The Tucker Carlson Show - Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man

Episode Date: April 30, 2025

Matt Walsh: Any country that can’t function without American aid has no right to exist. (00:00) Should Gay Couples Be Able to Adopt? (10:12) The Effects of the LGBT Agenda on Western Society (19:56) The Destruction of Gender Roles (30:16) Walsh’s Advice on How to Raise Your Kids (42:42) The Modern Obsession With Video Games (44:35) Should Marijuana Be Legal? (59:43) What It Really Means to Be a Man (1:20:00) Is the Manosphere Movement Gay? Paid partnerships with: iTrust Capital: Get $100 funding bonus at https://www.iTrustCapital.com/Tucker ExpressVPN: Go to https://ExpressVPN.com/Tucker and find out how you can get 4 months of ExpressVPN free! Beam: Get 47% off for a limited time using the code TUCKER at https://ShopBeam.com/Tucker Masa Chips: Get 25% off with code TUCKER at https://masachips.com/tucker Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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dejaudan.com slash business coverage okay so i'm gonna um i'm not an x all that much but i do read you and sometimes i i read your tweets and i'm like matt walsh ladies and gentlemen spinning people up here's one we've been saying for many years that gay adoption surrogacy should be illegal now everyone else seems to be catching on this is an abomination we've been saying for many years that gay adoption is an abomination i've never heard anybody say that uh wow we're just diving right in we're diving right in day adoption is an abomination. Yeah, well, I think there I was referring to social conservatives because social conservatives still somehow get a bad rap. So, you know, so-called social conservatives, even among other conservatives and other people on the right, it seems to me. But so when I say we, I mean like so-called social conservatives. I've never heard them say that.

I've never heard anybody. I think I agree with what you said, but I'm not. I don't think I've ever heard a single person say that. Everyone seems to be afraid to say that. Yeah, most people are. That's why I think, but, you know, so-called social conservatism is, that's why it's not popular, even on the right. Can I ask you, is there anything more hated on the right than social conservatism i don't think so so you could say like i think we should drop an atomic

bomb on a bunch of people and just like kill them all and their kids and people are like well that's a really good idea but if you're like actually we should like save some kids then they hate you what is that yeah or we should we should we should probably we should look at the way that human society was structured for thousands of years and we should probably consider that they were right about a lot of that stuff you know maybe not everything right maybe not everything but there are just certain basic civilizational truths that we have moved away from in recent decades. But I don't think there's any good reason to move away from them. And so if human beings did something a certain way for literally millennia in every civilization that we know of, it's probably right.

I mean, there's probably a lot to be said for it again not in every case but in in most cases so it's worth pondering anyway it tells you something if right if every civilization none of which that we know have had contact with each other came to the same conclusions exactly so so it's something like the uh you know gay adoption that and this is this isn't the only argument against it, but I think it is a worthwhile argument that there's never been a society anywhere on earth, anywhere period,

where they have had two men in a romantic relationship starting a family. That's just, that's never existed. It's always been a man and a woman start a family or in certain ancient civilizations and even some primitive ones today, you might have a man and several woman start a family or in certain ancient civilizations and even some primitive ones today you might have a man and several women you might have polygamy um that's pretty that's pretty common feature i would say certainly common but you never had and why do you have polygamy i'm not i don't support polygamy but there was a logic to it

especially in ancient times yes you got to create people you know and the whole point is to create the whole point of the family is to make children and care for them um and you know a a family that's headed up by two gay men is that's why it's it's a it's an abomination it's just well it never happened before and now it's happening and that's why we call it progress right this is progress it's something that's never been done yeah and well it's progress in the way it's progress in the way that cancer progresses you know so when i hear about progressivism i think of i think of progressivism it is progress so we're at stage four gay right now, would you say? Oh, yeah. Full on stage four. Yeah. Terminal.

It's a terminal case. Yeah, I'd figure why not just jump right into it. So I think you make an obvious and very fair and smart point. We should pay attention to the way things have always been done because maybe we can learn something. It's like discarding it all. French Revolution style doesn't end well i totally agree but what's the the more affirmative detailed case against it these kids don't have homes and here are two loving parents to watch over the child why is that bad yeah well i think that there are a couple of things first of all it's interesting to note that when this conversation about gay parenthood first

started really in earnest like 10 years ago most of the conversation was focused on adoption and gay men want to adopt but now what's happened is there's been a shift and now you've got a lot of these gay couples that are turning to surrogacy so they're renting wombs you know they're renting the the they're purchasing the body parts of women and renting them using them like an airbnb rental um wait i thought we got rid of slavery yeah i would have thought but this is uh this is exactly this is the in a very literal sense the objectification of a human being treating them like an object using them as an object so it's just interesting there was a study done recently a survey a couple years ago actually that found that it was like 60 plus

percent of gay couples when they think about parenting they would prefer surrogacy so it's a slight a hand trick you see on the left a lot where they they want to bring about some social change and they present an argument for it but then once they get what they want to bring about some social change and they present an argument for it. But then once they get what they want, they abandon that. And then you kind of, you figure out what they actually wanted. So it's kind of like adoption has given way to surrogacy. And then the whole argument, which I didn't, I never bought, which is that we're rescuing kids who are in these terrible situations and foster care that's out the window because these are not kids that you're

rescuing. You're creating them. Rather than rescuing a kid from an unfortunate situation, you're creating them to be in an unfortunate situation from birth, which is a different thing. So that's the first thing. And the second thing is that even if we're talking- But would you concede that one upside

to a collapsing post-industrial economy is there a ton of poor people who are willing to have babies for profit i don't know that i would call that an upside i'm just like this is so like yeah that's uh people don't take three steps back like if this were happening and if you know dickens were writing about this in the 1850s you'd be like wow you know london's a very screwed up place yeah where we're taking advantage of the poor like that's the step beyond prostitution i mean it really is treating someone as you said correctly as an object but there's not but there's also the the fundamental point whether it's surrogacy or adoption the fundamental point is what does the child have a right to?

We keep hearing about, we hear about this right to parenthood. I mean, you have gay couples now that are, that are demanding insurance cover fertility treatments as if the reason why two men can't make a baby is because of fertility problems. No, it's because of the laws of nature,

but, and that is, that is cloaked under this it's sort of under this umbrella of why i have a right to parenthood no you don't have a right to pay what does that mean no one has a right to be a parent uh it's great to be a parent if you can but you're not born with this like entitlement you're entitled to a child what the hell does that mean rather than talking about the right of the parent let's talk about the right of the child this also this applies to so many of that this applies to abortion supplies to a lot of topics um what does the child have a right to and i would say a child has a right to a mother and a father a child has a right to the basic basic fundamental uh setup that that you know billions of kids throughout history have had

which is a mother and a father now if through the course of events through no one's fault that is taken away from a child i mean you can have a parent that dies you end up with a single parent you can have a divorce which i think is terrible um but it's not supposed to work that way so if you have a child in foster care you're looking for a mother and a father and to just say okay well we'll give this child to two dads you're basically giving up on that child you're saying well yeah we couldn't find the right setup for you so instead you're getting this and i just reject that i reject that totally um and i also think frankly that you know a lot of people won't like this but but but i i think we've passed the point world yeah right no one likes anything that we're saying uh a child being in foster care is is far an ideal scenario. It's very, very sad.

A child going to two gay parents, I think, is worse. I think it's easily worse, actually. Why? It's just more disordered. It's more confusing for the child. Again, neither scenario was good. We don't like either thing. But I don't see going to gay parents as an improvement over what they had before. Do we know that it screws kids up or we just sort of intuitively know it?

I think we intuitively know, but also there's been plenty of studies done about the mental health effects of kids that grow up in these, you know, single sex, same sex parent homes. There's been a lot of studies done about it. But honestly, I don't, you can look at the studies, people will fact check and they're there. I just, I don't need studies for this. It's the same thing with the trans topic. You know, from the very beginning, when we started talking about that, you had all these people saying, well, what are the studies? Where are the studies showing that we shouldn't chemically castrate a 5-year-old or a 12-year-old?

Well, there are studies now that will bear that out. But we don't need a study to tell us that. This should be intuitive. We just intuitively know it. There are certain things as human beings that we just know. And one of them is that sexually mutilating a child is bad. Another one is that a child needs a mother and father. We just intuitively know that. I don't need any study. I don't care what any academic says about it. I don't care. So when you were born, the AIDS crisis, AIDS, was sort of in its early years. And there were famous people who had AIDS, who died of AIDS, who lied about why they were dying because they didn't want to admit that they were gay. So that was the world you were born into. Now being gay is like an advantage in college admissions and a lot of schools and in hiring. So like we've,

it's moved completely. It's like the opposite of what it was in 40 years why do you think that happened and what do you think its effects are uh yeah i think that's um it's the collapse of well it's just this war on it's kind of what we started with. It's this war on normalcy, on civilization, really. It's part of the anti-family agenda, the anti-human agenda. And I think that, and that's always been there. Why did it catch on, though, to such an extent? I think that the side that was supposed to stand up for the family and stand up for civilization largely failed and abdicated their responsibility to do so. You know, conservatives, the church has just largely failed. Not even failed, not even tried, really.

Not even tried. Why is that? Fear, cowardice, hypocrisy. I mean, hypocrisy in the actual sense, in the literal sense of not someone who says something and does another, but someone who claims to believe something they don't, which is what actual hypocrisy is. And so we have a lot of hypocrites on the right and in the church, unfortunately, who are just claiming to believe things they don't really believe. And so I think that the answer is, it's like, why aren't there enough pastors in any church, in any denomination, standing up and talking about these issues and leading on these issues.

And the answer is, well, there's a lot of cowards, but also a certain portion of them don't really believe it. I mean, they don't believe. It's like whether or not they really believe in God is a question. So I think that that's a part of it too. What do you think the effect of it has been? Not just the acceptance of homosexuality, but the celebration of it. Like, what—I remember hearing, you know, 30 years ago when this was gathering steam, people saying, well, it's not a threat to you.

You know, gays aren't going to break into your house and, you know, forcibly make you gay or something. Like, why do you care? And I thought that, you know, kind of made sense to me at the time um but i there's a sense that's just not true actually that it did have a big effect on everybody else do you think that it certainly did because because it's always a lie obviously when they say oh this isn't we just want to do what we want to do and we're not, it won't affect you and we don't need you to be involved. This is just what we're doing in the privacy of our own homes. That was a good argument, though, don't you think?

In theory, in principle, it's a good argument. I'm just saying as a kind of matter of slogans, you know, like, that's better than just do it for Nike or have a Coke and a smile. That's like a really effective ad campaign for Americans because that matches the American instinct, like, you know, live and let live. to an extent that if someone across the street from me is in their home doing some freaky weird stuff and that's it they're just in their home doing it and i never even know about it or see it my children don't see it my children don't know about it uh then yeah it's hard to make an argument that i'm somehow impacted by that because i'm not except maybe in the most indirect sort of way but that's not that's not how it actually indirect sort of way. But that's not how it actually works. That's just the slogan. That's not what really happens. And so we follow the

trajectory and we've seen this time and time again. It always starts with tolerance. They say, well, just tolerate this, which I guess we're supposed to think means you know just people are doing this on their own you don't have to you could just stay out of it and they'll stay away from you and yes tolerate it right um tolerance so it starts there but then it goes to very quickly acceptance and then they start saying well you, you should accept this. Well, accept and tolerate are not exactly the same thing. How are they different? Well, tolerate means I just put up with it. I allow it.

I allow it. I put up with it. I don't try to stop it. Right. Is what tolerance means in the most literal sense. Accept means I'm embracing it. Right. It means I'm embracing it. but then they don't stop at

accepting because then they go to well okay now actually we need you to celebrate it you know so it goes from tolerance to acceptance to celebration and pretty fast actually pretty fast yeah i think i think there was a time when that process might have taken 10 years and now it seems like it takes 10 minutes. So, we went from decades ago, it was, hey, they're just in their private lives in their own homes doing this, doesn't affect you, to now, well, they're literally marching in the street in leather bondage gear, like flaunting in front of confused children standing there. Having sex on the street, you know, in leather bondage gear, like flaunting in front of confused children standing there. Having sex on the street, actually. Yeah, right. Engaged in sexual acts.

And even worse than that, they're going into the school systems. They're putting this stuff in the school. They're trying to tell my kids, when my kids aren't in the school system, but, you know, they're trying to tell our kids. Do the authorities know your kids aren't in the school system well they do now we still and i'm in tennessee so we still have we still have that right in tennessee so far but then they start going into the school system they start they start promoting this they start trying to tell our kids that uh that you should also tolerate this and accept it and embrace it and and celebrate it um there's this kind of there's

a you know what what they're telling kids in school about homosexuality for example is not just biology there's a moral message they're giving them a moral message and the moral message is this is okay there's nothing wrong with it it's this is you know a gay couple is equal in every way to a straight couple. These are just different variations. You know, it's a, it's morally neutral. That's their message. That's a, that's ideology.

That's not biology. And, and once you start doing that, then it's like very clear how this affects me. You know. But how does it affect the society? Well, it fundamentally transforms society and our basic priorities, how we live, what matters to us. So we're not positive that cryptocurrency is the future of finance, but we do know that what we have now is broken and dangerous. Debt has never been higher in this country. Many of our so-called leaders are getting rich, serving you. It's a scam.

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confuse that if you convince people that there's no difference between men and women like that's when civilization falls then you have like women fighting your wars yeah you know what I mean? And gender roles is another one. That, again, it goes back to human civilization worked a certain way for thousands of years. And it seemed to work. And we went from, you know, mud huts to walking on the moon. If you believe we walked on the moon, which I absolutely do. Boy, you are taking some bold positions this morning. That is bold.

That is bold, I've discovered. You're taking on the entire internet. So we went from there to there with a kind of basic structure, with a basic setup. Gender roles is one of them. They were so basic, so fundamental even, you didn't have a word for it. You know, if you go back to 1700 and use the term gender roles to anyone, they're not going to have any idea what the hell you're talking about. Even though their entire society is structured around it. Exactly.

And this is true even now. If you go outside of the kind of liberal Western bubble, which I've done, which i've done once when we were doing what is a woman i went to we went to kenya we talked to the messiah tribe in in kenya did they know what a woman was they didn't know what a woman was they were confused by the question not because they didn't know the answer but because they couldn't possibly understand why it would even be asked right um but then i even i remember a lot of this didn't make it in the movie because it was it wasn't totally connected but talking about gender roles with them and again they had no idea what that term even meant but their whole society is

completely structured around it it was if you're a man this is what you do if you're a woman this is what you do and that's it and. And I remember asking one of the women, I was in her hut, which is actually made of cow dung. And it's a one room hut and they all sleep on one bed, mud floor. And she was telling me what she does all day as the woman of the house,

which is she takes care of the house, she takes care of the kids. And I asked her if she was happy doing this. And she laughed at me. It was such a ridiculous question. Because of course she is. And then I asked about depression. And this might be in the movie.

I said, you know, where I come from, a lot of people are depressed. And one of the guys said to me, well, we don't have that here. We don't do that. We don't we don't do that we don't have we don't have depression that's not a thing here um and that's not and yeah of course there's unhappiness it's not like a utopia i wouldn't want to live there to be perfectly clear about it but uh you do notice that in these societies that are structured around gender roles, there's a lot of anxiety and hangups that they don't have because they know they have a basic concept of who they are and what they're supposed to do. you can't beat nature. If I go out into a blizzard with my boxer shorts, I don't care what, you know,

my resolve level is or my courage. It's like, I'm going to freeze to death because you can't beat nature because it's bigger than you because God created it. Right. And we're, and, and,

and we are certainly discovering that in this, in this culture. And that's why, you know, you can go on Tik TOK any, which I don't recommend, but you can go on tiktok any which i don't recommend but you can go on tiktok anytime and you can it's a whole genre of video now on tiktok where you've got these young women it's usually it's usually young women who do these videos these selfie videos where they're in tears crying because they went out into the working world and they found it so miserable and depressing

and empty and they just hate it and they don't want to work and they don't want to do it and they just and they're in despair over it um and and that's that's exactly what's what's happened i think we were we were you know the message to wait so you're not only against gay adoption you're against women working at banks uh yeah for the most where did you get all these opinions you know it it's not the ideal setup because i mean and just to be clear i don't uh i think that there are families where both parents have to work. I think there are a lot of families where they think both parents have to work, but they don't actually have to. It just depends on what your priorities are

and if you're willing to make the sacrifices. I think most families, you know, people say to me all the time, well, I'd love to have, I'd love for it to be one income. I'd love to homeschool. I'd love to have a family. We can't afford it. I mean, but you went to Harvard and had a big trustchool. I'd love to have a family. We can't afford it. I mean, but you went to Harvard

and had a big trust fund. It's easy for you to say that. Right, exactly. Yeah. No, you didn't have any trust fund and you didn't even go to college. You worked at Blockbuster

and then you told me this last night at dinner. I had no idea. You worked at a couple of Blockbusters. I did, yeah. Yeah. I was an assistant manager

at one of the both. Is that true? It was. That's how low their standards were towards the end. It was definitely toward the end. I left Blockbuster, and then they went out of business shortly thereafter. So you can connect the dots on that one. By the way, it's not the first company you've worked at that's no longer with us, which is interesting.

You are the destroyer. But how old were you when you got married? 25. Then how long after that did your wife get pregnant with twins? It was about a year, year and a half, yeah. Did, and that point I assume she was raising the twins, right?

Right, yeah, yeah, we, yeah, I was working, I was making about $40,000 a year at the time, half that when we first got married, but by the time we had kids, I was making about $40,000 a year. And that was the forty thousand dollars a year and that was the only income in the family that was the only income in the family and no trust fund at all no no no uh i no when we uh no savings of any kind you know this was a time there was one time i remember I went to the gas station to get gas and my card was declined. Got insufficient funds.

And I'm in the gas station. I have no money. I can't. And the gas tank is empty. Because when you're broke, your gas is always almost empty. And so I had no gas. I had insufficient funds. And I remember thinking, this is after I had two kids already.

This is how broke we were. But I remember thinking, I'm going to have to ask someone at a gas station for money. I'm going to have to do this. I can't believe I'm going to have to. But I didn't. I just started looking under the chair for coins. And I found about like a buck 50 in coins. And I went and paid for gas, a buck 50 worth of gas in coins.

Enough to get home. And then we'll figure out the problem. But anyway, the point is we had no money um we were very broke and you know money went a little bit farther back then but not that much farther i mean this was this wasn't 50 years ago right how many years ago was this was 11 years ago 11 years ago all of us remember 11 years ago it it was the same country. Yeah, it was the same country. And so we decided we wanted to have one income. We wanted to have a one-income family, so a family of four on one income. It was not a high income at all.

It can be done, I think, in most cases. You just have to be willing to make the sacrifices. And a lot of people aren't. And that's fine, too, because you have to decide on what your priorities are. And so you might say, look, it's a priority to us that we have a big enough house that each person can have their own room. We don't want to share rooms for kids. It's a priority to us that we have two cars, that we can go on vacation, a nice vacation once a year, that we can have two or three TVs, that everyone can have a smartphone with all the plans. And we want to have five all the plans, and we want to have five different streaming subscriptions, and we want to be able to eat out whenever we want.

That's a priority to us. In a case, if that's a priority, then yeah, in a lot of cases, you're going to need double income. But if you're willing to say, okay, we're going to downsize our home, we're going to share bedrooms, we're going to have one TV, we're going to downsize our home. We're going to share bedrooms. We're going to have one TV. We're going to have one car. We're going to go on much more modest vacations. And we're going to cut things down to the bone a bit because it's worth it to us

to be able to keep mom at home and to be able to homeschool or whatever it is. So I think if you're willing to say that, a lot lot of people could do it but do you think it is worth it yeah absolutely definitely why 100 um because a lot of other stuff doesn't matter really it's like there's no happiness in that um i i think i think that's clearly true uh on the other hand you know it's it's a drag not having enough money. I've had more than enough money most of my life, but I have had periods where I didn't have enough and had to sell stuff. And everyone goes through that.

And it's a bummer. It's very hard. Like I said, having gone through it, it's really difficult. I much prefer having money to not having it but uh not at the expense of having someone else raise my kids so what's the upside of you know making the conscious decision to have the mother of your children raise those children the downside i mean you, you just described it, like you're going to sacrifice in order to get that.

But if you do get that, what do you get? Happiness in the home is a big thing. Not perfectly happy. It's not, you're going to have your problems and your struggles, and some of them may be financial. And there can be some real misery that comes from that. I don't deny it. But it's just a fundamentally happier home, in my experience,

when the children are being raised by their mother, by their parents. The kids are happier. And beyond happiness, you can control how your children are raised and you can raise them with your value system and maintain that, which is almost impossible if you're putting your kids are going to, they're going to spend five days a week, you know, seven hours a day, nine months a year for 12 or 13 years of their formative years, not with you or your, or your wife in this government indoctrination center around their peers.

And so inevitably they're going to be absorbing. They're going to start orienting themselves to the world based on that, by looking at their peers. And so inevitably, they're going to be absorbing. They're going to start orienting themselves to the world based on that by looking at their peers, not even so much what their teachers are telling them, but what their peers are doing. And that's what's going to happen. So at a certain point,

you're going to lose, you run the risk that you're just going to lose them. And that's why you have these parents who turn around and everything they've instilled in their kids seems to have just gone out the window. And I think there's a big reason why. But then we're told that if you don't do that, if you don't submit to the culture, then your kids are out of step with their peers. They're weird.

They never quite fit in. They're weird they're weird is that a risk is that a meaningful downside like what do you think of that i don't think it's meaningful weird is there are bad kinds of weird but this is a good kind of weird um yes yeah i hear this a lot people will say, well... How do you socialize them? Yeah, how do you socialize them? Do you want to keep your kid in a bubble? Yes.

And it's like, yeah, I do. I absolutely want to keep my kids in a bubble. I really do. But are they getting enough porn if they're in that bubble? Right. Porn enough time on TikTok. if they're in that bubble? Right. Well, enough porn, enough time on TikTok. I mean, all that sort of thing. That's the point.

You are supposed to be providing an environment for your child to grow and develop and mature physically, morally, spiritually, have a childhood, have actual childhood experiences. I hear from people all the time, people my age and older that say, oh man, I remember when I was a kid and we were outside, we would run around in the woods and we would be outside all the time playing tag. And I just wish my kids had that because kids these days are just on the screens all day. They don't have a real childhood. And I say that your kids can have that. There's no reason why they can't have it. My kids have that. I work in media and yet my kids have exactly that kind of childhood because we just determined from the beginning that our kids are, they're going to have a real childhood. They are going to run outside and scrape their knees and climb trees. And that's what they're going to do. That's the kind of childhood they should have. And it is possible to have it. The only difference now

is that it has to be a choice. I think 30 years ago, that was just the default. So more than a choice. I mean, you have to organize. Well, you're the one with six kids who are homeschooled. So you tell me, but it sounds from the outside like you have to reorganize your entire life around that goal. You do. It doesn't happen naturally, right? Right. It doesn't happen naturally. That's why I said it has to be a priority.

If it's an actual priority. If you really are lamenting that kids today don't have a real childhood, which I agree. I think that many of them don't. And I think it's a horrible tragedy. It really is. But if you really care about that and if it troubles you, then yeah, you have to make...

So what if you... I mean, if you don't mind, if this is too personal, just say, stop being so creepy and I will pull back. But if you don't mind, like describe in specific terms

the steps that you've taken to protect your children and allow them a childhood in a world that would deny them one. Like what have you done? Well, it starts with we don't send them to public school. You know, we have always homeschooled from the beginning. So that's a big step. They don't have phones. They don't have access to any screens except for our family tv we have a family tv

we don't do there's a policy my wife and i have had since the beginning is we don't do screens there will be no screens in a room that has a door on it uh so we have one tv and it's in a very public area of the house where anyone can hear it when they walk in. And that's it. So we do have that. Like our kids can watch TV. They can't watch it all day, but they can watch it. And we're going to know anything that they watch.

You know, they're not going to just sit there on the TV and choose something and tell us what you want to watch. If it's something I've never heard of, well, you're not watching that until I can watch it first. And they don't have any internet access at all. No phones, no tablets, nothing like that. Laptop. No laptop, no computer at all. And our oldest kids are almost 12 now. The only exception we make is if we go on long car rides, which for us is four hours plus,

then we have tablets that are for the car, four hour plus car ride. There's no internet on it. It's books and educational games. The tablets have that. In the car, if it's four plus hours, you can use those tablets.

Then when we get to our destination we're taking the tablets back and i and i've and i've and i've noticed this that that even this this little bit of access to this that kind of technology that we do give to our kids in the car in this really yeah in this really specific scenario you see how this it just has this pull on them yeah and it becomes uh especially if it's one you know we sometimes go places it's a 15 hour 16 hour ride over a couple of days so during that time they do have the tablets for a while and when we get there it's almost like a detox yeah they they're they're just they're they're jonesing for the giving them

one jelly bean they want more exactly exactly Right, exactly. Exactly. And I've had to take what some people would consider extreme steps to get them over that. How extreme? Well, to me, it's not extreme because it's like what my dad would have done. But I remember it was last year we had just come back from a long

car ride. And so we took the tablets away. And then my son, who was seven at the time, freaked out. He started screaming that he wanted his tablet. And I said, no, we don't, we're not that family. We don't have seven-year-olds screaming about tablets. We're not going to do that. And so I said, come here, bud, come over here. I brought him over to where our trash can is in the kitchen. And I said, here's where the tablet's going here. I brought him over to where our trash can is in the kitchen. And I said, here's where the tablet's going.

It's in the trash. And that's it. We're throwing it away. You're not getting it back. Did he have a funeral for it? Emotionally, in his heart, he did. He was shocked. He was distraught.

But we threw it away. I didn't give it back to him. It went in the trash. And like a year later, he got a new one for the car. And he freaked out. And about 10 minutes later, he was fine. And he was running around outside using a stick like a lightsaber or whatever. But it shows you why most parents, despite, I think, wanting to do what you do, I do think a lot of parents will hear this and say, man, I would like to do that or I should have done that.

But the reason they don't is the pushback from the kids is really intense. Denying kids electronics, denying them what all of their peers, what all their friends have. Like, it's hard. It is hard. It is hard. It is hard. And especially if it's easier, we have it a little bit easier because our kids are homeschooled and most of their friends are like homeschool Christian families. And most of them are on the same page.

Not all of them, but most of them are. And it does make it easier. It certainly does. If your kid's in public school, it's going to be a lot harder because there's a whole culture that comes out of the screens, out of the devices. of their peers who are not part of the homeschool community, but just like a kid from public school or something, the difference is stark. It really is in every way. You can just, the way that they speak,

like I said, they have a different language that they pick up. The way that they carry themselves. I think a lot of these kids are a lot more just sort of jaded and cynical. They seem a lot harder to impress. They're overstimulated. They're not interested in things outside of the screen. My son, my 12-year-old son is, and I was the same way when I was his age. I'm still this way way but he goes through these phases where he becomes really obsessed with a certain topic and it

changes it'll it'll change every four to six months he picks a new topic that he's just obsessed with it's the only thing he cares about is this topic and it could be anything from he went through a phase where he was obsessed with Native American culture. It could be Lord of the Rings. It could be anything. Space. He did a dinosaur thing, as a lot of boys do. And anyway, so when he's around his friends or he's around other kids, he wants to talk about whatever that is. He wants to talk about this thing that he's really interested in. And he'll learn everything there is to know about it. He'll end up knowing more about the subject than I do. I'm learning from him about it. But he'll be around these other kids and he wants to,

that's what he wants to talk about. He wants to talk about, hey, let me tell you this really interesting thing I learned. And with some of these kids, they'll look at him like he's weird, you know, because that's just not. They don't do that. They want to talk about, you know, the Minecraft movie or whatever, you know. Sorry to hurt your feelings, but the idea you have any privacy online at all is not true. Big tech monitors everything you do on your phone, your laptop, even on your television. How's that paranoid inducing? It's a total invasion of privacy. And of course, it's an end on your television. How's that paranoid-inducing? It's a total invasion of

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I've gotten in a lot of trouble with some in my audience. You're not allowed to criticize video games or marijuana. Those are the two things you're not allowed to criticize. You really can't. You really can't. Which to me only validates a lot of the criticisms that people are that attached to it. Because here's my thing with video games. I don't think there's anything intrinsically wrong with them.

We don't do video games with our kids because it's a screen-based activity. And we've just decided that our kids are not going to have a childhood dominated by screens. And so we're just not going to do that. That's a decision that we made. But there's nothing intrinsically wrong with them. I think I would... A lot of the gamers, they'll... Anytime I offer some mild criticism of video games or anything... What's your mild criticism? It's not about the game itself.

It's about the attachment to it. It's about revolving about the attachment to it you know it's about it's about revolving your whole life around it and so that when we get into this conversation the video game fans will say to me well this is no different you know you're a football fan which i am a big nfl fan and they say well what's what's the difference between playing a video game and watching football on a sunday afternoon and i think that's a valid point. I think that there probably is little difference. I think there's a little bit of a difference, but not much.

And I would say the same thing about being a sports fan, that it's fine to like sports. I do. I love football. It shouldn't dominate your life. And there are people out there who it just – their sports fandom is the central thing about them. It's their whole personality. And that's excessive. That should not be your personality.

You know, your affinity for some group of guys playing a game should not be your personality. It shouldn't be your identity. And that's my point about video games. That's it. So that's why I say it's a very mild criticism. You want to play the games, that's fine. You don't need my permission. But it should not be the central fact of your life.

It shouldn't be your number one priority. You shouldn't have an attachment to it. You shouldn't have an excessive attachment to it. That's it. And I think that's pretty reasonable. Why are people touchy about that? People are, it's part of the culture. People take their entertainment

and their recreation very seriously. And I think for a lot of people, it just, that is their, the central fact of their identity. And so a lot of people it just that is their the central fact of their identity and so they kind of take it personally they take it as a personal attack which is not how i mean it where are you on marijuana uh i think it's awful i think it's terrible i used to have a more kind of libertarian view of it. Yeah. If you were to go back 10 years, 15 years, my view was, I don't like it personally,

but- You were never a weed smoker. I've had it. I've never been years and years and years ago. Not in adulthood. It's not for me. It's not for me. But, and my view used to be,

well, it's not for me, but probably all this to be well it's not for me but probably all this i kind of bought into the war on drugs thing and all this money that we're spending to try to stop people for smoking it is a waste and so it should probably just be legal even if i don't like it uh there's this argument from the marijuana fans that, well, it's no different than alcohol. And we know how prohibition of alcohol worked out. And so if we're going to allow people to go out and get a drink, why shouldn't they be able to go out? It worked out pretty well, I think.

I think cirrhosis deaths went way down, didn't they? I mean, they did. Yeah. I'm not convinced by the argument for that reason. I'm also not entirely convinced that alcohol and marijuana are comparable. For one thing, an alcohol can be really bad and there's addiction and it can destroy families and lives. Alcohol is, though, at least a more social, it's a social lubricant so if you're with a group of people and you're having a drink it can help you have kind of loosen up you have a better time as long as you're not being excessive

now if somebody gets trashed then it kind of ruins the time for everyone and that can happen i think marijuana is not like that it's it it it kind of turns you inward it makes you anti-social you know so if you're sitting around a table with some people and a couple of them are drinking a beer even if you're not drinking you can have a perfectly nice time but if you're sitting around a table and a couple of the people are stoned it's like that's it's lame you don't even want to talk to that person they've got nothing to contribute yeah um does seem to isolate people yeah i think it's isolating i think it turns you i think it turns you inward but regardless of all that my my my opinion was yeah it should probably just be legal but i also believe in when you get new data

you get new facts you need to analyze them. You need to be willing to change your mind. And so we, we have legalized it in many places across the country in many cities. And I've been to these cities as many of us have where, where weed is now. It's like cigarettes were 30 years ago, everybody's smoking.

And I think the early returns are not good you don't think denver new york are pretty great i really don't i think they're quite it's it's quite terrible it's not all because of weed but just the experience of walking around everybody's high it reeks of weed everywhere how has this made anyone's life better that's my question that's what i want to know i i'd be willing to adjust my view on this and i've asked this question before i haven't gotten a satisfactory answer but we've made weed legal in a lot of these places in what way has it has it has it measurably improved life anywhere now that it's legal? Well, I don't know.

I mean, it's degraded people to the point where they're very easy to control. Don't you think that's an upside? So if you're like running a criminal enterprise posing as a government and you don't want people to rebel violently against you, then you give them drugs so they won't. And if I was in a position of power politically then maybe i'd feel that way but for me i mean that that does like take three steps back like what is this the whole population is like addled with something you know ladies are on benzos the kids are on amphetamines the young men are on weed yeah like no one's in his right mind but everybody's kind of grooving out to his own music and testosterone levels have just like dropped to the floor and so

probably not going to have an insurrection when everyone's high right yeah it makes people compliant it makes them uh apathetic even more than i think people just sort of naturally are these days. And of course, in reality, these are all bad things. So it kind of goes back to how has it made anyone's life better? And I don't know, I'm a simple person. Maybe I can be guilty of being simplistic sometimes. So if that's the case, then guilty as charged. But to me, it's like, I think a policy is bad if it makes people's lives worse

and doesn't improve anything. What if it works in theory? What if it's a beautiful theory? Well, theories are great. Then we can talk about it. Then it's a lot of fun to talk about. It's like that famous, the DeGaulle line, which I think is probably fake. Then we can talk about it. Then it's a lot of fun to talk about. It's like that famous De Gaulle line, which I think is probably fake.

We know it works in practice. The question is, does it work in theory? Yeah. And I do feel like that's in operation in the United States. It's like, well, you know, people have the right to X, Y, or Z, therefore we're doing this.

And it's like, actually, that's a disaster. But people have a right. You know what I mean? It's like there's no reference point in reality there. It's just like the theory makes sense. Let's go with it. Yeah, and that's a disaster but people have a right you know what i mean it's like there's no reference point in reality there it's just like the theory makes sense let's go with it yeah and that's why i increasingly i i when people start talking about their rights it it it doesn't mean a lot to me i don't even know what people mean when they say it you know i'm not trying to be pedantic but the next time someone says well i have a right to this just ask them what do you mean you have a right to it what does that mean no i know they really have no

they don't know what they're saying i think the vast majority of people talking about their rights if you ask them to define the word right they would not be able to do it define anywhere what's white supremacy what's racism what's what's anti-semitism what is any word used as a cudgel to make people be quiet and control them no one ever is forced to define what the term means right in fact there are even laws that i'm you know around those questions that are laws they carry punishments and the term is never defined yeah i just I feel like this is a trend where language isn't used to communicate. It's used to control and therefore it has to remain not fully defined. Right.

And that's why I think all I can do in response to that is if it's one of these terms that doesn't mean anything anymore, then it, then it, it's not persuasive to me in an argument. Right. It's a term that has become not useful. And it may have been useful at a time.

It may even be a term that used to have a definition or should have a definition. Right. But there are a lot of terms that are just not useful anymore in a conversation because they don't clarify anything. What? Well, right. You know, rights.

That's one. It's just not. I'm not saying rights don't exist. I'm saying it's not a useful term in a conversation most of the time, because when somebody says, oh, I have a right to this, I don't know what they mean by that. And I think they don't know what they mean by that. Right. I don't think they care, actually.

Yeah. um i don't think they care actually yeah and uh and and but also racism uh white supremacy anti-semitism any any of the the isms these are all these are not useful terms anymore because you know when you're calling someone racist that doesn't tell me anything about him actually it could be if you're if you're pointing to a guy saying that guy's racist, maybe he thinks that all black people are inferior and should be enslaved. That's racist. So maybe that's what you're telling me about him. But you could be trying to tell me that that's a guy who understands that, you know, young black males are disproportionately violent.

And he has pointed that out. So you could be using the term to describe that also which is not actually racist at all so when you say racist i don't know what you mean so it's just it's not a useful term you need to be more specific it means something i don't like right like something that gets in my way right there's there's yeah exactly there you're saying there's something about that guy that i don't like. Yeah, right. I want this thing, and you're between me and this thing, and how do I get you out of my way? How do I incapacitate or destroy you so I can get what I want?

You're racist, or any of those other terms. Right. You're in the way. Exactly. I should have asked you this, but I'm interested if you don't mind. What is your spiritual practice at home? Like, you educate your children, you and your wife, I assume your wife primarily, educates your children. to this but i'm interested if you don't mind what is your spiritual practice at home like you you educate your children yourself you and your wife i assume your wife primarily educates your children

but as head of head of household how do you think about your requirements as like the spiritual leader of your home yeah we're catholic um so and we pray together every night as a family which i think is is uh and we can get lazy about that. I think a lot of families do, but I think it's really important. It doesn't have to be anything, you know, it doesn't need to be a two-hour routine, but. But you say your prayers before bed. Right. Yeah.

As a family. All of you, all eight of you. Yeah. Well, not the babies. The two-year-olds they they get out of it for now but uh well basically you've got a whole congregation yeah we do yeah uh on you know it's i think it's important to be on your knees this is just a bodily physically yeah physically on our knees and you know why so because it's a it's a it's a a symbol of humility and submission

before god now you don't have to be on your knees to pray there's a perfectly of humility and submission before God. You don't have to be on your knees to pray. There's a perfectly valid prayer if you're not on your knees. But if you can, I think you should be. And I think it's a good image for the kids to see. It's a good image. It's good for my kids to see me on my knees praying. It's good for them kids to see me on my knees praying. It's good for them to see that.

Because to my kids, I am the authority figure in the home. I don't answer to anybody in the home. I don't have to ask anyone's permission for anything. And I'm ultimately like the source of discipline in the home as the father as i should be but for them to see that oh even even that guy even dad who in the home you know this is his castle but even he is um showing submission and obedience and humility toward some power above him. I think that's a really powerful image for my kids to have

and that I had with my own dad growing up. So we do that. And I think this is also, I think I'm at the point where my where it's kind of like my whole ideology, my political ideology at this point is that I want my kids to go to heaven. I want my kids to go to heaven and I want them to be good and happy people. That's what I want. So everything that we do in the home, and we're not perfect.

We don't get this right perfectly, and we're not perfect. We don't get this right perfectly, not even close to it. But everything we do in the home should be tailored towards that end to help our kids be good and happy people. And that's also, those are the policies that I support. Those are my politics. Sounds like Christian nationalism, Matt. Guilty as charged. I'm a nationalist, I'm a Christian, so. Another term I have never heard defined. Well, that's, wow, what an interesting way to frame it.

What a great way to frame it. What do you think of as your duties as a husband and father i think it's um provide you know i'm we talked about gender roles so i i do believe that the father should be the provider in more ways than one. You know, you're providing financially, like bringing home the bacon is a really important part of that. And I think that the father should do that. But you're also providing safety, security.

You're protecting protecting and it and and you know i know when you say that it sounds like well that's that's easy because like what are the what are the chances that i'm actually gonna have to fight off some bad guy that breaks in the house it's not it could happen it's not impossible they're increasingly high yeah increasingly high but i haven't had to do it yet uh and maybe i'll never have to do i hope i never I never have to do it. But it's not just about that. As a man, you should be, I believe, a stabilizing presence to your family. When they're around you,

they should just feel safer and calmer. Not necessarily because they're worried that a bad guy is going to... That's part of it, but it's not just that like they're they're the world's a confusing place the world is a dark place everyone has anxieties and when you're there they should just feel calmer and better having you around and if something goes wrong if there's um you know, the shit hits the fan, there's a problem, they should be able to know that, okay, well, thank God dad's here. Or thank God my husband's here. And I think that's one of the central duties of a father, which means that, you know, we've gotten away from, in large part in this society, we've gotten away from in large part in this society we've gotten away

from uh we don't talk about stoicism as a virtue anymore at all uh no one really talks about that i happen to believe in it a lot i may take it a little bit too far i you know i i maybe i err too much in that direction but if you had cancer you wouldn't tell anybody correct i admire that yeah i i if i was it's easy to say but i think if i was dying of cancer right now you would not know and i would never tell anybody why um because it's not your burden everybody knows a good night's sleep is super important it's actually one of the most important things you can do for your health and your sanity. And that's why we are excited to tell you about something that really helps. Beam's Dream Powder.

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be prepared. Go to AmmoSquared.com to learn more. I have seen this firsthand, including recently, and I vehemently agree with you and i think it's i think it's a gender specific thing i think that's a man's burden absolutely not the wine yeah but i and i again i i've seen it in a very profound way it changed my life actually seeing it but i haven't thought through why it's important but i know that it is it sounds like you have thought through why that's important. Why is it? Well, it goes back to what I said, that as the man, you should be a stabilizing, protective force in the house. You should be a calming force in the house for your family.

You should be relieving their anxieties to the extent that you can if you are verbalizing all of your many complaints and your anxieties then you've inverted that you know now now you're looking to your wife and your children exactly to sort of carry that burden it's your emotional support animals right right and you're you're turning to them to carry this. That's totally right. And I just, I don't believe in that. And I think that it's just different. You know, women, it's not the same for women. I think that women are much more relational. Women share. They're feminine.

We used to say the fairer, gentler sex. And so it's just a different thing. And I also think for women. Now, most women, I think I've been conditioned that they aren't allowed to say this part out loud. But I think it's true that they also don't really want a man who's going to complain and open up to them too much. Can you say that one more time? At a higher volume, because I think that people need to, men need to hear this. Right.

Women will, we have been conditioned to believe that opening up and sharing your emotions is just a good thing. Crying in front of your girlfriend. Right. She really wants you to cry. That's what we've been told and your and your girlfriend might might tell you that she might tell you oh you know what i really want you to open up more but what's she thinking inside right he's such a bitch yes that's why you never cry in front of your wife or your girlfriend. Like never. I mean, in the rarest of cases, you have a close

family member dies. That's one thing. Your daughter walking down the aisle. But other than that, just never cry in front of them. Especially not because you're stressed out, because you're just dealing with some kind of anxiety. And people think that this is extreme, or they want to pretend that, well, if women can cry, the men can cry. But just imagine a scenario. Let's say you're in the car and the weather gets really bad

and then you get lost. Maybe the GPS goes out and you're lost. Weather's bad. It's really stressful. One of those stressful things. It's dark. It would not be uncommon

in that scenario if you're with your wife. She might start crying. She's very nervous. She starts crying. Oh my gosh, we're lost. What are we going to do? And that would not be an uncommon thing.

And as a man, you don't think less of your wife for that. Hopefully, you're there to comfort her and say, no, I got this. We're going to be fine. We got it. Now, you as the man, if you started crying because you're stressed out and lost and it's dark and it's raining and you don't know where you're going and your wife saw that, she will

never look at you the same way again. She will always remember that. She'll remember the time when it was stressful and she needed you to take over and be in control and figure it out. And you started crying like a little bitch. She will always remember it. And I think we, again, I think we all intuitively understand that. We understand that it's, okay, in that scenario for the woman to cry is normal. For the man to cry, it's ridiculous. It's shameful.

But it's interesting that you said at the outset, we've been told the opposite. And it's almost like what's not almost like it is that all the ingredients in a successful marriage and family and in fact in a successful life have been systematically targeted by the people in charge and their proxies for destruction so like everything you need to know to have a successful life has been undermined like no you definitely cry in front of your wife like show your feelings no she should go get a higher paying job than you like you should do more of the housework like you need to be the woman actually in the relationship no it's totally fine to spend all saturday playing video games

while getting high or whatever. Like we're getting not just like three degrees off good advice, but we're getting 180 degrees opposite advice. It's like our society, I'm not, it's not like our society has been targeted intentionally for destruction. And I'm wondering why, where does that come from? If you read the Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan, which came out, I think in the early 60s, you know, over 50 years ago, that book is like a recipe for destroying a society and yet it was promoted. That's sort of the root of modern feminism. what is that is it spiritual are these like spiritual forces working to destroy the west are they what do you have any clue uh it's so comprehensive yeah everything you said is the

opposite of what your kids are taught yeah in school it's uh it's it's certainly a spiritual attack this this all feels demonic because it is in my opinion uh it's also it's it's all an effort i think to just to destroy the family to to upend the fundamental societal institution which is the family um because all of the you know nefarious forces that want to control us, want to control what we do, control what we think, control what our children think. The family is an enemy to them. The family is the one thing standing in the way. Yeah. And so it's all about destroying the family.

Even the things that seem little, like it's okay to cry in front of your wife. No, it's not. It's not. And that again, that's an attack on the family. Because if a man takes that advice and starts acting feminine and emotional, it's going to hurt his marriage. It might destroy his marriage.

Yes. And so that's the ultimate goal. And I think a lot of it, I mean, you mentioned feminism. I think a lot of it, I mean, you mentioned feminism. I think a lot of this does go back to feminism. I think that... It was way more destructive than any plague in history. Feminism, by far and away, is the most destructive ideology in human history.

It's not even close. I agree with that. Why do you say that? Well, let's start with the body count. 60 million dead babies since Roe, just in this country. And if we're talking worldwide, you know, hundreds of millions. But in this country, 60 million children were killed through abortion, which is the feminist sacrament. You don't even need to go beyond that.

That's kind of enough, I think, to make the point. But of course you can. Ever since feminism took hold, divorce rates have skyrocketed. Birth rates have plummeted. I mean, we're watching the disintegration of the family unit in real time. And people are less less happy they're unhappy

i mean as much as there's this cliche kind of image of the 1950s housewife who you know was was was depressed and and it was all the hollywood films are always like with this with this image of the the housewife was depressed and she was on whatever drugs secretly and the husband was off having sex with the secretary. And most of that is just Hollywood. It's a Hollywood cartoon. And in reality, it's kind of the opposite. Now is when all that is happening.

The women are depressed, anxiety riddled, on antidepressants. Men too. So birth rates plummeting, 60 million dead babies, divorce rates skyrocketed, people are unhappy, they're on antidepressants.

You don't need to go much farther you don't so let's say you're emerging from adolescence into the world you're describing now you're 18 18 year old male um american born what's your program what's your advice to that to that kid how do you make your way in this world what What do you do? How do you live a happy, meaningful life that gets you in the end to heaven given that you're facing these cultural headwinds? What would you do if you're 18 right now? I would do the same thing,

a version of what I would do the same thing that I, a version of what I did do. You know, the roadmap is the same. Some of the obstacles are different. Some of the challenges are harder. Not all of them. In some ways, it's, you know, there are some things that are easier about today than 300 years ago, certainly.

So a lot of the challenges might be different, but the basic path is the same. And you can't give up on it because to give up on it is despair. I mean, that's just giving up. So hold fast to your faith. Number one. Number two. to your faith number one um number two figure out what your vocation is you know and and you know you'll have a professional vocation something you're supposed to be doing with your life

and go and pursue that no matter what it is and no matter how hard it is. And also keep in mind that if you're 18 years old, and I say this to younger guys all the time, in many ways, I admit I'm quite happy that I'm not 18 years old, 20 years old in this environment. I am happy for that. And I'm certainly happy. Thank God that I'm already married, certainly. But you do have one huge advantage,

one enviable advantage, which is the same advantage that every young man has had, that you're young, you're hopefully physically healthy, you're not married, you have no kids, you have no dependents. So, you can, it's very low stakes. You can go anywhere and try anything, right? Like you don't, if you're looking around and your car for a week or two months, it's not great That sucks, but you you can do that because it's just you Now for me when I got six kids, so if things fall apart for me It's much higher stakes and it's not as simple as I can't just like go anywhere and try to do anything At this point. I can't just like okay. Well, i'll go get a job at at mcdonald's it's not gonna work i got all these kids to take care of but for you you you can go anywhere and do anything and you can take risks and if it doesn't work out it'll be hard but it

won't be disastrous um so that's one thing and and that's your whatever your professional vocation is. But there's the personal vocation that I think for all men is the same, which is that every man is called to be a father. Every man. For most men, that will come in the form of biological fatherhood. Not all. There are other forms of fatherhood. There's spiritual fatherhood. I think some men are called to religious life. If you're Catholic, called to the priesthood. You don't get married, but you are still a father in a spiritual sense. But every man is called to fatherhood in some sense. No man is called to live for himself only and serve only himself. No man is called to live a life where they go to work, come home, play video games,

have no one depending on them, no one that they love. No one is called to that life. So go and pursue that. Go pursue that and go pursue it fearlessly and know what you're looking for and realize that there are a lot of women who are also looking for the same thing. I hear from conservative Christian men all the time saying, I'm conservative, I'm Christian, there are no good women left. Yes.

There are no women out there who share my values. Constantly you hear that. But then I also hear from women all the time who are conservative Christians saying, I'm conservative, I'm Christian, there are no good men, there are no men who share my values. And I'm like, well, you guys, you're both out there. You both exist. I know you're out there. So you just have to pursue it and pursue it fearlessly and know what you're looking for.

And don't waste your time. As a man, don't waste your time with women who you know don't share your fundamental values. When I met my wife, we got engaged. Six months later, we got engaged. So it was quick. And we talked about, on our first date,

we talked about everything. We talked about religion, politics, everything talked about everything we talked about religion politics everything just got it all out in the open because at that point we were both you know i was 25 she was 24 but uh so young you're getting old yeah but uh by today's standards that's that's you know young to to be um getting married but we didn't to, we just didn't want to waste time. Like, what's the point? If we have, if our fundamental values don't align,

then this can only end in heartbreak. So there's no point. I'm not going to waste my time. I'm not going to waste two years of my life dating this person when there's no future. And I know for a fact that the heartbreak is coming. It's the only way it can end.

And I'm just delaying it for no apparent reason. I'm not going to do that. So we laid all that out really early on. And people ask like, well, how do you know that someone's values align with yours? Ask them. I mean, that's one way to find out now somebody can lie but you can weed out a lot of people just by asking and then and then after you've done that and you go to the polygraph stage right polygraph uh that's where dating comes in and you kind of you you get to know them a little bit it doesn't have to be that long you don't need to date them for five years it doesn't take that long to get to know someone to know what they're really about i think and if somebody's a total fraud if they're a terrible person most people are not good at hiding it like i think most of us can tell i could talk

to someone for two hours or less of course i could talk to someone for 20 minutes easily um and if you're dating someone for six months that's more than enough time i mean all the time you spend with them it's more than enough time to figure out what they're really about so and it's still possible and uh and and and my my that's my main message to young men is that uh you know there's this kind of what do they call it big towel men go their own way movement online among like some right-wing men in the what the manosphere what does that mean men go their own way i i guess it basically means uh the whole system is rigged against men and the family courts are rigged yeah everything's rigged all true which is true

yeah that's true i don't deny it what i deny is their conclusion which is that it's hopeless men just need to go their own way do their own thing like like go be gay i don't think that they would sounds pretty gay to me to me it does to me it does uh i think in practice i don't know if it involves that in practice. I think often practice just means go get a job, live your life on your own and give up on the hope. With no girls? Yeah. Give up on the hope of ever having a happy marriage because it's not possible.

So wake up by yourself every day? Exactly. That sounds like a lot of fun. And that's despair. That is... Oh, it's also weak. I mean, look, I think everything is rigged against men, obviously, particularly white men, obviously. But, okay, then, you know, you've had tough tasks before.

Make it your job, your duty to help fix it like give the give the middle finger to the people who are oppressing you and be happy build a great happy life have decent children like that's the greatest possible yeah i think that's attack that's exactly right and that's exactly the right message is when someone says well everything, everything's rigged. It's not fair. It's really hard. I might fail. Right, okay.

That's the answer. Yeah. Yes, you're right. Okay. What now? Now that we've established that, now that we've established how bad it is, which we have,

what's next? What are you going to do tomorrow? Now, we're all on the same page we've established how bad it is, which we have, what's next? What are you going to do tomorrow? Now, we're all on the same page. It's rigged. It sucks. It's bad. I hate it. I wish it wasn't this way.

And yeah, even after everything I just said, you could still get married and somehow you end up with a sociopath who was able to hide it, which I think is rare, but it can happen. And then you have kids and she cheats on you and she takes the kids she ruins your life yep yep all of that yeah that can happen yep um okay now that we've established all of that when you wake up in the morning tomorrow what are you gonna do what are you gonna do with that information what are you actually gonna do with your life? You're going to say to yourself, I'm not afraid because I'm a man. I could hit by a bus. I could get ALS. Like the number of bad endings that are possible in your life is like limitless. And by the way, the end will be bad. Like you're going to die in pain and afraid. Okay, we know that. But knowing all of that, you still like have to be courageous and just jump

face first into it anyway i mean that's kind of the whole point right right and especially when you have kids once you have kids the possibility of tragedy increases exponentially oh yeah well i mean now now you because before it was like all the tragic things that can happen to you. Now it's, what are all the tragic things that can happen to my kids? Oh, yeah. And then time's up by however many kids you have. Yeah. And then you've got your wife and it's like, there are so many horrible ways that this could go.

Oh, yeah. And may. Right. But then, if any of that happens what's the end result the end result is could be misery and despair okay so then your solution is just to embrace misery and despair at the outset yeah because you're afraid that it might happen agree um and i and i by the and you And I would rather, for me, if I'm going to end up miserable and in some tragic scenario, which I hope doesn't happen, I'd rather it be because I went out and lived a life. It's one of the saddest things about this country. The country is getting sicker.

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That's just a fact. Like, we shouldn't hide that from ourselves, actually. Like, something horrible is going to happen to you, for sure. You're going to get the diagnosis. Somebody who loves getting the diagnosis or worse. And the whole point is, you know, you're a dad. You're not afraid. Yeah.

Right? I mean, you're running toward the sound of gunfire and away from it. That's like your whole role. Yeah, I totally agree. That's of all the unpopular messages that we've talked about, that's probably the most unpopular. Why? Is that like it's going to end in tragedy no matter what?

We're all going to die? Like, we're all going to die. Oh, yeah. It's bad the most unpopular. Why? It's going to end in tragedy no matter what. We're all going to die. We're all going to die. Oh, yeah. It's bad. Right. It's bad. That's the thing that nobody wants to think about and talk about. We should probably think about it and talk about it a lot more than we do.

Oh, the more you think about it, the lighter you're bearing and the more cheerful you are. I was reading someone recently who said, meditating on death every day is the most certain way to joy and cheerfulness and lightness. I think that's right. I kind of agree with that. I mean, I read a book. There's a book that was written years ago

called Denial of Death. You ever read that? No. And I'm blanking on the name of the guy who wrote it. It'll come to me. But anyway, the book is called Denial of Death. I don't agree with... It's kind of psychoanalytical.

There's a lot of psychobabble in it. It was written by an author who ironically wrote this book, published it, won, I believe, a pulitzer and died and died of cancer i think he didn't know that he had it when he wrote this book but then he published the book and he died but anyway his his his kind of theory was that like all of modern society is actually fundamentally set up to distract us from the fact that we're going to die of course that that terror of death is what drives everything um and he takes that farther than i would probably take it but i think there's actually a lot of truth to that i remember i read this book

and i and i uh and i and i and i could see a lot of that my own my own life of course but then i i i discovered that that once i once i started actually thinking about that and meditating on it maybe not literally meditating but really thinking about it uh i did become i became less fearful somehow of it of course because you've you've looked the monster in the face and like accepted you know there is something snuffling under your bed you know okay so how have your um well two-part question how have your views changed and how has the definition speaking of definitions of conservatism changed in say the past 20 years let's start with you i don't know that any of my views have,

they haven't fundamentally changed. I've become more radical. I've certainly become radicalized on pretty much every issue. I'm just farther to the right on everything. My whole life I've just been, I started on the right. I come from a conservative Catholic family. And so I'm already starting like way over here.

And everything that's happened in the country and also in my personal life has only just moved me farther and farther so that's the only way that my views and where does that lead at the end like what's your view of Francisco Franco where does it lead in the end I don't know like what I mean so if you start right and you keep going right where do you wind up are we still filming is the question uh where is the 80 year old matt walsh on the issues that'll be interesting it'll be interesting to check in i'll be long gone but um uh but i think so that that's that's my own personal trajectory

the definition of conservatism, though, has only changed in that I think it's – in that it has no definition. I think it's – like so many – we talked about the words that don't mean anything anymore. Yeah. Words that used to be useful and maybe used to mean something and they just don't anymore because of how they've been misused and abused and overused uh and i think conservatism is uh another one of those words i just when you when you tell me now that someone is conservative uh i i don't it doesn't tell me a lot about them i don't know what you mean it generally means i'm not gonna to like them um yeah well they're going to be some kind of fraud you know on the internet uh luring people with false prophecy that's kind of what i think that's that's my gut reaction so discredited

has that word become but i mean what the reason i asked this it's a moving target of course it means something different in every generation or maybe every year. But because Donald Trump just got elected after four, probably the worst four years since the American Civil War, under Joe Biden, there is this like large group, tens of millions of people who are aligned in this thing, this movement, this block of voters, this ideology. And what is it and how has it changed these are big questions matt so i'm gonna let you i'm gonna give you a second to pause okay because i don't know what it is exactly is my point i don't know what it i think it's i know what it isn't i think so one thing that unites us is that we have this general idea of wokeness, leftism, whatever you want to call it.

Uh, and we don't like that. So I think we all have that in common. You know, we, we, when we look at a, a woman with blue hair and a nose piercing,

everyone on the right, we could look at that woman and we could say we probably don't like her and we probably don't agree with anything she thinks so we we don't agree with the blue hairs that's one thing we have in common and the main thing that we don't agree with them on is that we think free speech is like a foundational concept the foundational concept of the united states and if you have an opinion you ought to be able to express it and i thought this was what everybody agreed on. I thought this is why they voted for Trump.

Shows you how dumb I am. And then I wake up and I see these people, many of whom I know, scolding Rogan, me, just scolding in general. You're not supposed to platform that person or that set of ideas or that those are words that shouldn't be spoken.

And I'm like, you know know we're a hundred days into this and already people i thought were on my side are mad because of like naughty words or concepts or ideas or questions questions literally people on the so-called right are mad about asking questions it's like a parody or something i thought that's like we made fun of the left like they'd be like just asking questions. It's like a parody or something. I thought that's like we made fun of the left. Like they'd be like, just asking questions. Your questions are more than questions. They're assaults on me.

And I'm literally hearing people on the right say that about me. So it pisses me off, but it's not just me. Like what the hell is going on? Yeah. I don't take you seriously. If you use the word platforming negative, I don't take you seriously if you use the word platforming yeah negative i i don't i don't take you seriously i've already lost respect for you i agree that to me that's a

leftist thing that to me that's the blue when i think of the blue hair woman with the nose piercing i think of her as someone who scolds you for why did you platform that person well that's why i don't like her in you know all things being quiet, I feel sorry for her. She's got blue hair and a nose ring. There's no man who loves her. I feel sad for her. That would be my default view. The only reason I don't like her is because she's scolding me for platforming people she doesn't agree with.

Right. Well, I don't like her for a lot of other reasons, too. But I don't feel sorry. You're a lot nicer than me. But yes, so using that term as like a pejorative, as this forbidden thing, that should be a leftist. I mean, that should be one of the quintessential. We think about wokeness. That's one of the quintessential features of wokeness, whatever that is exactly, is this idea you don't want to platform people. I just don't agree with it.

I mean, what does that even mean and also uh usually when someone is accused of platforming someone else it's like it doesn't even make sense to begin with because the person that they're saying is being platformed already had a platform like we all have platforms we're all we're out there saying what we think already so usually when they say platforming what they really mean is you talked to that person. It's not that we don't want you to platform that person. They already had a platform. We don't want you to speak to that person and have any kind of conversation with them.

But what they're really trying to do is set guardrails around my mind and treat me like a slave, a non-human being. They're trying to tell me you're not allowed to think certain things. And I reserve the right, I think it's an absolute right to think whatever I want, A. B, if you disagree with what I think, it's incumbent on you to convince me that I'm wrong through reason. Like, show me the countervailing evidence. It's not enough to say my views are naughty, The person I'm talking to is naughty. They're discredited. They're bad.

I mean, that's like a species of religion and a false religion, I would say. And yet I'm seeing that impulse. That reveals a way of thinking that is totalitarian and low and dumb and embarrassing and that I associate with the left, but I'm seeing it everywhere on the right. Like, what the? I'm trying not to use the F word. What the heck is going on, Matt Walsh? Like, if I disagree with you, Matt Walsh,

I would say, I disagree with you and here's why. And I would pay you the respect of taking your ideas seriously and trying to dissuade you from those ideas. I would not say how dare you, Matt Walsh, think that because that's insulting not so simply to you, but I'm insulting my own intelligence. That's how dumb people communicate, right?

Yeah. And I believe in free speech in principle. So people should, and to me, free speech is, it's not a complicated idea. Free speech means that you have the freedom to express whatever opinion or perspective you want. I can agree or disagree disagree it doesn't matter now that doesn't extend to things like in my mind hardcore pornography that's not speech that's not an opinion that's being expressed that is digital prostitution but if it's an opinion if you're just sending a message about what you believe, you should be able to do that, period. So that's the first thing.

But then also strategically, when you start complaining about platforming, it's a bad strategy. Because when you point to someone and you say that person shouldn't be platformed, all you're doing, if you're worried about what that person is saying all you're doing is making people more interested in what that person says i know i'm that way if i hear that there's a controversy because so and so was platformed and i've never heard that person i immediately say oh what's this person all about i gotta look into them yeah i always do that oh i take it one step farther and then book the person on the show yeah yeah always of course because it's it's like and whatever it is you said that upset upsets people i'm interested because people are so upset i might not agree with it

but i'm interested uh and i i just reject in principle like if you are telling me that i shouldn't hear that person or talk to them or take them seriously or listen to their ideas just in principle I want to say no f you I'm just now I'm going to listen even more you know now I'm going to listen to a two-hour podcast that I wouldn't have listened to otherwise just because you said exactly and especially if you don't explain the person's ideas and why they're wrong I mean I think a lot of ideas are wrong and there are a lot of poisonous people out there selling crap, poisonous crap. I completely agree with that. I just think it's important.

It's essential. It should be required to explain why it's wrong, not just that it's bad. What did you think of the debate? A lot of this kind of broke through the surface in the debate between Dave Smith and Douglas Murray on Rogan a couple of weeks ago. Did you watch that? I did. I watched, I ended up watching, I wasn't planning on watching the whole thing, but I watched the whole thing over the course of a few days. It was a long debate. And you know, I have a different, I come in with a different perspective than maybe some people who are really interested in the debate in that I don't have a dog in the fight. I don't, everyone is, I'm constantly hearing from the peanut gallery demanding that I kind of give my verdict or my take on Israel and Israel versus Palestine and all this kind of stuff.

And I have given my take. And my take is I don't care that much. So I just don't care that much. I'm not just America first. I'm an American chauvinist in that I only care about my own country. I honestly don't care about other countries. I wish them well. I don't wish any of them, I don't wish them ill.

I wish the people of other countries well. I think they all have a right to defend themselves and they should i think that if you can't defend yourself as a nation or if you can't survive without um being propped up by another government say ours then you shouldn't exist as a country that's just the way of the world so wait wait wait if you if you can't exist as a country. That's just the way of the world. So... Wait, wait, wait. If you can't exist without being propped up by another government, say ours, you shouldn't exist. Israel cannot exist without being propped up by the United States. You think so? Its nuclear program came from the United States. Its weapons come from the United States. Its economy is supported by the United States. I'm not attacking Israel. I'm just saying in point

of fact, I think that's true. And I mean, Israel thinks it's true or they wouldn't have armies of lobbyists and influencers in the United States. Bibi wouldn't have shown up twice in the past three months. Yeah. I mean, from my perspective, it seems like they can handle themselves quite quite fine uh but any country if there is any country out there that fundamentally cannot exist without being subsidized by american taxpayers then not only should that country not exist but that country already does not exist it's it's not really that's interesting it's not really a country right no it's um and unless we want to go back to the old way which was you know back in in the bad old days uh when we did real empires you know if you want to just be conquered and and you're going to be a you're you're going to be a vassal state of ours and we we're going to sort of own you, then that's one system.

But we don't really do that, at least not directly anymore. So, if you... Can I just ask you, that's such an interesting... Not only does it have no right to exist, it already doesn't exist. It's not a real country.

Yeah, not a real country. If any country that that... Right, that that's true of. Yeah. Now, I'm not convinced at all that that is true of Israel. I'm not convinced at all. I mean, I don't know either, by the way. And I think Israel seems like a perfectly functional and strong country, including with a strong economy that goes up and down.

But basically, I mean, they have a robust tech sector. They've got a lot going for them. And so I think I kind of agree. I'm just saying they don't seem to feel that way. But who knows what the truth is. I think that if we were to withdraw, I think we should withdraw all federal, all foreign aid from every country. You know, I don't think we should be doing it at all. Really? Yeah.

And I think if we did that, I think Israel would still exist. I think if we took away all the foreign aid tomorrow, next week, two months from now, Israel would still be a country. Yes. There are probably other countries on the planet that just would not exist anymore. But countries have to make more realistic decisions when there's no backstop in the same way that people do. And in the same way that people on welfare or people with trust funds equally kind of tend to make terrible decisions about their own lives. I think it's also true for countries. You get way overextended when you're dependent.

Yeah, and by the way, when I say that a country that can't survive without us shouldn't exist or doesn't exist, that's not any kind of like moral judgment. It's just this is the way of human civilization you you have to be able to you have to be able to stand on your own two feet to to be to even qualify as a country right and i think the american taxpayers have been saddled for many years now with propping up country after country after country after country when that is not a responsibility that should fall to me or you or to my kids. Our responsibility is to ourselves.

And it's also true of us. If we could not exist. I agree. If we were depending on welfare from some other country in order to exist, then I would say that like, we're not a country anymore. So, you know,

take it away and like, let whatever happens happens. Let, let the thing fall apart. And maybe from the ashes, we can build a real country. That would be my take if it was true of us. So.

How did we get, um, I, I vehemently agree with you. I don't think I've ever heard it as well put. But I don't think anything you said is radical. I think it's, as you just said, it's the way of human civilization. How do we get to a place where that xenophobia is a great sin.

And so I don't know. I don't really understand it because I've never felt it. But for a lot of people, it feels wrong to them to actually prioritize their own country. I guess it feels unnatural to people, which is crazy. It's bizarre. Because to me, it's the most natural thing in the world. Like, I, it's not,

it should not be controversial to say, I care more about my country than I care about anybody else. I care more about the people in my country than I care about anyone else. And the amount that I sort of care about you It increases the closer you are to me that That's the way people work So I care the most about my own kids I care more about my own kids than Anyone else if my kids are in a fire and someone else is in a fire,

I'm saving my own kids a thousand times out of a thousand. If I had to choose between one of my kids and a thousand other people, I'd save my kid over the thousand because they're my kids. That's my blood. And then branching out from there i care about my my family my my larger family i care about from there my community where i live um and then you know there's a subsidiarity and then and then branching out from there i care centric circles of obligation exactly and that's that should just be so natural that's that's how people work and and that's how everyone works like if i told you anyone who hears this and thinks that it sounds cruel or something well if i came to you and told you that your friend's child died you would be really broken up, I would assume.

In tears, yeah. You'd be in tears about it. If I came to you and said, you know, just a few minutes ago, a child in China was hit by a car and died, you would say, that's too bad. That's sad.

And then you would not think about it again correct you would move on with your life and never even think about it even though that's a child it's a child the child died it's a terrible thing it's really sad objectively that child in china dying objectively is as terrible as your friend's child dying but your attachment to that child in china is much less is basically non-existent um your obligation to that child but the idea is that what you're describing is sentiment sentimentality really and that it's our job as evolved beings to override that false sentimentality with like a clearer moral code. I don't think it is sentiment. I think it's the opposite.

I think the idea that we should. But do you know what I mean? Yeah, that's what they say. This is effective altruism, actually. It's like, no, that every human life has equal value, which I think you would agree with as a Christian. Absolutely. Yeah. Therefore, our obligation to every human being is identical. And you're right that they would.

So, what I'm saying, they would call false sentimentality. But that is false sentimentality. This idea that we're citizens of the world and we value everyone the same is a false sentiment. No one actually thinks it. You would save your own child from the fire. Is it because you think your child has more moral worth than anyone else's child? No. Is it because your child dying in a fire is objectively more sad than someone else's child? No. But that's your blood. That's not sentiment. That's your blood.

That's your family. That means something. But blood doesn't matter. Genetics aren't real. I think it's the most, it's one of the most real things there is, you know, and it's obligation. You know, it should be inherent.

It's instinctual, but it's also, you have an obligation to your child. And then branching out in the instinctual, but you have an obligation to your child. And then branching out of the concentric circles, you have an obligation to your country and you should have an attachment to your country and a pride in your country. These are your people.

This is your history. These are your ancestors. And so that's it i mean and to me it's the most it's the most natural thing in the world and um so nationalism is is not really an ideology it's just like nature it's just the default position it's like yes it's the natural state of human being natural state it's the natural way that societies are organized that's all national why is everyone afraid of it and against it i think it's it's a lot of it is confusion not understanding what nationalism even is um it's part of the kind of globalist agenda it's part of the kind of globalist agenda. It's part of this destructive,

like I said, a lot of it comes down to destroying the family. And we do that by inverting everybody's priorities. Yeah. So that, like they want to get you to the point where you're more concerned about peace in Ukraine than you are about protecting your own child. Well, they've absolutely succeeded, by the way.

They go on social media, which I really try to avoid. But whenever I go on it, and it's all right-wingers or whatever they are now, but it's all Trump voters, right, in my feed. They're yelling at each other over mostly about Israel, but also about Ukraine, but about foreign countries. That's what they're mad at. I mean, they're totally obsessed. And by the way, I think it's legitimate to have views on all four. I've got a million views on a million different foreign countries, including those two. But that's their overriding concern. It does seem I hate the word

op, but it does seem like by design someone has sapped the vital energy from Trump's voting base by convincing them that what's happening in these foreign countries is more important than what's happening in their own. That's what I see. Do you see this? I do see it. And I don't understand it. how do we get to a point where the dominant conversation in this country is about what's happening in other countries? I don't understand it. I don't understand the people that are obsessively focused on it, on either side of it, really. I agree. Because... Can I say, America's role in the world is a different question.

Like, we play a role in the world, we certainly have. What's the appropriate role is a question that Americans should be concerned with because it's our money and the lives of our young men. So, but this is something different. You're saying people's, like, obsession about a foreign conflict

between two, like, foreign actors. Is that what you're saying? Or I don't want to put words in your mouth yeah yeah obsession with a conflict um taking any foreign country and making it the centerpiece of our political debates makes no sense to me uh and and i think people on either side do that my sense right when i go on twitter go on x and no matter what the topic is it seems it's like you know used to be six degrees of kevin bacon or whatever yeah uh now it's two degrees of israel it's like no matter what the topic is it always comes back for a lot of people to Israel one way or another. And that's not how I see it.

I don't see Israel as the centerpiece of any of these debates at all. It does seem like it's blowing or blowing up is probably too strong, but it's definitely dividing Trump's voter base big time. Do you feel that? I do. Hiding Trump's voter base. Big time. Do you feel that? I do, and it's a shame. Because why are we being divided over that? Of all things. Let's be divided over fentanyl or tariffs or whatever.

Something, you know what I mean? Yeah. So that's going all the way back to actually your question that I never answered. I don't think I gave you a chance. I was off. I was also off. But about the Dave Smith and Douglas Murray debate. My point was I'm going into it. I don't really have a dog in the fight.

I don't know why these guys either. And I don't know either of the guys. I don't really, I'm not following the issue that closely. I'm just not. I'm focused on America. And so I'm, I'm really just interested to see how this turns out. I'm listening to both arguments.

And I thought that Douglas Murray, who seems like a really smart guy, I thought he made a crucial mistake in the debate by starting, it seemed like the first 45 minutes to an hour was this kind of this litigation over who's an expert and who isn't. And that's just not, you're not going to win the argument that way. Nobody wants to hear it. Nobody should want to hear it. Credentialism, you're not an expert you know we've seen what the expert class has given us especially over the last five years pretty good job or no i would i would give it a solid d minus very generous very generous uh so nobody wants to hear it nobody wants to hear about about um

calling yourself an expert goes back again to words that don't mean anything anymore yeah that's a word that should mean something it should it is possible expertise is a real thing there are people who can be experts on a subject i i would hope that the pilot of my plane is an expert in flying a plane. As we've seen, we can't rely on that being the case either anymore. But that's what it should mean. But we've also used the word expert and applied it to people who are making outrageously false claims. I mean, the experts are the ones who told us that you can castrate your son and turn him into a girl. That was the expert opinion. That was the opinion of the expert class for years and still is with some of them.

So in a world like that, in a world where the experts are telling us that women have penises and men can have babies, the word expert just doesn't mean anything anymore. It should, but it doesn't which means that if you're going to have this conversation skip past that we don't need like we don't need to litigate what an expert is or who an expert is you want to begin with the merits of the debate right just just get into it it doesn't matter this guy that you're sitting next to whether he's an expert or not makes no difference. I don't care if he's a scholar. I don't care if he's a homeless guy who just pulled off the street.

His arguments are valid or they aren't. And that's all that matters. That's all that anyone cares about. So this went on for an hour? Yeah, I'd say the first hour was about who was an expert and who isn't. What is that? I mean, Douglas Murray is famous for being smart.

What do you think that was? I don't know. I honestly don't. I thought it was just a strategic error, a pretty serious one. And then by the time you actually get into the debate, then a lot of people have just kind of checked out because it comes off as kind of snobbish um and it comes off

as you know it's credentialism as as you're trying to invalidate the argument before it's even presented um so that that was the mistake then when they actually got into the actual conversation i found it to be i just thought it was interesting. I really did. And I thought they both made valid points. They both know more about the subject than I do a lot more. That was very clear to me. Um, and I, I,

I think if you could chop off the first hour of the debate, it was an interesting conversation. Who do you think made a more compelling case on the mat? Once they actually got down to the question at hand i don't know i think that so douglas murray said one thing he made one point that i thought was was really good it was just a simple one. I like simple points. Me too.

And at one point he asked Dave, because once they got into arguing about what happened after October 7th, how Israel responded, and Dave has all of his criticisms about what Israel has done. And then Douglas Murray said, well, what would you have them do? What would you prefer for them to have done? If they want to rescue the hostages and also destroy Hamas, what do you want them to do instead? And then from what I remember, Dave, he pointed out that, okay, destroying Hamas and rescuing hostages are kind of, are not necessarily the same objective.

And then they started talking about rescuing hostages. They didn't really circle back to the destroying Hamas part. And I would have liked to see him stick on that point. Like get an answer. So if you're Israel, you have a foreign, you know, these foreign enemy that's come into your country,

slaughtered hundreds of people, how should you respond to that? And I think he should have pressed that and he didn't. And so it became, it became sort of unfocused, because I would have legitimately liked to hear the answer to that. For sure.

What would you have them do? So we could talk about maybe there are other ways to rescue the hostages, but do you think they should try to destroy Hamas, given what happened? And if you do, how else should they go about it?

But they kind of moved on to other things and it became this kind of, it became a sort of unfocused in my mind, sort of like circular conversation, as these debates tend to devolve into very often. If you were in control of what people on Twitter debated, what would

they be debating right now? Everything we talked about for the first, you know, hour of this conversation is what, like, let's talk about the war on the family. Yeah. On marriage. Things that affect our kids. You know, how do we raise healthy, happy kids? Let's talk about that. Any of these issues is like serious, deep cultural issues in our country.

Yes. Is what we should be talking about in my mind. You feel like it's very hard to go from affluence to less affluence. It's very hard to move backward. It's like hard for the human brain to deal with it. But it's very hard to go from affluence to less affluence. It's very hard to move backward. It's hard for the human brain to deal with it. But it's possible. You feel like the United States could become significantly poorer, not poorer, but less rich than it is now. And still remain cohesive and happy people with meaningful lives who love their neighbors and their spouses and their children.

But you're not going to do that without families. You can't do that if people are living in studio apartments by themselves with their cats. That's just not going to happen, right? Right. So I just think objectively, that's the most important issue. Why isn't it the topic of discussion or debate? and why did the republican party shunt aside social conservatives like circus freaks for 40 years like what was that uh i think there are a lot of people invested in it not being the topic of conversation because once you start talking about it you start noticing things that they don't want you to notice well you start noticing who the

you know this the the the actual agenda to destroy the family to destroy marriage uh you start you start noticing that you know we we veered off took kind of a left turn veer off away from the way civilization was structured for thousands of years it hasn't really worked out um you start looking at any of these things and you and you say okay well we started making all these changes all these reforms all this supposed progress uh and a lot of the these wheels have been in motion for decades. How has it worked out? By its fruits, you shall know it.

So how has it worked out? None of it has worked out. And I think you notice that. And I think there are people who don't want you to. And also, some of these social issues when you're talking about families and these kinds of things, it hits closer to home. That's for sure. As it should. More than tax rates.

You can hurt people's feelings. Yeah. It hits closer to home. And so people feel everyone has, they have their own hangups. They have their own sensitivities. They have maybe mistakes they feel they've made in their own families, their own marriages, or with their own kids. And they feel indicted i think so i think for some people it just feels it's safer to talk about issues that are 10 000 miles away um because

i mean there are plenty of conservative so-called influencers who you know have personal lives that are what you're describing as bad do they ever call you and say hey matt walsh you hurt my feelings uh certainly don't call me no they don't call me to say it but uh plenty of conservative influencers quote unquote will you know they'll all say something they'll send out a tweet they'll attack me publicly so i'd much prefer the call i'd much prefer the it's not hard to get my number if you're in the you know business or send me a message or something but people don't generally do that that's not how people operate have you noticed like a huge percentage of war crazed republican senators are secretly gay

what is that uh are they yeah like what is that what is the connection between which are the ones that are secretly gay i don't know that the ones who are secret about it um but there is some kind of there i guess all i'm saying i'm not being catty i'm trying not to be catty or cruel or whatever but i do think there's a connection to the way that you live at home, connection between the way you live at home and like the policies that you espouse and the impulses that you have and like the vision that you have for the country you lead. Like, I don't really know if you want people with like truly unsettled, dark personal lives with power. Do you?

No. I mean, even outside of the people running the country, I automatically have at least some semblance of respect for a man if he's a good husband and a good father. And you can't always tell that, but I think often you can. And those are the kinds of people i want to surround myself with i don't want to be around people who aren't um people have disordered personal lives i don't i don't really want to be around them so if i don't want to be around them i don't want them running the country fair last question broad question 100 days into trump how's it going are you are you happy with it? I assume you voted for Donald Trump?

Yeah. Has it been what you expected? In some ways, it's been better than I expected, in some significant ways. I think that my number one criticism of Trump in his first term was, despite all the talk about how he's a fascist dictator, in reality trump in his first term was despite all the talk about how he's a fascist dictator in reality in his first term it seemed to me he was very shy about wielding his

power and his authority um he seemed to be a lot more worried about what people say about him what the media says about him a lot more focused on the coverage and all that sort of thing and this time around that doesn't seem to be the case you know and jumping in with 2 000 executive orders or whatever it was dozens um touching on some real hot button controversial issues what was your favorite uh well i mean as someone who's been really invested in this issue all the there's several executive orders uh dealing with gender ideology i mean even something as simple as illegally defining what a man and woman is we shouldn't have to do that but we did and he did

um prohibiting to the extent that it's possible from his position the castration and mutilation of children now congress has to follow up with these executive orders and codify them into law which hasn't happened with i don't think any of them which i am worried about because the thing about an executive order is that when the next guy gets in there, if he's a Democrat, he can undo that as quickly as it was done. So it's a Band-Aid. It's not the permanent solution. Why hasn't there been a law yet passed by Congress federally banning the mutilation and castration of children? Because they're for it.

For it or they don't care that much well same thing you know same thing i think i mean if you you're in a position to stop something it's not that hard and you don't i think it's fair to assume you approve of that thing you yeah you approve of it or you just don't you don't you don't it's you don't care enough to try to stop it which effectively it's it's one in the same um so i all that was good i liked all that and i think that he's using his powers authority he's not he's not he's not afraid to do that this time around which I think is really good. If there's one major criticism or area for improvement, it's, you know, I don't know what the deportation numbers are exactly. I think they should probably be a lot higher. Easier said than done, of course. And also we have to, I acknowledge that there are fewer people coming in now you know which is going

to bring your deportation numbers down but i think that should be a lot higher and and i think i think that i understand politically focusing on illegal aliens who have committed heinous crimes we should focus on them but not just them i mean we should be deporting anyone who's in this country who's not supposed to be here. You know, I don't care if you had a speeding ticket or a DUI or a manslaughter charge. I mean, I care. That's a big difference. But in any of those cases, or if you had nothing, you shouldn't be in the country. But there are plenty of people, the majority, I would say, of people in Washington are arguing the opposite, which is like, you know, it doesn't matter that they're breaking the law.

That's what they're arguing. In fact, they should be protected as they break the law. So why are you following laws? As someone who was born here, paying all the taxes for all this stuff. Like, are you following the law? As far as you know, I am, yeah. As far as I know i text your wife and find out um i hope not because you'd be an idiot to do that wouldn't you yeah well well except that uh of

course i realized that this this you know get out of jail free card is doesn't is not does not apply to everybody and it doesn't apply to me like you're propping up a system with at least half of the money you make every year, at least half, more than half if you total it all up, even in Tennessee. And you're paying for a system in which like you're the it's only downside for you. And it's upside for people who are mocking the laws that you pay to enforce. I don't like. Do you feel like a foolish? Yeah do you feel like foolish yeah you feel like a sucker but also what's the what's the alternative because if i were to say well hey if they don't have to follow the law then neither do i well really quickly the system will come

along and disabuse me of the notion that this is a this is you have as many rights as a haitian exactly legally yeah exactly because i don't so that won't apply to me especially as a you know as a dreaded white man so uh so we're kind of left with no choice i'm only throwing it out there because you said you were becoming much more radical and i'm trying to accelerate the process by pointing out some things that i want you to think about i appreciate that it'd be hard to accelerate it at this point i love it there's a forest fire of truth within you matt walsh thank you for submitting to all this that was i really enjoyed it appreciate it thank you thank you we want to thank you for watching us on spotify a company that we use every day we

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