Matt Walsh One-on-One With OutKick

The Daily Wire's Matt Walsh sat down with OutKick to talk about his new children's book Johnny the Walrus. The book poses a premise -- that children can identify as a walrus -- to expose the ideas associated with the gender identity movement.

We also discussed Critical Race Theory, Twitter, and his advice for young adults entering the workforce.

Bobby Burack: Why did you write a children's book?

Matt Walsh: First of all, it's a lot easier to write a children's book. So that's one great thing. Also, I've got four kids. And anyone with children knows this: it's a daunting task trying to find books, especially newer children's books, to buy for your kids because it's just nothing but left-wing propaganda or even far-left propaganda.

If you go to Barnes and Noble, you'll find a lot of racial CRT-type propaganda, but most of it, I think, is focused around gender and gender theory. And there are a lot of powerful people in this country that are very invested in making sure that our kids believe, from a very young age, that you can be whatever gender you want, everything is malleable and fluid.

So I wanted to write a book that's an answer to that, and hopefully, an added antidote against that. One that kids can engage with on one level and that adults understand.

Burack: How do you plan on building off this book? Will there be a sequel? Do you want to adapt the book into a digital show?

Walsh: I would like to write some more children's books down the line. I got some ideas. I don't know if there's necessarily a sequel to this tale. The story ends, and that's kind of the point. It's really kind of a simple story. But there are other conservatives also who are writing children's books coming up with other kinds of entertainment. That would be good for kids as well. So yeah, it's definitely part of the plan.

Burack: It seems educators are hell-bent on convincing students of all ages that they are a member of one of two groups: the oppressors or the oppressed. That's a dangerous mindset -- to go into the world as an adult feeling either guilty or victimized. 

That to me is the children's book to write.

Walsh: It is dangerous, and that is something that we need to meet head-on. And I think there are, fortunately, people doing that with Critical Race Theory. A year ago, that was a term that not very many people knew. Now it's kind of a household term. And that's not by the left's doing. They don't want us talking about CRT. They would have preferred we remain blissfully ignorant to it.

Critical Race Theory, we got to keep in mind, has been in the schools for decades in some form or another -- it's just that we've only recently noticed and we're calling it what it is. So I agree that's really important. But I'm hoping that gender theory becomes the next big theory that people on the right become aware of and start talking about. Because as insidious and malicious as race theory is to kids, I think that gender theory is even worse, and it's even more pervasive.

Gender theory is everywhere, especially in the schools at the youngest levels. What are they doing with Critical Race Theory, as you point out, is separating kids into categories: oppressor-oppressed. They're making little kids feel guilty about being in their own skin, feel guilty for sins they didn't commit. They're also making black kids feel suspicious of the white kid. But gender theory goes even deeper, where they are depriving children of a firm sense of identity. Because when you tell a child you can literally be anything you want to be -- literally whatever you want to be -- then you take away the clear lines that kids need to grow into who they really are. You deprive them of their identity. I think the harm that we're doing to kids is incalculable.

Burack: What advice would you give young adults who have been told they are oppressors, people who know the system is openly rigged against them? Tucker Carlson told me in the spring he would tell his 22-year-old self to opt out of the system completely.

Walsh: Yeah, I would certainly agree with Tucker on that. At least to the extent that you can opt out of the system.

We should differentiate between if we're addressing younger people and what their life trajectory might be versus someone who's an adult right now. If you are already in a certain line of work and that's where your training is, you probably don't want to drop out. So your only choice is to fight. File lawsuits against stuff like mandatory anti-white training. But as far as kids who have not entered the world force, yes, I'd opt out.

I didn't go to college myself. Absolutely no regrets about that. I have plenty of regrets in life, but that's not one of them. And I certainly will be telling my own kids, and have told them already, that they're not going to be under any pressure from me to go to college. College is not some sort of automatic default thing that you should do.

I think we need to go back to a more sane approach to college where if you are 18 years old and you know for a fact that you want to be a doctor or lawyer or an engineer, then additional education is obviously needed.

But if you have no idea what you want to do with your life, which is most 18-year-olds, then go into the working world. Go do something, and think about it. There's no reason why you have to go to college right after high school. And probably if you go off into the world, you'll discover what you want to do. Maybe you'll decide you want to go to college, and maybe you'll realize that'd be a waste. That's certainly the advice I would give and have given.

Burack: Does this gross racialization of the workforce have an endpoint?

Walsh: On the practical end of things, we're going to need to start seeing lawsuits. There's been a little bit of that, but there needs to be a lot more. If there's any way to turn back the tide, it's gonna have to happen through the courts.

I say that with some hesitation because I don't have a lot of faith in the court system. If your employer is forcing you to sit through some sort of racial brainwashing session -- and so many employees are forced to do this sort of thing -- you need to file a lawsuit to stop it.

If you're sitting there and you're being told that because you're white you owe an apology, you have just been racially discriminated against. It's racial. It's race-based harassment. It is illegal. We have laws against this.

It needs to be handled in the courts.

Burack: You're pretty active on Twitter. You're also, based on algorithms, pretty hated. Has Twitter been beneficial to your career? 

Walsh: Definitely beneficial. And that's much to the left's chagrin.

I look at social media, like you describe it, as a tool to be used carefully. Because it can also use you, and you got to be really careful about that.

I say this all the time to conservatives who ask, "Why are you on Twitter? It's rigged against you." Here's why: I can use their platforms to undermine their own ideological agenda. Why wouldn't I do that if I can use their platform as a megaphone to get out a message that I believe is the truthful message, a common sense message amid all this insanity? Oh, and I can use their platform for free.

I would caution this idea of "let's make our own social media companies." Then all you have is right-wing social media. That's fine if you want to do that, but now you're just in an echo chamber with no cultural influence, no one's paying attention to it outside of people that are on that site. I just don't think it has the same impact on society and culture.