The Michael Knowles Show - Friendly Fire: The Next Decade Begins

Episode Date: October 17, 2025

Friendly Fire marks the official launch of the next decade of The Daily Wire. Join Ben Shapiro, Matt Walsh, Michael Knowles, and Andrew Klavan as they debate, discuss, and disagree on the biggest headlines of the day, along with special guests including Isabel Brown. Jeremy Boreing also makes a special appearance to premiere the long-awaited teaser for The Pendragon Cycle. - - - Today's Sponsors: ExpressVPN - Go to https://ExpressVPN.com/FRIENDLYFIRE to get four extra months of ExpressVPN’s privacy protection. Shopify - Sign up for your one-dollar-per-month trial and start selling today at https://Shopify.com/FIRE Helix - Visit https://helixsleep.com/friendlyfire to get 20% off sitewide. Balance of Nature - Go to https://balanceofnature.com/pages/podcasters and use promo code FRIENDLYFIRE for 35% off your first order as a preferred customer, PLUS get a free bottle of Fiber and Spice - - - Privacy Policy: https://www.dailywire.com/privacy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

USAA knows dynamic duos can save the day, like superheroes and sidekicks or auto and home insurance. With USAA, you can bundle your auto and home and save up to 10%. Tap the banner to learn more and get a quote at usaa.com slash bundle. Restrictions apply. Choice hotels get you more of what you value. Here's a little tune to help you remember. Same drive, different day. Don't you wish you were getting away?

Pack your bags and come on through. Texas, Ohio, Alaska, we're up there too. Comfort in, it's calling your name. Save on the stay. Oh, and free waffles are yours to claim. Well, I hope you like my little song. Book direct at Shoreshiltails.com. You will get to sound off on whether or not black people are disabled as the Supreme Court

Reliable. Oh, God. I'd say something that'll get us canceled. If you really want me to, I mean. I'll tell you, waiting in the wings the last few minutes was quite entertaining. Far too much friendly small talk so far as this friend to fire. We've got a lot of the friendly, but not the fire. Not a lot of fire.

Friends are these, who needs enemies? Friends are these, coo needs enemies. So what? We're just going to commitz for the first part of it. Is that the idea, or we're going to actually just jump into the show? My favorite part is when Knowles reads the stage directions. Yeah, hold on. I got to.

What is it saying? Look hot. Okay. All right. That's fine. We're there. Ben, you're positively glowing. You're out of the country.

I am out of the country. I am. I'm still here. And I will say that Donald Trump in Jerusalem is a thing, man. We'll probably talk about a little bit later, but that dude can light up a country. I mean, really, really strong stuff. Where are you guys? Obviously, you're back in the States.

My understanding is that you and Claven are headed to like Yodel in the Alps or something, correct? Next week? Yes, we're going for strudel in Austria. I'm very excited. We are probably more exciting. for Knowles then for Claven, given the history there. The father went front. It was a very short period of time.

It doesn't quite get me to Liechtenstein and my Bonnie Prince Charlie over there, but it's one step closer. I can't believe that we're like a minute in and you already did the Bonnie Prince Charlie. It should take you at least an hour to get there, but no, we're starting off hot. That's actually our whole show. Thanks so much for tuning in, folks. No, do you know what today is? Today

is actually two momentous events because we're celebrating a decade of the daily wire, not just by looking backward, but by looking forward. So, I don't know if you guys know this, this is the eight-year anniversary of Mr. Walsh at this company. Is it? Really? Yes.

Do we celebrate that exactly? Is that the word? More, I think. Yeah. Wow. Well, I, I don't, I get anything? Do I get like a cupcake? I mean, I mean, to be fair, I mean, I think that you get a very large check.

I mean, like, on a regular basis. So there's that. Yeah, but I still want a cupcake. You know what we'll give you, Matt? You do get something. You will get to sound off on whether or not black people are disabled as the Supreme Court reliable. You will get to sound off on whether or not young Republicans can talk about that in group chats. And you will get to sound off on whether or not Gen Z is de-gayifying itself. All of that, you'll get to hear from Isabel Brown.

You'll get to hear from Jeremy and the Pendragon. Finally, we're going to get this great Pendragon release, you know, the first look at it. We're going to get so much. But first, we're going to look back. Because, Matt, eight years ago, you were in a car, and now you're not in a car. Are we thrown in something? Or you're just saying that to me? No, I'm just saying that to you.

Oh, God, I thought we were thinking about something. We were throwing out. Yeah, I was. Oh, there's the picture. I don't know if this. Yeah, that was me in the car. I, you know, when I look back at these videos now, I am, I'm mostly perplexed by the hair.

Like, I didn't, I didn't learn to comb my. hair until I was about 32 years old. Like, that's actually true. I didn't, and I don't, I don't have great hair now, but at least I comb it. And so at some point between the eight, like around 32 or 33 years old, I said, I should probably start combing my hair at this point. And I, and I did, but this was before that. So you can see, it just looks like a dead animal sitting on my head. It looks like a toupee. It looks like, I don't know how my wife let me walk out of the house like that, but she let me walk out of the house like that many times for years. I mean, I feel like she didn't let you walk out of the house because you were literally broadcasting in a car. So you basically just stayed in

your car all day, right? You might have lived back there. I mean, that was, I do like that our idea for your show originally was that you were just going to sit in your car. And what kind of car is that? That doesn't look like a super nice car, actually. That looks like that. I don't want to, I don't want to admit what kind of car that was. That was, this was my, we had one car, is my wife's car. She brought it into the marriage. It was a facade. It was a Volkswagen Passa. Whoa. And she brought it into the marriage. My car broke down. We only had one car. And so I had to go, I would go to a Walmart shopping center and do my show with confused. There was no tinted windows, as you can clearly tell. Shoppers are walking by, just looking in at this guy,

ranting at his windshield, confused. You look like an accountant who's like three sheets to the wind and drove out to complain about his wife on TikTok, you know? She hadn't understood me. There were already signs then, though, and I can see the Daily Beast headline of Matt Walsh, broadcasting from Hitler's car. Coincidence? I think not. Drew, when we started all out here together, like 10 years ago, I think you had more hair than Matt did there. Is that right? I actually did, although I didn't wear it on my head. It was a secret. When we started this, you weren't even there, no. No, I was here on day too. Before, you came on to be my Twitter voice, which I have to say was the last thing you ever did that actually was good. You sounded so much like me. I started imitating you

just so I could sound like me. But I remember I had just been, the first day we did this, I had just been to England to visit my son, who was at Oxford. And for some reason, we had to,

absolutely had to do it the next morning. So I flew in, I must have gotten an hour of sleep. I walked in, and it was me and Ben in this pool house that Jeremy had.

And I did this like 15-minute show or something like that. Got up, looked down, and I was wearing bedroom slippers. I was wearing, like, you know, and back then, you know,

I was younger, like 105. And like I was looking, I thought, I forgot to put my shoes on. I literally came in for it. And Jeremy said, I noticed that. You know, one of my favorite things about this company and looking back on all of this is to see the change that occurred in Walsh and did not occur in Andrew Claven. It's one of my favorite things. Like Walsh still had that like not full beard. Like it was kind of my style of beard. Actually, like this kind of shortcut Zorn Mom Donnie thing that was happening right there. So he kind of looked half hipster. And now, of course, he looks like a mountain man. And now, of course, while she looks like he belongs out in the forest of New Hampshire,

chopping wood or something, but here he looks like he, you know, belongs fixing your computer at one of those repair shops at them all. And he soberes up, yeah. And then meanwhile, you got Drew, and Drew looks exactly the same. Drew is like the principal from back to the future. Didn't that guy ever have hair? I mean, just identical. Like, you could just travel him back in time and supplant one drew for the other Drew.

And there would be exactly the same. There is a picture in my room that has gone to be 400 years old, however, I was like, just slowly decaying all my. It's just the corruption. Written in the face of it. And then Knowles is like, Noel's story is a good one because he was kind of like the aggressive,

the aggressive climber at the Daily Wire. Like he started out as a guy who was supposed to, you know, answer phones. Yeah, you, your original job was like social media marketing and you were never good at it. So we're like, give him a show. When I say Pizza Boy, I meant I used to eat a lot of pizzas in the Daily Wire. Oh, dude.

I mean, that's not I used to eat. One of my favorite Noel's memories from the first 10 years of Daily Wire, like very early on, was he thought he was going to get cast in a movie. And so he thought that this meant that he had to somehow get a six-pack. And so the way he was going to get a six-pack was that he was going to walk around the office, just eating bags of meat, literally just like Ziplog bags of ground beef. And he just walked around for like weeks on end doing this. And he just got fat. At no point, I gave 20 pounds of muscle. I didn't cut. I never cut. I just, I got, you know my favorite memory, Ben, of all those years ago? This was pre-fat, I think, was I was preparing, and this was

like, I don't know, this is like year one, and I was preparing to, propose to my beloved wife, sweet little Alisa. And I bought the ring, and I was all excited. And then I told my friend Ben Shapiro, and he promptly almost ruined my marriage proposed. My marriage, maybe, almost. Yeah, now, this is the thing. I will see, I thought, like, Knowles must have thought of me as a closer friend than I was because, you know, really, like he thought, okay, you know, I'm confiding in Ben and like confiding in Ben, like, unless you're like a really close friend, you should not confide in Ben, you know, I've got like a show and I got things to say. And Knowles basically says, I figured okay, he's telling me because it's after the fact. He already proposed. Like,

why would he tell me if he had not already proposed? It's not like, you know, we spend hours your diarying each other in the evenings or something. As he tells me, and so I go on the air and in the middle of the show, I'm like, and congratulations to Michael Knowles who's proposing to sweet little Alyssa. And then unfortunately for Michael, Alyssa listens to the show. And how did you get out of that one? It was like she listened to late that day or something.

Because luckily, she was listening to it, you know, all the time. But she listened after the fact. We went in there, edited that out of your show. Before it came, I was very lucky. The marriage went off just fine. And that just, that prompts me to take a little trip down memory lane on our video screens. This year, the Daily Wire turns 10.

That's right, 10 years of leftist tears. Bottled, unfiltered, and sold for a profit. Let's rewind. 2015, Caleb Robinson thinks the world needs smarter conservatives, so he decided to do something about it. Caleb calls Jeremy calling Jeremy calls Ben Shapiro. What is going up? They load up the truck

and move to California. Yes, California. Mission, give quiet conservatives a voice, loudly. Then, Ben goes full viral. First, he wrecks Pierce Morgan on CNN. You tend to demonize people who differ from you politically. And get threatened by a dude cosplaying a woman on Dr. Drew. You cut that out now or you'll go home in an ambulance. Yeah, that seems mildly inappropriate for a political discussion.

Boom! The Ben Shapiro show is born. It's shocking to me. Next up, Andrew Claven. Old guy, big brain, surprisingly funny. This is the Andrew. Then we give the intern his own show. Michael Knowles.

Oh, man. Then we find Matt Walsh. Yes. Recording in his car. Like he's on the run. We give him a desk. The beard thrives. Cut to 2020. Joe Biden, COVID inflation, high taxes, rampant illegal immigration, and of course, the BLM riots.

California was literally a dumpster fire. So we moved the company to Nashville. I love partying. I love dancing and I am famously social. Then we add a sports show, crane and company. Very spot on. The morning wire. Thanks for waking up with us. Candice joins. I am so excited to share the news with you. Change the game and eventually left the group chat. Then we started the comment section. Podcasts, news, books, live shows. And while we were busy changing culture, Joe Biden mandates a vaccine. We sue. All the way to the Supreme Court. There's a lot of winning that is happening right now.

Still not satisfied. Hey, what if we start making movies? Run hide fight, shut in, and terror on the prairie. 2022, Matt Walsh drops what is a woman. Why do you ask the question? I just wanted to know, what is a woman? Then, the greatest lie ever sold. We take down BLM.

Where is that money? I don't know. Matt Walsh testifies to stop child mutilation. It goes to the Supreme Court. We win again. Noticing your theme? Then we launched Daily Wire Plus. Enter Dr. Jordan v. Peterson.

His podcast, typical series, and the Mastering Life Collection of Wisdom. Why is that not a good thing? We started our own razor company, our own chocolate company, and cigar company. And when Bud Light went woke, we almost started a beer company. Thanks a lot, lawyers. 24. Am I racist? It hits theaters. Your movie is really funny.

It's really funny. Crushes the box office. Crushes D.E.I. And crushes Joy Reed's Will to Live. Raise a glass if you're racist. It's a racist. We're not done yet so far this year. We opened a D.C.

office, join the White House press pool, and we welcome Isabel Brown. Now, the Daily Wire is a media empire. Billions of views. Cultural wins stacked like Biden gaffed. Yeah. And all because of you. Get ready for what we have in store for the next decade. Well, believe it or not, that was actually, I think, kind of fun to look back at the last 10 years. But here's the thing, we're not going to just do a bunch of looking back because it's time to look forward to the future to a lifetime of with us. Because here's the thing. We do have a brand new thing. It is called the Daily Wire Lifetime membership. It's one membership. It gives you all access for the rest of your natural life and perhaps beyond because I can't actually speak to what happens after that with any real sense of assurance.

No renewals, no expiration. Every new benefit we add to all access in the years ahead. Those become yours automatically. With all access, you get ad-free episodes before they're available anywhere else, live Q&As where you're talking to us, you know, like a human, early access to. to offers and announcements unlimited access to all of our films, our docu-series, our investigative reporting for the rest of your natural life. Lifetime members also carry that forward flag pin. You see this? You see this beautiful pin? This magnificent pin, the producer Jake had to literally go across the country to get for me today because for some odd reason, I guess it just somehow, well, in any case, he had to spend half the day going and getting this. But you can have this pin without having to drive

all the way from Jerusalem to load in order to pick it up. It is accented in 14. 14-carat gold reserves only for our DW lifers, along with a signed copy of my fabulous, incredible. Everyone loves it, brand new book, Lions and Scavengers. They're all saying so, time. Here's the catch. There are only 10,000 lifetime memberships that will ever exist, ever, like forever. When they're gone, they are gone. Become the cornerstone building the next decade of DailyWire.

We appreciate it. Head on over to DailyWire.com slash lifetime and secure your place in dailywire history. Gentlemen, can we please dive in on whether or not black people are disabled, Ben? What are you? That's your opening? It's not black people are disabled. It's a disability itself. The blackness is the disability.

This woman is a chucklehead, first of all. You know, Katangie Brown-Jackson is a chuckle-hut. And she just said this, that they should be able to have special voting districts because they can't get to the polls. they're disabled by blackness. That's basically, that's what she said. I didn't go to law school. Ben, is that true? I mean, that doesn't sound right.

I mean, like, if I, if I, if I, just, like, off the top of my head, it doesn't sound like a thing that's, that's true. And also, it is, it is just another amusing episode in that Ryan Long comedy special where, like, it's white supremacist and woke left and they're the same. Because all the white supremacists will also say that thing. But Katanji Brown Jackson apparently did say that thing. Do we have audio this? I don't actually believe your summary of this.

Do we have, like, audio of her saying this? this thing? Because I would like to hear it. I guess I'm thinking of it, of the fact that remedial action, absent discriminatory intent, is really not a new idea in the civil rights laws. And my kind of paradigmatic example of this is something like the ADA. Congress passed the Americans with Disabilities Act against the backdrop of a world that was generally not accessible to people with disabilities. And so it was discriminatory in effect because these folks were not able to access these buildings. The idea in Section 2 is that we are responding to current-day manifestations of past and present decisions that disadvantage minorities

and make it so that they don't have equal access to the voting system. Right? They're disabled. In fact, we use the word disable in Milligan. We say that's a way in which you see that these processes are not equally open. Starting a business can seem like a daunting task, unless you have a partner like Shopify. They have the tools you need to start and grow your business. From designing a website to marketing to selling and beyond, Shopify can help with everything you need. There's a reason millions of companies like Mattel, Heinz, and all birds continue to trust and use them. With Shopify on your side, turn your big business idea into, sign up for your $1 per month trial at Shopify.com slash special offer. Oh, no, that is not good. That is not good. Lawyering or human being, that is bad. I mean, just for those who, you know, care about the law, the ADA was, which I think actually is a bad piece of law,

but the ADA originally was passed on the basis that, you know, like, people in wheelchairs can't go upstairs. and therefore they might need a ramp to go up into a building. And she's making the case that that's somehow like black people not having their own voting districts because they're somehow historically disadvantaged. Well, I think the thing with the ADA is that disabled people are in fact disadvantaged by physical reality. That's a bit of a differentiate. Okay, I'm sorry, she's dumb. There's no other way to put it.

She's just dumb. Matt say something that'll get us canceled. Just do it. You want to. I can see it in your eyes. Go. If you really want me to, I mean, I was actually, I was going to do the episode. I was going to speak in her defense a little bit.

And the only thing I'd say in her defense is that there's no good argument that the other side can make on this case. They're going to lose the case. And we should, it should be getting a lot more attention than it is because this might destroy the Democrat's party's ability to get a majority in the House of Representatives like ever again. And there's nothing that can really. be said because what they're trying to defend is the proposition that in order to avoid racial discrimination in the way that we that that that district works you have to deliberately

racially discriminate by creating districts that explicitly exclude as many white people as possible like that that's the argument they're trying to make and there's nothing intelligent to be said in defense of it and so that might be the best available argument is what I'm trying to say that she came up with. I don't know. Fair. Drew, I know you were around when Plessy v. Ferguson was decided. What do you make of this oral argument? Well, what I like about it is the voting rights act was passed, I think, in 65, so that's 60 years ago, right? So essentially what they're arguing is that the country hasn't changed

at all. So we have had all the civil rights law. They've sued over the civil, they've turned the Civil Rights Act into something that was never meant to be. They've destroyed our right to free association. They say that, you know, they're counting, they're heads, how many black heads are in a room so they can, none of that has helped. None of that has helped. All they have to do is take this wall down that was put up 60 years ago and suddenly, you know, Rod Steiger in a sheriff's hat is going to show up again. He's just been waiting. He's been waiting behind that wall to come back. Nobody cares anymore. Nobody's stopping black people from voting. I mean, they say, these people think that it's a disability that if you say,

oh, you need ID, like every country on earth. You need ID. to vote, black people can't get ID? How would they know how to, how would they understand how to get ID? I don't, I do not understand. I have asked this on college campuses. I do not understand why any black man, specifically, a black man would let a party, would vote for a party that treats him like a cripple. I don't understand it. I mean, I can understand women. They want to be taken care of something like that. Who would vote for somebody who talks about you like that? It's absolutely despicable, though it is hilarious, which for me is redeeming. You know, I'm always willing to laugh at it. And I just think I would have been really, really funny if at the end of this, John Roberts, it just

turned to her and say, Madam, you're a chucklehead. I mean, that was just made my day. Well, black men are actually starting to make that move a little bit. And I know, listen, we will get to whether or not young Republicans are allowed to Katanji post in their group chats, you know, if they're allowed to make these sorts of racist and offensive comments. First, though, Ben, could you tell us about ExpressVPN? Would I? I would love to tell you about ExpressVPN. There's nothing more I would love to talk about than ExpressVPN. Like literally in the whole wide world. Because here's the thing. Michael Moles has not been using his ExpressVPN. So the way that I know this is that ExpressVPN is supposed to protect you against hacking. It's supposed to protect you against people getting a hold of your data. And I'm not going to say that I hacked Michael Moles's email. I will say some material has come into my possession about Michael Moles's search history. Like as, and I have to say, it is deeply embarrassing, like truly embarrassing, like more embarrassing than that Politico chat. Apparently, he searched his own name 36 times in the last two days.

Certainly. Apparently, he has, believe it or not, Thomas Aquinas fan fiction, which I didn't think was an actual category of fan fiction. I don't know who he's shipping there, but it's definitely weird. He's been searching nonstop about whether Starbucks is going to start serving pumpkins spice latte yet. like he will not stop with this crap. And you, and worst of all, K-pop demon hunter's ukulele covers. That is the thing that we can all expect sometime in the near future. So don't let, here's the thing, folks, don't let people like me get a hold of your data, the way that I got a hold of Michael Moles's data and then publicly embarrassed him because ExpressVPN can protect you. It can, in fact,

protect you. It's an app that encrypts 100% of your online activity and rerouted through those secure servers. Third parties can't keep tabs on you. When I'm traveling, I've got ExpressVPN on all the time. I'm on airports or hotel Wi-Fi or whatever. Don't wait until it's too late and don't be a dummy like Michael. The time to protect your data from the future is right now. Use my special link to get four extra months of ExpressVPN's privacy protection. Head on over to ExpressVPN.com slash Friendly Fire.

That's EXPR, ESSVPN.com slash friendly fire to get four extra months of coverage. I feel like Spudgeon's tentacle porn. I don't. You know what else I was searching for that Ben didn't mention I was searching for his new book, according to this ad copy that was handed to me, I was searching for his new book, Lions and Scavengers. And you know where you can get it? You can get it on the Daily Wire Shop.

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Turn your big business idea into a gigantic business with Shopify on your side. sign up for the $1 per month trial and start selling today at Shopify.com slash fire. The money will rain down for you when you do that. Shopify.com slash fire. Before we talk about anything like substantive in the news, I also want to tell you about all the great stuff that has come out from Daily Wire and that is coming out soon. We had an opportunity to disrupt what became 9-11.

It's coming at your kids whether you like it or not. It wasn't if it was going to happen. It was when the United States was going to be attacked. These people are trying to talk to my daughter. Edward? I'm a demon. The whole purpose behind this is to overturn Western civilization. The Lodin was getting very antsy.

Happy 10th anniversary, guys. Big fans. Love what you guys have been up to. And congratulations on all your success. Look forward to seeing more from. all of your top talent, all the amazing content you've produced, and wish you the best of luck for the next 10 years. Ten years?

It's your 10-year anniversary? Where did the time go? I looked up online what you get somebody for their 10-year anniversary, and the modern gift is diamonds, so that's out. The more traditional gift is either tin or aluminum. So I'm between sending you a pack of alttoids or a Dr. Fauci vaccine, which is laden with aluminum. Just ask RFKJ. I think given the options you're getting yourself a pack of alt-oids,

and what I mean by sending it is, I love you. Here's to 10 more. Here's to 10 years of standing firm, to 10 years of pushing boundaries, to 10 years of restoring integrity in media. And I will say to all my buddies at Daily Wire, I can't count how many liver cells and brain cells I've killed with you guys. I will say the particular joy of joining you guys and lady ballers, that that was something else. Ben is a foul-mouthed ref, that that is an image I never thought I'd see and I'll never see again.

And everyone else, I just want to congratulate you for surviving with Michael Knowles on the payroll. I don't know how y'all exist. I'm astonished. Michael hasn't bankrupted you, but somehow you've made it. Congratulations. I can't wait to see what you're doing the next decade. Oh, that was nice. Okay. That was nice. Does anybody even wanted to sneak up in back of Tim and just take that hat off and see if his brain is just naked under there?

One of my favorite memories, honestly, like first 10 years of Daily Wire was Jeremy Boring's 40th birthday party where I got Ted Cruz to come to Jeremy's 40th birthday party. And then Ted proceeded to give like an actual honest to God stump speech at Jeremy's birthday party. You remember this? Like at a small pizza shop in the valley, it was pretty spectacular. Good times, good times. Well, from that, I feel like let's say, should we talk about?

something serious? Matt, you talk about something serious. This is a bit far too much small, far too much friendly small talk so far in this friendly fire. We got a lot of the friendly, but not the fire. Not a lot of fire. Yeah. So, okay, so let's let's get into, I've been strictly instructed that the intros to these topics are supposed to be two minutes, but my, my primary and most reliable strategy in any debate is just to talk and not let anyone else. That's my only, it's my only move. So, you know, Politico. Let's talk about Politico. This This is one of the big stories happening right now. And for anyone who's not familiar, Politico published a couple days ago, this big hit piece

revealing the private group chat conversation of some young Republicans. And the young Republicans are not elected officials. They're not anyone that anyone's even heard of for the most part. There's one person in the group chat, apparently, who works in the Trump administration, who is not recorded having said anything. So he was in it, but as far as we know, he didn't say anything, quote, unquote, offensive. But there were other comments made in the group chat, as Politico reveals, that were

a lot of edgy jokes and a lot of offensive language that's being used in this group chat. And most of it, as Politico finally admits in the article, if you read all 57 paragraphs of it, they'll finally admit that, yeah, most of this is supposed to be a joke. Although they don't, of course, put that in the headline. And, you know, the title of the article has the quote, I love Hitler. And when you look at the context of that comment in the group chat, it's very obvious that it is a joke. It's sarcasm very much in line with the kind of sarcasm that Republicans use all the time about, yeah, I'm real far right. I guess I love Hitler.

You know, along the lines of me having Theocratic Fascist in my Twitter bio, which isn't entirely a joke, but it's mostly a joke. So this is kind of, this kind of breaks down a few different ways. And for me, the story here is not the group chat, because these are private messages between people that no one knows. These are not relevant people. And the only reason why the media is showing us is. The only reason why they're doing this is obviously it's a political hit. And in particular, they're trying to distract from the fact that the left has spent the last month, I mean, really much longer than that, but especially the last month, openly celebrating political violence.

And now we have an attorney general candidate, it's probably going to be the next attorney general of Virginia, who was in his own messages saying not as a joke that he wants his political opponents to die and even their children to die. And he was very specific that he was not joking about it. And so the left is looking to distract from that. And their way of doing it is by somehow obtaining these messages and putting them out to distract us. And, you know, some Republicans have been very quick to offer their denunciations to say how offended they are, how horrible these messages are, that everybody involved should be fired, that they should never be allowed in politics again. I think that that response is foolish.

I think it gives the left exactly what they want. I have really appreciated J.D. Vance's response. Now, I think the vice president has struck exactly the right chord on this because he's not going to play the game. And instead, what he's done is he has redirected the conversation back to the thing that the left is trying to distract us from. There's only, there's one reason and one reason only that this story exists. And it's to get us to stop talking about Jay Jones and the leftists who've been celebrating

the murder of Charlie Kirk for the last month. That's the only reason that the story exists. And so J.D. Vance's point is, no, I'm not going to play that game with you. I'm not going to give you what you want. Instead, I'm going to redirect the conversation back to the thing that you're trying to distract us from. And I think that that's exactly the right move. I think there's some disagreement about that, though. There's more to be said about it.

But I'm going to go first to the guy who I think is most likely to agree with me, and that is Michael, Michael. Well, you're right, Matt. I totally agree. Was it the swastick on his forehead? The only, yes, hey, listen, we're Italian. And Mussolini, he was a complex figure. My only take on this that probably has not been said elsewhere is even the fact that we're talking about the ideology of the far right and comparing the far right to the far left and, you know, whether or not people like Hitler or whatever, is actually kind of missing the point. I strongly suspect these messages were leaked by another young Republican that has been reported. And having spent a lot

of time with New York young Republicans, I promise you this whole thing is about some like petty personal grudge and it's some power play within New York politics. And it actually has very little to do with the ideology or putative ideology of these texts. But I totally agree. There is no comparison whatsoever between some 19-year-old kid who's making a edgy jokes trying to out-based his friend in a group chat, and a former state legislator would be top law enforcement official in Virginia saying, as you note, Matt, that he is not joking when he calls for the death of his opponents and even the death of their children. So, yes, not at all. Now, the question then becomes, should we ever police our own? Should we ever have

guardrails or do we say anyone, you know, to the right of Hillary is on our side? And I think the answer is obviously, yes, there have to be guardrails, just like a nation is circumscribed by its border, so to a political coalition is circumscribed. That's what delineates it as a specific coalition. But the question is, how are we going to arrive at those guardrails? Are we going to say that anyone who ever gets caught telling an off-color joke by Politico, they're completely cast into the outer darkness? No, I don't think that's right. I think we should have guardrails, we should police a coalition, and the way we should do it is very carefully. This was Scalia's answer when, as a student, we asked him, hey, you know, where do you draw the limits on

Second Amendment, where you draw the limits on story decisis. And everyone wanted a really ideological answer. And his answer was very carefully. We kind of know, we're prudent. It's a people business. And should these kids have their lives ruined because they were mouthing off and telling jokes in a group chat? No. I don't think so. I think we're not prudent. So, I mean, here's the thing, we're just not. I mean, so I would agree with you that, quote unquote, policing, you need to be prudent about how you police. I also think that everyone agreed. I would assume Matt included, and Matt, you told him if I'm wrong here, that there are certain things that can be said that social consequences should actually attend to. Certainly that's true on the left, right? If you say that you want to murder the Speaker of the House and then calls the kids fascist, there should be social consequences that actually attend to that.

I agree with everything you say about the difference between a private group chat between a bunch of young Republican idiots who are outbasing each other and the attorney general candidate in Virginia actually saying the thing running for office. Now, I will say, I don't think these people are kids. I don't think 31 year olds a kid. I don't like using the sort of language of kids to describe people who really should be married and have children of their own by this point in their life. And I think the kind of loose playing with that term, as though if you're a 31 year old, which is what one of these people was, somehow this is the equivalent of being 17. I don't think that's true either. But the YARs go down to 22. I agree. But some of the people who are being quoted here are in their 30, some are up all the way up to 40. I get it. I get it. Again, I'm not even disagreeing with the motivations of the

Politico story. In fact, even on my show today, I talked about the motivations of the Politico story, which Matt, I agree, are completely scurrilous and designed to distract from the sort of violent rhetoric we've seen from the left. But it has led to, I think, a reactionary response on some parts of the right to say, there should be no policing ever at all. No social consequences should ever attend to things that are said on the right. That it's basically just pure my side versus yours side. The problem I have is number one, I think that's moral. And number two, I don't think that's pragmatic. I don't think that's moral because I think that there are things that get said on the right that are really, really, really, ugly and pretending those away doesn't make them go away. I think that they're rising. I think that they're

getting more common. I know that my death threats from that side are getting more common. I know I have more security because of that, and it's not just from the left. I have lots of security from the left. And I also get lots of security from the right. Matt, I think a little bit earlier today you tweeted that that kind of your litmus test is the people who are trying to kill you. And I totally get that. I also have that litmus test. The difference is that I think that if somebody tries to kill, Matt, there's a good shot that it's going to be a leftist. If somebody tries to kill me, it's a freaking Agatha Christie novel. I just don't know which direction the bullet is coming from at this point, given the sort of various and sundry radical extremes that exist. I'm not going to say that the right is equivalent to the left in this respect, because I don't think it's been mainstream. to nearly the same effect on the right that it has been on the left. But to pretend that it has not infiltrated a lot of very important spaces, I think is sort of whistling past the graveyard. Now, again, that's not about the Politico story. There's more of a broad commentary about where we are in the movement.

And as a matter of sort of morality, we all have things where, again, I'm not saying cast into the outer darkness, right? I'm not calling for any of these people who I think everyone knows who I'm referring to, but I don't think I'm calling for any of these people to be deplatformed or removed from YouTube or removed from Twitter. In fact, I've called for many of these people. Nick Fuentes, for example, to actually be returned to Twitter, despite the fact that we have some pretty significant disagreements, including the fact that he thinks that I and people like me are scurrilous, you know, sons of Satan or whatever, however he would put it. You know, but, you know, that is a different thing from, is this person part of, quote, unquote, the movement that I belong to. And the answer there is he doesn't think I'm part of the movement that he belongs to, which he's made very clear. And so that gets into the question of pregnant. There's the morality of when someone says something bad, should you can,

condemn it. And I think that as a general matter, you can do what Winsome Sears did, right? Winston Sears is running against the Attorney General candidate in Virginia. She was asked about the Politico chat. She says, yeah, that's bad. Now, you do Jay Jones, which seems to me like a pretty good answer and a good way of policing. And then when it comes to the pragmatic, can just find, you were in the group chat. Yeah. I mean, Drew, I just want to make one more point here, and then you can say whatever you want. On the pragmatic side, I fundamentally disagree with this idea that the reason that the right, quote, unquote, loses is because we fragment while the left is unified. The left is losing because it unified around its crazies.

Do not unify around your crazies. Sure, the crazies can vote for you. They can vote for your party. You can't stop them from doing that. It's a free country. But that doesn't mean they should have like a decisive voice in the future of the movement because if you do that, you end up with the trans movement running the Democratic Party and you lose from here to forever. It's the Democratic solidarity that's destroying them, not the Democrats as a sort of fragmentary party. So, hang on me, let me, let me, we'll go to Drew just a second. I just want to respond to two things there. And the first is, and I've heard this argument that, well, the left is losing because they failed to drive out the radical elements of their party.

I just, I think there's a, I think there's a false premise there, though. I don't think that's actually happening. I think, you know, Mondani, one of the most radical political figures we've ever seen in this country, is about to be the mayor of our largest city. Because there are no Republicans or moderates in New York, Matt. I mean, Trump's been president twice. And it was the trans issue that killed Kamala Harris in the last election because they won't stop doing the trans issue, which is the most extreme elements of the party, including,

obviously, you know, what would happen to Charlie? Yeah. Yeah, and the trans issue was a big problem for it. But that's also, that's another thing, too, is that when we talk about the sort of the quote-unquote radical elements of the right versus the radical elements of the left, these are not exactly the same thing. The radical element of the left denies basic biological reality. I mean, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, these, these basic realities that we all understand. And that's not, that's not happening on the right. There's no equivalent of that, of someone saying that men can have babies. Like, that's, there's just no, there's no exact equivalent of that. But the second point,

on the Politico article itself, okay, obviously, if somebody says something publicly, and they've decided to announce it to the world, well, then that's fair game for anyone to disagree and anyone to say anything they want about it. But with that in particular, I think that in almost every case, if you are speaking in private, you're having a private conversation, and then somebody with obviously sinister intentions comes along and takes that private conversation and makes it public, in almost every case, my position is, and this has always been my position, I don't care, I'm not even paying attention to it. Okay, I am not going to dignify that. I'm not going to go I'm not going to give you what you want. I'm not going to reward that strategy. And by the way,

part of that's a principled stand on my part. It's also, it's like a self-preservation thing. I don't want people doing that to me. I don't want people going through and revealing my private conversations, not because I'm saying those kinds of things, but because these are private conversations. Now, there are exceptions to that. One exception is if you're running for political office and you want to be the top law enforcement official in a state and you've said privately that you think that, you know, half of your state should die, well, that's one of those exceptions. And I think probably in general, if you're running for political office, that's an exception. There are things that become fair game that otherwise wouldn't be.

But outside of those exceptions, I just fundamentally disagree with the idea that we should give these people anything that they want or that we need to start now condemning things that were said in private in conversations that had nothing to do with us. We weren't involved. We don't have the context. They were not intended for any of us to even see in the first place. And should we police that? So I would say no.

I want to say this. First, I agree with everything that Matt is saying in its context and in the context that we're talking about. I don't see why I should care about these people on a private chat. I don't think private chat should be revealed. And when the New York Times is spewing out perversion and racism at a level that is far, far beyond. anything these people are saying and incitements to violence. I don't see why a private chat compares the New York Times and the crap that they turn out every day. I also agree with Ben that nobody should be censored. I don't want to censor absolutely anybody. However, let me say this. When J.D. Vance comes out

and he condemns these people. And J.D. Vance is one of my favorite people in the administration. He was my choice for vice president before Trump picked him. I think he's doing a spectacular job. He would have a lot more authority if he would stop hanging out with Tucker Carlson. I guess it depends on what you mean by that exactly, because if you disagree with things that Tucker Carlson says, then no one is saying that you can't disagree with them. You can't make your disagreement known. You can't debate them. Of course. Of course you could do that.

I don't agree with everything that Tucker says. I don't agree with everything that anyone on the right says. It's a different category, though, it's a different category. I mean, you and I disagree, Ben and I disagree. We're all talking about the same world that's actually. happening. You know, to say that Hamas... Well, I guess I think Tucker is talking about the same world. Really?

Yeah, I think he's got different views on the world than you do. But if we're talking, if we're talking about standing up and saying, I disagree with that strenuously, here's why. Well, then yeah, absolutely. If we're talking about, you know, I know you said you're not supporting censorship, but if we're talking about sort of driving somebody out of the movement, alienating them, saying, you know, disowning them, that sort of thing, I absolutely, totally very much disagree with that. You might disagree on Tucker. Same the Holocaust is a mercy killing is the same as saying a man can become a woman.

It's just as crazy. Well, hold on. Let's just take Tucker off the table there for a second because obviously Tucker is a very fraught topic for a lot of people, myself included. But I think that, you know, I guess the question for Matt is there are certain people who you would basically say don't belong in the movement. And so the question I think for everybody, and I think this is one that we should openly discuss. I mean, if we're going to have these discussions is, who doesn't? Right? Like, who doesn't?

Well, I'll give you a takeaway on this that is obviously timely. When Charlie was killed, you know, the guy did like 10 jobs. I mean, it takes innumerable people to fill all the things he did. The most valuable thing he did from a political coalition standpoint is he kept the coalition together. And his events were the events to go to. And his platform. was really setting the agenda for the Republican Party. And Charlie made a really important point to have a coalition in which he would not be pressured to get rid of Tucker, but he also wouldn't be pressured to get rid of people who hated Tucker or who Tucker hated or whoever, you know, where the various constituencies hated them. But Charlie, furthermore, to your point, Ben, also drew a line. There were plenty of people that were not permitted into TPSA events.

And so he did this in, I think, an obviously very effective way, a way that did not fall into the perils of, you know, a movement becoming too extreme. And I just wonder if there's not a lesson that we could take from that. I mean, I think, I think a good, here's a good rule of fun about Charlie, by the way. How about this? How about you probably don't belong in a leadership position, shall we say, in the conservative movement, if you won't just buy into the basic factual idea that Charlie Kirk was murdered by a gay man who is a trans furry lover. How about that? If you spend your days fulminating about all the other things, with regard to Charlie and speculate that he was murdered by other forces, that seems to me

not connected with reality. I mean, that's something that Erica's said, that something TPSA has said. Like that seems like that seems like a pretty good, easy rule of thumb. That if you're spending all your days doing that, if you even, if you even tangentially are doing that, if you're trying to divide them, Matt, I thought that what you said, when Charlie died was right. You know, that one of Charlie's goals was to keep the movement together. It's obviously something JD is trying to do. He's trying to keep people in the room together. I totally get it. I've talked publicly about the fact that Tucker called me that day, two days after Charlie was shot and said, like, let's stop, let's stop fighting.

And I said, you know what, that sounds great to me. That's fine. I really don't want to be fighting with you because obviously we have other priorities. In fact, I even offered Tucker that we should get on stage together and talk about the things that we agreed with. He's yet to take me up on that offer. But the bottom line here is that, you know, when it comes to where you set limits, limits at some point are going to have to be set. And it seems to me that the move on the right is that because we don't like the left at all, because the left is bad, there must be no limit set. And any attempt to set a limit is somehow firing inside the tent. And what this actually leads to is many of the same people who are firing inside the tent,

then turning around and claiming that you're violating the truce. Because I'll tell you what, it's Nick Flentes, who's attacking Donald Trump on a regular basis. Yeah. It is Alex Jones who's attacking Donald Trump on a regular basis. I mean, it is Tucker Carlson who's attacking Donald Trump on a fairly regular basis, actually. So. And I'm, and I think that the friendly fire should stop across the board. And, and I've been very clear about that. You mean the show. There are, not just that you know the show. Yeah. I think that the show. Because I'm the two things. Number one, yeah, just on your point, Ben, about who killed Charlie Kirk, I've been very clear about it. This was clearly a left.

This was leftist violence and we should stay focused on that. I think we're letting them off the hook when we try to, we try to blame anybody else other than the left. This was leftist violence for sure. Does that mean that anyone who feels differently, should be drummed out of the movement? No, I don't think so. And I also think that, that, you know, it's like we're not even in a position to decide, well, who should be a leader, who should have a platform, who should be, you know, who should be getting attention in this movement. It's like, that's not up to us, up to us to decide anyway. Well, no, but it's up to a decision.

Let me just say, after Charlie died, okay, a couple of days after Charlie died, I put out a tweet where I said that I want to call a truth, I can only do it on my end. I want to call a truce. I want to extend an olive branch to everybody on my side. Everybody on the right. Everybody to the right of Bill Marr, including him, not that I ever had really a beef with him, but I want to extend a truce

because we are dealing with a threat. Drew, you said it yourself. These are people like the political violence is on one side. This is on one side. There is one side that engages in political violence. There is one side that rejects the basic realities of life. There's one side that's responsible for murdering 60 million babies in this country. Okay, it's one side.

And so I think that for right now, maybe we'll get back to the arguments, maybe we'll get back to the infighting, we'll get back to that in the future, I'm sure. But for right now, I think we need to be unified against this threat, especially now, especially with the midterms coming up in presidential election right after that, the left, if they get back into control, they're going to be out for blood even more than they ever have been. And so we need to be united against that together. And that's what I said. when I said that a couple days after Charlie's death,

you know the response I got? Almost every single comment I got was, yes, amen, absolutely. I'm with you. Almost every single comment. I said the exact same thing, the exact same thing, like two days ago. And it's completely flipped. Now, almost every single comment is, how could you say this? I can't unite with them.

There's no way. I can't do that. And it's just, I haven't changed. I'm still, what I'm saying is no different than what I said a month ago. I haven't changed. I don't think the situation has changed at all. And I don't know why everything else has flipped. Because...

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They're picking it up Tuesday from the driveway. I haven't even left my chair. It's done. The car is gone. I'm holding a check. Anyway, Carvana. Give it a whirl. Love you.

So good, you'll want to leave a voicemail about it. Sell your car today on... Carvana. Pick up fees may apply. I think, because I think if you take that to its full extent, it's crazy. It works within a context, but surely there is some kind of human decency level that you can cross where, no, you're not on my side. I mean, I don't understand why if you support the cat's paw of Iran where they sit

around and chant death to America, what makes you a conservative? What makes you a conservative that you say tough sounding things? I mean, that you talk in a loud voice about the problems of the country? I don't know. What makes you a conservative if you are in favor of a regime that used to have until Trump took it away, the capacity to actually hurt us? You know, I don't understand the anti-Americanism. I would say you're not on our side.

You're not a conservative if you are not interested in conserving and preserving and defending Western civilization. And I guess the one point I'll give in, you know, in your favor, Drew and Ben, is that I do think that there are some people who claim to be conservatives who actually are not interested in conserving Western civilization at all. And so if you don't want to conserve that, then like we're just not, we're actually are fundamentally, because that's the thing I'm saying we need to unite to defend is Western civilization. And so for example, civilization that has to mean something. Right. So, so for example, in, you know, recent recently I've been talking about the Islamic takeover of Dearborn.

And I've had people who I guess claim to be conservatives who are trying to tell me that actually this is a very good thing, that our country becomes Islamic. And it's like, okay, we're clearly not on the same side. You're trying to conserve Islamism, and that is not what I'm trying to conserve. So obviously you get to a point where those, where it's like, yeah, lines are drawn. And I think the line is at conserving and defending Western civilization.

Anyone who's on board with that and wants to do that, I think we should work together. But if someone says, I'm not interested, I don't want your olive branch. Screw you, which I have gotten that response from a lot of people. Well, and that's your choice. And we got to go to. I just don't want us to make the decision.

I don't want to make the decision on who's defending Western civilization according to popularity. I don't think that's the right of the way. This has all been very fun. I mean, truly, truly enjoyable. But Matt, I need you to talk to us about how you sleep at night. Hold on, I got a better transition. How do you sleep at night?

How about how do you sleep at night? I got a better one. So, hey, you know, we've been talking about who it would be prudential for us to get in bed with politically. Now, Matt, would you tell us about how you get into bed? That was a much better transition. I thought Ben's was better, to be honest. What? I got that.

I worked on that. That whole segment I was working with me. Yeah. Let me tell you about about this. I'm going to do it very organically. This isn't even an ad read. This is, there's no text here. It's just prompts.

You guys are throwing this at me. I don't usually get, I'm like remedial when it comes to, I'm remedial when it comes to ad read. So they always just give me exactly what they want me to say. And now I'm looking at this. It says, tell your audience about your experience with helix mattresses. Okay. Well, okay, fine.

This doesn't mean no good. Why do you even give me this paper? It doesn't be no good. Look, the truth is, I can actually speak from the heart about helix mattress because we got a Helix mattress about, I don't know, about three, when they first came on the show like three years ago, and I can honestly say, this is genuinely true that prior to the Helix mattress,

insomnia was something that I struggled with. I had trouble sleeping. And now ever since we got it, I sleep like a baby every single night until our kids wake us up at 5 o'clock in the morning. But until that moment happens, I sleep very well. I legitimately recommend this mattress to everybody, and we believe in the me Helix mattress so much

that we have now gotten it for all of our kids. All of our kids sleep on Helix mattresses as well. It doesn't get any better. And the thing is, you go in, you go to the Helix website, you take a quiz, and you can match whatever your sleep preference is with the perfect mattress for you, and I've found that it works really well. So you can visit helixleep.com slash friendly fire

to get 20% off sitewide. That's helixleaksleep.com slash friendly fire for 20% offsitewide. Make sure enter our show name after checkout so they know we sent you. Helixleaflead.com slash friendly fire. Now also, I do have to note that we did drop the merch of the decade to celebrate a decade of DailyWire only at that DailyWire shop. We have daily wear. We have daily wear shirts. We have hats.

We have the only camo hoodie made specifically to stand out. It's 10 years of truth printed, stitched and ready to wear. So head on over to DailyWire.com slash shop. right this instinct. That hat that Drew is wearing that covers up his bald spot, which is to say his hair hat. Very kind of you, Ben. Is in fact available over at that daily warehouse.

I'm usually kind of you to call it a bald spot. I usually call it my head. You know, the other thing that I really want to talk about is how the Gen Z is de-gayifying itself. And for that, since we're all very old, we're going to bring on a bright, young, hot, zoomer, fresh and fit kind of talent. But first, Ben, I want to go back

to a men of a certain age. Do we have an update on Jordan? We do. So we have been talking with Michaela over at the Peterson household. She's wonderful, obviously, and Jordan is on the mend. She did tell us, and we obviously agree, that it is worthwhile. She wants him to be public. Obviously, she wants all of his messages to continue to be heard. And so it's actually, I think, quite important what we are doing here at Daily Wire by ensuring that pretty much all all your Jordan Peterson needs continue to be fulfilled, that we actually get as much of his material out there as possible. He is on the end.

We're looking forward to seeing him back, and all of us are praying for him and praying for his family right now. So that's sort of the update at the moment. What you already know is not sufficient to guide you into the future. To negotiate properly, you have to know what you want. So then you might ask, well, how do I know what I want? If you take your problem seriously, The probability that you can carve out a path in life that will constitute a success

while certainly increases. You're going to encounter obstacles, some of which might be the size of dragons along the way. You see what it would be like to care for someone. You see what it would be like to have someone care for you and value you. You have little kids for a very short period of time. It is a major mistake not to notice that and not to appreciate it. We're dealing with the pattern of misbehavior. Our son, who's three years old.

When a disciplinary issue arises, you need to make space to master it. You can make a bad situation good, faster than you think, and turn it into something better than you might imagine. Ten years ago, my friends, the Daily Wire gave you a voice in the fight that no one else would take fights that we could not have won without your support. We sued the Biden administration, took it to the Supreme Court. We won to stop the private mandate on... Fauci-Oachie. We exposed the Loudoun County School cover-up that the media tried to bury,

which also advanced the movement to expose transgenderism that Mr. Mount Walsh had a little hand in, I think. Two major hit movies, What is a Woman, Am I Racist? We gave Jordan v. Peterson a platform to make him uncancellable when the left tried to cancel him. We took aim at the EI. We're just getting started, folks, to celebrate 10 years of the Daily Wire. You can become a member during the deal of the decade starting at $7 a month, which was the price when we started, long before Biden inflation, long before all of the wonkiness in the economy, seven bucks a month. You can't get a half an egg for $7 right now, but you can get a DailyWire membership. Go to dailywire.com slash subscribe to join right now.

Speaking of psychiatric improvement, great news about Gen Z coming out of the UK. There's a study that shows that queer identity is in free fall. And it's a little bit unclear. People are talking about it on Twitter, but they're saying that it means that the whole LGBT identity is collapsing. That's not really clear from this study out of University of Buckingham. What is very clear is that non-binary identity, gender queer identity, has collapsed. It peaked in the woke year of 2023, and it's just collapsed since then.

There is some indication, at least from the abstract of the study, that trans identity is also following that. The L and the G seem to be actually pretty solid, but the rest of it is collapsing. This does not really surprise me at all. The reason is that the gods of the copybook headings just reassert themselves. This is the central conservative consolation, is that reality will win on a long enough time scale. I'm not even surprised that the non-binary part is leading the charge here, because the non-binary part is the most abstract version. of the LGBT identity, it's just this complete androgynous illusion, whereas the L and the G and the B and the T and all that

is a little more visceral and it pertains more to sexual desire and all the rest. So that's kind of harder to extirpate. But in terms of the extreme version of these ideologies, it would seem as though they are on the precipice of being eradicated from public life entirely. To help us understand this, we bring on our Gen Z correspondent, and a new member of the Daily Wire Fan

I'm like, Isabel Brown. Hello, Isabel. Hey, gang, how's it going? I'll tell you, waiting in the wings the last few minutes was quite entertaining. Isabel, I need to know, is your generation not gay anymore? It's like a video, like, I'm not gay anymore. Is that happening? And if so, where are we going to get our interior designer? Tell you people, I have been trying to warn the world that Gen Z, the kids were all right for a very long time. Literally a year ago, a little, a year and a half ago, I should say, was laughed off set. at every TV network, every radio station, every podcast,

when I presented my book that it was Gen Z that was going to save America, that no one wanted to be a lame gay chick like Disney wanted us to be in South Park so beautifully predicted. The numbers, of course, needed some time to catch up, but I think the kids are going to be all right. And none of this information out of this new study shocks me. The idea of the cultural fad of the transgender cult, which is really what we've been seeing for a long time, has already been disillusioned, thanks to people boldly speaking the truth.

I know you guys were mentioning Charlie just a few minutes ago when I spoke on campus at the first prayer vigil at the campus that he was scheduled to speak at next, my alma mater at Colorado State. There was a young woman who came up to me, and I just think this is so indicative of the Gen Z story right now. She said, I have to tell you something. And when she started speaking to me, I was a little wondering where she was falling on the political spectrum. She gave extreme leftist vibes. But she pulled me aside and she said, I have to tell you. you something, Charlie Kirk saved my life from gender ideology. I thought that I was non-binary.

I thought that I needed to castrate myself and take all of these puberty blockers and hormone affirming drugs. I thought I was going to end my life at one point because of all of these lies. And only one person ever had the courage to tell me the truth that I am a woman and I was created on purpose to be a woman. And that was Charlie Kirk. He wasn't mean about it. He was kind about it. But he let me have self-respect and ability to look in the mirror and love what I was seeing for the first time in my entire life. And I think of all of the work that you guys have done for the past 10 years with the Daily Wire, the efforts of people like Charlie Kirk, because people were good enough to tell the truth to the next generation when everyone else was lying to them,

we are not gay anymore. That's the good news. That sounds almost too hopeful. I want to turn to Matt, because Matt, you must be torn on this. On the one hand, you've helped lead the charge against the Lavender Mafia. So I think you'll be inclined to claim a victory here. On the On the other hand, you're profoundly dewer and pessimistic and won't want to admit that things are getting better, and maybe they're not getting better. So what is it? Are we not gay no more? So my ego is battling my pessimism, is what you're saying. Yes, exactly. What's going to win out?

I think that you're right that the study that you're talking about is a little bit, it's not quite as clear cut, I think, as people want it to be. because it is focused on this non-binary thing. And I don't know that we can say that, you know, Gen Z isn't gay anymore. I don't know that we have the evidence that it's becoming less gay. I think all the evidence of fact is the other way. Gen Z is a lot more gay than any other generation. But I do think, based on this study and also just like, and other studies and other data, and just anecdotal observations from a lot of us,

that the trans and non-binary thing, I think, is declining. It's losing steam. And that was inevitable. And the reason why is because nobody ever really believed it to begin with. The only way, I mean, transgenderism as a concept, as we all know, it's been around for a long time, it's been around for many decades. It didn't explode onto the scene in this kind of mainstream way until about 10 years ago, 2015, 2016, and the way that it was able to proliferate from there

and seemingly take over an entire generation is, by all the people who knew better not saying anything, either because they wanted to be polite, or because they were afraid of the backlash, or because they thought ideologically that they had to be OK with this, or some combination of the three. And so it wasn't that people had, all these people had fallen into this trance.

It's that most people knew it was crazy and went along with it for those reasons. A little bit like the masking. It's like masking, everyone went along with it. Everybody was masking. And we walked around for a couple of years, that it'll be like this forever, and that am I ever gonna be able to see another person's face

in public ever again? And then what do you know? Within about like six months, no one's doing the mask anymore. And the reason why is because most people wearing the mask, it's not because they actually thought they had to, it's because they were just going along with it for those same reasons, political ideology, fear, and I think it's the same thing with trans.

So now that that's done, like people aren't afraid anymore. People are not afraid to say what they know is true on this issue. And it was that, that was the silence silence that was needed in order for this virus to take hold. And so the environment isn't there anymore. And so I'm not surprised that we're seeing this trend. And I don't know if it's going to extend over to like homosexuality, but I do think with trans and non-binary that it's on its way out.

Well, Drew, you were friends with Cole Porter. Do you think that this is a longer scope trend or is it going to be just confined to the non-binary? No, it's a longer scope. First of all, I want to agree with Isabel that I think her generation will actually save the world. Every single one of them I met, they are not the way the two generations between the boomers and them are. They aren't hostile. The women dress like women. The men look perfectly comfortable being men.

They don't radiate the kind of hostility that I get from the people who are around like 50. It's just that somehow feminism, I think, seems to have lost its grip on them. And they seem just much more comfortable in their skins. And so I'm very hopeful. What I read in this study, because I agree, it's a little amorphous. But first of all, a lot of it is coeval with the pandemic. So people are locked away. They're told that they stink if they tell the truth.

They told they're mean if they don't lie about where the virus comes from, how the virus is cured, what is working, what's not working. They go nuts. People went nuts. And the thing about transgenderism is it is a mental illness. Being homosexual is not necessarily a mental illness. If you define a mental illness as believing. things that simply are not the case, then believing that you're a woman when you're a man is a mental illness by definition.

But if you're a man attracted to men, then that's who you actually are. So it may be a problem, but it's not a mental illness. And so I think that the mental illness wave that was caused by the pandemic is receding. I think the way the mental illness wave expressed itself was because of what Matt was talking about, this induced mental illness of believing what the left is saying. and their incredible domination, which we finally broke of the means of communication. So if you own the academies,

if you own the news media, if you own Hollywood, then it feels like everybody is telling you that you must be, you know, the wrong sex. And that has an effect. It had a real effect. And I think that grip has been broken as well. So, yeah, I'm pretty hopeful.

I think the thing about being gay is that it's not a choice. I think people are born gay, but I think it can be a choice. I think people can, you know, experiment with it and dabble in it. I think there's been a lot of that and I think that will recede to.

What I want to see is more babies. That's the thing I want to see. And right now there's only one way to make them and when there's another way, it's going to be bad. So I think I would like to see more people just making and taking care of babies. I can't take all this optimism. It's making me a little bit more.

I'm surprised you and shrivel away. I just, I can't. I can't, guys. Like, I can't. It's late at night where I am and I've had it. We're way too deep into the show for this much optimism. So let me explain.

explain for the pessimists in the crowd why all this is happening. The reason that this is happening is is actually a good reason, but that is that trans was the ultimate victimhood status. And people are constantly seeking the ultimate victimhood status because it allows you to get away with literally anything, including forcing 99.99% of the rest of humanity to redefine reality in coordination with your ideas of yourself, which is like the greatest thing in the world from a particular perspective. It's actually quite bad for you. But from the perspective of getting one up on literally all of the rest of humanity, if you earn that incredible victimhood status that applied to trans people for like three or four years or 10 years in the United States, that was like a great place to be.

And then the victimhood status went away because of things like what Matt did and what we did, obviously, here at Daily Wire, over the course of the last 10 years, insanity reasserted itself. And you're no longer considered an inherent victim because you're a man who claims to be a woman or the opposite. In fact, in some cases, you may in fact be an aggressor, as we have seen repeatedly from time to time. I think that non-binary is sort of the same thing. Like, people just saw through it. That's not a victimhood status.

Like, non-binary is just you being weird. You're just saying that you don't have a sex. It's just silly. And I think the next one to go is bisexuality. It's going to go in reverse order. Bisexuality is usually just either straight people pretending to be gay or gay people pretending to be straight. The sort of bisexuality thing is likely to go.

In fact, that's what the stats shows. A huge number of people who identify as bisexual actually are just heterosexual. like they've only had partners who are heterosexual paired in the last year or two years or five years, but call themselves bisexual because it's based on your level of self-identification. The reason I'm pessimistic about Gen Z, aside from, you know, the statistics, is the fact that Gen Z, if they lose the victimhood status in terms of sexual relations, which is really what's happened, is that we were in a period where the next victimhood class was not race, the next victimhood class was sex.

And that has gone away because, frankly, it got boring. No one cared, and there's nothing more to transgress. Everything had been transgressed up to and including whether men and women exist. And so what's the next victimhood status? I think the next place that the young people will go for their victimhood status is economic victimhood. So I'm optimistic that young people are going to move away from some of the crazier I'm sexually identifying as a cat routine. But I think they are going to increasingly identify as somehow economically dispossessed and then call for massive government interventionism, which is mostly what the Mamdani moment is about. And that, by the way, is what you're seeing in the polls for young people.

Young people are increasingly hot on socialism and communism. They're increasingly hot on massive government interventionism. They don't really like capitalism very much. And so I think that the next sort of victimhood status is going to go back to classic Marxist victimhood status, which is if you are poor or if you just can't get an affordable apartment in New York, it must be because the victim, the system is somehow screwing you. Ben, you know what you can also get? So first of all, Isabel, wonderful to have you with us.

Congratulations on the show launch. the Isabel Brown Show, how many weeks in is it? I think we're on our sixth week, but honestly, we launched two days before Charlie was killed, so everything just feels like a fever dream in the last several weeks.

It felt like it's been on for one day. Yes, everybody should go watch it. Isabel, always wonderful to see you. Without question, beautify the room with these disgusting men. Damning you with faint praise. Also, by the way, and then some. And then a lot some, actually.

Also, by the way, By Ben, you were saying people are all going to be broke under communism, whatever, you know, and they're going to have this economic class warfare. Well, even if you're completely destitute, I've got such a great deal for you to also keep up your health. And that is balance of nature. Drew, I know you're looking bad. And so I decided, I brought these here. I wanted to give these to you. I wanted to give you some balance of nature. Give me some balance of nature.

Oh, my goodness. That's amazing. That's a nose. You actually accomplish something. It's supposed to fall. I take these, you know, it used to be, I grew up eating mostly mammoths. And so I need a lot of energy and a lot of nutrition. And this is the easy way to get it.

You don't have to have a spear. You don't have to make those arrowheads out of rocks and stuff like that. You just actually take these capsules and you get all the fruits and veggies that you need packed in to these little capsules. And you get a red and green, so it looks a little Christmassy. If I had known, if I had prepared for the show for even five seconds, I would have taken off this easy to pull off strip, which I can't pull off. And I would be able to open this up and show them to you. But I can't. I can only show you the pictures of fruits and veggies on them.

And they're absolutely terrific. And they make you feel terrific. Well, once your body's feeling all good and you're living in this terrestrial world of flesh and blood, then you can go right back into the digital realm. Because the Daily Wire app is better than ever. It is going to give you that absolute all-access experience. Check out this little teaser. Introducing the new Daily Wire Plus app, your digital home for the next decade of the Daily Wire, featuring all of your favorite hosts and content together in one place.

Follow the voices you trust with new host profiles. Get shows, articles, and now shorts, all in one feed. Smarter Search makes it easy to find shows, podcasts, documentaries, and more. Coming next month, download episodes to watch offline, anytime, anywhere. DailyWire Plus is now on your biggest screens, Roku, Fire TV, Samsung, Apple TV, and more. The full DailyWire Plus library streaming on the biggest screen in your home. Also new this fall, DWTV, our 24-7 live streaming channel. Get the new DailyWire Plus app, built for the next decade of DailyWire.

Available everywhere you watch. Well, after all of that pessimism about Gen Z, I'm going to give you a place where optimism blooms, the Middle East. But actually, I actually am quite optimistic about the Middle East, believe it or not right now. And that's because we have a president named Donald J. Trump. And I've said since term one that the most successful element of Donald Trump's presidency has been his handling of the Middle East. If you can actually make deals happen in the Middle East, that's an extraordinary thing. And Donald Trump has been the only person in my lifetime who truly has made deals happen in the Middle East. So I was actually in the Israeli parliament in the Knesset at the invitation of the embassy of the United States,

Mike Kukabee, for the speech that the President Trump gave. And it was just fabulous. It was just so wildly enjoyable. So first of all, I think you have to understand that the situation on the ground in Israel, the number of just the overwhelming population, their desire, their need for these 20 live hostages were held in terror tunnels for two years to come home was extraordinary. I mean, just it bled out on the streets. walk around the streets of any city in Israel and much of the country, you will see pictures of the hostages, and they've been up for two years. And so the fact that they actually came home on a split screen, President Trump is talking in the Knessa while these people are coming home to their families at the same exact time. And the president was able to somehow get the entire world on

board with a demand that Hamas give up these live hostages and that Israel not have to give up its security position in the Gaza Strip. Israel retains control over some 53% of the Gaza Strip and still has some security oversight of enormous amount of the rest of the Gaza Strip. By the way, all the same people who are very, very upset about quote unquote genocide and the Gaza Strip seem to care not one whit. That since Israel has pulled back a little bit, Hamas is legitimately just pulling people out of their homes and shooting them dead in the middle of the street by the hundreds apparently in the Gaza Strip. But Trump's speech was just spectacular. And the amount of enjoyment in the room, I mean, Trump was going long. He was riffing.

He was making jokes. And people were, people were keeling over. I mean, it was so funny. He was so good and so funny. And we're all used to hearing President Trump do this routine because he's done it for years and years in the United States. But the fact that he was able to come to the Middle East, bring people together who legitimately, you know, all these countries don't believe in Israel's existence technically. He was able to actually bring all those people together and get live hostages out is an extraordinary accomplishment. It can only happen because Donald Trump's real estate skills from New York somehow map exactly and directly onto the Middle East.

and a very bizarre, like he just got rid of all the State Department conventional wisdom that's a bunch of horseshs. And he just did the thing that he did in rooms in New York for legitimately decades, and it worked. I have two things, I want to say. When I was watching the whole thing on TV and, you know, obviously great joy over the release of the hostages. But when I saw Donald Trump in Egypt and the leaders of the Middle East are arrayed behind him, the leaders of Europe arrayed behind him, all I could think was holy crap,

the guy has actually made America great again. It has been since Reagan that we have seen America take that kind of aggressive leadership, which also is a statement of manly governance, which I love. And finally, his statement, the open talk about God. I remember when we started the Daily Wire, you and I used to argue about whether we could use God as a reason when we put forward our ideas. And I kept saying, that is the reason we believe the things we believe in. And without God, everything the left says makes sense.

and I am so thrilled to see God back in the public square because I think he is the reason we say the things we say. And the only other thing I want to say about this is how tough is Bibi Netanyahu that Donald Trump is the good cop. That's an amazing thing. Donald Trump comes into the interrogation room and says to Hamas, you know, you want to talk to me,

I can help you, but you don't want him and Netanyahu's outside going, let me out tear those people on the piece. Okay, we'll talk to Trump. You've got to be a fairly tough guy to make Donald Trump the good cop, and I think all credit to Netanyahu for doing that. Knowles, have you thoughts on this? I do.

I have a political thought on it, which is, one, obviously it's great. We want peace in the region for the purposes of justice, but it is an American concerned about American politics. I don't want Israel to be an issue that creates problems for us. And there have been plenty of people on the left, I guess, and also on the right, who have tried to make Israel this issue that threatens the right-wing coalition. And so the thing I really love about Trump getting this piece is, one, he was negotiating past the sale the whole time. He was saying, you know, hey, guys, I really hope we got a piece because otherwise I'm going to ship all the Palestinians out and I'm going to build a casino in Gaza or something.

So he was able, and at the time, you had all these ninnies who were screaming and whining. I said, he's doing what he always does. He's negotiating. And I think he has such a good track record at this point. I trust him to do it. I'm going to let the guy cook. But even more than that, I just think there are people who have all sorts of views on Israel, Palestine, whether or not America should be involved in the Middle East or to what degree we should be

involved. And to me, the big win for conservatives and Republicans here is not for exactly one niche view over another to win out, but for this issue to reduce in importance. And that was obviously always going to happen after the war ended, after some kind of peace was achieved, if peace could be achieved so that we could focus on the issues that are of greater importance to Americans and that are bigger winners for the Republican Party. If the Democrats were able to do this on trans, for instance, where some of the Democrats realize that trans is nuts, but some of the Democrats are just totally bought in on it.

There's really no way for them to win that with their base in the general public. So the only way they win is for that issue to just kind of drop down a little bit in importance. And I think that's what's probably going to happen here. And now we can focus on the things that people really, really care about. You know, the economy, immigration, all the rest. And even in terms of foreign policy, I don't know, I guess we're zap and boats in Venezuela now. To me, it's a big win, not only for global justice, but just domestically, politically, Trump just keeps throwing Ws as a board. Can I say, can I say, can I actually,

can I jump in? I just want to say I agree with that. I totally, I totally disagree with it. I have to say that. People, Israel is very popular. We need them as an ally in the Middle East. They're a good ally. The only, the only army that can extend its power outside of its country, except for Turkey and they're much better friends. And that means we can turn our defensive attention to the east, which is what we have to do. Well, I mean, I actually, I agree with Knowles that actually this issue going away as a top issue is definitely good for the country because the media had retailed such an enormous pack of lies about this and TikTok and all the rest of it, that it was extraordinarily polarizing. But I think that it only is a good thing if it ends with an Israeli victory. If it ends

with Hamas somehow winning a victory, that's a horrible thing for the United States because it's a terrorist group. It's a bad thing for the West because it's a terrorist group. If Iran extends its sphere of influence, that's a very bad thing. Now you have a bunch of countries that, again, have very little in common except opposition to Iranian terrorist groups and hopefully a willingness to grow economically, now attempting to work together. That's a massive victory. So it's not just that it's off the front pages, obviously that's a good thing, but also that it's off the front pages in precisely the right way, which is the really man. That's the thing. Anybody could have gotten a bad deal, perhaps, but it actually took President Trump to get a very, very shockingly good deal.

And that's a truly amazing thing. Now, speaking of something kind of amazing, so we are going to actually be bringing out in the near future, in the near future, Penn Dragon. So you've heard a lot about this over the course of the last couple of years. It is the most ambitious TV project ever done by an independent studio. I don't think there's any question about this. It looks beautiful. It really looks. You're going to see some of it in a moment. We're going to show the trailer for Penn Dragon in a moment. You should just understand that we are a company that tries to do ambitious, ambitious, big things, that tries to make a difference in the culture. And I think, I think you're going to love it. Here is Jeremy Boring presenting the trailer to you.

Thanks, fellas. And congratulations on 10 incredible years. You know, it's, it's humbling to see the little company that started in your garage grow into the dominant conservative new media organization in the country and to deploy more than a billion dollars in the fight for our nation and our culture. It's a lot for 10 years. From the biggest and most important political podcast of the last decade, the Ben Shapiro Show, to the biggest and most important documentaries of the last decade, am I racist and what is a woman? From the depth and beauty of Jordan Peterson's Exodus series to the wit and wisdom of Andrew Claven, to whatever it is that Michael Knowles does, it's been the honor of a lifetime to be in this fight with you guys and with the hundreds of

employees who've given their best to our cause. It wasn't always easy. From partnering with Dallas Sonnier on movies like Run Hide Fight, to launching a chocolate company in a single day, to creating our own children's entertainment platform. We've never been afraid to take big risks. We've punched way above our weight. Hearts have been changed. Laws have been changed. Children's lives and bodies have been saved. Elections have been won. We've even gotten to help people on their journey to find God and restore their marriages and prove their lives. It's been quite a privilege. But I always come back to the audience. You guys listen to the shows. You watch the videos. You You're the memes.

You buy the razors and the cigars. You support our advertisers. You've been the real change makers these last 10 years. Thank you. There's more to say, of course, and more people to thank, but a company can't run on nostalgia alone. The Daily Wire has always been about fighting the left and building the future. So tonight I want to give you a glimpse of what's next.

It's the culmination of years of effort to build culture, not just to criticize it. It's the biggest, most ambitious project in the company's history. And it's finally coming to Daily Wire Plus this January. Please enjoy the world premiere of the first trailer for the Pinned Dragon cycle, Rise of the Merlin. This land is in a welter of confusion. ...than sheep. More princes than crows on a battlefield. All seeking to snatch what they can, when they can, without a care for who suffers. Until this island is ruled by one, the wheel.

both justice and mercy, there will be no peace. Ryan Reynolds here for Mint Mobile, with a message for everyone paying big wireless way too much. Please, for the love of everything good in this world, stop. With Mint, you can get premium wireless for just $15 a month. Of course, if you enjoy overpaying, no judgments, but that's weird. Okay, one judgment. Anyway, give it a try at mintmobile.com slash switch.

Upfront payment of $45 for three-month plan, equivalent to $15 per month required. Intro rate first three months only, then full price plan options available. Taxes and fees extra. See full terms at mintmobile.com. Boys playing the game of kings, they say they have the Merlin with them. I've seen what you can do where it begins. Well, I mean, if that doesn't look like a blockbuster to you, I don't know what does.

I don't want to take too much credit because it looks great. I don't want to take too much credit, but I do want to say that I did most of the stunts. That's true. You know, the other thing watching it is it kind of reminds you, this is the thing that sets us apart. You know, this is like kind of what the whole thing has been about. It's really started with it. Is making culture. And it's just so, it's so preposterously ambitious and big and beautiful.

I'm very excited. Again, then this company started in Jeremy's poolhouse. And so, you know, we can't thank you enough the people who have made this possible. Our subscribers are all access members. people who watch our shows and all the rest. Because honestly, without you, we don't get to make things like that and try and change the culture and try and change the world by changing the culture, which is something we've done over and over with Matt's movies and with the other movies we've made.

And then with this brand new, massive, I think incredible series from Jeremy, the Penn Dragon cycle. Now, as you know, earlier tonight, we officially announced our new Daily Wire Lifetime Memberships, a limited tier of 10,000 Lifetime All-Access Members. That's it. 10,000, 10,000 only, who will have every all-access benefit. for the rest of your life. Well, actually, 5,000 of them have already been claimed.

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Guys, that was a blast. Should we ever do this again? No. Absolutely not. Absolutely not. All right. Well, see in two weeks. This is Friendly Fire. Catch you next time. There's a reason you're seeing this message. It's intentional because this moment is different. It's both a thank you and also an invitation. Thank you for choosing courage over fear. Thank you for standing when silence would have definitely been easier.

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