Bonus Live Episode: White House + PraegerU Are Making AI-Slop Founding Fathers
In the first ever live-audience recording of a SWAJ episode, Brad Onishi and and Dan Miller discuss the unholy alliance between the White House and PragerU to generate AI slop that rewrites the words of Founding Fathers to fit ultra-conservative narratives. They highlight the deeper implications of this partnership, including the potential impact on education, the distortion of historical truth, and the broader socio-political atmosphere. The episode also touches on questions from the audience related to Christian nationalism, Reconstructionism, and current political controversies.
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Axis Mundi This is Stray White American Jesus, and I am Brad O'Nishi, author of Preparing for War, The Extremist History of White Christian Nationalism and What Comes Next, and the founder of Axis Mundi Media.
Today, we're talking about a report from 404 Media about how the White House has partnered with PriggerU to make AI sloppified founding fathers say things like, facts don't care about your feelings.
We'll talk about that for the first half an hour or so, and then we'll move into questions from the live audience that joined us for this episode.
If you're a subscriber, you'll get to hear the entire hour or so of our recording.
And if you're not, it's a great time to sign up so you can get the entire episode and listen not only to what we have to say about the Praetor U White House partnership, but also about all the amazing questions that we got from the audience regarding Christian nationalism,
Reconstructionism, all the way down to what's going to happen with Epstein, and so on.
Just amazing questions from people.
So it's 40 bucks for the entire year, and you can check that out in Supercast in our show notes.
Go to axismundi.supercast.com.
That's A-X-I-S-M-U-N-D-I dot supercast dot com.
And you'll find what we have to offer.
Thank you.
Hope you enjoy our discussion.
It was a thrill to get to do this with subscribers joining us on the call and in the live episode.
We can't wait to do it again.
Here it is.
Welcome to Straight White American Jesus.
It's great to be with all of you, those of you joining us live and those of you listening after the fact.
I'm Brad O'Nishi, author of Preparing for War, The Extremist History of White Christian Nationalism and What Comes Next, here today with my co-host, Dan Miller, professor of religion and social thought at Landmark College.
And glad to be with you, Brad, and a whole bunch of live people here with us.
It is, it's a very different experience.
I got my haircut today.
I wasn't sure if you were going to get a haircut, so I got mine cut.
I wanted to make sure.
Yeah.
All right.
All right, y'all.
So we're going to talk today about something that there's just a lot to say about.
And some of it is scary.
Some of it is laughable.
Some of it is sad.
And some of it is just a perfect emblemization of what this administration looks like.
But 404 media reports, and one of you put this in the Discord the other day.
I saw it there as well.
That Prager U, and some of you know about Prager U. If you don't, Prager U is a nonprofit started by Dennis Prager, and it's supposed to be a Prager U. It's, you know, they style themselves a university of sorts.
They put out these videos that, as Dan's going to get into in a minute, are supposed to be both educational and hopeful.
And they're full of right-wing Christian nationalist propaganda.
They talk about how slavery was a good thing.
They talk about how colonialism and imperialism not so bad.
And, you know, if you let David Barton make history videos, this is what you would get.
Prager U, however, I can tell you this, has about three to four million viewers a day and has 10 billion lifetime views.
So this is not, this is a behemoth.
Prager U is used in school curricula in Florida and Oklahoma.
And there is a new, there's new reporting out of Oklahoma, Dan, and you're the one who's always talking about Oklahoma, that if you are going to teach in Oklahoma now, you will take a quiz made by PragerU to test if you are a patriotic citizen with the right ideology such that you'd be allowed to teach students in Oklahoma.
So if you move from a quote unquote liberal or progressive place and you want to teach in Oklahoma and you fail the test, then just that's too bad.
And you've been keeping right in a state now that as their social studies curriculum requires, you know, teaching the big lie as sort of an option and understanding history and all that sort of stuff.
So it's very much, very much in line with Oklahoma.
And there's a terrible teaching shortage at Oklahoma.
Like there's not enough teachers there.
And I don't think this is going to help.
But nonetheless, what are they doing?
They're calling this Road to Liberty.
There was a big event on June 25th.
Secretary Linda McMahon took time to attend this.
And the Road to Liberty is basically a set of videos where you can scan a QR code and then get a display that'll take you to AI-generated content of people from the American founding speaking.
So quoting from 404 Media, the videos are clearly AI generated with the sepia-toned people's mouths moving almost independently from the rest of their faces and some of them.
In one, an AI-generated John Adams says, facts do not care about our feelings.
So let's just set the stage and then Dan, you can take us through some like theoretical reflections on this.
You're in the White House.
You're in, you know, the place where the president lives, a symbolic, like Axis Mundi of American civic life.
The White House is a place that is a symbol of the United States in many ways.
I used to live in D.C. The White House has like a gravitas around it.
It is a place that draws people from all over the world.
So now you're walking through this valley, this hallowed hall of the American Republic.
And just, I don't know, for contrast, Dan, like any of you, any of you who are like with us today, anybody who's listening, think about places you might have visited on travels.
This could be a state capital, okay?
This could be a city hall, but this could be like you visited London, right?
You visited Paris, you visited somewhere, and you went to one of the most important buildings in that country.
You went to Parliament, right?
You went to Westminster Abbey, you went to Buckingham Palace, you went somewhere, okay?
And then think about coming to the White House and Dan, you're walking through a hall and you scan a QR code and AI John Adams pops up and he starts talking like Dan Bongino or Charlie Kirk and saying, right, facts don't care about your feelings.
There's so many issues here and there's so many things that just represent everything that is happening with Trump's administration in the moment.
You have some like fittingly theoretical reflections on this.
So contextualize some of this in a more academic way.
You could do this with animation.
You could do this with, you know, the kind of the still image or the quote underneath somebody, right?
And so there's the AI piece of it.
I've also read some interesting things about why it seems like the right is so into AI generated stuff and often like cheap AI stuff, right?
That that's, I guess the media studies folks could maybe look at that.
But what I was thinking about was, was PragerU, because as you say, it's this sort of university style thing.
They put like the U in there.
And I think obviously that's what that's supposed to evoke, right?
Is university.
But I went to the website and so a couple things, I'm like looking at the PragerU.com website, you know, the about section.
Marissa, I believe it's Marissa Street is how you pronounce her name.
She's the CEO.
And this is what she says.
She says, this is a quote next to her image.
Millions are rejecting the doom and gloom peddled by popular culture and are looking for alternatives.
They are hungry for what PragerU provides.
Hopeful, truthful content that's good for the brain, body, and soul.
There's a serious personal development vacuum in modern America, and Prager U is helping to fill it.
And what strikes me about this, what I think is significant about Prager U and the right-wing, kind of this putting right-wing talking points into the mouths of founding figures and also just kind of a bunch of random revolutionary era people in this.
There's a lot of just people that nobody's ever heard of that are part of this display.
But it's that notion of what stands for me is this linking of truthful and hopeful.
Because I think what strikes me is, because people are going to say, what about the facts?
What happens if you're like, John Adams never said that?
And we all know everybody hears me talk about facts all the time and the fact that the fact that if you were to, I don't know, Brad O'Nishi just got to hang out in the White House and was like hovering around and people hit the QR code and you said, no, yeah, John Adams never said that.
It's not going to matter that John Adams didn't say that.
Or if you're Prager U, it's not going to matter that you did that because on their website, they don't say we're a university.
They don't say we're accredited.
They talk about truth and intellect, but they also talk about spirit and soul and being uplifting.
And what stands for me then is if you link that truthful and hopeful, I think that within that framework, it's truthful because it's hopeful.
What makes it true is that it's what feels right.
If you're on the right, if you're on the American, if you're a Christian nationalist, having these founding figures say the stuff that Donald Trump says or say the stuff that Hegseth says or say the stuff that Kirk says or whoever it is, right?
That's what makes it true.
And I think that if you go to the website, I don't recommend going to the website unless you have to, but it's just right on the surface.
So they say the Prager U mission, I'm reading their mission statement.
It says, our mission is to promote American values through the creative use of digital media, technology, and here's the word, edutainment, EDU hyphenment, right?
This mix of education and entertainment.
I think, again, it captures that dimension, right?
What makes this true for folks on the right is how it makes them feel.
And so this week, being the geek that I am, I was reading an article by a guy named Tad Tuleha.
I hope I'm pronouncing his name right.
He's a folklorist.
And the reason that I was reading him is he writes about conspiracy theories.
And he's writing specifically about why conspiracism, the kind of affective and emotional effect that it has on people.
But his idea, he has this idea of what he calls symbolic truth.
And I think it really applies to this because he's talking about, say, facts, you know, or accounts of things, whether it's things that are like, you know, conspiratorial or historical events that are supposed to have happened, then get debunked and so forth.
And he's looking at this notion of why doesn't the debunking matter?
And he says it's because for them, it's a part of a larger symbolic truth.
They know the truth.
So if you're on the right, if you're a Christian nationalist, you know that this is a Christian nation.
You know that people on the left make things up.
You know that people on the left are trying to deny, you know, real constitutionality when they, I don't know, promote DEI initiatives or when they teach about race or whatever.
You feel that to be true.
And so facts are in service of truth.
Facts don't state the truth.
They don't settle the truth.
And so what this, what this does, and I think what makes this significant is it tells people exactly what they want to hear.
And that is what makes it true.
And so this notion of symbolic truth.
So if Brad O'Nishi was hanging around in the halls of the White House and being like, hey, I've written some good books about some stuff and got some thoughts on this.
Do you want to hear them?
They'd be like, no, we don't.
Because your book is a real downer for us, Brad, because you're telling us we're not a Christian nation.
And you're telling us that, I don't know, maybe DEI initiatives are constitutional.
Or you're telling us that, I don't know, maybe Samuel Alito is like super conservative and not just reading the Constitution or whatever.
It's because the facts aren't what establish the truth.
And I think I say this all the time, but I think that that's the hard thing.
If you are a kind of factually oriented person, certainly for a lot of academics who've spent our career having to like establish facts and give arguments and counter arguments and evidence, it's hard to understand why these things resonate the way that they do.
But this is what strikes me.
And so for me, the AI generated piece is kind of not quite window dressing.
I mean, there's an element to it, but the significance of it is what Prager U is and how it works and why it has 4 billion for whatever the number was of lifetime views.
And the fact that it's now in the White House, even though it's the last thing I'll say and then I'll shut up and throw it out for more thoughts on your part.
But the White House has a disclaimer about this that says the White House is grateful for the partnership with Prager U and the U.S. Department of Education and the production of this museum.
This partnership does not constitute or imply U.S. government or U.S. Department of Education endorsement of Prager U, right?
So they've got their cover their ass statement that says that they're not endorsing it, but you go into the White House, as you say, this hallowed place where you're learning about American history and you're hearing these things, and they're going to resonate with people, not just because they feel true, but I think as you're highlighting, that space has even more of that effect.
So those are some thoughts about sort of why this feels like such a big deal to me and the resonances and the sticking the you on there to give it that veneer of education when it's all about emotion.
You know, think with me, Dan, back to our evangelical days.
And, you know, I think, and we've talked about this on the show, have laid this out, but I think it's worth laying it out again in this moment is there was this kind of incoherent, bipolar sense of being a Christian at that moment.
I'm talking about 1995 to 2005.
On one hand, you had, we are countercultural, we are the minority, the world is never going to be Christian, and we're fighting against this stream.
And that was kind of fun.
And you and I have talked about that kind of countercultural.
That was the way you could be a rebellious teenager as this like conservative Christian.
But there was also this sense of, yeah, but what if like we ever did get a Christian president?
And what if there was a really popular actual Christian band like Creed?
Wouldn't that be cool?
You know?
Brad, I think you're muted or something.
Or audio went.
You're not showing that you're muted, but we'll come through you.
Oh, that's fun.
Oh, there you are.
You're back.
All right.
Okay.
So the thing I'm trying to say here is what if we actually got a Christian government and a Christian leader?
Okay.
And you got George W. Bush, and we've been over this history, whatever.
I want to fast forward to today where you literally have Prigger U, which is propaganda, edutainment.
It is not history.
It is not scholarship.
It is not based on sound methodology when it comes to academic approaches to these kinds of materials.
And you find them in school curricula.
And you can say at church.
You can say in your men's small group.
You can say at Sunday school, look at this.
We've made it.
Like everybody's now waking up to the truth.
And now, Dan, just fast forward, you're walking through the White House and you scan with your phone.
And here comes John Adams popping up saying, the facts don't care about your feelings.
And the reason I think AI is so popular here is because for years, people in our high control religion spaces, but also people in the American right, are pushing myths and fighting history, right?
We're going to push myths that we want to be true, and we're going to fight the history that is true.
And now I have an AI, like I can literally create John Adams and put the words in his mouth and have them say it to me and everyone else.
I love that.
I love that.
I can actually have John Adams say the stuff that I want him to say that I know, as you say, I know and feel is true.
And I love this AI.
This is great.
Because instead of just trying to find that stuff in the histories and the sources and try to create and revise the American past, as people have been trying to do forever, I can just put the words in his mouth and have him say them to me.
And the final thing here to me that is so ironic, like the irony cannot be lost, is that you're having a man from two and a half centuries ago say something that is a phrase from now, right?
Facts don't care about your feelings.
So you're having a man, a historical figure, an American founder, say something that he never said because you feel that's important.
And the thing he's saying is, facts don't care about your feelings.
And I think one of the general themes that I have tried to bring out on the show over the last month or so is that fascism, Christian nationalism, Christian supremacy, and this kind of myth-making, this is all about feelings.
No.
It's all about feelings.
I want this to be true.
I want to feel that it's true.
If I go back to immigration, because to me that's like a paramount issue of today, if you think about the kinds of measures that Stephen Miller and J.D. Vance and Donald Trump and ICE are taking right now, it is about feeling.
When I see Stephen Miller on the TV, I see a man who has disgust.
He feels disgust for people who are not white.
I see a man who feels disgust that they're in his country, that they're going to American schools and in the American public square.
And deporting people as they are is going objectively to hurt this country economically, socially, when it comes to food, when it comes to taxes, when it comes to everything.
This is not helpful.
I read an article two days ago about someone from Ireland who overstayed his travel visa by three days because his girlfriend got hurt and was in the hospital.
So instead of going back to Ireland, he stayed with his girlfriend who was in the hospital.
And he was detained by ICE for 100 days.
Instead of just put on a plane.
I mean, that would be the, instead of the kind of punitive model of this, just put him on a plane and send him back to Ireland.
That's feelings.
That is, I want to punish you.
I want to take, that is, there's nothing that you can tell me factually that that helped.
What did that help?
This guy from Ireland is in the hospital attending to his girlfriend.
He overstays three days.
And instead of, as you say, you put him on a plane, you put him in detention for, do you know how much that hurt this country in terms of like, how much did that cost?
How much did that hurt that man?
We are now a country that does that to people who overstay their visa for three days.
And what does that tell people in Ireland?
Should people in Ireland come spend money here?
Should they come to the World Cup?
Should they come to the Olympics?
Should they come visit the White House where they're going to get Fed propaganda?
This is all about feelings.
And yet you made a man who never said the thing say the thing about facts don't care about your feelings.
The irony could not be more like twisted and sad and deep, but here we are.
All right.
Final thoughts on this before we, I'm going to do a short, I'm going to give you a short story today.
I didn't tell you I was going to give you a story, Dan.
All right.
But I'm going to give you a story about the White House that you're, you may or may not like.
All right.
So my, my thoughts before, before your story are just that notion, again, the facts thing, right?
Because you say he obviously didn't say this.
John Adams didn't say this and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
But to get at that feeling thing and this notion of symbolic truth, it's when the person, yeah, but he would if he were here today.
Like it's that kind of weird retrospective attribution that then like kind of comes full circle and like gains that kind of veracity where you can't counter it.
That's the kind of thing where somebody's like, you know, maybe he didn't say exactly that phrase, but if he were here today, Brad, that's what he would say, right?
So it just becomes this kind of circular sort of thing.
And everybody knows this and people are like, you know, think that sounds far-fetched.
I don't know if anybody's had this experience.
If you've ever had a family member who, I don't know, in heated conversations or something, they always appeal to a dead family member.
I know that sounds kind of morbid, but they'll be like, you know, if grandma was here today, she would say that what you're like, how am I supposed to respond to that?
It's emotion.
It's unverifiable.
It's all of those kind of things.
It's the same thing that happens, right?
If John Adams were alive today, this is what he would say.
So it doesn't matter that he didn't.
And that's the point.
Yep.
Yep.
All right.
Before we go to questions, so if you've got questions and you want to start asking those, throw them in the chat and we're going to get there.
And the chat is pretty much on fire right now.
Somebody said I dared to insult Creek.
I know.
I saw that.
And I was given what I deserved because I went silent for a minute.
That's fair.
Someone else here, Alexander, Alexander said this.
And Alexander, I think this is a great comment.
You said, I think Prager U has been filling in a gap that Focus on the Family wasn't able to fill after James Dobson left.
And I think that's just really insightful.
I also think that what Prager U is, is if you think of Focus on the Family as like the cassettes, the kind of poorly made videos, the books, right?
Prager, I'm sorry, Focus on the Family was really good at printed media and radio.
And then the videos were kind of, eh, but like they were still there.
Prager U's videos, and hear me out for a minute, are really good.
And what I mean by that is they're very effective.
Their thumbnails and the way that they title the videos are very effective.
The recipe they use is effective.
Like they have done a very good job making content that is completely unfactual propaganda and terrible history.
But to see them as the heir of focus on the family is a really good, I think, comparison.
Now they're not totally focused on quote unquote the family.
Dobson was just obsessed with, you know, why you should be able to hit your children and why men are in charge all the time.
They, they, they have other things.
They're, they're, they're like much more like Renaissance.
I mean, they want John Adams to say stuff you never said.
They're like, they're much more Renaissance people, but nonetheless.
All right, y'all.
Thanks for listening to this free version of our bonus episode.
We hope you found the discussion about Prater U in the White House informative and at least helpful for understanding what's going on.
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