The Matt Walsh Show - Ep. 1539 - Democrats Have Entered Panic Mode As RFK Sets Out To Make America Healthy Again

Episode Date: February 19, 2025

Today on the Matt Walsh Show, with RFK Jr. confirmed as HHS Secretary, we finally have someone in a position of authority who is willing to investigate all of the psychiatric drugs that have been prescribed to millions of Americans, starting with antidepressants. Also, Trump makes the first major mistake of his presidency by signing an executive order expanding access to IVF. And a couple of weird Democrats in Ohio have proposed a law banning men from having sex unless they intend to conceive a child. This is supposed to make some kind of point about abortion laws, but it actually proves the opposite case.   Click here to join the member-exclusive portion of my show: https://bit.ly/4bEQDy6   Ep.1539   - - -   DailyWire+:   Don’t just watch CPAC—be part of it LIVE with Daily Wire Backstage this Thursday night, February 20, on DailyWire+!   "Identity Crisis" tells the stories the mainstream media won’t. Stream the full film now, only on DailyWire+: https://bit.ly/3C61qVU   Get your Matt Walsh flannel here: https://bit.ly/3EbNwyj   - - -   Today's Sponsors:   Balance of Nature - Go to https://balanceofnature.com and use promo code WALSH for 35% off your first order PLUS get a free bottle of Fiber and Spice.   ExpressVPN - Go to https://expressvpn.com/walsh and find out how you can get 4 months of ExpressVPN free!   Momentous - Ready to start living on purpose? Visit https://livemomentous.com and use code WALSH for 20% off your order today.   - - -   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

Today on Matt Wall Show with RFK Jr. confirmed as HHS Secretary, we will finally have someone in a position of authority who's willing to investigate all the psychiatric drugs that are prescribed to millions of Americans, starting with antidepressants. Also, Trump makes the first major mistake of his presidency by signing an executive order expanding access to IVF. And a couple of weird Democrats in Ohio have proposed a law banning men from having sex unless they intend to conceive a child. It's supposed to make some kind of point about abortion laws, but it actually proves the opposite case. Talk about all that and more today on the Matt Wall Show. Being a husband, father, and host to my own show means life never slows down. Imagine try and eat 31 different fruits and vegetables every day. Sounds miserable and time-consuming.

But with balance of nature, fruits of veggies, there's never been a more convenient dietary supplement to ensure you get a wide variety of fruits of vegetables every day with 31 different whole fruit and vegetable ingredients. Balance of nature takes fruits and vegetables and freeze-drys them, turns them into a powder, and puts them in a capsule. You take your fruit and veggie capsule every day, and then your body knows what to do with them. Go to Bouncingature.com and use promo code Walsh for 35% off your first order as a preferred customer.

Plus, get a free bottle of fiber and spice. That's Bouncingnature.com promo code Walsh. Imagine that we're back in the late 1980s or early 1990s, and you're feeling depressed, and nobody wants to talk to you. So you pay a psychiatrist to listen to your problems, but even after talking things out with your shrink, you're still not feeling great, and all hope seems lost. Then the shrink tells you not to despair,

because you have an opportunity to participate in a clinical trial for a new class of drug that has a potential to cure all of your symptoms called selective serotonin re-uptake inhibitors or SSRIs. And if you enter the trial, you have a chance of getting the new SSRI drug or you can get a placebo that does nothing. But you're told it's a win-win. You know, if you participate in the clinical trial, big pharma will get some more data and whether this new class of drug actually works and you have a chance of being cured.

If you're not cured, then in all likelihood, the worst case scenario is, you know, you know, it's not a big deal. Either you get a placebo and nothing changes, or you get the real drug, which is relatively modest side effects like dry mouth, nausea, dizziness, and so on, in exchange for enduring those side effects, your depression might go away. So what do you have to lose? Well, this was the process that drug companies used to convince the world that SSRIs worked. After running a bunch of double-blind clinical trials, they found that people who took the SSRIs ultimately reported that they felt better than people who received the placebo. And therefore, we were told that the whole serotonin theory of depression must be true. After all, when people took SSRIs and had more serotonin in their brains, their depression went away.

People who took the sugar pill didn't do as well, so there you have it. Science wins again. But there's a major problem with this whole methodology. And it's a problem that somehow didn't occur to any of the media outlets or physicians who pushed SSRIs for many decades. And you might have to think about it for a few minutes, but eventually it becomes obvious. Here's the issue. In practice, these clinical trials were not actually double-blind studies. The vast majority of patients were able to break blind, as they say in the industry,

and that means they were able to figure out whether they got the real SSRI or the placebo, which destroys the whole study. And that's because in most cases, the patients who got the real drug very quickly noticed that they were experiencing some of the side effects. After all, if you take a pill and you start experiencing dry mouth or nausea or something like that, then you'll probably conclude that you're taking active medication. And that's exactly what happened in many of these trials. In fact, one study conducted about researchers at Columbia says that 89% of participants correctly guessed

that they were on the SSRI, which is an extremely high number for a clinical trial. Now, you can probably see the issue, hopefully. If the studies aren't really double-blind, then we have no way of knowing if the SSRIs actually improved people's minds. It's quite possible that these patients were actually feeling better because they thought they were taking a wonder drug. And because we're talking about people's emotional state, which is very fickle and highly suggestible, if you tell them they're taking a wonder drug, that will make them feel better, a lot of people will just feel better because you told them that they would. And they convinced themselves that it was working, so they told the therapist that they were improving. This is commonly referred to as the placebo effect, of course, and the only way to defeat it, particularly when you're trying to assess the effectiveness of psychoactive drugs, is with double-blind studies.

But that didn't really happen with SSRIs. And this is not some crackpot theory, by the way. A few years ago, a researcher at Harvard named Irving Kirsch found that, quote, analysis of the published data and the unpublished data that were hidden by drug companies reveals that most, if not all of the benefits are due to the placebo effect. The relatively small differences between drug and placebo and antidepressant trials are at least in part due to breaking blind and discerting that one is in the drug group

because of the side effects produced by the drug. Now, Kirsch goes on to suggest that instead of SSRIs, maybe all patients to just be given a placebo. After all, based on the FDA's data, less than 45% of SSRI trials showed a statistically significant benefit of the SSRI over a plastic. placebo, and the placebo, of course, has no side effects. But as we all know, there's no money in

prescribing sugar pills. So instead, doctors in the pharmaceutical industry pushed SSRIs. Based on these garbage clinical trials, which fall apart under the slimmest possible scrutiny, the use of SSRIs among teenagers and adults in this country increased by almost 400 percent from the early 1990s to 2006. And it kept going up. By 2014, one in ten adults, was filling an SSRI prescription. From 2015 to 2021, SSRI use increased by another 35%. So we're talking about tens of millions of prescriptions here.

And meanwhile, the number of Americans suffering from depression has only kept increasing. According to Gallup in 2023, the percentage of the U.S. adults who reported having been diagnosed with depression at some point in their lifetime reached 29%,

nearly 10 percentage points higher than in 2015. So, in other words, we are more depressed than ever, and at the same time, we're taking more antidepressants than ever. And if antidepressants are actually working, then you should see that trend going in the opposite direction. But it's not. Now, these prescriptions have continued even after

one of the most prominent medical journals on the planet admitted that actually doctors no longer think that low serotonin levels are linked to depression. In other words, if these drugs actually work, then no one can really explain why. quoting from the journal molecular psychiatry our comprehensive review of the major strands of research on serotonin show there is no convincing evidence that depression is associated with

or caused by lower serotonin concentrations or activity most studies found no evidence of reduced serotonin activity in people with depression compared to people without this review suggests that the huge research effort based on the serotonin hypothesis has not produced convincing evidence of a biochemical basis to depression I'll say that again. This review suggests that the Hughes Research effort based on the serotonian hypothesis has not produced convincing evidence of a biochemical basis to depression.

This was a paper published in the summer of 2022 by one of the top journals in the entire field of medicine. And yet, to this day, if you suggest the depression is not related to a chemical imbalance, If you suggest that it is not biochemical, which is what that study showed, that it's not biochemical, then you will still be dogpiled for doing so. I mean, it's been impossible to have anything approaching an honest conversation about depression and SSRIs in this country because many of the people on these drugs will just lash out with blind rage if you even suggest that depression might have causes that go deeper than chemical imbalances.

If you try to talk about the problem of despair, which is what depression is, if you try to talk about it with any depth or nuance at all, you're screamed out of the room by drug addicts who don't know their drug addicts. But the truth is that none of the support for SSRIs is based on reality. The whole class of drugs has been peddled

to tens of millions of people based on complete fabrications, based on bad studies, and based on, and based on bunk theories. It is not an overstatement to say this is one of the great medical scandals of our time. What's changing now is that finally someone in position of authorities is willing to investigate these drugs and many other drugs like them. A few days ago via executive order, the Trump administration established something called the Make America Healthy Again Commission, or Maha.

And it'll be headed by RFK Jr. And the purpose of the commission, according to the White House, is to determine. why Americans have shorter life expectancies than people living in other nations, as well as higher rates of chronic diseases like cancer and asthma. And part of this effort means assessing the quote, prevalence of and threat posed by the prescription of selective serotonal re-uptake inhibitors, antipsychotics, mood stabilizer, stimulants, and weight loss drugs. Watch. Last Thursday, President Trump signed an executive order to establish the MAHA Commission to study what has caused the precipitous decline in American health over the past two generations.

So we will convene representatives of all viewpoints to study the causes for the drastic rise in chronic disease. Some of the possible factors we will investigate were formally taboo or insufficiently scrutinize, a childhood vaccine schedule, electromagnetic radiation, glyphosate, other pesticides, ultra-processed foods, artificial food alitists, SSRI and other psychiatric drugs, BFAs, PFOAs, microplastics, nothing is going to be off limits. As of right now, as you heard, RFK's commission is going to be focused on gathering data. You know, they're not banning anything outright. They're not punishing doctors for prescribing anything.

Instead, they're doing what the government should have done several decades ago. they're looking at the existing evidence and determining whether it's valid or not. They're not going to simply accept clinical trials without looking closely at them. They're going to see whether it makes sense to keep prescribing these drugs to so many Americans, particularly young people. Now, you have to wonder what kind of person would object to a fact-finding effort like this. After all, if SSRIs and other drugs that he mentioned actually work as advertised, then the extra scrutiny wouldn't be a problem at all.

but RFK Jr. has received a lot of pushback because of this. Newsweek, for example, recently took aim at RFK's claim that antidepressants can be more addictive than heroin. They cited a Stanford professor saying, quote, antidepressants and heroin are in different universes when it comes to addiction risk. In my 35 years in the addiction field, I've met only two or three people who thought they were addicted to antidepressants versus thousands who were addicted to heroin and other opioids. Did you notice the qualifier there?

I've met only two or three people who thought they were addicted to antidepressants. So one thing we could take away from that is that people who take these drugs tend to be in a lot of denial. And I think the very idea that you could become addicted to them doesn't occur to a lot of the people taking these drugs. They don't even think that that's a thing that can happen. And so when they have this compulsion to keep taking the antidepressant, they don't see it as an addiction. and according to this addiction specialist, because they don't see it as an addiction, it isn't one. I mean, this is the kind of quote unquote science

that's behind so much of the psychiatric field, and it's what has propelled millions of people to end up on these drugs, is this kind of totally bunk, ridiculous nonsense that they call science. So we're meant to conclude that RFK is a conspiracy thing, for even suggesting that SSRIs can cause dependency, but just a few years ago, that was not a conspiracy theory at all. It was settled science. In 2018, the New York Times published an article title,

many people taking antidepressants discover they cannot quit. Here's some of the relevant findings. Quote, in New Zealand, where prescriptions are at historic highs, a survey of long-term users found that withdrawal was the most common common complaint, cited by three-quarters of long-time users, and a recent survey of 250 long-term users of psychiatric drugs, most commonly antidepressants, about half who wound down their prescriptions, rated the withdrawal as severe. Nearly half who tried to quit could not do so because of these symptoms. In another study of 180 long-time antidepressant users, withdrawal symptoms were reported by more than 130. Almost half said they felt addicted to antidepressants, close quote. Now, if you compare those numbers to the percentage of heroin users who become addicted within a month of using the drug, you'll find

that RFK actually has a point. By one estimate, up to 38% of new heroin users become dependent within a year, which is a lot, obviously, but it's less than the number of antidepressant users who reported feeling severe withdrawal symptoms. And this is why RFK's commission is an important step. It's clear that we have a lot of evidence that antidepressants are causing far more harm than most people realize. But they're not seeing the evidence because it's being suppressed. and a transparent commission could solve that problem. It can also address this objection,

which was just published by the left-wing outlet Mother Jones, quote, in a 2023 live stream on X with Elon Musk, RFK claimed that tremendous circumstantial evidence suggested that people taking antidepressants were more likely to commit school shootings. Actually, most school shooters were not taking those drugs, evidence shows, close quote.

Now, this is another common refrain you hear from the defenders, the apologists for SSRIs, they say that most school shooters were not taking SSRIs. And as we've previously discussed, there are two major problems with that line. First of all, we don't actually know what drugs a school shooter was taking unless the family discloses it. The police and hospitals aren't going to tell anyone citing privacy laws. And in pretty much no case, does the family definitely state that the shooter wasn't taking certain kinds of medication?

Secondly, a lot of mass shootings are really gang violence, and those incidents get lumped in with school shootings, so they flood the data set and make it hard to determine whether SSRIs are influencing a certain kind of shooting. Now, anecdotally, of course, you'll find plenty of evidence that SSRIs might be linked to school shootings, from Columbine to Northern Illinois University, to the Navy Yard, to the movie theater in Aurora, Colorado, to the Black Church in Charleston, to the old National Bank in Kentucky. the shooters were all confirmed to be on antidepressants. In response to these shootings, you might say that correlation doesn't prove causation. After all, these shooters were taking SSRIs because they were unstable. It doesn't necessarily prove that SSRIs made their condition worse. And that's true, but there is additional affirmative evidence to believe that SSRIs are, in fact, making these shooters condition worse. For one thing, there's the FDGA black box label on these drugs, which indicates that they can increase the risk of suicidal thinking and behavior.

And there's this. A few years ago, researchers writing in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine found that the antidepressants doubled the risk of suicidality and violence when they were given to healthy people with no mental health disorders. And this is a direct quote from the journal. Antidepressants double the occurrence of events in adult healthy volunteers that can lead to suicide and violence. Now, how is that possible? How can a drug make someone violent and suicidal? How can a drug put violent suicidal thoughts in a person's head? How does that work?

How does it work? Well, the truth is, we have no idea. The people prescribing the drugs have no idea. The people making the drugs have no idea. We have no clue why these drugs supposedly work in the first place if they actually do work. And we have no idea why they might turn normal people into violent maniacs. But it's obviously a very concerning finding, especially given how much doctors are overprescribing these drugs to any patient who claims to be depressed. It is very, very, very easy to get an antidepressant drug.

This is not a difficult thing to do. And the whole diagnostic process relies entirely on self-report. It is just you telling the doctor how you feel and what's going on with you. Okay, it's why it's not like diagnosing a real physical illness where they can run tests and they can look at your body and they can detect that there are lesions, there are tumors, there are, you know, there are things going wrong in the body. But with these psychiatric illnesses, these alleged psychiatric illnesses, none of that exists. They're not doing brain scans. They're not looking at anything. It's just based on what you're telling them. which means that anybody who wants to get any psychiatric drug can get it. Doctors would rather prescribe those drugs than tell patients the truth about their depression and how to deal with it. I can say that in my personal life, and this is anecdotal, but it's all anecdotal.

Everything is based on anecdotes. The diagnostic criteria is based on anecdotes. Everything is just anecdotes. It's just people telling stories about what's going on with them. People, they know that's what all this is. So I'll say that in my case, I've known many people who take antidepressants. And in almost every case, there are glaringly obvious things in their lives that would cause any normal person to be depressed. In almost every case, I can look at their life and say, well, yeah, I'd be kind of depressed, too, if I had this going on.

Right? So depression is actually a totally rational response to their circumstance. But instead of making lifestyle changes or dealing with the underlying trauma, they're given drugs that effectively numb their brain. They don't make them feel better. It just numbs them. So they don't feel the feeling anymore. But the thing that's causing the feeling is not being addressed.

And it will never be addressed if you don't have the feeling that calls attention. to the underlying problem. So it's just like giving someone a painkiller to make it hurt less when they put their hand on a hot stove. The stove is still burning them. The pain from the stove is not the problem, right? When you put your hand on a hot stove and it hurts, the hurting is not the problem.

That's actually good. That means that your nervous system is working like it's supposed to. The pain is good. It's a good thing because it's alerting you to the fact that your hand is on a stove. So you have to take your hand off the stove. That's the solution. So the reason the medical establishment and Democrats are panicking over RFK's commission is simple.

The moment people realize that they have agency, when they realize that they can take their hand off the stove, they become a lot harder to control. They also become a lot harder to monetize. For Big Pharma and corporate media outlets that sell advertising space to Big Pharma, the implications are obviously pretty dire. But for Americans hoping to reverse this country's longstanding public health decline, after a generation of junk science and fake clinical trials, it's a change that's long overdue. Now let's get to our five headlines. Kayak gets my flight, hotel, and rental car right,

so I can tune out travel advice that's just plain wrong. Bro, Skycoin, way better than points. Never fly during a Scorpio full moon. Just tell the manager you'll sue. Instant room upgrade. Stop taking bad travel advice. Start comparing hundreds of sites with kayak and get your trip right. Kayak, got that right.

Imagine going to your computer and looking at your browsing history. Now imagine hitting print, signing your name at the bottom and nailing it to the front door of your house for all your neighbors to see. While you're at it, pictured on a billboard over a major highway. As wild as that sounds, that's essentially what most of us are doing every day unless you already use the sponsor of this video, ExpressVPN. Here's the thing. Internet providers can see every website.

you've ever visited. Yes, even in incognito mode, they can still see it. In many countries, they're required to keep logs of your online activity for years, just in case the government wants to take a peek. And in the U.S., ISPs can even sell your data to whoever they please. You can't stop ISPs from doing this, but what you can do is encrypt your online activity before it reaches your internet provider, turning their logs into useless gibberish. Because I use ExpressVPN, my internet provider cannot see, record, share, or sell my browsing history. They never had it to begin with. What I really like about ExpressVPN is that it's easy to use. I just tap one button on any device, whether it's my phone, laptop, tablet, or desktop, and I know my privacy

is ironclad. So if you like to join me in fighting for the right to privacy, use my special link to get four extra months of ExpressVPN for free at ExpressVPN.com slash Walsh. That's ExpressVPN.com Daily Wire reports. President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Tuesday from Mar-Lago that It's focused on expanding access to IVF in vitro fertilization. Trump's executive order calls for policy recommendations to make it easier for families to access IVF and to aggressively reduce out-of-pocket and health plan costs for such treatments. White House Press Secretary Carolyn Levitt said on Tuesday, according to the American Society for Reproducted Medicine, one cycle of IVF in the United States costs around $15,000.

The order states within 90 days of the date of this order, the assistant to the president for domestic policy shall submit to the president a list of policy recommendations on protecting IVF access and aggressively reducing out-of-pocket and health plan costs for IVF. The order says today many hopeful couples dream of starting a family, but as many as one in seven are unable to conceive a child, despite their hopes and efforts, infertility struggles can make conception difficult turning what should be a joyful experience into an emotional and financial struggle.

My administration recognizes the importance of family four-nation formation, and as a nation, our public policy must make it easier for loving and longing mothers and fathers to have children. Okay. Well, as you know, I've been a big fan of most of what Trump has done in his second term. In fact, I think his second term in office is off to the best start of any president in modern history, by easily the best in modern history, by a long shot. But I have to call it as I see it and be honest with you always. You know, I've got to call the shots as I see them.

So I have to say that I strongly, strongly, strongly disagree with this move. Now, yeah, he's following through on a campaign promise that he made during the campaign. So it's like, I can't act like I'm shocked or betrayed by it. He said he would do this and he's doing it. But I think it's the wrong thing. I think it's very wrong. human life is either a sacred thing or it isn't right and if it isn't then well nothing matters I mean actually nothing matters if human life isn't sacred your most important issue

whatever you care the most about whatever it happens to be doesn't matter okay so if your most important issue is gun rights. Well, gun rights only matter because human life is sacred. If it isn't, then your ability to protect yourself with a firearm is irrelevant. Who cares if you're able to defend yourself or not? Who cares if you can defend your family? Why does that matter? Your life doesn't matter. Your family's life doesn't matter. You know, immigration. Why does protecting the border matter? Well, it matters because our national sovereignty matters. Why does a national sovereignty matter? Well, because we as Americans deserve to live in a country with borders and safe neighborhoods and distinct culture and national identity.

But in other words, America's borders matter because Americans matter. If there were no people in this country, then it wouldn't matter what happened. There's no people here. So, you know, it goes back to the sanctity of human life. If human life is not sacred, then none of this stuff matters. If human life is sacred, though, then we have to ask ourselves whether this sacred thing, which is life, should be created in a petri dish outside of its natural context and then stored in a freezer like a hunk of ground beef, you know, that you're saving for next week to make chili and then destroyed if it isn't used. Is that what we should do with sacred life?

Store it in a freezer and then destroy it. And IVF, make no mistake about it, destroys millions of human lives. Millions. Now, we don't know the exact number. There's no way to know for sure, but we do know approximately how many IVF births there are per year, and we know approximately how many embryos are created per birth, and we can extrapolate that hundreds of thousands of extra embryos are frozen or discarded every single year, meaning that millions are discarded in the course of just a few years.

So I want you to imagine something for a moment. imagine if somebody wanted a dog so they went to a breeder who then bred a litter of puppies for the person to choose from and I know people do go to breeders of course but now imagine that the unused puppies

and that's what they would be called unused the extra puppies right now imagine that they're all just killed and discarded. The person chooses the one they want, and these are newborn puppies. I want that one,

and all the rest are just taken out and drowned. And then the breeder will go and make more puppies for the next person who wants a puppy. And now imagine that this plays out thousands of times a year, so that many thousands of puppies are created and then destroyed every year. Now, I think everybody would have agree that that kind of system would be inhumane because dog life is just too valuable to be

treated that way. Now, you know, we're talking about newborn puppies here. What kind of consciousness does a newborn puppy even have? Do they have any sort of self-awareness? I mean, it's really debatable whether full-grown dogs have self-awareness, at least self-awareness in the way that people do. A newborn puppy almost certainly has none. And, you know, if you don't have self-awareness, then you can't really experience pain. I mean, you could have a nervous system, and so you could have all the kind of hardware in place for pain. But if you don't have self-awareness, you are not experiencing it because there's no you, really.

If there's nothing that is conscious of the pain, then the pain is not being experienced. The pain is happening in a physical sense, but it's not being experienced because there's no conscious sort of entity there to experience it. And so a newborn puppy, I would seriously doubt, has any real self-awareness at all. And yet, in spite of that, we would all agree that intentionally creating and then destroying thousands of puppies every year systematically is a horrifying waste and degradation of the lives of those animals, regardless of how sentient or conscious they may or may not be. So if human life, if we would say that about the lives of dogs, I mean, is human life less valuable than the life of a dog? Is it like infinitely less

valuable? Because that's how we treat it. And if we could see this kind of system as clearly barbaric when used on dogs, how can we not say the same when it's used for people? You know, there's simply no question biologically that a human embryo is number one human. It's a human embryo. It was created by a human. Well, it was created in a lab, but it was created, um, it was even so created by a human. And it's a human embryo. So we know that. Is it a living human? Well, I mean, there are only really three states of being that anything can be, right? Anything that you point to in the physical universe, it seems to me, can broadly fit into one of three categories. And that is alive, dead, or inanimate.

Okay? Well, a human embryo is not dead, not yet anyway. And it's not an inanimate object like a table or a rock. I think everyone can understand that a human embryo being stored in a freezer is not, it's different than like this, the table that I'm sitting at, the desk I'm sitting at. Because this desk will only ever be a desk. It's not like if it sits here for another 10 years, it's going to suddenly spring into a living creature. it'll decay and and will be no more eventually, but it's never going to change fundamentally

into anything that it isn't. So a human embryo is alive. You know, if it's not dead and if it's not an inanimate object, which it isn't, it's not either of those things, obviously. The only thing left is to be living. That's the only other kind of thing you can be, right? So we have a living, This is a human life.

There's nothing else it can be. Creating human life in a laboratory and then destroying it, if it isn't used, is barbaric. It is just wrong. And by the way, even if the human embryo isn't a full growth, even if I were to agree, that I've made this point plenty of times in the past, but if I were to agree that the human embryo is not a full human being. If I were to agree that the human embryo is a potential human, but is not actually a human, and I don't agree with that, just to be clear, I absolutely do not agree with that.

A human embryo is a human. But I'm saying that even if I did agree with that, I would still say that this potential human life has immense value. Even being a human life means you have infinite value. And I would argue that being a potential human life also gives you in effect infinite value. I mean, what if somebody, imagine just for another analogy, imagine that somebody created an AI system or something along those lines. And let's say that we knew that with a few more tweaks in a few months,

this AI system will be fully conscious. It'll be a sentient being in a few months. So imagine we get to the point where we are a few months away from having AI, having robots and so forth that are fully conscious. Well, that piece of technology that's a few months away from having sentience, from being a conscious being, would be the most valuable piece of technology on the planet. I mean, it would be worth trillions of dollars. And certainly everyone would agree that destroying it would be an insane thing to do. Well, maybe that's a bad analogy because in that case, I think allowing AI to become fully conscious is not a good idea. So maybe you would destroy it.

But the point is that this, one way or another, this would be a very valuable piece of technology. even though it's not conscious now, but we know that it will be soon. When you look at a human embryo, even again, even if you're of the mindset that this is just a bit, just, just a potential human, by your logic, in the span of a few months, it would be a full human. So it would still have immense value. And just throwing it away is, um, I don't know what else to call it, but barbaric. The other thing I'll mention briefly, just, you know, you heard it there in the executive

order that, well, there are people who want to be parents and they're not able to conceive naturally. And so they're longing to be parents and, you know, what's our answer for them? And that's kind of the argument for a, the argument against all of this is just that, that, well, yeah, you know, maybe that's true. Maybe there are some ethical concerns here with creating human beings and then throwing them away, but I really want to be a parent. Well, what I'll say to that number one is that I don't discount your desire to be apparent. And if you're not able to conceive naturally,

I imagine that that's, I totally don't doubt that that's a source of great pain. But your desire for something does not override these serious, most. moral problems, moral and ethical problems with IVF. Okay, your, in fact, your desire is not a moral argument at all. Like, we're talking about morality. We're talking about ethics. We're talking about the value of human life. And so your desire, no matter how strong it is, is, I'm sorry, irrelevant.

It's just, it's not irrelevant to you. I understand that. I sympathize with it. Okay. It's not emotionally irrelevant, but it's irrelevant. to the argument. Because the argument is like, are these human beings and is it ethical to create a human being in a laboratory and then discard him like it's garbage? And the fact that, well, yeah, but I really want to, that's just, that's not an argument. That doesn't address any of the concerns. right? And number two, this is why adoption, okay, this is why adoption agencies exist.

There are children who are born and have already been conceived and have already been birthed and who need families. And so if you're in a position where you deeply desire to be a parent and you're not able to conceive, well, what should you do? You should adopt is what you should do. Rather than trying to make a child in a laboratory, there are children right now who you should go and adopt. That's the recourse that I would suggest. All right, Daly Wire, has this actress Julianne Moore claims that the Trump administration

banned a children's book that she wrote from schools run by the Department defense, but a representative from the organization responded by saying that it's one of several books currently under review and no permanent changes have been made yet. The celebrity wrote a lengthy Instagram post about her book, Freckleface Strawberry, and how she believes it was removed from schools without good cause. The story follows a young girl who tries to get rid of her freckles before learning to accept herself and her differences. Moore said it was a great shock for her to learn that her book was banned. Quote, Freckleface Strawberries is a semi-autobiographical story about a seven-year-old girl who dislikes her freckles but eventually learns to live with them when she realizes that she's

different just like everybody else. It's a book I wrote for my children and blah, blah, blah. I particularly stunned because I'm a proud graduate of Frankfurt American High School, a DOD school that once operated in Frankfurt, Germany. I grew up with a father who's a Vietnam veteran, spent his career in the U.S. Army, and now, and she's upset that her book has been. There's only one reason I'm reading this story. There's one reason I like this story. I like it because it shows you just how utterly vacuous the book.

banning narrative is on the left. They go around screaming about book bans, even though no book bans have actually been put in place anywhere in the country. It's a total figment of their imagination, completely made up. And the book bans that we hear about are all situations like this. You know, has Julianne Moore's book been banned from these DoD schools? No. They're not banned. What's happened is they're conducting a review to decide which books they want to have available in their school classrooms and in their libraries, and maybe her book about freckles or whatever makes the cut, maybe it doesn't. Either way, it's not being banned. Do you know how many books are published across the world every single year? It's something like two million books. So how many total

published books exist in the world today? I have no idea, but it's certainly tens, if not hundreds, of millions. How many of those books are going to be put in an elementary school library? You take any one single elementary school library, whether it's a DOD school or not, how many of the tens of millions of books in the world are going to be in that library? Like a few dozen? Maybe. So does that mean that every other book, all of the many tens of millions of books that aren't in the library have been banned? If so, then that means that, For as long as schools have existed, tens of millions of books have been victims of bands. That means, by the way, that I am the victim of book bands.

I have four published books, including a children's book. The vast majority of schools on earth, it'll shock you to learn. Do not carry any of my books. Even though I am the most revered and celebrated and acclaimed children's author in the world, certainly living today, probably of all time, there are very few elementary schools, if any, that carry my book. So in other words, I guess I'm effectively, you know, a Holocaust survivor. I'm, I'm a victim of Nazi Germany. If you listen to the leftist, apparently, this is Nazi Germany stuff, that they're not carrying Johnny the Walrus. The fact that your child's elementary school doesn't

carry Johnny the Walrus means that I have been banned. They have essentially taken my books and thrown them in a giant pile and burn them. Not carrying my book is really no different. It's no different. A school not carrying my book, Johnny the Walrus, is no different than the government going into people's houses and confiscating the book and shooting them in the head for having it and then throwing all of my books into the sea and me along with them. It's the same thing. It's the same exact thing. I mean, that's how this works, right? So the whole book band narrative is just total absolute nonsense. And it never ends. It just continues. They never stop.

That's the thing with the left. They never stop. They continue on. The book bans. They don't exist. It's not real. It's not happening. It's not a thing.

What we're being told is that every school in the country needs to carry every book that's ever been written. Because if they don't, if there's any books that aren't in there, then it's a ban. It's a book ban. Every school library needs to be like. the size of Dallas Cowboys Stadium so that it can store every book that has ever been written. If not, we're in Nazi Germany. Free speech has been destroyed. And this goes for bookstores, too. I mean, did you know that, did you know that there are millions of books that Barnes and Noble doesn't carry? Millions. Actually, Barnes and Noble doesn't carry almost all books. There are almost

no books that Barnes and Noble carries. Basically, every book ever written with rare exception is not available Barnes and Noble, which means that they have banned almost every book. If you call Barnes & Noble and say, hey, do you have this book and they say no, that means they banned the book? That's what it means. That's how this works. That's what the left is saying.

It makes a lot of sense. Let's get to the comment section. Success isn't built on resolutions. those are made to break. It's built on taking action and building unstoppable momentum. When it comes to optimizing your health span, living better, and longer, certain things are non-negotiable. Quality sits at the top of that list, and in the world of performance-focused supplements, momentous stands alone. Their commitment to NSF certification means every batch undergoes rigorous testing for heavy metals, harmful additives, and label accuracy. That's why they've earned the trust of all 32 NFL teams

and leading collegiate sports dietitians nationwide, while other brands chase trends and flood the market with endless options, Momentus takes a different approach. They rely on research and expert guidance to focus on what really matters, mastering the fundamentals with unwavering consistency, then tailoring supplementation to your specific goals. Speaking of fundamentals, protein and creatine form the cornerstone. Momentus sources the highest grade creatine monohydrate available, an essential supplement for both men and women seeking peak physical and cognitive performance. Ready to start living on purpose, visit livemometus.com. Use code Walsh for 20, percent off your order today.

A few comments here. Madam a pilot, I agree that the CRJ-900 landed extremely hard. It looks like the runway had a lot of wind-blown snow on it. Apparently, crosswind gusts were up to 40 miles an hour. It was very sunny, which makes judging visibility visually how high you are above the ground, very difficult. The aircraft was almost certainly being hand-flown at this point in the flight, and likely they were flying a visual approach, as opposed to a navigation-ass-ass-ad approach, like an NRAV or ILS approach.

So this was probably pilot air. Now, there's still really no excuse because these airlines are equipped with radar altameters, which quite literally yell your altitude as you come in for landings. That's my two cents. And then edit, it turns out they were flying the ILS approach, probably still hand-flying short final. Yeah, this lines up with what other pilots have told me. So I've seen this a lot. I mean, it seems pretty clear that, that, I mean, I mean,

I've talked to several pilots. I've heard from several pilots who just look at the video of the plane landing and say, yeah, there's clear mistakes made there. Were there other things that factored into the crash? Maybe. So this does appear to be pilot error. I've also heard from some sources in the airline industry some interesting information about, allegedly about the pilot who was landing the plane.

I don't know if the information is true, so I can't share it, but trying to vet it. Some of these kind of rumors are circulating right now on social media, so maybe we'll have more about that soon. But, you know, I, all I'll say is what I say yesterday, what I've been saying now for forever,

that, you know, we can look and we can see that for a long time, air travel was extremely safe. It was like almost magically safe. It seemed almost magical, at least to the passengers, that it could be this safe. We went years and years and years without any major incident, without any major accident. And it was just incredible. For a long time, you could rightly say that the safest place you could be anywhere is on a plane being flown by a major airline. And that was the case for a long time. And then the airline industry started adopting DEI. And then after that, we started seeing a lot of close calls and then we started seeing accidents.

And now we have two major airline accidents in the span of a month. So we'll be told that this is all a coincidence, that there's no correlation, that there's, that there's rather no causation behind this correlation, but I just find that very hard to believe. I'm a pilot, and my analysis is that the plane is upside down and that's bad. That's fascinating. So this is why we need to trust the experts, because I wasn't sure. You know, when I first saw the video, that's the thing. When I first saw the video of the plane upside down, I said, okay, what's the problem here? Is it not supposed to be like that?

And then, yeah, I've got, so I've also heard from a few sources that have confirmed. I had to confirm this, but a few sources have confirmed to me. This comment and others have said, yeah, actually, typically what you want is for the plane to land the right side up so that you're not hanging upside down. So that was interesting. One of my cousins had a no-child wedding for a Latino couple to have that is insane. My family decided not to go since we have two younger children. turned out a lot of people ignore the no child part of the invitation. We turned out

looking like the bad guys for not showing up ridiculous. Well, you were right. I mean, you're not the bad guys. And I would not go to a wedding where my kids were not invited. That's just, I wouldn't do it. And because I reject it in principle. And also, you're just putting more burdens on your guests, which I wish that people, you know, if you're getting married, You want to have a big day. You want to have a big celebration. I get it. I don't begrudge that at all.

But also, like, try to make it a little bit easier on the guests. Your guests are people, too, and they have lives. And so you should at least take into consideration the burden that you're placing on your guests. And when you tell you guys, they can't bring their kids. Well, all you're doing is, that's another hurdle. on top of just like in principle, I think that's wrong. Also, you're creating another hurdle for the guests. And now they have to go out and hire child care, which is not going to be cheap. Okay, because we're talking about a ceremony and wedding. This could be, especially if they have to drive to it. They have to travel to it also. I mean, we could be talking about many hours, if not days, where they have to hire child care. And they're paying out of pocket for that. So that's reason enough to not have a child free wedding. You know, that's why you also, it's like, same thing for like destination weddings. Same deal.

Now, look, if you decide you want to have destination wedding and you're not really, and it's like you're not really inviting anyone to it, except your close, immediate family and they all want to go to this trip, then, you know, that could be fine. But, you know, to say, I'm going to go get married in, you know, the Bahamas or something, and then send out 500 invitations expecting all these people to go on a vacate, to take vacation time. for your wedding is just nuts. It's nuts.

The kid wedding argument is crap, Matt. If they were told beforehand not to bring their kid and they did anyway, the parents are horrible people. I'm pretty sure you wouldn't appreciate someone bringing their pet into your house. And I don't want to hear the BS argument about children not being pets. That was the rule the couple who paid for the weddings had. And if the relative or loved one didn't like it, then by default they were not invited either. The option for them to bring their kids was not. on the table. They were invited to a wedding, not compelled to go. You almost had it right with your when you made your Thanksgiving comparison. If the same guy who wants to bring his mastiff into your house to take a dump invited you over for a vegan Thanksgiving, nobody's forcing you to go. If you do decide to go, then shut up and eat the tofu turkey. Okay. Yeah, but children aren't pets. So you can't, I don't want to hear your BS arguing about how children aren't pets, quote, unquote. But they're not. I mean, they're not pets.

They're very much not pets. Like, I don't know. It's not a BS argument. That's an actual thing. So that's why your case doesn't apply. Okay? They aren't pets. So children and here's a radical idea.

Children and pets should be treated differently. Just like, I certainly hope you don't put your child to bed in a crate at night. Okay, I don't lock my kid in a crate when they go to sleep at night. We do put a dog in a crate. All right? So because I feed a dog out of a bowl on the ground. I don't do that with my kids.

I let my kids sit on the furniture in the house. I don't let the dog sit on the furniture because they are humans and the dog is a dog. And these are two different kinds of creatures. And so they are treated differently. if I invite your family over for dinner, if I say, hey, come over for dinner, bring a family. Yes, I would be very annoyed if you brought your dog. Because your dog, that's not what I meant. Your dog is not part of the family.

And I know you might say, well, he's really part of the family. Okay, maybe to you emotionally, but he's not actually part of your family. He's not like actually. He's not legally, not in any kind of actual sense. is he part of the family. And so when I invite the family over, I'm not talking about the pets. I'm not saying, bring all your pets too.

Bring the gerbil and the cat and the dog. Like, and most normal people understand that. However, if I invite your family over, I say, hey, bring, come on over with your family. It's understood that I also mean the kids. That's why I said, bring the family. I don't know how else to explain it. I really shouldn't have to explain it.

If you were here with us on election night or the inauguration, you already know the Daily Wire doesn't just, up, we take over. And now we're headed back to DC to do just that at CPAC. Join me along with Ben Shapiro, Michael Knowles, Andrew Claven, and Jeremy Boring, all on stage live tomorrow night, February 20th. Check it out. Hey, honey, it's mom.

Did you know if we switch to Verizon we can get four phones for $0, plus four lines for $25 a line? Call me back. Me again. That's just $100 a month for four lines on Unlimited Welcome. Plus four phones, no trade in needed. Call me. It's Mom.

America's Best Network, Verizon. the one we're talking about. I'll send you text. America's Best Network based on Root Metrics, best overall mobile network performance, U.S. second half 2025, four new lines and a limit and welcome and auto pay. See Verizon.com for details. No scripted talking points, no corporate approved narratives, just real conversations. And also, we're taking your questions. Don't just watch CPAC be part of it. Live tomorrow night, February 20th on Daily Wire Plus. Now let's get to our daily cancellation.

Daily cancellation today is a bit graphic. So if you have kids around while you're listening to this. Please turn the show off and come back to it when the kids are not there. We're going to talk about a piece of legislation that's been introduced by Democrats in Ohio. And the state of the Democrat Party is such that I have to issue a parental advisory warning before discussing the bills that they write. This is what happens when your party is overrun by weirdos and creeps, but that's where we are. The Daily Star reports, quote, a pioneering bill has been put forward in Ohio that would make it a serious crime for men to ejaculate unless they plan to father a child. The proposed law introduced by Democratic House Representative Anita Somani

aims to regulate male reproductive rights in the same way as women's. Abortion remains a highly contentious issue in the U.S., which, as we know, Samani points out, quote, you don't get pregnant on your own. If you're going to penalize someone for an unwanted pregnancy, why not penalize the person who's also responsible for the pregnancy?

The bill dubbed the Conception Begins that Erection Act would make it a crime for any man in the state to discharge semen without the intent to fertilize. There are exceptions for cases or protection or contraceptives are used during sex, also masturbation, sperm donation, or same-sex relations among the LGBTQ plus community would also be exceptions. That's the bill.

Here's the local ABC affiliate with more. The bill named The Conception Begins at Erection Act is co-sponsored by Democratic State Representatives Anita Somani and OBGYN from Dublin and Tristan Rader of Lakewood. The whole entire point of this bill is to call out the hypocrisy, particularly the state legislature, when they bring forward bills to regulate women's bodies. Now, there are exceptions to the proposed law, which include sperm donation, contraception, and members of the LGBT community. Men face a maximum $10,000 fine after the third offense if they have sex with a woman without the intention of conceiving a child. Men have the same rights no matter where they go in the country. women have rights based on where they live.

The final draft still being written, the proposed legislation will get a hearing after it's submitted. But with a Republican-controlled legislature, the bill not expected to go anywhere. For this particular bill, that's certainly okay. Again, the whole point of this bill wasn't to get it passed. The whole point of this bill was to call out the hypocrisy. So the point of the bill, he says, was not to get passed. And, of course, it won't pass. So this dufus is admitting that they're wasting taxpayer money on a political stunt.

They are using the legislative process as a stage for their theatrical performance, and he isn't bothering to pretend otherwise. That's how much respect they have for their constituents, which is all that really needs to be said about this. It's a ridiculous stunt by politicians who can't contain or disguise the contempt they have for the citizens of their state. But on top of all that, it's also a really bad argument. They're doing this to make a point, and the point they're making is quite stupid.

In fact, it undercuts their position. It makes the opposite point from what they're trying to make. That's what happens when you take a straw man argument that you found in a YouTube comment section, then try to build a piece of legislation around it. It's destined to backfire. And that's what's occurred in this case. The idea that this parody bill is supposed to legislate a man's body in the same way that pro-life law is allegedly legislate a woman's body, like that's the idea.

They're attempting to illustrate the absurdity as they see it, of pro-life laws, of laws that prevent the dismemberment of infants, by showing what it would be like if the shoe was on the other foot. Right? That's the idea. But it doesn't work. Their dumb, satirical bill seeks to legally control a man's sexual behavior and penalize him for behavior that falls outside of the parameters of this law. But that is precisely what anti-abortion laws don't do. Laws restricting abortion do not place any restrictions on a woman's sexual behavior. Like, as far as these laws are concerned, the woman can have sex with whoever she wants, in whatever way she wants, as often as she wants. There is no abortion restriction in the country, in any state anywhere, nor has there ever been one proposed at any point anywhere, that would put the kinds of restrictions on women that this bill in Ohio would put on men.

Now, these Democrats in Ohio are correct. The bill they propose is a good example of what legislating somebody's body and controlling their sex life would look like. And the keen observer will notice that abortion restrictions don't look anything like that. The real analogy to a law prohibiting men from having sex unless they intend to have children would be a law prohibiting women from having sex unless they intend to have children. But no such law exists, not in Ohio or anywhere else. Abortion restrictions do only one thing. They protect a child who has already been conceived from being killed. The laws don't prevent women from having sex or put any kind of regulation on the sexual act at all.

They simply prevent women from killing their children long after they've already engaged. in the reproductive act and conceive the child. Preventing a woman from killing her child is not some kind of unique and onerous burden. It puts women on the same plane as men who also are not allowed to kill children. The question of how or why the woman had sex or with whom is completely irrelevant. Maybe she meant to conceive the child. Maybe she didn't. Maybe she's married to the father.

Maybe she isn't. All of that is totally irrelevant to the law. The point of the law of any law banning abortion. is to recognize the scientific fact that children in the womb are living human beings. Now, it is, of course, true that sex is where babies come from. That is one biological fact that left has still seemed to understand, at least for now. And so it is also, therefore, true that you should only have sex if you are at least open to the possibility of conceiving children. Now, the left treats this idea like some kind of mind-boggling non-sequitur.

Sex is how babies are made. it's resulted in a baby. That act has resulted in creating a baby billions of times throughout history. If you are so terrified of having a baby that you would actually kill to prevent the child from being born, if you would rather murder your own offspring

than raise him, if you would even rather murder him than give birth to him and hand him to someone who wants to raise him, then you should not be having sex. Like, you should exercise some, self-control and save yourself a lifetime of guilt and regret in the process. Nobody is talking about passing any laws that would prevent you from having sex, but you still

shouldn't. But it is your choice. That part of it is. Killing a child, however, should not be a choice available to you or to anyone. It should not be available to anyone ever at all for any reason. that's the whole point and as pro-lifers that's really our only point

and it's the point that these Democrats and every other Democrat miss and it's why they are today canceled that'll do for the show today thanks for watching, thanks for listening have a great day Godspeed