Brad and Dan begin by discussing a litany of stories related to the 45th president - the releasing of his tax returns, the criminal referrals to the DOJ by the J6 Select Committee, and the silence from the GOP.
They then get into a column at the New York Times that bemoans how Americans have "updated" and "personalized" Christianity be going "woke" and so on. This leads to an epic dual rant by the co-hosts befitting the Festivus Season.
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Welcome to Straight White American Jesus.
My name is Brad Onishi, faculty, University of San Francisco.
Our show is hosted in partnership with the CAP Center, UCSB.
Here today with my co-host.
I'm Dan Miller, professor of religion and social thought at Landmark College.
Nice to see you, Brad.
We're recording at a little bit different time since we both have, you know, family obligations coming up, but it's nice to see you even in a change of venue.
This is one of those times of the year where the temperature changes and where we live is obvious.
In the summertime, I think people think California is this place where it's hot no matter what.
But right now, I will say most of you are under a super freeze warning, minus 20.
Dan, I know you're going to get a little bit of weather.
And I'm preparing to drive south to my parents' home, which is like in the desert near Palm Springs.
And it's like a high of 83 tomorrow.
So this is the time of year I feel like it really comes through, you know?
You get what you deserve.
So because when you when you lived in in upstate New York, I used to to sort of mock your lack of, let's just say, cold weather prowess.
So I'm glad that you feel like you're back in your element, you know, going down south.
I have a vision of you totally as like this kind of lizard figure just basking on a like a hot rock or something on Christmas afternoon.
So I don't know how accurate that is, but I like the image.
See, here's the thing, though, is like in the bay where I live, it's like in the morning, it's like 37 and it's a high in the daytime of like 57.
That's like, to me, paradise.
I don't want 95.
I just don't want.
Here's what I hated about upstate New York.
And I promise everybody the weather talk is going to stop in 10 seconds.
I promise you.
But like the weeks of like, Hey, low of 10, high of 18.
Like that is where I was just like, what are you serious?
Low of low of three high of 14 for like, you know, two weeks.
I don't know.
I can't do that.
It's just not, that's not possible for me.
So.
Let's get going.
Dan, we've got some big stories, like big national stories.
We've got one kind of op-ed that I'm angry about, and I have more grievance.
I have more Festivus to do.
So let's just jump in with, we've got a lot of Trump taxes, Trump DOJ referrals, J6 select committees.
So I'm going to throw it to you.
Start wherever you want.
Yeah, so a couple things to look at there because again, it's been a big week for Trump and we'll get into like what I think are the takeaways and they're kind of related on the two.
But the first one is the news and most people have probably heard this.
Of course, the January 6th committee in the House is trying to wrap things up because They're going to lose the majority here in a few days.
And of course, that will all stop.
So they've been releasing the summary findings and all this other kind of stuff.
Lots of interesting stuff there.
A number of people taking the fifth, all that kind of stuff.
But the really, really sort of big news out of this is that the J6 House Committee determined that there was sufficient evidence to refer Trump to the Department of Justice for four crimes.
So they were, and again this is like exciting legal terms, like obstructing an official proceeding, conspiracy to defraud the government, making knowingly and willfully false statements to the federal government, and inciting or assisting an insurrection.
So basically they said We think there's enough evidence to this to warrant criminal charges, so we're going to hand it to the Department of Justice.
Now, what does that mean?
The Department of Justice is not obligated to charge on the basis of this.
This isn't an indictment.
I hear people who kind of sometimes describe it as an indictment.
It's not, at least not in any specifically legal sense.
It's unlikely to sway prosecutors, right?
They're interested in evidence and so forth.
But it's worth pointing out that they're already investigating a lot of the same things, right?
And there's now an independent investigator looking at this.
And so I think it adds weight to that.
What I think is really interesting, though, is number one, the historical nature of it.
It's the first time that a former president has been a subject of criminal referral.
And I think that that's important.
I think that that's symbolic.
I think that's why the J6 committee did this.
We hear lots of stuff, and this is all true, about wanting to show that not even presidents or former presidents are above the law and so forth.
But it's mostly symbolic, right?
It is.
It's there to be a symbol.
It's there to be an image.
My big takeaway is this, and I'll throw it over to you to see what you think.
But for me, the big takeaway is how muted the GOP response to this has been, right?
And I just want folks to think back to when the news broke really by Trump, right?
The moral logo had been been raided by the FBI that they had executed a search warrant.
We had everybody in the GOP and on the right up in arms talking about how politicized the Department of Justice was witch hunt, witch hunt, witch hunt on and on and on.
That's boiled away over time as it's become more and more clear that there was real substance to that and potential real legal ramifications for Trump.
But you and I have been talking about national media has been talking about people have been mapping that Trump is sliding with the GOP.
And I think this tells that because we have not heard the kind of response that I think six months ago.
Uh, we would have heard if this was June, I think the GOP would be going crazy about this.
So that, that was one of my big takeaways that we continue to track.
I think this theme for us is okay.
So number one, what's going to go on with Trump in 2024?
Don't know.
But what's the relation of that to Trumpism?
We talked about that last week.
I think this maps onto that.
So I'm, I'm open to your thoughts about the significance of this, the insignificance of this, what this means and doesn't mean for the GOP, for Trump, for the Democrats.
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