Ep. 1667 - The Pope Hosts Cringe ‘Climate Justice’ Event

58m
Today on the Matt Walsh Show, Pope Leo hosts a “climate justice” event at the Vatican. Should climate justice be a priority in the midst of Christian persecution all over the globe? Should it be the priority under any circumstance at all? Also, the Trump Administration restores law and order to Memphis. Don Lemon lashes out against white men, again. And Secretary of War Pete Hegseth launches a horrific and bigoted attack against the bearded community.

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Ep.1667

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Today on the Matt Wall Show, Pope Leo hosts a climate justice event at the Vatican.

Should climate justice be a priority in the midst of Christian persecution all over the globe?

Should it be a priority under any circumstance?

Also, the Trump administration restores law and order in Memphis.

Don Lemon lashes out against white men again.

And Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth, launches a horrific and bigoted attack against the bearded community.

All of that and more today on the Matt Wall Show.

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As I said yesterday on the show, as a lifelong and devout Catholic, I don't enjoy criticizing the Pope.

I would prefer not to do it.

I also don't especially enjoy the backlash that I will inevitably get from certain other Catholics who believe that I am behaving inappropriately or even committing a sin by issuing these criticisms criticisms publicly.

But if anyone in the audience feels that way, I won't be able to convince you otherwise.

I have to do what I believe is the right thing.

And in a time when we simply cannot rely on church leadership to actually lead with moral clarity, it falls on the rest of us to speak up because the only other option is to be silent.

or to pretend that we're okay with something that is very obviously not okay.

And I can't convince myself and have no interest in trying to convince myself that the latter is the correct course of action.

So here we are.

After a 30-day stretch in which one of the most prominent Christians in the country was murdered in front of the entire world, prompting thousands of public celebrations, a murder that was bookended by mass shootings at two churches, one of which was targeted by a trans-identifying terrorist who explicitly despised Jesus Christ, you might hope that Christian leaders throughout the world and in all positions would be focused on that crisis.

That's especially true since in Nigeria, Christians are currently being systematically slaughtered by Islamists in a genocide that's been ongoing for many years.

This would be the ideal time for the most important Christian leader, the leader of the Catholic Church, the Pope,

to say something that might reassure Christians and Catholics and

rally them, motivate them, those who are increasingly being targeted with violence because of their faith.

Christians need moral guidance,

have always needed it, need it now more than any other time in recent memory, maybe in history.

That's just not the approach that Pope Leo has decided to take.

As we discussed the other day, he gave a profoundly bad answer when he was asked about Dick Durbin's Lifetime Achievement Award.

First, the Pope stated that you're not pro-life if you support the death penalty, a position that contradicts scripture, Catholic tradition, and any semblance of moral logic.

He made it an equivalence between abortion, which is the execution of innocent children, and capital punishment, which is the execution of convicted murderers.

He suggested that although Durbin supported and enabled the mass murder of children, overall, you know, he had a pretty decent career if you forget about all the baby killing.

And then in the next breath, the Pope suggested that you're not really pro-life if you don't open the borders to hordes of illegal aliens from the third world.

With respect and as charitably as I can, I would say that these are the kinds of ideas that are very compelling to posters on Reddit.

And I'm not trying to be smug when I say that.

It's just that's what we're dealing with.

There's no getting around the fact that the statement he issued on this subject could have come from any random NGO spokeswoman or Democrat politician.

And that's what makes it so disturbing.

Unfortunately, for Catholics who would prefer to think of that moment as kind of a blip on the radar screen and not indicative of any deeper or more serious problem, we have now another Poblio moment that we need to discuss.

He just appeared at the Vatican's latest international conference in Italy, which was entitled, Raising Hope for Climate Justice.

Now, already, just from the name of this event, you know this is going to be something extremely problematic because the only people who use terms like climate justice and environmental justice without exception are communists who also prattle on about equity and unhoused folks and racial justice.

This is language that, by design, identifies the speaker as a committed, true believer of the left-wing cause, someone whose sole purpose is advancing leftist ideology.

No Catholic, let alone a Catholic in a position of leadership, let alone the Pope,

should be using or endorsing the the idea of climate justice.

It is a communist term.

It is a term with deep and very bad political implications.

There's no way around that.

And indeed, the footage of this event bears that out.

Now, you may have seen this viral moment from the conference in which the Pope blesses a block of ice to the delight of all the climate hippies in attendance.

Let's watch that again.

Here it is.

I would now like to invite you to stand for the blessing of the waters.

Lord of life,

bless this water.

May it awaken our hearts,

cleanse our indifference,

soothe our grief,

and renew our hope through Christ our Lord.

We will raise hope by demanding that leaders act with courage, not delay.

Will you join with us?

Lauda to see

Missenori

contut.

Now, in a vacuum, there is, of course, nothing wrong with the Pope blessing something, least of all water, or frozen water in this case.

But the context makes this scene very troubling.

Pope Leo, as you saw, blesses a block of ice and then stands there while a bunch of communist weirdos do some kind of,

I don't know what that is, weird earth-worshiping, hippie ritual.

I mean, it's not a Catholic, there's nothing about that.

It was not a Catholic,

and this is one of the problems.

I've had questions from people saying, well, what is this some kind of Catholic?

Is this a Catholic?

That's not nothing in there.

It's not Catholic.

That's not what that is.

I've been going to Catholic Church for 39 years.

I've never seen anything.

I don't know what that is.

I've never seen anything like that.

And yes, your eyes weren't deceiving you.

Arnold Schwarzenegger was there flapping the playground parachute around as the incantations got going.

And we'll have more on Schwarzenegger's role in a moment.

And for now, it needs to be said that, you know, the leader of the Catholic Church just shouldn't be anywhere near this nonsense.

It's not just cringe and embarrassing.

It's scandalous to any non-Catholic who sees this and thinks that this event represents Catholicism in any way.

It doesn't.

The conference began with a speaker who stated that the event was, quote, directly connected to COP30, which is the UN climate summit.

He also talks about the cry of the earth and the cry of the poor, which was the theme of the event.

Left-wing climate activism always, always has heavy undertones of Gaia worship, which is just one of the reasons why Catholics should stay far away from it.

And this event was, you know, kind of proves the point.

Watch.

The way of peace,

we're gonna rise up, rise up.

We're a million different colors dancing to the beach.

Rise up, rise up.

We're a million voices singing as one.

We choose peace.

Oh well, oh well.

Hey, we choose peace.

Oh well, oh well, oh well, oh hey, hey, oh.

In the name of our people near and fight, we stand with every child that suffers poverty and work

Now, on one level, you know, you see that and you almost want to laugh

as the you can't help but laugh, just an absurd scene.

It's just absurd.

It's just absurd.

Of all the other problems with it, like the Pope should not be partaking in something that is absurd, and that's what this is.

And that's the most charitable way to describe it.

And you see, you know, the various members of the audience checking their watches and staring blankly ahead while these middle-aged hippies declare that they want peace.

Anybody wonder, what does peace have to do with the climate?

And who cares if these random women want peace?

And what exactly is the point of any of this?

Who is this supposed to appeal to?

Why is any of this happening?

Why are you doing this?

Why are you doing this?

But really, it's not particularly funny, nor is it worth joking about.

When Christians are being slaughtered,

the appropriate response is not to host a dollar store Woodstock with the Pope.

And yet, at no point did anyone at this conference demonstrate any interest in

defending Catholic teaching or Catholics from the actual threats they're facing.

Instead, speakers lined up one by one to insist that, you know, the weather is going to kill us or whatever.

One of these speakers was, as we mentioned, the actor and former governor of California, Arnold Schwarzenegger.

When he was done playing with the playground parachute, he took to the podium and delivered an address.

And before we play his remarks, in case it's not obvious, Schwarzenegger should not have been invited to speak at this event.

He should not be speaking on a stage with the Pope.

I have no idea if he's a Catholic or not, but he did go on the record recently suggesting that heaven is a fantasy.

So the odds aren't looking great that this is any kind of devout or observant Catholic.

But more importantly, Schwarzenegger's intentions were very transparent.

He sees Catholics as a very large demographic that he can co-opt en masse for his political environmentalist project.

And he was very explicit about that, actually.

Watch.

The Catholic Church

has 1.4 billion members,

1.4 billion Catholics out there,

400,000 priests,

600,000 nuns,

200,000 churches.

Now think about that.

That power.

And for that

to be involved in our movement, in our environmental movement, to terminate pollution.

To terminate pollution.

And of course,

I'm very honored to be here because

I'm next to an action hero.

Now you're laughing because he doesn't look maybe like one, like you see in the movies with the muscles and with the guns and all that stuff.

No.

But the reason why I call him an action hero is because as soon as he became the Pope.

He ordered the Vatican to put solar panels on top of the buildings.

Think about that.

And one thing you'll notice about the speech is that Arnold has a tendency to say, think about that.

Right after he says something that you absolutely unequivocally do not need to think about.

You know, the idea that the Pope is a hero because he had solar panels installed at the Vatican is one of those lines that no one should ever think about ever again in any context.

But the earlier part of Schwarzenegger's speech, the one where he says that, you know, he wants every Catholic in the world to join his environmental movement, is the bigger tell.

It's pretty clear that

to him, the most exciting thing is the size of the Catholic Church, not its teachings, but its size.

That's the key asset.

And he wants to take advantage of that asset for his own manipulative and cynical and political reasons.

What made this whole event so galling, one of the things that made it galling anyway, is just how rote and predictable it was in many respects.

They're all channeling the same language that Greta Greta Thunberg was using five years ago before she decided that Gaza was more important than climate change.

And it's obvious why she made that decision, by the way.

After all, it's pretty hard to talk about how the world's going to end in five years for your entire career.

Sooner or later, people start to realize that, you know, the world is still around.

If Greta accomplished anything, it's making clear that when leftists talk about climate justice, they're not really talking about the climate.

They're talking, again, about communism.

They're talking about destroying the West and eradicating all of these supposedly oppressive institutions, including the family and the church.

This is from an article that Greta Thunberg wrote just a few years ago, quote,

schoolchildren, young people, and adults all over the world will stand together demanding that our leaders take action, not because we want them to, but because the science demands it.

That action must be powerful and wide-ranging.

After all, the climate crisis is not just about the environment.

It is a crisis of human rights, of justice, and of political will.

Colonial, racist, and patriarchal systems of oppression have created and fueled it.

We need to dismantle them all.

Our political leaders can no longer shirk their responsibilities.

Now, this is what the left means when they say climate justice.

This is what it always means.

It never means and can never mean anything else.

They want to dismantle everything.

It's why they oppose nuclear power, even though it would eliminate all of their concerns about greenhouse gases while providing affordable energy to tens of millions of people who desperately need it.

Leftists seek to dismantle Western civilization.

Every single one of their pet projects, from racial justice to climate justice to immigration justice to homeless justice to employment justice and anything that they attach the word justice to,

are merely different fronts in this battle, different

vehicles towards the same objective.

Climate justice is an inherently left-wing political concept.

It comes bundled with every other leftist project.

That's the point, which is why, for example,

you know, if you go to the, speaking of the UN, they're working in cooperation with the UN for this event.

Well, if you go to the website for UN women, you'll be told this.

Feminist climate justice brings a gender lens to the fight against climate change, acknowledging how the drivers of the climate crisis are also the drivers of gender inequalities.

While women and girls experience its disproportionate impacts from climate change at the global level, the effects are not uniform.

Looking at climate change through the lens of intersectional feminism, meaning the way in which various forms of inequality often operate together and exasperate each other, it is clear that climate change risks are acute for Indigenous Afro-descendant women and girls, older women, LGBTQ plus people, women and girls with disabilities, migrant women, and those living in rural, remote conflict and disaster-prone areas.

If you're invisible in everyday life, your needs will not be thought of, let alone be addressed in a crisis situation, says Matya Fornin, a lesbian feminist human rights defender who works to empower stateless and landless Indigenous women, girls, and young LGBTQI plus people in Thailand's Chiang,

Mai, Mai Hong Sun, and Tok provinces.

Humanitarian programs tend to be heteronormative and can reinforce the patriarchal structure of society if they do not take into account sexual and gender diversity, she explains.

If you go to the website for Greenpeace, you'll be told this.

We at Greenpeace are often asked, why is an environmental organization talking about LGBTQIA2S plus issues?

What does queer justice have to do with climate change?

Why don't you stay in your environmental lane?

Because the fight for environmental justice cannot be achieved without the fight for LGBTQIA 2S plus rights and the fight for social and racial justice and gender equality.

As we tackle the crisis of climate change, pollution, and loss of biodiversity, we must also address social issues and inequality and discrimination.

There's no justice if there is no liberation for all.

Marginalized communities suffer the most in the climate crisis and during times of disasters.

Further marginalized groups within the diverse LGBTQIA 2S plus community, especially people of color and low-income communities, experience even greater impacts of climate and environmental injustice.

Okay, I could go on.

The point is that this is a package deal.

Climate justice comes with LGBT feminism,

you know, bring down the patriarchy, all the rest of it.

It has always been this way.

This is what the climate justice movement is, has always been since its inception, since day one, at its core.

There is no Catholic version of it.

And that's why Christians, especially Christian leaders, shouldn't be anywhere near it, nowhere near it.

Now, that's not to say that Christians shouldn't love God's creation and seek to preserve and protect it.

Of course, everyone can agree with that.

Which is, by the way, one of the reasons why we don't need to spend a lot of time on it.

If we're just talking about loving, you know, God's creation,

protecting the earth and those sorts of things, protecting nature, everyone agrees with that.

Yeah, like we don't need to, especially amid everything happening in the world right now, we don't need to spend time on that.

We just don't need to.

But the climate justice movement

is a left-wing political movement again, and its goals very explicitly are the destruction of Western civilization, starting with the church itself.

You don't have to take my word for it.

Ask them.

Go up to any leftist who's going on about climate justice.

Ask them how they feel about the church.

Ask them how they feel about the family.

If the Pope is going to gather a bunch of climate justice activists together in a room, it should be to rebuke them for being anti-human communists.

That's the kind of leadership we need.

Need.

And it's the kind of leadership we must demand.

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WREG in Memphis reports.

Attorney General Pam Bondi, Secretary of of War Pete XF, and White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller arrived in Memphis on Wednesday amid a federal push to fight crime in the city.

Our mission here is very simple, zero tolerance for crime in the city of Memphis, Miller said.

They addressed law enforcement officers from multiple agencies at an operations center in the city, saying they were there to provide safety to the great city of Memphis.

Bondi said to the law enforcement officers, this is long term.

We're going to work hand in hand to make sure the most violent city in the country has no crime.

Here's a little more from, we'll play this clip.

This is a little more from Stephen Miller.

Watch this.

To the Memphis Police Department, to the officers that I see sitting in front of me, we are about to provide you with a level of support you cannot even imagine.

This isn't just a task force.

This is a all-of-government unlimited support operation.

ATF, DEA, FBI, ICE, Department of War, every resource we have.

And they're not going to be sitting behind a desk at a keyboard.

We are sending in real cops with guns and badges to go out with you on the street every single night making arrests.

These are people who have taken down drugs, kingpins, the worst criminal offenders in the United States, standing with you shoulder to shoulder to shoulder.

All we ask from you is to show up at roll call every single night with your brothers and sisters in the federal government and to go out and get the criminals off the street.

And if you do that, I pledge to you, we will liberate this city from the criminal element that has plagued it for generations.

This is not just a strategy shift.

This is an attitude shift.

We are not going to live in an environment

anywhere where there is a street that belongs to a criminal, where there is a neighborhood that belongs to a gang, where there is any physical space anywhere that belongs to anyone other than the law-abiding citizens and families of Memphis.

The idea that there is a square inch of block in this city where a citizen doesn't feel safe is unacceptable.

This is Memphis.

This is the United States of America.

And all that

is done.

It's over.

It's finished.

Now, first of all, I have to say that

I'm very grateful that Stephen Miller is part of this administration.

I mean, that was excellent.

He's great.

Totally authentic from everything that I've heard about him.

I've never met him or spoken to him.

But from everything I've heard off the record from people, he's absolutely authentic and genuine.

So the guy you saw in that speech is the guy you meet in person, same guy.

And that, as you know, is certainly not always the case in politics, to put it mildly.

But he said something there that's really important.

And it's something I've ranted about a million times.

In fact, we just talked about it this week, I think.

He said that there should not be any square inch of

any block in any city in America where citizens feel unsafe.

And that's exactly right.

And that's not some kind of utopian childish nonsense.

It's not the equivalent of saying

there shouldn't be anyone in the world who ever goes hungry.

That's utopian.

You know, of course, it's true on one level.

We would like it if nobody ever went hungry and we should help the poor, but

we're just not ever going to have a world where no one ever goes.

To act as though we could actually achieve that is utopian.

This is not.

There doesn't have to be any part of your city or your neighborhood that's taken over by crime and violence.

It's very, very possible to have a city where every part of it, every block is safe and livable.

It's possible to have a city where you feel safe walking down the street alone at night,

anywhere in the city.

Now, there's always going to be the possibility of a crime.

There's always going to be the possibility of a bad person doing a bad thing.

You can't eradicate crime completely, obviously, but you can contain and minimize it enough that your whole community is safe and civilized.

It's very possible to do.

How do I know it's possible to do?

Well, because there are plenty of communities in America that have achieved that.

And there are communities and cities

across the world that have achieved that.

And all you have to do is look at, well, what did they do to achieve that?

You know,

it's just a matter of being willing.

You have to be willing to do what it takes.

And what it takes is relentlessly and ruthlessly punishing criminals.

That's all.

Rounding up the criminals and punishing them severely.

That's really all it takes, actually.

It really is as simple as that.

And it could be done everywhere.

And it's not because they don't want to.

And the other thing about this, I also want to say this is,

as this campaign continues by the Trump administration to clean up these cities,

it's really good politics by the Trump administration.

I mean, more importantly, it's the right thing to do.

He's protecting American citizens, restoring American cities.

It's the right thing to do.

And you know how I feel about that.

We talk about it every day.

But also on a purely political level, it's a brilliant move.

It is also brilliant politics because you're putting Democrats in the position position of being against safer cities.

They are against safer communities.

They are opposed to making your neighborhood, your community, safer

for your children and your family.

Now, obviously, we already knew that Democrats were opposed to all these things, but now you're forcing them to kind of stake out that position explicitly and defend it.

And as you go into these cities and make them measurably safer, you're forcing Democrats to try to explain why that's a bad thing.

Everyone feels safer in Washington, D.C.

now, and Democrats now have to explain why.

Well, actually, that's bad.

Did you know it's bad that you're safer now?

You know it's bad that you're not getting carjacked?

Here's why.

So, it's great politics.

Okay, moving on, Don Lemon.

We got to talk about, well, we don't have to talk about Don Lemon, but we're going to.

Don Lemon, of course, was fired from CNN a couple of years ago, as you remember.

He's since tried to reinvent himself as a podcaster.

And it's always interesting to see these traditional cable news people and network news people when they try to pull off this transition.

And most of them are not able to pull it off.

It doesn't go well.

Megan Kelly is one of the few exceptions.

She was obviously a huge star on Fox, and then she went for that stint on, what was it, NBC, and

didn't go very well

because of NBC and how they treated her.

But then she starts her own thing, becomes a podcaster, and she's bigger than ever.

Now she's like, she's everywhere.

She's a bigger star than she ever was, a huge success.

One of the rare cases of that happening, someone coming from that world, going over to this world

and succeeding, Don Lemon is having a different experience.

He's been at this podcasting thing for over a year now, maybe two years.

I don't know.

It's not going well.

And just to show you, here's what his channel looks like.

So these are the most recent seven or eight videos from this week.

He's averaging, I don't know, generously, let's call that

15 to 20,000 views per episode or per video.

He also has an audio-only version, just like we do.

And I'm not sure what his exact, I went and I was, because I was just, I was curious.

I went to the Spotify charts to check it out, see where he's ranked.

And if you look at the news category for podcasts on Spotify, they list the top 50 in just that category.

And he's unlisted.

He didn't make the list at all.

So he's not even in the top 50.

He's not ranked.

And

so it's pretty pathetic.

But,

oh, and also drawing your attention back to the screenshot.

of

his channel, look what he calls his episodes.

He either labels them a hot take,

because that's what you do when you have a hot take.

You label it a hot take in the title.

Hey kids, here's my hot take.

How do you do, fellow kids?

Want to hear my hot take?

And he either calls it that or he calls it a lemon drop,

which,

come on, Don.

Now, I get it.

It's a pun involving your name.

It's sitting right there for the taking.

Maybe someone suggested it to you and you you just couldn't resist.

Maybe somebody said, oh, you know what?

When you do like a short video, you could call it a lemon drop.

And maybe you just couldn't resist because it's but you can't do that.

Okay.

Like my name is Matt, but you don't see me labeling my episodes,

I don't know, welcome Matt or something.

You gotta have some self-respect is all I'm trying to say.

So all that's really beside the point, though, that just establishes that Don Lemon is a pathetic failure.

I wanted to establish that.

Total failure of a man.

But maybe that explains why he's now lashing out so here he is in one of his recent uh barely viewed episodes um uh lashing out at white men listen wake up white men what the is wrong with you

but you're too dumb to even realize that

because you're lazy and sitting in front of a computer or a phone and you're just eating it up

my gosh

look at what they're doing all of a sudden my heritage is going to be over That I won't, I want to live in a country.

White kids go to white schools and white people marry each other.

What is wrong with that?

I want to grow up in the country that my great-grandfather grew up in.

That country doesn't exist anymore.

Men who look like you, men who vote like you, and men who sound like you.

White men,

something

is broken.

Something is cracked deep inside when so many of you believe the answer to fear, to loss, to change is violence.

Are you listening to me?

I hope I'm saying it loud enough for the people in the back.

Well, no, Don, we aren't listening.

To answer your question,

he says, are you listening?

Are you listening?

Is anyone listening?

You can hear his voice echoing through the empty halls.

No, nobody's listening, Don.

That's your problem.

And your other problem, these are two, these problems are very much related, is that you are a rambling bigot.

You are a dumb, rambling bigot.

Your hatred for white people has driven you insane.

It's made you delusional.

You say that so many white men resort to violence.

And of course, in reality, black men are an order of magnitude more violent than white men.

So we've been through all the stats many times.

It's not even close.

There's no competition.

Okay, this is not a

this this this this is this is not a close competition at all.

If we're doing, if this is like the Olympics of violence,

black men win gold, silver, and bronze, okay, in every, in every event.

They just do.

And, you know, this is such an obvious rebuttal that you wonder why he's even saying this.

Like, he's setting himself up for it.

That you as a black man are telling white men that there's something spiritually wrong with them and that they're too violent.

And meanwhile, black men are like 6% of the population and account for more than half of the murders in the country.

So

why are you doing this to yourself?

Why would you bring this up?

Well, you can see the answer if you go, like if you go,

if you read

the responses to my post on X where I gave exactly this obvious rebuttal, I responded to that clip and

I was one of like a million people to make this point about how black men are much more violent statistically than white men are.

And you look at the responses and it's

one after another, and there's thousands of them

from liberals, many of them black liberals,

who truly don't believe that black men are more violent.

They don't just disbelieve it.

They treat the assertion like it's insane.

Like as if I just claimed that

the sun is made of Skittles or something.

They treat it, they laugh it off,

they scoff at it.

To them, it's absurd.

It's an absurd thing to suggest.

And they aren't pretending.

I don't think they are.

For these people, they truly don't understand this basic statistical reality.

They live in a fantasy world.

They live in a world, in the world they live in, they honestly believe, they really honestly believe that the majority of violence in the country, the vast majority of it, comes from white men.

That's what they think.

That's the world they're living in.

And

it could not be further from the truth,

but they're living in this fantasy world.

And so Don Lemon is talking to people who are in this fantasy world.

He's not talking to you or me.

People who live in reality.

He's talking to people who are in this fantasy world.

And that becomes really obvious when you look at the responses.

All right.

Finally, Michelle Obama, speaking of podcasts that nobody listens to, she's back on her podcast once again complaining about her husband.

So here is Jesse Waters.

So that we don't have to wade through it.

Jesse Waters played some of the highlights or lowlights on his show last night.

So here it is.

Watch this.

Did you catch Michelle's latest podcast?

It's bad.

There's a therapist.

Her big bro made the cut, but Barack, he's MIA.

Turns out, things aren't as they seem.

A lot of young people could look at that and go, I want a marriage like Michelle and Barack.

Right.

And it's like, well, let me, you know, let me talk about what marriage is, you know, because it's even when it looks good, even when it's great, it's hard.

Yeah.

And so I think it's important because, you know, it's very easy to quit on a marriage.

Michelle didn't hold back besides canceling Barack's pickup games.

She hates what he does with his mouth.

The chewing.

The way you're chewing makes me want to smack you upside the head.

The girls and I are very irritated with the way Barack chews.

Oh my God.

That's chewing is the essence.

Like you hear the otherness of a person, right?

You hear they have a body, they have saliva.

They're they're like you

it's like

why did they annoy us

barack can't even eat in peace even when barry keeps his mouth shut michelle's still complaining now that we're empty nesters it's like well what are we gonna talk about so we're together all day and we we do this thing where it's like i'll see him and it's like what you been doing it's like up don't tell me until dinner because we're we gotta have something to talk about at dinner so if all throughout the course of the day i'm getting caught up on his stuff, then it's like we're sitting staring at each other.

I should always miss something to talk about.

You know, I got to say, I never thought I could ever feel sorry for Barack Obama.

I never thought I was capable of experiencing that emotion towards Barack Obama.

But I do kind of feel sorry for him whenever I see these clips.

When I see these clips of Michelle Obama,

I do sort of feel sorry.

I mean, can you imagine?

Can you imagine you were the president of the United States of America?

You achieved something that only 44 other Americans,

I think it's 44 other, right?

Because if you,

the non-consecutive terms, and so it's whatever, 45 total.

So you achieved something that 44 other Americans have ever achieved.

Okay, you had the same job that George Washington had.

You're one of the most famous people in the entire world.

You're one of the most influential Americans of all time.

Now, in Barack's case, of course, your influence is terrible and toxic and poisonous, and you were a disaster.

I think Barack Obama's presidency will go down as the most disastrous presidency in American history.

But put that aside, okay?

Put that aside because

that's not how Michelle Obama would see it.

The point is simply that you were the president, and now in retirement,

here's your wife.

Here's the person who identifies as your wife whining about you and nagging you in a podcast

every day,

telling the world that you chew too loud.

Okay?

You were the president and you've, and here is your wife.

He chews too loud.

One of the most important men in American history, important in a bad way, again, I don't have to clarify, important in a bad way, but put that to the side.

One of the most important men in American history, and here's your wife sitting around a table gossiping about you.

I don't like it when he chews loud.

You know, being married to him isn't so great, just so you know.

My God, what a nightmare.

What hell on earth that must be.

Marriage is hard, she says.

And because that was the main reason I wanted to address it, because she says this thing, marriage is hard.

And in fairness, a lot of people say that.

She's not the only one to say that.

That's the great wisdom, the great insight that you hear all the time from people these days.

And I got to tell you, and it's very discouraging, I think, to

a lot of young people that aren't married.

And they hear this and they hear married people, people like Michelle Obama, talk about marriage, complaining about their spouse,

talking about, oh, it's so hard.

Oh, it's a hard.

Oh,

what toil and drudgery is marriage?

Oh, yeah, it's worth it, but it's so hard every day.

Every day is just, it's like pulling teeth every day.

Well, I got to tell you, almost 15 years in, six kids, I don't agree with that.

Okay.

I don't think marriage is hard.

Okay.

It's actually not hard.

Actually, marriage is pretty easy.

Okay, and again, I'm not, and I'm,

it's not like I'm a year into it.

It's not like I got married six months ago and you could say, oh, wait, you're in the honeymoon phase.

Wait all you,

you know what?

Not only is it not hard now, 15 years in, it's actually easy.

It actually got easier.

Looking back at it now, I would say that the hardest part,

as much as we hear about this honeymoon phase thing,

Actually, the hardest part is like the first year.

The part that's supposed to be, I guess, the way people talk about it is like bliss, nothing but bliss.

It's the honeymoon phase.

I would say the hardest part is the first year, which makes sense because you're getting adjusted to it and you've never,

you know, especially if you did it the right way and you waited to live with the person until you were married to them,

then you've never, you know, you've never lived with someone before,

you know, maybe you had a roommate or something, but you've never, so this is, this is new and you're, and you're getting adjusted to that.

And so it kind of makes sense.

And you're, you're also younger, right?

And

so it makes sense that it gets easier.

Like, it's, it, and, and, and now it's, it's, marriage is easy.

It really is.

And it's fun.

It's like it's now you could say life is hard.

Okay.

Living is hard and there's challenges that come with it.

And so if you mean that marriage is hard in that kind of like broad sense, in the sense that just like life, life is hard, or it can be, then fine.

But marriage itself is for the most part easy and fun.

And

it should be.

I mean, you've got someone that you love and hopefully like, and you're around them all the time, and you can hang out and you can go out and do things.

Like, you know, you've got, that's a good thing.

And when you compare it to the alternative,

I mean, there's no contest.

There are really only two things

that can make marriage hard.

Really only two.

And one,

is

if you're married to a narcissist,

or two,

if your spouse is married to a narcissist, meaning that you're the narcissist.

Or three, you know, is the combination of the two, which is the hardest of all, if you're both narcissists.

And by the way, most of the time, it's option three.

Most of the time, when you meet someone who's married to a narcissist, they're also a narcissist because narcissists tend to, you know, they tend to find each other in that way.

Not always, not always, but most of the time.

Now, if it is option three and you're both narcissists,

any marriage where it's option three,

both of them will think that it's option one they they both think that oh my gosh i'm married to a narcissist because they don't realize that they are two

and that only makes it harder because of the they don't even understand what situation they're in

so all that to say marriage fundamentally is not hard doesn't have to be hard shouldn't be hard it's not to say you don't encounter challenges It's not to say you don't have things you have to work through.

Of course, all that's the case, but generally speaking, like it's not, you should not be, and you don't have to wake wake up every day where this is some great challenge.

Like most of the time, it's great.

It's like pretty easy.

You should go by, you should go through most of your days and like the fact that you're married really doesn't present any challenges.

In fact, most of the time, it's an asset.

So,

but with that said,

I don't doubt what Michelle Obama is saying, because in the case of Michelle and Brock, it's option three.

They are both raging narcissists.

So yes, in their case, marriage is hard,

but only because they're narcissists.

And marriage requires you to consider the needs of someone other than yourself.

And if you aren't a narcissist, it's usually not any great challenge to consider someone else's needs.

Now, we all have moments of selfishness.

I'm certainly not perfect.

Nobody's perfect.

But for normal people, considering someone else's needs,

it's not impossible.

And in a marriage, often it's enjoyable.

Like, you like doing things for your spouse.

You like to see them happy.

You like to make them feel appreciated.

That's the way that it should be.

That's the way that it can be.

Again, unless you're a narcissist.

So when you hear someone saying this, oh, so hard.

It's so hard.

Maybe they are

maybe they made the unfortunate mistake of marrying a narcissist, but most likely this is what you're listening to is a narcissist speaking.

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Now let's get to our daily cancellation.

For our daily cancellation today, I'm afraid that I must cancel Secretary of War Pete Hegseth.

Now, I've always liked Pete Hegseth.

I defended him while he was being smeared during the confirmation process.

I've praised him for the work he's done in his role leading the Defense Department.

I'm not going to rescind any of that praise today,

but I am going to call him out for being egregiously wrong about one, I think, very important issue.

There was a moment during the meeting with top military brass at Quantico that we talked about this week that this moment I haven't talked about.

And I haven't talked about it because I needed time to collect my thoughts.

I had to think about it, pray about it.

It was the moment where Hexeth launched into a sudden, unprovoked broadside attack against members of my community, the bearded community.

Listen.

Long hair, superficial individual expression.

We're going to cut our hair,

shave our beards, and adhere to standards.

Because it's like the broken windows theory of policing.

It's like when you let the small stuff go, the big stuff eventually goes.

So you have to address the small stuff.

This is on duty in the field and in the rear.

If you want a beard, you can join special forces.

If not, then shave.

We don't have a military full of Nordic pagans,

but unfortunately, we have had leaders who either refused to call BS and enforce standards, or leaders who felt like they were not allowed to enforce standards.

Both are unacceptable.

And that's why today, at my direction, the era of unprofessional appearance is over.

No more beardos.

The era of rampant and ridiculous shaving profiles is done.

So Hexeth doesn't just declare beards verboten in the military.

He smears the beard.

He besmirches its good name.

He even uses the B-slur, calling bearded men beardos, a term that has been used to oppress and persecute the bearded community for centuries.

Don't look that up.

I'm just telling you, but it's true.

And he implies that beards are pagan.

You know, talks about Norse pagans.

That's true, of course, that the Vikings had beards, but you know who else had a beard?

Jesus?

Every other notable man in the Bible?

Presumably they had beards throughout much of Christian history.

Also, while we're on the subject, why exactly wouldn't we want our military to be a little bit more like the Vikings?

Why is that?

They were fierce warriors.

What's wrong with that?

Answer me this, Mr.

Secretary.

Which is more likely to instill fear in the hearts of our enemies?

An army of bearded Vikings coming after them or an army of hairless, baby-faced office depot managers?

Now, I agree with you that there should be strict grooming standards, but if anything, the grooming standards should require a beard, not forbid it.

And he calls beards ridiculous.

I would say that not having a beard is ridiculous.

Every man in the military should be mandated to grow a beard.

There's something spiritually wrong deeply with a man who can't grow a beard.

This kind of policy would weed those men out.

Now, I understand that historically the prohibition on beards was put in place for practical reasons so that soldiers could get a good seal on their gas masks in World War I and World War II.

But that concern is, you know, it's not as relevant today as it was back then.

I mean, the vast majority of military members will never have an occasion to put on a gas mask in the field.

So, what other reason is there to have a ban like this in place?

The reason, as Hexeth says, because he doesn't say anything about gas masks, he's talking about discipline,

standards.

And I believe in discipline and standards.

I think it's especially important in the military, obviously, of discipline and standards.

But why should the standard be beardlessness?

Consider for a moment that most of the greatest military leaders and warriors in history wore beards.

Okay, we've already talked about the Vikings, which Heg Seth brought up himself as if it helped his case.

What about all the great Civil War generals?

You know, Grant, Lee, Stonewall Jackson, they all had beards.

So did Hernan Cortez and the conquistadors.

So did Genghis Khan.

So did Attila the Hun.

So did Aragorn and the Lord of the Rings.

Now, granted, he's fictional, but what does it tell you that whenever a great warrior is imagined in fiction, he always has a beard?

Tolkien, one of the most imaginative men to ever live, could not even conceive of a clean-shaven warrior.

Think about that.

On the other hand, there was Gollum, a shriveled, scrawny, envious, insane little, hairless cave dweller, the perfect representation of the non-bearded man.

Now, unlike Pete Exeth, I do not discriminate against men who make different facial hair choices.

I embrace follicle diversity.

I don't look down on men who are beardless.

I mean, I do literally look down on them because they're short.

You know, their growth has been stunted by the lack of testosterone, but I don't judge them for that.

I pity them, and I pray for them the way that I pray for all the other, you know,

not to be insulting, but all the other deformed freaks out there.

I wouldn't call them any slurs.

I wouldn't go around saying that beardless men look like 11-year-old boys trapped in an adult man's body, like some kind of low-T version of Benjamin Button.

That's not the sort of thing I would ever say.

I wouldn't say that they look like big, weird babies.

I'm not going to say that.

I wouldn't say that beardless men look like they're suffering from leprosy.

These are things that I wouldn't say.

I certainly wouldn't claim that a man without a beard is also a man without a soul.

That's a theological question.

You know, there's a lot of debate about it.

I'm not going to speculate because that would be irresponsible.

You know, and also that conversation would go over the heads of beardless men because they, you know, they typically have lower IQs according to science.

All that to say, I'm taking the high road.

I'm not going to get into a fight with a beardless male community.

It wouldn't be productive.

And, you know, anyway, I would never hit a woman.

If only Pete Hexeth could have been as kind and accepting.

as I'm being right now.

Instead, he chose to expose himself as an anti-beard bigot.

And for that reason, despite all the other great things he's doing, he is today canceled.

That'll do it for the show today.

And this week, talk to you on Monday.

Have a great weekend.

Godspeed.

Hey there, I'm Daily Wire executive editor John Bickley.

And I'm Georgia Howe, and we're the hosts of Morning Wire.

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