile. What I think about her, what I've always thought about her, and I understand her latest album that just came out there, I've seen some people talking on Twitter about how she goes, she goes further in kind of the left-wing territory

than she has in the past. I don't know about that because I haven't read the lyrics. But generally, I think that of all the different, there are many pop stars that are far more objectionable than her,

far more vulgar and objectionable. I think for the most part, what you get from Taylor Swift, it's not good, don't get me wrong. It's just kind of vapid and shallow and silly. That's most of what you get.

I think the most relevant criticism of her is that she's, I think, now 34 years old. She's a 34-year-old woman still singing about her, you know, basically high school-level relationship problems. So this appears to be a 34-year-old woman who hasn't grown up much and hasn't grown as a person or an artist. In fact, I think one thing I did see on Twitter

is that on her latest album, she actually has a song called So High School or something like that, where she's actually directly comparing her current, relationships to being in high school. And so this is someone in kind of a state of arrested development. And I think that there are a lot of people in the West who struggle with that same condition. So she's not a positive influence as far as that goes, I would say. You see, I sort of disagree with that because I think that all great singer-songwriters,

the ones who write the songs, actually their best stuff tends to come from the negative stuff in their life. I remember Phil Collins, for example, he used to famously write amazing stuff when he was heartbroken. And whenever he was happy, it was never as good. And I don't see her as any different or any better or worse than that. I think she's an incredibly gifted singer-songwriter. I mean, inarguably, the record speaks for itself.

I think she writes great pop songs, and she has an extraordinary following. And in terms of her life, I mean, she's had a few dodgy boyfriend. She's with a guy now who's an American sporting, Icon him anyways, very successful guy in his own right. And she may well end up getting married to this guy and settling down and having kids. And 34 is no longer deemed to be an old age to do that. In fact, I mean, one of the issues about modern society is that women are leaving it much later.

And my mother was 20 when she had me. And that was quite normal back in the 60s. But now people are going to work, not as successfully as Taylor Swift. and they are leading a slightly different life. How do we equate that reality with the population issues which Elon Musk talks about all the time, which are becoming almost inarguable

that we're not producing as a planet enough babies? Yeah, well, on the first part of that, I don't see any issue with musical artists talking about the negative things in their life, as you point out. I mean, that's what many great artists have focused, if not exclusively on that, that's some of the most powerful work has come from the sort of struggles and sorrow that they experience.

My issue with her is that she doesn't appear to be saying anything interesting or insightful about it. If there is a Taylor Swift song out there where she offered some real beautiful poetic insight into any of these issues, then I haven't heard it. I'd love to hear what it is. But it's just from what I could tell, it's just sort of the same thing over and over and over again. And that's the problem. And I do think that, yeah, there are people tend to get married later these days. They tend to have children later. And that if you find yourself in that position, if you're 35 years old and you haven't gotten married yet, you haven't had kids yet,

it's not like it's, oh, it's too late you should give up. You know, some people, that's what ends up happening. But that certainly does factor into the fact that we are a population in decline. because, you know, on an individual basis, if some people as outliers end up getting married or having kids later, okay, but as this kind of societal strategy, I think it's very clear that it's better as a group in general to get married, younger, to have kids younger, and to, you know, so that you are younger and more energetic when you have kids, you'll be around. for your grandkids, you'll be around even for your great grandkids. You have multiple generations that are alive at once, which is something that's also going away, I think, in the West. So that's the way I would break it down.

Let's talk about an existential threat to all of us, which is nuclear weapons. Fascinating conversation between Joe Rogan and Tucker Carlson on Joe Rogan's podcast, in which Tucker Carlson was very anti- the American use of nuclear weapons, to end World War II, described it as evil. And you said the decision to drop the atomic bomb

was one of the most morally complex dilemmas that mankind's ever faced. And the people who made that choice had to weigh things none of us could imagine. Millions of lives hanging in the balance. Ultimately, I think they made the right call because it seems obvious to me, if not for the bomb, many more Americans would have died.

War is a brutal and terrible thing, but you must do whatsoever is necessary to protect your own people, America first. I mean, I kind of agreed with that. And I would say that it wasn't just to save, obviously, America lives. It would also, by ending World War II in the way that it did, it also brought an end to the war for everybody, including, of course, people here in Britain.

But it is, as you say, a morally complex thing. We now have thousands of nuclear weapons in existence. These decisions are being debated all the time about whether Russia may use one, whether North Korea might use one and so on. Is it ever defensible to use a weapon of mass destruction, whatever the argument behind it? I think it can be.

I'm a big fan of Tucker Carlson. I disagree with him on this one. I think that... Now, I understand the argument on that side of it. I'll admit that I've kind of waffled back and forth on this particular issue over the years, as I'm sure many people have, because I think that there are valid arguments on either side

as to this historical reality whether we should have dropped the bomb or the bombs on Japan. So I think that there are valid arguments on either side. And at the end of the day, we're dealing with, it's speculation. It's because the argument in favor of it is that by dropping the bomb, we saved many lives that would have been lost in America, as you say, throughout the world. There's no way to know for sure whether that's true or not, because we can't rewind the clock and do it differently.

So we're left with historical speculation. So it's going to be sort of dubious no matter what. But I think that... Well, it's highly likely, in the sense, had the alternative been some kind of invasion, then just given what was going on in World War II, it is absolutely guaranteed that many more American lives would have been lost

if Bouti got on the ground against Japan, for example. So I don't think it's kind of inarguable that although it was a heavy loss of life from those two nuclear weapons, ultimately it probably saved 10 times as many, if not more people getting killed. I mean, most people accept that. Yeah, I think that's true.

And you could certainly make the argument that it even saved many lives in Japan for the reason that you just said. But I think when we talk about American lives specifically, to me it just seems pretty obvious that if we hadn't dropped the bombs, that many more American lives would have been lost in the bargain.

And the leaders of our country, when you're in a war, your first priority has to be protecting and defending the lives of your own people. In fact, that should be your first priority all the time, even if you're not in a war, but especially in a war. And so that's what they had to balance. And I also say that, look, the people that, as I said in the tweet,

this is one of the most morally complex dilemmas that I think mankind has ever faced. And these people, they're dealing with something where if you do the wrong thing, millions of lives could be lost. And I think there's probably nobody alive right now who has ever faced a decision where the stakes are that high.

And so that's why I'm a little bit, I give a little more, I'm a little more gracious towards the people who made the decision for that reason. I mean, China has a no first use policy when it comes to nuclear weapons. The US, UK, Russia, France, Pakistan do not. Should every country sign up,

I mean, they're not going to, but should they all sign up to a no first use policy? Should your natural instinct, as any government of any country, be you don't go first on that? that seems to me to be the only way you could guarantee they don't get used. I don't think, I guess I would say no, because first of all, I don't think, it doesn't mean anything. I mean, a country can sign that agreement, but it doesn't mean they're going to stand by it.

Right. And I also just, it, it, I can't imagine a scenario right now where I would be in favor of the United States dropping a nuclear bomb. There's nothing happening in the world right now where I think that the United States should drop a nuclear bomb. But I, 50 years from now, 60 years from now, 20 years from now, 20. 20 years from now, I don't know. It's impossible to know what's going to happen in the future. There could be a scenario in the future where in order to defend America,

the most effective way to do that is going to be dropping the bomb. You hope it doesn't happen, but I can't say for sure it won't. So it's hard to sign on to something like that ahead of time. In the same interview, Tucker also said he's not convinced by Darwin's theory of evolution. Belize we're all here, thanks to God. What was your take on that? I didn't listen to what he said on evolution specifically, but I do think that, look, I'm a Christian, so I'm not going to join a crowd mocking Tucker Carlson for questioning evolution.

I think that there are plenty of valid questions you can ask. And I also think that that's also taking faith aside for just a moment. that is part of science. Part of science is asking questions, being skeptical. So without knowing specifically what he said about evolution, I think that I don't see any issue with that at all. Let's turn to something bigger than news, obviously, around the world today, Trump on trial day one.

My take on this has been that of all the four cases against him, this is by far the weakest and the most trivial, and the one that looks like the biggest overreach by a Democrat prosecutor who just wants to nail a particular opponent. And I'm sure that from what I've seen of what you said about this, you would concur with that.

What's going to happen here with this case? Well, the problem is that it's impossible to believe that this is a fair trial. Now, we start with the fact that I think the charges are absurd, but regardless, the idea, you know, we all have a right. We have a basic right as Americans to a fair trial, and it's just impossible to think that he's going to get one.

It can't happen because, you know, and we've already seen that with the jury selection process and even people who made it through multiple steps of jury selection, then admitting that, oh, actually, they can't be fair. So it's like how many slipped through the cracks. In order to get a fair trial, we would have to imagine either that the jurors don't know who Trump is, so don't have any preconceived notions.

Well, that's not the case, because if Taylor Swift is the second most famous person in the world, Donald Trump is the most famous. No question. So if they know who he is, which of course they all do, then we have to imagine that they don't have any real stake in the outcome, that they don't have any real opinion about him. They don't care how this all works out.

They don't have any stake in the election that's coming up in November. And that also is just impossible to believe. Now, the problem is, of course, you would run into this, no matter when you tried him and where you tried him, but to do it in New York during a general election, it's pretty obvious they're not making any attempt to make this trial fair. Well, that's my argument about it.

And also, I just think that just generally, I'm not sure it's a good thing for America to see any American president actually go on to a criminal trial for the reasons you've just laid out. It is almost impossible to find anyone in America who would have an entirely neutral, fair-minded view of any president because they're such famous, powerful figures in the country.

I just don't see how any of them would ever get it. If it was George Bush, if it was Barack Obama, if it was Joe Biden, whoever. I don't think any of them would ever be able to get a fair trial, particularly if it was deliberately held in a state where they're already very unpopular. Exactly. And during an election. We can't forget. During an election, which they didn't have to do.

Like, I think, I can't say that we should never put a former president on trial because what if Donald Trump left office and then murdered somebody? I mean, you know, if you do something like that, then obviously there are going to be circumstances where the fact that your president shouldn't let you off the hook. But it does mean that we should be very, very, very, very careful about when we do something like that. And they have not been careful here at all. It's been quite the obvious. Well, I think just, you know, whether you paid off. Stormy Daniels or not and knew it was being used for that. I don't care.

It's like, you know, a fling with a porn star 18 years ago that he says didn't happen, but it probably did. I just, I'm not sure that it doesn't pass to me the bar for putting America through a trial. I mean, the whole country is enduring this now. Of a president of the United States who was literally in the White House just like three years ago, there he is trudging into a 14th floor Manhattan courtroom in lower Manhattan

day after day after day being prevented from being able to campaign which I think in itself is completely unfair that one of the two nominees should not be allowed to campaign for six weeks because of this trial but just the sort of triviality of it all doesn't seem to me to pass any test for what should be happening. Yeah, and also are we supposed to believe that no other president has ever paid somebody off if they had damaging...

Bill Clinton paid off Paula Jones $850,000 to get rid of a harassment case while he was the serving president of the United States. Well, I don't remember him during any kind of trial. Of course not. I mean, he had sex with an intern in the overall office. I mean, both of those things to me far outweigh in terms of magnitude of shape. to the office to Trump when he wasn't president, but 18 years ago when he was a well-known ladies man

onto his third marriage, potentially having a one-night stand with a pawnster. I mean, to me, there's no real comparison. But Clinton never went through any of this. He didn't. And I also think, look, anyone who makes it to that level in politics is going to have secrets. I mean, every person has secrets. If you make it to that level, you have secrets.

So it's just even beyond Clinton, It's hard to believe that these are the only two. And also with Trump, it's unlike the other presidents where they give an enormous amount of leeway, and once they leave office, they leave him alone. With Trump, they're looking for every little thing they can find. I mean, they're combing through his life to find all the dirt they can possibly find.

And this is all they found on him, which I actually think, you know, it's pretty impressive that this is the worst he's ever done. You'd think, because, you know, I think if you put, I guess my point is, if you were to put that same effort into Clinton, Or into Bush or Obama. Or JFK? JFK, you'd find much worse than paying off a porn star

and being sloppy with some classified documents or whatever. Yeah, and I sort of think, also, if you take a presidency in totality, Barack Obama unleashed the biggest drone program in American history, for example. Drop more bombs in one year than anyone in history who'd held the office. These seem to me, if you're going to start prosecuting presidents

for what they've done, you may want to look slightly higher, right, to actual serious potential crimes committed while president. I would agree. Let's not forget Barack Obama, drone-bombed American citizens as well. Right. Which we would think that that would be a much more serious crime

than, you know, paying a porn star. And those, if we're going to, if we're going to sort of cross this threshold where we're throwing presidents in jail or trying to, then you would think we'd want to start with something like that with killing American citizens, which Trump has never done, by the way. Let's turn to a big story over here,

the Cass Report, which has really been seen as a massive victory for the war on woke. You famously wrote, did a brilliant movie called What Is a Woman. I know you'd be following this and have strong views about it. J.K. Rowling, obviously, once again, putting your head, head over the parapet and more and more people coming around to her way of thinking about this. What do you think of this? And in particular, the fact that the UK is now ahead of the US.

We've now banned puberty blockers, for example, which is still allowed in America. What do you think is going on here? And what are the repercussions of the cast report? Yeah, I do think that I do think it's interesting that the UK is ahead of the US on this. But I do, I think it shows where we're headed in this country. I think it shows where this issue is headed. And I'm not much of an optimist on most things. But I do think that when it comes in particular,

there's a gender ideology fight in general. I think that the gender ideologues are losing. But especially when it comes to the impact on children. And children being chemically castrated and sterilized, I think that they're simply losing. And the reason that they're losing, is that, is that, you know, they were able to get away with this for so long, mainly because people didn't know that it was happening.

And if they heard about it, they didn't believe it because it sounded so horrifying. But then once people became aware of it, once sort of the toothpaste got out of the tube, there's no putting it back in. And once people are aware of it, and now the gender ideologues are in a position of having to actually defend it, like explain why this is okay, well, it's just an unjustifiable, indefensible thing, and they know it. There's no argument for it. I mean, you took a lot of blowback for the what is the woman.

film, but actually, I've noticed a real turn in the way this debate has gone, and that actually people are now far less silenced and much more prepared to come out and say what they really think. And the truth is, the vast majority of people, whether it's America, Britain, Australia, you name the country, the vast majority of people think that this whole principle, for example, of women's sport, of allowing biological males, to compete against political women. I just think all of this is now turning very quickly.

Do you feel that, or am I being too optimistic? No, I do feel it. I think that is what's happening. And I don't think it's because with my film or anyone else, J.K. Rowling has done, obviously, incredible work on this. Any of the people that have been in this fight, I don't think it's because we have necessarily convinced people that it's wrong to have men competing against women in women's sports,

or it's wrong to sterilize children. I don't think we've convinced them because I think it's the kind of thing you don't need to convince most people. They already know it. What we've been able to do, though, in the sort of the anti-gender ideologue movement, is raise, it's mainly been an issue of raising awareness,

making people aware that this is happening. It's happening on a wide scale. You are affected by it. Your children are in danger of this affecting them in a very serious way. And once we're able to raise awareness of it, that's where I think that's sort of the rest of the work almost happens on its own

because people understand intuitively that this is insane. I completely agree. And you've been very courageous, I think, in your work on that. Let's turn to your new show, judged by Matt Walsh. It's a new series on Daily Wire

where you're going to be judging disputes between people. Let's take a little look at a clip. All right, for the Honourable Judge Walsh. You stand in this majestic, your splendid temple of Justice seeking redress, acquittal, and retribution. Yes, sir.

He said he was going to go get a toilet. And then you decided because of that, you're not paying for any. Because you have bidet. The bidet is the one. Which one is that? It feels great. It does the way. Stop talking about this.

I'm pretty gangster, you know? Like, I'm into like the whole Snoop Dog, seeing him smoke out with his boys. I still have no idea why you're here. You're going nowhere fast. Then your Volkswagen bug, 27's on my ride. Yeah, I'm a real thug. Bayliff.

Do you have a taser? I don't have a taser. Asia. I love that clip. But you're basically, you're identifying as Judge Judy, right? Yeah, well, you can tell it's a very serious legal courtroom show. And this is, this is a place where we take on very serious cases. And I am, you know, I am, as I've, as I've christened myself, I am now America's foremost, if not foremost legal authority, at least foremost legal expert. What is the serious, but what's a serious purpose?

of this, Matt? That's the purpose. I mean, look, the purpose is, it's, these are real cases. We take cases of, these are mainly cases that would never be allowed in a real courtroom. And we, and I do have very limited legal authority to, you know, settle these disputes, not nearly as much authority as I'd like to have. But mainly, look, it's just a, it's a fun, funny show. We wanted, we wanted to do something that wasn't political. I think a lot of people when they first watched the show, we're expecting that it would have some sort of, you know, the first person in there

would be a Democrat that I can yell at for being wrong. And, you know, maybe there'll be some of that. But for the most part, it's not political. It's just supposed to be entertainment, which I think is also important to just have entertainment people to enjoy it. I completely agree. Just allow people to have a bit of escape is fun.

And just sit and enjoy it for the sake of it. And not feel you have to immediately park yourself into some toxic tribal, you know, mindset where you can only enjoy it if your tribe tells you can. Just fun, right? Yeah, that's the idea. And also, not everything has to have, you know, we talked while making the show, you know, should there be sort of a lesson at the end of it?

What's the lesson that we're trying to teach? We realize it doesn't need to be a lesson necessarily. It's, uh, this is, you know, it's just supposed to be fun. It's just something people can watch and enjoy. And not everything has to be serious and political. And I think in particular, you know, in conservative media, I think this is something that conservative media is starting to wake up to the value and the power of entertainment,

just entertainment. And I'd like to see that trend hopefully continue. I completely agree. How did people watch this and how often are you going to be doing it? Well, you can get it on dailywire.com. You've got to become a subscriber, and we'll have new episodes every week on Tuesdays for the next many weeks. Brilliant. I look forward to it.

Matt, always good to have you on our sense. Thank you very much indeed. Thank you.