 Usually, when right-wing propagandists make points, they don't just say explicitly what they're thinking. They'll usually resort to innuendo or priming. But sometimes, every once in a while, the mask will slip off and they'll say what they're really thinking. And when they do this, it's horrifying because their minds are dark and they are very authoritarian in nature. And that happened with Matt Walsh of The Daily Wire, my less handsome conservative doppelganger who said what he was really thinking with respect to voting rights and what he thinks about voting rights is that they're bad. He explicitly says that he doesn't support voting rights. And I'm not being hyperbolic. This is what he says. Take a look. Well, as you know, this subject is always difficult for me emotionally. Whenever I hear Democrats panicking over the attack on voting rights, it hits me right in the heart. It shakes me to the core. That's my hopes up because I very much wish that there was an attack on voting rights. I think universal voting rights is one of the worst ideas this country has ever had. There are few things more worthy of coming under attack than universal voting rights. Voting ought to be a privilege reserved for those who are most competent and qualified. It's not a natural right. God did not imbue us all with some sort of sacred entitlement to participate in our national elections. The Bible certainly makes no mention of any such thing. So if it's not a natural right, which it emphatically is not, then it's a privilege that we grant and it would be wise to consider a person's basic qualifications before granting it. We are under no moral obligation to allow hordes of stupid, bewildered, clueless zombies to flood the voting booth and cast their ballots in a state of ignorance and confusion, helping to steer this giant ship of a country right into one iceberg after another. So that's my position, which I state often and without apology. I am against voting rights. I don't like them. If it was a position shared by most conservatives and by any significant portion of elected Republicans, Democrats would be correct in claiming that universal voting rights are under assault, are at risk. But sadly, it is all in the left-wing imagination. I mean, talk about saying the quiet part loud, holy shit. The only thing he left out was that he's pro-authoritarian explicitly. And when it comes to who he doesn't think is qualified to vote, we all know that he means people of color because they consistently vote Democrats. They are the most loyal to the Democratic Party. So he's talking about restricting them. They're not the ones that are qualified. That's not what he says. But I mean, if you press him a little bit further, if he was being a little bit more honest, yeah, that's what he would say, I'm assuming. Now he's lying to you, he says that, you know, the reason why there is no attack on voting rights in this country is because most elected Republicans, most conservatives in general, they don't agree with me. But he's wrong. There is a systematic, coordinated effort by Republicans to disenfranchise millions of voters. And we'll talk about that. But first, I got to respond to some of the things that he says here. So he says that voting ought to be a privilege reserved for those most competent and qualified. Who gets to determine who is and isn't qualified? What if all of a sudden there was a rule that right-wing psychopaths couldn't vote? Then he wouldn't be qualified. What if the qualification was you had to have a college degree or own land, as was the case before, or be of a certain sex? I mean, who gets to determine who's qualified, Matt? I mean, you certainly have your thoughts about who isn't qualified. But see this ideal for him only works in an authoritarian scenario. In his ideal worldview, he wants an authoritarian dictator to determine who is and isn't qualified. In a theocratic fascistic state, we know the people who wouldn't be qualified to vote. So this only works. He only gets what he wants. The people who he doesn't want to vote don't get to vote in his ideal regime, which is not democracy. It would be a theocratic regime. So, you know, even though he's admitting quite a bit here, there's still a lot that he's leaving out, still a lot that he's leaving to innuendo. And what he's saying is truly scary. He is anti-democracy and he's saying it. He's saying I am against voting rights. I am in favor of restricting people's voting rights. And this is on the daily wire. Ben Shapiro supposedly the more reasonable intellectual conservative. But yet this is who he has on his platform. Somebody who is literally pro-authoritarian. Wow. He also says it's not a natural right. God did not imbue us all with some sort of sacred entitlement to participate in our national elections. The Bible certainly makes no mention of any such thing. I don't give a fuck about your Bible. I don't believe in your God. I don't buy into your superstitions. So I don't care. The point that he's making, though, isn't necessarily to people like me. He's trying to convince people who watch him, evangelicals, that, you know, it's not immoral. It's not against God. If you leave some people out. I know that Jesus was inclusive. But, you know, if we limit the amount of black people who vote, it's not bad because, you know, voting is a privilege. It's not a right. God didn't say that we should all have the right to vote. So fuck it. Don't let some of these people vote if they're going to vote for who I don't want them to vote for, such as Democrats. Now, ironically, he says this, we are under no moral obligation to allow hordes of stupid bewildered, clueless zombies to flood the voting booth and cast their ballots in a state of ignorance and confusion. But what if we say that about conservatives? Well, they're very clearly brainwashed by Fox News, OAN, Newsmax, The Daily Wire. So maybe they're casting their ballots in a state of confusion. Should we not allow them to vote? I would argue no, because I'm in favor of universal suffrage. But when poor people in red states vote Republican, they are quite literally voting against their own economic interests. So isn't that a seemingly irrational thing to do? Should we not allow people to vote if they're not voting the right way? No, because that's not how democracy operates. So he very clearly is against democracy and he's just saying it. And it's insane. I'm against voting rights and I don't like them. When somebody tells you who they are, you should listen to them. And what he's saying is probably felt by millions of conservatives across the country think about it. How many people actually believe Donald Trump's big lie about the 2020 election? And if they don't believe the big lie, maybe they think, wow, all these idiot Democrats voted for Joe Biden. And I think that that's stupid. Maybe we should restrict voting. Maybe democracy isn't working out for me. I mean, this is truly, it's just, it's astonishing to see them admit these kinds of things now. Now, getting to his gaslighting about there not being an attack on voting rights, that's just factually incorrect. He knows that this is indeed something that the GOP has been doing for a very long time. Voter ID laws was previously their go to, but now they're expanding the range with which they restrict people's access to voting, especially considering the way that the 2020 election went. Because there was such high turnout largely because we ran a pandemic. So people opted for mail in voting and the GOP responded by cutting off the things that specifically drove turnout. As the Washington Post reports, how GOP backed voting measures could create hurdles for tens of millions of voters. At least 250 new laws have been proposed in 43 states to limit mail, early in person and election day voting. Now, keep in mind that this is an article and we'll dive into it. That was published back in March of last year. But now, since then, there has been much more laws and the GOP has done even more to disenfranchise people. They're not just resorting to voter suppression. Now they're trying to strip local precincts of their power. So GOP controlled legislatures can possibly have the authority to steal an election if need be. If Trump loses again in 2024 or if some future Republican Trump-like demagogue comes along and wants an election stolen. They're trying to give themselves the power to appoint rogue electors to the Electoral College to subvert the popular vote in their states. On top of that, they're trying to give themselves the authority in some instances, it varies state to state, to just outright cancel votes that they believe were illegitimate. That's incredibly authoritarian, but they're doing it. But let's get to the ways that they're suppressing the vote. The GOP's national push to enact hundreds of new election restrictions could strain every available method of voting for tens of millions of Americans potentially amounting to the most sweeping contraction of ballot access in the United States since the end of reconstruction. When Southern states curtailed the voting rights of formerly enslaved black men, a Washington Post analysis has found. The rush to crack down on voting methods comes after many states temporarily expanded mail and early voting in 2020 because of the coronavirus pandemic, leading to the largest voter turnout in more than a century. The changes reshaped both who turned out and how they voted with an astounding 116 million people, 73% of the electorate casting their ballots before election day, according to the Post's analysis. So do you think it's a coincidence that Republicans are trying to limit the ways we can vote following an election where turnout was unusually high because access to voting became a little bit easier because we were in a pandemic? Do you think that that's just a coincidence? They're just all of a sudden really worried about election integrity and securing elections and they're worried about voter fraud, which isn't a thing in the country. It's statistically insignificant. It doesn't actually affect elections. And to the extent that we find evidence of voter fraud is happening by Republicans. I mean, do you think this is all coincidental? Of course it's not coincidental. Let's go to some graphs here. So 33 states have proposed legislation that restricts early in-person voting and mail-in voting. Two methods of voting that are unsurprisingly popular because of how convenient they are. So in my state of Oregon, we've been voting by mail for decades and both Democrats and Republicans are thoroughly satisfied with it. Do you know why? Because it makes voting easy. I don't wanna stand in a line outside and freeze my ass off. I want my ballot mailed to me and I wanna take the time to fill it out. Now moving on to graph two, you can see the number of people, these restrictions impact millions and millions of people. So to see that and to hear Matt Walsh say, well, there's no attack on voting rights, it's delusional. It's very, very delusional. But as honest as he was seemingly being there, he wasn't telling you all of his feelings. And certainly he disclosed a lot more than most Republicans, but really he wants no voting. He doesn't care about democracy, he doesn't want voting at all so long as he gets the policies and the culture and the society that he values. So in the event there was some sort of theocratic fascist dictator in power, he'd be okay with nobody voting. That's what he's not telling you. So he's just resorting to saying what a lot of Republicans won't. I mean, honestly, I give him credit for at least being truthful in that record. Again, most Republicans probably think this way, elected Republicans, but they just don't say this because I mean, at least up until a year ago, most people in America value democracy, but now the GOP is very quickly becoming explicitly anti-democracy. And that's really bad, that's a horrible sign. So, you know, there's an iceberg dead ahead and we're going right towards it and people don't really acknowledge just how extreme the GOP is, but they should look to moments like this where they just admit they're against voting rights and really take that as their warning that maybe we should do something because people are becoming radicalized at just increasingly alarming rates and perhaps they wouldn't be as susceptible to radicalization if perhaps their economic conditions improved, if we had more economic equality, if they didn't feel so desperate, maybe they wouldn't watch propaganda like the Daily Wire or Fox News. I just, I don't know, but this is pretty striking to see even if it's not surprising, like to just see a talking head on the right, just say I don't support voting rights, that's alarming. Ideas, ideas, ideas, ideas, recovery mode, my brain ideas, ideas, ideas, ideas, recovery mode, my brain ideas.