The King Of Satire And Disguise | Matt Walsh
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Let them expose themselves. Let them do the work. I don't have to explain to the audience or explain to the person why they're wrong. Let them expose that, and then we're going to put it on display. Probably a lot of them are sitting kind of nervous right now and thinking about embarrassing things they said and thinking like, "God, I hope that didn't make it into the film." I can tell them right now, it did. And to Robin DiAngelo in particular,

There's one moment that she's thinking, "Oh my gosh, I hope that's not in there." Oh, it is Robin.

Oh, it is. On today's episode of the Sunday Special, I sit down with the man, the myth, the fearless leader of the Sweet Baby Gang, Daily Wire's very own Matt Walsh. Matt's latest exercise in trolling in the libs, Am I Racist?, premieres in theaters September 13th. He's here to talk about the making of the documentary and the rotten ideas it exposes. You know Matt best from The Matt Walsh Show, where his political commentary and cultural critiques highlight our nation's most alarming trends.

Walsh is also the best-selling author of the children's book Johnny the Walrus, which playfully points to the absurdity of transgender ideology. In 2022, Walsh's first documentary film, What Is a Woman?, went viral around the globe for his clever expose of the gender medicine grift. Walsh's knack for revealing lies with satire has been captured once again in Am I Racist?, where the toxicity of racial equity is on full display. In the film, Matt infiltrates a white privilege grief workshop. He disguises himself as a DEI consultant to the queen of the anti-racist, Robin DiAngelo.

All the while, he threads the needle for us as viewers on the profound anti-Americanism that undergirds all of it. Today, Matt and I discuss the making of the film, his observations on the interviewees, and the most sinister aspects of wokeness. All of us here at Daily Wire cannot wait for the rest of the nation to see the film and grapple with the reality of the grift of the DEI industry. Don't miss this inside look at Am I Racist? out in theaters September 13th. Welcome back to another episode of the Sunday Special.

Matt Walsh, the star of Am I Racist? Thanks so much for stopping by. Great to be here again. As always, it's amazing to see you. So let's talk about... You know I did this show like seven years ago, right? Really? It's been that long? Yeah. You remember that? Not at all. I feel like I've seen you since. Yeah, probably. Wow. Wow. It was actually the first interview...

I ever did in my life. Really? Yeah. It was terrible. I was really bad. Wow. Well, you've certainly improved in so many of your qualities, although the beard is... Did you have a beard at the time? It was more like your sad excuse for a beard. Right. That's horrible. I've learned to hide my face since then. Yeah. The key to my success. Actually, in this movie, it sort of is the key to your success, as it turns out. So let's talk about the origins of Am I Racist? So you make What Is a Woman, the best documentary of the last 10 years with director Justin Folk. And then...

we're trying to figure out here at Daily Wire what you do next, and you come up with this. So where did this come from? Well, we knew we wanted to explore. The first question is like, what issue do you want to get into next? And it was pretty obvious we wanted to get into race and the anti-racism grift and DEI and all that stuff. And then the next question is like, well, how do you approach it? And of course, with What is a Woman, the whole kind of

premise of the film is just me going around and asking very, very simple questions, remaining like a blank slate, not really skeptical, but also not believing anybody the whole time. I think we knew with this issue that that strategy probably doesn't work as well. And we don't want to just do the same thing over again. So our idea with this was like, well, what if we start in the same place? I start by just asking questions, but rather than remaining a blank slate,

If I just take everything I'm told and believe it uncritically and then try to put it into practice. Where will that take us? It made it fun but also challenging because when we started making the film, we honestly didn't know where it would go or what the film would be in its final stages.

at the end. I mean, it's a pretty audacious move. I mean, as a terrible actor myself, who's now been in multiple films being a terrible actor, I mean, do you have any acting background? Because you actually have to do some acting in this film, because obviously you're not somebody who tends to believe things easily. I think that that's fair to say. You're not somebody who would uncritically accept the kind of stupidities of DEI. But in the film, you kind of gradually are eaten by the machine that is DEI. So you had to do something different. Do you have any acting background?

How was that for you? I do. I actually have an extensive acting background. I was in a critically acclaimed performance in a film called Lady Ballers. That's true. And that's pretty much it. That's the only... What I found is there's a little bit of acting in this film. There is. And my process for acting is I... What I did was I thought...

I pretended. That's the whole, that's, I figured out that's what acting is. Just pretend. That's incredible. That's my whole process. Wow. Like from beginning to end, A to Z. So you just pretend. Just pretend. That's amazing. That's the whole thing with acting. It's actually, it's actually kind of easy. Like I think anyone can be a passable actor. It probably takes talent to be a really, really good one, you know? Mm-hmm.

So is that like since childhood you've been able to pretend just in that way? Well, yeah, every child can. So I think every adult has it in them to be a good actor because as a kid it comes naturally to you. And it's true. You're so filled with joy like childlike wonder that you just bring that back to the fore. My inner child. It spills out of you like baubles from a fountain of jewels. It's pretty incredible. In any case, to get back, I want to start this interview with

by playing a clip from the film, Am I Racist? Which, by the way, everybody should obviously go check out miracist.com and pre-buy your tickets if you have not already, which you should have. But this is a clip from near the beginning of the film. Why don't you tee up the clip that we're about to play? This is sort of the very beginning of the film. Yeah, this is very early on, and we discovered that

There are these workshops that I guess we ask ourselves, if I want to start this journey, where should I begin? Fortunately, there are a lot of DEI certified experts out there offering their services for a fee, sometimes a quite handsome fee. And they have all kinds of workshops. And so we looked into these workshops. And one that we found was a workshop for your white grief to work through if you as a white person feel grief,

and guilt over your privilege, which I of course do. I have a lot of grief all the time, a lot of guilt. I'm Catholic, I carry around a lot of guilt because as Catholics, we have a lot of Catholic guilt. So I figured this is a good place to start to kind of unpack, as they would say, a lot of that. And going to this workshop, we all sit around, as you'll see, it looks like an AA meeting basically, a bunch of white people. There's a black woman who's the leader of the group instructing us.

We were told when we first started, one of the rules is that if you're a white person in the group and you start to get emotional and cry, you can't cry in the group because white tears are manipulative. So there's a cry room that you can go to. Even to the other white people? Yes. Wow. They don't want to see your white tears. No white tears. We got into it, and I discovered as we were sitting in the group and talking about it and going around in circles and answering questions,

I started to get pretty emotional. It was much heavier than I thought it was going to be, I guess. And so I had to leave to go to the cry room at one point. And while I was in the cry room, unfortunately, a couple of people in the group realized who I was. They put two and two together. They talked to the other people in the group, told them who I really was. And this clip picks up with me re-emerging from the cry room, drying my eyes off, and then this is what happens.

The white participants in the group feel that there's something in themselves that they have to overcome when all that's being requested of you is that you be. Hello. Hi. How are you? Sorry about that. Oh, no problem. You good? Yeah. Remind me of your name again. Uh, Steven. Steven? Yeah? Okay. Um, do you want to come up? Come up? Yeah, do you want to come up and share anything? Sure, what do you want me to share?

Whatever's on your mind. I just want to know that like my physical safety and yours and everybody else's here is okay. Why would your physical safety not be okay? Did I miss something? I don't feel comfortable. What? Can you guys catch me up to speed on what's going on here? You don't need to be caught up. We're gonna be silent. Is it because I said I had 17 black friends? It might have been 15. It depends on how you count them.

I would really appreciate it if you left so that the people who actually want to be here and deserve to be here can get what they need. I do want to be here. Can you please leave? I would like it if you left. I'm trying to learn. I'm on this journey. Come with me. Well, I didn't consent to be touched. I'm not offering to touch you. I'm offering to walk you out. Will you walk with me and I'll answer your questions. Okay. I'll admit it. I'll admit it. My name's not Steven. Maybe you already knew that. My name is Matt Walsh. Mm-hmm. We know.

I just was here on this journey that I'm just starting, but I see that I'm not wanted. If you were on your journey, then you would have told us who you were and your real name, but you didn't. Are you saying I needed a better disguise? Is that what you... I don't know. Maybe. But you can figure that out as you walk out the door. Maybe. Yeah, maybe. Thank you so much. I really had the transformative experience myself. And my pronouns are he, him...

I did everything I could to fit in. I opened up. I was raw and emotional. I told them about my black friends. It was no use. They rejected me. And they called the police. My mere presence in the room caused them pain. I'll never be accepted if I look like this. If they know that I'm Matt Walsh, I'll always be an outsider. I need to go deeper undercover. A whole new identity.

If I want to be an ally, I need to look like one. Like someone who is progressive, tolerant, enlightened. Let me think. Have I ever met anyone like that? Ah, yes. Yes, I have. What is a woman? Why do you ask that question? Am I racist? Rated PG-13. Buy tickets now.

So... That's the origin. That's the superhero origin story. Yeah. That's where the costume comes from, yeah. And it is amazing. I mean, you were able to get into extraordinary spaces by wearing a man bun and some very thin-framed glasses. Yeah. You wouldn't think it'd be enough, but it's sort of similar to what we experienced with What Is A Woman when we were able to talk to people that we didn't think... We get the same question with What Is A Woman, how...

How did you get those people to talk to you? And the answer is it's kind of the same in both cases, that a lot of these people live in a bubble where they just can't even imagine that anybody would ever try to challenge them or embarrass them or expose them in any way because they've never been around that ever. They've never been around anyone who would actually do anything but fall to their knees in admiration of them.

And so I think we were able to kind of take advantage of that sort of arrogance of these people. What's amazing about this sort of film is that, as you say, because they think that you're one of them, they say things, a lot of these people, that they would never say in a public setting against somebody who's adversarial. Actually, now that I think about it, I actually did something similar when I wrote a book called Primetime Propaganda about sort of the insider Hollywood story. And I just sent out a bunch of emails as well before I was

much more well-known. And they said, and it said, I was a graduate of Harvard Law School. My name was Ben Shapiro. And so people immediately assumed that because my last name was Shapiro and I went to Harvard Law School, I must be on the left because obviously Jewish liberal from Harvard Law. And so instead of wearing a yarmulke, I would wear a Harvard Law baseball cap, just walking in interviews and people would just say the thing. And a lot of this movie is that. So number one, how did you get all these people in the room with you? Apparently, I mean,

We saw the budget. I know the budget. So it was not cheap to get many of these people in the room. There's a good living being made by DEI consultants. Yeah, that's the answer right there. Most of the people we talked to were willing to perhaps even put their better judgment to the side if we just pay their fee. Which, of course, is funny because they also claim that they're fighting racism and

They want to get the word out about that, but they'll only do it if you pay them. And so that's one thing we do in the film is we tell the audience very directly, like, this is how much this person charged us to talk to them. And you're going to see that some of the price tags are quite...

And I think for folks who don't actually understand how deep-rooted this is in American society, I think most Americans, they look at this like, this is very fringy. Not that many people that I think normies know goes to a white guilt seminar where they weep about their...

exposure to white privilege and all this sort of stuff. Most people are presumably not doing, as we'll see in another clip, a dinner party with Sir I. Rao. We'll get to that in a minute. But this does...

pervade all of American society. I mean, it's baked into law. It's baked into employment policies at a wide variety of companies. According to Kamala Harris, it's baked into her policies as would-be president. Equity is pervading all parts of the federal government. Maybe you can explain for a second why Americans should really care about DEI. It's become a buzzword on the right, but for a lot of people, they don't necessarily understand what it is. Yeah, well, I think the fact that most Americans aren't sitting around in a circle at a white grief seminar or going to a race to dinner event

That's sort of the point. That's why it matters. Because most people are not true believers like this. They want nothing to do with this craziness. And yet, the people you see in the film are the ones who are coming up with these programs that are then foisted on normal Americans at their jobs. So maybe in your free time, you're not choosing to go to something like this.

But the problem is that this stuff is brought to you in places where there's no reason why it would be there. The fact that you just want to work, you know, you're working a job that has nothing to do with any of this, and yet you're being forced to, at the very least, listen to this sort of lecturing, if not actively affirm it in a lot of cases. So this is why we have to care about it, because we really have no choice. I wish we were in a position where we could look at some of these people in the film and say,

Yeah. Total fringe doesn't matter. What they say is totally irrelevant. I want to get to a point where it is irrelevant, but right now it's not.

So when you were preparing for the film, did you have to read a lot of the tomes from these people? One of the people who you get in the film is Robin DiAngelo, the author of White Fragility, which is one of the best-selling anti-racist books of the last 10 years. It's hundreds of thousands of copies. It was used as sort of the guide for the pathetic white people during the race riots of 2020, during the George Floyd uprising. Did you have to read through a lot of this material in order to prep for the film? There's only so much that I can subject myself to. I

I certainly, I listened to several lectures from these people. I did read Robin DiAngelo's book, White Fragility. Truly an awful piece of shit. It's horrific. I mean, it's just, and it's also just... By the way, folks, if you want to see like a full-scale review of that, I think I once did like an hour and a half review of this on YouTube where I went like point by point through Robin DiAngelo. It's such trash. And...

Yeah, I think I talked to you before we went and interviewed her, too, because I knew you were the resident Robin DiAngelo expert. So you know from reading the book that it's not only, like, the ideas are terrible, obviously, but it's also just bad writing. It's a slog to get through. There's nothing entertaining. It's just like being nagged while you sit there for three hours reading this book. It's just a very unpleasant experience. And I figure once you read one book, that's the other thing. It's like once you've read one of these books,

You get the idea. It's always the same thing. It's the same ideas. All the people we talk to in the film, they all have the same central thesis, which is that white people are inherently racist and are the villains of history.

And that's pretty much it. That's the idea. That's the starting point. And the way they define racism is that they are participants in a system that perpetuates racism. As Zibram X. Kendi once suggested, he was asked to define racism. He said a system that perpetuates racist ideas for racist purposes, which, of course, is not a definition of a term. You cannot define a term by using that same term.

If I ask you to define shoe and you say, well, it's a shoe that fits on your foot, that has not helped in any way, shape or form. But yeah, we there was a moment in time when we slightly toyed with the idea that like maybe this movie should really be called what is a racist? Because because that we found that that that right there is actually a question that trips these people up, which is just that. What what is a race? What is racism? And.

And Ibram X. Kendi is not the only one who can't really define it because if he gives the actual answer, which of course is, it's not complicated. Like if you hate someone because of their race, if you think another race is inferior to your own, then you're racist. That's basically what racism is. But they don't want to say that because then that, number one, that implicates all races potentially. Anyone can be racist. They don't want to accept that.

And number two, they know that most people don't feel that way. And so if that's the definition of racism, the average person will hear that and think, okay, yeah, I legitimately don't feel that way about other races. I'm not racist. So these people have nothing to say to me. I'm free.

But they don't. Well, it's a power game. It's about implicating a system. They're not interested in implicating individuals only insofar as they can then use those people as an attack on the broader quote unquote racist system. And the way that they define racism is any system that perpetuates an inequality in outcome between two groups.

is a racist system. And the way you can tell that the system perpetuates the inequality is that the inequality exists. So if there's any inequality of result between white people and black people in any measure of American life, except athletics, in any measure of American life, then it must be that this is a racist system. And it's been set up by the group that is predominantly successful in order to victimize the other group. So success equals racism in this particular context.

way of viewing the world, which is why Asians are now white adjacent, because Asians are too successful. It's why Jews went from being Jewish to being white. It's why if you are a black person and you are too successful and you vote Republican, you are now considered white because you can't be part of that institutional structure. It's all ridiculous power games masquerading using the words that

we all thought that we knew when we were growing up in the 1990s, everybody knew what a racist was. It wasn't like you had to go through all these hoops to try and figure out what the hell it meant. It wasn't particularly complicated. And so you would see something racist and you would call it out and everybody sort of agreed on it. And then we'd all move on with our lives. But that wasn't enough for these people because what it really is a Marxist revolution in the guise of race speak. And, you know, they're lying about it. And that's why they can't define it because if they were to define it, it'd become clear. That's also why they...

Part of the game is, especially if they want to implicate Asians and even some black people as being somehow...

Partly white. The way they do that, of course, is you just tack on ness at the end, whiteness. And so you turn, you know, they've turned racism into this kind of amorphous concept. And then they turn being white into an amorphous concept, too, where it's, yeah, if you have skin we consider white, then you're part of whiteness. But you can be a part of whiteness and not even be white.

And we find that out in the film also. That's a theme they return to quite often is there's white people and then there's whiteness. And whiteness is a terrible thing. It's a cancer. It's a disease we have to eradicate.

We'll get to more of that in just one second. First, the IDF is on high alert in preparation for yet another attack. Hospitals have prepared themselves to deal with mass casualties. Major airlines have halted flights into Ben Gurion Airport in Tel Aviv. Israelis have been told to prepare for at least three days without power and electricity. In the event of an attack, Israelis across the country could be forced to spend days or even weeks in bomb shelters. While these shelters do keep Israelis safe, they need to be equipped with basic essentials for survival, including food and water. The Fellowship,

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So, you know, I think people don't understand how much work it takes to put into a film. They watch the final product, and unless you've actually lived it the way that you did, it's very difficult for the audience to see all the work that goes into doing something like this. And just for the sake of people understanding, how much time did you have to spend on the road? How much prep was this? What was your life like while filming this? Yeah, it was, I want to say it was probably about almost 18 months.

of production on this and uh and that means just us on the road going around talking to people um dozens and dozens of hours of footage that you then have to take and

Especially with a film like this, you know, it's because you're kind of figuring out the story as you go along. And so you shoot a lot of stuff and then you go back in and you figure out what the story is and you build it out from there. So, yeah, it's a lot of time and a lot of work. But it's quite rewarding work. I think it's even more rewarding than, like, the work that goes, in my opinion, the work that goes into a podcast because people don't,

People listen to a podcast and think that there's no work that goes into that, like we don't have real jobs. Which, you know, maybe is fair, but it actually is a lot of work that goes into it. But the problem is that you do a podcast, you give your take on whatever the news of the day is, and then tomorrow there's new news, and no one cares about what you said yesterday. So everything lives for like 12 hours. You do a film, there's a lot more work that goes into it up front, but hopefully, if it's successful, it will be relevant for more than a day, and

That's what I love about it. And one of the things that you obviously have to rely very heavily on in both What Is A Woman and in Am I Racist is the fact that you have the world's best deadpan. So I have to ask, how was this cultivated? Is this a sort of natural persona, the deadpan? How do you not break? When I watched What Is A Woman for the first time and people were saying ridiculous things and you were just absolutely stone-faced, I mean, I'm okay.

okay at it, I'm pretty good, somewhere in the mid-range. You're like extraordinary levels of deadpan. And then there's a lot of that in this movie. Here you actually have to act as though you are sympathetic to the things that people are saying, which I think is actually in some ways harder and in some ways easier. First of all, which one did you find harder? To keep a straight face or to sort of mimic sympathy for the positions? I mean, you go pretty far here. I mean, there are times here where you're actually crying. There are times where...

That's some pretty solid pretending, as you say. Yeah, it's hard to say. I mean, the answer of doing the deadpan is it's just I guess I was born without a soul. I don't know. I'm an emotionalist freak, I suppose, is the answer. People ask me that all the time. How do you manage that? That's how I am, I guess. I guess when you have this thing of not showing emotions, you have to find a way to channel it.

Did you have to cry on cue? Like, did you have to make yourself cry in the course of the filming? Yeah. Yeah. Did you think of, like, a teddy bear being burned? No, I honestly, I just thought to myself, well, what would it look like if I pretended to cry? That's the whole, I can't even, I can't, I'd be the worst guest on, like, Inside the Actor's Studio or something. We're finding that out, right? I have no, I don't know. I just...

Well, how did you pretend to do that? I don't know. I just pretended. Yeah, you're good at pretending. That's all I'll say. I mean, you are good at pretending. I cannot cry on cue. That would be a thing. Yeah, but it is. The hardest part is always, in both of the films, is when you're in the room with just really terrible people who are saying awful things. So it's not like I have to hold myself from...

Holding myself from laughing is not a problem for me. Holding myself from yelling at them and saying, you effing moron, what are you talking about? That actually does take effort. So that's the difficulty there. And really in both films, it was very good that we had a great team behind us, Joseph Fokas, director, who could kind of keep me on target because in both films, I got to a certain point where I said...

we got to stop doing it this way. Just put me in a room with one of these people so I can yell at them and argue with them. Let's just totally change the direction of this film and just make it that. I got to go right at these people. And in both cases, they kind of pulled me back. And I'm glad that they did because in the moment, you almost feel there's anger you have to suppress. It almost feels like

This feels wrong. I shouldn't let you say this to me. In any other context of my life, if anyone said this stuff to me, I would never let them get away with it. But you have to remember that what we're doing, we're trying to do something here a little bit more sophisticated. This is not just debating or whatever. This is like, let them expose themselves. Let them do the work. I don't have to

explain to the audience or explain to the person why they're wrong. Let them expose that. And then we're going to put it on display. Well, speaking of putting it on display, I want to show everybody another scene from the film. This is one of the funniest scenes in the film. There's a lot in the film. It's really, really funny. So why don't you introduce what's happening in this clip? Who are these people? So this is Race to Dinner. And when we first decided to make this movie, the first thing I said to the team is like, I want

to get on Race to Dinner. We have to find a way to get to Race to Dinner because I'd heard of this Race to Dinner thing years ago. These are two women, Saira Rao and I believe Regina Jackson is the other one. And they've been doing this for several years now. And their whole thing is they go around the country and they go to dinners

And they sit at a dinner table with white women, only white women. And they sit there for two hours eating dinner and explaining to the white women why they are racist and horrible. And just really kind of breaking them down. It's honestly, and you'll see in the film, it's probably the first real brainwashing session, real intense brainwashing session that I have personally witnessed. Yeah.

kind of breaking them down, letting them know that they're pieces of garbage, they're nothing, and you can kind of see it happening. And this is what these women do. They go around the country and they charge money. They're paid thousands of dollars to come to dinner and call people racist. Now, so we knew we wanted this in the movie somehow. First thought, of course, was it'd be great if I could attend a dinner and sit there and be a part of it. And we tried to make that happen, and we discovered that, no, you have to be a woman. You actually have to be a biological woman. They had another way of putting it. They said...

I forget what they said. They said you had to be socialized as a woman. That was their way of putting it. But really, it meant you had to actually be a woman to be at the table. So that wasn't going to work for me, unfortunately. And so we came up with a new plan. I was like, well, maybe I can't be at the table, but maybe I can get into the room another way. And we set it up so that it just so happened that I was working for the company that was catering this dinner.

And so I got to be a waiter at the dinner. But I went in with the goal of, I'm in the room. I got to find a way to sit at the table. I got to earn my seat at the table. And that's how I'll know that I've really moved to the next stage in my anti-racist journey. And so I think that this, that's where this clip picks up.

I used to be a white woman, an unsuccessful one, for many decades, and it was a miserable experience. And really, the hatred of yourselves and each other is like the most, the not seeing your power, the being afraid. Like, all you do is talk about each other, talk about yourself. Oh my God, I'm so fat. That's all they do. That's all they do. I'm telling you. These white women? But it's, it's, that's it. It's, I'm so fat, I'm so stupid, I'm blah, blah, blah. Sorry.

Your kids are watching you. And they're watching you talking about each other, you know, raging against the machine or being silent or whatever the hell it is that you're doing or not doing. And they know that you're not doing for them. That's so important. That is so important what you just said. It's really important. You may have to add you to our team. Oh, I would love to take a seat and join you. No, you're not allowed to. Okay. Definitely not allowed. I do have my DEI certification that I got. Okay.

Not saying I'm an expert, but I'm also not a novice, so... Okay. White people are starved for these conversations. We are. We're so starving. Yeah. We are so starving for this. Anyone else want to say anything? I'll just say one thing. I'm so glad we can have these conversations, and I'll be done, but I'm just so glad that we could all get together to have these conversations. That's all I wanted to say. Thank you. Is he an actor? Are you an actor? Oh, no. Can you let us... We're trying to listen and trying to have this conversation. Okay. You know...

We're all acting all the time in our lives. And I think that that's part of the problem, you know? That it's like we're all trying to play a part rather than just being real and having these uncomfortable conversations. And that's what I'm always trying to tell people, especially, you know, white women. No offense. No, but see, like, you're a white dude. There's power positions and, you know, it's...

Pointing white people pointing fingers at each other is not helpful. You know, I've been on this journey for so long, and just to see you guys at the table having this conversation has been really enlightening for me. Anyway, I got the DEI certification, and I'm just on the journey. All right, you ladies have a great night. Decolonize yourself. Do your own work.

white supremacy dismantling. And then you can start to bring in other people. - Can I just say one last thing? Can I just propose a toast? I mean, just raise a glass if you're racist. And that's the thing. - Cheers. Oh, I'm not racist. Let me just have a glass. - Well, all the rest of you, to racists. - Oh, it's so good.

I earned my seat at the table. You did? In the end. So, I mean, obviously, this is all improv. I mean, there are no lines written when you're walking into something like that, I assume. Oh, no, no, yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, how do you make those decisions in the moment? Because, I mean...

I've been in debate situations, obviously uncomfortable situations, many of them. But having the audacity to sort of walk around and say that sort of stuff to people and then just take a seat. Did you do a lot of pranking people when you were younger or what? What's the back story? Yeah, I mean, I did. But most people, when they've watched scenes like that, they say, well, it seems so uncomfortable. How did you deal with that? It's a lot of fun. I mean...

You think it'd be uncomfortable, but, and it is like, it's, it's super uncomfortable, but it's also a lot of fun. Um, because it's like, it gives you, we're making a film. And so it kind of gives me a license to say things and do things I wouldn't otherwise do. Um,

And also, frankly, it's also fun to make a dinner like that uncomfortable. These are people that richly deserve it. Did you know you were going to give a toast to racism at the end of that? Or that was legitimately a spur-of-the-moment thing? We knew we wanted to end on a toast. The only thing we had planned was we wanted to end on a toast. And if we could get them to participate in a toast to racism, that would be fantastic. Of course, as you saw, they did. So we knew that.

And that was pretty much it. That was the end point. And the rest of it was just, we'll see how they respond. We honestly didn't know. I thought that there was a pretty good chance that the first time I interjected, they would kick me out, tell me to leave. They didn't. Another thing we discovered, it's like an interesting psychological thing we found making these movies, that people just don't want to get up and leave situations, and they don't want to tell you to leave. People are willing to put up with way more than you think. So...

It is incredible. I mean, how you don't break character. How did you not break character there? I mean, that's... The mask helped. Yeah. Were you laughing underneath the mask a little bit? Yeah, the mask helped. That's another thing that we used. That was a little bit of a, I guess, a behind-the-scenes... Some of the way the sausage is made here is that we were able to... This is...

We started making this movie about a year and a half ago. So it was kind of after the mask craze. But still, even now, like if you go to really liberal areas. If you're a lefty, you can get away with that 10 years from now for sure. And so all the places we're going are like far left spaces. And so, you know, we could use that to our advantage. I can walk into a place, have a mask on. They can't question. Not only can they not question it.

But and not only does it disguise your identity a little bit, but it actually gives you more credibility. Like now I'm more liberal than you. I'm actually taking your health into consideration here. So that was that was nice. That worked out. So have you had any feedback from any of the people who are in the trailer? So obviously, Robin DiAngelo shows up in the trailer. Sarah Rau shows up in the in the trailer. Have any of these people reached out and been upset or not yet? No, not yet. I mean,

I kind of expected that they would, but on the other hand, I guess there's not a lot they can say. Maybe, I'm sure, eventually they'll come out. Maybe once the movie comes out. Probably a lot of them are sitting kind of nervous right now and thinking about embarrassing things they said and thinking like, God, I hope that didn't make it into the film. I can tell them right now, it did. And to Robin DiAngelo in particular, there's one moment that she's thinking, oh my gosh, I hope that's not in there. Oh, it is, Robin. Oh, it is.

So what was your favorite scene to film in this movie? That's a great question. At the very end of the film, I don't want to give too much away, but it's in the trailer. You can see that by the end, I had become a DEI expert myself. And if you're a DEI expert, what do you do? You have a seminar and you start dispensing advice yourself. So by the end of the film, I was holding my own DEI seminars for people who came

to be instructed, you know, and how to decolonize themselves and so on. And I had a lot of fun with that. That was a lot of fun, as you'll see in the film. And what was your least favorite thing to film? Probably the support group scene, because looking back on it now, it worked out pretty well, and it's a lot of fun to watch.

But that was also, you also have to keep in mind that all the stuff in the film, these are like, some of the stuff is hours long. I mean, that race to dinner, we were there for an hour and a half, two hours. It was a really long time to be in these environments. And that support group, you know, I was probably there for two hours sitting in a circle with these people. It's just, just imagine what that would be like. And it's like, it's not pleasant at all. So on a personal level, you and I have talked a little bit about this, but it,

Five years ago, you were somewhat well-known. Now, obviously, you're incredibly well-known. What is a woman is a huge hit. This is going to be an enormous hit. You're really, really well-known across the country. How has that changed your life? How have you dealt with that?

Yeah, it helps that I kind of, that I live with, you know, I don't go out much. I'm a recluse and I just live with my kids and my wife and, you know, I'm just at my house all the time. And even before all this, it's like, I don't really want to go anywhere. So that kind of helps. And it's like when you're at your house with your family, you don't, you know, it's the rest of the world. It doesn't matter. Oh yeah, now you're on the phone with somebody important and your kids are crying and somebody needs a diaper changed and your wife's like, hang up the phone. You're like, there's things going on. Exactly. Or even...

you're trending on Twitter, people are mad at you for something. And if you're in media personality mode and you're at work, I find that that stuff can bother me more. I'm more aware of that. But then it is kind of a magical thing. So much of that exists just in this little box. And you can go home and just put the box down

And it's like it's not even happening. Which is kind of a power move to know that in this little box, there are thousands of people that are really mad at you and yelling at you. And you're just with your kid reading them a book. Oh, 100%. That's why my favorite thing on Twitter is to, on X, is to mute people. I never block anybody, but I definitely mute a lot of people. I've discovered the power of muting. It took me a long time. It's great. It's amazing. It's great. They're just ranting into the void thinking that you're sitting there reading their dumb comments. And you're not. You can't even see them. There are people who have, for years...

have yelled at me and I have not heard a word of it. They have spent probably hundreds of tweets yelling at me. This is the AI development that I want brought to like the actual real world, that you just go out in public and somebody's going to say something bad and then they just don't exist to you. That'd be absolutely wonderful. And then the good thing is, I know we talked about this a little bit off air, but of course, not surprisingly, people are much more bold on the internet than they are in real life. And it's a really interesting thing that

Like if you were to follow me on Twitter or you on Twitter and see the kind of reaction we get, you would think that when we go out in public, like half of the people that come up to us hate our guts and are like throwing tomatoes at us and kicking us out and saying they'll come around here. It's like almost never happens. I go out in public and it's 99.9999% of the time, if anyone talks to me, they're really friendly and they're just very supportive and they're wonderful, saying very nice things.

It's like the very rare occasion when anyone says anything even remotely negative in person. All of that, almost all of it lives in the little box. So to get back to the film itself, so obviously you're taking on DEI. It's a big topic. It's obviously a big topic in this presidential election, and it's the undercurrents of the presidential election that we are not allowed to speak about. As I've said before, the media like to play the sort of bizarre

bizarre who's on first game or they're like, we are appointing the first black woman vice president. And it's so important. You're like, that's kind of racist. And they're like, what's racist? Like to appoint somebody on the basis of being black and woman, like, no, that's racist. Like, what's racist that you said that you're appointing her only because she's a black and a woman. You're like, well, but you just said that. Like, no, no. But when we say it, it's not racist. When you say it, it's racist. It's this whole bizarre game. Now, how much does the DEI mentality infect our politics? And what does it mean for this particular presidential election?

Yeah, well, when we call her the DEI president, as you said, we're just taking them at their own word. And Joe Biden, this is what happens if you announce ahead of time that I'm only looking for... Now, you could claim, you could try to claim that... The most you could claim is that, well, she was the best black woman who was available. And that I don't buy either. But that's the most you could say because you announce ahead of time that you're only looking in that particular category of people. Yeah.

So yeah, it's a DEI president. And in a way, I guess it's sort of good because it brings us to the forefront. And the reality is that having a DEI president is a troubling thought. It's even more troubling to me to think about having a DEI airline pilot or heart surgeon president.

And the truth is that this stuff infects all those industries also. So, you know, the aftermath of What Is A Woman turned into a fair bit of activism. And the third act of What Is A Woman is all about you taking the fight to the left, you know, going after places that are transing the kids, trying to go to states and say that this has to stop, that this is cruel, it's unusual. I mean, it's basically a violation of the Eighth Amendment, that it's terrifying and horrifying. And you're actually taking action. When

When it comes to DEI, what are the sort of solutions that you hope that people take away from the film? Well, there are political solutions, some of which, you know, Donald Trump has talked about outlawing programs that exclude people on the basis of race, which are already supposed to be outlawed. Most of that stuff is like flagrantly illegal already. So shutting that down, which a lot of that could be done on a policy level, I think. A lot of the other changes, I think,

could be made relatively easily with just lawsuits. But people that are affected by this stuff need to file lawsuits, and we've seen a little bit of that happening already. And yeah, we have an activist court system and all of that. But even so, I mean, this stuff is so flagrantly illegal that I think a lot of it only remains in place because it hasn't been challenged in the courts. And so that has to happen. And then

I think even, and then there's kind of a cultural level too. It's similar with what is a woman, that there were laws that needed to be changed. A lot of those laws have been changed. Policies need to be put in place. A lot of them have been, not all of them, but a lot of them have been put in place. But then there's a cultural level of people need to not be afraid when it comes to what is a woman. You know, need to not be afraid to say what they know is true.

which is that we all know what a woman is. We all know that it's wrong to do this to kids. And we all know it. So let's all live it as though we know it. Let's have the kind of culture that is totally intolerant of that kind of madness. And I think we're starting to see that change culturally on the gender stuff. I think it needs to happen on the race stuff too, because even if we make all the political changes that we need to make, we still have a problem if you have white people walking around feeling

burdened by guilt for things they didn't do that nothing to do with them. It's just totally misplaced, ambiguous kind of guilt that they, but a lot of these people just carry around. And, and we have to get rid of that. It's like, it's actually kind of a freeing message. It's not that we're not saying that we all should be, we all, you know, have things we've done that are wrong. And so if you feel guilt, there might be other things you've actually done in your life you need to explore. But, but,

You don't carry any sins around because of what people of your race did or didn't do 100 years ago or 200 years ago. So one of the arguments that I've heard on the right, I'm sure you've heard it also, is that we've hit peak woke, that we're actually on the other side of woke mountain and that it's all downhill from here. After spending this much time in woke land, what is your takeaway? Are we at peak woke? Have we reached it? Where do you think we stand? I mean, the answer is I don't know. I wish I had an answer to that.

i i would like to think yes um and if i were to say yes it would it would be because it's it it does seem like the culture is a little bit less tolerant of some of the crazier woke ideas than they were even three years ago like for example when we did what is woman we did the man on the street interviews we walked and this was we were filming it three years ago um we went to many different cities and we just talked normal people walking around and asked them basic questions about gender

What is a woman? Is it okay for boys to go into the girl's room? That kind of stuff. And we found that the vast majority of people that we talked to, no matter where we went in the country, either didn't want to talk about it, were terrified to talk about it on camera, or gave answers that we could tell they didn't really believe. I think that if we went around and did Man on the Street interviews now in the same exact places, asking the same questions, I think we would get different answers. I think we'd find a lot more people that'd be willing to say, yeah, a woman is a...

a female. No, of course a boy can't go in the girl's room. That's ridiculous. I think that. And some of it's like anecdotal. It's just a sort of feel. It's a vibe I'm getting. And I think that's probably the case with the race stuff too. So that would be an argument that maybe we have reached peak woke. The argument against that view, I guess, is just that this stuff is so deeply embedded that even if culturally, even if the average Joe on the street

has woken up to a lot of this. We still have the institutions that run society, and those are still as crazy far left wing as they've ever been. And to change that is going to take, we're not lucky enough to just for that to be something we can change in a couple of years. Like that's a generational struggle. Something like reclaiming academia, that's decades of work to do that.

So that's my non-answer. I'm kind of... Yeah. I mean, so when you look at the people who you're profiling here, some of them are just absolute grifters. I mean, as you say, one of the things that happens in the film is you show the amounts of money that had to be paid in order to get these people in the room. And they are making absolute bank. I mean, Robin DiAngelo is making a lot of money doing this grift. So you understand why she's doing it. She's doing it because it's a wonderfully lucrative grift. The

The question is that, you know, you having now inhabited this character, yes, it's pretend, but also, you know, you actually have to try, I assume, to think about what it would be like to be that person in order to be that person. Where do you think the attendees at Sarah Rau are coming from? What would motivate a human being to shell out thousands of dollars to go listen to Robin DiAngelo, not to mock her or to expose her, but to actually take her seriously? What is the mindset of a country that takes these people seriously?

I think for those individual people, I would like to think it's as simple as a virtue signal and they're trying to impress their liberal friends or whatever. And I'm sure there's some of that. But you don't sit around the table and pay money to endure that just as a virtue signal. I think you're there because at some fundamental level, you really believe it. And so for those people, they are true believers. And I think that on this issue in particular, if I were to psychoanalyze, I think a lot of it does come down to guilt and people are carrying around a lot of guilt.

Everyone carries around guilt. And part of the problem is that in the past, we had a way of understanding the guilt that we all feel. And you understood it in a religious context. You understood it as a spiritual problem. And there was also a remedy, which changes from religion to religion. But every religion has like a remedy for the guilt. Like, here's what you do with that. The religion says to you, you feel guilty. You should because here are bad things that you're doing. Here's what you do about that. Here's what you do with that.

And as we become a secular society, we don't have that message anymore. So people still have the guilt though. And so they're looking around like, why do I feel this way? What do I do with this? How do I explain it? And then you have the DEI grifters, the race grifters that come in with an answer. And their answer is, well, it's because you're white because it's all racial. And by the way, here's what you can do to atone for that. Now, for people who aren't white,

it's still a similar thing because another thing people can walk around feeling is, you know, you feel like you're not where you want to be in life. You feel like you haven't progressed as much as you want. You know, we all have, to a certain extent or another, like an inferiority complex, you know. And so the message from the race grifters, if you're in the non-white category, is, yeah, well, you know, you feel that way because there's this conspiracy against you by these people over here.

And so we're going to give you a way to channel those feelings. And so I think that's what's happening with a lot of these people. Yeah, and that's such a great point about, you know, the kind of

misinterpretation of guilt. Because as you say, most mainstream religions will say that there are activities that human beings participate, that we all sin. That's just what we are. That we both have an identity problem because we're sinful creatures or creatures capable of sin. But also because we sin. I mean, you just got a daily basis. You're going to make mistakes. You're going to break the rules. You're going to do things deliberately that you know violate the rules. And that's a sin. And then you have to

address yourself with God and make yourself right with your fellow human being and God in order to alleviate all that. And secular leftism says there's no such thing as sin. Sin doesn't actually exist. So when it comes to your own personal activity, there's what the state says is wrong, which is not quite a sin. It's just kind of what the state says is wrong. But there's no reason for you to ever feel guilty about the things that you do

There's only, but that guilt has to go somewhere. So maybe you should feel guilty about the thing that you are, but not how you identify yourself. How about the things that are immutable? So we moved from you feeling guilty about the things that are mutable about you, namely your actions, your attitudes toward the world, the things that you do in the world, to guilt about the things that are immutable about you, your race, yourself.

your sex, the things you were born with, right? All of that's the stuff that you, and I guess that's a good way of avoiding the guilt because as soon as you declare that you're guilty for having done that, there's literally nothing more you can do. There's no actual corrective action you can take to fix immutable guilt. Immutable guilt is upon you. And so the minute you acknowledge it, it's now been expiated. And there's a certain amount of pride because in a religious context, yes, it's about pointing you towards, yes, there are sins you're committing. You shouldn't commit them

But there isn't, or at least there shouldn't be any pride in the religious person of recognizing that something is a sin. But over here, there's a certain pride for the white person who says, oh yeah, I'm guilty of being white. And the moment they acknowledge that, then they take this almost weird, sick pride in the fact that they realize how terrible they are for being white.

And they get to feel, now they'll say all the time that they're not better than anybody else, but they clearly feel like they're better than the average white person for having recognized this about themselves. And then, and you know they feel that way because then a lot of them will turn around. And lecture the other way. And lecture the other way and charge money because now they are part of the enlightened few. Yeah.

So you become a licensed DEI expert in the film. How hard was it to penetrate these circles? Because then you actually, in the film, it's not really a giveaway because there's a clip of it, you actually end up giving DEI advice to people. How hard was it to penetrate this industry once you have your DEI certification, which I assume comes with some sort of Cracker Jack box or something? Not hard at all. Extremely easy. It's very easy to get certified. And it's once you are certified,

it's very easy to get anywhere you want. Like it, it really does. That might change now, but when we made the film, at least when we were in production, it, it really does open up like any door that you want to open. Um, probably because it just, it, again, it never occurred to them that anybody would be as terrible as we are and exploit it in this way. Um,

So I don't know. I might have ruined it for the next person who wants to come along. You destroyed the entire industry now. So there goes a multi-billion dollar industry, Matt. First you take out the transing of the kids industry, and now you're taking out the DEI industry, just single-handedly destroying the American economy. It's just causing a new Great Depression. Unbelievable, this guy. That's the hope. So all right, give me your quick five second, not five seconds, but give me your quick TED Talk spiel. You're the DEI expert. Put on the persona.

Pitch me on the DEI TED Talk here. Well, look, what I discovered with being a DEI trainer myself is that you're not saying anything. There's certain buzzwords you have to know, and you just have to keep coming back to those buzzwords. A big one is decolonize yourself, decolonize your whiteness.

I still don't know what that, I honest to God, I'm not just saying I don't know what that means. After producing this film for a year and a half and hearing it a million times, I don't know what it means. I don't. But it doesn't matter. That's the great thing about it. Just say it. It's just, all you have to do is say to someone, you have to decolonize your whiteness. If you look serious while you say it, that's it. They're not going to ask you, what do you mean by that? Because the other thing we discovered is that the people you're talking to

They don't want to admit that they don't know what you're saying because they feel like they should know these terms. That's one of the tools of the woke trade here is that they use these totally made up terms and they throw them into conversation and they know that people listening aren't going to want to ask, what does that mean? Because if you ask that question, it means that you've already exposed yourself as not part of the club. So everybody just sits there and they listen and they nod along.

So decolonize yourself is a big one. Whiteness is a big one. Journey. We're always going on a journey. We're always on a journey somewhere. It's not about the destination. It's just you're on the journey. And you just kind of circle around those themes over and over and over again. It never ends.

Well, if you've not yet bought your ticket, folks, you really need to. Amiracist.com to buy your tickets. Man, it's going to be in theaters, obviously, September 13th. Congratulations on another phenomenal piece of work that took an enormous amount of effort. It's going to destroy, again, another entire swath of the left-wing economy. So I can't wait to see what you do next. And I'm slightly horrified to find out what the pitch will be. Well, thanks for having me.

Executive Producer, Justin Siegel. Executive Producer, Jeremy Boring.

The Ben Shapiro Show Sunday special is a Daily Wire production. Copyright Daily Wire 2024.