Brad and Dan begin by discussing Mike Pence's homophobic joke about Pete Buttigieg and his openly blaming of Donald Trump for the J6 insurrection.
They then break down the GOP's reversal on mail-in voting and debate what effect it will have at the polls.
Compromising Positions: https://global.oup.com/academic/product/compromising-positions-9780190924072?cc=us⟨=en&
Finally, they check in on cases from San Diego to Texas to Florida to Missouri - highlighting how Christian misogyny and anti-LGBT and anti-immigrant policies are working in lockstep.
Men's Conference: https://emergemen.com/conference/#info
Awaken Church: https://leftcoastrightwatch.org/articles/preaching-fascism-inside-san-diegos-awaken-megachurch/
Florida: https://newrepublic.com/post/171137/ron-desantis-florida-bill-felony-undocumented-person-home-car?utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=EB_TNR&utm_source=Twitter
Missouri: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/3/6/2156592/-Martha-Washington-becomes-a-focus-of-debate-over-Missouri-Don-t-Say-Gay-bill?utm_campaign=recent
Texas: https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2023/03/texas-lawsuit-suing-friends-explained.html
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Welcome to Straight White American Jesus.
My name is Brad Onishi, faculty at the University of San Francisco, back after a week off and here with my amazing co-host.
I'm Dan Miller, professor of religion and social thought at Landmark College.
Nice to be back with you, Brad.
Yeah, thanks, Dan.
It was good to be away.
I got to go to Maui, and I know some of you, when you hear that, you're like, oh, Brad's just on Maui, like, you know, he's at Club Med just hanging out.
Which, don't get me wrong, I did get to go to the beach and relax, but some of you may not know, my family's history goes back to Maui, all the way back to 1900, when my family, when my great-grandfather went from Japan to Maui.
That's where my dad grew up.
It's where so many of my cousins and uncles and aunts and other people growing up were.
And so I will tell you, Dan, I grew up in Southern California and we'd get back to school on like, uh, in September and talk to kids, what'd you do this summer?
And like, oh, we went to Hawaii.
And it's like, you know, and all these kids, like a lot of them, like more affluent than our family would be like, yeah, we like stayed at this resort and you know.
Rode on dolphins and like swam in a pool with like, you know, a water slide that had like a, like somehow an upside down loop, you know?
And they'd be like, Oh, you went to Hawaii too?
Yeah, we did.
We, we went to Maui and like, I slept on my aunt's floor and we helped out with some chores and visited like three to 400 different aunts that we have there.
Anyway, very different experiences growing up, but.
It was all good and it was great to be away.
Thank you to, uh, to Annika and to Dan for just an amazing weekly roundup last week while I was gone and excited to be back.
So before we jump in, want to say, Dan said this before, but I want to say it like check out our new website and I'm especially excited because you can now search episodes and like so many emails every week.
People are like, Hey, you did an episode on this.
Where is it?
We have like 400 something episodes and it's really hard to kind of just pull those out.
So now you can search and I want to thank Aaron Bailey who helped us do that and I'm really excited for that.
So check that out.
And one other thing, we would really like to bring on an intern who can help us with some digital Media stuff, perhaps help us move toward video content, or at least getting our content on YouTube and some other marketing and other aspects of digital marketing.
So, if you are a college student, a seminary student, and you'd be interested in that, you can send an email with the subject line, intern, to straightwhiteamericanjesus at gmail.com and we'll get back to you and let you know.
What's going on with that and with some more details.
So Dan, anything else I missed?
I'm pretty famous in class for like not doing the announcements very well and then it all goes awry later.
So anything?
And I feel like this works just like class.
We have to remember to do announcements first because by the end nobody's paying attention anymore, right?
No, I think that's good.
I'm excited about the website.
I think it looks great.
And I don't know about listeners, but it helps me because I can't remember where we said stuff.
People ask me all the time, or I remember saying it, and now I can try to actually find where I did.
So thanks, not just to Aaron, but to you for the work that went into that.
And just to just echo that about an intern, somebody who's willing to or interested in doing that, we'd love to hear from folks.
Yeah.
All right.
So today we're going to talk about the world's most exciting man, and I think you all know who I'm talking about, Mike Pence.
He's had quite a week.
He's sparring with Donald Trump.
He's making homophobic jokes about Pete Buttigieg.
And there's just kind of a bunch of talk about there.
Dan's going to take us into talking about mail-in voting and how the GOP has really reversed its tails and its approach strategy to mail-in voting.
And then in the last segment, I want to call our last segment today, Dan, checking in on, and we're going to check in on quite a few people.
The men.
So I'll just leave that there.
We're going to check in on Missouri.
We're going to check in on Ron DeSantis.
Seemingly a weekly check in with him and some other folks.
So that's what we'll do at the end.
All right.
Let's jump into the world's most exciting man.
Uh, Mike Pence.
Like, you know, Dan, there used to be these, these commercials, right?
The world's most interesting man, you know?
And it would be like, you know, he's the, he's the life of the party at parties he doesn't even attend.
If he punched you, you would thank him or I don't know.
I can't remember the exact lines and, and he, like, you know, he would sign off by saying like, I don't always drink beer, but when I do, I drink Dos Equis, right?
Free ad, Dos Equis.
Please email me and send us like, you know, a case of beer.
That'd be nice.
Stay, stay thirsty, my friends.
Stay, there it is.
Yep, there, there it was.
Yep.
Yeah.
And so I kind of feel like Mike Pence, uh, not the world's most interesting man.
Uh, like I feel like he, if he was in that commercial, it would be like, you know, he says dad jokes that, uh, don't even elicit a groan from his, from his kids.
He always looks like perhaps he's constipated even when he's on stage.
I don't know, things like that.
He wouldn't say, I don't always drink beer.
I think he would always, he would say something like, I don't always drink soda water, but when I do, I drink Ginger ale.
All right, ginger ale.
Free advertisement for you.
All right.
Here's the thing, Dan.
He got a little feisty this week.
He got a little, you know, he got going.
I don't know what it was.
I don't know if there was like, he had an extra Diet Coke one day and was just feeling like, you know, kind of feisty, but he was, he was doing it.
So.
Mike Pence was at the gridiron dinner and he took some, he took some shots.
So here's his shot at Donald Trump.
I read that some of those classified documents they found at Mar-a-Lago were actually struck, excuse me, stuck in the president's Bible, which proves he had absolutely no idea where they were.
Okay.
He then took, he then made a joke about Pete Buttigieg.
And he complained that Buttigieg took maternity leave or parental leave, we should say, after the adoption of twins in 2021.
So here's the joke.
Pete is the only person in human history to have a child and everybody else gets postpartum depression.
So, you know, this was widely decried as a Homophobic joke.
One that is hurtful.
And it really falls in line, Dan, with everything we talked about all the time.
That, you know, for white Christian nationalists like Pence, for many in the GOP, there's one version of family and that's it.
And that they feel it's totally kind of free game to mock and deride any other Uh, formation of family and of love and of parenthood and so on and so forth.
So this is all part of Mike Pence's brand.
And I'll throw it to you in a minute if you want to comment on what Pence said.
I mean, Buttigieg's response was basically like, you know, it's hurtful.
There's not a lot of time for that because there's a lot of work to do in Washington.
So, you know, Buttigieg is basically like, you know, I have no I'm not going to even acknowledge this in any extensive way.
I have a lot of work to do and there's a lot of things that need my attention, so I'm going to do that and go from there.
So anyway, I'll throw it to you in a minute, but I think one of the things that emerged here as Pence, in a way that we're not used to, seemingly goes on the offensive Is that he not only took shots at Buttigieg, a fellow Christian, Buttigieg is like one of the most outspoken Christian people in democratic politics, but he took a shot at Trump for, A, not being a Christian, right?
For basically saying he had no idea where these things were in his Bible.
I mean, that's an interesting development, Dan, after all of the... Dad, sorry, that's a little weird.
What's going on?
I just spent a week with my dad, so I don't know.
I must remind you of Pence as the world's second most interesting guy.
Something's going on.
All right.
So Pence also made some like really pointed remarks about Trump.
So he said at the same dinner, right, the gridiron dinner, Uh, he says history will hold Donald Trump accountable for the events of January 6th.
Had he sent the votes back to the legislatures, they wouldn't have had a problem with January 6th.
So in many ways, you can blame him for January 6th.
Uh, it was Trump's response.
Okay.
So, so Pence goes on the offensive, Trump responds, excuse me, sorry, I'm like getting lost in my notes here.
And then, you know, Pence said, of course, his line is he did not have the constitutional authority to reject the electoral votes.
This is what he always said.
President Trump was wrong.
I had no right to overturn the election.
And his reckless words endangered my family and everyone at the Capitol that day.
And I know that history will hold Donald Trump accountable.
So we have this back and forth with Trump.
Trump's final words here, they sound like a mob boss.
So here's what he says.
I guess he figured that being nice is not working, Trump said.
But you know, he's out there campaigning and he's trying very hard.
And he's a nice man.
I've known him.
I had a very good relationship with him until the end.
So that sounds like Ma, I don't know Dan, if you read that and if you heard that in a mob movie you'd be like oh yeah that's the mob boss saying like he's a nice guy he's no threat to me and I'll take care of him when I need to you know in some way or another.
So I guess what I'm interested in here Dan is first let's just make sure we get the through line President Trump endangered my family, Pence says, all the while Pence makes fun of Pete Buttigieg's family.
So let's just talk about family values and make sure we get that clear, okay?
But Dan, we really see a turn here where Pence is going on the offensive.
He is saying more and more that Trump was to blame and that history will hold him accountable.
I think we know why Pence wants to run for president.
I don't know why.
And I'll just be very honest.
And I get it.
I get it on some level.
I know that when you have some modicum of success in life, you don't want to give it up.
And Pence was vice president.
And Pence still thinks there's a world where Pence is president, I guess.
And look, maybe that's possible.
Donald Trump was president.
So Arnold Schwarzenegger was governor of California.
I don't know.
Maybe there is a world where Pence is president, but I don't see that world.
And he's clearly doing this because he's going to run.
And he's, it's time to announce his, his candidacy probably in the next like two months.
So he's going on the offense in a way that we're not used to.
I got more to say, but what do you see here?
I mean, there's, there's more to say about Trump because Trump has his own, there's other things happening on the side of Trump.
And anyway, what, what, what do you got for this?
Yeah.
So it's interesting, I guess on one hand, if you're Pence, it all feels good.
Cause like we're talking about Pence and nobody had been, I mean, that, that's the thing is, We look at what the presidential race is going to look like at the GOP.
We know about Nikki Haley, who is trying to do what?
Trying to break through some of the noise.
So she's like one of the only figures who goes to CPAC and try to, you know, convince people that she belongs in the conversation with who?
With Trump and DeSantis.
It's all sort of Trump and DeSantis and like everybody knows this.
So Pence is trying to make noise.
So he is and we're talking about him and he gets in the news, which on the one hand is good for him.
I think it's also interesting.
Clearly, he's taking the move.
You know, we've heard Nikki Haley, by contrast, say things about having sort of age eligibility kinds of things and competency issues and things like that, which is a shot at, I think, both Biden and Trump because they're older.
But she won't come out and say, I oppose Trump, Trump was wrong, you know, whatever.
And Annika talked about this in the last episode.
Pence is taking a different swing and saying, you know what, I'm going to go after Trump.
I'm going to try to create that space.
And I don't, I'm kind of with you.
I don't see a world probably where Pence wins a Republican nomination for president.
Because right now, the person who is really, you know, a threat to Trump is somebody who, as we talk about all the time, is on Trump's right flank.
And that's not Pence.
So I think that's sort of strategically part of what he's trying to do.
The J6 thing is interesting and important.
I think he's trying to flip the tables on Trump because, of course, for lots of Trump people, Pence is to blame for J6.
If he had just done what Trump told him to do, there would be no J6.
And so he's trying to flip the script on that.
He, in terms of the Buttigieg comments, and as you say, pushback from all the people you would expect, Buttigieg's husband, that's a really hard phrase to say, no offense to Buttigieg and the last name and the possessive, Pointed out that, you know, their twins were ill and in the hospital at the time and was sort of like, you know, where else would a family person be but there?
And, you know, the double standard, the White House called on him to apologize and so forth.
We could talk about, you know, we talk about the family values and the fact that it's only a certain kind of family that has value within that sort of Christian nationalist framework.
I say all of that because at the same time that Pence is making these comments about Trump, and of course the gridiron dinner is this kind of, it's almost like a roast kind of, right?
Like where you're sort of making these jokes that are not really jokes about other people and so forth.
So he takes aim of both Trump and Buttigieg And I think he's trying, in his Pence-y sort of way, to be the culture war Pence as well.
So to draw a distance from Trump, to say to those who might be listening, who might be interested in voting for a Republican, Trump's the real reason we had J6, not me.
And look, I can be a culture warrior too.
And Pence is just not as good at the culture war stuff as Trump and DeSantis.
We've seen this before.
We've seen where other people, they try to come up with the nicknames that Trump can come up with.
They try to do just the literal, like, I am going to level at you exactly what you just said to me and make it stick.
Move that Trump does.
And when other people do it, it just doesn't work as well.
And I think Pence is trying to do that.
And he has a long history of anti-LGBTQ rhetoric and policies.
People might remember when he was governor of Indiana, passed the so-called religious freedom law that targeted LGBTQ plus people and so forth.
But he didn't win that.
He lost big.
He had to draw back.
It created this national backlash.
He kind of drew back, played the, Oh, I'm so shocked.
I'm just trying to live my faith and stand up for people of faith kind of thing.
And it just didn't work.
And if we contrast that with like DeSantis.
Who has read the Trump playbook and has been like, you know what?
I can do this too.
We're going to double down on things.
We're going to triple down on things.
We're never going to apologize.
We're never going to back it up.
DeSantis, of course, has the Florida State Legislature to help him bludgeon these things in a way that I think in a different time and place Pence didn't.
All of which is to say, we sort of bring it sort of full circle to like, what is going on with Pence?
I think he's trying to make a name for himself.
I think he's trying to carve a space in the GOP.
He's trying to play culture warrior, but he's just not very good at it.
It's like the best he can do is a joke, you know, homophobic, because I think he did refer to it, right, as maternity leave, not parental leave.
The idea that that was his word when you said that earlier.
And then, you know, the joke about postpartum depression and everything else.
And so people have rightfully criticized him as, you know, sort of mocking women and other people who have babies who deal with postpartum depression and so forth.
I feel like it feels like, yeah, it made news, but it doesn't feel like it rises that much because I just feel like it's hard to kind of take Pence seriously.
He just doesn't have the gravitas that other figures in the GOP, specifically Trump and DeSantis, have right now.
So I say none of that to minimize what he said or to trivialize what he said.
But I think the point is, it's sort of like, here's Pence being like, I'm gonna give you my best shots, and you're like, that's your best shot?
Really?
Like, other places are banning books and libraries and stuff, and of course they have the sort of bully pulpit, as it were, to be able to do that, and Pence doesn't.
But yeah, so I look at it on one hand, you know, it's offensive, and I think we should be offended, and I think it's right that everybody criticizes Pence, and it's no surprise.
He's one of those people who's good at playing nice guy, but when you get into what he actually thinks about things, he's pretty awful.
I find it hard to be as incensed by Pence as I am by a Trump or a DeSantis because he just feels like kind of a little bit of a gadfly buzzing around trying to get into the conversation and he just really doesn't have a place there.
Pence is that guy that is not the preacher at church, but he's the guy that is in the front row, and when the preacher decries the godlessness and sinful nature of American society, he's got that perfect, disappointed, indignant, righteous look on his face, like, oh yeah, this country's really gone downhill, preach it, you know?
And he's not raising his hands in worship, he's just very stoically approving of the preacher's You know decry of America's downfall and that's that's his best political weapon is that like look on it that disappointed look on his face and that's what he did for four years as vice president.
Trump would say these the worst things ever and he would just sort of nod and kind of indignant righteous sort of like ways and that was that's and even when he tells his jokes and makes his shots it still feels like he's just the guy sort of making that face so I'm not Yeah, I don't always drink milk, but when I do it's 2%.
Mike Pence.
Anyways, go ahead.
It's like, it's the milquetoast version of like, you know, amalgamation.
It's like, yeah, it's just hard to feel serious about Pence and, you know, I...
Yeah, I think moving forward it's going to be interesting to see if this is just going to be a two-person race out of the gate with Trump and DeSantis, or if people like Nikki Haley and Mike Pence and somebody else are really going to be able to gain traction within the GOP.
Well, and this struck me as you were speaking earlier, and we didn't talk about this and plan for this today, so this is off the cuff in many ways, but Dan, I just kind of wonder, and I'm totally happy to be wrong about this, as I said, this is a kind of spontaneous thought.
I wonder if Nikki Haley is going to be the VP pick for DeSantis.
Um, because if you think about it, she's a woman, she's a woman of color.
That gives DeSantis all the cover for his pick.
They're both Southerners, which supposedly hurts you, but I think traditional strategies have gone out the window since 2016.
But she does provide, you know, she's a woman, she's a woman of color.
So there it is.
DeSantis is like, what?
You know, you can't tell me I'm racist and misogynist.
Look who I chose for VP.
She has no chance.
I think she has to know that.
And she went to CPAC because she could.
She took these minor shots at Trump about competency, doesn't come out against Trumpism, and slides right into the VP slot for DeSantis in a way that like fits perfectly for both of them.
You and Annika laid it out perfectly.
You've been on this since she announced.
She's not turned into some moderate foe.
She's not Kinzinger.
She's not a never-Trumper.
She's not carved out some kind of corner of like, yeah, we need to get away from this.
This is horrendous absurdity.
She's really sort of stayed the line except for competency, which would not apply to DeSantis because he's nowhere near as old as either Biden or Trump.
And once again, she gets the VP slot.
Woman of color.
And DeSantis wins.
She wins.
And there you go.
I don't know.
Spontaneous thought of the day, Dan.
But like, what do you think real quick?
Yeah, I've wondered the same thing.
If she's positioning for the soft landing loss, where you can maybe gain enough traction, enough visibility that there's some value to you of somebody else picking you up and adding you to the ticket.
Clearly isn't planning on Trump doing that, I don't think.
I think it makes sense.
If I take the emotion out of it, just sort of the analytic view of this, it's really interesting to watch and see what happens over the next few months as this unfolds.
All right.
We need to take a break, but we're going to come back and talk about...
Trump grand jury.
Looks like Trump might be indicted.
I'm not sure there's as much fire as there is smoke, so we'll see about that.
And then we're going to get into mail-in voting and how the GOP's somewhat unsurprisingly changed its tone on that whole endeavor.
So we'll be right back.
All right, Dan, real quick, I don't want to spend all day on this, but there's been a lot recently about the fact that Alvin Bragg, who is the Manhattan DA, invited Trump to talk to a grand jury.
And, you know, what this signaled to the legal world is that you don't really do that unless you're ready to indict.
And so it basically said, hey, If you're going to have Trump come in and talk to the grand jury, then it looks like you're going to indict.
And a lot of people are like, whoa.
And this is all surrounding the Stormy Daniels hush money case that happened seven years ago now.
The whole funneling money to Michael Cohen, who funnels money to Stormy Daniels.
Is this an illegal campaign contribution because of where the money came from?
So, and I'm less interested in going through the details and mechanics of all that now.
If you want to do that, please, there's total ways to read about that.
What's interesting, and I think there's a great piece at the Daily Beast by Shan Wu this week that really lays out some of the details of this.
And one of the things I think that needs to be kept in mind is Alvin Bragg is the Manhattan DA.
He's come in recently and he basically totally nixed the previous case that had been building for years and years and years regarding Trump.
And the Trump Organization.
That led to Allen Weisselberg, the Trump Organization sort of money man being punished, but that was kind of it.
And it really felt like Bragg just tanked the case.
If you remember that several of the folks who worked on that, Mark Pomerantz and others, they resigned because they were so incensed that the case they'd been building for years had just been tanked by this new DA, Alvin Bragg, who came in and really took this kind of sharp turn.
So there's a couple of theories of what's happening, but as Shan Wu lays out at the Daily Beast, the Stormy Daniels case, Dan, was basically dead and he revived it.
Like, you know, he resurrected it out of nowhere.
And it's now moving ahead at like lightning speed to the point where it's like Trump might be indicted.
And I don't know about you, Dan, but when I first heard this, I was like, well, I thought Stormy Daniels was over.
I just thought that was like a dead end.
So what Wu contemplates in the piece is, all right, why is this happening?
Is he doing this because he got so much criticism for tanking the previous case and basically leading to these high profile resignations on the part of those working under him?
Or Is he worried that the Georgia case, the one involving the election fraud, is going to overshadow him?
That Fannie Willits down in Fulton County is going to get to Trump first and he'll look like an idiot because he had all the cards and in fact she swooped in and actually got the biggest fish ever, which was actually indicting Donald Trump.
So here's my point, Dan, I don't want to spend all day on this, is that I think a lot of us have been hearing about Stormy Daniels in this case and Trump being indicted, like, a lot.
It may actually happen.
The question is, is it happening in a way that is actually going to go anywhere because the case has been revived after so many years and sort of thrown into the fray at 100 miles per hour?
Shan Wu at the Daily Beast says, I'm not so sure, and I think he makes a good case.
So anyway, quick thoughts on this before we get to mail-in voting.
Yeah, so I think the article's great and has, I mean, hits a lot of insights that I hadn't thought of, some things that I had thought of, and I think I don't, I don't think it sort of misfires anywhere.
I think it's interesting to What?
I think there's also a sense in which I mean everybody wants to get an indictment on Trump and I think there's a sense in which for a lot of these these folks and I think for a lot of people on the left generally like that's what matters not so much I think it's easy to lose sight of like why we want indictments on Trump of like what actually happened the goal becomes to just get something to stick to Trump because if we look at as I understand it the Stormy Daniels case I mean let's say that he is indicted for that He's a billionaire.
He's no longer president.
He's not formally running.
It's a campaign finance issue.
Really, what's it going to do?
A censure of some sort?
A penalty?
And it's, of course, not going to detract.
And none of his MAGA followers are going to be upset about this.
It'll just become another coup for him.
Versus I think the Georgia issue is much more significant, at least to me.
And I don't mean any of this to minimize the issues that happened with Stormy Daniels and hush money and so forth.
I mean, if we're looking at like the sort of social stakes of what was happening, trying to overturn an election is a bigger deal.
So for me, my eyes are still much more on Georgia and what happens there.
I'm more concerned about that.
I feel less, it feels like some of the stuff in New York now, as you say, dismissing what felt like a bigger thing to a lot of us, and then going for this other one feels like it's just trying to score some points, you know, land a hit on Trump, who's notoriously slippery.
Yeah, and so, I don't know, it's hard to know what to make of it, but it is.
I was like you, it felt like it was coming out of left field.
I'm not a legal observer, I don't follow this all the time.
And it also feels, I don't know, mistimed?
Out of play?
Like that would have been a big deal a while back, and the stuff that felt more relevant is what he dropped.
So yeah, I think I agree with a lot of that, and I think that my interest still remains much more on the Georgia grand jury and what happens there.
No, I think the point you make is just really, really important, right?
Like, when it comes to the heart of what people are going to care about, the Stormy Daniels thing is going to feel like such ancient news and they're going to be like, what even happened there?
It's an adult, you know, pornographic actor, sex worker, hush money, I don't know.
Do I care about that?
Kinda.
But this guy tried to overturn an election.
He called the DA or the Secretary of State in Georgia and basically said, find me votes.
That feels like you're so right.
I feel I think for for the wider observer, the person who's actually like a casual kind of just like tell me what matters and then I'll care a person.
It's really Georgia, so I think you're, I don't know, I hadn't thought about it that way until you said it, but I think that makes, I think that's so, such, it's very insightful.
This, just to add to that real quick, this just sort of occurs to me, and I'm doing what you were doing earlier, just thinking on the spot, which is always a risk for us bookish academic types.
But I think that there was a time, everybody remembers when Trump ran and there was the recording of him bragging about sexual assault and so forth.
You had bragging about sleeping with porn stars and paying hush money and so forth.
And I want nobody to mishear me, right?
Those are real things.
They are bad.
They should, in my view, disqualify somebody from office.
They should be legally punished and so forth.
But there was also an element where, at the time, The big thing with Trump is just that he's sleazy, and it was salacious, and it was still—this feels like a million years ago—it was still the, wow, how are Christians supporting this when he brags about sexual assault?
And then he tried to overturn the American democratic system.
It's like, to me, that just turned the tables and turned Trump into something else.
That he had not been before.
And I feel like that's part of where this feels like a disconnect to me.
It's like, oh, we're still in the, ew, look how icky he is as a misogynist guy.
And he is.
He's terrible as a misogynist guy.
But this just feels like something different.
So it feels, I think for me, that's part of why I feel that disconnect.
And I don't know if that makes sense or not.
It's like when people talk about, you know, some historical figure before the big events that transforms them.
I feel like Trump after January 6th is a different figure in many ways than Trump before January 6th, despite everything that came before that.
There's a book out there.
I've referenced it tons of times on this show.
I've referenced it in my own book.
And the book that I'm talking about is by Leslie Dorough Smith, and it is called Compromising Positions.
And she makes the case that you just made, Dan, that for the hyper-masculine male politician in the United States, sex scandals actually usually help them because they look like real men who will do what it takes and take what they want.
And she makes this great case as to why women in these cases and men who don't fit that mold often take the fall for those scandals, and it's the hyper-masculine Trump types who actually end up gaining from them.
And so I think everything you're saying about Trump and sexual assault and Stormy Daniels really, it really tracks.
And so friends, I'll put it in the show notes, but Compromising Positions by Leslie Durrell Smith will really convince you of this.
It's a great read.
Okay, let's switch tracks here a little bit.
Dan, you were speaking.
I just want to, I have a note.
Since we're all thinking on the spot today, I had a thought.
Instead of like scoops of ice cream, what about like just little tiny balls of ice cream?
You know what I mean?
And instead of getting one scoop, you got like thousands.
But then I looked it up.
Dippin' Dots, ice cream of the future.
Yeah, I know.
I just, the idea was already taken.
So, I'm going to keep thinking, but anyway.
So, Mail-in voting.
How's that for a segue?
I was just trying to give us a little bumper there.
Well, we all know that mail-in voting is ripe for fraud, and we shouldn't do it ever, ever, ever.
Like dippin' dots.
No.
Okay.
No.
No.
Sorry.
I missed it.
We practiced it, and I missed it.
All right.
Go ahead.
Mail-in voting.
It's like ballot harvesting.
No, like for years we have heard the GOP, so first of all, even years before, once upon a time, the idea of mail-in voting or, and things that are related, I feel like mail-in voting is kind of a shorthand now for like related things that aren't technically mail-in voting.
Mail-in voting or expanded absentee voting or just different options where you can drop off ballots or vote early in person, you know, a whole range of practices to increase voting access.
Once Upon a Time was not a super partisan issue.
And then Donald Trump came along and gave voice.
He didn't invent it.
He wasn't the only one saying it.
But this notion that mail-in voting was ripe for fraud, and people were going to cheat the system, and they're going to have dead people suddenly voting by mail, or people mailing in multiple ballots, and so forth.
I referenced this thing called ballot harvesting, which is basically where you'd have like third party groups that collect ballots and then submit them for people and things like that.
And we have heard for years now from the GOP with Trump as the loudest speaker that this is ripe for fraud.
And what did he do when he wanted to delegitimize the 2020 election?
He blamed things like mail-in voting and so forth.
Right with the midterms in November on Truth Social, He had a statement say you'll never get a fair election with mail-in balloting.
Never, never, never.
Or something like that.
The three nevers I know are there.
I'm not beating the rest word for word.
Why does all that matter?
Well, because the GOP figured out that they did not do well in the midterms.
And one reason might be that People didn't vote early for them or didn't do mail-in voting because we know, and the GOP knows, that mail-in voting and different practices have traditionally helped Democrats.
For whatever reason, voters who are more likely to vote Democratic are more likely to take advantage of these different kinds of policies and procedures and practices and so forth.
And the GOP strategy for a long time has been to try to do away with that.
And now Trump at CPAC says that they need to rethink this, that they need to encourage things like ballot harvesting and so forth.
The Republican National Committee is now expected to consider ways to drive up GOP voter participation in things like mail-in voting and early voting and so forth.
Lots of analysts have said, and we've talked about this, everybody's talked about this, Everybody who observes the GOP has said this was a mistake for them to oppose this because it can only disadvantage them.
The people who aren't going to vote for them are not going to not vote early because of this, and it can only sort of harm them.
So, takeaways from this, and I'm interested in your thoughts, is number one, it's not surprising tactically That they have what for them was a very pretty disastrous midterm election.
And then they say, geez, we need to like change course on this.
They're trying to save face by saying, well, you know, the Democrats do it and if you can't beat them, join them kind of thing.
You know, it's their fault that we have to do this, but we have to do this.
But I have a lot of questions about this.
Like, number one, can they put the toothpaste back in the tube on this?
We've been talking for weeks about Tucker Carlson and Fox and how Fox knew that the stuff about election meddling was false and so forth, but did what?
Reported that it wasn't anyway because they knew that their core audience wanted to hear that.
They would lose the audience if they did.
Is MAGA Nation really, all of a sudden, going to Change on this?
So that's a first question.
In like 18 months, it's not that long until the next election.
Is it really the case that by November of 2024, the GOP masses are going to be out and doing this?
Number two, and I guess it's kind of related to that, but we've seen spates of state legislatures that have rolled back voting access, of municipalities that have rolled back voting access, Can they just undo that?
Are they going to really want to undo that?
Because it can't just be like GOP people can vote early.
They're going to have to expand these things.
Are they really going to do that?
How will an Uncle Ron defend support for this?
And that's something to think about for all the people having conversations.
How does it jibe with, because Trump is not going to stop saying that 2020 was an unfair election.
Like, everybody in the GOP everywhere wants him to stop talking about that and focus on something forward-looking, and he is still Hammering away at this.
He just promised, or Bannon said in his show, that the afternoon that Trump is inaugurated in 2025, he will start a new January 6th commission that'll look at what really happened.
He still wants to relitigate this.
I don't see how those two things are going to fit if a key part of relitigating this was, it was things like ballot harvesting and early voting and mail-in voting that caused Trump the election, but now everybody's supposed to walk along with him.
And I also wonder, and this is that interesting thing as we move forward, is Trump going to have the pull that he's had?
As people like DeSantis are coming against him, as big donors are starting to look elsewhere and so forth, is it going to matter if even Trump says this?
Or This is the theme that we keep coming back to.
Have the things that the GOP, the horses they let out of the gate, are they just too far gone?
Is there no reining them back in?
So lots of questions about this strategically or tactically.
It makes sense why they're saying this, but I'm really, really interested to see how it actually plays out over time.
No, I agree about the toothpaste part.
You've trained people to think that 2020 was a fraud.
You've trained people to think that the election was stolen.
This is the lie that goes to the very heart of Maga Nation and white Christian nationalism.
I make that case in my book basically.
You're telling people that their country was stolen from them 60 years ago, that the election was stolen.
So it goes right to all their fears.
It goes right to all of their paranoia and right to all of their grievance.
And a big part of the steal happened through mail-in voting and early voting and blah, blah, blah.
Now you're going to turn course and say, actually, you should do it.
And I think you're exactly right.
Is the boomer Uncle Ron out there going to all of a sudden be like, yeah, this is actually safe.
I'll just do it this way.
And here's the other people I'm thinking about, right?
So we can talk about You know, Nikki Haley or anyone else.
But here's something I'm thinking about.
Carrie Lake.
Carrie Lake loses barely in Arizona.
Let's just not lose sight of that.
There's like a world where Carrie Lake is the governor of Arizona, okay?
So she barely loses.
She goes to CPAC.
She is still on her train about how she got her election stolen.
What happened in Arizona?
You had dudes with AR-15s sitting near drop boxes.
Because they were ensuring the, you know, integrity of blah, blah, blah.
Is Carrie Lake gonna back off that?
Cause Carrie Lake's kind of gesturing towards running for Senate in Arizona.
She's, she's maybe trying out to be Trump's VP.
Okay.
So.
I guess my point, Dan, is like, there's a lot of MAGA Republican voices out there that are going to have a hard time getting on board with this.
And there could be some real dissonance like with the Kerry Lake types out there in addition to Trump and his surrogates and his proxies.
I agree that from a numbers perspective, the GOP needs mail-in voters.
Period.
It just needs them.
From a propaganda perspective, a rhetorical perspective, it's a hard right turn.
I mean, we just did Dippin' Dots, Dan, as a segue.
I mean, you didn't.
I did that.
Okay?
It was me.
All right?
They're trying to go from mail-in voting led to your country being stolen.
They're like, yeah, actually, it's fine.
Probably okay.
No big deal.
And I just, I agree.
It's just, it's tough.
So anyway, final thoughts on this before we jump into some final issues for today.
I just think it feeds back into the theme and I know that like I talk about this all the time.
I've been talking about it for we've been talking about it for years, but the GOP for a long time was happy to tap into conspiracism and nationalism and populism and try to harness that.
To gain power and I think this is yet another example where we're going to see that they can't you once you've turned on that faucet, you just can't turn it off.
There's no way to shut it off.
And I think that we're going to I think we're going to see that happen.
And I'm interested to see if Let's imagine a world where DeSantis wins the nomination or something, and Trump decides he's going to run third party or something, and now MAGA Nation is against the Republican National Committee for saying that you should do mail-in voting.
I think it's yet another example of, as they say, the chicken's coming home to roost, the old saying, that the GOP is still having to reap what they've sown for decades.
You and Annika talked about it last week with Goldwater and McCain.
They both were these figures that courted white Christian nationalists.
They both regretted it.
In my book, I make the case that German conservatives thought they could control Hitler.
I mean, in 1928, the idea was, oh yeah, we'll get him involved.
He's got the populist Backing and then we'll just control him and that didn't work out so well.
So there's, we can call on dozens of examples of how you cannot do that.
You cannot just rein in what you've let loose.
It does not work.
So, all right, let's take a break.
We'll come back and we'll check in on a bunch of folks around the country, state legislatures, churches, and so on.
Be right back.
All right, Dan, I want to start with checking in on the men, and specifically the Christian men, specifically the evangelical and white Christian nationalist men, but just the men.
So this past week, Awakened Church had its men's conference, and the theme was valor.
And Awakened Church started out in San Diego, so right in my backyard growing up, a place, as I have made the case for years, Southern California.
That is, in many ways, a laboratory for evangelicalism and white Christian nationalism in terms of its marketing, in terms of its brand.
And there's a great piece at Left Coast Right Watch, and I'll put this in the show notes, by Kate Burns.
And I actually commented on this piece, so I'm very familiar with this piece.
But Kate really gives us an inside look into Awakened Church.
So Awakened Church starts in San Diego.
And it's by this couple who moved to San Diego in 2005.
And you know, their goal was really to become like big time church planters and successful mega church people.
And this is Jorgen and Leanne Mestizos.
Okay.
Now they moved there from Australia in 2005 and things kind of go okay.
But you know, when they really hit their stride, Dan, they really hit their stride during the pandemic.
And we said this a couple of weeks ago.
That we're going to be studying for years the ways that the pandemic led to strange migration patterns in this country, and I just think we're going to be studying for a long time how the pandemic revolutionized American religion.
So how do these church planters from Australia, Juergen and Leanne Matissas, make their hay?
They are now a huge church that has like five or six campuses in San Diego.
They have one where, Dan, guess where it is?
Guess it is in?
Where's their other one?
Boise.
They have another one in Boise, Idaho.
Yep.
Cause all their San Diegans, Californians have moved to Idaho.
So they opened a whole church there.
There's another one in Utah.
So they have like eight, nine campuses and they really hit their stride when, Dan, when they started really preaching the gospel, family friendly.
What was it?
Oh, it was when they turned into a full-throated MAGA church.
So they now host Tucker Carlson, Candace Owens, Sean Foyt, the Reawaken America Tour, right?
They're part of that whole shebang.
Flynn, Stone, Eric Trump, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Charlie Kirk, I think I mentioned Charlie Kirk, TPUSA.
The whole thing.
So, Dan, here's the thing.
During COVID, when they go full MAGA church, they blow up, they really hit their stride, and now they're on a roll, okay?
Now, what I want to talk about right now, just in the little time we have left, is their men's conference that they had, and the theme is valor.
And Dan, I'm going to put you on the spot.
We both watched the recap video of the Men's Conference, and I have my ways of describing it, but I have not asked you this.
Friends, we did not do this pre-tape.
We didn't have a big conference and strategize what we were going to say.
So Dan, I have no idea, but I know you watched the video of the Men's Conference from Awaken Church called Valor.
That was the theme.
What did you see and how would you describe it?
If I just said, hey, describe Valor, the Men's Conference, what would you say?
It's like, I don't know if people remember the old Sunday school, Onward Christian Soldiers.
It's Onward Christian Soldiers, like, with metal.
It's everything.
It's lots of military imagery.
You've got people, like, rappelling on the stage.
Lots of camo and fatigues, tug of war.
It is everything about what our friends call muscular Christianity.
It is baptizing, lots of images of baptism.
Baptizing a kind of hyper-masculine, militaristic, It's violent machismo as the sort of the divine model, the real men of God.
And so it's once upon a time you had promise keepers and it was all about being a good dad and like crying more and stuff like that.
This is that with like a big shot of testosterone and adrenaline into it.
And sort of all of I think the most aggressive impulses of a certain kind of hyper-masculinist American Christianity.
I mean, there's all these images of, like, young, like, teenage boys along with grown men doing, like, obstacle courses and, like, military training drills.
There's just men on stage yelling.
Like, just, I don't, I don't know about you, Dan, it just looked like disjointed, incoherent, like, yelling, grunting.
Like, right?
As you say, repel.
With literally, like, like, heavy metal music overlaid.
Like, it's, it's obviously, it's all about getting the adrenaline up.
It's, you know, all of that.
Well, and this was the recap video.
So if you say, hey, show me what was really important for the conference.
There was very few images of like contemplation, Bible study.
There was very few images of like men hugging or, you know, holding each other.
Now, I mean, there was a couple of like, you know, people raising their arms to God and stuff and embracing, but.
And the whole time I was watching the video, Dan, I was thinking of like, gosh, this is what you're told as a real man if you go to this church.
So like, if you're not this, if you're not into obstacle courses and playing with fake guns and grunting, if you are the 16-year-old in the corner who likes poetry,
If you're the kid in the back who loves to play the saxophone and doesn't want to jump over an obstacle course and play with a fake AR-15 and do weightlifting drills, if you're just not this man, then you're not a real man, according to these folks.
Now, I want to come back to this in a minute because it really, as you said it, you said militaristic and camo.
I want to come back to that in a sec.
But I want to check in on some other folks and hopefully you all see the threads I'm trying to draw together.
So Dan, I want to check in on Texas.
This is from Slate, okay?
And what happens in Texas is something that I think we all saw coming in a very tragic way.
So Texas now has this law where you can kind of pursue as a bounty hunter people who help with Women having abortions, okay?
So you have this case, and I'll post this in the show notes, but you have this case where a woman divorces her husband and her husband is menacing, she feels unsafe around him, and it's a relationship she needs to get out of.
However, in the middle of that divorce, she realizes she might be pregnant.
And so she uses abortion pills, what are often deemed abortion pills, to end the pregnancy.
Now, in the process of that, she texted friends for support and some of her friends said, yes, you should do that.
And, you know, yes, that's a good idea.
One person helped her get those pills.
So what's happening now is that Marcus Silva, who is the man, the ex-husband in question, has filed a lawsuit in Texas state court.
He did this about a week ago.
He's represented by Jonathan Mitchell, the former Texas Solicitor General who devised SB8, the Texas Vigilante Abortion Ban.
He's also represented by Briscoe Cain, a Republican member of the Texas legislature, and the far-right Thomas More Society.
This team, this law team, is demanding more than $1 million in damages from each of the two friends that his ex-wife, Jane Doe, who's not named for her safety, texted and talked with as she planned and carried out her abortion.
It demands the same from the Houston woman who procured the pills.
So let me just boil this down, Dan.
Woman texts two friends and says, hey, I think I should have an abortion because I'm getting divorced from this man.
He's unsafe.
I don't want, you know, this is not a planned pregnancy, so on and so on and so on.
Her reasons are her reasons.
None of our business.
And the women who text her with support and affirm her decision are being sued for $1,000,000.
And the woman who helped get the pills is being sued for $1,000,000.
This is the result of that Texas vigilante bill.
So, think about, and you know, the article in Slate just talks about how this man is a bully, how he, I mean, what, I don't know, there's so many words in my head that I don't want to use.
I'll throw it to you quickly.
What are your thoughts on this?
Because I have some other people I want to check in on and I promise there's a theme here and I promise at the end I'm going to try and draw it all together.
Just very briefly, two points.
One is it's sort of absurd on the face of it.
And again, from an analytic perspective, it'll be interesting to see as it's actually tested in court, how it works.
Number two, this is exactly what the bill was supposed to do.
Like this is not an unintended consequence or something run amok.
This is exactly what they wanted and we're seeing it put into practice.
So people who said that critics of these bills were alarmist and whatever, well, here it is happening just as intended.
All right, so hold that in your mind.
Let's check in on Missouri, okay?
Let's check in on Missouri.
All right.
So in Missouri, and some of you might have seen this, but there was a don't-say-gay bill of sorts put forth in Missouri, okay?
And there was this back and forth between, in the state legislature, between the folks who, Representative Ann Kelly, who introduced the bill, And Representative Phil Cristofanelli who opposed the bill.
Now, Fanelli is a Republican and the Daily Kos in the article makes clear that Fanelli is anti-abortion, anti-worker, and pro-gun.
So, this is a red meat Republican.
However, he is LGBTQ.
He's one of the very few LGBTQ Republicans to have served in the Missouri State Legislature.
So, The bill is a don't-say-gay bill, and it basically says you cannot talk about sexual orientation in the classroom.
You cannot mention it at all, okay?
So, let me give you the back and forth between Christofanelli, the one who opposes it, and Ann Kelly, the one who introduces it, okay?
So, Christofanelli says, who is Martha Washington?
And Ann Kelly, who introduced the bill, says George Washington's wife.
Cristofanelli says, with your bill, how could that be mentioned in the classroom?
And Kelly says, well, that's not sexual orientation.
And Cristofanelli says, really?
And Kelly goes on to say that I don't consider that sexual orientation.
And Cristofanelli says, well, I'm just going to read the language in your bill.
No classroom instruction by school personnel or third parties relating to sexual orientation or gender identity shall occur.
So, you mentioned George Washington.
Who is Martha Washington?
Uh, his wife.
Well, under your bill, how could you mention that in a classroom?
To me, that's not sexual orientation.
Really?
So it's only certain sexual orientations that you want prohibited from introduction in the classroom.
And Kelly says, well, do you have language to make that better, to make it where you're not talking?
And Cristofanelli cuts her off and says, I didn't introduce your bill.
I didn't write it.
You wrote it.
And so I'm asking what it means.
Which sexual orientations do you believe should be prohibited from Missouri classrooms?
And Kelly's response here, right, is amazing.
She does not try to like use the language of the bill, doesn't say, well, right.
She says, we all have a moral compass and my moral compass is compared with the Bible.
So as soon as he's like, hey, tell me who Martha Washington is without telling me about a George Washington sexual orientation.
It's, I believe, in the moral compass that comes from the Bible.
Christofanelli says, I think during your testimony, you said that you didn't want teachers' personal beliefs entering the classroom, but it seemed a lot like your personal belief you would like to enter all Missouri classrooms.
So he's like, so you also said no personal beliefs in the classroom, like Black Lives Matter or whatever else.
And you just referenced your personal belief in the Bible.
Okay.
And Kelly, you can believe something without putting that on to somebody by the way you behave.
And you can have beliefs and morals and values that guide you through life.
So, I'm not going to read the whole thing, Dan, but I think you all can see where this is going.
She does not even consider the fact that mentioning Martha Washington is a mention of George Washington's sexual identity.
Why?
Because she considers heterosexuality not to be something that's actually a thing.
It's just the default.
It's just the standard.
And it's only when you mention non-heteronormative sexual identities and genders that it's an ideology or something that shouldn't be introduced.
Dan, I've never seen A more clear, like, uncovering, right?
Revealing of an agenda in such a short amount of time.
Like she gets called on Martha Washington and then it's like, well, I believe in the Bible and I have a moral compass.
And it's like, whoa, you just gave away the game.
You just gave away the whole game in like one second.
Thoughts on this?
Because this is stunning.
I have one more I want to check in on after this, but what do you think?
Just briefly, I think it's a smart strategy to call it out that way.
And we've talked about what I view as related to these library laws and things about if parents find a book objectionable, it has to be removed from the shelves and so forth.
If I were a liberal or progressive or just a good person in one of these places, I would immediately start calling the school district and say, like, I'm offended by the Bible because it says this.
Or I'm offended by this or that film or DVD or book or whatever because I find straight relationships really gross and they make me uncomfortable or whatever.
And just bring out the absurdity of these and make them say the quiet parts out loud, which these are aimed at black people and other people of color.
They're aimed at women.
They're aimed at LGBTQ community.
And as you say, this immediately blew the top off of it.
All right, we checked in on the men.
We checked in on Missouri.
Let's quickly check in on Florida.
I know we've done a lot of Florida over the last month, so you all are tired of it.
But you know what?
There's a reason.
You know why?
Because in addition to everything else he's done, Ron DeSantis, and this is at the New Republic, wants to introduce and supports a new Florida bill that criminalizes not just being undocumented in Florida, but anyone who associates with them.
So Dan, this is similar to the abortion SB8 we just talked about in Texas, but instead of abortion, it is associating or helping with undocumented workers.
So he wants to make it a felony if you have an undocumented person in your home or give them a ride.
Okay, I'm not, we don't have time today to go over this in like 20 minutes or more detail, but let me just say it again.
Senate Bill 1718, part of DeSantis' broad repressive legislative agenda, according to the New Republic, targets not just undocumented people, but also anyone associated with them.
It's likely to pass a Republican controlled state legislature, and it criminalizes anyone who transports an undocumented person into or within the state.
Kevin Kruse, the historian from Princeton and someone many of you will know, had a great tweet about this and said, well, what if you, I don't know, hid an undocumented person in a In your attic or like in a cranny or a nook in your basement.
Basically a reference to someone like Anne Frank or other people in the during the Holocaust in Nazi Germany.
Basically saying that's what you're creating here.
Okay?
So Dan, think about this.
If you give an undocumented person a ride, it might be a felony.
Think about the cruelty, the barbarism, just the utmost vengefulness of this whole act.
All right, we're running out of time, so let's just draw the threads together.
We started this segment with a way you can church.
Training men of valor, to be aggressive, to be soldiers, to be those who stand up to what's right and take what's theirs.
I mean, if you all watch the video from Awakened Church's Men Conference, we're not lying.
That is what that was about.
Dan, if you combine that Onward Christian Soldiers training that we saw from Awakened Church, and Awakened Church is not fringe, at least in MAGA World, TPUSA, Charlie Kerr, Candace Owens, Shawn Foyt, okay?
And then you think, well, what are the things they're going to try to do in society to make it more Christian?
I don't know.
Maybe be vigilantes against women who have abortions and sue them for, sue their friends for a million dollars.
I don't know.
Make it a felony to associate with in any way an undocumented worker.
Make it so you can't even say anything about sexual orientation in a public classroom?
We haven't even mentioned, Dan, the Nazis in Ohio who showed up to protest a drag queen show or a drag show.
Not a drag show at a library, just a drag show, okay?
Here's my point, Dan.
The churches and these policies, the visions of masculinity, they all go together and they should all terrify us.
And if you think that, you know, we're in a Biden presidency and things are looking up, I get it.
But if you imagine A DeSantis presidency, Dan?
I don't know what comes after that because this is the kind of thing that he wants to put in place and the kinds of Christian soldiers he wants to train and he wants to be in cahoots with and he wants to be part of his group are the awakened churchmen who are out there in fatigues training for war.
There's a reason I call my book Preparing for War and people ask me why and I'm like, well, here it is.
So anyway, final thoughts on those threads before we go to Reasons for Hope.
Just the sort of dystopian nature of it.
I mean, it sounds like something that you would read about in some sort of thing.
And again, just people are often like, these are so irrational.
If you trace through the possibilities these lead to, they're absurd.
And the last thing I'd say is it's not about rationality.
It's about desire.
It's about political feelings.
It's about a deep sense of what America should be.
And it's about targeting those who are viewed as threatening that.
This scares the, yeah, I mean, this, this, this frightens me.
So I'll just leave it there for now.
All right, Dan, Reason for Hope this week.
Mine comes from sort of my neck of the woods.
Wellesley College students, historical women's college, they voted to adopt gender-neutral language and to open admissions to all non-binary and trans applicants.
People who may not follow this, it's been a weird issue among a lot of women's colleges about issue of trans acceptance and identity and so forth.
So I was just really, really hopeful about this.
I also live near Smith College and this was an issue with Smith.
For some time, so I took a lot of hope in that as expanding senses and awareness of gender and what am I mean to identify as a woman and so forth.
Mine comes from something we talked about a couple weeks ago, but really didn't spend any time on, and that is there's a conference next week on Christian nationalism and its threats, and that conference is taking place in Oxford, Dan, our old stomping grounds.
Neither of us will be there, but it also kind of is a nice way to think about something else that's happening in the UK, which is the Church of England adopting or moving toward adopting general neutral language for God.
So, God being they, them, or just other ways to refer to God other than just he, him.
That seems really important.
It seems like it's a really positive development and something that shouldn't be overlooked.
Others have noticed this.
We've already talked about Vladimir Putin noticed this.
Vladimir Putin did not like this very much.
But nonetheless, I see it as a reason for hope.
And, you know, Dan, coming from a place that you and I both have affection for and a lot of friends who serve as ministers in the UK and also are theologians and scholars and so on.
So, all right.
That'll do it for us today.
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