A year ago I would never have guessed that I would become a fan of Matt Walsh. His brash, in-your-face style didn’t appeal to me.

But I changed my mind after watching “What is a Woman,” and ever since I have been a Daily Wire subscriber and a regular viewer of his show.

My wife won’t let me watch it until she gets home, and after dinner, we sit down to watch it together. We watch Ben Shapiro and Michael Knowles occasionally, and Andrew Klavan every week.

But Walsh, for us, is the must-watch show.

If you aren’t a regular viewer it takes a while to get exactly what Matt is doing. By that I don’t mean his message is veiled–it is anything but. He is blunt to a fault at times, and you can’t walk away from an episode without getting his message. He is, in fact, one of the most clear-thinking and plain-speaking intellectuals you will find. He is also a comedian, although he hides that fact for the uninitiated.

Intellectual? Why yes, he is. Matt is not a college graduate and occasionally appears out of place on the (sort of) monthly Backstage that brings together all the hosts and Jeremy Boreing, the CEO. Ben Shapiro and Michael Knowles are deeply steeped in abstruse philosophy and religious history, and as a former academic I particularly enjoy listening to Ben go deep into some academic theory that I studied in college.

Those guys are geeks. They could easily have been college professors in a different era. My wife and I marvel at how erudite the discussions are on Backstage–it’s like watching fast-talking Oxford Dons discussing both the issues of the day and the philosophy behind their views on them.

Walsh isn’t an intellectual in that manner. He isn’t a philosopher or a professor, but a practical thinker in a very American way. He is an extraordinarily logical thinker, reads deeply into the issues that matter to him and can outthink and out-articulate anybody on the intellectual battlefields he ventures into. He doesn’t bring up Foucault or the wisdom of the Talmud, but everything he says is either on point or laugh-out-loud funny once you understand his humor.

He is very funny. As I said, once you watch him for a while you understand that he has the driest sense of humor on the planet. My wife and I each get at least a couple of hearty guffaws each show. Most of the jokes are at Matt’s own expense. Because much of his humor is referential, and the referents are to earlier shows it takes a bit to get the jokes.

The entertainment value after you watch a week or two outstrips the value of the commentary, and by that, I mean very high praise.

Watch full episode here: https://t.co/B1xDXJFUfc

— The Matt Walsh Show (@MattWalshShow) April 28, 2023

YouTube demonetized his show a week or two ago, and I wrote about it then. It was a punitive move they decided to make based on his direct criticisms of Dylan Mulvaney. Matt never dances around, and he was quite harsh about Mulvaney and what he is doing. A lot of conservatives were unhappy about the tone of Matt’s criticism and condemned his harshness.

But the truth was that Matt was right to call Mulvaney out, and he never would have done that if Dylan weren’t an activist trying to push an ideology on us. Dylan isn’t fair game because he is transgender. Being mean to random people because we disagree with their life choices is offensive and cruel.

Dylan is fair game because he is ridiculing women and recruiting people to a destructive cult. Criticizing Dylan is no different than criticizing a cult leader. For the cult victims, nothing but mercy and compassion. For the cult leader, it’s war when they come after your kids.

The Daily Wire’s response to the YouTube demonetization was fascinating. They didn’t cave to YouTube’s demands that they take down the offending shows. They took their show elsewhere.

You could always watch Matt’s show as a Daily Wire member, but the free version is 80% of the show and they monetized it with YouTube ads. They gave that up and decided to make the show freely available elsewhere, including Twitter.

This costs them money in the short term–reportedly somewhere between $100,000 to $250,000 a month.

I’m not sure whether there is a business case for what they are doing, but as a fan, I am glad they are. More people should invest a good week getting familiar with the show and picking up its message and especially its vibe. It may not be everybody’s cup of tea, but it certainly brightens my day.

You can find Matt’s show for free on Twitter.

Note: I don’t know anybody at Daily Wire, don’t know Matt Walsh, and have no connection to anything they do except as a fan. I wrote this solely because I love Matt’s work and think many of you will too.

Second note: one of the recurrent jokes in the show is that he calls his viewers part of the “Sweet Baby Gang.” It is utterly perplexing to non-initiates, but it is a reference to a video he discussed on his show where an actress was critiquing young people for being so slovenly and treating themselves with disrepect. If you wonder about the origin story, here it is.