Jeremy Boreing
Appearances
The Ben Shapiro Show
Daily Wire Backstage: Trump’s Address to Congress
Borders are Tom Holman. Thank you for making time with us. It's a huge night. We're very grateful for the work you're doing. I'm very grateful for the work that President Trump is doing and just looking forward to actually having some sanity and law and order on the southern border. Thank you.
The Ben Shapiro Show
Daily Wire Backstage: Trump’s Address to Congress
Amen. Amen. Ben, it's hard to follow that with an ad read, but if anyone can do it.
The Ben Shapiro Show
Daily Wire Backstage: Trump’s Address to Congress
So quite a treat to have Tom Holman with us and also a treat that Ben and Matt get to attend this event. And to make it even better is that you had to go to the Joe Biden.
The Ben Shapiro Show
Daily Wire Backstage: Trump’s Address to Congress
So, basically, this is going to be a giant pep rally for the right tonight. And to make it all the more glorious, we're going to be filling up with leftist tears, left, right, and center. Is there anything... Is there anything being bandied about that we think would be a surprise?
The Ben Shapiro Show
Daily Wire Backstage: Trump’s Address to Congress
Is there anything that, is Donald Trump going to do anything here tonight that shocks his constituency, or is this pure fan fiction playing out right in front of us tonight?
The Ben Shapiro Show
Daily Wire Backstage: Trump’s Address to Congress
It's too late to buy any index funds.
The Ben Shapiro Show
Daily Wire Backstage: Trump’s Address to Congress
Well, Ben and Matt, you've got to get to your seats. The show's about to begin. You're sitting in Speaker Johnson's box, as I understand. It's an unbelievable honor. I have no doubt that Drew and I will be invited to the next State of the Union.
The Ben Shapiro Show
Daily Wire Backstage: Trump’s Address to Congress
You guys have a great night. We'll see you after the president's remarks. Hopefully we're able to get you back. And in the meantime, we're going to look at the people coming in, which is always kind of my favorite part of this, like the red carpet of ugly people. When people make their grand entrances into the State of the Union. All right, guys, we'll see you later.
The Ben Shapiro Show
Daily Wire Backstage: Trump’s Address to Congress
Ben and Matt, off to the speaker's box to hear... President Donald Trump make his address to a joint session of Congress. We're seeing all the best people walking into the Capitol as we speak. It's actually kind of fun. I mean, it really saw Elon a second ago and, of course, Vice President J.D. Vance and Speaker Mike Johnson already up on the podium.
The Ben Shapiro Show
Daily Wire Backstage: Trump’s Address to Congress
And then a bunch of really sullen looking Democrats, which makes it.
The Ben Shapiro Show
Daily Wire Backstage: Trump’s Address to Congress
I noticed that none of them have shaved their heads, though. I feel like if you're going to do it, do it. Go all the way.
The Ben Shapiro Show
Daily Wire Backstage: Trump’s Address to Congress
Nancy Pelosi is not a young woman.
The Ben Shapiro Show
Daily Wire Backstage: Trump’s Address to Congress
What does it say on that lady's jacket?
The Ben Shapiro Show
Daily Wire Backstage: Trump’s Address to Congress
It may have been the 14th Amendment on her sleeve. That's interesting. I'm not positive, but I think it may have been the text of the 14th Amendment. We're hearing that the president is running just a few minutes late, which I call presidential prerogative. Of course. You... or just rudeness. Wherever the president arrives, he is precisely on time. That's right.
The Ben Shapiro Show
Daily Wire Backstage: Trump’s Address to Congress
I'm certain it has something to do with abortion. It's really the only issue they care about.
The Ben Shapiro Show
Daily Wire Backstage: Trump’s Address to Congress
The president's cabinet arriving now is the Secretary of State Marco Rubio and crew. Pete Hegseth, who's kind of a friend of the organization and a fellow Nashville resident with us. Howard Lutnick? People don't know this. Howard Lutnick talked to us one time about buying The Daily Wire. Really? Not buying it. He wanted to help us take it public at one time. Can we nationalize it now?
The Ben Shapiro Show
Daily Wire Backstage: Trump’s Address to Congress
I do, too. I get a big kick out of Lutnick. He's a... You know, he's... He actually is Bobby Axelrod. They say that the character was actually written in part. Is it really based on Letnick? Yeah, that checks out.
The Ben Shapiro Show
Daily Wire Backstage: Trump’s Address to Congress
Oh yeah, hearts breaking all over the crunchesphere as he endorsed the mRNA vaccine. Except, did you read the column?
The Ben Shapiro Show
Daily Wire Backstage: Trump’s Address to Congress
That's a cruel thing to say. I will say that the Make America Healthy Again movement, I think that... It has some very good foundations, and then it also has a little bit of kooky silliness to it. I get the sense, though, that RFK Jr. is one of the most genuinely decent dudes in American politics. Really? I just think that he's a... I think he actually likes people. Yeah.
The Ben Shapiro Show
Daily Wire Backstage: Trump’s Address to Congress
I think he actually likes the country. Yeah. I think he's intelligent. I think he's intelligent.
The Ben Shapiro Show
Daily Wire Backstage: Trump’s Address to Congress
Well, you can't judge a Kennedy by that.
The Ben Shapiro Show
Daily Wire Backstage: Trump’s Address to Congress
If all of the women in his background are still alive and none of them are submerged.
The Ben Shapiro Show
Daily Wire Backstage: Trump’s Address to Congress
Oh, man. Oh, man, you can't say things like that. Oh, I'm sorry.
The Ben Shapiro Show
Daily Wire Backstage: Trump’s Address to Congress
No, no, no. This is Mingle City.
The Ben Shapiro Show
Daily Wire Backstage: Trump’s Address to Congress
Yeah, I like to think we're back.
The Ben Shapiro Show
Daily Wire Backstage: Trump’s Address to Congress
It'd be very interesting to see what the president chooses to cover in the speech. Obviously, Donald Trump has never given a short speech.
The Ben Shapiro Show
Daily Wire Backstage: Trump’s Address to Congress
That's right. But then, in fairness, he immediately went downstairs and gave the rest of the speech.
The Ben Shapiro Show
Daily Wire Backstage: Trump’s Address to Congress
Well, the trick of it is, and this is kind of what Chevron was ultimately about, is that it actually is the legislature ceding its authority to regulate two executive agencies.
The Ben Shapiro Show
Daily Wire Backstage: Trump’s Address to Congress
No, they created a branch of government. They created a branch of government.
The Ben Shapiro Show
Daily Wire Backstage: Trump’s Address to Congress
Yeah. It is fun to think back to the 90s. As you know, I always say that the 90s were the peak of American civilization.
The Ben Shapiro Show
Daily Wire Backstage: Trump’s Address to Congress
But it's so much better than the 50s. In the 50s, we're in the middle of this Cold War, the nuclear arms race, the space race. Everyone had PTSD from the war. In the 90s, we didn't have a single problem. In the 90s, we could ascend Bill Clinton twice to be president of the United States.
The Ben Shapiro Show
Daily Wire Backstage: Trump’s Address to Congress
And it didn't matter. It was actually pretty good. In the 1990s, we could make Smash Mouth, a best-selling rock and roll band. Yeah. singing songs about having your finger and your thumb in the shape of an L on your forehead because literally nothing was wrong.
The Ben Shapiro Show
Daily Wire Backstage: Trump’s Address to Congress
You missed the height of American power.
The Ben Shapiro Show
Daily Wire Backstage: Trump’s Address to Congress
In the 1990s, Kurt Cobain killed himself to protest that nothing was wrong. There was literally nothing wrong.
The Ben Shapiro Show
Daily Wire Backstage: Trump’s Address to Congress
I mean, what a triumphant moment for Donald Trump. No kidding, man.
The Ben Shapiro Show
Daily Wire Backstage: Trump’s Address to Congress
It doesn't seem possible that the administration could have made this accomplishment because I was under the impression that it was impossible to secure the border unless we voted for Joe Biden's comprehensive immigration reform package. So somewhere I just got bad information.
The Ben Shapiro Show
Daily Wire Backstage: Trump’s Address to Congress
And in living memory, nothing like this has ever happened.
The Ben Shapiro Show
Daily Wire Backstage: Trump’s Address to Congress
I don't think anyone else has such a handsome goatee in the United States Congress.
The Ben Shapiro Show
Daily Wire Backstage: Trump’s Address to Congress
The president about to take the podium and address the joint session of Congress. We'll cut to his remarks, and then we'll be back as soon as the speech is over to tell you what we think about it. We'll see you then. An amazing speech by Donald Trump to the joint session of Congress. Maybe the longest joint session ever by a president of the United States.
The Ben Shapiro Show
Daily Wire Backstage: Trump’s Address to Congress
I mean, if we think of it as a State of the Union address, even though technically it isn't one, you know, was this an hour 40, an hour 50 minutes?
The Ben Shapiro Show
Daily Wire Backstage: Trump’s Address to Congress
Guys, according to AI, which knows everything. Yeah. The record belongs to Bill Clinton. Yep. Knew it. One hour, 28 minutes, 49 seconds. Oh, wait. I think there may be a new record.
The Ben Shapiro Show
Daily Wire Backstage: Trump’s Address to Congress
I also think it was a bad choice of the people who were producing the actual video broadcast of the speech not to let us hear what he was saying. Yeah. Because he went to all that trouble. It was so disruptive. It shut down the speech. All these things happened and none of us know what on earth... I mean, he had a cane. I think you made the point that it was like from the 1800s.
The Ben Shapiro Show
Daily Wire Backstage: Trump’s Address to Congress
The caning of Sumner or something. Yeah, yeah, right. But I don't know what the guy was on about. But you could tell, obviously, that... Speaker Johnson was already prepared for this.
The Ben Shapiro Show
Daily Wire Backstage: Trump’s Address to Congress
He had all of the procedural order in front of him so that he'd be able to react because the Democrats were forecasting that they were going to cause this kind of trouble for the entire day leading into this.
The Ben Shapiro Show
Daily Wire Backstage: Trump’s Address to Congress
It's a terrible night for the Democrats. And truly, if they had just treated it like any 1990s State of the Union address, they would have come out far ahead of what they did.
The Ben Shapiro Show
Daily Wire Backstage: Trump’s Address to Congress
Do we have any video of Ben and Matt at the event? Quite an amazing thing. We may have the Democrat response. Let's hear what they're saying.
The Ben Shapiro Show
Daily Wire Backstage: Trump’s Address to Congress
There they are. There they are. With our friend Riley Gaines. Riley Gaines. Hey, guys, I believe we have the Democrat response. Can we hear it? I guess not.
The Ben Shapiro Show
Daily Wire Backstage: Trump’s Address to Congress
I'd have to say she's doing a very good job, but I actually don't understand how she is juxtaposing the Democrat platform from Trump's administration right now.
The Ben Shapiro Show
Daily Wire Backstage: Trump’s Address to Congress
I mean, in fairness, it is the biggest Ponzi scheme of all time.
The Ben Shapiro Show
Daily Wire Backstage: Trump’s Address to Congress
And 20-year-olds are the only people who know how to do this. If it's my private data, why does the government have it?
The Ben Shapiro Show
Daily Wire Backstage: Trump’s Address to Congress
She is quite good, whoever she is. I actually think she's quite a good presenter.
The Ben Shapiro Show
Daily Wire Backstage: Trump’s Address to Congress
The events in the Oval Office with Zelensky were very difficult to watch. But in order to have a judgment about them now, you have to ignore the fact that he got the deal. Zelensky literally today sent him a letter and said, yeah, all right.
The Ben Shapiro Show
Daily Wire Backstage: Trump’s Address to Congress
I'm actually somewhat impressed with her.
The Ben Shapiro Show
Daily Wire Backstage: Trump’s Address to Congress
All right, I'm officially saying let's tune out. I'm not joking, Matthew. As soon as she said we can't tune out, I'm out. Game over. I will say, truly, this is not a joke. I do not know who this human is. I get the sense that she's from Michigan. I think this is maybe one of the best responses that I've ever seen.
The Ben Shapiro Show
Daily Wire Backstage: Trump’s Address to Congress
Her name, according to the control booth, is Alyssa Slotkin. Oh, it's Slotkin.
The Ben Shapiro Show
Daily Wire Backstage: Trump’s Address to Congress
Is she a member of the Senate?
The Ben Shapiro Show
Daily Wire Backstage: Trump’s Address to Congress
You never do it right. That's why I'm quite impressed with it. Also, it's a very moderate speech. It's so moderate, in fact, that it is actually difficult to distinguish most of what she just said from what Trump actually said. That's what I mean.
The Ben Shapiro Show
Daily Wire Backstage: Trump’s Address to Congress
I'm not joking. I have a monitor here, and I can see the audience numbers beginning to plummet. The minute she was speaking. Yeah, you know. We had just heard that speech. It was a repeat.
The Ben Shapiro Show
Daily Wire Backstage: Trump’s Address to Congress
Difficult to get out of the House chamber, but they are. We do think there's some chance that they will make it back to Speaker Johnson's office.
The Ben Shapiro Show
Daily Wire Backstage: Trump’s Address to Congress
Yeah, I have to say, it was a bit rambling in places as Trump speeches can sometimes be, and went longer than it needed to, as Trump speeches almost always do. He's sort of like the modern Martin Scorsese of speeches. You're like, somewhere in there, there was a perfectly good 90-minute... The greatest master of this, of our generation.
The Ben Shapiro Show
Daily Wire Backstage: Trump’s Address to Congress
However, it was the most fun State of the Union address I've ever seen. No question. He was there. It was triumphant. And you said it before, he was enjoying himself. You know, he had some great lines, too. I mean, what a mic drop moment to be able to say, oh, yeah, and Zelensky just called and wants me to make a peace deal with Russia. That's a... One week ago,
The Ben Shapiro Show
Daily Wire Backstage: Trump’s Address to Congress
People were essentially saying the world order was over. Yeah. There's going to be a unified European army. Yeah. And now he's just getting exactly what he wants. Less than one week ago, Friday afternoon.
The Ben Shapiro Show
Daily Wire Backstage: Trump’s Address to Congress
I find it distasteful that some on the American right now are playing Putin as the great defender of Christendom.
The Ben Shapiro Show
Daily Wire Backstage: Trump’s Address to Congress
It's absolute nonsense. Vladimir Putin's the aggressor in the war. He invaded a sovereign nation in Ukraine. He has missiles pointed at us. He has nuclear missiles pointed at us right now. He's not our friend. But Ukraine can't win this war. Right. Yeah, that's right. That can't be done.
The Ben Shapiro Show
Daily Wire Backstage: Trump’s Address to Congress
It's also different in kind than any war that we've seen in our lifetime. I'm not making an age joke, but you actually have seen things like this. Michael and I have not. Yeah. This is a war where the... The Battle of Lepanto. This is a war where the casualties are in the seven figures. Yeah, yeah. You know, America lost something like 5,000 troops in... the totality of the war on terror.
The Ben Shapiro Show
Daily Wire Backstage: Trump’s Address to Congress
You're talking about hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians and Russians have died in the last three years in this war. When we say meat grinder, we're not being rhetorical.
The Ben Shapiro Show
Daily Wire Backstage: Trump’s Address to Congress
America. And this is the other thing, because the Putin apologists make of him this larger than life figure. And they want to say, well, America couldn't beat Putin. Of course, America could be. Yeah. Yeah. Europe could beat Putin if they set their mind to it. Europe and America would destroy Putin.
The Ben Shapiro Show
Daily Wire Backstage: Trump’s Address to Congress
Welcome to Daily Wire Backstage's live coverage of Donald Trump's address to Congress. Some people will call it a State of the Union. Some people will get onto us if we do call it a State of the Union. It's very controversial. It will look exactly like a State of the Union, and I think that's really what matters. I'm joined here in Nashville by Andrew Klavan and Michael Moles.
The Ben Shapiro Show
Daily Wire Backstage: Trump’s Address to Congress
The one thing that I found disappointing in the foreign policy part of the president's speech is that he didn't talk about the new Trumpistan colony in what was formerly the Gaza Strip. I wanted at least three paragraphs.
The Ben Shapiro Show
Daily Wire Backstage: Trump’s Address to Congress
He's going to support it. And it is, at this point, it's a fait accompli. Of course, Israel is going back into the Gaza Strip.
The Ben Shapiro Show
Daily Wire Backstage: Trump’s Address to Congress
You know, I mean, I thought like... I thought it was a sensible enough rhetorical argument for something that I think is somewhat nonsensical in practice. I'm completely against the tariffs. I think using tariffs as a form of leverage to get us better trade deals than we might otherwise have, which we've seen President Trump do in the past, is a perfectly good thing to do.
The Ben Shapiro Show
Daily Wire Backstage: Trump’s Address to Congress
But free trade has been very good for America, and the dollar being the standard currency basically of all global trade. Yeah, that's been good for us. It is very, very good for us. And that's the thing that you do not want to lose and that you put at risk with this tariff.
The Ben Shapiro Show
Daily Wire Backstage: Trump’s Address to Congress
Well, I think that if we're going to talk about things that none of us understand, we should bring someone on who does understand some of them. And that is Matt Walsh. And also Ben Shapiro, you guys are at the Capitol. What was the energy like in the room? I mean, it was pretty outstanding from where we were sitting.
The Ben Shapiro Show
Daily Wire Backstage: Trump’s Address to Congress
To your point earlier, sir, it's perfectly understandable why someone living south of our border in particular would want to get to the greatest country in the history of the world. It's a no-brainer.
The Ben Shapiro Show
Daily Wire Backstage: Trump’s Address to Congress
When you add further incentives through all of our government programs, all the handouts, the open invitations that Joe Biden and his administration were putting out to people to come to the country, you can't be surprised when they do. At the same time,
The Ben Shapiro Show
Daily Wire Backstage: Trump’s Address to Congress
The idea that American politicians would engage in harboring those people, it seems to me, it's very easy to throw around words like treason in political discussion. But when you're actually using your position as an elected representative of the American people to help criminal aliens in the country at the expense of your own constituents. I mean, how is that not a treasonous offense?
The Ben Shapiro Show
Daily Wire Backstage: Trump’s Address to Congress
I think that Donald Trump changes. I don't think that Donald Trump is fundamentally ideological. He fundamentally wants to make a deal. And so I think that one of the reasons that he is so unpredictable is because everyone assumes that there is some other motive at play. When in fact, it may just be as simple as the thing's unfair, I'm going to put tariffs on it. And if somebody comes back to me,
The Ben Shapiro Show
Daily Wire Backstage: Trump’s Address to Congress
and there's a better deal to be made in the future where I take the tariffs off because something good's happening, then that'll be the thing that I'm for. I don't know that he's, I don't know that Trump is sophisticated. And I don't say that as a knock on Trump. I'm actually saying it kind of as a good thing. Like, I just don't think that he is, I don't think that he is that.
The Ben Shapiro Show
Daily Wire Backstage: Trump’s Address to Congress
When Joe Biden shuts down the Remain in Mexico program and says, no, instead, we're going to bring millions of people into the country who don't need to be here. We already have a solution. The first Trump administration implemented the solution. We're going to remove the solution. How is that not treasonous?
The Ben Shapiro Show
Daily Wire Backstage: Trump’s Address to Congress
It was kind of like... I don't think that it was just funny, although it was certainly funny. I don't think it was just plain speak and shellacking the Democrats, although it was certainly that. It was also a perfect trap that he put them in. Because once he said, they cannot clap for me no matter what, He took all the tools that they had.
The Ben Shapiro Show
Daily Wire Backstage: Trump’s Address to Congress
I mean, this is the reason all their shenanigans basically fizzled out in the first three minutes. Because what was left once he had already established, here's how the game's going to get played.
The Ben Shapiro Show
Daily Wire Backstage: Trump’s Address to Congress
Had he not made those remarks at the beginning of the speech, they would have clapped for the 13-year-old boy.
The Ben Shapiro Show
Daily Wire Backstage: Trump’s Address to Congress
Well, fellas, he's also really funny.
The Ben Shapiro Show
Daily Wire Backstage: Trump’s Address to Congress
Truly the most entertaining State of the Union that I've ever seen. And, you know, I had a kind of sadness watching it because Donald Trump's not a young man. We are in the end of whatever this is. And, you know, four years is a long time. We get to enjoy the ending of it.
The Ben Shapiro Show
Daily Wire Backstage: Trump’s Address to Congress
Yeah. Thank you. But it was the first time that I felt that kind of nostalgia for Donald Trump, and I was feeling it while he's still president, because we will never see anything like it again. No, no, no.
The Ben Shapiro Show
Daily Wire Backstage: Trump’s Address to Congress
Fellas, I know it's late in D.C. and you have shows to do tomorrow. Thanks for hanging out with us. Thanks for coming back after fighting your way through whatever mob there was and signing autographs for Congress people. Boebert, I know. There's just all kinds of weirdness that you guys had to deal with. But it was a good night.
The Ben Shapiro Show
Daily Wire Backstage: Trump’s Address to Congress
Thanks to all of our DailyWire.com subscribers for hanging out with us, making it possible for us to do this work. We do have one fun thing going on, and that is that Ben is leading this crusade to get President Trump to consider pardoning Derek Chauvin of the federal charges that he was convicted of. Of course.
The Ben Shapiro Show
Daily Wire Backstage: Trump’s Address to Congress
Won't mean that he gets out of jail will mean that he has to go to a state prison, but it will still be the beginning of correcting this horrible injustice. And we have a petition at pardon Derek dot com. We'd love for you to sign it as we're letting President Trump know that this is still an important issue that he's he's given all these great pardons already in his time as president.
The Ben Shapiro Show
Daily Wire Backstage: Trump’s Address to Congress
But there is like one guy is obviously still been left on the field. And that's Derek Chauvin. So head over to PardonDerek.com and add your name to our petition today. And we'll see you guys back here next time for Daily Wire Backstage.
The Ben Shapiro Show
Daily Wire Backstage: Trump’s Address to Congress
Of course, I'm your host, Jeremy Boring. And joining us remotely from the Capitol itself, tonight we have Ben Shapiro, Matt Walsh, There's an empty chair, which we were saving for Elijah, but it has now been filled. And the man filling it is the former acting director of ICE and the current borders are in the second Trump administration, Tom Holman. Thank you for being with us.
The Ben Shapiro Show
Daily Wire Backstage: Trump’s Address to Congress
If you are not a Daily Wire Plus member, here's what you're missing. Ad-free, uncensored shows from the most trusted names in the conservative media, plus Andrew Klavan. If you're not watching Daily Wire Plus, you're not getting the full show, plus exclusive investigative journalism, first access to what's next.
The Ben Shapiro Show
Daily Wire Backstage: Trump’s Address to Congress
And if you join now, you can take part in the live chat where you can ask us questions during the live show, dailywire.com slash subscribe. Obviously a really big night, the sort of triumphal return of Donald Trump to the Capitol as now the 47th president. What can we expect tonight, Ben?
The Ben Shapiro Show
Daily Wire Backstage Live at CPAC: The Fight, The Wins, The Future
So far I've enjoyed this panel very much because we're living up to our sort of reputation at The Daily Wire. Your favorite thing about Trump is us. And your favorite thing about Trump is your movie. And Michael's just here for the booze.
The Ben Shapiro Show
Daily Wire Backstage Live at CPAC: The Fight, The Wins, The Future
Delicious Mayflower cigars. Ben, the best thing about the first 30.
The Ben Shapiro Show
Daily Wire Backstage Live at CPAC: The Fight, The Wins, The Future
I have to say, my favorite thing about the presidency so far is just the sheer chaotic disruption that Donald Trump represents. Everything from saying that he's going to build Trumpistan in the Middle East. Mar-a-Gaza, Mar-a-Gaza. Mar-a-Gaza, yeah. Gazalago. Gazalago. It's a work in progress.
The Ben Shapiro Show
Daily Wire Backstage Live at CPAC: The Fight, The Wins, The Future
I love it because what it says is the way you guys have been thinking about this for the entire lifetime of every person involved in international politics is wrong. And it's not even necessarily that I agree with every single one of Trump's disruptions.
The Ben Shapiro Show
Daily Wire Backstage Live at CPAC: The Fight, The Wins, The Future
It's that I agree with the idea of the disruption itself that Trump represents because only through disruption do you shake things up from the status quo and create the actual opportunity for change, and I actually think President Trump sort of understands this. I think he wields it.
The Ben Shapiro Show
Daily Wire Backstage Live at CPAC: The Fight, The Wins, The Future
I think half of the things that Donald Trump says, he doesn't exactly mean, but what he understands is that in the act of saying it, he breaks everyone out of their comfort zone and creates the opportunity for actual meaningful change, and that's an enormous skill. It's something that he's been doing in his business life for all of living memory.
The Ben Shapiro Show
Daily Wire Backstage Live at CPAC: The Fight, The Wins, The Future
Donald Trump's very old, not as old as Andrew Klavan, but he's not a young man. And he's very successfully done this. He keeps people from being able to get to complacency, keeps people from believing that just because something has been the way means that it must continue to be the way. And you see it particularly, I think, in places like Doge. I think Elon Musk is the greatest living American.
The Ben Shapiro Show
Daily Wire Backstage Live at CPAC: The Fight, The Wins, The Future
I think that he is... We should clap for Elon Musk. He's probably still here. He's probably still here, and any one of us at any moment could be the recipient of one of his children. It's a really important thing to say on Elon's good side. I think Elon is the greatest living American. I think that Elon is one of the only people in the world actively trying to build a future.
The Ben Shapiro Show
Daily Wire Backstage Live at CPAC: The Fight, The Wins, The Future
I think that for too long, the left has been the only ideological movement in the country who believes that there will be a future, and the future that they believe in is one that does not include us. And for too long, people on the right have sort of given up on the idea of a future.
The Ben Shapiro Show
Daily Wire Backstage Live at CPAC: The Fight, The Wins, The Future
We've become a little bit black-filled, a little bit nihilistic, a little bit conspiratorial and afraid that tomorrow must be worse than today, which is worse than yesterday. Elon doesn't subscribe to that at all. He not only believes that America's best days are ahead of it, he's actively working to make that happen. And that is what you want in the government.
The Ben Shapiro Show
Daily Wire Backstage Live at CPAC: The Fight, The Wins, The Future
We are going to take questions, and I believe that the place where we're going to take questions is over in this, they told me it's down there, but I don't know where down there means. But we're gonna spend a lot of our time interacting with you guys, because you bought the tickets. And we get to hear from each other, you know, all day, every day. I could have told you all of their answers.
The Ben Shapiro Show
Daily Wire Backstage Live at CPAC: The Fight, The Wins, The Future
I know what they wanted in the green room, only green M&Ms for Ben. Classic. All the other M&Ms for Michael, he's not very discriminating. We're gonna take a lot of questions from you, but first, Ben Shapiro.
The Ben Shapiro Show
Daily Wire Backstage Live at CPAC: The Fight, The Wins, The Future
You were sitting next to the man who called for the eradication of transgenderism from our national polity on stage. Well, second. Okay, it was second.
The Ben Shapiro Show
Daily Wire Backstage Live at CPAC: The Fight, The Wins, The Future
Absolutely. Good, good. One of the things that we like to do on backstage is move beyond just politics and talk about culture, talk about religion, talk about the things that make our life meaningful. One of the things that's been on my mind a lot in this really triumphant moment in the last 30 days. Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni. How did you know? Who are they?
The Ben Shapiro Show
Daily Wire Backstage Live at CPAC: The Fight, The Wins, The Future
One of the things that's really on my mind is that when you're in these triumphant political moments, it can seem suddenly like your life is going to be good because we're winning in the very important but somewhat abstract realm of politics. But the truth is, your life may continue to be quite bad.
The Ben Shapiro Show
Daily Wire Backstage Live at CPAC: The Fight, The Wins, The Future
Listen, I'm good at that. Everybody's in a good mood. And Jeremy's like, and then you'll die. And then you'll die. And at the same time, your life may have been very good these last four years while Joe Biden was president, even though things in our national politics were going quite poorly.
The Ben Shapiro Show
Daily Wire Backstage Live at CPAC: The Fight, The Wins, The Future
And so I think it's important in these moments to reflect on what are the actual things we can do in our own lives to ensure that we're living lives that are honoring to God, productive for our family, productive for our country. It can't just be that we're watching news on television. It can't even just be that we're actively engaged in politics and being somewhat activists.
The Ben Shapiro Show
Daily Wire Backstage Live at CPAC: The Fight, The Wins, The Future
How are we to live our lives in light of the moment in which we live?
The Ben Shapiro Show
Daily Wire Backstage Live at CPAC: The Fight, The Wins, The Future
I hate it when people clap for you. I really do.
The Ben Shapiro Show
Daily Wire Backstage Live at CPAC: The Fight, The Wins, The Future
I also think about God every day and about how you're not yet the man that you were made to be.
The Ben Shapiro Show
Daily Wire Backstage Live at CPAC: The Fight, The Wins, The Future
Yeah. It's... I was in a dialogue with someone online once who was talking about how because divorce laws are punitive toward men, which is undeniably true, that marriage itself should be eradicated. And this person kept saying over and over, my wife left me. And she destroyed my relationship with my children. She took the house. She got half of my money. I didn't want a divorce.
The Ben Shapiro Show
Daily Wire Backstage Live at CPAC: The Fight, The Wins, The Future
She chose to get this divorce." And he had tons of followers. He was creating tons of energy around this argument. And I said, listen, there's no question divorce laws are punitive toward men. They need to be changed. All of the incentives around marriage have become deeply inverted to the detriment of our society. These are real policy issues that need to be addressed.
The Ben Shapiro Show
Daily Wire Backstage Live at CPAC: The Fight, The Wins, The Future
I said, but I do think that you're throwing the baby out with the bathwater. I mean, I'm sorry that this happened to you, that your wife left you for no reason. He said, well, I mean, she had a reason. I cheated on her. And I said, oh, well, there you go. Methinks the policy that you are actually against is the policy of you, the policy of consequence, of just consequence.
The Ben Shapiro Show
Daily Wire Backstage Live at CPAC: The Fight, The Wins, The Future
One of the Ten Commandments. That's the policy that he opposed. Yeah, Uncle God's policies. But it is nevertheless the case that most of what your life will be is what you make of it. There will be parts of your life that are impacted by outside forces, absolutely.
The Ben Shapiro Show
Daily Wire Backstage Live at CPAC: The Fight, The Wins, The Future
And the beauty of politics is that we have the opportunity, especially in a country like this one, to do something about those policies that impede our ability to live our lives. I was backstage talking to Mike Rowe. He mentioned there are 8 million open jobs in this country right now. There are 7 million working-age men who aren't just unemployed. They have removed themselves from the workforce.
The Ben Shapiro Show
Daily Wire Backstage Live at CPAC: The Fight, The Wins, The Future
They are not looking for a job. They don't want a job. They feel disenfranchised because they have been disenfranchised, but they are also participating in their own disenfranchisement. And one of the things I've learned in life, one of the things I've learned in business, sometimes people who've succeeded in business will tell you, business is about fail, fail, fail, until you make it.
The Ben Shapiro Show
Daily Wire Backstage Live at CPAC: The Fight, The Wins, The Future
And that's not true. Success in business is about fail, fail, fail, fail, fail, and with a little luck you made it along the way. It's less like getting to a destination and much more like being a batter in the major leagues. If you get a hit, Three out of 10 times in the major leagues, you will be in the Hall of Fame. There will be statues of you in your hometown.
The Ben Shapiro Show
Daily Wire Backstage Live at CPAC: The Fight, The Wins, The Future
You did not get a hit 70% of the time. And it's not as though once you did get a hit, you only hit from there on out. No, it's that you missed, you missed, you got a hit, you missed, you missed, you missed, you got a hit, you missed, you got a hit, you got walked. Most of the times when you got the hit, you still didn't score.
The Ben Shapiro Show
Daily Wire Backstage Live at CPAC: The Fight, The Wins, The Future
You got thrown out at second or the batter right behind you was the third out and you basically got your hit and got on base for no reason whatsoever. Sometimes you score and you didn't earn it.
The Ben Shapiro Show
Daily Wire Backstage Live at CPAC: The Fight, The Wins, The Future
I lost the analogy, but I'm sure there was... All that matters is that you get back up and keep batting. That's the only difference between... It's not the only difference, but it's the fundamental difference between people who make it in baseball and people who do not make it in baseball.
The Ben Shapiro Show
Daily Wire Backstage Live at CPAC: The Fight, The Wins, The Future
And it is true in business, and it is true in your marriage, it's true as a parent, it's true in almost every aspect of your life. It's your ability to take... life as it is, not as you wish it would be, to take the hard parts of life and to keep getting back up and to keep doing your job.
The Ben Shapiro Show
Daily Wire Backstage Live at CPAC: The Fight, The Wins, The Future
We like to take questions from our Daily Wire Plus subscribers during our Ben Key show. They're the people who make it possible for us to keep, alongside our advertisers, to keep doing the work that we do over at Daily Wire. But today, we want to take questions from you guys. Ben has a policy that if you disagree, he would like you to come to the front of the line.
The Ben Shapiro Show
Daily Wire Backstage Live at CPAC: The Fight, The Wins, The Future
I have precisely the opposite policy. The more sycophantish you are, the more I want your questions. So please, if you like me or even love me, front of the line, we'll take our first question.
The Ben Shapiro Show
Daily Wire Backstage Live at CPAC: The Fight, The Wins, The Future
That's fine.
The Ben Shapiro Show
Daily Wire Backstage Live at CPAC: The Fight, The Wins, The Future
It can be really easy to be tempted toward some sort of absolute answer on a question like this. Some people will tell you, just keep your head down, get your degree, you're paying to be there, the most important thing is not to rock the boat, You need something from them in exchange for your money and your time. Go get it. That's the only reason you're there.
The Ben Shapiro Show
Daily Wire Backstage Live at CPAC: The Fight, The Wins, The Future
Other people will say, you should just be fighting all the way, defending your rights. Campuses are ground zero for all the worst things that are happening in our culture. Be an activist. But the truth is, you actually have to live your life. And none of the people giving you advice on this topic do. And only you know what you actually want to get out of this experience in college.
The Ben Shapiro Show
Daily Wire Backstage Live at CPAC: The Fight, The Wins, The Future
Only you know what kind of career you want to build in your life on the other side. of your time in college, some of them much more dependent on getting that degree than perhaps others are. I think the best thing you can do in this regard is live according to your lights. The one thing I'll say you should not do is live your life out of fear.
The Ben Shapiro Show
Daily Wire Backstage Live at CPAC: The Fight, The Wins, The Future
If you find yourself living your life out of fear, you actually can't make the cynical calculation of, I will live my life out of fear, but on the other side of it, I'll be very, very successful. That's a deal with the devil that you can just never walk back. But that doesn't mean that you always have to be in the fight. It doesn't mean that you have to be reckless in every situation.
The Ben Shapiro Show
Daily Wire Backstage Live at CPAC: The Fight, The Wins, The Future
I will say in my own life, I've made the choice from a young age, probably before I could make it consciously, that I was just going to say what I believed in every situation and come what may. And I'd like to say that it's worked out well for me. I've gone through a lot of real difficulties because of that decision. I don't necessarily think that that is the most virtuous decision.
The Ben Shapiro Show
Daily Wire Backstage Live at CPAC: The Fight, The Wins, The Future
I think it's the most Gen X decision, but I don't know that it's the most virtuous decision. Although it can contain virtue. Sometimes, though, it can contain hubris and recklessness and all sorts of other things.
The Ben Shapiro Show
Daily Wire Backstage Live at CPAC: The Fight, The Wins, The Future
So I think that rather than looking for an absolute answer to the question, the very best thing that you can do is actually know yourself, know what you're trying to accomplish, know what fights are worth your time to be in and go fight those fights. And if you're like me, it'll be all of them and you'll never get a college degree and you won't make any money until you're 30 and that's fine.
The Ben Shapiro Show
Daily Wire Backstage Live at CPAC: The Fight, The Wins, The Future
And if you're like Ben, you'll be writing a syndicated column at 17 and now be Ben Shapiro.
The Ben Shapiro Show
Daily Wire Backstage Live at CPAC: The Fight, The Wins, The Future
Live according to your lights.
The Ben Shapiro Show
Daily Wire Backstage Live at CPAC: The Fight, The Wins, The Future
Well, I think that it... I'm very famously anti-college. I think that most people should not go to college. Thank you. I think that if you want to be a heart surgeon, I think there's a strong case that you should go to college. But I think most people who are getting Bachelors of Fine Arts should not be getting them. And you might say that in a better world than this,
The Ben Shapiro Show
Daily Wire Backstage Live at CPAC: The Fight, The Wins, The Future
those degrees are useful to society. Back when we taught things like the Western Canon, back when we taught things like philosophy, perhaps a liberal arts degree actually did prepare people who aren't going to go into very specialized fields. Nevertheless, those degrees and that experience could prepare them for their life as productive citizens. We don't live in that world anymore.
The Ben Shapiro Show
Daily Wire Backstage Live at CPAC: The Fight, The Wins, The Future
You're not going to study the Western Canon if you go to college. And so unless you're going to do something very particular, I would go get a job instead. The thing that you have to do in this life, God said, you know, everybody likes to focus on that, on the seventh day you will rest. But the part that he said right before that was six days you will toil. Go to work.
The Ben Shapiro Show
Daily Wire Backstage Live at CPAC: The Fight, The Wins, The Future
Yeah! Next question, please.
The Ben Shapiro Show
Daily Wire Backstage Live at CPAC: The Fight, The Wins, The Future
Guys, thank you so much for spending time with us tonight. Enjoy the rest of CPAC, and enjoy the next four years. They're going to be great.
The Ben Shapiro Show
Daily Wire Backstage Live at CPAC: The Fight, The Wins, The Future
I'm certain you did that wrong. No one should clap for Michael.
The Ben Shapiro Show
Daily Wire Backstage Live at CPAC: The Fight, The Wins, The Future
is a little... What's the worst thing that could happen? Welcome to CPAC and Bat Stage Live.
The Ben Shapiro Show
Daily Wire Backstage Live at CPAC: The Fight, The Wins, The Future
Thank you. This is a show that we do once a month at the Daily Wire. In fact, we're going to do it again on March 4th for the President's Joint Session of Congress where we get the whole team together and we talk about what's on our mind. And so this will be a little bit different than the other panels that have happened throughout the day because we have to do ad reads.
The Ben Shapiro Show
Daily Wire Backstage Live at CPAC: The Fight, The Wins, The Future
It's okay, it's how we buy the plane tickets to get out here. What I want to talk about though first right out of the gate, today is 30 days of Donald Trump into his second term. Which means even if you don't like Donald Trump, you're 30 days closer to being the end of Donald Trump.
The Ben Shapiro Show
Daily Wire Backstage Live at CPAC: The Fight, The Wins, The Future
I want to talk about all the amazing things that have happened in this first 30 days. One of the most dynamic and energetic beginnings of any presidency, certainly in my lifetime. And since we got all of our pals here at CPAC, let's just talk about how great it's been. Michael.
The Ben Shapiro Show
Daily Wire Backstage Live at CPAC: The Fight, The Wins, The Future
Andrew Klavan, you have opinions.
The Matt Walsh Show
Jeremy Boreing Hosts a Special Daily Wire Townhall
It's 2025. The Daily Wire is about to turn 10 years old. And yesterday, the President of the United States signed an executive order titled, Protecting Our Children from Chemical and Surgical Mutilation, which prohibits surgical and chemical mutilation of our children. It is a great day for The Daily Wire.
The Matt Walsh Show
Jeremy Boreing Hosts a Special Daily Wire Townhall
It is rare in this life that you get to be a part of a moment like this. And it would be inappropriate for us not to take a moment to reflect on it together as a team and to reflect on it with our audience, with the people who have supported us, with the people who have empowered us by
The Matt Walsh Show
Jeremy Boreing Hosts a Special Daily Wire Townhall
Mark Zuckerberg has publicly acknowledged now that they were taking actions to suppress effective political and social content, and we were the most engaged provider of that kind of content in the world at the time. We saw an 80% reduction in our traffic and revenue on the platform.
The Matt Walsh Show
Jeremy Boreing Hosts a Special Daily Wire Townhall
There was a time when it was the number one source of our revenue and the number one source of our traffic, and it was cut by over 80% as a result of the actions that we've taken around this issue. This single set of changes from this single company has cost The Daily Wire tens, and I'm not exaggerating when I say very probably hundreds of millions of dollars.
The Matt Walsh Show
Jeremy Boreing Hosts a Special Daily Wire Townhall
And it wasn't the only loss because of the trans issue. After Michael Knowles told the crowd at CPAC that transgenderism must be eradicated from public life entirely, no less an adversary than the Biden White House itself came out to announce him. YouTube demonetized Matt Walsh's entire channel for discussing the biological sex of Dylan Mulvaney. He's a dude, by the way.
The Matt Walsh Show
Jeremy Boreing Hosts a Special Daily Wire Townhall
In sum, YouTube has demonetized 2,000 videos from Daily Wire since 2020 and declared 194 videos hateful and derogatory just since 2022. The total cost of these enforcements just from YouTube against the Daily Wire are likely between $10 and $20 million.
The Matt Walsh Show
Jeremy Boreing Hosts a Special Daily Wire Townhall
The total cost of the additional shadow banning and removing from recommendation engines and inability to retarget the audiences that we weren't able to engage with in the first place and all the other consequences of our stand on the trans issue are well in excess of $100 million. Just so you know, because big numbers start to sound small when we use them all the time.
The Matt Walsh Show
Jeremy Boreing Hosts a Special Daily Wire Townhall
When you're talking about 100 or $200 million in just four years for a company that only did $200 million of revenue this year and the year before, you are talking about the difference between abject success and close the doors and sell off the printer failure.
The Matt Walsh Show
Jeremy Boreing Hosts a Special Daily Wire Townhall
That we have been able to persevere and survive and even thrive against these kinds of attacks, almost all of which were directly because of the trans issue. is nothing short of miraculous.
The Matt Walsh Show
Jeremy Boreing Hosts a Special Daily Wire Townhall
God himself has, for some reason that is beyond my understanding, chosen to allow us to continue to survive when by all right, we should not have been able to because of the attacks we have taken, because of the stand that we've made on the issue of transgenderism. As I said, if that agent back in 2019 had told me what the price was actually going to be, I don't know what I would have said.
The Matt Walsh Show
Jeremy Boreing Hosts a Special Daily Wire Townhall
listening to our shows, by sharing our content, by engaging with our advertisers, our advertisers who actually did the advertising, our subscribers who made it possible for us to take some of the stands that we've taken against incredible odds.
The Matt Walsh Show
Jeremy Boreing Hosts a Special Daily Wire Townhall
I probably would have said the same thing because I'm an ornery cuss, and also because I had a lot less to lose back then, which, you know, if he comes along and says the same thing to me now, as I like to say, I'm not very good, but I'm real expensive. It's not that I'm not for sale, it's that no one ever makes an offer.
The Matt Walsh Show
Jeremy Boreing Hosts a Special Daily Wire Townhall
But damn, we had our teeth kicked in over this issue again and again and again and again. I couldn't begin to outline all of the consequences. But here are a few. 206 enforcements from TikTok, who has actually shut down our channels on numerous occasions. We've been dropped by backend service providers from JW Player to HubSpot to OpenWeb to Aspire.
The Matt Walsh Show
Jeremy Boreing Hosts a Special Daily Wire Townhall
We lost a multi-million dollar a year email business for almost two years because of these and other cancellations. We were blocked by Eventbrite for events related to what is a woman, by Target for sales of Johnny the Walrus, by Bing who canceled our ability to even give them our money. They wouldn't let us spend advertising dollars with them because of the trans issue.
The Matt Walsh Show
Jeremy Boreing Hosts a Special Daily Wire Townhall
We were restricted and banned by Twitter, including their blocking of Dr. Jordan Peterson, before he ever even joined the Daily Wire. And I think it's worth noting that Dr. Peterson's rise to international prominence largely began with a refusal to buckle on the issue of preferred pronouns.
The Matt Walsh Show
Jeremy Boreing Hosts a Special Daily Wire Townhall
One might say that while the Daily Wire has been a leader on this issue, we have also attracted other people who are willing to fight the fight on this issue to join us. And Dr. Peterson is an obvious example, another leader on the issue who chose to join the Daily Wire.
The Matt Walsh Show
Jeremy Boreing Hosts a Special Daily Wire Townhall
Even conservative media organizations refused to have our talent on their shows at various times because of our rigidity on this issue. Everyone wanted us to just get over it. But we kept fighting. We launched our children's streamer, Bentkey, specifically because of Disney's, quote, not-so-secret gay agenda of adding queerness into content for little kids.
The Matt Walsh Show
Jeremy Boreing Hosts a Special Daily Wire Townhall
We fought against GARM for trying to enforce their ideology on us at the cost of our ad revenue. And Ben was called to testify on Capitol Hill. We even dropped our HR, they call it HRM, like our HR backend provider, where you used to all log in and see why your paycheck bounced.
The Matt Walsh Show
Jeremy Boreing Hosts a Special Daily Wire Townhall
I don't think people, sometimes even inside the company and certainly outside, actually realize just how difficult it has been to wage this particular fight and what it means that we've been able to participate in this victory It's a very special thing. We should hold on to it. Like with all of your successes in life, you should hang on to it loosely, but you should hang on to it nonetheless.
The Matt Walsh Show
Jeremy Boreing Hosts a Special Daily Wire Townhall
One time, one time, but we dropped that entire service because they were requiring us to put pronouns in everyone's profiles. At every single turn, we dropped law firms who required us to identify our pronouns. Every single turn, we made the decision that was worse for business because it was right for our mission. Because this company exists for two reasons.
The Matt Walsh Show
Jeremy Boreing Hosts a Special Daily Wire Townhall
A business reason, yes, and a missional reason also. And there's tension between those two missions. And when in doubt, we choose our values. The fundamental thing that we will be accused of by people who watch this video is, sure, you did all of that, but you did it to make money. You did it to sell books. You did it to sell tickets to your movies. You did it to get traffic on the platforms.
The Matt Walsh Show
Jeremy Boreing Hosts a Special Daily Wire Townhall
What I'm telling you, first of all, is that it's not by accident that The Daily Wire has aligned the profit motive with our missional interests. We did that deliberately because we know how human incentives work. We know that we will be more likely to accomplish our values-based mission if we are also accomplishing a business mission.
The Matt Walsh Show
Jeremy Boreing Hosts a Special Daily Wire Townhall
But I assure you that at every single point at which we made one of these decisions, we thought that it wasn't going to be financially successful. We thought there was a chance. We were taking a bet on the audience. We were putting our faith in the audience. We were assuming that if we felt the way that we felt, surely somebody else felt the way that we felt also.
The Matt Walsh Show
Jeremy Boreing Hosts a Special Daily Wire Townhall
And that maybe if we had the courage of our convictions to stand up when others were not standing up, that maybe that audience would have our back. And yes, that did redound to our benefit, not to the price of the hundreds of millions of dollars. that we've been denied by company after company, by tech giant after tech giant, and again, sometimes even by other people in the conservative movement.
The Matt Walsh Show
Jeremy Boreing Hosts a Special Daily Wire Townhall
Now, that is, as I've said all along, that is not to say that we were alone in this fight. There were a lot of important voices in the fight. Abigail Schreier and Riley Gaines and Seth Dillon and Haya Raichik and Megyn Kelly.
The Matt Walsh Show
Jeremy Boreing Hosts a Special Daily Wire Townhall
Elon Musk spent $44 billion to restore, in part, to restore the Babylon Bee after they made a very brave stand and refused to take down a post about a man dressed as a woman in the federal government. And, of course, there are many, many, many more stories. But they weren't all there from the beginning.
The Matt Walsh Show
Jeremy Boreing Hosts a Special Daily Wire Townhall
Many of the people who did some of the best work on this topic in part felt the freedom to do so because we had taken big risks ahead of them. Still others of them only even agreed with the concept of doing it.
The Matt Walsh Show
Jeremy Boreing Hosts a Special Daily Wire Townhall
because they read a book by Abigail Schreier, because they watched a movie by Matt Walsh, because they read an article by Luke Rosiak, because they saw a video of Ben Shapiro asking a college student why she wasn't 60, which is one of the biggest viral moments in the history of the company from the very earliest days of The Daily Wire.
The Matt Walsh Show
Jeremy Boreing Hosts a Special Daily Wire Townhall
And the presence of those other great warriors in the fight doesn't change the fact that for a decade now, the Daily Wire has been leading on this issue more and more effectively than any other organization in American public life.
The Matt Walsh Show
Jeremy Boreing Hosts a Special Daily Wire Townhall
And for that reason, every single one of you and everyone who has ever worked here in the past and every subscriber and every former subscriber who subscribed to The Daily Wire sometime in the past and everyone who listens and shares and everyone who engages with our advertisers and every advertiser who's ever advertised on our shows and stood beside us should feel some pride of ownership in this remarkable moment.
The Matt Walsh Show
Jeremy Boreing Hosts a Special Daily Wire Townhall
We all deserve to recognize the role that we've played and to savor this enormous victory. It's easy to say of conservatives that for all our talk, we don't actually conserve anything. It's easy to say, but it's a lie. Our work matters. Our dedication to our principles matters.
The Matt Walsh Show
Jeremy Boreing Hosts a Special Daily Wire Townhall
Nobody has fought harder than we have on this issue. And for that reason, I've never been more proud. And I want to tell you a little bit just in reflection on how it came to be in this moment. Two weeks after the founding of the company, Ben Shapiro went on CNN and did a show with Dr. Drew and Zoe Turr. If those of you don't remember, Zoe Turr is a biological man. Yes.
The Matt Walsh Show
Jeremy Boreing Hosts a Special Daily Wire Townhall
These battles aren't short and victory is never guaranteed, but when we take great risks on behalf of what's right, sometimes God allows us to participate in some small way in world-changing events. The Daily Wire fights. This team fights. Our audience fights. And sometimes we win. There are a lot of people who don't like the Daily Wire. That comes with the territory. And it's fine.
The Matt Walsh Show
Jeremy Boreing Hosts a Special Daily Wire Townhall
But we take great risks and we have been a part of great victories. If you're employed in this country today and you're unvaccinated, you should know that the Daily Wire, alongside a small handful of other companies, made that possible by daring to take on the federal government. If you think... Sure, that's just what you do for a living.
The Matt Walsh Show
Jeremy Boreing Hosts a Special Daily Wire Townhall
I would encourage you to pick a fight with people who can audit you and regulate you and who can and do regulate and threaten the people on whose platforms we conduct almost 100% of our business.
The Matt Walsh Show
Jeremy Boreing Hosts a Special Daily Wire Townhall
And if your child or grandchild should struggle, as millions of children do, with questions about their identity and how to feel comfortable in their own skin, you should know that The Daily Wire, along with a handful of other allies, played a pivotal role in helping to make sure that your government can't prey on them in their weakest moments and then castrate them while they're still too young to drive.
The Matt Walsh Show
Jeremy Boreing Hosts a Special Daily Wire Townhall
This year marks the 10-year anniversary of The Daily Wire, as I said. And that means 10 years of fighting this particular fight. Through every one of those battles, God has blessed us. Even with all the risks and all of the challenges, and even after all of the defeats, we've managed to grow in size. We've managed to grow in strength. We've managed to grow in revenue and in reach.
The Matt Walsh Show
Jeremy Boreing Hosts a Special Daily Wire Townhall
We're bigger today than we've ever been. And we're fighting harder for our values than we have ever fought. Over the coming months, will do a lot to mark this enormous milestone, 10 years of the Daily Wire.
The Matt Walsh Show
Jeremy Boreing Hosts a Special Daily Wire Townhall
And I look forward to getting back together and raising a glass to that unbelievable moment and sharing also with you in the audience some of the fun ways that we're going to celebrate between now and September 21st, which, according to some arguments, is actually the first day because it's the first day of the Ben Shapiro show.
The Matt Walsh Show
Jeremy Boreing Hosts a Special Daily Wire Townhall
There's an argument for July, which is the first day we started paying Ben Shapiro. And there's an argument for October, which is when we launched the website. But I think September 21st is the appropriate day because it's the first day that we appeared on the public scene.
The Matt Walsh Show
Jeremy Boreing Hosts a Special Daily Wire Townhall
But reading the news yesterday couldn't help but think that today and this enormous victory is just an excellent way to kick off the festivities. So to everyone in this room and to those who've been with us on this journey through this last decade, fighting these battles and other battles that are yet to be won, you have my deepest thanks. We did it together. Savor it. Thank God for it.
The Matt Walsh Show
Jeremy Boreing Hosts a Special Daily Wire Townhall
Thank one another for it. Thank all the warriors who've taken the field to defend our children. Thank Donald Trump for winning his reelection, which is the number one job of a politician, is to win, and for having the courage in his victory to do things that other Republican presidents have lacked the courage of their convictions to actually take on, and then let it go.
The Matt Walsh Show
Jeremy Boreing Hosts a Special Daily Wire Townhall
because the only way to thrive in this world is to hold lightly to those victories and to move on to the next challenge and win yet again.
The Matt Walsh Show
Jeremy Boreing Hosts a Special Daily Wire Townhall
who it's hard to remember him because he's basically disappeared from public life. But he's a biological man who at that time was defending so-called trans rights, which were fairly novel at the time. Most of us had not really engaged with this issue in a major way.
The Matt Walsh Show
Jeremy Boreing Hosts a Special Daily Wire Townhall
And yet there was Ben, 2015, I can't stress enough, two weeks after we started The Daily Wire, and he was debating these issues and he referred to Tur as Sir, which in retrospect was perhaps a little bit more polite than Ben should have been. Tur, though, responded to this by grabbing Ben by the neck and saying, if you say that again, you're going home in an ambulance.
The Matt Walsh Show
Jeremy Boreing Hosts a Special Daily Wire Townhall
It was an amazing moment of television. I mean, here you had a rather large biological man in a dress threatening physical violence if Ben didn't bend the knee to this obvious delusion. And what was the reaction from CNN? Nothing. What was the reaction from Dr. Drew while one of his guests was being threatened on national television for saying a political opinion? Nothing.
The Matt Walsh Show
Jeremy Boreing Hosts a Special Daily Wire Townhall
And that was the first clue that we had as a company as to what this fight was going to be like.
The Matt Walsh Show
Jeremy Boreing Hosts a Special Daily Wire Townhall
It was going to be threats, threats of physical violence, threats of economic hardship, threats of demonetization, of blocking, of harassment, of threats against essentially the livelihood of everyone who worked for this company and our opportunities at success at every turn if we did not accept this obvious lie. So from day one, it was the Daily Wire's policy not to give into this.
The Matt Walsh Show
Jeremy Boreing Hosts a Special Daily Wire Townhall
This order comes on the heels of other critical actions taken by President Trump in just his first week in office, which affirm that the federal government will reform its practices to recognize the scientific and moral reality that there are only two genders, male and female.
The Matt Walsh Show
Jeremy Boreing Hosts a Special Daily Wire Townhall
From day one, it was our policy not to use the ridiculous novel concept of preferred pronouns in any of our reporting. And we decided instead we would just use pronouns in our reporting like reporters had been doing since the dawn of time.
The Matt Walsh Show
Jeremy Boreing Hosts a Special Daily Wire Townhall
But at the time, in retrospect, that's not a very big deal, except that at the time, everybody was moving as quickly as they could to rewrite the rules of language to accommodate for this gender madness. Back then in 2015, we only had two hosts, Ben and Drew.
The Matt Walsh Show
Jeremy Boreing Hosts a Special Daily Wire Townhall
At that time, I'm not even sure that we had hired Michael Knowles to be our social media manager, which was the worst decision we ever made in the history of the company. We eventually had to give him a show just because he was so bad at his job. But even with only two hosts, this issue was never far away from our coverage. I remember Ben talking about it on his 20th episode.
The Matt Walsh Show
Jeremy Boreing Hosts a Special Daily Wire Townhall
I remember Drew talking about it in the first month of the company and giving one of his first comedic monologues about men going into women's restrooms. And you should go back and watch it. It's absolutely vintage, classic Andrew Klavan. And again, at the time... No one was having these conversations. No one was engaging in this fight. Now, of course, it's universal.
The Matt Walsh Show
Jeremy Boreing Hosts a Special Daily Wire Townhall
And in retrospect, it feels like these were just very small moves that were happening, but they were pronounced moves at the time. In fact, many right-of-center commentators and journalists at that time, even many who now are on the correct side of the issue, who now have done heroic work since having the scales lifted from their eyes, nevertheless, in those days, they were not on our side.
The Matt Walsh Show
Jeremy Boreing Hosts a Special Daily Wire Townhall
They were... supportive of, again, I call them so-called trans rights because I'm not sure that there is a right to mutilate your body in service of a delusion. And there's certainly not a right to mutilate children in service of a delusion. We weren't the only people in the fight, and I don't mean to imply that we were, but it was lonely. There were not many, and we were leading.
The Matt Walsh Show
Jeremy Boreing Hosts a Special Daily Wire Townhall
And our outspokenness on the issue came with a very real price. The truth is we couldn't have imagined how great a price it would ultimately be. And I'm going to tell you a little bit about that as we go through today. But we were warned. In 2019, as the company was really starting to get its sea legs, we were really starting to break through. We were really starting to have success.
The Matt Walsh Show
Jeremy Boreing Hosts a Special Daily Wire Townhall
These actions should bring an immediate and dramatic end to what's been a true period of national disgrace, which I think will be remembered as no less evil than slavery or abortion. And Donald Trump deserves enormous credit for righting this terrible national wrong. For me personally, though, this is also an exciting moment to reflect on what we've accomplished as a company.
The Matt Walsh Show
Jeremy Boreing Hosts a Special Daily Wire Townhall
We were being courted by one of the big three Hollywood talent agencies. And an agent at one of these, a top agent at one of these top agencies with whom I've cultivated a friendship. I think he's a good guy. I'm not going to say his name because I don't want him to take a lot of flack for this. Nevertheless, he called me and he said, listen, we love you guys.
The Matt Walsh Show
Jeremy Boreing Hosts a Special Daily Wire Townhall
We think that there's huge opportunity. There are a lot of great deals to be done, but, you know, you're conservatives and we're, as an organization, pretty well populated by left-leaning Hollywood folk. I said, yeah, but you knew that when you were taking the meetings with us. Are we going to be able to do deals or not? And he said, you are 100% going to be able to do deals.
The Matt Walsh Show
Jeremy Boreing Hosts a Special Daily Wire Townhall
We're going to do huge deals. We're going to make a lot of money together. We're going to help you guys increase your reach, increase your effectiveness. And the truth is, we don't really care what you guys talk about. You want to talk about abortion, that's fine. You want to talk about small government, that's fine. Robust foreign policy, that's fine. We understand. But there is one thing.
The Matt Walsh Show
Jeremy Boreing Hosts a Special Daily Wire Townhall
You have got to stop talking about this trans issue. You have to understand, he told me, a lot of the people you'll be working with at the agency, I mean, this is LA, this is New York, a lot of the people you're working with at the agency have transgendered children. It's personal to them. You have to let it go. The or else was kind of implied. He didn't actually say it.
The Matt Walsh Show
Jeremy Boreing Hosts a Special Daily Wire Townhall
And again, the guy who said this, a good guy, he wasn't actually trying to threaten me. He was trying to tell me the actual reality of the situation, but it really was a devil at the crossroads moment for Ben and I. I mean, essentially we were being told you can have the world and it will only cost you your soul. And we wanted the world. You know if you work here.
The Matt Walsh Show
Jeremy Boreing Hosts a Special Daily Wire Townhall
You know if you've been following the company, if you're a supporter of the company. We are remarkably ambitious. We're the most ambitious people in conservative media. We don't just want to be the preeminent conservative media company. We want to be the preeminent digital media company in the world. That's what we have our sights on.
The Matt Walsh Show
Jeremy Boreing Hosts a Special Daily Wire Townhall
The most influence, the largest and most engaged audience, the most opportunity to make a difference, the most opportunity to do well and to do good. And here we were being told, well, the cost of that is you cannot talk about this issue. And we chose our souls. Again, you look back and you say the Daily Wire did over $200 million of revenue last year. We have millions of people in our audience.
The Matt Walsh Show
Jeremy Boreing Hosts a Special Daily Wire Townhall
We have enormous reach. We have successful hosts and successful shows and successful movies, successful documentaries. And it seems like that was an easy decision to make. It was not an easy decision to make. In fact, if we had known just how hard it's going to be, I don't know if we could have had the fortitude to have stood by the decision.
The Matt Walsh Show
Jeremy Boreing Hosts a Special Daily Wire Townhall
Fortunately, God has special providence for fools, and we were very naive. So in the years that followed, we doubled down and we tripled down on this particular fight. We led on this particular fight and we scored real victories, both political and cultural. In 2021, our own Luke Rosiak blew open one of the most consequential news stories of the decade.
The Matt Walsh Show
Jeremy Boreing Hosts a Special Daily Wire Townhall
And I say consequential because it literally elected a governor in the state of Virginia. In Loudoun County, Virginia, a school board had covered up a sexual assault in order to protect the insane bathroom policy that they had put in place, which had allowed a teenage boy to go into the restroom with teenage girls.
The Matt Walsh Show
Jeremy Boreing Hosts a Special Daily Wire Townhall
There are a lot of people in the conservative movement who deserve a lot of credit for this victory, but a lot of the people who deserve the most credit are sitting right here in this room today. We don't often get to tout all of our own accomplishments, modesty being a virtue, but false modesty is a sin.
The Matt Walsh Show
Jeremy Boreing Hosts a Special Daily Wire Townhall
After the story blew up, Matt Walsh rented a room in Loudoun County in order to qualify as a citizen for a citizens-only school board meeting and helped bring the issue to national attention.
The Matt Walsh Show
Jeremy Boreing Hosts a Special Daily Wire Townhall
It went viral and led in significant part to the election of Governor Youngkin in Virginia, which is a huge turning point for the state of Virginia and the beginning of what became a cascading turning point around this issue and around our politics nationwide. And, of course, the school officials responsible for the travesty were later indicted for their roles in the cover-up.
The Matt Walsh Show
Jeremy Boreing Hosts a Special Daily Wire Townhall
That is because of the work of Luke Rosiak. It is because of the work of Matt Walsh. It is because of the work of The Daily Wire, from our journalists all the way through our social media team for making that happen.
The Matt Walsh Show
Jeremy Boreing Hosts a Special Daily Wire Townhall
And in many ways, it was the springboard for Matt's journey becoming himself a leader on this issue, the leading voice at the leading publication on the defining social issue of the last decade. Again, a thing for which we should be enormously proud and thankful to have been a part of.
The Matt Walsh Show
Jeremy Boreing Hosts a Special Daily Wire Townhall
After that, Matt released his children's book, Johnny the Walrus, and cleverly became the number one author in the LGBT category on Amazon. It was a hilarious stunt, and the book was very, very funny and very good. I'll brag a little bit that my niece illustrated the book. Obviously, this was a great moment for me in the history of the company, but it was also effective.
The Matt Walsh Show
Jeremy Boreing Hosts a Special Daily Wire Townhall
because it changed policy at Amazon. Outraged Amazon employees staged a die-in. They were so scandalized by the fact that we were able to sell some books about ideas with which they disagreed that they pretended to be dead at the doorway of Amazon to imply that reading our words in a children's book was the threat of actual violence. It threatened their actual lives.
The Matt Walsh Show
Jeremy Boreing Hosts a Special Daily Wire Townhall
And Amazon, one of the largest and most valuable companies in the world, had to make a choice. Would they stand with their employees?
The Matt Walsh Show
Jeremy Boreing Hosts a Special Daily Wire Townhall
And probably, if we're being honest, based on the geography of where they were founded, probably their own sort of political beliefs, whether they deeply held a belief in transgenderism at the top of the company or not, who knows, but certainly they were friendly to the idea of progressive values.
The Matt Walsh Show
Jeremy Boreing Hosts a Special Daily Wire Townhall
And yet, because the Daily Wire was gaining traction, because we were starting to have purchase with the audience, they chose sanity. which was surprising to all of us. They left the book up in their store, and today it's sold over 150,000 copies on Amazon. And that wouldn't be the last time we took a top tech company to task over the issue of transgenderism.
The Matt Walsh Show
Jeremy Boreing Hosts a Special Daily Wire Townhall
Then, of course, in March of 2021, Harry's Razors canceled a big advertising campaign with The Daily Wire because Michael Knowles and Candace Owens had discussed the reality of biological sex on a show that, at the time, wasn't even on The Daily Wire. And once again, we decided to fight rather than simply let the left have the ability to dictate this dilution onto the rest of us by fiat.
The Matt Walsh Show
Jeremy Boreing Hosts a Special Daily Wire Townhall
And to put it bluntly, The Daily Wire has been leading on this issue from the very day that we were founded. I couldn't be more proud of all of our enormous contributions to this issue. We've made enormous contributions to a range of issues, and I'm often proud of the team, but never more so than today. It is rare... in life. I've been in this business for a minute. I've seen a lot of things.
The Matt Walsh Show
Jeremy Boreing Hosts a Special Daily Wire Townhall
We launched Jeremy's Razors. And just so you understand, today, Jeremy's Razors is a growing and thriving business. It did something like $20 million of revenue last year, which is a pretty funny end to the joke, if you think about it. But it wasn't obvious that that was going to redound to our benefit.
The Matt Walsh Show
Jeremy Boreing Hosts a Special Daily Wire Townhall
We were essentially saying to all of our advertisers on whom we are dependent, and at that time were dependent for almost all of our revenue. This was before the real ascendancy of our subscription program. And we were telling them, we will not bend the knee to these sorts of threats. We will not bend the knee.
The Matt Walsh Show
Jeremy Boreing Hosts a Special Daily Wire Townhall
We could have lost an overwhelming number of our advertisers, and we could have lost the entire company. We didn't, thank God. But that doesn't mean that we weren't taking that risk. We did take the risk. And we won. A year later, we launched another market opportunity with Jeremy's Chocolate. Hershey's Chocolate thought it would be funny to cater to all this nonsense with a Hershey bar.
The Matt Walsh Show
Jeremy Boreing Hosts a Special Daily Wire Townhall
And we said, no, you can't. We're not going to give in to this sort of diversity cult that you're a part of. We launched our own chocolate. And today, we've sold over a million bars of our She, Her, and He, Him chocolate. As I like to say, one of them has nuts. I'll leave it to you to decide which is which.
The Matt Walsh Show
Jeremy Boreing Hosts a Special Daily Wire Townhall
And again, we were telling the marketplace of our advertisers that we weren't going to put up with this. There was enormous risk. Just because the moves worked does not mean there wasn't enormous risk. Success always seems inevitable in retrospect, but success is never guaranteed. Each one of these moves in required of us huge risk, both of capital and of toil and of reputation.
The Matt Walsh Show
Jeremy Boreing Hosts a Special Daily Wire Townhall
And every single time we felt like we were putting the entire company at risk to stand for these particular values. And we felt that way because we were. And the consequences that we had been warned about were very nearly upon us. And of course, the most important and most public move we made came in the form of a question.
The Matt Walsh Show
Jeremy Boreing Hosts a Special Daily Wire Townhall
In 2022, Daily Wire released Matt Walsh's culture-shaping documentary, What is a Woman? The left, it turns out, did not know the answer, and they were pissed. Matt's film became a national sensation with tens of millions of viewers.
The Matt Walsh Show
Jeremy Boreing Hosts a Special Daily Wire Townhall
By the time the dust had settled, we, working together with Matt, had exposed the sinister motives behind body-destroying medical procedures at Vanderbilt Hospital and beyond, hosted a giant rally outside of the Tennessee State House demanding action to protect children, and had started a movement that inspired over 36 states nationwide to change their laws to ban the barbaric practice of mutilating children in the name of radical political theory.
The Matt Walsh Show
Jeremy Boreing Hosts a Special Daily Wire Townhall
Those actions, more than anything else, led to the case that's currently before the Supreme Court to determine whether or not states have an inherent right to protect children from having their bodies sacrificed on the altar of this fashionable social contagion, or whether our government is just a pagan death cult. We will know that this year, and we will know it because of What is a Woman.
The Matt Walsh Show
Jeremy Boreing Hosts a Special Daily Wire Townhall
And What is a Woman wasn't our only film dealing with these issues. In 2023, we put out Lady Ballers starring... virtually all of us, and tackling the issue of men dominating women's sports. The day after we released the trailer, Facebook permanently collapsed our traffic on the platform.
The Matt Walsh Show
Jeremy Boreing Hosts a Special Daily Wire Townhall
You have to understand that there was a time when The Daily Wire was the number one publisher in the world on Facebook, which was the number one publisher in the world. The day after we released the Lady Ballers trailer, they crushed us.
The Matt Walsh Show
Daily Wire Backstage Live at CPAC: The Fight, The Wins, The Future
So far, I've enjoyed this panel very much because we're living up to our reputation at The Daily Wire. Your favorite thing about Trump is us. And your favorite thing about Trump is your movie. And Michael's just here for the booze.
The Matt Walsh Show
Daily Wire Backstage Live at CPAC: The Fight, The Wins, The Future
And the Mayflower cigars. Delicious Mayflower cigars. Ben, the best thing about the first 30.
The Matt Walsh Show
Daily Wire Backstage Live at CPAC: The Fight, The Wins, The Future
I have to say, my favorite thing about the presidency so far is just the sheer chaotic disruption that Donald Trump represents. He, you know, everything from saying, you know, that he's going to build Trumpistan in the Middle East. Mar-a-Gaza, Mar-a-Gaza. Mar-a-Gaza, yeah. Gazalago. Gazalago. It's a work in progress.
The Matt Walsh Show
Daily Wire Backstage Live at CPAC: The Fight, The Wins, The Future
I love it because what it says is the way you guys have been thinking about this for the entire lifetime of every person involved in international politics is wrong. And it's not even necessarily that I agree with every single one of Trump's disruptions. It's that I agree with the idea of the disruption itself.
The Matt Walsh Show
Daily Wire Backstage Live at CPAC: The Fight, The Wins, The Future
that Trump represents, because only through disruption do you shake things up from the status quo and create the actual opportunity for change. And I actually think President Trump sort of understands this. I think he wields it. I think half of the things that Donald Trump says, he doesn't exactly mean.
The Matt Walsh Show
Daily Wire Backstage Live at CPAC: The Fight, The Wins, The Future
But what he understands is that in the act of saying it, he breaks everyone out of their comfort zone and creates the opportunity for actual meaningful change. And that's an enormous skill. It's something that he's been doing in his business life for all of living memory. Donald Trump's very old, not as old as Andrew Klavan, but he's not a young man. And he's very successfully done this.
The Matt Walsh Show
Daily Wire Backstage Live at CPAC: The Fight, The Wins, The Future
He keeps people from being able to get to complacency, keeps people from believing that just because something has been the way means that it must continue to be the way. And you see it particularly, I think, in places like Doge. I think Elon Musk is the greatest living American. I think that he is... We should clap for Elon Musk. He's probably still here.
The Matt Walsh Show
Daily Wire Backstage Live at CPAC: The Fight, The Wins, The Future
He's probably still here and any one of us at any moment could be the recipient of one of his children. It's a really important thing to say on Elon's good side. I think Elon is the greatest living American. I think that Elon is one of the only people in the world actively trying to build a future.
The Matt Walsh Show
Daily Wire Backstage Live at CPAC: The Fight, The Wins, The Future
I think that for too long the left has been the only ideological movement in the country who believes that there will be a future and the future that they believe in is one that does not include us. And for too long, people on the right have sort of given up on the idea of a future.
The Matt Walsh Show
Daily Wire Backstage Live at CPAC: The Fight, The Wins, The Future
We've become a little bit black-filled, a little bit nihilistic, a little bit conspiratorial and afraid that tomorrow must be worse than today, which is worse than yesterday. Elon doesn't subscribe to that at all. He not only believes that America's best days are ahead of it, he's actively working to make that happen. And that is what you want in the government.
The Matt Walsh Show
Daily Wire Backstage Live at CPAC: The Fight, The Wins, The Future
We are going to take questions, and I believe that the place where we're going to take questions is over in this, they told me it's down there, but I don't know where down there means. But we're gonna spend a lot of our time interacting with you guys, because you bought the tickets. And we get to hear from each other, you know, all day, every day. I could have told you all of their answers.
The Matt Walsh Show
Daily Wire Backstage Live at CPAC: The Fight, The Wins, The Future
I know what they wanted in the green room, only green M&Ms for Ben. Classic. All the other M&Ms for Michael, he's not very discriminating. We're gonna take a lot of questions from you, but first, Ben Shapiro.
The Matt Walsh Show
Daily Wire Backstage Live at CPAC: The Fight, The Wins, The Future
Hey, you were sitting next to the man who called for the eradication of transgenderism from our national polity on stage. Well, second. Okay, it was second.
The Matt Walsh Show
Daily Wire Backstage Live at CPAC: The Fight, The Wins, The Future
Absolutely. Good, good. One of the things that we like to do on backstage is move beyond just politics and talk about culture, talk about religion, talk about the things that make our life meaningful. One of the things that's been on my mind a lot in this really triumphant moment in the last 30 days. Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni. How did you know? Who are they?
The Matt Walsh Show
Daily Wire Backstage Live at CPAC: The Fight, The Wins, The Future
One of the things that's really on my mind is that when you're in these triumphant political moments, it can seem suddenly like your life is going to be good because we're winning in the very important but somewhat abstract realm of politics. But the truth is, your life may continue to be quite bad.
The Matt Walsh Show
Daily Wire Backstage Live at CPAC: The Fight, The Wins, The Future
Listen, I'm good about that. Everybody's in a good mood, and Jeremy's like, and then you'll die. And then you'll die. And at the same time, your life may have been very good these last four years while Joe Biden was president, even though things in our national politics were going quite poorly.
The Matt Walsh Show
Daily Wire Backstage Live at CPAC: The Fight, The Wins, The Future
And so I think it's important in these moments to reflect on what are the actual things we can do in our own lives to ensure that we're living lives that are... honoring to God, productive for our family, productive for our country. It can't just be that we're watching news on television. It can't even just be that we're actively engaged in politics and being somewhat activists.
The Matt Walsh Show
Daily Wire Backstage Live at CPAC: The Fight, The Wins, The Future
How are we to live our lives in light of the moment in which we live?
The Matt Walsh Show
Daily Wire Backstage Live at CPAC: The Fight, The Wins, The Future
I hate it when people clap for you. I really do.
The Matt Walsh Show
Daily Wire Backstage Live at CPAC: The Fight, The Wins, The Future
I also think about God every day and about how you're not yet the man that you were made to be.
The Matt Walsh Show
Daily Wire Backstage Live at CPAC: The Fight, The Wins, The Future
Yeah. It's I was in a dialogue with someone online once who was talking about how because divorce laws are punitive toward men, which is undeniably true, that marriage itself should be eradicated. And this person kept saying over and over, my wife left me. And she destroyed my relationship with my children. She took the house. She got half of my money. I didn't want a divorce.
The Matt Walsh Show
Daily Wire Backstage Live at CPAC: The Fight, The Wins, The Future
She chose to get this divorce. And he had tons of followers. He was creating tons of energy around this argument. And I said, listen, there's no question divorce laws are punitive toward men. They need to be changed. All of the incentives around marriage have become deeply inverted to the detriment of our society. These are real policy issues that need to be addressed.
The Matt Walsh Show
Daily Wire Backstage Live at CPAC: The Fight, The Wins, The Future
But I do think that you're throwing the baby out with the bathwater. I mean, I'm sorry that this happened to you, that your wife left you for no reason. He said, well, I mean, she had a reason. I cheated on her. And I said, oh, well, there you go. Methinks the policy that you are actually against is the policy of you, the policy of consequence, of just consequence.
The Matt Walsh Show
Daily Wire Backstage Live at CPAC: The Fight, The Wins, The Future
It's one of the Ten Commandments. That's the policy that he opposed. Yeah, Uncle God's policies. But it is nevertheless the case that most of what your life will be is what you make of it. There will be parts of your life that are impacted by outside forces, absolutely.
The Matt Walsh Show
Daily Wire Backstage Live at CPAC: The Fight, The Wins, The Future
And the beauty of politics is that we have the opportunity, especially in a country like this one, to do something about those policies that impede our ability to live our lives. I was backstage talking to Mike Rowe. He mentioned there are 8 million open jobs in this country right now. There are 7 million working-age men who aren't just unemployed. They have removed themselves from the workforce.
The Matt Walsh Show
Daily Wire Backstage Live at CPAC: The Fight, The Wins, The Future
They're not looking for a job. They don't want a job. They feel disenfranchised because they have been disenfranchised, but they are also participating in their own disenfranchisement. And one of the things I've learned in life, one of the things I've learned in business, sometimes people who've succeeded in business will tell you, business is about fail, fail, fail, until you make it.
The Matt Walsh Show
Daily Wire Backstage Live at CPAC: The Fight, The Wins, The Future
And that's not true. Success in business is about fail, fail, fail, fail, fail, and with a little luck you made it along the way. It's less like getting to a destination and much more like being a batter in the major leagues. If you get a hit, Three out of 10 times in the major leagues, you will be in the Hall of Fame. There will be statues of you in your hometown.
The Matt Walsh Show
Daily Wire Backstage Live at CPAC: The Fight, The Wins, The Future
You did not get a hit 70% of the time. And it's not as though once you did get a hit, you only hit from there on out. No, it's that you missed, you missed, you got a hit, you missed, you missed, you missed, you got a hit, you missed, you got a hit, you got walked. Most of the times when you got the hit, you still didn't score.
The Matt Walsh Show
Daily Wire Backstage Live at CPAC: The Fight, The Wins, The Future
You got thrown out at second or the batter right behind you was the third out and you basically got your hit and got on base for no reason whatsoever. Sometimes you score and you didn't earn it.
The Matt Walsh Show
Daily Wire Backstage Live at CPAC: The Fight, The Wins, The Future
I lost the analogy, but I'm sure there was... All that matters is that you get back up and keep batting. That's the only difference between... It's not the only difference, but it's the fundamental difference between people who make it in baseball and people who do not make it in baseball.
The Matt Walsh Show
Daily Wire Backstage Live at CPAC: The Fight, The Wins, The Future
And it is true in business, and it is true in your marriage, it's true as a parent, it's true in almost every aspect of your life. It's your ability to take... life as it is, not as you wish it would be, to take the hard parts of life and to keep getting back up and to keep doing your job.
The Matt Walsh Show
Daily Wire Backstage Live at CPAC: The Fight, The Wins, The Future
We like to take questions from our Daily Wire Plus subscribers during our Ben Key show. They're the people who make it possible for us to keep, alongside our advertisers, to keep doing the work that we do over at Daily Wire. But today, we want to take questions from you guys. Ben has a policy that if you disagree, he would like you to come to the front of the line.
The Matt Walsh Show
Daily Wire Backstage Live at CPAC: The Fight, The Wins, The Future
I have precisely the opposite policy. The more sycophantish you are, the more I want your questions. So please, if you like me or even love me, front of the line, we'll take our first question.
The Matt Walsh Show
Daily Wire Backstage Live at CPAC: The Fight, The Wins, The Future
One thing I would say is that It can be really easy to be tempted toward some sort of absolute answer on a question like this. Some people will tell you, just keep your head down, get your degree, you're paying to be there, the most important thing is not to rock the boat, You need something from them in exchange for your money and your time. Go get it. That's the only reason you're there.
The Matt Walsh Show
Daily Wire Backstage Live at CPAC: The Fight, The Wins, The Future
Other people will say, you should just be fighting all the way, defending your rights. Campuses are ground zero for all the worst things that are happening in our culture. Be an activist. But the truth is, you actually have to live your life. And none of the people giving you advice on this topic do. And only you know what you actually want to get out of this experience in college.
The Matt Walsh Show
Daily Wire Backstage Live at CPAC: The Fight, The Wins, The Future
Only you know what kind of career you want to build in your life on the other side. of your time in college, some of them much more dependent on getting that degree than perhaps others are. I think the best thing you can do in this regard is live according to your lights. The one thing I'll say you should not do is live your life out of fear.
The Matt Walsh Show
Daily Wire Backstage Live at CPAC: The Fight, The Wins, The Future
If you find yourself living your life out of fear, you actually can't make the cynical calculation of, I will live my life out of fear, but on the other side of it, I'll be very, very successful. That's a deal with the devil that you can just never walk back. But that doesn't mean that you always have to be in the fight. It doesn't mean that you have to be reckless in every situation.
The Matt Walsh Show
Daily Wire Backstage Live at CPAC: The Fight, The Wins, The Future
I will say in my own life, I've made the choice from a young age, probably before I could make it consciously, that I was just going to say what I believed in every situation and come what may. And, you know, I'd like to say that it's worked out well for me. I've gone through a lot of real difficulties because of that decision. I don't necessarily think that that is the most virtuous decision.
The Matt Walsh Show
Daily Wire Backstage Live at CPAC: The Fight, The Wins, The Future
I think it's the most Gen X decision, but I don't know that it's the most virtuous decision. Although it can contain virtue. Sometimes, though, it can contain hubris and recklessness and all sorts of other things.
The Matt Walsh Show
Daily Wire Backstage Live at CPAC: The Fight, The Wins, The Future
So I think that rather than looking for an absolute answer to the question, the very best thing that you can do is actually know yourself, know what you're trying to accomplish, know what fights are worth your time to be in and go fight those fights. And if you're like me, it'll be all of them and you'll never get a college degree and you won't make any money until you're 30 and that's fine.
The Matt Walsh Show
Daily Wire Backstage Live at CPAC: The Fight, The Wins, The Future
And if you're like Ben, you'll be writing a syndicated column at 17 and now be Ben Shapiro.
The Matt Walsh Show
Daily Wire Backstage Live at CPAC: The Fight, The Wins, The Future
Do you want to be like that? Live according to your lights.
The Matt Walsh Show
Daily Wire Backstage Live at CPAC: The Fight, The Wins, The Future
Well, I think that it... I'm very famously anti-college. I think that most people should not go to college. Thank you. I think that if you want to be a heart surgeon, I think there's a strong case that you should go to college. But I think most people who are getting Bachelors of Fine Arts should not be getting them. And you might say that in a better world than this,
The Matt Walsh Show
Daily Wire Backstage Live at CPAC: The Fight, The Wins, The Future
those degrees are useful to society. Back when we taught things like the Western Canon, back when we taught things like philosophy, perhaps a liberal arts degree actually did prepare people who aren't going to go into very specialized fields. Nevertheless, those degrees and that experience could prepare them for their life as productive citizens. We don't live in that world anymore.
The Matt Walsh Show
Daily Wire Backstage Live at CPAC: The Fight, The Wins, The Future
You're not going to study the Western Canon if you go to college. And so unless you're going to do something very particular, I would go get a job instead. The thing that you have to do in this life, God said, you know, everybody likes to focus on that, on the seventh day you will rest. But the part that he said right before that was six days you will toil. Go to work.
The Matt Walsh Show
Daily Wire Backstage Live at CPAC: The Fight, The Wins, The Future
Yeah! Next question, please.
The Matt Walsh Show
Daily Wire Backstage Live at CPAC: The Fight, The Wins, The Future
Guys, thank you so much for spending time with us tonight. Enjoy the rest of CPAC, and enjoy the next four years. They're going to be great.
The Matt Walsh Show
Daily Wire Backstage Live at CPAC: The Fight, The Wins, The Future
How are you, sir? Good to see you. I'm certain you did that wrong. No one should clap for Michael. No. It's just a...
The Matt Walsh Show
Daily Wire Backstage Live at CPAC: The Fight, The Wins, The Future
is a little... What's the worst thing that could happen? Welcome to CPAC and Bat Stage Live.
The Matt Walsh Show
Daily Wire Backstage Live at CPAC: The Fight, The Wins, The Future
Thank you. This is a show that we do once a month at the Daily Wire. In fact, we're going to do it again on March 4th for the President's Joint Session of Congress where we get the whole team together and we talk about what's on our mind. And so this will be a little bit different than the other panels that have happened throughout the day because we have to do ad reads.
The Matt Walsh Show
Daily Wire Backstage Live at CPAC: The Fight, The Wins, The Future
It's okay, it's how we buy the plane tickets to get out here. What I want to talk about though first right out of the gate, today is 30 days of Donald Trump into his second term. Which means even if you don't like Donald Trump, you're 30 days closer to being the end of Donald Trump.
The Matt Walsh Show
Daily Wire Backstage Live at CPAC: The Fight, The Wins, The Future
I want to talk about all the amazing things that have happened in this first 30 days. One of the most dynamic and energetic beginnings of any presidency, certainly in my lifetime. And since we got all of our pals here at CPAC, let's just talk about how great it's been.
The Matt Walsh Show
Daily Wire Backstage Live at CPAC: The Fight, The Wins, The Future
Andrew Klavan, you have opinions.