April 4, 2026 - Human Events Daily - Jack Posobiec
57:16
THOUGHTCRIME Ep. 121 — Back To the Moon? Bryon Noem's Bimbo Fix? Mt. Everest = Lame?
Thoughtcrime Ep. 121 features hosts debating the Artemis moon program's delayed landing, contrasting it with Everest's commercialized dangers and Sherpa scams. The episode intensifies with a fierce theological clash over whether Tolkien's Lord of the Rings is pagan or Christian, followed by moral outrage regarding leaked details about Brian Noem's cross-dressing and his wife's alleged ignorance. Concluding with a partnership between Turning Point USA and Citizens Alliance to build a red wall in Nevada and Arizona for 2028, the discussion underscores ongoing cultural battles over truth, privacy, and political strategy. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: CohereLabs/cohere-transcribe-03-2026, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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Antarctica Conspiracy Theories00:14:05
All right.
Welcome to this Thursday edition of Thought Crime.
We are joined by Russ, Blake, and Cliff.
Hey, Cliff.
Howdy.
You too.
You're looking well, as always.
Nice hat on your head.
Which one's this?
You're like Tyler.
That's why you interchange with Tyler.
You guys have lots of hats.
This is the Win World Poker Tour.
I think it says on there 2022.
Yeah.
Look at you, man.
The World Poker Championship.
It is going to be something obscure.
Are you a card shark?
I didn't realize that, Cliff.
We'll get into that sometime, Blake.
I don't want to brag too much.
I try to also push.
I'll say it.
You know, that's, yeah.
He's a card shark.
Something like that.
All right, whatever, whatever.
Enough niceties.
Guys, guys, guys, guys, we have something extremely important.
Run it.
Clip one.
Why do you want to be here?
Why do you love space?
Why do you love being a part of history?
We're going back to the moon.
That's why.
We're going back to the moon.
Guys, hold on.
All right.
Okay.
So, first of all, we're going back to the moon.
This is what Blake does with Strong Cell, too.
He always jumps the gun.
All right.
A couple things.
We're doing an early thought crime today.
We may get Jack in, but Jack is actually participating in the Turning Point event at George Washington University.
So, hopefully, he can call in because we want to talk about him going viral with Lord of the Rings last night.
I think it's important.
Yeah.
Hopefully, we get him in.
Anyways, by the way, you came out smelling roses on that.
I did.
I got marked safe by Nerd Roddick and the crew.
I did not because apparently I just haven't watched it, even though I said, pretty sure it's overtly Christian.
That was my direct quote.
That was your take.
You guys are always making excuses.
You're going to call it DEI this week.
That's what I predicted.
No, no.
He's going to do it.
He's going to do it.
He's a little bit on the gay side, but that's fine.
Okay, here we go.
We are doing an early thought crime with Cliff.
And yes, our first topic is Artemis Too Long.
You know what?
Play it again.
Why do you want to be here?
Why do you love space?
Why do you love being a part of history?
We're going back to the moon.
That's why.
Oh, that kid is awesome.
You know, his parents were like, his dad's like, where'd it go?
But, you know, don't tell mom I taught you that word kind of thing.
Oh, it's so great.
We're going back to the moon.
Some people are trying to black pill.
They're trying to be lame about it.
They're trying to be, ooh, we went back to the moon 60 years ago.
Yeah, but we're going to the moon again.
Well, did we go to the moon?
Yes, we went to the moon.
Yes, we went to the moon.
Wait, is anyone here a moon landing?
I don't get to have fun with any of the current conspiracy theories.
Let me have the 60s ones.
No.
Oh, gosh.
So you're going to be like that, Andrew.
You're just going to say that.
Well, let's play it.
And then I want Cliff to weigh in.
This is from 1969, allegedly.
Well, I guess either way, it's from 1969.
SOC 4.
Very, very fine grained as you get close to it.
It's almost like a powder.
Round miss, uh, to three point.
Round miss, step off the laminate.
It's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.
Oh, that looks beautiful to me, and it has a start beauty all its own.
It does look beautiful, doesn't it?
Because it was on a soundstage in Burbank.
Just kidding.
Cliff, what's your take of Artemis 2 and us allegedly returning to the moon?
Yeah, I mean, listen, this is the one conspiracy I feel like is allowed these days because we've had enough time in between.
Between.
No, I'm not quite there where I don't believe it, but I think with everything that's happened in the last 10, 15, 20 years, I would not be surprised if a couple of years from now we find out, hey, this baby was staged.
But I got to make one comment.
The kid reminded me, have you guys ever heard the story about the janitor, one that we were first trying to go to the moon?
Is this folklore or have you heard this one before?
I'm not familiar with this legend.
You're going to have to educate me.
So apparently, Kennedy or some high level politician was there.
And he ran into a janitor and there was a camera on them.
And he said to the janitor, He said, 'What do you do here?' And the janitor said, 'I'm working to put a man on the moon.' And they talk about this at like, you know, like CEO or self help type seminars that like, you know, you want your team fully aligned.
That kid from that interview, he was locked in and ready to go.
Yeah.
Yeah.
That is actually a cool like leadership story.
You got the janitor who's like all in to clean the heck out of those toilets because he thinks that he's helping to send somebody to the moon.
Really, we were just trying to win a PR war against the Ruskies.
Yeah, but we won it awesomely.
We did.
Yeah, even if it.
Okay.
Is it more bad?
Well, is it more cool?
Sorry, 11 year old.
This is a PG 13 show.
Is it cooler if we actually went to the moon or if we pulled off an entire, like.
Don't do this.
No, don't do any of this.
Don't do this devil's advocate stuff.
It's way cooler to go to the actual world.
It is cooler to go to the moon.
It would fool the entire world that you went to the moon.
No.
No.
It's way cooler to go to the moon.
I'm going to be honest.
I believe we went to the moon.
I'm very proud of that as an American.
But it is weird that it's been since 1969.
When was the last time we went to the moon?
It was like mid 70s?
Like 71 or 72.
I thought it was like 75.
Am I off?
We were going at like one every year or so, I think.
Anyways, it's just wild that it's legitimately 50 years ago that we.
And now we're not even landing on the moon, by the way.
Artemis 2, their mission is to slingshot around the moon's gravity, come back to Earth, and then by 2028, land somebody.
Yeah, I think the current plan is Artemis 4 is the one that lands on the moon.
Artemis 3 is going to be testing landing stuff in orbit around Earth, and then I think Artemis 4 is like.
They actually do it.
Yeah.
I just think conspiracy theorists have way too much leeway these days.
Well, I've made the observation that we went from trust the experts to only trust non experts that don't know what to tell you.
And there's so many non experts.
Oh, gosh, the internet is.
Blake got into some fights with some non experts last night.
Oh, yeah.
Are we going there?
Oh, if you guys want.
No, it's just like.
Oh, man, we've got 8 million.
This is what happens in Russ's.
Yes, dance pops up.
Just dance.
There's just eight, you know, oh man, yeah, I'm sure every single person who is an expert on this at every single university, including in multiple countries, who'd have reasons to affirm otherwise, like they all agree on this thing.
But no, I bet this, like, podcaster who does MMA is, like, really, really on point with this thing.
He's definitely figured it out on the whole moon question.
Oh, I see.
Which is true.
Oh, wait.
I didn't even know that.
Rogan is.
Rogan is a big moon truther.
Is he a moon truther?
No, I've even seen tweets, like, people arguing that, like, a very real reason we're doing this mission may literally be to, like, Prove to Rogan that we can actually do it.
So, I have a family member who will remain unidentified that is a flat earther, like a legit flat earther.
Are they on like.
No, this is like a normal good person, like in a lot of ways.
This is why.
And not dumb, actually.
No, they're dumb.
About this, they are.
Cliff, I hear Cliff laughing.
About this, they are wrong.
Like, do they fly in space?
What's that?
Do they fly in planes?
Well, so that I've had this conversation.
I was like, can you not see the curvature?
Like, if you're, if you're, if you fly, for example, from Seattle to London, which I did one time many years ago, I remember because it goes up towards the Arctic and comes down.
It's the shortest route.
And you could see the curve of the Earth very clearly.
And then you think about Artemis, like, how many things would they have had to engineer and just pre plan to fool people about the curvature of the Earth?
Because that, Thing was up there within like five minutes.
It was in, you could see every single commercial pilot is in on it because they plot out their courses apparently on the assumption the world is round.
They'd have to do it quite differently if it wasn't.
Well, so like one of their points that they make is that you don't go, like a lot of people fly over the Arctic, but nobody flies over Antarctica.
Yeah, where would you be flying to?
I don't know.
Maybe you were going from Australia, New Zealand to South America.
Yeah, and also there's probably no airports you can land on there if anything goes wrong.
Yeah, but you couldn't land at an airport in the Arctic.
Yeah, there's closer ones.
There's places you could land.
Usually when you fly over, I don't think you're usually going over the North Pole.
Usually you're doing more of a great survey.
I don't know.
I'm not sure.
In general, look at a map.
There's nothing in the South Pole area.
Antarctica is really far away, even from.
The southern tip of like South America or Australia.
Also, I just can't imagine there's that many flights from Australia to Santiago, Chile, or whatever.
What's the expected time on this?
Is it like two weeks?
I mean, what are the expected time?
It's about 10 days.
It takes you like five days to get to the moon.
Didn't we hear that like the bathroom malfunctioned?
Yeah, they fixed it.
They fixed it.
But you did have to worry about that because there's two, I believe there's two women on this ship, and women need a lot of time in the bathroom.
Should have sent Mark Quain Mullen up there.
He'd have been able to fix the bathroom pretty quickly.
Plumber microwave.
We should have sent Aerosmith on this mission because they were really good in the movie Armageddon.
Oh, you're right.
There you go.
It says, however, a few long haul routes in the southern hemisphere fly close enough to skirt or briefly enter Antarctic airspace, especially depending on winds and exact routing.
These typically offer distant views of the continent's edge or ice.
But this plays into their conspiracy theory.
Ice wall.
Because it's like, yeah, it's like a whole ice ring.
And so if you're flying.
Close enough, you're just touching, you could see the ice, but you don't fly over it to prove there's actually a current.
What's their explanation for like some flights go east and some go west to get to the same spot?
That you're going around like it's all a big flat disk?
Yeah, the disk spins.
I don't know this perfectly well, I'm not the best guy, but the disk spins and they're flying around a disk.
And why do they believe this?
Which is why it makes sense to go over the North Pole because it shortens the distance, everything.
Just because the internet told them.
Yeah, that's.
Yeah, I'm going to go with the dumb.
I got three reasons here.
Grok's telling me why people don't fly over Antarctica.
One, no demand for direct routes, which is pretty obvious.
Safety and practical challenges.
And then the lack of infrastructure.
There's only a handful of research military airstrips, mostly on ice, seasonal, and not equipped for large commercial jets.
We need an extreme.
Did you mention extreme conditions?
Because I was going to say Antarctica has way more extreme weather.
Antarctica is way colder than the North Pole.
We sat in a plane for an Hour waiting to get de iced just in Minneapolis.
So, God forbid we're going to the North Pole.
We have all these conspiracy theories about flat Earth, but we have a lot of cool stuff we could do with Antarctica.
We could go with At the Mountains of Madness, is actually a true account from H.P. Lovecraft, and if you fly over it, you'll unleash the Cthulhu horrors that will overrun humanity.
We could also say The Thing.
We could say The Thing was a documentary, and that if we were to send planes to the South Pole, They could crash and allow the thing to escape and consume all of humanity with its assimilative powers.
I have no idea what you're talking about.
You haven't seen The Thing?
Wait, The Thing?
The Thing?
You don't even know what I'm talking about?
I'm thinking of it.
He doesn't even know about The Thing.
Cliff, you know what The Thing is, right?
Uh oh.
I don't.
No one has anyone.
Okay, RumbleChat, back me up on this.
You guys have watched The Thing, right?
Come on.
Are you appealing to the chat for this?
Yes, I'm appealing to the chat.
Who wrote it?
The thing movie.
1982 horror?
Yeah.
The thing, man.
It's where you can't trust anyone because any of them.
Kurt Russell's in it.
Yeah, Kurt Russell.
Oh, wait, I've seen Kurt Russell.
And it's the alien and it assimilates and poses as people.
And then they like.
It has to do with Antarctica?
Yeah, it's on an Antarctic base.
This is like one of the coolest movies ever.
This is like one of the coolest movies ever.
Scientists are disturbed at their base camp by a helicopter shooting at a sled dog.
When they take in the dog.
It brutally attacks both human beings and canines in the camp, and they discover that the beast can assume the shape of its victims.
A resourceful helicopter pilot and the camp doctor lead the camp crew in a desperate, gory battle against a vicious creature before it picks them all off one by one.
Andrew, you should do voiceover work.
It's very passionate.
Yeah, it's the movie that came out.
It was the cooler movie that came out at the same time as ET.
In a world, in a world, in a world.
You can't trust anyone.
In Antarctica, where in 1982, Kurt Russell leads a crew.
Desperately attempting to fight back against an alien canine force.
Oh, wow, that is pretty good.
Thank you.
Did you do?
You guys ever?
That wasn't scary.
It was beautiful.
You guys ever hear the I'm now diving deep into the Antarctica conspiracies.
And I had not heard this one before.
They're really secret Nazi bases, and that's where Hitler escaped to.
I hadn't heard that before.
There's like a fun name for it, too.
It slows down the aging process.
He's the Batman villain known as Mr. Freeze.
Yeah, well, that too.
Moon Takeover and Mars Race00:03:51
Yeah, they had like a name of it.
It's like, what was it?
Like New Swabia, New Schwabenland, they would call it.
And I believe in the moon landing.
I just want to be very clear because.
Okay, so accepting that the moon landing is real, is it, you know, we're all very excited for that kid, but is it sufficient that we are going back to the moon 60 years after we went for the first time?
We have way better film production now.
We do.
We can prove anything.
Everybody seems to be like, it's a hologram.
It's AI.
Is the mission tainted?
It's AI.
Is the mission tainted by us bringing a Canadian on this mission and then leaving him on the moon?
Thousand percent.
Yeah.
We call it Maple Syrup Americans.
Yeah, what's that, Cliff?
It's a complete disgrace.
Complete disgrace.
I don't know how we let that pass.
Does he have an American flag on his shoulder?
Look at, and there's a woman, which got me.
Yeah, but let me say this, though.
I think the whole landing part is like, that's what's impressive.
I mean, obviously, you know, I'm not saying that getting to the moon is obviously impressive, but like, you know, what was it?
The ballpoint pen and the whole story, you know, of what happened and then getting off the moon.
Like, that to me is what, you know, you think, you think, what was the movie we were just saying?
Armageddon.
Like, you think about the landing part.
I do think that discounts the whole trip that they're not actually landing.
Well, you build up to it.
You build up to it.
It's still the first time.
That's why it's so weird is that we've already done it before.
Yeah.
Yeah, but we haven't done it for like seven years.
What's tragic is that America abandoned this, and we know why, because America went all in on dumber stuff.
Trump brought it back, and then Biden shelved it.
And Trump gets back.
You know who really brought it back, amusingly, was Bush, remember?
Bush got really into like, we should go to the moon and land on Mars and stuff.
And then Trump's really into it.
They moved very slowly.
We should land on Mars.
This should be step one towards us going to Mars.
And we should also build a nuclear reactor.
Well, now we're in a race against China.
That's the takeover of the moon.
Yeah.
So China wants to essentially own the moon.
And we're like, we're going to do it first.
I don't know what kind of minerals are on the moon.
Like, could you mine the moon?
Oh, 100%.
What's on the moon?
I think everything.
I think anything that would have created minerals on Earth would have made them on the moon, too.
There is an amazing show that I love on Amazon Prime, or not Amazon Prime, Apple TV called For All Mankind.
And it literally, the whole point is like, what if the United States had won or lost the space race back in the 70s?
And then you kind of go through them landing on the moon, them putting a permanent base on the moon, then the race for Mars.
And there's a whole like, the Cold War actually has a full on kinetic war on the moon.
Wow.
That's kind of cool.
What if we were losing the space race to China and they were taking over the moon?
Would it be justified for us to blow up the moon?
Pretty sure that would have some downsides.
Yeah, that would have some serious consequences.
Okay, okay.
You guys can all be like, oh, no, don't blow up the moon.
Did you know there was an actual college professor who was obsessed with pushing the idea that we should blow up the moon?
Really?
Yes.
This is obscure.
Cliff, what were you going to say?
No, I was just looking at the Bush stuff because I'd never heard that, Blake.
And you're right.
His moon, this is W. Bush.
His moon goal was to return by 2020.
And then his Mars goal, which this is such a simple thing for W to say, was to use the moon, quote, use the moon as a stepping stone to get to Mars, which, you know, I get it.
But like, yeah, that was in 2004.
Vision for space exploration.
Everest Cash Cow Accidents00:07:18
Yeah, that was a weird name.
So we're executing on Bush's vision in a variety of ways right now.
There you go.
Yes, it was.
An Iowa State mathematics professor, Alexander Abian, spent much of his career advocating that we destroy the moon, which he said would eliminate seasons, the wobble of the earth, and it would delete all associated events like heat waves, snowstorms, and hurricanes.
And he said that those who dismissed him were like those he dismissed Galileo.
So he said we should explode the moon.
And he was a mathematics professor, so he's smarter than all of us.
But speaking of things that are kind of cool, but also possibly lame, we also have very fascinating news out of another extreme part of.
Our universe, Mount Everest.
So, Mount Everest, the tallest mountain in the world, is in the news because Nepalese police have discovered a sinister Sherpa plot to poison Mount Everest climbers.
Apparently, they were spiking their food with baking powder or other things, causing them to fall ill so that they would then request a helicopter evacuation off of Mount Everest.
Extraordinarily daunting.
They would get a helicopter evac off Mount Everest, which is really expensive.
And it was a way to basically scam people into expensive helicopter evacuations off of Mount Everest.
How extreme that is.
Apparently, it involved over 20 people, and it may have cost over $20 million worth of expensive helicopter evacuations.
Guaranteed it's like American insurance companies paying for it, too.
Oh, 100%.
Oh, totally.
Totally.
Yeah.
We're like somehow the Somalians figure out a way to defraud us and the Nepalese.
It really is sinister.
Like, you think of what a cash cow just having Mount Everest is.
For the Nepalese economy.
And then these guys are like, no, it's not enough.
We have to do this insane scam on the people coming here to spend money.
Well, on top of it, too, like most of these people going up Mount Everest are rich people who are bored, anyways.
So it's like, oh, so you're going to scam them out of even more money.
Got it.
Roger that.
So, the reason I wanted to bring this up is similar thoughts.
So, okay, they're scamming the people who climbed Mount Everest, but the bigger idea, the thought crime idea, is climbing Mount Everest actually cool still, or is it actually kind of lame?
Yay!
Yeah, like, let's be frank here.
The first guy to climb Mount Everest did it in the 50s, and he had to figure it out.
Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay, they had to figure out how to get to the top of the mountain.
And, you know, They were going to die if they failed.
And they had to do all the work.
But now you could just be a rich person and go climb Mount Everest.
And it's the Sherpas, the local Nepalese, they do all of the hard work of figuring out.
They basically create the route up there.
They guide you up the whole way.
And yeah, you can die.
But a lot of people die every year.
Yeah, but you can also die in a normal car crash, too.
And I'm not a hero or brave for driving my car around Phoenix.
I think it's not exactly the same.
But it is.
It's much deadlier.
Have you seen the Phoenix drivers?
It's bad.
It's bad.
The Nepalese, am I saying that right?
Nepal?
Say it however you want.
Nepalese, I mean, they are really impressive.
The fact that these guys go up and down, up and down, up and down.
Yeah, they're impressive.
They're impressive.
They're impressive.
The rich white dude.
The rich white dude from the West.
Not so much.
Like, I remember about this was when I was in high school or so.
I've got technical training.
This guy became the first blind person to climb to the top of Mount Everest.
And yeah, you can say that's amazing.
He's blind.
But the other way you could phrase it is.
Okay, a blind person can do this.
It does sort of degrade the accomplishment for everybody else.
Yeah, and you know what's interesting about Mount Everest is that there's like a bunch of trash everywhere.
It's become really like dirty, the route, because so many people do it.
Well, and the standard thing is you use oxygen tanks and then you just chuck the metal tank.
It's there for the rest of eternity.
You're climbing with your climbing buddy and he gets tired, so you chuck him, his entire body, to the side to get to the top.
And abandon him.
And they do throw up the B roll of it.
It's a content warning here, but there's a lot of corpses on Mount Everest.
And in fact, some of them are important landmarks.
There's a Canadian flag.
Yeah, all right.
And this is what will happen.
You will get tired.
You'll be in the death zone, and you just get tired.
And the guides will say, You need to get up or you're going to die.
You have to keep moving.
But if you can't keep moving, they just ditch you there.
And if you're high up enough, you can't get that scam helicopter rescue.
So now you're making it sound cool to hike Mount Everest.
It's impressive.
If you hike Mount Everest, yeah, but it's also, again, it's that combo where the Sherpas are doing all the hard work.
So if you go out there and you just die and you're not doing the hard work to climb, you're just sort of hazarding high altitude and you might get altitude sickness and keel over.
It just sort of feels dumb to me.
It's the mountain climbing equivalent of getting into a cage and swimming with sharks.
Like, it's not.
I got the numbers here.
What do you guys think?
How many people die per year?
Yeah, how many people die per year?
I'm not sure I'm sold on this analogy yet.
I think it's.
I actually thought it was much higher.
Go ahead, take a guess.
Before you look it up, I got the numbers.
Thank you guys, Blake.
Yeah.
I mean, I would say it's like it comes in bursts.
Like, there will be years where no one dies or one dies, and then there will be a bad storm, and maybe like 10 people die last year.
I would say average of one or two.
Last year was five, which is a pretty low number.
Eight deaths in 2024.
2023 had 18 deaths.
Holy moly.
And then the notable one was 2015.
There was a huge avalanche around base camp.
19 people died.
Wow.
It's lower than I thought.
I thought it would be much higher.
That's the worst of all.
You go to Everest and you just die in an avalanche at base camp.
That sucks.
I hadn't thought about it that way.
Womp, womp.
Yeah.
I mean, but I wonder how many of those were hikers and Sherpas or did the Sherpas that were like, we know how to avoid this?
There are definitely accidents that will take on a lot of Sherpas.
Really?
It's just some girl named Stephanie.
Just doing the check in list and what the Sherpa now.
2014, there were 16 Sherpas because there was some sort of like that was they were the only people that died that year.
There was some sort of icefall collapse, but that was 2014.
They're just getting back for all these Sherpa deaths that have happened throughout the year.
They're getting back at Whitey.
Yeah, I can kind of see that.
It's a dark story.
Yeah, this is it's very dark, but no, we need comments.
If anyone has thoughts, is it lame to climb Mount Everest?
Let's see.
I don't think it's quite as lame as, you know, or like, it's more harrowing than floating in a shark tank completely protected.
Because the only way you die that way is if you have some sort of like.
I mean, have you seen the videos of sharks getting stuck in there and.
And people literally like up against the back of the cage because the face got stuck in there.
Oh, no.
But I mean, I guess that makes some sense.
But it's not like if you're a small enough shark to get through a cage and a shark tank, you're probably not like a man eater kind of shark.
Tolkien's Christian Morality Mythology00:14:42
Andrew's the kind of guy he watches Jaws and the guy gets in the cage and he's like, I could do that.
It does look scary.
He watches the Meg and he's like, Jason Statham has nothing on me, man.
But at least the Meg is a fictional shark.
Jaws is a real shark.
Jaws is not a conspiracy.
Yeah.
It's not a conspiracy because Jaws is real and the moon landing's fake.
Yeah.
Andrew's just watching Jaws, and he's like, They don't need a bigger boat.
I could take that out on a jet ski.
Yeah, I definitely don't think so.
You know, Jaws rocked me to my core as a kid because one of the behind the scenes shows Spielberg when they put the oxygen tank in the shark and then they shoot it, and then obviously the shark explodes.
And apparently, somebody technical on scene was like, Well, Steven, if you shoot an oxygen tank, it's not necessarily going to explode.
And he was just like, They'll believe that it explodes.
That was like his whole line for doing that.
Like, there's no.
If you shoot an oxygen tank, it's not going to explode.
But by the way, the fact that he was just like, they'll believe it explodes goes back to the moon landing.
Good director knows what the audience will believe.
Mr. Kubrick, they'll never think this is real.
They'll believe we landed on it.
Honestly, the reason all the Kubrick conspiracy theories about the moon landing don't work is that knowing what we do about Stanley Kubrick, he would have made them redo the landing about 50 times before he'd be satisfied with the take.
So that's probably the best argument against that particular weird conspiracy.
Well, I actually, again, I believe the moon landing happened.
I just understand why some don't.
Okay.
Shall we?
I've been waiting for Elizabeth.
We shall.
All right.
All right.
Cliff, we have to start with you here since you weren't a part of this conversation.
Do you believe the Lord of the Rings to be overtly pagan or not?
So let me give my political answer first.
You'll be very disappointed in me.
So, in a past life, I think Andrew might know this, but I was a math teacher and I taught in New Zealand.
And so I got to go to Hobbiton.
It was an interesting trip.
I have never seen the series.
So, talk about being a bad guest.
And somebody who cannot comment, I have no clue.
I've obviously seen clips, but I did not feel the Lord Jesus Christ when I was at Hobbiton.
That is my thought for this conversation.
Score one for Jack right there.
Yeah.
Yep.
I don't get these takes where it's like it's pagan unless like Frodo collapses on his knees and confesses Jesus as his Lord and Savior.
But admittedly, that's it.
It went quite viral.
I got sent, I have friends in Europe who also don't know that I work on this like program who were sending me that clip.
So let's remind people what it was.
Let's do clip 14.
I've heard people try to make the argument that Lord of the Rings is overtly Christian.
And I hate to burst the bubble, guys, but you're just wrong.
There's nothing overtly Christian about Lord of the Rings.
There's no church in it.
There's no faith in it.
There's no Christ figure.
There's none of these things.
And honestly, Lord of the Rings, if it's anything, Lord of the Rings is overtly pagan.
I would like the record to reflect that when I was nodding and smiling, it was because I Heard that take before, not because I agreed with Jack.
I was gonna say, Go, go, get me that final frame.
This is my defense.
Give me the final frame.
My face goes like he goes overtly pagan, and I go, Because he was thinking he agrees with it.
Unless you were trying to hold back a sneeze.
Well, that was not what I was trying to do.
I was like, Huh?
Hmm.
All right.
Well, everyone got very spirited about it.
Everyone was ganging up on Jack.
They were all going after him.
And so he, I believe, he insisted he had to call back in to defend himself.
So I think we've got him on hold.
Jack, are you there?
Are they still crying?
Are they still crying?
They're still crying.
Is that what's going on right now?
The Lord of the Rings, like, Lord of the Rings is Catholic people are still crying about this.
What's that I hear?
What's this I hear?
Oh, it's Jack's theme music.
It's Lord of the Rings music.
Jack's favorite music.
He listens to this regularly.
All right, Jack.
What's weird is that, like, really.
So, what's really weird about this is that, like, really stupid people who don't have brain cells thought that I was saying that I didn't like Lord of the Rings, or, like, that Lord of the Rings was bad, or that I. Like, the amount of hallucinations and drugs that people were taking.
Kind of like the earlier Lord of the Rings fans who are the hippies, it was just amazing to see all of these things that people responding to that I literally didn't say.
Because people forget that we were talking about this because of the Stephen Colbert sequel to Lord of the Rings.
And the whole point of it was me trying to explain why someone who's like an arch liberal would like Lord of the Rings, but then someone who's, you know, like an arch conservative like JD Vance would also like the same series.
And it's amazing to me that.
Man, not only did I burst the bubble, I burst it so bad that they're still crying about it.
And I've also realized that people don't know what the word overt means, where yes, overt means on the surface level, which is actually something that was said by, wait for it, J.R.R. Tolkien, the writer of the series, who said that he eliminated religion from the series and it is not found until you review it further.
All right.
What do you buy this?
Do you buy his defense here?
I don't.
No, I don't.
What do you mean do I buy it?
It's just true.
It's just true.
Fair enough.
I don't know.
I just feel like this is.
I don't know.
I just think he's picking a fight.
He's picking a fight over the wrong thing with the wrong people.
I want to get the original one that went.
I want to get the.
Send me the original post from Human Events.
Roger that.
Because some people brought up some good points, Jack, and I want to give you a chance.
It's amazing.
Go ahead.
I mean, I'm happy to respond to all the incorrect points that people were making.
You know, there were some people who came to your defense as well, like Joshua Lysak.
He had your back.
Let me see here.
I can't find the original.
New York Times multiple bestselling author, Joshua Lysak.
There it is.
Okay.
It's like communists.
It's like communists.
Okay, so let's just deal with the community note, Jack.
It says In letter 142 to Father Robert Murray, J.R.R. Tolkien describes Lord of the Rings as a fundamentally religious and Catholic work.
So, in that letter, they clipped off the end of what he said.
He said it's fundamental in the sense that it's at the lower level, but he also says that he eliminated religion from the series itself and that you don't encounter it until you go into the lower level, like until upon the revision.
So, he removed all of the overt elements of religion.
So, all of the Lord of the Rings fans got really, really mad and decided to take their own.
Favorite author out of context.
It's really sad, actually.
Check.
Like, why are you guys twisting the words of Tolkien if you love him so much?
This is interesting.
So, Tom Roswell, you can find him on X at Tom Rosell.
Sorry, Rosell, R O W S E L L.
He says, Pagan here.
Tolkien was Catholic, and Lord of the Rings is pagan mythology repurposed and imbued with Christian morality.
It isn't actually pagan.
So, it's kind of like a quasi, which is kind of what I think you were saying.
Actually, and a lot of people made the point, Jack, that since it, you know, Middle Earth and the whole theme is what 10,000 years before our current moment or something like that, it was like some mythological antiquity that it couldn't have, Christ had not come yet at that point.
So it had to be pre Christian, but it was imbued with Christian morality, pagan mythology imbued with Christian morality.
Would you agree with that presentation from this pagan?
I certainly would, because again, the pagan here.
Is not understanding what I'm saying.
I didn't say anything about the morality of the series.
I was talking about the overt surface level elements of the story dwarves, elves, knights, dragons, wizards.
Again, this is all pagan mythology.
Gandalf is basically a version of Odin.
You have a pantheon of gods and one higher god.
Again, this is all just pagan mythology.
As Tolkien himself said many times.
Gandalf is a guide.
He's not Odin.
He's an angel.
That's more of what Tolkien was saying.
But I did have to.
So Tolkien himself.
Well, don't lie.
Don't twist Tolkien.
Tolkien himself said that Gandalf is based on Odin.
In the sense of wandering, not in the sense of like actually like Odin, but the core of it is that, you know, as with Christianity, it's absolute truth.
Like Lord of the Rings is written with, at its core, absolute truth as in good versus evil.
Whereas in paganism, there is no like absolute truth.
There's just, there's relative morality, if that's the right word that I'm thinking of.
Somebody, this one got some play here.
It says, it's not like Norse mythology.
Okay, but that's the morality.
That's not, we're just talking overt.
Again, I didn't say anything about the morality.
Oh, I think he's got a delay.
That's still overtly.
Yeah.
That's still overtly.
The morality part is overtly Christian.
I know what overtly means, Jeff.
I'm just saying, it's still overtly Christian.
It's expensive.
But that's a different, okay, but you're just making a different argument than I was making.
Okay.
Fair enough.
I feel like if something's pagan, it's got to have actual pagan gods in it.
And there's only one god in Lord of the Rings, and it's explicitly like the Christian god.
So that's yeah, but that's not true.
There are powerful creatures called the Velar that operate as sort of a pantheon of gods.
Okay, but like a velociraptor is a powerful creature, it's not a pagan god.
No, but it's obviously like to his point, it's magical or holds power.
Well, so is Narnia.
So is Narnia has Narnia has, yeah, is a supposedly a it's an allegory, right?
Right.
Narnia is an allegory of the Bible, it has centaurs.
Oh, here comes the what about it, though.
Here comes the whataboutism.
Not even just that, but like.
No, but that's your point, Jack.
It has magical creatures, but it's, in your own words, it is a direct allegory of the Bible because it has Christ in it.
Well, actually, in Narnia, Christ is a lion.
I don't know that Christ is a lion in our world, but there's magical creatures in Narnia, unlike.
You would have to take that up with J.R.
Well, you find yourself in disagreement with J.R.R. Tolkien then, because J.R.R. Tolkien said that Narnia is a direct allegory of the Bible.
So here's an interesting one, Jack.
This is from Oktoboyo.
It says it pulls most heavily from Norse mythology.
Take the Volsunga saga, for example, which revolves around loci stealing a ring from a dwarf.
Which is then cursed to bring death and destruction to whoever owns it.
This also inspired Richard Wagner's famous ring cycle opera.
That's kind of an interesting one.
You know, I'm just still getting hung up on this point.
It has powerful creatures.
Okay, well, the Bible has those angels who fall to earth.
It's got the Nephilim.
It's got the devil and his angels popping up in Revelations.
We have demons possessing people.
And yeah, God has power over them, but they are portrayed as existing.
Look, we can go around and around and split hairs on all this all day long.
And believe me, I'd love to.
I love this stuff way more than politics.
As you can tell, obviously, we're all into it.
I like Tolkien.
I like Lord of the Rings.
I saw people accusing me of saying that I didn't like it.
I didn't say that at all, actually.
And what I was trying to get at, I guess, if anything, was that I think that for the current moment, we do need things that are more explicitly Christian because we live in such a fallen society right now that we need things that aren't just Christian morality below the surface.
I'm talking about overt.
Outward displays of Christianity and the Christian symbology.
I think that's really important.
And you see a lot of that in society today where people are bringing back those Christian symbols.
So I'm talking about like what should we use as a tool to evangelize?
And as great as Lord of the Rings is, I just don't think it's great of a tool if you're explicitly trying to bring people to the cross.
I mean, it might be good as like a really, really outward gateway drug, but it has.
Spawned so many pagans and neo pagans and Wiccans and elvish other kin.
In fact, the word other kin itself comes from Lord of the Rings fans who originally were like the hippies and the counterculture left.
So, you know, it's kind of a work that can be taken multiple ways.
And I've thought, as great as it is, you know, it's just not something that I would use for that function.
I mean, Stephen Colbert is a Catholic.
I mean, I'm not saying he's a good guy.
We're going to go wrong with that.
No, I think I feel like the best.
Oh, just like Joe Biden?
Come on.
I'm just saying.
It's not like Colbert is distinctly self professing Catholic.
Well, okay.
So we have one more topic we want to get.
So I want to make one more final argument to Jack.
Lord of the Rings Gospel Elements00:02:46
Okay.
It's this.
Yeah!
Yeah!
That's great.
I have to say, though, real quick.
All right, Blake.
Well, talking about.
You got me there, Blake.
You got me there.
Got it.
I have to say, though, specifically when it comes to evangelizing, I don't know any of my friends that are not Christian who would.
whose eyes don't glaze over the minute I start talking about anything that is fundamentally in your face.
Spoon fed, like, here's the gospel message right off.
Because growing up, my mom used to have these movies from Pure Flicks, and every single one is poorly made, but it's just the Bible thrown in your face.
And it just didn't work.
But something with like Lord of the Rings is like, you still have the opportunity to take something that is good material, it's a good book, it's a good movie, and you're able to walk through.
The elements of the gospel and the elements of Christianity with something like Lord of the Rings that a non Christian can get behind because they're not being just pummeled over the head with the gospel.
Like, we're supposed to be salt and light, we're supposed to be out there, we're supposed to be all of that.
And I agree with that.
But at the same time, most non Christians do not care to listen to the gospel message right off the bat.
You have to tease them in, you have to bring them in in some way.
Shape or form, and that's what Lord of the Rings has done for generations, even just with the books.
But then once the movies came out, so that's all I'm gonna say.
That's my final word on it.
I think my argument was a bit better.
Yeah, fair.
I'm not gonna, I mean, I'm not gonna say it doesn't lead to conversions.
I mean, JD Vance, of course, is a great example of that.
You know, to steal my argument, that you know, here's and he, of course, JD's got a book out coming out as well about his conversion and his like return to the faith.
And we know that he has talked about Lord of the Rings in this context before.
And so I'm not going to discount anything of that.
And I'll point out that obviously that's a great example.
But at the same time, JD Vance is a unicorn.
And we do not have a lot of JD Vances.
You will not run across a lot of them.
So I wouldn't want to say that the unicorn is always the best way.
But you're right.
JD Vance Faith Conversion Story00:13:51
Obviously, the pure flakes stuff.
And I'm not knocking those guys at all.
But I get what you're saying in terms of the criticism there.
And no, I would also not hold up that.
Stuff either.
A lot of the comments, by the way, were that Tolkien never said that Narnia was too overtly Christian.
That wasn't the problem.
The problem was that it was too allegorical and he preferred more sophisticated or more vague, less on the nose.
Yeah, whatever.
All of that.
Symbolism.
He was all there, all butthurt because Tolkien was an Anglican and everything.
I mean, that's splitting.
That's semantics.
We're talking about the same thing.
Overt, allegorical, overtly.
Again, you're splitting here.
That's semantics.
It's the same thing.
All right.
Well, Jack.
We should be talking about VeggieTales and whether that went woke or not.
I'm looking for that opinion.
I'm not going to watch any VeggieTales.
Oh, it did.
It 100% did.
As somebody who grew up on VeggieTales, I'm sure it did, but okay.
Just don't watch VeggieTales made after 2003 or whatever.
Just watch the old ones.
All right.
So the final topic is something.
Well, we got it.
Jack's got a bounce.
We know.
Yeah, Jack's got an intro and event that's going on soon.
Does he have to bounce now?
I believe so.
I mean, I can hang for a little bit, actually, because we have, like, here, I'm backstage at George Washington, and the event is filling up.
I see a ton of kids.
I've got, like, a camera feed.
A ton of kids are coming in.
Erica, the team are here.
Carolyn Levitt's going to be here.
I mean, this is going to be a huge event.
It's the kickoff of this is the turning point.
I can hang for, like, a couple more, maybe one more topic.
I think we're going to be able to do that.
All righty.
Well, then you're very lucky because we have great imagery for you.
From overtly Christian or pagan to overtly something.
All righty.
We're going to talk about the most famous person from South Dakota.
There's two false gods in this picture.
We have to talk about the most famous person from South Dakota right now, and that is.
Oh, no.
Ryan, no.
Yeah, all right.
We gave you the opposite jump.
I'm a big fan.
We gave you the opposite to bounce.
I'm a big fan of my home state, but there have been strange.
Reportings and rumblings from it in the past week.
So many of us, myself included, felt a lot of sympathy for the husband of Christy Noam because of the widespread rumors about her amorous activities with another person.
And he was at her hearing testifying before Congress when they were grilling her about this.
It was all very strange.
Everyone felt very bad, but someone didn't feel bad.
Instead, they just went and leaked his entire private life to the Daily Mail.
There are reports that she had been talking about this.
Behind the scenes for a while, it's very possible.
I don't know what the reports are, but apparently, just to catch people up on it, Brian Gnome has some sort of hobby, and that hobby is look, we should be clear.
Yeah, which of us hasn't inflated a balloon and then shoved it down our shirt to pretend that it's a cartoonishly large pair of breasts so that we can then send a bunch of money to strippers because we have a bimbo vacation.
I'm getting, uh, yeah, I'm getting.
I'm getting notification.
It turns out I actually do have to go.
There's a situation I have to deal with.
Run, Jack.
Run.
Yeah.
You guys, man, you guys have a great time.
I'm out here with Turning Point USA.
I don't know if you heard of them.
Great organization.
I'm just going to be with those guys tonight.
Have fun with them.
I understand, Jack.
I understand.
All right.
I wish I could run.
Yeah.
Well, you're trapped.
You're trapped.
You can't get away.
So this is actually, this is kind of, man.
Why do you feel bad for him, Blake?
Well, I guess what I would say is it's very bad.
It is very bad.
It's gross.
It's basically transgenderism adjacent.
Like, we should honestly be happy he hasn't already truned out, as it were.
But at the same time, my understanding is he basically was never leaking anything against his wife.
He was never doing anything publicly to humiliate her.
And there's something off about me that this is bad.
This is 100% bad.
And he should not do it.
But he also was not a public figure, he didn't hold any office.
He was an insurance salesman.
In, I think, Castlewood, South Dakota.
I can't remember the name because I've never been to it.
It's that small.
That's who he is.
And he just like blasted on the Daily Mail.
And in some sense, it's almost like blasting any random person for doing that.
And if this guy is not publicly putting himself out there, if he's not a lawmaker himself, something feels very dark about just leaking all of that.
But that said, it is very gross.
So this is what Ryan James Gurdesky was reporting.
He said, I mentioned on my podcast months ago that one of Trump's cabinet members was.
Telling reporters off the record that her husband was gay.
I didn't name Gnome by name out of respect for privacy, but to say she had no idea really flies in the face of what she was saying.
And Ryan.
This is a little bit different from being gay.
So, Ryan, well, it could just be, I don't know.
It could be part of the same sort of thing.
Well, what it is is based on what it is, it's autogynephilia.
Like, that's what's going on with cross dressers.
It's that his kink is like that himself becoming the woman he is attracted to.
So, it's a particularly messed up form of being straight.
What he's saying is in the report, she's like a spokesman for Gnome basically says she's devastated.
She had no idea.
Please respect.
Respect their privacy, kind of thing.
Saying she's devastated in the family is blindsided by this.
They're asking for privacy and prayer, which is a funny way to put it.
Blindsided.
Maybe you could say that she was telling the truth, that she's blindsided by the fact that the report went public.
Okay.
Or she's blindsided by this revelation that her husband is dressing up with fake huge boobs.
Or she could just be not telling the truth.
Or she could just be.
Come on, guys.
We can't justify this.
This is demonic.
This is wild.
Who's justified?
And what gets me.
No, no.
I mean, like.
When we talk about it, it's like, all right, well, why would he do this?
It's weird.
And I got to say this I am always so impressed with how I always think, oh, you know, I've seen it all.
And there is something about political power.
And look, yeah, he might not be a public figure, but his wife's a cabinet member.
There's just something in the political world where these sexual deviants come out and it's like they're challenging or trying to do what is not allowed.
It's almost like they're attracted to do things that are deemed not appropriate.
But Seeing this story, I mean, I shouldn't even look at the photos.
The guy is weird.
He's got a problem.
And it's just, to me, it's almost hilarious that some of this stuff comes out because any normal person looks at this and is like, what the hell is going on in the political world in America?
Well, just to offer context, because we're going to have Libs bully Brian Know about this.
And yet we had to pretend for years on end that, what's her name in the Biden administration?
Rachel Levine, that Rachel Levine was like a totally normal person and totally a real woman.
Richard Levine, whatever.
Well, and then.
On top of that, Sam Brinton, totally normal dude.
While he's, I mean, at least what we'll say, Brian Gnome, nobody, at least he, so far, no one so far has accused him of stealing anyone's luggage.
I don't really want to take any Polly market bets on what he might have been doing with his wife's clothes.
But, and if Cliff hates those photos, he's going to hate the ones coming up next.
This, oh gosh.
Wait, what?
Hold on.
What?
You know what?
I do my job well.
That's all I'm going to say.
I was asked.
And I asked by whom I, you know, I'm gonna throw Angelo under the bus on this one.
He was like, Hey, this would be funny.
I agree, I thought it was funny.
Um, yeah, let's pull up photo uh 18.
But wait, what are we about to see here?
Oh, just wait, it'll be it's a great photo.
There it is, there it is.
What's that?
19.
Hold on, what?
Oh, oh, uh, 20.
That's disgusting.
Oh, 21?
This is pagan, yeah.
22?
Why did Cliff get such a.
Cliff's?
Cliff's was way more low key.
Deflated.
Pagan.
Yeah.
And 22.
It doesn't look weird.
And then, of course.
All right.
Okay.
So that's Marco Rubio auditioning for the job of Christy Noam's next husband, I suppose.
You're welcome.
You're welcome, Bach Ryan.
You know, if you're only listening to this on a podcast episode, you're lucky.
And we're not going to tell you what you missed.
The Jack one was really funny, though.
Hold on.
Yeah, throw that one back up.
That was funny.
Jack is here with us in spirit.
The reason it's so funny is it looks like one of those.
Pagan.
Those like adult female books that's like porn for women.
No, I don't understand.
No, please stop.
You're digging yourself a hole in this one.
You're going to have to describe these books.
Whoa, whoa, you're throwing me under the bus now.
Yes, I am.
Oh, just suddenly getting attacked by Andrew.
His stare kind of going.
You know, it just worked.
Oh, like that facial expression you had last week with Jack when he was talking about the paganism?
You were defending yourself with your facial expression.
You should have done, Russ.
You should have done the prosthetics with that face rather.
Oh, you know, it was already hard to try to get Grok to add chesticles to all of y'all.
But it's disgusting.
So here's the thought what if Brian Nome had just come out and just said, that's an AI pick and it's all fake?
I thought about that.
That could have been a defense.
But you can run it through AI software.
You can run it through AI software and find out if it actually is.
Guaranteed reporters would have been like, we ran the photo through AI and it is not AI.
And he could just be like, they're full of it.
So, what you do, especially with X's algorithm right now, you take the actual photo, you throw it into AI, make a bunch of AI photos of it, and then just get a bunch of people to circulate it around X.
And then all of a sudden, you don't know what's what and what's full on.
We are cooked, aren't we?
AI.
Well, I'll tell you who is cooked.
None of us can run for political office now that we all just laugh at those photos with the screenshots.
I mean, I was disgusted for the record.
Yeah, yeah.
But good thing I wasn't planning to run for political office.
Fair enough.
Oh, man.
Although I do see a Russ congressional seat at some point.
Oh, yeah.
No, that ain't happening.
Yeah.
Especially after you aced the Lord of the Rings question.
You're stuck.
Hey, you know what?
I got marked safe by Nerdronic and the guys.
I'm.
I'm fully okay with that.
I don't understand why I didn't get marked safe.
Why was I not marked safe?
Because you hadn't watched it.
The problem was you explained that you hadn't seen it in like 10 years.
I mean, that makes me a little human.
Well, that's like.
No.
Like, I saw them when they came out and when they were like, you know.
Fair enough.
On the streamers at first.
Fair enough.
What if every member of the fellowship had the Brian Gnome look?
Oh, no.
I don't want to do that.
I clock out.
Please tell me you guys don't have those photos.
I don't know.
All the orcs.
Grok is going to start being like, what is wrong with you, right?
We're turning you off.
There'd be a lot of subtle political commentary if you bimboed up the orcs.
They really would just basically be like, well, Rings of Power kind of already did that.
Yeah, so I've heard.
I actually sort of, just to wrap it up, put a fine point on it.
It feels like some people are alleging that potentially our ex cabinet secretary was aware of this, maybe helped leak it.
We have no knowledge of that being the truth, but we do have reporting that says she was aware of it.
And not blindsided by it.
It'd be hard to not be aware of it.
Either or, it is a sad story because they do have kids and I feel bad for them.
So hopefully, it's rough to pick up the pieces.
It's rough when something like that destroys a family.
Yeah, hopefully they can pick up the pieces and I don't know what the future for the family is.
I don't know how she didn't know.
As big as those prosthetics or whatever you call them, what did you call them?
Chesticles?
Yeah, chesticles.
As big as they were, I don't know where you're hiding those in the house.
They were a balloon.
It was a balloon.
That's tough.
Yeah, it's a balloon.
Yeah.
Oh, really?
I'm throwing them in the trash.
I'm throwing the balloon, yeah.
That's why they were so wonky.
Yeah.
You guys have a lot of experience in detail on this.
I'm very impressed.
Russ is the one with all these.
I'm new.
I'm new.
I just got here last week.
You're not new.
You've seen all this.
Yeah, that's true.
Carnage.
That's true.
Any final thoughts?
Lord of the Rings is Christian culture.
Thank you and good night.
I'm going to have to agree with you on that one.
But if you're a dude dressing up like a woman, that is not Christian culture.
Facts.
Andrew, let me give a quick shout out.
Erica came out with Tyler to open up the Las Vegas headquarters.
Want to say congrats.
Really excited about the partnership between my group, Citizens Alliance, and Turning Point.
We got a lot of swing states we're going to be battling.
Obviously, as Charlie's vision, work backwards from 2028 with the presidential.
And in 2026, I think it's going to be a tough year, but I think we're obviously going to do the work, do the ground game.
And really excited about that partnership.
We'll have a lot more details over the next couple months as we roll things out.
Yeah, that was a big, big development.
Nevada is key to building the red wall along with New Hampshire and Arizona.
Media Interest and No Comment00:00:41
So we're, by the way, if you guys want to get involved with what we're doing there, Turning Point Action, turningpointaction.com.
Obviously, there's also Cliff's work, Citizens Alliance, but it's a great partnership.
So congrats as well, Cliff.
I know you're central to that whole vision.
So big, big moves.
And like I said, there's so much.
Sometimes I wonder if anybody else is doing anything.
As much like media interest as there always is.
I mean, I'm about at the point where I'm just going to say, like, you know, no comment, leave us alone.
Like, legit, is anybody else doing anything?
Because we seem to be the topic of conversation 24 7.