In the fourteenth episode of The Babylon Bee podcast, editor-in-chief Kyle Mann and creative director Ethan Nicolle are joined by Red State's editor-at-large Kira Davis. Kira joins for the entire episode to discuss current news stories and then get into the main topic: race. How do we handle it as a society and as individuals? What should the conversation be like? What is the Christian response to the race issue? How does the concept of grace fit into an issue so weighed down by history? We dig into these heavy topics and more. Follow Kira Davis on Twitter Listen to Kira on Smart Girl Politics, and Just Listen To Yourself Stories of the Week (10:09) CNN's 7-Hour Climate Change Town Hall Loses In Ratings To 'Baby Shark' Being Played 185 Times In A Row (15:48) White Girl Turned Into Pillar Of Pumpkin Spice After Looking Back At Starbucks (24:18) href="https://babylonbee.com/news/walmart-discontinues-sale-of-auto-parts-to-prevent-car-accidents?fbclid=IwAR3RuA1zwt9ieXVlX-1sNW7Mrja7bjJCQOIuP2kfPJuz8OUV1-pWmRa27R0">Walmart Discontinues Auto Part Sales To Prevent Car Accidents (33:02) Main Topic: Race and grace (1:16:06) Hate Mail (1:24:08) Paid Subscriber Portion: Kira talks about that time she was on Dr. Phil, the time she was kicked out of the 2010 Democratic National Convention, and her experience with drive-by shootings. Become a paid subscriber at https://babylonbee.com/plans
In a world of fake news, this is news you can trust.
You're listening to the Babylon Bee.
Here are your infallible hosts, Kyle Mann and Ethan Nicole.
Who needs drugs when these guys have Jesus?
Welcome, everyone, to the Babylon Bee Podcast.
I'm Kyle Mann, and I'm Ethan Nicole.
And with us today, we have a special guest, Kira Davis.
Hi.
Hi.
Hey.
Hi.
Hi, guys.
We need to introduce her.
She's the editor-at-large at Red State.
And I'm the podcast host of the Smart Girl Politics Podcast.
And I also just started my own podcast called Just Listen to Yourself with Kira Davis.
Nice.
So you can find all those things.
I listen to Stupid Guys Politics podcast.
Stupid guy.
That's why I didn't know about that one.
Stupid deal.
Stupid guys.
Yeah.
You should try Smart Girls.
Yeah.
I just, I feel like it's a whole different angle.
Yeah.
I kind of think that that's our territory.
Is this too fast?
No, really.
It's the name of our podcast.
We should do like a branch of Smart Girl over with the Stupid Guy.
Because we're just kind of the guys that sit around and we have no right to talk about any of this stuff.
Yeah, we just make jokes about stuff.
Yeah, we do.
We are Beefs and Butthead of Christianity.
That's great.
Great description.
Wow.
OK, well, Kira, thank you for being.
Thank you for having me.
I'm so excited to be here.
Big fan of the Babylon B.
And my listeners over at Smart Girl are also huge Babylon B fans.
So I'm definitely, I'm going to get some recordings with you guys before I leave because I know my audience is going to want to hear from you guys.
But I don't live that far away in this part of the country.
A lot of us are in the same area.
So I love to get to people in person whenever I go.
Yeah, it's the best.
We try to get people to drive out to our compound, to this luxurious compound.
Like we're in SoCal, but it's like when people, when we tell people where we are, they're like, they start to cry.
And we're like, sure, can you please do that?
No, but I wish I could show the listeners, but this place, it's gated.
It has floors of gold.
There's, I mean, the kitchen area is just insane.
And then it's a pool, the pool side.
I mean, yeah.
It's basically TBN.
There's giant golden angel statues everywhere.
Why don't you just take TBN?
What are they doing with that over there anyways?
Nothing.
I went to TBN in New York when I was on Eric Metaxas.
And it is weird.
It's super high ceilings and everything's very glittery.
I want so bad to go in there one day, but I'm scared.
It's a different world.
I always love how they're like sitting on these golden thrones.
and they're like telling people I watched one once but this lady I'm a little sick sorry if you guys can tell my voices I haven't named and claimed health and prosperity for myself.
But yeah, there was this lady when I was growing up and we were watching TBN for some reason.
And she was like, she said, send in $1,000.
If you don't have $1,000, send in $100.
She goes, if you don't have $100, take off your left shoe.
Mail in your left shoe.
And God will take that as a, you know, you're planting your prosperity seed.
She's on a golden.
And she's like sitting on this golden.
And you're just like, just melt down the golden throne.
You know, there's probably a lot of, it's probably worth something.
Yeah, I had a friend whose mom called that lady.
Or there's like a couple.
I can't remember.
Maybe the crouches.
Yeah, it was like the crouch too.
Yeah.
And they're sitting on the golden thrones.
I love them.
He called them king and queen god.
Yeah.
At night when I can't sleep, there are two channels I turn to.
One is TVN and the other is Home Shopping Network.
And it's because they're both selling something, right?
And I am fascinated by people who sell things.
Maybe my husband's in sales and maybe that's a part of it.
But I am fascinated by the psychology of like what you're saying versus what a person is hearing.
And I love, especially Home Shopping Network, because they have so much time to fill.
I mean, you've got a four-hour slot as a host to sell red shirts, you know?
And so I'm fascinated by these women and men who fill four hours of screen time trying to sell the red shirts.
And I love to hear all of like how they're selling the shirt.
And what, you know what?
You could wear this shirt.
You could wear this shirt to church.
Or after church, what I like to do is I would like to put, I'll just put a little pin on it and then you can go out to dinner with your friends.
Or it just goes on and on.
And then I'll wear it to bed.
You know, if I like, I wear it to bed and my husband doesn't like when I wear t-shirts to bed.
And then when you get up in the morning, you could wear it to school.
You could get in your car.
You could put your keys in the car when you turn the red shirt on.
It's like it'll go on and on.
They'll say the same sense.
I always wear the switcher.
If you're in Star Trek, you don't want to wear the red shirt, though.
But, you know, no, and you know what's amazing is you watch those and you start to like want to buy it.
Oh, yeah.
Like you're like, you know, this little trinket that they're trying to sell and you're like, oh, this is so stupid.
And then half hour later, you're like, for three payments of $6.99 each.
Like, what is that?
So that's not much.
That's not much.
Well, those websites where it's tons of text telling you, it's the same thing as text, right?
You keep scrolling and it keeps giving you all these things like, oh, and also.
Yeah.
And I don't, you're just like, why am I still reading it?
I really want to click on it.
It doesn't make any sense.
It's a weird voodoo.
Well, that's what all that text is.
I like it.
You're TV on the page.
I like the parallel you drew between TBN and the home shopping network.
They're both selling.
They're both selling.
I've never thought about that.
Well, sometimes I'll look at those people too, especially the TBN people, and I'll just try to imagine what their inner lives are like.
Like, what does Mama Blue Hair say when she gets up and like looks at herself in the mirror?
Is she going like, I'm really doing this for God?
I really, or is she just like, I need another $100,000 today?
Like, I don't know which it is.
And it's her business.
And anybody who wants to watch that and get something out of it is their business.
I'm not judging you.
I'm just, I just find it fascinating.
I'm judging you.
I don't care.
Like, you know, you do you.
Get whatever.
I have met very sweet people that are TBN fanatics for sure.
Yes, me too.
I think they've kind of tried to turn it around a little bit recently.
But I don't know.
Well, they have.
I haven't watched it.
Really?
I think the Mount Crouch guy was trying to make it seem a little more respectable.
Yeah, they bring it on his past.
I love Eric Metaxas, and he's got a show on there now.
They're bringing on a few personalities like that.
Well, isn't it interesting that I don't know if you guys heard this week, but that Benny Hinn came out and denounced the prosperity gospel.
And to hear that, that makes, I think that's interesting.
I think there's a shift happening in the business of Christianity.
And I think people are starting to realize that the capitalistic part of it is starting to turn people off.
So Kyle's got some thoughts on that.
I really don't have any thoughts.
For me, it's like I've seen, because he's done this before where he says, you know, he turns his back on the prosperity gospel.
And there's always these big headlines like in Relevant Magazine.
Oh, Benny Hinn denounces.
And it's like, well, has he given all that money back?
He still has a mansion in San Clemente.
We can go there right now.
I don't want to sound too cynical.
I'm glad he's saying those things.
Yeah.
No, that was my first hunt, too.
Let's see the fruit.
I was like, well, I'll be interested to see what he if he fills his San Clemente Cliffside Beach mansion with homeless people.
If he gives it to me, then he's really repented.
So we'll see if he does that.
I don't know.
I don't think so.
He has to be me in this case because the whole black thing and stuff, you know?
Yeah, I guess you give it to a white guy.
It's a great segue.
Yeah.
Segue.
The whole black thing.
That's what you should name this episode.
Oh, my God.
By the way.
Yeah, that's a great name.
The whole black thing.
That's perfect.
That's not going to get you guys any hate now.
Yeah.
Well, if you give us permission to use it, right, then it's okay.
I don't know.
I just realized we're pretty much DC talk right here.
Yeah, that's right.
We've got Kevin.
Who am I?
Am I Kevin Mac?
You're Kevin.
You're kind of the hippie.
Yeah, you're definitely.
I would be Toby Mac.
What a stop.
They were my first concert.
These TikToks, my first concert.
I went in like midnight.
Yeah, you're way more Toby Mac than I am.
I was Toby Mac all the way.
But what was the other guy?
Oh, I shouldn't say that.
A lot of people listen to this.
Toby Mac.
We liked him.
He's a nice guy, I'm sure.
You're just not into his music?
That's just something with the.
We live in an extreme day, day, day.
Well, that was his music like 20 years ago.
It all sounds the same to me.
I'm a grumpy old man.
Sure.
Fair.
Fair enough.
I got in Ethan's car the other day and he's listening to stuff from like, he's like, he's like a guy that should have been born in the 1940s.
Are you listening to the Imperials?
I'm listening to like Sinatra, like Cranols, Robert Johnson, just old, old, old stuff.
I love old music.
I love bluegrass, like banjos.
Oh, that's cool.
I'm not racist.
I just like banjos.
Okay.
People connect banjos to the KKK.
Really?
Oh, that's the first time I've ever heard that.
Not all bills.
Yeah, not all banjos.
Not all.
All right.
So, what we're going to do, we are going to get into the hot topic of the black of the whole black thing.
Let's do it.
Let's go to the whole black thing.
Us two white cisgendered heteromales are going to interview a smart girl here.
And she's going to tell us.
Maybe your audience should know I'm black.
They don't mind.
Well, you mentioned it during the Benny Hinn segment.
Oh, sure.
Sort of.
But just in case you missed that witty remark.
Yeah.
I am black.
Yes.
So sue me.
We're going to get into that.
We're going to get into that whole thing.
But we're going to go into some weekly stories first.
So buckle up.
Every week, there are stories.
These are some of them.
CNN's seven-hour climate change town hall loses in ratings to Baby Shark being played 185 times in a row.
Baby Shark did, did it, did it?
Baby Shark did, did it?
Are your kids?
Yeah, that song was like.
It was like, how long ago was that that became really viral and everybody's talking about it?
It was like just a few months.
No.
Yeah, if you have kids, you've been hearing it way longer than that.
Because I was like, oh, everybody just noticed that's on the internet.
That's been on for a long time.
Like a year ago, it started becoming like a meme and a thing.
Yeah, it became a meme, but it had been around for a while before that.
Yeah.
Yeah.
My kids listen.
Yeah.
There's a million different iterations.
There was someone uploaded like a YouTube video, and it was, you know, it was just kids singing to it and dumb graphics on the screen, and it got like 3 billion views on YouTube or something.
It was just everybody's kids.
Each kid watches it 6 billion times.
A lot of parents don't.
Is that how YouTube works?
Like every time.
A lot of parents don't let their kids watch TV anymore.
Or few people watch TV.
But I have a lot of friends.
My kids are older now, but I have a lot of friends whose kids just, that's the TV is YouTube.
So they find the videos that they want on YouTube.
Yeah, they have no interest in checking the cable guide.
Can you imagine?
They're reading all the texts up there.
Oh, Sesame Street's going to start in a half hour.
I was trying to explain the TV guide to my 12-year-old daughter the other day.
Our kids grew up with Netflix, and then the first time we got cable because it came on an internet package, and they started screaming at the TV when commercials came on.
Because I'm like, what is this?
My son will not watch TV.
He will not watch TV because of commercials.
He won't sit with us and watch TV.
What kind of generation are we raising that won't sit through some capitalism?
Good-fashioned.
Old-fashioned in my day, we used to watch all the commercials, yeah.
We'd sit through and we liked them.
You remember, like, your sibling would be sitting in front of the TV and you'd have to go to the bathroom or do something, and they're like, It's back on when you'd have to rush to the bathroom.
Yes, I remember those days.
Well, I will tell you guys, I did watch part of that climate change.
Did you?
Oh, did you?
Yeah, I did.
Why would you do this?
Well, I'm the editor-at-large for Red State, so it's my job.
No, we just look at the hot takes afterwards and make jokes about them.
Yeah, pictures of Joe Biden's exploded eyeballs.
You guys get to make your hot takes because people like me and watch this and vlog through these things.
I got, let's see, I caught the tail end of Kamala Harris.
I got Amy Klobuchar.
I got Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders.
That's the Elizabeth Warren was kind of the big headliner.
And I had by the time I got through, no, that was not just his eyeball.
It was not.
That's how I got it.
It was not a Biden crowd.
I will tell you this.
This is the one thing I noticed: that besides Biden's eye, is that that crowd was only there for Bernie and Elizabeth.
Like nobody, those guys were working hard.
They're working on all their applause lines hard.
It's got to be a unique sampling of people that want to be in a room for seven hours to talk about climate change.
Seven hours.
I did three and it was interminable.
And I was just like, how can there possibly be another question?
Like, have all these questions been answered?
How many climate change questions are there?
But it was just, I can understand why Baby Shark beat it.
Yeah.
I'd listened to Baby Shark 200 times before I would sit through that again.
Have you guys heard the other one?
There's another one my kids always have come on on YouTube.
It's like, Johnny, Johnny.
Yes, papa.
Telling lies.
No, mama.
No.
And it's always different.
Like, there'll be one that's like Chinese guys singing it, and there'll be another one where it's like India.
And then there's like, it's all different foreign languages.
It's really bizarre.
The internet is weird.
No, I missed all of it.
And they all have like 21 million views and stuff.
Yeah.
Why don't we come up with like a baby song?
Why don't we do that?
What are we doing this podcast for?
We should be in that office working on a YouTube baby song.
Let's make that one up right now.
And then someone listening can turn it into a cartoon and we'll team up with them, split the profits 50-50.
Okay.
Go.
Little Johnny eating an apple.
He's not cute.
He's not cute.
He really loves his bread.
All right.
That's it.
That's all you need.
That's all you need.
Apples and bread.
The covers two food pyramids.
It's weird too because that Johnny one has like a really weird lesson.
Like they don't, the kid doesn't get in trouble.
He just keeps lying.
Johnny, Johnny.
That's why, that's what I hate about most children's programming.
Like I'm sure you guys have talked about Caillou.
Freaking Caillou.
Caillou.
Caillou was banned in my house.
My kids watch The Bachelor.
They cannot watch Caillou.
He's just like this.
He's just this whiny little bald kid.
He's like four years old, but he's still bald.
And he's just like, he never learns his lesson.
He's just like, mommy, I want the toy.
He's so naughty and he's so rude.
He's so spoiled that right out there.
We've got neighbors.
There's very loud people around here, just so everybody knows.
Well, it's just a bunch of Caillus over there.
It's the staff.
Yeah, we're in a crazy newsroom.
It's the staff.
It's the staff of this mansion.
Yeah.
Anyways.
All right.
Well, we will move on to talking about pumpkin spice here.
White girl turned into pillar of pumpkin spice after looking back at Starbucks.
We like that when other people read headlines because they can laugh.
Yeah, we're just like staring at a red.
I've read it.
I've read this.
I've read the Babon Bea every day.
I've read this headline a million times already.
I've laughed a million times.
I don't get the reference.
What's that reference to?
Really?
Just kidding.
I live in Orange County.
I'm never sure with you.
I live in Orange County and it's Starbucks culture there.
So everywhere.
I mean, right?
The West Coast.
I don't know, everywhere.
I'm from the Northwest, like Portland.
Uh-huh.
There's a coffee shop literally every block at least.
And there's little huts that you can drive up to to get the coffee if you can't even stop and drive through.
I remember back in the early 90s, mid-90s, when the idea of a coffee shop was really bubbling up in Seattle and Portland and going to visit a boyfriend at the time in Seattle and being so blown away by, oh my gosh, there's a coffee shop on every corner and there's these little drive-up huts.
They're like, yeah, you just walk.
I thought it was so crazy.
I thought we, what a weird place.
And, you know, 20 years later, and it's like, there's a coffee shop on every corner.
And coffee's a culture.
Yeah, I can only imagine the little huts don't work out down here because of like, there's just not room in parking lots.
Well, and then we've got homeless issues.
Yeah, it's just drug addiction.
Yeah, I wouldn't.
I'd be scared to work in one of those late at night down in like South Central.
Oh, no.
South Central?
I don't know.
I don't know.
These days, it's like you got to be scared everywhere.
Yeah.
Down there.
Santa Monica?
I don't want to last time with Santa Monica with, but yeah, it's scary.
It's overrun.
So pumpkin spice.
I'm for it.
Really?
Yeah, I like pumpkin spice.
Is that because are you mixed?
You say you're mixed race, right?
Yes.
So is that your white girl half?
No, I'm going to say this.
I believe we are in a culture of contrarianism these days.
And so whatever a lot of people like, then someone's got to get on the internet and be like, well, I'm just, I'm so sick of this.
It's like, people like pumpkin spice.
Let them like the pumpkin spice.
It's getting to the point where companies are putting out pumpkin spice products just to spite the anti-pumpkin spice crowd.
And there's, it's fascinating because there's a marketing value in that, right?
Works.
Pumpkin spice AR15.
Pumpkin spice spam.
I saw it the other day.
I saw it at the store.
Nasty.
Right?
I mean, it's already nasty.
I kind of wanted to get it though, but I just wanted to see.
I get it for the gimmick.
But yeah, no, I'm for pumpkin spice.
If you like pumpkin spice, enjoy it.
Enjoy your holiday.
I'm not sure what pumpkin spice is.
It's like allspice.
But it's like, so is it the spice of a pumpkin or is it like supposed to be a mix, like pumpkin/slash spice?
It's the spice you put in your pumpkin pie.
That's why it's called pumpkin spice.
But what is that spice flavor?
It's an all-spice, like it's a nutmeg.
So you could call, yeah, totally.
It's a nutmeg and clove and something mix.
All the other ones.
It's a real thing, yeah.
You could call pepper chicken spice then.
See, that's kind of what that's what I'm saying.
It's not really pumpkin spice, it's it's just generic spice that you associate with.
Yeah, but you can't sell generic spice latte.
That's what I'm saying.
It's a marketing.
It's got to be.
It's the man trying to control us.
We could just rename it to anything.
We could rename it to anything.
Ground up stuff from nature.
Latte.
Skinny, please.
Extra food.
I'm for pumpkin spice.
I enjoy, I don't really enjoy flavored coffee, so I would never really get it myself.
But if people want to enjoy pumpkin spice, go for it.
I'm not going to judge you.
I like having it around just to mock it.
Like, I'd be sad if it was gone.
I feel like we should move on, though.
The pumpkin spice mocking has really, I feel we reached our peak last Christmas season.
So we need a new spice to mock.
Yeah.
It shouldn't be salt because salts, we need it.
What's the Christmas Starbucks drink that comes out?
It's like the peppermint, mocha.
Peppermint.
And then they do eggnog.
The eggnog, which I actually love.
I love eggnog.
I do like eggnog.
We can't turn on eggnog against it.
Yeah.
No, we can't.
I always thought candy canes were stupid.
Yes.
We can attack those, make them problematic.
Make candy canes look next pumpkin spice.
I agree.
They are dumb and they don't taste good.
I don't care what anyone says.
Candy.
It's too much.
Yes.
And they're just, there's just like mint, you know?
Just too much mint.
Why?
There's already enough saying, thank you.
Yeah.
Plus, I'm sure there's some kind of like satanic pagan meaning behind candy canes.
Can't be Christmas.
Well, in contrast.
Why isn't a candy cross?
In contrast to my anti-Christmas co-hosts here, I would like to come out as a very pro-Christmas dance.
How dare you?
Ethan.
Are you anti-Christmas?
Yes.
That's what it sounds like.
I love Christmas.
It sounds like you hate baby Jesus.
I don't like candy corn.
I prefer grown-up Jesus.
You guys candy corn fans?
I am a huge candy corn fan.
It's like wax, like a ball of wax.
It's useless.
Delicious.
This could be an entire episode.
You know, I am a, I guess I am kind of a contrarian.
Like, I feel like I, yeah, it's just if everybody likes something, I have to find the.
I often question if that's why I'm a Christian conservative in Hollywood.
I'm like, wait, do I just like to go against what everybody's saying?
Maybe there's some value to it, too.
There is like some actual scientific, you know, I mean, this is why your kids rebel.
Yeah, yeah.
My parents are super left-wing liberal atheist hippies, and I'm a right-wing Christian.
Yeah.
You know?
So like, if I'm in a group of a bunch of super conservatives, I want to find like the issue that I disagree with them on.
Yeah.
You know, and I want to be the guy who's like, actually, I don't buy into all this.
Yeah.
You know, but then if I go to a group of like, you know, liberal Democrats, I'm like, you know, wearing a MAGA hat or whatever.
It's like, yeah, I'm, you know.
Do you own that?
You own one of those?
Well, no.
So if anyone wants to mail us a MAGA hat, I'd like to have one just for the entertainment.
We have a OA, like, make satire great again.
Well, now you're not just.
Somebody was online the other day saying you're not supposed to even wear the joke hat.
I know.
Because the joke hats are triggering.
Yeah.
Just the red hat people.
Any red hat.
Yeah, they were saying like even baseball teams.
Yeah.
And yeah, someone replied that what about my favorite baseball team, you know, the Angels, red hats.
And they're like, it's not worth it.
She was like, just basically, she was like, you need to take one for the team.
Like, sorry, you can't wear your red hat because there might be some people around who think it's equivalent to KKK hats.
I like the one that says made you look on it.
I did get a, I did order because I saw this shirt online, and I never wear political stuff ever, but I did order a Donald Pump workout shirt for the gym.
And it's like Donald Trump and he's all muscle bound and he's make America strong again.
It's the most ridiculous thing I've ever seen.
I was like, I must have this.
Ethan's got the Donald Trump mug.
He's drinking out of over there.
Most really terrific.
My wife got me this mug for Father's Day.
That's hilarious.
Saying you're a great dad, a great great dad.
Very special, very handsome, really terrific.
Everyone agrees.
And I always hide Donald Trump when I'm out in public.
I was thinking they should do a MAGA hat that's kind of a orange color with little brown speckles.
And they could say, Make America Great Again, and then a little text below it says pumpkin spice.
It's like the pumpkin spice edition of the action.
That's a really triggering cat.
But it wouldn't be red.
You have such a dark side, Ethan.
No idea.
It now comes in pumpkin spice.
There's also Antipope who's throwing pumpkin spice molotop cocktails too.
We talked about that on the site.
But we're going to move on to other things from pumpkin spice, I think.
We have more topics to talk about.
Drink your pumpkin spice if you want to.
But don't.
And if not, don't.
So don't be a contrarian.
Just do you.
You do you.
Walmart discontinues auto part sales to prevent car accidents.
Thank God.
Finally.
Somebody had the guts to do it.
It's about time.
Stunning and brave.
Stunning and brave.
I don't get it.
Don't get the joke.
It's for us in a place like California, it's meaningless because you can't get a gun at Walmart anyways.
That's true.
Yeah.
So this story is more a story for the national crowd.
People who still live in free states.
Well, actually, no, I think I went to Walmart.
I can't remember if they had guns or not.
Did I tell them my crazy story of trying to buy a gun here in California?
Like I went in, I went into Big Five and to buy a gun.
And it's like you go up to the counter and you feel like the guy's judging you for like trying to buy a gun.
They're like, you know, like sizing you up.
You're just like, I just, you know, I don't know.
I just want a shotgun.
Well, what for?
You know, and I'm like, uh, so I, you know, I look into what I have to do.
And in California, it's crazy.
Yes.
It's like, yes.
You have to take a quiz.
It's as easy as getting pseudo-fed.
Come on.
It's as easy as getting an abortion or whatever their stupid comparison.
Dude, if any of those things were as hard, they wouldn't have to.
You have to take the quiz.
You have your background check.
It's a 10-day waiting period.
And now you have a 10-day waiting period for ammo as well.
Ammo too?
Every time that just was the last round of elections we just did.
We just voted that in.
But every time I hear somebody online, some like celebrity be like, it's easier for me to get some, yeah, some cough medicine than a gun.
I'm like, where do you buy your guns?
So I can go there and get one too.
It's nearly impossible.
And in California, even though we have the constitutional right to conceal carry, it is nearly impossible to.
Yeah, it depends on the county.
I've tried.
Most of them reject.
I've tried as a commentator.
I get hate mail, which mostly is meaningless to me, but you can use it as proof that you're in danger.
And they wouldn't even take that.
I was like, well, listen, I pulled out my race card.
I'm like, I'm the black woman and I'm in politics.
And they were like, no, no, we do not judge.
Did you need this concealed care?
You're exactly what we need to be gotten rid of.
You don't want you defending yourself.
So you get, so yeah, there's a quiz.
And then there's also, when you pick up the gun, you have to show the guy at the counter that you know how to use it.
Yeah, you have to like show this is what you shoot at.
Well, you have to like point at all the different parts of the gun and say, you know, this is the barrel.
This is the trigger.
And you have to show them that you know how to load it and unload it before you're allowed to take it home.
I'm done buying guns in California.
And then I tried, so I finally got, so my ID had the wrong address on it, so they wouldn't sell me a gun.
Oh, geez.
So then I had, you have to bring in like you have to bring in proof and stuff.
So I go to the DMV, I get my license.
I come back.
My license says federal limits apply on it, which is a new thing in California.
Oh, because you didn't have the real ID.
It doesn't count as a real ID.
I just got the bad.
So they won't accept that as your ID.
Unbelievable.
To get by a gun.
So it's like impossible.
I have to go back to the DMV.
You just need to go.
Don't buy your gun if you go to Arizona.
Don't buy your guns in California anymore.
And one of my closest friends' father owns a gun range in Orange County.
And he is like, you know, it's been, it's family business.
It's been there 60 years.
And he's like, businesses, it's, we get a lot of people in the range.
Like, it's increased the amount of people that want to learn how to fire a weapon.
But he's like, sales, it's impossible.
He's working on closing out because he just can't do it.
Anyways, I'm not buying my guns in California anymore.
Sorry, California manufacturers, but it's not your fault.
But mine are all either I bought from friends in Oregon or they're like hand-me-downs from like stepdad and stuff.
By the way, if there are any California law enforcement listening to this podcast, we're just joking.
None of us have unregistered firearms anywhere.
There's no need to send anyone out to the Babylon B compounds.
We lost him in the big boating action.
Yeah, we lost them.
They're lost.
So, oh, I liked, we also had a story.
When I am president, I will take away your guns, says man who will never be president.
He's funny.
He is funny.
He's so cute.
He does feel like this adorable little student body president.
He's so straight.
I don't, I can't look at him the same.
I did.
I'm going to, I'm going to out him just because I don't think he's going to listen to this podcast.
But I did the Dr. Drew show, Dr. Drew Pinsky, which you may remember from the Loveline Days.
And he's like pretty much every bit as brilliant as he seems on TV.
And we were talking between him on a break, on a commercial break, and Beto was on TV.
And he said, you know, I think that he is, he has some psychosis.
And I bet if you, he was being serious.
By the way, Dr. Drew doesn't joke a lot.
And he, he was saying, I've treated guys like him.
And when I look at him, I see whatever that is.
That's that, it's a physical representation of the neuros.
He said, but I bet if you opened his medical files, he's been on psychiatric hold several times.
He's like, I have no proof.
I don't know.
But I look at Beto differently every time now.
Like a little twitch in the eye kind of thing.
A little twitch.
He's like, he's a little super serious.
He's like, his family's not with him a lot.
That tells me that they don't care to be with him a lot.
And he said, I bet he's been on several.
I feel like anybody who like runs for president is psychotic.
Like to look at all the people in the nation and go, yes, I am the one.
Doesn't that require some form of like ego or super psychotic?
I don't know.
This is what I tell everybody.
10 years I've been in the business of politics.
This is what I tell everybody.
I don't care what side you're on, if you're a liberal, conservative, independent, whatever.
You cannot trust any of these people because the type of person you have to be to get to the top of the political pyramid is the type of person that you would not want to trust your kids with.
So maybe you thought Barack Obama was pure as a driven snow, but no, he came from Chicago and he and he became president of the United States.
You don't get to that level without selling out in some way.
And it goes for name whatever your favorite politician is.
I don't care.
George Washington.
Oh, sell out.
Oh, my gosh.
George Washington was the worst.
Also, slave owner.
Didn't he put down that rebellion, though?
That was his big.
No, the rebellion.
Like, we have to keep hearing about the South American Revolution.
It's like, when are you going to get a new game, George?
You got it.
I kind of feel like we should just pick a random person.
Like, man, you just get drafted one day.
You see it.
It's kind of like jury duty.
And it's just like you get your summons in the mail and it's like, hey, Bob, come with us.
You are president.
You are president.
And I feel like it would be better.
It would probably.
Maybe.
I don't know.
No, listen, you guys.
As much as I enjoy laughing about it, the truth is, is that the process is the process for a reason.
You also need the type of person who can stand on an international stage, look a despot in the face and lie right to him.
You need that person too.
So it's just a matter of finding the politician that lines up most.
Every politician is self-interested.
You got to find the one whose self-interests line up most with your self-interest.
And then that's what you vote for.
I don't think any of them care about me at all.
No, and they shouldn't.
You don't need to care about them.
You just need to make sure that the things you're interested in are the things they're interested in.
And then I don't know.
I just don't vote at all.
Yeah, my dad doesn't either.
He's well, he, well, he was a big Obama fan.
And it's the first time he ever gave money to a politician because my dad is black and he said, I just never thought I'd get to the point in my life where I would see a black president.
And then I think a year or two in, he was like, I don't like this guy.
And now my dad's a Trump voter.
Oh, really?
Yeah.
Wow.
Let's move into our main topic.
I think that's a perfect segue.
No, that's great.
To our main topic.
And now, the Babylon Bees topic of the week.
So I prefaced this when I invited Kara on the show.
I heard you on Bridget Fettes podcast, and I really loved what I heard you saying about race.
And also, you're speaking from your Christian perspective.
And it was super refreshing.
And there's even parts of it where I was like tearing up.
Oh, I know me too.
I was kind of shocked.
I got a little bit emotional.
Yeah, it was emotional.
And it was, but it was talking about broad race issues.
And there's a lot of stuff like you rarely hear the word grace when people are talking about race and mercy and just these Christian ideas.
Yes.
Of that we were called to forgive.
And so I kind of want to launch in from that perspective and just kind of go from there.
Yeah, absolutely.
So let's do that black stuff.
This is it is so I even told you when I had you on, I'm like, we're two white guys.
Yeah.
And I hate to pigeonhole you on this topic.
I actually wanted to say that I appreciated that.
That's the first time I've ever gotten that message.
Really?
And I would have been fine anyway.
Like it's not something I think about very much, but it is something that happens a lot, especially in the conservative blogosphere.
If you're, if you're black and you're conservative, which I am both of those things, then you become the black conservative.
Yeah, and that's all you're talking about.
That's all everyone wants to hear about.
And that's, I'm happy to talk about race and issues of grace and reconciliation.
Those are on my heart all the time.
Always happy to talk about it.
But it's like, I do feel like, I mean, maybe I just have a big ego, but I feel like I'm an interesting person.
Like I have other things to talk about.
Back in the day when we started this whole new media thing, Huffington Post, I don't think they do it anymore, but they used to do HuffPo Live, where they would stream a political discussion every day.
And Mark Lamont Hill hosted it.
And when that first came on, I was on that show once a week.
And every week, Mark Lamont Hill, who's also black, would only have me on that show to talk about why I was such a filthy black Republican.
Like that was the theme of every show that he would invite me to.
You know, please justify your traitor politics.
And I would say maybe about the 12th time, the producer called me and I was like, you know what?
Tell Mark I'm not doing this show anymore because the only thing he ever asked me to talk about is race.
Like he's part of the problem.
So I'm not doing it anymore.
I haven't seen or heard from him.
I like that picture of the HuffPo editorial team.
Have you seen that?
It's like 20 white girls.
It's like the entire liberal blogosphere of like white people complaining about black problems.
Yeah, I mean, for me, that's like one of the things that, you know, it's just weird to bring that up.
It's such a broad topic.
So even just somebody I don't know very well.
Like if you're, say, I get an Uber and the guy's black, it's just weird to bring up race.
Like, yeah, he doesn't want you to see it.
Right.
Yeah.
But it feels like there's a gap there that like or an elephant in the room.
There is.
And it feels like it's gotten worse since Obama.
I agree.
I sense it all the time.
And when I was on Bridget's podcast, I let her in on a few secrets.
I'll let the Babylon be.
Listenership in on a few secrets.
Like black people actually don't really, we're not really impressed with how many black friends you have.
Like that's not, you don't lead with that.
Okay.
Don't tell me, don't meet me at this happens.
Don't meet me at a party and then immediately launch into the last black person that you had a conversation with and tell me, oh, and she's so cool.
You would love her.
It happens.
Maybe it's the circles that I travel in, but it happens all the time, especially in the world.
Does anybody have any conservative?
Does anybody like no?
Yeah, Hollywood, yeah.
Yeah, like the Hollywood crowd.
And some, yeah, some conservatives.
Yes.
You probably get more than me, the immediate assumption that you're liberal in Hollywood.
Oh, there's, I've never been asked otherwise.
Yeah.
Obviously.
It's an advantage.
Does anybody like, does anybody approach you and ask if you'll be their black friend?
I've never had someone like, but I'm like kind of on the wider scale of black people.
Like my husband gets it more.
He's, he, and my husband, we live in Orange County where there aren't many black friends.
We are, I told this on Dr. Drew's show the other day.
I was like, we do get invited as the black friends to parties.
What's the giveaway?
Because I assume they don't just say, will you be my black friend?
That's what I was wondering.
Is that they just said, will you be my black friend?
Like, what are the tell friends?
How do you know?
Oh, well, there's some code.
Like, you're so cool.
Like, I just don't know any other people like you.
I can dance like you.
I just, it's like I have a reflect, or what I find what a lot of white people will do these days, and you guys did it totally not meaning.
Yeah, yeah.
They'll self-deprecate.
Okay.
It's like it's a, it's an indication that like, I want you to know that I'm noticing that there's this thing.
And I'm, I mean, I'm, I enjoy wit and sarcasm and all of that.
So for me, I, it's not, you know, alarming or anything.
It is weird.
It's weird how like the self-deprecating or the like there's a there is a there's I'm losing the word just you're assuming a higher place by self-deprecating in a way.
Like maybe.
In a weird condescending.
You're condescending.
Yeah.
Yeah.
But I think the intention is to put the other people at ease or to hey, listen, I'm giving up my white privilege here.
Yeah, exactly.
That's it.
Yeah, which I guess the opposite is, I guess, in a way that is condescending.
Not that that was your intention at all, but I notice it.
I notice it a lot more.
And I find it every bit as offensive when I meet white people who are like, and people feel so bold about it these days too.
I guess because there's some social media value to it, but it's like, I just want you to know that I am acquiescing my privilege.
I have absolutely nothing to say about this topic because I'm just a white person and I can't speak on it.
And I'm just like, that we are not, listen, me and my husband are not going home at the end of those conversations going, wow.
Like, Ethan is so progressive.
Like, he's so, we're going like, oh my God, I don't want to be friends with a person who hates themselves.
They did that on Twitter, right?
That recently, kind of.
They said, I hate myself for being white.
Was Rosanna R.K.
Yeah, yeah.
I wrote her a whole little black bed.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah, I wrote a letter to her.
The letter was: A, the letter was pointing out what you guys just said.
Like, there's some condescension in this.
Also, it's a lie because you could give up all this privilege right now.
Give up your house, empty your bank account, make your next movie all black cast, all black production company.
Like, you could do it, but she's not going to do that.
But the other thing I said was like this is the reason why white privilege has no place in the church is that you are uniquely created.
You are special and you are valuable simply by virtue of being here and breathing because somebody created you and no one else can be you.
No one else can walk the path you walk, love the people you love, be loved by the people who love you.
So it's not just a matter of being condescending or elite or liberal or conservative, but it's also a matter of looking God in the face and spitting at him and saying, What you have given me is not enough because it's not the right thing.
So I think as a church, the Christian church needs to be careful not to embrace this language.
And I fear too many already have.
Yeah, that's an interesting topic because that is a big divide right now in evangelicalism is kind of the people that are embracing like critical race theory and social justice and applying those terms to the church.
Yes.
And it's interesting because it seems compassionate at first, right?
Like we're going to address issues of social justice.
But like you're saying, it's almost, you know, it's elevating race to a level that it was never intended to be within the church.
It becomes an idol all on its own.
It's just a different, it's not a golden idol that we can touch, but it's.
Yeah, I mean, like you said, that we're all individually created by God, individually, uniquely.
And that gets the, that's like the first thing to go in culture right now.
We are identified by the color of our skin or our gender, whatever, whatever turns us on.
All these things that don't actually matter that much at all.
But we, you know, the idea that we're individuals is kind of thrown out the window off the bat.
And that was what was so revolutionary about Christianity, about Jesus, was the idea that you would take all of these people from different backgrounds, ethnicities, cultures, genders.
You know, mixing genders was like unheard of.
You know, everything that he did flew in the face of tradition and what was acceptable.
And we've backtracked from that in the church.
We've just become our own Pharisees in a lot of ways.
And we think we're insulated from that title of being Pharisees because we wrap ourselves in the terms of like racial justice or white privilege.
But like, yeah, like Kyle said, what we're doing is just elevating this above, there's a place for culture.
And I don't want to, you know, say that there's not culture is important.
There's a, as a mixed race woman, I have been embedded fully in white culture and fully in black culture.
And I can tell you that there are significant differences that are simply cultural.
That's, and you have that between, you know, Indian or Asian or anybody who is from a different culture is going to think differently like you have different preferences.
Sometimes our churches aren't integrated not because they're racist, but because black people and white people like to worship differently.
Sure.
You know, the cultural thing.
So there's nothing we should be culturally sensitive, but the idea of elevating race to anything other than just a physical identifier, I think it's dangerous.
Yeah, I mean, if our identity is as a new people of God and we are identified as children of God, you know, and that's our top priority, then race can't take precedence over that.
It can't.
I wonder like, though, I mean, sometimes people go so far as it's like, you know, I don't see color or like, you know what I mean?
That's an overcorrection.
Okay.
Yeah.
I was wondering what your take on that wasn't people.
Like, I'm colorblind.
I don't see.
I think it's only ever said with the best of intentions.
But again, I think that goes back to culture.
Like there was a time when I was a person who was like, you know what?
Let's just be colorblind.
And I think I even like the 80s and 90s were kind of that was what the political correct thing to do was to not think about race too much and see everyone as the same.
And so I used to be that person.
But then once I became an adult and really started, you know, living in community with people that I hadn't necessarily lived with before, I realized, you know, the thing is black Americans speak the language of race.
That's just how it is.
It might not be fair.
You might not like it.
It might not make sense to you.
But for whatever reasons, they're probably historical.
And someone smarter than me can probably trace us all the way back to slavery.
But we speak the language of race.
So when you're having a conversation with black people, that is always a filter that they have on.
So there's nothing wrong with addressing issues that pertain to it.
There's nothing wrong with speaking around those issues with listening to each other about race.
There's nothing wrong with making race a subject.
You just can't make it the subject.
I think that's one of the weird things coming from being white.
Coming out of white.
The idea of somebody bringing up whiteness with me, like bringing it up to me as like, as if I could be a spokesperson on it or that I would have any influence.
Like just, it's so bizarre to think that.
Yeah.
Like I don't want like you're the PR guy.
Yeah.
As if we could ask you like, hey, could you let all the black people know on Twitter, just send out a tweet that we're cool?
We're nice guys.
They would be like, Kira, you're not cool.
So I don't care.
No, I'm not a cool black person.
It's kind of like when they say the LGBT community, like they all hang out together and have like a have meetings.
Right.
Right.
White people don't get that treat.
We don't ever get white communities.
I think about this a lot too.
I'm like, we do talk about what, well, what is white culture?
Because white culture could be Italian.
It could be Scottish.
It could be like, but then black culture is just black culture.
Yeah.
But this brings me to the other thing I say often and all the time, which is that black American culture, I think, is the truest form of American culture.
It's actually the purest form of American culture.
It's purely American.
It's not an immigrant culture.
It's not based in immigration.
That's interesting.
Black people were taken over as slaves.
They were forced to give up their culture.
They were forced to give up their religion.
They were forced to give up their names, their family connection.
So it was a blank slate.
So the black Americans at that time had to fill in their cultural things with their own new traditions.
That became gospel.
That became rap.
That became fashion.
That became, so think about pop culture and how influential black culture is on pop culture.
I think there's an argument to be made that most pop culture is black culture.
Yeah, I mean, a lot of great art comes out of that.
It comes out of oppression, right?
I mean, you're when you create it from that real place.
Have you read Thomas Soule's Black Rednecks and White Liberals?
Yes.
What do you think of that premise?
Thomas Soule's genius.
Man crush.
What do black people think about that?
That's one of the weird things the race issue creates.
If you try to even just say certain facts, like if you talk about a shooting that happened between cops and a black guy, if you try to talk about the facts, you're scared to bring up actual facts, right?
Like you just want to, if it's anything besides it's horrible what they did and they're racist, then you're bad.
And then, even with the facts of his book, it's like it feels racist to even bring it up, like that a lot of black culture originated out of really from the slave, the culture of the slave owners, which makes a lot of sense.
Yeah.
Yeah.
The stuff that they're kind of protecting is sacred black culture, which is, you know, I think he was just, I don't know.
He was making the same argument that I'm making now.
Okay.
Which is that black people have always adapted in this country and we've always had to.
And because of that, that's what makes black culture.
That's why I say it's the purest, not that it's the only form, but it's the purest form because we are a nation of immigrants.
So everyone's brought their culture in, but black Americans didn't get that privilege.
So they had to create their own culture.
And that culture has become so powerful and so influential that it now is seen as pop culture.
Yeah.
And I think that's valuable.
And I think it's something to think about when we're talking about race.
But I do question the, it's like a religion right now and it's it's dangerous.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, that's like even talking right now, which and you've like basically, you know, I know that you're like willing to talk about whatever.
But even now, I feel like I'm stepping through a mind field.
Like I'm scared to like say something wrong.
To me?
Not with you.
But just that we're recording it and who knows what I, did I say something wrong?
I know.
And that's what I, every, every time I talk about race, the question I get asked the most is, how can we have a productive conversation about race?
So since I've been alive, politicians have been like promising we're going to have this national conversation about race.
Bill Clinton did a tour.
He did a national town hall tour.
And then Barack Obama did the same thing.
And I actually am, I'm actually kind of glad Trump is not trying to force a national conversation about race on us.
Like it's a relief.
But the reason why I say we will never, or we are not in a position to have an honest national conversation about race is because we're not, Americans are not in a position to be honest with each other for the reason you just said.
So I'll give you a great example.
And you probably heard me say this on Bridget's podcast, but I used to do community development in the inner city.
And I was at a conference in Chicago and there was a panel on race reconciliation.
I went and there was a white lady, a Chinese lady, Hispanic guy, and a black guy.
And the opening statements were like, give us your opening statements on how you feel about race.
Right up the top, the white lady was, well, you know, since I'm in a place of privilege, I am going to defer to the other people on this panel.
I don't think as a white woman that I have a voice in this conversation.
Okay, well, that's not helpful.
Wow.
And everybody clapped like seals.
You know, like, what are you talking about?
You're a virtue signaling.
It is.
Do you have a seal voice that you can do?
You always, every time I mention an animal, I got a lot of animal noises.
Yeah.
I did action too, but they couldn't see the face.
I know how they worked.
They were good, though.
They were good.
Once we get the video stuff set up.
Oh, man.
You need like a seal sound clip because that's there's so many seal claps.
I could do better.
No, you were good.
And anyway, so she acquiesced.
Hispanic guy said something I didn't even pay attention.
I don't like Hispanic people, so I didn't pay attention.
We're cutting off.
We're going to isolate that audio and pull it out.
I'm kidding.
I can't remember what he said, but it just wasn't that interesting.
And same with the black guy.
What he said wasn't that interesting.
But when it came to the Asian woman, she was Chinese.
Her father was a Chinese immigrant.
And she said, I feel like we are not having the real conversation up here because we're all talking in platitudes, but no one ever talks about like both sides of the conversation.
There's a whole nuance to this that no one ever talks about.
She said, My dad's an immigrant.
He owns a corner store in an inner city in Detroit, and he's been robbed six times.
And the last two times he was beaten within an inch of his life, all six times were black.
It's in a black neighborhood.
So he's all the interactions he had were with black people.
He hates black people.
She's like, Is my dad a racist?
Yes.
I'm super embarrassed by it.
I hate it.
But on the other side of that, he's had to see this horrible representation of the black community.
It's the only interaction he's ever had with black people is violence and rudeness and tension.
And she's like, So, what about that side of it?
What about the side of like how we portray ourselves to each other and what that does for our stereotypes of each other?
And the black guy and the white lady immediately told her to shut her mouth and told her that what she said was offensive and that there's no excuse for who her father is.
And if they're, if this is going to be a panel of excuses, then we're done.
And half the room walked out.
Wow.
And that was 14 years ago.
And that was the moment when I said, we can never have an honest conversation because in order to have an honest conversation about race, everyone's got to come to the table already giving up their right to be offended.
Yeah.
And no one wants to do that.
That's only gotten worse.
Everything starts with a but.
Yeah.
Yeah.
The national, every time someone says we need to have a national conversation, it usually means they just want to tell you.
They just want to lecture you on what to believe.
Or virtue signal.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Virtue signal about it.
I see every conversation about race that I see on TV or online, I'll sit and watch it.
I'll give it a shot because I'm hopeful.
And I have yet to see one that hasn't just devolved into, listen, white people, this is what your problem is.
And if you could be less white and less problematic, then we would be better people.
We would be a better country.
And trying to be less problematic.
It just isn't helpful.
But I just, I don't have confidence for having the real conversation because even it doesn't matter who I'm talking to.
There's always somebody who has a but.
I brought this conversation up with a fellow black co-host on Fox News recently, and she was like, but, you know, she, well, we were on with Charlie Kirk from Turning Point.
And Charlie was trying to say something, and she didn't want Charlie to talk.
The white supremacist?
The white supremacist.
No, I just, you got to cut that because I'm scared of TP, you say, to be honest.
Charlie's wanting to say something, like, whatever he was wanting to say.
It wasn't offensive, but he wanted to say it.
And she didn't want to let him talk.
She was like, you know what?
I'm a black woman.
You're a white man.
You need to acquiesce this time to me because you have a platform to say whatever you want, whatever you want.
And I want to talk now.
So Charlie was rightly offended, but we got through the segment.
And at the break, we all started having an argument.
And I, and someone had just asked two minutes before, how can we have a national conversation about race?
And I said, this is why we can't have a conversation about race because you can't even let Charlie get a full thought out.
And Charlie can't even help but be righteously indignant about you, you know, taking his time.
And no one ever wants to just sit down and say, I want to listen to you.
You start.
I'm going to listen.
And I'm not going to, you know, combat you with my arguments right away.
I'm not going to sit here thinking about what I'm going to say next.
I'm actually going to hear what you're saying.
I'm going to repeat it back to you.
And then I'm going to tell you my response and the lady that I was with, her first response with.
But white people have had that privilege forever.
Yeah.
Okay, fine.
Yes, white people have controlled the dialogue forever.
So like give up the, that's the whole concept of grace, right?
Grace.
That's what grace is.
You, you make the decision not to treat someone the way they deserve to be treated.
Right.
So how has, I mean, you went from living under the Obama administration, which was just all rainbow unicorns and sunshine and to the terror, the reign of terror of the Trump administration, where all people of color are canceled.
Yeah.
So how has that been?
How have you been coping with that?
Gosh, it's just, it's never been better.
I've been really enjoying the Trump presidency.
I'm kidding, of course.
But yeah, it is weird, you know, that kind of we come into this Trump era and people do act like that, kind of like.
It's so media driven because that's not how what I see in my daily life.
Like I, I knew I was not a, I was not on the Trump wagon.
I was like anybody but I can't believe when it was primary season was coming up, I was like, I can't believe we're doing this.
Yeah, I just was really confused, angry.
I really thought it was a betrayal of conservative values.
But what I ended up doing was I, I actually took a few months after he won the primaries and I individually interviewed Trump supporters.
And I said, tell me what I'm not getting.
Tell me what you see that I don't.
And it didn't make me a Trump supporter, but it made me feel a little bit better because I was like, oh, people are thinking about this.
People, this isn't just a reactionary.
People are actually thinking.
But the truth is, is that I knew back then even, like these polls are wrong because every minority I talked to is like, yeah, I kind of like Trump.
Like I was at the gym and I was talking to my trainer once and my trainer's like, we're not going to elect Trump.
We can't.
We're not going to let this happen.
This is a Mexican guy on the treadmill beside me.
And I was like, oh, who are you voting for?
He was like, I'm voting for Trump.
And I'm like, see, I'm like, dude, I'm telling you, you don't know how many people out there.
And that's how I, I know so many black people who love Trump.
Most of them wouldn't say it out loud.
But black people, but also this whole thing of Trump being a racist, I don't even know where it comes from.
They just like slapped the label on him.
And now we all just accept that he's a racist.
But I don't know where it comes from.
Yeah, there's suddenly it's everything.
I mean, I guess even when Bush Jr. was president, I remember how it was just over the top all the time.
That's what, yeah.
And it's just getting worse now.
But like, it's just, yeah, because they just scream racist, racist, racist.
Yeah.
I think Trump just says so many things.
I think it makes them mad that he just says whatever he wants.
Yes.
He just says so many things.
He says whatever's on his head.
Yeah.
Whatever's on his mind.
And yeah.
So he's addressing that.
But that's a control that means he's going to say how it seems racist.
But that's the value of not filtering everything through the language of race.
Like I appreciate this is this is why black people have always loved Trump.
You watch any movie from the 80s and Trump's in it.
It'll be in most black movies of the 80s.
Like black people, we used to love Trump because he's a baller.
Yeah, baller.
And we love a baller.
He's rich.
He's the first black president.
He dumps one old wife for a new wife.
I mean, it's like he does that every few years.
Like this guy was, he was flashy.
There was not one hint.
There's nobody that you would have found prior to his run that would have said, yeah, he's a racist.
But I think that's what people appreciate the most.
If you can encounter somebody who's just genuine and who isn't filtering their conversation for you, even if they do end up saying something offensive, you can just be like, hmm, well, whatever.
Like, that's just how he is.
There's a moment when he was getting interviewed in one, it was close to when he was, I can't remember if he was already elected or if he was primarying or what, but it was that question that everybody always get, like, what is your greatest flaw?
And it's always something done like, I guess I just worked too hard.
Like, it's so exciting.
I just love too much.
Yeah, I just love to meet people.
And Trump's like, something like, I just, I think I get too angry when people, I get so mad.
He basically admitted a huge flaw that he gets very angry when people insult him or something like that.
But it was so honest.
It was completely honest.
And I was like, that moment, I was like, I kind of get it because he says what he actually feels.
And I can see how that makes people mad, but also like how refreshing it is for someone in politics to just say how they feel.
Well, that's the whole Trump phenomenon.
That's what it is.
Every time somebody's like, I like Trump, but I just wish he'd stop tweeting.
No, this is who he is.
That's what the people voted for.
That is what they voted for.
They voted for this bombastic sense of, you know, ego.
They voted for the unfiltered.
They voted for the Twitter account.
They voted for all of it.
They don't want it.
Washington.
It was a vote against eight years of having our first black president, which we all should have been celebrating, telling us that we're actually not good enough as a country, that we actually haven't made enough progress when we've done about everything we could possibly.
We went to war.
We elected a black president.
We have all kinds of programs to benefit black Americans.
I mean, we've done so much.
And then there are so many good people out there who know that they love their neighbors, who know that they go to church with people who aren't like them, who know that they don't judge each other, and yet they were being labeled as those people.
It's hurtful.
And I understand why people were hurt by the Obama administration in that respect and why they felt like they should, that they wanted to lash out.
They wanted to burn it all down and Trump was just the match.
Yeah, I wonder how much of that comes down to like whether or not you approach things from a position of gratitude, you know, versus a position of like bitterness and always wanting to get revenge, you know, for all of us.
I mean, that's something that you can look at your life and say, you know, I had these disadvantages.
Yes.
And I'm going to, I'm going to even, I'm going to settle the score now.
You know, oh, yeah, sorry.
Sorry.
Continue.
Well, just that you're talking about the, I think it was the Charlie Kirk thing.
And, you know, her attitude seemed to be, which I see seems like a lot.
The goal isn't unity and for everybody to get back onto the level playing field.
It's to reverse everything.
Like it almost feels like if white people were slaves and if it was all flipped around, that would actually be fine.
Like, yeah.
I know people actually that extreme, but it feels like they would, there's certain people that it feels like they would kind of get like a little smile, that idea.
Payback.
Like the payback.
The child just said it is the spirit of revenge.
And that's rather than gratitude for what you got.
And that's what most of the racial reconciliation talk these days is, it's the gospel of envy, is really what it is.
Rather than, yeah, rather than being genuine.
I think the greatest, one of the best examples to look at in modern history for how to do it the right way is Rwanda.
So after their genocide, they had a horrific genocide in the 90s that continued into the 2000s a little bit, but they got themselves together.
And one of the things they did when they got out of civil war was they set up these truth and reconciliation committees.
So that meant that if you were responsible for war crimes, but you wanted to reintegrate back into society, you could go before these truth and reconciliation committees.
You testify to your crimes.
Your victims, their families will come forward.
You have a conversation where there is a back and forth about why this happened, how it happened.
You ask your questions of each other, then you forgive, and there's no criminal prosecution.
Now, I'm not suggesting that for the United States, but for Rwanda, they had to do it because the country was in such chaos that they had a leader that understood, who was a Christian at the time, who understood that the only way to move forward was to do it with grace.
And it took an extraordinary amount of human effort to forgive somebody who murdered your family, but they did it.
Now, I'm not saying there's no bitter people in Rwanda.
I'm just saying that what the courage that to do that takes, the average American citizen does not possess.
Yes, I do not believe so.
That's when you're talking about, I keep going back to that, the Charlie Kirk thing, but that's just not the place to have the conversation, right?
Like to have it on this national, like on a news show, you're talking to the audience, you're not talking to the person next to you.
Like even now, we're on a podcast.
We're really all talking to the audience, like in general.
One thing I think I love about podcasts, it's the closest thing you get to like a real conversation.
Me too.
Yeah.
You know, because there's no commercial breaks.
But I think even like that's probably one thing that's led to the Trump presidency where we're like, we're so tired of the false humility and the false, you know, the virtue signaling.
We want those real conversations.
And like, I think the issue is more, you know, there's all sorts of people talking about race on media, but like, how do we on the street in real life, day to day, have these conversations?
And I think that's like, that's where the change has to come.
And I feel like one of the reasons that we have Trump and that we had Trump and Hillary is because we've all kind of taken our hands off of a lot of the issues because we were too afraid to talk about it amongst ourselves.
And so the extremes have kind of been able to be the ones who get the vote.
And that's where we're at.
So I don't know what you guys think of that.
I think it's incredibly racist.
I guess what I'm leading to is like, that's what I want to get at is how to have those conversations in day-to-day real life.
Don't.
Or how to have the conversations.
That's not even it.
Like, just what do we do?
Do we just go on as we're as we're going on?
Or like, I think that's the question.
Yeah, I think so.
I do.
Just live.
Well, Morgan Freeman had a great quote.
Somebody asked him, like, how do we, how, I've given you permission now.
Morgan Freeman, someone asked him, how do we solve this race issue?
And Morgan Freeman said, maybe we should stop talking about it.
Because here's the thing.
You, all three of us, because of what we do, what we've tripped into this weird bizarre world.
We live a large portion of our lives online.
And so we see the things that go online.
We see the Twitters back and forth.
And it can start to feel like that's real life.
But that's not real life.
When you leave this palatial estate to, you know, go back to your regular lives with your boring old families, you're going to stop at the store.
You're going to go to Home Depot.
You're going to pay your bill.
You're going to talk to your neighbor before you go in the house.
You're going to talk to your wife, your kids.
And not one of those people is going to, there's a chance a good majority of those people are not the same race as you.
And not one of those people is going to bring up race.
Not one of those people is going to tell you that they hate you or they won't serve you until you can prove who you voted for.
None of these conversations are actually happening in our real lives.
Most of us are just living our lives, loving our neighbors, serving our communities.
So whenever you feel discouraged, whenever you feel like the conversation is getting out of control and I'm scared, get offline and go into your neighborhood.
We are not having, I live in a neighborhood where it's like mostly white people and then some Asians and then there's me and my husband and our kids.
I can't remember the last time I had a conversation about race.
I have gone, I have never seen a person in a white hood at Denny's when my family and I, like not one KKK person has walked through my never.
I did go to a KKK rally once.
Have you seen a MAGA?
It's the same thing.
No, I like I have a MAGA.
Close enough.
I know.
It's a long way.
I know, I know.
My husband got one at a conference or something.
He was like, I can't wear this.
I'm like, I'll date.
I dare you.
He's like, no.
He's in sales, though.
So no politics, no religion.
Well, I like, I mean, that's, that's kind of a relief.
And it is kind of, it goes with my inclination.
You know, there's like, we just need to live and do our best and be our best.
And this stuff's going to grow.
I mean, you don't just overcome, you know, the history of slavery and stuff just like, you know, overnight or whatever.
And it's amazing how, in the span of history, how recent it really is.
Yeah.
And I, I, I do want to say this because, and I can say it on this podcast, but I do feel, I feel a little bit hamstrung sometimes when I talk about this issue because I can't talk about the real problem, which is the heart.
That doesn't fly on Fox News or like politics.
Like I can't have a deep conversation on a 45 minute show on Fox News about like the sin in your heart.
And racism is just sin.
That's all it is.
You know, but the truth is, is that racism is sin and we're all sinners.
And racism is not a bigger sin than anything else.
It is a sin and it causes people to hurt each other.
And so the only solution to sin is Jesus.
It's a really, so the, I, I can, I can, I have lots of really fancy and articulate things to say about how we talk about race, but the idea of grace is integral to racial healing.
And if you can't grasp, I think people who don't know Jesus have trouble grasping the concept of grace, but it can be done.
It can be done.
But I just think it's hard to address this issue when we've become so irreligious and faith has become so mocked and so unpopular.
And it is really the only way to really heal from any of that.
Yeah, the profound idea that Christianity, you know, it's like built on the idea that we're all sinners.
We're all falling away from God and we all are in need.
And the moment you break away from that, you become the idol.
You become the subject.
You're the savior.
We used to, I heard this great sermon from Tim Keller.
I don't know if you ever listened to Tim Keller, Christ forgiving him.
Have you ever made fun of him?
Yeah.
I'm a big Tim Keller.
I'm a big Tim Keller fan.
No, we make fun of him.
It means we love him.
Yeah, it's out of love.
I love Tim Keller.
So he had this great, he has this great sermon about, what was I just talking about, Ethan?
Hurry up.
Kyle.
Kyle.
Grace.
Grace.
We're all sinners.
We're all sinners.
Yeah.
We're all broken sinners.
So we used to be.
You were preaching, if I remember.
Used to be, there was a time in this country where we were defined by the things outside of us.
We were defined by our faith, by our family, by our flag, by our gods.
You know, we were all in service of something, either to our family or like that's what you were raised to believe.
Like, I'm going to grow up and I'm going to be a dad someday.
I'm going to have a family that I raise because that is your responsibility to your line, to your, you know, legacy.
And now we live in the society where everything has been completely turned inward.
And now we only look at ourselves and it has made, we have made our own selves our gods.
So instead of looking outward to God, we can only look in.
And the problem with looking in is we're rotten on the inside.
There's nothing to look at.
It's navel gazing.
So we're sitting around examining something that doesn't exist, the self, you know, and all of the terms that we use to describe.
Caring these self-care self-love, self-esteem.
You know the word self is in so much of our vocabulary, so that's another thing.
With race, like and grace, you have to get outside the self, and and we're raising generations now of kids who have been told that their self is the most important commodity.
Yeah, so much good stuff here.
Uh agree yeah, i've.
I've often mentioned that I read fairy tales to my kids, my daughter especially right now, and we had talked about because, you know, the big sin that's railed against right now is greed, but the big popular sin that's in and cool is envy.
Right right uh-huh, and that's all I feel like a lot of this breaks down to.
That is fascinated by.
This was the ending of the original Beauty And The Beast.
Oh, when the uh evil stepsisters who want everything Bell has they, they live these lives of horrible envy and so they get turned to stone at the end and they're they're, they're told that if if, they can just uh, stop being so envious, then they'll turn back to normal.
But this uh, I think it's the fairy godmother or something like that says, uh, I fear you may remain statues forever.
You can correct pride anger um, gluttony and laziness, but you need a miracle to transform a heart filled with malice and envy, that those are the hardest sins to beauty and the beast.
Not the Bible, but but those fairy tales.
The thing we we neglect to consider about old fairy tales in the modern era is that they were allegories for biblical principles.
True, which is why there are a lot of them were so, why they last the test of time, because they're wishing, but we've changed them.
I mean you, you've probably read fairy tales and now that at the end, Cinderella would have welcomed those back like it's one thing I hate about Dora The Explorer, yeah Swiper, Swiper never gets justice.
He has never receives justice.
He every day Dora asks him not to swipe Swiper, no swiping, and every day he swipes something.
And then at the end of the episode, Dora and Boots will be like, you can come to our party if you promise never to swipe again and Swiper goes okay, and then they go to the party and then Swiper just swipes.
All like Dora needs to make.
She needs to deliver some street justice, like grim's fairy tales.
Yes, he'd get his eyes picked out by birds and then he'd be stuck in a barrel full of broken glass and nails, driven into it and then thrown down a hill.
See more appropriate.
Yeah, like we've removed all the consequences, like why?
What consequences has Swiper paid?
That's true, no wonder he keeps swiping.
No one, he's never gone to jail, he doesn't have a record.
Yeah yeah, I mean, I think we need the death penalty for Uh, for swipe.
Do we need grace for Swiper?
No, we need the death penalty.
He's Dora's given him grace, He's just spit on it.
At some point, grace must give way to justice.
Justice is a form of grace.
I feel like if anybody deserves a horrible, murderous, bloody death on Dora the Explorer, it's, I'm the map, Murder.
Just thoughts of murder go through my head when he's like.
Though I can hear it in his voice, the guy that does the voice, that map, I can hear him hating himself too.
Yeah.
I hear it.
Well, he probably doesn't hate when he's rolling around and all that money, though.
Eventually, he'll get replaced by like Google Maps or Waze or something.
Then he'll be out of a job.
Surely there's got to be.
I know the new Dora movie is out.
I wonder if there's a Waze map in there.
I wonder what they did with the map in that movie.
I just love that we live in a timeline where there's a live action Dora the Explorer.
Yeah, it's really weird.
It's supposed to be really good.
Imagine like a hobo map just like laying in the street like, I'm the map.
I'm the map.
He's drinking beer at the bowling alley bar.
I was the map.
I was the map.
The bartender's like, yeah, okay.
I was a map once.
And then he sees Dora the Explorer come on the TV and he throws his beer bottle at it.
I was the map once.
For this GPS Hulu.
Or not Hulu, but Waze.
Waze.
Waze!
Oh, man.
Hate mail.
We're going to keep this going, but yeah, we're going to do hate mail.
All right.
And then we're going to keep this going, the subscriber portion.
This is spicy, great stuff.
We're going to talk about Door the Explorer the whole time.
Caillou.
All right.
Let's do our horrible hate mail jingle.
I really miss Adam Ford.
And hate mail time, Kyle.
We got a special hate mail segment.
We've compiled, this is like rapid-fire hate mail.
Okay.
Because a lot of the hate mail we get, you know, we've.
I find that language problematic.
Why is it triggering?
It's triggering.
Whoa, I find the word triggering problematic.
Is it?
It was part of that.
Yeah, it refers to guns.
So most of the hate mail we read are these like paragraph long because we read the long, angry missives that we get from people.
It's hysterical.
But so much slips through the cracks because most of the angry mail we get is actually short, just people saying, go die in a fire.
Yeah, yeah.
Go die in a house fire.
That was our first.
Yeah, that was our first.
That was a great one.
So I compiled a few.
These people are mad that we're deceiving people.
And yeah, so we're going to rapid fire.
I think I got four or five of them here.
Okay.
What in the world are you writing?
This is a bunch of garbage.
What are you putting out more fake news?
Stop lying to the public.
You guys.
Somebody took the time, sat at, they opened their computer.
They pulled up the email and they thought about those words.
And then they committed those words.
Decided that was worth it.
And then they hit send on it.
That's incredible.
They need to go think about their life.
I wish there was a way to peek into that person's life.
See who that is.
Can I read the next one?
Yeah.
Are you high?
Your news is garbage.
And not three, but four exclamation marks.
I think that person's high if he's reading the Babylon Bay for news.
Okay, yeah.
Your journalism style is extremely dishonest, hard to read, and uncredible.
Please stop.
Your journalism style.
Yeah, I like it.
It's not even the content.
It's just the style.
It's just a style.
You should do less not real parody and then do stuff like report on things and then get quotes from people and write those down.
I don't know.
Would that work for you guys?
We need to get like a journalism for dummies book.
We're not journalisming right.
Journalisming so hard.
Kira, do you want to read the next one here?
I don't have a hate.
No, okay.
You guys have that.
Satire is a waste of time.
Please stop.
Hey, we got another.
Please stop.
Please stop.
Maybe this is the same person.
It could be.
Satire is a waste of time.
Please stop.
Try using your time investigating and writing real stories.
I think that this is the same person.
That person wrote the first email and then was like, you know what?
I need more.
Like, you know how when you finish a conversation, you leave and then you think about all the witty, amazing things you should have said.
That's what this person did.
They like hit send and they're like, no, wait.
I hate when I do that.
I send like three emails in a row to somebody I haven't talked about much.
Oh, yeah, by the way.
Oh, yeah, sorry.
I'm sorry.
Well, it's like, you know, later on in the day, you think of that perfect comeback.
Oh, yeah.
Yes.
I do that.
I'm the worst.
And I'll be up all night thinking about, why didn't I say this?
This would have been so funny.
The whole room would have been cracking up.
They would have put me on their shoulders, hoisted me, and celebrated me as the wittiest guest at the party.
Yeah, or it's like those fictional things people do on Twitter where it's like, I said this perfect comeback.
Yes.
Everyone on the train clapped.
That would have been you if you had just thought of it.
I'm going to get my slow clap moment someday, though.
That's got to be real.
All right, here's the last one.
How can you claim to be a Christian and post lies?
How?
Tell us.
Babylon B writers devastated.
This reminds me of.
Did that be written to like any Christian fiction writer?
Yes.
I was going to say, I went to college at a Christian college in Iowa, Northwestern College of Iowa.
And they were Dutch Reform.
Americ, there's American Christian Reform and Dutch Reform.
These are two denominations that are, I can't, maybe closely Lutheran, maybe is very popular in the Midwest and parts of California, actually.
And Northwestern College was American Reform, just typical.
Dort College was our rival college, and they were Dutch Reform.
And then the Dutch Reform Church, they were not allowed to do plays.
So any Dutch Reform church or school, you were not allowed to have a performance troupe of any kind on campus.
You are not allowed to have like plays in church on Sunday.
They didn't do Christmas shows because it's lying, because acting is lying.
Oh, yeah.
So there are Christians out there who really do believe that acting is lying.
Yeah, I've heard of that.
It's crazy.
It's so weird.
Bizarre.
It's the weirdest thing.
It's so strange.
Sad.
Yeah, like I knew of some churches who were like, no, we can't even do like a Christmas reading at Christmas because it's like, it's too close to acting.
It's storytelling.
Huh.
What if they do like a disclaimer like every five minutes?
They're like, this isn't real.
We aren't really these people.
Actors are acting.
Put a sign up.
This is only tangentially related, but I like when parents are way opposed to Harry Potter.
But then it dawns on them that Narnia is all magic and witches.
Yeah, but it's Jesus magic.
Yeah, it's Jesus magic, so it's okay.
I wonder what the line is there.
Okay, so this concludes our podcast.
And for the freeloaders.
For the freeloaders.
And we'd like to tease what we're going to do in the subscriber portion.
Oh, we've got some juicy.
We've got what we call Dr. Phil, DNZ, and drive-bys.
Yeah, you're going to want to hear it all.
Yeah, Kira was on Dr. Phil, and she got kicked out of the DNC.
And I have some experience with drive-bys.
Some drive-bys.
We don't know on which side she has.
You won't know.
You have to tune into the subscriber portion.
So it could go off the rails even from there.
Kira, if people want to learn more about you, they're crazy.
First of all, they're crazy.
What should they do?
If they want to get canceled, where should they find your material?
You can find me on Twitter at RealKira Davis's K-I-R-A.
I am the editor-at-large at Red State.
So if you like opinion and you like the stuff that you're hearing from me, you can see my stuff.
I write several times a week, but I have a Friday column called Unsolicited Advice, where I give advice to people who don't know me and who never asked for it.
And you can find me at Smart Girl Politics podcast if you're into the political thing and you want to know more from the conservative female perspective.
And then I have a new podcast called Just Listen to Yourself, where you can find that anywhere you find podcasts.
And that's where I take certain talking points on hot button issues and I just draw them out to their logical conclusion.
Just ask people to listen to themselves sometimes when they say some things.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Awesome.
Well, check out Kira there.
And if you want to continue listening, go to babylonbee.com slash plans and throw money at your screen.
And then you will be granted, magically granted access to the wonderful world of Narnia, which is our Jesus magic.
Yep.
Step through the wardrobe.
Thanks for having me on, guys.
Thank you.
Yeah, thanks for coming.
Kyle and Ethan would like to thank Seth Dylan for paying the bills, Adam Ford for creating their job, the other writers for tirelessly pitching headlines, the subscribers, and you, the listener.