Ep. 1449 - How The FBI Is Willing To Risk Your Safety To Get Kamala Elected
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See representative for warranty details. Promotion is 20% off plus a 10% senior or military discount. One discount per household. Today, the Matt Wall Show, Democrats are celebrating an alleged drop in the crime rate. This is supposed to be proof that the Biden-Harris strategy of not fighting or prosecuting crime has somehow succeeded in creating less crime. But the actual statistics, of course, tell a very different story. Also, Donald Trump promises to kill the Department of Education. Let's hope he does. And the Washington Post shocks the world by publishing an op-ed, a

mostly positive op-ed, actually, about my new film, Am I Racist? We'll talk about all that and more today on The Matt Walsh Show.

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Shortly after the two ABC moderators entered the presidential debate on the side of Kamala Harris, there was a brief moment when Donald Trump pushed back. And it happened when David Muir finished one of his drive-by fact checks concerning the crime rates in this country. The moderator intended to immediately ask Kamala Harris a question so that Trump couldn't respond. But Trump did respond, and the moderator had no answer to what he said. Let's watch that moment again.

And we have a new form of crime. It's called migrant crime. And it's happening at levels that nobody thought possible. President Trump, as you know, the FBI says overall violent crime is actually coming down in this country. Excuse me, the FBI defrauded. They were defrauding statements. They didn't include the worst cities. They didn't include the cities with the worst crime. It was a fraud, just like their number of 818,000 jobs that they said they created turned out to be a fraud. President Trump, thank you. I'll let you respond, Vice President.

Well, I think this is so rich coming from someone who has been prosecuted.

Now, if you're going to debate a candidate when you're really supposed to be the moderator, then you should at least be able to debate. But Muir had no answer when Trump refuted his canned talking point about FBI data. He sheepishly had to pivot to Kamala, who started laughing awkwardly. And that's because what Trump said was true. This summer, when the FBI released its quarterly uniform crime report showing that crime was down, they didn't include data from New York or Los Angeles. The NYPD and LAPD

are the two biggest police forces in the entire country. But they didn't report their data at all, apparently because they couldn't comply with the FBI's new data tracking requirements in time, supposedly. And that wasn't particularly unusual. Back in 2022, roughly one third of the country's 6,000 police agencies didn't report crime data to the FBI. This isn't some partisan talking point that I'm making here. The FBI admitted all this. It's just a fact.

Now, yesterday, though, the FBI released its latest updated annual report. And the agency claims that this time around, the report comprehensively documents violent crimes that occurred in 2023 because the data comes from law enforcement agencies that cover more than 95% of the country's population, including this time the NYPD and the LAPD. And according to the new data, car thefts went up by about 20% from 2022 to 2023. So that's a massive increase.

But violent crime was supposedly down overall by 3%, while murder and non-negligent homicide were down more than 10%. Reported rapes were down nearly 10% as well, and property crimes dropped 2.5%.

Now, as you'd expect, left-wing media outlets celebrated the news. They portrayed it as vindication for Kamala Harris and her debating partner, David Mueller. Watch. Just moments ago, the FBI released a new report showing the national crime rate decreased in 2023. NBC's Ken Delaney is with us this morning. Ken, good morning. Break down what this report says.

Good morning, Jose. This report is entitled Crime in the Nation. It's the FBI's best estimate of what happened last year in terms of crime, and it shows a significant decrease. Violent crime decreased an estimated 3% last year, according to the FBI. Murder and manslaughter came down an estimated 11.6%. That's the biggest drop in the last 20 years.

aggravated assault down 2.8%. And here's what's also important to know about this, Jose, 'cause there's been a lot of criticism of FBI crime data. This data covered 94% of the US population. And while it's true that not all crimes are reported, all murders are counted. And what this shows big picture, because this is the second year in a row that the FBI has documented the decline in violent crime, it shows that after a big spike during the pandemic, violent crime has backed down to around 2019 levels.

So a few things about this. First of all, several large police departments, including the NOPD and the LAPD, did not report demographic data about those crimes to the FBI.

If you pull up these police departments on the FBI's website, you won't be able to see the race and gender of assailants or their victims, for example. On social media yesterday, a lot of people interpreted this as proof that NOPD and LAPD didn't report violent crimes at all, but that's not true. They did report violent crimes, but they left out information about who's committing them and who the victims are, which is still a notable omission, especially when the Biden administration and Kamala Harris are claiming that we live in a white supremacist hellscape.

where it's not safe for black people to go about their lives. And it's an unexplained omission too. My producers reached out to the FBI, LAPD, and NOPD to ask why this data was missing. We have not heard back yet. But in general, the FBI's numbers are being accurately reported by MSNBC and other mainstream outlets. If you think the FBI's data captures all the crime that's occurring, then yes, the data is a sign that this country is safer than it was a year ago. And that'd be a good thing if that was true.

The problem is that this data doesn't, in fact, capture all the crime that's occurring or anywhere close to it. As even that MSNBC report conceded, the only way for the FBI to hear about crimes is if someone reports them to a police department in the first place. The victim needs to report it, and then the police department needs to then report that to the FBI. That's the only way we know. At least that's the only way it shows up in these statistics.

And that may not be happening as much as it should be because people don't have any confidence that police or prosecutors will do anything about the crime that is reported.

Unless we're talking about homicides, which are usually reported because it's hard to conceal a body, this is a significant problem with the data. And the Biden administration itself acknowledges that. Earlier this month, the DOJ released a report entitled Criminal Victimization 2023. The report is unique in that it doesn't rely on police department data. Instead, it captures non-fatal crimes that weren't reported to law enforcement using something called the National Crime Victimization Survey, or NCVS.

which is administered by the Bureau of Justice Statistics and the Census Bureau. And as the DOJ put it, the NCVS collects information on whether crimes were reported or not reported to police and on the reasons why the crime was reported or not reported. Victims may not report a crime for a variety of reasons, including fear of reprisal or getting the offender in trouble, believing that police would not or could not help, and believing the crime to be too personal or too trivial to report.

So the reason the DOJ collects the data is that, as it turns out, there are a lot of crimes that aren't reported, far more than you might think. Quoting from the report, approximately 45% of violent victimizations were reported to police in 2023, which was not significantly different from 2022. The percentage of rape or sexual assault victimizations reported to police increased significantly from 21% in 2022 to 46% in 2023. A

A lower percentage of robbery victimizations were reported to police in 2023, 42%, then in 2022, 64%. During this period, the percentage of overall property crime victimization reported to police decreased from 32% to 30%, due in part to a decline in the reporting of motor vehicle thefts to police from 81% to 72%.

So when you hear that the FBI reports that property crimes were down 2% in 2023, you have to keep in mind that according to the DOJ's crime survey, only around a third of property crimes are reported to police in the first place. And the majority of other non-fatal violent crimes aren't reported either. The exception appears to be motor vehicle thefts, which are reported at a rate of more than 70%, which is still down from the year before that.

down significantly actually. And that just so happens to be the same category that, according to the FBI data, increased from 2022 to 2023. Although 70% of reports, even that seems remarkably low. Because that means that 30% of car theft victims didn't even report it to the cops. How could that be the case? Well, I actually have some personal experience here. I'm

I had my car stolen out of a parking lot downtown a couple of years ago here in Nashville. And I did report it to the police, cuz that's what you think you should do. And precisely nothing happened. A detective followed up a few days later, but that was it. I never heard another word about it. In fact, I was told that they had eyewitnesses and I believe video of the perpetrators.

But they were, as I was told, a bunch of kids and there wasn't much that could be done or would be done. Yeah, which is very common, it's a very common experience for people that report crimes to the police. So if my car is ever stolen again, my incentive to report it is much lower because I know now that nothing will happen. Now, I still will report it in this case because I need to report it in order for insurance to cover it. But

That would be my only incentive. It'd be the only reason I'm doing it is just file the paperwork so I can send it to the insurance companies. And that's also probably why car theft reports are so much higher relative to other types of crime. But in any case, the point is that a lack of enforcement has a very demoralizing effect on the victims of crime. The takeaway from the DOJ survey is that under the Biden administration, crime has increased across the board.

Here's how the Wall Street Journal summarized the survey data. Quote, the NCVS report for 2023 finds no statistically significant evidence that violent crime or property crime is dropping in America, excluding simple assault, the type of violent crime least likely to be charged as a felony. The violent crime rate in 2023 was 19% higher than in 2019, the last year before the defund the police movement swept to the country.

The problem is especially severe in major cities. This is something that's also not captured by the reporting we're hearing about the FBI's data, but it's true. Major cities are completely unrecognizable from what they were just a few years ago, and there's no sign that this trend is going to change. Quoting again from the journal, according to the NCVS, the urban violent crime rate increased 40% from 2019 to 2023. Including simple assault, the urban violent crime rate rose 54% over that span, from

From 2022 to 2023, the urban violent crime rate didn't change to a statistically significant degree. So these higher crime rates appear to be the new norm in America's cities.

Now, of course, there are reasons to be skeptical of survey data in general. The Bureau of Labor Statistics just admitted they overestimated job growth in this country by something like 800,000 jobs. And that was because the surveys they used evidently aren't very reliable. But in this case, the DOJ survey has a few advantages over the FBI's data. As I mentioned, it captures crimes that aren't reported to the police.

And if you wanna know the real crime rate, you have to take that into account. Because otherwise, all you're getting is the crime reporting rates, which is not the same as the crime rates. And additionally, the DOJ has been running this survey since the Nixon administration. So they've been doing it for a long time. But the FBI recently overhauled its data collection method in 2022, which makes it very hard to compare year to year changes in crime. And that's a major problem

Because it's essentially impossible to establish a baseline for comparison with the FBI data. By contrast, with the survey data, we can get a broader look at the overall increase in crime under the Biden-Harris administration, not just looking at 2022 and 2023. And more to the point, there are plenty of other indicators that the DOJ survey is correct, and that America has become a more dangerous place to live in under Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.

For one thing, you can go to any major city in the country and visit a CVS or a Rite Aid and see how many items are hidden behind glass. We'll talk about that more in the five headlines. You can look at how police departments have shrunk all over the country from New Orleans to New York. You can also look at some other indicators that no one's talking about. For example, the homicide victimization rate in this country increased by 19% from 2019 to 2023. That's nearly 20% increase in the rate of people getting killed by other people, whether intentionally or unintentionally.

And you can see the chart there. It seems like a rather significant jump, to put it mildly. But this is data that no mainstream media outlet will report. It's only because of an account on X called Data Hazard, which came up with the numbers by looking at death certificates, that we have this information at all. So think about that. We have a 20% increase in the homicide victimization rate in just four years. Any other country at any other time in history would call that a crisis.

But using that kind of language wouldn't play well for Kamala Harris. So instead, her promoters are resorting to a familiar tactic. They're selectively relying on data that helps their candidate while ignoring the data that contradicts or complicates that narrative. It's all part of an effort, once again, to convince you to ignore what's happening right in front of you, what you can see with your own eyes, what you're experiencing in your own lives. They don't care that more people are dying since 2019 or that most violent crimes are still going unreported.

They only care about one thing, which of course is winning in November and retaining their power. So they're disregarding all nuance, all complicating factors in their reporting on this. But the rest of us, people actually want to live in this country regardless of who the president is. We can't accept that. A government that will lie about the deaths of its own citizens will lie about anything. And after the one-sided misleading response we saw to the FBI's data yesterday, it's clear that that's exactly the kind of government that Kamala Harris supporters want.

Let's get to our five headlines.

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So Trump had a rally in, I think it was Pennsylvania last night. And here was my favorite part of what he had to say. Let's watch that. We spend more money per pupil than any other country by far. And yet we're at the bottom of the list. Out of 40, we're ranked about number 40. And I'm gonna close the Department of Education and move education back to the states. And we're gonna do it fast. Maybe I'll have you do that.

I'll use Lee. Maybe I'll have you, you could do it. That's not too easy. We'll get somebody great. We'll get Lee Zeldin is here with us tonight. I think that's a job for Lee. So this is a great idea. It's exactly what needs to happen. It's what many conservatives like myself have been calling for since forever. And I hope Trump actually does it. Now, if he does it, if he closes the Department of Education, as he just promised to do, I

It'll be a major, major panic if he does, panic by the media and by the left. There's gonna be hysteria unlike anything we've seen before, truly. I mean, and we're used to seeing a lot of hysteria around Donald Trump, completely irrational hysteria as hysteria always is by definition. But this will dwarf all of that. I mean, can you imagine if he actually shut down the Department of Education?

The way the media will report that, the kinds of things they'll say about it. It's a war on education. He's destroyed education. No children will be educated. Education is dead. No one's gonna learn to read or write anymore. It's just like Hitler all over again, somehow. So that's gonna happen. But Trump should do it anyway. He'll have nothing to lose. Final term, he's almost 80 years old. They hate his guts anyway. They wanna put him in prison. They wanna kill him. They've tried to do both. So

Go in there like a damn wrecking ball, a bull in a china shop, whatever metaphor you like, and get it done. I mean, this should be a day one priority. Kill the Department of Education, kill it with fire, burn it down, dance around its ashes. Metaphorically, I mean, not literally, in a poetic sense, burn it down and dance around its ashes joyously. And as Trump briefly pointed out in that clip,

If we're judging our current education system by its fruits, as we should, then the case is basically closed here. I mean, the fruits, the results are abysmal. The education system is simply failing to educate a huge number of kids who go through the system. I'd say it's failing to properly educate basically all of them. The Department of Education was founded about 40 years ago or so.

So just ask yourself this, are kids today generally better educated than kids 40 years ago? Does anyone think that? Anyone at all? Take an 18-year-old high school graduate. Let's go back to 1954, just to make it nice and round numbers. 18-year-old high school graduate in 1954, 18-year-old high school graduate in 2024, who's better educated?

Who is more literate? Who is more knowledgeable about history and literature and civics? Who's a more mature, well-adjusted, well-spoken, articulate person? Is there any question? I mean, would anyone put their money on the 2024 graduate in that race? I don't think so. And that's because our education system is a catastrophic failure.

And it's such a failure that it has created a civilization level crisis. It's a crisis that cannot be entirely fixed by abolishing the Department of Education because you're still gonna have the public school system that will still exist. And ultimately, the public school system itself needs to be abolished, the whole thing. The entire system should be dismantled because it is utterly failing in its basic job to educate kids.

There are a lot of other reasons why we should destroy the public school system, get rid of it, abolish it. But you don't really need to get past this, which is they're not doing the job. You've got a whole bunch of poorly educated or basically uneducated 17 and 18 year olds coming out of that system after spending 12 to 13 years in it. And they've learned almost nothing.

They know basically nothing about the world, about history, about literature, about any of the subjects that they should be well versed in after spending all that time in that system. They know basically nothing. And we all kind of understand this. I mean, rarely will you hear anybody step up to the plate to argue that the average American citizen is pretty well educated, pretty knowledgeable. There's a reason why

One of the cheapest things you can do as a YouTuber, right, is just go out to any street corner somewhere and ask basic trivia questions to random people passing by. And if you do that for 30 minutes, you're guaranteed to find a whole bunch of adults who can't tell you, you know, who was the first president of the United States? What century was the Civil War fought in? You know, things like that.

We all know that it's very, very easy to find adults who cannot answer those kinds of questions. Questions that with a properly functioning education system, seven-year-olds would be able to answer. And what is that an indictment of? It's like, so everyone knows that. And yet few people, relatively few people make the obvious connection. Who do we blame for that? Of course, you primarily blame the education system. That's the system that's supposed to be doing all that stuff. And they aren't doing it.

So if we can all kind of agree that frankly, there are a whole bunch of morons that we're surrounded by in this country, which we are, who do we blame? It's the education system is supposed to make sure that doesn't happen. That's your job. You're not doing it. You are failing. It's not working. So the whole system should be totally destroyed. But this is a good start. The more localized you can make education, the better.

Education is not something that can be handled by a bureaucracy. Bureaucracies can't handle anything. They make everything worse, especially education. And education also cannot be mass produced like iPhones in a Chinese sweatshop somewhere. It's an individual thing. And you have to educate children individually as individuals to the extent possible. And obviously, you can't do that

Even in a homeschool environment, even with our kids in homeschool, they get as individual as an education can be, they receive. But even then, we've got multiple kids. And so it's not entirely individualized. But you want to get as close to that as you can. And the more you expand it and expand it and expand it to make it ultimately a federal issue, then you just have this

assembly line, you know, wholesale kind of approach. And it just doesn't, it just doesn't work. Here's a report out of California about a familiar site. And this kind of relates back to the opening monologue. But well, we'll play this first. And then I want to tell you, I want to read some comments about this from people on the left, sort of how they interpreted and who they blame for it. But let's watch this.

Locking up shelves to protect items is what some Rite Aid stores in Los Angeles are doing due to a rise in retail crime. It's really unfortunate. This is video of a store in Compton where you can see nearly all items are under a lock and key from paper plates to candy.

At this Rite Aid in Santa Ana, a different view. Items are out in full display, including makeup and other essentials. The same thing at this Calabasas location. And in Beverly Hills, this Rite Aid has some beauty products locked in shelves. We did ask Rite Aid for more information on the security changes, if they are being made at specific stores or if they are being added to all. We have not received a response.

Now, this clip is being passed around Twitter with some commentators unhappy about it. Unhappy and blaming Rite Aid for this. So here's someone named Christopher Webb who identifies himself, not surprisingly, as a lifelong Dem. He says this. I know I'm not the only one who's had enough of these convenience stores keeping everything under lock and key. Who has time to wait 10 minutes for an employee to unlock a deodorant? Amazon's the beneficiary of this bad business strategy, Rite Aid. Another commenter agrees.

These retailers spent millions putting everything in locked cabinets because they everyone claiming crime, which was debunked. My target now leaves all the doors open and you can't take carts down the aisle because of the doors. It's insulting and stupid. Well, that's good news. Crime has been debunked. Did you know that? It's okay, everybody. They debunked crime. Crime is a myth. It's a right wing conspiracy. There's no crime. So if you think you were the victim of crime,

And you say, I was just a victim of a crime. Well, you're gonna have this swoop into the scene to say, excuse me, actually, that's been debunked. No, someone just shot me and stole my wallet. No, that's been actually, actually, that's been debunked. It's debunked. Sorry, it didn't happen. Crime doesn't exist. People don't commit crimes. What are you talking about? It's never happened. So why are stores locking up merchandise? Well, because,

Because they enjoy losing money. They are deliberately making shopping less convenient for their customers because they want to lose money. This is a classic get poor quick scheme by these dastardly retailers. They're like anti-grifters. They're the opposite of grifters. They engage in dishonest schemes in order to lose money on purpose. That's what's happening here, apparently. At least that is the version that we get from the left. That's the vision of

That's how much these morons understand basic human nature and basic business principles. That's the kind of insight these people have into life, that that's what they think. They think that the stores just wanna lose money. That's what motivates these big corporations is to lose money. No, of course, in reality, crime is a very real thing. And the reason stores do this is that there's so much shoplifting that they have no choice. Yeah, it's incredibly annoying. We all agree on that.

I was just in Walmart the other day and they had shampoo and razors locked behind glass. It was the first time in this Walmart, which I go to all the time, it was the first time that I'd seen that. And this is a recent development that they put all that stuff behind glass. And I actually ended up not buying the shampoo and the razors that I needed, which is what I came there for.

Because I didn't want to wait around for an employee to come and unlock the stuff. And to me, it's time consuming and also embarrassing. The idea that I have to have an employee come and I have to ask their permission, like I'm a child. Mommy, can I get the shampoo? And then they're gonna monitor me while I'm judging my shampoo purchase. Okay, if I go for the scented shampoo, all of a sudden I'm getting judged. Okay, I like the scented shampoo.

I don't think we need to, this is not a communal thing. Why are you sitting there watching the shampoo that I'm buying? So I ended up not even, I just went somewhere else. And I can make a movie where I intentionally antagonize rooms full of people to the point where they call the cops on me, and I'm fine with that. I can handle that. But I can't handle calling an employee to unlock the shampoo for me. That I can't do. That's too cringe even for me. So what's the takeaway here?

Yes, stores are definitely losing money because of this. I know that because they lost my money and I can only assume I'm not the only one. And it's a basic fact of economics. It's a consumer habits 101. The more convenient something is, the more likely that people are to do it, the less convenient, the less likely. So why are stores doing it? Are they unaware of this fact? Does Walmart need a lesson

from these Twitter commenters in how to get people to buy stuff? Are the bigwigs at Walmart checking Twitter and seeing this comment from whatever his face and saying, did you see this? Apparently, this is making us lose money. I didn't know. Yeah, I had no idea. I thought more people would buy it if you lock it behind glass. I think it'd make people intrigued. They would think that it has more value. And so now there'd be lines around the block to buy shampoo.

No, I don't think that's the way it's working. Walmart made like $650 billion last year, okay? They made enough to buy entire countries. And so I think they know a thing or two about consumer habits. I think they understand basic economics, okay? I'm not much of a trust the experts guy, and the left usually is. But this is one area where, yeah, you kind of trust the experts. If I go into Walmart and they're doing something,

I just sort of assume that they're doing that because that's the best way to make money in this circumstance. Like, they're pretty good at making money. I mean, they're pretty good. This is Walmart we're talking about. And so, yeah, I mean, whatever. If I went to a Walmart and they had like a, they built a huge moat around it with crocodiles in it.

I would say like, okay, well, I guess this is the best way for them to make money right now. Cuz this is Walmart. They know they wouldn't do it if, I don't understand how that could be the case, but it must be because they wouldn't be doing it otherwise. And yet we do know that in a vacuum, certainly you lose money by putting this stuff behind glass. So what does that mean? It means that the shoplifting problem isn't just bad, it's really, really, really bad.

That's the takeaway. That's the lesson that a rational person can draw that Walmart and Rite Aid and all the rest of them, they're looking at this and they're saying, yeah, we're gonna lose money if we lock all this stuff behind glass. We'll lose more if we don't. And so they're doing the least bad option. Shoplifting is a crisis. Crime is a crisis.

Why? Well, because our cultural degradation has reached a point where so many people have not been raised with a basic moral foundation. Don't steal is like one of the most basic, most elementary level moral lessons that you're supposed to teach your kids. And a lot of people have not been taught that. It's a scary thought, but there's a lot of people in this country where they say, well, if I can take that and have it for free, why wouldn't I?

And if you try to explain the moral, it's like you're talking to a wall. For them, it's yeah, I'll take it, it's free. I'll just take it. If I can take it, I don't have to pay for it. That's what I'll do. And then meanwhile, and certainly not unrelated to this, you got these Soros DAs across the country who've stopped prosecuting these kinds of crimes. Rather than doubling down and getting tougher on minor quote unquote crimes like shoplifting, which is what they should do, they've stopped prosecuting them entirely.

So you end up with a whole bunch of morally stunted human beings who have no compunction about stealing, along with a justice system that lacks the willpower to do anything about it. And, you know, you add those two factors together and now I can't buy shampoo without adult supervision at Walmart. Right. That's the way that it all it all kind of shakes out.

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and become a member. You can watch it on demand anytime you want. The documentary explores one of the most debated questions of our time. It's been amazing to see how this journey, and to go on this journey and find an answer and how it's resonated with audiences across the world. You'd watch the film that started it all, What is a Woman? Go to dailywire.com slash subscribe to join today. Use code DW30 for 30% off your new Daily Wire Plus membership. Now let's get to our daily cancellation.

Well, we know that the mainstream media is corrupt, dishonest, and both intellectually and morally bankrupt. That is the fundamental reason why, as we've been tracking on the show for the past few weeks, mainstream film critics have refused to review my new film, Am I Racist? But credit where credit is due, a few journalists, even if they aren't film critics, from a few major publications, have had the gumption to acknowledge the movie's existence. And yesterday, most unexpectedly,

The Washington Post was added to that list. The film critic at the Post, whoever it is, still has not reviewed the film and probably never will. But the journalist Megan McArdle did bravely venture to theaters to watch the movie and wrote about it. Wrote about it mostly positively, it turns out, after the fact. And here's the headline. You might not enjoy Am I Racist? You should watch it anyway, which I could not agree more. Whether you like it or don't, still watch it. That's my message.

Now, even before reading her piece, I'm impressed simply that she's willing to do the thing that people who are paid to watch and write about movies have been too afraid to do. But the readers of The Washington Post are not so impressed. In fact, their reaction demonstrates why most mainstream outlets have been too afraid to venture down this road. And we'll take a look at their reaction in just a moment. But first, let's read a little bit of McArdle's take on the film.

She begins, as I drove to the AMC Theater in Danvers, Massachusetts, my phone kept peppering me with the same plaintive question. Am I racist? It was startling the first time it happened. And for a second, I wanted to reassure my phone that no consumer electronic device can't be racist. But

The phone wasn't really asking. Rather, it was reminding me that I had tickets for the latest movie by Matt Walsh, a conservative podcaster and provocateur who was probably most famous for his film, What is a Woman? That movie apparently did well enough to justify releasing the new one onto about 1,500 screens this month. It was number four at the box office, albeit a distant fourth in a very slow week, which is why I was going to see it. While you might not like this suggestion, you should do the same. Just, you know,

FYI, actually, it wasn't a very slow week. Our film came out only a week after Beetlejuice set box office records for the month. And we weren't a distant fourth. We were like 700K behind the third place film, which isn't really distant. And that was Deadpool and Wolverine. But, you know, but who's counting? I mean, I'm counting obsessively every day, but let's not get hung up on those details. Continuing.

I'm not promising you'll enjoy the movie. If you're on the liberal to progressive side, you'll think it's simplistic and unfair, which, yes, obviously. But it's also effective, and people on that end of the spectrum should watch it to understand why it works and why the left keeps providing Walsh such a rich trove of targets. If you don't like the people he's lampooning, it's easy to convince yourself that he's revealing something deep and important, just as I've heard progressives argue that Borat movies were laying bare the hateful underbelly of America.

But what Walsh is actually revealing is two not very surprising realities of human nature. First, that every group has an awful fringe, and it's easy to make that group look bad if only the fringe's worst moments survive the cutting room floor. Second, that the human instinct for avoiding confrontation is exploitable if you're sufficiently willing to violate the social contract.

Both points have already been amply demonstrated by a long history of cults and dictatorships, not to mention middle school. Yet to give Walsh his due, it's still jaw dropping when participants in the ersatz diversity workshop sit silently or even participate as he berates a sick looking elderly man in a wheelchair for being a racist. Walsh eventually stops the workshop when it seems as though they're actually considering flagellating themselves with the whips that he's passed out.

So this is not exactly a rave review. She credits the film for being effective, but also calls it simplistic and unfair. She also attempts to absolve the left of any blame for what we document in the movie. And she does that by writing off, you know, Robin DiAngelo and company as the fringe. Now,

As one of the guys who made the film, I, of course, disagree with these assessments. The core message of the film may be in many ways simple, but that's not the same as being simplistic. And the Robin DiAngelo's of the world are certainly not in any way the fringe of the left. Robin DiAngelo conveys and promotes the

left wing racial ideology, not a fringe version of it, but a mainstream version of it. I mean, this is a woman who, as she confesses in the film, is hired by Fortune 500 companies and major government agencies to do workshops for their employees. And calling that fringe, I think, is rather absurd by analogy. And it's hard to come up with an analogy for the right because nobody on the right has access to those kinds of institutions.

Imagine if Sean Hannity ever found himself in an embarrassing situation and I tried to claim that he's just a, well, he's just a fringe right winger. I mean, say what you want about Sean Hannity, he's definitely not a fringe character on the right. And Robin DiAngelo is considerably less fringe than that on the left. After all, the most mainstream thing a conservative can do is host a show on Fox News on the left and

Mainstream means that you're doing work for Coca-Cola and Google and Netflix and so on, which is what Robin DiAngelo says that she's done in the film. And that's the kind of mainstream that Robin DiAngelo and her cronies are. And it's as mainstream as you can get. Okay, I cannot think of anything more mainstream. Google is like the definition of mainstream.

And so if you're getting hired by Google, then you are mainstream. You're the mainstream of the mainstream on the left anyway. So I think McArdle is incorrect in some of her analysis. But still, I give her credit for offering any analysis at all, even a wrong analysis. And it's not entirely wrong. So here's how she wraps everything up.

A number of the people attending his workshop walk out as the strangeness escalates. And earlier in the film, he gets kicked out of a workshop that someone else runs. But that happens only after he leaves the room, giving participants time to figure out who he is and reach consensus on expelling him.

Most people sit through his provocations because, well, it would be rude to leave or point out how bizarre his suggestions are. That itself is telling, however, because some of his targets are also exploiting those same conciliatory social instincts, which is what makes the movie's jokes land. When progressive activist Syra Rao monologues about the awfulness of white women to a group of white women at one of her race dinner events, which reportedly cost up to $5,000 to stage, she says,

The faces of the guests foreshadow those of Walsh's workshop participants. The frozen anxiety of someone witnessing a social offense and unwilling to return it in kind. That's also...

What you see on the face of celebrity diversity consultant Robin DiAngelo when a bewigged Walsh gives all his cash to a black producer as reparations and invites DiAngelo to do the same. I dropped my head into my hands as DiAngelo went scurrying for her wallet. Though I confess, I also laughed because you can't help think of how many times DiAngelo has been paid for advice on how white people ought to interact with people of color.

And some of that advice is only slightly less bizarre and patronizing than suggesting we haul out our wallets and tip them $20. D'Angelo and Rao and a number of others gained money and fame during the Great Awakening because decent people, genuinely concerned about America's racial divides, were too polite to point out that they sounded like lunatics. Those well-intentioned Americans had their social instincts hacked, the machinery diverted into a continuous loop of unproductive navel-gazing instead of the racial justice they were trying to achieve.

That's what left them vulnerable when Matt Walsh showed up to exploit the same bug. Now, that's her main takeaway, and she's right. What we attempted to do in the film successfully, I think, is tap into the same exploitation and manipulation methods that these DEI race hustlers use and turn it against them. And if McArdle noticed that, then she understood the basic point of the film, even though I could quibble with some of her analysis. But

The basic thrust of it, she understood and is articulating, I think, very well. Her readers, though, are doing quite a bit more than quibbling with her analysis. In fact, they are offended that she's offering any kind of analysis at all. So I perused the comment section on the Washington Post website, and I'll give you a brief sampling, enough to kind of get the basic gist. And as I read these, I'm going to ask our editors to put some sad piano music in the

of these distraught commenters who have been betrayed by this, effectively, this movie review from a journalist. Here's what they have to say. Just reading a few. "Yeah, I'm gonna give my money to someone who fights everything I support. If he was being sincere in doing the work, that would be one thing. But to pay to see a mockumentary about racism from an alt-right Trumper? To put money in that guy's pocket? To go to see this to, as they say, own the libs as a liberal? Well, that's an easy pass."

Another says, "My God, the depth of your stupidity and that of Walsh is deeply, truly staggering." Or is it just pure bigotry? Or is it just running a con on suckers for money? We know why moronic movies like this work. It's because they have a huge propaganda apparatus constantly lying to these people. And that includes grifters like you. It's because they were raised by people unconcerned with truth or facts or history or empathy with others. And many were told this was just God's will.

We should give a person money who has openly supported theocracy and fascism so we can understand? Should I donate money to Nazis so I can understand? The next one says, "Trying to justify and normalize racism has been the goal of the right for years. Now they have a whoppo opinion writer going to lengths to explain racism is okay because the fringe left has some crazy people? Nice try." Another says, "So he's not sincere, therefore is a racist, and thinks this is all something to laugh about.

Why would you support and promote this project, Ms. McArdle? Unless you yourself are happily and openly racist too. Y'all are effing weird. Another says, I didn't know anything about Matt Walsh, the person that created the movie recommended here by Megan McArdle. I would have more respect for McArdle in the post if I had never read this column, if I had never known anything about Matt Walsh. And another says, Walsh's last movie was utterly repugnant. If you paid to watch another movie by him for anything other than science or journalism,

you just might have a problem. And one more, this grifter movie has nothing to do with racism. It's about owning the libs and getting famous and rich off the MAGA goobers who will confirm their biases. So pretty much like all the rest of the current Republican cult from the orange leader down. Now I have to say, I really take exception to that last comment. He says the movie isn't about racism, it's actually about getting rich and famous. But why can't it be about racism and getting rich and famous?

I mean, two things can be true at once, right? We could kill multiple birds with one stone here. And as for the rest of these comments, the most important thing to keep in mind is that these are people who have not seen the movie. They object to anyone seeing it at all. They didn't even pay attention to McArdle's analysis. It didn't matter what her analysis was. In their minds, she betrayed them

simply by watching it. I mean, this is the cult mentality that you find on the left. And although the right has plenty of issues of its own, you don't find anything quite like this on our side. Conservatives would not get angry at a right-wing commenter for watching a Michael Moore movie and offering a perspective on it. In fact, if there's a new Michael Moore movie out, which hasn't been in a long time, and people are talking about it and the left is celebrating it, I think if you're a right-wing commentator, you're actually kind of expected to watch it.

So that you can give your take on it, cuz your audience wants to know, they wanna know, what do you think about this thing? And indeed, pretty much every movie Hollywood churns out, documentaries and narrative features are made by raging leftists. As a conservative commentator myself, I don't have to worry that my audience will dogpile me if I watch a movie and give my thoughts on it. You find this attitude on the left for two basic reasons.

The first is that their worldview is a brittle, fragile thing. It cannot withstand any serious or even not so serious challenge, which means they have to steadfastly avoid anything that might challenge it. C.S. Lewis once wrote that a young man who wishes to remain a sound atheist cannot be too careful of his reading. And the same could be said about a young man or a woman or an old man or woman who wishes to remain a sound leftist.

But the other thing that comes out in these comments and also in the backlash that YouTube reviewer Jeremy Johns experienced when he dared to notice that my movie exists is that many on the left have come to believe that they own the art form of film itself. If you're on the right, you know, you've long since grown accustomed to the fact that, as we just established, virtually every movie you've ever seen was made by people who disagree with you and probably hate you.

Leftists have had the exact opposite experience and this has given them a sense of kind of artistic entitlement. They believe that art belongs to them. Conservatives who make art are treated as intruders, as burglars, kind of sneaking through the window in the middle of the night. The only appropriate response is to kind of shoo them away. They don't belong here. Art is not for them. That's the attitude. And it's a delusion that I'm quite happy to break, I have to say.

I will say, though, that I did find one comment on the Washington Post website from somebody who says they actually watched the film. And here's what the comment says. Quote, I went out of my way to see it last week. What a horrible excuse for a movie. Like watching MLK on steroids. Now, I promise you, I did not make that comment up. This is someone insulting me by, I guess, calling me MLK on steroids. I don't know if he means that I'm like MLK, but extremely muscular, or if he means that

In a more kind of philosophical sense that I'm like a civil rights pioneer turned up to the nth degree. Maybe he means it in both ways. I'm a muscular, turbocharged civil rights icon. I can only assume that's what he's trying to say. And all I can say to that is guilty as charged. Perhaps if we do a sequel in the next film, I'll pass around a petition to change the Martin Luther King Jr. monument to the Matt Walsh monument. It's an idea worth considering at least.

So that comment was obviously correct and deeply, deeply rational, I think. But the other ones, not as much. And that is why the Washington Post readers who are having a heart attack because somebody watched my movie are all 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. The stage is set. The stakes are sky high. Senator Vance, Governor Walz face off. But who will land the knockout punch?

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