Today, the show takes a Wacky Wednesday break from the present day to let Jordan take over the show and present a topic of his choosing. In this installment, he tells Dan about a couple of televangelists, and Dan in return tells him about a few wrestlers.
| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
|
unidentified
|
I'm sick of them posing as if they're the good guys, saying we are the bad guys. | |
| Knowledge fight. | ||
| Dan and Jordan. | ||
| Knowledge. | ||
| I love you. | ||
| Hey, everybody. | ||
| Welcome back to Fight Knowledge. | ||
| I'm Jordan. | ||
| I'm Dan. | ||
| Hey, and this is a podcast where I start making up nonsense about people and we see what happens. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Hey, Dan. | ||
| Hi, Jordan. | ||
| How are you doing? | ||
| Great. | ||
| I got a question for you. | ||
| What's that? | ||
| What is your thing for the day that is brightening your spirits in this trying time we all find ourselves in? | ||
| I have been... | ||
| It is good to spend time with my partner. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Sure. | |
| I love her very much. | ||
| She's kind of, you know, we're all kind of getting used to this circumstance, but having her has really made this a lot easier. | ||
| Oh, that's great. | ||
| Kept me from going crazy. | ||
| How about you, Dan? | ||
| I'm happy for you. | ||
| Yeah, thank you. | ||
| Mine's going to be a little bit less. | ||
| Emotionally resonant? | ||
| I stumbled across some videos on YouTube. | ||
| Don't worry, she doesn't listen to us. | ||
| I stumbled across some videos on YouTube by this pro skateboarder from Switzerland named Johnny Geiger. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| And what he does, he has a series of videos where he's a professional skateboarder, so he's good at skateboarding. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| What he does, he has a series where he's trying to recreate the tricks that Rodney Mullen did, these really difficult tricks from classic skate videos, trying to do... | ||
| I find them so endearing. | ||
| He seems like a pretty cool guy. | ||
| He has a good, bright personality. | ||
| And one of the things that I really like about these videos is that they're really a celebration of process. | ||
| You see him fail repeatedly. | ||
| And trying to figure out how to do the trick. | ||
| There's a long learning curve through it. | ||
| And then the eventual payoff of hard work. | ||
| You know, winning out. | ||
| And he does the tricks. | ||
| It's good to be impossible. | ||
| They're so hard to do. | ||
| And, you know, just perseverance. | ||
| Pushing through when you fall over and over and over and over and over again. | ||
| And the other thing, too. | ||
| It's like, through that failure, you see the incremental progress. | ||
| You see, like, oh, that little part of the trick, he's figured out now how to do that, but he's still falling at the end. | ||
| Right, right, right, right. | ||
| I really find that brightening. | ||
| I really enjoy it. | ||
| Because he could have just posted the successful trick. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And you probably would have gotten a shit ton of views out of that. | ||
| People watch all those little clips. | ||
| I think it's way better in the structure than it is. | ||
| Yeah, yeah, yeah. | ||
| And I enjoy it. | ||
| It's been a night, and it's like outdoors in Switzerland. | ||
| It's gorgeous. | ||
| It looks nice. | ||
| The music's great. | ||
| So I enjoy it. | ||
| I have no idea who this dude is. | ||
| I'd never heard of him until a couple days ago, but I can't stop watching these videos where he tries to recreate these tricks. | ||
| That's really cool. | ||
| Shout out to Johnny Geiger. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hey! | |
| Hey, Sonya, do you know him? | ||
| Wait, wait, she's in Sweden. | ||
| She can't. | ||
| That's a different place. | ||
| I don't know what that means, but... | ||
| That's my bad. | ||
| Yeah, that's all right. | ||
| Anyways, Dan, I've taken over. | ||
| Yeah, that's true. | ||
| We're doing a reverse fight knowledge episode. | ||
| And I figured that since we talk almost... | ||
| I'm done with Mark Moreno, by the way. | ||
| Oh, that's good. | ||
| I'm sure people would be sick and tired. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, yeah, yeah. | |
| Well, before you get down to business, I'm going to let you take the wheel. | ||
| But before you do, we've got to take a moment to say thank you to some folks who have signed up and are supporting the show. | ||
| A lot of initials on this episode. | ||
| Gotcha. | ||
| So first, Anthony G. Thank you so much. | ||
| You're now a policy wonk. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm a policy wonk. | |
| Thank you, Anthony G. Thank you, Tony G. Next, Joe R. Thank you so much. | ||
| You're now a policy wonk. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm a policy wonk. | |
| Thank you, Alex U. I like to believe that one's Alex University. | ||
| Ah, I like it. | ||
| Next, AK. | ||
| Thank you so much. | ||
| You're now a policy wonk. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm a policy wonk. | |
| I like to think that's AK University. | ||
| Could be. | ||
| Next, Michael G. Thank you so much. | ||
| You're now a policy wonk. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm a policy wonk. | |
| Thank you, Michael G. Next, Roger. | ||
| Thank you so much. | ||
| You're now a policy wonk. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm a policy wonk. | |
| Thanks, Roger. | ||
| I just learned, someone posted that Roger Stone is on Cameo, and so you can pay him to record little messages. | ||
| Of course you can. | ||
| I'm very close. | ||
| I tried to buy a Cameo from him. | ||
| Just have him say it's over for humanity. | ||
| There will only be lone survivors. | ||
| I've been trying to think, like, what I would want Roger Stone to say, and it's... | ||
| You know, I feel like there's already audio of a lot of things I want to hear him say. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, yeah, yeah. | |
| I think I would just want to have him read a list of words just like completely out of... | ||
| Poopy pants. | ||
| Outdoors. | ||
| I would just enjoy it. | ||
| I would love... | ||
| I think I might end up... | ||
| I can't justify that purchase. | ||
| Anyway, Tessa, thank you so much. | ||
| You're now a policy wonk. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm a policy wonk. | |
| Thank you, Tessa. | ||
| Thank you, Tessa. | ||
| Next, Jed. | ||
| Thank you so much. | ||
| You're now a policy wonk. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm a policy wonk. | |
| Thanks, Jed. | ||
| Thanks, Jed. | ||
| Next, finally. | ||
| Armand, thank you so much. | ||
| You are now a policy wonk. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm a policy wonk. | |
| Thank you very much, Armand. | ||
| Thank you, Armand. | ||
| If you're out there listening and you're thinking, hey, I enjoyed the show, I'd like to support what these gents do, you can do that by going to our website, knowledgefight.com, clicking the button that says support the show, we would appreciate it. | ||
| It would be very, very helpful. | ||
| And now, I bequeath the show to you, Jordan. | ||
| Here we go. | ||
| So you've done this a couple times now. | ||
| I mean, it's like 400 something. | ||
| I'm still fucking up the first part of the episode. | ||
| 400 episodes in or so, this is your third? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| And two of them have been complaining about Mark Marino and climate change. | ||
| So everyone's probably expecting that that's what you're going to talk about. | ||
| And honestly, I've seen the clip names. | ||
| I have no idea. | ||
| I have no idea what you're about to tell me about. | ||
| So here's what I want to talk about. | ||
| Since we have talked almost exclusively about people who either... | ||
| Don't believe in what they're saying. | ||
| Uh-huh. | ||
| Maybe believe in what they're saying, but either way are acting completely differently than what that's real. | ||
| I wanted to see what would happen if we talked about people who actually believe what they're talking about. | ||
| All right. | ||
| I also... | ||
| Oh, man. | ||
| I see a name in here, and I hope it's who I think it is, but I'm sure it's not. | ||
| We'll see. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So, I mean, might as well go ahead and play our Out of Contacts drop. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I think the Pope needs to seek Donald Trump's forgiveness for saying such an outlandish thing. | |
| Okay. | ||
| Do you know who we're talking about? | ||
| I'm not entirely sure. | ||
| I mean, he has the voice of a televangelist. | ||
| He is a televangelist, yes sir. | ||
| Okay, I went the opposite direction with this, they actually believe what they say. | ||
| I thought you meant it with someone who has a good opinion and believes what they are. | ||
| No, absolutely not. | ||
| I thought this was going to be like an uplifting, these people are... | ||
| Not a chance. | ||
| I am not sure who this fella is. | ||
| I know it's not Pat Robertson. | ||
| No. | ||
| And I know it's not Jack Van Impey. | ||
| It is not him. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I don't know. | |
| It is Robert Jeffers. | ||
| Oh, okay. | ||
| I've heard that name. | ||
| I know that guy. | ||
| He's the head pastor of First Baptist Church of Dallas. | ||
| And I started looking into him because I wanted to talk about religion or something along those lines. | ||
| I was looking for something to talk about. | ||
| And I had this idea of what are we talking about if we talk about somebody who believes what they're talking about. | ||
| So when I talk about belief, I don't know if Dr. Robert Jeffers or any... | ||
| I'm going to talk about a few televangelists today. | ||
| I don't know if they actually, in their heart of hearts, believe this bullshit. | ||
| It's almost impossible to tell. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| But the guys that I am going to talk about have all actually lived their lives according to these principles. | ||
| And by all accounts, successfully. | ||
| Sort of like Bill Cooper dying the way he did. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| It's kind of a... | ||
| Indication of living by the things we profess. | ||
| Right. | ||
| I don't know if they believe it or not, but they are professional believers. | ||
| Walking the walk. | ||
| Every single day, they are paid to wake up and act as though they are the most Christian people in the world, and that's what they do. | ||
| All right. | ||
| So, as far as... | ||
| Belief goes. | ||
| That's what I'm talking about. | ||
| Not do they think that it's 100% true. | ||
| All right. | ||
| And the guys that I'm talking about, specifically Dr. Robert Jeffers, is a Fox News televangelist. | ||
| He is the TV guy that you go to if you want any defense of Trump from any attack. | ||
| He will defend Trump doing anything. | ||
| I feel like there's a lot of religious folks who do that. | ||
| Is it the case that he just has less toxicity to him than Jim Baker? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Absolutely. | ||
| So that's why you can slot him in on a TV show. | ||
| This guy, the more I research him... | ||
| He keeps the collar clean, as it were. | ||
| Yeah, yeah, yeah. | ||
| I've researched this guy for the past two days non-stop. | ||
| And by all accounts, he is an incredibly sweet, nice, Kind human being who has the most vicious, awful thoughts. | ||
| He has charmed journalist after journalist who's gone with him. | ||
| I'm going to work with a guy named Michael Mooney. | ||
| A lot of his work, and he's basically lived with Jeffers for a while to see what's going on. | ||
| To see if he's a huckster, you know? | ||
| You get that sense from some of those Louis Theroux documentaries, where he goes and he's like, all these people are terrible, but some of them are kind of nice to you. | ||
| Right, right, right, right. | ||
| And this guy is a complete psychopath. | ||
| Like, what these televangelists do is... | ||
| They do it because they're good at the TV part. | ||
| These guys aren't the guys who love the grift. | ||
| Alex is a comic who's hustling all the time, trying to sneak onto gigs, trying to find every possible way, selling merch after the shows, that kind of stuff. | ||
| The televangelists that I'm talking about are more like... | ||
| They're just really talented performers. | ||
| They want the spotlight. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| And they're really good at it, and they're paid because they're... | ||
| Talented performers. | ||
| To your point though, I think that Alex primarily is only grinding and selling merch after the shows because he was pursuing the limelight and he overextended himself to the point where he now has a giant studio and all that shit he has to pay for and no one could pay him ads. | ||
| That's probably true as well. | ||
| It's sort of a functional thing where if he had his druthers he probably would be as attention grabby I don't know. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Maybe. | |
| It's a weird thought, but I'm sorry. | ||
| I don't mean to derail. | ||
| No, no, no. | ||
| You're not derailing me at all. | ||
| As far as that goes, that's an interesting question, except these guys are the ones who took the steps that get you there. | ||
| Alex didn't. | ||
| I think he thought he was. | ||
| That's probably true. | ||
| Maybe auditioned for a movie. | ||
| Got told he has to worship the devil like Mark Dice got told. | ||
| Yeah, I mean, this guy is the guy who goes on Fox News and says Democrats worship Satan. | ||
| Mormonism is a cult. | ||
| He got into a huge fight with Mitt Romney in 2008 because he said that Mormons were a cult and we could never vote for them. | ||
| And that John Huntsman was a better Mormon. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Steve. | |
| Sorry, Steve Jennings. | ||
| Yeah, and then in 2012, he was like, well, of course we got to vote for Mitt Romney. | ||
| We can't not vote for him. | ||
| He's that kind of guy. | ||
| And like all televangelists, he's written a ridiculous number of books. | ||
| That I don't think anybody reads, ever. | ||
| Probably one of those bulk purchases things. | ||
| Yeah, totally. | ||
| And his books all have clickbait titles, like the most recent one is Courageous, Ten Strategies for Thriving in a Hostile World. | ||
| Then there's How Can I Know? | ||
| Answers to Life's Seven Most Important Questions. | ||
| How can I know? | ||
| Uh-huh. | ||
| Or God's Seven Secrets for Success and Significance. | ||
| Are those the same as the Habits of Highly Effective People? | ||
| Almost exactly. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| I don't think anybody has read these, and all televangelists write the exact same book. | ||
| You know what? | ||
| I bet people have read it, and I bet they're church small groups. | ||
| Oh, yeah, totally. | ||
| I bet that certain groups, churches, they get together and they have a book study. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Well, and he's the pastor of a megachurch, so he does have a captive audience there, where it's like he owns the printing press that prints his books and sells them to the people who... | ||
| Work at the printing press. | ||
| That kind of thing. | ||
| Good grift. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Like, good grief. | ||
| Good grief. | ||
| Good grief. | ||
| So, I wanted to find out where this dude comes from. | ||
| And as far as his early life, there's really not much detail going on. | ||
| The biography that you keep getting is, Jeffress was raised in Dallas. | ||
| At the age of seven, he joined the First Baptist Church of Dallas. | ||
| He was saved by... | ||
| Wait, what year was this? | ||
| Let's see. | ||
| He's 64 now. | ||
| So that puts us at... | ||
|
unidentified
|
He was 57 years ago. | |
| How long was he in Dallas? | ||
| His whole career? | ||
| No, no, no. | ||
| Not his whole career. | ||
| He was raised in Dallas up until... | ||
| I'm trying to see if there's overlap with Alex. | ||
| There is. | ||
| Oh, boy. | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| He's raised in Dallas. | ||
| He goes to Baylor. | ||
| So he's a Waco guy. | ||
| This dude is First Baptist all the way. | ||
| And he was saved by legendary televangelist W.A. Criswell. | ||
| The guy who established or turned the First Baptist Church of Dallas into basically the first megachurch. | ||
| And here's a little bit of Criswell. | ||
|
unidentified
|
We have a full program tonight. | |
| So we begin. | ||
| May I speak on the curse of liberalism? | ||
| Sure. | ||
| Yeah, that's how he starts. | ||
| Good opening volley. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, yeah, yeah. | |
| And he is... | ||
| Let's talk about that 501c3. | ||
| There you go. | ||
| That's basically what we're talking about when you get down to it. | ||
| And Criswell is... | ||
| Like, one of the biggest televangelists, and he's got that Southern Baptist tradition that I am absolutely mystified by. | ||
| Like, I love it. | ||
| I really do. | ||
| I love listening to Southern Baptist preachers. | ||
| Yeah, there's an energy to it. | ||
| Oh, man. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Just listen to him tell a story. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oklahoma and Texas play football in the cotton ball. | |
| I gotta stop already. | ||
| This has a real dusty road drive to it. | ||
| Oh, yeah. | ||
| Oh, yeah. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Seated right there, squared in front of me, was an Oklahoma fan in all of that whole side of Texas fanatics. | |
| There he was. | ||
| There he was. | ||
| In the days of Bud Wilkinson, he stood up right there in front of me and held up a $100 bill, and he said, Oh, you Texans! | ||
| I'll give you seven points and bet you this $100 bill will beat you. | ||
| He didn't have any takers, sat down after a little while, stood up again and said, All you Texans, I'll give you 14 points and bet this $100 bill we beat you. | ||
| Nobody took him. | ||
| After a little while, he stood up again and said, All you Texans, I'll give you 21 points and bet you this $100 bill that we beat you. | ||
| Didn't have any takers. | ||
| He sat right down there in front of me, and I said, Man, I'd like to have you in my church. | ||
| You believe in your team. | ||
| And you put your money where your mouth is. | ||
| Boy, I'd like to have you in my church. | ||
| This guy sounds like a little plumber son who grew up and became so sweet. | ||
| It's very Dusty Rhodes-ish. | ||
| You hear him yelling about hard times. | ||
|
unidentified
|
All these hard times! | |
| Daddy, you're putting Dusty Rhodes through some hard times, Daddy. | ||
| Hard times when they fire you and give you a watch. | ||
| But that is like the good version of it. | ||
| Dusty Rhodes. | ||
| But it's one of the actual kind of scammy preachers. | ||
| It's a bummer because it is a really infectious, seductive manner of speaking. | ||
| But when it's a pro wrestler who's the American dream. | ||
| It's perfect. | ||
| Maybe his belly's a little too big. | ||
| Maybe his hiney's a little too big. | ||
| Doesn't look like the athlete of the day, but you know a brother, he's bad. | ||
| And they know he's bad. | ||
| And Ric Flair. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm coming for your title, Ric Flair. | |
| Now you see why it's great. | ||
| Yeah, of course. | ||
| It's so good. | ||
| It's so fun. | ||
| And it's someone who comes from the Midwest, too. | ||
| It's almost in your DNA. | ||
| That kind of, like, it's really fun. | ||
| The tent revivalist. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, yeah, yeah. | |
| That's crossed the world. | ||
| And then, you know, I grew up in a church background. | ||
| My family was a cult, and Criswell was absolutely a cult leader. | ||
| In fact, Billy Graham was a member of Criswell's church. | ||
| Like, he brought Billy Graham into the fold. | ||
| And then he went, turned heel. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| So he's the Ric Flair. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| Billy Graham tried to put me through a hard time! | ||
| I think Billy Graham might actually have tried to put him through. | ||
| Oh, yeah? | ||
| Maybe. | ||
| Tried to give him a watch. | ||
| So, yeah. | ||
| So, Criswell creates the modern megachurch, basically. | ||
| And he's doing this to build a compound. | ||
| He is not building a megachurch. | ||
| He's building, like, a complete city. | ||
| Sort of like Jim Baker's Morningside? | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| Jim Baker is a fan of Criswell. | ||
| Yeah, everybody is. | ||
| But this is from, to give you an idea, this guy is creating a Christian separatist compound, essentially, and this is from a sermon he gave in the 80s. | ||
| Christian education is education and environment of the mind and heart and will of our blessed Lord. | ||
| It is an institution. | ||
| It's a school where the faculty and the administration and the trustees and the classes and the environment and most of the student body are all Christian. | ||
| I don't know why he said most. | ||
| Because he wants all of it. | ||
| Putting most in there seems so ridiculous to me. | ||
| No, no, no. | ||
| You've got to let in a couple non-Christians in order for there to be a game. | ||
| Yeah, it does seem like that, right? | ||
| Because you've got to swing them. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| You need to have like 5% non-Christian, but by the end of the term, 100%. | ||
| Right, right, right, right. | ||
| It's a little bit like the 97% voted for me, where it's like... | ||
| No, no, no, no. | ||
| Because that's just an illusion. | ||
| Right. | ||
| You need to keep things interesting. | ||
| Are you saying that he's turning this school into a hunt? | ||
| Well, more or less. | ||
| I mean, not the most dangerous game. | ||
| You're not killing people, but it is, you know... | ||
| In a way. | ||
| Spiritually. | ||
| I know from my time at a Baptist megachurch that a lot of the thing that seemed to animate the faith of some folks within the church, certainly not all of them, but the evangelism part of it really seemed to give it meaning. | ||
| So I would believe that if you wanted to create this Christian-only environment and you're someone like this guy... | ||
| You'd let in 5-8% non-Christians in order to give people to convert. | ||
| You gotta have somebody to chase. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| It's almost like feeding pets. | ||
| Well, I mean, there's a certain section of the student body that's probably gonna need that. | ||
| Right. | ||
| All these people are snakes, and so every now and then you gotta throw a mouse in there for them to, I gotcha. | ||
| I mean, that just makes sense. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| No. | ||
| You're not wrong. | ||
| And he basically created that. | ||
| He created this, and Robert Jeffers... | ||
| Is the result of an education completely controlled by W.A. Criswell. | ||
| I swear to you, he is like an experiment. | ||
| The more I've looked into him, he was groomed by Criswell from the age of seven. | ||
| He is an absolute automaton. | ||
| He's not a human being. | ||
| He's a psychopath. | ||
| And he is the most terrifying man alive to me. | ||
| Because he believes everything that he is told by Criswell. | ||
| He's raised by Criswell, goes to Baylor, immediately out of Baylor, gets hired right back at First Baptist Church in Dallas, works there for a few years. | ||
| Then he goes to become the head pastor at First Baptist in Eastland, Texas, which Criswell helped him get the job. | ||
| Then after that, he becomes the head pastor at First Baptist Church in Wichita in Texas, which he got because of Criswell. | ||
| Was it Wichita in Texas? | ||
| Wichita Falls. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, yeah. | |
| And then in 2007... | ||
| Five years after Criswell died, Jeffers became head pastor of First Baptist in Dallas and took over, like, this was the king coming home to, this was fucking Simba coming back to Ruth. | ||
| Yeah, yeah, yeah. | ||
| And he is relentless and insane. | ||
| And I couldn't find any early sermons of his whenever he was, you know, before First Baptist in Dallas. | ||
| However... | ||
| He did go on Card Sharks. | ||
| I like that game. | ||
| In 1986. | ||
| That was a great game. | ||
| And you can find it. | ||
| Was Card Sharks the one where it's just high-low, basically? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| It's absolutely just high-low. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I love that. | |
| Yeah. | ||
| No, it's great. | ||
| But here's the thing that I forgot about Card Sharks. | ||
| They ask survey questions like Family Feud. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| And... | ||
| Everybody is, I think, encouraged to give a weird personal tidbit before they give their answer for the survey question. | ||
| That would make sense. | ||
| You've got to keep it a little interesting. | ||
| You find out a lot of weird information about people. | ||
| People surveyed how many people ate tacos in the last month. | ||
| Is it over 40% or under? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| That's the game. | ||
| That's the game. | ||
| And then they put out like the playing cards and you have like a seven on there and you buy higher or lower. | ||
| I think it's higher. | ||
| That's the whole game. | ||
| It's a six. | ||
|
unidentified
|
That's the whole game. | |
| Yep. | ||
| I love it. | ||
| It's so dumb. | ||
| It is incredibly stupid. | ||
| You can't go back and watch. | ||
| Shows in the 80s though. | ||
| And then if you win, you get like, I don't know, a toaster. | ||
| You'd get a beach ball. | ||
| Oh no, at the end of this, he went on like a few episodes and I think he wound up winning about $4,500. | ||
| Which in 1986 money is pretty good. | ||
| That's not bad. | ||
| It's wild to go back and watch shows from the 80s because they wind up doing all kinds of weird misogynistic shit. | ||
| If you watch any kind of stuff from like... | ||
| Any of those shows. | ||
| Everyone's drunk and they're all saying shit that's like, oh my god! | ||
| Yeah, absolutely. | ||
| In this one, the host of the show has guys kissing people. | ||
| He's got 10... | ||
| And he announces them as such. | ||
| Ten college co-eds who are asked to sit up next to the stage like Price is Right style. | ||
| And we're talking about ladies. | ||
| Oh yeah. | ||
| That's why they're called college co-eds. | ||
| In the 80s, you knew what that meant. | ||
| I never understood that. | ||
| Co-educational means it's men and women. | ||
| I know, but it's always... | ||
| I think it was popularized maybe by Playboy because it was women that you actually went to school with and not private. | ||
| I would assume it's a half thing. | ||
| Yeah, something like that. | ||
| So there's ten ladies. | ||
| Ten women. | ||
| They were surveyed. | ||
| How many of you would kiss on the first date? | ||
| Okay. | ||
| The contestant against Jeffers says it is six. | ||
| Six women would actually kiss on the first date. | ||
| The guy asks our boy Robert. | ||
| Robert says the number is higher, and then this happens. | ||
|
unidentified
|
is 10. Everybody. | |
| Everybody. | ||
| So it is Tyler. | ||
| I want to see you all personally backstage after the show. | ||
| Sit down, you hussies. | ||
| Sit down. | ||
| All right, Robert. | ||
| Here's the card. | ||
| I mean, hey, look. | ||
| That's terrible. | ||
| But that's the host. | ||
| Right, right. | ||
| This is like an indictment of the show. | ||
| No, no, no. | ||
| I mean, this happens all the time. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| But... | ||
| It is wild to me that this monster who would later on go on Fox News, who would give a sermon about how homosexuals should be killed, this guy is on card sharks in the 1980s. | ||
| That is weird. | ||
| And he is just infectious. | ||
| Well, don't you remember when Paul Pott was on the $500,000 pyramid? | ||
| Don't you remember when Charles Manson... | ||
| I disagree with the... | ||
| Seriously, he is a joy to watch on this show. | ||
| I promise you, go watch this episode of Card Sharks. | ||
| His joy is infectious, and he is just a very genuine and real human being. | ||
| This is him introducing himself. | ||
| I'd love to see Reverend Manning on The Bachelorette. | ||
| Sorry, here's his intro. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm from Eastland, Texas, where I'm the pastor of the First Baptist Church of Eastland. | |
| That is presently until my congregation finds out I'm out here playing cards on national television. | ||
| I may have to find another line of work. | ||
| You may have some extra penance back at the chapel. | ||
| I've got a whole congregation praying for me. | ||
| He's just TV ready. | ||
| This is him. | ||
| This is him winning. | ||
| This is a super cut of him winning whenever he gets questions right. | ||
| All right. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Whoa! | |
| Woo-hoo! | ||
| Significantly lower. | ||
| Here comes an ace. | ||
| Oh, okay! | ||
| Definitely lower. | ||
| Lower than an ace. | ||
| It's a six. | ||
| Higher, Bill. | ||
| He's going higher than a six. | ||
| It's a nine. | ||
| Three. | ||
| He's going to freeze. | ||
| He's going to have an answer, Robert. | ||
| Let's go lower. | ||
| He's going for it. | ||
| If he is correct... | ||
| He's our new champion. | ||
| Lower than a nine. | ||
| A two, and it is! | ||
| New champ! | ||
| New champ! | ||
| Do you hear that? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, yeah. | |
| It is for the match. | ||
| It is! | ||
|
unidentified
|
It is! | |
| Take that, Rick. | ||
|
unidentified
|
The champion pulled it out. | |
| That's why he's the champ. | ||
| He's done it! | ||
| He's done it! | ||
| Very good, Robbie. | ||
| Very good, Robert. | ||
| Good job, Robbie. | ||
| I don't know if you could hear it well, but all of those whoo-hoo's, all of that was him. | ||
| I couldn't, I don't know what I assumed that was, but somehow I didn't think that was him. | ||
| Yeah, that's, yeah, but everything, he's jumping up and down, he's flapping his arms back and forth, clapping, he's screaming, he's whooping. | ||
| Jeffers is fucking loving it, and people love him. | ||
| Like I said, there's not much information about his early life, but there are all these weird little things that he starts giving up in the course of asking a question. | ||
| They'll ask you, like, we surveyed 100 people. | ||
| One of them said, how many do you think said this? | ||
| And you say, well, is it 60 or more? | ||
| But you have to give a personal, you know, to your tacos thing. | ||
| We surveyed 100 people. | ||
| How many of you had tacos last night? | ||
| Well, I eat tacos every single night and I've been doing that for 30 years so I'm going to go with four. | ||
| It's that kind of thing. | ||
| This is his biography as told through two episodes of Card Sharks in 1986. | ||
| Was it two episodes he was on or was he like a week champion? | ||
| He was on for like a week. | ||
| But I could only find two on YouTube. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Bill, I used to date a lot of college co-eds. | |
| That was before I was married. | ||
| I'm convinced they were in love with more than one person at that time. | ||
| I have a lot of third graders in my congregation, and they say I have been performing a lot of wedding ceremonies lately, and I think there's a trend back to the more traditional type of marriage. | ||
| I'm married, no children yet, and looking forward to another great day on card sharks. | ||
| Atta boy. | ||
| I do a lot of the same work as a psychiatrist in counseling people, and I think I'm a pretty good judge of character, and I would think most psychiatrists being doctors are pretty egotistical. | ||
| I know a lot of women watch soap operas today, and some men too, and they tend to fantasize a lot, but I used to live in an apartment with six other guys, and things got pretty grungy there. | ||
| Pretty grungy. | ||
| Don't worry. | ||
| The audio is from YouTube there. | ||
| I don't find anything too weird about it. | ||
| It's a little grandiose. | ||
| I'm basically a psychiatrist. | ||
| I dated a lot of ladies. | ||
| That's just Alex saying he fucked all the satanic cheerleaders and stuff. | ||
| Those are the only details that I can find from anybody about his younger years. | ||
| Also, I find it dubious. | ||
| No, I don't know how much of anything is true, but this is all stuff that he believes that's part of this. | ||
| And this entire time, he is TV ready. | ||
| And you see it the moment he goes on this show, because he was trained by the televangelist. | ||
| He was raised to be on TV. | ||
| This is a guy who is obsessed with TV. | ||
| And here he is just cracking jokes. | ||
| He's killing. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It's congressmen in Washington DC and we asked them do you think that alien creatures from another planet have ever landed on the earth how many US congressmen do think alien creatures have landed on the earth I imagine a lot of them think they're still serving with some of them in Congress Looking at that new TV that shows what they're doing. | |
| But most of them would probably not want to admit it, even if they did believe it, because of their reputation. | ||
| So I'm going to say that's going to be a low number of 22. 22 out of 100. | ||
| That's a pretty good rationalization for your guest. | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| He's TV ready. | ||
| He's direct. | ||
| He's got the timing down. | ||
| The host fucking loves him. | ||
| They are cracking jokes back and forth the entire time. | ||
| He's the kind of person you'd want on there. | ||
| I mean, he's against type. | ||
| He's charming and charismatic. | ||
| Seems to be fine in that setting, though he's a preacher. | ||
| It's a unique contestant. | ||
| Yeah, absolutely. | ||
| And while he's doing all of this, he is preaching the most homophobic, like, HIV is God's... | ||
| Sure. | ||
| This is all going on. | ||
| Somehow they didn't make it onto card sharks. | ||
| It's surprising, right? | ||
| Yeah, yeah, yeah. | ||
| All of this stuff is happening at the same time as this incredibly nice, charming, and funny guy is on TV doing what he is the best at. | ||
| And like I said, I read a lot from Michael Mooney about him, and this is one of the quotes that he gives from a 2012 profile. | ||
| This is Mooney speaking. | ||
| In the days I spent with him, sometimes from sunrise to sunset, That said, he still enjoys the company of people who see the world differently. | ||
| That guy is very scary. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| We are so used to disingenuous people in this world, specifically, that you can see why it's easy to be charmed by a guy like Dr. Robert Jeffers, because he's genuine. | ||
| This guy is a journalist who has worked with... | ||
| He's a Dallas journalist, and he's been through the whole ringer with all of these fucking liars and bullshit artists and that. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| And Jeffers absolutely charmed him. | ||
| Like, without question. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Because he is genuine. | ||
| He genuinely believes all this shit. | ||
| He is open-hearted and clear-eyed whenever he says all of this awful stuff that he believes, and he can crack a joke while he's doing it. | ||
| I'm only slightly exaggerating when I say that even though I know he has not committed a crime in his entire life, he is a dangerous society that needs to be quarantined like the fucking Joker. | ||
| This guy is terrified. | ||
| And it's all because Criswell created him. | ||
| That's why I know he hasn't committed any crimes or done anything like this. | ||
| He was created in Criswell's lab to do all this stuff. | ||
| And the reason that I thought about Jeffers... | ||
| It's not because of his appearances on Fox News. | ||
| I mean, I know you're a regular watcher. | ||
| I know you love Fox and Friends. | ||
| And Red Eye. | ||
| Those guys are so funny. | ||
| They're so funny. | ||
|
unidentified
|
The right is getting really good at it. | |
| The reason that I'm talking about him is because he recently got into a disagreement. | ||
| With a guy named Randy Robeson. | ||
| Now, he was the guitarist for Quiet Riot, right? | ||
| Is that his name? | ||
| Randy Rhodes. | ||
| Check that out. | ||
| It's Randy Rhodes. | ||
| Everybody's Rhodes. | ||
| Well, that's a reference to our fifth episode or something like that. | ||
| That was 400 episodes. | ||
| All right, guys. | ||
| Start from the beginning. | ||
| So, Randy. | ||
| Nope. | ||
| Wait, it is Randy. | ||
| It's just not Rhodes. | ||
| It's Robeson. | ||
| Yeah, it's Robeson. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, yeah, yeah. | |
| Randy. | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
| Randy Robeson is also a televangelist, but he is the son of maybe the best Southern Baptist preacher I've ever heard. | ||
| Benny Hinn. | ||
| James Robeson. | ||
| Close. | ||
| This is James Robeson. | ||
| This is not from too long ago. | ||
| So this is Randy's dad. | ||
| Yeah, this is Randy's dad. | ||
| This story is 40 years old, and he has honed this into a fucking knife. | ||
| The story is basically... | ||
| Let me give you the story. | ||
| This is the entire story. | ||
| There's a carpet cleaner named Milton Green. | ||
| Milton Green invites our boy James Robeson to sit in a chair. | ||
| He says... | ||
| I think that you're in torment and I'm going to get rid of demons. | ||
| He does that. | ||
| What a guy. | ||
| Everything's fine. | ||
| What a nice guy. | ||
| This is how the greatest Baptist preacher tells this story. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Robert and I didn't sit down in front of a carpet cleaner named Milton Green. | |
| And Milton said, would you sit in a chair and he'd pray for the most tormented man I ever saw. | ||
| I want to say, have you read my brochures? | ||
| Do you know who you're talking to? | ||
| Do you know? | ||
| He said, why don't you come over here and just sit in his chair at Holiday Inn. | ||
| Come sit in that chair. | ||
| So help me. | ||
| I promise you. | ||
| I'm leaning up against the wall in the Holiday Inn bed. | ||
| If I have ever seen something that looked like an execution chair, an electric chair I'm looking at, I could see stuff hanging all over it. | ||
| And it was like, boy, I heard it. | ||
| You get in that chair, you're dead. | ||
| One of the things about that, like, the style of talking is just like... | ||
| It's so awesome that they just seem completely comfortable being out of breath. | ||
| Yeah, yeah, yeah. | ||
| He's always out of breath. | ||
| Always out of breath. | ||
| There's something very appealing. | ||
| I don't know why, because it seems unhealthy. | ||
| But there's something about it that just is like, yeah. | ||
| Well, maybe it's because it adds sincerity to it. | ||
| It's like, this is difficult. | ||
| I'm digging down to try and tell you. | ||
| No, he's the runner for Marathon, literally. | ||
| I'm giving you this information to save your life. | ||
| That is how important this is. | ||
| Here is what he's saying is a guy asked him to sit him in a chair. | ||
| And this is a titanic life or death struggle. | ||
| And it continues. | ||
|
unidentified
|
If I had ever known that Charismatics ever said, would you come sit in a chair? | |
| All the king's horses and all the king's men couldn't have gotten in that chair. | ||
| Now, isn't that a shame how we intimidate people? | ||
| Like that dog that comes in the room all beaten down. | ||
| People come into church beaten down because they've been beat up by the preacher. | ||
| Whip, whip, whip. | ||
| They don't come in like conquerors, like soldiers, and the whole armor of God, warring against the principalities and powers, taking the shield of faith, quenching every fiery dart of the wicked. | ||
| They don't lodge. | ||
| They're not fiery darts. | ||
| They're useless, wasteful suggestions. | ||
| We ain't buying the lie. | ||
| Is there something I don't understand about this chair? | ||
| No. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| It is a folding chair. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay. | |
| Just making sure. | ||
| Of the kind you might imagine? | ||
| Tan? | ||
| I don't understand what's wrong with sitting in the chair. | ||
| It is terrifying. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay. | |
| Cool. | ||
| What was he even talking about, right? | ||
| I mean, principalities. | ||
| He's talking about demons. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| That's about all I got. | ||
| That's about all you got. | ||
| There's a chair. | ||
| But you want to run through a fucking brick wall for this dude. | ||
| I'm not sure I'm having the same response you are. | ||
| I'm telling you, listen to this, man! | ||
| He's fucking into it. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I think it's good. | |
| I think it's good in terms of, like, oratory. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| But I don't know if I'm going to run to a brick wall. | ||
| All right, we'll see what happens. | ||
| Eventually, he sits in the chair. | ||
| And now Milton Green starts the exorcism. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And Milton had to think that authority was volume because he is screaming at the devil. | |
| And he is screaming at every foul, tormenting spirit. | ||
| He's yelling at lust, bondage, rejection, compulsion. | ||
| He's yelling at everything. | ||
| And I'm thinking, dear God. | ||
| Dear God, I hope these walls are thick. | ||
| I said, dear God. | ||
| I said, that man is talking to the devil. | ||
| And I'm the only one in the room. | ||
| I said, God, what if my friends find out? | ||
| What if the preachers find out? | ||
| Well, I guess I maybe didn't realize that he's talking about an exorcism. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| I thought he was just sitting in a chair. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| There's a little bit of that. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Neither of them actually believe in the exorcism. | ||
| That elevates the story a little bit. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, wait. | |
| They don't? | ||
|
unidentified
|
No. | |
| Is that the reveal that they all think it's bullshit? | ||
| No. | ||
| Later on, Milton Green, guess what he becomes? | ||
| A televangelist, Dan! | ||
| They are working together. | ||
| He's just killing with this story. | ||
| These people are eating it up. | ||
| And then he ends it with this fucking kicker. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And I'm speaking to about a hundred preachers in Florida. | |
| And as I began to close like I am now, all of a sudden, a man got up from the back. | ||
| And he came running down to the front. | ||
| And he walked over to the side of the room. | ||
| And he grabbed a chair. | ||
| And he walked right up beside me. | ||
| And he slammed it down. | ||
| And he said, here, you're in a chair. | ||
| And a man prayed for you. | ||
| My deacon paid my way to come 600 miles to get here. | ||
| He said, here's the chair. | ||
| Here I am. | ||
| Set me free. | ||
| Set me free. | ||
| And every preacher in the room fell on their face all around him. | ||
| Set us free. | ||
| I'm going to go. | ||
| Guy's got the chair. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| He has the power of the chair now. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Uh-huh. | |
| This story is just him. | ||
| Getting his demons exercised. | ||
| Right. | ||
| And then later on he goes to a conference and people all bring their own chair to him because now he has the power to exercise demons. | ||
| Right. | ||
| This whole thing is that long journey there. | ||
| And it is he fucking demolishes this room. | ||
| I'd like to see this guy on Card Sharks. | ||
| He would be amazing on Card Sharks. | ||
| So James Robeson is a fascinating guy. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| And then his son Randy Rhodes from Quiet Riot. | ||
| Quiet Riot. | ||
| Absolutely. | ||
| So, I was looking into James Robeson, and he's a contemporary of Criswell. | ||
| Wait, so dad was contemporary with the spiritual dad of... | ||
| There you go. | ||
| I've forgotten the main person's name. | ||
| Robert Jeffers. | ||
| There's a few names. | ||
| I'm talking about four guys. | ||
|
unidentified
|
The first generation and the second generation. | |
| Jeffers is the one that I am aware of already. | ||
| And that's the name I couldn't remember. | ||
| That's the name you can't remember. | ||
| Clogging my brain with Card sharks and preachers and Dusty Rhodes references. | ||
| I'm telling you, Baptist preachers will get to your head. | ||
| It's hard to be in your seat. | ||
| Too much to juggle. | ||
| Yeah, I know. | ||
| Tell me about it. | ||
| The inverse is also true. | ||
| So, Robeson is... | ||
| Oh, you're telling me it's hard to get through information when someone interrupts you? | ||
| We do this once a year! | ||
| Right. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Robeson is coming up in the world of conservative, charismatic preachers. | ||
|
unidentified
|
James. | |
| This is way back. | ||
| Contemporary of Criswell's. | ||
| Criswell's older. | ||
| James is coming up. | ||
| I gotcha. | ||
| Because James is the fucking preacher. | ||
| He's the preacher's preacher. | ||
| The kind of guy who's got multiple rags to mop his brow. | ||
| And he's killing it. | ||
| Somehow I imagine him being in Oh Brother, Where Art Thou? | ||
| Basically. | ||
| So close to that. | ||
| And his early career is... | ||
| Just that. | ||
| He's hustling. | ||
| He's going from place to place, finding little things to jump in and get more famous off of. | ||
| Find places where people have chairs. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Stuff like that, yeah. | ||
| Then, sometime in the mid-80s or so, he stops doing it. | ||
| He doesn't stop preaching, but he stops trying to climb the conservative Christian ranks. | ||
| And he just kind of... | ||
| Almost settles and creates a modest TV empire. | ||
| He creates the life that Alex wants. | ||
| Or the sustainable Jim Baker? | ||
| Absolutely. | ||
| He's not screwing anybody over. | ||
| He's not being a good guy in the sense of doing anything too positive. | ||
| He's got a charity that by all accounts and purposes Is okay. | ||
| You know, it's not a scam, but it's not like the best. | ||
| But also might be a scam. | ||
| Well, I mean, charity watch and people like that have evaluated it and said it's not a scam. | ||
| I apologize for casting aspersions. | ||
| No, no problem. | ||
| And he just kind of creates this stable, modern TV empire. | ||
| He's got multiple talk shows. | ||
| He preaches. | ||
| He's not trying to get too big. | ||
| He's... | ||
| He's got everything that he wants, and he stays just a little under the radar. | ||
| You don't know about him, right? | ||
| Like James Robeson? | ||
| Not off the top of my head, no. | ||
| Worldwide. | ||
| People all over the world watch him. | ||
| He's got his own channel, all of this shit. | ||
| And he, again, since the 80s, for whatever reason, has lived this life that suggests he believes what he's talking about. | ||
| Now, just like Chiswell created Jeffers, You correctly noted it, that James Robinson created his son, Randy Rhodes. | ||
| Well, I mean, literally. | ||
| Yeah, absolutely. | ||
| But Randy is not a preacher. | ||
| Randy is not a televangelist. | ||
|
unidentified
|
He's a guitarist for Quiet Life. | |
| No! | ||
| Damn it! | ||
| That'd be funny. | ||
| Randy is a bit of a doof. | ||
| He's a nice guy. | ||
| I'm kind of obsessed with him. | ||
| I really am. | ||
| He has his own internet talk show on James Robeson's network, and it feels exactly like a televangelist giving his kind of a doof son a talk show. | ||
| It gets downright Chris Farley show at times. | ||
| You'll like his guests. | ||
| He does mainly reformed, born-again Christians, that kind of stuff. | ||
| He has that kind of interview. | ||
| And of course, if somebody famous becomes a born-again Christian, you get... | ||
| Welcome to Life Today. | ||
| I'm Randy Robinson. | ||
| I have the heartbreak kid for you wrestling fans. | ||
| You know exactly who I'm talking about because Shawn Michaels was the face of the WWE for many years. | ||
| If anybody follows wrestling, you know who this is. | ||
| Shawn, welcome to Life Today. | ||
| Thank you very much for having me. | ||
| You know what? | ||
| You are a real son of a bitch. | ||
| Let me explain to you why. | ||
| Why? | ||
| Did you watch this video? | ||
| No. | ||
| Oh, okay. | ||
| Because you have introduced Shawn Michaels to the proceedings, and you didn't include his theme song. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Get the fuck down. | |
| You didn't include his theme song in here. | ||
| I'm sorry. | ||
| Have you not listened to Shawn Michaels'theme song? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I have not. | |
| I think I'm cute. | ||
| I know I'm sexy. | ||
| I've got the look. | ||
| All right. | ||
|
unidentified
|
All right. | |
| It's great. | ||
| It's the best. | ||
| That is the Attitude Era, isn't it? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| You know who sings that? | ||
| Randy Rotes? | ||
| Shawn Michaels. | ||
| No, he does not. | ||
| He does not sing. | ||
| Oh, shit. | ||
| That's hilarious. | ||
| Now, that's not my fault. | ||
| Randy should have been playing that theme song. | ||
|
unidentified
|
100%. | |
| If you're introducing Shawn Michaels, you've got to have the... | ||
|
unidentified
|
Bullshit. | |
| If you can have Stone Cold on your show, and you introduce him, that glass has got to break. | ||
| It's got to break. | ||
| Yeah, absolutely. | ||
| That's poor showmanship. | ||
| Well, I mean, Shawn Michaels is now a reformed, born-again Christian. | ||
| I don't know if you know about his tag team match that he had with Vince McMahon. | ||
| I can't remember what pay-per-view it was at. | ||
| Like recently? | ||
| No, it was a long time ago. | ||
| It was in the, like, maybe sometime in the 2000s. | ||
| But when Shawn Michaels became a born-again Christian, it became sort of a thing in the storyline that Vince was mocking. | ||
| Because Vince had this megalomaniacal, I'm more important than God kind of thing. | ||
| And so Vince, and I can't remember who his tag team partner was, but they had a tag team match with Shawn Michaels, and Shawn Michaels' tag team partner was God. | ||
| The literal God? | ||
| Was it invisible? | ||
| They had to have a spotlight. | ||
| I don't remember. | ||
| Sometimes wrestling's great. | ||
| Sometimes it's great. | ||
| You just gotta admit it. | ||
| One of the more goofy things that... | ||
| I mean, as Shawn Michaels is definitely coming to the faith, allowing it to be portrayed that way in television seems very weird. | ||
| Hilarious. | ||
| But yeah, he was a dude who had some drug problems. | ||
| Totally. | ||
| It's one of those things, that's a pretty good... | ||
| Root for him to go down, as opposed to dying. | ||
| Right. | ||
| So, of course, he wrote a book, and he goes on Randy Robeson's show. | ||
| I know he wrote a book. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, yeah. | |
| Probably about how he's a sexy boy. | ||
| It is not. | ||
| It is all about... | ||
| This interview is really boring, but it has one of my favorite... | ||
| Like, I've watched so many... | ||
| All of Randy's interviews are incredibly boring, even when they're interesting. | ||
| But... | ||
| He is a genuinely curious person who's also a bit of a dupe. | ||
|
unidentified
|
This is him asking Shawn Michaels a big question. | |
| What is sweet chin music? | ||
| Close. | ||
| You remember the arena where you said goodbye to everybody? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I do. | |
| It was in Phoenix. | ||
| That Phoenix arena. | ||
| You said something that struck me in that whole bit. | ||
| For one, you were obviously touched. | ||
| You're ending a significant time in your life. | ||
| You're thanking the fans. | ||
| You made a statement. | ||
| You said, the only time I like me was when I was out here. | ||
| In other words, you made me like me. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| What does that mean? | ||
| You're being unfair. | ||
| I love that question. | ||
| It's a pretty decent question. | ||
| I know, that's what I'm saying. | ||
| I love this guy. | ||
| That's not doofy. | ||
| No, just the way he goes. | ||
| I mean, he probably could have framed it a little better. | ||
| What does that mean? | ||
| Yeah, it is a little direct. | ||
| No, that's a Chris Farley show question, for sure. | ||
| That's what I'm saying. | ||
| He's a little bit of a doof, but he's a genuine guy. | ||
| He seems really nice. | ||
| I would have preferred to ask what it meant when Shawn Michaels lost his smile. | ||
| He's not sharing that curiosity. | ||
| Damn, Shawn Michaels, super kicking people, speech and music. | ||
| Great finishing move Shawn Michaels has. | ||
| What was that? | ||
| Sweet chin music. | ||
| It's a big kick to the chin. | ||
| But what he would do is you'd get knocked down on this side of the ring. | ||
| Would you get up again? | ||
| You'd be getting up. | ||
| You'd be struggling to get up. | ||
| And as you're slowly getting up, he'd be in the corner at the turnbuckle and he'd stomp his foot. | ||
| Like a bull. | ||
| Like a bull. | ||
| Well, to give the audience, like, you know it's coming. | ||
| They call that tuning up the band. | ||
| Oh, no! | ||
| They tune up the band and then hit you with the sweet chin music. | ||
| And then right when you were finally standing up, that's when the kick would come right to your chin. | ||
| Right to your chin. | ||
| And then... | ||
|
unidentified
|
Just a sexy boy. | |
| It's a good theme song. | ||
| I turned the corner on it. | ||
| I used to think it was pretty lame when I was younger. | ||
| I hesitate to give you my opinion. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| He showed up at a WrestleMania a couple years back out of nowhere, and boy, I celebrated pretty huge when that theme song came on in a way that I didn't even expect myself to. | ||
| I'm not even a huge Shawn Michaels fan. | ||
| Interesting. | ||
| Gets you excited. | ||
| Nostalgia. | ||
| Yeah, definitely. | ||
| Absolutely. | ||
| Well... | ||
| Just, like, the reason that he has Shawn Michaels and those types of guests on there is because... | ||
| Probably a bunch of wrestlers. | ||
| Not that many wrestlers? | ||
| There's a lot of ones who have come around to, like, being pretty religious. | ||
| Really? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| That makes sense. | ||
| Yeah, like Lex Luger. | ||
| Not Lex Luger. | ||
| Lex Luger. | ||
| Lex Luger was on the 700 Club. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| And I almost did an episode. | ||
| I think I might have done, like, a half episode. | ||
| Well, isn't Cain born again now, too? | ||
| No, he's a libertarian and the mayor of... | ||
| Right, right, right, right, right. | ||
| I can't remember the city. | ||
| But he's... | ||
| The Million Dollar Man to Ted DiBiase was on the 700 Club. | ||
| There's been a number of wrestlers who have come on, like Pat Robertson's show. | ||
| So I just would have assumed that maybe this guy just cycles through wrestlers. | ||
| It might be. | ||
| I didn't see too many with wrestlers, but that one was funny. | ||
| I'm going to go look through his guest list and there's going to be a bunch of people like, you didn't realize Tugboat was a pro wrestler? | ||
| That's probably true. | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| If they're not using, because they might not even have used their stage names. | ||
| On this episode, Irwin P. Shyster. | ||
| Irwin R. Shyster. | ||
| Excuse me. | ||
| IRS. | ||
| How dare you? | ||
|
unidentified
|
IRS. | |
| Yeah. | ||
| Oh, man. | ||
| He was a tax guy. | ||
| Of course he was. | ||
| Yes, naturally. | ||
| I think I got it. | ||
| I think I guessed that one ahead of time. | ||
| CPAs, man! | ||
| CPAs, man! | ||
| I really derailed you. | ||
| I apologize. | ||
| No, no, you're doing great. | ||
| But the reason that he has guys like Shawn Michaels on is because he fancies himself something of a bad boy. | ||
| He's a little bit. | ||
| This is the type of shit that he really wants to get into. | ||
| In Green Bay, Wisconsin. | ||
| And he's got a new book called Battle Over. | ||
| Yes, The Battle Over Rules. | ||
| And he's going to talk about that on Life Today. | ||
| Check that out at lifetoday.org. | ||
| But for this particular interview, you're fortunate enough to be watching the bonus interviews where we can go out of the bounds a little bit. | ||
| We're going to discuss the topic that was rejected for the broadcast show because it was just a little over the lines. | ||
| And I've got a prop here. | ||
| We're going to talk about... | ||
| And I do not tell him this. | ||
| We're going to talk about the bead method. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes! | |
| This is your own... | ||
| We actually pitched that to your... | ||
|
unidentified
|
I didn't know that. | |
| Yeah, you did. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm sure that we got shot down. | |
| They said no, we're not going to discuss that. | ||
| Is this anal beads? | ||
| Close to. | ||
| Really? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Oh, shit. | ||
| Yeah, so... | ||
| I thought I was going to say that. | ||
| It was going to be a joke. | ||
| And it's going to be like, no, it's crafting. | ||
| Or something like that. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Nope. | ||
| Dude actually straight up on... | ||
| Okay, that is a little bit edgy for this Christian television station. | ||
| Absolutely. | ||
| Yeah, he definitely... | ||
| He gets away with saying, like, we're going to do something a little fucked up. | ||
| Because it is. | ||
| Well, it's not quite anal beads. | ||
| It's a... | ||
| In a marriage, this pastor has this idea of, like, okay, we all need to have sex. | ||
| Right. | ||
| But it's tough to have sex when you're older. | ||
| And sometimes people don't want to do it, so we created this bead method, which is like a barter system. | ||
| Like, here, here's some beads. | ||
| Now we fuck for a while. | ||
| Then you're done. | ||
| I'm out. | ||
| Yeah, exactly. | ||
| Also, not that ribald anymore. | ||
| This isn't that exciting. | ||
| Not as controversial. | ||
| This is just transactional sex within a marriage. | ||
| You nailed it. | ||
| And that subject was rejected. | ||
| For the broadcast show. | ||
| I would reject that, too. | ||
| Of course. | ||
| From my own show. | ||
| But he's just obsessed with being this kind of a bad boy in this world. | ||
| So he, of course, has written a shit ton of books like everybody else in this world. | ||
| But, unlike most people, one of his books was fiction. | ||
| It was called Sceva, or I don't know how to pronounce it. | ||
| It's S-C-E-V-A. | ||
| And here is the blurb for it that was... | ||
| Let me see if you can find out who wrote this blurb for him, okay? | ||
| In this supernatural thriller, the seven deadly sins threaten to destroy the lives of seven Bible college students after an ill-advised attempt to cast a demon out of a man. | ||
| Now you can read the book praised by publishers as, quote, intense, a great read, and, quote, strong writing, but rejected for being too edgy for Christian readers. | ||
| Who wrote the review? | ||
| Who do you think? | ||
| I have two guesses. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay. | |
| First guess. | ||
| Nope. | ||
| Dad. | ||
|
unidentified
|
No. | |
| It was him. | ||
| He wrote his own blurb. | ||
| Of course he did. | ||
| I kind of love him. | ||
| I also would have guessed the host of Card Sharks, but I couldn't remember who hosted him. | ||
| I think it was... | ||
| Oh, man. | ||
| Now I can't remember. | ||
| It's like a Bill Mitchell something along those lines. | ||
| No, Bill Mitchell's a QAnon guy. | ||
| Yeah, a different Bill Mitchell. | ||
| But this guy... | ||
| And Robert Jeffers are both second generation televangelists. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| And my... | ||
|
unidentified
|
God damn it. | |
| That's so weird to think about. | ||
| Isn't it? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| That's a legacy business. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Uh-huh. | |
| Yeah. | ||
| But I mean, it makes sense. | ||
| It just took me aback for a second to think like, you know, hearing about one of them, yeah, it's whatever. | ||
| But like hearing multiple, like you think about like, well... | ||
| I mean, Jim Baker's kids are... | ||
| They do the announcing. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| That's not the same thing as, like, running their own thing. | ||
| Right. | ||
| That's, yeah. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hmm. | |
| It's tough. | ||
| It's tough. | ||
| It's weird. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| It's gross. | ||
| And it's in within these two... | ||
| But it's also very similar to how wrestling works. | ||
| It is. | ||
| A lot of second generation, a lot of third generation wrestlers. | ||
| This is all TV. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Like, any comparison to TV is what these guys are all TV creations. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| And their eyes are all for TV and stuff like that. | ||
| And it's between these two second-generation televangelists that I try and explain the question, why does the religious right support Trump no matter what? | ||
| Why is that? | ||
| Because I see that article written 300 million times over and over and over again, right? | ||
| Why are these supposedly moral, upstanding people supporting a monster like Trump? | ||
| It doesn't make any sense to people. | ||
| And I will give you these two characters, two second-generation televangelists, to try and explain it away. | ||
| Randy Rhoads and... | ||
| Robert Jeffers. | ||
| Jeffers. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| All right. | ||
| So... | ||
| One of them, the bad boy. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| One of them, the pristine article. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| Huh. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
|
unidentified
|
You know what? | |
| Which one do you think is worse, though? | ||
| Probably the pristine article. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah, absolutely. | ||
| What do you feel about Randy so far? | ||
| I mean, anybody who's hanging out with Shawn Michaels can't be all bad. | ||
| He's not a bad guy. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| That's not actually true. | ||
| Shawn Michaels has some pretty shitty friends, mostly wrestlers. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| I can't really get a sense of him from the, like, limited amount of information I have. | ||
| I mean, I know, like, his dad seems to be a guy who likes to have exorcisms on chairs and is, like, a classic old-school... | ||
| Classic. | ||
| ...huckster-type preacher, but, I mean... | ||
| He seems reformed, though. | ||
| The sins of the father aren't bestowed upon the son in my conception. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Yeah, I don't know. | ||
| I got no idea. | ||
| I need more information. | ||
| Well, as far as his vocal patterns and all that stuff goes. | ||
| He seems way less gifted. | ||
| And he's way less gifted. | ||
| Again, compared to these other guys. | ||
| But at the same time, he's talking like a person. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| So there's a, you know, it's not as gifted in the genre. | ||
| Right. | ||
| But there's also a relatability about someone who speaks like, well, what about this thing? | ||
| People like that. | ||
| Totally. | ||
| There's a lot of people who talk real fucking stupid on podcasts who people like. | ||
| Oh, yeah. | ||
| Yeah, no, and I like him. | ||
| I genuinely do. | ||
| I mean, I don't know what he's like in his private life, but everything that I see through all of this stuff is just him. | ||
| He's just a guy. | ||
| He's a guy who believes in all of this Christian stuff. | ||
| And he's struggling within this confines. | ||
| There's this constant push and pull with him between what he is told by mainstream conservative Christians, like Dr. Robert Jeffers, and what he thinks is a moral stance. | ||
| He doesn't believe in the same God that Richard Jeffers believes in. | ||
| Not even close. | ||
| They are, of course, friends, and Randy basically agrees with everything that Robert Jeffers says. | ||
| But any time you get that little bright spot of him, like, well, I don't think we should be evil to gay people, but it's that over and over and over again. | ||
| These little bits of him coming really close to saying, like, I don't believe what you believe. | ||
| And then just being like, well, you sound right. | ||
| Let's go. | ||
| That kind of thing. | ||
| The reason that I'm talking about these two guys is because I came upon... | ||
| Randy putting out a live stream entitled Does Evil Reign, which is based on an interview he recently did with Dr. Jeffers. | ||
| Oh, I thought it was with... | ||
| Shawn Michaels. | ||
| I thought it was with the Acolytes. | ||
| It's actually Randy Rhodes. | ||
| It was with Gangrel, who was a literal vampire demon from... | ||
| What? | ||
| You don't know about Gangrel? | ||
|
unidentified
|
How would I... | |
| Do you know about Gangrel? | ||
| He's a literal vampire demon? | ||
| Well, from wrestling, yeah, kayfabe. | ||
| I understand that. | ||
| This guy would spit blood at people, vampire teeth. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Gangrel, he came around, he was a vampire, and the lights would go out, and then there'd be candles and flames. | ||
| Sure, sure. | ||
| He'd rise on the stage. | ||
| Right. | ||
| He was hanging out with, originally, the brood. | ||
| That was Edge and Christian, right? | ||
| There is two sort of enforcers. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Edge and Christian, who later on went to have their own... | ||
| Oh, absolutely. | ||
| Very successful dudes. | ||
| Tag team and both world champions in their own right. | ||
| Of course. | ||
| And so they fucked around. | ||
| And then Edge and Christian were with Gangrel. | ||
| And then they left. | ||
| And then Matt and Jeff Hardy became the new brood. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Who hung out with Gangrel. | ||
| And then everyone's like, we shouldn't hang out with Gangrel. | ||
| That guy is... | ||
| Lame. | ||
| That's not good. | ||
| He thinks he's a vampire. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I wish wrestling went like that. | |
| They just suddenly started. | ||
| They broke kayfabe the moment that it was time to. | ||
| Well, you keep half kayfabe. | ||
| You're still your own character, but like, I don't think that guy's a vampire. | ||
| If they just introduced that new wrinkle. | ||
| I've never seen him drink blood. | ||
| That's like in Ocean's 12 when Julia Roberts plays a character that looks like Julia Roberts. | ||
| You're fucking with me and I don't like it, sir. | ||
| That introduction of half reality is worse than... | ||
| How dare you tell me that you think he might not be a vampire? | ||
| We all know that! | ||
| I think it might be fun, though. | ||
| That would be fun. | ||
| Only in the world of kayfabe. | ||
| If you were to disagree, though... | ||
| You would probably have a better conversation than the way that Randy disagrees here. | ||
| This is Randy introducing the idea of disagreeing with Dr. Jeffers. | ||
| It's not real nice when you invite people into your facility, onto your show, and you just argue with them. | ||
| It's kind of rude. | ||
| The flip side of that is if they say something that I disagree with, And I don't say anything, people assume that I'm in agreement with them. | ||
| And so I'm always having to measure, okay, does that rise to the level that I need to say something? | ||
| And if you watch closely, you'll see sometimes when they say something, I might politely push back and say, you know, is it this or is it this? | ||
| That sounds like an adult. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yep. | |
| Yeah, that just seems like a... | ||
| He's a nice guy. | ||
| This is him politely... | ||
| Going through this, he's like, I'm doing a show. | ||
| I don't want to be ungracious, but at the same time, if I disagree with somebody, I want to be polite, and then I'm going to measure whether or not I need to say something. | ||
| And if I don't say anything, he's recognizing that there's a tacit understanding that the audience has. | ||
| They're like, well, you must agree with it, otherwise you would have said something. | ||
| Absolutely. | ||
| That's like recognizing your responsibilities. | ||
| Yeah, listen to that. | ||
| Isn't that refreshing? | ||
| I don't know if it's refreshing. | ||
| It feels refreshing to me. | ||
| It's very different. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Now, this is him going out of his way to, even when he does disagree with Robert Jeffress, to point out that he's like, I don't want to offend anybody, I don't want to do anything. | ||
| Just know that I mean zero disrespect to Dr. Jeffress as I... | ||
| I don't offer you an alternate view of things. | ||
| But I want to bring his view because it is probably the dominant view in evangelical churches right now. | ||
| And the other thing is I'm not convinced that I'm 100% right all the time. | ||
| I feel like I'm constantly learning, which is why I love having all these people in here and getting to kind of tap their brains. | ||
| And sometimes I'll push on some of the... | ||
| More difficult issues because I'm sitting there learning and I think that that's good for an audience to watch and learn. | ||
| That's pretty humble. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yep. | |
| Now, who are we talking about in contrast with that guy? | ||
| The guy who has never been wrong once in his entire life. | ||
| Talk about Jeffy Babes. | ||
| Oh yeah. | ||
| This is what Jeffers sounds like on this show. | ||
| Well, I don't know what you drive. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I don't know if you... | |
| The stereotypical Texas thing is a pickup truck. | ||
| So let's say you have a pickup. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm guessing you don't have one of those coexist bumper stickers. | |
| My wife actually almost got me one as a joke. | ||
| Because if there is anything that is the opposite of my worldview, it's that coexist. | ||
| So she almost put it on my bumper. | ||
| It's a joke. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| It's a good joke. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| His worldview is the opposite of coexist. | ||
| He is 100% right about everything. | ||
| He has no interest in your opinion. | ||
| He has no interest in anything you have to say. | ||
| That is why he is so dangerous and evil. | ||
| And that is also why Randy is a different person. | ||
| Randy is humble and curious. | ||
| He wants to know. | ||
| He has his own opinions, but at the same time, he's always trying to learn. | ||
| That is the difference between these. | ||
| This is the war in Christianity as far as I see it. | ||
| And it is being won by Robert Jeffers. | ||
| And again, Randy has won me over. | ||
| Here's Randy talking about a certain difference in philosophy he has with Robert Jeffers. | ||
| Okay, so he starts with a C.S. Lewis quote, which I love C.S. Lewis. | ||
| And he points out that we are in a battle. | ||
| If you don't know this by now, then I'll just tell you, we are in a battle. | ||
| We're in a spiritual battle. | ||
| We don't wrestle against flesh and blood. | ||
| It's a common mistake, I think, that people make, even Christians, thinking that, oh, you over there, you're my enemy. | ||
| No. | ||
| No. | ||
| It's spiritual, okay? | ||
| Right, but I think a lot of people take that to be like, it's a spiritual battle and I'm against your spirit. | ||
| Right, right, right. | ||
| Absolutely. | ||
| I don't feel like that's what he's saying. | ||
| But those same words, delivered slightly differently, are exactly what you hear from Alex. | ||
| But it doesn't have the same feeling. | ||
| And also, I want to say this. | ||
| He doesn't like C.S. Lewis. | ||
| I heard that so much back when I went to church. | ||
| None of those assholes ever read Mere Christianity, The Problem of Pain. | ||
| None of those motherfuckers were reading C.S. Lewis. | ||
| They read Out of the Silent Planet once and they called it a day. | ||
| They read a couple of fucking paragraphs and they're like, good enough. | ||
| Oh, I like The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe because I understand it deeper because I read all this other... | ||
| No, you didn't. | ||
| Get the fuck out of here, K-Life leader. | ||
| I don't fucking believe that this guy... | ||
| Christians love to say they love C.S. Lewis. | ||
| I'm nitpicking because I do appreciate the tone and what I see from him in there, but I still don't believe that he likes C.S. Lewis. | ||
| That shit is dense and not fun to read. | ||
| Have you ever read the Out of the Silent Planet trilogy? | ||
| No. | ||
| I've read a number of his non... | ||
| Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe work. | ||
| His essays. | ||
| Yeah, but not that. | ||
| I'm unaware of that. | ||
| Oh, man. | ||
| The second book in that trilogy is essentially a retelling of Genesis, but it's Adam and Eve on Venus, and it is essentially a retelling of Genesis, and it is so much longer and so much more boring. | ||
| I amaze myself whenever I read it, because I... | ||
| It's so boring. | ||
| And then the third book... | ||
| Weird to have space religion be more boring than regular. | ||
| Yeah, I know, right? | ||
| Right? | ||
| And then the third book is just unreadable. | ||
| It's awful. | ||
| But I think that's kind of the same with even the Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe ones. | ||
| No one read past... | ||
| Man, Voyage of the Dawn Treader was actually a really good book. | ||
| I remember loving that book. | ||
| No one read A Horse and His Boy. | ||
| I read A Horse and His Boy. | ||
| I read all of them. | ||
| Silverchair. | ||
| I don't know if... | ||
| Oh, man. | ||
| Silverchair is terrible. | ||
| Most people didn't read all of them. | ||
| They're just like, yeah, I love fucking Turkish Delight. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, yeah, yeah. | |
| Good for you. | ||
| Now, that's the thing. | ||
| I was one of those kids in church who loved C.S. Lewis because I'd read all of his... | ||
| Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. | ||
| Voyage of the Dawn Traders is like the second one, right? | ||
| It's the fourth one? | ||
| I can't remember the order. | ||
| Prince Caspian's the second one. | ||
| Silverchair, maybe? | ||
| Silverchair might be five. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I don't know. | |
| I want to say it's five. | ||
| Last Battle is second in the trilogy. | ||
| But yeah, listen to the way this dude is putting everything. | ||
| It is this idea of like... | ||
| He is hearing the same words that Jeffers is saying, just like you put it. | ||
| You say it a little bit differently, and it's exactly what Alex says. | ||
| But he means it in the, I don't know, a more genuine way. | ||
| I hear what he's saying when he's saying it's a spiritual battle, meaning within your own spirit. | ||
| You are having a... | ||
| The test is within all of us, and you have a responsibility to fight this battle within yourself to rise to the occasion. | ||
| Absolutely. | ||
| That's the battle. | ||
| When I hear Alex talk about, we do not fight against flesh and blood, it's a spiritual battle, I hear him saying, kill that person because there's a demon in him. | ||
| You got it. | ||
| It's a big difference, but it is the same intrinsic idea. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Or not intrinsic idea. | ||
| It's the same words being used to express different things. | ||
| Absolutely. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| That's exactly it. | ||
| But I feel like I'm hearing this and maybe I have way too generous an opinion of this dude because it's the way you're presenting it. | ||
| I'm worried about that, but I'm trusting you. | ||
| I mean, well, Dan, I mean, I guess it's easier. | ||
| To have a negative opinion of somebody with very little information about them than to have a positive opinion with only a few questions. | ||
| You just told me about this guy and you buttered me up by having the Shawn Michaels. | ||
| I know, I know. | ||
| This could be a trap. | ||
| It could be. | ||
| As far as I can tell, he believes... | ||
| Here's my thing about him. | ||
| And this is the thing that I was really struggling with while I was thinking of this idea, which is like... | ||
| I've known my parents. | ||
| I know that they do not want people in cages at the border. | ||
| But I don't understand how they can justify it to themselves. | ||
| And I know that Randy is that same type of Christian. | ||
| I can hear it in everything he says and everything he does. | ||
| I've watched all of those over and over again. | ||
| He's your parents' version of Christian. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| He is that person. | ||
| And I think the large majority of Christians, I think the large majority of them do not want that. | ||
| Right. | ||
| But they are trapped. | ||
| They are trapped by guys like Dr. Robert Jeffers. | ||
| And here's another thing. | ||
| Here's what's going to endear you. | ||
| To Randy, I think a little bit more. | ||
| He's live streaming this. | ||
| So there are people in the Twitch chat. | ||
| Oh, sure. | ||
| When he's on Twitch? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| That's weird. | ||
| Yeah, there are people in the Twitch chat. | ||
| Is he like playing Dark Souls? | ||
| A little bit. | ||
| But again, this is how this dude responds to trolls showing up in his chat. | ||
| Welcome all you trolls on Twitch. | ||
| I see you guys out there. | ||
| You're welcome to listen. | ||
| That's why I'm on Twitch. | ||
| You're not going to bother. | ||
|
unidentified
|
He's a nice guy. | |
| Even if he wasn't a nice guy, that's the right move. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| Trolls are going to come up more frequently. | ||
| They're always going to exist. | ||
| If you just have that approach, then people don't get a rise out of you. | ||
| They don't get what they want. | ||
| You just yell at somebody, and you're going to end up attracting, like, it's fun. | ||
| We could poke him. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Absolutely. | ||
| Good on him for knowing that, at least. | ||
| Or even if it's just, like, instinctual, knowing that. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Good on him. | ||
| He continues to deal with trolls throughout the livestream, and it is very funny how, like, I just don't know how more just, like, a kind of, like, general... | ||
| Doofy, good dude could react than the way that he does. | ||
| It's just like this general sense of a guy who's just like, I'm satisfied with my life. | ||
| I'm trying to do what I think is right. | ||
| And you guys are being mean. | ||
| And you know what? | ||
| It's your right to be mean. | ||
| And I understand. | ||
| And he's doing that whole thing. | ||
| And then later on, he gets into my favorite recurring bit on his show is he writes books. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| And no one knows about it, and no one has read them, and no one really believes that he writes them. | ||
| So in so many of these interviews, you wind up having a situation like this, where he does this. | ||
| When he dinged the idea of happiness, I said, well, you haven't read my book called God Wants You to Be Happy. | ||
| And he laughed because he thought I was joking, because I do joke. | ||
| I'm not joking. | ||
| I wrote a book called God Wants You to Be Happy. | ||
| You know what would be a great bit? | ||
|
unidentified
|
What? | |
| If you had never written a book. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And he's like, Edward thinks I'm joking about writing a book. | ||
| But that's the joke. | ||
| Right, right. | ||
| That would be awesome. | ||
| This happens like three or four... | ||
| I watched maybe ten of these. | ||
| Do you have any insight on why no one believes he wrote a book? | ||
| I don't know! | ||
| I don't know if anybody's ever actually published it physically. | ||
| Well, sure. | ||
| But a lot of people self-publish. | ||
| And I definitely don't think anybody knows about this guy. | ||
| Does this guy have a publishing outlet? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| So you probably publish it. | ||
| Maybe. | ||
| It's not good. | ||
| But this happens, there's an interview with another woman who wrote this. | ||
| That's super weird as an accusation. | ||
| Or like, how much do you think of that is actually people thinking he hasn't written a book? | ||
| And how much is him being insecure about his book sales? | ||
| So much both. | ||
| That other people don't think he's written a book. | ||
| It happens over and over and over again. | ||
| It's very weird. | ||
| He brought it up on one interview. | ||
| This woman wrote a book about how Christian women need to understand that men like to look at women and that it's not a bad thing. | ||
| And that interview gets weird and horny and Randy's like, I'm glad I'm not a teenager anymore. | ||
| Doing all kinds of weird stuff in there. | ||
| And then eventually he's like... | ||
| Oh, happiness. | ||
| I wrote about happiness in my book. | ||
| Well, God wants you to be happy. | ||
| Yeah, and she just goes, I'm sorry, what? | ||
| You did? | ||
| No, I wrote a book about happiness. | ||
| Oh! | ||
| Over and over and over again. | ||
| This happens in almost every interview. | ||
| It is very funny. | ||
| So yeah, the disagreement that Randy and Robert have is on happiness. | ||
| That's what Randy is saying that it's about right here. | ||
| He wrote a book. | ||
| God wants you to be happy. | ||
| Robert does not even... | ||
| I don't even know if Robert believes in happiness. | ||
| This kind of thing. | ||
| That's the fundamental... | ||
| And God certainly does not want it. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Now, Randy is a doofy guy who just wants to live and let live. | ||
| And this is the type of stuff he does agree with. | ||
| This is how he deals with trolls and that kind of shit. | ||
| We've known these Christians, unfortunately. | ||
| Belinda says she takes pleasure in looking at flowers. | ||
| And you know, I'll tell you something interesting. | ||
| I studied the Reformation a bit because I didn't really get that education in school. | ||
| And one thing that the Catholics and those who were protesting the Catholic Church didn't argue about because they agreed on it was that God reveals Himself through nature. | ||
| So Belinda, I 100% agree with you. | ||
| I take pleasure in the mountains. | ||
| I love to snow ski. | ||
| And I stand up there, and if you're at Keystone or Breckenridge, you can see the Continental Divide for miles and miles and miles. | ||
| And I'm like, this is the most beautiful temple in the world. | ||
| God's creation. | ||
| So yes, 100%. | ||
| Judy? | ||
| He might have read C.S. Lewis. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah, maybe I was wrong to judge too harshly. | ||
| Yeah, because, I mean, that is true. | ||
| That is a belief of, you know, like, if you've never heard the name of Christ and you'd recognize him through nature, that is salvation. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Absolutely. | |
| That is good enough. | ||
| That is a position that a lot of schools of Christianity have held. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| And he's getting a little bit trolled with, like, a, oh, I like nature, like that kind of thing. | ||
| Maybe. | ||
| I didn't interpret that as a troll. | ||
| That's what I'm saying. | ||
| I thought that that might be a sincere comment that someone was making. | ||
| I like to look at flowers. | ||
| That honestly is very in line with what someone might say. | ||
| Right, right, right. | ||
| The reason I think that is I think Belinda pops up later on. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| I don't have that context, so I'm sorry. | ||
| My bad. | ||
| This is before Belinda pops in. | ||
| But that's what he's doing. | ||
| He's very simple. | ||
| This is what we agree on. | ||
| And here's where we disagree, and there are more trolls coming in here. | ||
| I'm getting trolled hard today. | ||
| This is funny. | ||
| It's about time. | ||
| The trolls have left me alone for way too long. | ||
| Okay, so here's the part where Dr. Jefferson and I have a disagreement. | ||
| And this is where I want your input. | ||
| Constructive input, please. | ||
| I'll just ignore it if it's just trolling. | ||
| And this is... | ||
| It kind of goes to eschatology. | ||
| In other words, how we view the future. | ||
| The dominant in the evangelical churches is a futuristic view. | ||
| In other words, things are going to get worse and worse and worse before they get better. | ||
| And this is where I actually just don't agree. | ||
| I was raised that way, but I don't agree anymore. | ||
| And we're going to get into it. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So he doesn't believe in the progression towards good. | ||
| Right. | ||
| The downward progression to sharp uptick. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| That's good. | ||
| Randy is a chilled... | ||
| Chill guy. | ||
| He sounds so much Bob Ross-y to me. | ||
| I like to look at the mountains. | ||
| That's the greatest temple. | ||
| The religious show, Bob Ross. | ||
| Basically. | ||
| What he is getting to is that when he says that eschatology is the fundamental disagreement, he's not even getting to the reality of it. | ||
| This is the fundamental disagreement. | ||
| And he thinks it's just them disagreeing about happiness. | ||
| Just because he allegedly wrote a book about it. | ||
| Right. | ||
| I have not read it. | ||
| He may not have written it. | ||
| It might not exist. | ||
| It might not exist. | ||
| I went to his website, and it's there. | ||
| You can buy it on Amazon. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| But I don't know. | ||
| You didn't go through to the cart. | ||
| I'm not going to buy the cart. | ||
| But he thinks they're talking about happiness. | ||
| He thinks they're talking about happiness and whether or not you're supposed to be happy or you're supposed to wait until God replaces the world or whatever. | ||
| Right. | ||
|
unidentified
|
What they are actually talking about is the literal replacement of the world. | |
| Like here is Dr. Jeffers. | ||
| This is what his argument is on the side of eschatology. | ||
|
unidentified
|
me. | |
| This world is not the world as God intended it to be, and this world is not the world that it will always be. | ||
| There is a new world coming. | ||
| But until that time, evil is going to have reign over this world. | ||
| A lot of the religious things. | ||
| Right. | ||
| This is the imperfect meat world. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| The difference here is what we get back into. | ||
| The words can mean different things. | ||
| Dr. Jeffers is not talking about how eventually Satan's going to reign and then God will replace the world and all this stuff. | ||
| Jeffers is actually talking about how he wants to replace the world. | ||
| Criswell's idea of a Christian separatist compound, the main goal of that was to create a completely separate Christian world. | ||
| That would eventually grow to be the world. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| Now, he could not do that, and what he realized was that that was not possible, and it wasn't going to be possible to be left alone unless you are the only thing. | ||
| So he created Dr. Jeffers, and this is... | ||
| The reason that I find him so terrifying is, and it goes back to Randall Ballmer wrote an article in Politico about the creation of the Christian separatist movement and how people always talk about Roe v. | ||
| Wade as being the inciting factor to getting the Christian right to mobilize and turn into what they are. | ||
| Certainly inciting. | ||
| Right. | ||
| What it was born out of, though, was the... | ||
| Court decision in Green v. | ||
| Kennedy, which later became Green v. | ||
| Connolly when Connolly became the Secretary of the Treasury. | ||
| This happened about five to ten years before Roe v. | ||
| Wade. | ||
| The situation boils down to this. | ||
| If you segregate your private schools, you do not get tax-exempt status. | ||
| That's it. | ||
| The end. | ||
| And the goal for Criswell, whether or not it was racial segregation, the goal has always been To completely segregate Christians away from everything else. | ||
| So they took that idea of they're going to make us become public schools and they turned that with Jerry Falwell and Bob Jones and all of those guys into this and then they teamed up with Wayrich's Burgeoning Heritage Foundation. | ||
| All of these guys turned into what the right is today. | ||
| All of it just like knee-jerk and awful reactions to notions of civil rights. | ||
| Right. | ||
| With one main goal, and that is creating a completely white Christian theocracy. | ||
| That is the purpose of this, and that is what Jeffers was raised to do. | ||
| So when he starts talking about how, you know, this world is not the world of God, like that kind of stuff, and he's not talking about waiting. | ||
| For God to come back. | ||
| And he's not talking about the world of God either. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Uh-uh. | |
| He wants his world. | ||
| Absolutely. | ||
| It is interesting. | ||
| I don't know how much of it is just like intrinsic suspicion of things, but it does feel different. | ||
| Even without your presentation, I think I would hear him say those things. | ||
| Jeffers say those things differently than Randy Rhodes. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Robison. | ||
| I disagree. | ||
| It's interesting. | ||
| I think what it speaks to is the inherent neutrality of religion itself. | ||
| Because these people are both expressing really religious ideas. | ||
| And one of them is expressing them in a way that's like, yeah, alright. | ||
| And the other one is saying... | ||
| Fairly similar kinds of things. | ||
| Like, oh no. | ||
| That are 180 degrees. | ||
| It's about what's packaged on it that really is what becomes a problem. | ||
| And Randy is absolutely of... | ||
| They're both raised second-generation televangelists. | ||
| They both have this incredibly intense religious education. | ||
| Both of them can toss out... | ||
| Anytime they all have that televangelist way of talking where it's like, say words, words, words, words, words, Hebrews 9, 18, words, words, words, words, you know, that whole thing. | ||
| They can all pull quotes from memory. | ||
| Neither one of them has any greater command of the Bible than the other. | ||
| And both of them say almost exactly the same thing. | ||
| And both of them disagree on everything. | ||
| And Randy is the only one who doesn't know it. | ||
| That's the thing that fascinates me about all this. | ||
| So basically the disagreement they're having is that Dr. Jeffers wants to get rid of this. | ||
| I mean, he's a doctor. | ||
| He's got a doctor. | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| I go back and forth between just calling him Robert Jeffers or Dr. Jeffers. | ||
| Big Bob. | ||
| But yeah, to your point. | ||
| I find him so terrifying because the guy who is trying to be the bad boy is calm, quiet, humble, caring. | ||
| And the guy who is the pristine, never been in trouble, always enthusiastic, woohoo! | ||
| That guy, waving around and so happy all the time, is a tool created by a guy who wants to build a... | ||
| Christian theocracy. | ||
| And so now he is that perfect tool for Trump. | ||
| It is almost like Jeffers was created by Criswell to be used by the first fascist dictator that could show up in order to solidify the Christian right and because Jeffers is genuine and brilliant and real and Trump is a lying piece of shit. | ||
| Jeffers is going to trick Trump, essentially, into creating it as a Christian fascist dictatorship instead of just a regular one. | ||
| He is terrifying. | ||
| His side of Christianity is literally, we need to end the world in order to create our world. | ||
| And then on the other side, you have Randy Robison dealing with trolls. | ||
| Love in his life. | ||
| I listened to this clip and I was just like, this is the guy that I think of whenever I think of the Christianity that I somewhat admire a little bit. | ||
| Listen to this. | ||
| Charlie says that Satan rules because Charlie cannot spell Satan. | ||
| And he's telling me God doesn't exist. | ||
| Here's your problem, Charlie. | ||
| You might as well tell me my wife doesn't exist. | ||
| Satan does rule. | ||
| Satan rules, because you don't know how to spell Satan. | ||
| He doesn't even have that, like, he doesn't even have that, you don't know, it's just, you don't know how to spell Satan. | ||
| Yeah, it's not even a dunk. | ||
| Yeah, no. | ||
| Hey, you're trying to tell me God isn't real? | ||
| Tell that to my wife! | ||
| Like, it's so much just this benign kind of this guy. | ||
| It's even that, like, the way you were saying that is a zing. | ||
| Yeah, it's still, no, he's not even doing that. | ||
| He's just trying to say, like, yeah, God exists in the same way my wife does. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Learn to spell. | ||
| Yeah, he's just a nice guy. | ||
| I think, to me, in my experience, because I've spent so much time in Christian worlds, and so have you, I know Jeffers. | ||
| I've seen that guy everywhere. | ||
| But the large majority of people that I've met in so many congregations is Randy. | ||
| I would agree with that. | ||
| That kind of thing. | ||
| And so, whenever people talk about why is it, That Christians follow Trump. | ||
| I see it as a function of this kind of... | ||
| This dichotomy? | ||
| And the guy who trained the fascist was maybe the best televangelist at the time. | ||
| And the guy who trained the chill guy, his dad, was the guy who just sort of kept a low profile and did his business. | ||
| Yep. | ||
| Well, you're bumming me out. | ||
| Yeah, I know, right? | ||
| And it's not because... | ||
| Jeffers is so good at using the same words that Christians use to mean positive things and twisting them into something horrific, all the while believing it's good. | ||
| That's why he's such a powerful tool, is because Criswell got him at such a young age and controlled every aspect of his life. | ||
| And I'm sure, yada, yada, yada, whatever about his own motivations. | ||
| But it's fairly clear that if you're captured, By Criswell and taken under his wing personally at seven years old, you're not going to be unaffected by that. | ||
| Yeah, it's going to be a tough course correction, at very least. | ||
| Yeah, absolutely. | ||
| They're not fully developed and you're being bombarded with a lot of really heavy stuff. | ||
| It's going to be hard to process the stuff that's coming in, in addition to adolescence, growing up. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I mean... | |
| Yeah, that's a bummer. | ||
| Yeah, and it's from the guy who's the best at it. | ||
| Like, Criswell is a brilliant cult leader. | ||
| To the point, like, the closest analog for Criswell and Jeffers that I can think of is L. Ron Hubbard and Miscavige. | ||
| Like, that's the type of shit we're dealing with right here. | ||
| Jeffers believes all of this to the point where it's indistinguishable from... | ||
| From reality. | ||
| Like, it's amazing to me. | ||
| But most people, like, and here's what I'm saying again with Randy kind of having that sense of, I know something's not right here, but I don't know why I'm fighting it. | ||
| Like, in this clip right here. | ||
| In the futurist view, we believe that a new world is coming. | ||
| Jesus will come and set up his kingdom on earth. | ||
| And then there will be no more evil. | ||
| Here's my question for you guys, and here's the disagreement that I would have with the futurist view, which Dr. Jeffress does hold to. | ||
| And that is, when I look at what Jesus did in his work on the cross, I believe that he gave us everything we need to establish his kingdom here on Earth. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| His kingdom here on Earth is already ready to go. | ||
| Yep. | ||
| Yep. | ||
| Randy wants to make the world a better place. | ||
| Randy thinks we have the tools to make the world a better place. | ||
| Well, I guess that is the difference and the definition of what the promise of the cross was. | ||
| Is the promise already fulfilled in the act of the crucifixion and resurrection? | ||
| Or is it contingent on some future event? | ||
| That does seem to be a profound difference. | ||
| Yeah, absolutely. | ||
| Of opinion. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| That's tough. | ||
| I mean, I'm always down for the religion that takes the shape of things that will create a better world for everybody. | ||
| So, I mean, without knowing any of the other stuff that he believes, because I really feel like there might be stuff I don't know about that's really fucked up. | ||
|
unidentified
|
No, no, no. | |
| Here's the thing, though. | ||
| That's, again, that gets to my point exactly. | ||
| I will guarantee... | ||
| No, I know. | ||
| Randy believes in, obviously... | ||
| Like, conservative right-wing bullshit. | ||
| He will say it, he'll repeat it, and it's just so clear to me that what underpins his beliefs have him saying that stuff in order to stay in lockstep with the people that he thinks are his teachers. | ||
| All of these people goes into that kind of second-generation televangelist. | ||
| The difference between them is Randy is, like... | ||
| He was raised in this. | ||
| He knows the language. | ||
| He knows what he's supposed to believe. | ||
| And there's a part of him that is fighting against it. | ||
| There's a part of him somewhere that's like, I know it's bad to do this, but I'm told by guys I respect, guys who are the kings of the world, the leader of the biggest, of the first megachurch right now. | ||
| He's telling me that this is what we have to say. | ||
| This is what we have to believe. | ||
| That kind of shit. | ||
| I mean, was it Criswell or Jeffers who started their speech off by saying the evils of liberalism? | ||
| That's Criswell. | ||
| Yeah, so he taught Jeffers, and he wasn't necessarily the mentor for Randy Rhoads, so it makes sense. | ||
| I mean, the rejection of liberalism and the rejection of a humanist perspective is going to ultimately lead towards not... | ||
| Recognizing a united society. | ||
| Absolutely. | ||
| It's going to always err towards utopianism in the future of like, we're going to create this perfect thing once this liberalism where people have freedom of choice and they can sin, they're allowed to sin once we're free of that. | ||
| Yeah, it would make sense that that dude, the dude who is sort of mentored by that guy would be... | ||
| Far more down that side than someone else. | ||
| And he's far more effective. | ||
| What's amazing to me is that Jeffers is trained as a weapon. | ||
| Jeffers was weaponized from a young age. | ||
| And it's very clear that Randy was just raised in the church. | ||
| That is so much the difference to me between the two of them. | ||
| Jeffers is here. | ||
| To remake all of Christianity in Criswell's image. | ||
| And Randy is here because his dad is a televangelist. | ||
| And he got a little gig. | ||
| And he got a little gig. | ||
| And he can talk to Shawn Michaels. | ||
| Oh, and here's the other thing. | ||
| On Randy's website, which is very cute, it is essentially an angel fire page. | ||
| It's very funny. | ||
| He has these little devotionals and stuff that he's written before. | ||
| There's like five things that he's written. | ||
| Almost all of them are about TV. | ||
| He just loves TV. | ||
| He's like, here's how we can make Christian TV shows. | ||
| You watch TV shows and when they're Christian, you're like, these TV shows suck. | ||
| Here's what we can do to make them better and that kind of stuff. | ||
| This guy just wants to work in TV. | ||
| He has no idea. | ||
| He just loves TV and shit. | ||
| That's what he was raised up loving. | ||
| You should go hook up with Jim Baker. | ||
| Absolutely. | ||
| I think Randy sums up my views on Jeffers pretty easily right here. | ||
| Craig says Satan is a bully. | ||
| 100%. | ||
| And here's the thing you gotta know. | ||
| He's a liar. | ||
| He's full of crap. | ||
| Can I say that? | ||
| I just did. | ||
| That's cute. | ||
| That's the bad boy. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| That's Randy the rebel. | ||
| Can I say that? | ||
| Can I say that on Twitch? | ||
| God, I know Randy. | ||
| I know so many Randys. | ||
| Yeah, he seems quaint. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| He's very cute. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| He's dumb. | ||
| And he's gonna get eaten alive by Dr. Jeffers every fucking time. | ||
| Well, I mean, probably, yeah. | ||
| I mean, if there ever is call for a head-to-head confrontation. | ||
| This was as close to the call for a head-to-head confrontation as you can get. | ||
| When was this from? | ||
| A couple weeks ago. | ||
| Okay. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| So, uh... | ||
| Keep your eyes on this space. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Exactly. | |
| It's still a developing story. | ||
| Might have to do a part two on that. | ||
| Yeah, I don't know. | ||
| This is interesting. | ||
| I don't know what I think about this. | ||
| I get criticized a lot for not being more aggressively atheist in my positions and anti-religion, though my background would suggest I should be, as is yours. | ||
| Right, and you heard me, a very stringent anti-atheist, slowly and gently, or very stringent atheist, not anti-atheist, slowly and gently fall in love with the Bob Ross of Christianity. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Like, this guy is what I've always thought that Christianity wants to be. | ||
| And he is enthralled. | ||
| That's what I think of as far as... | ||
| So you subscribe to his Twitch, I'm guessing. | ||
| No. | ||
| Oh, God, no. | ||
| Absolutely not. | ||
| He's so boring. | ||
| I swear, he is so boring. | ||
| That's because he didn't say horrible things. | ||
| That's what I'm saying! | ||
| That's why he loses. | ||
| Right. | ||
| It's why he loses. | ||
| I mean, we go back to the wrestling thing. | ||
| It's why heels are often more exciting than faces. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| The good guys are often kind of dopey and a little bit boring, whereas the characters that are allowed in the bad guy persona are always a little bit more, they have an edge to them, they're more interesting, but they're assholes and you want to see them get beat by the good guy eventually. | ||
| That's how you make the money. | ||
| Right, but what if you're the asshole... | ||
| You're the heel who says all the interesting things. | ||
| You get so much press attention all the time. | ||
| And yet when people want to look into you and find out where you're a liar, find out where you're full of shit, and really explodes you, and it turns out you're the sweetest, kindest human being alive. | ||
| You're incredible. | ||
| There's just nothing bad to say about you personally. | ||
| You live that life that you say that you do. | ||
| Like, that whole thing. | ||
| You become both. | ||
| You become the heel and the hero. | ||
| Marty DeRosa is going to kick my ass, but I'm sure there's a wrestling analog for that. | ||
| I'm sure there is. | ||
| I'm sure that bad guy character who's like, he seems really nice. | ||
| I'm sure that is a character and I can't think of it. | ||
| That's the thing that I think is so attractive to Christians who otherwise would never go along with such amoral bullshit is that the guy spouting amoral bullshit Is living the moral life that most Christians can't live. | ||
| Are you just talking about the prosperity aspect of a lot of these preachers who live these largely comfortable affluent lives and they create an image that becomes aspirational almost to the audience and congregation? | ||
| But see, that's what I'm saying. | ||
| Jeffers is different even from that. | ||
| If I wanted to talk about that, we could talk about Paula White Cain all day. | ||
| So many of these people are those guys who are selling you something and trying to win money from the grift. | ||
| And I genuinely don't think Jeffers is. | ||
| Jeffers is not trying to grift anybody. | ||
| Just political. | ||
| He is purely political. | ||
| He's working on a political project. | ||
| Absolutely. | ||
| Jeffers is a true believer. | ||
| And the one thing that he truly believes in is getting rid of the rest of us and creating a white Christian theocracy. | ||
| And he will say anything, defend anything, do anything to make sure that that happens. | ||
| Well, let's hope Randy Rhodes wins this one. | ||
| I know, right? | ||
| Got your back, Randy. | ||
| Yeah, come on, buddy. | ||
| Man, Randy Robinson is so funny to me. | ||
| Most of his... | ||
| Stuff has, like, a few hundred views. | ||
| Oh, yeah. | ||
| He's just a nice guy. | ||
| Well, I mean, he's trying to enter a space that's not made for what he's doing. | ||
| Right. | ||
| You know, like, it's... | ||
| I like to shit on, like, Dave Daubenmire for having, like, 35 views on these videos. | ||
| But to be fair, like, YouTube streaming isn't the place for... | ||
| Like, it's not a huge popular place for Christian extremism. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Necessarily. | ||
| So it's tough. | ||
| Twitch has got to be even more of a sort of a wasteland or no man's land for religious sitting around chatting broadcasts. | ||
| I mean, good on him though, because I mean, again, I'm hesitant to say anything too committal because I don't know anything about this guy. | ||
| But the idea that he's carving out a space on Twitch that no one is doing that. | ||
| There is a place for it in terms of streaming platforms, and if it's him doing it, it seems like a better person than some monster. | ||
| Absolutely. | ||
| Unfortunately, once he carves out that space, the monsters will gravitate towards it and exploit the work he's done. | ||
| And then his kid will become the Antichrist. | ||
| I think that's the only thing we can predict. | ||
| That's the only thing that we can say is for 100% going to be true. | ||
| You heard it here. | ||
| Randy Robinson's kid will destroy the Earth. | ||
| I mean, if it skips a generation, then... | ||
| All right. | ||
| No, I mean, but that's the thing. | ||
| All four of these televangelists absolutely hold abhorrent views. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| There's no doubt in my mind. | ||
| Yeah, to varying degrees. | ||
| Yeah, exactly. | ||
| There is, but James Robinson... | ||
| First started by just going, like, I don't want to be part of this anymore for whatever reason. | ||
| I'm obsessed with chairs. | ||
| Pretty much. | ||
| I sound like Dusty Rhodes. | ||
| He's just that guy. | ||
| Now, I mean, he's, of course, in the Christian televangelist world, he believes in awful shit. | ||
| Randy Robinson. | ||
| Absolutely, in the Christian televangelist world, he believes a lot of horrible shit. | ||
| But when you listen to Randy talk, you can see that he doesn't want to. | ||
| I think there's so many people who just don't want to believe this horrible shit, because part of the teachings of Christianity is like, shut the fuck up and listen to your pastors. | ||
| It's that kind of thing. | ||
| I don't know if I fully got my point across, but I feel like I did alright. | ||
| I think there's a lot of points. | ||
| I think there's a lot of reflection. | ||
|
unidentified
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I don't know. | |
| I would say that what I see from this is like two different trajectories going through time. | ||
| You got like one that seems to be working towards a better outcome and one that seems to be working towards a worse. | ||
| Right, right, right, right. | ||
| But both of them believing that they're working for the better outcome. | ||
| Yeah, I think almost everybody does. | ||
| I mean, I think that even Alex... | ||
| Man, it's hard for me to say this. | ||
| Because I'm not sure I believe it. | ||
| Yeah, I know! | ||
| No, right? | ||
| That's why it's so refreshing for me to study people who do believe what they're saying. | ||
| But at times I do think that he probably thinks he's doing what's right. | ||
| I agree. | ||
| I think there's at least a part of him that thinks that. | ||
| Although it can't be his... | ||
| It can't be full. | ||
| Whereas I think these guys probably fully think that what they're doing is right. | ||
| 100%. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I'm fascinated by these guys. | ||
| Well, I think that you're always going to find that whenever the genre is religious. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I think that you're always going to find people who are more believing that what they're doing is right when you take the framework of politics and replace it with religion. | ||
| Now granted, Alex is a crypto-religious fascist who's hiding his religious beliefs behind political messaging. | ||
| And also aliens. | ||
| And demons. | ||
| And a lot of movie references. | ||
| But there's still the political veneer to it that allows the... | ||
| Maybe I'm not committed to everything. | ||
| I can change positions. | ||
| I can support Ron Paul and Rand Paul and then support Trump. | ||
| You can do that. | ||
| You can't do that with God if you're a religious person. | ||
| Or if you're one of these televangelists, you can't be like, my candidate is God. | ||
| Well, hold on. | ||
| Shawn Michaels is fighting next to him! | ||
| Another contender has showed up and God is not doing it for me, so guys, you should vote for Trump. | ||
| Yeah, that does make it harder, doesn't it? | ||
| So yeah, that's televangelists, Dan. | ||
| I think what I've mainly done, and this is what we talked about as far as me doing episodes, is after the last one with Mark Moreno, I never want to talk about Mark Moreno again. | ||
| I think the feeling is mutual. | ||
| The same thing is true today of Robert Jeffers. | ||
| I never want to talk about Robert Jeffers again. | ||
| Maybe we open up a whole new series where you start taking on some of these Televangelist that I don't want to fucking cover. | ||
| We've got a lot of requests for people who want us to cover Rick Wiles. | ||
| I don't know who Rick Wiles is. | ||
|
unidentified
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Maybe we'll see what happens. | |
| Maybe that's the new genre of Jordan Take the Wheel. | ||
| This has been fun. | ||
| Thanks for bringing this to my attention. | ||
| I'm still a little confused. | ||
| Not by you, but just by some of these thoughts. | ||
| The generations aspect is fucking with me. | ||
| Isn't it fascinating? | ||
| It really is. | ||
| It's wild. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| It's nuts. | ||
| Anyway, so we have a website. | ||
| Did you forget you're the host? | ||
| Yeah, it's knowledgefight.com. | ||
| Anyway, so we have a website, Dan. | ||
| It's knowledgefight.com. | ||
| And we are on Twitter. | ||
| We're at knowledge underscore fight, and you're at GoToBedJordan. | ||
| Indeed, and we are on Facebook. | ||
| That's right. | ||
|
unidentified
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If you want to rate, review, subscribe, all that. | |
| You can do that for podcasts. | ||
| You just heard it. | ||
| Yeah, yeah, yeah. | ||
| In the meantime, I'm Neo. | ||
| I'm Leo. | ||
| I am the juiciest troll. | ||
| You forgot DZX Clark. | ||
| Oh, shit! | ||
| Andy in Kansas, you're on the air. | ||
|
unidentified
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Thanks for holding. | |
| Hello, Alex. | ||
| I'm a first-time caller. | ||
|
unidentified
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I'm a huge fan. | |
| I love your work. |