Iran Negotiations FAIL, Round TWO With Iran IMMINENT
Tate Brown and Megan Basham dissect failed Iran negotiations where JD Vance's stalled talks in Pakistan face a "round two" over uranium enrichment, mirroring White House proxy wars between Vance and Marco Rubio for 2028. They analyze Pope Leo XIII's political commentary triggering Donald Trump's Truth Social attacks, sparking a debate on whether Catholicism remains an ascendant bulwark or if the U.S. is secularizing despite evangelical voting reliability. Ultimately, the episode suggests that rising gas prices, military operations, and Republican reluctance to abolish the filibuster are driving unpopularity for the Trump administration amidst these geopolitical and domestic fractures. [Automatically generated summary]
Patriots, this is Tate Brown here holding it down.
I usually don't open it, ladies and gentlemen.
I just thought, you know, let's make this, let's NASCARify the show.
Ladies and gentlemen, start your entrance, that sort of thing.
I think that'd be a very beautiful direction to go in for the show.
As I said, I'm your host, Tate Brown, here holding it down.
I'm very happy to be back with you guys on this beautiful Monday.
We're going to be getting into all sorts of stories all across the political spectrum.
It was a spicy weekend, to say the least.
We obviously have the Haran situation.
Not much good news coming out of Iran.
That's not really a surprise.
I think I was holding my breath the entire time.
And indeed, yeah, not so much positive developments coming out of Iran.
I think we'll get into it a little bit.
I'll really break it down tomorrow.
I think we're seeing a bit of a proxy war taking place within the White House.
I've touched on this previously that, you know, you have, I don't know if they're direct adversaries per se.
I mean, everything that's been said to the press is that they're aligned fully, but it really does seem like Rubio's camp and Vance's camp are both already maneuvering to be ready for 2028.
And we're seeing more of that.
I think this week I saw something, and many other people pointed it out, was quite an egregious example of the maneuvering happening.
So, we'll get into all of that.
You know, it's this proxy war.
Also, we have a proxy war happening on the Tim Cass campus right now.
I was just outside.
There's a goose that is outside of Chicken City, and he's antagonizing the chickens within Chicken City.
The chickens are going absolutely ballistic.
They're pissed off, to say the least.
And this goose is just letting him have it.
He's just yelling at them.
So, I mean, you know, everyone's focused on this sort of potential proxy war happening within the White House.
We're losing sight of the real proxy war that's right in front of us the goose geese, even versus chickens.
It's really a sight to behold.
It was quite something to see when I was walking outside.
It's a very beautiful thing.
We also have the Pope, Pope V. Trump.
Is it really Pope B. Trump?
I don't know.
Trump is talking some smack, to say the least, about the Pope.
And, you know, I think it's kind of fair.
The Pope interjected into American politics.
You know, you mess with the bull, you get the horns, that kind of thing.
I wouldn't have posted it, but I'm not going to moral fag, to use the correct verbiage here, over, you know, again, the Pope stuck his nose in our business.
I mean, you kind of got to expect Trump to respond.
He's already shown that he'll hit back, as we saw with the, you know, post declaring that Tucker, Candace, Alex Jones, et cetera, persona non grata.
Trump is clearly in the mood to be a striking back because we saw all through the first Trump term, he never really commented on Pope Francis.
And I think Pope Francis, some of his statements are far more pointed than Pope Leo, the current Pope.
We're going to bring in the great Megan Basham at halftime.
We're going to bring her in to give us her thoughts on the whole situation.
You've probably seen on the timeline, she's been going, she's been cooking, to say the least.
I think pretty much everybody on this Rumble lineup, perhaps the conservative commentariat by and large, Is uh, you know, has a different perspective on this entire situation than I do.
Um, you know, I am a Protestant, so I'm not really too concerned with the Pope's thoughts on our um the way we conduct our domestic affairs and foreign policy.
But you know, I'll steal, man, and we'll bring on Megan, and I'm sure Megan's gonna have um some some thoughts on all of this and so much more.
And if we have time, we'll get to it.
We're gonna get to some interesting um sociological developments coming out of the Masters.
I think the Masters uh really jumped the shark this year, it was still a great event.
I love the Masters, and I think it's a Great example of white excellence to say the least, but uh, the bar stoolification of the Masters tournament is really getting out of control and it's really starting to bother me, so I have to stick my head up here and uh, state my case for why, uh, you know, the bar stoolification of the Masters, one of the last great institutions in the United States, is a very bleak sign for our country.
So, with that, we're gonna get into everything, and we don't have any sponsors for today, so I'm just gonna jump straight into business here.
We're gonna get straight down and dirty.
This was April 11th, 2026.
This is when this post came through.
Obviously, that would have been Saturday.
This would have been Saturday.
You know, as we saw, I'm going to adjust my chair here.
JD Vance was dispatched to Pakistan to participate in a round of negotiations with Iran.
Obviously, the sort of terms for a ceasefire were established between the United States and Iran.
Again, Iran, it's kind of a messy situation because, you know, the Trump administration is claiming that they're communicating with a regime that's new, entirely new.
That's been installed and is currently calling the shots in Iran.
But we're not really seeing any reporting that would indicate that that is truly the case.
I mean, it could be true that they're just, you know, holding court with an entirely new set of leaders within Iran.
That's obviously the case because we've killed like 35 of their top brass.
So that's not really a surprise.
As far as being a new regime, I'm not sure that's the case because, as we saw, pretty much all the terms that Iran proposed to make a ceasefire happen were pretty much indecipherable from the terms they would have proposed before the war even took place.
So, again, I was holding my breath.
I wasn't.
Too optimistic about the terms of the ceasefire.
You know, a lot of people going on the timeline celebrating and saying this was the end of the war.
It was looking like the Ewok village for a second.
But instantly, once you took a look at what Iran was expecting out of the negotiations, it became very obvious they haven't really changed too much.
And it's really just, it's a bit grim because, again, the United States and Iran are both not going to concede on a very crucial point, which is uranium enrichment.
It's just, it's an impasse, it's a political impasse.
What was it, the Kaiser that said, you know, War is just the natural conclusion of politics, something along those lines.
And that is very much the case here.
I think we're just going back into round two.
It's what the title says.
It's in the title.
We're heading towards round two.
So, with that, we're going to take a look at the.
You probably saw the clip already.
It went everywhere.
But this is JD Vance talking about how his negotiations went in Pakistan.
Obviously, JD Vance was the man sort of put in charge of negotiations.
He was seen as our chief negotiator.
We actually had seen some reporting that the Iranians didn't even want to negotiate with Witkoff and Jared Kushner, which.
I think it makes sense because every single round of negotiation that's happened with Witkoff going back a year, really a year and some change now, has seen zero progression, right?
Like Iran is looking for a few concessions, or at least the United States to move on a few positions, and Witkoff has not done that so far.
There's also another element to it, which some people have speculated on, and Iran has not confirmed this, but people have speculated that Witkoff and Kushner are both Jewish, Iran may just.
Be kind of fed up negotiating with them.
So the United States had to trot out a Christian to engage in negotiations.
Perhaps the Iranians saw that as more of a good faith move.
That's sort of more of the commentary.
It's speculation on the entire thing, but I'm sure that is an element.
I mean, I wouldn't be surprised.
But take a look at this clip here.
This is from Vice President JD Vance talking about his findings in the Iran negotiations.
We have been at it now for 21 hours, and we've had a number of substantive discussions with the Iranians.
That's the good news.
The bad news is that we have not reached an agreement.
And I think that's bad news for Iran much more than it's bad news for the United States of America.
So we go back to the United States having not come to an agreement.
We've made very clear what our red lines are, what things we're willing to accommodate them on, and what things we're not willing to accommodate them on.
And we've made that as clear as we possibly could.
Now, this is obviously, I mean, he has to dress it up a little bit here for obvious reasons.
We're kind of in a situation now where even though we've completely bombed Iran and really just devastated them, quite frankly, there is sort of some clock ticking.
And the Trump administration is very well aware of this.
Again, not like a dramatic drop, but it is a drop.
The general ballot is still favorable.
We saw some polling from, I think it was from YouGov.
That shows that the general ballot for the midterms is actually tightened up, which really just illustrates more how bad the Democrats are at this, how crazy they truly are.
There's really no surprise there that the American people, by and large, are still not viewing the Democrats as a viable alternative, or at least a lot of people that voted for Trump and then are sort of dissuaded with them or have fallen out of favor.
Trump's fallen out of favor with them.
So, the general belt's tightened up.
There's like a two point spread now, according to some polling, which is just insane because, again, like there's not really been many dubs that the Republican Party has stacked up recently.
And to be quite frank, Congress really hasn't given the American people a reason to vote for them.
I mean, the Save Act is still shelved, it's probably dead.
A wildly popular piece of legislation that's bipartisan, quite frankly, you have bipartisan support for it.
I mean, you're seeing a good sizable chunk of Democrats that, again, just thumb through the Save Act and they're like, yeah, this is really like sensible.
This is a really sensible policy position for the U.S. government to hold.
Like, what's the hang up here?
Voter ID, like, yeah, duh.
But Congress can't seem to get it across the finish line.
And it's mostly attributable to Republican cowardice that, you know, they don't want to abolish the filibuster.
Because, you know, I've gone into this time and time again.
You guys, I'm kind of preaching to the choir on this.
But, you know, the Republican Party, certainly our senators, have a.
They're wonks, they're political wonks, right?
You know, they're guys who.
Really believe in the system, really believe in the status quo.
So, any disruption to the system they see as very deeply concerning, troubling, and conflicts with their principles.
You know, this My Principles talk is what I sort of cite all the time.
For the same reason, we saw the blue slip system.
In short, it's what allows a single senator to object to a judge appointment and basically hold up the appointment of the judge.
We saw it at Alina Hava in New Jersey, where Cory Booker came out, sort of issued a blue slip, and it held up Hava's.
Appointment to be a judge in the state of New Jersey.
The blue slip sort of system, protocol, whatever you want to call it, is not codified law, right?
That's not a mechanism that Booker is sort of deploying there.
It is a handshake agreement between all senators, right?
It's just a sort of loose rule that exists in the Senate and can be overridden at any time.
I mean, really, it would just be up to Foon just to say, no, actually, we're just going to ignore that.
And quite frankly, the U.S. Senate, they just don't really understand what time it is because they have very, uh, Comfortable lives that for them the system still seems to be functioning, um, as it should, so they're just not willing to go there.
You know, they're not that guy, so to speak.
They're not there, they certainly don't know what time it is.
Um, unfortunately, I don't think that's going to change either because you know, I know a lot of these staffers that work for these senators and they all know what time it is and they're all increasingly frustrated with their bosses, so to speak.
And I'm trying to be a bit discreet here.
Um, It's just a mess.
It really is just a mess.
So, the fact that all this to say is the fact that the Republicans are able to basically just sit on their hands and manage the decline of the United States and yet still have a fighting chance in these midterms is quite something.
I don't even think it's going to be a washout.
I really don't think it's going to be a blue wave.
Just if you go by polling, and you know, you may be saying, well, you know, polling has been inaccurate time and time again.
In presidential elections, kind of, but the last midterms, the polling was pretty accurate.
So, I really wouldn't downplay, you know, the implications of a general ballot tightening up.
There's something to be said.
Now, That's the general ballot.
If you look at individual races, you know, things change a little bit, I suppose.
But all that to be said is like, you know, the Republicans aren't really out of this.
And it's mostly attributable to Democrat malpractice more so than, you know, the GOP stitching together a really solid proposal to the American people, a really solid pitch.
So even though the general ballot's tightening up, you're seeing the Trump approval rating take a dive.
His approval among non college educated whites has nosedived since February.
That's polling from YouGov.
He's down like 20 points.
There's a 20 point.
Drop in support went from like 80, 70, 80 down to 50, 60.
I mean, you're seeing a lot of these Senate races going from toss up or lean R to, so, you know, North Carolina, Georgia going from toss up to lean Democrat, Ohio from lean R to toss up, and Nebraska going from solid R to likely R.
So, again, General ballot tightening up, but that's a general ballot, right?
What's really frustrating is seeing that, okay, again, in some of these crucial races, you are seeing the Democrats either clawing back some territory here.
You can call me a black pillar, whatever you want to call me.
I'm just saying, you can't.
We should have learned this lesson after the last midterms vibes don't necessarily override results or polling, rather.
Vibes are less important than polling.
And honestly, if vibes are anything to go off, Republicans should be probably worse off.
And this right here is why I say the Trump administration aren't idiots, right?
I know people in line are saying Trump's demon possessed and should be removed from office.
He's senile.
It's not the case.
He's very well aware that the national environment is shifting away from him.
This war is increasingly unpopular.
Now, again, you could go speculate, you could dive into why the war is unpopular.
I think personally, the primary reason, and again, you're seeing this echoed by a lot of very sensible people, is they're just feeling the pinch economically, right?
You know, Trump, in and of himself, was elected primarily to deliver for the American people, deliver domestic wins.
And when gas prices shoot up above $4 a gallon, again, that's not going to play in Peoria.
And that's just the reality of the situation.
People need to see their lives improve in very tangible ways.
And that's not how you do that.
So I think it's obviously sort of, you know, goes to the point that there's a lot of pressure on the Trump administration to wrap this war up.
And the Iranians are very well aware of that negotiations.
Again, the Iranians, you know, they've been very tactical thus far, you know, bombing all the Gulf states to spike, you know, internal frustration with the war among Gulf states.
Very calculated.
Iran is.
They're making calculations here.
This is another one.
They're very well aware of the domestic situation for President Trump and his administration.
So, we're going to get into all of this and so much more.
Again, the Marine Authority of the UK, the UK Maritime Trade Operations, they are still, as it stands, sort of the main communications for global trade regarding blockades, et cetera.
And just before Trump himself announced that there was going to be a blockade of Iran, effectively a naval blockade.
They put out an advisory saying that maritime access restrictions are being enforced on all Iranian ports and coastal areas, including locations along the Arabian Gulf, Gulf of Oman, and Arabian Sea, east of the Strait of Hormuz.
So you're seeing like two things here the U.S. are obviously implementing a blockade of all maritime traffic in and out of the Strait of Hormuz.
In addition to that, even if this weren't the case, we saw reporting that Iran doesn't even know where a lot of the mines that they placed along the Strait of Hormuz even are.
They just drop them out of the back of a boat and hope for the best.
So, you know, you have a double, sort of double trouble here is, okay, you have the maritime blockade.
And even if that weren't in place, a lot of ships are really hesitant to move through the Strait of Hormuz because there's mines everywhere.
So it's like a complete disaster, quite frankly.
Trump put out this Truth Social post saying Iran's navy is laying at the bottom of the sea, completely obliterated, 158 ships.
What we have not hit are their small number of what they call fast attack ships because we did not consider them much of a threat.
Warning if any of these ships come anywhere close to our blockade, they will immediately be eliminated.
Using the same system of kill that we use against the drug dealers on boats at sea.
It is quick and brutal.
P.S. 98% of drugs coming into the U.S. by ocean or sea have stopped.
Thank you for your attention to this matter, President Donald J. Trump.
Now, again, the strategy here, presumably from the Trump administration, is to just ratchet up pressure on Iran.
Again, their economy is basically in full mobilization at this point.
They're in a total war economy.
So some of these levers that we're pulling won't necessarily have a direct impact on Iran.
But there's something to be said about China.
China buys 80% of Iran's oil exports.
And we saw before the blockade came into effect, the previous closing of the Strait of Hormuz prior to this round of negotiations, that Iran was bum rushing tankers out of the Strait of Hormuz, effectively trying to offload as much of their oil stock as possible to China to cash in these sorts of things.
So, again, this is really hammering Iran's economy, but Iran's economy has now kind of moved to full mobilization.
They're in survival mode.
And as we've stated on the show previously, guests have stated this, I've stated this victory for Iran and this war is just survival.
The regime surviving this war is a victory in and of itself for Iran, where the U.S. has a much more complicated win condition for, again, for a variety of reasons we can get into.
I stated on IRL and I got some flack, but I do truly think that part of the impetus for sort of Conducting the operation now rather than after the midterms.
You know, people were saying, well, this is going to be unpopular, so why not just wait until after the midterms?
Was they perceived there to be blood in the water with the mass protests that were taking place all across Iran?
They really did think that the Iranian regime was on loose ground, shaky ground.
And that was true.
But Scott Greer makes this point all the time.
You know, when we bombed Germany during World War II, we assumed that this would sort of have a demoralization effect and that people would blame sort of the Third Reich for these bombings taking place.
But In turn, what happened was those people ended up rallying around their government because they said, Well, I'd rather go with the devil I know over the devil I don't know.
And that was Germany.
We're talking about Iran, a complete civilizational adversary, quite frankly.
Neocons make this point all the time.
They're like, well, this country, you know, they chant death to America.
So that is true.
So why would they ever view America as liberators?
It's just not realistic.
But there was also, you know, I would say a secondary effect was, again, they're trying to maximize pressure on China.
And we saw it with Venezuela.
I mean, that was basically a move for a variety of reasons.
One of them being it eliminates a massive chunk of hard or, sorry, heavy crude that would be available for purchase for China through BRICS that basically eliminated that.
So, All this to be said, we're seeing kind of an internal battle between, I don't know if a battle would be the appropriate word, but you're seeing two factions here sort of maneuvering for 2028.
You know, multiple outlets have highlighted this.
This is PBS, Los Angeles Times.
I just picked out random ones.
You're seeing the press come out and they're saying, well, Rubio and Vance have different postures on Iran.
And that, again, is sort of setting the table for a battle in 2028.
Obviously, Vance is trying to sort of posture himself and his camp or trying to maneuver Vance as the guy that sort of negotiates an end to this war.
Versus Rubio, who's I think going to probably run on Venezuela and then if he can topple Cuba, run on Cuba.
Two completely different philosophies here.
Now, again, all reporting, all communications from Trump himself and also from Vance and Rubio indicates that they're all aligned, they're all on the same page.
That could be true, but it is also true that these are both very smart men.
They're both politicians fundamentally, and they are trying to posture themselves for 2028.
And then you have like sort of secondary examples of this.
I mean, you know, Tucker Carlson, Joe Kent, that whole faction.
Are maybe not directly in communication with JD Vance, but they're of the same ilk, right?
They come from the same world.
And so, you know, there's a lot of sort of, we can get into it tomorrow, I think would be a really good thing to get into.
But you are seeing sort of some theorizing that, you know, Tucker and Kent and all these different sort of players are sort of trying to set the table for a Vance negotiation to the end of the Iran war to sort of position Vance really well for 2028.
I think we'll just get into that tomorrow because it's really interesting stuff.
I mean, I think this is a great example.
Tucker's son, Buckley, is JD Vance's deputy press secretary, and that is still the case.
Now, this is not a guilt by association thing.
I'm just pointing out that there is an obvious sort of connection here.
And in addition to that, pretty much any communication from JD Vance's camp that is making its way to the press, you can assume that it's passed along Buckley Carlson's desk.
I think there's no question about that.
That's why you saw this reporting at the beginning of the war from Politico.
Vance was, quote, skeptical voice in the White House on Iran strikes.
And they were citing in this article these different Trump officials, these senior Trump officials were sort of.
So, I'm not accusing Buckley Carlson of being these senior officials that were talking to the Politico.
I'm just saying that he is in that, and that kind of gives you an idea of who is managing Vance's media right now.
It's just, it's worth considering.
So, I mean, this is another good example, Max Blumenthal, who is a left wing guy.
I mean, the Gray Zone is a leftist tabloid.
But, you know, Tucker Carlson has worked with Max Blumenthal in the past.
They've gone to each other's shows all the time.
They actually have written pieces together for Gray Zone, if I'm not mistaken.
I mean, recently Tucker was, you know, glazing Gray Zone.
He was saying, you know, although it's a left wing paper, they do some good reporting challenge.
Sort of our foreign policy assumptions, this, that, and the other.
That aside, Max Blumenthal, who just talks like all the time, he put this post up yesterday.
And it was the video of Marco Rubio at the UFC event.
He's sitting ringside.
And this is what it says commentary Marco Rubio knew the Islamabad negotiations were a hoax.
He stayed ringside in Miami and let JD Vance take the fall.
He's not a secretary of state.
He's a clever, mafia, wise guy.
Now, obviously, some pointed language here.
And you got to remember Max Blumenthal is on the left and is just a massive skeptic of Israel to begin with.
But that is interesting.
That is an interesting.
Sort of right here, that is kind of interesting messaging.
JD Vance is going to be the fall guy.
There could be something here that could be the maneuvering that the JD Vance camp is taking.
You saw the same with Joe Kent, where Joe Kent, you know, he's like, the way he's talking, if you remember his resignation a few weeks ago, the way he was talking in that statement and with Tucker was like World War III is imminent.
Like World War III is about to happen.
World War III is going to happen any minute now.
Like, I had the maximum pressure.
I had to clean my hands of this and get out.
And then a week later, he's like posting tweets about, you know, praising Trump, saying, well, Trump's negotiations, this is the way forward, peace through strength, et cetera, et cetera.
Again, I think clearly they're trying to, these guys are still sympathetic to JD Vance.
And this is fine.
This is not an attack.
Like, I mean, I like JD Vance, but I think it's clear what's going on here is this isn't just random infighting and, and like these guys are just crashing out.
These are all calculated, you know, media decisions that are being made.
I don't think there's a plausible situation in which Tucker.
Joe Kent, these sorts of guys, purposely torpedo a JD Vance 2028 campaign that just doesn't seem likely to me.
By all accounts, I mean, maybe if Buckley got fired or something, that could indicate that JD Vance is sort of cleaning his hands of that sphere.
But Tucker, Joe Kent, all these guys, the world they come from, they're China hawks, right?
They view the ultimate global adversary and really the only relevant global adversary as China.
And they view Israel and all of our Middle Eastern escapades as an impediment to what we should actually be focused on, which is the East.
You know, the East, you know, East Asia, right?
The Pacific theater.
Even Max Blumenthal, I mean, he's an Israel skeptic, but a large part of his reasoning for that, if I'm not mistaken, maybe we could talk to him one day, that'd be quite nice.
But again, from what I read from him, and I do read his stuff quite often when it comes across my desk, is that he is, in addition, he views Israel ultimately as a distraction for what the real global adversary would be China.
We should be sort of boxing in China.
Now, you may be saying, well, this Iran operation is part of a China boxing in attempt.
But that's just because there are different factions within the White House.
There are overlapping reasons for a pincer movement on Iran.
One of them being short China containment, but another one being, again, we're trying to clear the Middle East of any adversary so we can achieve peace in the Middle East.
I think that is still ultimately the primary objective of Rubio, Trump, et cetera, et cetera.
I mean, Trump's been saying this for 40 years.
Like Trump's been very, very consistent on this.
So this idea that, you know, it's solely for the purpose of boxing in China, sure, that's.
That's part of it, but that's because again, you have a faction within the White House that are China hawks, so it makes total sense.
We'll get into all that tomorrow.
I think that'd be quite interesting.
We need to keep rolling along here.
Trump put this out a long post on Pope Leo.
Basically, the crux of it is he's critiquing Pope Leo as a left wing globalist, and he's saying that Pope Leo sticking his nose in American politics is unacceptable, and he's you know just trying to sort of slip in sort of leftist narratives into the United States.
And so, Trump this is why Trump goes on the attack here.
You know, he comes back at him, he says, Well, where were you doing COVID?
When the Catholic Church was shutting churches down during COVID.
He says Pope Leo's weak on crime, which there's some truth to that.
I mean, look, everyone's trying to say, well, Pope Leo is even more conservative than Trump because he's holding to church dogma on gay marriage or abortion.
But he's talking to David Axelrod.
Trump points this out in his post.
Do you think that Pope Leo was sort of struggle sessioning Axelrod over abortion and gay marriage?
I doubt that.
I think Pope Leo's primary focus in this situation is sort of.
Combating what he perceives to be this emerging fascist dictator, you know, the demagogue, would be a more accurate word, you know, this democratic backsliding that's occurring in the United States.
And he views Trump as a sort of proponent of that.
So obviously, Pope Leo's going to go after him.
Very obvious Pope Leo on July 4th, you know, he is an American who's born and raised in Chicago, is heading down to Lampedusa.
Again, I don't know if I'm pronouncing that correctly, but it is, again, the island that is sort of the staging point for North African migrants as they move into Europe, as they migrate into Europe.
He's going there on July 4th, which is just an obvious political message.
So I think it's fair game, honestly.
I know a lot of this can be a very unpopular take.
We're going to bring Megan in to discuss this.
This is what Trump's getting a lot of flack for.
He put this up on Truth Social.
You know, him, you know, as Jesus, you know, presumably here.
Obviously, I think that's what he's trying to suggest here.
Healing, you know, this is like a boomer meme.
I'll go on record.
I don't like it.
I'm a Christian.
I don't like it, but, you know, it sucks.
He's deleted it from what I can see.
It looks like Trump got this from Nick Adams, which is quite funny.
I'm not going to pearl clutch over this, but it was just a bad idea from the tweet that because it just gives more ammo to a lot of these people.
But I think what we should get at here, and we'll get into this with Megan, is I'm just skeptical because what you're seeing right now is you're seeing a lot of Catholic, not the majority by far, because I know them and I speak to them, but a lot of these vocal Catholics online are saying that Protestantism, specifically evangelicalism, is sort of the primary problem in the United States, and that if the evangelicals just get out of the way, we could have this like based right wing government.
And they're using sort of Trump's attacks on Pope Leo as proof of that, saying, you know, he's, you know, he's attacking the Catholic Church.
And, you know, this is just clear that this evangelical rot in the United States needs to get out of the, you know, move out of the way.
And that Catholicism is ascendant in the United States.
Well, there's two problems with that.
I'm skeptical that Catholicism is ascendant in the United States.
I mean, okay, we're seeing New York Post headlines indicating that there are sort of where he's seeing 20 year highs in conversions to the Catholic Church.
There were a lot of headlines 20 years ago saying, you know, the Catholic Church is, you know, ascendant and all the cool people are becoming Catholic and, you know, Millennials are becoming the most Christian generation in history.
And we're seeing the exact same thing now from the press.
The press is coming out and saying Gen Z is the most religious generation in history.
Well, in reality, when you look at how the religious movement in the United States, again, Protestants converting to Catholics, fairly minimal here.
This is data from Ryan Birch, who's really solid on all sorts of these interreligious studies.
You're seeing a massive push towards secularization.
So, again, you're seeing a lot of vocal people on Twitter who.
Twitter is going to be where intellectually curious people flock towards.
They're saying, well, we have this emerging Christian thing happening in the United States.
But I think the reality is that we're just seeing further and further secularization.
And so I'm not going to pop the champagne over these sorts of things.
So, with that, we're going to get to our interview with the great Megan Basham.
And in 2024, I brought out a best selling book that dealt with the intersection of politics and religion called Shepherds for Sale How Evangelical Leaders Traded the Truth for a Leftist Agenda.
So, you know, these are the kind of things that I'm known for I report on religion a lot, but I'm also, you know, a pretty serious Christian, so I take these issues seriously myself.
Well, I'm very pleased to have you on because obviously, you know, I'd say Trump primarily has kind of kicked off this discourse that we're seeing on Twitter, but it is leaking into the mainstream.
I've been thumbing through some of the major TV channels and they are talking about this.
So this is kind of escaped containment, so to speak.
Is, you know, you're seeing a lot of people online, a lot of Catholics online specifically.
And this is obviously not the majority of Catholics.
My main reason for this is because I talk to them in real life and they're like, what are you even talking about?
But you're seeing a vocal chunk of Catholics online sort of declaring that evangelicals are the primary issue, evangelicalism is the primary issue in the United States, and that.
If they were to sort of get out of the way or be, you know, superseded by like a Catholic majority, that we would see sort of a right wing, you know, a flourishment in the United States.
Now, you've gone on Twitter, and correct me if I'm wrong, but you're obviously questioning this narrative.
You're questioning that, you know, Catholicism in general is sort of ascendant in the United States.
And I think I was pointing out data before you came on.
I myself am also a Protestant.
I was pointing out data from Ryan Burge, who is kind of a neutral observer, I would say.
He said, like, he has a Catholic wife and Catholic children.
So clearly not someone that has like an axe to grind with Catholicism.
He's just putting out data saying, like, Okay, yes, you are seeing a vocal chunk of people on Twitter sort of declaring their sort of personal findings, but it's not really reflected in the data.
And you're seeing, again, sort of the flocking to the non denominational churches as kind of the primary religious resorting that you're seeing beyond the majority of Christians are still becoming non religious.
And that's not stopping with Zoomers.
I wanted to bring you on to sort of ask you because you're getting a lot of flack for this right now, but I think you're correct.
And I don't really see this.
Sort of pointed attacks on Catholics.
I think you're just telling everyone, like, hey, can we just cool it a little bit with like posting New York Post headlines and declaring victory?
Yeah, and you know, I was probably a little bit surprised at the vehemence of the response to some of the things that I posted.
That I was feeling like, look, this is just, you know, basic looking at the data and saying, okay, who's driving the American electorate?
Who's responsible for the momentum on the American right?
And this sudden backlash that I'm seeing from some Catholic circles against evangelicals, and I'm just going to be transparent I'm an evangelical, so this is how I'm experiencing it.
And I've talked to some Catholic friends.
Who have gone, yeah, there's certainly sort of increasing tensions.
And I think part of the reason for that is that evangelicals have been certainly the most vocal and the most reliable Trump supporters.
So they have been the engine of this populist shift, if you want to put it that way.
They supported President Trump at around 80% in pretty much every election that he's been involved in.
So, on top of that, if you look at the social issues that Christians tend to care about most, things like abortion or what The definition of marriage is, or whether boys can become girls, and we should whether we should let medical professionals try to turn boys into girls and vice versa.
If you look at the polling data again and again, you find that evangelicals are the firewall holding that kind of thing back.
Catholics are not as reliable as a voting block, and I understand there's a lot of reasons for that.
You know, I have heard if they're not regular attendees, if they're cradle Catholics, they're less likely to be serious about these issues, and if they're more recent converts.
But on the other hand, I've heard Cradle Catholics say the opposite.
They say the more recent converts are not reliable.
So, you know, I don't know about those internal dynamics, but what I do know is that as a voting block, the Catholic Church is much more split on these issues than evangelicals are.
And that's true even when it comes to the less biblically clear but conservative issues like how we handle immigration.
Do we give amnesty to millions of illegal immigrants here?
How do we handle climate change?
Should we, you know, empower the government to enact authoritarian regulations over us?
Because of climate change alarmism.
There too, you find evangelicals being the most reliable conservative voting block.
And so I think that where the tension comes from is that while they're very reliable, we tend actually not to be power graspers.
And I know what the popular narrative that is forwarded in the legacy media is that evangelicals are grasping for power.
But if you look at the data there, too, that's not true.
We actually tend to be far less politically involved than progressive Christians and agnostics and atheists.
So, anyway, all of those narratives tend to be false, but it's generating, I think, a lot of tension.
And I hate seeing it.
I don't want to see it.
But what I think is that the Vatican is not helping those tensions.
Well, there are so many directions we can go here.
I mean, I think the first one would be to kind of hammer home the point that.
Evangelicals, I think Ben Braddock was maybe the one who sort of coined this phrase that a lot of evangelicals are sort of citing here, is that they're kind of the lone bulwark, so to speak.
And there's so much truth to that because, again, if you look at sort of the ways that politics have moved in the United States for the last 20, 30 years, as evangelicals, if you're a Catholic, if you're like a mainline Protestant or whatever you are, if you find yourself on the right, you have to look at evangelicals and be like, this group.
Even with the imperfections that there are, and I mean, you dove into it, your book is a fantastic book, have bought us so much more time than we should have had.
Because, again, you just look at Europe.
I mean, I know it's kind of like almost cachet at this point to compare the two, but look at Europe.
I mean, they don't have that strong religious bulwark, so to speak.
And they've lost a lot of ground where the United States, even with probably more systemic issues than Europe even has, has bought ourselves decades of time to continue to put up a fight to, again, what we're seeing sort of overtaking the United States.
So I just think it's.
Kind of ridiculous to sort of instigate and sort of posture against evangelicals because, again, you just look at who can the Republicans depend on in an election cycle?
It's evangelicals.
Okay, you know, people are going to like split hairs here and say, well, evangelicals, you know, they don't consistently vote for the most right wing candidates.
That's not the point.
You have, this is a gift.
This is a gift that you, again, you just have this party who, among all else, view like issues like abortion as their primary issue.
They're just never going to vote for the Democrats because of fine lines like that.
And then you see Catholics, and again, this is not an attack on my Catholic friends.
I'm, again, we're just interpreting data here.
Is again, I'm really.
I mean, I'm told that Catholics again have this like pious sort of dispensation against abortion, against gay marriage.
But you were seeing up until 10 years ago, even white Catholics breaking for the Democrat Party.
So I just sit there and I'm like, okay, online that might be true.
I mean, we certainly are both well aware that the conservative commentariat and these sort of conservative institutions by and large are at this point kind of dominated by Catholics.
Um, but I think that has more to do with evangelicals just being inherently like anti institutional.
Evangelicals just commonly just are skeptical of institutions for a variety of reasons that we could get into if we want to.
So that's just naturally going to happen.
But their behaviors at the voting booth have bought the American right and honestly the right wing across the West so much more time.
And if anything, it's like we should be giving them their flowers rather than sort of attacking them.
Yeah, and I think there's also a real tension in the fact that Pope Leo and the Vatican have inserted themselves into some of these political issues.
Now, we can debate, is that the role of the church?
Is it right for them to be doing that?
But if you're an evangelical and you're someone who doesn't revere the Pope, and in fact, part of the reason you're Protestant is because you don't believe that there is a mediator between you and Christ.
So when you see that kind of political rhetoric coming out of the Vatican, I think you very naturally see a backlash amongst evangelicals about that because, in the first place, I mean, part of the reason we're Protestant is because we don't believe in a state church.
We don't believe in church authority over the state.
We do believe God has authority over the state, but an established church is something very different.
And that's something that you did tend to see in Europe.
So it evolved in a different way.
And we are having different debates and conversations about that.
And so when I look at the Vatican doing that, I understand the tensions coming from evangelicals.
Though at the same time, you know, I understand that Catholics are reacting in a different way because last night when the president put up an unfortunate image of himself that, let's just say, seemed very Christ like.
And it was apparently part of a troll of the Pope.
And, you know, as Protestants, we were all like, okay, you fight with the Pope, you know, not my monkeys, not my circus.
And we kind of sat back and watched it a little bit, even though we have feelings about the political ramifications.
But when he posted that, it was sort of like all Christians on deck, everyone was going, Yeah, no, we're not okay with this.
And so that was a little bit of a unifying moment.
But I don't want to lose the fact that it did apparently arise out of this war of words going on between the administration and the Vatican.
Because one of the things that happened just before that over the weekend was this Avignon papacy false story that was circulating.
And it did seem to me like we now know that that wasn't true at all.
The Trump administration did not threaten the Vatican, but it felt like they were a little bit slow getting out to say, hey, this didn't happen.
To me, if you knew it didn't happen, you could have said it immediately and sort of drawing it out over days.
And then, you know, I mean, some of the Pope's commentary has not been helpful.
His post in the last 48 hours that God doesn't condone any war, that God will not bless anyone engaged in war.
Well, that's awkward for a number of reasons.
One, it's not biblically true.
We can go all through scripture and show here are places where God didn't just condone, he commanded war.
He commanded Joshua to, you know, make war.
He commanded, Moses to make war, David to make war.
We have all of these places where God commanded his people to make war.
And in the New Testament, we have Romans 13, where we're told that the purpose of the government is to wield the sword to terrorize wrongdoers.
Well, I don't know if the Pope thinks that the only way you can terrorize is by asking nicely, but that tends to not work.
So sometimes, you know, the arm of authority from the government protecting its own state does look like war.
So that was part of it.
And when he made that commentary, I think just a lot of Christians went, We know that's not biblical.
We know that's not helpful.
And so you saw a backlash to the Vatican as well.
So, I mean, it's been a very, very messy 48 hours.
Well, I'll give you the opportunity to potentially disavow this if you disagree.
This has sort of been my analysis on the whole thing, and it's a bit spicy.
But, you know, I don't like to often weigh in on the inner Christian debates because you look over at what the left's up to, and they're just sharpening their knives right now.
Jack Posobic, you know, front of the show, he's been making this point as like, clearly the Elbridge Colby threatening the, you know, The cardinal story was like an op.
And I think there's probably some truth to that.
But what I do want to say is, again, if American leadership antagonizing the Pope is like a line for you to break with American leadership, you would have had no place in the United States until like the 1960s.
Because again, the country was dominated by Protestants well into the 20th century.
And you can look at John Adams, sort of explicitly, his very sharp critiques of not just the Pope, but Roman Catholicism by and large.
Again, this isn't to say that Catholics don't have any inheritance in the United States.
It's obviously true.
But it is to say that, again, this is.
Protestants are in the driver's seat.
They've been in the driver's seat.
And also, like this sort of adopting Catholics as junior partners in this sort of project is a very recent thing.
So, if, again, if your fine line is, well, they can't critique Catholicism, they can't critique the Pope, again, you would have been completely ostracized until about 60 years ago.
And I think that's just the reality of the situation.
And in fact, yeah, I got in some hot water myself over the last couple of days because I said something somewhat similar.
And I didn't realize the strength of feeling that would engender among my Catholic friends.
Who I do consider friends.
And I have many Catholics that I love, but I had all my life kind of looked back at that history and gone, oh, how silly.
That's just ridiculous that they were worried about a potential Catholic president answering to Rome.
And I had always dismissed that notion.
And I said, you know, over the last week, I have started to see where that feeling came from, where that concern came from.
And that, you know, kind of blew open the doors of backlash for me, but I'm used to it, so no big deal.
But when I look at that, I also think we are entering new territory when it comes to what's happening with abortion.
And I think actually that is a really big factor here that we're not talking about because up until the fall of Roe, you had evangelicals and Catholics together, very locked arms on that issue.
And the Dobbs decision has somewhat reshuffled the deck.
So we're still trying to figure out okay, where does the fight go now?
But it has also, I think, brought some of those old political divisions that are based on faith to the fore in a way that we haven't seen, as you said, since the 1960s.
So, you know, I do think that's a complicating factor, and I don't know where that goes.
It's been painful for a lot of us who have been in this movement for a long time, particularly, you know, in ecumenical organizations where we're partnering with Catholics to further these aims.
To suddenly go, wow, okay, there's a hostility here that I didn't anticipate.
And I don't think it arises from one side or the other, but I do think it arises from the fact that we're suddenly realizing that we do have very different doctrinal ideas and they matter.
And they matter in a way that we haven't noticed for a long time.
And I posted this on X and I'll repeat it here that I think no book is aging as well right now as Rusty Reno's Return of the Strong Gods, which is a theory that.
And I don't want to butcher it because he's brilliant and it's been a while since I read it.
So forgive me, Dr. Reno, I'm going to do my best here.
But it's a book about how for so long we had these new gods of pluralism and democracy.
I mean, Again, there's kind of different directions.
I mean, for one, you know, like to your point, where again, you're actually starting to understand a little bit of the skepticism of sort of our predecessors.
I guess, like, in conclusion, I don't know, this may anger some of the people that have, like, a pine tree in their name, but I think, like, I'm not really expecting Catholics to, like, become, you know, Southern Baptist or anything like that.
I guess what I'm petitioning is, like, maybe just a thank you and understanding of why evangelicals behave the way that they do.
Because, again, if you go and talk to evangelicals, especially in middle America, what do they think about Catholicism?
What are their views on Catholicism?
They're not going to really respond with, like, a theological or intellectual sort of critique of Catholicism.
They'll just be like, I don't really think about it very much.
I guess I'm, like, a bit skeptical, but I'm.
Don't really think about it very much, versus if you pull Catholics on what they think about Protestants, typically you're going to get a pretty strong reaction.
Some will just outright say that they think it's the issue with the United States, but at the very least, they're going to view them as like idiots.
And what's frustrating me is seeing a lot of Catholics online basically reheat like anti white, anti middle American rhetoric and then repackaging it with like anti evangelical rhetoric.
And I'm just like, how was this useful?
So I understand why some people online are saying, like, guys, let's just stop fighting.
Like the left's over there, they're ready to come after us.
But I'm like, If we can't critique the Vatican without these people threatening to like not or to like vote for the Democrats, then we do kind of have to address that before we continue to move forward.
And look, I think we just have to maybe a little firmly, but kindly and politely say, we don't really care what the Pope thinks.
I mean, part of the reason that we're Protestants is that we don't care what the Pope thinks.
So, you know, we're going to respond to him the way we would any other political commentator, which in my view is what he's become.
So when he puts out this very pointed, direct commentary at Trump and the United States about immigration, well, at that point, you know, he's a political operative, then to me, like any other, I'm going to answer him like one.
And that's even.
More true when we hear stories about him meeting with David Axelrod.
You know, Pope Leo is from Chicago.
He is not some innocent, you know, foreigner who doesn't know what it means to meet with David Axelrod.
Well, and like all, by all indications, we've seen reporting from the press that, you know, he was to a degree politically active as far as he was registered to vote.
You know, we saw tweets from him that like he certainly was keeping tabs on American politics, even as if he was in Peru.
And then obviously, infamously, his brother is very, very politically active.
But I guess another avenue we can go down is you're seeing, in conjunction with sort of this freak out, I would quite frankly put it, over Trump's going at it with the Pope, is you're seeing, and I think this is a mistake from conservatives, is you're seeing them sort of post headlines from the New York Post saying young people are flocking to the church, specifically the Catholic Church, but even like Christianity by and large.
You're seeing all these reports and everyone's celebrating popping the champagne.
But if you actually comb through the data, all trends kind of point to further secularization.
Now, it is true that Zoomers are slowing, sort of a secularization.
The millennials really put the brick on the gas pedal there.
But Zoomers still, and I look around at all my friends I grew up with, by and large are still secularizing.
And there's really not much that can change there.
So I guess I don't think it's useful to kind of posture as if, like, see, the Calvary's finally here.
The young people are finally understanding.
It's like, I don't think that's really reflecting on the ground.
Now, again, it is true.
Some parishes are reporting like 20 year highs.
The key point there is 20 year high, as in 20 years ago, we saw the same thing happen and then another drop off and another further secularization.
And I was actually kind of as a thought experiment last night, I was going through Internet Archive, and you would see headlines from the LA Times and all these different publications back in like 2004 declaring that there's this sort of religious revival among, you know, millennials and that millennials are the most religious generation of young people ever.
And we all knew how that turned out with like the current behavior of millennials.
And now you're kind of seeing that sort of kicked back up again with Zoomers, I guess, because it's like sexy to report on.
And I'm just like, I don't think this is really useful because it's not painting an accurate picture of how dire the situation truly is.
To me, it's just kind of like cope.
I mean, I don't mean to be cruel here, but it just kind of feels like cope because it's like, no, once boomer evangelicals die off, the coalitions that Republicans are going to stitch together are going to be the most complicated, interwoven coalition ever.
And the infighting is just going to get way worse.
You know, and then it's true that, you know, when you look at the numbers for Catholicism in the United States, they've been pretty flat since like Literally 1940.
If you go through there, about 20 to 25% of the population, that hasn't changed.
And in fact, if we didn't have such massive immigration, it would have gone down quite a bit by now.
And look, I don't necessarily think that's a good thing either.
I mean, I want Protestantism flourishing in the United States, but I don't want an irreligious populace.
I don't think that's a good thing.
And the one maybe little glimmer in there that has given me hope, Um, and I see this among evangelicals.
So, you know, I won't speak to the Catholic numbers, probably the same, but it's not so much who is coming back to church that those numbers haven't shifted that much.
Uh, but it's, it's the, what those people look like.
So it turns out it's primarily young men because they are becoming, and that data is sound, that they are becoming much more conservative and church is a part of that.
So I'm interested in what that looks like, that it's, you know, this sliver of extremely conservative young men who are coming back to church and what that's going to mean.
Going forward.
So, you know, my ideal will be that we have a new leadership of young men arising.
But I'm with you on kind of the boomer dumping.
I have my own frustrations with the previous generation.
But I also think there's a little bit, you know, honor your father and mother going on here that we need to consider.
Yeah, because, you know, the dismissal of Jerry Falwell and the moral majority that's something that we have seen the deconstructing evangelical left do.
And I don't want to be a part of that because they built some incredibly important and incredibly effective movements.
And we need to acknowledge that and look at, okay, why were they successful and consider that maybe instead of only dumping on them, how do we emulate some of those successes?
I mean, for one, on your first point, I mean, okay, yeah, we are seeing like, okay, an uptick in Catholic converts, but, you know, the Catholic Church is still bleeding.
I mean, as far as I think the number is eight to one.
So for every convert, there's eight people leaving.
That can be primarily explained by two things.
One is Hispanics sort of assimilating across Texas, specifically also Arizona.
They just sort of attend non denominational evangelical churches.
Anecdotally, this is true.
I went to high school in San Antonio and ended up at like a mega church in high school, and it was full of second generation Hispanics who just sort of had no interest in Catholicism.
The second one is ethnic whites from major cities like Boston, New York, Baltimore, moving to red state, like suburban environments, and just kind of not sticking with the Catholicism thing.
Now, granted, a lot of them weren't like pious Catholics.
They were probably just Easter, Christmas, and that was it.
But they end up either becoming non religious or falling into, again, like evangelical churches.
So that's kind of why you're seeing an eight to one, again, Conversion to falling out of the church distinction.
So, there's a lot of issues there.
Also, I mean, we point this out all the time is like evangelicals, as soon as you stop attending church, you just say, I'm not religious.
But Catholics, even if they don't attend church, they will still identify as Catholic because it is like a minority identification, not like ethnic minority, but they are like a minority.
So, of course, they're going to sort of stick with that.
It's a very strong identity.
And then, yeah, in addition to that, even with young men, I'm still kind of skeptical as a young man because I'm like, I don't know if young men's, I mean, their political positions have changed because of the context changing, but I think young men have always dispensationally been.
Sort of right wing in the sense of they want to see upheavals, they want to see things change.
It's just now the Overton window is moving, so they're moving with it.
But, you know, I'm even skeptical that like a lot of young men, because I also see a lot of young men kind of tapping out where they'll tweet out something super based or they'll say something super based to their friends, but what are they actually doing on the ground?
Not very much.
And it's not their fault.
It's because most of their avenues to greatness have been cut off.
But I do think that's just the reality.
So it's another one of those things where I'm like, I'm not even sure if we should be.
Sort of relying on young men to save us.
Because if you look at, and this is again, this is a controversial, but it's just true, is again, when boomers die off, the political calculations for the right are going to be much tougher.
It's going to be a lot tougher to crunch numbers because boomers are like 75% white.
They're mostly evangelical, they're very religious.
So that's a reliable Republican voting block.
When you look at Zoomers, very diverse ethnically, very low religious participation rates, that's not as reliable of a voting block.
And even though, again, the New York Post is exclaiming these different data points that young men are sort of wisening up, so to speak.
I just, I'm very skeptical to just throw boomers out of the coalition and then like put all my eggs in the basket of like Zoomers.
I'm just, and I'm saying this as a 25 year old, like that's very right wing.
I'm just saying it's like, let's be a little realistic here, guys.
Yeah, no, I think you're absolutely right about that.
And part of the failing of Gen X and millennials has been we're not as good at building coalitions and organizations and movements as the boomers and the greatest generation were.
I mean, we saw that they built great institutions.
Liberty University is something that you could point out that Jerry Falwell did that while building the moral majority, which was a very successful coalition.
So I think we need to be talking more about Gen X's posture, and millennials kind of inherited this a little bit.
And I'm talking about my own generation when I'm saying Gen X. Just kind of sitting back as observers.
That's just sort of our generational pose, and it always has been that we just kind of sit back and cynically call balls and strikes.
But at a certain point, that's not enough.
You need leadership.
And I see your point about young men are not yet equipped and seasoned for leadership.
And so you have perhaps some of these young men who are ready to join something and do something, but nobody's organizing them except some of the worst elements, like a Nick Fuentes or something.
They seem to be a certain type is coalescing around him.
But that's not a movement that's ever going to win anything, and I don't want it to win anything.
So, how do we put together a winning coalition and a winning movement that is structured and organized and has leaders?
Because you cannot have any kind of successful movement without strong leadership.
And we've seen that in President Trump, that he actually did manage to build something new with strong leadership.
But, you know, I can tell you just quickly, anecdotally, I'm in a group with a lot of Protestants who talk about, you know, the Protestant impact on our current politics and what that's going to look like.
And they were kind of blackpilling.
Because the revolution came up and the discussion was, we don't have the kind of virtuous and educated public that we would need to do what they did.
And my thinking was, well, look, I don't know that that's true among the ordinary person in the revolutionary era.
I think they had some incredibly virtuous and educated men leading it.
Yeah, I mean, yeah, I mean, kind of to close, I guess, is that classic meme where it's like, when the system collapses, my ideology is going to rise out of the ashes and take over.
Yeah, I mean, just look, I suppose it sounds pretty conventional wisdom to say my closing thought is we have a very big, bad enemy in the left, and it is far from defeated.
So, what I would like to see is for, and I'm going to say this as like the older Gen Xer, the shenanigans to stop.
And let's get focused on that again.
That's really my message.
And you can find me at The Daily Wire.
You can find me on X at Meg Basham.
And you can find me on Instagram at Journalist Megan Basham.
And you can find my book.
Shepherds for sale, pretty much anywhere they sell books.
Again, like, you know, takes that are not in vogue right now.
That's certainly the case because of where all the energy is online.
But I do think quite a few people across the base, so to speak, will resonate with a lot of these sort of things, these topics that me and Megan discussed.
So, you know, I'm sure chat.
You know, all over the place on that, but I just think that's the reality of the situation.
Sorry, no one's.
I think, in close, I guess the thing is, no one's coming to save us.
That is 100% the case.
No one is coming to save us, unfortunately.
So, with that, let me go ahead and send you guys to the great Devorey Darkens.
Let's see, raid.
And I'll send you guys over that way.
Follow me on X and Instagram at Real Tape Brown.
We'll be back tonight for Timcast IRL at 8 p.m.
It's going to be a very, uh, Very hot show tonight.
There's no question about that.
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