Weekly Roundup: Trump, Vance, and Just War Theory + Pete's Pulp Fiction

This week, the quagmire in Iran turned into a Catholic quagmire in the United States,

as the Pope received attack after attack from not only Donald Trump, but remarks from

the Catholic Vice President, J.D. Vance, and the Protestant, Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson.

This was one of those weeks where it was hard to keep up with the various religious and

theological conflicts happening here in the United States.

Luckily, we are two religion scholars, trained in theology, ready to break it down for you

and anyone who will listen.

Lots to cover, let's go.

Welcome to Straight White American Jesus, I'm Brad O'Nisha, author of American Cesar,

How Theocards and Tech Lords are turning the United States into a monarchy, founder of

Axis Mindy Media, here today with my co-host Dan Miller, Professor of Religion and Social

Thought, Lamar College, glad to be with you Brad, getting over like my third cold of

the season, so just in case anybody hears me coughing or wheezing or anything, that's

what that will be.

So good times.

You ever had a dean or a smart business school person or a arrogant scientist say, oh,

who needs religion majors, that's the stupidest department on campus, why do we have the

humanities?

And I don't know, just weeks like this, I don't even need to say anything, just hold

up the week and be like, hey, here you go, we kind of need people who know about this

stuff.

And that's what we do.

We've been studying this stuff for two decades, we lived it.

This is who we are.

And, yeah, all right, even more importantly, Brad, if we get to it, if we get far enough

to delve into the world of Pete Hegseth this week, some of us are old enough to remember

Pulp Fiction.

So I think that that just builds relevant this week as well.

So, you know, this is like a, if you are a humanities person who is like elder millennial,

this week was just for you.

This was your week.

You know what I'm saying?

Because the Pulp Fiction, just war, it just, whoo, it's hard to keep up.

Okay.

So, everybody is aware that Donald Trump attacked the Pope and has started a quagmire of his

own doing here at home.

And I'll say quickly, Dan, I think he did that because he got his ass handed to him in

Iran.

He did not, he started a war he couldn't finish, he tried to bully Iran, Iran didn't

back down.

So, one Trump card pun intended in their back pocket, which was the state of form used,

the war just sort of turned into something real.

I will say this later, but I'll say it now, the Trump administration has no just war

theory.

They just thought, oh, it's just a war.

How hard could it be?

And it turned out it was a lot harder than they thought.

And so I think what Trump did is what he always did.

He's like, well, this isn't going well.

I didn't win.

Rather than admit I didn't win and fix it so people don't suffer.

I'll just start a fight with someone else.

I will argue that this quagmire of his own making in the United States, which is an attack

on the Pope, is going to cost him as much or more as what happened in Iran and we'll

get there.

Before we do that, run us through the summary so people are kind of caught up on what

happened this week.

And some of the back and forth, we'll get to JD Vance, we'll get to Mike Johnson, we'll

get to the US Catholic bishops responding, blah, blah, blah.

Let's get it.

Most of what sort of started here is Pope Leo issued a statement.

He did not cite the Trump administration.

He didn't specifically talk about Iran, but I think everybody knew what he had in view.

And I will read his statement because it was sort of started the whole thing.

He said, God is not blessed any conflict, anyone who's a disciple of Christ.

The Prince of Peace is never on the side of those who once wielded the sword and today

drop bombs.

Military action will not create space for freedom or times of peace, which comes only from

the patient promotion of coexistence and dialogue among people.

That's what he said.

Trump being Trump couldn't let it go.

And so he came unglued, issued as like a 334 word truth social diatribe says that the

Pope's week on foreign policy and week on crime and that he fears the Trump administration

and a whole bunch of stuff like this.

He then followed that.

This is almost an aside, but you know, one of the other weird things this week with the

AI generated image of him as Jesus, like healing someone and that created a bunch of backlash

from everybody, including even a lot of conservative Christians.

He later deleted it.

That's just a, that's like another thing we can do what we want with that.

The Pope then responds and I think this is what's kind of remarkable is that you get this

back and forth.

The Pope basically said that they're not afraid of the Trump administration and they'll

speak the gospel and that's what the church works for and so forth.

Trump then convenes like a Q&A session where he refused to apologize for the comments.

And among other things, he said this and I think this is what's going to be a theme as

we go along and we look at how other politicians responded this.

He said he went public.

I'm just responding to Pope Leo, like, you know, he started it.

I'm just responding, even though to reiterate Leo never mentioned Trump by name, he never

mentioned the Iran conflict and so forth.

Trump then also responded to the image of him as Jesus and said that he thought it was

like he was a red cross worker in it and didn't know he was Jesus.

Another aside thing to Trump, it's like either you make yourself look like the 25th amendment

should apply when you say things like that or you're just the liar that you are.

Yeah.

Well, so Caroline, leave it said that that was a doctor to image.

So, you know, I think everyone, a lot of folks listening have seen this already, but I'll

just, I'll just reiterate it and Google real quick.

Take a look.

Well, like, it seems like the talking point that Trump was supposed to say is that it

was a doctored image, but he went with, I was a doctor.

Yeah.

So it seems like that.

But I think secondly, it's like Caroline, Caroline, the, the image is AI.

Of course, it's a doctorate.

It's like an invented image.

Yes.

Thank you for that.

It's not a photo, Caroline.

It's not something that's been altered.

It's a doctored image.

So there's that.

I think third and, and I don't think we're going to just spend tons of time here.

There was real backlash to the Trump as Jesus thing.

There was a split in Maga Christianity over this.

Some people said that it's blasphemy.

He should take it down.

Franklin Graham said, oh, I believe him.

When he said he thought he was a doctor, Megan Basham said, I, I believe that too.

So anyway, that happened this week.

It deserves five hours of analysis, but nonetheless, we're going to keep going.

So what else?

Yeah.

So this brings us to JD Vance.

And first, you know, Trump spokesperson as, you mentioned, he's the Catholic Vice President.

And Fox News, he sort of took a softer line, said the Pope should stay in his lane, said

he should stick to matters of morality as if war and conflict is not related to morality.

But then later or in another event, I forget actually, which one came first.

It's, it's, no, the event, yes, it's a turning point USA channeling his, his inner Charlie

Kirk.

He still wants to be the heir apparent of that movement.

I think we have a clip of, of part of what he had to say there, he took a much firmer

line.

But when the, when the, when the Pope says that God is never on the side of those who will

the sword, there is the thousand year, more than a thousand year tradition of just war

theory.

Okay.

Now, we can of course have disagreements about whether this or that conflict is just, but

I think that it's important in the same way that it's important for the Vice President

United States to be careful when I talk about matters of public policy.

I think it's very, very important for the Pope to be careful when he talks about matters

of theology.

And I think that one of these issues here is that there has been, is, again, hey, random

dude screaming, I told you I'd respond to your point.

I just want to respond to this question first.

But I think one of the issues here is that if you're going to opine on matters of theology,

you've got to be careful, you've got to make sure it's anchored in the truth.

And that's one of the things that I try to do.

And it's certainly something I would expect from the clergy, whether they're Catholic

or Protestant.

Now, what I want to pause on here, and this is a thing that's going to come up, is

there at the end where he basically is like, yeah, you know, the Pope just doesn't understand

Catholic theology, IJD events, lay Catholic without any formal training.

I've been Catholic for 10 minutes.

I can't, I can't believe he doesn't know what just war theory is.

And this, this concept of just war theory is where I want to hover for a bit and turn

into the geeky academic religion scholar that I am.

This is where we can sort of earn our money today.

Let me, let me play a clip here, first, of what, of what Pope said yesterday.

Yeah, this is after JD.

So we got JD on Fox News.

We've got JD at TPUSA.

And then here's the Pope yesterday, after all of that.

World to those who manipulate religion and the very name of God for their own military,

economic or political gain, dragging that which is sacred into darkness and filth.

The masters of war pretended not to know that it takes only a moment to destroy.

Yet often a lifetime is often not enough to rebuild.

They turn a blind eye to the fact that billions of dollars are spent on killing and devastation.

Yet the resources needed for healing, education and restoration are nowhere to be found.

The world is being ravaged by a handful of tyrants.

It is held together by a multitude of supportive brothers and sisters.

They are the descendants of Abraham as numerous as the stars in the sky and the grains of sand

on the seashore.

So he says a handful of tyrants are destroying the world.

It takes a few seconds to destroy.

It takes a lifetime or a generation to build back up.

So all right.

So that leads into this whole just war theory.

Before you give us just war theory, can I also give you Mike Johnson on just war opinions?

All right.

So here's Mike Johnson who is Protestant and it brings up just war theory and says,

I'm going to surprise the Pope got involved.

Mike Johnson has never looked more like a weasel than in the last six months.

Like he looks like a little weasel who gets sent out every time JD Vance and Donald Trump

do something.

He has to go out there and be like, didn't see it.

I don't know.

Or he says things like, well, I'm kind of surprised that the Pope got involved.

I mean, the leader of a wide world church with 1.2 billion members that's been a political

entity for 2000 years.

Well, I can't believe he would have something to say about somebody threatening a nuclear

winter on an entire civilization, but that's just me.

It's just like it's just he's a weasel and he looks more and more like a weasel every

day.

I think he said several days back that something about those who engage in war, you know,

the Jesus doesn't hear their prayers or something.

You know, it is a very well settled matter of a Christian theology.

There's something called the just war doctrine.

There's a time to every purpose under heaven.

I think what the president's comments, what the vice president's comments reflect is

their understanding, deep and the, you know, the skiff and the classified briefings of

the stakes that are so high and the situation that we're facing and the fact that you had

the nation that was the largest sponsor of terrorism now having had that ability taken

away from them.

It's potentially millions of innocent people will be able to keep their lives and not

be killed by terrorists.

That's a good thing.

That's what's come out of this, okay?

I set the table for you.

We got JD.

We got the Pope.

We got Mike.

Yes.

What's that?

It's just worth it.

Yeah.

People are wondering if they hear this term, you know, just war theory and people arguing

about whether or not the Bible talks about war and whether God is ever on the side of

warriors and so forth.

So here it is.

So for the first two or three hundred years of Christian history, it was actually common

church teaching that Christians were required to be pacifists.

The understanding of Jesus' teachings was that they had to be pacifists.

Roman soldiers, for example, they're all kinds of debates about can somebody who's been

in the Roman army become a Christian?

Can a Roman soldier be a Christian if they've been in the army and, you know, and been

part of a warrior culture like this?

What do they have to do to a tone?

All of these kinds of questions.

But then the church runs into this problem.

Christianity becomes the favored and later official religion of the Roman Empire, which

of course was the world's most powerful empire built and maintained through military

conquest.

So the church around that time had to basically come up with a way to make war okay, you

get this like, it's my very sort of cynical take on the on Christian doctrine and the

history of it.

Suddenly the church is the church of power and has to find a way to make warfare alright.

And it's, it's an actual doctrine developed primarily by Augustin.

That's the name that will really get attached to this later thinkers like Thomas Aquinas,

you know, some of the big hitters in the history of specifically Catholic theology developed

this theory.

But just war theory has become influential far beyond the confines of like narrow theological

discussions.

If you take an ethics class and you talk about conflict or warfare, just war theory

will be brought up.

You find a lot of public figures that just talk about this or even a lot of international

conventions on warfare are arguably built around the concept of just war theory.

So it's a really significant theory.

But but here's, here's what it is.

I'm going to be really nerdy for a minute and just lay it out.

Basically there are sort of two main pieces of this that we're concerned with.

The first is that it's supposed to give a justification for going to war in Latin.

It's the the use of bellum, which basically means you have to have good reasons, moral

reasons for going to war and that you have to have just conduct in war or use in bellow.

So basically it's saying there are moral reasons for going to war and there are sort

of parameters you have to operate within the conduct of warfare to make it just.

What are some of the reasons that would make it just to go to war?

You have to have a just cause.

You have to have a real wrong, such as self-defense.

And that's typically self-defense is usually like the standard sort of piece of this.

There has to be a legitimate authority declaring war.

You have to have right intention that you have to be seeking to redress injustice, not

to seize territory or power.

It has to be the last resort.

You have to have exhausted all peaceful alternatives, proportionality that the benefits of the war

have to outweigh the potential destruction and you have to have a reasonable chance of

success.

Those are all things that are supposed to go into justifying a war.

And then the conduct in the war is that combatants have to be distinguished between enemy combatants

and civilians.

The concept of proportionality that the violence used has to be proportionate to the objective

and that there should be no intrinsically unethical means that are used.

And the way that that's interpreted now is kind of interpreted as methods that are forbidden

by international law, such as atrocities or certain weapons and so forth.

So that's just war theory.

And if you look at that, you can see why people would question whether or not this meets

any of those parameters.

Was there a legitimate authority in the U.S. it's supposed to go through Congress, not

the president?

We've talked about that.

Was it the last resort?

It wasn't.

The proportionality ad-bellum that is proportionality and the justification and in the conduct,

Trump has been threatening war crimes for weeks.

We talk about the way that Hegseth talks about raining down destruction and disproportionate

attacks on that.

So all of that is why you would get those in the Catholic tradition who would say this

is not, this is not a just war.

And then to back that up, at the same time, you've got JD Vance telling the Pope, well,

I guess the Pope doesn't understand just war theory.

That's kind of weird or referring to him as a Catholic clergy member when he's in fact

the head of the Catholic Church.

On Thursday, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops posted a statement on their website

in response to public comments like the comments made by Vance.

And this was really interesting.

The statement was offered by Bishop James Massa, I believe is how you say his name.

He's the chairman of the Committee on Doctrine.

So what is the Committee on Doctrine?

It is the Committee task with upholding, interpreting and teaching the Catholic faith.

So in other words, to the JD Vances of the world who say, I can't believe the Pope doesn't

understand just war theory.

The Council of Bishops says, so hey, we've got our Catholic theology experts and here's

what they had to say.

So I'm just going to read through this and then we can sort of dive in from there.

They say for over a thousand years, the Catholic Church has taught just war theory and is

that long tradition, the Holy Father carefully references in his comments on war.

A consistent, neat tenant of that thousand year tradition is a nation can only legitimately

take up the sword in self-defense.

Once all peace efforts have failed and it sites the Catechism of the Catholic Church.

That is the official teaching of the church.

That's a direct quote.

That is, they go on to be a just war.

It must be a defense against another who actively wages war, which is what the Father

actually said, quote, he does not listen to the prayers of those who wage war.

So they're contextualizing what they say, Pope Leo said, highlighting the ways in which

the current Iran conflict violates the tenants of just war theory.

And they go on to say when Pope Leo speaks as supreme pastor of the universal church.

That's sort of his official title.

He is not merely offering opinions on theology, JD Vance.

He's not just a Catholic clergy member.

He is preaching the gospel and exercising his ministry as the vicar of Christ.

The consistent teaching of the church is insistent that all people of goodwill must

pray and work toward lasting peace while avoiding the evils and injustices that accompany

all wars.

End quote.

Not saying we all need to be beholden to Catholic theology or anything else, but this

all sort of contextualizes this language of just war and the mire that the Trump administration

is now created with the Catholic Church and I think opens up a number of pathways for

us to reflect on what's been going on this week.

Yeah.

Well, let me take off my like, you know, I, yeah, take a Catholic, just war theory hat.

Take take take a breath.

Let's take a break.

We'll come back and we'll analyze everything we just that we just heard from Dan about

all these events.

Okay, Dan.

So here's here's a couple of ways for me to start on this Trump and Vance and Johnson

and now they're lackeys who will get to later will get to the sort of third rate back

Vance Republicans who are who are jumping into the fray here.

They've started something that I think was inevitable, but I did not think we would see

this early.

And what I mean by that is I have said for a while that there are potential fishers

in the Christian nationalist coalition in this country because there are actual differences

theologically, doctrinally, ecclesiastically, and just in terms of lived experience, networks,

money, et cetera, between Catholics and Protestants in the United States, okay?

And I said that, you know, if the dog ever catches the tail, if they ever can appoint their

American Caesar or their, their, their Protestant Pinochet or their, their, you know, American

Franco, whatever, somebody's going to be disappointed because it's going to be a Catholic

appointment, a Protestant appointment, a technocratic appointment, whatever.

Trump has only sped that up.

I think what has happened here and I'll just, I'll say it, something I said already is

that because Iran has gone so poorly in terms of approval numbers in terms of losing,

you know, service members lives in terms of killing 16, 17,000 civilians in terms of

a 20 to 30 billion dollar bill.

It's all gone so bad.

There has been such lack of support at home and abroad that he had to pick another fight

and now we're all talking about the other fight.

So in some sense, we're doing exactly what he wants.

We're not talking about the Epstein files, we're talking about Iran, we're not talking

about Iran, we're talking about his fight with the Pope.

But this has real world consequences and we'll get there in a minute.

So I think that's number one.

But I think one of the reasons that this is getting underneath the skin of people like

Vance and Trump and Johnson is that there's a moral authority coming into play here that

other people will listen to, okay?

And I'm not the first one to say that, right?

There's been a lot of folks who've offered that idea.

But if we go back to just war, we have this, we have this sort of framework of like, well,

if you have to wage war, here's how you do it.

Okay.

And it is a long tradition and it does offer a kind of way to understand how to engage

in conflict if that's what you have to do.

Now I don't think you are, I are here to defend the Catholic Church.

We're not here to defend Augustine.

But I want to just go through like a very, you know, we don't get to do this very often.

Can I just take you through like a very basic, domestic point, Thomas Aquinas?

Are you ready for this?

So excited, Brian.

Augustine's pretty much the progenitor of the just war theory.

You know, there's a lot of other folks to pick up on it.

But I'm going to mention Aquinas and then I'm going to mention Lombard.

This is just a great day.

It's really great.

So Aquinas works on this idea that like evil and sin are a lack, okay?

I'm wondering if your Tomistic ears agree with me.

But basically, for Thomas Aquinas, the privation theory of being that's a lack of the

being.

It's not a substantive being in its own right.

Yes.

Dared.

Just come on, just a tonal pro on the other end of the mic over here.

Evil is a privation of being.

It's a lack.

It is something that you don't have, okay?

So war for Aquinas and war for the just war tradition is always a lack of peace.

Now it may be a necessary evil, but it is always an evil.

It is always a lack of peace, but it's never good, it's never a positive.

And there were even medieval theologians like Lombard and others who would say, look, yes,

if you have to go into war, you go into war.

But if you kill someone in war, you might have to do penance for quite some time within

the confines of the setting, I should say, of your spirituality and within the church,

because you've killed someone, okay?

So what we get with just war theory is the idea that you already did this, but we can

go point by point.

You only wage war if you have to.

You only wage war if you've been attacked first.

You only wage war and waging is even the wrong word.

You only enter into war if you have no other viable alternative.

And when you do that, you don't kill civilians.

When you do that, you use proportionality.

You don't threaten to drop bombs such that you end somebody's civilization.

So if we wanted to do a scorecard and like have, you know, Dana White at the podium there,

like, you know, scoring the weather or not, this lines up with just war theory, Trump's

conflict in Iran.

I think it would get a zero out of ten in terms of it's like checking any of the boxes

for a just war.

So there is like, there's no sense in which JD Vance a Catholic has any ground to stand

on or Mike Johnson, a Protestant when they mentioned the Pope and just war.

Not only is it in a front as a Catholic from JD Vance to the Holy Father, but it is also

just their theology is is poor here because there's no, there's no stick to stand on here

when it comes to arguing that whatever is happening in Iran is a just war.

There's just not.

And Trump can say all the time, well, I guess the Pope wants a nuclear weapon.

And that's just that's not at all with the Pope saying nobody thinks Iran has a nuclear

weapon right now.

Their capability has been diminished.

I mean, it's it's a complete false.

It's a red herring.

It's it's not it's not real.

So those are my initial thoughts on the this does not line up with just war in any sense.

It does not fit any of the criteria.

And I think that Johnson and Vance kind of think that they can just fire back here at

the Pope in a way that might be effective.

And I think this is going to truly backfire on them like truly, but anyway, further thoughts

on this.

I want to I want to get into a couple more things here when it comes to that the Pope and and

Trump.

But what else what else you got after taking a breath.

A couple more things.

I think related to what you're saying one is again, being a person of a certain age.

The last time this came up in the US context was with the war in Iraq, the United States

led and so forth.

And the same question came up then because it was a war of preemption.

And folks might remember and then go back and look, this the just war thing came up.

And it was much more muddy for people because there was this argument that there was kind

of an imminent threat from Iraq.

The difference is the Trump administration keeps saying that, but they haven't given any

evidence of anything.

So you had the Bush administration trying to show that there were W and D in Iraq and

all of that.

Of course, that all ended up being false and misleading in questions about whether they

knew it was false or not.

But the point is there was an effort to meet the standard of just war theory and say it

was preemptive, but it was an act of self defense, et cetera.

You don't even have that here.

You've just had this blind invocation of the concept and there are a number of things

here.

But quite frankly, I think Mike Johnson and and JD Vance are like, they like the undergrad

who, you know, I don't know, they read the intro textbook thing and they throw out some

big words.

Yeah.

And maybe to some regular person out there, they're like, Oh, oh, just war theory.

Oh, just I'm about the order of Morris.

You're using Latin terms and things.

Oh, that must be big.

Only this time they went up against the PhD like professor, the person who teaches the

dog distinguished, the distinguished professor who's written 10 books on that.

Yeah.

Okay.

Let me tell you what that means.

And so I think they're just, they're on one hand, just tell them where they're in

over their heads.

I think they pick the fight with the wrong person.

You want to argue with somebody about just war theory?

Don't, don't go like poking at the Pope of all people or the US Council of Bishop.

So I think that there's that piece.

I think we've seen this play before and it's interesting.

And I think it's worth noting and shows all kinds of things about the Trump administration,

whether it's just hubris, whether it's a disinterest in learning lessons from the past,

of not having looked at the Bush administration and what happened with the war in Iraq on this

very issue and so on.

To your other point though about the, the, the sort of division within Mogoland, I think

it's significant because you have a weird coalescence here on one hand.

You had already a lot of that super hard core America first piece of Mogga that never liked

this military action in Iran.

They saw this as a violation of what Trump said, America first, not being interventionist

and whatever.

And you've also had a certain subset of American Catholics who have sort of been moving in

the Mogga circles.

You got the, the hard line JD Vance, rad trad Catholics, but you've got some others who

are sort of like there that they care about what the Pope says.

They have an intuition that this feels weird.

And so you have this, an expansion of some of those schisms or those splits that you're

talking about on one hand, a kind of super nationalist America first piece, but also a certain

kind of Catholic American, a certain kind of Catholic voter who now is not comfortable

with what is going on.

Partly because the Pope said this, but partly because Trump and Vance are busy yelling

at the Pope.

And I think that that's an interesting dynamic to continue watching as we go forward and

see what, what the outcome of this can be.

Well, and if you don't think that's real, Robert P. Jones has a great piece that's

upstack today about this.

And he shows you that white Catholic voters are people that do flip.

We've talked a lot about Latino voters.

We've talked a lot about religious Latino voters and black voters, but white Catholic

voters are not white evangelical voters.

They, they, if you look at 2016, 2020, 2024, there is some movement there.

We'll see that I think now into the midterms.

I think we're going to see some of that movement at play.

So if you think that this is just a lock that a white Catholic in, in, you know, Worcester

Mass or in Pittsburgh or, you know, wherever across the country is just going to be on the

side of the president here, there is a sense of like, well, no.

And I think I, I, I, before we move on, I want to touch on JD Vance and I think this

is going to play into some stuff you've been talking about with Josh Holly.

Why would JD Vance say this so flippantly?

Like, is, can he be this dumb?

So I just want to take a minute on JD Vance here, if you don't mind.

And like, why would JD say this?

Like for, even for a Catholic convert who's not been a Catholic for very long to come out

and say that the Pope should be careful or the Pope should stick to matters of morality

is just breathtaking in its imbicility.

But also it's like, read the room, drizzler.

Like the drizzler just is the kind of guy that like walks into a funeral and is like,

oh, bad traffic getting here, huh, everyone?

And you're like, bro, what?

Aunt Joan died, shut up about the traffic.

Why would he say this?

And I think one thing that, that you and I really want to touch on and we've, we've touched

on for a long time on this show is that for a certain, a certain person, Christian nationalism,

the conversion to Catholicism on JD's part, the 36 year old dad who goes to the mega church

in his neighborhood, even though he's never been a Christian and now all he can talk

about is I am Charlie, Charlie Kirk.

There's a deep sense to me there that especially men in those categories are buying into a world

view of authority, of order, of a sense that, oh, as a man, I have a great place in this

framework.

I'm the head of the household, I have power, I have reverence and I get to impose on

the world what is this sense of like right and wrong, good and bad, clean and dirty, us

and them.

Like when I see the Mark Wahlbergs of the world out there being super Catholic these days

or the Chris Pratt's, when I see like, especially white men, but not just white men who are in

their 30s and 40s and 50s going down this road, I always think, oh, your Christianity

is going to be a Christianity of order and authority and imposition.

It's never that like contemplative, vulnerable, oh, you started reading Thomas Merton, oh,

you discovered Meister Eckhart, oh, you really got into the idea of peace and a radical

kingdom of God.

No, it's always going to be these dudes who are super into a certain way of being hit.

And here's the words, like if we did a little word bubble, the words we would get would

be like father, husband, Christian, American, patriot, heritage, tradition, history, bourbon,

whiskey, cigar, mahogany, like these are the words that would come up.

Anyway, you've been talking about this with Josh Hawley, like I'm sure you've got more

eloquent ways to say this than me.

Yeah, there's a few things there.

Why, you know, when you talk about why would you say this?

Man, say this.

It's also the way that he says it, that this sort of casual drop is one piece of it is

just the casualness that meant like it's supposed to pass his knowledge.

I can just throw this out because I know a lot about it and you're like, cool, like what

do you know about it?

Like what is it?

Can you explain it to me?

And of course, he wouldn't be able to.

But I think there's this thing.

So I'm going to back up again.

Like you said, this is the religious scholars day, you know, here.

There's an old, old, old kind of philosophy of religion, kind of question or conundrum

predates Christianity, ancient Greek thinkers pose this question, but it's one that comes

into Christianity too.

And it was the question of does God do what is right because it's right or does something

become right because God does it or God wills it?

And it's this fundamental debate that that cuts through the whole Christian tradition

and it's still sort of there.

In other words, when God commands something, does he do it because it's the right thing

to do?

Or is it just because he is all powerful?

So anything he wills by definition is good because he wills it.

JD Vance and his Catholicism, lots of forms of Protestantism, the petexess of the world,

so many of the broy kind of return to Christianity that you're describing, it answers it that

ladder away.

Whatever God does is good because God is a God of order and power.

Not God is a good God who uses order and power to bring about the good.

God is all powerful.

God is power.

And so anything that God wills or powers becomes good.

And I think in my view, what that means is that once you adopt that theology, it's not

a long stretch to say, well, whatever is an exercise of power is good.

If God is power and God does things and that makes it good, then if we exercise power

and we impose order through power, that becomes good.

That becomes our God.

And I think that that is part of the draw of this when you have the most privileged segments

of society and so forth, you're latching onto this theology as you're highlighting.

But I think that's why you also get this notion that I think it is inconceivable to

j...

They're not interested in considering the possibility.

But I think it's inconceivable to JD Vance or Mike Johnson or Pete Hegseth that you

could have an American war that would be unjust.

Why?

Because it's an act of power.

The fact that it's an act of power and it's something that America is doing, imposing

an order on the world, bringing order into chaos or all the language that they'll use,

that means that by definition, it becomes good.

And it's just a simple slide of the idolatry of Christian nationalism.

It's the nation as God.

That's what Christian nationalism extolls.

Not really where a bunch of Christians we're going to retake our nation, but the nation

becomes God.

The American power is the God of Christian nationalism.

And that's what you see.

Dare I say the leader becomes Jesus?

I don't know, Dan.

Is that...

That's crazy, man.

That's crazy.

Yeah.

Yeah.

A bunch of doc dodgy images.

Yeah.

Interesting.

Yeah.

All right.

Sorry.

I didn't mean to cut you out.

No, that was just it.

It's just that you get this kind of inversion of just war theory.

Or by definition, anything America does is just.

And we could just go from there.

I think that's right.

So one thing that JD asks in his typical reply guy manner in this whole thing is, you

know, did the church oppose, we're two in fighting the Nazis, okay?

You know, did the church oppose D-Day and liberation and all that?

And, you know, there's Vincent Miller, you know, is a Catholic theology chair at the University

of Dayton and he spoke to America magazine this week and he says, look, the church condemned

the conduct of total war in World War II, such as the obliteration bombing of cities.

Exactly.

What Trump was threatening to do to Iran?

Yes.

Exactly.

Like, Miller goes on.

The vice president's answer shows he has much to learn about what the church actually

teaches about peace and war.

So like JD wants to give you the reply guy like, whoa, what about D-Day?

Is the pope going to be against that?

What about deliberating Dekka?

Was that?

What about, you know?

Actually, when the grown-ups do theology, it's nuanced and it's complex.

When the grown-ups do ethics and try to figure out right and wrong, it's nuanced and complex

because that's how the world is.

But additionally, JD tried to reply guy the pope and like, he can do that in sometimes.

But he just looks like that smug 41 year old who thinks he knows everything and I think

he looks really, really stupid here.

I want to take a break and then I want to come back and take exactly what you said about

the nation becomes God.

And I want to apply it to Pete Hegseth and his viral pope fiction moment.

We'll be right back.

Okay.

So everybody by now has seen the fact that that Pete Hegseth prayed a prayer that came

from from pope fiction.

And first of all, shout out to the guy who's been on this from the beginning and that

is Brian Kailer.

Brian Kailer dropped this.

He broke the story.

He's been paying attention to the worship services at the Pentagon.

He is the guy.

If you want to think anybody, it's Brian Kailer at word and way.

He is the one.

So Brian Kailer, come get your flowers.

Come to the podium, please, because you're the one who gave us this.

So he says Hegseth, when he praised the prayer, the prayers titled, C-S-A-R-2517, which stands

for combat search and rescue.

And alludes to the fact that it borrowed some wording from Ezekiel 2517.

So the prayer that Hegseth prays in the viral clip is combat search and rescue 2517.

It's like a stock prayer that's sort of part of the practice of this and so forth.

Yeah.

Now here's my wager, Dan, is that most people watching or listening to this have seen

Colbert make the joke, they've seen YouTube videos, they've heard podcasts, everybody

is making fun of it.

And that means the Facebook, the Instagram, it's everywhere, Pete Hegseth, dressed in

all manner of different pulp fiction characters, Uma Thurman, Bruce Willis, everybody.

Okay.

Good for you, Pete.

I'm going to be a little bit of the stick in the mud here and point you to something

that I think is the actual story.

And that is, yes, it's funny.

Make fun of him, pulp fiction, go for it.

I don't think he thought this was a Bible verse.

I think that's wrong to say that.

I think if you see like a YouTube video or an Instagram, I don't think he was actually

thinking this is a Bible verse.

I think he thought it was a stock prayer, as you just said, Dan.

But let me read you from Brian Kailer's sub stack on this at word and way or his newsletter

on this at word and way.

The last two sentence of the prayer, do mirror language from Ezekiel, except the speaker

is changed from being God to the commander of the US mission.

So when the prayer is prayed, I will execute great vengeance on them.

I will lay vengeance on them.

When you get that language about vengeance and me delivering pain, right, in Ezekiel,

it's God.

Okay.

But in the prayer, it's the commander of the US mission, ostensibly the president.

Dan, I don't know.

I heard you say five minutes ago that in the Christian nationalist understanding of

Hegseth of advance of my Johnson, the nation becomes God, the leader of the nation becomes

right.

The representative of God.

And so even Hegseth's prayer to bring in a prayer where the person speaking about

the vengeance is not God who is the creator of the universe and the one who will decide

the judge, the alpha and the omega, but is the commander of the US mission is an even

further revelation of how these guys think about faith, the divine and their ability to

say, yes, we will go kill people.

We will go destroy civilizations.

We will attack girl schools.

We will end the lives of 17,000 civilians.

And yeah, that's what God wants because we represent God and we pray in the voice and

name of God when we pray.

Sorry, I know Dan, we would probably get more clicks and we would get more likes and

we'd get more people if we just did a whole make fun of Hegseth as a human thermon, Bruce

Willis, Pulp Fiction thing.

I think the actual story is this, I got a lot of weird questions, man.

So when I first came across this, I first, I first saw the headline of like, Pete Hegseth,

channels, Pulp Fiction, whatever.

And I start looking at it.

And then I find out that there is this like search and rescue prayer, that's like a

stock thing that's clearly modeled on Pulp Fiction, like, what the hell did that come

for?

Like, I don't know.

I had not had time to go into the background of like, who wrote this and like, who was the

Pulp Fiction fan who was like, but you know, was somebody trailing Pete Hegseth?

Did they want him to look like there's a whole wise, the search and rescue thing all

about killing people and stuff.

That's a whole, that's a separate, whatever.

But also once upon a time when I watched Pulp Fiction and that scene with Samuel L. Jackson

where he says this, I remember as a Bible student at a Southern Baptist college, I was

like, is that what Ezekiel says?

I don't feel like that's what he's, and I remember I went and looked it up.

It was like, oh, it's like mostly a bunch of made up stuff and then like an illusion

to Ezekiel, because like, let's face it, it sounds cooler than what Ezekiel said.

Okay.

Fine.

Whatever.

I think that there's a good chance that Hegseth, like the Pulp Fiction version, he might

well have thought that's what the Bible says, because I don't think Pete Hegseth actually

cares what the Bible says.

I think like most of these Christian nationalists, when they appeal to the Bible, it's usually

virtue signaling.

It's like, it's like a stating their tribe.

They don't actually know what the Bible says, but to your point, this isn't isolated

to this.

I tell undergraduates all the time when they're reading text, you got to be really careful

to look for the quotation marks sometimes, because like, what you're reading, is it what

the author is saying?

Are they quoting what somebody else is saying, like, who's the speaker in the text?

And in the Hebrew Bible, there are lots and lots and lots of passages where you have

the prophets who, it's in quotation marks, and ostensibly they are conveying a message

from God.

That's what a prophet is, a messenger.

And this is one of those things.

And so there are often places in the Hebrew Bible where God is the speaker.

And even though you get all that first person language, I this and that, whatever, but it's

God, but conservative Christians and Christian nationalists do this all the time, where they

just invoke the passage, I will blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and be like, this is how

we've been empowered as Christians to do this and whatever you're like, whoa, that was

actually your quoting God.

Like you are abrogating the role of God.

Is that, are you sure?

Are you sure?

That's okay.

Like, you want to go that direction.

You can.

So I think that you're exactly correct to pick that up in that prayer.

I think you're exactly correct to pick up Hexas use of it.

I just want to amplify that and say if we were to do like a full discourse analysis of

the kinds of passages, the Christian nationalists like all these violence and violence and executing

judgment and wrath and so forth, it'd be interesting to go and do a deep dive on how

many of those are prophetic quotations of things that God has said that are then simply picked

up as the mission of the nation and the nation becomes God.

That is the highest good is the nation.

God just becomes a kind of empty vessel that you can fill up and try to make it seem

legitimate that you're doing that.

But nationalism is just a form of, you know, the worship of the nation, among other things.

That's all it is.

And we see that on a regular basis.

But there's this assumption by these men that, of course, they have the right to put themselves

into the place of the God who's saying in the first person, I, you know, the first person

singular, I wage war.

I, of course, because what does God do?

That exercises power, wages war and I can wage war and exercise power.

Therefore, yeah, I'm, I'm a divine figure.

Here we are.

That's exactly right.

No, I do want to say, this is just worth pointing out and, and I, it may seem silly,

but whatever, JD Vance, once again, continues to attach himself to TPUSA, as he said.

So he made these comments about the Pope at a TPUSA event at the University of Georgia.

And Matthew Bodie was, was there.

He's a, somebody who wrote a book on Charlie Kirk and he was the first one on social media

who I saw talking about this.

The TPUSA event was like one tent full.

Nobody was there.

Erica Kirk pulled out, okay, extensively saying fears of threats and so forth, but they've

said that there was no sign of any indication of, of threats to her.

If I recall Dan and I'm working on memory here, it's not in front of me.

I do believe that vice president of the United States has a secret service detail.

Does that strike you as true or does?

I think I've heard that.

It does.

Okay.

All right.

Good.

Yeah.

We'll have to check it later, but I do think he has a secret service detail.

I do think they're probably abreast of all of the threats and intelligence that they come

through with.

They'll protect him.

No, no, no, no.

Somebody else get assassinated like, you know, on stage, but they're just, yeah, they're

not going to sweep the building or anything.

They're not going to check everybody for weapons.

They're not going to do any of that.

You know, they're just, yeah, it was a ridiculous notion, which I'm suggesting means I think

there were other reasons why Erica Kirk backed out of the event.

Well, because no one was there.

And I think that, you know, I think that's all clear.

I think one of the things that we should notice here is that a year ago, it felt as if

the onslaught from the Trump administration was unbearable and unrelenting and we would

never be able to fight back.

And a year later, we are in a place where there is utter chaos in this administration period.

I mean, the numbers for the midterms look terrible.

There is no momentum on any front, the economy on, on foreign policy, on the religious front.

I mean, there is just, there's division all over the board and TPUSA, which was once

the beacon and the hope of the younger generation of Christian nationalists in this country that

looked after Charlie Kirk's death like it was going to be this behemoth, this juggernaut

is having things like this happen.

And JD Vance has continued to attach himself to it.

Who has not lashed out at the Holy Father, Dan, after being stood up on a date?

I mean, if you're trying to cheat on your spouse and meet up with your, you know, your

paramour and they, they don't show up, you're going to get mad and you're going to start

yelling stuff.

You don't mean.

And I think maybe we should just give JD a benefit of the doubt.

Parker Kirk didn't show up.

He was hurt.

He was feeling vulnerable.

He started saying things he didn't mean.

Maybe he'll realize that later.

I don't know.

Let's take a break.

And last one of the day, we'll come back and we'll do an extended segment here on Hex

F and then on the back bench, Republicans trying to defend Trump.

Okay, Dan, here's a piece of what we just talked about.

Nation as God, men of authority who take the role of God in the nation because they think

they represent power and authority, a deity that is an empty vessel just for men to wage

war, an imposition and conflict.

And I can already see the emails now.

I can see the folks in our mentions on Facebook, people who are like, you guys are ridiculous.

You have Trump Trump arrangement syndrome.

You're just angry ex even Jill calls.

And I just, you know, maybe they're right.

So I want to give Pete Hex a chance to defend himself and just see if he would even ever

consider comparing Donald Trump to God or Jesus.

I mean, I just want it like, you know what Pete, let's be fair.

You have hearsay.

Go ahead.

Here's Pete talking about it.

Our press are just like these Pharisees.

Not all of you, not all of you, but the legacy Trump hating press.

You're politically motivated animus for President Trump nearly completely blinds you from the

brilliance of our American warriors.

The Pharisees scrutinized every good act in order to find a violation, only looking for

the negative.

The hardened hearts of our press are calibrated only to impune.

I would ask you to open your eyes to the goodness, the historic success of our troops, the

courage of this president and this historic moment for a deal that could end the Iranian

nuclear threat, the incredible battlefield victory laid before your eyes.

The not one, but two incredible rescue missions, miracles, you might say.

So according to Pete Hexath, the press in the United States are the Pharisees.

Now I want to just say clearly that his conception of the Pharisees is a super sessionist, borderline

anti-Semitic understanding of the Pharisees.

In certain brands of Christianity, the Pharisees are always sort of seen as these enemies of

Jesus and God.

And the Pharisees historically were much different than that.

There's a much more complex picture to the Pharisees than whatever Pete Hexath or Christian

nationalist pastors telling you.

So that's one I'm not going to go in on that forever.

But two, Dan, he says, like the press doesn't recognize basically the miracles that are

happening like the fair, like the Pharisees are the ones who see Jesus, heal people and

are like, nah, he didn't do that.

The press sees the miracles of Trump.

Huh.

So in this story, Pete, Trump is Jesus.

I mean, Trump wouldn't dare compare himself to Jesus, wait a minute, okay.

It seems as if Dan, it kind of seems as if the nation is God.

The leader of the nation is the Messiah.

And Hexath and Johnson and Vance are willing just to go into a kind of public sphere and

argue for that on a Christian nationalist basis.

Pete Hexath said it himself, thoughts here before we go to the backbenchers and they're

telling the Pope to stay out of politics.

Just to add that again, this isn't new.

We heard, we've heard the Messianic stuff about Trump since the first administration.

He's, he's Cyrus the Persian allowing the, you know, who allowed the Jewish people to

return to their homeland.

He's going to bring religion back to America like it was explicitly Messianic language

that was used about him.

Remember the whole thing with him signing the Bibles, autographing Bibles and all of that

stuff.

And now we have this like, this is not new.

This is just, it's just more.

And so it's, it's almost weirder that people like this week are like, oh my gosh.

How dare you compare Trump like they've been comparing Trump to Jesus for like 10 years.

And like, like this isn't new.

It's maybe more explicit, but it's not going anywhere.

And as you say, it's like example after example, we could not make it up if we had to.

Franklin Graham, Twitter, I do not believe President Trump would know only to pick

himself as Jesus Christ.

That would certainly be inappropriate.

I'm thankful that he took it down or made it clear that that's not what he thought.

Sure.

Forbued.

Sure.

Forbued.

Okay.

Cool.

Megan Basham said the same thing paraphrasing.

So whatever.

I just think that if you want to take a thesis away from today, it's this idea that if you

turn the nation into God, you turn the leader of the nation into the Messiah and into the

divine figure.

And then you have to defend that.

And if anybody says otherwise, like the Pope says, this is immoral.

This is not right.

Actually, God does not with you on this.

You get so threatened that if you're JD Vance or your Mike Johnson or your Pete Hexath,

you just start losing it.

And that is what I think we've seen this week.

So that's there.

Now, this all trickles down.

We all know that once Trump says something, they have to write up talking points and then

they have to like go find people out to sort of defend this and articulate like, you

know, some sort of like rationale for what is happening.

So Trump's picked a fight with the Pope.

Here's Troy Neils, a representative from Texas, talking about his take on what's happened

with the Pope and Trump and the back and forth of comments and so on.

He reacted to Donald Trump's comments on the Pope over the weekend.

I've probably say the Pope needs to keep his business into leading his flock.

So to speak, leading the church and probably stay out of the political arena.

He doesn't need to be getting involved in the political arena.

Go lead your church, but stay out of the politics, right?

We didn't elect the Pope to be the president or be the anything else.

So just keep his nose in the church's business and stay out of the political arena.

But what if he sees his role as sort of leading his flock away?

Lead his flock.

Well, let's focus on just behavior to do it, everything else.

Just focus on your flock and Donald Trump is our president.

It's not the Pope.

I didn't elect the Pope to be president.

Smoking a cigar, looking smug and tough and machismo as he walks up the steps.

Swagger, John Wayne, I just think you should stick to his own flock.

Lead your church and we'll take care of the world.

The Marlboro man walks in the Congress.

Thanks Troy.

Appreciate that.

Here's Elise Stephaniek, who lost like three jobs after I think Elise thought she was

going to be in the Pambondi role or the Marcarubio role and now she's on CNN are going

with Deborah Brown about the Pope.

But it is notable, he's attacking the first American Pope and it is Republicans who are

Catholic.

The Pope should not be attacking.

The Pope from my perspective should not be engaging in political attacks.

I don't want to see the Pope as a politician.

I want to see the Pope continue to focus on this this research that we're seeing in the

Catholic Church.

He's not the gospel as he has said.

He says I'm not getting involved in politics and focusing on the gospel.

You don't see it that way.

I don't believe that the Pope should function as a politician.

President Trump is a political leader and he is a strong political leader.

So I was disappointed to see that attack from the Pope and I know CNN wants to continue

to focus on these tweets.

This is what has been happening for the past 10 years.

Look at the results.

Look at historically the historic number of support from Catholics for President Trump

from Catholics for House Republicans as well.

Now, if we want to top it off, here is Donald Trump's really good friend, Sean Hannity,

theologian par excellence, give it to a Sean.

Chains that law.

But right on cue, Pope Leo the 14th is now seemingly more interested in spreading left-wing

politics and the actual teachings of Jesus Christ as the AP put it, Pope Leo amplified

his condemnation of America's conflict with Iran saying that God does not bless any conflict

and certainly doesn't side with those who drop bombs.

Well, first that is simply not biblically accurate.

The Bible contains over 400 references to war, frequently depicting God as authorizing,

demanding, intervening in battles like one that we all know, the battle between David

and Goliath.

Why is the Pope twisting religion to specifically attack only President Trump and the US?

Why did he recently meet with Top Obama advisor David Axelrod and the far-left governor

of Illinois, JB Pritzker?

Is it because he's a run of the mill Trump-pating Democrat that lacks moral clarity about radical

Islam?

By the way, did he talk to them about abortion?

Well, in that case, you know, where are the pointed words for Iran?

This evil regime, the number one state-sponsored terror.

All three of them are giving us the line that the Pope should stay out of politics.

And I could talk for 16 hours about this.

I want to make a very clear point as we start to head toward the last 15 or 20 minutes

of today.

Christian Nationalists will always say things like we didn't elect a pastor, stay out of

politics, but they will never say we did not elect a pastor, Donald Trump, Pete Hexeth,

Mike Johnson.

So you stay out of theology.

You stay out of faith.

Christian Nationalism works on a one-way street.

It gives more and more theological and religious authority to the government.

And it takes less and less and less away from actual Christian institutions.

And Christian Nationalists are so happy when the government, the leader of the nation,

which, as you just said, Dan represents God, the nation as God.

They're so happy when they get the approval of the leader of the nation.

So yesterday, Sean Foyte, the Christian Nationalist Trubidor, with sideshow bob hair,

was at the White House leading worship.

And they're singing in the White House.

Pray songs that, you know, come from Bethel.

They love when the government, as God, approves of them.

Mike Johnson, do you remember, Dan, when he became Speaker of the House, compared

himself to Moses?

Pete Hexeth is praying prayers where the commander of the war is in the place of God and saying,

we will get vengeance on you.

But when the Pope says something about morality, war, ethics, it's like, bro, stick to your

lane.

Christian nationalism is bad for the religious and the non-religious because what it does

is it gives all the power to the government to decide what is good religion and what's

good Christianity.

And it says that the politician, the president, the congressperson can tell the religious

leader, stay in your lane over there.

But we are going to take over your lane and ours.

We're going to be theologians.

We're going to be politicians.

We're going to be ethicists.

We're going to be totalitarian in terms of our approach to what we tell people and how

they should live.

But you have one single lane.

That's kind of what they tell everybody, right?

They told LeBron James the shut up and dribble.

They kind of just told the Pope to shut up and shepherd this week.

What do you think?

I think you got another T-shirt shut up and shepherd.

Shut up and shepherd.

We have all these shut up and a closet full of T-shirts like you and I and like two other

people wear and like nobody knows what they mean.

But when the four of us to get together at a live event, it's going to be awesome.

We'll just have like, this is like LeBron James's body.

LeBron James's body, but with the Pope's face.

And he's not dribbling.

He has like a...

You know, the staff.

The like...

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I think it circles around to another point when we talk about Christian nationalism.

I mean, I know you've gotten this question.

I've gotten this question where people say, well, how come other Christians don't speak

up?

How come other Christians don't get involved?

How come other Christians don't like, you know, why do they let them speak for them?

And what it highlights is, Christian nationalism is not about Christianity.

It's about a very certain conception of Christianity and only that kind of Christian gets

to play a role.

And that's what we see when, you know, I'm not going to take sides in Christian sort

of, I don't know, the quick Christian debates about true and our authentic Christianity

or whatever, but it would be a weird statement for most people to be like, yeah, the Pope's

not Christian.

I understand certain kinds of religionists would do that, but I'm like, yeah, okay.

I'm not going to question his credentials to call himself a Christian, but the Pope

doesn't matter.

The Pope's not the right kind of Christian.

Christians protesting in Minneapolis are not the right kinds of Christians.

Christians decrying immigration policies.

They're not the right kinds of Christians.

Christians who affirm the LGBTQ population and help relocate them to cities and states

where they can be safe, not the right kinds of Christians, not real Americans.

They're all fake.

So there's that piece of this too, though when people say, well, why don't like other

Christians who think things, sort of change things.

This is why they get to find out of Christianity, out of American identity and so forth, so

much so that Trump in his long response even said that he's the only reason that there

is an American Pope.

The church just wanted to come after him and thought they could control Trump with an

American Pope.

Yeah.

So other Christians need not apply.

There is no space for any other kind of vision of Christianity.

And so, yeah, I have students who ask like, well, was no bomb a Christian?

Yeah.

It still is probably as far as I know, Biden, Christian, right, but not the right kinds.

And so they don't count.

The Pope of all people, not the right kind, doesn't count.

And so they're just dismissed.

And when people wonder about the obvious hypocrisy of that, how in the world does a Mike

Johnson of all people or somebody like him, you're like, yeah, you really ought to keep

religion out of politics.

You're like, you're really, you're like legislating from the Bible, man.

Like, what are you talking about?

That's somebody asked him, what is your worldview?

Somebody said, what's your worldview?

And he's like, Bible.

And you're like, well, okay, what?

How?

Yeah.

But let's keep religion out of politics as the speaker of the house is the highest ranking

Republican in Congress.

I'm going to invoke not the Constitution, the Bible, but nope, nope, nope, hey, keep

religion out of politics, Brad.

It highlights.

But what I'm trying to explain is like, they will tell pastors and the Holy Father,

keep yourself out of politics.

But nobody's allowed to tell them to keep religion out of their politics.

Exactly.

It's a one way.

Absolutely.

And what I think what I'm trying to say about everyday Catholics is what they are feeling

if you wanted to give an analytical like category to it is, JD Vance, Mike Johnson and Donald

Trump are saying to you, your religion is not legitimate.

It is not authorized.

It is not good religion because it comes from the Pope who we have just defined out of

actual true gospel Christianity, sorry.

And that's the position you're putting Catholics in is like, okay, so now if I go that way,

it's not real Christianity and it's bad Christianity.

It's not authorized by the divine figure who is the head of my country.

Oh, okay.

And some of them are going to go with Trump.

Don't get me wrong.

I've already seen the post.

Some of them are going to go mage on this, but not all of them.

And this is just not like this is this really you know, do you remember way back in Easter

like two weeks ago when Pete hexeth had a Protestants only service like the fishers of the Protestant

persecution of Catholics in the United States, the ghosts of that are here in real ways.

I just think that's like, you know, undeniable.

So I think that's that's part of it.

It is incredible to hear Mike Johnson, the leader of the, you know, congressional

caucus of the GOP say, like stay, you know, stay to your late or like JD Vance, like

these are guys that want to legislate birth control and, and they want to legit.

I mean, they, JD Vance wants there to be blue laws JD, you know, and you know what I think

we kind of need Dan and I will close on this and then we'll go to reasons for hoping.

I just wonder if it's maybe time in this country for a task force, you know what I mean?

To really investigate this because it, it seems dangerous like we have the vice president,

the speaker of the house, the pret, they're all, they're all saying negative things about

a Christian leader and, you know, Troy Neils, the marble man and Elise Stefanik and Sean

Hannity, they're also picking on Christians.

Do you think it, is it time for an anti-Christian bias task force or something like that that

could really get to the bottom here of just this political persecution of American Christians?

Because it feels dangerous, we might need a task force, have you heard of anything like

that in the past?

Yeah.

Yeah.

The, the, the poke is an American Christian.

They're living in his religious freedom.

Yeah.

So yeah, we ought to go.

Yeah.

And finally, there was a task force to try to defend the violations of Christian conscience

and freedom in America.

If only some administration could do that.

As silly as I'm being, the point is made that like the Christian task force only investigates

anti-Christian rhetoric or actions that the state and the godlike figure at the head of

it deems to be anti-Christian.

They decide what's anti-Christian.

And then when they, when you attack them, when you criticize them, when you critique them,

even if you are the pope, they're like, oh, no, no, no, you're not Christian.

You're not Christian.

We will persecute you.

The task force is actually going to come after you rather than try to defend you.

Do you see how Christian nationalism works?

Do you see why it's bad for atheists, for Hindus, for Buddhists, for agnostics, for

humanists, but also for Christians?

It's bad for everybody because you turn the nation into a god and you turn the leader into

a Messiah.

Whoo.

What's your reasons for hope, Dan?

So I'm going to make one more point.

I mean, it's going to segue into my reason of hope.

I'm sure it's going to be smooth and seamless as all of my segues are, as we know, a

provision of being, you know, when it's right, like whenever my daughter is like, what's

wrong?

What's what I did?

I'm going to be like, that was a provision of being and I didn't, I didn't appreciate

it.

Yeah.

It was not approaching the highest good.

It was not approximating that.

Yeah.

Yeah.

There was, there was.

So you talked about the, the loss of the potential erosion of Catholic support.

I think one piece of this is, for example, Catholic blue collar Americans, all those union

members, all those blue collar Americans in Catholic districts that used to be reliably

democratic that have shifted Republican over time.

And why do they vote for Trump?

They voted because of the economy.

Some of those Catholics, when they're now being told, you're not really good Americans

because you're Catholic and by all by the way, the same Pied Hegseth who's busy not having

Easter mass, he's not doing these things.

It's also the same one of this week, invalidated union contracts in the Department of Defense.

So you get the, you get the intersection of these things.

Not only is they're the anti-Catholic piece, but you have the utter failure of the Trump

administration to deliver on its economic promises, which is what drew a segment of that Catholic

population to Trump in 2024 and I think that that's a real thing.

That leads me to my, my reason for hope is just basically and I, I, I, I want to preface

this by saying I am aware that all of these things have a real human cost and I am not

saying that they are good things.

So if we are looking for reasons for hope, here is one is the Trump administration has

lost the plot.

They have, they, they continue to be lost as you're saying that they're foundering, it

looks like the wheels are coming off.

This week, another story that we can almost completely unnoticed was a tax day and tax

day, I'm just going to throw this out there sucked for me this year.

We owed a lot of taxes.

So I was aware that it was tax day.

But the Republicans are trying to try and they're trying to tout the one big beautiful bill

which it turns out didn't give the kind of savings that they thought it would and didn't

do the things that they thought it was going to do.

But they were supposed to be pivoting and emphasizing that and Trump is, remember, he's

going to be talking about affordability and all these things.

We have been hearing that for months and months at this point.

And I remember, you know, when you would hear this, well, you know, it's still a year

out in the midterms.

There's a lot of time to turn this around.

We're confident that American voters are going to get behind one, we're now like almost

halfway there still seven months from the midterms and there's just no sign of being

able to recover those themes that they want to recover because they're busy picking

fights with the Pope.

They're busy participating in unpopular wars.

And again, there are real costs to those things.

I'm not celebrating that.

But I do think that as we continue to sort of swing toward the summer and then into the

fall in the midterms, I think that watching this administration be as rudderless and aimless

and incapable of doing anything that it that it needs to do, I think I think it continues

to be a reason for hope as we look to what I think is a really, really important election

in the midterms.

All right.

I'm going to give you some reasons for hope from our discord.

Yes.

Our discord is lit and we got a lot of amazing people in there every week.

So Dawson says, not says, but posts an article from the Guardian about the Trump administration

agreeing to keep flying the pride flag at Stonewall at the monument, which is a awesome.

Andrea posts that a 96 year old woman has enlisted her 150 pound dog to plant her spring

flowers.

You know, that may seem small, but Barbara Collins and Chewie, her dog, they're getting

the flowers planted and in a year that has felt like little beautiful, joyful things like

planting flowers is not going to happen.

Barbara and Chewie are doing that this year.

Something that is a little more on on brand for us, Democrats have filed articles of impeachment

against Hexath.

We'll see what happens there.

The special election in New Jersey happened and predictably the Democrat one.

That's the replace the now governor of New Jersey.

Nathan put in that the Montana Supreme Court rules that it's entirely constitutional in

their state to protect trans people.

So those are all great things.

There's more that we could mention, but I'll stick to those.

All right, y'all.

Thanks for being here.

Thanks for your support.

We can't wait to see you next week.

I'll be at an event on April 23rd with Matt Taylor, Julie Ingersol, Sarah Posner.

You can find that at accessmoondy.us if you want to come hang out.

Be back next week with the Sunday interview with some great content early in the week.

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