
Loading summary
A
It's okay not to be perfect with finances. Experian is your big financial friend and here to help. Did you know you can get matched with credit cards on the app? Some cards are labeled no Ding decline, which means if you're not approved, they won't hurt your credit scores. Download the Experian app for free today. Applying for no Ding Decline cards won't hurt your credit scores. If you aren't initially approved, initial approval will result in a hard inquiry which may impact your credit scores. Experian Today, the Matt Walsh Show. We will do a deep dive into what may perhaps be the worst, most laughably bad and wokest TV series to ever be produced by a streaming service. And that's obviously saying something. Also, a new report by Axios makes it clear that Democrats are running as fast as they can from the trans issue. And a prominent Democrat senatorial candidate who claims to be a Christian says that all religions are equally valid. Is that a position that a Christian can actually hold? Talk about all that and more today. The Matt Walsh. Normally, Stephen Miller, the White House Homeland Security Advisor, spends his time focusing on major issues facing this country and the world at large, like removing illegal aliens from the US Purchasing Greenland, deposing South American communists, and so on. But every now and then, Stephen Miller weighs in on topics that, at least on the surface and, and also several layers below the surface, don't seem quite as important. So, for example, the other day, Miller offered his assessment of the new Star Trek show on Paramount plus called Starfleet Academy. And here's what Miller wrote. Not exactly a flattering review, but here's what he said. Tragic. But it's not too late for Paramount plus to save the franchise. Step one, reconcile with William Shatner and give him total creative control. Now, Shatner, who of course played Captain Kirk in the original show, responded, and he said this I'm on the same page with you, Stephen Miller. Shatner also called out some abysmal oversights by the writers and wrote, quote, shame on the line producers, I'm ready to assume command of the series now. Seeing this exchange, it occurred to me that this new Star Trek show is an ideal target for a deep dive. Sort of like the one we did Thanksgiving week with Ken Burns's documentary about the American Revolution. And that's not because anyone should care about a new streaming show that's, you know, total garbage. Those are a dime a dozen. Well, except that these garbage streaming shows somehow cost like $100 million to make, so it's more like 1.2 billion a dozen, I guess, but. But I digress. The reason we should talk about the state of Star Trek as a franchise, and the reason Stephen Miller probably chimed in, is that it's a useful window into what the modern left has become and where they went wrong and how to defeat them. And on top of that, some of the scenes in this new show are genuinely hilarious, unintentionally, of course, and it will be highly enjoyable to mock them. And also, as a certified Trekkie, I am more than qualified to weigh in here. You know, I've been watching Star Trek ever since the days when Frodo and Hermione were battling Dr. Doom on the Death Star. So I know a lot about this series, I know a lot about the lore behind it. I have a lot of respect for it. Now, yes, it's true that Star Trek began in the 1960s as a progressive liberal show by the standards of the day. And they weren't exactly subtle with the messaging about equality. They had a black woman on the bridge serving as a communications officer, which was unusual at the time. By the time the movies came out, the writers decided that in the Star Trek universe there was no money. Everyone just worked for free to improve mankind. It was like a communist utopia. But in those early communist Star Trek shows there were still some elements that you would describe, at least by modern standards, as right wing. Everybody in the crew was physically fit, which you'd expect from the crew of a military vessel. There was no body positivity movement going on. The leaders were all highly competent, decisive men. The officers talked to one another like serious people who understood the gravity of their positions. As the author Isaac Young put it, Star Trek's beating heart was a professional 19th century naval crew in space. It was basically a love letter to right wing aristocracy and professionalism with a left wing coat of paint. And you can literally pinpoint the exact second it died by the BMI of the cast. And more importantly, the old Star Trek shows explicitly rejected the idea that everybody is a blank slate. Every species on the ship was distinct in significant ways, according to my producers, who wouldn't lie to me about something like this. The Klingons were the warriors who were obsessed with honor and violence. The Vulcans were cold and unemotional but highly logical. The Ferengi were scheming and untrustworthy and so on. Ferengi sound to me like some kind of parasitic infection you pick up in an African jungle, but apparently they're an alien species in Star Trek. The point is that these differences weren't inherently good or bad. They were just unavoidable, consistent differences. That's how liberals and most communists, including Gene Roddenberry, the creator of the series, used to view the world. They recognize differences between large groups of people and they wrote a show about those people, you know, getting along sometimes. But new Star Trek, like modern leftist, takes a very different approach. They enforce the fiction of blank slatism, meaning that everybody starts life with a blank slate. And under this worldview, no particular demographic has any inherent advantage or disadvantage over another. We're all the same. We're just molded by our environment. Now, this is unscientific and factually obviously wrong, but it's a core tenet of modern leftism. And that's why at every opportunity, Starfleet Academy on Paramount plus takes pains to push this blank, slightest lie. For example, no longer are Klingons a warrior race that are fixated on honor and warfare. Instead they're now into science and for some reason bird watching.
B
I see you declared early molecular biology and regenerative therapies do no harm's. Not a phrase you hear a whole lot in Klingon.
A
And why do you not yearn for the honor of a valiant death in battle like the rest of our kind, Cadet Krach? Because I yearn for a valiant life, cadet Master. I watch birds. My mother, she taught me to see the beauty in things. Nice. I. I can't believe that's. I can't believe that's a real show. It's real, so. And you can already see that racial diversity was very, very important to the writers of the show. Unfortunately, writing was not important to the writers of the show. A lot of people have accused Starfleet Academy of having bad acting, which it does, but you can't blame the actors. I mean, think about the dialogue here, okay? Think about the dialogue. One character says, I watch birds. They're beautiful. And then the other says, nice. How did that. An actual writer who writes scripts. A screenwriter wrote that dialogue and it passed through all the producers and everything that had. Many people touched this script and every single one of them looked at that line of dialogue. I watch birds. They're beautiful. Nice. Every single one of them looked at that and said, that's great dialogue. I like, yeah, we need that in the show. We need to film that. We need that scene in this show. It's got to be in there in the first episode. What do you want an actor to do with that? I mean, you tried delivering those lines in an award winning way. Daniel Day Lewis could not elevate that Material, it's impossible, but at least it really subverts your expectations to have a gay bird watching Klingon. And more to the point, it completely erases anything unique about the entire race. And of course, the people who are writing this trash, the people who are going out of their way to turn traditionally masculine characters into effeminate bird watchers, are women. A large portion of the writing staff of the show, including the lead writer and showrunner, are women. And we've talked about this before, how all of these terrible shows, like almost all of them, are just written by women. Women took over all these jobs, and then the quality just cratered into the earth. And, and what they're showing us now is, is. Is exactly how liberal women see the world in 2026. For instance, judging by the show, liberal women still haven't recovered from Donald Trump's first term, which we know. I mean, not just from the show, but, you know, just turn on, turn on the news. They're still very upset about the fact that when parents commit crimes, they're separated from their children. In fact, that's the plot device that Starfleet Academy uses in order to put the entire show in motion. The show begins with the villain, a white guy, of course, played by. Played by Paul Giamatti, who is way, way too talented to be here. I felt I was. This is the one emotional reaction I got from watching this. The first episode is. Is deep sadness when Paul Giamatti shows up like Paul Giamatti on Starfleet Academy. It's like if Marlon Brando was still alive and played the villain on the fifth season of Stranger Things opposite a bunch of actors who wouldn't get the job if they auditioned for a high school play. So anyway, Giamatti, who must be working to pay off some serious gambling debts or something, plays a character who's working with an impoverished woman to commit a space robbery. And a Starfleet officer is ultimately murdered during the robbery. And by any measure, this crime means that both Paul Giamatti and the mother should go to prison for a very long time. You know, instead they throw the book at Giamatti and the mother has to go to rehab. You know, rehab for committing felony murder. That's an extremely lenient sentence for the mother by any measure. She commits robbery and murder, and her sentence is to talk about her feelings. But the show immediately tells us that, in fact, it's. It's. The sentence is a great travesty of justice. That's because the mother, in order to go to rehab, has to be separated. From her child, who's taken into custody of Starfleet. The Starfleet woman who issues the sentence, played by Holly Hunter, who's very difficult to understand when she talks, is also like another problem with being a character in a show or certainly a leadership position on a spaceship. But she comes to regret it. She has a full on meltdown about it. She quits her job and Starfleet becomes a teacher. And that leads to this remarkable scene where a high ranking officer tries to convince her to go back to work. This is one of the most cliche kinds of scenes in shows like this. But usually in a show, this is the scene where it's like a grizzled old, you know, assassin or something, or military commander like Liam Neeson. And we gotta go and there's a really bad guy out there and we gotta go find him and kill him. But there's only one guy who can do it and it's got to be you. We need you to come back for one last rodeo. That's usually how it goes. And you can kind of tell in the world of the show why they feel like this is the only guy who can do this. I mean, it's Liam Neeson, but in this case, the only the person they need is this just like small, petite, blonde woman. We. We need you. No one else can do this. And anyway, here's how that scene goes.
B
Anyone here a captain who resigned in disgrace. Oh, wait, that's me.
A
A captain who resigned because we separated. A mother and child.
B
I separated them.
A
You didn't have a choice.
B
No, here's the thing. I did. I could have refused, pulled some kind of bait and switch with the prosecution taking the heat later.
A
It wouldn't have changed anything. We were in Trio. Starfleet wasn't making any exceptions.
B
Separating children from their parents isn't exceptional. It's reprehensible.
A
So you resigned because you still remember how the Federation used to be and felt we weren't living up to our principles?
B
Don't make me pure of heart.
A
A lot of people agreed with you.
B
Well, you didn't.
A
I was dead wrong, though. There's so many things about these modern shows that just like none of it, none of it is right. It all just. None of it works. And sometimes in ways that it's not even immediately clear, there's a lot of ways where it doesn't work and it's clear why. But then the other thing you notice is that all, again, all these shows are written by women. Not just women, but liberal millennial women. And so the Characters, even if they're older or if they're supposed to be exist in the future or whatever, they speak with, like, like, like with the, with the kind of affectation and the sarcasm of a. A liberal millennial woman. So that's where we get the line where she goes, you ever hear of a disgraced captain? Oh, wait, that's me. So it's like, that doesn't even make sense for a woman of that age to be speaking that way. And also another way to date the show, everyone could tell that they wrote this a decade ago. You know, the left doesn't pretend to care about family separations anymore. Remember when that was the big thing? They're separating families now. They're not even doing that anymore. They're just straight up admitting that in their view, any enforcement of immigration law is wrong, period. Even if you're deporting individual grown men who have no families and are also sex offenders that we also are against. They've said no. So they've dropped the pretext of being outraged by family separations. But in Star Trek, apparently, they're still hung up about the fact that if you murder someone, you'll get separated from your family. You know, if you have a child, you should be able to commit any crime you want, according to liberal women, even though liberal women also think that it's okay to kill your child. So the worst thing in the world is to separate a child from his mother. Unless you just kill the child, in which case that's okay. So that's their position. And then we learn that, in fact, the entire show is going to be a power fantasy for the white liberal woman who's been frozen in a time capsule since 2017. The white female captain decides to track down the child 15 years later, offer him a career in Starfleet, even though by that point, he's become a criminal himself. Watch.
B
When you and your mother were separated.
A
Separated. Is that what you tell yourself?
B
That is not what I tell myself. I tell myself we made a horrible, catastrophic decision that robbed you and your mother of a future. So I quit. And I've been looking for you every single day for the last 15 years.
A
So this is the dream of every leftist woman who voted for Kamala Harris. They dream of, you know, breaking oppressed, multiracial illegal aliens and other criminals out of prison. You know, I mean, they're real fantasy. It's all played out. Right there is everything that a liberal white woman wants. You break a, A, a non white illegal immigrant out of jail and then apologize to them. That's the ultimate fantasy for a liberal white woman. Everything they want in life, right there. You break the dangerous black criminal out of jail and immediately apologize. And of course, in this show, spoiler alert, the multiracial criminal saves the ship in the end. So he's. He reprograms. It's like he. He reprograms the villain's goo that. That's like eating the ship alive or something like that. It's weird. So he's a genius. In addition to being a criminal, he's far smarter than any of the professional officers on the ship. Somehow all he needed was a better environment and for his mother to get away with murder and everything would be fine. This is a blank slate fantasy that underlies leftism. And at some level, they know it's a fantasy because they don't pretend to take anything in the show seriously. The old shows would at least try to present thoughtful, intelligent content. But throughout Starfleet Academy, the female captain sits in her chair like a cat lady who's lounging at her house watching, you know, reruns of Grey's Anatomy. She keeps the same posture even when the ship is being attacked. And nearly. Yeah, right, the ship's being attacked, everyone's gonna die. And she's. She's curled up on the seat. This is what, you know, this. That's command posture. That's how you sit when you want it. When you want to be taken seriously and have everyone respect you, that's how you sit with your knees up, curled up in the fetal position on the chair. And sometimes she has her glasses on, you know, because. To show that she's smart. Because in the future, they've figured out intergalactic space travel and teleportation, but not optometry. And by the way, speaking of that attack on the ship, the big dramatic moment in the show, it gave us yet another insight into the IQ of the writers room. So see if you notice anything odd about the dialogue in this scene.
B
Emergency evasive.
A
Multiple systems overload, Captain. Primary power at 86%.
B
All remaining power to forge shields. Open a channel to Starfleet Commander. This is Captain USS Athena calling Starfleet Command. Repeat, 10%. USS Athena under attack by the Venari Rock.
A
Damage to multiple decks, Captain, including crew quarters.
B
Bridge to the doctor. Doctor, report.
A
A little busy here, Captain. The explosion damaged our emergency hollow emitter. Medical staff is in short supply right now. From what I can see, there are multiple injuries, but both cadet and officers, but no casualties.
B
Let me know if that changes.
A
If we can avoid another direct Hit, that would be super helpful. There's the millennial cringe sarcasm again. If we could avoid another direct hit, that would be super. If we. If we could just avoid another direct hit, I mean, that would be super. This is a 70 year old man on a spaceship in the future. Speaking like a 33 year old female gender studies major, graduate, whatever. So they've got a ton of injury. That wasn't the point though. They had a ton of injuries on the shoot, on the, on the crew. Things are blowing up, people are seriously hurt. Some senior officers have been impaled, in fact. But on the bright side, there are no casualties. Now, not to nitpick, but somehow, through the entire production of the show, none of the 15 executive producers or the 20 writers or the crew members or the actors or the directors picked up on the fact that a seriously injured individual counts as a casualty. Saying we have a number of serious injuries, but no casualties is saying we have a number of casualties, but no casualties. The show made it all the way through production without a single person noticing that the doctor of the ship doesn't know what a casualty is. Now, a few minutes earlier, when the attack begins, there was another technical error that I'll point out just cuz why not? This one, admittedly, is. It's a little hard to spot, but if you're watching the video version of the podcast, see if you can identify it. Captain, I'm picking up sources of tachyon interference. 100,000 kilometers to port. 12 contacts incoming.
B
Retract centers. Red alert. Raise shields. Target those contacts and take them out. Get to the kids.
A
Okay, so again, not the biggest deal, but they say that the incoming fire is coming from the port side of the ship. And then they cut to the CGI shot where the fire is clearly coming from the starboard side. Now, it's obvious what happened here. The woman writing the show who's probably all hot and bothered by all the fan fiction she was writing about rescuing a multiracial criminal and turning him into a Starfleet officer, quickly looked up the definition of port. And she learned from Chachi bt, which also wrote most of the script for her, that port means the left side of the ship when facing the front. But for this definition to work, you have to understand that you're facing the front of the ship while facing in the same direction as the bow of the ship. And so, so you can see in this diagram, port is the. The. The red portion of the diagram. So in this CGI shot, the weapons are hitting the starboard section of the ship. Not the port. And in a show with any standards, they'd be embarrassed by this. The bridge crew on the ship is supposed to consist of professional, highly trained officers, but they don't know the difference between port and starboard. And of course, the point of modern storytelling in Hollywood, though, isn't to create a realistic environment or believable dialogue. Instead, they're contractually obligated to shoehorn as much leftist ideology as possible into the episode. To that end, we're introduced to a jerk character among the cadets, who of course, is played by a white actor. So the villain and the jerk cadet are both white men. But to the extent that white people are portrayed positively in the show, which they very rarely are, they're either salivating over criminals or they're lesbians delivering DEI struggle sessions. So this is from episode two. It's a viral clip that you may have seen already, but let's enjoy it again. Watch. Name of this Cadet. Being a cadet in Starfleet Academy means being open to the people around you. And that connection is where time and space really live.
C
I don't need connections.
A
Yeah, yeah, you're a genius. Who owns all the suffering. I only know two things, kid. Number one, old age and treachery always triumph over youth.
B
And a smart mouth.
A
Oscar Wilde.
B
Love that dude.
A
Fun fact. When he died, they had to put glass over his tombstone because people kept trying to make out with it. Number two, a smart mouth isn't worth a damn. The acting is so bad. Now, one thing you immediately notice when you watch these woke streaming shows, aside from the bad dialogue, bad acting, all that is just how bad they look. You know, putting aside the atrocious chatgpt dialogue, the wooden, lifeless acting, it just looks cheap. Even though they spend more than $10 million an episode. This is one of the weirdest phenomenons about modern, about, you know, you find in modern Hollywood, is that they're spending zillions of dollars making this stuff, and it looks terrible. The stuff looked better 30 years ago. I mean, they had better sets with more character in the 1960s. From the looks of it, it appears they shot the entire season of Starfleet Academy at like, a Chuck E. Cheese. And. And they, they then they hired the employees of Chuck E. Cheese to be the lead actors in the show, which. Okay, that's one way to save money. How did it cost you $10 million an episode? I could have done that for 50 grand. Now, the rest of episode two isn't much better. They have a telepathic species using sign language for the first time in the show's history as a way to appeal to the deaf community. So, yes, in the future, telepaths, who by definition have an extremely advanced system of communication that's beyond human comprehension, are also using sign language, which is just random spastic hand movements that no one, including deaf people, actually understand. They apparently retconned this, changing the way the whole species works just for the sake of, you know, adding in more diversity. Then they spend the rest of the episode telling us that walls are bad and that Donald Trump's a bad man because he built a border wall. And again, parts of the show were definitely written like a decade ago. Then in a more modern touch, they also tell us that the multiracial criminal isn't actually a bad guy because he didn't get due process. So, you know, this is the Kilmar Abrego Garcia reference. Watch.
B
The Federation allowed me to question standards.
A
Question or lower them. By allowing a criminal into your Academy.
B
You'Re referring to Cadet Mir. Oh, thank you so much. Those allegations were never subject to judicial review or due process and occurred outside our jurisdiction. So he's not a criminal here yet.
A
Academy admits traditionally includes a six week preparatory program followed by a rigorous entrance exam and intense psychological scrutiny. Was Mir exempt from these?
B
He passed the exam in the 98th percentile while sitting in the back of a shuttle. I lived in the Junnaran sanctuary and swam in the Opal Sea. Beitaze was paradise. Some of the bravest, kindest people I've ever met. It seems to me, sir, that you're allowing your walls to define you now.
A
Now, first of all, even if you commit a crime outside of a jurisdiction, you can still be considered a criminal in that jurisdiction. If a high school student commits some heinous crime in Tokyo and somehow escapes to the United States, the United States will still definitely treat him like a criminal. We certainly wouldn't let him into West Point, which is what's basically happening in the show. We, we'd arrest him and put him on a flight to Japan. For what it's worth, the telepathic guy actually makes a great point in this scene. You know, we're supposed to think he's obnoxious, but he's actually correct. He points out that Starfleet standards must be pretty low if they're letting a criminal into their highly selective Academy because a liberal white woman is attracted to him. And in response, the white liberal captain explains that actually they didn't lower the standards at all. Now, you see, in this leftist fantasy, the multiracial criminal From a Broken home has a 98th percentile test score. That's a revealing moment in a few ways. The writers could have said, yeah, he's bad. You know, he's got bad test scores, but he brings other skills to the table. But they insisted on keeping the line about 98th percentile scores so they can have a girl boss gotcha moment where she puts the racist white man again, another nasty white guy in his place. And they included this line because even in their fantasies, leftists still recognize that objective standards are important. They just imagine that since everyone's a blank slate, all of their preferred demographic groups are capable of meeting those standards. Even though, of course, that's not remotely true. And every streaming service across virtually every show and virtually every genre is just. Is. Is now full of shows like this. To give just one more example, there's a new Agatha Christie adaptation on Netflix where they introduce a black character who wasn't in the original novel who lectures all the white people about how Europeans destroyed Africa. Just a constant stream of propaganda and. And all of it says the exact same thing. Watch. And is that the extent of your connections to Germany? No, I fought for them in the war. You fought with the Germans? Yes. I had no choice. The whole of West Africa was engulfed in battles between Germany, France, and England. In Cameroon, we faced troops from Nigeria, the Belgian Congo, French Equatorial Africa. Welcome. For more than two years, Africans fought.
C
Other Africans on behalf of and led by.
A
White Europeans. Well, then we are grateful for all their and your endeavors. I lost my entire family. I never want to see anything like that happen again. Now they insert dialogue like this where it obviously doesn't belong or make any sense into modern adaptations of classic works of literature. You know, you're trying to watch a mystery series based on a novel from the 1920s, instead of getting that, you're informed that white people caused all of Africa's problems, which isn't remotely true, and the person telling you this is a Cameroonian scientist, not a German, like the original novel. For the simple reason that the writers felt compelled to deliver yet another lecture on colonialism, they really thought that would be compelling to watch. And they've done this to Star Trek. They've done it to Agatha Christie. They've done it to everything. Streaming services are full of this garbage, most of which is based on, you know, either fabricated history, in the case of the Last Thing Bad data, anti white feminist propaganda, in the case of Star Trek. You know, we put a lot of effort into my show, Real History, for exactly this reason. You can make a very strong case that if more people understood history, then streaming services would have a lot less slop. And that's because in all these shows, the writers see themselves as atoning for past injustices. They believe it's their role to bring about equity because of atrocities that in many cases never actually happened. And audiences, for the most part, or at least the audiences that gravitate to this kind of slop don't know any better. Particularly if you went to public schools, then no one ever told you the truth. But even if you don't buy that theory, the fact remains that most new streaming shows are unwatchable. They treat you like you have a Somali tier iq. They beat you over the head with the leftist messaging. Well, Real History, which will continue monthly with new episodes, is my effort to combat this trend. And ultimately, of course, the goal is to end it. And let's hope there are many more similar efforts to come. Now let's get to our five headlines. If your credit card balance is stressing you out after all the holiday spending, cut your cell phone bill in half by switching to Pure Talks saver. Plan just $20 a month for unlimited talk text and 3 gigs of high speed data on Pure Talk's superfast nationwide 5G network. They're a veteran led company who cares about giving back to those who serve. So if you're active or former military or first responder, you'll save an additional 20% every month. The easiest way to free up cash flow is to reduce your monthly recurring bills. And who doesn't want more money back in your pocket? Go to PureTalk.com Walsh make a switch day in as little as 10 minutes. Again, talk text and data for just $20 a month. That's PureTalk.com Walsh. You'll save an additional 50% off your first month. Pure Talk, America's wireless company. Let's start with this positive headline. Axios has this Dems potential 2028 contenders cautious on Trans Rights the article says Democrats weighing bids for president are struggling for footing on transgender issues, dodging questions on the topic more than a year after President Trump's Kamala is for they Them ad was widely seen as one of the most effective attacks in the 2024 campaign. Republicans already are promising to air 2028 campaign ads blasting Democrats over the party support for trans rights. Last week, California Governor Gavin Nome stumbled when conservative influencer Ben Shapiro pressed him on the topic on Nome's podcast and quoting his response about whether boys can become girls, he says, yeah, I just, well I think for the grace of God. That was his answer. Oh, thanks, Gavin. Well, that clears it up. Hey, can girls, can boys become girls? Well, you know, for the grace of God. What, what the axios quiz. Nearly 20 Democrats viewed as possible 2028 contenders. Most didn't want to talk about trans rights and former Vice President Harris, New York Representative Alexandra Kasa Cortez, Governor J.B. pritzker, Senator Cory Booker, Governor Andy Beshear, Senator Chris Murphy, Representative Ro Khanna, and Gavin Newsom were among those declining to comment or not responding. And then even the ones who responded basically dodged the question or referred back to other times when they had answered the question, although not really answered it even then. So my only point here, we don't need to dwell on this, because I've made this point a bunch of times, obviously, is that, and for some reason there are some conservatives who are very resistant to me saying this, which seems odd at first, but the fact is we have won on this issue. This is the most, the most absolute victory that conservatives have achieved on any cultural or political issue in the last 30 or 40 years. And, and we know that we won not just based on the victory, victories in court, the legislative victories, the executive orders that have come down. So on a political level, on a practical level, on our legal level, we certainly have won. But the real indicator, and I said this back during Kamala Harris's campaign, the real indicator is how terrified Democrats are of this issue. They don't want to talk about it. They certainly are not going to bring it up themselves. And they stopped doing that probably two years ago, if not more. They're not going to bring it up. They're not going to run on it now. It wasn't like that five years ago. Six years ago. Five or six years ago, Democrats would shoehorn quote trans rights into anything, anything they were talking about, they would just throw in a line about how we support trans people. Now, it's the exact opposite situation. They're not going to bring it up. They don't want to talk about it. If you ask them about it, they're going to run away from it because they know they lost and they've given up. This is the sign of the real victor that they, they're raising the white flag. Now, of course, they're never, because these people have no integrity. They're never not going to come out and say, yeah, you know what? We really got that wrong. Yeah, you know what? Wow, that's embarrassing, man. We've been, we were going around for years saying that Women have penises, men can have babies. We were castrating children. Wow, that was pretty, that was, that was some effed up stuff and we got that wrong. And let's just pretend that didn't happen. Let's move on. They're not going to say that. They're never going to say that, obviously. But for them, raising the white flag is just. We are not going to talk about this anymore. We're, we're, we're moving on and they're going to pretend it didn't happen that way. By just not talking about it now, does that mean that the rest of us should never talk about it again? No, quite the opposite. Number one, even though they've lost on a cultural and political level and it's been one loss after another in this, you know, one, one battle, they've lost after another on the way to losing the overall war on trans ideology, even so, you know, not every, There are still children who are being subjected to this, who are at, at risk or being indoctrinated or being mutilated. And so while there's even one child who's still being targeted and victimized by these people, if there's still even one, then the fight continues for that reason alone, but also on a political level. The fact that they don't want to talk about this is all the more reason why Republicans should talk about it. When there's an issue that your opponents are terrified of, it's the last thing in the world they want you to bring up. Then, yeah, bring it up. So when you hear in the article that Republicans are already thinking about 2028 running campaign ads on this, yeah, you absolutely should. And don't listen to any conservative who says, no, let's move on. No one cares about this anymore. Like, what? Do you not want to win? You know that your opponents are terrified of this. They don't want to talk about it. They don't have a good answer. Obviously they don't have a good answer. So yeah, of course, run the ads, bring it up in any debate, corner them on it, because it's humiliating to them. They're so embarrassed. It's humiliating. And that's all the more reason to keep talking about it. From Amazon, MGM Studios comes Melania, a new film that takes you inside the 20 days leading up to the 2025 presidential inauguration. Through the eyes of the first lady herself. Step into her world as she orchestrates inauguration plans, navigates the transition and moves her family back to the nation's capital. History's biggest stage on the Biggest screen, Melania, only in theaters January 30th. All right, James Talarico is a Democrat state representative in Texas. He's running for Senate now. And he's also supposedly a Christian. In fact, he's a Presbyterian seminarian. And he was interviewed by. I think this was Ezra. Yeah, this is Ezra Klein, who was asking him about his alleged faith. And his answer is, basically, everything wrong with liberal Christianity distilled down to, you know, one minute. And everything wrong with liberal Christianity, as we'll see, is that it is not Christianity at all. Watch. How do you think about the competing claims of different religions? Do you believe Christianity to be more true than other religions? Do you believe there to be exclusivity? These beliefs, that they're incompatible with each other? I believe Christianity points to the truth. I also think other religions of love point to the same truth. I think of different religious traditions as different languages. So you and I could sit here and debate what to call this cup. And you could call it a cup in English, you'd call it something else in Spanish and French. But we are all talking about the same reality. I believe Jesus Christ reveals that reality to us. But I also think that other traditions reveal that reality in their own ways with their own symbol structures. And I've learned more about my tradition by learning more about Buddhism and Hinduism and Islam and Judaism. And so I see these beautiful faith traditions as circling the same truth about the universe, about the cosmos. And that truth is inherently a mystery. Well, that's total nonsense. And of course, Ezra Klein is listening attentively. He looks very interested, enthralled. There are no. Now this conversation goes on for five minutes. There are no interesting follow ups at all. Just Ezra Klein listening to the dumbest anyone's ever said, like, wow, yeah, okay, this is classic left wing faux Christian nonsense. And it's, it's what they always say. Any, any liberal Christian, which is a contradiction in terms of, will say this. All religions are valid. They all point to the same truth. This is the, you know, this is the kind of universalist heresy. Actually, I guess it's technically omnism. He's an omnis, which is the belief that all religions are valid, that they all point to the same truth, like you said. And now you can say that the obvious follow up, which we never get is, well, really, James, what truth is that? What truth do all religions point to? Because the truth that Christianity points to, the truth of Christianity is that Jesus Christ is Lord. He's. He's. He's the way the truth and the life. That's the truth of Christianity. Jesus Christ is the way, the truth and the life. The central truth claim of the Christian faith is that, and it is very specifically not a claim made by any other religion on the planet. If any other religion made that claim, they wouldn't be another religion, they would be Christianity. So, and when it comes to that central claim, it's either true or it isn't. It can't be true and not true. It's either true or it isn't. If it isn't true, then if Jesus Christ was just a guy, if he didn't exist, whatever, then in that case Christianity is false. And not only false, but it would be worthless. If the central truth claim of Christianity is false, then the entire religion is worthless, worse than worthless. I mean, anything that's not. If you are dedicating your life to a thing that is not true, that's not just wasting your time, that is by any measure, objectively a negative thing. On the other hand, if it is true, which it is true, then Christianity is in that case the only valid religion on the planet, which is the case. Christianity is the only true and valid religion on the planet. And if you are a Christian, that must be what you believe, and there should be no embarrassment in saying it. I'm a Christian and so I believe that Christianity is not only true, but it is the truth and it is the only true religion on the planet. Every other religion is false. If you can't say that as a Christian, then you're not a Christian. If you can't say that, then you're clearly not a Christian. Now if you believe that, but you won't say it for some reason, then you're a coward, then you're a ridiculous coward. But if you can't say it because you don't believe it, that you don't believe it, then you're not a Christian. And this isn't even a matter just of theology. It's also a matter of basic logic. A thing cannot be true and also not true at the same time. Two religions that point to completely different and competing truths cannot both be right. One of those truths is not a truth. You know, it's like one of those, those games at the whatever at the fair where a bunch, there is like a jar with a bunch of gumballs and then you have to guess how many gumballs are in it. Well, if I say that there are 64 gumballs in the, in the jar and you say there are 72, we both can't be right. Now, we could both be wrong. That's a. That's a logically possible scenario, is that you could say 72, I say 64, and, you know, it turns out that it's 53 or something. We both can't be right, though. That is the one thing that can't be is that we're both right. There cannot be 64 gumballs and also 72 at the same time. Not possible. And one of us is right or none of us is right. Those are the only options. And we're not both pointing to the same truth either. What does that mean? Now we both, in this scenario of the gumballs, might be trying to ascertain the same truth. We're both making a claim about the contents of the jar, but one of us is right or none of us are right. The only thing we can't be. We can't both be is right. So the only similarity, the only thing that. That really ties all the religions of the world together is that they're all making a claim about the contents of the. Of the jar. In this case, the jar is the universe. Every religion is making a claim about the nature of the universe, what exists and why it exists. That's what every religion is doing. Every religion is trying to explain what exists and why those things exist, but they're making very diff. They are coming to very different conclusions on both of those points. It's especially funny to claim that you learn more about your own religion by studying other religions. I mean, what exactly do you learn about Christianity by studying Hinduism? I would love to follow up on that. That would be an interesting thing to follow up on. I learned a lot about Christianity from studying Hinduism. Oh, really? Like why? That's not even a gotcha. I want to hear it. What did you learn. What did you learn about the Christian faith from studying Hinduism? Hinduism developed in a different part of the world, completely divorced from the Christian tradition. If, you know, if Hinduism had never existed, Christianity would be the same. It's hard to conceive of two religions that have less in common than those two. Hinduism is polytheistic. Or if, you know, I. I think some would say it's more. I mean, I'm no scholar of Hinduism. Maybe some would say it's more pluralistic because the, you know, you got the infinite creator God, who's a Brahmin, and then the manifestations, you know, the. The minor deities are manifestations of the kind of prime deity. Again, I'm no expert in Hinduism, but you know, it. I've read a little bit about it. Like it is interesting to read about other religions, not to learn about Christianity, not to discover the theological validity of all the world's religions. But from an anthropological perspective, if you're interested in anthropology, if you're interested in history, then religion is part of that. And learning about the mythologies of other cultures and other places of the world, that it's interesting. Like academically it's interesting, sure. But if you do even a little bit of that, if you study other faiths even a little bit, the first thing you notice is basically the opposite of what James here is saying. What you'll notice is, wow, these other religions are really different. I mean, if you actually study other religions, that the first thing you notice is, wow, Christianity is unlike any of this stuff. Christianity is, is, is very distinct. It's like Christianity came from another world. You know, all these other religions feel like kind of outgrowths of, of these various different cultures around the planet. Christianity feels like it came from another world because it did. And that's what you notice if you actually study it, which James has not. If you're tired of feeling like crap and want to be healthier in 2026, you need to throw some colostrum into your daily routine. Our sponsor, Cowboy Colostrum is as legit as you can get. We're talking 100% American grass fed cow colostrum that's collected only in after the calves get their share. Unlike other brands that process their product and strip out half the good stuff, Cowboy Colostrum keeps it whole, full fat and protein rich, basically the way nature intended. This is true. First day colostrum packed with immunoglobulins and growth factors, not some watered down version. They make it easy. Also, just throw a scoop of chocolate, Madagascar vanilla, matcha or strawberry into your coffee or smoothie. No artificial flavor, just natural ingredients that actually taste good. The result? Well, it'll be a stabilized gut, clear skin and healthier hair. It's the highest quality bovine colostrum you could buy in the US and honestly, it just works. My producer Holly tried Cowboy Colostrum and she's loving it so far. For a limited time our listeners get up to 25% off their entire order. Just head to cowboycostrum.com Walsh and use code Walsh to check out 25% off when you use code walsh@cowboycolostrum.com Walsh I'll mention this briefly. Illinois Governor JB Pritzker signed the Clean Slate law into act on Friday, creating an automatic process to seal the Eligible criminal records for individuals convicted of certain non violent offenses, including theft and drug possession. The Clean Slate act, passed with bipartisan support with my signature, will offer the opportunity for Illinois to create an automatic process to seal the criminal records of those convicted of nonviolent crimes. There's no reasonable public safety justification for making it hard for returning citizens to get a job or housing or an education. It's a policy guided by punishment rather than rehabilitation. Law applies to more than 1.7 million adults in Illinois, requires law enforcement agencies and circuit clerks to steal eligible criminal records without individuals having to file petitions. So I'm not a big fan of this, shockingly a soft on crime policy passed by J.B. pritzker in Illinois. I know you're pretty surprised that I'm not a fan. I know you heard that and you thought that sounds like something Matt Walsh. It's got Matt Walsh written all over it. But no, I'm actually not a fan and not going to waste time going into detail here. You already know my take. To begin with, I object to the premise that so called non violent crimes are not serious. Not to mention, as we've seen, violent crimes are very often categorized as non violent. So in fact, this law will apply to violent crimes anytime there's a law passed anywhere in the country where it's making the punishment more lenient for nonviolent crimes. You should know in every case that this is being done with the intention. It's not even like this is an accidental result. With the intention of also applying these lenient sentences to violent crimes. All you have to do, it's not, it's not very hard. All you have to do, it's just one more step. It just adds a step. First you have to re categorize the violent crime as non violent. And then what do you know, Just like magic, it gets the lenient sentence as well. But I mainly want to focus on this part where he says there's no reasonable public safety justification for making it hard for returning citizens to get a job or housing or education. It's a policy guided by punishment rather than rehabilitation. Now, and the governor, this is obviously not true because there is a public safety justification. There are many jobs, for example, where a person's history committing, say theft would be very relevant, would be a matter of public safety. But, but put that aside for a second. He says that it's a policy guided by punishment rather than by rehabilitation. Okay? So I mean the implicit assumption here, which is implicit in all of our conversations about criminal justice, is that rehabilitation ought to be the primary goal. And so you always hear this argument from people when they're trying to explain why they oppose this or that kind of punishment or, or anything. They always say, well, that's not, that's not how you rehabilitate that. That doesn't, that doesn't help with rehabilitation. Well, who says that rehabilitation is the goal anyway? Why, or at least the primary goal? Why is that the primary goal? No, the primary goal is punishment. Punishment should be the primary objective. Like if you commit a crime and we got to punish you, if you're going to be reintroduced to society at some point, and a lot of these people just never should be. But if you are going to be, then obviously for the sake of society, it's, it's better if there's some kind of rehabilitation. But whether you're going to be rehabilitated or not, you still got to be punished. That's the most important thing. And at any rate, more importantly, this is a false distinction. There, there is no rehabilitation without punishment. So saying rehabilitation without punishment, it's like saying you want to build muscle without exercising. These two things cannot be separated. One is the method by which the other is achieved. You can't separate building muscle and exercise because exercise is the method by which building muscle is achieved. And whether you're talking about building muscle or rehabilitating criminals, then that method must involve suffering. You cannot get around it. And punishment is, is by definition intentional suffering inflicted on people who've done a bad thing. You're making them suffer intentionally. This episode sponsored by Equip Foods. People often pick up protein bars assuming they're making a quick and healthy decision. But if you've ever taken the time to actually read the label, you were probably surprised to see how much sugar is in these bars. Finding a protein bar that tastes good and is made with quality ingredients might feel like a more daunting task than actually working out. Now enter Equipped Foods Prime Bar, the first grass fed beef protein bar made with only real food and absolutely nothing to hide. Starting today, my listeners will receive an exclusive discount on Prime Bar, which has become our team's favorite protein bar on the market. With 20 grams of protein in every bar. You know, I've tried a lot of protein bars on the market and none of them taste like real food. They taste artificial and strange. But Prime Bar actually tastes like real food. And it's good. With just 11 clean ingredients, including collagen, beef tallow, and colostrum naturally sweetened with dates and honey, you get 20 grams of clean protein without the bloat. No whey, no seed oils, no gluten. Artificial junk. They're third party tested for heavy metals, microplastics and pesticides so they can actually back up their cleanest bars on the market claim. If you want to try the cleanest protein bar on the market that already sold out Once, go to equipfoods.com Matt Walsh Use code Matt Walsh at checkout to get 25% off one time purchases or 40% off your first subscription order for a limited time. That's Equip foods.com Matt Walsh and use code Matt Walsh at checkout. All right, finally. I thought this was a cool, this is from Lex Friedman show and I like his show. I think it's interesting. I like that he talks to different sorts of people, scientists, archaeologists, people with strange theories and ideas about the world. I don't listen to very many podcasts, but if I ever am going to listen to one, it will be about a subject that has nothing to do with politics. And I can't stand the, especially the long form interview podcasts that are just rambling 19 hour conversations about nothing with someone who is not remotely interesting. The podcast where it's like, hey, we're sitting down with this person. We're going to talk for seven hours. Who cares with that person. They have nothing interesting to say whatsoever. The only person, literally the only person who knows how to do the long kind of unfocused conversational style of interview and can do it with basically anybody and make it interesting is Joe Rogan. He's, he's the master of the art form. Everybody else sucks at it. Everyone else sucks at it. So if you're thinking, well, what about this person? Yeah, that person too. Everyone else who tries to do the long conversational kind of long form podcast interview stuff like everyone else is bad at it. He's the only one who knows how to do it. Actually. I just listened to Joe's whole interview with Matt Damon and Ben Affleck and they basically talk about movies for like two and a half hours. And I thought it was, I thought it was great. It was very interesting. And most long form podcasts though are, are terrible. And but this is one that, you know, I think has some interesting stuff. And in this case he was interviewing again, Paul Rosalie, who's a con conservationist and is an expert on the Amazon jungle. I think he lives in the Amazon jungle or spends, spends a lot of time there if he doesn't live there. And in this latest conversation, Paul Rosolie brought to Lex's show some footage that he, Paul, captured of an uncontacted tribe in the Amazon, which is just really fascinating. I mean, objectively, this is the most fascinating thing that has happened on anybody's podcast, including mine, in a long time. It's like, it's hard to beat something like this. Let's. Let's watch.
C
See, as they come closer, they start laying down there. See, he's laying down his bow and arrow. And now they're all standing in a relaxed. Yeah, smiling. Are they smiling? Smiles come at some point. I would say that one of these guys seemed like in a leadership position. He did most of the talking. Did you have a sense of hierarchy at all? Like the boss again? There was just these two dominant guys and, like, this guy and one other guy who looked almost like him, like his brother.
A
Gesturing.
B
Wow.
C
But see even that, as he's pointing, we're going, what are you. What are you. What are you pointing at? You guys are nuts. You guess you're nuts. Oh, you see, as though they're rushing in. There's this desperation. They're hungry. We had a great moment where we'd given them the plantains, we'd given them the bananas. And he'd said, look, that's it. He said, we've given you what you asked for. You asked for bananas. We don't cut the trees here. All of us here are not tree cutters. We're indigenous people. And he couldn't explain who the hell we were, but they were like, we don't cut the trees. We're not the loggers. But then they don't have boats. They don't have stone tools. Imagine if you showed them ice. You know, they wouldn't. This is historic. I mean, it's the. I mean, you hear of Percy Fawcett encountering the tribes. We've heard of anecdotal accounts of the tribes. This is the first time that the tribes have been filmed. We can hear their voices, that there's a documented interaction happening. I mean, this. Now, look how comfortable he's getting. He's so close. They asked him for his shirt, he gave his shirt. They asked him for his pants, he gave his pants. He was in his underwear. You see the shirt that's over his shoulder? Ignacio took off his Jungle Keeper's shirt and threw it to the anthropologist, and then the anthropologist walked it off and threw it to them. So over the shoulder of that uncontacted naked warrior is a Jungle Keeper shirt with the logo showing.
A
So, I mean, it's genuinely historic. We've never seen footage this clear and up close of uncontacted tribes. Usually the footage is like Bigfoot, grainy off in the distance and that sort of thing. But this is very vivid. Obviously if you're watching the video podcast you saw very vivid, very clear and it's fascinating. And he said these people don't have boats or stone tools. That means these are, these are literally prehistoric people, like pre Stone age. Okay. The ancient Egyptians are futuristic compared to these people. If these people stumbled upon technology from 4,000 years ago, they would be flummoxed. Don't have boats. I mean human beings first started using boats like 10,000 years ago and they don't even have that. A boat is 10,000 year old technology and it's far more advanced than what these people have. So that's fascinating again on an anthropological level. And it also raises all kinds of questions which are forbidden. Like if Europeans had never come to the New world, would the which we're told by the left, that's what they should have happened, never should have come. Here we are, we, we stole this land, we're intruders. Well, if Europeans had never come, would the entire hemisphere still be stuck in this state naked, carrying spears, perpetually living in a sort of prehistoric condition? Now granted, some of the tribes in the Americas were more advanced than this, certainly the Mesoamerican tribes, many of the North American tribes were more advanced than this. But all of them, all of them were thousands of years behind the Europeans of the 16th century. And would they still be there if that contact had never been made? And I think the answer is obviously yes, because this is what happened when you have these native tribes and you really don't make any contact, you go out of your way to not contact them. What happens is that they just don't advance at all. And that raises the next question. Would that have been better? Would it have been better if all the tribes of the New World had been left in the year 5000 BC give or take? I think definitely no. I mean would anybody want to live like that? We know about the, the noble savage myth, you know this idea that the native people lived in a state of blissful harmony with nature. But the truth, and this is one of the reasons why I find the uncontacted tribes to be so interesting, is that it give. It's like you can look in a time machine. I mean it's like looking in a time machine. It's like someone coming from the past and showing you a magic giving You a magic crystal or something from a movie where you can see what's happening in the past. And so you could do that. We have that right now. You look into the past and what you find is that people in the far distant past or people today who are living as though they're in the far distant past, they live brutal lives, brutal and very short lives, where rather than being in a state of harmony, they were constantly afraid of everyone and everything around them and for good reason. And they suffered in some of the worst ways imaginable and died very young. Often of causes that these days are extremely preventable. You know, things like your teeth rotting out of your skull and you get infections in your mouth that kill you. I mean, this is the kind of thing that doesn't happen in the modern world, but very common. And not only do they not have the technological advances that we have today or any of the comforts that we have, they also didn't have much in the way of art or music or they have a very primitive form of both of those things, but nothing like the richness of, of, you know, music as we know it today. Well, not, I wouldn't say that modern pop music is very rich, but you know, the music that means certainly they didn't have a written language, they didn't have books or anything like that. And so not a single person who's honest would look at the uncontacted tribe frozen in time and think, man, I'd love to live how they live. It's too bad I'm, I'm not living like that. No one thinks, I mean, I visited a primitive tribe, not uncontacted. This was the Maasai tribe in Kenya. But they have a lot of contact with the outside world. But they do live in mud huts and you know, they live again, it's a primitive kind of way. Their way of living hasn't changed in 4,000 years. Everything in the village smells like sewage, both human and cow in origin. There are flies everywhere. There's like things you don't even think about, especially if you have this kind of Disney version of the past in your head where like everything smells, everything is dirty, everything is dirty and gross and everything smells, flies everywhere, crawling on everything and everyone all the time. And it's just not a life that anyone who's lived a better life would want to experience for any extended period of time. When we think about. So when, when we fantasize about living an old fashioned life, you know, going off the grid, something I do fantasize about where, you know, that kind of thing we're thinking about, well, wouldn't it be great to live in a nice cabin in the woods with a fireplace, comfortable bed, lots of books, running water, certainly at least a stove, you know, a wood burning stove. And so when you, when you think about that, you're, you're fantasizing about living maybe 120 years in the past. And even that in reality would be much, much harder than your fantasies. Account for the kind of romanticized view like in real life, that'd be. It's a very hard life. But this isn't 120 years. This is like going back 12,000 years. And, you know, you might think, hey, I'd love to go back 50 years, 100 years. You don't want to go back 12,000 years. Nobody wants that. That is not a life anybody wants to live. And that leads us to two conclusions. And one is that colonialism was a great good, was by and large a benevolent act. Not perfectly, not all the time, these are not perfect people, but by and large a great good. And then the second is, which I'm, which I'm a little bit, I'm certain of that first conclusion. The second conclusion, I'm a little, I could, you know, I could see the argument, but I think the second conclusion is that we should make contact with all of these people and introduce them to the modern world. Which isn't to say that we should put them on a plane and fly them here to be immigrants before Democrats get any, get any bright ideas. I mean, they look at that video and they think, you know what, you know where those people should live? Minneapolis. We need those people living in Minneapolis. Yep. Get those people to Minneapolis immediately. Get them registered to vote. Let's go. I'm not saying that. What I'm, what I'm saying is, I mean, they could continue to live where they live, but I think introducing them in some way to the modern world is probably the right thing to do. And you know, as fascinating as this kind of footage is and as sad as it would be in some ways to see these tribes basically disappear, that's kind of a selfish thing. I think when Westerners look at that and say, oh, that would be so sad, you know, if you modernize and these tribes disappear, it's a sad thing. Well, that's a selfish perspective that we have because we just think it's interesting that people live this way. And so for us it's a, it's a, it's a novelty, it's an Interesting thing. It's an interesting video to watch. But in reality, their lives are quite terrible in many ways, and they're suffering and dying young needlessly all the time for reasons like, you got a bunch of problems. We can solve a lot of them easily. All. All the ways to solve it. It's all out here. And I don't know, think about how you would feel if I was living in some tribe somewhere and the whole rest of the world is 10,000 years in the future and they never told me. I, you know, if I ever found out about that, I think I'd be a little bit upset. I think I would look at that and say, you got. Why don't you guys tell us? He never told me this. You guys have toothpaste and air conditioning? I don't know. Of course, introducing or making contact. There's diseases that are. Spread. There's all kinds of things. So, And, And. And making contact. The. The tribes themselves are quite. Could be quite violent. And so doing that is a dangerous proposition. But, you know, overall, I think that's probably the direction that this should head. And all of that is the lesson once again that colonialism is a wonderful thing. Never let anyone tell you otherwise. And I think we will leave it there. That'll do it for today. Thanks for watching. Thanks for listening. Talk to you tomorrow. Have a great day. Godspeed. Oh, and you know what? I'm building my colony right here. I'm colonizing this whole board. Sam, my God. Tell me more about your identity as a colonizer. Are today's games getting you into trouble? Play Amiracist, the game about stereotypes that says the uncomfortable part out loud. FBI hate crime statistics in 2015 show that 78.4% of all hate crimes were committed by. By white people. That's right. Right. That's racist. Ew. Come on. It's fun for everyone. And lays out the facts. Nine out of ten Native Americans are offended by the NFL team name Redskins. Oh, that's right. That's racist. Nine out of ten are not offended. Visit amiracistgame.com and get yours today so we can all be canceled together.
Episode 1720 – “Woke TV Is Back With A Vengeance In This New Paramount Show”
Date: January 20, 2026
Host: Matt Walsh
Matt Walsh takes a scathing and satirical dive into the new Paramount+ series Starfleet Academy, asserting it to be the "worst, most laughably bad and wokest" TV series produced by a streaming service. Walsh uses the show as a lens to critique contemporary progressive culture, highlighting what he sees as the decline of both storytelling and Western values in modern entertainment. He broadens the conversation to include discussions on leftist ideology, the trans rights debate within the Democratic Party, progressive reinterpretations of Christianity, soft-on-crime policies, and finally—via a segment from the Lex Fridman podcast—a reflection on colonialism prompted by never-before-seen footage of uncontacted Amazonian tribes.
[00:53–27:41]
[23:00–27:49]
[29:44–37:57]
[37:57–50:35]
[50:35–55:20]
[57:45–1:06:39]
This episode typifies Matt Walsh’s polemical and biting approach: blending pop culture, politics, and philosophical hot takes with equal parts mockery and social commentary. While primarily lampooning “woke” entertainment, Walsh uses these examples to build broader arguments against leftist ideology and for traditionalist conservatism—culminating in a passionate defense of Western progress, both in TV writing and in global history.
Tone: Sarcastic, combative, direct, and deliberately provocative.