Ep. 1511 - The Real Reason LA Is Burning — And It’s Not Climate Change
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Today on the Matt Walsh Show, the city of Los Angeles is going up in flames. The left claims it's a product of climate change, but that's because they don't want to talk about the real cause, which is incompetence, if not outright sabotage, by the Democratic leaders of LA and California. Also, Joe Biden finally admits that he actually may not have been capable of serving a second term. A new study finds that vegans are often depressed and miserable. I don't think I needed a study to tell me that.

And a Hollywood actor goes on Bill Maher's podcast and tries to defend sex changes for kids. It doesn't go well for him. All of that and more today on The Matt Walsh Show. Are you feeling the stress about keeping up with New Year's resolutions, work, family, and more? Well, you're not alone. Prices remain higher than ever, and a lot of us are maxing out our credit cards. Now is the perfect time to take control of your finances and pay off that debt in the new year. If you're a homeowner, American Financing can help you unlock the equity in your home and start saving money.

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Normally when a politician becomes the mayor of a major city, it's because they've supposedly spent their career working in the city and advancing its interests. Eric Adams became the mayor of New York after working in local law enforcement for more than 20 years. So did the mayor of Fresno, a man named Jerry Dyer. Meanwhile, the new mayor of San Francisco, Daniel Lurie, helped ensure that the Bay Area would be the home of the Super Bowl 50 a few years back. So now it's not to say that these are necessarily good politicians. Many of them are not.

But if you look through their careers, at the very least, you'll find that they had an interest in the city and the one that they would later represent as mayor. That's like the lowest of all bars, but at least they clear that. But the current mayor of Los Angeles, Karen Bass, is an exception. She doesn't even clear that bar.

If you look at what Karen Bass has been talking about for the past decade, you'll find that by her own admission, she was never especially interested in California. Instead, again and again, she's talked about advancing the interests of Africa. Here's just a small selection of her appearances on African media. Watch.

I say that our reason for coming as the contingent of the Congressional Black Caucus is really part of many commemorations taking place in the United States this year, commemorating the 400th anniversary for the arrival of Africans on the U.S. continent.

I was involved in the 70s and 80s in the whole anti-apartheid struggle. Our history on the continent has not always been a great history. And so I think that there's things that we need to rectify. But at the same time, I would never want to tip it in the other direction and say that there's too many problems in Africa or Africa should be able to sustain itself. So let's cut off U.S. funding.

There also might be other ways that our country can support the African Union so that they can put some teeth behind that when that type of statement is made. I mean, for example, when the coup in Mali happened and there was the need for troops to come in,

you know the mullions had to call in the French the African Union wasn't quite ready to intervene and they certainly did come along but I think there's a variety of ways that the United States can help to shore up the infrastructure and capacity of the African Union so she seems pretty knowledgeable about

issues in Africa, very invested in issues in Africa. The only problem is that she doesn't live in Africa and she doesn't represent Africa, supposedly. Again, this is an allegedly American politician who supposedly represents Americans. But in reality, she's doing the Ilhan Omar routine where she constantly promises to use America's resources to help the people she really cares about who aren't American.

So it was fitting that as an unprecedented massive wildfire broke out in Los Angeles this week, Karen Bass was again in Africa, attending, in this case, the inauguration of Ghana's new president. Now, why is the mayor of an American city taking time off of work to attend the inauguration of a third world leader 7,000 miles away? Well, that's a good question.

And the point is that this was not simply bad timing, as you may have seen it portrayed in the media. It was inevitable. Democrats like Karen Bass spend so much time representing their real constituents, foreigners, that they're rarely in town when a disaster materializes back at home. Now, Democrats are able to get away with this betrayal because for the most part, the media lets them do it.

So it must have come as a great shock to Karen when after she landed at LAX, she was immediately confronted by a reporter who grilled her about her many failures. This reporter named David Blevins is the senior Ireland correspondent at Sky News. And here's how this, well, it's hard to call it a conversation. It's rather one sided, but here's how it went. Do you owe citizens an apology for being absent while their homes were burning?

Do you regret cutting the fire department budget by millions of dollars, Madam Mayor? Have you nothing to say today? Have you absolutely nothing to say to the citizens today? Elon Musk says that you're utterly incompetent. Are you considering your position? Madam Mayor, have you absolutely nothing to say to the citizens today who are dealing with this disaster? No apology for them? Do you think you should have been visiting Ghana while this was unfolding back home?

I mean, it really is amazing and also amazing that this is a Irish correspondent for a foreign news outlet who appears to care more

about what's happening in Los Angeles than the mayor of Los Angeles does. And by the way, total flying time from Ghana to Los Angeles is something like 18 hours. And that whole time, Karen apparently didn't prepare any kind of response to these questions, all of which were highly predictable. She didn't think about why she had slashed the fire department budget by $18 million just a few months ago. She didn't have any message for the thousands of displaced families that she supposedly represents.

Instead, Karen Bass kept quiet until her staffers handed her some talking points to read. And then once she had those talking points, she promptly humiliated herself once again. Watch. Build stronger than ever. Right now, if you need help, emergency information, resources, and shelter is available. All of this can be found at URL.

Los Angeles together is how we will get through this through the heroism of our firefighters. Apparently doesn't know how the internet works. I mean, it would be impossible to script a more on the nose satire of democrats priorities and total incompetence than what Karen Bass just pulled off.

She abandons her constituents during a massive fire in order to pander to Africans. And then she transforms into Ron Burgundy when she belatedly returns. And in case you didn't catch it, she read the URL of the website as literally URL. So again, doesn't know how the internet works. I mean, maybe they don't have a great internet connection in Africa. So that's where she's spending all of her time. So maybe we can't

blame her for not knowing how that works. By Karen Bass's own admission, she needs to be removed from office immediately. And we know Karen Bass agrees with that because she wrote this post on social media when Ted Cruz infamously went on vacation during a disaster in Texas, quote, Ted Cruz fleeing Texas in the middle of a deadly crisis is part of a larger pattern of the GOP abandoning folks in crisis. We need to build a movement to kick them all out.

Politicians like Bass are why climate change is such a common talking point on the left. Because it's their get out of jail free card when their incompetence becomes extremely obvious. Bernie Sanders, for example, just put out a tweet claiming that the wildfires prove that climate change is real. Now, there are major problems with that claim, a bunch of them. But just the first one is that no one, even the alleged scientific experts,

really thinks that that's true in this case. Michael Shellenberger just spoke to John Keely, a researcher at the US Geological Survey who's been studying fires like this for decades. Keely assessed that quote, I don't think these fires are the result of climate change. You certainly could get these events without climate change. Well, of course you could, because the thing driving the fires is wind, and wind is not a product of climate change. We've always had wind. For as long as we've had Earth itself, there's been wind.

And as for the origin of the fires themselves, well, that's a different question. We know what's making these fires spread so rapidly. It's the wind and all of the fuel that these fires have to burn. But what's starting the fires? Again, an important question.

Especially since we were promised just a few years ago that electing Joe Biden would effectively end wildfires in this country. Biden said it himself after the last big wildfire he pretended to care about. Watch. Donald Trump's climate denial may not have caused these fires and record floods and record hurricanes. But if he gets a second term, these hellish events will continue to become more common, more devastating, and more deadly.

So if he gets a second term, then we'd have all these wildfires. And the obvious implication there is that if we elect Biden instead, we won't have them. And Biden became the president, as you may remember. And what do you know? We still have the wildfires. So it took less than four years for this particular climate change prediction to blow up in their faces like they all do. We've gone from Biden will end wildfires to

Biden will use wildfires as an opportunity to make personal announcements about his family, which is what he did yesterday. Watch. We got notification yesterday that their home was probably burning down. Today, parents are maybe still standing in my shoes. The good news is I'm a great grandfather. How's it up today? I'm a granddaughter. I'm a baby girl, a baby boy. So I'm having this take for a while. I'm going to be successful.

Thank you, Press.

Now, yesterday, officials offered one possible explanation for why these fires are now wildly out of control. They stated that there's a shortage of firefighters in Los Angeles. Watch. And then additionally, we heard repeatedly fire crews requesting help, backup and not having enough crews. Were you guys prepared enough for this? Do we have enough resources to fight these fires? Thank you. No, L.A. County.

And all 29 fire departments in our county are not prepared for this type of widespread disaster. There are not enough firefighters in LA County to address four separate fires of this magnitude. Now, why might there be a shortage of firefighters? Well, it turns out that's not a great mystery either. Just a few years ago, Los Angeles officials celebrated

termination of more than 100 firefighters because they wouldn't take the COVID shot. Watch. 113 LA City firefighters have been suspended without pay for defying the city's vaccine mandate in November. Firefighters who had not submitted their vaccination status or requested an exemption were informed they would face suspension and termination.

Now, a few months after terminating all these firefighters for not taking the COVID shot, a new chief took over at the Los Angeles Fire Department. And this new chief doubled down on DEI hiring. She went out of her way to diversify the ranks of the LAFD, meaning she wanted to hire fewer white men and more lesbians like herself. Watch.

I'm super inspired. She took time out of her already busy schedule to tell us about her vision for the department's future, one that includes a three-year strategic plan to increase diversity. People ask me, well, what number are you looking for? I say, I'm not looking for a number. It's never enough. Out of 3,300 city firefighters, only 115 are women right now. She's already looking at ways to change that. She's quick to point out that doing so has a greater potential

purpose, attracting the best and brightest for the job. They feel included, they feel valued, and they feel part of a cohesive team. The chief also checks another box when it comes to inclusivity and diversity at this department. She's a proud member of the LGBTQ community. That just kind of opens the door of people that thought, wow, I didn't even know that that was an opportunity for me.

She checks the boxes, because that's the thing that they, I mean, literally, when we say that DEI is only concerned with box checking, literally, that's the case. You just heard it there. And the thing is, when you decide that we wanna have fewer men as firefighters and more women, what you end up with in the end is,

is fewer firefighters in general. Why is that? Well, because the vast majority of people who are interested in being firefighters are men. That's the case. That was the case yesterday. It's the case today. It's gonna be a case forever. And on top of that, if we could all just be honest about it, not only are the vast majority of people who are interested in being firefighters men, the vast majority of people who are qualified to be firefighters are men.

The people that you want responding in a situation like this when your city is on fire are men. You want male firefighters. We call them firemen. That's what you want. You want firemen showing up. And everybody knows that. Everybody knows that. But we're supposed to pretend otherwise, like we don't. We're supposed to pretend that men and women are equally capable of responding in a situation like this when your city is on fire.

But this was the fire chief's top priority and was just getting more women in there, which is to say getting more people in who are less qualified to do the job. That's what it means. And she got to work immediately, creating a DEI bureau within just one year. Watch.

Every day the LAFD is called upon to respond to crises and today it is taking a step to resolve one of its own. The department's first ever diversity, equity and inclusion Bureau will launch in January one year since its first ever female fire chief Christian Crowley was appointed. So by creating this new Bureau, our diversity, equity, inclusion Bureau. Now we actually have the staff

to do the work when it comes to doing a deep dive in regard to how we do business, how we take care of one another in the fire stations and in our work environment. This stuff is so infuriating. I mean, here's a question, and this is something that unfortunately is playing out right now in Los Angeles, over the city probably. But if firefighters are responding to a scene and their house is on fire, and there's someone inside the house who's incapacitated, passed out, smoke inhalation, and that person is a

Let's just say it's a man about myself. Let's say it's me, I'm the one that's in that building. I'm not a huge guy, I'm slightly above average height and all that. It's not like I'm Dwayne Johnson, but just a man. How many female firefighters would be capable of picking me up and carrying me out of the building? How many of all the female firefighters, what percentage of them could even do that?

I'm gonna say maybe 0%.

But they're doing the work at the Los Angeles Fire Department, whatever that means. Now, to be fair to this fire chief, a month ago, she did send a letter to the mayor explaining that her department would struggle to respond to wildfires because of the funding cuts. And here's what that letter looked like. You can see it. The fire chief states that Bass's budget cuts had, quote, severely limited the department's capacity to prepare for, train for, and respond to large-scale emergencies, including wildfires.

What's particularly strange about these budget cuts and the fire department's focus on DEI is that it's been widely known for years that a massive devastating wildfire was potentially imminent in Los Angeles. Insurance companies have known that, which is why they've tried to raise rates on disaster coverage for homeowners in recent years.

Instead of responding to the risk, Democrats in California banned the insurance companies from raising rates. And then they fired the firefighters for not taking the COVID shot. So the insurance companies dropped thousands of California residents from coverage. Meanwhile, California's leaders also took down a massive dam just to ensure that emergency personnel would have as little available water as possible in the event of something like this happening. Watch.

These dams are coming down and it's about damn time. Governor Kate Brown, Governor Gavin Newsom, U.S. Secretary of Interior Deb Haaland and tribal leaders all coming together to celebrate the world's largest dam removal along the Klamath River Thursday. The groups meeting at Iron Gate Fish Hatchery in Hornbrook. Last month, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission issued the final approval of the historic plan to remove four dams on the Klamath River in California and Oregon.

So they redirect rainwater to the ocean and shut down the dams to save the fish and appease the tribal elders. And now they're apparently out of water to fight these fires. Firefighters are using traffic cones to scoop water now, as you can see in the footage here. Now, these are images that are going to be remembered many years from now.

As the mayor of Los Angeles hangs out in Ghana and the fire department leadership pushes DEI hiring and the politicians empty the reservoirs and remove the dams and the brush remains uncleared, the rank and file firefighters are reduced to scooping water into traffic cones. This is what Donald Trump warned about just a few months ago on Joe Rogan's podcast. In fact, he's been warning about it for years and now it's happened. In case it's not clear, it's necessary to scoop water into traffic cones because no water is coming out of the fire hydrants.

The businessman Rick Caruso called into local news to make that observation, watch. My heart goes out obviously to the people with their homes and I'm watching the small businesses around us go up in flames. This is people's livelihoods, so it's devastating. But what is most concerning to me is our first responders and our firefighters who are trying to battle this. There's no water in the palisades. There's no water coming out of the fire hydrants.

This is an absolute mismanagement by the city. Not the firefighters fault, but it's by the city. And I'm gonna be very honest, we've got a mayor that's out of the country and we've got a city that's burning and there's no resources to put out fires. So if you look at your pictures, you don't see the firefighters there because there's nothing they can do. And it looks like we're in a third world country here. This is obviously an extremely damaging piece of information for local officials.

That's presumably why an anchor at the local Fox affiliate tried to fact check Rick Caruso and imply that he was wrong about this. And then he was immediately fact checked by a Fox reporter on the ground who confirmed that indeed the firefighters are out of water. Former LA mayoral candidate and real estate developer Rick Caruso criticizing the city's response to the windstorm and fires. He says officials should have been more prepared. Real issue to me is twofold.

to go remove the brush in these hills that spread so quickly. And the second is, you've got to have water. And my understanding is the reservoir was not refilled in time and in a timely manner to keep the hydrants going. So that's a failure, whether on DWP's part or another city agency. But this is basic stuff. This isn't high science here. It's all about leadership and management that we're seeing a failure of

And all of these residents are paying the ultimate price for that. Despite what you have heard from Caruso, no firefighters have told us that they are running out of water. And let's go out to Gigi Gracia. She is live in Pacific Palisades. I know your signal is not the best, but Gigi, what can you tell us?

Well, firefighters have told me they have no water on this block and you may be able to make out the ember storm that we're in the middle of right now. This house is going to be a total loss. They have no water to put on this fire. They are standing by because they're trying to save the home that is next to it. So this is one of the most basic factual issues of this entire disaster and the local media obviously has no idea what's going on. Neither do the people who are supposedly running the state.

Yesterday evening, CNN asked Gavin Newsom about why there was no water coming out of the fire hydrants, and he had no answer to the question.

What is the situation with water? Obviously, in Palisades, it ran out last night in the hydrants. I was trying to fire a fire on this block. They left because there was no water in the hydrant here. Local folks are trying to figure that out. I mean, just when you have a system that's not dissimilar to what we've seen in other extraordinarily large-scale fires, whether it be pipe, electricity, or whether it just be the complete overwhelm of the system. I mean, those hydrants are typical for two or three fires, maybe one fire. You have something at this scale. But again, that's got to be determined by the local...

Now shortly after that interview was shot, another fire began in Hollywood Hills. Arson obviously seems like a strong possibility to explain a lot of this because California is a lawless state where no one even arsonists are prosecuted. But additionally, late last night, someone shot footage of what appears to be arson attacks taking place in the city. This is from the Santa Monica neighborhood, watch. We're at 302 Pico and

People are lighting fires now. You can see they lit a fire. These guys, not all the people there, but some of those guys lit that fire. And they're actually, the trees caught fire and then the palms are catching fire. So civilians are now lighting fires down in the so-called flats around Santa Monica, Venice. So be safe out there. Fire department's been dispatched. We don't have enough water to put this thing out.

but we're supposedly on the way. - Now, based on that footage and the sheer number of separate fires, it seems more likely than not that we're dealing with a series of arson attacks here, but not spontaneous combustion caused by climate change, but people setting these fires.

But at the moment, we don't know for sure. What we do know, as this catastrophe continues to unfold in Los Angeles, is that no one is buying the climate change narrative anymore. The people running the state of California are simply too incompetent, too incoherent to pull it off. Now, yes, it's too late for the people living in the many destroyed areas of Los Angeles, which are becoming more numerous by the hour.

But the rest of the country now understands exactly where climate change derangement leads. Along with DEI and the rest of the equity agenda, it leads to destruction and blame shifting and ultimately total unmitigated apocalyptic disaster, which is what we're seeing happening in a major American city.

And as entire enclaves and left-wing cities burn to the ground, the reality is now simply too obvious, even for the most committed members of the climate cult, to ignore any longer. Now let's get to our five headlines.

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What is wrong with this sickly bastard? And yes, it did just happen and it is now. And I blame my kids. I believe in accountability, so I blame my kids. We had a round of whatever cold virus is going around right now. We had a round of that. And then apparently we went back for seconds because my kids started coughing again. Now it's ripping through the house a second time. Just around and around and around. Because look,

You know, it goes without saying, I love my kids to death. My family is the greatest thing in my life. But they're also, let's be honest, little petri dishes. They, you know, they're little buckets of disease. Cute little buckets, adorable. But kids are just constantly bringing viruses and bacteria into the house. And they have no sense of personal space either. So that combination just means that whatever they have, you're going to get. You know, you're sharing it as a family. The other day, my two-year-old,

sneeze directly into my face, like this close. It seemed intentional, because there's no reason for you to be this close. Got up, point blank range, all the shrapnel, I absorbed it all, and so here we are. It's the way it goes. Here's this from the Daily Wire. President Joe Biden voiced uncertainty when asked whether he believed he could serve another four-year term in the White House if he did not drop out of the 2024 race.

On Wednesday, USA Today published a transcript of an interview that its Washington bureau chief, Susan Page, conducted with the 82-year-old Biden over the weekend. Page asked, do you think you would have had the vigor to serve another four years in office? The president said in response, I don't know. That's why I thought when I first announced talking to Barack about it, I said I thought I was the person. I had no intention of running after Beau died, for real, not a joke. And then when Trump was running again for reelection, I really thought I had the best chance of beating him.

But I also wasn't looking to be president when I was 85 years old, 86 years old. And so I did talk about passing the baton, but I don't know, who the hell knows? So far, so good. Really? So far, so good. But who knows what I'm gonna be when I'm 86 years old? It's kind of incredible. You almost have to laugh, almost. Biden was asked whether he could actually perform the duties of the presidency in a second term. And his response now is, who the hell knows?

Keep in mind, I don't think I have to remind you, this guy was running for a second term. Now he admits that he has no idea whether he could even do the job. I would have respected him more if he had said that during the campaign. At least the honesty I would have respected. Obviously, I wouldn't have voted for him, but I would have liked it back in May when he was still in the campaign. If someone is like, are you sure you can do this job at your age? Look, man, who the hell knows? I'm old. Let's be honest. I could be dead tomorrow. I mean, what do you want me to tell you?

I wish he had just said that. At least there would have been some honesty to it. And obviously, this is not a revelation. We aren't learning anything here. The only thing this reveals, if it reveals anything, because I mean, this also shouldn't be a newsflash, but it is that Joe Biden himself was and is aware of his own mental deficiencies. It's not like he ran again or tried to run again because he was actually unaware that he was losing his mind and really thought that he could do the job. No, he knew he couldn't do it.

He knew that he was falling apart and he was going to put the country in that position anyway. He was going to deliberately put the country in the position that the president of the United States would become fully, fully, fully mentally incapacitated while in office. He was going to march us right into that scenario. It's really no different than like a, you know, a drunk driver. I mean, this is kind of the presidential equivalent of a DUI.

because the drunk driver knows that they're drunk. He knows he's getting behind the wheel of a car in a state where he's not equipped to operate a vehicle safely. That's why drunk drivers deserve incredibly harsh penalties, because they're intentionally putting other people in harm's way. They'd rather potentially kill someone than call an Uber. And with Biden,

It was the exact same thing. Exact same thing, which is why, as I said all along, I have no sympathy for this guy. In almost any other scenario where you've got an old guy losing or old woman losing their mental capacities and going senile, in almost any other scenario, I would have nothing but sympathy for someone in that position. And it's a position that almost all of us are going to be in

Or we're going to die before we're able to be in that position. But that is the direction that we're all heading, regardless. So it would behoove us all to have sympathy. But not in this case. Not in this case, because you are intentionally trying to inflict this on the country. Here's something a little different, getting out of politics for a moment. There's just a really interesting article in The Atlantic that you should read. It's called...

The antisocial century, and I just read it this morning. I thought it was interesting and sad and troubling. It's about the increasing trend in American culture towards solitude. People are spending more time alone than they ever have before. The writer, Derek Thompson, he opens the article with a little anecdote about how a small Mexican restaurant near his house, he goes there with his wife and daughter, and he

It sits down at a table, place is totally empty. Nobody else is sitting down and eating and yet the business is still open and doing well financially because over near the bar or what was once the bar are a whole bunch of brown bags

that are just sitting there because everyone orders to go now. And so he watches the train of people come in, walk over to the bar, grab their bag and leave. And there isn't any conversation or greeting of any kind. They don't even have to interact with a cashier anymore because everyone orders online, you pay online. And you just walk in, you grab your food, you don't say anything to anybody, you go home and eat.

And of course, this exact scenario can be observed everywhere in the country and many, many restaurants now. This is where they do all their business. People just don't eat in restaurants anymore. They take their food and they go home. A lot of these people are eating alone. I mean, it's the same thing in the movie business. The theater business, as we know, is declining because everyone's watching movies now. It's not like people aren't watching movies anymore. They're watching more movies than ever have before. But they're doing it at home and usually alone. And the article goes into the data. It's...

very clear that Americans are more alone now than they've ever been. This is a civilizational shift and there's no precedent really for it. There's nothing to compare it to. People are spending less time socializing, less time going out with their friends, less time going out in general. And on top of that, so everyone's kind of like staying in their homes and also more people are living alone in their homes than ever before.

These are all trends that stretch back decades. They didn't start with the COVID lockdowns, which is something that a lot of people like to point to that as kind of the beginning point of all this isolation and solitude. But you can trace these trends to way before that. That certainly added fuel to the fire. And of course, the number one data point, and one of the major things that's also contributing to it, is that fewer people are getting married and starting families. So

That's where the isolation, the solitude begins for a lot of people. I don't really have a grand sweeping point about this. I think it's just an interesting article. And this is an issue that I think we should be focused on quite a bit more than we are because we're watching as like the very idea of what it means to be living in a human society is changing and devolving, I think, degrading.

Obviously, the internet is the thing that more than anything else is driving this. People have replaced human interaction and human connection with the distraction and stimulation of the phone, social media, and so on. And when we talk about isolation and solitude, that means something very different now. It's a kind of, because it's a kind of distracted solitude. It's hard to call it solitude at all. It's isolation, yes, but not really solitude.

And maybe that's the way to put it. This is what people are experiencing now is isolation without solitude, which is to say that it's isolation without any of the potential benefits that you might get from isolation. And it's not good generally to be isolated for long periods of time. But if you're going to be, at least that could be an opportunity for reflection, thought, rumination, you know, reflection.

contemplation, prayer, solitude is or should be, could be contemplative. But there's no contemplation when everyone is at home staring at screens, right? So that's kind of the caveat here is that everyone is alone, they're at their homes, but they're not, but they're, what are they spending their time doing? They're just staring at screens the whole time. So now there is, yes, a lot less in-person interaction and a lot less community,

But there's also a lot less solitary contemplation and reflection. So we've kind of lost both. We've lost the best things about being communal and the best things about solitude all at the same time. That's kind of the shift that we're observing. Here's another one.

Just running through a few of these. Not going to spend a lot of time on this, but wanted to mention. Actually, it relates to the first topic here in the five headlines. This is from the website Study Finds. It says, every morning across America, millions of senior citizens grab their car keys and head out to doctor's appointments, grocery stores, and social gatherings. For most, these routine drives maintain their independence and connection to the world. But beneath this everyday scene lies a troubling reality. Nearly one in six older drivers experience mild cognitive impairments and

And our healthcare system lacks a reliable way to determine who among them should no longer be behind the wheel. With 48 million licensed drivers over 65 in the United States, approximately 17% of seniors experience at least mild cognitive impairment. So that's 17% of 48 million is the number of cognitively impaired drivers on the road.

Numbers paint a sobering picture. In 2020 alone, motor vehicle crashes led to 7,480 deaths and nearly 150,000 non-fatal injuries among drivers over 65. As the research notes, with approximately 17% of people older than 65 experiencing mild cognitive impairment, it's critical to have a healthcare system that appropriately evaluates and addresses driving safety among older adults. Now, here's why I find this interesting. You know, there are a lot of problems in life. This country has a lot of problems. Can't solve them all.

But you can solve or at least significantly mitigate some of our problems. And many of these solvable problems would actually be very easy to solve or to at least address in a significant way. I mean, if we had a giant checklist with all of the solvable problems and there are 10,000 problems on it, I think like 9,000 of them could be solved pretty easily and simply. But just nobody does it.

Now, there might be like 1,000 of the 10,000 where the solution is much more complex. But for many of them, it's actually a really simple solution. So this is one of those solvable problems. It's a problem, it's a real problem. There are elderly people on the roads who shouldn't be there. There are old people driving who shouldn't be driving. They're cognitively impaired and they're piloting these giant heavy hunks of metal

Down the highway. That's a problem. So it's on our checklist. It's on our checklist of problems. It's not at the top. It's not the number one problem, but it's also not at the bottom. I mean, people are hurt and killed every day because of this problem. And we sit around debating it. I mean, we actually don't debate it. We don't really talk about it. But whenever it comes up, it's debated. Like, what do we do about it? Even in this article, they say, well, it's a difficult, it's a complex, it's a how do you measure, how do you determine problems?

Now, it's not difficult. Here's the solution. I think everyone recognizes this is what we should require that everybody retake the driver's exam once they hit the age of 70, let's say. You can say 65, but let's just say 70. And then take it again every three years, at least, until you die.

Now, this would obviously not completely erase the car accidents caused by elderly drivers, but it would greatly, greatly, greatly, greatly reduce them. And there's no argument against it. Like, why don't we do that? How is that not the law in every state already? Of course you should read it. The idea that you should take a driver's exam once ever in your life. And so if you passed it when you were 17,

The implication is that 70 years later, it still counts. What? You might as well not even have a driver's exam at that point. If you're gonna have it at all, then it should be something that comes up again in life. There's no argument to get. The only argument you ever hear against having elderly people retake the exam

Is that, well, if you take their license away from the elderly person, they'll become depressed and isolated, which I get that. I know, that's tough. That's a tough thing. But that argument admits that there are a lot of elderly people on the road who wouldn't be able to pass a driver's exam. So you're admitting that. And what we're saying is that for the sake of elderly people maintaining their independence, people have to die.

Like younger people have to die on the roads every year so that old people can feel happier and drive around, which is madness. You know, and anytime you talk about something like this, people are always like, well, hey, why are you talking about it? That's not the biggest problem in the world right now. California is on fire, whatever. You know, it's like, yeah, I know it's not the biggest. So let's just cross this off the list.

Let's just go down and all these problems that aren't the biggest problems but are solved, just cross them off the list. Let's just do it. Let's deal with this problem. It could be easily done with a solution that there is no coherent argument against. And we don't do it. So it's just one of those things, one of many things where we look at this problem and people are dying because of it. And we say, well, what are you going to do? Well, I know what we could do. We could do this. It would totally work. Oh, yeah, yeah, but we're not going to do that.

Why aren't we going to do that? Yeah, we're just not. We're just not going to. We're just going to, yeah, we're just going to continue forever. We're going to continue forever allowing 85-year-olds who can't see drive. It's crazy to me. I don't get it. All right. I've had this one also on deck. I should mention it. This is from Yahoo. It says, vegans could be more likely to be depressed because they drink plant-based milk.

According to a recent study. And we know I talk a lot about milk issues on this. It's become part of my brand is discussing all different kinds of milk, milk related issues. I get involved in a lot of milk centric controversies. And so I saw this and I said, well, this is about milk. So this is apparently this is my wheelhouse.

Data collected from more than 350,000 participants enrolled in a UK biobank study found that those who drank semi-skimmed cow's milk were at a lower risk of both anxiety and depression compared with plant milk drinkers. Scientists from the Southern Medical University in China found that, followed so many people, so on, doesn't matter.

Those who consume plant-based milks, such as soy and almond, were found to have a 14% increased chance of depression. So that's the thing. It's no surprise. I'm sure that people who drink fake milk, who drink, as we know, almond milk is not milk. It's nut juice. It's juice from nuts is what it is. And I understand why we don't want to put that on the container, but that is what it is. But I'm sure they're depressed.

But I don't think it has anything to do with whatever is in the fake milk or with the nutrients they aren't getting from real milk. I think it's just that the experience of being vegan makes you depressed. You are depriving yourself of the basic elemental joy of a good meal. I mean, not just of milk, but if you're vegan, you can't have a good meal. If you're vegan, you can never have a good meal.

You can have a meal that is good in comparison to all the other crappy meals that you have, but you can't have an actual good meal if you're vegan. It's impossible. It doesn't exist. So they don't know what a good meal is. They don't even understand that food can be good. They don't know that. Like a vegan, especially if a vegan has been, God forbid, is conditioned to be a vegan from childhood. This is someone, it's like someone who's blind from birth. They don't even know what, like, they don't know what a rainbow is. They can't even conceive of it.

And if you're a vegan, especially if you've been vegan your whole life, you don't even know. The fact that food can be a good experience, it can be enjoyable to eat food, you don't even know that. You've never experienced it. And to you as a vegan, food is a necessary evil. It's a thing that you suffer through. So being a vegan, it's like being in a, you know, kind of a goblin in a cave underground who never experiences sunlight. Right.

And no offense to vegans, I don't mean it as an insult to say that you're all a bunch of goblins. I don't mean that you look like goblins. Well, a lot of you do, but that's not my point. My point is about the basic joys of life that you're not experiencing. And then again, this may be confusion of chicken and the egg kind of thing. What I mean is, are vegans depressed because they're vegans or are they vegans because they're depressed?

Maybe depressed, self-loathing, miserable people are more likely to become vegans as a way of punishing themselves. And then being vegan makes them even more depressed. I think it's probably something like that. It's a vicious cycle, but something. More research is needed. Let's get to the comment section. Let's do that. If you're a man, it's required that you grow up with a sweet baby game.

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Hey, Matt, some of your viewers are Christian conservative Canadians who also love freedom and free speech. We're not all libtardians. Yeah, I know. I understand that. And I appreciate you. And there were a lot of in response. You know, we did the show yesterday. I talked about, well, there's purchasing Greenland. There's taking taking possession of the Panama Canal are suggested.

potentially on the agenda for Trump. But there's also this thing about conquering Canada. And so I talked about waging a conquest of Canada. And for some reason, a lot of Canadians in the audience were upset about it. And I got a lot of comments like this saying, well, how could you say that you wanted to conquer? Well, look, I understand that not everyone in Canada is far left wacko. And like I said, I appreciate the conservative Canadians. I really do.

And I will make sure that you have comfortable accommodations in labor camps. I'll make sure you have the best cells out of anyone. You get the easiest jobs. I mean, they're going to be hard, back-breaking jobs. You're not going to get paid for them. But, you know, so no reason to be so upset is what I'm trying to say. Let's see.

Porn is terrible, but you can't ask for a smaller government and then continue passing more and more laws. Rather than asking the government to make sure your children are not watching porn, perhaps it's the parents' responsibility to make sure. I know it's a crazy concept. Now, okay, well, I'm not asking for a smaller government because smaller doesn't mean anything, okay? The whole, and I know conservatives have been saying this forever, and have you noticed that it never happens?

Conservatives have been chanting forever, small government and it literally never happens. The government has only grown ever. It's all it's done for 100 years. And so maybe that tells us that this slogan is not very effective. And one of the reasons it's not effective is cuz it doesn't mean anything. What do you mean smaller? Smaller than what? Smaller in what way? So we just solve all our problems by just making it smaller? That doesn't solve anything.

What I want is a more, among other things, is a more efficient government. And efficient means that you're being productive and you're not wasting a lot of effort and money. So yes, efficiency does often mean that, in effect, that the operation becomes, quote unquote, smaller because you're getting rid of a lot of the dead weight and a lot of the wasted effort and all the rest of it. But the goal is not smallness itself. The goal is efficiency.

And efficient means, in other words, that you are good at doing the things you're supposed to be doing. There's a very broad definition of efficient, but that's what I want from the government. And so that requires us to first determine what the government is supposed to be doing. There are a lot of things that it shouldn't be doing that it is doing, and I want it to stop doing those things. And yet there are still things that it should do. This is an important distinction. And I would say that

Putting some laws in place to prevent the multi-billion dollar porn industry from preying on millions of children is the kind of thing that the government should be doing. Protecting kids is the kind of thing the government should be concerned. Now, there's lots of things the government could do in the name of, quote unquote, protecting kids that are bad. They can use that as a cover to do things that actually have nothing to do with protecting kids. I understand that. But putting laws in place

to put some kind of insulation, some kind of filter system, some kind of shield in between this massive behemoth, hardcore porn industry and our kids. That actually is about protecting kids. And it's a kind of basic level of protection that not only is it appropriate to provide kids, but kids have a right to it.

We have an obligation to provide it. Yes, starting with parents, but not just parents. At a societal and political level, there is an obligation to do something, at least to try to protect these kids from this satanic industry. Another comment says, I did not expect us to bring back Manifest Destiny. Well, why not?

Why wouldn't we take? I mean, it's funny people talk about manifest destiny now like it's some clearly objectively bad thing. Manifest destiny, of course, is the belief in the 19th century that it was America's destiny, its calling, its vocation to stretch itself west across the continent to the Pacific. And it was this belief that drove the pioneers and explorers and settlers to do exactly that. And now we're told that manifest destiny was bad and it was racist and all this kind of stuff. Wasn't it obviously our destiny?

When the people talked about manifest destiny in the 19th century, isn't it clear that it was in fact our destiny? Was it not obviously our calling to do exactly what we did? To expand, to claim new land? What if we hadn't? What then? What if we hadn't done that? If there was no manifest destiny, what does the world look like right now? Now, if you're a really naive moron, you, I guess, would think that if America had just consigned itself to one coast,

Then everything west of the Mississippi would have remained in the control of warring bands of Stone Age tribes as it was at the time. And even if it had worked out that way, that would not be good. Okay, that would be absurd. Imagine in the year 2025 that we have our highly advanced society, our highly advanced civilization. But if you go in the woods and

You'll run into an Apache warrior who wants to peel your scalp off your head and wear it around his neck as a trophy. Okay? It's clear that that would not be an improvement. That's not what we want. But that's not even what would have happened. Okay? What would have happened, and this is an important fact of American history that most people don't seem to understand when they talk about the...

how terrible it was that America expanded and took all this land from Native Americans. I've addressed that so many times to talk about why this conquest of the wilderness was not a bad thing, but in fact, a great thing. But another aspect of that is that if we hadn't done it, it would not have just, this land would not have just remained in the hands of these warring bands of Indian tribes who were living 5,000 years in the past.

No, that's not what would happen. Other countries would have laid claim to it. They already had Great Britain, Spain, France, Russia. Eventually China would have gotten into the mix. So if not for Manifest Destiny, it would be the United States on the East Coast and then Europe part two on the West. Which is to say the United States wouldn't exist in that scenario. I mean, if the United States had never expanded, it would not exist in the year 2025.

So all of that, I would think, vindicates the idea of manifest destiny. And yet we still talk about it. Like it's, yeah, it's the reason you exist right now. You understand that? You exist because of it.

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Today we cancel the actor John Cryer, who is, of course, the former star of the sitcom Will & Grace, or may have been Two and a Half Men. I didn't bother to check. But in any event, Cryer appeared on Bill Maher's podcast this week where he offered his theory on why Donald Trump won. Watch. I think the whole country...

Even unless you're like stupid woke. I hope you're not but you know it is Hollywood somewhat stupidly work, okay The whole country was like I mean I think the biggest issue for the election one of the biggest ones was Democrats pointlessly totally just punted on immigration and let anybody who wanted to walk in for three and a half years did and

- Well, I think they would probably disagree that people walking in probably felt like it was a little harder. - No, no, no, actually there's a great 60 minutes piece on it where the border, I mean, you don't get 8 million people here by making it difficult. But there's, I mean, you see they're walking through and the border guys are just watching them do it. They're just watching them walk past. You never saw that? - I did not see that. - See, that doesn't get in the liberal media. That's the problem is the bubbles we live in.

I think I had it right. Like that kind of stuff is what lost the election for the Democrats. It's in all- Maybe part of it, I don't know. I think a lot- They have polling on it. Well, I think it's inflation. I think Americans hate inflation.

inflation. They hate inflation, they hate riots, and they hate black women. And they hate trans people. Dude, they just spent hundreds of millions of dollars humanizing trans people. And that's disgusting. Yeah, we shouldn't talk politics. Okay, we shouldn't. Great. We don't have to. Now, what makes this stupid is, well, everything about it, but let's narrow it down a bit.

Cryer gets the first part of the answer right. He says Trump won because Americans hate inflation and riots. That simplifies and condenses the issue quite a bit, but it's basically correct. Americans were tired of our wrecked economy and our lawless cities. They wanted economic stability and law and order.

But then Cryer throws in the claim that Americans also hate black women. So apparently his theory is that Americans correctly associated Kamala with economic decline and lawlessness, but would have still voted for her if not for the fact that she's black.

We would have said, well, we really hate inflation and crime, but she's white, so we'll take it. Never mind the fact that Trump beat Hillary Clinton in the first run, who is, last I checked, not black. Now, of course, this is all part of the mythology that woke idiots like Jon Cryer subscribe to. It's a mythology that, as we know, claims that America is racist. And according to this mythology, black women in particular get the harshest treatment. Black women are reviled and persecuted more than anyone else, they say. Never mind the fact that

Oprah is one of the wealthiest and most popular figures in the country, so is Beyonce. We were constantly told during the race that Michelle Obama's approval ratings were higher than any candidate or any potential candidate on either side. Now, I don't think any of those people should be popular, not because they're black, but because they're all pretty awful in their own ways. But they do cause some problems for the America hates black women narrative. In fact, here's the funny thing. Nearly all of the people who claim that Kamala lost because she's

sort of a black woman, would also say that Michelle Obama would have crushed Trump, even though Michelle Obama is blacker than Kamala. Now things took an even more ridiculous turn when the conversation moved to the trans issue. Listen. You're asking too much often to rewrite like the idea that when someone is born, there is a default setting for humans, male and female. Not everyone is. Now a real conservative would say, no, everyone is.

I would never say that. I think what a liberal says is yes, there's a default setting, but then there's a whole other section and that's great and we should protect those people, but don't pretend there isn't also a default setting. And you can't rewrite the world so that every baby is just a jump ball. Oh, it could be anything. No, if it's got a dick, it's probably a boy.

And if it's not, we'll deal with that in a compassionate way. But we'll also be apprised of the idea that children don't know about anything. Yes, sometimes it is obvious and we should address it that way. But I mean, kids...

The mighty-- I mean, the idea that I would, as a child, would have had to have dealt with something like this? Well, again, the people that go through it don't say, this is the life I want. No parent wants to be in the midst of those choices. It's terrifying. Some kids these days actually just do want to be trans. I don't agree. It's cooler, John. I don't agree. It's a thing. Nope.

I don't agree. Oh, come on. I don't agree with Bill Maher. That's the name of the show tonight. Well, your eyes are not open to that, I think. Okay, well, okay. There are some kids, especially, why is it like so much more prevalent like here than Indiana? Are they suppressing it there? Maybe a little. Yeah, there's a societal suppression, but it's like left-handedism. Being left-handed was suppressed.

for thousands of years amongst human beings. But once they, it was apparently in the 30s, scientists basically said, there's no, left-handedness doesn't actually do anything bad. Right. Left-handedness shot up. People just stopped training themselves to be right-handed. And this is a, you know, this has happened societally before. And that's the closest analog that I can think of.

Now, there are many problems with this. To start with, Bill Maher is presenting the weakest possible case for team sanity here. He says that male or female are the default settings for most humans, but not all humans, which is, of course, incorrect. It's not most humans. Every human who exists on the planet, who has ever existed, will ever exist, either falls into the category of male or female. There are no other categories. Those are the only two. So Bill's given up far too much ground to the other side at the outset of this conversation.

And any amount of ground given up is too much. Give them nothing because they deserve nothing and their ideas have no merit and no value. So John Cryer takes the ball and runs with it.

And he compares being trans to being left-handed and says that left-handedness was suppressed for thousands of years. And once the suppression stopped, left-handedness exploded. And he claims it's a similar thing that's happening with transgenderism. The explosion in trans identification is not because of social contagion. It's because the thousand-year campaign of suppression has come to an end. Now, there are a number of issues with this. First of all, left-handed people were not suppressed and persecuted for thousands of years.

John seems to think that there was some kind of global effort lasting millennia to oppress and subjugate the left-handed people of the world. That never happened. Maybe it should have. Left-handed people are freaks who shouldn't be trusted, but it didn't happen. In fact, some ancient societies revered left-handed people. Some societies associated the left hand with wisdom.

And at any rate, even if we had been rounding up and imprisoning left-handed mutants for hundreds of centuries, that still would do nothing to prove the point with transgenderism. It would do nothing to prove John's case. Actually, rather than proving it, the left-handed analogy undermines his case. Because left-handedness is a preference. It's not some kind of innate state of being. Is John admitting that transgenderism is the same kind of thing, a mere preference? Also,

And this is very important. A left-handed person does not cut off their right hand because they're left-handed. One does not affirm one's hand preference by having the opposite hand amputated. Everyone would agree that we should not be making permanent life-altering changes to anyone's body, at least of all child's body, based on their dominant hand. So even if we bought his analogy, it would not lead us all the way to his conclusion. It wouldn't even get us halfway there.

This is the problem for the proponents of gender ideology. Analogies are an extremely useful tool in making and explaining an argument. I use them all the time. The gender ideology proponent is not able to make any analogies. Every analogy backfires. They cannot say human beings can choose whether they're male or female, just like X.

Or they can't say, we should make permanent changes to a child's body if they say they're trans, just like we do X. Because these are things that have no analogy. In order to defend their position, they're using logic that they would not accept in any other area of life. They're making the kinds of arguments that if applied to literally anything else, in any other circumstance, everyone, including them, would reject.

There's no logical precedent for their position because it is not logical. Now, compare that to team sanity. We don't have this problem. We are overflowing with analogies. Our cups runneth over. We can say human beings can't choose their sex just like they can't choose their race or their height or their natural hair color or their genetic composition, their DNA.

In fact, it turns out that we have no say over any of the fundamental components of our physical identities. We can also say we shouldn't make permanent changes to a child's body if they say they're trans, just like we don't let children get tattoos or cosmetic procedures, etc. That's because our position on transgenderism is entirely consistent with our position on everything else. On the other hand, the defense of gender ideology exists in this kind of

logical vacuum. It requires you to make the kinds of arguments that you would never make otherwise. It requires you to contradict yourself, which is the very definition of an illogical position. And it is why John Cryer, from whatever show he's from, is today canceled. That'll do it for the show today. Thanks for watching. Thanks for listening. Talk to you tomorrow. Have a great day. Godspeed.

I've often said that gender-affirming care is health care, it is mental health care, and it can actually be suicide prevention care. I think I'm going to take some medicine so I can kind of like...

Transform into a boy, get surgery. After the surgery, I didn't really feel any better. When it stopped being a thing for adults and it started to be a, "Let's teach this to kids." Total lie. Manipulation. It's gaslighting. Please stop. He's a boy, not a girl. How could she do this to my son? What they're talking about is hormonal therapy or sex reassignment surgery on children. I thought fixing me externally would fix me internally.

But of course I was wrong. The fact that the state thinks that they're more important and have a better say in what happens to your child over the actual parent's opinion is egregious. Puberty blockers, surgeries, big money makers for hospitals, for physicians. All I want to do is hold my son. Are you asking me to lie to parents? And he said yes. This is an weaponized...

Use of a parent's sympathy and caring and concern by the left to destroy your child. Let's tell kids that maybe they can be the opposite sex. Maybe they actually are the opposite sex. It is an evil thing to tell children that happiness lies on the other side of puberty blockers or double mastectomies. The left so badly wants to blur these lines. That's a five alarm fire. It's criminal.