All Episodes
Previous Next
Oct. 12, 2020 - Louder with Crowder
26:28
Amy Coney Barrett Change My Mind PreGame Q&A! | Good Morning #MugClub
| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
Well, just as soon as he kisses her, then they'll have to be married.
Hey, good morning. It's a beautiful day. I'm going to show you something. I'm going to
Good morning, Mug Club!
My name is Audio Wade.
Hey, how's it going, everybody?
I know it's not Stephen sitting here, which is confusing at least, but we do have Stephen.
He's going to be here.
He is headed right now to a Change My Mind on the topic of Amy Coney Barrett.
It's going to be Fill the Seat, Change My Mind.
It's going to be an exciting day.
In studio here is Brendan.
On the TriCaster.
Can you see Brendan?
There we go.
Hey, there's Brendan!
Whoa, this is exciting.
What a happy day.
All right, so yeah, so we will be taking your chats today only on the Blaze.
So we do have, we know that there are Facebook chats.
We're not going to take any from YouTube, anything like that, because again, they don't pay us nothing, I think is the way Stephen describes it.
So yeah, we'll be doing that.
Yeah, so again, get your chats in on Blaze TV.
Head over now, I think.
Let's see, we do have Stephen on the line.
Can we see you, Stephen?
Yes, I can see.
Can you guys hear me well?
We can hear you well.
Yeah, he's sitting over there in the car.
So you are headed now to... Who told you you could sit in my ex-chair and by the looks of your nerves here, leave a little O. Henry bar on there when I get back?
I thought you were going to be doing it from your booth, your audio booth.
Oh, well maybe... I guess I just made a bad assumption.
That's my fault.
Sorry about that, Mr. Crowder.
It doesn't harm me so much as it does the viewers.
That's true.
So we're sitting here in the studio, the B Team, I guess, but you are headed to a Change My Mind on the topic of Amy Coney Barrett, big story in the news right now.
Confirmation hearings, I guess, are going on right now.
Yes.
So what do you expect to see in the Change My Mind?
What's going on today?
Well, first off, yeah, everyone who's in the chat, of course, is a member of Mug Club, please do send what you want to see discussed most or what you expect people to discuss most.
And one of the, we'll be doing a couple of different locations today.
So I know this is the first time we've done this.
It's a bit on the fly.
One will be on campus, where I think I've been banned, but we're kind of off campus, but on campus.
And then we'll be moving around somewhere else around town.
So we get kind of a varied response.
This is one of those things where I just don't see, and often this is when it comes up when a change of mind sort of comes, it stems from exhaustion sometimes, I just don't see any valid argument as to why we don't confirm this state.
I really don't.
Like, constitutionally, as far as precedent, decorum, there's nothing to say that we shouldn't other than some people don't like her opinions.
And listen, I understand that.
I didn't like Sotomayor's opinions.
I didn't like Kagan's opinions.
But that's the process, right?
If you have a president who nominates and you have a Senate that confirms, them is the brakes.
So I expect people to sit down and probably say, well, they think it's wrong.
They think it's underhanded.
A lot of them probably don't know that this has happened 29 times in American history.
A lot of them probably don't know that this is right in line with both precedents and precedent.
Um, and I bet you a lot of them don't know a whole lot about Amy Coney Barrett outside of what the media has told them.
So I'm hoping this will coincide nicely with The grilling and the anti-Christian, anti-Catholic sentiment that will be taking place today during the hearings, and hopefully simultaneously be able to be broadcast and inform some people.
And listen, people need to know too, if we get enough, and this always depends because with Change My Mind, you know, sometimes we'll have people sit down and they go, well, I don't know, I think she's a bitch.
We're like, okay, thank you for sitting down.
We just don't broadcast.
Pretty much everyone always sees every Change My Mind that we record, unless it's someone who Seems like they might be challenged, or we'll have sometimes people just show up to promote their own stuff, like, hey, I'm running for the 42nd Congressional District.
Now, provided that those don't happen, if we get enough, we're going to be running Change My Mind on Amy Coney Barrett for two whole days.
So we'll be running it tomorrow morning, and then Wednesday morning, and of course, live fact-checking the Biden town hall on Thursday.
So it's a jam-packed week.
That was a roundabout way.
I kind of got everything in there, but that's what I expect.
And I try to go in open-minded with these things.
It's not a debate.
It really is, I'm hoping that I hear something that gives me a lightbulb moment as to why these folks are against nominating her.
And I haven't heard anything other than, well, we don't like her.
Merrick Garland.
Yeah, absolutely.
And we do have a chat here from Christopher.
Christopher says, what is your take on the Dems threatening to increase the number of seats in the Supreme Court?
Do you expect that to come up today, or what are your general thoughts on that?
I do expect that to come up today and that's a tough one, the court packing.
Because, first off, we have changed the number of seats.
It's varied between 5 and 10.
But that was a very different time.
That was during the founding of the country when they actually hadn't really created most of the circuit courts.
Sure.
And so they didn't really know how many representatives they needed.
And then Abraham Lincoln, you know, had 10 justices as he was going into slavery, right?
And that was it.
But that was a civil war.
The last time this happened was a civil war over 150 years ago.
And it has been nine ever since.
And I tell you what, If we're going to be talking about honoring Ruth Bader Ginsburg's dying wishes, which no one can confirm and her granddaughter just says it's true, how about honoring her actually written on-the-record opinions?
And she was vehemently against court packing for the same reason that Joe Biden was vehemently against court packing up until literally three weeks ago.
Yeah, it is crazy how quickly that's changed.
And another chat here from Jonas.
He says, Discuss the difference between Merrick Garland and Amy Coney Barrett.
His name is Jonas.
That's true.
It is Jonas.
He's carrying the show.
That's not very nice.
Discuss the difference between Merrick Garland and Amy Coney Barrett.
So obviously you expect that to come out because that was essentially the argument that you heard about.
It's ridiculous.
Here's what I will say.
This, to me, is one of the most beautiful examples of the three branches of government.
Anyone out there watch the schoolhouse rock?
You guys remember?
It's executive, legislative, judiciary, right?
These are the three branches of government that we have, and the judiciary is meant to be the most separate and apart.
So, for someone to be confirmed, right, to the judiciary, that's that third branch, It has to go through the Executive, the President has to nominate, and then it has to go through the Legislative, where you then have the Senate who has to confirm, and then we have a new Justice on the Judiciary!
Hey, here's a thought!
Merrick Garland, we had Executive Barack Obama nominated just as 29 times with Presidents who have come before him, and we had a Senate who rejected.
And in this case, we have a Republican Senate, so they'll likely confirm.
Barack Obama was well in his authority to nominate, Just as the Senate was well in their authority to deny.
Donald Trump is well within his authority to nominate just as Barack Obama was.
And the Senate is well within its authority to deny or accept.
Nothing has changed.
I don't understand why it's an issue.
So it's one of those things where people say Merrick Garland, Merrick Garland.
No, the issue wasn't just that it was an election year.
That's what the media tried to paint it out to be because obviously they cherry pick the
arguments that you heard presented from Lindsey Graham or McConnell.
Lindsey Graham said on the record several times, he said, listen, this is unprecedented
in a split election, in a split party right now between the executive branch and the legislative
branch in an election year to expect it to get forced through.
That's just not going to happen.
And then, of course, when he goes on the cable news shows and he talks more, sometimes he
doesn't express the full breadth of his argument and says, well, this is an election year.
It's different.
So then people take the weakest argument, right?
And they go, oh, all he said was it was the election year.
He was very clear in what he was expressing.
Conservatives who knew what they were talking about knew I was an issue.
Now, my concern here, and this is why we did the change of mind, is I do see, unfortunately, a lot of people on the right who were reductive, who simplified it to, ah, it's an election year!
Well, that was never the argument.
It was never my argument.
Sure.
So hopefully this provides an opportunity to illuminate that for people.
Yeah.
Because it wasn't just about it being an election year.
It was about it being a divided government.
And by the way, In midterms, Republicans have only added seats to the Senate.
So when people say, oh, it's a vote of no confidence... Well, no, in this case, it's a vote of supreme confidence when you're talking about the Senate.
Yeah, absolutely.
Yeah, we have another one here actually about the... A change of mind, I guess, in general.
It says... It's from Steven with a PH.
In today's... In today's cultural climate... I hope that guy gets martyred.
Wow.
In today's cultural climate... First martyr.
Ah.
Delightful.
In today's cultural climate, is it possible to help someone change their mind, or are people doomed to be stuck in their ways?
What do you think?
I mean, obviously, you're going out there doing something called Change My Mind.
It assumes that there's, at some level, some ability for people to change their minds today.
Right.
Well, I'll tell you what.
I've never had my mind changed entirely on an issue or fundamentally on an issue at a Change My Mind.
But I have had my mind opened on certain thoughts, and I will say this, in trying to change my mind, often people change their own mind.
Often people end up finding common ground.
So, to Stephen with a PH, hopefully you've watched Change My Mind before, and if you have, you've seen dozens of examples of other people changing their minds, simply through the attempt to change my mind.
And that also can happen, by the way, when there's a debate.
When it's just a debate where you're trying to score points, which is what we have on television, which is what the cable news system is designed to encourage, you've got an eight minute segment and you've got to use up as much time as possible to score points, right?
Because your only job at that point is to try and show the audience, right?
The dwindling audience with cable news, how your arguments are supreme.
When it changed my mind, it's almost like, you know, you've been doing jujitsu more now and you've sort of grown to understand the difference That simply having rounds makes, right?
The early UFCs, they had no rounds.
They had no time limit.
And when that's the case, guess what?
You didn't have anyone stalling and then looking to score points before the end of the round for the ref to step in.
You didn't have anyone looking to the ref because there was no ref.
That's what changed my mind is.
It's, listen, it's a slow cook.
It's we sit down, there is no ref.
There is no one keeping time.
There is no one who needs to get to reverse mortgage commercials.
It is do the ideas stand or fall.
And, of course, we're not going to be talking for two, three hours because sometimes these people like to be long-winded.
There is a point where you have to end it and you realize it's no longer fruitful.
But that really is what changed my mind.
I've tried to reiterate this as often as possible.
It is not a debate.
People can go and watch what a debate is like when I was on BBC or Sky News or Fox News or Russia Today,
or we've had people on our show.
I'm very clear that it's different when there's a debate.
This is trying to encourage people to rationalize their position and use a Socratic method.
And often people have never done that, specifically on college campuses, which is remarkable
because a lot of these kids who come up are, and not just kids, we've done it obviously downtown Austin,
we've done it downtown Dallas, we've done it in front of the White House,
we've done it in Michigan, right?
We've done it in Vermont, not always at schools.
But what is most remarkable to me is when we do these kinds of events at schools is you'll have people
who come up who are studying philosophy or humanities Yeah, I think probably a lot of what you'll encounter today is going to be, you know, maybe some of the anti-Christian or anti-Catholic kind of sentiment.
We have a question here from Mark, who says, so why is ACB being crucified for being Catholic, but Joe Biden isn't?
That's because Joe Biden isn't Catholic.
OK.
What do you mean?
What do you mean by that?
I mean, this is a guy who wants millions of unborn babies killed in their mother's womb.
And I mean, he's best.
He's buddied up with the lady who's been denied communion.
I don't listen.
You'll know them by the fruits of the tree.
I don't know anything about Joe Biden.
I don't know any values that he has expressed that are Catholic values.
None.
Then again, I also feel that way about the Pope.
I'm not a Catholic.
I'm a Protestant.
I know we have plenty of brothers and sisters in the Catholic denomination where we disagree on theology, but I think we find, of course, a lot of common ground.
And one of them that really seems to be undeniable should be the idea of life.
And Joe Biden doesn't believe that.
His running mates don't believe that.
And Joe Biden, at every turn, if you can look at what he's espoused and what he's believed, It runs in diametric opposition to the Catholic Church.
Now, it's something that... I can't say he's not a Catholic.
I can say he's not an observant Catholic.
For the same reason that Ben Shapiro is Jewish.
Okay?
Harvey Weinstein is Jewish.
You think they're going to the same synagogue?
You know what I mean?
No, listen.
This is important to note.
And so, the only way to really determine it would be to ask Joe Biden.
Not, well, how does your Catholic faith inform your... It would be like, Do you believe that Jesus Christ died on the cross for your sins and is the one and only way to get through heaven?
And if he says no, he's not a Catholic.
Amy Coney Barrett's been asked that.
She's answered very clearly, unequivocally.
I've never heard Joe Biden answer that way.
Right, yeah, and for some reason it isn't seen as an impediment to Joe Biden being able to make decisions, but it is seen as an impediment for ACB to be able to make decisions.
It's seen as an impediment because people don't believe that his Catholicism means anything.
Let's be clear.
That's true.
If they believed that he was actually Catholic, they know that Joe Biden would be pro-life and he would not be the Democratic nominee.
If they believed that he was actually Catholic, he would have a deep sympathy for the Founding Fathers and the Constitution and the reasons that we have the framing for this country that we do.
And he would be out there espousing his Catholic views.
And he would be praising ACB for Catholicism and for her faith, for her adoption of children from crap hole countries.
And I say that because it's a good thing that they were rescued.
They're not concerned with it for the same reason that they weren't concerned with Barack Obama's Christianity, for the same reason that Barack Obama never seated, he was never seated in a church throughout his entire presidency.
Because they know that they don't mean it.
Right.
Yeah, that makes sense.
Yeah, so we have another chat here from Brett.
He says, do you think it's time to change lifetime appointments for the Supreme Court?
Obviously, that's the current system, but what do you think?
Uh, no.
No?
Okay.
Certainly not right now.
Yeah, I guess... Listen, that's a topic... I set you up with a yes or no question.
That's my fault.
No, no, it's okay if it's a yes or no question.
Right now, no.
And certainly not as they're discussing packing courts.
I think we need to deal with Amy Coney Barrett and then we need to deal with this idea of packing courts and the election before we get to the idea of lifetime appointments.
Do I see a valid argument to be against it long term?
Sure, I absolutely do.
For the same reason that I see a valid argument against serious term limits for local representatives.
Right now, that's not a discussion that I think needs to be on the table.
What needs to be on the table is getting this distinguished lady confirmed and making sure that everyone knows court packing is straight from the pit of hell.
Gotcha.
Yeah, so one of the things that—I guess the right has been able to laugh off, but I guess it's a serious argument on the left.
Somebody said here, so I would like to see—Amber says, I would like to see you discuss how racist ACB is for stealing those poor Haitian children and then erasing their real parents.
You mentioned that, I guess, sort of offhand, but do you expect that to come up?
Is anybody actually arguing that, or is that just something that the right is able to make fun of?
She says, I would like to see you discuss it.
I'm not going to discuss it unless someone brings it up.
It's not an argument.
Right, right, right.
If someone brings it up, I'll just say, oh, OK.
Yeah.
It's one of those things.
I think the conservatives, unfortunately, and Amber, I appreciate it, but I think that a lot of people who maybe come from Uh, there was a sort of new wave of people who came from, not that they were alt-right, but that's where a lot of people sort of came in this trolling idea.
It doesn't mean that it's the best thing to do.
It may be fun on Twitter to make fun of people, but if you're actually having a discussion here, and the idea is to change people's minds, I certainly won't veer the conversation into, what do you think?
You know, like baiting that hook, kind of like a bait when you reach for my foot and I put you in a crucifix when we're doing jiu-jitsu.
I'm like, oh, what's this foot doing here?
You're like, I've got a single leg.
Oh, I'm being choked.
I'm not going to try and bait out there like, what do you think about adopting black kids?
Because it's just a fruitless endeavor.
The only place that argument goes is, well, I think it's racist.
And I say, well, I think it's wonderful.
I mean, what else?
You think it's racist.
You think it's horrible that she adopted children and brought them into a loving home from a horrible You think it's wrong because you see everything through the prism of race.
I think it's wonderful because I see it through the prism of love.
And that is defined by my Christian faith, which will piss people off because you know it matters to me.
Yeah.
Well, you've talked about how there is a difference between someone that you can change their mind and someone that you might just use as, like, an example to say, like, okay, well, we just have fundamentally different views of the world, and I guess that that's sort of what changed my mind, is able to sort those different people out.
Yeah, with the abortion, you know, when we brought out the fetal chart, that was actually Reg's wonderful idea, because sometimes I'll get lost in the weeds, and he said, you know, bring this out, because if someone says Sure.
don't have any limitations on abortion, you know, show them at four weeks, at six weeks,
Yeah.
eight weeks, all the way up until nine months.
And when people just said, well, I don't think there should be any limitations, I go, well,
how about right here?
And I point to a baby on that chart that's nine months or eight months, and they say,
no, no limitations.
I just say, okay, well, thank you very much.
Sure.
Yeah.
Some people may think that's cowering away from an argument.
I'm sorry.
It's not.
It's just that person has decided that they don't, they don't care whether it's a life
Period.
They want to abort.
There's no debate at that point as to whether it's terminating a life.
Right?
When you say, I'm okay with it up to 8 months or 9 months.
It's not about viability.
It's not about it being a life.
It's not about it feeling pain.
It's not about it having a heart.
It's not about any of those things.
It is about a secularist, humanistic religion where you are making sacrifices at the altar of self.
And so, that's not a discussion that I want to engage.
Uh, that's not a discussion that I'm there to engage.
Same thing if we show up today and someone says, well, I don't think she should be nominated because she's racist.
And I said, well, okay.
Even with that statement, it's broad enough where I will say, could you, would you be willing to clarify that?
She adopted black children and that's racist.
I will not continue a conversation.
You see everything through the prism of race.
I see it through the prism of, of right and wrong and love.
And I can't think of anything more beautiful than a privileged, Cis white female uh and likely cis white male when you're dealing with your husband right because two people are adopting here uh in the United States taking a child from a scenario like that
And truly being colorblind, I'm sorry.
The fact that there's even a pretzel that people are attempting to twist themselves into to argue that that is problematic, shows how far around the bend many of them have gone.
But that's not all liberals.
And that's what changed my mind is, is hopefully we find some, you know, we find some reasonable ones who are willing to sit down.
And I gotta say, I'm a little nervous with this one because they're just, there really is not much of a leg to stand on for people arguing against ACB.
I think they'll probably try and pivot right away to Roe v. Wade.
Yeah.
And maybe if everyone does that, we'll have to do a separate Roe v. Wade, overturn Roe v. Wade, change my mind.
But I'm hoping we can actually talk about ACB.
Well, actually, there's a question here from Paige.
It says, Stephen, do you think ACB will attempt to overturn Roe v. Wade?
How will the Democrats then try to undermine that decision?
What do you think?
You think it's really on the table, overturning Roe v. Wade?
I don't know that it is.
I don't believe that it's been with Kavanaugh or with Gorsuch.
I don't know.
Again, that's kind of the complications that arise when we're doing this while the hearings are going on.
But I wouldn't put it past her.
I wouldn't put it past her, and I don't think there's anything wrong with that.
I mean, you know who had a real problem with Roe v. Wade?
Was RGB.
Ruth Bader Ginsburg said that she thought it was very heavy handed and she was afraid did more harm
than good because Roe v. Wade is not about banning. If you overturn Roe v. Wade, you don't ban abortion.
Roe v. Wade is based on the 14th Amendment and this loose sort of interpretation of privacy rights.
And I don't want to, I won't get into it too much because we'll get into it to the,
in the change my mind, but I think that of all the justices who have been nominated recently,
I do believe that ACB, there's a strong chance that she would vote to overturn Roe v. Wade.
I don't know that it's something that she'll be spearheading, but if it is something that comes to the floor, I think she would vote for it.
And I don't think that's a bad thing.
Yeah.
Well, hey, I know you do have to get going here in a few minutes to get to the Change My Mind, but maybe this might be a good note to end on from Scott here.
He says, what do you think is the number one reason why people change their mind politically?
Obviously, the goal is to see if we can change somebody's mind, see if they're the type of person who can take that.
But what do you think is the number one reason people do it?
I would say it comes from two.
Can I do that?
Can I cheat and say two?
Absolutely.
I don't think Scott will be mad.
Truth and empathy.
Now, I want to be clear because I know sometimes people will say, well, you're not always, sometimes you come across as a dick.
Sure.
Granted.
But if you look at all the actual change of minds that have taken place, where people have changed their mind, or we found common ground, it comes through speaking truth.
And that comes through preparation.
And I don't just mean preparation for these topics, but years and years of preparation.
Um, and being empathetic to the point of view, I can think of three examples that sprang to mind right away.
One was she came back on the show, um, the lady at, uh, I can't remember the school.
It was, uh, I believe in Dallas, uh, who had had an abortion.
Yeah.
Who was pro abortion.
And I told her, I said, listen, well, I do.
And she, she did believe in God.
And so we started with that sort of premise.
Otherwise I wouldn't have used this argument.
And that's why I do believe you're going to meet your, uh, Your daughter or her son.
I can't remember exactly.
I do believe you're going to meet your child someday.
So, um, I think that's, that's an important thing to keep in mind.
And she reached out afterward and she asked to come back on the show and she said that her mind had been changed.
And that was because it wasn't just about scoring points.
It wasn't about taking a dump on our world.
You know, we had people who came up and were screaming that I was a Nazi and a fascist.
And it's fun to make fun of those people, but that's not what we set out to do.
A perfect change of mind is where that doesn't happen, and we have a bunch of those kinds of dialogues.
Another one was that young lady.
I'm horrible with names, but I never forget her face.
It was at UT Austin, where she sat down and she talked about being from a small town and affirmative action.
And she said that she didn't believe she would be at UT if not for affirmative action.
And I walked her through it.
I said, well, hold on a second.
You said that you were at the top of your class.
She said, yes.
I said, you said that you didn't really have much of a social life.
You didn't go out partying.
And I went through the list of everything that she had told me.
And I said, I think that you are supremely qualified and deserve to be here.
And it's really sad to me that you don't believe you are here at UT Austin, that you've merited this seat off of anything other than your race.
And I want to tell you, that's not true.
And she said, oh.
And a lot of people reach out to me afterwards and she had changed her mind.
There was also a black professor there who changed his mind.
So it comes from truth and empathy, but it is hard to speak truth through empathy.
If the person is coming in aggressive, looking to score points,
that is not you know, this is what that is not what we do with change my mind.
But that is what some people do.
And that's why you see a variance in the in the types of discussions that take place.
So it really does come through truth.
That means you have to have truth first and foremost and being empathetic.
Now being empathetic doesn't mean that you agree with all actions that are taken from someone.
In other words, you can be empathetic to someone who is living a life of sin without necessarily praising or even condoning the sin.
You can be empathetic because And this is how Christians, how we all believe, we can be empathetic because we understand that sin is bondage, that sin destroys people.
And so when I hear someone talking about abortions and how much it means to her and how she, if she couldn't have an abortion, that she wouldn't have been able to pay for that child, I do have empathy, but it's not because I think that abortion is a brave and beautiful thing.
I have empathy because that woman doesn't yet know that she has just changed herself.
placed herself in bondage until she frees herself from those chains through truth.
So it would be truth and empathy when those two can capably intersect. They can't always,
but that's our job as Christians, and that's our job as critical thinkers,
as people who are to the right of center. Yeah. Good stuff.
Yeah, so we've got the Change Our Mind coming out tomorrow.
So you're doing it today, coming out tomorrow, and then another one on Wednesday, then a big Biden town hall stream on Thursday.
Big, exciting week.
Thank you so much for calling in.
Really excited to see how this Change Our Mind goes.
Thank you for having me on my show.
I'm sorry.
All right, cool.
See you later, Stephen.
And see you later, everybody else.
Yeah, thank you so much for joining us at Good Morning Mug Club.
We will see you tomorrow with a Change My Mind, and then another one the next day, and then a stream on Thursday.
Big week.
See you later.
▲
Export Selection