The Matt Walsh Show
Ep. 1526 - Democrats Shill For Big Pharma In RFK Jr Confirmation Hearing
Thu, 30 Jan 2025
Today on the Matt Walsh Show, Democrats humiliate themselves in RFK Jr’s confirmation hearing as they desperately defend the multi-billion-dollar pharmaceutical industry. Our country suffers its first major airline disaster in many years. We'll talk about what we know so far and what we don't. And a former president of Kenya has a more “America First” view of US foreign policy than most US politicians. Click here to join the member-exclusive portion of my show: https://bit.ly/4bEQDy6 Ep.1526 - - - 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 Find my exclusive collection at The Candle Club: https://bit.ly/4heYAgF Get your Matt Walsh flannel here: https://bit.ly/3EbNwyj - - - Today's Sponsor: Dose Daily - Save 30% on your first month’s subscription by going to https://dosedaily.co/WALSH or entering WALSH at checkout. - - - 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 Wall Show, Democrats humiliate themselves in RFK Jr. 's confirmation hearing as they desperately defend the multi-billion dollar pharmaceutical industry. Our country suffers its first major airline disaster in many years. We'll talk about what we know so far about this terrible situation and what we don't. And a former president of Kenya has a more America-first view of U.S.
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d-a-i-l-y dot c-o slash walls for 30% off your first month subscription. There's a civil trial going on right now in the state of California that hasn't gotten much attention at all. For the most part, the corporate press doesn't wanna talk about it, probably because it would upset some of their biggest advertisers.
But if you have any interest in learning more about how the alleged science concerning vaccines actually works in this country, it's one of the most important cases that's ever been tried. I'm talking about a product liability lawsuit that's underway against the pharmaceutical giant Merck.
The litigation relates to allegations that Merck concealed serious side effects of its Gardasil vaccine, which promised to protect people from getting HPV, a virus that can lead to cervical cancer in women. And Merck, of course, denies the allegations, and the jury hasn't returned a verdict yet. But even without a verdict, the fact that this case has even made it to trial in the
is worth talking about. Concerns about the Gardasil vaccine have been widespread for nearly two decades since it was first introduced into the market. So here, for example, are two news clips from 2008 and 2009 related to the first version of the vaccine. Watch.
But the vaccine Gardasil is coming under scrutiny. Gardasil prevents the spread of human papillomavirus, also known as HPV. HPV is a sexually transmitted disease that can cause cervical cancer. We're learning Gardasil, which has been given to millions of young women, has been the subject of more than 7,800 adverse event reports.
Some side effects range from nausea to paralysis, and 10 deaths have been reported, although according to the CDC, those have not been linked to the vaccine.
A vaccine for four types of HPV was approved in 2006 in the hope it would save thousands of lives, but now there are some big questions about its safety. Three weeks after Amanda Ratner received the HPV vaccine, she experienced pain at the injection site and fell ill.
She's gone from the position of being a competitive varsity lacrosse player in high school to somebody who's chronically ill.
Now put aside for a second whether Gardasil was indeed dangerous or whether Merck lied in its advertising. Those are questions that I don't pretend to be an authority on. That's for a jury to decide. That's why it's at trial. The really interesting question is why it took until 2025 for anyone to resolve definitively the question of whether this vaccine is actually as safe as advertised.
The fact that the judge has allowed this case to go to trial means that the allegations at a minimum probably aren't frivolous. So how was this vaccine, which has been taken by countless people, allowed to escape this kind of serious scrutiny for so long?
That fact alone, the existence of an information blackout on such an important vaccine is, of course, just one of many harrowing, unexplained failures of the public health establishment in this country. If you pull up one of the complaints against Merck, which was filed by the law firm Weisner Baum, you'll find a lot of other very disturbing allegations too.
One woman, the main plaintiff in the case, alleges that she's been confined to a wheelchair since the age of 16 because of the vaccine. There are also allegations that Merck paid doctors and nonprofits thousands of dollars to promote the vaccine, as well as claims that Merck lied about the vaccine's contents.
Now, normally allegations like this never see the inside of a courthouse because the pharmaceutical industry enjoys a broad liability shield. And this case is a rare exception. Now, I mentioned the lawsuit over the Gardasil vaccine because it came up yesterday during the confirmation hearing for Donald Trump's nominee to be the next HHS secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. That's because RFK Jr.,
worked with the law firm that brought the case against Merck, and he stands to benefit financially from the outcome. In other words, RFK Jr. played a role in finding the plaintiffs for this very rare and very important lawsuit that's currently in progress against Big Pharma. But here's how Elizabeth Warren questioned RFK about it. Watch.
I'm asking about fees from suing drug companies. Will you agree not to do that?
You're asking me to not sue drug companies.
No, you can sue drug companies as much as you want.
I'm not going to agree to not sue companies or anybody.
I'm asking you to commit right now that you will not take a financial stake in every one of those lawsuits so that what you do as secretary will also benefit you financially down the line.
I'll comply with all the ethical guidelines.
That's not the question. You and I, you have said.
You're asking me, Senator, you're asking me not to sue vaccine companies.
No, I am not. Yeah, you are. That's exactly what you're doing. Look, no one should be fooled here. As Secretary of HHS, Robert Kennedy will have the power to undercut vaccines and vaccine manufacturing across our country.
Now, what's extraordinary about this moment is that Elizabeth Warren has built her entire career around the lie that she's a populist, or at least someone who's extremely skeptical of entrenched corporate power, particularly when it's held by banks. But in this case, Warren is pretty much indistinguishable from a lawyer for Big Pharma. She's berating RFK Jr.
because he took Big Pharma to court over the HPV vaccine. And even though he stated that he won't pursue any lawsuits while he's in government, it's not enough for her. She wants him to commit to renouncing lawsuits that he's already participated in or that he might pursue after leaving office. And he won't agree to that.
I mean, she's getting emotional in her defense of the multi, multi-billion dollar big pharma industry. And I'm not going to speculate on Warren's motivations. You can point to various campaign contributions she's received from the pharmaceutical industry, as many people already have. Actually, on second thought, I am speculating that Elizabeth Warren is a bought and paid for shill for big pharma.
Not speculating, but actually outright accusing her of it. But still, the truth is, this is a much larger problem than Elizabeth Warren. Throughout the hearing, RFK Jr. was repeatedly attacked by Democrats simply for questioning the safety and efficacy of various drugs that are widely prescribed.
These are drugs that we're assured are effective, even though there are very real reasons to doubt that. In particular, Kennedy was hit over his skepticism of SSRIs. He was hit on this, I think, in the most unfair and disingenuous way. And this was a hearing full of unfair and disingenuous attacks, but this, to me, was the worst.
So here's Tina Smith of Minnesota in one of the most egregious moments from this hearing. Here it is.
In an interview in 2023 and again in 2024, you blamed school shootings on antidepressants. You said, and this is a quote, there is no time in American history or human history that kids were going to shoot schools and shooting their classmates. It really started happening coterminous with the introduction of these drugs, with Prozac and with other drugs.
So do you believe, as you've said, that antidepressants cause school shootings? This should be a simple question.
I don't think anybody can answer that question, and I didn't answer that question. I said it should be studied along with other potential culprits like social media. But I don't know. I would never make, because there's no science on that.
Well, there is, Senator. I mean, excuse me. There is, Mr. Kennedy. Thank you for the promotion. The science shows that there is no link between school shootings and antidepressants. And, in fact, most school shooters were not even treated with antidepressants. And of those that were, there was no evidence of association.
I don't think you can say that, Senator, because HIPAA rules nobody knows.
Now, RFK's response at the end of that clip is obviously the right one. You might remember the 2023 mass shooting in Lewiston, Maine. The shooter killed 18 people at a bowling alley in a bar. We still don't know what, if any, drugs he was taking at the time of the incident. So anyone who says, well, it's been determined that there's no link between the drugs, you don't know that.
You absolutely don't know that. The same is true of the transidentifying mass shooter here in Tennessee. The Tennessee Star has reported, citing a search warrant, that Vanderbilt had prescribed SSRIs to the shooter, but we don't know if the shooter was actively taking those medications because neither the police nor Vanderbilt will tell us.
And therefore, it wouldn't show up in any studies that purport to show how many mass shooters were on SSRIs. This is the norm. you know, when it comes to these academic papers on SSRIs. And as I previously discussed, there's another way that these studies hide the number of mass shooters who are on SSRIs. Basically, they include inner city violence in their tally of mass shootings.
So if a bunch of gang members in the south side of Chicago shoot up a birthday party or something, or shoot up some other gang members on a street corner, that gets added to the tally of mass shootings. And because those kinds of shootings happen every day in places like Chicago,
for reasons that have nothing to do with SSRIs, like turf disputes and gang wars and drugs and everything else, the authors of these studies can make it seem like SSRIs don't cause mass shootings. But they're really just obfuscating the central question by flooding the data set with unrelated information.
The core question, which is whether SSRIs cause otherwise law-abiding young students to shoot their classmates, remains unresolved in medical literature. Because it's no surprise and it's no secret that young angry males who grow up in the hood with no father figures and get involved in gangs and drug dealing by the age of 12 would then turn to violence. I mean, there's no mystery there.
We all get that. We understand what that is. But there is a mystery as to why a child who has never been violent, who was not raised by a street gang, who is financially stable, would one day casually execute a dozen classmates for no reason that he can even articulate. Why is that happening? And why is it that so often these kids are on psychiatric medication?
There are definitely reasons to think that SSRIs could play a role in this kind of violence. For one thing, you can look at the warning label on the drugs. You can pick up the bottle, look at it. The drug companies themselves tell us that there could be a link, that says it on the bottle, that these drugs can actually increase the risk of suicide and violent behavior in some cases.
The drug makers are telling us outright that these drugs can put violent thoughts into your head. Okay, they can make you think violent things that you wouldn't have thought otherwise. They can make you want to lash out violently against yourself or other people. The pharmaceutical companies are telling us that directly.
And yet, when that thing happens, they will insist that the drug that they said can cause it to happen must not have caused it to happen. It's a very interesting thing that they can give all these drugs to kids that say on the bottle, this can cause violent thoughts, thoughts of suicide. And then that exact thing happens with a kid who's taking the drug, and yet,
We're never allowed to draw any link. Shouldn't we ask the pharmaceutical companies? Well, you're the ones who put this stuff on the bottle. Where are you getting that information? You must be getting it from somewhere. Or you can also look at these studies that show that SSRIs can increase the risk of violence in people who aren't depressed at all.
A few years ago, for example, researchers in Denmark reviewed experiments going back to the 1960s, and they found that when healthy volunteers, meaning people with no mental health issues, were given antidepressants, the drugs doubled their risk of suicidality and violence. So why did that happen? Why might SSRIs make healthy people violent? The honest answer is that we have no idea.
I mean, how can a drug put a thought into someone's head? We have no clue how that can happen. And yet we give these drugs to millions of people anyway. Just a few years ago, we learned that there's actually no clear link between low serotonin levels and depression. This was the central claim that justified the mass adoption of SSRIs in this country, and it's false.
So we have no idea what these drugs are actually doing. Maybe we should pump the brakes then a little bit. That's what RFK tried to say yesterday, and here's the response he got.
I know people, including members of my family, who've had a much worse time getting off of SSRIs than people have getting off of heroin. The withdrawal period is, I mean, and it's written on the label.
I have some experience with this myself, Mr. Kennedy. This is personal for me. When I was a young woman and I was struggling with depression, thankfully, I had the resources to help me get through it, a new generation of SSRI uptake re-inhibitors, which helped to clear my mind, get me back on track to being a mom and a wife and a productive, happy person. And I'm really grateful for that therapy.
So I have some experience with this, and I think that everyone should have access to that care. And your job as secretary is to expand access to care, not to spread lies and misinformation.
Do you think physicians, when they make that prescription, ought to have access to good science?
Of course they do.
That's all I believe, too. And you and I are in agreement, Senator.
Now, usually you expect that in a confirmation hearing, the worst thing that can happen is that the nominee says something disqualifying. But in this case, the senator said something disqualifying. Because let me be extremely clear about this. If you need psychiatric drugs in order to function, then you are not fit to serve at the highest levels of government.
And we don't know, is she still taking the psychiatric medication? She said that she did. Is she still? Not sure. We need clarification on that. Because if she is, she shouldn't be in office. If you need psychiatric medication, you're not qualified to teach elementary school students or operate heavy machinery for that matter.
You simply cannot claim that you're competent to govern if you need to regularly take psychoactive substances. So am I saying that every lawmaker on antidepressants should be removed from office? Yes, I'm absolutely saying that. And that should be common sense. You just said you need drugs to make your mind clear. Well, and you're running the country? What?
Now, more importantly, RFK is obviously right about SSRIs. When the peer-reviewed journal Molecular Psychiatry, one of the most prominent journals in the field, admits that depression isn't actually caused by a serotonin imbalance, which is what happened in 2022. Now, it's obviously worth taking a close look at a class of antidepressants that's entitled selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors.
If a comprehensive review finds that we were wrong about these drugs for decades, then maybe we need some more information and studies before we prescribe them to millions of people, including children. But of course, this is a pattern in the healthcare industry. Drugs are approved all the time when they don't actually work, at least not in the way that we understand or we're told. As RFK Jr.
said yesterday, it was a similar story for Alzheimer's drugs. Some of these drugs received a lot of funding and fast-track approvals, only to turn out to be completely useless. In one case, the data supporting these drugs was actually faked. Watch.
The gold standard means real scientific research with replication of studies, which very rarely happens now at NIH. We should be giving at least 20% of the NIH budgets to replication. We should make sure that all the science is published with the raw data. We should make sure that the peer reviews are also published. And I'll give you a quick example.
20 years ago, NIH scientists did a study on Alzheimer's, which they said it was caused by amyloid plaque. After that, NIH shut down studies of any other hypothesis. 20 years later, we now know that those studies were fraudulent. NIH has funded 800 studies on a fraudulent hypothesis. And we've lost 20 years in figuring out how to cure for Alzheimer's. And that's just one example.
I could give you hundreds. We need to end that. We need to end the old boy system. We need to have replicatable science.
Now, at this point, you can probably tell that this hearing did not go very well for Democrats. Later on, they tried to attack him for pointing out that Lyme disease has some very conspicuous origins.
Apparently, we're supposed to think post-COVID that it's some sort of outlandish conspiracy theory to believe that Lyme disease could possibly have anything to do with government labs injecting ticks with various exotic diseases. And then there was this moment where one Democrat tried to make the point that RFK Jr. doesn't believe that germs can cause disease.
Then he refuted what she was saying, so she just read it into the record anyway. Watch.
What do you think is causing the avian influenza?
I think the H5N1 virus is.
So that's good to hear because in a recent book, I will submit this for the record because we don't have that much time. Mr. Kennedy has questioned the scientific basis for germs causing disease and the power of vaccines and antibiotics.
I've never questioned that, Senator.
Well, I will submit that for the record.
So these hearings are all like this. They're not actually about getting any kind of thoughtful answer from the nominee. It's all drive-by soundbites. Doesn't even matter what he says. But even by this low standard, there was one moment in yesterday's hearing that managed to stand out. This moment comes to us from Bernie Sanders. Sanders began by asking R.K. Jr.
whether health care is a human right. And he said no, because no one, especially gluttons or habitual smokers, is entitled to anyone else's labor. And then Sanders resorted to berating RFK Jr. for his support of anti-vaccine apparel, specifically anti-vaccine onesies. So behold, one of the great moments in modern congressional history.
You have started a group called the Children's Health Defense. You're the originator. Right now, as I understand it, on their website, they are selling what's called onesies. These are little things, clothing for babies. One of them is titled, Unfaxed Unafraid. Next one, and it sold for 26 bucks a piece, by the way. Next one is, no vax, no problem.
Now, you're coming before this committee, and you say you're pro-vaccine. Just want to ask some questions, and yet your organization is making money selling a child's product to parents for 26 bucks, which casts fundamental doubt on the usefulness of vaccines. Can you tell us now that you will, now that you are
pro-vaccine, that you're going to have your organization take these products off the market.
Senator, I have no power over that organization. I'm not part of it. I resigned from the board.
That was just a few months ago. You founded that. You certainly have power. You can make that call. Are you supportive of this? I've had nothing to do with leadership. Are you supportive of these onesies?
I'm supportive of vaccines.
Are you supportive of this clothing, which is militantly anti-vaccine?
I am supportive of vaccines. I want good science.
So this is a level of seriousness that Democrats are applying to these confirmation hearings. You got Bernie Sanders screaming about onesies. And also, I guess apparently they're on sale for 26 bucks. So go check it out, buy some. They barely even mentioned, of course, gender ideology or how RFK Jr. plans to end castration of children in this country.
They weren't remotely interested in his call for more transparent and accurate data in modern medicine. Instead, one by one, Democrats ran interference for Big Pharma. They talked about anti-vax onesies and demanded that RFK stop bullying Merck and the terrible oppressed pharmaceutical companies. Because Democrats...
like Bernie Sanders, like Elizabeth Warren, like to pretend that they stand against corporate greed and so on, but you simply cannot pretend to be an avenger for the working class standing against corrupt billionaires if you will also defend the pharmaceutical industry to your dying breath.
There is no greater example of corporate greed in this country right now than what we have seen from Big Pharma. This is an industry that we know for an absolute fact has pushed literal poison on people by the millions and done it all for no reason other than pure profit. This is an industry that supplies actual castration drugs to 13-year-olds.
An industry that got millions of Americans hooked on antidepressants on false pretenses based on a belief in a chemical imbalance that doesn't exist. And there are dozens of other examples just like this. And they are all things that Democrats don't want us to talk about. And in fact, have attempted to forcibly prevent us from talking about.
So whatever reservations conservatives have about RFK Jr., it's very clear that he needs to be confirmed. We have a real opportunity to install someone who is skeptical of the junk science that we've been relentlessly fed for decades on everything from SSRIs to Alzheimer's to gender ideology.
And after yesterday's debacle of a confirmation hearing, it's clear we need to take this opportunity now while we still have it. Now let's get to our five headlines. So the big and horrifically awful story of the day, of course, is the plane crash in D.C. An American Airlines regional jet collided with a Blackhawk helicopter as it was making its final approach into Reagan National Airport.
It was, from what I understand, about 400 feet above the ground at the time that the collision happened, which means that those passengers were, I don't know, less than a minute, 30 seconds probably, from being safely on the ground. And instead, per the latest reports that I've seen, everybody on board the plane and everyone on the helicopter are all presumed dead.
67 people in total who have died in the first major airline disaster in the U.S. since 2009 and the biggest one now since, I believe, 2001. Now, as I'm recording this, we still don't know exactly how this happened. We know that it was a collision midair, but in terms of how did that collision happen, why did it happen, there's still a lot that's not known. The plane was coming in for landing.
The helicopter was crossing its path. I don't want to get into a lot of speculation, especially as you're listening to this. It's likely that as you're listening to it, we know more than we did at the time that I'm saying these words. So there's only so much that can be speculated. I will say that when the video first started circulating, there's the...
I guess it's a webcam video from the airport where you can see in the distance, you've probably seen the collision. You can see the explosion in midair. And when it first started circulating, it's obviously very startling and terrible. And you get the feeling when you watch it that it looks intentional. It looks like the helicopter just made a beeline right for the plane.
And a lot of people had that initial reaction. I did too. It's just kind of a visceral initial reaction to it. But I think from everything we know at the moment, which still isn't a whole lot, the possibility of it being intentional seems unlikely. I mean, it would also be incredibly difficult to do that intentionally, although I guess nothing can be ruled out at the moment.
It seems at this point the most likely scenario is that this was a confluence of errors and major egregious mistakes made by some or all of the people involved. You have air traffic control, you have the helicopter pilot, the airplane pilot. And in order to avoid this, you would need all three people. I mean, really, it's more than three.
You need all three parties in order to avoid this happening. You would need all three parties to communicate correctly and clearly and then execute. So it seems, again, just the most likely scenario. that one party, probably at least two, maybe all three, failed in communication or execution or both.
And the thing is, I can speak for myself, as a passenger, I always get the most nervous when the plane is at altitude and it's 35,000 feet and you hit turbulence. That makes me nervous. I think most people are the same way. When you talk about what are the scariest... For a passenger. When you talk to a pilot, they'll tell you something else.
But for a passenger, what's the scariest moment of a flight? It's probably that. It's when you're all the way up in the sky, you're above the clouds, and the plane starts shaking and rocking. For me, it's quite unsettling. But the truth is that there's nowhere... there's nowhere safer on earth than a plane at 35,000 feet. I mean, almost nothing can take down a plane at that altitude.
If you talk to pilots, I mean, you would need either an absolutely catastrophic almost unheard of mechanical failure, or you would need like a missile. And outside of those two things, the plane is going to stay in the sky. Turbulence almost certainly won't do it.
And that's why there has very, very, very, very, very rarely been plane crashes where the plane plunges out of the sky from thousands of feet. It almost never happens. In the whole history of aviation, it's very rare. So most of the bad stuff can happen and does happen. I mean, if it is going to happen, if the bad stuff is going to happen, it's usually going to be on takeoff and landing.
And that, you know, kind of the cruel thing here is that's exactly when passengers feel the safest, probably. I mean, I know like in the final 30 seconds of a flight, you know, when you can look down, you can see the ground, it looks like you, you know, it looks, it's, you're only a few hundred feet up.
That's, I'll start, I'll text my wife at that point before we've even landed to say, you know, we landed safely because it feels like, it feels like, well, we're here, you know, what could possibly go wrong? But the truth is, and again, if you talk to pilots about this, I think they would, they would affirm this, that that's the danger zone.
I mean, that's actually the most dangerous part of the flight. And because there's a lot more going on, there are a lot more balls in the air that have to be juggled. And if something goes wrong, there's no room for error. There's very little that a pilot can do in those final seconds and minutes to adjust to avoid something catastrophic.
Whereas if you're 35,000 feet in the sky, you have comparatively a long time to figure it out if something bad happens. But when you're landing, there's just not a lot of time. And so a lot can go wrong when a big jet is landing at a busy airport. And a lot would have to go wrong for this kind of tragedy to occur.
As you know, if you've been listening to the show for a while, that I have been worried about this exact thing. This is something that we've talked about on the show several times over the last many months, even going back a year or more, I think, that the worry that I've expressed is that
even though there has not been a major airline disaster in a very long time, or there hadn't been, that I was worried that we'd have one very soon. And it's not like some kind of prophecy or anything like that. It's just because there'd been a lot of close calls. And the close calls don't get reported. I mean, they're reported, but they don't get a lot of attention.
I mean, there have been things that have happened that if things had just gone a little bit differently, hundreds of people would have died, but they didn't die. And because they didn't die, it doesn't make the headlines. But there have just been a lot of close calls. And so it doesn't take, you know, anyone who notices that and takes note of all the close calls would say the same thing.
Like, man, we've come really close. And it just stands to reason statistically that when you're coming that close that often, eventually, you know, you're gonna come out on the wrong side of that. And this is something that pilots, I've heard this also from pilots. I mean, the pilots are the ones who obviously know.
And many pilots have been talking about this, that we've been flying way too close to the sun with this kind of stuff for too long. And now here we are. So we'll be able to say more very soon, I think. It'll be clear what happened sooner rather than later, maybe who's at fault, where the system broke down. I think the American Airlines CEO put out a statement where he
not so subtly put the blame on the military for it, which is not surprising. You're going to have the finger pointing that goes on back and forth. But it's pretty clear that there was obviously some major mistakes here. And I would be surprised if the mistakes were all on one party's end of it. So for now, I just feel terrible about this and for the families. And
i worry about this of course of course every time you get on a plane you worry about this but even more like if my wife flies somewhere this is you're just you just you dread this exact scenario and uh um it's horrible to think that it actually happened and now there are people who are experienced experiencing in real life you know not just in their in their worst nightmares uh there was a there was a a clip on on social media last night i'm not going to play it but
And I don't even remember what media outlet posted it, but it was a clip apparently of a husband who was at the airport whose wife was on the plane. And at this point, it wasn't known if everybody had died or not. And there had even been reports that maybe some people had been recovered. And so he's waiting there, obviously desperately hopeful that his wife was one of the people recovered.
Turns out that, you know, tragically, nobody Nobody was, no one survived. But anyway, the reporter comes up and starts talking to this guy, you know, interviewing him, and he says that he was texting with his wife. She asks to read the text message.
I mean, just, I get that you're a reporter and you're doing your, you got to do your job, you're reporting on this, but you also have to have some basic humanity. And talking to the guy at all, I think is, wrong. This is just a time to have humanity. Asking to see a text message is just way over the line. I mean, just repulsive.
So we'll obviously continue to track this story, and I'm sure there'll be a lot more to say about it. All right, it's kind of hard to go from that to the rest of the show, but I'm not going to try to just talk about the plane crash for the whole show because that would require me to fill the time with an hour's worth of speculation, which I don't want to do. So we'll move to this.
Here's an interesting clip that I wanted to play for you. It relates back to a conversation we had yesterday. We talked about the issue of foreign aid. And I gave my spiel, which I've given a thousand times, about how we should cut off all foreign aid to every country and let them stand or fall on their own two feet.
And if you can't exist without the United States supplementing your existence, then you don't deserve to exist. You should, and I say this without irony, If you can't exist on your own without U.S. foreign aid, then really what should happen is you should be conquered by a stronger country and become their subjects.
I mean, that's what should happen to a country that lacks the will or ability to exist on its own. They should be conquered and colonized. Because here's the thing. If you're reliant on foreign aid, then you are already a colony. You've already been colonized. It's just colonized in this kind of modern, indirect way. It's better to be colonized in a more honest and direct way, I think.
And have a better, greater country come in and rule over you because you cannot rule over yourselves. That's better than the modern form of colonization where a country funds your existence. So you don't really have independence. You don't have sovereignty. You're not a sovereign nation. But you also don't have the law and order and stability that you could have.
if some greater country came in and governed you. So I am unironically in favor of countries that can't exist without aid being conquered. That's the way of the world. It's the way the world worked for thousands of years. And I think it's an absurdity. I just think it's an absurdity to prop up failed states with taxpayer money. I just think it's absurd.
And by the way, I'm not saying that every country that receives aid would collapse without it. You know, we talked about, what was it? We talked about, you know, we were talking about the Central American and South American countries. And I said that we've got all these countries that they... They depend on the U.S. for foreign aid, right?
But then they want to turn around and get all big for their britches when we try to send illegal aliens back to them. And I got responses from people saying, well, they don't depend on U.S. aid. It's a very small part of their GDP. They don't depend on it. Okay, well, so if they don't, great. Then that's all the more reason. we should take the aid away.
If they don't even depend on it, you're telling me they don't need it and we're still giving it to them? Why? So it's like you got two categories of countries, broadly speaking. You have the countries that receive foreign aid and don't depend on it and don't need it. For them, absolutely, let's stop giving it to them. They don't even need it.
Then you have the countries that do depend on it, whose very existence depend on it, And them also, for that reason, we shouldn't be giving them aid. So in either way, we're left with, I don't think we should be giving foreign aid. So anyway, a clip went viral yesterday of a politician in Kenya, a former president, making essentially this exact point, or at least a very similar one.
Here it is. People the other day crying, I don't know, Trump has removed money. He said he's not giving us any more money. Why are you crying? It's not your government. It's not your country. He has no reason to give you anything. I mean, you don't pay taxes in America. He's appealing to his people. This is a wake-up call for you to say, okay, what are we going to do to help ourselves?
Instead of crying, to say, what are we going to do? What are we going to do? To support ourselves. Because nobody is going to continue holding out a hand there to give you. It is time. for us to use our resources for the right things. We are the ones who are using them for the wrong things.
Couldn't agree more. He says, why are you crying? It's not your government. It's not your money. They have no reason to give you anything. You don't pay taxes in America. He's appealing to his own people. Yeah, that's exactly that. Every word of that. And this man, Uru Kenyatta, I'm sure I'm mispronouncing it, is his name.
And what he's saying is, he's saying something that most politicians in America won't say. He has a more America first mentality than most American politicians. That's the crazy thing. So I don't know anything about this guy or what kind of president he was, but I respect the hell out of that. He's saying Trump is taking care of his own people. His people are Americans. It's that simple.
If you don't pay taxes in America, why should you expect any tax money from America? So my question is, why is it so hard for American politicians to say that? Why can the former president of Kenya say that and you won't? Uru Kenyatta can say, hey, American leaders, they got to take care of their own people. So he'll say that, but the vast majority of actual American leaders will not say that.
That should really tell you something. All right, Donald Trump yesterday made another big announcement, another executive action that he's taking to address the immigration crisis. Let's listen to that.
Today, I'm also signing an executive order to instruct the Departments of Defense and Homeland Security to begin preparing the 30,000 person migrant facility at Guantanamo Bay. Most people don't even know about it. We have 30,000 beds in Guantanamo to detain the worst criminal illegal aliens threatening the American people. Some of them are so bad, we don't even trust the countries to hold them.
because we don't want them coming back, so we're going to send them out to Guantanamo.
All right, so he's going to send the worst criminal aliens to Guantanamo Bay. Now, I mean, shipping illegal alien criminals to Gitmo is the kind of thing that you would hear me suggest on this show half-jokingly, because I know that it would never happen, and no American president would ever do that, even though they should. And yet Trump is actually doing it. He's actually doing it.
It's extraordinary. Still, it's kind of shocking. Even though it's a totally sensible and good and correct policy, it's still shocking. It's shocking because we have grown so accustomed to nonsensical and bad and incorrect policies. Of course we should ship them to Gitmo. Why even have Gitmo if we're not going to use it to imprison foreign nationals who terrorize American communities?
Foreign nationals who are a threat to American communities. That's why you have Gitmo. Gitmo is made for that. So it's a great idea. And I think Trump's first couple of weeks in office have really sharply revealed and demonstrated if nothing else, just how god-awful, abysmal our leadership has been in this country for so long.
Because most of what Trump is doing, and I've been saying this, most of what he's doing, you can call it right-wing, you can call it conservative, but it's really not. It's just common sense. He's doing a bunch of stuff where you go, why weren't we doing that already? Yeah, that makes sense. Why were we already doing that? And that is almost everything he's done has just been that kind of thing.
The kind of thing that normal Americans, like the kind of idea that just a normal person would have and would say, well, why don't they just do this? Like, we have Guantanamo Bay. Why don't we just ship them there? If you've got a criminal alien who keeps coming into the country and we can't stop him, just ship him off to Guantanamo Bay.
It's the kind of thing you'd hear on a podcast or you'd hear just someone sitting in their living room. And I mean, that's a good thing. Okay, not everything that someone says on a podcast or in their living room is a good idea and should actually be enacted as policy. But a lot of it is just common sense. And then the answer you always get is, yeah, well, you know, it's not that simple.
That's the answer we'll get from our leaders most of the time, from politicians. They'll say, yeah, I mean, that seems like a real sensible solution. It seems like that would be a rational, practical way to handle this. But it's not that simple. You can't really do that. It turns out, actually, it is that simple. Most of the time, it is pretty simple.
That's why I always say that most of the problems we face as a country and most of the problems you face in your everyday life, most of them are not complicated. Most problems are simple. That doesn't mean that they're easy to solve. They can still be hard to solve. It can be hard to do, but it is simple. It's like losing weight. It's not complicated. It's hard. It's difficult.
It requires focus and discipline. All these things that are hard for people. Hard for me. Hard for anyone. But it is simple, though. The answer is simple. And I think that works even on a national and international level. There are things that are complicated. There are complicated issues. But a lot of these issues are pretty simple.
How do we solve in general the problem of rampant crime in our communities? Even the type that is not committed by illegal criminals. But how about just the criminals that are here legally? How do we solve it? What do we do about it? I don't know. I guess we should arrest all those people and just put them in jail and not let them out. That's one thing we could do. It's pretty simple.
And again, we'll hear from politicians, but you can't really, why can't we? Why can't we just do that? Would work. You got someone who's dangerous, you put them in prison, they're not going to hurt anybody. It is that simple, but you just have to have the will to actually do it, and that's what we're seeing from Trump. Let's get to the comment section.
If you're a man, it's required that you grow up in hate.
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Yeah, you know, a lot of people have made that joke. And I can't say that I approve or that I find it funny. I can't say that I do on YouTube. I couldn't say that I find that to be a funny joke. Can't say it. You can say it. I can't, you know. I'm just raising awareness. The only reason I read this joke is just to raise awareness that some people are making this joke.
A lot of people are making this forklift joke. And I want to bring that to your attention. I want to raise awareness of it. Uh, the worst part about this is that Lyft actually apologized and left their very respectful driver out to dry. Yeah. I hope the driver sues Lyft also. He, he, he has a case. So Lyft should be, you know, Lyft's getting sued by the obese woman.
Now she gets sued by the Lyft driver too, because, and here's something I didn't mention yesterday. And a lot of people brought up in the comments too. Seatbelts, right? This is an open shut case, open and shut case just based on seatbelts alone. There's no way that a could use a seatbelt in a normal car. The seatbelt is not gonna make its way all the way around her.
Which means he can't legally take her anyway. If you do ride share, you can't even legally pick up. Or if you can legally do it, I mean, different states have different laws in terms of seatbelts, but it's a major liability at a minimum. This is someone who cannot use a seatbelt, so that should tell you everything.
And even the, you know, the payload capacity for a lot of four-door sedans, and I don't think we know exactly what the maker model was of this car, but we know that the payload capacity for a lot of, it was a four-door sedan, and we know that for a lot of them, the payload capacity is like 800 pounds. Well, the driver was an adult man.
We didn't see him in the video, so we don't know what he looked like. But if he was a slightly above average sized man at, let's say, 200 pounds, I don't know. And I actually read that she was 550 pounds. That puts them at 750 if she gets in that car. They're only 50 pounds away from payload capacity in the car, potentially.
And if he's carrying anything else, like in the trunk, any luggage or anything, then they could very well be over the limit. And besides, even if they did squeeze in under the capacity, the car, the payload capacity is under the assumption that, you know, that you're going to have, if we say, well, it would fit four or five adults.
Well, the assumption is that the adults are sitting in different seats. Not that you can have four adults crowded into one seat on one side of the car, which is what she's the equivalent of in terms of her weight. Let's see. I would vote Teddy Roosevelt off Mount Rushmore. He's a member of the same family as FDR who ushered in socialism and in so many ways that it even taints his uncle.
That's insane. Roosevelt stays. Teddy Roosevelt stays on Mount Rushmore. So if we've got to kick someone off for Trump, You know, you can make an argument that maybe there's room. There might be room to carve another face in there, but maybe not. Because, you know, the other thing about Trump is he's got that, you know, the head of hair is quite, is substantial.
And so you got to have room for all the whole thing. You probably would have to carve him over somebody. And so you do have to vote somebody off the island. And it's not going to be Roosevelt. Roosevelt is the most, one of the most badass Americans, period. to have ever lived. Okay, this is somebody who almost died exploring the Amazon rainforest after he was already president.
And after he got shot while giving a speech and then stood up and finished the speech, okay, after getting shot. So he stays. I'm sorry, it's Abe Lincoln. Abe Lincoln's the one that's gotta go. I hate to say it. Ten years ago, the Daily Wire started a fight. We took on the radical left's assault on truth. We refused to bow to their delusions.
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Now, pretty much every time we've talked about Disney lately, it's been hard not to wonder whether they're intentionally sabotaging their own brand for some unknown reason. And that might sound like a crazy conspiracy theory, but ask yourself this, when was the last time that the spokeswoman for a major company told half of the company's customers
that they should suffer in pain for the rest of their lives and never know peace. And then after the spokeswoman delivers that message as explicitly as she possibly can, the company doesn't fire that spokeswoman or publicly repudiate her in any way. In fact, they keep paying her. That's basically how bad things have gotten at Disney.
The actress Rachel Zegler wrote a whole post about how Trump supporters should basically burn in hell. And on top of that, for good measure, she declared that Snow White, the movie she's doing a remake of, is a terrible and misogynistic story. So to fix that, they need to have a new girl boss, a main character who treats the dwarves like they're her slaves.
And at no point in this process is she fired. And you have to wonder, what kind of company would operate like this? I mean, if it didn't deliberately want to tank its own reputation. Maybe that's not Disney's ultimate goal. I've seen some people suggest that maybe Disney only intends to tank specific projects, the ones that it knows in advance are going to do poorly.
So, for example, they know that Snow White is going to bomb, so they encourage Zegler to torpedo the whole thing with politics. And that way, when everything collapses, they can blame Trump supporters instead of their own incompetence. Think of it like a face-saving public relations strategy. And that's an alternative theory. Does it make a lot of sense? No, it doesn't.
But this is the kind of theorizing people do in the face of this level of incompetence. This particular conspiracy theory actually has another benefit, which is that it helps explain the otherwise inexplicable statements that were made by the actor Anthony Mackie, the star of Disney's upcoming film Captain America Brave New World.
What Mackie just did is so over the top and so clearly intended, you would think, to antagonize potential fans of the film that you think, like, there's got to be something else going on here, even though there probably isn't. So perhaps they know that... I don't know. Maybe they think Captain America Brave New World is going to bomb, so they decided to completely destroy it preemptively.
And then they had Anthony Mackie go out and say this. The viral moment is at the beginning of this clip when he explains that Captain America, what it represents in his view, which is an easy question when you're on a publicity tour for Captain America and somebody asks, what does it represent? You'd think that's a pretty easy question. That's a softball.
How do you not just crush that as a home run answer? But he doesn't. And it's kind of extraordinary footage in its own right. But we'll play the whole thing because really the whole statement is something to behold. Here it is.
For me, Captain America represents a lot of different things, and I don't think the term, you know, America should be one of those representations. Like, it's about a man who keeps his word, who has honor, dignity, and integrity. Someone who is trustworthy and dependable. You know, it's kind of... This is kind of like an aspect of a dream coming true.
You know, when I was a kid, you know, all of us as actors, I believe, want to get back to that day before someone told you no. When you look out your door and you see a five-year-old kid with a stick and he's slaying dragons to save the princess in the tower, that kid really believes there are dragons out there. That stick is really a sword and he's really trying to save that princess.
And then one day somebody told him, no, there are no dragons. That's not a sword. And that princess is not there. And all of his little dreams were dashed. So, you know, as an actor, I feel like our job is to get back to the day when we see that dragon and we slayed that dragon to save that princess. And that's kind of what this movie was for me.
So the money quote at the beginning, in case you missed it, was this quote. For me, Captain America represents a lot of different things. And I don't think the term, you know, America should be one of those representations. Yes, Captain America is not supposed to represent America. That's according to the star of the upcoming Captain America film just a couple of weeks before his film comes out.
Now, it's such an incredible moment that it's hard to think of anything to compare it to or how it could even possibly happen. But you put yourself in this actor's shoes for a moment. You've just emerged from an extended bender, which has temporarily destroyed your memory and your capacity for high-order thinking.
Even in that scenario, this is still an interview that you should be able to pull off, even if you don't know anything about Captain America. you still know that he's called Captain America. So it should be a pretty big clue all by itself. And again, a really easy thing to talk about.
saying that Captain America doesn't represent America, it's like saying Spider-Man has nothing to do with spiders. It's like right there in the name. And of course, it gets even worse when you consider the fact that Captain America's costume is the American flag, and he was created specifically to promote American ideals ahead of World War II.
According to Wikipedia, which is the extent of my knowledge of Captain America, the very first Captain America comic has him punching Hitler in the face on the front cover, which is about as explicit a message as you can possibly get. But somehow, Anthony Mackie, who's playing Captain America, missed it. in his years of preparation for this role, this managed to escape him.
Then he explains what, in his view, Captain America is all about. He says, when you look out your door and you see a five-year-old kid with a stick and he's slaying dragons to save the princess in the tower, that kid really believes there are dragons out there, that the stick is really a sword, and he's really trying to save that princess.
And then one day someone told him, no, there are no dragons, that's not a sword, and that princess is not there. And all of his little dreams are dashed. So as an actor, I feel like our job is to get back to the day where we could see the dragon and slay the dragon and save the princess. And that's kind of what this movie was for me.
Now, if you went back in time and showed that quote to Joe Simon and Jack Kirby, the two guys who, according to Wikipedia, created Captain America, you have to imagine they'd be a little bit confused. It's such an incoherent, rambling response that it almost defies comprehension. It's as if he's doing everything he possibly can to avoid talking about Captain America.
He appears to be talking about how he wants to go back to being a child where he apparently believed at the age of five years old that he was slaying actual dragons with a stick in his yard. And then he suffered a traumatizing experience when someone informed him that there were no actual dragons in his backyard.
And his whole acting career has been an extended effort to undo that psychological trauma. Now, from some of the reporting, it seems like he really wanted to play Spider-Man a few years ago, but he ended up with this. But it's all the same to Anthony Mackie. Whatever role he gets, he'll find a way to tie it back somehow to his childhood fantasies.
And that's what this movie is all about in his view. Now, in this case, someone at Disney apparently came to the realization that something had to be done, so they made a desperate attempt at damage control, which, as far as I know, never happened with Rachel Zegler. So maybe they haven't completely given up on this new film.
This effort at damage control produced this new statement from Anthony Mackie, which reads, quote, Let me be clear about this. I'm a proud American, and taking on the shield of a hero like Cap is the honor of a lifetime. I have the utmost respect for those who serve and have served our country. Cap has universal characteristics that people all over the world can relate to.
So he still doesn't seem to understand the character. And then he makes things even worse with his follow-up, which doesn't even make sense. Quote, I feel like it's just as important for black kids to see a black Captain America as it is for white kids to see a black Captain America. Growing up, my favorite hero was green. So it wasn't about race or anything.
It was about him being a good guy trying to do the right thing. Now, of course, that's not the point. Race had nothing to do with it. And it's not why people responded so negatively to his initial statement. The point is that Anthony Mackie is embarrassed by the explicitly patriotic nature of the Captain America character.
He doesn't want to ascribe any uniquely positive traits to America or Americans. Even his cleanup PR damage control statement, he still doesn't want to do that. He can't bring himself to say, hey, Captain America embodies the American ideals of courage, honesty, and fortitude. Easy thing to say. That's a crowd pleaser. But he can't say it. He can't bring himself to say it.
because that would just be too complimentary towards his own country. And as a Hollywood liberal, the thought of being complimentary towards his own country sickens him. So how did Disney end up here yet again with yet another actor playing the title role for a major IP, despite hating that IP and everything it stands for?
Well, either Disney exclusively hires actors who are completely incapable of behaving like high functioning intelligent adults when they're doing their PR tours for their films, And who are so full of bitterness and hatred for their audience that they can't even pretend to respect them. Or something else is going on here.
Meaning there's some kind of deliberate, nefarious conspiracy in which Disney wants to sabotage its own products. And at this point, whichever theory you're partial to, it really doesn't matter. Either way, there's really no reason for anyone to go see Captain America now. As it is a film that is not in any way about America. Or about captains, I guess. Or anything like that.
Instead, it's apparently about dragons and sticks. And that is why the new Captain America film and its openly anti-American lead actor are today canceled. That'll do it for the show today. Thanks for watching. Thanks for listening. Have a great day. Godspeed.