The Matt Walsh Show - Ep. 1385 - We Have Some Of The Covenant Shooter's Writings. Here's What They Say.

Episode Date: June 12, 2024

Today on the Matt Walsh Show, the Daily Wire has obtained several pages of the Covenant shooter's writings. I am going to show you those pages today. There has been an effort, up to the highest levels of government, to hide this information from us. As more and more information about the shooter, her mindset, and her potential motivations comes out, the reason for all the secrecy becomes clear. Also, an activist judge strikes down Florida's law banning gender transitions for minors, using the flimsiest reasoning imaginable. Joe Biden gives a gun control speech where he lies three times and babbles incoherently--and that was all in just one minute of the speech. And, the birdwatching community has been engaged in a yearslong quest to confront the history of racism and slavery among birdwatchers. We'll have an update on that very important story, and much more today on the Matt Walsh Show.   Ep.1385   - - -  Watch the full episode of today's show for free on DailyWire+: https://bit.ly/3KAFAdM Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Today on Matt Wall Show, the Daily Wire has obtained several pages of the Covenant Shooter's writings. I'm going to show you those pages today. There has been an effort up to the highest levels of government to hide this information from us. And as more and more information about the shooter, her mindset and her potential motivations comes out, the reason for all the secrecy becomes clear. Also, an activist judge strikes down Florida's law banning gender transitions for minors using the flimsyest reasoning imaginable. Joe Biden gives a gun control speech where he lies three times and babbles incoherently. And that is all in just one minute of the speech. and the birdwatching community has been engaged in a years-long quest to confront the history of racism and slavery among birdwatchers. We'll have an update on that very important story and much more today on the Matt Wall Show.

Over the past year, Joe Biden's FBI has offered two separate justifications for refusing to release the writings of the trans-identifying mass shooter who killed three nine-year-old children and three adults at a Christian school in Nashville. The FBI's first justification, the one that they used in court, was that releasing the documents might interfere with a pending law enforcement investigation. Now, that justification never made any sense because the shooter is dead, and to this day, the FBI hasn't named any additional suspects in the shooting. At the same time, in private communications with authorities in Tennessee, the FBI outlined a different rationale. They warned that releasing the shooter's writings would lead to conspiracy theories and false narratives. Never mind the fact that the FBI's job isn't to police false narratives, and if it were,

the FBI would have raided every corporate media office and arrested nearly every mainstream journalist and news anchor in the country by now. The point is that, according to Biden's government, for one reason or another, you're not supposed to see what this shooter wrote. If she had been a white supremacist, of course, you'd see it instantly. But in this case, you're not allowed to see it at all. At least that's the way that they would like to have it. Meanwhile, Vanderbilt University Medical Center, which reportedly treated the shooter for psychological

problems for more than 20 years, has refused to answer basic questions about what drugs the shooter may have been taking, what kind of treatment she may have been receiving. What this means is that from the health establishment to the federal government, the privacy interests of a mass murderer are getting priority. The safety of the public is being ignored, and the truth, the full story, whatever it is, is being suppressed. Now, wherever you fall on the political spectrum, this is a national scandal. The point of transparency is not to demonize anyone who may be suffering for mental illness or to quote unquote marginalize any particular group of people. The point of transparency in this case is to give the public the information it has a

right to know and to likely save people's lives in the process. It's to identify what's not working in the mental health treatment pipeline and to fix it. This is a matter of national importance, urgent importance, as it would seem that when it comes to the medical establishment's approach to mental health, there's quite a lot that is not working. And, To contrary to what the FBI said, it's the absence of transparency, the absence of it that leads to false narratives like the ones we've seen in the last year about the Covenant shooting. So that's what brings us to today. I'm going to exclusively show you several pages from the writings of the Covenant School Shooter. The Daily Wire obtained these documents, and now I will go through them for the first time on this show. The documents reveal obviously newsworthy information about the shooter's possible motivation.

Information that the government had no good faith basis for hiding from the public. But before I show you the documents, I want to make a few things clear. First of all, for people viewing this podcast on YouTube, you should know that on YouTube, more than other major platforms, it's difficult, if not basically, impossible to discuss sensitive and important topics like this. The sensors on YouTube are, as you may have heard, extremely overzealous, especially when it comes to any story relating to trans ideology and especially when it comes to this story in particular. If you saw my previous coverage of the Tennessee Stars reporting on the shooter's writings, you know that we had to cut the monologue from the YouTube broadcast last week entirely.

We're going to try to avoid cutting as much of it this time, but there's no way around it. If you want my unredacted full monologue, you'll probably have to go elsewhere. We post the podcast on Spotify, Apple, Twitter, Rumble, and of course the Daily Wires website and app. This is a situation completely outside of our control, but the good news is that you can still get the full monologue and all of the important information I'm going to relate to you. You just can't get it here if you're watching right now on YouTube. And finally, I wanted to note that some of the victim's families have made it clear that they don't want to see the shooter's writings or have them published. That's obviously understandable. Nobody can unimagin what they're going through.

And there are real concerns about glorifying or amplifying the words of a mass murderer. if I was in their shoes, I would probably feel as they do. Now, it's my personal opinion that there is a conspiracy to cover up the truth about this shooting and what led to it. But the families, obviously, are not a part of any conspiracy. They have their own totally understandable reasons for not wanting this stuff made public. I sympathize with them. Certainly don't want to contribute in any way to their suffering. The reason I'm going to show you these documents is that I honestly believe that the full truth could save lives.

Now, we still don't know the full truth. I'm not claiming to have the full truth right now, but we can get closer to it. Ultimately, as one court in Tennessee has already ruled, and as I'll explain shortly, the public interest in this case is clear and overwhelming. And with that in mind, we're going to go ahead with the story. I will note that we won't be monetizing this episode.

I want to simply relay this information. We're not looking to make any money off of it. We just want to get the information out. So the first entry that we've obtained in the shooter's handwritten writings reads as follows. And this part is addressed to someone named Page. We don't know who that is, but in context, it may refer to a Nashville radio host who previously played basketball with the shooter in eighth grade and who reportedly called the authorities because the shooter messaged her on the day of the attack. Quoting from the shooter's writings, Dear Page, aren't parents manipulative. It's total ignorance

when parents step in and try to change their child's environment, make them go to youth group and force Christian friends in their life because the old ones were a bad influence, I can't effing stand that. Parents actually believe religion can change nature. That could explain why I don't practice religion anymore. Let kids think for themselves. Listening to parents does no damn good, but to mold their premature minds into a pre-formatted program like clones do. The very manipulative forms teams hate and rebel to. Kids are not robots. We are the future. That's how it's meant to be. Two idea, one mind, that's all nature needs. And the writing continues, quote,

You did life the way you wanted. It was 100% your heart's desire needs. No one else but you that planned it. Why I admire you so independent, so young, me young too, and what I desire to die and be with you. My ultimate plan thought from no one else but me. I am who I am. You are who we are.

Nature is pure. It's raw form. Close quote. Now, you might remember that when the shooting took place, there were some reports that the shooter may have had a personal motivation for attacking the Covenant School. Some people suggested without any evidence that the shooter might have been abused by somebody at the school, for example. But from these writings, that doesn't appear to be the case. And there's been no evidence to come out to support

that theory. That was, it would seem, a false narrative. But it wasn't the kind of false narrative that the FBI cared about. It's the kind of false narrative that could have been dispelled by releasing the documents. But once again, they kept them, which creates the false narratives. Instead, these documents are evidence that the shooter harbored a more general anti-Christian animus. She says, again, quote, parents actually believe religion can change nature. That could explain why I don't practice religion anymore, let kids think for themselves, listening to parents does no damn good. Now, immediately you can understand why the media, along with the highest levels of the FBI in the White House,

saw this document as radioactive. This is pretty much a verbatim recounting of what every major media outlet, a mainstream politician on the left has been saying for the past decade or more. And this is in addition to the writings from the shooter that Stephen Crowder released last year, in which she describes her own anti-white sentiments, referring to white people as little crackers with quote-unquote white privileges. Of course, that's a popular sentiment on the left these days. So is the idea that children can consent to hormones that cause sterilization,

puberty blockers that stunt bone development, even physical castration and other permanently disfiguring surgeries. So is the idea championed by BLM, that children don't need a stable nuclear family to thrive. And so is the idea that it's a felony to leave skid marks on a pride mural stenciled on the street, even as it's completely fine for arsonists to torch Christian churches just outside the White House gates. Now, you can call these beliefs what you want, anarcho, tyranny, Marxism, something else. It's what the left now believes. And it's the ideology that, based on these writings, seems to have driven a very troubled adult woman away from her

own family. That was her support system, which she obviously needed. The rest of the shooters' writings that we've obtained only reinforced that point. Fragments of these writings have been reported already by the Tennessee Star, but we can publish the full source documents today. This is from an entry dated March 11, 2023, just a few weeks before the shooting. In these documents, the shooter makes it very clear that she suffered severely from gender dysphoria. Now, I can't read all of this passage. It's too graphic, but on most platforms, you can see the document on your screen right now. There it is for you to see. For podcast listeners, it suffices to say that the shooter says that she swears to God that she's really a male. She goes into great detail about her sexual fantasies, including having sexual relations with a woman. This is a, it is a long and distressing description of her gender dysphoria. It's all right there, plain as day. And then she says something extremely revealing. Quote, having a brain like mine has its godliness, but also prone to making poor-ass decisions. On that one quote, you can see the direct contrast between the teachings of Christianity and the teachings of gender ideology.

Christians believe that people are made in the image and likeness of God. They also believe that God, not man, has divine power. But gender ideology proclaims the opposite. It teaches that man is capable of changing his nature, the snap of a finger, that people can be born in the wrong bodies and that gender clinics and prescription drugs can fix what would be then, I guess, God's mistakes. this is an ideology that is at its core antithetical to Christianity. Was it one of the reasons this shooter was motivated to kill Christians? And by the same token, why the White House and the FBI tried to cover up the shooter's writings? These are questions people have been asking since the shooting first happened.

They were always perfectly rational questions. People asking these questions, though, were condemned by the media and the government. And now we have the documents. And now there's all the more reason to be asking those questions. Remember, in the wake of this shooting, corporate media outlets and the White House press secretary both told you that the so-called trans community was the real victim here, even as Christian men, women, and children lay dead. That was all incidental, what we were told. They didn't want you to realize that, in her own words, the shooter described her disdained for religion very clearly

just before the shooting. There are other grievances in these documents along these lines. For example, in the document that shooter writes that she's upset that her new masculine identity apparently wasn't accepted on a job form at Instacard. She also says that she resents that she was never given puberty blockers, quote, the torture of being raised a girl. It was only until my early 20s, I finally found the answer that changing one's gender is possible. But this answer, as the shooter refers to it, apparently wasn't much of a solution. If anything, it apparently emboldened this lifelong psychiatric patient into committing an act of horrific violence. As the answer continues, the shooter also lashes out at her mother saying, quote,

what she believes, how she grew up conservatively, and that LGBTQ, especially transgender in her era, was an enigma nearly non-existent. Then she elaborates on this grievance, quote, pain of losing a daughter. That's not pain, that's selfishness. Just like any rest of the parents with that mindset, how could they not ever think of their own child suffering,

that they hate their gender so bad they cut and want to kill themselves? F parents like them who think of themselves first, and their preference of conservative religion. Gay S. make them believe that the child they're given should stay that way. Even if transgender treatment was discovered and tested during my time, I know how the situation would have turned out. My mother would not have paid assent. Children who were able to successfully take puberty blockers

and never enter torture puberty, but those little Fs don't know how good they effing have it. I'd kill to have parents who would let their child be happy, no matter how different it is to their viewpoint or don't agree or are scared of it. They're willing to listen to their children, not the other way around. I'd kill to have those resources. 2007 was the birth of puberty blockers and a newfound discovery for treatment of non-conforming transgender children. 2007 was when I was in the sixth grade.

She already hit me. Close quote. The shooter then goes on to graphically describe how she made a stuffed male doll have simulated intercourse with a stuffed girl doll who represented the dream girl, quote, unquote, that she wished to have in real life. Again, I can't read this out loud. It's very graphic, but the image is on the screen for those watching on a platform where they can see it. This very disturbing entry ends with the shooter saying that she was sexually aroused by what she did with the dolls, concluding that she's a, quote-unquote, pervert who was too much time on her fantasies. And just a few days ago, the Tennessee Star reported on what those fantasies may have entailed, quote, retired Metro and Nashville Police Department, Lieutenant Garrett Davidson, told Michael Patrick Leahy, CEO and editor-in-chief of the Tennessee Star that the Covenant School killer, received treatment from the Vanderbilt Psychiatric Hospital,

where professionals failed to report her violent fantasies to law enforcement. Davidson wasn't involved in the shooting investigation in his official capacity, but he's seen more documents as part of the probe due to a leak than we have. According to Davidson, quote, my impression from what I was seeing in some documents is that the therapist had actually made a forced committal to them to get treatment for the shooter. I assume Vanderbilt's psych attempted to render mental health treatment, psychological treatment, but as far as I know,

I don't think they reported out and said that there were supposed to, specific ideations with a plan and they didn't notify the police, that's where I think the public would want to know if they had done that and then had detectives received that information, looked and saw that she had obtained firearms or might have possessed them, had a reason to believe that and then conducted a search warrant, it's reasonable to believe, now we have the benefit of hindsight that maybe these firearms could have been seized. Now we reached out to Vanderbilt University Medical Center about this report. We wanted to know if there was any truth to the claim that they failed to notify law enforcement of the shooter's violent fantasies.

We also wanted to know whether the shooter, who had been in their care for a very long time, since she was the only child, was receiving any kind of talk therapy or hormone therapy related to her gender dysphoria. The exact drugs she was taking when she lashed out violently would seem to be a detail that is very important to the public, especially to any parents who may have their kids on the same drugs. So wherever you stand on the issue of trans ideology, these are critical questions. But Vanderbilt hasn't responded to us. They've also refused to respond to the Tennessee Star, and that tells you a lot.

Think of it this way. Even if Vanderbilt had to respect HIPAA laws here, even if they were barred by law from disclosing any details about their treatment of the shooter, even if those regulations still remain in place after a patient dies, even if we accept that for the sake of argument, you'd think they at least would say as much. They could put out a statement explaining that a law passed by Congress prevents them from sharing this obviously relevant information. Information that other medical providers and the public could use to help prevent future attacks like this. This woman was reportedly a patient of Vanderbilt's for many years. What treatment did they give her? What treatments did, if any, did they fail to give her? The answers to those questions could save lives, but Vanderbilt remains quiet.

For whatever reason, they're refusing to say anything at all. All we know is that, as a Tennessee Star reported based on the police search warrant that the shooter has been, have been described SSRIs. That's all we have. Now, you hate to think that there might be ideological reasons for this response or lack thereof, but at this point, it's hard not to wonder. You might remember that it was just a couple of years ago that I exposed a Vanderbilt physician on camera saying that she was proud of her new gender clinic at Vanderbilt because it made the hospital a lot of money. And that revelation led to the closure of Vanderbilt's gender clinic for kids, as well as legislation in Tennessee and all over the country. But

Vanderbilt, as far as I can tell, never fired the physician who made those remarks. And now they're ignoring the media completely after a trans-identifying individual, someone who had been in their care for more than two decades, committed mass murder. Now, in response to this story, a lot of people will probably say, well, so what if this person identified as transgender? She was clearly mentally ill, and mentally ill people come in all shapes and sizes. Some are transgender and some aren't. And you know what?

That's true. Nobody would deny that. But it still raises the question of whether this shooter's transgender status affected her treatment in any way. We all know that institutions like Vanderbilt generally affirm patients quote unquote gender identities. And so this brings what is to my mind perhaps the biggest question of the most urgent importance. And it's this. did Vanderbilt's commitment to quote unquote affirmation in any way interfere with their ability to give this person the treatment that she needed? Is that why she apparently wasn't referred for involuntary commitment?

Is that why she wasn't barred from buying and possessing firearms? We don't know. But we need to know. I mean, it's truly a matter of life and death. Unfortunately, we might have more. answers soon. This cannot be the end of this story, and we have reason to believe that it won't be. There's a very real possibility that within a matter of days, we could receive more excerpts of the shooters' writings, and the court fight to release the entire manifesto in the meantime

continues. Whatever that manifesto contains, there's no chance at this point that any mainstream institution, not Vanderbilt, not the FBI, certainly not the White House, we'll tell the truth about it. And that's why the only solution, the only way forward, is transparency. It's well past time that we stopped treating these writings as a state secret. To prevent more loss of life based on everything we've seen, and more importantly, what we haven't seen. We have no other choice. Now let's get to our five headlines. The Post-Bolennial reports, on Tuesday, a federal judge struck down a law from Florida that bars minors from getting puberty blockers or cross-sex hormones for sex treatment

interventions of apparent consent to treatment. He compared the law to discrimination against minorities and women. Senior judge Robert Hinkle stated in his opinion that Florida went too far by barring transidentified minors from being prescribed puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones if they have parental consent. Hinkle, who was nominated by Democratic President Bill Clinton, quoted Martin Luther King, Jr. And compared getting the treatment as a minor to women and minorities fighting for civil rights. Hinkle said in the over 100-page decision,

Some transgender opponents invoke religion to support their position, just as some once invoked religion to support their racism or misogyny. Transgender opponents are, of course, free to hold their beliefs, but they're not free to discriminate against transgender individuals just for being transgender. In time, discrimination against transgender individuals will diminish, just as racism and misogyny had diminished. To paraphrase a civil rights advocate from an earlier time, the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.

Governor Ron DeSantis blasted the ruling saying Through their elected representatives, the people of Florida acted to protect children in the state, the court was wrong to override their wishes of it we've seen here in Florida, the United Kingdom, and across Europe. There's no quality evidence to support the chemical and physical mutilation of children. These procedures do permanent life-altering damage to children, and history will look back on this fad in horror.

And of course, he's right about that. I have to tell you that I sort of appreciate this ruling. I disagree with it, obviously. by disagree, I think it's totally deranged, both morally and intellectually, not to mention legally. But I appreciate it because, for one thing, it just brings us closer to the Supreme Court ruling on this issue. And I feel very confident that, and maybe I don't want to jinx it, but I feel very

confident that the current makeup of the Supreme Court will come to the right conclusion on this. I don't see the Supreme Court when the time comes, and it will eventually, I don't see the ruling that parents have a constitutional right to have their children sterilized. I don't see that. But I appreciate the ruling also because it's so flimsy, so weak, so clearly ideologically motivated that it will not only be easily overturned, but it just continues to expose the gender ideologues for who they are. I mean, it's that ludicrous. It's hard to even know where to begin, and this article only gives a brief snippet of the judge's ruling.

The New York Times article on this ruling has other snippets just as absurd like this. Reading now from the decision, the state of Florida can regulate as needed, but cannot flatly deny transgender individuals safe and effective medical treatment, treatment with medications routinely provided to others with the state's full approval so long as the purpose is not to support the patient's transgender identity. safe and effective, says who? There's a reason, as Governor DeSantis alluded to, there's a reason these treatments are being banned across the world, often by governments that are otherwise very sympathetic to the leftist cause and the LGBT cause more broadly.

That's because there is no reliable evidence that these drugs, when given to minors for this purpose, are safe or effective, and lots of evidence to the contrary, not to mention just basic common sense that should already reveal the truth of this. And besides, effective at what exactly? What are the drugs supposed to be effectively doing? Can you explain that? They're not effective at changing anyone's biology. They're not effective at changing males into females. So this is totally wrong, but let's go back to that bit from the, from the, that the post-millennial quoted. Some transgender opponents invoke religion to support their position, just as some once invoked religion to support their racism,

misogyny. Transgender opponents are, of course, free to hold their beliefs. To paraphrase the civil rights advocate from earlier time, the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice. So this is just full on undisguised left-wing activism. It's not a legal decision at all. Like what you read there is indistinguishable from what you're, might read in an editorial on Pink News or something. Let's start with the fact that the transgender opponents, quote unquote, meaning in this case, people who are opposed to transitioning minors, those people, us, we actually don't invoke religion as our primary argument.

I very rarely hear that. I rarely hear anyone on our side of this debate do that. when two people are arguing about whether it's a good idea to give quote-unquote puberty blockers to minors or whether it's a good idea to perform cosmetic double mastectomies of minors, I rarely hear the person on the right side of that debate. I rarely hear them hear them say, well, you shouldn't do that because God says it's bad. Now, it's true that God does say that it's bad. It's a true statement.

But we don't need to invoke religion at that point of the discussion for the the same reason that we don't need to invoke religion to explain that three times three equals nine. Now, I mean, you could, but it's, it's, that doesn't need to be your first argument. In fact, it's usually the other side that brings religion into the conversation. This judge is, this judge does it right here. He has no evidence-based argument, no science, no scientific argument. He has only a moral argument. It's a completely unhinged moral argument,

but that's all he has. And so, and he is the one, which we find so often with the left, that when they are arguing against so-called social conservatives on one of the so-called social issues, they will always accuse us, of bringing the Bible into it.

Not that it's wrong to bring the Bible into a conversation, but the point is that they will do it much quicker, actually, generally than we will in these conversations. And in this case, we also get the quote for Martin Luther King Jr. By the way, how do you think that any of the civil rights leaders of the mid-20th century or before, how do you think any of them would feel about puberty blockers for children?

Is there any indication that any of them believed that gender was fluid? If Martin Luther King Jr. was around today and you asked him, is gender fluid? What do you think he would say to that? And if there was that belief among the civil rights leaders

of history, then why didn't they ever say it. Like it never came up one time. They never mentioned it. All right, Biden gave a gun control speech yesterday, and as Greg Price on Twitter documents, he told three lies and then babbled incoherently, all in the span of one minute. The speech was longer than one minute, but it took only one minute to include all of that. Let's watch this. They are so damn important. We need you. We need you to overcome the unrelenting opposition of the gun lobby, gun manufacturers, so many politicians when they oppose common sense gun legislation.

I used to be a law when I was no longer the vice president. I became a professor at the University of Pennsylvania. Before that, I taught a constitutional law class, and so I talked to the Second Amendment. There's never been a time that says you can own anything you want. You couldn't own a cannon during the Civil War. No, I'm serious. Think about it. How much do you hear this phrase?

The blood of liberty. Quash of dough. Give me a break. Seriously. And by the way, if they want to think to take on government, if we get out of line, which they're talking again about, well, guess what? They need F-15s. So I just want to give you the transcript of that last piece.

He said, I think he said, how much have you heard this phrase? The blood of liberty, washed of those, give me a break. No, I mean it, seriously. And by the way, if they want to think they, this to take on government if we get out of line, which there's talking again about, guess what? they need F-15s. That's what he said. The only way that we even know what this vegetable is trying to say in, you know,

is that we've heard him say something similar when he was slightly more coherent. So we can sort of piece it together. So what he's trying to say, as far as we can decipher, is that the Second Amendment supporters are idiots who think that they can overthrow the government, but they can't because they don't have F-15s. And, you know, there are a lot of reasons why that argument is both false and irrelevant. But let's just, if that's true, if all these Second Amendment supporters are just like, they want to be revolutionaries who talk a big game, but like they're, they're just silly.

You can laugh at them. They don't have F-15s. Well, then what's with all the panicking over January? I mean, I thought you said that democracy, our very way of life, our system of government, was hanging in the balance when a group of unarmed, largely out of shape middle-aged Trump supporters trespassed in the Capitol. So they almost overthrew the government with no weapons at all. and yet we would also need F-15s to do that.

So which is it? But you can't ask this guy for coherence, of course. And before he descended into unintelligible gibberish, he, of course, lied. Everything before that was a lie. He lied about being a UPenn professor. He lied about teaching a constitutional law class. He lied and said that you couldn't own canons when the Second Amendment was written. well actually you could

and not only that but you can actually I believe you can own cannons now you could you could buy one now it's not a very practical method of self-defense like I wouldn't use if there was a home intruder or something I wouldn't I wouldn't use it for that

but I really wouldn't use it for any like practical application but I think it would be really cool to have one anyway not saying you shouldn't get one So none of that was true. He said a bunch of stuff that isn't true, and then he swerved from there. It's like the only thing you could understand that he was saying was a lie, and then the rest of it was totally incoherent. All right, Daily Wire has this report.

As Pride Month continues, several people have been charged with allegedly defacing pride flags painted on streets with tire marks, and some critics have even accused them of a hate crime. in early February of Florida man was accused of deliberately doing multiple burnouts with his pickup truck in a Delray Beach intersection that was painted in rainbow colors. The incident was caught on surveillance video, which police released. She was a pickup truck with LED underbody lights and an American flag attached to the back, leaving tire marks on the intersection's pride paint while making a hard left after dark. In that case, a 19-year-old named Dylan Brewer surrendered to authorities after they searched for a search for him. for a week. There was a manhunt

for a week to track down the kid who took too sudden of a left turn on a pride flag. Which maybe, like, there's a certain symbolism there. Maybe he was trying to make some kind of a point about, you know, hard left turn, pride flag. I think there's,

I want to put words in his mouth, but you might have been, you might have been making, and I made the point before, too, that you could argue, and I think that some of these people that are being arrested for leaving creative designs on pride flags, I think they should argue. Only if it's true, I would never encourage anyone to, you know, make false arguments. But they could argue that they, in fact, are just trying to add designs to the pride flag. That, in fact, you know, the pride flag, It's a democratic process.

And every single year, there are more designs added to the pride flag. It looks busier and busier and more chaotic every single year. And so these might be people that are just trying to add their own designs. And they don't mean any harm by it. It's creative expression, you could say. But that wasn't the only case. The Palm Beach County Human Rights Council declared Brewer's action should be considered a hate crime. Earlier this month, three teenagers were arrested in charge with a felony for leaving scooter

marks on the pride flag painted on a street in Washington. Prosecutors demanded a $15,000 bond for the teens. Police used surveillance footage from the intersection to find the suspects. The 19-year-old suspect was charged with malicious mischief with a hate crime bias. He was accused of shouting, FU, and then a gay slur at a passerby. One witness said, we see that you have done this. this thing, people don't just go out and do that without intention. You don't destroy symbols without intention behind it. Lyme scooters, which rents the scooters the teens were using,

said it would be taking immediate action against the perpetrators. Now, they've got Lyme scooters coming after them. All of us at Lyme condemn these vile acts in no uncertain terms. A new Washington state law makes it a hate crime to deface public installations with the intent of intimidating a protected group. Okay, so. that's the important stipulation there. Because there's a lot of defacing and vandalizing of public installations and monuments and statues and that sort of things. A lot of that has happened, as we know. Is any of that, does any of that qualify as a hate crime?

No, because the goal in those cases is not to intimidate a protected group. Now, I think it's obvious to most intelligent people what's happening here. They keep making these pride flag crosswalks, and the crosswalks keep ending up with tire marks on them. Because they are crosswalks. They're on the street. Where cars go. They're in that exact spot. But that's where they put them.

And then they hunt down the perpetrators and charge them with hate crimes. And it's kind of rinse and repeat over and over again. So it's obvious that the point of the crosswalks. walk is exactly this. Right? Like, this is the point. It's like a LGBT version of a Venus flytrap. It's bait. And they put it down there and they wait for someone to drive across it aggressively, whether they're intentionally or not. And then they get to, you know, root out some more hate, punish more backwards, bigoted people, even teenagers, especially teenagers, teenagers on scooters. So, you know, as always, I think some people on the right kind of miss the point with these things.

And you hear some people on the right say, well, how could you be so sensitive or offended by tire marks on a crosswalk? Come on, don't you know that when you put something on the street, it's going to end up with tire marks on it? Yeah, of course they know that. That's the point. That's why they're doing it. It's why it's there. And also keep in mind that these are the same. same people who otherwise want to have the police less involved in things. We just had a story

about a town, I think it was in Massachusetts, if I remember correctly, where they are replacing cops with social workers for some 911 calls. And we know the left has been talking about that for years now, threatening to do that. And in some jurisdictions, they are actually doing that now. They're implementing that. Because they want to de-emphasize the police. They want to defund the police. They want, you know, they want to get the police less involved, except for here. You know, in a case where they are here deliberately setting up situations for the cops to get involved, get involved with, by the way, nonviolent offenders who have committed a victimless crime. And it's easy for it to be a victimless crime because it's not a crime at all.

So in this case, they want to send the cops out and, you know, you know, Once again, if we're missing the point, it's easy to call that, to make the mistake of calling that a double standard. But it's not a double standard, as I'm always reminding you. This is the standard is very clear. The standard is clear, actually. It's a very clear standard that they do apply very consistent. And the standard is that they matter and you don't. That's the standard.

Now, we could disagree with the standard. I certainly do. but that's the standard. I mean, we heard it in that law in Washington. You can't deface public installations if you're doing it in a way that is going to be offensive to protected groups. The very idea of having protected groups

because you hear that and you think, are there groups that aren't protected? Are you saying that they're... What do I mean protected? Aren't all groups of humans who are citizens of the country? shouldn't they all be protected by the law? What do you mean protected? Well, the answer is that no.

Actually, all groups are not, certainly not protected equally, not protected in the same way, not protected to the same extent. And so they could not be more clear about what the actual standard is. They're making it plainest day. Let's get to the daily cancellation.

In November of last year, I covered the ongoing years-long crusade by the birdwatching community to decolonize their hobby and renounce slavery and racism. This is very important because until the Birdwatch community embarked on this quest, the general public wasn't sure where Birdwatchers stood on the issue of slavery and racism. Are they for it? Are they against it? These are the questions people had.

In fact, many people assume that they must be for those things. If you saw someone staring through binoculars at a sparrow or whatever, you would think to yourself, I bet that person support slavery. In fact, I bet he actually owns slaves. That's what you would think. Or maybe that was just me. But inside the world of ornithology, everything changed on May 25th, 2020. That was infamously the date of George Floyd's overdose.

More importantly, for the birdwatching community, though, May 25th, 2020 was also the date of Amy Cooper's mildly unpleasant interaction with a black birdwatcher named Christian in New York Central Park. As you may remember, Christian demanded that Amy Cooper leash her dog. She refused. Then he tried to coax her dog away with treats, free. freaked her out. She called the police. One thing led to another, and birdwatching had its very own, ready-made George Floyd moment. The need for equity and unlearning in the name of racial justice was instantly clear to everybody in the hobby. To that end, as I covered last year,

the birdwatching community began doing the work, as they say. They changed the names of dozens of birds, including, for example, the Scots Oriole and the McCown's Longspur. Apparently, no one could even look at a Scots Oriole or McCown's Longspur and think of anything other than white supremacy and, you know, the trail of tears. As one birdwatcher commented unironically at the time, quote, the tendrils of all social justice have reached to the point of bird names.

I know that when I heard that they were changing the name of the McCown's Longspur, I thought to myself, thank God. Now I can rest at night. I can finally sleep. But it turns out that this was just the beginning of the hobby's quest for inclusion.

That brings us to the latest update in this story that the whole world has followed. closely following, and by the whole world, I mean really just me for some reason. Now various chapters of the National Audubon Society all over the country have embarked on a new frontier of social justice and anti-racism. They're not just changing the names of birds anymore. Instead, they're also changing the names of their own organizations. That's because although John James Audubon contributed more to the study of birds than anyone who's ever lived, he apparently owned slaves at some point or something. So his name is now verboten. To be clear, the National Audubon

itself isn't changing the name, but the local chapters are doing so while still taking the National Audubon Society's money and resources, which is a convenient trick, not a particularly original one, as it turns out. But in virtually every case, each of these local chapters is currently rebranding from the Autobon Society to a Bird Alliance. In the name of diversity and anti-racism, they're going from Audubon societies to Bird Alliances, which of course sounds like the lamest imaginable version of the Justice League in some alternate universe. populated exclusively by nerds, but that's what they're going with, bird alliances. And they're playing it completely straight.

The leaders of these ex-Odobon Society chapters have spent the last few months appearing on local news channels making the case for the name change. For example, here's the leader of the now-defunct Tahoma Audubon Society explaining why their new name is the Tahoma Bird Alliance. Watch. Stewart, you are the executive director of Tahoma Bird Alliance. Yes, let's say it one more time. Say it with me. Dahoma Bird Alliance. No longer is it the name that shall not be mentioned.

Yes, this is a great thing to do because the old name created barriers. Well see, and that's just, I remember when you were sitting on the couch when we just heard talking about this. And the forbearance of people of color and what the person who founded that organization is, what the person who founded that organization is, founded that organization, the activities and the thoughts and the philosophies and the language was really in its infancy, hate and racism. And so I think that sometimes that's hard for white people to understand because when I used to think about the Pto Homa Audubon Society, I would think of burders, I would think of ducks unlimited, I would think of people with funny hats. I would never, I never knew the roots of it until you

told me. So they can't even bring themselves to say the name Audubon. He's the guy who must not be named. If you have to speak his name, you must do so in a hushed whisper. Presumably, Audubon will be completely airbrushed out of history books and scientific journals in short order as well. And somehow that hard-hitting interview still left a basic question on answer, which is, why exactly can't you use the guy's name, even if he was a parable, bad racist person, which, I don't think he was, what exactly does change in the name of a birdwatching society accomplish in practical terms. Well, in another interview, the leader of Portland Audubon, now known as the Bird Alliance of Oregon, attempted to provide an explanation. These people are, you know,

at least they're capable of saying Audubon's name out loud, so there's that. Watch. And one of the things we noticed is, as a barrier to some of the inviting folks in, was right in our name, Audubon. What is wrong with the Audubon name? Well, there's nothing wrong with the Audubon name in particular. But it's named after a person. John James Audubon, was actually a slaveholder. He bought and sold slaves. Other people did. And you say because of the name, because of what it represented to so many people of color, you weren't getting them to be interested or excited in what you did. Well, yes, it's a good point because sometimes a barrier is only visible to the folks that it impacts. Right, sure. And in that regard, when we know

that that name was presenting a barrier, when we want to have more people involved in the environmental movement, the more voices that are there, it's much more effective. It was actually a really important thing. He just said unintentionally, but a barrier is only, sometimes a barrier is only visible to those it impacts. Well, no, actually, you can come to the opposite conclusion. Like, if you want to do something and you're complaining that there's a barrier preventing you from doing it, but that barrier is not visible to anyone else,

So your point, you're saying, I want to do this, but look, I can't because of this barrier. And everybody else is just like walking through and saying, what do you mean, there's no barrier? I don't know. That means the problem is you. That means that there is no barrier. That's a really good indication that, in fact, it's all in your imagination. But anyway, he's basically suggesting that there were a lot of people out there in Portland who really wanted to join their local birdwatching group.

But then they saw that it was named after the single most important birdwatcher to ever live. Some would say probably the only important one. And then they decided that it just couldn't be a part of it. of that. And instead of celebrating the fact that complete lunatics like this had decided to self-select out of the organization, the Portland Audubon Society decided to change their name to accommodate these people while retaining all the other benefits of their association with the National Audubon Society, of course. But there are other reasons for changing the name of these chapters. And my extensive research, I came across the John Wesley Powell's chapter of the Audubon Society,

which has also just changed this name. And they're now the Grand Prairie Bird Alliance. Here's their justification for the switch. How much of a barrier was the John James Audubon name to inclusion? Yes, he was a slave trader. Yes, he was a racist. Yes, he killed birds that he then arranged and painted. So that's not a terribly great message for today's audiences. But he did popularize the love of birds.

It's interesting because I think thanks to the information age, you can do some deep research on origins. Where did things come from? How did they come about? How did they become mainstream? I think for us in a more pragmatic, and maybe this is a sort of a Midwestern perspective, we were already struggling with Audubon, with Adi, with Autobahn, T, and the Speedway in Germany. So I think the way in which natural history, conservation history, biology, a lot of facts that I'm 47, year old woman walking around with a college degree and a master's, I probably couldn't tell you that much about Audubon or his origins. And so we were already struggling with, and this is what's happening at the national level, relevance. Now, first of all, I hope you appreciate the sacrifice

I made here. I had to sit and listen to multiple interviews with Birdwatchers in order to do this monologue. Now, you might say that I didn't have to do that. In fact, I don't have to be talking about this at all. That's true enough, but stop changing the subject. Anyway, this woman isn't really upset about racism or slavery. She's bothered by the fact that Audubon's name, Sounds like the highway system in Germany called the Autobahn. This is a big problem in the community. They kept confusing their local Autobahn society with a German highway. Therefore, we now have the Grand Prairie Bird Alliance.

Racism may not be solved, but at least no more Illinois residents will fly to Germany and drive on the highway when they really just wanted to see some birds. These are small victories, but victories nonetheless. Yeah, these victories have not come without a cost. All of these sudden name changes are also causing quite a bit of discord within the birdwashing community. It's tearing them apart, really. And that's especially evident in the state of Wisconsin, where recently there was major drama between two birdwatching groups. On one side of dispute, you have a group called Badgerland Birding, which, as you know, has operated for several years.

On the other hand, you have the Madison Audubon Society. The problem started with the Madison Audubon Society in the name of anti-racism, changed its name abruptly to the Badgerland Bird Alliance. Now you have the Badgerland Birding Group and the Badgerland Bird Alliance group, each competing for the same turf. Here's one more clip. I promise it's the last one. Watch. Hey, everybody.

This is Derek and Ryan from Badgilland Birding. We want to start off by saying we really did not want to make this video. We've been holding off for a while in hopes that we could come to some kind of agreements based on some things that have happened. But basically, another organization, formerly Madison Audubon,

we feel that they're trying to steal our name or at least step on our toes with our own. name. They have changed from Madison Audubon to the Badgerland Bird Alliance, which if you've been following us sounds super similar to our name and what we've done. So anyway, you get the idea. What, I mean, but what a catastrophe. Apparently now there are people signing up for the Badgerland Bird Alliance who thought they were signing up for the Badgerland Birding Group and vice versa. And so lawyers are getting called and feelings are getting hurt. The worst part is no one's watching the birds. It's total mayhem in the Wisconsin

and birding community. And this is the state of anti-racist efforts in the birdwatching world, just about seven months after I last checked in on them. At this rate, it won't be long until the various birdwatching groups have descended into gang violence. I know a lot of you, you know, think that this story doesn't matter. You're saying, Matt, why are you still talking about this? Why did you ever talk about it? Well, how will you feel when birdwatchers are at war? Think of all the birds that might get caught in the crossfire. And that's why I'll continue to monitor the ongoing crusade to decolonize ornithology. maybe we'll have an update in another seven months. Every seven months we'll do. It'll be a tradition.

Until then, because of its increasingly neurotic and doomed quest to engage in some of the weirdest virtue signaling we've ever seen, the entire birdwatching community is today once again canceled. That'll do it for the show today. Thanks for watching. Thanks for listening. Talk to you tomorrow. Have a great day. Godspeed.