Daily Wire Backstage Live at CPAC: The Fight, The Wins, The Future

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Hey, Michael Knowles here, and do I have a treat for you. The latest episode of Daily Wire backstage is right around the corner, and you do not want to miss it.
Don't miss me, Ben Shapiro, Matt Walsh, Andrew Klavan, and the God King, Jeremy Boring,

as we discuss the latest news and cultural events, all while enjoying some fine whiskey and cigars.

It is going to be all that and more.

Take a listen. Well, folks, you know, I'm not famous for being a particularly optimistic sort.
If you've ever listened to my show, let's say morosity, depression, that may be a feeling that's come over you once in a while listening to my show where I describe what's going on in the country, but I can safely say I've never felt more optimistic about the United States than I do right now. And that is thanks to President Donald J.
Trump. And one of the things that's sort of mysterious about President Trump is the fact that he isn't really an ideological conservative.

Now, people like me, I grew up in the movement.

I grew up reading Thomas Sowell and Frederick Hayek and reading Russell Kirk.

I don't think President Trump has ever sat around reading those people.

I don't think he sits around at night and browses Edmund Burke or anything.

And so the question is, why is it that this man, who's not truly an ideological conservative, is the most successful conservative president of my lifetime, bar none? It's a real question. And I think to understand that, the thing that we need to understand about President Trump is that more than anything else, more than anything else, and in this era, needed more than anything else, President Trump lives in the world of reality.
President Trump has been slandered by the media as somebody who creates fictions of his own and sort of lives within those fictions and says a lot of words that don't always match up with the truth and all that kind of stuff. The reality is that President Trump, in his gut, lives in the real world.
Which is why President Trump wins so often, because if you are going to win, you have to acknowledge reality, because reality always wins. And this is what makes President Trump conservative.
Conservatism lines up really, really well with reality. The reason that President Trump won the last election cycle is because the Democratic Party, the left, completely disconnected themselves from reality, completely disconnected themselves from reality in every possible way.
They ran screaming with their hair on fire, their blue hair on fire, away from reality. President Trump embraces reality with both arms.
When it comes to the world of economics, for example, President Trump only cares about success. He cares about economic dynamism.
He cares about American businesses being able to build and succeed. And he understands that in order for all those things to happen, you have to free American business from the shackle of regulation and government.
You have to allow businesses to innovate. You have to allow people to rise and fall on their own merit.
Meritocracy has to be valued more than, say, identity politics and DEI. President Trump knows that in his guts because he's a business person.
President Trump has had to make payroll. Unlike literally every leader of the Democratic Party over the course of my lifetime, he is not a career politician, which means he's always been answerable to reality.
And that means that when he unleashes another businessman, Elon Musk, inside the government and says, go in there with a meat ax and start taking out programs, that is what a businessman would do. If you came into a business as a business person and it was rife with waste, fraud and abuse, you wouldn't sit around and run a commission on it.
You would start firing people. You would go in and you start making changes.
You start breaking things and moving quickly. And President Trump is doing precisely that.
You can see business optimism in the country is skyrocketing specifically because of that. Meanwhile, the Democrats don't know what to do because they're cherished.
Blue pipeline, which is what the federal government is. It is a permanent payment program for the left, the federal government.
They have permanent institutions that exist outside the government. They take literally trillions of your taxpayer dollars, and then they funnel all that money out to their political allies inside and outside the government.
And Donald Trump came in, and he broke the pipeline. Why? Because he lives in the world of reality.
When we're talking about foreign policy, President Trump lives in the world of reality. When President Trump looks at the situation in Ukraine, he doesn't say, well, you know what, we're not going to set an endpoint.
We're not really going to set a goal. We're just going to wing it.
We're just going to go along with this for years. He says, listen, here's the reality.
The reality is that there is a grinding trench warfare situation in Ukraine. There is very little shot that Ukraine is going to be able to win back to Onbass and Crimea.
And we don't want Ukraine to actually fall to the Russians.

And so we know what an off-ramp looks like.

Now it's just a question of how do we get to that off-ramp.

That is what a practical person does.

That is a person who lives in reality.

That's not a person who wants to speak airy-fairy nonsense

and nostrums about democracy and tyranny.

All that stuff sounds nice, but does it get the job done

is the question that President Trump is always asking.

Does it get the job done? When it comes to the Middle East, President Trump has completely broken the mold. The sort of ancient wisdom of the State Department, which has been wrong for 80 years in the Middle East, is that the only way that you actually achieve peace in the Middle East is to make the Palestinian issue front and center.
President Trump in his first term totally turned that on his head. He ignored it, and peace broke out in the Middle East.
President Trump has now thrown onto the table a solution with regard to the Gaza Strip that is breaking people's brains and also happens to be the only plausible solution anyone has proposed in about a century in this particular area. Because it turns out that when you have a population group that literally held today a celebration of dead babies in the Gaza Strip, babies they had murdered in the Gaza Strip, it turns out that a two-state solution in which one of those states is actually run by those people is a really bad idea.
And President Trump knows that, and he says it, because he lives in the world of reality. And this is how you chalk up victories.
When it comes to China, President Trump is a realist. He understands that China is globally an opponent of the United States and that we need to stand up to Chinese predations, stealing our IP, buying American land, funneling fentanyl precursors through Mexico.
He understands on immigration that a realistic nation cannot have an open border. You cannot have a welfare state and an open border and pretend that that's workable.
President Trump understands that. Now, all of this sounds commonsensical to all of us, right?

Because it is commonsensical.

But in Washington, D.C., commonsensical is not the way things have been run.

Instead, people have been so wedded not to victory, not to winning, not to achieving things,

but to saying things properly in just the right way to get the right coverage in the New York Times

or in the Wall Street Journal or in whatever media outlet they're pand pandering to that they never actually think about what wins and what loses and then there's the matter of the reality of our daily lives President Trump understands that what most Americans want is not identity politics what most Americans want is not some bizarre notion about androgyny where men can be women and women can be men and that we are sort of free-floating sets of feelings existing within the meat suits that we wear around. President Trump understands basic things that the left has completely abandoned and that he was willing to say.
Stuff that was uncontroversial, you know, five minutes ago, like boys are not girls, right? These are controversial statements to make, but President Trump understands that that actually has some pretty deep ramifications when you say things like boys are not girls, such as perhaps men have a role to play that is different from women's role. That does not mean that women shouldn't be in the workplace, obviously, and it doesn't mean that men shouldn't help take care of the kids, but it does mean that men being masculine is a good thing, and it means that women being wives and mothers is a good thing too.
And that no country that ignores these basic truths can survive and grow and thrive. President Trump acknowledges and knows that the things that most Americans want, whether they are Hispanics living down on the border of Texas or whether they're white Americans living up on the border of Canada, those things are basically the same.
They want to be able to live in safety, free of crime, with prosperity, being able to hold down a job in a growing, innovative, dynamic economy. They want to be able to go to their church and worship God and share that with their community, without the government getting in their way.
These are all things that, again, sound so easy. They sound so easy.
But the way that President Trump measures whether a thing is true or not is whether it works. And that is why he has been so unbelievably successful.
Now, when it comes to us, what can we do? This does say something to the rest of us. You know, I think that I talk for a living, right, which is a really fun way to make a living.
But the reality is that, you know, people come to me all the time and say, how do I make a difference in politics? And obviously there are things that we all can do. I spent the last election cycle campaigning with a variety of Senate candidates and with President Trump.
I went out and I did things. But the things that most of us can do, aside from all the normal political fighting that Steve was talking about earlier, which is really important, the thing that is most important is to live a reality-based life, to be a model to our children, to be a model to our community, to build the social fabric that actually makes this country work, to create the businesses that make the country function, to engage in everyday common virtue.
Because the truth is, the country is not just built by President Trump. We love President Trump.
He's doing an amazing job. He should continue to be healthy and well

and continue to succeed day in and day out.

We're all praying for him.

But the country also runs

because of the people

who are doing the everyday things,

whose names we don't know.

You, people I know,

all the people out there

who are just living with their families

and bringing up their kids

in the correct fashion

in a country that is growing and thriving, building those building blocks, taking those building blocks and actually... ...day-to-day level.
President Trump is clearing the field for you. He's clearing the field for me.
The Republicans, I hope, are going to do that. But then it's our job to actually build.
And that's what we should be focused on, not just on politics over the next four years or eight years or 20 years. We should be focused on the building because that project, that's the project that never ends.
The political fight will always be there. There's no such thing as permanent victory.
There will be losses in the future. But the one thing that we can do every single day is continue to build.
And thank God, President Trump, the reason I'm optimistic, President Trump has brought us back to a world of reality where that building is possible and we should all build together thank you so much

and now I want to take the opportunity to welcome out my buddies from the Daily

Wire for an episode of Backstage Live. How are you, sir? Good to see you.
I'm certain you did that wrong. Fuck alone..
What did I get you? No, I didn't. Hey, what's going on, guys? No, I shouldn't.
No one should clap for Michael. No.
I'm a good fighter. Well, you're a man, so that makes sense.
I know we can drink this delicious 45-47 whiskey. Can we smoke the Mayflower Cigars, too, or is that...
Are we... Washington, D.C.
is a little... What's the worst thing that could happen? Yeah.
Welcome to CPAC and Backstage Live. You'll have the whole bottle.

Thank you.

This is a show that we do once a month at the Daily Wire. In fact,

we're going to do it again on March 4th

for the President's Joint Session of Congress,

where we get the whole team together and we talk about what's on our mind.

And so this will be

a little bit different than the other panels that have happened

throughout the day, because we have to do ad reads.

It's okay. It's how we buy the plane tickets to get out here.
What I want to talk about, though, first, right out of the gate, today is 30 days of Donald Trump into his second term, which means even if you don't like Donald Trump, you're 30 days closer to being the true. The Democrats must be thrilled.
I don't know. I don't know if they are.
I want to talk about all the amazing things that have happened in this first 30 days. One of the most dynamic and energetic beginnings of any presidency, certainly in my lifetime.
And since we've got all of our pals here at CPAC, let's just talk about how great it's been. Michael.
So favorite thing, this is very difficult because I loved when President Trump, Napoleon posted on Twitter and through social. I thought that was great.
Loved that. I loved when J.D.
Vance gave lectures on to mystic philosophy to that CBS News lady on television. That was great.
But my favorite thing, I think, my actual favorite initiative for the first 30 days has got to be the presidential pardons. I felt politically it was very important for the J6 pardons to go through.
But my favorite pardons, though, my absolute favorite, the pro-lifers who were unjustly imprisoned by Joe Biden and the Democrats. They are American heroes.

I ran into one of them outside, John Hinshaw.

He might be in this room right now.

These are American heroes.

These are deeply virtuous people.

They were trampled on by their government,

and Donald Trump rectified a major, major wrong.

He deserves a lot of credit for it.

You know, if I were to say my favorite thing from Trump's term,

well, number two, I'll get to number one, but number two.

I'm going to number one, but number two. You only get one.
My runner up is Trump talking about, at least talking about, potentially taking back control of the Panama Canal. That's a little bit of a deep cut, but I think that's an important thing.
And Greenland, too. Maybe we're taking Canada.
We'll see. We've got to get rid of the Canadians.
Move the Canadians somewhere else because we don't want the Canadians. We want Canada.
We want the land. Not so much the people on it.
We'll move them to reservations up in the Arctic, and they'll be quite happy. But my actual favorite thing is what I think is the end, basically the end of the trans agenda of gender ideology in this country.
You know, this is, the fight continues because the people that advocate for this butchery and this insanity aren't just going to go away. They're going to find a way to continue victimizing kids.
And so the fight will continue in that way. But look, we've got with Donald Trump, in just a few weeks, we have banning men from women's sports.
We have putting an end to child castration in the hospitals, defining sex as man and woman. And I think that the legal stuff is really important, but just the bully pulpit, having a person in a position of authority who's willing to say the obvious thing, which is that men are men and women are women, which by the way is something that everyone has always known.
Every single person in the world has always known that. But for a period of time, a lot of people were afraid to say what they knew to be true.
Because the... Well, and thanks to Donald Trump.
Thanks to a lot of people that have been in the fight. But what they needed was someone in a position of a power like Donald Trump to say this obvious, true thing.
And so I think it's the beginning of the end of gender ideology in this country. Andrew Klavan, you have opinions? Yeah.
by far, my favorite thing about the Trump administration has been the absolute decimation and destruction of the mainstream media. I mean, it has been like that scene in Game of Thrones where the woman has to walk naked through the streets while people shout shame and throw rotten vegetables at her.
Except it's been better because it's been the mainstream media walking naked through the streets. And they've just been reduced.
And I knew this, the moment- No one wants to see that, the moment the results of the election came in, this kind of blanket of peace passed over me because I realized what had happened, that we'd beaten them. And that was death, true.
Yeah, that may be death, yeah. But it couldn't have happened without Trump.
It couldn't have happened without Trump. But it couldn't have happened without us, too, and all the Joe Rogans and all the podcasters and all the small media that grew up suddenly and exposed them for what they were.
And the benefits, the side benefits of this is it has put a little tiny bit of steel in the Republican Party. These guys, you know, this place that we're in right now is surrounded by media like this glass, this steel bubble, I should call it.
And they think when the New York Times says something, it's the people talking. They think, oh my gosh, it's in the New York Times.
my career will be destroyed. And now they realize it's in the New York Times, a bird is going to crap on it, and no one's going to remember what anybody said.
So far, I've enjoyed this panel very much because we're living up to our sort of reputation at the Daily Wire. Your favorite thing about Trump is us.
And your favorite thing about Trump is your movie. Yeah.
And Michael's just here for the booze. That's true.
And the cigars. And the Mayflower cigars.
Delicious Mayflower cigars. Ben, the best thing about the first 30? So by far the best thing that has happened during the first 30 days was that exchange that he had with the Afghan lady reporter, which is one of the great moments in all of media history.
And if you haven't seen it, folks, you absolutely should Google it, because it is legitimately one of the funniest things that has ever happened in the history of the media. There's a reporter from Afghanistan who asked President Trump a question in a very thick accent, and he had no idea what she was saying.
He said, your voice, it's so beautiful, so melodious, I don't understand a word you're saying. God bless and live long, live in peace.
He went like full Spock at the end, like it was great. So that was great, just as a moment.
And there have been many such wonderful moments, including I don't care, Margaret, right, from the vice president. And there are a bunch of great memeable moments.
And of course, Elon is a walking meme, as you've seen. But in terms of actual policy, I think the most important thing that President Trump has done is he's actually, he has exposed the reality, which is that the amount of power that has aggregated in the executive branch over the course of time is extraordinary.
And it is at the behest of the president of the United States. So for two reasons, this is really important.
One, because the Democratic Party established over the course of the last hundred odd years, really since Woodrow Wilson, that the executive branch was going to be the predominant branch of American government and all power was going to be centralized in it. Spending power, regulatory power, all of it.
And then they basically said, and Republicans can't touch it. When we run it, we'll run it and we'll put permanent employees in place so that when you run it, you don don't run it.
And President Trump came in, and he said, no, no, no, you've given all this power to the executive branch. Guess what? Guess who's the president now? It's me.
And long live the king. And he literally put out an executive order saying, like yesterday, all of you people work for me.
And here's your reminder. The executive branch is a branch of government.
There is no fourth branch of government that is an unelected bureaucracy. And thus, you work for my agenda.
And this is great for a couple of reasons. One, because it means that he's going to be actually able to clean out so much of the rod inside these institutions.
And that's what Doge is in large part. But second, I think it sets up the predicate for if there is going to be a useful constitutional fight, which I kind of like, then let that fight be about the prerogatives of Congress.
Let Congress try to actually go back to the original structure in a fair way. Because for too long, Republicans have been playing by the Marcus of Queensbury rules on this stuff.
Whereas I say the rules apply when Republicans are in power and then they stop applying the minute a Democrat is in power. And President Trump, as I said before, he lives in reality.
And for President Trump, there's no set of rules where there are two sets of rules, right? There's either one set for everybody or there ain't no rules. And he says there's one set of rules for everybody.
I'm the president and now all you people work for me or you're fired, which is just wonderful. I have to say my favorite thing about the presidency so far is just the sheer chaotic disruption that Donald Trump represents.
He, you know, everything from saying, you know, that he's going to build Trumpistan in the Middle East. Maragaza, Maragaza.
Maragaza, yeah. Gazalago.
Gazalago. It's a work in progress.
I love it because what it says is the way you guys have been thinking about this for the entire lifetime

of every person involved in international politics is wrong. And it's not even necessarily that I agree with every single one of Trump's disruptions.
It's that I agree with the idea of the disruption itself that Trump represents. Because only through disruption do you shake things up from the status quo and create the actual opportunity for change.

And I actually think President Trump sort of understands this.

I think he wields it.

I think half of the things that Donald Trump says he doesn't exactly mean.

But what he understands is that in the act of saying it, he breaks everyone out of their comfort zone and creates the opportunity for actual meaningful change.

And that's an enormous skill.

It's something that he's been doing in his business life for all of living memory. Donald Trump's very old, not as old as Andrew Clavin, but he's not a young man.
And he's very successfully done this. He keeps people from being able to get to complacency, keeps people from believing that just because something has been the way means that it must continue to be the way.
And you see it particularly, I think, in places like Doge. I think Elon Musk is the greatest living American.
I think that he is, we should clap for Elon Musk. He's probably still here.
He's probably still here. And any one of us at any moment could be the recipient of one of his children.
So it's like a really, it's a really important thing to say on Elon's good side. I think Elon is the greatest living American.
I think that Elon is one of the only people in the world actively trying to build a future. I think that for too long, the left has been the only ideological movement in the country who believes that there will be a future, and the future that they believe in is one that does not include us.
And for too long, people on the right have sort of given up on the idea of a future.

We've become a little bit black-filled, a little bit nihilistic, a little bit conspiratorial

and afraid that tomorrow must be worse than today, which is worse than yesterday.

Elon doesn't subscribe to that at all.

He not only believes that America's best days are ahead of it, he's actively working

to make that happen.

And that is what you want in the government. We are going to take questions, and I believe that the place where we're going to take questions is over in this.
They told me it's down there, but I don't know where down there means. But we're going to spend a lot of our time interacting with you guys because you bought the tickets.
And we get to hear from each other, you know, all day, every day.

I could have told you all of their answers.

I know what they wanted in the green room.

Only green M&Ms for Ben.

Classic.

All the other M&Ms for Michael.

He's not very discriminating.

We're going to take a lot of questions from you.

But first, Ben Shapiro.

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Okay, because let's be real about this.

You need to stay healthy.

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Wow. Balance of nature.
I thought it was really compelling. Hey, you were sitting next to the man who called for the eradication of transgenderism from our national polity on stage right now.
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Okay, good, good.

So, one of the things that we like to do on backstage is move beyond just politics

and talk about culture,

talk about religion,

talk about the things that make our life meaningful.

One of the things that's been on my mind a lot

in this really triumphant moment

in the last 30 days.

Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni.

How did you know? Who are they? One of the things that's really on my mind is that when you're in these triumphant political moments, it can seem suddenly like your life is going to be good because we're winning in the very important but somewhat abstract realm of politics. But the truth is, your life may continue to be quite bad.
That'll just pick her up right here. Listen, I'm good at that.
Everybody's in a good mood, and Jeremy's like, and then you'll die. And then you'll die.
And at the same time, your life may have been very good these last four years while Joe Biden was president, even though things in our national politics were going quite poorly. And so I think it's important in these moments to reflect on what are the actual things we can do in our own lives to ensure that we're living lives that are honoring to God, productive for our family, productive for our country.
It can't just be that we're watching news on television. It can't even just be that we're actively engaged in politics and being somewhat activists.
How are we to live our lives in light of the moment in which we live? You know, there's a big debate that's been on the right, and it's become more emphasized in recent years. And it's actually a very old debate between the classical understanding of freedom and the more modern understanding of freedom.
And the way that it's usually summarized is by Lord Acton, who says that freedom is not the ability to do what we wish, but the right to do what we ought. And I certainly subscribe to that view of things.
But what that means is exactly what Jeremy was just saying, which is that the ways in which our freedoms have been restricted in recent years, by Joe Biden, certainly, and by many liberals, is that he denied us the right to do what we ought to do. He said, if you go to your church, you're going to be spied on by.
He said that if you run a Catholic hospital, we're gonna sue you, even if you're nuns. He said if you go pray peacefully in front of a Planned Parenthood abortion mill, we're gonna throw you in prison.
He was denying you the right to do what you ought to do. You see this in the attacks on marriage, the attacks on education, the attacks on children.
We could be here all night listing these attacks on what we have a right to do. Now we have the right to do those things.
President Trump has passed a number of executive orders that have really taken the government out of the business of oppressing Christians and families and kids and all the like. But that means that now we have to go to church.
That means we have to form our families. That means we have to educate our kids.
You know, now we do have the right to do those things. We do have our freedom back, but that freedom doesn't mean anything.
It's kind of like with free speech. Free speech doesn't mean anything if you don't have anything to say.
So you have to live out those substantive goods in your life. I hate it when people clap for you.
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True.

Well, I mean, it is this kind of trick about being a conservative is that you believe that the government should stay out of your business so you can be free. But now you're free.
What are you going to do? Right. It all comes down to us.
It's really not about please do this and please pass this program. It's get rid of all that stuff so I can do the things that I want to do.
And the thing about Donald Trump is Donald Trump, you know, movements happen almost organically. They almost happen by themselves.
They're like waves that come in. And I work in the arts my whole life.
And you see in the arts, there'll come a moment when there's a Picasso or a Marlon Brando, somebody who changes the game, but that game was already changing. He just represents that change.
And that's true of Donald Trump. Without him it wouldn't have happened, but at the same time he is at the head of a movement that's organically happening.
That movement has a lot to do with our old friend Uncle God. The arguments that for hundreds of years have slowly, slowly drained the faith out of Western culture have collapsed.
They've collapsed scientifically, they've collapsed morally, they've collapsed experientially. And so God is now suddenly in with the intellectual crowd, as well he should be.
And I think that this is the moment for us, each of us, not all of us, but each of us, to ask ourselves, who is this God and what does he want from me? Because every single person, not just in this room, but walking on the face of the planet, knows he is not yet the person he was made to be. And I think that that's something, I don't know, I think about it every day, I pray about it every day, and I think that's something everybody should be doing, because we're all here to create something.
Maybe it's a family, maybe it's just a way of looking at things, maybe it's a business, maybe it's, you know, works of art. Whatever it is, we are all here to make stuff.
And you make stuff out of your heart, and you make stuff out of who you are, and working toward becoming who you are is something you can't do alone, you've got to do it with God. And I think this is the moment for us to reconsider what that means to believe and what it means in our personal lives and then act it out and live it out.
I also think about God every day and about how you're not yet the man that you were made to be. Every day you pray.
Every day. And he calls me like at three in the morning.
Matt. What was the question? Ben.
I mean, first of all, I'm having trouble getting over Drew calling God Uncle God. I really am.
When you're as old as Drew. Wow.
We've been around a long time. We've been together a long time.
My goodness. It's rare that you spring a new one on me, but Uncle God was definitely a new one.
So I think that one of the great dangers that conservatives face right now is that so many of our institutions have been thoroughly corrupted by the left, that the temptation is to destroy all of them. And you see this in government.
A huge number of institutions in government are completely broken, need to be destroyed, rebuilt from the ground up. But my problem is that I see some people, Andrew Tate, who are attempting to take social institutions and then destroy those social institutions as well, pretend that they are meritless, that because there have been bad things that have been done to those institutions, now you throw out the baby with the bathwater and those institutions are themselves meretricious and need to be destroyed.
And the substitute morality that is offered is actually amorality. It's actually sin.
And that is a deeply disturbing and disturbed point of view. The thing that we all need to do, I think, and what I hope to do in my own life, is not to make excuses.
This is the biggest thing. And this, to me, is the essence of conservatism.
Stop making excuses for your own failure. It is one thing to point to an actual wrong that is being done in the world and say that this wrong needs to be corrected, because the world is filled with wrongs, and it's filled with injustices, and it's filled with bad things that do need correction.
It is another thing to look at your own failure and then not say, what can I fix, but instead look out there at, you know, the institution, I can't find a girl, thus the institution of marriage is broken, and thus I should treat women like trash. Okay, that is a terrible way to go about your life.
The answer to finding a good woman is to be a good man. Right? The answer to having a good marriage is to find a good woman and engage in a good marriage.
The answer to finding yourself a better church is to find yourself a better church. If you don't actually like the church that you're going to, if it's been taken over by Wokies, then the answer is not, well, I guess we're done with the church.
The church is stupid. We're not doing it anymore.
The answer is to either form your own or to find a more traditional instituted church that is not doing those stupid things. And I think one of the great temptations of politics is to assume that politics can solve everything.
You've got problems in your life, economic, spiritual, marital, and politics is going to solve all of those problems. If only you can go after somebody out there and blame those people, well, then that gives you the license to do really whatever you want.
And then the failures that spring therefrom are not your own fault. And that, to me, is a sin.
It's a sin against yourself. It's a sin against your society.
It's a sin against the God who created you, gave you free will, the ability to choose, and the skills with which to do something productive in the world. Yeah.
It's... I was in a dialogue with someone online once who was talking about how because divorce laws are punitive toward men, which is undeniably true, that marriage itself should be eradicated.
And this person kept saying over and over, my wife left me, and she destroyed my relationship with my children, she took the house, she got half of my money, I didn't want a divorce, she chose to get this divorce. And he had tons of followers, he was creating tons of energy around this argument.
And I said, listen, there's no question divorce laws are punitive toward men, they need to be changed, all the incentives around marriage have become deeply inverted to the detriment of our society. These are real policy issues that need to be addressed.
I said, but I do think that you're throwing the baby out with the bathwater. I mean, I'm sorry that this happened to you, that your wife left you for no reason.
He said, well, I mean, she had a reason. I cheated on her.
And I said, oh, well, there you go. So, meinks the policy that you are actually against is the policy of you.
The policy of consequence, of just consequence. It's one of the Ten Commandments.
That's the policy that he opposed. Yeah, Uncle God's policies.
But it is nevertheless the case that most of what your life will be is what you make of it. There will be parts of your life that are impacted by outside forces, absolutely, and the beauty of politics is that we have the opportunity, especially in a country like this one, to do something about those policies that impede our ability to live our lives.
But you know, I was backstage talking to Mike Rowe. He mentioned there are 8 million open jobs in this country right now.
There are 7 million working age men who aren't just unemployed. They have removed themselves from the workforce.
They're not looking for a job. They don't want a job.
They feel disenfranchised because they have been disenfranchised, but they are also participating in their own disenfranchisement. And one of the things I've learned in life, one of the things I've learned in business, you know, sometimes people who've succeeded in business will tell you business is about fail, fail, fail until you make it.
And that's not true. Success in business is about fail, fail, fail, fail, fail, and with a little luck, you made it along the way.
It's much more, it's less like getting to a destination and much more like being a batter in the major leagues. If you get a hit three out of ten times in the major leagues, you will be in the Hall of Fame.
There will be statues of you in your hometown. You did not get a hit 70% of the time.
And it's not as though once you did get a hit, you only hit from there on out. No, it's that you missed, you missed, you got a hit, you missed, you missed, you missed, you got a hit, you missed, you got a hit, you got walked.
Most of the times when you got the hit, you still didn't score. You got thrown out at second, or the batter right behind you was the third out, and you basically got your hit and got on base for no reason whatsoever.
Sometimes you score and you didn't earn it. Sometimes you pop it up, but the infield fly rule goes into effect and no one even knows what's happening in the game anymore.
I lost the analogy, but I'm sure there was... All that matters is that you get back up and keep batting.
That's the only difference between... It's not the only difference, but it's the fundamental difference between people who make it in baseball and people who do not make it in baseball.
And it is true in business, and it is true in your marriage. It's true as a parent.
It's true in almost every aspect of your life. It's your ability to take life as it is, not as you wish it would be, to take the hard parts of life and to keep getting back up and to keep doing your job.
Well, speaking of the hard parts of life, taxes, folks. So, am I right? Taxes suck, right? They're bad.
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That's part of the show. It's an ad.
I mean, it's what we all love, correct? We like to take questions from our Daily Wire Plus subscribers during our Ben Key show. They're the people who make it possible for us to keep, alongside our advertisers, to keep doing the work that we do over at Daily Wire.
But today, we want to take questions from you guys. Ben has a policy that if you disagree, he would like you to come to the front of the line.
I have precisely the opposite policy. The more sycophantish you are, the more I want your questions.
So please, if you like me or even love me, front of the line, we'll take our first question. Awesome.
Thanks guys. My name is Luke Rexing and I am actually a subscriber.
So thank you for what you do. I am also getting into cigars.
So haven't tried one of those yet. Tonight's the night.
Pass this back. Baby? Yes.
Let's go. Thank you.
You can just Venmo me for about $15 for that. Sounds good.
That's fine. Whenever you have a moment.
Please be 18. 23.
I think it's 21 now. Yeah.
But my question is, as a young conservative who wants to focus on a new business and an entrepreneurial spirit, how should I go about integrating my views into my business? Ben? Well, I think it depends on the kind of business that you're founding. So, I mean, there's certain things that are just baseline conservative, like be honest in business and don't try to cheat people, right? In my faith, the Jewish faith, you may have noticed, it says that the first thing that God is going to ask you after you die is were you honest in your business dealings? It is one of the things that Judaism teaches.
As you know, we like the money. In any case, when it comes to actually forming a business, the hard part of business, and Jeremy can talk about this more than I can since he does a lot of the hiring and firing, is actually being cold-blooded enough to look at what's working and what's not.
You're not doing anybody any kindnesses by keeping people in the wrong position for too long. That's the hardest part, I think, of doing business is the difficulty in extricating yourself emotionally from the business to do the efficient thing.
But it is important that in order for your business

to be a success, in order to be able to employ other people

and provide goods and services at a market rate,

that you actually make those hard decisions.

And again, I think that that requires

a certain level of emotional remove.

And you have to understand that you're actually, again,

not doing anybody any favors by keeping them in a position

where they ought not be.

And that does, I think, also include the reality that you have to, I think, take the blame on yourself if you hired the wrong person, right? Usually if an employee fails, if somebody does something wrong at your company, it's probably because you put the wrong person in the wrong position to succeed, right? That's sort of your job as a company is to put people in the right position to succeed. And so that I think is the hardest part.
Could I also say one thing that you're integrating your values into the business, and I don't know what your business is. Maybe you said it.
I haven't been paying attention to the questions today. But so integrate them as in, like Ben said, you're living according to your values.
What I think you don't need to do and probably shouldn't do is say, well, this is my business, and I'm the, this is the conservative version of this business. We're the conservative fill in the blank.
You don't need to be that. Just do the business and do it well.
And if you're living according to your values, then you're already, you know, the conservative version of that business. Sounds good.
Thank you, guys. Thank you.
Hey, my name is Christy Clark, and I'm actually asking this question for my 14-year-old daughter, who's at home watching right now and absolutely loves y'all. She watches you all the time.
I have to turn her TV off at night. Matt, super uncomfortable movie.
Absolutely loved it. I don't know how you sat there and did that, but that was amazing.
It's because I'm a, as Jeremy's pointed out,

it's because I'm a sociopath. That's how, that's my secret.
But my question for my daughter, Belle, is she wants to be just like you. She's 14.
She's charging that way of doing this type of thing, absolutely wants to do this in life. And how does she get started even at 14 in the world that we live in where she is pro-Trump, pro-Republican? What does she do at this age to be you one day and take over Daily Wire, Ben? Eventually, we'll be for sale, so she can do that.
But I think that, you know, I started writing a syndicated column when I was 17, so actually not that much older than your daughter is now. And the key, I think this is true, by the way, in virtually all businesses, but it's certainly true when it comes to political commentary, is you have to read an awful lot, learn a lot an awful lot about the business, and do a lot of work for free.
There's no such thing as a person who has success in literally any business who was not a failure for a very long time before they were a success. Everyone who's an overnight success was an overnight success 10 years in the making.
And so I started writing a syndicated column making no money off of this for probably a decade before I had the famous Piers Morgan interview. That was like fully a decade after I started doing what I was doing.
And that takes an awful lot of reading and writing. And then the other thing that I would say is that she should attempt, and I think everybody should attempt, to find a niche where you're a specialist in the thing.
And that can be an information niche. Either you can know a lot about a particular topic, or you can be willing to report on a particular topic.
And if you have a monopoly on that topic, that makes you a marketable commodity, right? Everybody's got an opinion on politics. Everybody in the room could be a political columnist, I'm sure.
But there's a difference between that and being a person who does the research and does the hard work that nobody else wants to do. One of my mentors, Andrew Breitbart, used to say that if you have a cell phone with a camera, you're now a reporter.
And that's one way that I encourage young people to get started is you're in your town. There are stories all around you of things that probably require change.
Get those stories. Hook up with an outlet like ours.
We'll report it, and we'll make that a thing. And that's a great way to get started in this particular business.
One of the great advantages if you want to be successful in media is that, and we're testament to this, it requires no talent to do media at all. So if your daughter has talent, she's already a step ahead of like 95% of the business.
It might be a disadvantage though. If she actually has talent.
To your point, Ben, on reading, one thing I would say, especially if your daughter's 14, which is great, love that. I was a political junkie from the age of at least six.
I was like campaigning for Bob Dole in my first grade classroom, all right? I was more excited about Bob Dole than Bob Dole was. But, so I'm all about it.
However, now it's very easy to become famous or infamous at a young age because of social media and cameras.

And she should resist that urge because you have to read like anything because no one reads anything anymore.

So if you read one book, you will know much more than most people.

However, if you want to have a view of politics that is solid, that is stable, that will deepen over time, of course, but that is grounded in something, you have to read like a billion books, and it's just not possible to do that at age 14. So I would recommend figuring out what she thinks, get the book learning, get a little practical learning.
I think working on a congressional campaign is the best political education out there. I worked on campaigns as a teenager and in my 20s.
It taught me a lot that you can't learn in books. And then when she's ready, I don't know, 16, 17, maybe a little later, maybe 28, 29, then she can make a big splash and she'll be ready to go and she'll have something that distinguishes her from everybody else.
Hi, my name is Blake Markson. I'm a subscriber and my question here, I'm a college student and I'm just, I've been, throughout my education, I've like questioned DEI and a lot of subjective business measures.
So what I'm wondering is how you guys would challenge these viewpoints and kind of move throughout like my educational process because I'm a sophomore right now and not really liking everything that I'm doing right now. Yeah.
One thing I would say is that it can be really easy to be tempted toward some sort of absolute answer on a question like this. Some people will tell you, just keep your head down, get your degree.
You're paying to be there. The most important thing is not to rock the boat.
You need something from them in exchange for your money and your time. Go get it.
That's the only reason you're there. Other people will say, you should just be fighting all the way, defending your rights.
Campuses are ground zero for all the worst things that are happening in our culture. Be an activist.
But the truth is, you actually have to live your life, and none of the people giving you advice on this topic do. And only you know what you actually want to get out of this experience in college.
Only you know what kind of career you want to build in your life on the other side of your time in college. Some of them much more dependent on getting that degree than perhaps others are.
I think the best thing you can do in this regard is live according to your lights. The one thing I'll say you should not do is live your life out of fear.
If you find yourself living your life out of fear, you actually can't make the cynical calculation of, I will live my life out of fear, but on the other side of it, I'll be very, very successful. That's a deal with the devil that you can just never walk back.
But that doesn't mean that you always have to be in the fight. It doesn't mean that you have to be reckless in every situation.
I will say in my own life, I've made the choice from a young age, probably before I could make it consciously, that I was just going to say what I believed in every situation and come what may. And, you know, I'd like to say that it's worked out well for me.
I've gone through a lot of real difficulties because of that decision. I don't necessarily think that that is the most virtuous decision.
I think it's the most Gen X decision, but I don't know that it's the most virtuous decision. Although it can contain virtue.
Sometimes, though, it can contain hubris and recklessness and all sorts of other things. So I think that rather than looking for an absolute answer to the question, the very best thing that you can do is actually know yourself, know what you're trying to accomplish, know what fights are worth your time to be in, and go fight those fights.
And if you're like me, it'll be all of them, and you'll never get a college degree, and you won't make any money until you're 30, and that's fine. And if you're like Ben, you'll be writing a syndicated column at 17, and now be Ben Shapiro.
You know, I would like to add just one more thing. Don't lie.
You don't have to get into every fight. You don't always have to speak up if it's not important, if it's not that big a deal.
But don't let them make you lie, because some of them will hunt you down until you either have to lie or tell the truth. Oh, I totally disagree with this.
You totally lied. Now wait, let me finish before you.
Whatever he says, because he doesn't know what he's talking about,

every lie takes something out of your soul, every single one,

and the bigger lie, the bigger the piece of your soul it takes. Isn't worth it.
Not for a minute. He's very old.
You should totally lie. So the way that this works is that when I was at UCLA, okay, you speak up in class, and then they had these things called blue books.
The blue books were the anonymous test that you took. You would write by hand in those days.
And you, I know, it's a long time ago. And you would write a student number, not an actual name on your blue book.
And then you write like a comma and you get the A. Obviously.
Because what difference does it make what you write inside the blue book? So that's where you lie. Look in his eyes.
Do you want to be like that? No. Look at my wallet.
Do you want to be like that? Live according to your lights. Thank you.
Hi, gang, my name is Yehuda, and it's so special to be here with you. I'm also a Daily Wire Plus subscriber.
And I must say, Michael, I disagree with you, and I agree with Matt. Kids should be at weddings.
Listen, I'm not saying... Wait, you said they shouldn't be? I said...
I didn't say they should never be at a wedding, but sometimes... I'm just saying always.
You throw on the tuxedo, you have a few Coca-Colas, it's a late night wedding, and I don't want the little wedding kids. Wedding for children, that's why marriage exists.
In like Pakistan, not in America. What are you, a limb? There's a total limb over here.
That's a limb position. Look at what you started.
Look at this, Josh. On a more serious note, on a more serious note, over the years it has become increasingly clear that the mainstream media is acting as an arm of the Democratic Party and as anti-American factions, although I repeat myself.
This has come to a crescendo during the last few election cycles, as well as during the COVID pandemic, something I witnessed personally as a medical doctor. The most recent attempt to equate free speech to Nazi-era fascism sets a new egregious level.
It would not be hard to trace these media trends to foreign groups, aggressively using our media to undermine and sabotage the United States. With some investigation, we can easily find which parties are complicit in these efforts.
My question is, should we conduct such an investigation? And furthermore, if we do, what actions should we take based on the data we find? Well, I mean, it depends if you're talking about foreign actors who are actually funding American media. So yes, I think there should absolutely be congressional investigations, presumably the House Foreign Affairs Committee, looking into funding of various enterprises and the propaganda that emerges from those enterprises.
If you're talking about the Democratic Party working in cahoots with the legacy media, I'm not sure that you need an investigation with that. I think you just need retinas and a prefrontal cortex.
I mean, basic logic suggests that the human centipede, that is the relationship between the Democratic Party and the media, is an ongoing bleep show. So I don't think that requires an investigation, and I don't think it's a big scandal.
I think that the truth is that the legacy media, and this is something Drew said earlier, so Drew, this is where you're right. You were wrong before, but now you're right.
What Drew said earlier is right. The legacy media has absolutely destroyed itself.
What this last election cycle did was expose the legacy media beyond all repair. And that was really exposed not even by COVID, which was truly terrible, or BLM, which was also truly terrible, but by Joe Biden dying on stage.
When Joe Biden died on stage in that moment, the legacy media was destroyed for all time. And I don't think that they're ever going to be able to recover it.
And you can see it in the numbers. People do not trust the legacy media.
It's irrecoverable. The Washington Post is never going to have a majority of Americans that believe it's trustworthy again.
So I'm less worried than I've ever been about the power of the legacy media. And I've spent most of my life worrying about the legacy media.
You know,

Ben, you said something there. You mentioned human centipede.
You were evoking images that

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Spoiler alert. Hi, my name's John Hinshaw.
Mr. Knowles' reference may be for...
I am one of the Washington pro-lifers who was sentenced to 21 months in jail, and we thank President Trump for pardoning us so that we're free. Thank you.
What I wanted to try to get a sense of is, well, what I'm feeling a sense of is there's really an opportunity for the United States of America to have a full discussion about the horror of abortion. We started to have it in the 70s.
I'm an old man. I remember it, but a lot of people here don't.
There started a discussion, and then Roe v. Wade happened.
And aside from all the lives that were lost, and all the women that were destroyed, there was also the complete cutting off of discussion about abortion. And the media has kept it that way.
Our courts, we've never been able, even in the Dobbs decision, the developing child before birth is only briefly referenced. In all the other court cases, it's about some specific legal angle to the issue, the heart of the issue, which is a developing child before birth.
And this, I sense, is the time. This is the time for this country to take up that discussion.
And even when I'm in disagreement with President Trump, as I am on the IVF, it is an opportunity for discussion. And so I even thank him for that.
So I wanted to get some of your feedback on that. Yeah, look, I think I totally agree with everything that you said.
And it's easy to forget that just, you know, even several months ago, certainly in the last couple of years, we were told, even by conservatives, that our victories, you know, the great victory of repealing Roe v. Wade, one of the great human rights victories of all time, was actually a bad thing politically because we were going to pay for it.
We're going to pay the price with some great backlash in the polls and the women of America would rise up to punish us for protecting babies from slaughter. And that didn't happen.
And the reason that it didn't happen is because it turns out, as many of us, as we have all been saying, people like you have been saying, the pro-life argument is a winning argument. It is a winning argument.
And as long as you're just honest, the only way to win the argument when you're pro-life is to be brutally honest and to show. It's one thing, you know, if we are claiming that there is a genocide of children happening, that 60 million human beings have been slaughtered by abortion, if that's what we claim, which is what we claim because it's true, then there should be passion and even anger behind our words.
And if there isn't, then why would anyone take us seriously? Because it's like we don't even believe what we're saying. So we are not the ones.
The pro-abortion side, they're the ones who have to cover everything they say in euphemisms. They have to be very careful about every word they choose.
And the euphemisms constantly change, because they can't talk simply and clearly about what the thing is. And we win the argument simply by being clear about it, because the pro-life argument is, as I said, it's the most winning argument of all time.
The pro-life argument is simply this, that it is always wrong to intentionally kill innocent human children. That's it.
And I defy any pro-abortion person, any so-called pro-choice person to engage with that. Are you saying that there are times when it is actually okay to intentionally kill an innocent human child and that's what they don't want to engage with? And as long as we're honest about it, then we win the argument.
And this is everything now. What you're talking about is everything, having the argument openly because the law is not going to stop it.
It's not going to be able to stop it with the technologies, with the medications. It will still be going on unless people see, unless they open their eyes and see what they're doing.
It's the only way. There are always going to be murderers.
There are always going to be people who kill people. But at least we can make it apparent to people that if you're a good person, you don't do it.
And that's an argument we can win, and we have to win. We have to win it now.
Hi, my name is Erin. I'm a college student.
College is woke now. So what would you say to me as trying to represent who I am, just like you guys do every day? I couldn't quite hear that.
I couldn't hear a word you said. You have a beautiful, mellifluous voice.
I meant college is woke, and I want to pursue what I love, just like you guys do. What do you do when you have that thought in your head? It's like, pause.
I need to keep doing what I love to do. Well, I think that it...
I'm very famously anti-college. I think that most people should not go to college.
Thank you. I think that, you know, if you want to be a heart surgeon, I think there's a strong case that you should go to college.
But I think most people who are getting, you know, bachelors of fine arts should not be getting them. And you might say that in a better world than this, those degrees are useful to society.
Back when we taught things like the Western Canon, back when we taught things like philosophy, perhaps a liberal arts degree actually did prepare, you know, people who aren't going to go into very specialized fields. Nevertheless, those degrees and that experience could prepare them for their life as productive citizens.
We don't live in that world anymore. You're not going to study the Western canon if you go to college.
And so unless you're going to do something very particular, I would go get a job instead. The thing that you have to do in this life, God said, you know, everybody likes to focus on that, on the seventh day you will rest.
But the part that he said right before that was six days you will toil. Go to work.
You know, I see your point, Jeremy, which is that for 99% of colleges and in 99% of classes, maybe even within colleges, you're not going to be able to get that great education. I disagree with my fellow conservatives.
They sometimes say, only go to college if you're going to study engineering or if you're going to study business or something. I think that's the exact opposite reason to go to college.
You should just get a job or an apprenticeship or go to trade school to learn a job. That's great.
That's awesome. There's totally a place for that.
If you want to get a university education, the point of it is not instrumental or utilitarian. It's not just to make some money or something like that.
The point is to get at the truth, and the way you do that is to immerse yourself in philosophy and in literature and history. You can still do that at some universities.
There are good ones. I mean, there's Hillsdale, Ave Maria, Franciscan.
You know, there are a handful you can name. Even at the big brand name schools, there are at least a few professors left.
And then my final point on this, if you find yourself at a woke college that doesn't have great classes, and at the very least, you can understand that every man is my teacher and I can learn something from him. One of the greatest advantages...
Not for 250,000 freaking dollars. Books are free.
That's true. Listen, you really do need teachers and mentors and things.
I agree, a quarter million bucks, you know, find scholarships and things like that. But all of that to say, if you're at the woke college, you're making a financially reasonable decision, you can benefit greatly from being around people who are radically leftist, because you can understand their arguments much, much better than they understand your arguments.
It will give you an advantage. That is how we win back culture.
It is how we make the best of our... Hold on a second.
Is he... Or just don't go to college.
Yeah! Next question, please. Hi, my name is Elora Van Tassel.
I'm the oldest of six kids, so my parents definitely understand the difference between a man and a woman. So thank you, Matt, for the movie.
I want to ask if you have more tips on standing up against confirming the people around me who continue to push the gender ideology. Keep in mind, I live in a deep blue state that is still, their media is still controlled by the left.

So it is important never to acquiesce in this.

Truly, it is really, really, really important.

And you're not doing anybody any favors.

Harsh truth is still better than kind falsehood.

And telling somebody who is obviously suffering from a mental condition that in reality they're a member of the opposite sex is not doing them any favors at all you wouldn't do it in any other circumstance you would never say to an anorexic person actually you know what you're totally right you're really fat when they're actually underweight by 40 pounds you would never ever tell somebody who is suffering from severe depression that actually maybe you're right maybe suicide is the proper answer you know you're thinking this through properly. And so the idea that you should confirm somebody in what is an unhealthy delusion is wrong.
Now, is that going to make friends? No. Is that person going to necessarily want to go out to dinner with you? No.
But they are going to remember in the darkness of the night that there was somebody who was telling them the truth. And that is really, really important.
Because if no one tells them the truth, then they're never going to understand that the other answer was always there, which is that maybe this is not a body problem. Maybe this is actually a brain problem.
And that requires different thinking about these issues entirely. And of course, Matt is the expert on this particular topic, because not only did he make a movie, but I've heard he's a woman.
But, sorry. I mean, look, I think Ben covered it well.
I mean, the most important thing, and also to go to Drew's point earlier about, you know, never lie. And so, you know, you don't have to go looking for confrontation.
We tend to be confrontational people. It's part of our job.
We're kind of wired that way. And so if you are and you want to go out and look for that, then God be with you.
But you don't have to do that. And you don't have to go jumping on every grenade that you find in the room.
But it's just don't play the game. Don't acquiesce.
don't play the language games. That was the big mistake that was made culturally,

even among some conservatives back several years ago,

where they started playing the language game.

And they said, well, I just want to be polite.

And once we start putting politeness over the truth,

then you've already lost.

And so don't do that.

And you'll be fine, I think.

Hello, my name is then you've already lost. So don't do that, and you'll be fine, I think.

Hello, my name is Jeremiah Gripsilver,

and I just wanted to ask a question on behalf of Ben Davies.

Michael Knowles, why do you pretend like your show is your own show when clearly Ben Davies is the host?

Wow.

Wow.

Fighting words.

Did we just find the one Ben Davies fan at the entirety of CPAC? That is outright, you know, sometimes people infiltrate these events, you know, the leftists or the, this kind of disreputable or well, all these kinds of people. And I found my least favorite infiltrator and that is the fan of Ben Davies.
Though he does run most of the show, if I'm being totally frank about it. He runs a lot of it.
I also wanted to ask what your favorite, like, funny Trump story is. Well, my favorite what story? Funny Trump story.
My favorite funny Trump story? Like a personal Trump story? I haven't really interacted with the man all that much. However, there was one great time when I, well, I can't say I wrote a book, but I did a book called Reasons to Vote for Democrats, a Comprehensive Guy.
We have scholars in the audience, I see. That's great.
A blank book. Ben Shapiro blurbed it as thorough.
And anyway, I did it. We sold a bazillion copies.
I ended up getting a big book deal out of it. Then I ended up on television, on cable news one morning, and the most important viewer of the Fox News morning show was watching from the White House.
That was President Trump, and he endorsed the book, and it was really, really great, and people wrote about it in the newspapers. But the thing they didn't write about is he also quoted the thing that I said right beforehand.
I think I was talking about his Syria policy or something. But the way he quoted it made it seem like I was the president.
It was like Michael Knowles, my administration is bombing Syria and all that. And I thought, man, this is really cool.
The president is making it sound like I'm the president. That's a really gracious thing for him to do.
And then he plugged the book. So from my personal standpoint, that's my favorite funny Trump story.
But I don't know, there are about 10 billion others for everyone else in the room. Thank you.
G'day, guys. I'm Geordie from Australia with these noisy folks up the front.
I'm a casual subscriber, by the way. So when Matt has a movie, I subscribe for that.
Question to Michael Knowles. You offered me some whiskey just before.
Do you have a spare glass up there?

Mm-hmm. Of the 45, 47 whiskey?

Yes, please.

Yeah. Do we have an extra glass? Do we have like a cannon that I could blast?

I haven't had a single sip.

There you go. This is your whiskey now.

Thank you.

I'll put it. Do we can someone? Here we are.
Wow, this is great. We're giving people booze.
We're giving them. Is this legal? This is certainly not legal.
I'll walk it down. Who's, you know, conservatives, we're people people.
The libs, there you are, sir. Enjoy.
I love it. This is, you know, it's like a family, man.
Did you get his ID at least? Yeah, he's like 45 or something. How many laws are we going to break during this show? If this kid asks for cocaine, the answer is no.
The answer is no. Can I get a cig? Any zins? I need someone to give me a zin, actually.
Uh, hello. Everyone's tossing.
All right fine. No, no, I'm fine.
It's okay. My name is William Ripsover.
I had a question for Matt or Michael. As a younger man, I was wondering what saint you try hardest to model yourself after, and as a young man, what saint did you most look up to? You know, I'll go to the New Testament, and Saint Paul has always been probably the saint that I've felt the most connection to.
I wanted to choose that as my confirmation name, but Paul Walsh just didn't,

I didn't think it sounded right, so I couldn't do it. But the thing I like about St.
Paul, I mean, obviously some of the most beautiful words, some of those beautiful insights ever written can be found in the Pauline epistles. But also, I guess I kind of, I can feel a certain connection to the fact that Paul was, when you read the Pauline epistles, he was quite blunt in the way that he talked to people, in the way that he addressed issues.
And to me, it's a real rebuke of the kind of nicey-nice Mr. Rogers sort of Christianity that we've gotten fed to us, force-fed to us over the last several decades.
Because then when you go, and even if you read the Gospels and you read the way that Christ dealt with hypocrites and dealt with corruption, you also find that it's quite a bit more aggressive and blunt and direct, not mean-spirited, certainly, not hateful. There's no contempt in it, but it's calling the sin out and rebuking it directly, which is the thing that I love about the U.S.
My confirmation saint is Thomas, but I don't know which one it was. Because I was a punk kid, I was 13, I became an atheist, and I don't remember if I picked Thomas because I was doubting or because I had heard vaguely of this man, Thomas Aquinas, and I heard he was a smart guy.
And I thought I was smarter than I was. But it all really comes full circle because doubting Thomas, he's called doubting.
But of course he says, you know, let us go with the Lord. Let us die with him.
That's a great show of faith. And St.
Thomas Aquinas is one of the most intelligent people ever to live and was right about everything and was certainly a lot more correct about ultimate things than some punk 13-year-old atheist who happily came out the other end. And by the way, Thomas means twins, so I think I can claim them both.
At least I choose to. Thank you very much.
Hello, my name is Harley. I'm a huge fan, but I wanted to ask, what do you have to say about the gender ideologists that use intersex people as a pawn for their trans agenda? It's a massive category error.
So when you're talking about people who are intersex, these are people who have some sort of genetic disorder in which they develop differently than, say, XY genetics because the SRY gene has crossed over, for example, or where they develop secondary sexual characteristics that are not in line with their genetics, this does not make them a separate sex anymore than a person who is born with a third arm would constitute a separate class of human being called the third-armed people. A genetic defect is not the same thing as suggesting that there is an entirely separate sex.
Sex is defined by the actual reproductive resource that is being created, either the egg or the sperm, the large cell gamete or the small cell gamete. That is actually how you define sex, biologically speaking.
So suggesting that because somebody has a birth defect in which it's unclear to the outside eye what their genetics might be,

that this somehow means that a genetic man who has all the normal characteristics of a genetic man could theoretically be a woman.

That's just an asinine category error, and people are lying when they attempt to equate intersex with, for example, a person who is a genetic male who claims that they are actually a female.

Guys, thank you so much for spending time with us tonight.

Enjoy the rest of CPAC, and enjoy the next four years. They're going to be great.
Thanks, everybody. Thank you.
See you guys. Thank you.
Thank you. Thank you.
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