wavePod

Daily Wire Backstage Live at CPAC: The Fight, The Wins, The Future - The Michael Knowles Show | Wave AI Podcast Notes

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

Fri Feb 21 2025

We're back in DC! Join Ben Shapiro, Matt Walsh, Michael Knowles, Andrew Klavan, and Jeremy Boreing live at CPAC for a special Daily Wire Backstage. As we mark ten years of The Daily Wire, we’ll break down the seismic cultural and political shifts that brought us to this moment—where long-standing battles are finally turning into victories. From the first weeks of Trump’s presidency to the downfall of radical leftist ideology, we’ll take on the biggest questions facing the country today, take yours, and chart the course for what’s next. - - - Today's Sponsors: Balance of Nature - Visit https://www.balanceofnature.com code BACKSTAGE for 35% off your first order + a free bottle of Fiber and Spice. Tax Network USA - For a complimentary consultation, call today at 1 (800) 958-1000 or visit https://www.TNUSA.com/DAILYWIRE Leaf Filter - Get a free estimate, free inspection, and 30% off at https://www.leaffilter.com/BACKSTAGE Thank you, 4547 Whiskey, for sponsoring this broadcast!

Summary

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

Podcast Information

Title: The Michael Knowles Show
Host/Author: The Daily Wire
Episode: Daily Wire Backstage Live at CPAC: The Fight, The Wins, The Future
Release Date: February 21, 2025

Introduction The episode of Daily Wire Backstage Live at CPAC brings together prominent Daily Wire personalities, including Ben Shapiro, Matt Walsh, Andrew Klavan, and Jeremy Boring, to discuss the current political landscape, recent achievements, and future strategies of the conservative movement under President Donald J. Trump’s leadership.

30 Days into Trump’s Second Term

Ben Shapiro [00:40] kicks off the discussion by expressing his unprecedented optimism about the United States, attributing this sentiment to President Trump’s leadership. Shapiro highlights Trump’s pragmatic approach, emphasizing his focus on reality over ideological purity:

“President Trump lives in the world of reality. President Trump wins so often because he acknowledges reality, and reality always wins.” [00:40]

Key Achievements Highlighted:

Economic Policies:
- Deregulation: Trump’s commitment to freeing American businesses from excessive government regulation to foster innovation and economic dynamism.
- Meritocracy Over Identity Politics: Emphasis on merit-based success rather than policies focused on identity politics and DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion).
Foreign Policy:
- Ukraine Strategy: Shapiro praises Trump’s realistic assessment of the Ukraine conflict, advocating for strategic disengagement to avoid prolonged trench warfare without clear objectives.
- Middle East Peace Initiatives: Trump’s unconventional approach to Middle Eastern peace, particularly regarding the Gaza Strip, is lauded as a pragmatic solution that challenges traditional State Department strategies.
Media and Government Reform:
- Cracking Down on the Federal Pipeline: Trump’s efforts to dismantle the Democratic-controlled federal pipelines, redirecting funds away from partisan allies.
- Executive Branch Oversight: Shapiro commends Trump’s move to centralize executive power, asserting his authority over the bureaucratic institutions to implement his agenda efficiently.
Cultural Battles:
- Gender Ideology: Emphasis on traditional gender roles and opposition to the trans agenda, with initiatives like banning men from women’s sports and defining sex biologically as male and female.

Matt Walsh [12:36] and Jeremy Boring [13:56] further elaborate on their favorite aspects of Trump's first 30 days, highlighting the importance of presidential pardons for pro-life activists and the strategic dismantling of gender ideology, respectively.

“The end of the trans agenda of gender ideology in this country... a very important solution.” [13:56] – Jeremy Boring

Media Critique and Conservative Resilience

Andrew Klavan [16:19] praises Trump’s role in decimating the mainstream media’s influence, comparing it to a scene from Game of Thrones where the media is metaphorically stripped of its power and credibility.

“The moment no one wants to see.” [16:20] – Andrew Klavan

Ben Shapiro [18:24] underscores the significance of media moments that expose the shortcomings and falsehoods propagated by the legacy media, further asserting that Trump’s administration has effectively reduced media bias to near non-existence.

Individual Responsibility and Building the Future

Ben Shapiro [10:00] advocates for personal responsibility beyond political engagement, encouraging individuals to live reality-based lives, model virtues for their communities, and contribute to the social fabric through everyday actions.

“The country also runs because of the people who are doing the everyday things... building those building blocks.” [10:00]

Jeremy Boring [17:20] adds that the Republican Party is being strengthened by new media movements and the erosion of trust in legacy media, emphasizing the need for continued individual and collective effort.

Audience Q&A Highlights

During the Q&A session, audience members posed questions on integrating conservative values into business, navigating gender ideology, and succeeding in a media-dominated landscape.

Integrating Conservative Values in Business:
- Ben Shapiro [40:23] advises honesty, merit-based employment, and making hard decisions to ensure business efficiency.
  
  “Be honest in business and don't try to cheat people... put people in the right position to succeed.” [40:24]
- Jeremy Boring [42:24] recommends living according to personal values rather than labeling the business explicitly as conservative.
Standing Up Against Gender Ideology:
- Ben Shapiro [71:21] argues against affirming gender identity claims that contradict biological sex, likening it to denying medical truths in other contexts.
  
  “Men are men and women are women... telling someone who is suffering from a mental condition that in reality they're a member of the opposite sex is wrong.” [71:21]
- Andrew Klavan [65:16] emphasizes honesty without succumbing to language manipulation or fear.
Navigating a 'Woke' College Environment:
- Matt Walsh [60:32] expresses skepticism about the practicality of college education in the current cultural climate, advocating for vocational training or entering the workforce directly.
  
  “I think that [college] is really difficult because I loved when President Trump... But the things they need was someone in a position of power.” [60:32]
- Ben Shapiro [58:55] encourages students to live according to their beliefs without living in fear, focusing on personal growth and purposeful activism.

Conclusion

The panel concludes with a reaffirmation of President Trump’s pivotal role in revitalizing the conservative movement, dismantling entrenched liberal policies, and reshaping the media landscape. The discussion underscores the importance of individual responsibility, honest discourse, and unwavering commitment to conservative principles to build a prosperous and morally grounded America.

Notable Quotes

Ben Shapiro [00:40]: “President Trump lives in the world of reality... conservatism lines up really, really well with reality.”
Jeremy Boring [13:56]: “The end of the trans agenda of gender ideology in this country... the legal stuff is really important.”
Andrew Klavan [16:19]: “The moment no one wants to see.”
Ben Shapiro [40:23]: “Be honest in business and don't try to cheat people... put people in the right position to succeed.”
Matt Walsh [60:32]: “I think that [college] is really difficult because I loved when President Trump... But the things they need was someone in a position of power.”

This summary encapsulates the key discussions and insights from the Daily Wire Backstage Live at CPAC episode, highlighting the panelists’ perspectives on President Trump’s impact, media reform, cultural battles, and strategies for individual and collective success within the conservative movement.

Loading summary...

Transcript

Michael Knowles (0:00)

Hey, Michael Knowles here. And do I have a treat for you. The latest episode of Daily Wire. Backstage is right around the corner, and you do not want to miss it. Don't miss me. Ben Shapiro, Matt Walsh, Andrew Clavin, and the God King, Jeremy Boring. As we discuss the latest news and cultural events, all while enjoying some fine whiskey and cigars, it is going to be all that and more. Take a listen.

Ben Shapiro (0:40)

Well, folks, you know I'm not famous for being a particularly optimistic sort. If you've ever listened to my show, let's say morosity, depression, that may be a feeling that's come over you once in a while listening to my show where I describe what's going on in the country. But I can safely say I have never felt more optimistic about the United States than I do right now. And that is thanks to President Donald J. Trump. And one of the things that's sort of mysterious about President Trump is the fact that he isn't really an ideological conservative. Now, people like me, I grew up in the movement. I grew up reading Thomas Sowell and Frederick Hayek and reading Russell Kirk. I don't think President Trump has ever sat around reading those people. I don't think he sits around at night and browses Edmund Burke or anything. And so the question is, why is it that this man, who is not truly an ideological conservative, is the most successful conservative president, President of my lifetime, bar none? That's a real question. And I think to understand that, the thing that we need to understand about President Trump is that more than anything else, more than anything else, and in this era, needed more than anything else, President Trump lives in the world of reality. President Trump has been slandered by the media as somebody who creates fictions of his own and sort of lives within those fictions and says a lot of words that don't always match up with the truth and all that kind of the reality is that President Trump, in his gut, lives in the real world, which is why President Trump wins so often. Because if you are going to win, you have to acknowledge reality, because reality always wins. And this is what makes President Trump conservative. Conservatism lines up really, really well with reality. The reason that President Trump won the last election cycle is because the Democratic Party, the left, completely disconnected themselves from reality, completely disconnected themselves from reality in every possible way. They ran screaming with their hero on fire, their blue hair on fire away from reality. President Trump embraces reality with both arms. When it comes to the world of economics, for example, President Trump only cares about success. He cares about economic dynamism. He cares about American businesses being able to build and succeed. And he understands that in order for all those things to happen, you have to free American business from the shackle of regulation and government. You have to allow businesses to innovate that. You have to allow people to rise and fall on their own merit. Meritocracy has to be valued more than, say, identity politics and dei. President Trump knows that in his guts, because he's a business person, President Trump has had to make payroll. Unlike literally every leader of the Democratic Party over the course of my lifetime, he is not a career politician, which means he's always been answerable to reality. And that means that when he unleashes another businessman, Elon Musk, inside the government and says, go in there with a meat axe and start taking out programs, that is what a businessman would do. If you came into a business as a business person and it was rife with waste, fraud, and abuse, you wouldn't sit around and run a commission on it. You would start firing people. You would go in and you start making changes. You start breaking things and moving quickly. And President Trump is doing precisely that. You can see business optimism in the country is skyrocketing specifically because of that. Meanwhile, the Democrats don't know what to do because they're cherished. Blue pipeline, which is what the federal government is. It is a permanent payment program for the left. The federal government, they have permanent institutions that exist outside the government. They take literally trillions of your taxpayer dollars, and then they funnel all that money out to their political allies inside and outside the government. And Donald Trump came in and he broke the pipeline. Why? Because he lives in the world of reality. When we're talking about foreign policy, President Trump lives in the world of reality. When President Trump looks at the situation in Ukraine, he doesn't say, well, you know what? We're not going to set an end point. We're not really going to set a goal. We're just going to wing it. We're just going to go along with this for years. He says, listen, here's the reality. The reality is that there is a grinding trench warfare situation in Ukraine. There is very little shot that Ukraine is going to be able to win back Donbass in Crimea, and we don't want Ukraine to actually fall to the Russians. And so we know what an off ramp looks like. Now it's just a question of how do we get to that off ramp. That is what a practical person does. That is a person who lives in reality. That's not a person who wants to speak airy fairy nonsense and nostrums about democracy and tyranny. All that stuff sounds nice. But does it get the job done? Is the question that President Trump is always asking. Does it get the job done? When it comes to the Middle East, President Trump has completely broken the mold. The sort of ancient wisdom of the State Department, which has been wrong for 80 years in the Middle east, is that the only way that you actually achieve peace in the Middle east is to make the Palestinian issue front and center. President Trump in his first term totally turned that on his head. He ignored it. And peace broke out in the Middle East. President Trump has now thrown onto the table a solution with regard to the Gaza Strip that is breaking people's brains and also happens to be the only plausible solution anyone has proposed in about a century in this particular area. Because it turns out that when you have a population group that literally held today a celebration of dead babies in the Gaza Strip, babies they had murdered in the Gaza Strip, it turns out that a two state solution in which one of those states is actually run by those people is a really bad idea. And President Trump knows that. And he says it because he lives in the world of reality. And this is how you chalk up victories. When it comes to China, President Trump is a realist. He understands that China is globally an opponent of the United States and that we need to stand up to Chinese predations stealing our ip, buying American land, funneling fentanyl precursors through Mexico. He understands on immigration that a realistic nation cannot have an open border. You cannot have a welfare state and an open border and pretend that that's workable. President Trump understands that. Now, all of this sounds commonsensical to all of us, right? Because it is commonsensical. But in Washington, D.C. common sensical is not the way things have been run. Instead, people have been so wedded not to victory, not to winning, not to achieving things, but to saying things properly in just the right way to get the right coverage in the New York Times or in the Wall Street Journal or in whatever media outlet they are pand that they never actually think about what wins and what loses. And then there's the matter of the reality of our daily lives. President Trump understands that what most Americans want is not identity politics. What most Americans want is not some bizarre notion about androgyny where men can be women and women can be men, and that we are sort of free floating sets of feelings existing within the meat suits that we wear around. President Trump understands that basic things that the left has completely abandoned and that he was willing to say stuff that was uncontroversial, you know, five minutes ago, like, boys are not girls. Right? Like, these are controversial statements to make. But President Trump understands that that actually has some pretty deep ramifications. When you say things like boys are not girls, such as, perhaps men have a role to play that is different from women's role. That does not mean that women shouldn't be in the workplace, obviously, and it doesn't mean that men shouldn't help take care of the kids. But it does mean that. That men being masculine is a good thing. And it means that women being wives and mothers is a good thing, too. And that no country that ignores these basic truths can survive and grow and thrive. President Trump acknowledges and knows that the things that most Americans want, whether they are Hispanics living down on the border of Texas or whether they're white Americans living up on the border of Canada, those things are basically the same. They want to be able to live in safety, free of crime, with prosperity, being able to hold down a job in a growing, innovative, dynamic economy. They want to be able to go to their church and worship God and share that with their community without the government getting in their way. These are all things that, again, sound so easy. They sound so easy. But the way that President Trump measures whether a thing is true or not is whether it works. And that is why he has been so unbelievably successful. Now, when it comes to us, what can we do? This does say something to the rest of us. You know, I think that I talk for a living, right? Which is a really fun way to make a living. But the reality is that people come to me all the time and say, how do I make a difference in politics? And obviously, there are things that we all can do, right? I spent the last election cycle campaigning with a variety of Senate candidates and with President Trump, I went out and I did the. But the things that most of us can do, aside from all the normal political fighting that Steve was talking about earlier, which is really important, the thing that is most important is to live a reality based life, to be a model to our children, to be a model to our community, to build the social fabric that actually makes this country work, to create the businesses that make the country function, to engage in everyday common virtue. Because the truth is, the country is not just built by President Trump. We love President Trump. He's doing an amazing job. He should continue to be healthy and well and continue to succeed. Day in and day out, we're all praying for him. Okay? But the country also runs because of the people who are doing the everyday things, whose names we don't know. You people. I know all the people out there who are just living with their families and bringing up their kids in the correct fashion in a country that is growing and thriving. Building those building blocks, taking those building blocks and actually day to day level. President Trump is clearing the field for you. He's clearing the field for me. The Republicans, I hope, are going to do that. But then it's our job to actually build, and that's what we should be focused on, not just on politics over the next four years or eight years or 20 years. We should be focused on the building, because that project, that's the project that never ends. The political fight will always be there. There's no such thing as permanent victory. There will be losses in the future. But the one thing that we can do every single day is continue to build. And thank God, President Trump. The reason I'm optimistic, President Trump has brought us back to a world of reality where that building is possible and we should all build together. Thank you so much. And now. Thank you. I appreciate it. And now I want to take the opportunity to welcome out my buddies from the Daily Wire for an episode of Backstage Live.

Ben Shapiro (18:24)

From the Vice President. And there are a bunch of great memeable moments. And, of course, Elon is a walking meme, as you've seen. But in terms of actual policy, I think the most important thing that President Trump has done is he's actually. He has exposed the reality, which is that the amount of power that has aggregated in the executive branch over the course of time is extraordinary, and it is at the behest of the President of the United States. So for two reasons, this is really important. One, because the Democratic Party established over the course of the last hundred odd years, really since Woodrow Wilson, that the executive branch was going to be the predominant branch of American government, and all power was going to be centralized in its spending power, regulatory power, all of it. And then they basically said, and Republicans can't touch it. When we run it, we'll run it, and we'll put permanent employees in place so that when you run it, you don't run it. And President Trump came in and he said, no, no, no. You've given all this power to the executive branch. Guess what? Guess who's the president now. It's me, and long live the king. And he literally put out an executive order, saying, like, yesterday, all of you people work for me. And here is your reminder. The executive branch is a branch of government. There is no fourth branch of government. That is an unelected bureaucracy. And thus, you work for my agenda. And this is great for a couple of reasons. One, because it means that he's going to be actually able to clean out so much of the rod inside these institutions. And that's what Doge is in large part. But. But second, I think it sets up the predicate for if there is going to be a useful constitutional fight, which I kind of like, then let that fight be about the prerogatives of Congress. Let Congress try to actually go back to the original structure in a fair way. Because for too long, Republicans have been playing by the Marcus of Queensbury rules on this stuff. Whereas I say the rules apply when Republicans are in power, and then they stop applying the minute a Democrat is in power. And President Trump, as I said before, he lives in reality. And for President Trump, there's no. There's no set of rules where there are two sets of rules, right? There's either one set for everybody, or there ain't no rules. And he says there's one set of rules for everybody. I'm the president, and now all you people work for me or you're fired. Which is just wonderful.

Matt Walsh (20:45)

Gaza lago. It's a work in progress. I love it. Because what it says is the way you guys have been thinking about this for the entire lifetime of every person involved in international politics is wrong. And it's not even necessarily that I agree with every single one of Trump's disruptions. It's that I agree with the idea of the disruption itself that Trump represents, because only through disruption do you shake things up from the status quo and create the actual opportunity for change. And I think. I actually think President Trump sort of understands this. I think he wields it. I think half of the things that Donald Trump says, he doesn't exactly mean, but what he understands is that in the act of saying it, he. He breaks everyone out of their comfort zone and creates the opportunity for actual, meaningful change. And that's. That's an enormous skill. It's something that he's been doing in his business life for all of living memory. Donald Trump's very old, not as old as Andrew Clayton, but he's not a young man, and he's very successfully done this. He keeps people from being able to get to complacency, keeps people from believing that just because something has been the way means that it Must continue to be the way. And you see it particularly, I think, in places like Doge. I think Elon Musk is the greatest living American. I think that he is. We should clap for Elon Musk. He's probably still here. He's probably still here. And any one of us at any moment could be the recipient of one of his children. So it's like a really important thing to say on Elon's good side. I think Elon's the greatest living American. I think that Elon is one of the only people in the world actively trying to build a future. I think that for too long, the left has been the only ideological movement in the country who believes that there will be a future. And the future that they believe in is one that does not include us. And for too long, people on the right have sort of given up on the idea of a future. We've become a little bit black pilled, a little bit nihilistic, a little bit conspiratorial and afraid that tomorrow must be worse than today and must which is worse than yesterday. Elon doesn't subscribe to that at all. He not only believes that America's best days are ahead of it, he's actively working to make that happen. And that is what you want in the government. We are going to take questions, and I believe that the place where we're going to take questions is over in this. They told me it's down there, but I don't know where down there means. But we're going to spend a lot of our time interacting with you guys because you bought the tickets and we get to hear from each other, you know, all day, every day. I could have told you all of their answers. I know what they wanted in the green room. Only green MMs for Ben.

Andrew Klavan (29:16)

Well, I mean, it is this kind of trick about being a conservative is that you believe that the government should stay out of your business so you can be free. But now you're free. What are you gonna do, right? It all comes down to us. It's really not about, please do this and please pass this program. It's get rid of all that stuff so I can do the things that I want to do. And the thing about Donald Trump is Donald Trump. You know, movements happen almost organically. They almost happen by themselves. They're like waves that come in. And I work in the arts my whole life, and you see, in the arts, there'll come a moment when there's a Picasso or Marlon Brando, somebody who changes the game, but that game was already changing. He just represents that change. And that's true of Donald Trump. Without him, it wouldn't have happened. But at the same time, he is at the head of a movement that's organically happening. And that movement has a lot to do with our old friend Uncle God. The arguments that for hundreds of years have slowly, slowly drained the faith out of Western culture have collapsed. They've collapsed scientifically. They've collapsed morally. They've collapsed experientially. And so God is now suddenly in with the intellectual crowd, as well he should be. And I think that this is the moment for us, each of us, not all of us, but each of us to ask ourselves, who is this God and what does he want from me? Because every single person, not just in this room, but walking on the face of the planet, knows he is not yet the person he was made to be. And I think that that's something. I don't know. I think about it every day. I pray about it every day. And I think that's something everybody should be doing because we're all here to create something. Maybe it's a family. Maybe it's just a way of looking at things. Maybe it's a business. Maybe it's, you know, works of art, whatever it is. We are all here to make stuff. And you make stuff out of your heart, and you make stuff out of who you are. And working toward becoming who you are is something you can't do alone. You got to do it with God. And I think this is the moment for us to reconsider what that means to believe and what it means in our personal lives, and then act it out and live it out.

Ben Shapiro (31:49)

My goodness. It's rare that you spring a new one on me. But, Uncle God was definitely a new one. So I think that one of the great dangers that conservatives face right now is that so many of our institutions have been thoroughly corrupted by the left that the temptation is to destroy all of them. And you see this in government. A huge number of institutions in government are completely broken, need to be destroyed, rebuilt from the ground up. But my problem is that I see some people, Andrew Tate, who are attempting to take social institutions and then destroy those social institutions as well, pretend that they are meritless, that because there have been bad things that have been done to those institutions, now you throw out the baby with the bathwater, and those institutions are themselves meretricious and need to be destroyed. And the substitute morality that is offered is actually amorality. It's actually sin. And that is a deeply disturbing and disturbed point of view. The thing that we all need to do, I think, and what I hope to do in my own life, is not to make excuses. Okay? This is the biggest thing, and this, to me, is the essence of conservatism. Stop making excuses for your own failure. It is one thing to point to an actual wrong that is being done in the world and say that this wrong needs to be corrected. Because the world is filled with wrongs, and it's filled with injustices, and it's filled with bad things that do need correction. It is another thing to look at your own Failure, and then not say, what can I fix? But instead look out there at, you know, the institution. I can't find a girl. Thus the institution of marriage is broken. And thus I should treat women like trash. Okay, that is a terrible way to go about your life. The answer to finding a good woman is to be a good man. Right. The answer to having a good marriage is to find a good woman and engage in a good marriage. The answer to finding yourself a better church is to find yourself a better church. If you don't actually like the church that you're going to, if it's been taken over by wokies, then the answer is not, well, I guess we're done with the church. The church is stupid. We're not doing it anymore. The answer is to either form your own or to find a more traditional instituted church that is not doing those stupid things. And I think one of the great temptations of politics is to assume that politics can solve everything, that you got problems in your life, economic, spiritual, marital, and politics is going to solve all of those problems. If only you can go after somebody out there and blame those people, well, then that gives you the license to do really whatever you want. And then the failures that spring there from are not your own fault. And that, to me, is a sin. It's a sin against yourself. It's a sin against your society. It's a sin against the God who created you, gave you free will, the ability to choose, and the skills with which to do something productive in the world.

Ben Shapiro (43:16)

This age to be you one day and take over Daily Wire? Ben eventually will be for sale. So she can do that. But I think that I started writing a syndicated column when I was 17, so actually not that much older than your daughter is now. And the key, I think this is true, by the way, in virtually all businesses. But it's certainly true when it comes to political commentary is you have to read an awful lot, learn a lot, an awful lot about the business and do a lot of work for free. There's no such thing as a person who's success in literally any business, who was not a failure for a very long time before they were a success. Right. Everyone who's an Overnight success was an overnight success. Ten years in the making. And so I started writing a syndicate of the column, making no money off of this for probably a decade before I had, you know, the famous Piers Morgan interview. That was like, fully a decade after I started doing what I was doing. And that takes an awful lot of reading and writing. And then the other thing that I would say is that she should attempt, and I think everybody should attempt to find a niche where you're a specialist in the thing. And that can be an information niche. Either you can know a lot about a particular topic, or you can be willing to report on a particular topic. And if you have a monopoly on that topic, that makes you a marketable commodity, Right? Everybody's got an opinion on politics. Everybody in the room could be a political columnist, I'm sure. But there's a difference between that and being a person who does the research and does the hard work that nobody else wants to do. One of my mentors, Andrew Breitbart, used to say that if you have a cell phone with a camera, you're now a reporter. And that's one way that I encourage young people to get started, is you're in your town, there are stories all around you of things that probably require change. Get those stories, hook up with an outlet like ours, we'll report it, and we'll make that a thing. And that's a great way to get started in this particular business.

Matt Walsh (46:55)

Yeah. One thing I would say is that it can be really easy to be tempted toward some sort of absolute answer on a question like this. You know, some people will tell you, just keep your head down. Get your degree. You're paying to be there. The most important thing is not to rock the boat. You need something from them in exchange for your money and your time. Go get it. That's the only reason you're there. Other people will say you should just be fighting all the way, defending your rights. Campuses are ground zero for all the worst things that are happening in our culture. Be an activist. But the truth is, you actually have to live your life, and none of the people giving you advice on this topic do. And only you know what you actually want to get out of this experience in college. Only you know what kind of career you want to build in your life. On the other side of your time in college, some of them much more dependent on getting that degree than. Than perhaps others are. I think the best thing you can do in this regard is live according to your lights. The one thing I'll say you should not do is live your life out of fear. If you find yourself living your life out of fear, you actually can't make the cynical calculation of, I will live my life out of fear, but on the other side of it, I'll be very, very successful. That's a deal with the devil that you can just never walk back. But that doesn't mean that you always have to be in the fight. It doesn't mean that you have to be reckless in every situation. I will say in my own life, I've made the choice from a young age, probably before I could make it consciously that I was just going to say what I believed in every situation and come what may. And, you know, I'd like to say that it's worked out well for me. I've gone through a lot of real difficulties because of that decision. I don't necessarily think that that is the most virtuous decision. I think it's the most Gen X decision, but I don't know that it's the most virtuous decision. Although it can contain virtue sometimes, though, it can contain hubris and recklessness and all sorts of other things. So I think that rather than looking for, like, an absolute answer to the question, the very best thing that you can do is actually know yourself, know what you're trying to accomplish, know what fights are worth your time to be in, and go fight those fights. And if it happens, if you're like me, it'll be all of them. And you'll never get a college degree and you won't make any money until you're 30, and that's fine. And if you're like Ben, you'll be writing a syndicated column at 17. And now be Ben Shapiro.

Ben Shapiro (50:46)

Look at this on a more serious note. On a more serious note, over the years it has become increasingly clear that the mainstream media is acting as an arm of the Democratic Party and as anti American factions. Although I repeat myself, this has come to a crescendo during the last few election cycles as well as during the COVID pandemic, something I witnessed personally as a medical doctor. The most recent attempt to equate free speech to Nazi era fascism sets a new egregious level. It would not be hard to trace these media trends to foreign groups aggressively using our media to undermine and sabotage the United States. With some investigation, we can easily find which parties are complicit in these efforts. My question is, should we conduct such an investigation? And furthermore, if we do, what actions should we take based on the data we find? Well, I mean, it depends if you're talking about foreign actors who are actually funding American media. So, yes, I think there should absolutely be Congressional investigations, presumably the House Foreign Affairs Committee, looking into funding of various enterprises and the propaganda that emerges from those enterprises. If you're talking about the Democratic Party working in cahoots with the. With the. With the legacy media, I'm not sure that you need an investigation with that. I think you just need retinas in a prefrontal cortex. I mean, basic logic suggests that the human centipede that is the relationship between the Democratic Party and the media is an ongoing bleep show. So I don't think that requires an investigation, and I don't think it's A big scandal. I think that the truth is that the legacy media, and this is something Drew said earlier. So, Drew, this is where you're right. You're wrong before, but now you're right. What Drew said earlier is right. The legacy media has absolutely destroyed itself. What this last election cycle did was expose the legacy media beyond all repair. And that was really exposed not even by Covid, which was truly terrible, or blm, which was also truly terrible, but by Joe Biden dying on stage. When Joe Biden died on stage in that moment, the legacy media was destroyed, destroyed for all time. And I don't think that they're ever going to be able to recover it. And you can see it in the numbers. People, people do not trust the legacy media. It's irrecoverable. The Washington Post is never going to have a majority of Americans that believe it's trustworthy again. So I'm less worried than I've ever been about the power of the legacy media. And I've spent most of my life worrying about the legacy media.

Jeremy Boring (56:15)

Yeah, look, I think I totally agree with everything that you said. And it's easy to forget that just, you know, even several months ago, certainly in the last couple of years, we were told, even by conservatives, that our victories, you know, the great victory of repealing Roe v. Wade, one of the great human rights victories of all time, was actually a bad thing politically, because we were going to pay for it. We're going to pay the price with some great backlash in the polls, and the women of America would rise up to punish us for protecting babies from slaughter. And that didn't happen. And the reason that it didn't happen is because it turns out, as many of us, as we have all been saying, people like you have been saying the pro life argument is a winning argument. It is a winning argument. And as long as you're just honest, the only way to win the argument, and when you're, when you're pro life, is to be brutally honest and to show it's one thing, you know, if we are claiming that there is a genocide of children happening, that million, 60 million human beings have been slaughtered by abortion, if that's what we claim, which is what we claim because it's true, then there should be passion and even anger behind our words. And if There isn't. Then why would anyone take us seriously? Because it's like we don't even believe what we're saying. So we are not the ones, the pro abortion side. They're the ones who have to cover everything they say in euphemisms. They have to be very careful about every word they choose. And the euphemisms constantly change because they can't talk simply and clearly about what the thing is. And we win the argument simply by being clear about it. Because the pro life argument is, as I said, it's the most winning argument of all time. The pro life argument is simply this, that it is always wrong to intentionally kill innocent human children. That's it. And I defy any pro abortion person, any so called pro choice person to engage with that. Are you saying that there are times when it is actually okay to intentionally kill an innocent human child and that's what they don't want to engage with? And as long as we're honest about it, then we win the argument.