Today on the Matt Walsh Show, Donald Trump shows what it's like when the United States actually acts like the most powerful nation in the world. With a couple of posts on social media, he forced an entire country to submit. Also, JD Vance does the cable news rounds and it doesn’t go well for the news anchors. Trump is accused of cruelty when he pulls security off of Fauci, John Bolton, and other ex-bureaucrats. But why should taxpayers fund their security, anyway? New York City considers a new law that seems specifically designed to annoy me personally. And federal government workers are now living in fear under the Trump administration. This is supposed to be a bad thing, according to the media. Click here to join the member-exclusive portion of my show: https://bit.ly/4bEQDy6 Ep.1523 - - - DailyWire+: Now is the time to join the fight. Watch the hit movies, documentaries, and series reshaping our culture. Go to https://dailywire.com/subscribe today. "Identity Crisis" tells the stories the mainstream media won’t. Stream the full film now, only on DailyWire+: https://bit.ly/3C61qVU Get your Matt Walsh flannel here: https://bit.ly/3EbNwyj - - - Today's Sponsor: Tax Network USA - For a complimentary consultation, call today at 1 (800) 958-1000 or visit their website at https://TNUSA.com/WALSH - - - Socials: Follow on Twitter: https://bit.ly/3Rv1VeF Follow on Instagram: https://bit.ly/3KZC3oA Follow on Facebook: https://bit.ly/3eBKjiA Subscribe on YouTube: https://bit.ly/3RQp4rs
Today on The Matt Walsh Show, Donald Trump shows what it's like when the United States actually acts like the most powerful nation in the world. With a couple of posts on social media, he forced an entire country to submit. Also, JD Vance does the cable news rounds, and it doesn't go well for the news anchors that he crosses paths with.
Trump is accused of cruelty when he pulls security off of Fauci, John Bolton, and other bureaucrats. But why should taxpayers fund their security anyway? New York City considers a new law that seems specifically designed to annoy me personally, and federal government workers are now living in fear under the Trump administration. This is supposed to be a bad thing, according to the media.
We'll talk about all that and more today on The Matt Wall Show. Let's talk about something that affects all of us responsible, hardworking Americans, taxes. Now that it's the new year and tax season is upon us, are you prepared for what's coming? Do you owe back taxes or your tax returns still unfiled, missed the deadline to file for an extension?
With the new year beginning and heading into the busy tax season, the IRS may be ramping up enforcement. Let me tell you, they're not playing around. You could face wage garnishments, frozen bank accounts, even property seizures if you haven't taken action yet. Here's the good news. There's still hope.
Tax Network USA has been in this game for years, and they know exactly how to navigate the complex world of tax law. They've helped taxpayers save over a billion dollars in tax debt and have filed over 10,000 tax returns. That's billion with a B, folks. They specialize in helping hardworking Americans like you reduce their tax burdens. Look, I get it.
Dealing with the IRS is about as fun as a root canal, but ignoring the problem will not make it go away. So here's what you got to do. For a complimentary consultation, call today at 1-800-958-1000 or visit their website at tnusa.com slash walsh. That's 1-800-958-1000 or visit tnusa.com slash walsh today. Don't let the IRS take advantage of you. Get the help you need with Tax Network USA.
Back in 2022, the Biden administration was doing everything it could to distance itself from Donald Trump's foreign policy. Joe Biden and his handlers wanted to demonstrate that one year after the election, the adults were supposedly in charge now. And to that end, Biden hosted the president of Columbia at the White House.
And the purpose of the meeting was to announce that the US intended to designate Columbia as a quote unquote major non-NATO ally. Watch.
Today I'm proud to announce that I intend to designate Colombia a major non-NATO ally, because that's exactly what you are, a major, major non-NATO ally. And this is a recognition of the unique and close relationship between our countries.
Now, like so many other alliances we've entered into, this was the very definition of a one-sided deal. More than a quarter of Colombia's imports come from the US, while Colombia accounts for a fraction of a percent of US imports. Colombia's Air Force was making news because they were cannibalizing their rotary wing aircraft for spare parts.
By most estimates, no other country in the Western Hemisphere has received more US assistance in the last 50 years than Colombia. And Colombia clearly wasn't capable of taking care of its own domestic affairs. In fact, just days ago, northern Colombia erupted into all-out warfare as guerrilla factions launched an invasion to take control of cocaine production. So that's what Colombia is like.
So a reasonable person might ask, why exactly was the Biden administration going out of its way to declare that Colombia was a major ally? How exactly are we defining the word major here? Not to mention ally. I mean, isn't an alliance supposed to be mutually beneficial? Where's the benefit for us? What the hell does Colombia bring to the table besides coffee and cocaine? What do they do for us?
Joe Biden and his administration never answered those questions. You can read all their press releases and statements and they never explain it. But these are pretty important questions, especially after what happened this week when Colombia decided to reject U.S. military flights containing dozens of Colombian nationals who had illegally entered the United States.
According to the State Department, at first, Colombia signaled that these flights were acceptable. And then when the C-17 cargo planes carrying the Colombian nationals were in the air, Colombia terminated their landing clearance and forced the planes to turn around. And before we get into the specifics of this particular dispute, I just want you to think about that for a second.
Imagine you're a Colombian citizen and you're being deported from the United States back to your home country. And then you find out in the middle of the flight that your home country doesn't even want you. I mean, you're such an undesirable criminal, such a strain on society, apparently, that you can't go anywhere. Your own country won't take you back. Even Con Air didn't have that problem.
And to make matters worse, the excuse that Columbia's government invoked was clearly a pretext that made no sense whatsoever. Watch.
President Trump says he's directing his administration to take immediate action against Colombia's president and his supporters, including tariffs, a travel ban, and visa sanctions. The move comes after Colombia denied entry to two C-17 military planes carrying undocumented immigrants, forcing the planes to turn around midair.
Colombian President Gustavo Petro said Sunday that the US cannot treat migrants as criminals, and that Colombia would accept migrants on civilian planes. The C-17 is a large Air Force plane that's typically used to transport troops and cargo, like this tank.
While the Air Force says it's designed to hold about 100 paratroopers with their gear, it can also carry more than 800 passengers if needed, as seen here during the US evacuation from Afghanistan. On Friday, two C-17s with about 80 migrants each arrived in Guatemala City from Texas and Arizona.
So the reasoning, according to Colombia's president, is that it's wrong to treat these Colombian nationals like criminals. Even though that's exactly what they are, they broke the law. By definition, that makes you a criminal.
But even if you concede that point, even if you pretend for a second that all these Colombian nationals on board the C-17 are law-abiding citizens who have done nothing wrong in their lives, The complaint still doesn't make any sense. There's nothing undignified in any way about what's happening here.
As you just heard, there are plenty of non-criminals who ride aboard these C-17s every day, and they don't complain because there's nothing unusual or oppressive about it. The thing can carry 800 passengers in an emergency. It can carry 100 paratroopers in full gear without any problem.
And yet we're supposed to believe that it's a human rights catastrophe when 80 illegal aliens, just 80, are forced to fly on one of these planes for a few hours. And that's not the only problem with the reasoning here. Consider this.
Even if Colombia's government did succeed in rejecting these flights, all that would happen is that these Colombian citizens would end up in migrant detention facilities in the United States. How exactly is that outcome any more dignified than simply allowing them to go back to their homes? And by the way, we're not under any obligation to give these criminals a free ride back anyway.
Okay, we would be well within our rights to just drop them off in the desert on the other side of the border and tell them to figure it out themselves. You got here, get yourself home. It's not my job to get you home. So these flights represent the United States being, if anything, too kind and generous in the first place. So- Obviously, everything the Colombian government is saying is a lie.
Gustav Petro is trying to deny the return of his own citizens to their own country because he doesn't want them. He's admitting many times over that the Trump administration is doing the right thing by getting rid of these people. If you spend just a few seconds thinking about what the government of Colombia is saying, that becomes very clear.
It was also pretty clear that the whole tough guy act was a ruse. Nobody takes Gustavo Petro seriously, even in his own country. Last summer, even though he's married and supposedly straight, Petro was spotted holding hands on some kind of date with a trans-identifying man. Here's that footage. And you can see it there. And So that's a man he's holding hands with.
You can tell by the shoulders, and that's always a dead giveaway. When this footage circulated at the time, Petro didn't deny the rumors, really. Instead, he condemned transphobia and demanded privacy and said that he definitely wasn't gay. Which, by the way, when you gotta put out a public statement saying, hey, I'm definitely not gay, folks.
Usually that's a sign that things are not going exactly well. People who aren't gay don't have to put out public statements saying that they're not. So anyway, he's going on a date with another man in a totally heterosexual kind of way, he insisted. So when it comes to respectable, reliable allies, needless to say, the Biden administration had a keen eye.
And obviously, his whole tough guy negotiator routine was extremely fake and transparent. But we all know why Gustavo is trying this approach. Because usually, historically, it works. If Joe Biden or Kamala Harris were still in office, they'd be falling over themselves to apologize for offending our major non-NATO ally. They would be saying, okay, what kind of plane should we put them on?
We'll get a private jet. We'll get each one of them a private jet. Would that be okay with you? Gustavo, you tell us what to do. We'll do exactly what you say, Gustavo. But that didn't happen this time. Trump was reportedly golfing when Columbia came up with this nonsense and he immediately responded to it via a post on Truth Social.
He wrote that, quote, Petro's denial of these flights has jeopardized the national security and public safety of the United States. So I have directed my administration to immediately take the following urgent and decisive retaliatory measures.
And those measures included 25% tariffs on Colombian goods, as well as a travel ban on Colombian government officials, visa sanctions on party members, enhanced inspections of Colombians at the border, additional treasury and banking sanctions. And Trump threatened even more crushing tariffs, up to 50% if Colombia didn't back down.
Now, as expected, there was some outrage on the left in response to this threat. But Trump's approach was both morally correct and strategically smart. The United States holds literally all the cards against a country like Colombia. We have all of the leverage. They have none. We could step on the nation like an ant if we wanted to. They have, again, no leverage. They have no power.
We could incinerate the entire country in 10 seconds. Okay, the power imbalance could not be any more cartoonishly extreme than it is, which means that we can easily bully them into submission. We have both the ability and the moral right and obligation to impose our will on these countries until they stop flooding our communities with criminals.
Trump should treat every country to our south just like this until they all get in line. And there's nothing they can do about it. Not a single damn thing. And very quickly, based on reporting from Fox's Bill Mulligan, Columbia's government came to realize that. quote, Columbia President Gustavo Petro offered his presidential plane to repatriate migrants coming back from the U.S.
on Sunday in response to stern warnings made by President Trump. In a statement translated from Spanish, the Colombian government said the plane will help facilitate a dignified return.
The government of Colombia, under the direction of President Gustavo Petro, has arranged the presidential plane to facilitate the dignified return of the compatriots who are going to arrive in this country this morning coming from deportation flights, the translated statement read.
By the way, I think if I were a migrant, I'd rather be on a C-17 than on a Colombian president's plane, you know, just for a pure safety perspective. But that is quite a turnaround. I mean, instead of blocking these flights, the Colombian government is going to facilitate them using the presidential plane, no less.
It was hard to see this development as anything other than a complete and total victory for the Trump administration, which explains why shortly afterwards Trump posted this image on social media. And for our podcast listeners, it's an AI generated image of Trump dressed like a gangster with a sign that reads F-A-F-O or F around and find out, which is kind of the lesson here.
And apparently in response to that post, a couple hours later, the president of Colombia posted an unhinged message on X, which led to a lot of speculation that he was undergoing some kind of mental or drug-related breakdown, having been thoroughly humiliated in front of the whole world in just a few hours.
Petro's long and rambling message was written in Spanish, so I'm relying on X's built-in translation tool to understand what he said. So this might be a rough translation, but with that in mind, here's part of it. Quote, this is Gustavo Petro. Quote, I like going to the black neighborhoods of Washington where I saw an entire fight in the U.S.
Capitol between blacks and Latinos with barricades, which seemed like nonsense to me because they should join together. I don't like your oil, Trump. You're going to wipe out the human species because of greed. Maybe one day over a glass of whiskey, which I accept despite my gastritis, we can talk frankly about this.
But it's difficult because you consider me an inferior race and I'm not, nor is any Colombian. Close quote. Now, if you put aside the fact that he's probably losing his mind, there's something kind of amusing about a post like this. He's trying to project a tough and defiant image after he's already backed down and agreed to fly these aliens back home on his presidential plane.
It's a bit like you're the basketball team of New Zealand or something, and you're talking trash after you've already gotten blown out by Team USA by 90 points. In any event, late in the evening yesterday, the whole situation fell apart for Columbia even more. They quit pretending to be in charge. They capitulated entirely, apparently realizing how weak their negotiating position was.
According to Trump's press secretary, Columbia agreed to unrestricted acceptance of all illegal aliens using military flights. Trump said that he'd hold off on the tariffs and lift the visa sanctions once the first plane load of illegal aliens lands in Colombia. So this was a total and complete victory.
And Trump's message ended with this, quote, today's events make clear to the world that America is respected again. So in other words, apparently, when you're the most powerful country in the world, you can just simply force other countries to do what you want. You can actually wield power for the sake of protecting the interests of your own people.
You don't have to capitulate to countries whose very existence depends on the aid and protection that you give them. They have to capitulate to you. If you force them to, and you should, you can and should use the power that you have. There's no point in being the most powerful nation on earth if you will not act like it. That is the moral of the story.
Now, it's hard to overstate the importance of Trump's foreign policy victory here. He just sent a very clear signal to every other country that for the first time in a very long time, the United States is actually going to advance its own interests using force if necessary. That's an important message to send to the government of Haiti, for example, which is especially upset right now.
Quoting for the AP, the president of Haiti's transitional presidential council said the Trump administration's decisions to freeze aid programs, deport migrants, and block refugees will be catastrophic for Haiti. He goes on to say that Haiti can't handle the influx of its own people. So in other words, Haiti wants you to know that sending more Haitians to Haiti will be a catastrophe for Haiti.
Right. Yeah, I mean, that's exactly the point. That's why Donald Trump was elected. It's why Tom Homan is on the streets right now with Dr. Phil kicking foreign nationals from places like Haiti and Colombia out of the country. If you don't want these people, then why exactly should we want them?
If the addition of thousands of more Haitians will be a catastrophe for Haiti, then why in the hell should we take them? Haitians should be Haiti's problem, not ours. Why should our country have to deal with your country's problems? Why? Over in Honduras, they have no answer to that question, but they do seem to think that they have some leverage. They're reportedly threatening to cut off U.S.
access to an airbase in their country. But again, just like Colombia, Honduras doesn't actually have any leverage in this situation. We send Honduras hundreds of millions of dollars in financial assistance every year. And if we turn that off permanently, they'll open the airbase immediately. I mean, it's Honduras. Like what, you're Honduras. What the hell do you think you can do? Honduras?
And if you won't open the air base, we'll just take it. How are you gonna stop us? The Texas National Guard is bigger than their whole army. So what are they gonna do about it? I mean, in all seriousness, if we just went in and said, yeah, we're gonna take that air base and that over there. We're gonna take that too. We're gonna take all that. What would they do?
Invade the country, launch an attack. They literally can't do anything. All they can do is just complain, which fine, go ahead and complain. Now, just think about this dynamic for a moment. All of the countries complaining about our deportation policies, all of them, all of them depend on us for financial aid. Okay, so these countries leech off of us. They take food out of our children's mouths.
They steal money from our paychecks. And then they thank us for our donations by shipping the worst elements of their societies into our neighborhoods so that our fellow citizens end up lying dead in ditches because of them. And now they have the audacity to complain because we're returning the package back to sender. That's why, again, I hope Trump treats them all like he did Colombia.
Tell them to shut their ungrateful mouths or he will shut it for them. For decades, we have had to put up with these entitled international welfare queens. Okay, they don't fear us, but they should. When you're the most powerful nation on the planet, lesser countries should fear you. They don't have to like you. That's not what makes peace and stability across the globe.
It's not countries liking each other. That doesn't exist. It's when they fear you, when they're afraid of you, which they should be. Now, these are all obvious observations, but until Donald Trump's election, nobody in Washington ever made them. Our political leaders and expert class in this country have pretended for so long that all of our problems are hopelessly complicated.
There's really nothing we can do to solve any of them. All we can do is sit around pontificating and debating and coming up with abstract theories to explain why we're so screwed. Well, Trump is proving that you can actually take action and do simple yet effective things to solve serious yet simple problems. You can, in fact, Just do stuff. You can send illegal aliens back home.
And when their home country doesn't want to take them, you can force them. And that's maybe the single most prominent lesson from Donald Trump's first week in office. We've already accomplished more on the international stage than we did in four years under the Biden administration. For Americans, this is a rare and welcome sign that we're finally getting what we voted for.
And for everybody else, especially in places like Haiti and Colombia, but also all over the world, it's a clear signal that they need to respect American sovereignty. And if they don't, then they too will be as humiliated as the president of Colombia is right now. They will face crushing embarrassment or worse on the international stage.
And the United States, without apologizing to anyone, will celebrate their defeat. Now let's get to our five headlines. Okay, JD Vance was back on the cable news circuit over the weekend. Personally, I'd like to see Trump send Vance out to do the cable news rounds every weekend. Just keep sending him until they refuse to take him anymore because he's constantly humiliating the news anchors.
Vance is very, very good at this. And that's what led to this immediately iconic moment between Vance and CBS anchor Margaret Brennan on Sunday. Here they're talking about the refugee program. And the lack of vetting that has historically accompanied these so-called refugees and asylum seekers who come to this country. Or at least Vance is talking about the lack of vetting.
Margaret Brennan is insisting that they are being vetted. And that culminated in this great moment. Watch.
Well, Margaret, I don't agree that all these immigrants or all these refugees have been properly vetted. In fact, we know that there are cases of people who allegedly were properly vetted and then were literally planning terrorist attacks on our country. That happened during the campaign, if you may remember. So clearly not all of these foreign nationals have been properly vetted.
No, but there are 30,000 people in the pipeline. Afghan refugees.
But my primary concern as the vice president, Margaret, is to look after the American people. And now that we know that we have vetting problems with a lot of these refugee programs, we absolutely cannot unleash thousands of unvetted people into our country. It's not good.
These people are vetted.
Just like the guy who played a terrorist attack in Oklahoma a few months ago, he was allegedly properly vetted. And many people in the media and the Democratic Party said that he was properly vetted. Clearly he wasn't. I don't want my children to share a neighborhood with people who are not properly vetted.
And because I don't want it for my kids, I'm not gonna force any other American citizens kids to do that either.
No, and that was a very particular case. It wasn't clear if he was radicalized when he got here or while he was living here.
I don't really care, Margaret. I don't want that person in my country. And I think most Americans agree with me.
So that line at the end there has already become a legendary meme. I don't really care, Margaret. It's kind of the frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn of this generation. And it is as simple as that. I don't care. I don't want that person in my country. That's it. But why do we want that person here? And the line is great. It becomes like a slogan, a banner that we can march under.
I don't really care, Margaret. I don't want that person in this country. And what's great about it is because it represents two things. And the first is, I don't care, right? You could try to use emotional blackmail. You can do the guilt trip routine. You can call us bigots, whatever. We don't care.
And this is why I've always said that the most powerful response to anyone on the left when they try to put a label on you, you know, when you're making an argument and they respond by saying, well, if you think that, that makes you a xenophobe, a homophobe, whatever, racist. The most powerful way to respond is to look at them and say, I don't care that you think that of me.
I understand that you think I'm a racist, sexist bigot. I don't care that you think that. It doesn't matter to me. Your opinion of me is irrelevant. And it's a totally disarming response because the whole labeling tactic, the whole strategy depends on you caring about the labels they put on you. Which is why...
for a very long time, this strategy was effective because people were, even on the right, were, you know, many of them were terrified of being labeled, you know, certain things. And, but if you don't care, then what? What now? That it's like, well, I got nothing left. It's, oh, well, it's mean to think that. Okay. Are you denying that it's mean? I don't care enough to even deny it.
That's what you think. I don't care that you think that. Well, but they got nothing. They got nothing left. And if you make it clear that you don't care how they feel about you, you don't care that they disapprove, you don't care about any of that, there's really nowhere for them to go from there. And the second part is just as important because Vance says he doesn't want the person in his country.
He wouldn't want that person in his community living next door to his wife and children. It's a really important point. This is something that a lot of us have said about politicians for a long time. We're the ones saying to the politicians that are facilitating the invasion of our country, we say, well, you wouldn't want your children living in a neighborhood with these people.
To hear that now from the vice president, that exact same logic, Where he's saying, yeah, you're right. I wouldn't want these people living with my children. And if I don't want them around my children, I'm not going to put them in anyone else's community, around anyone else's children. Like that's exactly the kind of thinking that we need. And it really is as simple as that.
That's how we should be thinking about this issue. When it comes to immigrants, refugees, asylum seekers, whatever we want to call them. And really all of these categories are now, they're indistinguishable. I mean, there's really no distinguishing, but every single illegal immigrant in the country, according to the left, would qualify as a refugee. Every single one.
And they wouldn't even deny that. I mean, they would not look at any illegal immigrant and say, well, yeah, except for he's not a refugee. Except maybe if you had any illegal immigrants from a predominantly white country, then maybe in that case they would say, well, it doesn't count. But for the most part, they would say these are all the same.
So you take whatever we're talking about, immigrant, refugee, asylum seeker, the first and really only question we should be asking is, do we want these people in our country? Does it benefit us to have them in our country? We know it benefits them, That's not the question. The question is not, is it better for the Afghan national to be in our country than in Afghanistan?
Well, sure, of course it is. Who wants to live in Afghanistan? That's not the point, though. The point is, is it better for our country for this person to be in it? Yes or no? The terrorist that Vance referred to in Oklahoma, that was an Afghan national who plotted to carry out an ISIS attack on election day. And Margaret says the guy was vetted.
Vance's point is that clearly he wasn't vetted very well if the vetting process didn't pick up on the fact that he has heavy ISIS sympathies. So- You know, it wasn't vetted well enough. And that's kind of the easy, obvious part, I think, that the vetting process is broken. It obviously isn't working. And we need to put a halt on the whole thing, as Trump has done, because it's not working.
But then there's the, I think for some people anyway, maybe the more uncomfortable question, which is this. Why are we importing people from Afghanistan into this country at all? Does it benefit us? Does it make our country stronger and safer? Does it help our communities to thrive if we bring in a bunch of Afghans? Does it? It's not even a rhetorical question.
I would invite anyone on the left to answer it. Does it make America a stronger, safer, better country to bring in a bunch of Afghans? What is the net positive? What's the net positive? Throwing open the doors and saying, yeah, anyone from Afghanistan can come. What exactly is the net positive?
If we had never allowed that, if we had shut the door and locked it and said, no, we're not letting any of them in, in what ways would this country be a worse place? Maybe put another way, what problem in our country can be solved by the mass importation of people from Afghanistan?
When you look at our nation and all of its many problems, which problem do you look at and say, okay, you know what would help solve this one? We need 50,000 more Afghans. That would help make this situation better. Can you name what that problem is? It's a question. And I would challenge anyone on the left to actually answer it.
Here's another question that nobody on the left will want to answer out loud. And again, it's just a question. But it's a thought experiment, let's just say. You're moving to a new community. You have two options in this thought experiment, just a hypothetical. Let's say you have two options. The only information you have is,
is this, one community is 20% comprised of Afghan nationals recently imported from a war-torn third world terrorist infested hellhole. And the other community is 0% comprised of such people. You have no other information. Which community do you choose? Is there any single human being in the country that would say, wow, yeah, well, I got it.
The one that's 20% Afghans who just came here from the terrorist infested country. Yeah, well, I wanna live there. Yeah, I gotta move my kids into that neighborhood for sure. Would any person say that? Would any single person say that? No, none of us would. Literally not a single one of us would say that.
We would all say, okay, well, I don't know what's going on in this other community, but I guess I'll go with that one. Because the one thing I know about this community over here is not very appealing to me. And that tells us that importing Afghans is not about making America stronger. It's about helping Afghanistan.
But we should not be helping Afghanistan at the expense of our country and our people. That is the... That is the disconnect for the left. And everything that I'm saying right now, it has become over the decades, everything that I'm saying about this, everything that Vance has just said, it has become unspeakable and provocative. And how could you say that?
I mean, what do you mean you'd prefer not to live in a community that was with a heavy presence of imported third world refugees from a country that is overrun by terrorists who hate this country? How could you say that? These kinds of statements have been treated that way, even though they're so obvious. Basic common sense. Everyone agrees with it. It's one of those things.
And we've gotten used to this dynamic where there could be a statement that everyone agrees with. And yet even some of the people who agree with it, like cringe when they hear it out loud. It's crazy. It's a crazy dynamic. But the way we've ended up in this position is that for the left, and we know the left has dominated and defined the culture for so many years, their priorities are
are exactly inverted, okay? Because the healthy and human way to be is to prioritize the people that are closest to you first, of course. Okay, like to start with your family, your children. You care about, in an abstract sense, you care about the children of the world. but you're not gonna do anything that's gonna harm your children for the sake of the children of the world.
Okay, you're not gonna make your children starve so that someone else's children don't. You wouldn't do that. If you did that, you should go to prison because you have a basic fundamental duty to the people that are closest to you. You should prioritize them. You should care about them more, a lot more, obviously. And then it emanates out from that.
You care about, this is the principle of subsidiarity. You care about the people that are closest to you, your family, your children, and then your community. And your country. You care about your family more than you care about your country. You should. But you certainly care about your country more than you care about a country 8,000 miles away that you've never been to.
And this is the way that it is naturally supposed to work. It's a principle that up until recently never even had to be articulated out loud because it was just so natural and automatic that you didn't have to think about it or talk about it. But as I said, the left has inverted that.
where the way they look at it or have convinced themselves they look at it is that they care the most about just the abstract, the people of the world, the community, the global community. And they somehow prioritize that, this kind of abstract, vague concept of a global community over their own nation and even their own families. It's a mental sickness. It's a confusion.
It's a fundamental confusion. But if you don't suffer from that confusion and you're just a normal person who prioritizes what is closest to you, prioritizes your own people first, then all this stuff is obvious. Then there's nothing offensive about saying, yeah, of course I don't want to import a bunch of people from Afghanistan. That's not going to make my country any better.
It doesn't help my country. I don't want to do it. I don't wish any harm on them. If Afghanistan turned into a wonderful, developed country and it was safe and everybody was happy and all of that, then fantastic. I feel that's good for them. Congratulations. I hope it does happen. But that's not my priority. It's not even on the list of the top 100 priorities. That's for them to figure out.
You know, these countries, they need to stand on their own two feet at a certain point. And if you can't, then you just cease to exist. And that's also just the way of the world. Figure out your own country. Yeah. You know, we hear this about Haiti all the time. Haiti, well, it's because of the interference by all... You know, Haiti has been a self-governing country for like 200 years. Okay?
Figure it out. Like, stop complaining. The history of our country is so terrible. Everyone's history is terrible, okay? Everyone's history is terrible. Everyone's ancestors suffered. What, you think you're special? Figure out your own country. Figure it out. If you can't, you don't even deserve to exist as a country anymore. If you can't figure out how to govern yourself and take care of yourself.
And it'd be the same thing for the United States. If the United States ever got into a point where we couldn't even exist without being like, without some international sugar daddy keeping us alive, then I would say, well, America shouldn't exist anymore. In that case, it basically doesn't exist already. All right, Daily Wire has this report.
President Trump has canceled Dr. Anthony Fauci's security detail. The Trump administration has canceled his security detail. Dr. Fauci has now hired his own security detail, according to a source familiar with the situation. When a reporter asked about the decision, Trump stated, I think when you work for the government, at some point, your security detail comes off.
And, you know, you can't have them forever. So I think it's very standard. It would be for someone else. It would be for somebody else. You wouldn't be asking the question. So Trump has taken security off of Fauci, a number of other bureaucrats. John Bolton is another one, Mike Pompeo, some others. And there's been a lot of outrage over that, as you expect.
The only shocking thing to me has been the fact that all these people had tax-funded security in the first place. This is how naive I am. I thought that only ex-presidents got lifetime personal security provided by the taxpayers. Which in that case, I understand, I'm on board for that. I think America, even the presidents that I despise, of which there are several still living,
Yes, I think the taxpayer should pay for the security. You should take care of your ex-presidents. And to have ex-presidents who end up getting assassinated is just not a good situation for this country. So that makes sense. But providing lifetime personal security to just other random bureaucrats, I honestly didn't know that that was a thing. I was unaware of that. And it should not be a thing.
And of course, as I said, Trump's being condemned for this, but the outcry has come from both parties. But I totally agree with him. First of all, these people can, as he said, these people can afford their own security. Fauci's net worth is something like $11 million. So he can, a guy has plenty of money to pay for his own security. So it shouldn't be an issue.
And also, in the case of Fauci in particular, and I'll be careful about how I say this so that it isn't misconstrued. But if Anthony Fauci needs security because of threats, if that's the case, it's because he is a corrupt, evil person who lied to the American people repeatedly about basically every aspect of COVID.
He lied to us and manipulated and conjoled and forced millions of people to put a drug into their bodies on false pretenses. He's truly a bad person. He's a very bad, he should be in prison. He's an evil, bad person who should be in prison. And that would be one way to get his security paid for, by the way. Put him in prison, he'll be taken care of there. I'm totally fine with that.
Put him in prison and let him have all the extra security that he needs. That I'd be on board with. This corrupt weasel lied to us about everything, everything from his funding of gain of function research to the origins of COVID to the efficacy of the vaccine and on and on.
And he more than anyone is the reason why all of these destructive, insane measures were taken that did infinitely more harm than good. People's lives were destroyed because of him. So if he's under threat, it's because of that. Now, this is why I don't want to be misconstrued. I don't want anything bad to happen to him. I don't condone at all anyone who might be making threats.
I hope that Fauci is unharmed. And when he dies, I hope he dies a natural death. And that's what I want. But the fact remains that Fauci is perceived as the villain very much because of his own actions. So I guess here's my question.
If a government bureaucrat is so bad at their job and so deceitful and so corrupt and so arrogant and power hungry and did so much damage in their position that they end up getting death threats over it. Does that mean we now have to pay for their security for life?
Like we have to reward terrible bureaucrats for their bad behavior by footing the security bill that is only necessary because they were so awful. No, that's insane. As I said, I hope nothing bad happens to Fauci, but it's his job to make sure that he's protected and he's got the money to do it, fortunately. So it's not our job. The taxpayers shouldn't have to foot the bill.
And generally speaking, if you're a bureaucrat, And the reason why this matters is, and I don't even know how many other bureaucrats have personal protection, but if you're a bureaucrat, especially if you're a bureaucrat who dealt with domestic policy. Now, if you dealt internationally, you may have foreign countries that don't like you, and that can create security.
But that was not the case for Fauci. So if you're a bureaucrat dealing with domestic issues... and you leave your job roundly despised by millions of Americans, it means that you were absolutely terrible. And whatever security is unfortunately necessary after that should be something that you take care of yourself.
All right, finally, I have to mention this story, and you'll see why when I tell you the headline. This is from Reuters. New Yorkers may be allowed to use paid sick leave to look after pets. Here's the article. Council member Sean Abreu says, co-sponsor of the bill, said that the change could promote health for both pets and their humans.
When you take care of your animals, you're taking care of yourself too. He said, citing long dog walks, socializing with other pet owners, and mental health benefits. The leave would be included in that already mandated by New York State, where companies must provide up to 40 or 56 hours of paid sick leave per year, depending on their size.
Okay, so this legislation was written just to troll me, I'm pretty sure. I'm not trying to be self-centered, not everything's about me, but this is in direct violation of multiple laws that I have passed down personally on this show. Laws which supersede the laws of the city of New York and the laws of this country, I gotta tell you.
And I think you all know that constitutionally, the laws invented randomly by podcast hosts have primacy over local, state, and federal jurisdiction. I've made it clear how I feel about both sick days and people who are too obsessed with their pets. Now both of these issues have been combined in this unholy stew.
And here's the thing, by the way, if an employer wanted to give sick days to people who want to stay home and walk their dog or whatever, they have the right to do that. Employers can give sick days for whatever they want. Or they should be able to give sick days for whatever they want. What's insane is forcing them to have certain sick day policies.
And in this case, forcing employers to allow employees to take sick days when they aren't even sick. So now a sick day must be allowed for employees who are sick and employees who are not sick. So why are we even calling it a sick day in that case? And we can have a conversation about legitimate reasons to take a sick day. Everyone knows my stance on it. If you call out sick, you're gay.
And I'm not saying that as an insult. That's just according to the research that I've seen. That's the most recent study that I personally saw. It was like 98% of people who call out sick in a given year are homosexual. It was just the study. That's what the research says. I don't know. And then the 2% is when I personally call out sick. That was also in the study. So that's just the science.
But maybe you think my view is a bit extreme. And maybe you'd claim even scientifically dubious. You might even claim entirely invented. You might say that. But we should be able to agree that whatever the valid reasons for calling out sick, my cat has a tummy ache is not one of them. Like my iguana has a headache is not a good enough, that doesn't pass muster.
My parakeet has indigestion and I have to stay home and comfort him. It's just not, that doesn't work. And now I'll just wait for the angry comments from people who tell me that they once had a call out of work for three weeks because their golden retriever was sneezing or something. I'm sure that's going to happen next. I look forward to that. Speaking of which, let's get to the comment section.
Okay, a couple of comments here. I honestly thought those clips Matt showed of Amelia Perez was an SNL skit. There's just absolutely no way that that film got nominated for 13 Oscars based on merit and not Hollywood pandering to the left. You know, the other thing, and I think I kind of alluded to this when we talked about this, I mean, just utterly awful film that got nominated for 13 Oscars.
The other thing about it is it wasn't even critically acclaimed. Okay, so there have been plenty of other cases of films that are bad and yet are showered with Oscar nominations and Oscar wins because although they were bad, they were critically acclaimed. And that's when you go to Rotten Tomatoes and you see the thing where the movie gets 95% from critics and 35% from the audience.
What's interesting here is, and this is what makes it pretty unique, it's not that it's a bad movie. I mean, it is really bad. It's bad on a scale that it's maybe unprecedented how bad it is, given the number of Oscar nominations. But the more unique thing is that it was not critically acclaimed.
The critics didn't even like this movie that much, which really tells you something because it's pandering to their political biases. So it's got that going for it. So critics go into it knowing that it's a movie, it's a trans musical, whatever thing. And it stars, you know, the quote unquote trans quote unquote actress, big quotes around that.
So already going in, critics are going to spot it about two and a half stars out of four. It's already got two and a half stars going in before they watch one frame. But then you look at the critical responses and that's it. They're basically giving it two and a half stars. So they're giving it the number of stars they had to give it.
because of the trans factor, but no additional stars because it's just a bad movie. Even critics are admitting that. I think it has like a 70 some percent on Rotten Tomatoes, which is a C minus, and yet it has 13 Oscar nominations. So pretty funny. Matt doesn't get enough credit for his ad reads. You can tell he pours his heart and soul into each one. Well, I'm glad you noticed that.
Not enough people do. I appreciate that. You know things are different when pardons are being signed in the first week. The gloves are off this term. Exactly right. Also, it turns out that it's possible to wield the pardon power in a good and just way so that you don't need to save it for the end of your term because you're embarrassed by it. It's possible to do that.
Now, we've grown so accustomed to the way that the pardons are doled out that it comes at the end. And the reason it comes at the end, obviously, is that the president who is delivering the pardons knows that this is embarrassing and so waits until he's going to be gone to do it. But you don't have to use pardons that way. There are actually people who deserve to be pardoned.
And if you're doing that, you don't have to wait to the end. Imagine if people used abortion as birth control for cats and dogs instead of spaying and neutering. Something tells me that would never, ever be accepted. And yet here we are with our own human babies being treated like literal garbage. Words can't. That is a very good point. That is a very good point.
I mean, I've made the comparison to the way that people treat animals many times. But the scenario, the kind of thought experiment you're laying out is a really interesting one.
because, and it's grotesque to think about, but even that, like to say it's grotesque to think about, yeah, it's grotesque to think about people bringing, someone bringing a dog in for an abortion because they don't want to have to deal with the puppies. That's a grotesque thing to imagine. And yet that's exactly what we're doing to humans by the millions. And you are, I think, 100% correct that
If somebody were to bring their dog in for an abortion to get rid of a litter of puppies before it's even born, everyone would condemn it. And can you imagine a dog abortion clinic being set up somewhere where the whole reason it exists is so that you can bring your dog in to abort puppies before they're born? The place would be burned down like that clinic would not survive a day. Not a day.
There would be there would be national outrage, you know, against something like that. And we all know it. Can you imagine that the shame that would be heaped up? Someone bringing their dog in by the leash to this dog abortion clinic. Just the throngs of people outside and what they'd be saying to that person. The person wouldn't even make it to the door.
That's how everybody would respond in that scenario. And why would they respond that way? Well, because they would recognize that the dog, the unborn dog is still a dog. And so killing an unborn dog, they would see it as no different than just killing a dog. And the person who's bringing their dog into the dog abortion clinic would not be able to say, well, it's just a clump.
It's not even a dog yet. What are you talking about? I'm not killing a dog. Um, And so that's a very good point. It's one of so many other unanswerable points that someone on the correct side of the abortion issue can make. This is just a point that no one on the left is even going to engage with this, I guarantee you.
They won't even engage with it because they know they can't, because they know that you're 100% right. They know that they would recognize the dogness of an unborn dog, but they will not recognize the humanity of an unborn human. And there's no way that they could possibly justify that on logical or intellectual grounds. And so the only way around it is just to ignore it.
Hearing Matt say that's the T is really funny. No, bro, that's cap. My Gen Z slang is... High key slaps, fam. So you need to do a vibe check. It hits different. That's all I got. I quit when I'm ahead. That's all I got. Donald Trump hit the ground running in his first week delivering on key promises, many of which were battles initiated and amplified by the Daily Wire. Am I racist?
The number one documentary of the decade exposed the grifters and race hustlers driving DEI initiatives following recent executive orders. DEI programs have been significantly dismantled at the federal level. and scaled back by major corporations. So we're winning, but the fight, well, the fight is far from over. Here's the deal. We can't keep doing this without your support.
Every dollar you spend helps fuel the battle for truth and sanity in this country. Now's the time to join the fight. Watch the hit movies, documentaries, and series reshaping our culture. Get access to so much more as well. Go to dailywire.com slash subscribe today. Now let's get to our daily cancellation. We close today with what I assume is supposed to be a sad story.
It tells the tragic tale of useless bureaucrats now living in fear under the tyrannical Trump regime. Politico has the article titled, I am terrified. Workers describe the dark mood inside federal agencies. Then the subheading, which really tells us everything we need to know, quote, I would love to leave, but I don't know where I'd go, said one staffer. Well, yeah, that is the problem, isn't it?
I mean, you can't figure out where to bring your talents and your skill set because you have neither talents nor a skill set. You're a useless bureaucrat. And you know that you're a useless bureaucrat. And you know that very few companies are actively seeking to hire useless bureaucrats. So that's the issue. But let's not get ahead of ourselves. Here's how the article begins.
Quote, President Donald Trump's executive orders targeting the federal workforce have injected a fresh wave of anxiety among employees across the bureaucracy. stoking fears the president is coming for their jobs. Just a few days into Trump's second term, some federal workers are contemplating quitting.
Others are preparing to file grievances with their union or moving communications with each other to secure platforms like Signal. Some fearing they'll be caught up in the White House's purge of diversity programs are leaving their names off of memos and documents they worry could be labeled as DEI-adjacent.
Now, of course, federal workers threatening to quit is like a cop threatening to not give you a ticket. They seem to be fundamentally confused about how incentives work.
But reading on, as federal employees searched this week for clues within the orders to see how they'll be affected, a staffer with the Environmental Protection Agency said they were cleaning out their inbox and waiting for information about early retirement and buyout programs. Trump version 1.0 was bad, said the EPA employee. I'm already done with version 2.0.
Well, I think the bigger point is that he is done with you, or at least I hope he is. In fact, he should be done with the entire EPA. We'll see how that works out.
Going back to the article one more time, it says, at the State Department, the shutdown of these programs was something many saw coming, but some were startled by the directive that they report individual cases of people's job descriptions being changed to disguise the DEI element to a special office of personnel management email address. Some saw it as an order to snitch on colleagues.
Quote, I would love to leave, but I don't know where I'd go. I'm terrified of not being able to pay rent and not having health care, one state staffer said. It's too early to tell if a mass exodus of federal workers will occur. The vagueness of the president's orders has many workers waiting to see how they will be implemented once political staff is in place.
But what is clear is that the new administration intends to follow through on its threat to purge and dismantle the federal bureaucracy.
Adding to federal workers' distress, the acting head of the Office of Personnel Management, which is effectively the federal government's HR department, on Monday instructed agencies to compile lists by the end of the week of all recent hires and promptly determine whether those employees should be retained at the agency.
Career staffers who have been on the job for less than a year are on probationary status, meaning that they can be fired without triggering civil service protections that insulate much of the federal workforce. The only reason you would do that... is if he's going to fire them all, said Alan Lest, a Washington-based employment lawyer who represents federal workers.
If you have these mass firings, you can't accuse him of discriminating or anything. Well, that's exactly right. I mean, the way to avoid charges of discrimination is to just fire huge numbers of bureaucrats indiscriminately, which is just yet another reason to fire huge numbers of bureaucrats indiscriminately. I mean, it's a win-win.
And here's the truth, if Trump announces tomorrow that he's taking a chainsaw to the federal workforce and cutting 60% of them on the spot, almost none of us will notice any impact on our daily lives. Which is why you'll notice that these articles lamenting the impending bureaucratic apocalypse always focus on the hurt feelings of the bureaucrats themselves.
They don't give us any specific examples of American citizens in the private sector who will be in any way negatively affected by the total annihilation of the State Department's DEI team, for example. They can't give us any sob stories about a person out there in the real world whose life will be horrifically altered by cuts at the EPA.
Instead, they tell us that cuts at the EPA are bad because the people who work at the EPA are sad about them. But that is just not a very compelling argument. And I know that as these mass layoffs begin, God willing, it may seem that people like myself are rather cruel and unkind about it. After all, these are real people who are losing their jobs and their livelihoods.
We should feel sorry for them just on that basis alone, or so you may think. But frankly, I don't feel sorry for them because the federal government is not supposed to be a giant jobs program for people who don't have any functional skills. Every single government job is supposed to have the express purpose of serving the public. That's why we call them, or used to call them, public servants.
But the federal government stopped serving the public a long time ago. And now most of these jobs exist for the sake of whoever happens to hold the job. Government jobs perpetuate and spread like cancer or a parasite feeding on the host organism, which is the taxpaying public.
And if you aren't serving the public, if your job is not in some tangible way making the lives of American citizens better, then you don't deserve to have the job. And I'm not sorry to see you lose it. I'm only sorry that you had it in the first place. But That's not actually the main point that I want to make.
What I'd like to do is just pass along some friendly advice to our federal workforce, because the timing here is actually quite providential. A lot of you may be losing your job soon, but at the same time, I'm told, a great number of jobs are currently becoming available.
Because the left tells us that all of the illegal aliens we're deporting are the ones who pick our crops and mop our floors and clean our trash and perform all the menial labor that keeps our country running. That's what they're telling. They tell us that our whole civilization is about to come crashing down without migrants here to perform these duties. Well, if that's the case,
This all works out really well because we ship out the illegal immigrants at the same time that we fire you from your pointless bureaucratic job. And so now you can kind of swap in and start picking our crops and mopping our floors. I mean, indeed, there's no reason why our floors should go un-mopped for even a single day. Let the illegals pass the baton to the bureaucrats.
And I mean, you guys claim to be public servants anyway, right? You're only in those jobs because you care so much about serving the public, right? Well, okay then, start serving us. You should be excited by the opportunity. And now you can truly put the servant back in public service, which is a wonderful thing, isn't it? Problem solved. Two birds killed one stone.
So if you're a bureaucrat still complaining about losing your job, even after this beautiful solution has been presented to you, then in that case, you are today, sadly, canceled. That'll do it for the show today. Thanks for watching. Thanks for listening. Have a great day. Godspeed.