The Matt Walsh Show - Ep. 1062 - The Gen Z Mental Illness Epidemic

Episode Date: November 14, 2022

Click here to join the member exclusive portion of my show: https://utm.io/ueSEm  Today on the Matt Walsh Show, according to the latest data, nearly half of Gen Z has been diagnosed mentally ill. How and why is this mental illness epidemic happening? Also, a major financial scandal involving one of the biggest Democrat donors in the country. Plus, is the woke brigade still in charge of Twitter? And church attendance has yet to climb back to pre-pandemic levels. Will it ever? Finally, the NEA teacher's union claims that teachers know and love their students more than parents do.  - - -  DailyWire+:   Become a DailyWire+ member to watch my documentary “What Is A Woman”: https://bit.ly/3dQINt0    - - -  Today’s Sponsors: 40 Days for Life - Check out 40 Days for Life – locations, podcast, and free magazine: https://www.40daysforlife.com/en/ Helix Sleep - Get up to $350 OFF + 2 FREE pillows with all mattress orders: https://helixsleep.com/WALSH Epic Will - Use Promo Code 'WALSH' for 10% off your Will: https://www.epicwill.com/ - - - Socials: Follow on Twitter: https://bit.ly/3Rv1VeF  Follow on Instagram: https://bit.ly/3KZC3oA  Follow on Facebook: https://bit.ly/3eBKjiA  Subscribe on YouTube: https://bit.ly/3RQp4rs  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Today on the Matt Wall Show, according to the latest data, nearly half of Gen Z has been diagnosed mentally ill. How and why is this mental illness epidemic happening? Also a major financial scandal involving one of the biggest Democrat donors in the country. Plus, is the woke brigade still in charge of Twitter and church attendance has yet to climb back to pre-pandemic levels. Will it ever is the question. And finally, the NEA Teachers Union claims that teachers know and love their students more than their parents do. We'll talk about all that and more today on the Matt Wall Show. Rovi Wade has been overturned, and this battle is now finally leaving D.C. and going to the grassroots.

No group in America is better position than 40 Days for Life to deal with that with about one million volunteers in a thousand cities. 40 Days for Life holds peaceful vigils outside abortion facilities. They have a larger presence in blue states with California being their largest state. Some former abortion facility directors say that these vigils can cause the abortion no-show rate to go as high as 75%, which is detrimental to their abortion business, to say the least. These law-abiding vigils have closed many abortion businesses in America and nearly half of those closed abortion facilities were in liberal cities where abortion will remain legal, including closures in San Francisco, Chicago, and Seattle. Forty Days for Life is effectively changing hearts and minds in the grassroots to end abortion.

And you can find out more if you check out their locations, podcasts, and free magazine at 40 Days for Life.com. Remember that especially now after the midterms and everything that's happened politically, it's more important than ever to stay engaged in this fight. And to do that, you've got to get more information at 40 Days for Life.com. Again, that's 40 Days for Life.com. In the days after the election, there has been a lot of talk about the Democrat Party's dominance among young voters. And indeed, they did, in fact, dominate.

Republican House candidates won the 45 to 64 age bracket by 10 points. They won the 65-and-over group by even more than that. No surprise, given that the Democrats spent the entire. you know, COVID pandemic trying to murder the elderly. But that edge disappears in the 30 to 44 demographic where Democrats had a slight edge. It's almost 50-50, though. And then there is Gen Z, which Democrats won by nearly 30 points. If the exit poll data's any indication, nearly twice as many in the 18 to 29 group voted Democrat as voted Republican. So that's Gen Z and like the first part of, you know, the later parts of the millennial generation as well.

It's no surprise to learn then that Gen Z is extremely mentally ill, at least according to the latest study, which we get this from the Christian Post. It has the report. Nearly 70% of Generation Z, people born between 1997 and 2012, say their mental health was adversely impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic, with 42% of adult members of the cohort reporting that they have been diagnosed with a mental health condition, and many of them say they are worried about the future. A new study from the data management firm Harmony Healthcare IT shows. The study, which is based on a survey of 1055 Gen Z members from the ages of 18 to 24 in September, included 47% men, 45% women, 6% who identify as non-binary, and 2% trans-identified individuals. According to the report,

some 57% of Gen Z adults struggle with their mental health and reported taking medication to alleviate their condition and paid an average of $44 monthly. The most frequently cited conditions were anxiety and depression, which were reported by 90% and 78% of respondents respectively. Other conditions reported include ADHD, 27%, PTSD, 20%, OCD, 17%, eating disorders 14%, and insomnia 12%. Less than 10% reported more diagnoses of bipolar disorder, addiction and substance abuse, and borderline personality disorder. While only one in five reported going to therapy for their mental health and spending an average of $149 monthly to do so, 87% of them found it helpful.

Okay, so nearly half of an entire generation now qualify as mentally ill, according to their diagnosis. When you break it down, the numbers seem to become even more troubling. 20% of that group allegedly have been diagnosed with PTSD, nearly 20% with OCD, 14% with an eating disorder. I mean, these are staggering figures. And however we make sense of it all, it's clear that something is very wrong here, to put it mildly. So how do we make sense of it? Well, to that end, I'll make three points. There are a lot more than three points worth making here, but these are the three things that I'd like to focus on.

right now. First, mental illness is a real thing. There are legitimate mental illnesses that people suffer from. But the only way you end up with half of a generation diagnosed mentally ill is if the definition of mental illness has been steadily expanded so as to include everyone, or as close to everyone as they can get. As I've warned for years, the so-called mental health industry has a vested interest, an obvious financial interest, to the tune to the of many billions of dollars in finding, labeling, and medicating as many mental illnesses as they possibly can. We're at a point now where, you know, every emotion you might experience, every fear, every anxiety, every uncomfortable feeling or thought has been turned into an illness

or the symptom of an illness. The human condition itself has been medicalized. And Gen Z has grown up in a culture where every inner experience outside of the norm, however the hell the norm is defined, is considered a symptom of a mental disease. They have been conditioned to seek the solace of a medical diagnosis, and so it is no surprise that they have sought and found so many of them. Now, does that mean, just so I'm not misunderstood here, does that mean that the mental illness epidemic in young people is fake. No, it means that it's manufactured, which is certainly not the same thing as fake. I mean, there's something real happening here, but it is manufactured. Eventually, the entire generation, I mean, literally almost all of them, if these trends continue,

will be diagnosed mentally ill. And although many of these newfound mental patients never should have been diagnosed to begin with, they will increasingly become as mentally sick as the medical industry says they are. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy. Why is that? Because they're not given the tools to cope with normal, emotional, and psychological experiences. They are made to rely on medication. They are made to feel helpless. Like they simply cannot control their own minds or their own emotions or how they respond to those emotions. And the sicker they're made to feel, the sicker they'll become and act. I mean, think of all the people in Gen Z saying they have PTSD. You know, PTSD is something we normally think of, you know, people, veteran combat veterans coming home from war and think about all the things that they've experienced and seen and they're suffering for PTSD.

Now, that makes sense. You've been in a truly traumatic environment. But to have 20% of this group saying they have PTSD, these aren't for the most part combat veterans we're talking about. And yes, they've been through some difficult things, the way that we handled COVID. was absolutely inexcusable, of course, but post-traumatic stress disorder? These are, many of them, people living very comfortable lives. So where does the PTSD diagnosis come from? It comes from kids and now young adults who have not been given the tools to cope with any difficult emotions at all. They just don't know how to deal with anything. And so any challenge, at all becomes traumatic, and they're now suffering from PTSD. Again, it's manufactured. There is an enormous generation-wide epidemic of Munchausen by proxy happening right now. That's basically

what's happening. Speaking of which, the second point is that gender ideology is, without question, one of the primary driving forces here. This is something the conservatives often get wrong, I think, because they confuse the chicken with the egg. It's not that so many in Gen Z identify as non-binary or trans or whatever because they're mentally ill, it's rather that so many are mentally ill because they have been given these identities through peer pressure and the powers of social contagion. The adolescent girl who first begins to fall into the trans trap, she's not sick. There's no mental illness driving that. At least there doesn't have to be. But once she falls into the trap completely, that is when the mental sickness begins to form and take hold.

So for a good example of this phenomenon, here's the latest TikTok innovation. One of the latest identities, one of the freshest ones right out of the oven. It's called trigender. Watch this. So a couple of people might have been surprised by my transgender pin that I put on this morning. I figured it's about time that I came out and talked about my gender identity. I am trigender, which means like a triangle, I have three genders. male, female, and non-binary.

And the difference between trigender and gender fluid is that I feel all three of these genders at the same time. All the time. It doesn't ever shift or change or where I feel one gender more strongly than the other, like gender fluid tends to be. Also I should recognize and accept that a lot of people don't see non-binary as a third gender. They see it as something completely separate from the binary. male and female. But for me, it's like a third gender. Or I guess you could call it a third identity.

So how I feel gender-wise is like a man, like a woman, and as neither at the same time. I hope this clears things up, but let me know if you have any more questions. I'm happy to answer. I do have questions, actually, quite a lot. She says she's male, female, both and neither at the same time. Now, that obviously makes no sense at all. It's the definition of a logical fallacy. You cannot be something and the opposite of that thing at the same time. It's like identifying as a married bachelor. It is a self-contradiction. So is the girl in the video simply crazy? Is she suffering from mental delusions? It's possible. And appearances would suggest that such is the case, but it need not be the case. What's more likely is that she's simply

trying to fit in with the fad and find her own trendy twist on it. But the more that she tries to live in this nonsensical identity, the more confused she will actually become, the more detached from reality and the more plagued by anxiety at the same time. I mean, keep in mind, as I am always saying, that, you know, the really sinister thing about gender ideology is that when someone becomes fully enthralled to it, they will have lost grip, not just on reality in general, but on the reality of themselves. And there's a lot that comes from this, and one of those things is anxiety, because anxiety is the unease that comes from uncertainty. It comes from the unknown. It's why, you know, you don't like walking down into a dark basement at night, because you don't

know what's down there, and your mind sort of fills in the gaps with all the terrifying possibilities. It's why Joe Biden's handlers become very nervous whenever he steps in front of a microphone because they have no idea what he's going to say or whatever childhood story he's going to make up. This is all anxiety. So gender ideology is like an anxiety machine because it makes a person's fundamental physical identity uncertain to themselves, creating a sort of unrelenting anxiety. It's no surprise then that Gen Z are reporting record levels of anxiety at precisely the time when these kinds of ideas are gaining prominence,

ideas which in effect turn out the intellectual lights, turning our minds into that dark, scary basement. Which brings me to my third point. I said at the beginning that it's no surprise that Gen Z voted Democrat because so many are diagnosed mentally ill, and I wasn't being facetious there. At least I wasn't being entirely facetious. There is a relationship.

It does actually make a lot of sense. because we know with Gen Z, not only does this make them susceptible to identity politics and all that, that the Democrats can exploit, but also because they have all of this anxiety in their heads, in their minds, and they don't know what to do with it, and they don't know how to cope with it. Again, having anxiety is a normal thing. It's part of the human condition. Nobody likes it, but it's part of the human. It's one of the things that makes us human is that we can experience anxiety. But the Democrat Party thrives on exploiting anxiety. That's how they motivate people to vote. If you listen to things that Gen Z, you know, their exit poll data, what were they concerned about? Why did they go to the poll to vote?

It's things like climate change. You know, they're actually worried about that. They think the world's coming to an end. They think that America's systemically racist, that there are white supremacist murderers walking around out there, you know, this is their view. of the world. They're full of anxiety. The Democrat Party is able to exploit it and convert that into votes. Which is why, as I've been saying all along, we have a long road ahead in this fight for the culture. And the fight is, in every sense of the term, generational. Now let's get to our

five headlines. If you're listening to this show and you're apparent, odds are that you put a lot of stock in how you raise your kids. You understand that your children look to you to define their values and their perspectives of the world. That's why it's extremely important that you have a will in place. A will determines how your financial assets are dispersed as well as your personal property. It lays out your health care power of attorney to ensure that your end of life's decisions are carried out. And if you're just starting out and you don't have thousands of dollars to spend on an attorney, but you want to make sure your savings, your belongings and your family are all protected, you have to create a will at epic will.

dot com today. You don't need a lot of money, in fact. Early estate plans started just $119, and you can save 10% when you use promo code Walsh. All you got to do is go to epicwill.com, use promo code Walsh, to save 10% on Epicwills' complete will package. That's epicwill.com promo code Walsh. We start with this story from The Daily Wire. It says Sam Bankman Fried, who's the now bankrupt founder of the cryptocurrency exchange FTX, gave a staggering sum of money to Democrats and far-left causes this mid-term election cycle before his multi-billion dollar empire imploded this week, which is something, by the way, that happens. So you've got this mega-democrat donor donated more than anybody else next to George Soros to Democrat causes. And all of this

explodes right after the midterms. Well, we're still in the middle of the midterms, actually, because they haven't even counted all the votes yet. But right after voting allegedly, concluded. That's what all this comes out. Daily Wire has more information about this. FTX, which is headquartered in the Bahamas, was launched in 2019 and had accrued more than one million users by 2022. User suddenly demanded $6 billion in withdrawals after an article published by Coin Desk revealed last week that the two arms of Bankman Freide's cryptocurrency empire, FTX and Alameda research, had significant overlap on their balance sheets in the form of the cryptocurrency FTT, which FTX, invented.

rival firm Binance, which had been planning to purchase FDX, announced that it would discharge all holdings in the coin and eventually reverse course on the acquisition. The disheveled 30-year-old went from boasting a $15.6 billion net worth to having no material wealth over the span of approximately two days. Federal and state officials are now investigating whether Banking Fred broke laws with his actions at the company. You would think that he certainly did.

Now, so SBF, there are a lot of initials going on here, but you've got SBF, who's the guy that owns FTX, and that is the organization, the company that invented FTT, which is the cryptocurrency. So all these things are confusing. But SBF was the second largest donor for Democrats, this election cycle, only behind, as I said, George Soros. He gave at least $38 million to leftist causes, PACs and candidates,

according to Fox News. Political reported that Bankman Fried was a top reason, source to whom Democrats went when lawmakers began looking at ways to regulate cryptocurrencies because of his willingness to write multi-million dollar checks to boost Democrats. And the deeper you dive into this relationship between SBF and the Democrat Party, the more you find. For example, the post-millennial has this report. It says the multi-billion dollar cryptocurrency company FTX run by SBF, the second biggest donor after George Soros collapsed last week, so we know about that. it was revealed that FDX had partnered with Ukraine to process donations to their war efforts

within days of Joe Biden pledging billions of American taxpayer dollars to the country. Ukraine invested into FTCS as the Biden administration funneled funds to the invaded nation, and FTX then made massive donations to Democrats in the U.S. A lot of this comes from an article from the cryptocurrency news website, CoinDesk from March 15th, 2022, reported that Ukraine partnered with FDX, and that FDX is converting crypto contributions to Ukraine's war effort into Fiat for deposit the National Bank of Ukraine. Okay. If you follow the trajectory there and you connect all the dots, you don't have to connect a lot of them, but Ukraine invested into FTX, FTCS is investing into Democrats, and who is investing into Ukraine?

In fact, you were, and you still are, whether you like it or not, and I certainly don't. So the Democrat Party, this is interesting, Democrat Party is funneling money to Ukraine, which then partners with FTX, and then FDX turns around and gives a lot of money to the Democrats. You might even call that a money laundering scheme. In fact, that's exactly what you should call it. It's like a giant money laundering scheme. And not the only one the Democrats have, by the way. They've got a lot of these things going on.

where they funnel money to organizations and the organizations give money right back to them. You know, not to not to distract from the FDX scandal, which is massive, but we should also note that this is this has been happening with Planned Parenthood for decades. The Democrat Party gives $500 million a year to Planned Parenthood, and then Planned Parenthood turns around and donates the Democrat causes. And they always have ways of justifying this or getting around it. legally. Well, it's easy to get around it legally when nobody, you know, the FBI's not interested in looking into it to begin with. But the way they do with Planned Parenthood is they say that, well, but these are, these are, the money's not going. These are all separate areas that the money is going to. Money's not going to fund abortions, except they're forgetting that the money is

fungible. And so if you give money to one aspect of an organization, then you have freed up money in other places where they can then spend how they want. So that excuse doesn't really wash. Democrat Party specializes in this kind of thing, is my point. And that appears to be what's happening with FTX. Now, you know, I just started reading about this last night, and I'm far from an expert on anything crypto-related or on this issue. But it is quite obvious already that the deeper you dig into this, the bigger the scandal becomes.

And already Sam Bankman fried, is, you know, he's in the Bernie Madoff conversation at just the scope of this scam, this Ponzi scheme that he was running. But we're never going to find out the full scope of it unless the media is interested in looking into it. And if the federal government is interested in investigating it, which they certainly are not going to be because he was a major Democrat donor. And it should be obvious by now. This is the reason why he was a major Democrat don't. It's actually pretty smart. And it does take intelligence, even to run a scam as big as what he was running,

even if it all did fall apart. It's pretty clear that he was donating to Democrats because he knows they're the ones who run the media. They're the ones who run the government. Even no matter who's in the White House, Democrats are still running it. And when all this blows up, they're not going to be interested in coming after him because they don't want all of these ties to come to light. And what are they going to do?

Give the money back? I mean, they should. They're not going to. The other part of this, too, is just cryptocurrency itself. And, you know, I said before that I don't understand cryptocurrency. I'm not an expert in it. And I've always said that. But I'm increasingly coming to realize that those of us who say, well, I don't really understand

the whole crypto thing. We actually do understand it. But it's like our first reaction to it we first heard about is that it sounds totally arbitrary and fake and made up and absurd. And so we always assume, those of us who say we can't understand, we assume that, well, there must be something more to it that I'm just not getting. I must not be getting it because what you're explained to me about cryptocurrency, it just sounds like a, just like a fantasy, just a bubble floating in the air that can easily pop. and people are putting their money into this, like actual real money? Well, you can invent a digital coin and then just declare that it's worth something. And it's only worth something if everyone else plays along.

That's what's keeping all this afloat, is that everyone's playing along with it. What happens when they stop playing along? Well, the value plummets. So for a lot of us, that was our first reaction to cryptocurrency. We first heard about it years ago. That's why we didn't get invested. Maybe we assume that there must be something that we're just not getting. But no, there isn't. There isn't more to it. That really is it. It's just, it's nothing. It's like something that floats out in the ether. And as long as everyone plays along and agrees to pretend that these numbers on a screen means something, then it will have value. And then the moment that we all say, you know what, I'm not into that anymore. It just plummets to the earth. And I know that the response to that is always, well, that's the same thing with fiat currency. It's the same thing with our money right now. What's happening with inflation? That only has value because we, we

essentially believe in it, which you're right. But then what that tells us is that cryptocurrency, it's not solving any of the problems caused by fiat currency. It has all the same problems, but only worse. It magnifies all of those problems. It doesn't solve them. It's like you're doubling down on what makes fiat currency unreliable and unstable by coming up with something that's even less reliable and even more unstable. Seems to me we should be going in the Other direction. All right. Moving to this also from the Daily Wires says,

Republicans will fail to gain enough seats to take back the Senate majority, according to a projection by Decision Desk Headquarters, the Senate will remain under Democrat control since ties are broken by the Vice President. The projection came after Decision Desk Headquarters called the Nevada race for the Democrats. The partisan makeup of the Senate will be decided after December 6th Senate runoff between Herschel Walker and Raphael Warnock. which even if Walker wins that one, the Republic at this point will not be able to take control of the Senate because Camille Harris will still have the tie-breaking vote.

Although it's certainly much better to win it than not, obviously, because then you've got the 50-50. We're back to what it was before. And depending on what the bill is, what the legislation is, maybe you can peel Joe Manchin or somebody off. But if Walker loses that race, then, you know, that's Joe Manchin's dream come true. Now he's off the hook.

It doesn't matter what he does. So it looked like it was trending this direction last week, and this is where we are now. And when I say trending in that direction, you know, it's the Democrats kept on counting the votes and kept on counting them until they had won the Senate. That's what I mean by trending in that direction. This from Breitbart,

Senator Josh Holly is calling for Republican Party to undergo reform after it was projected the party would not gain control of the U.S. Senate Saturday night. He said the old party is dead. Time to bury it. Build something new. And he said that a reaction to Republican Adam Lacksalt losing in the Nevada Senate race. And this is after the Republicans lost the Senate, this is what most people are saying now. And as far as the House goes, I mean, they're still counting the votes as it stands right now. Somehow, they are still counting votes. or almost a week out and they're still counting them because this is how a modern election is supposed to work where it takes you a week to count the votes. They still have not been able to explain why exactly it takes that long. I've listened to all the press conferences

where the people in charge have answered questions and supposedly explained why it takes this long and I still don't understand why it takes this long. I mean, I think I do understand it, but it's not an answer that they're going to give out loud. There's no good reason why. it should take a week to count the votes. And what they especially have not been able to explain is why can't they go talk to Florida?

How do they manage to count, you know, many more votes in a small fraction of the time? They've got many more millions of votes to count. They do it in five hours. And it takes you over five days in Arizona, Nevada, et cetera. But this is what Republicans are saying, that we've got to burn the party to the ground, start over. I agree with that. I absolutely agree, obviously. We need new leadership. As I said, the day after the election, you know, there are, we can spend weeks and months doing the postmortem and debating why the Republicans lost, and there are a lot of things

that went into it. One of them, of course, is how these elections are run to begin with, and the fact that it does take a week to quote unquote count them. That's part of it. It's not just that. It's also, as I said, the Republican Party on a national level had no message. I mean, what was the Republican Party's message? I don't know. I mean, I know their message was Joe Biden is bad. That's a fine message. We all agree with that. The voters seemed to agree with it, which is why all the exit poll data shows that voters were upset with the direction of the country, they were fearful and anxiety-ridden about the direction of the country. And yet, many of them still voted for the party that is currently taking them in the direction that

they say they don't want to go. What does that mean? It means that your message cannot just be a negative of this guy's bad. What you have to be able to explain is why we have a better vision for the country, and here's what the vision is, and they weren't able to do that. So that's one of the lessons that we should take from this. But the other question then is, what do we do about this system. Democrats are able to dominate in these states because ballot harvesting, mail-in voting, early voting.

And I think almost any conservative will say that at this point, that none of that should be happening. As I've said a million times, voting should be on election day with rare exception, active duty military being one of them, maybe there are a couple others you can name, but with rare exception, voting is on election day. The polls are open from this hour to this hour.

You show up there in person, flesh and blood. You walk in there, you cast your vote, and you produce your ID, and then you leave. That's the way that it should work. But it's not working that way. And the problem is that Pennsylvania, Nevada, Arizona, how are we going to convince the Democratic, that run these states to change the voting procedures to disadvantage themselves. It's just never going to happen. They're not going to do it. We can't say to them, well, this gives you an unfair advantage. Stop doing it.

That can be our claim. That's basically what we've been saying, as we're kind of impotently whining about it. But that's not going to be a compelling argument to them. Because the whole point that it gives them an unfair advantage. They're aware of that. That's why they're doing it. And so how do you, when you don't have power, how do you convince them to change something to take an advantage away from themselves? It's never going to happen. So what can you do? If you really want to change the system, you want to change the way that elections are run in these states, you have to take control. You have to have power in order to do it. And unfortunately, in order to do it, in order to take control of the system, you have to

you have to do that through the system itself. You have to be able to use the system that you want to change. If you want to change a system, you first have to understand how to use it to your advantage and exploit it. So that you can take control of it. And then once you've done that, then you can change it. So what we have to decide is as conservatives, we can keep stomping our feet and whining about the early voting and mail-in-voting and all the rest of it. And I, and emotionally, I fully understand that approach because I hate it also. And we can keep doing that and nothing's going to change because the Democrats in Pennsylvania and Arizona, Nevada, and the other states, they're going to, they listen to us and they laugh.

And that's all they're going to do. So the other approach is to learn how to, is to start exploiting the systems that are in place. I don't think they should have mail-in voting. I don't think they should have early voting. But they do. And so if we ever want to change that or anything else, then we have to learn how to exploit that, how to use that to our advantage.

In so many cases now, it seems like Republicans have kind of crossed their arms and said, I don't agree with this. So I'm just not going to take part. Well, we're only hurting ourselves when we do that. And so the Democrats are basically running unopposed. It created these tools for them. themselves and they have a monopoly on it because we haven't even tried to take advantage of it ourselves. And nothing's ever going to change. You have to be able to use the system and learn

how to navigate it if you want to take control of it and change it. That's just the reality. All right. What else do we got here? So I thought this was funny. Some journalists on Twitter are complaining, you know, Elon Musk taken over Twitter and he's already fired a bunch of people and are complaining about that. Well, here's the latest from a New York Times article, and a guy named Bill Gruskin tweets this. He says, Mr. Musk plans to begin making employees pay for lunch, which had been free at the company cafeteria. And then a guy named Andrew Wartman responds to that. He said, he fired three-fourths of the employees. Now he's planning to starve the rest of them. He's failure incarnate. Yes, now the Twitter employees are, and Musk actually responded to this

and said that, look, most of the employees don't even come to the office. So I don't think I'm going to starve them to begin with. But also, you know, they're working at Twitter. It's so they have jobs. They probably should be able to pay for their own lunches. Now, it's nice to get a free lunch every day. Don't get me wrong. We actually, we get that here at the daily wire. They provide us catered lunch every day. It's what's, it's fantastic if you can get it. But if they were to take that perk away from us, I don't think I would just sit here and starve. I would probably just, you know, you could pack a lunch or go buy lunch somewhere. So these are these really petty complaints that we're still hearing about the Elon Musk takeover of Twitter.

But there are complaints that you could make that are not as petty. So, for example, over the weekend, our great reporter Christina Buttons here at the Daily Wire, she tweeted out a link to a report that she just did for the Daily Wire. And the headline of the report is, new data emerges of 1,000. 100 plus adolescent gender-affirming mastectomies. And then she tweets it with this caption, she says, New Data, a study of nationwide hospital databases found that at least 1,130 adolescents between 2016 to 2019 received gender-affirming chest surgeries, gender-affirming,

in quotes. Chest surgeries in the U.S., an overwhelming majority, 1,114 of the adolescents were female. And so that's it. That's the report. Now, this isn't even an editorial. This is just Christina Buttons presenting the information, the data, which says that over this span, you know, well over a thousand minor girls had their breasts amputated in pursuit of this aim of becoming a boy, which, of course, they can never become.

Well, if you tried to click on that link on Twitter over the weekend, this is what would have happened. And this is what happened to me when I tried it myself. A warning page comes up and it says, warning, this link may be unsafe. It says the link you're trying to access has been identified by Twitter or our partners as being potentially spammy or unsafe in accordance with Twitter's URL policy. This link could fall into any of the below categories. And then it says it could be a spam. It could be a malicious link that's stealing information or, of course, it's none of those things. Or it could be violent or misleading content that could lead to real world harm.

So if the content is violent or misleading, then this warning page comes up. Now, it does give you an option. There's a, you know, a button there at the top that says you can click and go back to the previous page, get away from the unsafe content. Or in smaller letters below that, it says, ignore this warning and continue. And then you can get to the article. So factual information about the mutilation that's being inflicted on children in this country by these so-called gender-affirming. doctors. That factual information is flagged on Twitter as unsafe and it could lead to harm somehow. This is actually worse than it was before Elon Musk took over. You know, I don't remember ever

seeing a warning page like that pop up for an article like this before. So it's not just that, you know, we still have the same wokeness now that Elon Musk. It's actually worse in this way. And that's extremely concerning. Now, You know, I tweeted this out over the weekend. There were people pointing out saying that, hey, we need to be a little bit more patient and a little more generous with Elon Musk here. And he did. He just took over the company. He can't fix everything right away.

And I understand that. You know, Rome wasn't built in a day and all that. And you certainly can't fix it in a day. But all the same. I mean, as I said last week, you know, Musk did right away institute some major changes. the changes that he made with the verification process, and then they ended up abandoning that after like two days because it was a total disaster.

But they did implement major structural changes right away. So it seems as though they could have cleaned a lot of this up right away, and they haven't yet. That doesn't mean they won't in the future. But it does mean that the woke brigade is still there at Twitter, and they're still running things to a large extent. And if you really want to change that, I mean, Elon Musk has already fired whatever it is, half of the company,

you got to fire, but it's basically fire almost everyone and build the company over again from scratch to actually fix this problem. All right, this is from the Daily Wire. Also, it says churches in the United States are struggling to return to attendance levels seen prior to COVID lockdowns

before that shut their doors and forced online services, according to a new Lifeway Research poll. The survey released last week was conducted with 1,000 Protestant pastors from September 6th to 30th from a random sample of Protestant churches. The survey revealed that despite church,

is failing to return to pre-lockdown levels, the majority had resumed in-person worship services. Now, this doesn't surprise me at all as someone, I don't go to Protestant churches, I'm Catholic obviously, but I have noticed this myself. I think anyone who goes to church every Sunday, we all notice this. And I've been to a bunch of different churches in several different states over the last couple of years, and I've noticed this everywhere, that attendance appears to be significantly lower than it would have been before the pandemic. Is that problem going to write itself? I mean, here's the question.

Are the churches ever going to get back to pre-pandemic levels of attendance? And I'm skeptical that that will happen. I'm skeptical for a few reasons. One is that the culture keeps moving away from us as successive generations are more godless, more likely to be atheist, secularism takes whole of the culture more and more. So you're already, you're already trying to swim upstream because of that. But then at the same time,

and this was my objection at the very beginning, this was my objection to church's closing to begin with, is that when you do that and you shut your doors, you are telling your congregants, you're telling your flocks, that you are not necessary, that you, the church, as the church, you're saying to the congregation is that what we're doing here is not necessary.

Remember, this was during the time that only essential workers were allowed to go to the essential services are allowed to stay open, but all the non-essential services have to be shut down. And state governments, they declared that, well, church is a non-essential service. And unfortunately, a lot of churches, and there were some exceptions to this, but a lot of churches went along with that and agreed with it, whether explicitly or implicitly, and said, you're right, we're not essential. Once you've told your congregation that, once you've advertised that, once you have sent that message, you're not going to be able to get them all back.

Because I think there were a lot of people who were going to church before that, and the church has shut down, said, oh, we're not an essential service. We can stay shut down for as long as the government tells us to until everyone stops having the sniffles. We can just shut the doors. there are many churches that stayed shut for months on end, if not longer than that. And then many members of the congregation said, well, apparently you're not essential. Apparently, we don't need you. And you open your doors again, but what's the point of going back? I don't agree with that.

Church is essential. You know, as we're told in scripture, man does not live on bread alone. You also have to feed yourself spiritually. That is an essential service. But unfortunately, the church has broadcast the opposite message. and that has sunk in. And I don't know if there's ever going to be any undoing that completely. Let's get to the comment section. You know, with everything going on in the world right now, you could really use a good night's sleep. I know I could. That's why you need to check out Helix

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That way a voter at least knows how to spell and knows, least a little bit about the candidate. Obviously, this isn't even close to perfect, but I think it's a start. That's not a bad strategy. I love that idea. I think that's actually a really good idea. Now, maybe you wouldn't require that of all of the candidates on the ballot, but certainly the candidates at the top of the ticket. And certainly in a presidential election, if it were up to me, yeah, I like that idea and I would adopt that right away. You actually have to write the name of the candidate that you want on the ballot. Because if you don't, if you, if you can't even do that. Like if you need the name to be there ahead of time, because you don't know the names,

then, you know, you are voting purely out of ignorance. And you are working to undermine the democratic process and harm the country in the process. So I would agree with you on that. I think that's a great idea. And you have to spell it correctly, too. So if you misspell it, then the ballot goes out the window. It goes in the trash. But, Here's my point. This is a fun kind of like fan fiction thing to indulge in. If we were serious, if we were actually serious about protecting and preserving our republic, these are the kinds of things we would do. But it's just never going to happen, right? Like that, of course, what you're suggesting, you're not suggesting it as a strategy that will ever actually be adopted.

It's just in an ideal world, if you really, if you really, wanted to protect your democracy, then these are the sorts of things you might think about doing. And so it's okay to talk about that. I talk about it all the time. We should talk about those things. We should talk about what we would do in an ideal scenario. Because you have to know what the ideal is so that you know which direction you should be traveling in. But then the next step is to realize that we're not in an ideal scenario. We're living in reality. And so how are we going to navigate? We got the ideal, right? So we know the direction we want to go. But now we have the reality. And so how do we navigate the reality in a way that brings us at least a little bit closer to that ideal?

David said, it just occurred to me that Matt Walsh will be wanting to take some time off when his twins are born. Perhaps the Daily Wire could contact the people at Hallmark and bring in his doppelganger to host for a couple of weeks. Just an idea. I would love that. I would do that for sure. And I certainly will be taking some time off, but I'm not going to pull a Pete Buttigieg, so you don't have to worry about that. that taking six months off from maternity leave. Adam says, Matt, you were talking about dealing with haters and hateful threatening people at your rallies, etc. What advice would you give on how to deal with people who see it as their mission to hate and ridicule? I've dealt with some of this lately, and as much as I wish

hadn't, it really has rattled my cage. Thanks, SBG for life. Well, the only way to deal with people like that is to realize that their opinion doesn't mean anything. And I know it's a little bit easier said than done, so I can tell you that and it doesn't mean that. And it doesn't mean that you're going to be able to emotionally adopt that right away. But that is the only way to deal with such people is to realize that their opinion simply doesn't matter. And especially if you're doing the right thing and you're living according to your beliefs

and you're speaking the truth and you're defending the truth, all of the sniping idiots and all the little trolls involved, cultures who come after you, none of their opinions matter at all. And so you have to get to a point of indifference, basically, to them. I'm not even say you have to hate them or be angry at them. They're just indifferent. And I don't recommend indifference in many different, in very many situations. But this is one situation where indifference is the way to go. You have to be indifferent to what they think. Jamie Jones says, I was an iron worker for many years. In our apprenticeship training, we're required to learn eight or ten different knots, including the noose slip knot, news slash slip knot.

They're easy to make, great for moving things, floor to floor, and a skeleton building, and they don't bind up. They slip apart, hence the name. The stupidity flowing from the left causes me physical pain. Yeah, there's a lot of comments for people in the construction world who were agreeing that, in fact, ropes are very common on construction sites, even things that might look like a noose or a slip knot might actually be one, but there are practical applications for that. So that could explain, and we talked about a daily cancellation on Friday, you know, that could explain this epidemic of construction sites across the country shutting down for days at a time because somebody finds a scary rope and decides that it's a racist symbol.

But the other thing about that is I have to again remind you that not only are these news stories, almost always either hoaxes or some very stupid person is misinterpreting an innocuous rope that was being used for some other reason. That's all true. But also, the whole idea that a noose is a racist symbol to begin with is invented. That's invented by the media. It's like they invented the okay sign as a racist symbol. That's a media invention. I mean, you know, you. Yes, nooses in the past have been used in racist lynchings. That's obviously true. But also, the noose has been used as a method of execution for thousands of years all over the country, all over the world, rather, I should say, for thousands of years.

So the idea that it specifically has this one meaning now just doesn't make any sense to begin with. You know, last year we launched our Daily News podcast, Morning Wire. In this short period of time, it's become one of the top news podcasts. I suspect it's because Morning Wire gives you only the news you need to know in 15 minutes or less without the manufactured outrage. New episodes are available every morning, seven days a week, and they cover stories. Other media outlets won't touch. So check out Morning Wire on Daily Wire Plus, Apple Podcast, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Now let's get to our daily cancellation. Last week, we briefly discussed the latest bout of verbal flatulins from Representative Eric Swalwell, who critiqued the idea that parents

should be in charge of their own children's education. As you recall, Swalwell said, please tell me what I'm missing here. What are we doing next? Putting patients in charge of their own surgeries, clients in charge of their own trials? When did we stop trusting experts? This is so stupid. And indeed, this is so stupid. Everything you said is so stupid. As we covered, clients are in charge of their representation at trial, and patients are in charge of their surgeries. Now, they may delegate many of those responsibilities, which is a highly recommended approach, especially when it comes to surgery. But they are still supposed to be the ones in charge, basically, the ones deciding. As for the self-appointed experts, well, many of us stopped

trusting them when they shut down society over COVID, waged war against our fundamental civil rights, only to spend the next two years slowly admitting that all of their pandemic strategies were based on lies. Some of us may have also stopped trusting them when they started pushing for gender-confused children to get mutilated, castrated, and sterilized. And then there are those of us who never stopped trusting the experts because we never started trusting them to begin with. But these points are all academic because public school teachers are not experts anyway. They are by no means experts in the subjects they teach, nor are they experts in teaching necessarily. Some of them may certainly have reached the point of expertise through years of experience. But as a class,

as a group, they cannot be called experts, especially because most teachers start teaching. before the age of 25. Some of them are as young as 20 or 21. Lots of them are when they start. You can't be an expert in anything at that age. You certainly aren't going to be an expert in teaching kids who are barely younger than yourself. So Swalwell is wrong on every level and from every conceivable angle as per usual. But the interesting point is that he came out explicitly against parental rights just a day or two after the election. The left has gotten even bolder than usual over the past several days, having decided that the results of the midterms vindicate and validate all of their most extreme talking points. This conclusion is, of course, erroneous,

especially when it comes to parental rights of all issues. In fact, Republicans up the ballot may have fared relatively poorly in most states, but as we talked about last week, conservatives and school board races were much more successful. The Daily Wire reports, quote, this week, conservatives flipped at least nine school boards in at least six states, Michigan, Maryland, North Carolina, South Carolina, New Jersey, and Florida, giving them conservative majorities, according to two parental rights groups who endorsed many of the victorious candidates. The wind signal that parental rights were a significant factor at the ballot box on Tuesday in Michigan. Four school board candidates in Brandywine who were endorsed by a parents' rights group

rights group called 1776 Project P.A. PAC won their races, flipping the board from liberal to conservative. In Maryland, three of their school board candidates, one in Carroll County, flipping the school board there to a conservative majority. The 1776 Project Pack claims that it has officially flipped 100 school boards since November last year. The group's candidates also won in Oklahoma and Ohio. Another parents' rights group, Moms for Liberty, told the Daily Wire that it notched clusters of wins in at least four states. The group flipped at least seven school boards. In North Carolina, conservative candidates won in both New Hanover County and Iridale County,

flipping both of those school boards conservatives. in South Carolina, six conservative candidates, one in Berkeley County, five one in Charleston County, and another four one in York County, flipping all three school board to the conservative side. Mom's for Liberty also said that in New Jersey, three candidates in Cape May County won their elections flipping that school board conservative in Florida, two candidates won in Pineas County, flipping that board conservative as well. So in other words, the left decides at its own peril that parents' groups and parents' rights are a losing political issue. The results indicate actually exactly the opposite of that.

Republicans only lost on the issue of parental rights if they chose not to run on it in the first place, and many of them made that choice. You can't win the argument if you don't make the argument. And the argument for parental rights is very easy to make, and it will automatically resonate with the vast majority of parents. That's the thing about us parents, we identify with the political left or right, we don't like it when someone tries to parent our

children for us. Somebody should tell that to the National Education Association Teachers Union, which also decided after the election that they now have political permission to explicitly attack parental rights. So on Friday, the NEA tweeted this, quote, educators love their students and know better than anyone what they need to learn and to thrive. Better than anyone, they say. Now, the phrasing, there is quite deliberate, obviously. The teachers' union is claiming that teachers know better than parents what their children need. But that is, of course, exactly wrong. It is the opposite of reality. In fact, the very best argument for homeschooling is that parents, not public school teachers,

are experts in the most important field. Now, most parents, just as most teachers, don't have PhDs in math or science or any other academic discipline, but they are experts on one thing, which is their children. They're experts on their children. Parents know or should know their own children better than anyone. So the NEA accidentally raises a good point here. The most effective educator is going to be the person who knows the child best, who understands him, who knows what he needs, and can tailor the education to fit those needs. And that last step is very important, because even if a public school teacher does come to understand a child's educational needs, which is a big if, considering that the teacher will likely have 20 or 30 other students in the class, only about

45 minutes in a day to teach them any given subject. So it's very difficult to get to know any of the kids. But even if the teacher does, he's not going to have, he will have only a very limited ability to respond to the child's needs, even if the teacher comes to understand what those needs are. A teacher can't give 30 different kids. their own personalized and customized educational environment. It's impossible. And that's not because of the teacher's personal limitations, but rather it's because of the way the system is set up. A worker on an assembly line probably doesn't have, probably doesn't have the ability to make the product by hand. But even if he does, he can't do that while working on the assembly line.

The public tool system is an assembly line. The teachers are simply manning their stations along the conveyor belt. And even if they man them well, and men many of them do, there's only so much attention they can give to each child as he has ferried on down the line. So, yes, it is important in education to know the child well and to be able to respond, to know his needs, and to be able to respond to those needs. And that's why the parent is going to be in a much better position. And then what about love? Well, public school teachers may love their students in a broad and sort of charitable sense, right? But they will not and cannot love the student the way that a student's parents can and should, and most of the time, do love him. My wife and I, we've been with

our children since they were born. We feed them and put clothes on their backs. We care for them when they're sick. We're the ones checking under their beds for monsters before we tuck them in at night. We know them and love them more than anyone ever could. And that does make us, better equipped to educate them. Because education is not simply about passing along information after all. It's not merely a matter of memorizing details and being able to repeat them. That's supposed to be just a part of education. But education as a whole properly understood is supposed to be about making someone a better person. Now, our educational system right now may often have the opposite effect these days, especially at the college level, but a proper education does mean or should

mean instilling virtue. And that requires care, that requires patience, that requires love, which is why the parent should not only be involved, but should in fact be in charge. And that is why today the NEA Teachers Union is canceled. And that'll do it for this portion of the show as we move over to the members block. Hope to see you there. If not, talk to you tomorrow. Godspeed.