Weekly Roundup: Valentines 2025: Elon and Trump. Hegseth and Putin. Vance and the Pope.
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Brad and Dan break down Elon Musk’s alarming new influence over federal agencies after an executive order grants him hiring and firing power across the government. They dissect the surreal Oval Office press conference with Donald Trump and Musk, unpacking its implications for democracy and bureaucratic power. The conversation also covers Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s comments on Ukraine, J.D. Vance’s controversial theological take on immigration (and Pope Francis’ response), and what recent public opinion polls reveal about trust in the Supreme Court.
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Axis Mundi Democracy This may seem like, well, are we in a democracy?
Well, if you don't have a feedback group, okay, Axis, we'd have to, if you, if you, sorry.
I tell you, gravitas can be difficult sometimes.
So if there's not a good feedback loop from the people to the government, and if you have rule of the bureaucrat, if the bureaucracy is in charge, then what meaning does democracy actually have?
This week, Donald Trump held a press conference in the Oval Office with Elon Musk.
Elon Musk appeared to be the one in charge.
He spoke most of the time.
His four-year-old interrupted the president several times, and they eventually signed an executive order giving Musk firing and hiring power across the federal government.
Today we discuss how Musk has become the de facto president.
We then go into the comments made by Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth on Ukraine and what his worldview means for American diplomacy.
We end up with J.D. Vance and the way that the Pope responded to his theological ideas and his politics around immigration.
I'm Brad Onishi, and this is the Straight White American Jesus Weekly Roundup.
Welcome to Straight White American Jesus.
I'm Brad Onishi and joined today...
On a beleaguered, exhausted, wary Friday with my co-host.
I am Dan Miller, professor of religion and social thought at Landmark College.
And like Brad, on that note, see that's where I'm at.
On that note of feeling beleaguered, I was talking to somebody the other day and I was talking about, you know, I was talking about the podcast and like, you know, the weekly roundup and they were like...
Because I was talking about prepping for it, and I still get kind of tired prepping for it.
I was like, it's kind of weird.
We've done, I don't know how many roundups we've done, like hundreds.
And they're like, when did you start?
I was like, oh my God, we started before the 2020 election sometime in the cycle.
And they're like, oh my God, I'm like, no wonder.
Because I remember, and I've said this before, at the time you were like, maybe we're brainstorming.
Maybe we'll like, there's so much going on.
We do like a weekly news roundup.
I was like, that sounds really cool.
I don't know how sustainable that'll be, like, you know, because things aren't always going to be crazy.
And I'm like, it was like two elections ago and like the world is still effed up enough that it's like, oh, here's 27 things we could talk about and we get to talk about like three.
So, yeah.
Well, I don't know how sustainable it is because, you know, what I tell people is, you know, I read about 100 articles a week on the worst stuff happening in the world and it...
It destroys my mood, so I've got to find ways to not be in a bad mood all the time, which sometimes I'm successful at, sometimes I'm not.
Today we want to get into the Oval Office press conference.
Perhaps the, I will say, perhaps the most bizarre scene to come from the Oval Office in the history of the presidency.
We can debate it.
I'm sure there's presidential historians out there that will tell me about a time like Andrew Jackson had a horse in there or something, but...
I cannot, in recent memory, think of a more strange time there.
We'll get into Pete Hegseth and his comments on toxic masculinity and how the only way to win is hard power, not values, which is, I got so much to say, and I know Dan does too.
We'll also talk about the Pope's, nice word here, the Pope's rebuke to J.D. Vance and his ideas about Ordo Amoris and That Ordo Amoris is Latin for order of affections or order of loves.
J.D. Vance, I think, mangled the idea theologically, although there's a lot of reactionary Catholics out there that agreed with him.
I don't think Ordo Amoris is a theological principle I really like, but I do think it's a good name for a poly bar.
If you want to go to a bar with other poly people, order...
Of affections.
Or, you know, if you're poly, you have a primary and you have other partners and other people you're dating.
Ordo Amoris is a nice wine bar with tapas in your burgeoning downtown mid-sized city.
And hey, if you hang out there, you know folks are poly and it's a nice place to be.
So if anyone's looking for an idea for a business, there is the name.
I don't know.
Does that sound good, Dan?
You live in Amherst, Mass.
It seems like that might be a good place for Ordo Amoris.
Maybe we should go in.
And, you know, to open a bar together.
Yeah, there would definitely be worse places, I think, than Amherst, Mass.
So, yeah, I'm only thinking about the potential conflicts if, like, you know, not everybody's on the same page with what that order is.
But besides that, like, you know, I think it's fine.
Yeah.
You'd have to throw a lot of Theobros out every week and be like, nope, that's not what we're doing.
This is not, no, this is not for you.
We're not here for that.
There's your setup for the joke.
J.D. Vance walks into a poly bar and then we'll just see where it goes from there.
Yeah, yeah.
All right, y'all.
Here we go.
Let's do it.
This week, Dan, a lot of people have seen the images.
They've watched some of the video.
There was a half an hour press conference with Elon Musk in the Oval Office.
His son was there.
Per his usual these days, Elon Musk used his son as a kind of prop to show that he's somehow an involved dad or a normal guy or just something other than what people think of him.
Donald Trump was there and he sat at the desk while Musk talked, answered questions.
Musk did about 82% of the talking.
And just a couple of opening comments.
I think you and I have clips that we want to reference and I'll throw it to you.
Dan, did this just not look like the weakest presidential move one could ever make?
I mean, they were not sitting like diplomats.
It was not like Trump invited a diplomat and they were shaking hands with the...
Well, they got the two chairs around the fireplace and they're like sitting there kind of awkwardly like people in suits do when they're in the armchairs.
But that's what you always have when it's like a visiting dignitary or something, like that image.
So we don't have that.
Trump is not standing next to him as they kind of, like, hand off to each other what they want to say.
And I'll just say, too, if some of you have seen this, Musk's four-year-old son, whose name is X, at one point is, like, mouthing things to Donald Trump.
And at one point, you know, and I've seen the clips, I think, I believe this is what happened, that he basically mouths to Donald Trump, I want you to shut your mouth.
And some people think he said, I want you to shut your effing mouth.
So it's quite an image for the president.
Did Musk tell him?
You're going to sit.
I'm going to stand.
You're going to be over there and I'm going to be here.
I don't know.
I mean, give me your thoughts and also give me your opening clip.
Because we could spend the next 10 hours talking about this half an hour.
We're not going to do that, but go ahead.
So my opening clip is even like the opening clip.
Somebody just look at a still of it or any point during the thing.
Just like pause it and look.
Right?
Because, as you say, Trump is there, pretty motionless, pretty lifeless, sitting behind the resolute desk.
And I've read analyses of these, and I think this is probably right, right?
You have that, it was a Time magazine with a provocative cover of Elon Musk sitting behind the resolute desk in the Oval Office and all of that.
So I think probably the intent of this is Trump trying to show he's in charge.
He sits behind the resolute desk.
He's the real president.
And yet, I feel like the effect was the opposite.
Right?
Because the problem if you're going to sit at a desk and have somebody stand around you is like they're looming over you.
And like, Musk is not like a tiny guy to start with, right?
So he's like towering over Trump.
He looks younger.
He looks more vital.
He is like, you know, all the nervous movement, whatever, you know, all of that.
But just the image of you still, it doesn't look like Donald Trump is the president and Elon Musk is like his.
I don't know, pitbull that he's unleashing on an oversized government or whatever.
It looks like what lots of headlines say, President Elon Musk.
It looks like Musk is the main player.
There's just the weirdness of having an interview or a press conference in the Oval Office and then just basically handing it off to someone.
Everything about it.
For me, I just invite people, just go look at any image of it.
Look at how they're sitting or standing.
Look how they're situated.
Just ask yourself, like, if I didn't know who the main player is supposed to be here, who would it be?
And then you can watch it, as you say, and people, you know, do the statistical things of, like, how much more Musk was talking.
Trump is like, he's like, occasionally he'll be like, tell him about the time that, you know, whatever.
Tell him about the person that USA, they made millions.
Or like, you know.
He throws out this stuff that he heard about from Musk in the first place that was all coming from the right-wing blogosphere to begin with.
Anyway, just on and on and on.
But for me, just the visual of it, and I've got some thoughts about Musk's kid running around the office and stuff as well, but just the visual of it is like, to me, it says so much about how I think ordinary people are going to view this.
Who it makes us think really is in charge.
And I think it's ironic because I do think that it was an attempt by Trump and sitting behind the resolute desk to reassert presidential authority.
And I think it backfired pretty wildly the way that this entire thing played out.
I said months ago that I hoped in ways that sounded strange at the time, and I did not want people to misconstrue my hopes, but I hoped that Donald Trump was not fated enough in terms of his mental capacity.
That he would emerge as the narcissist we know him to be and eject Elon Musk from his orbit.
What happened on Wednesday was the exact thing that I feared, which is, what's worse than Donald Trump being president?
What's worse is Elon Musk being president.
Now, don't get me wrong.
I'm not pining.
Please don't email me and say you're easy on Trump.
No, dude, Trump is destroying American democracy.
Moment by moment.
But what's speeding it up is the fact that Elon Musk is actually in charge.
And I think, Dan, we saw that here.
I want to read from Josh Marshall, who I thought summed up something about the executive order that this whole half an hour press conference was supposed to be about and which a lot of folks really aren't noticing.
What does the executive order say?
A Doge operative called a Doge team lead will be assigned to every agency department of the federal government.
That team lead, who will presumably report to Elon Musk, since he's the head of Doge, will be in charge of all hiring and firing decisions at their particular department.
The executive order lays out a government downsizing plan in which only one new government employee can be hired for every four who leave service.
It adds various new reasons for termination, and it puts the overall plan for the downsizing in the hands of Doge, which is to say, Musk.
Dan, what we got here unofficially was Musk's symbolic power and a message to the world that Donald Trump is no longer the guy.
He's going to sit like the grandpa going, hey, tell him about that thing.
Didn't you have a computer?
Tell him about the buttons and that Wi-Fi you told me.
Oh, man.
And then the executive order actually officially says, let's just get this straight, everybody, okay?
Musk is in charge of hiring and firing at every government agency.
You cannot hire someone and you can fire someone if you're Elon Musk.
It all goes through him.
It all goes through him.
If you are the lead of name the agency and you want to hire somebody, it goes through Elon Musk.
There are new reasons to be fired.
We are seeing every day thousands of people being fired in every state across the country.
10,000 people, USAID. A couple thousand people here.
A couple thousand people there.
Dan, he is de facto in charge of the federal government.
I'm not overstating that.
I'm not trying to be hyperbolic.
I think Josh Marshall laid it out really well at Talking Points Memo the other day.
So I think that's something we have to get clear.
Thoughts on that?
Other points?
And then I got a couple more I want to hit on this whole thing.
A couple of things that I think stand out about this is, and to me, several strands of news that have sort of dribbled out this week come together here.
First is, I think even Musk is becoming aware of the scope of the federal government.
So I just want people to look up millions of dollars, millions of workers.
You're going to have a person in charge of hiring and firing?
These agencies are huge.
And so I think it shows, number one, that this just isn't, it's just not serious either, right?
It's not really about doing anything to help the country.
It's just about this notion that you could just get rid of entire segments of the government and still have a government.
And I realize that people are going to say, well, that's what they want.
I don't think it is actually what they want.
I think it might be what...
It might be what somebody like Musk wants.
It's not what most in the GOP actually want or have ever wanted.
We've talked about this I don't know how many times.
They're not actually into smaller government.
They're not actually into this.
It's been a good talking point for years, but I think it shows how short-sighted this is in terms of function.
You talked last week about Musk coming in and doing what he does when they take over any kind of startup or you buy a Silicon Valley startup and you're redoing it and whatever.
Except the scope is massive.
So this notion that you're going to have, like, a hiring manager for these agencies that, as you say, span...
I mean, many of them have presence in, like, all 50 states.
Something like, I don't know, the National Forest Service, you know, or the Department of...
Is that the Interior?
Department of Interior, Department of Agriculture, whichever it is for the Forest Service.
Whatever.
It's, like, it's everywhere.
You can have one person who's in charge.
I'm like, I'll bet the Department of, like...
The National Forest Service office in, like, most cities doesn't have one HR person, let alone, like, for the entire government.
So, like, that piece of it just shows, I think, the ridiculousness of this.
Tied in with that, though, is we're starting to hear more murmurings of in Congress, Republicans in Congress who are getting really nervous about this, because guess what?
They said, we're going to fire all the federal employees.
And there was this notion that, you know, it's Washington and everybody's this stuffed suit who's just making lots of salaries, sitting around drinking martinis with the other elites all the time and whatever.
And constituents are starting to figure out, be like, oh, hey, wait, wait a minute.
I like I work at the Bureau of Land Management down here or I work at the Forest Service or whatever.
And I've been doing that for 25 years and I take care of my family and I'm a reliable Republican voter.
And like, wait, like they're sending me the notices about buyouts and like if I should quit or not.
And it's not sure that like I can even trust that.
Like, what do I do?
And all of a sudden you're starting to get people in Congress who are like, oh, wait, they meant it when they said that they were going to go after federal workers.
And I'm reminded of this because we see this all the time.
We saw this years ago.
In Wisconsin with Governor Walker when he said he was going to do away with collective bargaining rights of state employees.
And I remember seeing tearful teachers when the teacher unions were basically destroyed and they were in tears and they're interviewed and like, I didn't know he meant us.
And I'm like, who did you think this was going to be?
And we're seeing that come out.
And I feel like these things flow together with this notion that guess what?
If you've got one person in charge of hiring, you're not looking to hire anybody.
You're not looking to streamline.
You're not looking to be more efficient.
You're just going to lop everything off.
Because if you're Elon Musk, do you care about, I don't know, national parks or national forests or any of like a million other things?
No.
Or this weekend, somebody tweeting about defunding cancer research.
And he's like, what the F are you talking about?
We're not doing that.
And they're like, you're funding.
Like, yes, you are.
You're doing all of these things.
The size, the scope.
The debacle that it is.
We're beginning to see what this really is.
And even people in the GOP are beginning to see what this really is.
And they are starting to get panicky about President Musk having unfettered authority.
So I feel like that was sort of me all over the place.
But there's just so many features flowing together into this ridiculous interview in the Oval Office.
Yeah, I agree.
There's a moment about seven minutes in where Musk says, you know, we're going to look at each expenditure and make sure it makes sense for the American people.
I mean, there's a couple of things about that.
A, we're talking about trillions of dollars.
So you and your 19-year-old hacker team are going to do that.
You and the 24-year-olds you hired are going to just sit down and decide that.
It's got to be hundreds of thousands of expenditures, like at least hundreds of thousands.
It takes us forever to go through our credit card statement every month.
And you're going to go look at hundreds of thousands of expenditures line by line?
Give me a break.
And I think the essence of this is really summed up in one of the first remarks Musk made.
I want to play a little clip of this so we can kind of get a sense of where he thinks he is getting his mission from.
Democracy.
This may seem like, well, are we in a democracy?
Well, if you don't have a feedback loop, you would have to...
Sorry.
I tell you, gravitas can be difficult sometimes.
So, if there's not a good feedback loop from the people to the government, and if you have rule of the bureaucrat, if the bureaucracy is in charge, then what meaning does democracy actually have?
So in that clip, you hear Musk say that if you have a disconnect between the government and the people, you don't have a democracy.
Now, Dan, there is the kernel of truth.
Here's how this hit me.
I've been thinking about it since I saw it.
I have a really good friend who's Danish, and there's like five million Danes.
So if you're in Denmark, There's 5 million of you, but there's this sense, and I've talked to my friend about this, of like, yeah, we all vote.
It's a we.
We're part of it, right?
I agree.
Here's where I'm going to admit that here is the vulnerability they are preying on.
Most Americans don't feel as if the government works for them.
Okay.
There's that.
So what he says is, the problem is the bureaucracy.
If you have a bureaucracy of unelected officials, you do not have a democracy.
Now, I'm going to get to the fact that Musk himself is an unelected bureaucrat.
I'm getting there.
Don't just hold your horses, everybody.
But here is the thing that he and Trump want to make everyone believe, and I think in some way they're being somewhat successful, is we are here because the people elected Donald Trump to be president.
And because they elected Donald Trump to be president, he gets to do the things that he thinks are right.
And that means getting rid of the bureaucrats who were not elected.
And the rebuttal to this is, look, if you are the executive branch, if you are the president of the United States, you do have the power to do reforms, to make changes, to do things that your predecessor or predecessors did not do.
But we have laws in place to protect citizens from fraud, from exploitation, from abuse, from people who are not elected, getting unfettered access to data and payment systems, and the ability to hire and fire and payments.
And Dan, a lot of the regulations and a lot of the laws that protect us came from the 1930s in the wake of the Great Depression and the Gilded Age when you had A few oligarchs who could exploit and abuse all, like, the 99%, okay?
Now, let's just get to the heart of the matter, and I'll throw it back to you, is here he is complaining about bureaucrats when he himself is not elected and is de facto in charge of the entire government.
What has come, and I'll try to do this quickly, this week have been dozens of injunctions and rulings from Judges that have said, what you're doing at USAID, at CFPB, what you're doing with the mass firings, what you're doing across the board, got to put it on hold.
This has got to stop until further rulings and cases can be made.
What you've seen consistently come from MAGA World, from Trump, from J.D. Vance has been, why does one judge get to stop what happens with the executive branch?
I mean, Elon was tweeting.
About how if one judge anywhere can stop anything that the president does, then you don't have a democracy.
And the response is, Dan, you said it last week.
Democracy is not a business.
It is not a monarchy.
It is not a CEO who has unlimited power.
It is a place where there's checks and balances, and we have laws.
Now, we've seen it.
If you get a court ruling that puts a halt on it, you may be successful if you're Donald Trump.
But the very fact that they're attacking the judicial branch shows you what this is about.
They want unfettered centralized power over the money, over the people, and over all of the resources.
I'll say one more thing.
Yesterday, Musk and Trump took $70 million out of a Citibank account that was already allocated to New York for FEMA relief.
Musk decided, going back to what I said, seven minutes in, he's like, we're going to look at each expenditure and make sure that's what it's for.
Musk claimed that that $70 million was being used to rent high-grade apartments for undocumented immigrants.
So he just took it away.
It had already been promised, allocated.
The budgets had already been signed.
Congress had already allocated the money.
This is not about, like, fraud and abuse.
This is about centralizing power, period.
Let me throw it to you.
Go ahead.
I'm going to stick with that theme of centralizing power and circle back around to like what J.D. Vance said.
And, you know, he said on Twitter X, he said, if a judge tried to command the attorney general how to use her discretion as a prosecutor, that's illegal.
Judges aren't allowed to control the executive's legitimate power.
And he also said, if a judge tried to tell a general how to conduct a military operation, that would be illegal.
So those are just false statements.
It's not necessarily illegal for a judge to do that.
I'm recognizing the military, there's like a whole different justice system, but generals don't get to just act with impunity.
But the circularity of this, so when he said judges aren't allowed to control the executive's legitimate power, okay, that's true, but what's at question is, is this legitimate power?
Is this a legitimate act of the executive?
And what you're highlighting is, the way that it's actually working is, the definition is, it's legitimate if Trump does it.
If Trump wants it, he was elected.
It's legitimate.
And that's the sleight of hand that Musk is defining as democracy.
We elected somebody, and now that they're elected, anything they do by default is legitimate, and there's no reason to think that.
The second piece that's tied in with this is this search for waste and fraud and whatever.
People watch this.
Part of the problem, and this happens all the time, I'm not the biggest defender of bureaucracy.
I'm not going to be the biggest defender of the U.S. government.
I'm not, you know, I understand that there are, you know, career positions that kind of hang on longer than they need to, things like that.
Fine.
Analysis after analysis after analysis for decades has found there's not endemic waste and fraud throughout the federal government.
Like, there just isn't.
Given the size, given the scope, given the complexity, given the numbers involved, it is just not an endemic problem.
That doesn't mean that you don't get the weird things of the $150 toilet seats and, like, whatever.
All that kind of stuff.
That stuff's real.
It's stupid.
Whatever.
But for everybody paying attention, they haven't found any evidence of that.
And so every time there's so-called evidence that's given, it's just this weird anecdotal, like, here's somebody from USAid who had millions of dollars.
Where'd that come from?
And even Musk is like, well, it could be that she's good at investing, but I suspect that...
Okay, good.
Right?
Or the money allocated to New York that's going to fancy apartments for undocumented workers.
Well, 150-year-old people getting Social Security.
Exactly.
Yeah.
Example after example after example that is just coming from the fever dream paranoia of the right.
That's what's coming into this and passing off as the legitimate exercise of executive power, which is what's bringing out these issues with the court cases and so on.
It's just, again, layer after layer, as you say, but I think that people need to watch out because what Musk is doing is appealing to democracy to try to sugarcoat something that's just fundamentally anti-democratic.
Well, you said it, but I'll say it again.
The idea is if we elected someone, that person gets to do what they want.
That is not democracy.
And there are a hundred senators and a whole host of congresspeople.
Who are supposed to have a say in this.
They're supposed to have the power of the purse.
If you want to change things in those agencies, if you want to audit those agencies, if you want to make drastic cuts, we're seeing the Republicans roll out their draconian budget.
I hate the budget.
I hate everything about it.
But that is one way you do it.
That is how you pass a budget.
It is not by getting a tech magnate to go in and just slash everything at once.
Now, I want to just stay on this for one second.
There was no evidence provided.
You hit it.
Paul Krugman wrote about this.
There is no evidence.
They did not provide data.
They did not show you line by line.
What they're appealing to is emotion.
And it's working in some sense.
I talked to a friend from home the other day who I was really disappointed because they were like, man, I think Doge is huge.
They're really cutting the waste.
And I was like, really?
Do you think that?
And he was like, yeah, this is great.
They're finally going to cut down on the government's waste.
And what's happening, Dan, is...
People who have been primed for years to think that the federal government is the enemy and that it is nothing but a waste factory are like, yeah, go Elon.
We got it.
And there's no sense of thinking through the ramifications of giving an unelected person control of the treasury, control of all hiring and firing, letting them go through expenditure and expenditure, letting them take money out of bank accounts.
Why did Citibank let Elon Musk take $70 million from a bank account?
It makes, right?
There's no sense of, like, the long term.
There's just sense of, like, yeah, let's break it.
Let's destroy it.
Right?
Dan, I don't know if you've ever had nights like this, days like this.
You know, when you're young, it's a Friday.
Today's Friday.
Right?
I mean, I can think of days in my 20s where it's like, it's Friday.
It's been a terrible week.
And it's like, what's your plan for tonight?
And my plan for tonight is, I'm going to, like, drink a bunch of beers and just, I don't know, be unhappy.
Right?
And just like rage against whatever's ailing me.
I have an interview coming with Catherine Stewart on Monday, and she says fascism is a pathology.
And we are at the stage in the pathology where the goal is not long-term equilibrium.
The goal is not long-term thriving.
The goal is let's break stuff because we've been angry and resentful for a long time.
And these two in this Oval Office, they're breaking it.
They're destroying it.
They're getting rid of the waste.
They're going to deport the others.
We're in the pathology stage of like, if you just want to destroy, well, then you're in luck.
And I just want to say this before we go to break.
New York Times, at least 11 federal agencies that have been affected by the moves Elon Musk has made, had 32 continuing investigations pending complaints or enforcement actions into Musk's companies.
32 investigations, Dan.
Guess who's in control of those agencies now and the hiring and firing?
Elon Musk.
Guess who just got or is at least in process of getting a $400 million contract for armored Tesla trucks in the U.S. military?
Elon Musk.
Guess who makes $8 million a day in government contracts?
Elon Musk.
ABC News shows us that last year he got $3.67 billion in government contracts.
There is no bigger welfare queen in this country than Elon Musk.
There is none.
None bigger.
His whole livelihood comes from us, the taxpayers.
We pay him, and now he has control of all of our money.
That is the situation we're in.
Let's take a break.
a break.
We'll be right back.
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That's BetterHelp, H-E-L-P dot com slash S-W-A. All right, Dan, we got just it's raining terrible men today.
Tell us about Pete Hegseth.
And some comments he made about Ukraine, Russia, the war.
And eventually we're going to talk about him saying the words hard power, which, yeah, that's a different kind of bar.
It's probably not the poly bar in Amherst, but we can talk about that idea later if you'd like, Dan.
Go ahead.
Yeah.
So we'll talk about some other terrible men, Trump and Putin, who also mix in here, right?
So just the two of them to discuss, among other things, Ukraine.
So you've got the Ukraine conflict without...
Any representative other than Donald Trump, who's a Putin acolyte and Putin, who's the person who attacked Ukraine.
And this is all, we know this, this is all after Trump's promises to, excuse me, to quickly end the conflict, meeting with the aggressor, all this kind of stuff.
Trump said afterward that he would inform President Zelensky of the call.
So it's like, thanks, you know, we'll let the president of Ukraine know about this.
He said that he and Putin agree on using common sense to address the issue.
And the reason I bring this up is, of course, this infuriated European allies and NATO members that have been involved in these kinds of things.
And then it was all exacerbated by, second, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth's comments about Ukraine in Brussels.
So a few high points.
And this is all on Wednesday, right?
And I swear you can hear Putin.
These have got to be like...
Like, I don't know if you do this, Brad.
You do lots of interviews and stuff.
I'm looking at your camera now.
If you ever have, like, those little post-it notes around, like, where you're looking of, like, things to remember to talk about and stuff, like, I can just picture, like, whatever, like, Putin has his little checklist when he's talking to Trump of things to make sure to say and, like, demands to level.
It's, like, basically everything that Hegseth is now saying in Brussels.
So he described a return to Ukraine's previous borders as illusory.
It's an unrealistic goal.
In other words, Russia's going to get to keep what they've taken.
That's what that translates to.
Ukraine is not going to recover its territory and so forth.
He said that Ukraine should be protected by foreign troops, but if there are NATO troops there, he said it wouldn't be American troops.
If there were NATO troops there, Article 5 would not apply.
Article 5 is the article that says if you attack one NATO country...
You've attacked all the NATO countries.
It's the whole point of having an alliance.
So he said, yeah, there should be some peacekeepers there, but they're not actually going to be covered by Article 5. So if, I don't know, say another aggressor comes back in and does something, they're only fighting peacekeepers in Ukraine, not taking on NATO. He said that the defense of Europe was not a primary U.S. security aim, that they're focused on immigration and things like this.
He said that there could be no NATO membership for Ukraine.
So he says all of this Wednesday.
Cue the angry European allies, who rarely compared to the first Trump term.
Let me restate this.
In the first Trump term, it felt like Europe didn't know what to do with Trump.
I think this was really telling how unified this seemed.
They came out, said a bunch of stuff about how much they didn't like this, how much you can't just have the U.S. and Russia discussing Ukraine without Ukraine being at the table and all of this.
So then the following day, like 24 hours later, Hegg says back in front of the cameras, he's saying that everything is on the table.
He didn't mention any specific conditions for peace.
He was asked about all the things he'd said the day before, and he refused to kind of reiterate those.
He said it was the purview of Trump in conversation with Putin and Zelensky to determine what happens in Ukraine.
He reacted defensively to suggestions that the U.S. was giving leverage to Putin.
As I just said, this is like a Putin talking list that he comes out with Wednesday, Thursday.
He's defensive about this.
Again, that followed the European rejection of this notion of Trump and Putin having this discussion.
So, one takeaway from this before we get into hard power and Hegseth.
Is something, if I'm looking for slivers of light in a kind of a dark world now, if Trump is anything, he is still nervous about how he is perceived.
He is still nervous about being perceived as weak.
He is still, like, we talked about him sitting behind the resolute desk.
He looks weak.
I think that that is going to just rile him up and drive him crazy moving forward.
And I don't think we'll see another press conference quite like that.
I think that he's sensitive to the Europeans.
Saying these things.
I think he's sensitive to accusations that he just gave in to Putin and was played by Putin in whatever phone call he had and then directing Hegseth kind of what to say and what to think that he was doing.
So I took a positive away from that, but it was also really telling to hear everything that Hegseth said about what Ukraine won't get and something you've been talking about.
I'll throw it over to you with this for a few weeks now, talking about this kind of...
Re-evaluating the post-Cold War period and how the U.S. has this perception that they lost because they still have to like, you know, they pay for NATO and they have forces everywhere and they have to be the world's peacekeepers and so forth.
And this was all on display with Hegseth and this notion that along with what Ukraine won't get, basically it's just about being tough guys.
Big, tough men will protect Ukraine and the world and everything else.
That model of masculinity also made it into this.
So I'll throw it to you for that and other thoughts on just this weird Wednesday Hegseth, Thursday Hegseth, Trump, Putin, masculinity, whatever this nexus is that we now get to explore.
Well, I want to add to this that J.D. Vance snubbed the Chancellor of Germany, Chancellor Schultz, and basically said we're not going to meet with him, which is just so on brand for J.D. Vance.
It's on brand for this administration.
And Dan, something that you mentioned, Before we started recording and jump here at any point, because I think you were so right, is there's a general outlook, as I've been saying, of diplomacy is weak and does nothing.
And if anyone has ever been a human being in a community, whether that is in business, whether that is Dan networking in your guild, you and I are professors.
We know how this works.
You get to know people.
You help people out.
Whether that's the other parents at your kid's school, whatever it may be, there's this whole economy of like, hey, I show up for you, you show up for me.
I build goodwill here, that goodwill comes back to me there.
I bring you soup when you're sick, you help me when I have a flat tire.
And we all know those people that we've done right by and we've tried to help and we've tried to invest in and we appreciate it when it comes back to us.
This administration is full of men.
Who do not see that kind of investment in networks and in relationships as having any kind of import.
What that leads to...
Go ahead.
I was just going to jump in and say, we can even be more cynical about this.
Let's not even talk about goodwill.
Let's just be more transactional.
Because that's how Trump and the others think.
Maybe I don't help the other person because I'm just a nice person and that's the decent thing to do.
Maybe I do it because they're going to be obligated to me.
At some point in the future, this is the example I was giving when we were talking.
If I always pick up the lunch bill, the lunch tab, that person's got it in their mind that I always buy them lunch.
Maybe they owe me a little something.
Or maybe if that person needs something, sure, yeah, I get it.
I get it.
Rough day.
I can pick your kids up from school.
No problem.
But I'm going to hold that in my back pocket.
That's a kind of currency that I then get to use later.
In a transaction with you.
So, like, that's the thing that has been the so-called soft power in the post-World War II period is, yes, there are idealists who do this because it's the right thing to do and human aid, human rights, these things are real and global aid, etc.
There have also been the real politics side of that that say, I don't care about human rights.
I don't care about all this.
What I care about is...
If we keep footing that bill, NATO is responsible to us.
They have to answer to us.
If we, yes, we take up the defense of, I don't know, Japan, or we've got a president in South Korea or Europe or wherever, is that an expense?
Yes, it's an expense, but guess what?
The Europeans have to pay attention to us.
They are now reliant on us in particular ways.
That gives us power and authority.
So even if somebody's not doing it because they're a decent person or a part of a community...
There is still this really hard-boiled, transactional reason to do this.
And that's what's so striking, to have these people who are so transactional in most things to just not see it, to miss that.
I mean, this is why I think across the political spectrum, left and right and center, for decades, you've had broad sort of consensus and agreement about U.S. global leadership and so forth, is because regardless of why somebody thinks we're doing that, They see the value of it.
That's what has disappeared here with this, and it's so strange.
So I say that just to say that even from what we would have thought would be a kind of Elon Musk way of thinking, a Donald Trump way of thinking, a J.D. Vance or Pete Hegseth way of thinking, it would have made sense to increase European dependence or to increase whatever, and we're still seeing the move away from that.
I think it's really striking.
So the way that Hegseth justified the comments on On Putin about, you know, Ukraine's borders will not be returned to what they were.
He said, he's talking about the realities of hard power on the ground.
That's what he said.
It's a recognition of the hard power realities on the ground.
And he then went on to say something that I think is worth everybody considering.
You can't shoot values and you can't shoot strong speeches.
There's no replacement for hard power.
There is nothing like hard power.
And there was people posting about this in our Discord last night, and I think there were some really good points made.
But, you know, Pete, I think King George might disagree, man.
I don't know.
I don't know.
There was some scrappy colonies way back in the day that did not have hard power.
Whatever that means in your weird Freudian life that I'm not even going to touch.
They didn't have the hard power of the king.
Whatever that means, Pete.
But you know what they had?
Values?
Belief?
That independence and freedom and taxation without representation and that a government who doesn't have your interests or rights in mind shouldn't govern you?
That maybe somebody in a far-off land shouldn't have control over you and your body and your family and your commerce?
They were scrappy and small.
Pete, I'm not sure what happened in that.
Does anyone remember?
You know, once in a while, one time, a couple decades ago, I believe Russia was involved in a place like Afghanistan.
Dan, isn't Russia like, if I looked at a map, isn't Russia like a lot bigger than Afghanistan and has more hard power?
And, you know, they just didn't go great for the Soviets in Afghanistan.
Some time later, there was a Vietnam War, I believe, and a superpower called the United States tried to do what they wanted in a tiny Southeast Asian country called Vietnam.
And I don't know, that ended how it ended.
You know, it kind of seems to me like Ukraine is still in this fight.
You dumb piece of whatever, Pete Hegseth, because of values and belief.
Everybody thought they'd be steamrolled right now.
And instead, fourth grade teachers and mothers of two are holding bazookas.
And fighting back.
And that's why Putin doesn't have Ukraine in his possession right now.
How can you be this stupid?
Belief, values, speeches.
When you have people who believe in a cause, they win.
So you can sit here and give this, like, the worst CrossFit speech I've ever heard and, like, pretend that you know something about leadership, but you're not on Fox News anymore.
And this might be the least American thing I've ever heard, not just because it's betraying our allies across the world in the way you just described, Dan, but because if you think about the American founding, it's not about hard power.
It's about people with muskets yelling the British are coming and fighting for their lives or independence in a way that nobody thought possible.
And here we are.
Not to be like Mr. Thanksgiving about it and, you know, think that I'm super into that whole story, but...
I do think Pete Hexeth is saying the dumbest thing I might have heard this week, and I watched the Elon Musk speech like three times.
So, there you go.
Dan?
Just to reiterate your point, we bring it forward.
You could talk about 9-11.
We could talk about the debacle after 9-11.
We could talk about nation building.
We could write all those examples.
But you could also look at, like, on the domestic front, What is the Trump administration and MAGA world terrified all the time?
They're not afraid of hard power.
They're afraid of ideas.
They're afraid of beliefs.
They recognize the threat that is posed by beliefs that they don't agree with.
It's why they're banning library books.
It's why they're...
Take down the flag.
No, take down that pride flag.
I'm so scared.
Yeah, the hard power of flying, like, the pride flag, or, you know, the book display in the public library for, like, Pride Month, or, like, whatever it is.
So it also just, it's this...
It's hard not to go the psychologizing direction, but it is such a projection from somebody like Hegseth of, like, what he wants.
To sort of have the world be around, and I think the kind of man that he wants to be, the man who's like big and tough and whatever, and I'm just like, the entire MAGA sphere, I'm like, you are terrified, terrified of ideas and belief that you can't counter, and women, that you can't name, that you can't counter, that you can't corral, and you're going to stand up?
And try to give us this JV-level, like, you know, I'm Secretary of Defense.
I know stuff about international relations kind of speech.
That is like, it flies so in the face of everything that the guy is and everything that MAGA is to say this.
And so I'll just come back full circle.
The real reason you're talking about this, Pete, is because Putin wants it.
Not because it's a hard power reality that we can't, whatever.
So it's just...
Layer after layer after layer from, like, the realpolitik layer to the historical layer to just the cultural anxiety of, like, the insecure manhood that always has to mask itself as, like, hyper-masculinity that's at work here, just layer after layer on display in Pete Hegseth.
You know, I didn't plan on saying this, Dan, but, like, you know, whatever.
I'm going to get theological, you know?
Pete Hegseth, Mr. Christian, who worships a crucified God.
Like, your God, right?
Conquered sin, how?
Through shooting stuff?
Oh no, he was crucified.
And Dan, you and I could sit here and do our whole thing, if you want, about the weakness.
How many books do you want to go over on Christology?
The Weakness of God.
The Weakness of God.
The Crucified God.
How many books have you and I read on Christology in our lives that are like, Christianity is different.
And I don't know if it is or not.
I'm not out here claiming it, but I've read the books that do claim it and say, yep, Christianity is different from all the other religions because their God was not one of hard power, but one of crucifixion.
And anyway, whatever, I can go on.
I want to make one more point about Pete, and then we will go to J.D. Vance.
Here we go.
Trump administration officials, according to the Washington Post, in a piece written by Dan Lamont.
At the Pentagon, invited far-right activist Jack Posobiec to participate in Defense Secretary Pete Hexas' first trip overseas.
I'm not going to spend a lot of time on this, Dan, but Posobiec is the guy who, I will remind you, CPAC 2024 showed up on stage.
The first thing he said was, welcome to the end of democracy.
I am not paraphrasing.
I am quoting.
He then went on to say, we didn't quite get there on January 6th, but we are going to get there now.
That is who Pete Hegseth invited on his trip overseas to give his really terrible JV football misguided CrossFit speech.
No shade on football or CrossFit.
Okay?
Please don't call me.
I'm not in no shade there.
Jack Postabique also wrote a book called On Humans, and it was blurbed by none other than J.D. Vance.
So they have kicked out media outlets from the Pentagon and from other places, and they have replaced them with a guy who says, welcome to the end of democracy, and wrote a book about how people who don't agree with him politically are not human.
That's bad news.
I'm over the shock stage.
I'm not going to sit here and clutch pearls and say, I can't believe that happened, or nope, I do believe it happened, and I expect it.
And that's where we are as we speak today.
Let's take a break.
Come back and talk about JD. Here we go.
Be right back.
All right, Dan, we're going to do this quickly, expeditiously.
A couple weeks ago, JD Vance was responding to a politician in the UK, and he went on his typical JD rant about this and that.
And one of the things that he said is, it is ridiculous that you would love all human beings in the same way.
There is something called the Ordo Amoris.
Just Google it.
That's what he said.
And of course I love my kids more than other people.
Of course I love people who are in my community more than others.
Of course I love my nation more than other nations.
That's how human nature works.
If you don't think that, you're stupid.
Someone entered the chat this week, Dan, a pundit, somebody, an influencer, named Pope Francis, Catholic, head of the Catholic Church, if anyone's seen him.
J.D. Vance converted in 2019. I think Pope Francis has been a Catholic longer than that.
I will have to look it up.
But he said in his letter, Christian love is not a concentric expansion of interest that little by little extend to other persons and groups.
The true ordo amoris that must be promoted is that which we discover by meditating constantly on the parable of the Good Samaritan.
That is by meditating on the love that builds a fraternity open to all without exception.
In essence, he was saying, Dan, that the kingdom of God reverses the common logic of loving those who are like you and calls you to a radical love of those who are to be loved simply because of who and what they are in God's eyes.
That was not all.
He went on to say, this is really apt, Dan.
This is interesting.
You know, I'm going to read a sentence here.
It just seems interesting in light of J.D. With you, we pray that the U.S. government keep its prior commitments to help those in desperate need.
This is actually Timothy Broglio, who's part of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.
Pretty interesting there.
And I'll just say, J.D. Vance.
You messed up so bad that it wasn't a Catholic theologian.
It wasn't like someone from Villanova or Notre Dame, or it wasn't a Jesuit priest in Paris.
This was the Pope.
And it was like, here's where you're wrong, J.D., on your theology.
Let me correct you.
Any thoughts on that, Dan?
Many thoughts.
So, you know, we've talked about people will remember us kind of going off about the whole Augustine City of God thing and the Catholic.
And I say, like, I'm not an expert in Catholic.
I'm not a Catholic doctrine expert, but I was like, you know, I think that's bad Catholic theology.
Like, what I understand in Catholic theology, that's not good.
And it's like, this week in case, I was like, I don't know, Latin.
I've never actually had Latin, and I've got to look it up and just tell what it really means.
Like, you rank levels of love, and basically the Christian message is that people who are far enough down in the rank, you don't have to love them.
That sounds kind of weird, but like, maybe.
And yeah, here comes Pope Francis who's like, hold my beer.
Like, let me tell you some Catholic doctrine stuff.
And I'm not here to defend Francis or the Catholic Church or like whatever.
But it was a really telling moment when somebody who hangs his hat on the radical traditionalist Catholic, you know, sort of dogma is getting, you know, just smacked down by the highest authority in the Catholic Church saying that he's wrong about this.
What I think is sort of interesting is...
The way that that will just have no effect.
And I'm reminded of years ago when Paul Ryan was Speaker of the House and the Pope weighs in on something, critiquing American Republicans, and suddenly they were like, the Pope should stay out of politics.
He shouldn't be mixing religion and politics.
He's got no business weighing in.
And you're like, really?
Religious right Paul Ryan guy?
You're going to tell us that religion and politics shouldn't be mixed?
I think the telling point...
For those who want to, you know, hold up J.D. Vance's Catholic credentials as, you know, sort of his card into the MAGA club and into Christian nationalism, is to look at this and say, well, the Pope doesn't seem to think that this is a good Catholic teaching.
And the really telling point is, what effect will that have on somebody like J.D. Vance?
Right, because I don't picture J.D. Vance.
I don't think we're going to see some tweet from him later being like, wow, you know what?
I've really been rethinking that, and we now need to care about the poor, the orphan, and the widow, and change our economic and immigration policies.
It was a really telling moment, and I think telling in two ways.
Again, number one, Vance is not a good Catholic in terms of actually believing Catholic stuff.
But number two, I think it's also revealing of what the appeal to a certain kind of Catholicism is actually doing in American politics, because it's not about being a good Catholic.
It's about being a Christian nationalist and trying to twist that doctrine to fit those policies, whatever they are.
And I think those things are both on display with Francis and his response to Vady Vance and American policy.
Well, right on that point, Tom Homan, the borders are, the deporters are, whatever he said, On X, he wants to attack us for securing our border.
He's got a wall around the Vatican, does he not?
So he's got a wall, but we can't have a wall around the United States.
One of the things about Vance and all those that would defend him, R.R. Reno and other reactionary Catholics, people from Crisis Magazine, First Things, whatever, is they're going to point to Augustine and Aquinas.
And this might be the Protestant in me.
I'm not whatever, but...
I'm always like, if you want to convince me, bro, just talk to me about Jesus and the New Testament.
I don't know.
Thomas Aquinas lived 1,100 years after Christ walked the earth, if we want to take everyone to face value.
Why would I believe Thomas Aquinas as opposed to the parable of the Good Samaritan?
It doesn't make sense to me.
Maybe that's a Protestant bias.
I don't know.
I'm sure I'll get emails about it.
But I think that's something that always surprises me, that when everyone's like, well, he's kind of right.
Thomas Aquinas wrote this.
And I'm like, my brother in Christ, tell me about Christ.
Not your favorite theologian, Uncle Tom, right?
Tell me about Jesus.
All right.
Let's go to reasons for hope, Dan.
You got a reason for hope?
I do, which is a poll that was done.
I came across it on the Hill.
But a recent poll showing that 83% of Americans believe that the president has to follow SCOTUS. Now, there are some partisan differences there and so forth.
Down at the bottom, it also showed a 51% approval rating for the Supreme Court right now, which is higher than it's been in a long time.
Why do I think it's a reason for hope?
We've talked around it, and it's going to come up a lot between now and God knows when.
But this concern about what happens if the Trump administration simply ignores the courts?
Like, what happens?
The vast majority of Americans, including a majority of Republicans, believe that the president needs to do, at least with SCOTUS, let the cases get all the way up there and do it.
But they believe in some level of judicial authority and checks and balances.
I took hope from that.
I also took hope.
I think that's why it's showing an increased approval rating for SCOTUS right now.
now.
I don't think that's about the Supreme Court as much as it is an anxiety and a concern about what people see in Trump.
But I do think that Trump, we know that Trump is nervous about polls and he's nervous about public opinion and he can be swayed by that.
So I took hope from the fact that that's the direction public opinion is going right now.
And we'll see.
We'll see if that can have an effect moving forward.
Yeah, I think there is I think it's good.
That the courts have held so far.
Now, whether or not they will continue to hold out, we will see.
I think there's also some actions that are being taken, direct actions against Tesla.
I mean, there's a lot of things happening in Europe against Tesla that are going to sink their profits.
There's talks about tariffs on Teslas.
There are protests.
There are ways that people are going to show their values and through speeches.
How they can affect Elon Musk's life and bottom line.
I don't know.
Dan, I'm not going to sit here and tell everyone that all of that means we're on the road to something rosy.
But we have to continue to fight and we have to continue to find hope where we can see it.
And I think those are places to look.
And I think participating in actions like that inspire hope.
People say it.
It's true.
Hope inspires hope.
Courage inspires courage.
It's contagious.
So let's keep on that track.
Thanks for listening today.
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