Weekly Roundup: Trump Makes Republicans Pro-Choice - And His Christian Base Revolts
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In this week's edition of the Straight White American Jesus Weekly Roundup, Brad Onishi and Dan Miller discuss the fallout from Donald Trump's recent comments on abortion and IVF, the political double standards applied to Kamala Harris, and a bizarre Arlington National Cemetery incident. Trump’s contradictory stance on abortion is causing uproar within his Christian nationalist base. Kamala Harris navigates media scrutiny amidst claims of double standards. The episode wraps up by examining the troubling implications of Trump's antics at Arlington Cemetery.
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In Florida, the state that you are a resident of, there's an abortion-related amendment on the ballot to overturn the six-week ban in Florida.
How are you going to vote on that?
Well, I think the six-week is too short.
It has to be more time.
And I've told them that I want more weeks.
So you'll vote in favor of the amendment?
I'm voting that.
I am going to be voting that we need more than six weeks.
Just so you understand.
Everybody wanted Roe v. Wade terminated for years.
52 years.
I got it done.
They wanted you to go back to the States.
Exceptions are very important for me, for Ronald Reagan, for others that have navigated this very, very interesting and difficult fact.
Donald Trump recently proclaimed that abortion is a states' rights issue.
His running mate, J.D.
Vance, echoed that on the campaign trail.
It was enough, at least in the moment, to placate some of the hardcore anti-abortion constituents on the American right.
But now, Trump is saying that an amendment, up for a vote in Florida, isn't sufficient.
That there needs to be more weeks.
That it's too hardcore.
That there need to be more exceptions and ways to navigate this thorny issue.
This comes in the wake of him proclaiming that, under his administration, the government will pay for IVF treatments.
All of this has been enough to cause uproar in Christian nationalist circles.
Leaders like Al Mohler are now wondering out loud if Trump is their man.
Today we analyze what this means, what effect it might have on the election, and if we will see a dip in Trump's much-needed support from white evangelicals, white Catholics, and other conservative Christians.
We also analyzed Kamala Harris' appearance with Dana Bash on CNN, and the disturbing details of Trump's visit to Arlington Cemetery.
I'm Brad Onishi and this is the Straight White American Jesus Weekly Roundup.
Welcome to Straight White American Jesus.
Back for the second time this week with Dan Miller.
I'll Always a treat, Dan, to see you twice.
Who are you and what's going on?
It's like an existential question because I feel like this week it could be.
No, I'm Dan Miller, professor of religion and social thought at Landmark College and co-host with Brad Onishi of the podcast Straight White American Jesus.
Resuming that up, it's first week of class.
I feel like you introduce yourself to your students and stuff, and I've said that a whole bunch of times.
I had a student this week, Brad, who dropped the class that I'm teaching because she told me she liked the podcast better than what we're doing in class.
Well, there it is.
And so she just doesn't think she wants the class.
There it is.
All right, there we go.
I, yesterday, got a very special piece of mail.
Somebody, and if you're out there listening, shout out to you.
It was actually sent to my university mailbox, but it was a Trump Bible.
No kidding.
So I have one.
I have a Trump Bible.
I did not pay for it, but I do have one.
Was it autographed?
Is it one of them that he signed?
No, but I do have one.
I thought Project 2025 was the Trump Bible.
Oh, yeah.
Dan Miller's on fire.
He's on fire.
All right.
We're going to get to Trump and abortion, so that's a big thing this week.
But last night, Kamala Harris sat down with Dana Bash alongside Tim Wells.
I want to talk about that, but also just really dig in on policy and a question surrounding Kamala Harris's platform, the questions in the press about her policies, has she flip-flopped and so on.
And I want to do that in order to kind of, I think, and especially Dan here is going to make some good points about the double standard in the press right now.
We'll finish today with Arlington Cemetery and Trump's very creepy and disastrous and in no short words, disgusting actions at Arlington.
So it's a kind of national headline week, Dan.
We're not really digging into a story.
In Baton Rouge or in Coeur d'Alene or anywhere else.
But nonetheless, I think things that will be on people's minds because the abortion story is really a Florida story.
The Arlington story is a military story and a national story.
So anyway, blah, blah, blah.
Let's get into it.
Last night, Kamala Harris sat down with Dana Bash, Tim Walz was there, and a lot of anticipation for this.
The legacy press has been very upset that Kamala Harris has not given them access, and there's been a lot of people making very good arguments on X and other places that the New York Times seems to have had a very right turn recently in terms of their political coverage, especially as it pertains to Kamala Harris.
Axios?
Axios.
I feel like it feels that way, yeah.
Maybe even CNN.
I'm going to pick on a CNN article today, but yeah, all of them.
I've got an idea why that is.
I'm sure you do too.
Here's my real quick take on this and then I'll throw it to you to give yours and then take us into policy is, this pertains to policy because Dana Bash really didn't ask a lot of great questions about Kamala Harris and what she would bring to the American people.
Did she ask some of those things?
Sure.
But the equation for Dana Bash seemed to be, hey, here's a right-wing talking point.
They said this.
What do you say?
So like she literally asked, she said, Trump says you're not black.
How do you respond?
Next question, says Kamala Harris.
Tim Walz, they say this about your military service.
What say you?
And Dan, I'll just say that this is one of those moments why people don't trust the mainstream media.
And I don't want to sound like, you know, Charlie Kirk.
I don't want to sound like a QAnon person.
What I want to say, though, is like, you had a chance to ask Kamala Harris serious questions.
You had a chance to ask a serious person serious questions.
And you spent a lot of your journalistic capital on, here's right-wing talking point, please respond.
Here's ridiculous thing that your wannabe fascist going on ridiculous truth social rants where he is echoing fascist rhetoric, re-posting QAnon memes, making sex jokes about Hillary Clinton and Kamala Harris and How oral sex has affected their careers.
I mean, disgusting things that if George W. Bush, Mitt Romney, John McCain, anyone else had done, would have ended their career.
And here's Dana Bash being like, yeah, let's take serious the things he says about you and just respond in the like 45 minutes we have on national television.
In the, like, big-time anticipated interview that we have been clamoring for forever.
Like, you all have seen this, but there's these moments when the British press gets at an American po- like, they get to Ted Cruz, and he's unfiltered, and they ask him, like, hardcore questions, and they don't let him out of it.
They don't let him lie, they don't let him bluster, and you're like, damn, why can't we have that?
Because what we do have is, like, You know, a political press that's so mad that they don't get unfettered access and sit down interviews every day with Kamala Harris.
And then when they get the chance, they're so worried about keeping access and everything else that they're just like, they ask these questions that really sound like a complete waste of time, if you ask me.
So.
You know, your reactions and then give us the like, how does this turn into a kind of policy discussion about Harris and her candidacy?
Yeah, so what I think and what I want to focus on is, and it's sort of a, you know, it's in the code kind of approach here, but I feel like the word policy is like, it's just like buzzword now.
We hear it all the time.
We hear it from the Trump camp.
As you say, we've heard it from the legacy media all the time.
We hear it from others.
And I think there's a lot going on with that word that if we like tug on it and pull into the rhetoric, we see, I think, a lot of the dynamics of this campaign.
So I want to start with that point that you have, because I had like a few points like that I kind of tie together with this.
But one is, and I think this goes to what you're pointing out with the New York Times, I think a point goes to what I'm seeing in CNN, saw it in Axios the other day, where the media, the legacy media as we say, is like one piece of this is they are still falling prey to Trump's games.
They are still falling prey to the MAGA games And I think that they subscribe to those criticisms, that they've been too good to Harris, and they've emphasized her momentum too much, and they've talked too much about joy and all of this.
The both-side-ism that we've talked about for years of saying, well, we can't just always be critical of Trump, even though he's a convicted felon, even though he has been, you know, found liable for sexual assault, even though He did the thing he did with the Association of Black Journalists, even though he did what he did in Arlington.
We'll get to those things.
Objectively speaking, from a descriptive level, there is more to criticize about Trump than there is the current vice president.
And yet, the Trump campaign has kept saying, she won't do interviews, she won't do interviews, she's not talking about policy, we'll beat her on policy.
And so what's part of what they do?
I think they overcorrect.
And so you get these, like, we're going to find reasons to be critical.
We have to be seen being critical of Kamala Harris.
And so I feel like you get this.
But as you say, they waste the opportunity because you didn't ask about Paula.
Yeah, they ask about fracking.
How come your views on fracking changed?
And, you know, she talked about that.
Whatever somebody thinks about that, whatever, that's fine.
But they're still playing Trump's game, I think, more and more.
And that ties in with the point you've been making, which is, I think, just this resentment of, you know, the kind of mainstream or legacy media that influencers matter now and social media matters now.
And yeah, people read from teleprompters and all of this sort of stuff.
And so I'm really picking on CNN today.
There was like an article yesterday ahead of this that just, you know, I had veins popping out of my forehead and stuff on a number of levels.
And so I'm picking on them, but we could pick other examples.
But here was CNN's description of this interview before it happened.
They said it is the, quote, most important chapter of the campaign.
Between last week's Democratic Convention in Chicago and the presidential debates on September 10th.
I'm like, wow, CNN, pretentious much?
Us sitting down and getting to talk to her is the most important thing that will happen in the campaign from the DNC to the debates.
And Brad's eyes literally just rolled out of his head and he had to put him back in.
Yeah, it was a ridiculous description.
It's just, if you're going to do that, you have to take it seriously.
And I don't want to pick on Dana Bash, but Dana Bash is not, I'm just going to be honest, is just not somebody known for challenging candidates, for coming back and saying, I'm going to hold your feet to the fire, for wanting to have serious discussions.
Dana Bash really seems like she doesn't want to make anyone mad when she interviews them.
And I just, I don't want to get it twisted, Dan.
I want A press that is robust, that is free, and that has the resources to cover everything from what's happening on the ground in Lincoln, Nebraska, to Portsmouth, New Hampshire, to Eugene, Oregon.
We need more reporters and journalists doing that good work.
The frustration is with The lack of seriousness with the interview when you get it, and then something I'll talk about in a minute, the horse racing kind of sweepstakes that you have to do to keep ratings up such that you make these comparisons, as you're saying, between Trump and Harris that are so ridiculous on their head that you realize that they are normalizing a proto-fascist candidate in front of us as we get two months to an election.
Yeah, well, so more on that, on this creating this sense of gravity around this and then kind of blowing it.
This is another quote from that same CNN article.
It says, Partisan bickering over the interview aside, there are many reasons why it makes sense for presidential candidates to submit to tough interviews.
Brat, tough interviews.
Again, this is before the question, but this is what they said.
They go on to say, someone hoping to run the country ought to feel an obligation to explain what they plan to do.
And, you know, this the sanctimoniousness of it, the all of that sort of stuff says, even if it might please their campaign managers to restrict appearances to low risk, partisan outlets and empathetic social media influencers, the more interviews a politician conducts, the more practice they become.
So fine, there's all of this.
I'm going to talk about what the GOP wanted from this in a minute, but she does it.
It's fine.
I'm sure people who are really opposed to fracking don't like that she has switched now.
I think people who dig into the border security bipartisan bill, there's a lot of stuff in there Democrats don't like because it was a bipartisan bill and so people can really like Pull on those.
If we wanted to delve into policy, we could do that.
But overall, she was fluid.
She was smooth.
She responded, I thought, well to these non-sequitur questions that have already been there.
But here's CNN's headline today, right, as they're reflecting on their interview.
This is the headline.
Harris bolsters momentum in first sit-down interview, alright, but leaves gaps on policy detail.
Like, that's their takeaway.
And as you say, you had the damn interview and can ask whatever you want, unscripted, blah blah blah blah blah.
And you're asking, Trump says you're not black.
Respond.
You know, whatever.
And yeah, so there's that piece of it that is just, I think, legacy media resentment that is still falling prey to the Trump game of sort of being like, we have to ask hard questions and all of this.
But that brings me to the double standard in all of this.
And I think there are multiple layers to the double standard here.
But here's the deal.
Trump has never offered detailed policy discussions of anything, even as four years of being a president.
All he has ever done is culture war, big sweeping claims.
We're looking at it.
We're looking at a lot of things.
There's a lot of people.
We're looking at things.
There's a lot of options.
We're going to do it.
We're going to do it.
It's going to be great.
It's going to be the best.
Mexico's going to pay for the wall.
We're looking at a lot of things.
A lot of things.
Yeah.
He's never done it.
If we want to bring these things together, this is part of why they argue for this strong, unified executive thing is because you don't have to have policy then.
You can just have whim.
That's what the policy is.
It's broad-sweeping generalizations.
It is, you know, America is dangerous.
It's never been worse.
I'm going to make it better.
Only I can keep you safe.
All of these things that he has said And we simply don't have the policy demands made of Trump that are currently being made of Kamala Harris.
And part of this goes back to playing Trump's game.
He has never played the game.
He won't play the game.
The media have finally figured out we can talk forever and try to force Trump to answer policy questions.
And if we give him an interview and try to do that, he's just going to tell a bunch of lies and stuff.
So we're going to quit pushing that.
But we're going to keep asking this candidate for this.
Oh, and by the way, another double standard, she's also a woman.
And I feel like there's a piece of this that can't be taken away from the gender dimension, that can't be taken away from these other elements that, yeah, she's the sitting vice president of the United States, and yet we're making demands that we're not making of the former president of the United States.
And these other things that are going on, we're going to talk about abortion, but like, was it just yesterday?
It feels like forever ago.
Trump's like, the government's going to pay for IVF treatments, and I'm going to require insurance companies to do it.
Holy shit.
Wow.
Is that a policy position?
Not yet.
That's an aspiration.
Can we get into policy details, Trump?
I've not heard anybody actually ask his campaign.
How are we going to pay for it?
How are you going to force the insurance companies to do it?
Who's going to fit that bill?
How's it going to work if a state has already banned that practice because of your Supreme Court justices and you've said it belongs in the states?
On and on and on and on.
Whatever.
We'll get into that.
But here's like yet one more piece of this, and I know it's like stream of consciousness, it's just pouring out of me, but here's another piece of this.
You get the double standard, but here's the other one.
It's a red herring false narrative.
And this is the more theory piece of me.
I would pay some money If political analysts, if journalists, if academics could figure out ordinary voters do not care or respond to detailed policy positions.
They don't.
Maybe they should.
I don't know how many political analysts and political philosophers have read about what people should care about, but they don't.
What do the polls find?
They find that people care about, quote-unquote, the direction of the country.
That's about emotion.
That's about feeling.
They do care about broad things.
Access to health care.
Do they care, really, when it comes down to it, about, I don't know, regulating co-pays and things like that?
Yeah, they do on a day-to-day basis, but it doesn't win elections.
So this There's this element where this whole demand for policy, I think, also misses what it is that real people want and talk about and think about.
And my example for this, Brad, you're an academic.
I'm an academic.
I'm sure you've had the experience where you're like at a, I don't know, you're at a cookout, neighbor's house, some preschool event, and you meet other parents and they're like, what do you do?
And they do this.
Oh, what do you teach?
I teach in these areas.
Like, oh, that's really interesting.
I'd like to know more about that.
You know what?
They don't want to know more about that.
They think they do, but you start telling them what you do and what you specialize in and stuff.
You see the eyes glaze over.
You see people start to tip over.
They start looking over your shoulder.
They start like, you know, pretending that they got a text coming in that they got to look at.
That's what it is.
Even when people, I think, say that they want to know more about a policy, I don't think that they do.
I think regular Americans, when they hear policy, they mean what analysts think are like broad brushstrokes and so forth.
They want to know, are you thinking about the fact that I feel like inflation is too high?
Are you thinking about the fact that I have a transgender kid and they can't get hormone treatments anymore?
Are you thinking about this?
They don't actually, in my opinion, want to know all the nitty-gritty details of what policies are going to be in place with what institutions and whatever, on the one hand.
And I also think That a lot of people who say they want that, the people that they poll, they're like, well, I just don't think I know enough about Kamala Harris yet.
They're not going to vote for Kamala Harris.
I don't know how many times I heard that about Obama.
I just feel like I don't know who he is yet.
I haven't heard enough.
No, you mean he's black and you're not going to vote for him.
That's what you mean.
And so I think it's also much ado about something that a certain class of political observers want, and it matters to me, I think it matters to you, but I don't think it matters to a lot of people the way it does to me and the way it does to you.
And I think that that's a whole nother piece of this that is often missed.
And it's why the Trump campaign is not, you know, sort of acting in good faith when they're like, she owes us reasons and all of this stuff.
I have one more point to make about the policy thing, but I want to throw it over to you for your thoughts on that.
And maybe I'm just off base and, you know, they should all be releasing 30 page policy programs on everything.
But I think, I think it doesn't work.
I think people care about policy.
If you can explain it in a bullet point, and I don't blame him for that.
OK, so I think Kamala Harris has come out and said, we're going to we're going to twenty five thousand dollars for first time homebuyers.
We're going to we're going to basically curb price gouging when it comes to, you know, supermarkets and and other other things.
She's she's had these very clear.
And I think bullet point fitted policy positions that if you're just a person who does not have a lot of time, you do not listen to all the politics podcasts, you do not, then you can understand like, oh, OK, well, that sounds good.
I mean, that seems better to me than this.
And and by the way, My plan will not raise taxes on the middle class and Trump will.
If you look at the Trump tax cuts and everything else he wants to do, you're a middle class person.
You're about to get higher taxes.
So lower taxes.
I'm going to help people buy homes.
I'm going to help make sure that the price gouging at the grocery store stops.
Couple of other things when it comes to reproductive rights.
And then you're like, OK, that's that's and people are always listening for what they care about.
Yeah.
And and I get it.
Like, you know, if if you send me something.
Like when when when you are are so stretched for time and bandwidth and somebody is asking you to wade through a 10 page thing, for me, it's like any any kind of manual.
Like part of part of my makeup and as a neurodivergent person is like following directions and reading manuals is really, really hard for me.
It's real.
And so if you send over a thing that's like, here's an eight page direction sheet.
I will avoid doing that at all costs.
And I just think if you do that with policy, people do that.
But like she hasn't done that now.
And part of the reason I'll just say one more thing is part of the reason that I'm disappointed this interview is I want to know more about her positions on things like Israel and other and other dimensions of of what's happening in our political landscape.
Because I will tell you that if she wins and she is the president and Donald Trump is not able to affect violence or coups or Supreme Court B.S.
I'm going to be willing to criticize Kamala Harris from day one about what she needs to do better.
And so I want to know what she needs to do better if and when we get there.
Yeah.
So I think the other piece, and you sort of touched on this, I remember, I think it was the same CNN article, I think, but it was somewhere that contrasted her with Hillary Clinton, you know, and Clinton had more experience and Clinton was able to turn any discussion into a policy seminar.
And I was like, yeah.
And Clinton was boring.
And people didn't like Clinton, and they weren't excited about Clinton, and that's part of it.
And I think the double standard gender thing comes in here, too.
If a man stands up and starts just going into policy detail, he's learned, he's erudite, maybe he's a little bit dry, but he's serious, and he's a policy wonk.
And, you know, these are all like affirmations.
If a woman does it, She's not very likable.
She doesn't feel approachable.
It's the political version of, you need to smile more.
Like, how come you can't be happier?
There's also a trap that I think a female candidate walks into if they go in a certain direction that is expected of male candidates.
And I think that that's a piece.
The last thing I want to raise about all this that I think is really, really significant is that I think that this language of policy, Team Trump knows they're in trouble.
They keep saying Trump can beat Kamala Harris on policy, not personal attacks and whatever, even though he doesn't have policy, but they have been clamoring.
For her to talk more about policy, to do a sit-down interview.
She's been protecting herself.
You had all the weird misogynistic and sexist stuff about, she's afraid to do the interview by herself.
She has to have a man sitting with her.
Whatever.
But here's the thing, because here's what they wanted from this.
They wanted her to fall flat.
There was a lot of reporting on this.
And this is one of the things that I read.
Again, this was in the CNN thing.
It just captured a lot of dimensions of this.
It said, they said, they said, by not scheduling major interviews before now, Harris opened herself to complaints by Trump and some nonpartisan observers she is trying to dodge scrutiny.
I think it's mostly Trump and the nonpartisan observers that picked that up.
But it says, this raised the stakes for any potential gaffes that will be seized upon by the Trump campaign.
They're ready, they're, you know, setting the stage for her to fall.
It went on to say, the interview has become a hurdle for the vice president because Trump aides have been goading her into it for weeks, apparently believing she'll flunk difficult questions, will blank on policy details, and that she lacks nimble political instincts.
Now, let's pause here for a minute.
I've got a direction I'm going with this, but I want to read that and be like, why?
Why are they so sure that she's going to do this?
Their dude is busy alienating the entire African American community and the entire journalistic world with stuff he says to the Association of Black Journalists.
Again, Arlington, just standing off to the side, we'll get to it, on and on, and you're like, she's going to fall flat.
You know why?
Because she had a bad interview with Lester Holt when she started being vice president.
Same article.
Republican confidence that Harris could be exposed by a televised interview springs from a one-on-one she conducted with NBC's Lester Holt early in her vice presidency.
The focused on her role as emissary to Latin American nations that represent the source of much of the undocumented migration to the U.S., her discomfort provided fuel for years of Republican attacks and the interview still hangs over her tenure as vice president.
In that interview, Harris seemed ill-prepared.
OK.
She didn't.
That didn't happen.
Like, yeah, you had a shitty interview half a decade ago, and maybe you've gotten better at it since then, whatever.
But here's what matters to me.
We've heard this narrative.
How did the GOP respond to the DNC?
They're going to fall flat.
It's going to be a disaster.
It's going to fall flat.
There's going to be rioting in the streets.
The Democrats can't do anything.
They'll never rally around anybody.
It'll blunt the momentum.
Didn't happen.
We've heard the things after it.
Here they're like, yep, we just need her to do an interview.
She's going to fall flat.
It's going to blunt the momentum.
Guess what's not happening?
She's not stumbling the way that they want her to and need her to.
It's not blunting the momentum.
But for me, if you're a campaign and everything hangs on the other campaign making a mistake, that's a position of weakness.
Sports metaphor time.
Sorry.
NFL starts next week.
But, you know, if you've got a good team that you follow, that's the team you're like, man, if we've got the ball in the fourth quarter, we got this game.
That's us.
Or, or, Brad, I'm going to stretch out.
I'm going to use basketball.
If we can get the basketball and we've got it set, we're in that last few seconds and we've got the perimeter shooter, if we can get the ball to that person, we've got this.
If you're the team that's like, man, I hope they fumble.
I hope they throw an interception.
I hope their star player fouls out.
That's not a winning formula.
And that's what I hear from the Trump campaign with this.
I hear that their strategy at this point is, we need Kamala Harris to mess up.
And so far, she's not doing it.
Long time between now and November.
But that's my last thing on policy.
And what it's code for is, I think that this is the Trump campaign, when they keep hammering on policy, keep trying to goad her, as it said, and I think this is true, into doing the sit-down interview, she finally does it.
I don't think CNN does them any favors, because they don't really ask about policy, except I guess I can say she still didn't talk about it.
But she didn't stumble.
She didn't fall flat.
She was politically nimble, to use the language that CNN used.
It was smooth.
It was practiced.
It was much better than the much more inexperienced candidate in 2019-2020.
So those are a lot of my thoughts.
But for me, this rhetoric of policy, as I'm trying to show, just connects on so many levels with so many elements of this campaign, and I think takes us a lot of places.
I throw it to you, and also on the theme of falling flat, maybe we'll go to Arlington after that.
Well, I just want to say, I think like there's a rally yesterday or the day before where Donald Trump goes into a weird tirade about how no one eats bacon anymore.
And that's somehow due to wind farms.
So, and I'll just, I'll just 30 seconds and we're going to go to break is why, why, why normalize Donald Trump?
Why take a right turn if you're the national press or the legacy press?
And unfortunately, we're in one of the situations, to use your football analogy, we're at the Super Bowl.
This is the Super Bowl.
It's not a state legislature race.
This is not a mayor race.
This is the Super Bowl.
And sometimes everybody gets together for the Super Bowl, and by halftime, it's 48 to 0.
And it's like, well, What are we going to do now for the announcers or for the people who spent billions of dollars putting this event on?
We've got to conjure some suspense.
Can they come back?
This is the team that's come back.
And I'm not saying Kamala Harris is up 48 to 0.
Do not get me wrong.
What I am saying is that we've had about six weeks of nothing but positive Kamala Harris stories.
Great pick for VP.
Great convention.
Coconut pilled.
Brat.
All the way to the polls, all the way to the polls.
And what the press needs to do now is be like, well.
It's it's kind of it's kind of halftime.
We're going to need to drum up something here so people don't like stop paying attention.
And I think that's why you're seeing this sort of turn.
So anyway, we need to take a break.
We'll come back and we'll get to Arlington and abortion.
Be right back.
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Okay, Dan, so there's something I'm watching.
So I just want to remind everybody that about three months ago, I said that we have the characters And the issues that will determine the 2024 election, the characters.
I just want to be clear.
Who, who said this?
It was, it was me.
It was me.
Yeah, it was.
And what I tried to lay out there was like, look, it's Biden and Trump.
What's going to happen?
And we got our answer.
I mean, Dan, we got our, our second act surprise.
If there's 10 episodes, the end of episode six was a bombshell.
Biden dropped out.
Okay.
What are the issues that I said were going to affect things?
Gaza?
Israel?
What's going to happen there?
The insertion of Harris has given at least some sense of hope and possibility for those voters, including us, who want to see dramatic change in terms of the United States' support for what is happening, the genocide happening in Gaza.
Okay, so that's there.
But the other one, Dan, I said was reproductive rights, because both of those tied into the religious right Gen Z. They tie into younger voters that tie into voters across the country, whether you're in Kansas, whether you're in Arizona.
What has happened this week is a kind of episode eight surprise that is going to lead us to the end of our season here.
And that is Donald Trump.
The clip I played at the top came out against Ron DeSantis in Florida and basically said that this This whole push for a six week abortion ban and an amendment that, well, a DeSantis platform, I should say, that is really one of the most stringent restrictions on abortion in the country.
Trump says, yeah, can't do it.
He also came out and said, my organization will be some of the most pro or the best for reproductive rights and women in the history of the nation.
He also said, and you already alluded to this, that his administration would make it such that the government would pay for IVF.
Like, Dan, when he and Vance were on the, like, abortion as states rights, the religious right, the white evangelicals, the, like, reproductive alliance of Catholics and conservative Protestants who have united over the idea of abortion as murder.
They could they could deal with states' rights.
You know what they cannot deal with?
All the stuff I just said.
And so this has changed the game, at least in some sense.
I'm going to read a paragraph from Peter Vayner at or Peter Veeder.
I don't know how Peter says his last name.
I apologize, Peter, at The Atlantic.
From a pro-life perspective, it's actually worse.
Trump has done what no Democrat, not Bill or Hillary Clinton, not Mario Cuomo or John Kerry, Not Joe Biden or Barack Obama, not any Democrat could have done.
He has, at the national level, made the Republican Party de facto pro-choice.
Having stripped the pro-life plank from the GOP platform, having said that Governor Ron DeSantis' ban on abortion after six weeks is too harsh and a terrible mistake, and having promised to veto a national abortion ban, Trump has now gone one step further, essentially advocating for greater access to abortion.
Real quick.
Yeah.
Sorry.
I just want to throw this in there.
This is the same party that was so upset about Obamacare funding birth control.
And now, the party that's supposedly opposed to Obamacare, their guy is like, we're going to make everybody have access to IVF.
We're going to require that everybody has access to IVF.
Well, the National Review has an article out today that says Trump's IVF proposal would expand Obamacare.
The National Review is not happy.
So here is Philip Klein at the National Review.
Uh, the National Review being a right-wing outlet that is considered, it's not far right, but it's close.
You know, I don't know.
We can debate the National Review.
Anyway, whatever.
Overturning Roe was the necessary first step of a much longer battle to protect the lives of the unborn.
And on that battle, it increasingly looks like Trump is joining the other side.
In addition to being a moral abomination, it's unclear what this does for him politically.
With this post, Trump will further alienate pro-lifers and divide his own party while doing absolutely zero to win over anybody pro-choice.
So they're like, look, You're not going to win anyone over.
And I don't know if that's true.
I don't know if there are suburban women that are like, maybe I can vote for Trump now because of his stance.
He's odious and he's a sexual abuser and this and that, but I can vote for him now.
I mean, there's probably not that many people out there like that.
Nonetheless, what I see with the National Review is the beginning of a crack, a fissure in this whole We can support Trump because of his opposition to abortion.
Let me give you an even more important one.
And that is, of course, Al Mohler.
Your friend, Al Mohler.
President of the Southern Baptist Seminary.
Here is his tweet from yesterday.
Former President Trump now appears determined to undermine his pro-life supporters.
His criticism of Florida abortion restrictions and his call for government funding of IVF and recent statement about reproductive rights seems almost calculated to alienate pro-life voters.
This election is shaping up as a catastrophe for the pro-life movement.
Pro-life Christian voters are going to have to think clearly and honestly and soberly about our challenge in this election, starting at the top of the ticket.
We must also work for the election and retention of pro-life candidates in Congress.
I'm curious about your thoughts.
I have a takeaway from this.
I want to give my prognostication as to how this plays into the end of our arc and our series when it comes to our 10 episodes.
I think we're at episode 8 right now, and I think this is the sort of like part of the narrative that is actually fairly important, and I think I'll explain why in a second, but let me get your reaction.
Yeah, so just a couple things.
One, I want to remind people, because I've had people who reach out who again are like, why is IVF, like, why are the anti-abortion people so opposed to IVF?
And again, we've talked about this, but just to throw it out, you have fertilized eggs that are destroyed in the process of IVF.
And if you believe, if one believes that a fertilized egg is a full human person with human rights and all of that, that's the issue.
This is like, again, one of these like kind of unforced errors that Trump keeps doing.
It's also sort of humorous, like, so I can imagine, I can imagine, you know, they're sitting around strategizing and they know that banning IVF is colossally, colossally unpopular.
We've heard Vance trying to walk back on this.
Trump has been trying to do this and so forth.
And I can hear the analysts now, because they know, they know that they're pissing off all the anti-abortion people.
They're like, we need to frame this as not being pro-choice, but as being pro-family.
People need to be able to have families, families are important, it's pro-family.
And Trump, the other thing about this is, not only does he come out in favor of IVF, and like a mandate for it and whatever, but the way he talked about it was sort of comical.
So here's what he said.
Because we want more babies, to put it very nicely.
And for this same reason, we will also allow new parents to deduct major newborn expenses from their taxes so that parents can have that beautiful baby we'll be able.
So, we're pro-family.
It's like, he's like, let me get all the buzzwords in.
Babies and families and we're pro-family.
And it's just, on one hand, the transparency of it.
We need to sound pro-family, so let's throw this out there, and we need to try to appeal to other people.
I'm with the right-wingers who say, I don't see the strong benefit of this for Trump.
I'm with you.
I don't think that this moves the needle much for Trump with most populations, because he lies all the time.
Everybody knows he lies all the time.
He clearly, the way he articulates these things, makes explicit that it's a political calculation.
Yes, politicians are politicians, they're always making political calculations, but on abortion, Trump has said, we need to not talk about abortion so much because it's not a good policy win for us.
He says the quiet parts out loud.
But if this catches fire the way that it appears that it might, and it kind of has if it keeps going, I think this only hurts him with some of his own people.
He had a major abortion rights group this week before the IVF comment who said, we're not obligated to vote for Donald Trump.
I mean, it was kind of a warning shot to his campaign.
And I think we also see, and we can get into the Florida stuff a bit more in a minute, but I could see him tomorrow turning around and having to try to walk this back and creating the policy salad that he does where, no, no, no, it's states' rights.
I always said it was states' rights.
I'm the one that took away Roe v. Wade.
And you're like, cool, so how do you square this circle, Donald Trump?
And saying we're pro-family isn't going to be enough.
It isn't going to do it.
So it's a If I thought Trump was more of a calculating person, like more sort of logical and strategic in his thinking, instead of just sort of instinctive and reactionary, I would be like, what in the world is he doing?
I think this comes out to me as like a really bad mashup of political strategists trying to get him to do things, mixed together with Trump, mixed together with, I think, desperation.
Well, I think he knows.
I think he knows that an abortion ban, whether a full abortion ban or a six-week abortion ban, is wildly unpopular.
I think he knows that.
So is he calculating?
I don't think that's the right word.
What I think he's doing is saying, If I come out and say that, it's wildly unpopular.
What he's not calculating, and this is the part I want to dig into, and I think is the part that on this show we can really speak to, is this has been one of the excuses to vote for Trump.
Well, yeah, he's not a great Christian, yes.
Porn stars, yes.
Adultery, yes.
You know, Eugene Carroll, yes.
All that stuff.
Grab him by the...
But abortion, but abortion, but abortion.
OK, so here's what Peter Peter Weiner says at the at the Atlantic.
How could an evangelical who claims to be passionately pro-life vote for a presidential candidate who now promises that his administration will be great for women and their reproductive rights, especially when that person has cheated on his wife's anonymous taxes, paid hush money to porn stars and been found liable of sexual assault?
So Dan, let's just let's just kind of cut to the chase.
Does this make a difference?
Does it make a difference?
I mean, you know, a lot of a lot of folks are waiting for Al Mohler in about a week to come up with a tweet thread that says, well, we're disappointed in President, former President Trump, but when it comes to the two choices, he's still better than Kamala Harris.
That's going to happen.
And I don't know if that'll be Al Mohler specifically, but it might be Marjorie Taylor Greene.
It might be Ralph Reed.
It might be any number of like evangelical Christian nationalists, luminaries who are all, all completely against reproductive rights.
They, they will rationalize their way into a vote for Trump.
The thing that I, I think is important is 2016 and 2020, he gets 80% or more of the white evangelical vote.
He cannot afford to let that slip to like 75.
He cannot afford to let some of those people just not vote.
Because if they write in, if they write in somebody, if they write in a candidate, if they write in Ron DeSantis, if they stay home, whatever, that white evangelical base shrinks every year because there's less and less white evangelicals every year.
The Trump campaign's basically approached 2024 like we've got them in the bag.
They didn't pick a Mike Pence evangelical.
They picked JD Vance, right?
And who is a reactionary Catholic, but nonetheless is not that like tried and true evangelical Reaganite kind of legacy pick.
In addition, They are really looking at Latino and black voters as the kind of new Christian population and constituency that they would like to win this time.
All, in my opinion, assuming that they will get 82, 83, 84, 85, 86 percent of the evangelical and other white Christian nationalists sort of base, whether that's Pentecostals, whether that's Catholics.
This, this might be one of those moments where like 2024 we see the election results and it's like he got 77, he got 76, but that Dan, that could be Pennsylvania.
That could be Wisconsin.
That could be Georgia.
Because if enough of those hardline anti-abortion people are willing to not be Al Mohler or someone else and just say, we're not voting for him now, he's in trouble.
And it may be like three percentage points in one category of religious voter in the country, but it may be enough.
That's my take.
And that's how I'm looking at this whole issue as we go forward.
Final thoughts and we'll go to Arlington.
Yeah, just a couple of thoughts about that is, number one, I think that that all makes sense.
And I think we're not talking about, I think this is important, we're not talking about people who are going to go to Harris, but you're talking about the same kind of enthusiasm gap that can start to open up that was plaguing Democrats forever.
And if there's an enthusiasm gap for Trump with religious voters, that's a huge problem.
I'm also thinking about, you know, there was an article, maybe it was Politico, I don't remember where I read it, but, you know, they were at a Trump rally in Michigan and they're interviewing rally goers there and the people, you know, who absolutely do not believe that Donald Trump is behind in the polls, this one dude is predicting he's going to win by, you know, an 80% to 20% margin and this is all fake and like whatever.
Remember in 2016 when Hillary Clinton lost, in part because a lot of people who would have voted for Clinton weren't super excited about her, but thought she was going to win the election, so they didn't vote?
If you get a tiny sliver of people that do that for Trump, they think he's got it overall.
Yeah, they would like him better than Harris, but you know, they're upset about what he's now saying about abortion, and they stay home.
I think it's a possibility.
The last point I want to do, I just want to talk about in Florida real quick, and the You know, what happens here, you get Trump who one minute, you know, he's asked about DeSantis.
And as you say this, this thing, and he says that, you know, six weeks is too short.
And they asked him, oh, you'll vote in favor of the amendment then that would, you know, override this.
He says, I'm going to be voting that we need more than six weeks.
And so people that the headline was Donald Trump opposes this and his pro-life.
And then immediately his campaign turns around and says, he hasn't said how he'll vote, he just said he believes six weeks is too short.
That is not going to be what those religious voters want to hear.
They want to hear him say, we are going to eradicate abortion now.
When he says, I'll veto a federal ban, if they still believe that there's a wink-wink with that, I'm saying this.
I have to say this to get elected.
We all know I need to say this to get elected, but you put it on my desk, and once I'm in office, I'll do whatever the hell I want.
If they still believe that, okay, maybe they go.
But if he keeps doing this, I think that sows that doubt, and there's the chance of losing that.
Look, the reason we're talking about this is this wasn't just one off-the-cuff, he said something dumb.
This is putting out... It's a pattern at this point.
It's putting out a post saying, my administration will be good for reproductive rights.
It's putting out a post saying we're going to pay for IVF.
That's why we're talking about this.
It is the clip I played at the top of the Florida issue.
But now we have three or four data points, and that is why the National Review, that is why Al Mohler, that is why the Susan B. Anthony list, that is why others around the country are like, wait a minute.
If you're the Harris campaign, you don't need a win.
You just need a no-show.
You just need a forfeit.
You just need like 3% of evangelicals who are true believers that abortion is murder to not vote for him, stay home, write in a candidate they think is on principle.
That's all you need.
They're not going to vote for you, Kamala Harris, and she knows that.
She doesn't need my advice, but you don't need them to vote for you.
You just need them not to vote for Trump, which people, and again, This might be splitting hair, whatever.
But in niche podcasting with two professors who live deep Christian nationalism, and this is our whole focus in terms of our scholarly lives, a couple of percentage points?
With the reproductive alliance of Catholics, Evangelicals, Pentecostals, it matters.
It will matter.
Let's see what happens if any liberal or Harris-aligned super PACs start putting out campaign ads in Arizona that says, Donald Trump says, it's aimed at that audience with just clips of Donald Trump saying this, just clips of what he says to DeSantis, clips of him trying to say both things at once.
The posts and on, yeah, it's real fodder because he's put it into these lasting ways.
And what I'm getting at with the Florida thing is this model is not going to work.
He cannot just say one thing, like literally one moment and the other the other moment and have these single issue voters who have been moved on this issue for decades Let's just close this out with a tweet by Eric Erickson yesterday.
If Donald Trump loses, and Eric Erickson, this conservative talking head who says some really, in my opinion, misguided and bonehead things a lot, but nonetheless still has an audience, 240,000 Twitter followers.
If Donald Trump loses today is the day he lost.
The committed pro-life community could turn a blind eye in part to national abortion issues.
But for Trump to weigh in on Florida as he did will be a bridge too far for too many.
We'll be right back.
All right, Dan, let's talk about Arlington.
I think that this just gets worse and worse as we learn more.
But essentially, the controversy is that Trump and his people visited Arlington National Cemetery.
There are severe and heavy restrictions on videotaping, taking photos, media, and explicit political action.
So like that stuff generally, but also you are not allowed to campaign or undertake like partisan political action at Arlington.
Yeah.
And so I, you know, we don't have a ton of time, so I'll just, I'll set up a couple of things that I think are worth mentioning and I'll, I'll, I'll zoom out as to why they're important.
The Trump, we're learning that the Trump campaign's plan was to fake a ceremony at Arlington and pretend it was public and then, and then condemn VP Harris for not showing up.
That's the idea.
The army is now looking into this and condemning it.
And then, and I think this is a really important part of the story, there was a cemetery official.
Who tried to stop them and was accosted physically by people from the Trump campaign.
I don't know who it was, but I can imagine certain people in that campaign.
OK, someone like Corey Lewandowski or others like being willing to grab people, push them, shove them, whatever, and say, we're going to do what we want.
OK.
So this is terrible.
In any pre-Trump political landscape in the United States, this would have been the end.
Like, you just can't vote for this guy.
So I do think, Dan, we are also on the precipice of seeing military support for Donald Trump slip in ways that might be important.
We will see.
But I think it's really it's getting really hard to make the case for certain military folks to to see Trump as their guide.
Now, it's hard to penetrate these circles.
And I will say I visited a family member this summer who is a military veteran, retired, and they still have their Trump signs.
So, you know, who knows?
Let me zoom out and make one really big point about this, Dan, that goes beyond the Arlington incident.
And I think Corten's What a Trump 2.0 presidency looks like.
These guys show up at what is...
It's a hallowed ground in the United States.
Arlington National Cemetery is sacred ground for the U.S.
military, for the United States, for our veterans, for those who've died in combat, just on and down the line.
It's hard to think of a place with more sense of sacredness for... The Army in their statement basically said there is no more sacred space in America than this space that has been desecrated.
I think that was their language.
It's the Army saying that.
They are told over and over, don't do this.
You're not allowed to do it.
It's not okay.
And somebody tries to stop them and they just basically physically prevent that person from doing their job.
Dan, what the hell do you think a Trump presidency is going to look like from 2025 to whenever he dies?
What do you think it's going to look like?
He will do this anywhere he wants.
It could be the Supreme Court.
And J.D.
Vance has already said in an interview with Jack Murphy in 2021, Donald Trump should do what he wants.
And if the Supreme Court challenges him, he should say, where's your army, John Roberts?
Come and get me.
What do you think a Trump 2.0 looks like?
It looks like incident After incident after incident of desecrating sacred American institutions, people, processes, and physically assaulting anyone who gets in your way and saying, what are you going to like?
They are basically like, what are you going to do?
What are you going to do to me?
Nothing.
You're going to do nothing to me.
There's no consequences.
So Dan, I, I, I think Arlington is a big story and I think it's a disturbing story, but for me, I'm like, y'all, think about what this dude is doing in 2026 when anybody tries to hold him accountable for anything.
When anyone at the Department of State, anyone at the Department of Justice, when any congressperson, and I'll make up one more point and I'll be done.
Why are we not seeing the person who was assaulted on TV?
Why are we not seeing their name?
Why are we not seeing them on Ari Melber or Rachel Maddow?
They didn't want to come forward because they were fearful of retribution by Trump supporters.
That's why they didn't press charges.
They said they did not press charges on this.
They could have.
They did not because they feared retribution.
Do you know what that's called?
Fascism.
When you are afraid to hold leaders accountable because you will be physically assaulted and have your life destroyed by the supporters of that person.
You live in an authoritarian regime.
Where you are not a free citizen.
Where you are not somebody who lives with any kind of liberty.
Because it means that if you hold someone accountable...
They can destroy you, even if they're doing something that everyone, with any sense, thinks is wrong, and that is desecrating Arlington Cemetery, one of the most sacred places we have in the country.
And it's banned by federal law.
And again, just to play on your theme, let's imagine Trump wins the election, he's now president, and one of his core constitutional duties has to do with executive personnel.
He can use that office to go after that individual.
He can remember who that person is.
He can identify where they are.
He can destroy their life with complete impunity because the Supreme Court gave him that when they invented a whole class of stuff that's not in the Constitution.
I want to pause for just a minute, because I think everything you say is right, but I want to just sort of, like, encapsulate, like, what a very, no good, very bad week this has turned into for Trump again.
You've got the Trump campaign, who, sure, Kamala Harris is going to fall flat on her face with this interview, she finally gets it, in the same week that Trump once again takes any attention away from that, that people were going to pay, and draws it on himself in this negative way.
I realize, like, obviously, not everybody in the military is politically conservative.
Not everybody in the military is a Trump supporter.
But Trump has long been fascinated with the military.
He has long sought to ingratiate himself to the military.
And there are lots of military, you know, active military personnel, veterans who have supported Trump and so forth.
The Gold Star families who kind of tried to help him get in there and all of that and came out in support.
But he also, another piece of this is that there was some video or photos that were released, and there is the headstone of another service member who died by suicide that is there, and that person's family has come out.
So we did not give permission for this.
We did not allow this.
You've had veterans groups coming out.
And talking about how he's desecrating sacred ground.
And this is all after Vance says Kamala Harris can go to hell for, like, criticizing this and so forth.
This is after the Trump campaign describes the person who tried to stop them as despicable and so on.
It's a really bad look.
And if you're looking at the week, you're like, wow, core constituencies that Trump needs and wants to win.
Are, I think, not just veterans, but boomer veterans.
Older veterans.
Vietnam War veterans.
World War II war veterans.
The old, largely white, conservative population that is the core constituency he has.
You know who Arlington matters to a lot.
Man, it is those generations of people.
Go talk to anybody in your family who served in Vietnam, who has ever been to Arlington.
I mean, I've been to Arlington.
It's moving.
But you talk to the people who, like, you know, they were there at Normandy.
They were in Vietnam.
They served.
And yes, Afghanistan, Iraq, and on down the line.
It's a core part of his constituency for whom I think this political stunt Can potentially be disastrous.
And so I think putting it in perspective with the alienating of the abortion rights folk, there's a lot of overlap in those Venn diagrams.
There's a lot of overlap in those same people.
I think there are going to be some Trump followers or Trump voters for whom the abortion thing is really bad and then the Arlington thing is even worse, or vice versa.
I don't know.
I just think it's a potentially disastrous week for Trump.
When there were headlines early in the week about Trump trying to reset, trying to overcome a bad week, and so forth.
And, you know, he did it again.
So I think that that's huge.
I think it's hugely ironic, this confidence that his team supposedly has that Kamala Harris is going to fall on her face.
When he keeps doing things like this.
And again, long time between now and November, but a really interesting week, to say the least.
It is.
And, you know, anyway, more to say.
We're out of time.
Let's go to reasons for hope.
I want to go to Georgia, where a bunch of things happened this week that were hopeful.
One is Democrats are suing the Republican State Election Board over the new rules that are basically... We've covered this, I think, two weeks ago, that would really make it hard to have A fair election in Georgia.
So that is something that's happening there.
This is all in a week where polls are saying that Harris and Trump are either tied or where Harris is inching ahead a little bit.
There's that.
The Georgia election workers who were attacked, Ruby Freeman and Shea Moss, have asked a federal judge, according to Kyle Griffin, for control over Rudy Giuliani's assets to collect on the $146 million defamation judgment against him for baselessly claiming they engage in election fraud.
I like that.
And Kamala Harris was in Savannah, Georgia this week, and there was an amazing turnout, and it was the first time a presidential candidate has gone there since the 1990s.
I'm not in here to just shill for Kamala Harris, but what I am in here to say is I think it's a good thing when candidates go places they don't normally go.
And Savannah, for some reason, it had been 35, 40 years since anyone had been there.
That's really cool to see the turnout there with white voters, black voters and others so excited.
It tells you something about what's happening with this campaign, something that, it's trite to say it now, would have never happened with Joe Biden at the helm.
And thus, we really are in a different political landscape than we have been.
What's your reason for hope?
Yeah, so mine is sort of collecting all of these thoughts.
It's watching Trump send out these lifelines.
We sort of collate the last two or three weeks.
Kemp in Georgia, having to make peace with Governor Kemp in Georgia.
The RFK Jr.
stuff that we talked about, having to reach out to him.
This attempt to moderate his abortion stance.
What all this tells me is Trump is playing defense, and it occurred to me this week, I don't know that we have ever seen that happen.
I don't know with the audio clips, I don't know with the convictions, anything.
I don't know that we've ever really seen Trump caught On the back foot, having to try to play defense, and he's not good at it.
His campaign isn't good at it.
He isn't good at it.
His entire life has been built on privilege and being able to double down and triple down on things and never have to apologize, never have to play defense, never have to retrench.
And I think we're seeing, continue to see him kind of unraveling as he does that because it's just not a game he knows how to play.
And so that was just really striking me this week because I was kind of, you know, gathering in my mind all of these events of the last Two, three, four weeks, and I think that that's a real dynamic shift that we haven't seen before.
James Carville, who is a little bit difficult for me to listen to these days, but nonetheless, he was on Greg Sargent's podcast, and he said something that I thought was actually somewhat insightful, and he said, they've gone from making Trump out to be someone to be feared, and I get it.
The Biden campaign of 2020 was like, you know, another Trump presidency would lead to the end of democracy.
I agree.
We said it, too.
Yeah, I know.
I said it.
Like, I agree.
Yeah.
But the Harris campaign has done something different.
They just make fun of him, right?
Now, you know, whether it's weird, but whether it's just like strange, whether it's, you know, Donald Trump is trying to pull out of the debate and they put out a video with him saying you wouldn't debate and with like chicken sounds over it, you know?
And what's happening is in addition to those blows landing, Trump is starting to look like a show in its like eighth or ninth season that was fresh and different when it started.
And Trump was fresh and different when he started for all the wrong reasons, but he was.
And by season eight or nine, you're like, this needs to end.
It's getting kind of cringey.
Like the office season nine.
Yeah.
It's tough as somebody who loves the office with all of his heart.
That's tough.
You know, like in the end of friends, when they were all kind of like moving out of the city and Monica and Chandler, we're going to go live in the South.
You were kind of like, yeah, guys, get your lives together.
You're like 38 by now.
No more hanging at the coffee house.
I don't want, it's over.
Like, you know, and I'm not saying you, you, you, you, everybody can live their life how they want.
My point is.
Trump's been on the air for eight, nine seasons now.
It's kind of the same old shtick and he just looks older and more incoherent.
And I think that's why some of this is landing.
Make fun of him.
He, he looks like he's not ready for this.
He says weird things about bacon and wind farms.
He says weird things about like flushing the toilet 10 times.
And he, he does the weird dance all the time.
A lot of people are catching on to that.
I'll just say that.
All right.
Some family business to end here.
If you are listening and you don't want family business, we'll see you next time.
On our special episode, Dan Miller, you explained your mug obsession and the discord from the premium subscribers is 100% pro Dan Miller, 100% against Brad Onishi.
There are pictures in the discord of people with mug collections way bigger than yours.
So you have won the day, my friend.
You, you are officially the winner of this debate.
That's that.
I'm going to be in Sonoma September 7th with Congressman Jared Huffman and others.
If you'd like to hang out, check our Instagram, check our Facebook.
I'm going to be in Omaha next week, September midweek on Thursday.
And you should come and see me there at the United Methodist Church and at a book signing at the Abbey.
So again, the flyers are on our Instagram and our Facebook.
Got some other things coming up.
I'll be at the Freedom From Religion Foundation event in Denver, end of September.
So if you're around Denver, if you're in Kansas, if you're in Fort Collins, if you're in wherever, come hang out there.
And we got more on the horizon, so just stay tuned.
All right, y'all.
Thanks for listening.
We'll be back next week with some great interviews, and it's in the code in the weekly roundup.
