Friendly Fire: The Next Decade Begins

Summary

The Matt Walsh Show | "Friendly Fire: The Next Decade Begins"

Date: October 17, 2025
Host: The Daily Wire (Matt Walsh, Ben Shapiro, Michael Knowles, Andrew Klavan, Jeremy Boreing, Isabel Brown)

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Overview

This special episode marks the 10-year anniversary of The Daily Wire, doubling as a retrospective and a forward-looking conversation among its core personalities. The roundtable dives into the evolution of the company, debates the lines of "friendly fire" within the conservative movement, discusses hot-button cultural issues, celebrates milestones, and previews new content like the "Pendragon" series. The tone is playful, irreverent, and at times intensely serious, reflecting on victories and internal fractures on the political right.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Daily Wire’s 10-Year Anniversary: Reflection and Future Vision

• The panel shares the company’s origins—from humble beginnings in a pool house to a "media empire."

• Milestones highlighted:

  • Viral launch moments (Ben Shapiro vs. Piers Morgan, Shapiro on Dr. Drew)
  • Expansion into streaming, movies (“What Is A Woman?”, “Am I Racist?”), commerce (razors, chocolate), and daily news products.
  • Legal actions vs. the Biden administration over COVID mandates.
  • Elevating figures like Jordan B. Peterson.

• Notable quote:

  "The Daily Wire has always been about fighting the left and building the future."
  — Jeremy Boreing [79:48]

• Announcements:

  • Launch of "Daily Wire Lifetime Membership"—10,000 spots, exclusive benefits, gold lapel pin, and a signed copy of Michael Knowles's book.
  • Upcoming original content: the fantasy TV series "Pendragon."

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2. Revisiting Humble Beginnings: Personal Anecdotes

• Matt Walsh reminisces about starting his show from a Volkswagen Passat in a Walmart parking lot, emphasizing Daily Wire’s organic growth and scrappy roots.
• Banter about evolving professional images—critiquing past hair, beards, and Knowles’s failed attempts at fitness for a movie role.
• Personal stories, including Ben Shapiro nearly spoiling Michael Knowles’s marriage proposal on air.

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3. Major Cultural & Political Issues

a. Supreme Court & Race as "Disability"

• Discussion centered on recent Supreme Court oral arguments, with critiques of Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson’s analogy comparing the effects of historical discrimination on Black Americans with disability:

  "[She's] making the case that that's somehow like Black people not having their own voting districts because they are somehow historically disadvantaged. [...] That's a bit of a differential. Okay, I'm sorry. She's dumb. There's no other way to put it."
  — Michael Knowles [16:44]

• The panel underscores what they see as the left's patronizing attitude toward Black voters and criticizes ongoing racialized districting.

b. Right-Wing Group Chat Leak & Internal Policing

• Breakdown of the Politico exposé on young Republican group chats containing offensive jokes (some referencing Hitler sarcastically).
• Matt Walsh insists the story is a distraction from left-wing political violence.

  "If you are speaking in private... and then somebody with obviously sinister intentions comes along and takes that private conversation and makes it public—in almost every case, my position is... I don't care."
  — Matt Walsh [39:07]

• Debate: Should the right police itself more aggressively, or is this playing into leftist tactics?
• Ben Shapiro:

  "There is no comparison whatsoever between some 19-year-old kid who's making edgy jokes in a group chat and a former state legislator, would-be top law enforcement official in Virginia, saying... he is not joking when he calls for the death of his opponents—and their children." [31:17]

• Klavan and Knowles both argue that internal "guardrails" are necessary, but warn about overcorrection.

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4. Debate: Coalition Boundaries and “Friendly Fire”

• Who is “in” or “out” of the conservative movement?

  • Point: Calls for unity against an existential left-wing threat; practical need for coalition.
  • Counterpoint: Some (like Klavan) warn against open doors for genuinely anti-American or anti-Western stances, or those allying with foreign adversaries.

    "There is some kind of human decency level that you can cross where—you’re not on my side."
    — Andrew Klavan [48:32]

• Matt Walsh's perspective:

  “If you are not interested in conserving and defending Western civilization, then we’re not on the same side.” [49:16]

• Reflecting on Charlie Kirk’s coalition-building:

  • Many cite him as a unifier, refusing to excommunicate divisive figures but keeping clear lines.

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5. Gen Z and the “De-Gayifying” Trend

• Key Theme: Is the younger generation rejecting trans/nonbinary identities?
• Ben Shapiro highlights a UK study: nonbinary identification peaked in 2023 and has since collapsed, with homosexual/bisexual identities remaining stable or only modestly declining.
• Isabel Brown (Gen Z Daily Wire host):

  “The idea of the cultural fad of the transgender cult… has already been disillusioned thanks to people boldly speaking the truth… We are not gay anymore. That’s the good news.” [59:39]

• Matt Walsh:

  “Trans and non-binary [identities] are losing steam… It was inevitable. Nobody ever really believed it to begin with.” [61:01]

• Klavan: Argues that transgenderism is a mental illness, whereas homosexuality is not. Praises Gen Z’s comfort in their own skin and predicts baby boom.
• Knowles: Skeptical, contends “victimhood” will now shift from sexuality to economic status among young people.

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6. Middle East Peace and Trump’s Foreign Policy

• Knowles, from Jerusalem: Praises Trump's deal-making in the Middle East—U.S. help in freeing Israeli hostages and brokering stability.

  “The most successful element of Donald Trump’s presidency has been his handling of the Middle East... Trump’s real estate skills from New York somehow map exactly and directly onto the Middle East in a very bizarre... it worked.” [71:54]

• Klavan: Trump brought U.S. global leadership “not seen since Reagan,” and religious values back into the public square.
• Debate: Is de-emphasizing Israel/Palestine politically wise for U.S. conservatives?
  • Knowles: Yes, reduces coalition friction at home.
  • Klavan: No, supports a strong alliance with Israel and a win against terrorism.

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7. Preview: "Pendragon" Series

• Jeremy Boreing premieres the trailer for Daily Wire's most ambitious TV project to date. It’s pitched as a transformative move in cultural influence.

  “It’s the biggest, most ambitious project in the company’s history and it's finally coming to Daily Wire Plus this January.”
  — Jeremy Boreing [79:48]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “You look like an accountant who’s, like, three sheets to the wind and drove out to complain about his wife on TikTok.”
  — Andrew Klavan (to Matt Walsh) [05:26]

• “We launched two days before Charlie [Kirk] was killed, so everything just feels like a fever dream.”
  — Isabel Brown [69:00]

• “With friends like these, who needs enemies?”
  — Ben Shapiro (playfully) [01:17]

• “Limits at some point are going to have to be set. And it seems to me that the move on the right is... there must be no limit set, and any attempt to set a limit is somehow firing inside the tent.”
  — Michael Knowles [45:56]

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• [02:29] - Daily Wire’s 10th Anniversary and Matt’s 8 Years
• [10:06] - Daily Wire Documentary-Style Retrospective
• [14:36] - Segue to Supreme Court/race as disability discussion
• [26:51] - The Politico young Republican chat scandal
• [39:07] - Internal right-wing policing: where to draw boundaries
• [53:51] - Update on Jordan Peterson’s health
• [54:31] - Gen Z and the "de-gayifying" trend
• [71:54] - Trump’s Middle East diplomacy, live from Jerusalem
• [79:48] - Boreing's Pendragon trailer and vision for the future
• [84:28] - Thanking subscribers, pitch for lifetime membership

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Tone and Style

The episode is marked by sharp wit, self-deprecating humor, occasional bickering, and both consensus and deep ideological disagreement. The hosts maintain an informal, conversational dynamic, moving seamlessly between ribbing each other and intense debate on conservative movement strategy and cultural issues.

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Conclusion

The episode serves as a Daily Wire family reunion, blending nostalgia, internal debate over strategy and boundaries, cultural victories, and a ringing call to continued engagement. The legacy and future trajectory of conservative media are foregrounded—media that is, as Boreing puts it, "about fighting the left and building the future."

For listeners, this episode offers a candid snapshot of the contemporary right—its victories, challenges, and enduring internal arguments over the soul and strategy of the movement.

Transcript

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[Ben Shapiro]

You will get to sound off on whether or not black people are disabled as the supreme court reliable.

[Michael Knowles]

That say something that'll get us canceled?

[Matt Walsh]

If you really want me to.

[Isabel Brown]

I mean, I'll tell you, waiting in the wings the last few minutes was quite entertaining.

[Matt Walsh]

Far too much friendly small talk. So far in this fire, we got. We got a lot of the friendly but not the fire.

[Ben Shapiro]

A lot of fire. Friends like these coonies. Enemies of friends like these coonies. Enemies. So what, we're just gonna kibitz for the first part of it? Is that the idea? Or we're gonna actually just jump into the show?

[Michael Knowles]

My favorite part is when Knowles reads the stage directions.

[Ben Shapiro]

Yeah, hold on. I gotta.

[Jeremy Boreing]

Hold on.

[Ben Shapiro]

What does it say? Look hot. Okay. All right, that's fine.

[Guest or Producer]

We're there.

[Andrew Klavan]

Yeah.

[Ben Shapiro]

Ben, you're positively glowing. You're out of the country.

[Michael Knowles]

I am out of the country. I am. I'm still here. And. And I will say that Donald Trump in Jerusalem is a thing, man. Probably talk about a little bit later, but that dude can. That dude can light up a country. I mean, really, really strong stuff. Where are you guys? Yeah, obviously you're back in the States. My understanding is that you and Clavin are headed to, like, yodel in the Alps or something, correct? Next week?

[Ben Shapiro]

Yes. We're going for strudel in Austria. I'm very Excited.

[Michael Knowles]

Probably more exciting for Knowles than for Clavin, given the history there.

[Ben Shapiro]

The Fatherland front was a very short period of time. It doesn't quite get me to Liechtenstein and my Bonnie Prince Charlie. It's one step closer.

[Michael Knowles]

I can't believe that we're like a minute in and you already did the Bonnie Prince Charlie. Like, it should take you at least an hour to get there. But no, we're starting off hot right now.

[Ben Shapiro]

That's actually our whole show. Thanks so much for tuning in, folks. No, do you know what today is? Today is actually two momentous events because we're celebrating a decade of the Daily Wire, not just by looking backward, but by looking forward. Also, I don't know if you guys know this. This is the eight year anniversary of Mr. Walsh at this company.

[Matt Walsh]

Is it really? Yes.

[Andrew Klavan]

Celebrate that, exactly. Celebrate. Is that the word?

[Ben Shapiro]

More, I think.

[Michael Knowles]

Yeah. Wow.

[Matt Walsh]

Do I get anything? Do I get like a.

[Michael Knowles]

I mean. I mean, to be fair, I mean, I think that you get a very large check. I mean, like, on a regular basis. So there's that. I mean.

[Matt Walsh]

Yeah, but I still want a cupcake.

[Ben Shapiro]

You know what we'll give you, Matt, you do get something. You will get to sound off on whether or not black people are disabled. As the Supreme Court reliable. You will get to sound off on whether or not young Republicans can talk about that in group chats. And you will get to sound off on whether or not Gen Z is de Gay ifying itself.

[Matt Walsh]

All of that.

[Ben Shapiro]

You'll get to hear from Isabel Brown. You'll get to hear from Jeremy and the Pendragon. Finally, we're gonna get this great Pendragon release. You know, the first look at it, we're gonna get so much. But first we're gonna look back because, Matt, eight years ago you were in a car, and now you're not in a car.

[Matt Walsh]

Are we throwing into something or are you just saying that to me?

[Ben Shapiro]

No, I'm just saying that to you.

[Matt Walsh]

Oh, I thought we were. Cause something killed. I thought we were throwing into something.

[Andrew Klavan]

There's a picture of you.

[Matt Walsh]

Yeah, I was. Oh, there's the picture. I don't know if that's. Yeah, that was me in the car. When I look back at these videos now, I'm mostly perplexed by the hair. Like, I didn't. I didn't learn to comb my hair until I was about 32 years old. Like, that's actually true. I didn't. And I don't have great hair now, but at least I comb it. And so at some point between the age. Like around 32 or 33 years old, I said, I should probably start combing my hair at this point. And I. And I did, but this was before that. So you can see it just looks like a dead animal sitting on my head. It looks like a toupee. It looks like. I don't know how my wife let me walk out of the house like that, but she let me walk out of the house like that many times for years.

[Michael Knowles]

I mean, I feel like she didn't let you walk out of the house because you were literally broadcasting in a car. So you basically just stayed in your car all day. Right? You might have lived back there. I mean, that was. I do like that. Our idea for your show originally was that you were just gonna sit in your car and. What kind of car is that? That doesn't look like a super nice car, actually. That looks like.

[Matt Walsh]

I don't want to admit what kind of car that was. That was. This was my. We had one car. It was my wife's car. She brought it into the Marriott. It was a Passat. It was a Volkswagen Passat.

[Michael Knowles]

Whoa.

[Matt Walsh]

And she brought it into the marriage. My car broke down. We only had one car. And so I had to go. I would go to a Walmart shopping center and do my show with. Confused. There was no tinted windows, as you can clearly tell. Shoppers are walking by just looking in at this guy ranting at his windshield, confused.

[Andrew Klavan]

You look like an accountant who's, like three sheets to the wind and drove out to complain about his wife on TikTok.

[Michael Knowles]

You know?

[Andrew Klavan]

Ah, she doesn't understand me.

[Ben Shapiro]

There were already signs then, though, and I can see the Daily Beast headline of Matt Walsh broadcasting from Hitler's car. Coincidence? I think not. Drew, when we started all out here together, like, 10 years ago, I think you had more hair than Matt did there.

[Matt Walsh]

Is that right?

[Andrew Klavan]

I actually did, although I didn't wear it on my head. So it was a secret. When we started this, you weren't even there, Noel.

[Ben Shapiro]

I was here on day two before.

[Andrew Klavan]

You came on to be my Twitter voice, which I have to say was the last thing you ever did. That actually was good. You sounded so much like me, I started imitating you just so I could. But I remember I had just been. The first day we did this. I had just been to England to visit my son who was at Oxford, and for some reason, we had to. Absolutely had to do it the next morning. So I flew in. I must have gotten an hour of sleep. I Walked in and it was me and Ben in this pool house that Jeremy had. And I did this, like, 15 minute show or something like that. Looked, got up, looked down, and I was wearing bedroom slippers. I was wearing, like, you know, I was. And back then, you know, I was. I was younger. I was like 105. And, like, I was looking. Thought I forgot to put my shoes on. I literally came in for. And Jeremy said, I noticed that.

[Michael Knowles]

I know that was, you know, one of my favorite things about this company and looking back on all of this is, is to see the change that occurred in Walsh and did not occur in Andrew Clavin. It's one of my favorite things. Like, like, Walsh still had that, like, not full beard. Like, it was kind of my style of beard, actually. Like this kind of shortcut Zorn, mom, Donnie thing that was happening right there. So he kind of looked half hipster. And now, of course, he looks like a mountain man. And now, of course, Walsh looks like he belongs out in the forest of New Hampshire chopping wood or something. But here he looks like he belongs fixing your computer at one of those repair shops at the moment.

[Andrew Klavan]

He sobers up.

[Michael Knowles]

And then, meanwhile, you got Drew. And Drew looks exactly the same. Drew's like the principal from Back to the Future. Didn't that guy ever have hair? I mean, just identical. Like, you could just travel him back in time and supplant one Drew for the other Drew. And there was a picture in my.

[Andrew Klavan]

Room that has gone to be 400 years old, however, just as slowly decaying. All my sins are written in the faces.

[Michael Knowles]

And then. And then Knowles is like, Knowles. Knowles story is. Is a good one because he. He was kind of like the aggressive. The aggressive climber at the Daily Wire. Like, he started out as a guy who was supposed to, you know, answer the pizza boy. Yeah, Your original job was like, social media marketing, and you were never good at it. So we're like, give him a show.

[Ben Shapiro]

And when I say pizza boy, I meant I used to eat a lot of pizzas in the Daily Wire, dude.

[Michael Knowles]

I mean, that's how he used to eat. One of my favorite Knowles memories From the first 10 years of daily Wire, like, very early on was he thought he was going to get cast in a movie. And so he thought that this meant that he had to somehow get a six pack. And so the way he was going to get a six pack was that he was going to walk around the office just eating bags of meat. Literally just like Ziploc bags of ground beef and just Walk around for, like, weeks on end doing this. And he just got fat. At no point.

[Ben Shapiro]

I gave 20 pounds of muscle.

[Michael Knowles]

I never.

[Ben Shapiro]

I didn't cut. I never cut.

[Matt Walsh]

I just.

[Ben Shapiro]

You know, my favorite memory, Ben, of all those years ago, this was pre fat. I think was. I was preparing. This was like.

[Michael Knowles]

I don't know.

[Ben Shapiro]

This was like year one, and I was preparing to propose to my beloved wife, sweet little Alisa. And I bought the ring, and I was all excited. And then I told my friend Ben Shapiro, and he promptly almost ruined my marriage proposal. My marriage, maybe.

[Jeremy Boreing]

Almost.

[Michael Knowles]

Yeah. Now, this is the thing. Well, see, I thought, like, Knowles must have thought of me as a closer friend than I was, because, like, he thought, okay, you know, I'm confiding in Ben, and, like, confiding in Ben, like, unless you're, like, a really close friend, you should not confide in Ben. You know, I've got, like, a show. I got things to say. And Knowles basically says, I figured, okay, he's telling me because it's after the fact he already proposed. Like, why. Why would he tell me if he had not already proposed? It's not like, you know, we spend hours dear diarying each other in the. In the evenings or something. And so he tells me. So I go on the air, and in the middle of the show, I'm like. And congratulations to Michael Knowles, who's proposing to sweet little Alyssa. And then, unfortunately for Michael, Alyssa listens to the show. And how did you get out of that one? It was like she was late.

[Ben Shapiro]

It was some real jiu jitsu because luckily she was listening to it all the time. But she listened after the fact. We went in there, edited that out of your show before it came out. It was very lucky. The marriage went off just fine. And that just. That prompts me to take a little trip down memory lane. On our video screens.

[Narrator]

This year, the daily wire turns 10. That's right. 10 years of leftist tears. Bottled, unfiltered, and sold for a profit. That's Rewind 2015. Caleb Robinson thinks the world needs smarter conservatives, so he decided to do something about it. Caleb calls Jeremy boring. Jeremy calls Ben Shapiro.

[Michael Knowles]

What is going on?

[Narrator]

They load up the truck and move to California. Yes, California. Give quiet conservatives a voice, loudly. Then Ben goes full viral. First he wrecks Piers Morgan on cnn.

[Michael Knowles]

You tend to demonize people who differ from you politically and get threatened by.

[Narrator]

A dude cosplaying a woman on Dr. Drew.

[Matt Walsh]

You cut that out now or you'll.

[Michael Knowles]

Go home in an ambulance. Yeah, that seems mildly Inappropriate for a political discussion. Boom.

[Narrator]

The Ben Shapiro show is born.

[Michael Knowles]

Shocking to me.

[Narrator]

Next up, Andrew Clavin. Old guy, big brain, surprisingly funny.

[Andrew Klavan]

This is the Andrew.

[Narrator]

Then we give the intern his own show. Michael Knowles.

[Ben Shapiro]

Oh, man.

[Narrator]

Then we find Matt Walsh.

[Matt Walsh]

Yes.

[Narrator]

Recording in his car like he's on the run. We give him a desk. The beard thrives. Cut to 2020. Joe Biden, Covid, inflation, high taxes, rampant illegal immigration, and of course, the BLM riots. California was literally a dumpster fire. So we moved the company to Nashville.

[Michael Knowles]

Love partying. I love dancing, and I'm famously social.

[Narrator]

Then we add a sports show. Crane and company.

[Michael Knowles]

Very spot on the Morning Wire.

[Lawyer or Legal Expert]

Thanks for waking up with us.

[Narrator]

Candice joins.

[Isabel Brown]

I am so excited to share the news with you.

[Narrator]

Change the game. And eventually left group chat. Then we started the comment section. Podcasts, news, books, live shows. And while we were busy changing culture. Joe Biden mandates a vaccine. We sue all the way to the Supreme Court.

[Michael Knowles]

There's a lot of winning that is happening right now.

[Matt Walsh]

Still not satisfied.

[Narrator]

Hey, what if we start making movies? Run, Hide, Fight, Shut in, and Terror on the prairie. 2022, Matt Walsh drops. What is a woman?

[Michael Knowles]

Why do you ask that question?

[Matt Walsh]

I just wanted to know, what is a woman?

[Narrator]

Then the greatest lie ever sold. We take down blm.

[Lawyer or Legal Expert]

Where is that money?

[Michael Knowles]

I don't know.

[Narrator]

Matt Walsh testifies to stop child mutilation. It goes to the Supreme Court. We win again. Anyone noticing our theme? Then we launched daily wire. Plus enter Dr. Jordan B. Peterson. His podcast biblical series in the Mastering Life collection of wisdom.

[Matt Walsh]

Why is that not a good thing?

[Narrator]

We started our own razor company, our own chocolate company and cigar company. And when Bud Light went woke, we almost started a beer company. Thanks a lot, lawyers. 2024. Am I Racist? Hits theaters.

[Ben Shapiro]

Your movie is really funny.

[Matt Walsh]

It's really funny.

[Narrator]

Crushes the box office, crushes DEI and crushes Joy Reid's will to live.

[Matt Walsh]

Raise a glass. If you're racist, it's a racist.

[Narrator]

We're not done yet. So far this year, we opened a D.C. office, joined the White House press pool, and we welcomed Isabel Brown. Now the Daily Wire is a media empire. Billions of views, cultural wins, stacked like Biden gaff. Yeah, and all because of you. Get ready for what we have in store for the next decade.

[Michael Knowles]

Well, believe it or not, that was actually, I think, kind of fun to look back at the last 10 years. But here's the thing. We're not going to just do a bunch of looking back because it's time to look Forward to the future, to a lifetime of joy with us. Because here's the thing. We do have a brand new thing. It is called the Daily Wire Lifetime Membership. It's one membership. It gives you all access for the rest of your natural life and perhaps beyond. Because I can't actually speak to what happens after that with any real sense of assurance. No renewals, no expiration, every new benefit we add to all Access in the years ahead, those become yours automatically. With All Access, you get ad free episodes before they're available anywhere else. Live Q and A's, where you're talking to us, you know, like a human. Early access to offers and announcements. Unlimited access to all of our films, our docu series, our investigative reporting for the rest of your natural life. Lifetime members also carry that forward flag pin. You see this? You see this beautiful pin? This magnificent pin the producer, Jake, had to literally go across the country to get for me today? Because for some odd reason, I guess it just. It somehow, in any case, you had to spend half the day going and getting this. But you can have this pin without having to drive all the way from Jerusalem to Lode in order to pick it up. It is accented in 14 karat gold reserves only for our DW lifers, along with a signed copy of my fabulous, Incredible. Everyone loves it. Brand new book. Lions and scavengers, they're all saying. So here's the catch. There are only 10,000 lifetime memberships that will ever exist, ever. Like forever. When they're gone, they are gone. Become the cornerstone of building the next decade of Daily Wire. We appreciate it. Head on over to dailywear.com/lifestyle and secure your place in Daily Wire history.

[Ben Shapiro]

Gentlemen, can we please dive in on whether or not black people are disabled?

[Jeremy Boreing]

What are you.

[Michael Knowles]

That's. That's your opening.

[Andrew Klavan]

It's not black people are disabled. It's black people. It's a disability itself. The blackness is the disability. This is what this woman is, a chucklehead. First of all, you know, Ketanji Brown Jackson is a chucklehead. And she just said, she said this, that they should be able to have special, you know, voting districts because it's. They can't get to the polls because they're disabled by blackness. That's basically. That's what she said.

[Ben Shapiro]

I didn't go to law school. Ben. Is that, Is that true?

[Michael Knowles]

I mean, that doesn't sound right. I mean, like, if I, if I, if I, if I just, like, off the top of my head, it doesn't sound like a thing. That's that's true. And also it is, it is just another amusing episode in that Ryan Long comedy special where like it's white supremacists and woke left and they're the same because all the white supremacists will also say that thing. But Katanji Brown Jackson apparently did say that things. We have audio of this. I don't actually believe your summary of this. Do we have like audio of her saying this thing? Cuz I would like to hear it.

[Lawyer or Legal Expert]

I guess I'm thinking of it of the fact that remedial action absent discriminatory intent is really not a new idea in the civil rights laws. And in my kind of paradigmatic example of this is something like the ADA Congress passed the Americans with Disabilities act against the backdrop of a world that was generally not accessible to people with disabilities. And so it was discriminatory in effect because these folks were not able to access these buildings. The idea in section two is that we are responding to current day manifestations of past and present decisions that disadvantage minorities and make it so that they don't have equal access to the voting system.

[Michael Knowles]

Right.

[Lawyer or Legal Expert]

They're disabled. In fact, we use the word disable in Milligan. We say that's a way in which you see that these processes are not equally open.

[Michael Knowles]

Oh no, that is not good. That is not good lawyering or human being. That is, that is, that is bad. I mean, just, just for those who, you know, care about the law. The ADA was. Which I think actually is a bad piece of law. But, but the ADA originally was passed on the basis that, you know, like people in wheelchairs can't go upstairs and therefore they might need a ramp to go up into a building. And she's making the case that that's somehow like black people not having their own voting districts because they are somehow historically disadvantaged. Well, I think the thing with the ADA is that disabled people are in fact disadvantaged by physical reality. That's a bit of a differential. Okay, I'm sorry. She's dumb. There's no other way to put it. She's just dumb. Matt, say something that'll get us canceled. Just do it. You want to. I can see it in your eyes. Go.

[Matt Walsh]

If you really want me to. I mean, actually I was gonna do the opposite. I was gonna speak at her defense a little bit. And the only thing I'd say in her defense is that there's no good argument that the other side can make on this case. They're gonna lose the case and we should. It should be getting a lot more attention than it is, because this might destroy the Democrat Party's ability to get a majority in the House of Representatives, like, ever again. And there's nothing that can really be said, because what they're trying to defend is the proposition that in order to avoid racial discrimination in the way that we. That districting works, you have to deliberately racially discriminate by creating districts that explicitly exclude as many white people as possible. That's the argument they're trying to make. And there's nothing intelligent to be said in defense of it. And so that might be the best available argument, is what I'm trying to say, that she came up with. I don't know.

[Michael Knowles]

Fair.

[Ben Shapiro]

Drew, I know you were around when Plessy v. Ferguson was decided. What do you make of this oral argument?

[Andrew Klavan]

Well, what I like about it is the Voting Rights act was passed, I think, in 65. So that's 60 years ago. Right. So essentially what they're arguing is that the country hasn't changed at all. So we have had all the civil rights law. They've sued over the civil. They've turned the Civil Rights act into something that was never meant to be. They've destroyed our right to free association. They say that, you know, they're counting the heads, how many blackheads are in a room. So they can. None of that has helped. None of that has helped. All they have to do is take this wall down that was put up 60 years ago, and suddenly, you know, Rod Steiger in a sheriff's hat is going to show up again. He's just been waiting. He's been waiting behind that wall to come back. Nobody cares anymore. Nobody's stopping black people from voting. I mean, they say these people think that it's a disability, that if you say, oh, you need id, like every country on earth, you need ID to vote. Black people can't get id. How would they know how to. How would they understand how to get id? I do not understand. I have asked this on college campuses. I do not understand why any black man, specifically a black man, would let a party, would vote for a party that treats him like a cripple. I don't understand it. I mean, I can understand women. They want to be taken care of, something like that. Who would vote for somebody who talks about you like that? It's absolutely despicable, though. It is hilarious, which for me is redeeming. You know, I'm always willing. And I just think I would have been really, really funny if at the end of this, John Roberts had Just turned to her and say, madam, you're a chucklehead. I mean that was just made my day.

[Ben Shapiro]

Well, black men are actually starting to make that move a little bit. And I know, listen, we will get to whether or not young Republicans are allowed to katanji post in their group chats. You know, if they're allowed to make these sorts of racist and offensive comments. First though, Ben, could you tell us about ExpressVPN?

[Michael Knowles]

Would I. I would love to tell you about ExpressVPN. There's nothing more I would love to talk about than ExpressVPN, like literally in the whole wide world. Because here's the thing. Michael Moles has not been using his ExpressVPN. So the way that I know this is that ExpressVPN is supposed to protect you against hacking. It's supposed to protect you against, you know, people getting a hold of your data. And I'm not going to say that I hacked Michael Knowles email. I will say some material has come into my possession about Michael Knowles search history. Such as. And I have to say it is deeply embarrassing. Like truly embarrassing. Like more embarrassing than that Politico chat. Apparently he searched his own name 36 times in the last two days. Certain. Apparently that's it. He has. He has, believe it or not, Thomas Aquinas fan fiction, which I didn't think was an actual category of fan fiction. I don't know who he's shipping there, but it's definitely weird. He's been searching non stop about whether Starbucks is going to start serving pumpkin spice latte yet. Like he will not stop with this crap. And worst of all, K pop demon hunters ukulele covers. That is a thing that we can all expect sometime in the near future. So don't let. Here's the thing folks, don't let people like me get a hold of your data the way that I got a hold of Michael Knowles data and then publicly embarrassed him. Because ExpressVPN can protect you. It can in fact protect you. It's an app that encrypts 100% of your online activity and reroutes it through those secure servers. Third parties can't keep tabs on you when I'm traveling. I've got ExpressVPN on all the time. So I'm on airports or hotel, WI fi or whatever. Don't wait until it's too late. And don't be a dummy like Michael. The time to protect your data from the future is right now. Use my special link to get four extra months of ExpressVPN's privacy protection. Head on over to expressvpn.com friendly fire that's ex P R E S S vpn.com friendly fire to get four extra months of coverage.

[Andrew Klavan]

I thought you miss Knowles tentacle porn. I don't.

[Ben Shapiro]

You know what else I was searching for that Ben didn't mention? I was searching for his new book. According to this ad copy that was handed to me, I was searching for his new lions and scavengers. And you know where you can get it? You can get it on the Daily Wire shop thanks to Shopify. Shopify is the platform. If you've ever started a business, your business would have done so much better had Shopify been around. They are the commerce platform behind 10% of all e commerce in the United States from household brands to small businesses. You can get started with your own design studio. What if you say oh no, I don't know how to do a website. I don't know how to talk to people. Don't worry. They've got hundreds of ready to use templates that Shopify will allow you to use to make a beautiful online store. They've got AI tools. If your creativity is a little bit weak, you can use their AI tools. It's marvelous. If you're ready to sell, then you are ready for Shopify. Turn your big business idea into a gigantic business with Shopify on your side. Sign up for the $1 per month trial and start selling [e-mail] fire. The money will rain down for you when you do that. Shopify.com fire before we talk about anything like substantive in the news, I also want to tell you about all the great stuff that has come out from Daily Wire and that is coming out soon.

[Michael Knowles]

We had an opportunity to disrupt what became 9 11.

[Isabel Brown]

It's coming at your kids whether you.

[Matt Walsh]

Like it or not. It wasn't if it was going to happen, it was when the United States.

[Michael Knowles]

Was going to be attacked.

[Ben Shapiro]

These people are trying to talk to my daughter.

[Andrew Klavan]

Edward.

[Matt Walsh]

I'm sorry we're off camera.

[Ben Shapiro]

I'm a demon.

[Andrew Klavan]

The whole purpose behind this is to overturn western civilization.

[Matt Walsh]

Bin Laden was getting very antsy.

[Michael Knowles]

Happy 10th anniversary guys. Big fans, love what you guys have been up to and congratulations on all your success. Look forward to seeing more from all of your top talent, all the amazing content you've produced and wish you the best of luck for the next 10 years.

[Isabel Brown]

10 years. It's your 10 year anniversary. Where did the time go? I looked up online what you get somebody for their 10 year anniversary. And the modern gift is diamonds. So that's out. The more traditional gift is either tin or aluminum. So I'm between sending you a pack of altoids or a Dr. Fauci vaccine which is laden with aluminum. Just ask RFKJ. I think think given the options, you're getting yourself a pack of Altoids. And what I mean by sending it is I love you. Here's to 10 more.

[Guest or Producer]

Here's to 10 years of standing firm. To 10 years of pushing boundaries, to 10 years of restoring integrity in media. And I will say to all my buddies at Daily Wire, I can't count how many liver cells and brain cells I've killed with you guys. I will say the particular joy of joining you guys and lady ballers, that was something else. Ben is a foul mouthed ref. That is an image I never thought I'd see and I'll never see again. And everyone else, I just want to congratulate you for surviving with Michael Knowles on the payroll. I don't know how y' all exist. I'm astonished Michael hasn't bankrupted you, but somehow you've made it. Congratulations. I can't wait to see what you do in the next decade.

[Michael Knowles]

That was nice.

[Andrew Klavan]

Okay, that was nice. Does anybody ever wanted to sneak up and back of Tim and just take that hat off and see if his brain is just naked under there?

[Michael Knowles]

One of my favorite memories, Honestly, like first 10 years of Daily Wire was Jeremy Boring's 40th birthday party where I got Ted Cruz to come to Jeremy's 40th birthday party. And then Ted proceeded to give like an actual honest to God stump speech at Jeremy's birthday party. You remember this? Like at a small pizza shop in the Valley. It was pretty spectacular. Good times, good times. Well, from that I feel like, let's say, should we talk about something serious? Matt, talk about something serious.

[Matt Walsh]

This has been far too much small. Far too much friendly small talk so far in this friendly fire. We got a lot of the friendly but not the fire.

[Ben Shapiro]

A lot of fire.

[Matt Walsh]

Yeah. So, okay, so let's get into. I've been strictly instructed that the intros to these topics are supposed to be two minutes. But my primary and most reliable strategy in any debate is just to talk and not let anyone else. Filibuster is my only. It's my only move. So Politico, let's talk about Politico. This is one of the big stories happening right now. And for anyone who's not familiar, Politico published a couple days ago this Big hit piece revealing the private group chat conversation of some young Republicans. And the young Republicans are not elected officials. They're not any. Anyone that anyone's even heard of for the most part. There's one person in the group chat apparently who works in the Trump administration who is not recorded having said anything. So he was in it, but as far as we know, he didn't say anything, quote, unquote, offensive. But there were other comments made in the group chat, as Politico reveals, that were a lot of edgy jokes and a lot of. A lot of offensive language that's being used in this group chat. And most of it, as Politico finally admits in the article. If you read all 57 paragraphs of it, they'll finally admit that, yeah, most of this is supposed to be a joke, although they don't, of course, put that in the headline. And the title of the article has the quotes I love Hitler. And when you look at the context of that comment in the group chat, it's very obvious that it is a joke. It's sarcasm. Very much in line with the kind of sarcasm Republicans use all the time about, yeah, I'm real far right, I guess I love Hitler, along the lines of me having theocratic fascist in my Twitter bio, which isn't entirely a joke, but it's mostly a joke. So this kind of breaks down a few different ways. And for me, the story here is not the group chat, because these are private messages between people that no one knows. These are not relevant people. And the only reason why the media is showing us this, the only reason why they're doing this, is obviously it's a political hit. And in particular, they're trying to distract from the fact that the left has spent the last month, I mean, really much longer than that, but especially the last month, openly celebrating political violence. And now we have a Attorney General candidate who's probably gonna be the next Attorney General of Virginia, who was in his own messages, saying, not as a joke, that he wants his political opponents to die and even their children to die. And he was very specific that he was not joking about it. And so the left is looking to distract from that. And their way of doing it is by somehow obtaining these messages and putting them out to distract us. And some Republicans have been very quick to offer their denunciations to say how offended they are, how horrible these messages are, that everybody involved should be fired, that they should never be allowed in politics again. I think that that response is. I think it gives the left exactly what they Want. I have really appreciated J.D. vance's response. Now, I think the Vice President has struck exactly the right chord on this because he's not gonna play the game. And instead what he's done is he has redirected the conversation back to the thing that the left is trying to distract us from. There's one reason and one reason only that this story exists. And it's to get us to stop talking about Jay Jones and the leftists who've been celebrating the murder of Charlie Kirk for the last month. That's the only reason that the story exists. And so J.D. vance's point is, no, I'm not gonna play that game with you. I'm not gonna give you what you want. Instead, I'm gonna redirect the conversation back to the thing that you're trying to distract us from. And I think that that's exactly, exactly the right move. I think there's some disagreement about that, though. There's more to be said about it. But I'm gonna go first to the guy who I think is most likely to agree with me and that is Michael. Michael.

[Ben Shapiro]

Well, you're right, Matt. I totally agree.

[Andrew Klavan]

Was it the swastik on his forehead?

[Ben Shapiro]

Yes. Hey, listen, we're Italian and Mussolini was a complex figure. My only take on this that probably has not been said elsewhere is even the fact that we're talking about the ideology of the folks far right and comparing the far right to the far left and you know, whether or not people like Hitler or whatever is actually kind of missing the point. I strongly suspect these messages were leaked by another young Republican that has been reported. And having spent a lot of time with New York Young Republicans, I promise you this whole thing is about some like, petty personal grudge and it's some power play within New York politics and it actually has very little to do with the ideology or putative ideology of these texts. But I totally agree. There is no comparison whatsoever between some 19 year old kid who's making edgy jokes, trying to outbase his friend in a group chat, and a former state legislator would be top law enforcement official in Virginia saying, as you note, Matt, that he is not joking when he calls for the death of his opponents and even the death of their children. So yes, not at all. Now the question then becomes, should we ever police our own? Should we ever have guardrails? Or do we say anyone to the right of Hillary is on our side? And I think the answer is obviously yes, there have to be guardrails. Just like a nation is circumscribed by its border. So too a political coalition is circumscribed. That's what delineates it as a specific coalition. But the question is, how are we going to arrive at those guardrails? Are we going to say that anyone who ever, you know, gets caught telling an off color joke by Politico, they're completely cast into the outer darkness? No, I don't think that's right. I think we should have guardrails. We should police a coalition. And the way we should do it is very carefully. This was Scalia's answer when as a student we asked him, hey, you know, where do you draw the limits on the second Amendment? Where do you draw the limits on stare decisis? And everyone wanted a really ideological answer. And his answer was very carefully. We kind of know we're prudent. It's a people business. And should these kids have their lives ruined because they were mouthing off and telling jokes in a group chat? No, I don't think we need, but we're not prudent.

[Michael Knowles]

So I mean, here's the thing, we're just not. I mean, so I would agree with you that quote, unquote, policing, you need to be prudent about how you police. I also think that everyone agrees, I would assume Matt included. And Matt, you told me if I'm wrong here that you know, there are certain things that can be said that social consequences should actually attend to. Certainly that's true on the left, right? If you say that you want to murder the speaker of the House and then calls the kids fascist, there should be social consequences that actually attend to that. I agree with everything you say about the difference between a private group chat between a bunch of young Republican idiots who are, who are outbasing each other and the attorney general candidate in Virginia actually saying that they're running for office. Now I will say I don't think these people are kids. I don't think 31 year old's a kid. I don't like using the sort of language of kids to describe people who really should be married and have children of their own by this point in their life. And I think the kind of loose playing with that term as though if you're a 31 year old, which is what one of these people was, that somehow this is the equivalent of being 17. I don't think that's true either.

[Ben Shapiro]

Why are we down to 22?

[Michael Knowles]

I agree, but some of the people who are being quoted here in their 30s, some are up all the way up to 40. I get it. Again, I'm not even disagreeing with the motivations of the Politico story. In fact, even on my show today, I talked about the motivations of the Politico story, which, Matt, I agree, are completely scurrilous and designed to distract from the sort of violent rhetoric we've seen from the left. But it has led to, I think, a reactionary response on some parts of the right to say there should be no policing ever at all, no social consequences should ever attend to things that are said on the right. That it's basically just pure my side versus your side. The problem I have is, number one, I think that's immoral, and number two, I don't think that's pragmatic. I don't think that's moral, because I think that there are things that get said on the right that are really, really, really ugly. And pretending those away doesn't make them go away. I think that they're rising. I think that they're getting more common. I know that my death threats from that side are getting more common. I know I have more security because of that. And it's not just from the left. I have lots of security from the left, and I also get lots of security from the right. Matt, I think a little bit earlier today you tweeted that kind of your litmus test is the people who are trying to kill you. And I totally get that. I also have that litmus test. The difference is that I think that if somebody tries to kill Matt, there's a good shot that it's going to be a leftist. If somebody tries to kill me, it's a fricking Agatha Christie novel. I just don't know which direction the bullet is coming from at this point, given these sort of various and sundry radical extremes that exist, I'm not gonna say that the right is equivalent to the left in this respect because I don't think it's been mainstreamed to nearly the same effect on the right that it has been on the left. But to pretend that it has not infiltrated a lot of very important spaces I think is sort of whistling past the graveyard. Now, again, that's not about the Politico story. That's more of a broad commentary about where we are in the movement. And as a matter of sort of morality, we all have things where, again, I'm not saying cast into the outer darkness. I'm not calling for any of these people who I think everyone knows who I'm referring to, but I Don't think I'm calling for any of these people to be deplatformed, removed from YouTube or removed from Twitter. In fact, I've called for many of these people, Nick Fuentes, for example, to actually be returned to Twitter despite the fact that we have some pretty significant disagreements, including the fact that he thinks that, that I and people like me are scurrilous sons of Satan or whatever, however he would put it. But that is a different thing from is this person part of, quote, unquote, the movement that I belong to. And the answer there is he doesn't think I'm part of the movement that he belongs to, which he's made very clear. And so that gets into the question of pragmatic. There's the morality of when someone says something bad, should you condemn it. And I think that as a general matter, you can do what Winsome Sears did. Right? Winsome Sears is running against the Attorney general candidate in Virginia. She was asked about the Politico chat. She said, yeah, that's bad. Now you do Jay Jones, which seems to me like a pretty good answer and a good way of policing. And then when it comes to the pragmatic.

[Andrew Klavan]

Can I just find.

[Ben Shapiro]

You were in the group chat.

[Michael Knowles]

Yeah, I mean, that's point on the. I just want to make one more point here and then you can say whatever you want. On the pragmatic side, I fundamentally disagree with this idea that the reason that the right quote, unquote loses is because we fragment while the left is unified. The left is losing because it unified around its crazies. Do not unify around your crazies. Sure, the crazies can vote for you. They can vote for your party. You can't stop them from doing that. It's a free country. But that doesn't mean they should have like a decisive voice in the future of the movement. Because if you do that, you end up with the trans movement running the Democratic Party and you lose from here to forever. It's the Democratic solidarity that's destroying them, not the Democrats as, as a sort of fragmentary party.

[Matt Walsh]

Let me, let me go to George, just a second. I just want to respond to two things there. And the first is, and I've heard this argument that while the left is losing because they, they failed to drive out the radical elements of their party. I just, I think there's a false premise there, though. I don't think that's actually happening. I think, you know, Mamdani, one of the most radical political figures we've ever seen. In this country is about to be the mayor of our largest city because.

[Michael Knowles]

There are no Republicans or moderates in New York, Matt. I mean, Trump's been president twice and it was the trans issue that killed Kamala Harris in the last election. Cuz they won't stop doing the trans issue, which is the most extreme elements of the party, including obviously what would happen to Charlie.

[Matt Walsh]

Yeah, yeah, and the trans issue was a big problem for that. But that's another thing too, is that when we talk about the sort of the quote unquote, radical elements of the right versus the radical elements of the left, these are not exactly the same thing. The radical element of the left denies basic biological reality. I mean, you're militating against these basic realities that we all understand. And that's not happening on the right. There is no equivalent of that of someone saying that men can have babies. There's no exact equivalent of that. But the second point on the Politico article itself, okay, obviously if somebody says something publicly and they've decided to announce it to the world, well then that's fair game for anyone to disagree and anyone to say anything they want about it. But with that in particular, I think that in almost every case, if you are speaking in private, you're having a private conversation and then somebody with obviously sinister intentions comes along and takes that private conversation and makes it public. In almost every case, my position is, and this has always been my position, I don't care. I'm not even paying attention to it, okay? I am not going to dignify that. I'm not gonna go along with it. I'm not gonna give you what you want. I'm not going to reward that strategy. And by the way, part of that's a principled stand on my part. It's also, it's like a self preservation thing. I don't want people doing that to me. I don't want people going through and revealing my private conversations. Not because I'm saying those kinds of things, but because these are private conversations. Now there are exceptions to that. One exception is if you're running for political office and you wanna be the top law enforcement official in a state and you've said privately that you think that, you know, half of your state should die. Well, that's one of those exceptions. And I think probably in general, if you're running for political office, that's an exception. There are things that become fair game that otherwise wouldn't be. But outside of those exceptions, I just fundamentally disagree with the idea that we should Give these people anything that they want or that we need to start now. Condemning things that were said in private in conversations that had nothing to do with us. We weren't involved. We don't have the context. They were not intended for any of us to even see in the first place. And should we police that? I would say no.

[Andrew Klavan]

I want to say this first. I agree with everything that Matt is saying in its context, in the context that we're talking about. I don't see why I should care about these people on a private chat. I don't think private chats should be revealed. And when the New York Times is spewing out perversion and racism at a level that is far, far beyond anything these people are saying and incitements to violence, I don't see why a private chat compares to the New York Times and the crap that they turn out every day. I also agree with Ben that nobody should be censored. I don't want to censor absolutely anybody. However, let me say this. When J.D. vance comes out and he condemns these people, and J.D. vance is one of my favorite people in the administration. He was my choice for vice president before Trump picked him. I think he's doing a spectacular job.

[Michael Knowles]

He.

[Andrew Klavan]

He would have a lot more authority if he would stop hanging out with Tucker Carlson.

[Matt Walsh]

I guess it depends on what you mean by that. Exactly. Because if you disagree with things that Tucker Carlson says, then no one is saying that you can't disagree with them. You can't make your disagreement known. You can't debate them. Of course. Of course you could do that. I don't agree with everything that Tucker says. I don't agree with everything that anyone on the right says.

[Andrew Klavan]

Now, I agree. It's a different category. I mean, you and I disagree. Ben and I disagree. We're all talking about the same world. That's actually happening, you know, to say that Hamas.

[Matt Walsh]

Well, I think. But. Well, I guess I think Tucker is talking about the same world. I think he's got. Yeah, I think he's got different views on the world than you do. But if we're talking about standing up and saying, I disagree with that strenuously, here's why. Well, then, yeah, absolutely. If we're talking about. I know you said you're not supporting censorship, but if we're talking about sort of driving somebody out of the movement, alienating them, saying, disowning them, that sort of thing, I absolutely, totally, very much disagree with that. Disagree with that.

[Michael Knowles]

You might disagree on that. On Tucker.

[Andrew Klavan]

I'm Just saying mercy killing is the same as saying a man can become a woman. It's just as crazy.

[Michael Knowles]

Hold on, let's.

[Matt Walsh]

Just as crazy.

[Michael Knowles]

Let's take Tucker off the table there for a second, because obviously, Tucker is a very fraught topic for a lot of people, myself included. But I think that, you know, I guess the question for Matt is there are certain people who you would basically say don't belong in the movement. And so the question, I think, for everybody, and I think this is one that we should openly discuss. I mean, if we're gonna have these discussions, is who doesn't? Right? Like, who doesn't?

[Ben Shapiro]

Well, draw. I'll give you a takeaway on this that is obviously timely. When Charlie was killed, you know, the guy did, like, 10 jobs. I mean, takes innumerable people to fill all the things he did. The most valuable thing he did from a political coalition standpoint is he kept the coalition together, and his events were the events to go to. And his platform was really setting the agenda for the Republican Party. And Charlie made a really important point to have a coalition in which he would not be pressured to get rid of Tucker, but he also wouldn't be pressured to get rid of people who hated Tucker or who Tucker hated or whoever where the various constituencies hated them. But Charlie, furthermore, to your point, Ben also drew a line. There were plenty of people that were not permitted into TPUSA events. And so he did this in, I think, an obviously very effective way, a way that did not fall into the perils of, you know, a movement becoming too extreme. And I just wonder if there's not a lesson that we could take from that.

[Michael Knowles]

I think a good. Here's a good rule of thumb about Charlie, by the way. How about this? How about you probably don't belong in a leadership position, shall we say, in the conservative movement, if you won't just buy into the basic factual idea that Charlie Kirk was murdered by a gay man who is a trans furry lover. How about that? If you spend your days fulminating about all the other things with regard to Charlie and speculate that he was murdered by other forces, that seems to me not connected with reality. I mean, that's something that Erica's said. That's something TPUSA has said. Like that seems like. That seems like a pretty good, easy rule of thumb that if you. If you're. If you're spending all your days doing that, if you Even. If you even tangentially eventually are doing that, seems if you're trying to divide them. Matt, I Thought that what you said when Charlie died was right. You know, that one of Charlie's goals was to keep the movement together. It's obviously something JD Is trying to do. He's trying to keep people in the room together. I totally get it. I've talked publicly about the fact that Tucker called me that day, two days after Charlie was shot, and said, like, let's stop. Let's stop fighting. And I said, you know what? That sounds great to me. That's fine. I really don't want to be fighting with you because obviously we have other priorities. In fact, I even offered Tucker that we should get on stage together and talk about the things that we agreed with. He's yet to take me up on that offer. But the bottom line here is that when it comes to where you set limits, limits at some point are going to have to be set. And it seems to me that the move on the right is that because we don't like the left at all, because the left is bad. There must be no limit set. And any attempt to set a limit is somehow firing inside the tent. And what this actually leads to is many of the same people who are firing inside the tent then turning around and claiming that you're violating the truce. Because I'll tell you what, it's Nick Fuentes who's attacking Donald Trump on a regular basis. Yeah, it is Alex Jones who's attacking Donald Trump on a regular basis. I mean, it is Tucker Carlson who's attacking Donald Trump on a fairly regular basis, actually. So.

[Matt Walsh]

And I think that the friendly fire should stop across the board. And I've been very clear about that.

[Ben Shapiro]

You mean the show not just get.

[Andrew Klavan]

Laid, but let me.

[Matt Walsh]

Because I'm. Two things. Number one. Yeah, just on your point, Ben, about who killed Charlie Kirk. I've been very clear about it. This was of kind. Clearly a leftist was leftist violence, and we should stay focused on that. I think we're letting them off the hook when we try to blame anybody else other than the left. This was leftist violence, for sure. Does that mean that anyone who feels differently should be drummed out of the movement? No, I don't think so. And I also think that it's like we're not even in a position to decide, well, who should be a leader, who should have a platform, who should be. Who should be getting attention in this movement. It's like, that's not up to us to decide anyway.

[Michael Knowles]

Well, not, but it's up to a decision.

[Matt Walsh]

Let me just say, after Charlie died, okay, a couple days after Charlie died. I put out a tweet where I said that I wanna call a truce. I can only do it on my end. I wanna call a truce. I wanna extend an olive branch to everybody on my side. Everybody on the right, okay? Everybody to the right of Bill Maher. I want. Including him. Not that I ever had really a beef with him, but I want to extend a truce because we are dealing with a threat. We are dealing. Drew, you said it yourself. These are people like, the political violence is on one side. This is on one side. There is one side that engages in political violence. There is one side that rejects the basic realities of life. There's one side that's responsible for murdering 60 million babies in this country. It's one side. And so I think that for right now, maybe we'll get back to the arguments, maybe we'll get back to the infighting. We'll get back to that in the future, I'm sure. But for right now, I think we need to be unified against this threat. Especially now, especially with the midterms coming up and the presidential election right after that. The left, if they get back into control, they're gonna be out for blood even more than they ever have been. And so we need to be united against that together. And that's what I said when I said that a couple days after Charlie's death. You know, the response I got, almost every single comment I got was, yes, amen, absolutely, I'm with you. Almost every single comment. I said the exact same thing, the exact same thing, like two days ago. And it's completely flipped now. Almost every single comment is, how could you say this? I can't unite with them. There's no way. I can't do that. And it's just. I haven't changed. I'm still. What I'm saying is no different than what I said a month ago. I haven't changed. I don't think the situation has changed at all. And I don't know why everything else.

[Andrew Klavan]

Has flipped, because I think if you take that to its full extent, it's crazy. It works within a context, but surely there is some kind of human decency level that you can cross where, no, you're not on my side. I mean, I don't understand why, if you support the Cat's Paw of Iran, where they sit around and chant, death to America, what makes you a conservative? What makes you a conservative? That you. You say tough sounding things. I mean, that you talk in a, you know, in a loud voice about, you know, the problems of the country. You know, I don't know what makes you a conservative if you are in favor of a regime that, you know, used to have until Trump took it away, the capacity to actually hurt us. You know, I don't understand the anti American.

[Matt Walsh]

Well, I would say you're not. I would say you're not on our side. You're not a conservative if you are not interested in. In conserving and preserving and defending Western civilization. And I guess the one point I'll give in your favor, Drew and Ben, is that I do think that there are some people who claim to be conservatives who actually are not interested in conserving Western civilization at all. And so if you don't want to conserve that, then we're just not. We actually are, fundamentally, because that's the thing I'm saying we need to unite to defend is Western civilization. And so you mean the Western civilization.

[Andrew Klavan]

That has to mean something, right?

[Matt Walsh]

Yes. Right. So, for example, in. And recently I've been talking about the Islamic takeover of Dearborn, and I've had people who, I guess claim to be conservatives who are trying to tell me that actually this is a very good thing, that our country becomes Islamic. And it's like, okay, we're clearly not on the same side. You're trying to conserve Islamism. And that is not what I'm trying to conserve. So obviously you get to a point where those. Where it's like, yeah, lines are drawn. And I think the line is that conserving and defending Western civilization. And anyone who's on board with that and wants to do that, I think we should work together. But if someone says, I'm not interested, I don't want your olive branch. Screw you. Which I have gotten a response from a lot of people. Well, then that's your choice. And we gotta.

[Andrew Klavan]

I just don't want to. I don't want to make the decision on who's defending Western civilization according to popularity.

[Michael Knowles]

I don't think this has all been very fun. I mean, truly, truly enjoyable. But, Matt, I need you to talk to us about how you sleep at night. Hold on.

[Ben Shapiro]

I got a better transition. Let me do the transition.

[Matt Walsh]

I got a better one.

[Andrew Klavan]

You sleep at night?

[Ben Shapiro]

I got a better one. So, hey, you know, we've been talking about who it would be prudential for us to get in bed with politically. Now, Matt, would you tell us about how you get into bed? Well, that was a much better transition.

[Matt Walsh]

I don't know. I thought Ben's was better, to be honest.

[Ben Shapiro]

What? That whole Segment I was working on.

[Andrew Klavan]

Yeah.

[Matt Walsh]

Let me tell you about this. I'm gonna do it very organically. This isn't even an ad read. There's no text here. It's just prompts. You guys are throwing this at me. I don't usually get. I'm like, remedial when it comes to. I'm remedial when it comes to ad reads, so they always just give me exactly what they want me to say. And now I'm looking at this. It says, tell your audience about your experience with Helix mattresses. Okay, well. Okay, fine. Well, this does me no good. Why do you even give me this paper? It does me no good. Look, the truth is, I can actually speak from the heart about Helix mattress because we got a Helix mattress about, I don't know, about three when they first came on the show, like, three years ago. And I can honestly say this is genuinely true that prior to the Helix mattress. Insomnia. Insomnia was something that I struggled with. I had trouble sleeping. And now, ever since we got it, I sleep like a baby every single night until our kids wake us up at 5 o' clock in the morning. But until that moment happens, I sleep very well. I legitimately recommend this mattress to everybody. And we believe in the Helix mattress so much that we have now gotten it for all of our kids. All of our kids sleep on Helix mattresses as well. Doesn't get any better. And the thing is, you go in, you go to the Helix website, you take a quiz, and you can match whatever your sleep preference is with the perfect mattress for you. And I found that it works really well. So you can visit helixsleep.comfriendlyfire to get 20% off sitewide. That's helixsleep.com Friendlyfire for 20% off site wide. Make sure to enter our show name after checkout so they know we sent you helixsleep.com friendly fire.

[Michael Knowles]

Now, also, I do have to note that we did drop the merch of the decade to celebrate a decade of Daily Wire. Only at that Daily Wire shop, we have Daily Wire shirts, we have hats, we have the only camo hoodie made specifically to stand out. It's 10 years of truth, printed, stitched, and ready to wear. So head on over to dailywire.com shop right this instant. Yeah, you can. That hat that Drew is wearing that covers up his bald spot, which is to say his entire head.

[Andrew Klavan]

That's very kind of you.

[Michael Knowles]

Ben is in fact, available over at that Daily Wire.

[Andrew Klavan]

It's usually kind of you to call it A bald spot. I usually call it my head.

[Ben Shapiro]

You know, the other thing that I really want to talk about is how the Gen Z is de gay ifying itself. And for that, since we're all very old, we're going to bring on a bright, young, hot zoomer, fresh and fit kind of talent. But first, Ben, I want to go back to men of a certain age. Do we have an update on Jordan?

[Michael Knowles]

We do. So we have been talking with Mikayla over at Peterson household. She's wonderful, obviously, and Jordan is on the mend. She did tell us, and we obviously agree that it is worthwhile. She wants him to be public, obviously. She wants all of his messages to continue to be heard. And so it's actually, I think, quite important what we are doing here at Daily Wire by ensuring that pretty much all your Jordan Peterson needs continue to be fulfilled, that we actually get as much of his material out there as possible. He is on the mend. We're looking forward to seeing him back and all of us are praying for him and praying for his family right now. So that's sort of the update at the moment.

[Ben Shapiro]

What you already know is not sufficient to guide you into the future. To negotiate properly, you have to know what you want. So then you might ask, well, how do I know what I want? If you take your problems seriously, the probability that you can carve out a path in life that will constitute a success, well, certainly increases. You're going to encounter obstacles, some of which might be the size of dragons along the way. You see what it would be like to care for someone. You see what it would be like to have someone care for you and value you. You have little kids for a very.

[Michael Knowles]

Short period of time.

[Ben Shapiro]

It is a major mistake not to notice that and not to appreciate it.

[Michael Knowles]

We're dealing with a pattern of misbehavior. Our son, who's three years old, when.

[Ben Shapiro]

A disciplinary issue arises, you need to make space to master it.

[Matt Walsh]

You can make a bad situation good faster than you think and turn it.

[Ben Shapiro]

Into something better than you might imagine. Ten years ago, my friends, the Daily Wire gave you a voice in the fight that no one else would take. Fights that we could not have won without your support. We sued the Biden administration, took it to the Supreme Court. We won to stop the private mandate on the Fauci Ouchie. We exposed the Loudoun county school cover up that the media tried to bury, which also advanced the movement to expose transgenderism that Mr. Mount Walsh had a little hand in. I think two major hit movies what is a woman? Am I racist? We gave Jordan B. Peterson a platform to make him uncancelable. When the left tried to cancel him, we took aim at DEI. We're just getting started, folks. To celebrate 10 years of the Daily Wire, you can become a member during the deal of the decade, starting at $7 a month, which was the price when we started, long before Bidenflation, long before all of the wonkiness in the economy. Seven bucks a month. You can't get a half an egg for $7 right now, but you can get a Daily Wire membership. Go to DailyWire.com subscribe to join right now. Speaking of psychiatric improvement, great news about Gen Z coming out of the uk. There's a study that shows that queer identity is in free fall and it's a little bit unclear. People are talking about it on Twitter, but they're saying that it means that the whole LGBT identity is collapsing. That's not really clear from this study out of University of Buckingham. What is very clear is that non binary identity, genderqueer identity, has collapsed. It peaked in the woke year of 2023 and it's just collapsed since then. There is some indication, at least from the abstract of the study, that trans identity is also following that the L and the G seem to be actually pretty, pretty solid, but the rest of it is collapsing. This does not really surprise me at all. The reason is that the gods of the copy book headings just reassert themselves. This is the central conservative consolation, is that reality will win on a long enough timescale. I'm not even surprised that the non binary part is leading the charge here, because the non binary part is the most abstract version of the LGBT identity. It's just this complete androgynous illusion. Whereas the L and the G and the B and the T and all that is a little more visceral and it pertains more to sexual desire and all the rest. So that's kind of harder to extirpate. But in terms of the extreme version of these ideologies, it would seem as though they are on the precipice of being eradicated from public life entirely. To help us understand this, we bring on our Gen Z correspondent and a new member of the Daily Wire family, Isabelle Brown. Hello, Isabel.

[Isabel Brown]

Hey gang, how's it going? I'll tell you, waiting in the wings. The last few minutes was quite entertaining.

[Ben Shapiro]

Isabel, I need to know, is your generation not gay anymore? It's like that video, like I'm not gay anymore. Is that happening?

[Andrew Klavan]

And if so, where are we going to get our interior designer?

[Isabel Brown]

Tell your people. I have been trying to warn the world that Gen Z, the kids were all right for a very long time. Literally a year ago, a little, a year and a half ago, I should say, was laughed off set at every TV network, every radio station, every podcast when I presented my book that it was Gen Z that was going to save America, that no one wanted to be a lame gay chick like Disney wanted us to be in south park. So beautifully predicted. The numbers of course, needed some time to catch up. But I think the kids are gonna be all right. And none of this information out of this new study shocks me. The idea of the cultural fad of the transgender cult, which is really what we've been seeing for a long time, has already been disillusioned thanks to people boldly speaking the truth. I know you guys were mentioning Charlie just a few minutes ago when I spoke on campus at the first prayer vigil at the campus that he was scheduled to speak at next, my alma mater at Colorado State. There was a young woman who came up to me and I just think this is so indicative of the Gen Z story right now. She said, I have to tell you something. And when she started speaking to me, I was a little wondering where she was falling on the political spectrum. She gave extreme leftist vibes. But she pulled me aside and she said, I have to tell you something. Charlie Kirk saved my life from gender ideology. I thought that I was non binary. I thought that I needed to castrate myself and take all of these puberty blockers and hormone affirming drugs. I thought I was going to end my life at one point because of all of these lies and only one person ever had the courage to tell me the truth, that I am a woman and I was created on purpose to be a woman. And that was Charlie Kirk. He wasn't mean about it, he was kind about it. But he let me have self respect and ability to look in the mirror and love what I was seeing for the first time in my entire life. And I think of all of the work that you guys have done for the past 10 years with the Daily Wire, the efforts of people like Charlie Kirk, because people were good enough to tell the truth to the next generation when everyone else was lying to them. We are not gay anymore. That's the good news.

[Ben Shapiro]

That sounds almost too hopeful. I wanna turn to Matt because, Matt, you must be torn on this. On the one hand, you've helped lead the charge against the lavender mafia. So I Think you'll be inclined to claim a victory here. On the other hand, you're profoundly doer and pessimistic and won't wanna admit that things are getting better. And maybe they're not getting better. So what is it? Are we not gay no more?

[Matt Walsh]

So my ego is battling my pessimism is what you're saying?

[Ben Shapiro]

Yes, exactly.

[Matt Walsh]

What's gonna win out? I think that you're right, that the study that you're talking about, it's a little bit. It's not quite as clear cut, I think, as people want it to be because it is focused on this non binary thing. And I don't know that we can say that Gen Z isn't gay anymore. I don't know that we have the evidence that it's becoming less gay. I think all the evidence, in fact, is the other way. Gen Z is a lot more gay than any other generation. But I do think based on this study and also just like and other studies and other data and just anecdotal observations from a lot of us, that the trans and non binary thing I think is declining. It's losing steam. And that was inevitable. And the reason why is because nobody ever really believed it to begin with. The only way, I mean, transgenderism as a concept, as we all know, has been around for a long time. It's been around for many decades. It didn't explode onto the scene in this kind of mainstream way until about 10 years ago, 2015, 2016. And the way that it was able to proliferate from there and seemingly take over an entire generation is by all the people who knew better, not saying anything either because they wanted to be polite or because they were afraid of the backlash, or because they thought ideologically that they had to be okay with this or some combination of the three. And so that it wasn't that people had, all these people had fallen into this trance, it's that most people knew it was crazy and went along with it for those reasons. A little bit like the masking. It's like masking. Everyone went along with it. Everybody was masking. And we walked around for a couple years thinking that it'll be like this forever and that am I ever gonna be able to see another person's face in public ever again? And then what do you know, within about six months, no one thought doing the mask anymore. And the reason why is because most people wearing the mask, it's not because they actually thought they had to, it's because they were just going along with it for those Same reasons, political ideology, fear. And I think it's the same thing with trans. So now that that's done, like, people aren't afraid anymore. People are not afraid to say what they know is true on this issue. And it was that. That was the silence that was needed in order for this virus to take hold. And so the environment isn't there anymore. And so I'm not surprised that we're seeing this trend. And I don't know if it's gonna extend over to, like, homosexuality, but I do think with trans and non binary, that it's on its. Its way out.

[Ben Shapiro]

Well, Drew, you were friends with Cole Porter. Do you think that this is a longer scope trend, or is it gonna be just confined to the non binary?

[Andrew Klavan]

No, it's a longer scope. First of all, I wanna agree with Isabel that I think her generation will actually save the world. Every. Every single one of them I met, they are not the way the two generations between the boomers and them are. They aren't hostile. The women dress like women. The men look perfectly comfortable being men. They don't radiate the kind of hostility that I get from the people who are around, like, 50, you know, it's just that somehow feminism, I think, seems to have lost its grip on them. And they seem just much more comfortable in their skins. And so I'm very hopeful what I read in this study, because I agree it's a little amorphous. But first of all, a lot of it is co evil with the pandemic. So people are locked away. They're told that they stink if they tell the truth. They told, they're mean if they, you know, don't lie about where the virus comes from, how the virus is cured, what is working, what's not working. They go nuts. People went nuts. And the thing about transgenderism is it is a mental illness. Being homosexual is not necessarily a mental illness. If you define a mental illness as believing things that simply are not the case, then believing that you're a woman when you're a man is a mental illness by definition. But if you're a man attracted to men, then that's who you actually are. So it may be a problem, but it's not a mental illness. And so I think that the mental illness wave that was caused by the pandemic is receding. I think the way the mental illness wave expressed itself was because of what Matt was talking about. This induced mental illness of believing what the left is saying and their incredible domination, which we finally broke, of the means of communication. So if you own the academies, if you own the news media, if you own Hollywood, then it feels like everybody is telling you that you must be, you know, the wrong sex. And. And that has an effect. It had a real effect. And I think that that grip has been broken as well. So, yeah, I'm. I'm pretty hopeful. I think the thing about being gay is that it's not a choice. I think people are born gay, but I think it can be a choice. I think people can, you know, experiment with it and dabble in it, and I think there's been a lot of that, and I think that'll recede too. What I want to see is more babies. That's the thing I want to see. And there's only, you know, right now, there's only one way to make them, and when there is another way, it's going to be bad. So I think I would like to see more people just making and taking care of babies.

[Michael Knowles]

I can't take all this optimism. It's making me a little nauseous.

[Andrew Klavan]

I'm surprised you didn't shrivel away.

[Michael Knowles]

I just. I can't. I can't, guys. Like, I can't. It's late at night where I am, and I've. I've. I've had it. We're way too deep into the show for this much optimism, so. So let me explain for the pessimists in the crowd why all this is happening. The reason that this is happening is actually a good reason, but that is that trans was the ultimate victimhood status. And people are constantly seeking the ultimate victimhood status because it allows you to get away with literally anything, including forcing 99.99% of the rest of humanity to redefine reality in coordination with your ideas of yourself, which is like the greatest thing in the world. From a particular perspective, it's actually quite bad for you. But from the perspective of getting one up on literally all of the rest of humanity, if you earn that incredible victimhood status that applied to trans people for, like three or four years or 10 years in the United States, that's like a great place to be. And then the victimhood status went away because of things like what Matt did and what we did. Obviously, here at Daily Wire over the course of the last 10 years, insanity reasserted itself, and you're no longer considered an inherent victim because you're a man who claims to be a woman or the opposite. In fact, in some cases, you may in fact be an aggressor, as we have Seen repeatedly from time to time. I think that non binary is sort of the same thing like people just saw through. That's not a victimhood status. Like non binary is just you being weird. You're just saying that you don't have a sex. That's just silly. And I think the next one to go is bisexuality. It's gonna go in reverse order. Bisexuality is usually just either straight people pretending to be gay or gay people pretending to be straight. The, the sort of bisexuality thing is likely to go. In fact that's what the stats shows. A huge number of people, people who identify as bisexual actually are just heterosexual. Like they've only had partners who are heterosexual impaired in the last year or two years or five years but call themselves bisexual because it's based on your, your level of self identification. The reason I'm pessimistic about Gen Z, aside from, you know, the statistics, is the fact that Gen Z, if they lose the victimhood status in terms of sexual relations, which is really what's happened, is that we were in a period where the next victimhood class was not race, the next victimhood class was sexual. And that has gone away because frankly it got boring and no one cared and there's nothing more to transgress. Everything had been transgressed up to and including whether men and women exist. And so what's the next victimhood status? I think the next place that the young people will go for their victimhood status is economic victimhood. So I'm, I'm optimistic that young people are going to move away from some of the crazier I'm sexually identifying as a cat routine. But I think they are going to increasingly identify as somehow economically dispossessed and then call for massive government interventionism, which is mostly what the Mamdani moment is about. So. And that by the way is what you are seeing in the polls for young people. Young people are increasingly hot on socialism and communism. They're increasingly hot on massive government interventionism. They don't really like capitalism very much. And so I think that the next sort of victimhood status is gonna go back to classic Marxist victimhood status, which is if you are poor or if you just can't get an affordable apartment in New York, it must be because the victim, the system is somehow screwing you.

[Ben Shapiro]

Ben, you know what? You can also get. So first of all, Isabelle, wonderful to have you with us. Congratulations on the show launch. The Isabelle Brown show. How many weeks in is it?

[Isabel Brown]

I think we're on our sixth week, but Honestly, we launched two days before Charlie was killed, so everything just feels like a fever dream. In the last several weeks, it felt.

[Ben Shapiro]

Like it's been on for one day. Yes. Everybody should go watch it. Isabelle, always wonderful to see you. You, without question, beautify the room with.

[Andrew Klavan]

These disgusting, damning you with faint praise.

[Ben Shapiro]

Also, by the way. And then some. And then a lot some, actually, also, by the way, Ben, you were saying people are all gonna be broke under communism, whatever, you know, and they're gonna have this economic class warfare. Well, even if you're completely destitute, I've got such a great deal for you to also keep up your health. And that is balance of nature. Drew, I know you're looking bad. And so I decided I brought these here and I wanted to give these to you. I wanted to give you some balance of nature.

[Andrew Klavan]

Give me some balance of nature. Oh, my goodness. That's amazing. That's Knowles. You actually accomplished something. This is supposed to fall. I take these. You know, it used to be I grew up eating mostly mammoths, and so I need a lot of energy and a lot of nutrition. And this is the easy way to get it. You don't have to have a spear. You don't have to make those, you know, arrowheads out of rocks and stuff like that. You just actually take these capsules and you get all the fruits and veggies that you need packed in to these little capsules and you get a red and green, so it looks a little Christmassy. If I had known, if I had prepared for the show for even five seconds, I would have taken off this easy to pull off strip, which I can't pull off, and I would be able to open this up and show them to you. But I can. I can only show you the pictures of fruits and veggies on them and they're absolutely terrific and they make you feel terrific.

[Ben Shapiro]

Well, once your body's feeling all good and you're living in this terrestrial world of flesh and blood, then you can go right back into the digital realm because the Daily Wire app is better than ever. It is going to give you that absolute all access experience. Check out this little teaser.

[Lawyer or Legal Expert]

Introducing the new Daily Wire plus app, your digital home for the next decade of the Daily Wire, featuring all the of all of your favorite hosts and content together in one place. Follow the voices you trust with new host profiles, get shows, articles, and now shorts all in one feed. Smarter search makes it easy to find shows, podcasts, documentaries and more coming next month. Download episodes to watch offline anytime Anywhere. Daily Wire plus is now on your biggest screens. Roku Fire tv, Samsung, Apple TV and more. The full Daily Wire plus library streaming on the biggest screen in your home. Also new this fall, DWTV, our 24. 7 live streaming channel. Get the new Daily Wire plus app built for the next decade of Daily Wire, available everywhere you watch.

[Michael Knowles]

Well, after all of that pessimism about Gen Z, I'm gonna give you a place where optimism blooms. The Middle East. But. But actually, I actually am quite optimistic about the Middle east, believe it or not, right now. And that's because we have a president named Donald J. Trump. And I've said since term one that the most successful element of Donald Trump's presidency has been his handling of the Middle East. If you can actually make deals happen in the Middle east, that's an extraordinary thing. And Donald Trump has been the only person in my lifetime who truly has made deals happen in the Middle East. So I was actually in the Israeli Parliament in the Knesset at the invitation of the Embassy of the United States, Mike Huckabee, for the, for the speech that President Trump gave. And it was just fabulous. It was just so wildly enjoyable. So, first of all, I think you have to understand that the situation on the ground in Israel, the number of just the overwhelming population, their desire, their need for these 20 live hostages were held in terror tunnels for two years to come home was extraordinary. I mean, just bled out on the streets. If you walk around the streets of any city in Israel and much of the country, you will see pictures of the hostages and they've been up for two years. And so the fact that they actually came home on a split screen, President Trump is talking in the Knesset while these people are coming home to their families at the same exact time. And the president was able to somehow get the entire world on board with a demand that Hamas give up these live hostages and that Israel not have to give up its security position in the Gaza Strip. Israel retains control over some 53% of the Gaza Strip and still has some security oversight of enormous amount of the rest of the Gaza Strip. By the way, all the same people who are very, very upset about quote, unquote, genocide in the Gaza Strip seem to care not one whit that since Israel has pulled back a little bit, Hamas is legitimately just pulling people out of their homes and shooting them dead in the middle of the street by the hundreds, apparently, in the Gaza Strip. But Trump's speech was just spectacular. And the amount of enjoyment in the room, I mean, Trump was going along, he Was riffing. He was. He was making jokes, and people were. People were keeling over. I mean, it was so funny. He was so good and so funny. And, you know, we're all used to hearing President Trump do this routine because he's done it for years and years in the United States. But. But the fact that he was able to, you know, come to the Middle east, bring people together who legitimately, you know, all these countries don't believe in Israel's existence, technically, that he was able to actually, you know, bring all those people together and get live hostages out is an extraordinary accomplishment. It can only happen because Donald Trump's real estate skills from New York somehow map exactly and directly onto the Middle east in a very bizarre. Like, he just got rid of all the State Department unconventional wisdom. That's a bunch of horseshit. And he just did the thing that he did in rooms in New York for legitimately decades, and it worked.

[Andrew Klavan]

I have two. Just two things I want to say. When I was. I was watching the whole thing on TV and, you know, obviously, great joy over the release of the hostages, but when I saw Donald Trump in Egypt and the leaders of the Middle east are arrayed behind him, the leaders of Europe arrayed behind him, all I could think was, holy crap, the guy has actually made America great again. It has been since Reagan that we have seen America take that kind of aggressive leadership, which also is a statement of manly governance, which I love. And finally, his statement, the open talk about God. I remember when we started the Daily Wire, you and I used to argue about whether we could use God as a reason when we put forward our ideas. And I kept saying, that is the reason we believe the things we believe in. And without God, everything the left says makes sense. And I am so thrilled to see God back in the public square because I think he is the reason we say the things we say. And the only. The other thing I want to say about this is, how tough is Bibi Netanyahu that Donald Trump is the good cop? That's an amazing thing. Donald Trump comes into the interrogation room and says to Hamas, you know, you want to talk to me, I can help you, but you don't want him. And Netanyahu's outside going, let me out. Tear those people. Okay, we'll talk to Trump. You gotta be a fairly tough guy to make Donald Trump the good cop. And I think all credit to Netanyahu for doing that.

[Michael Knowles]

Knowles, have you thoughts on this or not?

[Matt Walsh]

I do.

[Ben Shapiro]

I have a political thought on it, which is one, obviously it's great. We want peace in the region for the purposes of justice, but it is an American concerned about American politics. I don't want Israel to be an issue that creates problems for us. And there have been plenty of people on the left, I guess, and also on the right who have tried to make Israel this issue that threatens the right wing coalition. And so the thing I really love about Trump getting this piece of is one, he was negotiating past the sale. The whole time he was saying, you know, hey guys, I really hope we get a piece, cuz otherwise I'm gonna ship all the Palestinians out and I'm gonna build a casino in Gaza or something. So he was, he was able. And at the time you had all these ninnies who were screaming and whining. I said, he's doing what he always does, he's negotiating. And I think he has such a good track record at this point, I trust him to do it. I'm gonna let the guy cook. But even more than that, I just think there are people who have all sorts of views on Israel, Palestine, and whether or not America should be involved in the Middle east or to what degree we should be involved. And to me, the big win for conservatives and Republicans here is not for exactly one niche view over another to win out, but for this issue to reduce in importance. And that was obviously always going to happen after the war ended, after some kind of peace was achieved, if peace could be achieved, so that we could focus on the issues that are of greater importance to Americans and that are bigger winners for the Republican Party. You know, if the Democrats were able to do this on Trans, for instance, you know, where some of the Democrats realize that trans is nuts, but some of the Democrats are just totally bought in on it. There's really no way for them to win that with their base and the general public. So the only way they win is for that issue to just kind of drop down a little bit in importance. And I think that's what's probably going to happen here. And now we can focus on the things that people really, really care about. You know, the economy, immigration, all the rest. And even in terms of foreign policy, I don't know, I guess we're zapping boats in Venezuela now. To me, that's a big win, not only for global justice, but just domestically, politically. Trump just keeps throwing W's on the board.

[Matt Walsh]

Can I actually, can I jump in? I just want to say I agree with that.

[Andrew Klavan]

I totally disagree with it. I have to say Israel is very popular. We need Them as an ally in the Middle East, They're a good ally. They're the only army that can extend its power outside of its country, except for Turkey, and they're much better friends. And that means we can turn our defensive attention to the east, which is what we have to do.

[Michael Knowles]

Well, I mean, actually, I agree with Knowles that actually this issue going away as a top issue is definitely good for the country because the media had had retailed such an enormous pack of lies about this, that, and. And TikTok and all the rest of it, that it was extraordinarily polarizing. But I think that it only is a good thing if it ends with an Israeli victory. If it ends with Hamas somehow winning a victory, that's a horrible thing for the United States because it's a terrorist group. It's a bad thing for the west because it's a terrorist group group. If Iran extends its sphere of influence, that's a very bad thing. Now you have a bunch of countries that, again, have very little in common except opposition to Iranian terrorist groups and hopefully a willingness to grow economically now attempting to work together. That's a massive victory. So it's not just that it's off the front pages, obviously that's a good thing, but also that it's off the front pages in precisely the right way, which is the. Really. That's the thing. Anybody could have gotten a bad deal, perhaps, but it actually took President Trump to get a very, very shockingly good deal. And that's a truly amazing thing. Now, speaking of something kind of amazing, so we are going to actually be bringing out in the near future. In the near future, Pendragon. So you've heard a lot about this over the course of the last couple of years. It is the most ambitious TV project ever done by an independent studio. I don't think there's any question about this. It looks beautiful. It really looks. You're gonna see some of it in a moment. We're gonna show you the trailer for Pendragon in a moment. You should just understand that we are a company that tries to do ambitious, ambitious, big things, that tries to make a difference in the culture, and I think you're going to love it. Here is Jeremy Boreing presenting the trailer to you.

[Jeremy Boreing]

Thanks, Phyllis, and congratulations on 10 incredible years. You know, it's humbling to see the little company that started in your garage grow into the dominant conservative new media organization in the country and to deploy more than a billion dollars in the fight for our nation and our culture. It's a lot for 10 years, from the biggest and most important political podcast of the last decade, the Ben Shapiro show, to the biggest and most important documentaries of the last decade, am I Racist? And what is a Woman? From the depth and beauty of Jordan Peterson's Exodus series, to the wit and wisdom of Andrew Clavin, to whatever it is that Michael Knowles does. It's been the honor of a lifetime to be in this fight with you guys and with the hundreds of employees who've given their best to our cause. It wasn't always easy. From partnering with Dallas Sonje on movies like Run, Hide, Fight to launching a chocolate company in a single day, to creating our own children's entertainment platform, we've never been afraid to take big risks. We've punched way above our weight. Hearts have been changed. Laws have been changed. Children's lives and bodies have been saved. Elections have been won. We've even gotten to help people on their journey to find God and restore their marriages, improve their lives. It's been quite a privilege, but I always come back to the audience. You guys listen to the shows. You watch the videos, you share the memes, you buy the razors and the cigars. You support our advertisers. You subscribe. You've been the real change makers these last 10 years. Thank you. There's more to say, of course, and more people to thank, but a company can't run on nostalgia alone. The Daily Wire has always been about fighting the left and building the future. So tonight, I want to give you a glimpse of what's next. It's the culmination of years of effort to build culture, not just to criticize it. It's the biggest, most ambitious project in the company's history, and it's finally coming to Daily Wire plus this January. Please enjoy the world premiere of the first trailer for the Pendragon cycle, Rise of the Merlin.

[Michael Knowles]

This land is in a welter of confusion. There are more kings than sheep, more princes than crows on a battlefield, all seeking to snatch what they can, when they can, without a care for who suffers. Until this island is ruled by one who wields both justice and mercy, there will be no peace.

[Matt Walsh]

Look at them, boys, playing the game of kings. They say they have the Merlin with them. The Merlin died long before you and I were born.

[Michael Knowles]

I've seen what you can do.

[Ben Shapiro]

This is where it begins.

[Michael Knowles]

Well, I mean, if that doesn't look like a blockbuster to you, I don't know what does.

[Andrew Klavan]

Yeah, I don't want to take too much credit because it looks Great. I don't want to take too much credit, but I do want to say that I did most of the stunts.

[Ben Shapiro]

That's true. You know, the other thing watching it is it kind of reminds you this is the thing that sets us apart. This is like, kind of what the whole thing has been about, is making culture. And it's just so. It's so preposterously ambitious and big and beautiful. I'm very excited again.

[Michael Knowles]

Then this company started in Jeremy's pool house. And so we can't thank you enough. The people who have made this possible, our subscribers are All Access members, all the people who watch our shows and all the rest. Because honestly, without you, we don't get to make things like that and try and change the culture and try and change the world by changing the culture, which is something we've done over and over with Matt's movies and with the other movies we've made, and then with this brand new, massive, I think, incredible series from Jeremy, the Pendragon Cycle. Now, as you know, earlier tonight, we officially announced our new Daily Wire Lifetime membership, a limited tier of 10,000 lifetime All Access members. That's it. 10,000? 10,000 only. Who will have every All Access benefit for the rest of your Life? Well, actually, 5,000 of them have already been claimed. So, you know, I'm just saying, like, you probably should do it now because otherwise they just won't be available to you. Stand with us for the next decade, because if you think that what we've done over the past decade is amazing, wait until you see what we have planned for the next decade. Become the backbone of a movement to build the future and ensure that the best is yet to come. Not just for this company, obviously. Obviously. But for the country. Claim one of those 10,000 lifetime memberships. Well, now it's like 5,000 lifetime memberships, actually, as well as your gold Daily Wire forward flag. Remember this thing? Yes. This beautiful pin. This can be yours. You can flaunt it. You can flaunt it to all of your friends and compatriots. It's exclusively available as a gift to Lifetime members at daily wire.com/lifetime. We can't wait to see you there, guys.

[Ben Shapiro]

That was a blast. Should we ever do this again?

[Michael Knowles]

No, Absolutely.

[Ben Shapiro]

All right.

[Guest or Producer]

All right.

[Ben Shapiro]

Well, see you in two weeks. This is friendly fire. Catch you next time.

[Michael Knowles]

There's a reason you're seeing this message. It's intentional, because this moment is different. It's both a thank you and also an invitation. Thank you for choosing Courage Over Fear. Thank you for standing when silence would have definitely been easier. And thank you for believing in a brighter future.

[Ben Shapiro]

For the past decade, you've stood with us. You helped us fight government overreach, defend the silent majority and expose the lies of the establishment media.

[Matt Walsh]

You joined us as we challenged the left's lunacy through culture, shaping documentaries that challenged the new status quo, fearless journalism, and, yes, podcasts that became too loud to silence because of your support.

[Michael Knowles]

Let's be clear. None of it happens without you. If we became the fight, the left never expected to show up. And they certainly didn't expect us to win. And now, as we launch the next decade of the Daily Wire, we're offering something we've never offered before. A lifetime all access membership.

[Isabel Brown]

It's more than exclusive access. Access. It's a belief in the power of this movement to direct the course of our nation and to light the way during dark times.

[Andrew Klavan]

This movement isn't temporary. Neither is your membership. Because what we're building isn't just media. It's a legacy. A voice that cannot be canceled, erased or ignored.

[Isabel Brown]

It's your chance to lock arms with us, not just for today, but for decades to come.

[Ben Shapiro]

Lifetime members enjoy every feature and benefit.

[Michael Knowles]

Of Daily Wire All Access, with no red renewal fees ever.

[Ben Shapiro]

As All Access expands, every new benefit is yours automatically, for life.

[Michael Knowles]

You'll be first to know what's coming next with early access to announcements and releases. You'll skip the line with priority customer support. And of course, you'll be invited to help shape the future of Daily Wire itself.

[Isabel Brown]

And you'll carry the DW Ford flag pin, accented in 14 karat gold, a symbol reserved only for lifetime members.

[Michael Knowles]

Plus a signed first edition, my brand new book, Lions and Scavengers. This isn't for the casually curious. It's for the people who are committed. The 10,000 who will mark this moment and carry it forward. For 10 years. You stood with us. You shaped this first decade. Now let's build the next one. Together. Join us for life.