The Ben Shapiro Show - The Biden Abortion SCANDAL
Aired: 2026-04-14
Duration: 01:04:51


=== Biden DOJ Targets Pro Lifers (12:33) ===

[00:00:00]  Major breaking news from the Daily Wire over the Biden administration cracking down on pro lifers.
[00:00:04]  You won't believe the extent to which the Biden DOJ was targeting people who actually stand up against abortion.
[00:00:10]  And of course, President Trump is now in a war of words with Pope Leo.
[00:00:14]  President Trump, in my opinion, is right on the politics and he's wrong on the rhetoric.
[00:00:18]  Criticizing Pope Leo's politics, that's fully within bounds because, you know, the Pope sometimes talks politics.
[00:00:24]  And criticizing President Trump's approach because he should be more respectful to the Pope, the same.
[00:00:30]  But we are going to talk today about why Pope Leo and the President Ought to find an off ramp here.
[00:00:34]  Spoiler alert, they tend to agree on some pretty fundamental issues, ranging from protection of Christians to, you know, not killing the unborn or transing the kids.
[00:00:42]  And here's the thing if you are one of those people who favors every single one of the seven deadly sins, or you're a person rooting for the triumph of radical Islam, or you're a radical Muslim yourself, and you are attempting to pursue the extermination of Christianity, and somehow you're now hiding behind the Pope's robes in order to go after President Trump, we can all see you.
[00:01:04]  This is the Ben Shapiro Show.
[00:01:13]  So, the Daily Wire has some pretty astonishing reporting here today.
[00:01:16]  Again, just another reason you should become a member over at Daily Wire so we can continue to bring you these kinds of important breaking stories.
[00:01:23]  So, it turns out that the Biden administration was literally partnering with abortion activists to track and imprison pro lifers.
[00:01:30]  I mean, that's how bad the Biden administration was.
[00:01:32]  This is why, when I see the president and Pope Leo going at it, I think to myself, if we're going to talk about presidents who are legitimately attacking Catholics, we should really be talking about Barack Obama, who went after the Little Sisters of the Poor.
[00:01:47]  And decided that he was going to mainstream every sin he could find.
[00:01:52]  And we should talk about Joe Biden, who apparently was using the DOJ to go after pro lifers, which is insane.
[00:01:59]  That's insane.
[00:02:00]  According to Daily Wire reporting, President Biden's administration relied on information gathered from radical pro abortion groups to track, prosecute, and snoop on peaceful pro life protesters who were later arrested by the FBI.
[00:02:13]  Shocking emails released Tuesday by the Trump administration show.
[00:02:16]  So there was a DOJ report.
[00:02:17]  It was titled The Biden Administration's Weaponization of the FACE Act.
[00:02:20]  It examined more than 700,000 records.
[00:02:23]  The FACE Act is a bill that was designed to prevent people from obstructing entry to abortion clinics.
[00:02:28]  Also, the FACE Act at the same time said that you weren't allowed to invade churches during services.
[00:02:33]  You'll remember the FACE Act came up in the context of Don Lemon and his friends invading a church service in order to protest ICE and disturbing the church service and all of the rest.
[00:02:42]  So, the dossiers that were examined by the DOJ contained information of pro life activists who had not yet been charged with any federal crimes.
[00:02:51]  But they were deemed threats by abortion groups because of their activism.
[00:02:54]  And again, we've seen this kind of pattern emerge in all of the reporting from the Biden administration over and over and over.
[00:03:00]  They were using left wing cutout groups in order to do their dirty work.
[00:03:03]  Whether it was the Biden administration, State Department contracting out to other services to promote boycotts of right wing news outlets, or whether it was the Biden administration outsourcing its investigative pursuits to anti life, pro choice organizations to target pro lifers, this is a thing the Biden administration Liked to do.
[00:03:24]  According to the Daily Wire reporting, the weaponization can be traced to Merrick Garland's resurrection of the National Task Force on Violence Against Reproductive Healthcare Providers the month after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June 2022.
[00:03:36]  That task force was operating out of the department's civil rights division under the direction of Sanjay Patel, who was reportedly fired on Monday.
[00:03:44]  Patel was on texting terms with the National Abortion Federation security team and was regularly communicating with the Planned Parenthood Federation of America and the Feminist Majority Foundation, according to the DOJ.
[00:03:55]  So again, it turns out that members of the Biden DOJ were coordinating openly with various abortion groups and leaders in the abortion movement.
[00:04:08]  Apparently, he told one FBI agent that a person named Michelle Davidson, who is the security director for the National Abortion Federation, was a wonderful contact as it relates to face investigations and was an MVP bringing incidents to the attention of the DOJ.
[00:04:24]  One dossier that was given to Patel from an abortion group in 2021.
[00:04:28]  Contained information including addresses, photographs, including spouses and young kids, names of associates and affiliated ministries, information about upcoming travel plans or planned protests, even driver's license numbers of pro life activists before they had actually committed any crime at all.
[00:04:44]  And actually, social media posts were being flagged by these pro choice activists and sent over to the DOJ.
[00:04:50]  Here, for example, is an image of the DOJ asking this person, Michelle Davidson, about an evangelical Christian from Michigan who would go around doing pro life activism.
[00:05:04]  This is the email from Sanjay Patel over at the DOJ to Michelle Davidson over at prochoice.org.
[00:05:09]  Hi, Michelle.
[00:05:10]  Do you have any info on Zastron Code's travel to Montana?
[00:05:15]  One 136 page DOJ dossier documented the attendees of a conference hosted by Operation Save America, a pro life group.
[00:05:24]  And apparently, that dossier suggested the entire Zastro family is engaged in anti choice activities and sometimes refers to themselves as Zastro Holiness Revival Team.
[00:05:35]  And again, all these people who were mentioned, including members of the Zastro family and other people that the Zastro family was associated with, were later prosecuted by the Biden administration.
[00:05:47]  And this is all part of these non governmental organizations working hand in glove with the federal government under Joe Biden.
[00:05:53]  So, again, the short story here is the Biden DOJ was working with non governmental organizations in order to target pro life activists.
[00:06:03]  And as it turns out, Daily Wire reporting looked into the sentences that were sought by the Biden DOJ against pro life activists.
[00:06:12]  And what they found is that the Biden DOJ asked for a longer average sentence for pro life defendants compared to pro abortion defendants.
[00:06:20]  Actual sentences shook out to an average of 14 months for pro-life defendants versus three months for pro-choice defendants.
[00:06:28]  Again, this is astonishing stuff.
[00:06:31]  It demonstrates full scale the animus that the Biden administration had for the pro-life movement.
[00:06:38]  And again, this is nothing new.
[00:06:40]  This is nothing new.
[00:06:41]  I mean, you go all the way back to the Clinton administration and the attempt to target political adversaries using the DOJ is perfectly obvious.
[00:06:47]  This is why all of the heartburn I think proper heartburn in some cases about the Trump DOJ going after political opponents, the glass was already broken.
[00:06:57]  I've said this 1,000 times.
[00:07:00]  I've said 1,000 times that the left likes to say that Donald Trump broke all the rules, that he's the one who killed the American political system.
[00:07:08]  The reality is the American political system was already dead and Trump stumbled upon it.
[00:07:14]  Barack Obama used his IRS to go after pro life groups, to go after conservative groups, Tea Party groups.
[00:07:22]  It was Joe Biden's DOJ going after pro lifers.
[00:07:27]  I mean, there's nothing new here.
[00:07:29]  Democrats have been doing this for a very, very long time.
[00:07:32]  All President Trump is, in essence, is turnabout as fair play.
[00:07:36]  Now, again, that doesn't justify what President Trump has done with the DOJ.
[00:07:39]  I've criticized the president when it comes to DOJ prosecutions that I think are unjustified and going after former officials.
[00:07:48]  With that said, the fact that this will make no front page news, none, that the Biden DOJ was going after again, Pro lifers in unique ways and coordinating with outside groups to do that.
[00:08:00]  Imagine the scandal if, for example, the Trump administration was coordinating with pro life groups to go after abortion advocates.
[00:08:08]  Can you imagine the scandal?
[00:08:11]  Can you imagine the front page coverage?
[00:08:13]  It would be very real.
[00:08:16]  Now, one of the questions here is how people who were involved in this were allowed to stay at the DOJ for so long.
[00:08:21]  I mean, buried in this story is the little factoid that one of the people who was doing all of this, again, this person, Sanjay Patel, was still working for the DOJ all the way up until Monday, which is kind of crazy and does demonstrate the, the truth of President Trump's statement and the statement of many of his, of his associates that there is in fact a deep state.
[00:08:42]  There are people who have been lifelong appointees of various administrations who are still working Inside the administration and working against the priorities of the administration.
[00:08:52]  That's very real.
[00:08:53]  And thank God that we have people like Harmeet Dillon, who's now in charge of the Civil Rights Division over at the DOJ.
[00:08:59]  I'm very, very pleased that Todd Blanch has taken over for Pam Bondi, who I thought was not good at her job.
[00:09:06]  But it just goes to show you that the attempt to cleanse the administration of holdovers, who are very much in the camp of Joe Biden, is an ongoing pursuit.
[00:09:18]  It's an ongoing pursuit.
[00:09:20]  Now, again, the bigger message here is pretty obvious.
[00:09:24]  The Democratic Party is perfectly willing to use the auspices of government to go after religious people.
[00:09:30]  They've been doing it over and over and over again.
[00:09:32]  This is one of the reasons that I said to my family that we ought to leave California.
[00:09:36]  My great fear was and remains that states like California are effectively going to quasi criminalize religious practice by essentially saying that any 501c3 that receives tax exempt status from the state government must buy into the left wing social agenda.
[00:09:54]  And I think that if the Democrats were able to take over the Supreme Court, they would get away with that.
[00:09:58]  They would be able to use anti discrimination law as a guise for cracking down on First Amendment religiously protected activity.
[00:10:05]  That is the direction that Democrats would love to move.
[00:10:07]  And if left to their own devices, they absolutely would be able to do it.
[00:10:13]  If the Democrats had won in 2024, Kamala Harris would have attempted to stack the Supreme Court.
[00:10:19]  If Kamala Harris had won in 2024, state governments everywhere would be pursuing anti religious activity just like this.
[00:10:27]  The Biden administration was, in my opinion, the worst administration in modern American history, worse even than Obama, because Obama didn't say the quiet part out loud.
[00:10:36]  Biden said the quiet part out loud.
[00:10:38]  He just did all this sort of stuff, which is, again, astonishing.
[00:10:41]  Now, there are questions from members of the chat here saying, can government workers be prosecuted?
[00:10:46]  The answer is it depends on what statute they violated, as always.
[00:10:51]  That's always the big question.
[00:10:53]  Will there be full investigations?
[00:10:55]  I assume that the DOJ isn't just going to leave this alone, that if there's violation of law, there will be prosecutions.
[00:11:00]  That follows.
[00:11:02]  But it is a good reminder in a time when the president is currently fighting with the Pope.
[00:11:06]  It is a good reminder that the Republican president has significantly more in common with the Pope on key issues than the Democrats do.
[00:11:14]  And I know that there are a lot of top level members of the Catholic Church who want to play halvesies politically in the United States.
[00:11:21]  But when it comes right down to it, the priorities of the Catholic Church, for example, are much more in line with the priorities of the Republican Party than the Democratic Party, which is why the radicalism of the Democratic Party drove Catholic voters in droves out for President Trump.
[00:11:35]  So, the sort of newfangled attempt by the left to divide Catholics off from the Republican Party, the reason that's not going to work is because the Democratic Party is the abortion party, not the safe, legal, and rare party.
[00:11:47]  The shout your abortion party, right?
[00:11:50]  That is the thing that they are actually attempting to push.
[00:11:53]  The trans the kids party.
[00:11:56]  Again, if Catholics are forced to choose between the trans, the kids, abortions for everybody party, use the DOJ to target pro lifers party, target the little sisters of the poor party, and a Republican party led by Donald Trump who says untoward things on social media, I don't think that that's a hard decision for most Catholics in the United States.
[00:12:19]  Again, this will be of relevance when we talk about the current sort of rhetorical battle between the president and the Pope.
[00:12:24]  In short order, by the way, we'll be joined by the reporter on this story, Mary Margaret Olihan, who is our White House reporter.
[00:12:30]  All right, coming up, the president is in a war of words with the Pope, so that's not going great.

=== Pope Versus President Rhetoric War (14:20) ===

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[00:13:53]  Meanwhile, just going to point out that yesterday, in brief, we discussed the President of the United States putting out an image of him that appeared to be him as Jesus.
[00:14:05]  He later said that he thought it was a picture of him as a Red Cross doctor or something, which, I mean, I don't know how your Red Cross doctor's dress didn't look like that to me.
[00:14:14]  You know, again, the president loves the memery.
[00:14:16]  He did take it down.
[00:14:19]  I said it yesterday on the show, and then within moments, he had actually taken down the picture.
[00:14:23]  Well, yesterday, the president ordered DoorDash to the White House, which was pretty hilarious.
[00:14:28]  And he talked with the DoorDash grandma.
[00:14:30]  But then he, uh, then he spoke about why the image was taken down.
[00:14:34]  Here he was.
[00:14:41]  Well, it wasn't depicted.
[00:14:43]  It was me.
[00:14:44]  I did post it, and I thought it was me as a doctor and had to do with Red Cross as a Red Cross worker there, which we support.
[00:14:52]  And only the fake news could come up with that one.
[00:14:55]  So I just heard about it, and I said, How did they come up with that?
[00:15:01]  It's supposed to be me as a doctor making people better.
[00:15:04]  And I do make people better.
[00:15:06]  I make people a lot better.
[00:15:09]  I guess the Vice President JD Vance, who's been Running defense on all of this.
[00:15:13]  He came out yesterday.
[00:15:13]  He said, listen, the president was joking.
[00:15:15]  People didn't get his humor, so he took it down.
[00:15:17]  Fair enough.
[00:15:19]  What do you make of all of this and whether it's a.
[00:15:22]  What do you think of this back and forth with the church?
[00:15:25]  Well, first of all, Brett, I think the president was posting a joke, and of course, he took it down because he recognized that a lot of people weren't understanding his humor in that case.
[00:15:34]  I think the president of the United States likes to mix it up on social media, and I actually think that's one of the good things about this president, he's not filtered.
[00:15:42]  He doesn't.
[00:15:42]  Send everything through a communications professional.
[00:15:45]  He actually reaches out directly to the people.
[00:15:48]  Now, again, the reason that this story started to gain legs is because there were, in fact, a lot of Christians who were very upset about the story, and they're not wrong to be upset about the post.
[00:15:56]  However, the attempt by the media to now drive a wedge, like a wedge deep between President Trump and his Christian base, good luck on that.
[00:16:03]  Because remember, there is another party that is still out there.
[00:16:06]  It's always funny.
[00:16:07]  In a vacuum, no party looks good.
[00:16:09]  This is true for any party.
[00:16:11]  No party looks great in a vacuum because you can compare them to perfection.
[00:16:14]  But in reality, when it comes time for Christians to vote, In the next election or in the midterms, are they going to vote for the abortion, transgenderism, open borders, pro crime left?
[00:16:27]  Is that the choice?
[00:16:28]  Because the president put up a meme that they didn't like for like a day and then he took it down?
[00:16:34]  Again, that is not a defense of the meme.
[00:16:35]  The president himself took it down.
[00:16:37]  But the reminder here, and again, this is why that Daily Wire report from Leif LeMahieu is really important.
[00:16:44]  The reminder here is when you have Democrats in charge and they have control of the levers of government, do they use them to bolster?
[00:16:50]  Religious practice in the United States or to attack religious practice in the United States?
[00:16:54]  Do they use the elements of government to go after religious principles in the United States or to defend religious principles in the United States?
[00:17:01]  There are so many people, including Christians who I know and like, and people like David French, where David French will write a column for the New York Times defending James Tallarico as some form of glorious Christian while attacking President Trump.
[00:17:14]  It's like, well, you know, James Tallarico wears around the sheep's clothing.
[00:17:21]  Of Christian rhetoric while promoting wild leftism.
[00:17:24]  That seems to me significantly worse than the president who speaks in untoward ways and puts up dumb memes sometimes, but is actually a staunch defender of Christians in the United States and abroad and religious practice in the United States and abroad.
[00:17:40]  This attempt, again, right now what we are watching is a pylon.
[00:17:43]  The Iran war was the occasion for everyone who wanted off the Trump train to jump and for the media to then notice some of those people jumping and to try to turn this into a cascade, a sort of tidal wave of opposition to the president.
[00:17:56]  But the reality is this the president's approval rating has not markedly dropped since the beginning of the war.
[00:18:02]  He was in the low 40s at the beginning of the war.
[00:18:04]  He's in the low 40s now or high 30s now.
[00:18:07]  And this attempt to sort of divide him off from core constituencies, that's not going to work.
[00:18:11]  You may be able to take away the marginal, the people who joined on in 2024 just to oppose Kamala Harris.
[00:18:17]  But the actual Christians who are voting in droves for the president and will vote for his successor, whether that is Marco Rubio or JD Vance or whomever, those people are not going to turn away from the Republican Party.
[00:18:29]  Based on the posting of a meme.
[00:18:34]  And this brings us to the president in a war of words with the Pope.
[00:18:38]  So all of this started because the Pope decided that he was going to comment on a wide variety of topics implicating American politics.
[00:18:47]  Recently, of course, he made a comment with regard to Pete Hegseth, where he said, quote, we tend to consider ourselves powerful when we dominate, victorious when we destroy our equals, great when we are feared, which was taken by a lot of people as a rip on Pete Hegseth, who was praying for American success in the war.
[00:19:04]  And of course, he said about the current American war.
[00:19:07]  This is in the last three days.
[00:19:08]  Pope Leo said, It is here we find a bulwark against that delusion of omnipotence that surrounds us and is becoming increasingly unpredictable and aggressive.
[00:19:16]  Even the holy name of God, the God of life, is being dragged into discourses of death, right?
[00:19:19]  Some fairly strong language there from the Pope.
[00:19:22]  And President Trump struck back by putting up a truth social attacking the Pope.
[00:19:27]  We talked about it yesterday on the program, in which he criticized the Pope's politics.
[00:19:30]  And then he went on and he said the only reason he was selected is because he's an American and the Catholic Church wanted to deal with President Trump and all the rest.
[00:19:36]  And I said yesterday, I think that that's an inappropriate attack on the Pope.
[00:19:41]  However, the reality is that when the Pope strays into politics, then he is going to be hit politically.
[00:19:47]  And that is perfectly legitimate.
[00:19:49]  There are sort of three positions on this.
[00:19:51]  There is the position that says you must never criticize the Pope in any way.
[00:19:53]  That, of course, is incredibly silly.
[00:19:55]  We're going to have on in a little bit Trent Horn, Catholic apologist, to talk about the Pope and politics.
[00:20:03]  But no faithful Catholic that I know believes that the Pope is free from any sort of criticism over his politics.
[00:20:09]  That was certainly not true of Pope Francis.
[00:20:11]  It's not true of Pope Leo either.
[00:20:14]  And believe you me, I know plenty of Catholics considering that the vast majority of our hosts at this point are Catholic.
[00:20:19]  So that's position number one, and it's not true.
[00:20:21]  And then there is position number two, which is also not true, which is that when you criticize the Pope, you should treat the Pope the same way you would treat Chuck Schumer.
[00:20:28]  And that's not true either.
[00:20:30]  Right?
[00:20:31]  That you should attack the Pope in the same way that you would attack a normal politician, which is why I think the rhetorical approach of the president was wrong here.
[00:20:38]  But the truth is somewhere in the middle, which is that the Pope is.
[00:20:43]  Obviously operative in a temporal world.
[00:20:46]  He's operative in a world that is filled with politics.
[00:20:48]  And values and politics are not two separate spheres.
[00:20:51]  So, yesterday, the Vice President of the United States said that the Vatican should stick to matters of morality and the President should stick to public policy.
[00:20:58]  Here is the Vice President, who, of course, is a faithful Catholic.
[00:21:02]  It would be best for the Vatican to stick to matters of morality, to stick to matters of what's going on in the Catholic Church, and let the President of the United States stick to dictating American public policy.
[00:21:16]  Now, of course, there's crossover between morality and public policy, of course, of course.
[00:21:21]  And that's why I think that this other statement by JD Vance is correct, where he says you can respect the Pope but disagree on some of the substantive questions.
[00:21:31]  We're going to have disagreements, Brett, from time to time.
[00:21:34]  I think it's, it's a good thing, actually, that the Pope is advocating for the things that he cares about.
[00:21:39]  But we're always going to have disagreements on matters of public policy.
[00:21:43]  Or I should say, sometimes we're going to have disagreements on matters of public policy.
[00:21:47]  The Pope has been critical of our immigration policy, but ultimately the immigration policy of the United States is set by Donald Trump.
[00:21:53]  The Pope is going to have disagreements on other issues.
[00:21:56]  We can respect the Pope.
[00:21:57]  We certainly have a good relationship with the Vatican, but we're also going to disagree on substantive questions from time to time.
[00:22:04]  Okay.
[00:22:05]  Now again, I think that's the correct take.
[00:22:06]  And I have some substantive disagreements with the Pope when it comes to politics.
[00:22:10]  Again, this is coming from somebody who respects the papacy so much and respects the Catholic Church as a non Christian that I literally traveled to the Vatican and gave the Pope personally a hand signed 2005 White Sox World Series baseball.
[00:22:22]  So this is not coming from a place of disrespect.
[00:22:25]  It is just a reality, however, that in the world of politics, criticism is merited when it is merited.
[00:22:30]  And Pope Leo, thus far, has not commented in any real or serious way on, for example, Hezbollah's attacks.
[00:22:37]  On Israel, or by the way, its destruction of Lebanon, a once Christian state, and its continued targeting of Christians.
[00:22:43]  He has not commented in any serious way on the slaughter of Nigerian Christians.
[00:22:47]  He has not issued any very strong statement on the terrorist regime of Iran and its continued spread of violence and evil across the region.
[00:22:55]  And of course, the Pope just went to Algeria, which is in fact an Islamic state, a quasi dictatorship.
[00:23:02]  And there he met with a president named Abdel Madjid Tabun.
[00:23:06]  Following Algerian independence, you have to understand that this country, again, Used to be governed by France and it had a very large Christian population.
[00:23:15]  And then there was a war by a terrorist group called FLN against the French government in Algeria that ended with Algerian independence in 1962 when Charles de Gaulle gave up the ghost.
[00:23:27]  And when that happened, the population of Christians, just like in Lebanon, dropped precipitously from 12% to less than 1%.
[00:23:34]  Christians in Algeria are only allowed to pray in registered places.
[00:23:39]  And great shock, it turns out that the Algerian government will not register new churches.
[00:23:44]  And since 2019, they have been targeting churches.
[00:23:47]  Since 2019, some 43 Protestant churches have been closed.
[00:23:53]  Here is the Pope walking without shoes in the Great Mosque of Algiers with the rector, a man named Mohammed Mahmoud Al Qasimi.
[00:24:03]  Now, again, you can see him walking here, and it's supposed to be interreligious solidarity and all the rest.
[00:24:09]  And then the Pope gave a speech, and he said that he came, quote, as a witness to the peace and hope the world so ardently desires, and that your people have always sought, which, um, the idea that, uh, the Algerian people have always sought peace, uh, I'm not going to go with accuracy.
[00:24:25]  That is not an accurate statement.
[00:24:27]  At least the Algerian government and the FLN have never sought peace, so far as I'm aware.
[00:24:31]  He also said, quote, Africa knows all too well that people and organizations that dominate others destroy the world, which the Most High has created in order that we might live together.
[00:24:39]  And again, is that a critique of the government?
[00:24:42]  Because if it's not, it should be.
[00:24:44]  The Algerian government has been a dictatorship for a very, very long time.
[00:24:48]  They have sort of fake multi party democracy there.
[00:24:51]  Meanwhile, the president of Algeria used the presence of the Pope to compliment him on his both sidesism in the Middle East, calling him the world's most eloquent voice for peace at a time when conflicts are undermining security and stability in many parts of the globe, especially in the Middle East.
[00:25:08]  Now, again, I will point out the wild discrepancy between the amount of attention that was paid to a mistaken Shutdown at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre that was quickly fixed by every member of the Israeli government in a country that has an increasing Christian population, and the bizarre quiescence with which Islamic crackdowns on Christianity, amounting to basically the complete destruction of a Christian community thousands of years old, has been met.
[00:25:35]  And again, it is strange where Pope Leo chooses to put his focus.
[00:25:41]  He's commented pretty directly on American immigration policy.
[00:25:43]  Of course, the Catholic Church.
[00:25:45]  Actively foments illegal immigration in the United States.
[00:25:47]  That is just a reality.
[00:25:49]  That is not even a critique.
[00:25:50]  That is just a reality.
[00:25:51]  The Catholic Church is heavily involved in the movement of illegal immigrants from the southern border in the United States, providing them resources.
[00:25:59]  Pope Francis and Pope Leo took fairly anti borders positions.
[00:26:03]  The Pope has commented on American immigration policy, saying that the Trump administration was treating illegal immigrants in a way that is, quote, extremely disrespectful.
[00:26:14]  Yeah, again, the president criticizing the pope on any or all of this is fine.
[00:26:20]  Right?
[00:26:21]  Criticism of political statements is fine.
[00:26:25]  That's all fine.
[00:26:26]  Where the president went wrong and where he is open to critique is again the way that he criticized the pope.
[00:26:31]  If he had just said, listen, I disagree with the pope on the political manifestations of his underlying moral values.
[00:26:36]  I may agree with him on the moral values, but I disagree with him on the manifestation of the moral values.
[00:26:41]  Catholics say that.
[00:26:43]  The problem, of course, is that the president went after the pope in rather personal terms.
[00:26:47]  When the president is insulted, that's the way that he reacts.
[00:26:50]  I think it's a bad idea, and I think that some off ramp will soon be found.

=== Moral Values Manifestation Clash (03:11) ===

[00:26:54]  But let's be real.
[00:26:56]  Again, popes make political statements, they're entitled to it.
[00:26:59]  Sometimes I think that's wonderful.
[00:27:01]  Pope John Paul II's political statements helped bring down the Soviet Union.
[00:27:04]  I think Pope Benedict's statements with regard to secularism were some of the best written and best thought statements ever made on the subject of secularism and left wing social politics.
[00:27:15]  But popes speak politically all the time.
[00:27:18]  And so is critiquing a Pope's statement.
[00:27:21]  But here is the part where I start to lose it.
[00:27:24]  Here's the part where I start.
[00:27:25]  And again, the Pope is very political, okay?
[00:27:26]  He did a meeting with Barack Obama's henchman, David Axelrod, last week.
[00:27:30]  But here's where I start to lose it.
[00:27:32]  And here's where I'm not going to take seriously some of these critiques of President Trump.
[00:27:36]  If you are a person, if you are a person who favors abortion, transgenderism, same sex marriage, who believes that the Catholic Church is a unique font of evil and repression in the world, Who uniquely singles out the Catholic Church over, say, the child sex abuse scandal while ignoring the fact that those scandals exist in legitimately every institution of which I am aware, including the American public school system.
[00:28:01]  If you are a person who celebrates, not just acknowledges or disagrees with the Catholic Church on the seven deadly sins, celebrates them, shout your abortion.
[00:28:10]  Pride week.
[00:28:11]  If you're a person who does that and suddenly you're shouting, hands off the Pope, I don't believe you.
[00:28:16]  If you're a person who stands for the idea of Islamic domination, Of the globe.
[00:28:22]  And suddenly you're shouting about how much you love the Pope.
[00:28:24]  I also don't believe you.
[00:28:27]  If you're James Tallarico, the Senate Democratic candidate in Texas, and you legitimately go around trying to claim that the Bible supports the transing of the kids, I don't believe you when you put out a picture of Pope Leo with the quote from the Gospels Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.
[00:28:47]  I don't believe you.
[00:28:48]  I don't believe in your sincerity when you do that.
[00:28:52]  I certainly don't believe it when it's Mohammed Khalibaf, who is the speaker of the Iranian parliament.
[00:28:58]  And if you believe that the Iranian parliament, which chants death to America and death to Israel, and has basically wiped out the open practice of Christianity in the country, if you believe that the Iranian government is suddenly in solidarity with Pope Leo for anything but tactical purposes, you're out of your mind.
[00:29:15]  Christians right now make up somewhere between 0.1% and 1.4% of Iran's populations.
[00:29:23]  has executed over the course of 2023 alone almost 750 people for, quote, corruption on earth.
[00:29:30]  That would be apostasy or heresy.
[00:29:32]  And just like a lot of other Islamic law countries, Iran regulates Christian worship.
[00:29:36]  If you worship in your home, that is an illegal network.
[00:29:39]  They've called it a Zionist propaganda institution.
[00:29:42]  And that is according to the U.S. State Department report in 2023.
[00:29:47]  Christian converts from Islam in Iran are often detained or forced to sign commitments to refrain from Christian activities.
[00:29:54]  By law, if you're not a Muslim, you're not allowed to engage in public persuasion.
[00:29:59]  Proselytization is punishable with two to five years in prison, maybe 10 years if there's any foreign financial or organizational support.

=== Prudential Judgments and Conflict (11:42) ===

[00:30:05]  And you cannot hold any elected post, any senior government intelligence or military position, with the exception of five reserved in the 290 parliament seats.
[00:30:16]  You can't serve in the judiciary, security services.
[00:30:18]  You can't be a public school principal if you're a Christian in Iran.
[00:30:22]  So when I hear from Mohammed Khalibaf, Who tweeted it out in support of the Pope, quote, honoring Pope Leo's fearless stand.
[00:30:29]  I have no fear, echoes as he condemns the war crimes of Israel and the United States.
[00:30:34]  The Pope's leadership inspires millions.
[00:30:36]  Thank you for this light.
[00:30:37]  I think you're totally full of crap.
[00:30:38]  That's what I kind of think.
[00:30:40]  That's what I kind of think.
[00:30:41]  And that I'm not willing to brook.
[00:30:43]  Coming up, we'll have Catholic apologist Trent Horn on to explain to me what's going on with the Pope and the president.
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[00:32:18]  Already joining us on the line is Trent Horn.
[00:32:21]  He is a staff apologist for Catholic Answers and he serves as the host of the Council of Trent.
[00:32:25]  He's authored a bunch of books, co authored over a dozen.
[00:32:29]  And of course, he has master's degrees in a wide variety of fields theology, philosophy, bioethics.
[00:32:33]  Trent, thanks so much for taking the time.
[00:32:35]  Really appreciate it.
[00:32:36]  Thanks for having me on again, Ben.
[00:32:39]  So let's discuss, you know, from a Catholic perspective, where is it fine for people to criticize the Pope and where is it not fine for people to criticize the Pope?
[00:32:47]  Obviously, he's in a bit of a war of words with President Trump right now.
[00:32:50]  Popes frequently sound off on matters political because the crossover between the spiritual and temporal is not, you know, a bright line.
[00:32:57]  And if you're speaking on matters of morality, that will have consequences for politics.
[00:33:01]  Where is it fair to say, I just disagree with the Pope?
[00:33:03]  I think that he's wrong on a subject.
[00:33:06]  Yeah, I think it's important for people to remember that the Pope, that papal infallibility, Is a doctrine that only applies to an extremely limited number of things that the Pope says and hasn't been invoked by recent popes, except in things like the canonization of saints.
[00:33:22]  Otherwise, Catholics are to give the religious submission of mind and will to when the Pope teaches doctrine, says this is a teaching of the faith that the faithful are to hold.
[00:33:33]  But in many other cases, what we have are prudential judgments.
[00:33:36]  And prudential judgments relate to the virtue of prudence.
[00:33:39]  How do we use reason to get to the good?
[00:33:41]  Many times we can try to aim at the good.
[00:33:44]  But as you know, Ben, when liberals try to aim for the good, we often have the law of unintended consequences.
[00:33:49]  Well, we want to get rid of poverty, so let's raise the minimum wage to $50 an hour.
[00:33:54]  Well, you're trying to do good, but it's very imprudent.
[00:33:57]  You're not getting to the good, you're not using reason to get there.
[00:34:01]  So the Pope and the bishops can offer prudential judgments to say, here's what we can do to get to peace and flourishing for human beings.
[00:34:09]  And other people in different fields and social sciences can offer respectful disagreement of that.
[00:34:15]  All people, but Catholics especially, should give the Pope, who is our spiritual father, respectful consideration of these prudential judgments that are given.
[00:34:24]  But to simply flippantly toss them off as if the Pope is just some guy in Rome, that would be out of bounds, especially for Catholics who owe deference to the Holy Father.
[00:34:36]  So, so, Trent, this is the, the part that I think it needs to be explicated for, for folks who, who are not Catholic.
[00:34:42]  And, and, yeah, I've said that I think that the president criticizing the pope's positions or the pope criticizing the president's positions, all of that is sort of normal course of business that's been going on for several, at least a couple of thousand years at this point, actually.
[00:34:53]  Uh, sort of the conflict between temporal leaders and, and the papacy that, that over, over matters political.
[00:34:59]  Obviously, the president's tone when he goes after the pope should not be the same as when he goes after Chuck Schumer.
[00:35:04]  That is a, that is a mistake, uh, I think on, on a both moral and, and a political level.
[00:35:09]  At the same time, I will say that I'm a little more insulted, actually, even than the president using rhetoric that I would not approve of, by the people who oppose the Catholic Church at literally every turn, but suddenly are hiding behind the robes of the papacy in order to criticize President Trump.
[00:35:25]  If you're a person who is standing on behalf of Islamist dictatorships, for example, if you are a member of the Speaker of the Parliament in Iran, and you have attempted to exterminate the practice of Christianity in Iran, and now you're hiding behind the Pope to criticize President Trump, or if you are A member of the American body politic, and you're in favor of transing the kids and abortion on demand and all the rest, and suddenly you have a newfound respect for the Pope.
[00:35:49]  I find that a little bit hard to swallow.
[00:35:51]  No, I agree with that.
[00:35:52]  And this has been a constant problem with secular liberals for decades, and not just with the Pope, right?
[00:35:59]  When it comes to Jesus, you'll have liberals who will gladly quote Jesus when he said, Judge not, lest you be judged, or they'll just quote the judge not part, but they won't quote Jesus when he talks about, for example, that.
[00:36:11]  A man who divorces his wife and remarries another commits adultery against her, or Jesus' teachings about how if you lust after someone, you're committing adultery in your heart.
[00:36:21]  You'll have LGBT activists who will quote Jesus talking about love your neighbor and judge not, but not on his clear teachings related to sexuality.
[00:36:29]  And the same thing happened with Pope Francis.
[00:36:31]  You'd have liberals quoting him on immigration or LGBT ideology, but then ignoring the Pope when Francis would say that abortion is akin to hiring a hitman.
[00:36:42]  Which is something, even many conservative pro life activists and politicians rhetoric that they won't even step into if Pope Francis is willing to.
[00:36:49]  So I agree with you, Ben, that it's bad when people try to just use the Pope for their own purposes.
[00:36:55]  But that's something for both the left and the right.
[00:36:57]  I hate it when the left likes the Pope when he speaks about social justice issues and ignores him on sanctity of marriage and human life in the womb.
[00:37:06]  But also, people on the right oftentimes will appeal to the Pope on those issues, but not even give respectful consideration to what he has to say about.
[00:37:15]  War, for example, or poverty, even just giving respectful consideration to that, knowing that this is the rhetoric that he has said about the desire to end war and peacefully resolve issues.
[00:37:25]  This is something that we have seen going all the way back to Pope John XXIII, Pope Benedict XV, even popes in the ninth and tenth centuries, even during the Crusades, talking about war being a failure for humanity, war always being a defeat.
[00:37:38]  I think the biggest problem here, Ben, is that when President Trump talks about war and the Pope is asked by reporters, what do you think about this?
[00:37:46]  At the very least, if you're going to engage in these conflicts, you ought to do so with a sober tone when discussing it, not posting on social media about entire civilizations dying and gleefully talking about warfare.
[00:38:00]  It must always be done with a sober mind that human lives are involved in the process.
[00:38:07]  So, I do want to ask a question from sort of the outside, obviously, about the way that the papacy is covered.
[00:38:13]  So, usually you only see the headlines when the Pope says something that the left wing legacy media really likes.
[00:38:19]  And it's always hysterically funny to me when from time to time they will be shocked that the Pope says, for example, that same sex marriage is still not approved by the Catholic Church.
[00:38:29]  They'll act as though this is some sort of great shock that the Church is mirroring the position that it has taken for a couple of thousand years at this point.
[00:38:36]  How much of sort of the popular conception on the right about various popes, from Francis to the current Pope Leo, Is a reflection of the fact that we really only read headlines about what the Pope says from left wing media outlets.
[00:38:50]  We'll read the Pope's critique of the war, but we may not ever see that headline about abortion because left wing media doesn't really wish to cover that in serious detail.
[00:38:59]  And also, how often does the Pope speak in detail about things like the Iran war?
[00:39:03]  Because it does feel to a certain extent like people are reading tea leaves or vague statements and then interpreting it sort of as they wish.
[00:39:09]  The Pope will say that war is an evil, and people will immediately interpret that as that's a rip on President Trump.
[00:39:15]  As opposed to, say, a rip on Iran.
[00:39:17]  And so, how clear should the Pope be?
[00:39:21]  Should the Pope be issuing more sort of long form explanations of his positions on issues like the war in Iran?
[00:39:29]  I think that there have been previous magisterial documents.
[00:39:32]  Pope St. John Paul II authored one.
[00:39:34]  I believe it was in Santissimus Anmus or previous doc.
[00:39:38]  No, earlier, I think it was Pope Pius XI, who talked about how the moral sphere and prudential judgments, while they overlap, they're not always going to be identical.
[00:39:49]  So, I think it is important for the Pope to not try to think, oh, well, he's just going to be an expert on everything.
[00:39:56]  For example, I certainly agree with Pope Francis that we ought to protect the environment, for example, and not cause unjustifiable harm to the environment that ultimately doesn't contribute to human flourishing.
[00:40:09]  That said, in his previous encyclicals like Laudato Si, sometimes I had difficulty making heads or tails of what were his actual concrete proposals for what we should do to help the poor, to protect the environment.
[00:40:21]  And similar things about dealing with geopolitical questions, national stability, trade, dealing with armed conflict and how to resolve it.
[00:40:31]  I think Pope Leo really understands that the papacy is going to be limited in many of these practical questions about how to answer these things.
[00:40:41]  But at the bare minimum, the Pope is able to offer just sound advice of saying, for example, no matter what you believe about the conflict, whether you believe who is just or who is unjust, we can all pray for a conflict to end as quickly as possible.
[00:40:55]  Now, how to get it to end, that's going to be a prudential judgment.
[00:40:58]  Different questions are offered.
[00:40:59]  And I think it's wise for the Pope to step back and not offer, here's my 16 point proposal to bring the conflict to an end.
[00:41:05]  Instead, he's encouraging the faithful to pray and to ask their leaders, and hopefully people on both sides of a conflict, ask their leaders to bring it to an end as soon as possible.
[00:41:15]  But you're right, Ben, that many of these comments that Pope Leo has made in regard to Iran and the war are usually prompted by reporters that catch him as he's walking in and out of the Vatican.
[00:41:26]  And then I see them, and then he comes and he addresses them.
[00:41:30]  And what I appreciate about Pope Leo, in contrast to his predecessor, is that he's much less likely to speak off the cuff, and he understands the importance in being exact in the words that he says on these important matters.

=== Anti Americanism and Radicalism (15:00) ===

[00:41:48]  Well, that's Trent Horn.
[00:41:49]  You can go check out his work over at the Council of Trent podcast.
[00:41:53]  And of course, check out his books as well.
[00:41:54]  Trent, really appreciate the time and the insight.
[00:41:57]  Thank you, Ben.
[00:42:00]  Now, meanwhile, speaking of people on the right or purportedly on the right who are really sort of taking advantage of hiding behind the right in order to promote their trash, we got to talk about the fact that there are these influencers who are talking largely to young men, but they are clearly also mirroring perspectives that are anti American.
[00:42:19]  Really mirroring perspectives that are anti and being used by foreign figures in order to promote radical anti Americanism.
[00:42:27]  One of these people is a guy named Sneeko.
[00:42:29]  So, Sneeko is a 27 year old streamer.
[00:42:31]  He says that Hitler has aura and that women should be barred from voting and that Yahya Sinwar, the leader of Hamas, was a hero and that the Jews run society.
[00:42:39]  His actual real name is Nicholas Ken Tabalanthazi.
[00:42:42]  Apparently, he converted to Islam shortly ago.
[00:42:44]  Here he was on the streets of New York just a couple of nights ago chanting in favor of genociding the Jews.
[00:42:55]  So, why am I bringing this up?
[00:43:04]  Because there are a lot of young people who watch this person and treat this person with seriousness.
[00:43:08]  And he recently did a podcast with two figures who are foreign figures who are openly advocating for the demise of American power internationally.
[00:43:17]  That'd be Alexander Dugan, who is a propagandist on behalf of Vladimir Putin, and a professor.
[00:43:25]  Named Zhang Zhiquin.
[00:43:27]  You'll remember him from the Tucker Carlson show where he claimed that the United States should basically give up power to China.
[00:43:33]  And also, he claims, of course, that the Illuminati run the world and all the rest of this sort of junk.
[00:43:38]  Well, Alexander Dugan and this Chinese professor, Zhang, they've been making this case again throughout sort of right wing manosphere podcasts to stand.
[00:43:50]  And it does demonstrate the extent to which foreign influences really have grabbed a foothold.
[00:43:54]  It's amazing.
[00:43:54]  Many of the people claiming foreign influence on President Trump.
[00:43:57]  Are themselves acting as agents of foreign influence for propagandists of actual foreign regimes.
[00:44:03]  It's pretty incredible, actually.
[00:44:05]  Here, for example, was Alexander Dugan with the aforementioned Sneeko talking about how America is rotten.
[00:44:12]  Why is America rotten?
[00:44:13]  By the way, America is rotten because of, wait for it, it's Protestantism.
[00:44:20]  It is a kind of eschatological heresy.
[00:44:23]  And that is the problem, the metaphysical problem of American people.
[00:44:28]  So when you try to get to the roots, your roots are rotten from the very beginning.
[00:44:37]  Okay, so again, he says that it is Calvinism that's rotten from the very beginning, Protestantism.
[00:44:42]  You can see the op happening in real time.
[00:44:45]  The attack on Protestantism is an attack on, by the way, the fundamental nature of the United States.
[00:44:50]  When people say that America is a Christian country, That's true, but America also happens to be rooted in a particular form of Christianity, a particular form of Protestant Christianity, which is what Dugan is attacking here.
[00:45:02]  And then Dugan, of course, lumps together atheism and progressivism with the Enlightenment, which would be to say, you know, America's founding.
[00:45:13]  The main thing we share, all the traditionalists, we share this refusal of Western modernity.
[00:45:20]  So we can accept different traditions, but we consider the modernity to be.
[00:45:26]  Absolutely wrong.
[00:45:28]  Atheism, pluralism, progressism, enlightenment, all that things are totally, totally evil.
[00:45:37]  The enlightenment, you see, is totally wrong.
[00:45:39]  The enlightenment.
[00:45:39]  Okay, so I'm just going to point out that the enlightenment is what has led to the vast enrichment of humanity since about the year 1800.
[00:45:46]  And you can look at it on the charts exponential, explosive economic growth since that period.
[00:45:51]  Again, that is not an anti religious point.
[00:45:53]  You can absolutely be, as I am, an observant religious person and also believe in the fundamental principles of enlightenment.
[00:46:00]  Like the power of human reason.
[00:46:02]  And of course, Dugan then goes on and he claims that President Trump and, wait for it, the Christian Zionists are the Antichrist.
[00:46:07]  Again, you're hearing much of this sort of rhetoric mirrored on Tucker Carlson's show recently.
[00:46:13]  This collusion between Christian Zionism of Trump with its aggressivity, with this hegemony, with this imperialism, with this radical anti Christian elements you have mentioned,
[00:46:25]  and collusion with this radical aggressive Jewish Israeli Zionism, that's Uh, is seen by our society as the confirmation of the fears and predictions of our elders, uh, Christian orthodox elders, because it becomes more and more, it looks like anti-Christ.
[00:46:55]  So, what is Dugan doing here?
[00:46:57]  What is Sneeko doing here?
[00:46:58]  What is this professor from China doing here?
[00:47:01]  They're they're seeing chaos, and you have chaos agents in the United States who are mirroring this because they're trying to blackpill the United States.
[00:47:07]  I talked yesterday. about the difference between the American exceptionalist and the grievance party of, of both sides.
[00:47:12]  And it's very, very real.
[00:47:14]  It's very, very real.
[00:47:15]  Alexander Dugan and this weird streamer, Sneeko, and Professor Zhang are all saying the same thing as Hassan Piker.
[00:47:24]  They're all saying the same thing.
[00:47:25]  It is Alexander Dugan who wrote in 1997, it's quote, of the utmost importance to launch a geopolitical chaos in the domestic life of the United States, to encourage all kinds of separatism and ethnic, social, and racial conflicts by supporting all kinds of dissident movements.
[00:47:40]  Extremist groups, racist and sectarian ones, will destabilize the domestic political process of the United States.
[00:47:46]  At the same time, we will support the isolationist tendencies in American politics, even if this isolationism is being implemented through the frame of the original Monroe Doctrine.
[00:47:55]  So, again, that's legitimately what they are trying to do.
[00:47:59]  And then, of course, he argues All the content of modernity is Satanism and degeneration.
[00:48:06]  Okay, so this is the mission.
[00:48:08]  This is the shtick.
[00:48:11]  Here's Professor Zhang Zhequin, who is the Chinese half of this toxic alliance, claiming that the alternative to American hegemony is Eurasian unity.
[00:48:23]  Eurasia, by the way, is a term that Dugan loves.
[00:48:26]  Eurasia is the idea that essentially Europe should be dominated by Russia and China should be dominated.
[00:48:31]  China should dominate Asia and the two of them will hold hands into the future together.
[00:48:35]  Here is Zhang, a Chinese propagandist.
[00:48:38]  An alternative to American hegemony is maybe Eurasian unity, right?
[00:48:45]  Especially between Russia, China, and Iran.
[00:48:49]  So, if these three nations are able to create a trade bloc with BRICS as a framework, then this could easily extend to Europe, to Africa, to the rest of Southeast Asia.
[00:49:02]  And in this formulation, there would be no one great power.
[00:49:08]  China talks about the gold corridor, which is this blockchain like gold based financial system where gold is stored in different vaults across Eurasia.
[00:49:23]  And this becomes the basis of a new financial system.
[00:49:26]  And this is all plausible.
[00:49:30]  And I think this could be very good.
[00:49:32]  The problem is that this would basically bankrupt America.
[00:49:39]  So, again, the goal here is obvious.
[00:49:42]  China, Russia, with their friends in America, like the Sneakers, and yes, like the Tucker Carlson's, who, by the way, is named by Dugan as an ally.
[00:49:50]  They're linking hands across the aisle with people like Hassan Piker.
[00:49:54]  The left, by the way, has decided that Hassan Piker is the new hero.
[00:49:58]  Ezra Klein, who, again, I'm so disappointed in Ezra as a person, just as a normal, rational human being, for his defense of Hassan Piker.
[00:50:06]  It's crazy.
[00:50:07]  Hassan Piker defends legitimate terrorist groups, like full scale genocidal terrorist groups.
[00:50:11]  But Ezra Klein found a way to defend him in the New York Times.
[00:50:15]  Quote, pick over Piker's years of streaming, and you can find offensive things he said.
[00:50:19]  Among them, that America deserved 9 11, that his favorite flag is Hezbollah's, that a liberal Zionist is akin to a liberal Nazi.
[00:50:27]  But to focus only on those comments is to miss so much more that Piker has said and believes.
[00:50:32]  Wow.
[00:50:33]  Well, I mean, if you are in favor of 9 11, and your favorite flag is that of a terrorist group, and you defend Hamas, I mean, we have to give you a full hearing here.
[00:50:45]  I mean, very important to give you a full hearing.
[00:50:48]  According to, again, according to Ezra Klein, quote, Giz also said that anti-Semitism is gross, immoral, and a hate crime.
[00:50:56]  Well, as long as you say the nostrum, as long as you spout the formula that you hate anti-Semitism, it's just those nefarious Jews who are running the world, and also America deserved 9-11, and also Hamas was justified, then it's probably totally fine.
[00:51:08]  Then it's probably totally cool.
[00:51:09]  I have disagreements, says Ezra Klein, with Piker, but he isn't a Jew hater.
[00:51:12]  He's an anti-Zionist.
[00:51:14]  Um, no, if you are justifying Hamas, then I'm pretty sure you hate Jews.
[00:51:19]  Since Hamas's goal is to wipe them from the face of the earth.
[00:51:22]  And here is Hassan Piker on Pod Save America saying that Hamas is 1,000 times better than Israel.
[00:51:29]  When you say Hamas is 1,000 times better, do you actually mean that?
[00:51:33]  Or is that a rhetorical move or like a solidarity signal?
[00:51:37]  Like what?
[00:51:38]  I mean, it's all of the above.
[00:51:39]  I do mean it.
[00:51:40]  I think it's a rhetorical move because it frustrates a lot of people.
[00:51:43]  I've also said I'm a harm reduction voter, I'm a lesser evil voter, and therefore I would vote for Hamas over Israel every single time.
[00:51:52]  That is insane.
[00:51:53]  And yes, of course, anti Semitic if you're defending Hamas over Israel, the terrorist group that tried to murder every Jew it can find.
[00:52:02]  Yeah.
[00:52:02]  By the way, Hassan Piker is also the guy who says he'll never make fun of Mao.
[00:52:05]  He's one of the great leaders of the world.
[00:52:07]  And the grievance party is in full solidarity here.
[00:52:13]  I got stopped by a cop who thought I was like making fun of Mao Zedong, which I never would and never will.
[00:52:20]  Mao Zedong is one of the great leaders of.
[00:52:25]  Of this world, okay?
[00:52:27]  A man who changed the entire universe, the entire planet.
[00:52:35]  He murdered at least 40 million of his own citizens.
[00:52:37]  No, Zidong.
[00:52:38]  And Piker loves him.
[00:52:40]  But he has to be a mainstream part of the Democratic Party.
[00:52:42]  By the way, again, this grievance party, this left right grievance party is quite real.
[00:52:47]  Tucker Carlson's morning note today quote, the people in charge don't want you to know this, but Muslims love Jesus.
[00:52:53]  Hmm.
[00:52:54]  Well, I'm going to need an explainer on then why Muslims killed a bleep load of Christians over the course of Islamic history.
[00:53:03]  Why they tried to wipe Christians out of the Middle East, invaded Europe, I'm going to need an explainer on that one.
[00:53:12]  This again is one of these dumbass lines that is trotted out by people who are attempting to draw solidarity with a religion that overtly wipes Christians out of its civilization.
[00:53:23]  It's insane.
[00:53:24]  If you buy this, then you are just being propagandized.
[00:53:28]  Now, again, his idea is that because the Quran, trying to co opt Christianity, says some nice things about Jesus while also rejecting Jesus' divinity, the core claims of Christianity are rejected by Islam.
[00:53:41]  It just has a doctrinal matter, which is not a shock.
[00:53:43]  Muslims are not Christian.
[00:53:45]  Jews are not Christian.
[00:53:47]  Jews are not Muslim.
[00:53:48]  Turns out people have lots of different religions.
[00:53:49]  The question is what do Muslim states try to do?
[00:53:52]  And the answer is if you have a global vision that everyone will be Muslim and that there is Dar al Islam, meaning the preserve of Islam, and Dar al Harb, meaning the preserve of war, I'm pretty sure that it's hard to claim that that is pro Christian.
[00:54:06]  But the point that Tucker makes in his morning note that's why Donald Trump's painting and depicting himself as the son of God offended the president of Iran.
[00:54:15]  It was an attack on his religion as well as Christianity.
[00:54:18]  You see, the president of Iran is more of a defender of Christianity than Donald J. Trump, according to Tucker Carlson.
[00:54:24]  And the chaos operation is absolutely in full swing.
[00:54:27]  The grievance party is in absolutely full swing.
[00:54:31]  Amazing stuff there from Tucker Carlson in solidarity with Hassan Piker, in solidarity with Alexander Dugan, in solidarity with Professor Zhang.
[00:54:40]  Incredible stuff.
[00:54:42]  Now, here is the thing why is some of this finding fertile ground?
[00:54:45]  The reason it's finding fertile ground is because it is all a conspiracy theory.
[00:54:48]  About the nature of the United States and the nature of the West.
[00:54:50]  The West is bad.
[00:54:51]  The West has driven you into your current bad situation.
[00:54:54]  That's people who are enjoying the black pilling, really enjoying the black pilling.
[00:54:58]  It's all part of a broader phenomenon.
[00:54:59]  Again, this is the grievance party's contention.
[00:55:02]  The grievance party's contention is that a strong America in the world is bad.
[00:55:06]  America itself is corrupt and evil.
[00:55:08]  America has sold out its heritage for a pittance of goods.
[00:55:13]  That America can only regain its heritage by basically destroying itself and therefore joining forces with people who despise America, openly despise America.
[00:55:22]  That is somehow a solve.
[00:55:24]  And a lot of this is gaining credence because, again, there are a lot of young men out there who are absolutely just ripe for the picking.
[00:55:33]  Young men who have been told by everyone in social media that the way to success is to buck, quote unquote, the matrix, that the system is out to get you, and that the only way to fight back is to essentially follow the losers by giving them money.
[00:55:46]  It's really ugly and it's really terrible, and it makes people's lives actively worse.
[00:55:51]  Joining us on the line to discuss is Nick Fritas.
[00:55:53]  He's a former Virginia General Assembly member.
[00:55:55]  Serving in the House of Delegates.
[00:55:56]  He is a Green Beret combat veteran.
[00:55:58]  He served two tours in Iraq and he has a brand new book titled The Man Book, a point by point guide to sucking it up and getting the job done.
[00:56:04]  It is out today.
[00:56:05]  Nick, thanks so much for taking the time.
[00:56:06]  Really appreciate it.
[00:56:07]  Hey, it's an honor to be on.
[00:56:09]  Thank you.
[00:56:11]  So let's talk about what's happening to young men in America.
[00:56:14]  It does seem like a great demoralization has taken place.
[00:56:16]  Like there's an active demoralization op that's being promoted by the so called manosphere.
[00:56:22]  It's hard for me to think of something that has been more anti man in many ways than the manosphere, which basically says to young men, don't be a man, sit there, complain about your life, blame conspiratorial systems.
[00:56:31]  What do you make of where we are?
[00:56:33]  Well, I think there's two things that are simultaneously competing for young men's attention.
[00:56:38]  One was obviously the left's narrative of feminism, girl boss, the future is female, men suck, right?
[00:56:43]  Masculinity is toxic.
[00:56:45]  And you have no future.
[00:56:46]  Obviously, that's incredibly demoralizing.

=== Demoralization of Young Men (06:47) ===

[00:56:48]  One of the responses to that was other men coming in going, No, you should be strong, you should be capable, but you should do it for purely hedonistic reasons.
[00:56:56]  And so you can sleep with a lot of women, so you can have a nice car, have a nice house, and you can get revenge on all the people that treated you this way.
[00:57:02]  And that is appealing on some level, if we're being honest.
[00:57:06]  The argument that I make is that young men have recognized that the left's version is garbage.
[00:57:12]  And by the way, it's not sustainable.
[00:57:13]  There's no such thing as building a civilization without man.
[00:57:16]  You don't sustain civilization without man.
[00:57:18]  You're certainly not going to have your vanguard of the revolution be a bunch of people that define themselves by mental illness.
[00:57:24]  But the real question is, what should men be looking for?
[00:57:28]  And the argument that I give is one of biblical masculinity.
[00:57:31]  It's the idea that we don't want to just be strong and capable.
[00:57:35]  We want to be strong and capable for something and for someone.
[00:57:39]  I'm a Christian.
[00:57:39]  I want to be strong and capable for my God.
[00:57:41]  I want to be strong and capable for my wife.
[00:57:44]  I want to be strong and capable for my children.
[00:57:45]  And I want to be strong and capable for my country.
[00:57:48]  And that's what actually gives you true identity, meaning, and purpose.
[00:57:51]  It's not just chasing.
[00:57:52]  Frivolous things.
[00:57:53]  There's nothing wrong with having the nice car.
[00:57:55]  There's nothing wrong with having the nice house or the good career.
[00:57:58]  But what we find is that we are not made happy by the toys that we accumulate.
[00:58:05]  We're not even ultimately made happy by the freedoms that we have.
[00:58:08]  Freedom may be a necessary component, it's not a sufficient one.
[00:58:11]  We're made happy by the noble responsibilities that we take on.
[00:58:15]  And that's what we need more of.
[00:58:16]  We need more young men to be able to find places to not only develop those capabilities, but to actually develop them toward a purpose that will give them genuine identity and meaning.
[00:58:27]  So, Nick, a lot of us have been making this argument for a long time.
[00:58:29]  You've been making that argument.
[00:58:30]  Of course, Jordan Peterson made that argument for a very long time.
[00:58:33]  I've been making that argument.
[00:58:35]  The question is that there does seem to be a wall that's gone up for a lot of young men.
[00:58:39]  How do we breach that wall?
[00:58:41]  There's a whole social media sphere that just exists in which young men are basically told that to believe people like you or like me or like Jordan is essentially to reinvigorate and give life to a terrible system that has ground them underfoot.
[00:58:55]  How do you convince people that the pursuit of those hedonistic pleasures Is not going to lead to happiness, especially because when you're 20 years old, hedonistic pleasure sounds pretty good.
[00:59:05]  I think the first thing that we have to do is we have to acknowledge something.
[00:59:07]  Part of the reason why some of the people within that sphere have gained such ground with young men is because they showed up and defended them when a lot of Christian, when a lot of conservatives, when a lot of other people in the space were not defending them, right?
[00:59:20]  The constant message they heard from the right was, well, just pull yourself up by your bootstraps.
[00:59:23]  And we weren't actually acknowledging that from the moment they entered elementary school, they were being told they sucked by society.
[00:59:30]  And instead of coming along and defending them and saying that was wrong, well, we just kind of said, just work harder.
[00:59:36]  Well, there were a lot of other voices that came out there and actually supported them and defended them.
[00:59:40]  And the thing is, if you look at the way that men look at love, we associate it with loyalty.
[00:59:47]  And so a lot of the conservative core, when they started getting up and actually defending this or calling into question the feminist narratives, a lot of they were doing it in response to those elements of the manosphere.
[00:59:58]  And so young men looked at that and said, whoa, you don't get to come in and trash the guys that were the only ones defending me.
[01:00:05]  When you guys sat this one out.
[01:00:07]  So, the first thing that we have to do is we have to actually acknowledge that no, this sucks.
[01:00:10]  It was unjust and you shouldn't have been treated this way.
[01:00:13]  But the answer is to not become the barbarian.
[01:00:16]  The answer is to become the knight, right?
[01:00:19]  The answer is to become the person that defends and protects and builds up civilization because that's going to give you genuine meaning.
[01:00:25]  But the only way they're going to receive that message is that they actually hear it from somebody that they can respect as having earned and achieved those things.
[01:00:33]  So, it's all good to cite studies.
[01:00:35]  It's all good to say, well, statistically speaking, no, no, no.
[01:00:38]  They want to see people that have actually lived this out in their life, not perfectly, because none of us are perfect, but they want to see people that have actually put their morals and their principles into practice and achieve the things that they're looking to achieve.
[01:00:50]  I said this after Charlie Kirk died.
[01:00:52]  I said, There's a lot of young men that are going back into church for the first time, but if they walk in there and they see a bunch of weak, feckless men, they're leaving and they're going to go find somebody that's strong.
[01:01:02]  So we need more people in this space to actually stand up and be strong, but also acknowledge what young men have been going through.
[01:01:10]  So, Nick, in your book, The Man Book, where you go through sort of a point by point guide, how should young men get started?
[01:01:15]  What's the first thing that they should do?
[01:01:17]  They wake up this morning and they say, Yeah, society has been nasty to me since I was young because I'm a man, but I also don't want to just become a nicotine addicted basement dweller who watches streamers all day and then thinks that's a form of victory.
[01:01:30]  So, what's the first thing I should do?
[01:01:32]  Well, there are five categories I talk about, right?
[01:01:35]  And it's the spiritual, the emotional, the intellectual, the physical, and the professional.
[01:01:39]  And these are things that you constantly develop all throughout your life.
[01:01:41]  So, I remember when I was a young man, I wanted to serve in the military.
[01:01:45]  Why?
[01:01:45]  I wanted to test myself.
[01:01:47]  I wanted to test myself intellectually.
[01:01:48]  I wanted to test myself physically.
[01:01:50]  I wanted to put myself to the test and prove that I could be the sort of man that could protect and provide and be able to respond correctly in a crisis situation.
[01:01:59]  So, one of the things I tell young men to do is you need to take your faith seriously because what you believe about God will shape the rest of your worldview.
[01:02:06]  Intellectually, you need to study.
[01:02:08]  It doesn't mean you need to be an academic, it just means you need to be the sort of person that people can count on for wise counsel.
[01:02:15]  Physically, I always tell men, look, get to the gym, right?
[01:02:18]  You don't have to be an Adonis.
[01:02:20]  Men should have a violent hobby.
[01:02:22]  Learn how to shoot, learn how to fight.
[01:02:24]  And the reason why I say this is so important is we may live in a civilization where you can get by through life pretty safe without having to do difficult physical things.
[01:02:33]  You will feel more confident about yourself if you are capable of dangerous physical things.
[01:02:38]  And the things I like to tell young husbands or young fathers is can you imagine your wife or child being in a dangerous situation?
[01:02:44]  And the only way you could help them is by calling another man with those capabilities to come and protect them.
[01:02:49]  If you don't want to feel that way, then go get after it, right?
[01:02:53]  And then it's also the professional.
[01:02:54]  It's developing capabilities, developing marketable capabilities so that you can be there for yourself, for your family, for your friends when they're in need.
[01:03:02]  These are the sort of things you're constantly developing these throughout your entire life, right?
[01:03:06]  So develop those capabilities.
[01:03:08]  And then for those guys that want to get married, go, you know, again, think about the sort of woman that you actually want to marry and have kids with, right?
[01:03:14]  Not just one you want to sleep with, one that you want to actually live life with.
[01:03:19]  Because I guarantee you, by the way, the sleeping with part will be better if you love and respect who they are.
[01:03:24]  Not just as a physical object, but when you actually love them for who they are.
[01:03:28]  So go develop yourself, make yourself attractive to that sort of woman, and then put yourself in proximity of the sort of woman you would want to marry.

=== Developing Life Capabilities (01:14) ===

[01:03:36]  Right.
[01:03:36]  And then you're far more likely to actually start having things that you got to wake up for every day in order to meet these challenges.
[01:03:43]  And it does, it gives your life purpose.
[01:03:45]  You feel that kind of meaning.
[01:03:47]  And when you have that, and when you develop the discipline necessary to attain it, not only do you save yourself, not only do you save your family.
[01:03:54]  You save your country because that's the building block of America, right?
[01:03:57]  I mean, I love the Declaration of Independence, I love the Constitution, but without people taking personal responsibility over their lives to make it better, those things don't stand up by themselves.
[01:04:07]  They need to stand on a good theological framework, and they need to stand on a framework of people that actually take their own lives as their own personal responsibility.
[01:04:15]  So, those are the things that I would tell young men you just pick small things that you can accomplish every day that lead to larger goals that you're trying to achieve, and that'll keep you going when it gets difficult.
[01:04:26]  Well, the book is the man book, and the author is Nick Fritas.
[01:04:29]  Thanks for the time, Nick.
[01:04:31]  Really appreciate all of it, and good luck with the book.
[01:04:33]  It's an honor, Ben.
[01:04:34]  Thank you.
[01:04:36]  All righty.
[01:04:37]  Coming up, we'll get to your questions because the show continues.
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