Brown and MIT Shooter Found, Vivek's Definition of "An American," And Weed

And we're live. Welcome back to the LOOPcast. It's Tom and Erika. That being said, Josh said he's not going to make it. He's probably burning rubber and listening to the show right now, clocking what we're saying so that he can come and respond to what we do end up saying. So, listen, anything's possible, right? Anything's possible. The Bears might be moving to Indiana, so anything is possible. Good morning, everyone. A LOOPcast brought to you by The Loop, of course, every Catholic American's favorite morning newsletter.

Got a fun Friday show. We're going to have the vibes going high. I got to follow up by saying what we're going to cover first. We have information as to the shooter of both Brown and MIT. They're saying it's connected. We have the official narrative.

To deliver to you at this point, what we do know, I know it ended a national manhunt of, what was it, five days? A lot of people paying attention, close attention, so I have Eric going to give us the details on that one. The second one is, Eric and I were both excited to talk about this. Vivek Ramaswamy loves to stir it up around Christmas time. Sure does. He had an op-ed published in the New York Times about what an American is, and he went with the creedal definition.

We're going to give it a good faith go for what his version of America is, offer some critiques, potentially, and then kind of talk about what is an American. I think that actually really dovetails well with the soap opera that was AmFest last night. Oh, my goodness.

So, I watched a lot of the speeches. I was just catching up on that. I'm like, oh, wow. Wow. This is where we're at, and then we finish off with, come on, weed. Lay off the weed. Trump is not laying off the weed. He's going to reschedule marijuana. We have a couple of MAHA updates, but good news, twilight zone, as always. It's going to be a great Friday show, so if you want to support us, go ahead and check it out.

YouTube, go over and subscribe over on YouTube. If you haven't, leave us a review. Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Would be great, and yeah, give us a Josh countdown. Someone clock when, I'm sure he's going to show up at like minute 35, but until then. Will dad make it for Christmas? Is that what I hear?

Until then, we have a show. So, Erika, what is going on, the current situation with Brown and MIT? Yeah, we actually have news. It seems that the national manhunt is over. They are saying they have found the suspect, and he died of self-inflicted wounds. So, as Tom said up front, since Saturday night, they've been conducting this manhunt for the guy who is responsible for the mass shooting at Brown University last Saturday, and the subsequent killing of an MIT professor. The suspect is 48-year-old Portuguese national Claudio Manuel Neves Valente, and he was found in a storage facility in Salem, New Hampshire.

So, he had clearly started in Providence with the Brown shooting, moved his way up north to Massachusetts, and then to New Hampshire. He is a former Brown University graduate physics student. He apparently was only enrolled, actually, for two semesters in classes. He later withdrew in 2000, so that was in 2000, 2001, and then withdrew from the program in 2003. No recent affiliation there to the campus, and let us see. We will just go through the timeline a little bit. So, December 13th, 4 p.m., was the tragic murder of Ella Cook, a sophomore, and Mekhamid Aziz Umurzikov, a first-year student.

Nine others were wounded. Six are still in the hospital going into Christmas, so pray for them. And their full recovery. In the days that followed, we got an absolute clown show from the Providence PD, the Rhode Island FBI, the Brown University Security, and it was just this endless barrage of these pressers where they would say, you know, nothing's been discovered. We aren't really sure. The cameras were off. So, wild speculation, of course, ensued. And they threw out a name in the first 24 hours.

People tore apart this poor kid's life. Yeah, first they released a name, then they released a photograph of a man who had the same name as the guy, but it was the wrong photograph, and then they got the other man, and then they finally said, no, we... Just kidding. We had no idea what was going on. At this point, investigators say, looking back, the suspect, he was using avoidance tactics, so he switched license plates on his rental car multiple times, perhaps.

He had untraceable cell phones that he was using to navigate his way from Providence up to Brookline, Massachusetts, to find, and apparently, his second shooting, Nuno, Loureiro, who is a 47-year-old nuclear scientist at MIT, they had actually been at university together in Portugal prior to both coming to the United States as PhD physics students. So, it seems at this point that the motive did have a personal component, being that he went back to Brown, where he had been a student, then he went after this other guy that he had known in college back in Portugal.

The critical breakthrough in the case actually came via Reddit. So, those of you wondering, did the FBI track him down on surveillance cameras? Yeah, I have a piece on that. No, this was crazy. It was actually a homeless Brown student who posted something on Reddit. Who lives in a facility on Brown's campus, had posted something on Reddit. And it goes by John. Now, investigators say that he's a former... Brown University student who grew suspicious of the gunman when he locked eyes with him in the bathroom just two hours before the shooting inside the Barris and Holly building.

The gunman, his name is Claudio Neves Valente. Now, John pictured here is the man police were looking to speak to because of how close he got to that gunman. John said he followed Neves Valente out of the building before the shooting and played a game of cat and mouse in the neighborhood. Surveillance video shows Nevis Valente running away from John. At one point, he stood just feet away from the gunman and questioned why he was circling the block. The gunman repeatedly responded, quote, When police released images of the suspect after the shooting, John wrote an anonymous Reddit post describing seeing the gunman unlock a parked gray Nissan sedan with Florida plates he thought could be a rental.

Three days after the shooting, John anonymously called the police tip line and flagged his own Reddit post. On Wednesday, John walked up to police, revealed that he was the man police were looking for, that he was close to the gunman, and that the Reddit post came from him. Police used license plate readers to track the gray Nissan to an Alamo car rental center in Boston. They pulled surveillance images showing Nieves Valente, and they traced him to a storage facility in Salem, New Hampshire.

Where he was found dead last night. Now, Nevis Valente was spotted in the Brown University building on November 28th. That's two weeks before the shooting. Last night, I asked investigators how it could be that a homeless man and not police noticed a suspicious person in that time.

Well, the province police is obviously not gonna patrol Barris and Holly. That's a question, frankly, for Brown and their police department. Why would a civilian observe that to be suspicious? It's a great point, and I like that. Yeah, there are a lot of questions that are. If anything, I think what this whole thing has just exposed is the absolute incompetence and just lack of will when it comes to the security forces at Brown and the Providence Police Department. Washington-reacted Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem has responded that they are announcing a pause on the diversity visa lottery program through which Nevis Valente entered the country back in 2001.

This program grants about 50,000 green cards. annually, and it's intended to bring people who are underrepresented immigrant countries to the United States. So, for example, Portugal. We don't have enough people from Portugal in the United States, so we have a diversity visa program, which the only silver lining in all of this could be that Where they're going to overhaul that program. Yeah. Hello. And, you know, I thought the benefit of living in this dystopian surveillance state is that maybe we would actually get police investigations that actually catch the people that do it, but I guess that's not materialized yet.

Either that's a good sign that the surveillance state is not coming, or we still need Reddit and homeless people who are alert. I mean, good for that guy. That's the thing. I think someone was asking about motive. It's all speculative at this point. I think the speculation is that He was somewhat of a failed physician, and so he was coming back to Brown to take it out on the MIT professor that was more successful than him, that went on to teach.

And another interesting—not to go out on the conspiracy, though. Rabbit hole. Well, I mean, why not? Why not? Trump True Social merged with an energy company, and that energy company merged with the same company that this MIT professor worked for.

Just saying. I don't even know what that means. I just saw that. I was like, what an insane... Coincidence, because everyone freaked out about the MIT assassination, because at that point, if it's a nuclear scientist, it's like a national security problem. Yes, yeah. He's working clearly, working on... Was it an assassination? Yeah, right. Was this a foreign government job? I guess the guy's from Portugal. I don't know why Portugal would have to do with it.

So, yeah, there's a lot of questions still kind of ongoing, but all to come, hopefully, in a very public... That's the thing, because I guess he killed himself, so who would they even prosecute at this point? I don't know. As opposed to the Tyler Robinson situation, where he's still alive, they're going to try him in court. I don't know how this one actually maybe doesn't get out to the public. Yeah, I mean, probably try. Right now, they're saying that he acted alone, that this was just a lone crazy guy, and so in terms of investigating the motive to try and better understand the case, that's what we would hope would happen.

Obviously, since he's dead, there's less urgency. Toward law enforcement to, you know, investigate that story, but it will, they will investigate it, you know, and I'm sure this will be written about for years to come on what exactly happened here, but, you know, my takeaway right now is just to pray for the families of the victims, the young girl, Ella Cook, who died, the young man who's just 19 years old.

They lost their lives, and the children, the MIT professor is a father of three young children, so pray for them. It is going to be a terrible Christmas for them. And I guess the two students, they were outside of the physics room. Didn't at first they say they were taking a test, which they weren't taking a test. They were all studying for an exam. Yeah, they were all.

Presumably, this guy went looking for someone in the physics department, but then I guess just started popping off, but you know, I don't know. It is terrible. I don't know. I guess we will have to see what comes of that, but. One thing that I am certain about is I disagree with Vivek Ramaswamy's- There we go. It's nice to have certainty. Yes. I can't wait for your rundown of this. Tell me, what is Tom's take?

Vivek, infamous for popping off unpopular American opinions around Christmas time last year. It was less sleepovers. And he's running for governor. Running for governor of Ohio. Seeking to be a public servant of the United States of America. I've never seen someone care less about Ohio and more about national politics than Vivek in this race so far.

But he, last year, if you remember, he had the infamous H-1B, less sleepovers, more math camps. Um, crash out, and that was what eventually led him to, like, leave Doge, largely, because people are so mad about it. They're like, I can't believe you would just insult Americans, American culture like that. Um, but unfortunately, So, I'll go through his argument. I think it leads to the treatment of Americans as kind of like economic cogs in a machine that can be replaced by lower cost units of labor.

Not the idea that Americans are a people, a place, a bloodline with an ancestry that need to be prioritized. So, if I were to distill his argument, it was long-winded. And I think he's trying to create a false dichotomy between this idea of people that believe in heritage Americans, is the term that's starting to get popularized, like someone had blood that goes back to the Mayflower, or early revolution, or early America, and- Or even fought in the Civil War, I think.

Fought in the Civil War, like heritage Americans, you see it thrown around on Twitter all the time. And then, the false dichotomy he presents is that you're either for the heritage American thing, or you're for the creedal American thing, and his definition of creedal American- Is American-ness isn't a scalar quality that varies based on your ancestry. It's binary. Either you're an American or you're not. You are an American if you believe in the rule of law, in the freedom of conscience, in freedom of expression, in colorblind meritocracy, in the U.S.

Constitution, in the American dream, and if you are a citizen who swears exclusive allegiance to our nation. No matter your ancestry, if you wait your turn and obtain citizenship, you are every bit as American as a Mayflower descendant. As long as you subscribe to the creed of the American founding and the culture that was born of it.

Um, lots of people have thoughts on this. Erika, I'll give you the opportunity before I share mine. Yeah, I think, you know, in terms of response, I want to respond to Vivek and say what's wrong with this argument first before trying to, like, rebuild my own definition of what is an American, my own understanding. But, I mean, by this, by his own definition here, I mean, I can think of multiple people who don't believe in freedom of conscience, freedom of expression, who certainly don't believe in a colorblind meritocracy.

I mean, that's the entire Kamala Harris. Yeah, what did we talk about last show? It was like discrimination against white people. Yeah, like, I mean, do I think that the political left have un-American ideas? Absolutely, but they are still Americans. Like, Governor Kathy Hochul, who we're going to talk about later, absolutely an American. All of the crazy, like, people who prosecuted Catholics and pro-lifers during the Biden years. Chris Wray, he's an American. I don't think he holds to any of these ideas necessarily that Vivek just...

Uh, listed, which brings me to the problem that this idea that America is purely a creedal identity is so vague and empty as to be meaningless. Like if you speak these words, somehow you're automatically an American. And what that would also mean is, you know, I could actually have people like over in Tibet or like Madagascar who say, oh, sure. Like I've never set foot in America, but I believe in the rule of law, the freedom of conscience. I believe in the U S constitution, the American dream.

And now. Boom, I'm an American. So, if you somehow have the know-it-all to navigate the system and get your papers done, you're somehow an American. A paper American, as some call it. I think, yeah, exactly. It's such a vacuous understanding of it, masquerading as this somehow deep, transcendent, soulful understanding of identity that it ends up being ultimately meaningless.

Which I argue is actually the point. Yeah. Some people might think that it's kind of... Oh, it might be vapid, but at least they mean well. And I think that there's many people that do it on purpose because it allows you... So, I want to reemphasize your point. This creedal definition of America could literally include one billion people around the world that believe in all the things that he just said, and they don't even live in America, so they therefore would be American.

So, I think it's just such a... It's an outrageous, the idea that America is a creole nation. It's tired, too. It's part of it, but it is super tired, and it doesn't make sense logically, and everyone points that out immediately. Yeah, and here's why it's tired. I mean, going back to the last 30 years, we talk about this all the time. All the time. This is precisely the kind of thinking that the George W. Bush administration used to say, okay, like, the world is just this.

It's all these sort of, like, the anonymous American. Remember the anonymous Christian? Like, everyone's a Christian. They just don't know it yet. But everyone's American. They just don't know it yet, so we just have to go, and we just bring American ideas and American military power to all these Arab nations, and we'll have an Arab Spring, and people, and that would manifestly be untrue. Right, like, we'll just give them our constitution, and if they had our constitution, the same outcome would happen.

It's the same idea that you could say, okay, you could just swap the 30 million Americans that are here now with 30 million Indians or 30 million Russians. And it would be the same country, and that's just, of course, on its face, obviously, wrong. Like, Nate Hockman had one of my favorite. It is really fun making fun of these things because it's just so easy and it's true. His tweet, America is great because it does not exist. That's what makes us exceptional.

We are the absence of form. Without essence, beyond comprehension. A black hole, a void outside of space and time. Nobody knows who we are or how we got here. Anyways... That's why I love this country. Which sounds exactly like a Kamala Harris campaign talking point. Wasn't that in some of her speeches?

Totally. I mean, isn't that the point, that there's people on both the left and the right that make these points? And that's why people are curious, like, oh, there's this new right emerging, like Donald Trump was a break from the mold. This idea, he said something so crazy and groundbreaking, he said, America first. And people are like, why is this resonating with People in the middle of the country, why is this resonating with, you know, the non-coastals? It is the essence of what the American government should be and has not been for at least 30 years.

Basically, like, I think back to the great betrayals, like the great betrayals being allowing China into the World Trade Organization and shipping all our manufacturing overseas. We don't build here anymore. That is detrimental to Americans, because real Americans lost those jobs. Now, you could say that it brought costs down for TVs, and that's more efficient economically, but it was worse for Americans, for the American people. It made people more efficient consumers, but it didn't benefit the people. But in order to make that argument, you would have to say, This is a people.

Americans are a people with a cultural heritage, with a past, with a national character that we need to... We live in a particular place. Particular place with borders. I mean, think about how our own sovereignty has been completely destroyed, whether that's foreign interests playing us, as we all debate currently, or even just internally. We didn't have the self-confidence to enforce our own border laws, or to allow our country to be overrun by illegal immigrants, and didn't even have the ... Self-confidence to actually make them citizens.

Instead, we just gave them benefits and allowed them to operate as this kind of shadowy subclass. I think back to the difference of, and throughout American history, when we brought immigrants here, it was for, we need masons to build our buildings, so we went and brought over a bunch of Italians, or to dig our channels, or whatever, Chinese to build the railroads. It was always for a purpose. It was for the purpose of building up America, and then those people, through time, became Americanized.

People subscribe to the creed, and then their children, their posterity became Americans, and that is a good thing. We have this new phenomenon where we go around bombing all these countries, and throughout the Middle East is a great example, and then those refugees come here, and people do not see any problem with that. Well, the first problem is we are going to turn them into liberal democracies, which markedly failed by all measures in the Middle East, but we are going to bring those people here, and they are just going to be able to operate fine, and even if they do not, they will just assimilate, right?

And we see how many different examples of, like, we have multiple communities that haven't assimilated and have no desire to, the latest being, say, the Somalians, Ilhan Omar or whatever, in the country that openly gives speeches about how much they hate America, how unjust it is. Zoram Amdani, great example, like, he wants to make white people feel pain. America is not a finished project. We need to improve it, and I'm somehow here to do that. As if America wasn't the most generous nation in the world that allowed you...

To come here and take advantage of what's so great about America. And I think it's the immigrants, and I also think it's the businesses. And that's maybe where I break with some of the institutional right on that. We have businesses that basically take advantage of the legal structure, of the idea of fairness and the law and the type of consumers here in America, the workers here in America, that let those businesses flourish, our entrepreneurs, etc. And they take those profits from the American people and ship those jobs overseas.

You should not be able to do that. That's un-American in my mind. The idea of an international business really bothers me because that just assumes, well, we'll just plug in cheaper labor here and it's no problem, right? Because we're kind of businesses of the world. We're beyond borders, we're beyond whatever. And so, it's unsurprising to me.

That people can pretty quickly point out why this is a problem because everyone feels these pain points. If not personally, as I certainly have growing up in the Midwest looking around me, in idea, they just recognize there's something. It's unnatural to not have.

A connection to the people next to you, to the land you're on, to your heritage, even if, as I was, like I, you know, Erika, your roots probably go back farther than me. Like, I came from Italian, German, Croatian immigrants, so I wouldn't be considered, I guess, one of these heritage Americans or whatever, but I still, I have a profound gratitude and a desire to build here in America. I'm building my family here. I have no allegiances to foreign countries. And that, I think, that appreciation, I think back to like the Civil War, too, for example, which really has been bothering me lately.

They just replaced Robert E. Lee's statue in the Capitol with someone I've never heard of, which isn't this kind of the entire point. A man who is admired by many presidents past the Civil War, by all accounts, a virtuous man from Virginia, that... He was a part of solving. The Civil War in the end, by bringing in the soldiers, not causing more bloodshed, and then how Abraham Lincoln spoke of those men as well, because the real tragedy is that they were brothers, is that they were Americans, and the real triumph is that we were able to somehow overcome that and become united again, and that is actually something to be really proud of, an amazing feat, rather than something to continually shame, shame, shame, shame, shame, shame, and to treat people like they are not Americans.

Because they're from the South or whatever state they're from, so... Yeah, because they had un-American ideas. Yeah, no, no, you're good. So, I think a couple of crisis moments that you pointed out, people are like, why are we renegotiating? I think throughout American history, we've had these moments where we came to such a divisive breaking point or a time of chaos and upheaval that throughout our history, we've had to renegotiate our understanding of what it means to be an American. And so, this conversation isn't just, oh my gosh, it's suddenly 250 years later, and now we're having this crisis of meaning or something.

This has happened throughout, and you point to the Civil War rightly. Under Vivek's description, the entire Confederacy would have been non-Americans anymore. Like, they would not have been citizens. And the whole point of how we came back together was that we knew that, yes, there's a creedal element to being an American, and that is unique among many nations in the world. But it's only one element in many of what it means to be an American, and that's what actually Lincoln was fighting for.

He said, we must not be enemies, we must be friends. And he was saying that we fight for the Union to stay together because it is a thing, it is a homeland, it is a nation worth preserving. And if Lincoln had taken Vivek's stance, he would have just been like, well, good riddance. See you later, Confederacy. We'll just... Be like the dominant nation to the north from now on.

So, that was a moment. We also had the post-World War I, the constriction of immigration, right? When we started after the Bolshevik Revolution, we shut down immigration levels. We shut it down after the European War because we didn't want to import those ideas over here. I mean, now you can go read about those acts and that constriction of immigration. It was so racist, but there was also a creedal element there as well that we don't want to. Bring people over here whose sole purpose is to tear down the bourgeoisie, as they call them.

Why would you import people who want to destroy capitalism when that's part of the American economy? So, I think that, you know, in our own moment right now, we are coming, we've talked a lot about the divisions in our country, you know, stoked by wokeism, the triumph of progressivism, the long march through the institutions. So, it's no surprise. That we have become very confused about what it means to be an American. And to your point, Tom, as well, when we were speaking yesterday, the country looks a lot different from when we had the Federalist Papers, right?

And I wanted to read this. This is from Federalist No. 2, John Jay. He defined Americans as, quote, One united people, a people descended from the same ancestors, speaking the same language, professing the same religion, attached to the same principles, there's the creedal element of government, very similar in their manners and customs. Well, I mean, look around, like that is not what we have now. So, of course, we're at a moment where we have to talk about this again, and I think that for Vivek to bring this up again as like, Here's my proposal.

I'm like, no, part of the problem is- Who's asking you? We tried that. Respectfully. We tried that definition. It didn't work. Oh, my gosh. That's why we're here. My cynical take is that they're going to go find someone. The New York Times is going to find someone that's willing to go super hard line on the ethnic or racial thing, because the New York Times want to present that false dichotomy between you're an absolute racist if you disagree with the idea that it's just a creedal nation.

And this is kind of the thing we were saying, joking about the Supreme Court ruling on what is pornography, like you know it when you see it. It's so irritating to me, and I actually don't think people that immigrate here properly even think this way, but for you to just show up and get your paperwork done, and then to somehow think that you're more American or just as American as someone that's been here for generations is insane, and you would be laughed off the face of the earth, probably deported in most countries.

Like, if you were to go to Japan, and then get Japanese citizenship somehow, because they don't allow it, you will not be as Japanese, even if you were able to get the paperwork, you would never be as Japanese as Japanese. And you could say the difference is, is because there's an ethnic component there, and they don't have the same creed or whatever. Fine. But it's the same thing with France. It's the same thing at one point with France, I don't know what it is now, but it's just everyone kind of instinctually knows it.

That when someone is an American and when someone isn't, and certainly we don't have the same, I don't think we have the country that the founders ever envisioned, because they just, they simply did not know. Of all these people that existed everywhere, and what our immigration policies would be, and everything like that, I mean, even Alexander Hamilton, the influx of foreigners must therefore tend to change and corrupt the national spirit to complicate and confound public opinion to introduce foreign propensities. Yeah, I mean, this is just like an obvious...

It's not, and that's not racism. That's not saying somehow other races are lesser. It's simply observing the fact that in order to have a cohesive national identity... You have to know your neighbors. You need to speak the same language. You have to believe the same things. You have to have a similar vision of the common good. You can disagree violently, even, on how to achieve that common good, or what is the good life, but you have to have some common way of speaking together.

I actually really appreciate it. I was watching Michael Knowles was talking to, what was that, Friendly Fire, they call it, where he's like with... Andrew Klavan and Ben Shapiro and Batya Anand again, but I really appreciate it because they were talking about this, and Michael Knowles was like, you know, I have been thinking a lot lately about the book of Ruth, and this is sort of a biblical way that we could maybe start to get some purchase on a positive answer to what is an American, and what does it mean that we receive immigrants and that we have had immigrants, and all of these questions about who can come in and become an American.

Does it take generations? But he says, if you look at the biblical figure of Ruth, who went on to become one of Jesus' great-great-great-great-great-grandmothers, so she comes, she's a Moabite, right? So, they live outside of Israel. Her husband, her first husband, is Jewish. He's an Israelite.

And he and his family had emigrated to Moab, where he met Ruth, and his brother married Ruth's either sister or half-sister, and their mother Naomi was with them, their Jewish mother. And then when he dies, Ruth decides to go back to Israel with Naomi to her homeland, and she does three things that Michael points out. So, she has, by marriage, she's entered a family of the Israelites, and... She then says to Naomi, your people shall be my people, your God shall be my God, and that is that sort of like creedal element.

And then she comes back to Israel and acts in service to her Israelite mother-in-law and in service to the Israelites. So, there is that element of self-sacrifice and service in order to build the family that you are asking to become a part of. And as a result of those sort of things, she says, well, I am going to be your Those three elements, you've got marriage, and so purchase on the future of your adopted country, and the children come into that, of course.

You have the renunciation of her Moabite identity and saying, I will now take on the creed and the God of the nation into which I wish to come, and then coming in with an attitude of service, right? Those three elements could give us a lot to talk about on about, like, who can become an American, and how does that How should we actually look at it? And it is so opposite to what we have been seeing with the Somali fraud thing, right?

The fact that 80% of Somali families in Minnesota are receiving aid, that's the opposite of what Ruth did, right? That's not coming in with the intention of serving and contributing and building and joining. So, anyway, I really liked his framework of trying to get some positive answer to this, because it is easy to just make fun of Vivek. I do it all the time. I am like, oh, so, Credo, like, okay, so, let me get this straight, you know. But I love talking about that, because it really animates me as an American.

It just, I have a, like, almost physical revulsion when he speaks about what he thinks America is. And I love you even said that there, and I think a lot about this. When you speak of America as a homeland.

And when you say, when you refer to America with a pronoun, you say her, and you think about it as like a motherland, almost as like, you say alma mater, loving mother, like with institutions that you love. And I don't know if it's because.

We're kind of rediscovering that now, because we're just so sick of what we've gotten elsewhere. It almost feels like there's a combination between the country becoming much more corporate, I guess, or something like that, and businesses kind of becoming cold corporate, where it's like, if you do these steps, you work for whatever. But even if you're in a small business or something like that, and someone were to come in and disrespect you, be entitled, not be a good worker, You know, trash you in public, public and in private, you'd fire them.

But if you're just in a large business, you know, it's like, ah, you don't even really know about that person or whatever. And in the same way, I think our country may have just gotten too big. We've lost sight of this. And I even think back to the times of Robert E. Lee. The reason he fought for the South was because he fought for his state, for Virginia. And they didn't even really know much outside of their state. Virginia would have been just as...

Like, Kansas would have been just as foreign to him. Right, your state was primary identity to be. Right, you knew your neighbors. You knew your neighbors, you saw them around. You actually relied upon them. You worshipped in the same churches. You spoke the same language. You had the same traditions, right? Like, you would, Christmas would be a big deal.

And I think that's, I saw that you sent me that speech from JD, which I think was good, at the Claremont Institute, about, like, we need a new definition for the, you know, what's. Being an American in 2025, not a new definition as in it completely changes, but we need to distill because clearly we haven't gotten the vision of America that, say, the founders had precisely because we've had just a mass influx of immigration from people of different cultures and different beliefs and different everything because we've kind of just become like a cash or check type country.

Right. And a couple of things he brought up off the top of his head, which I largely agree with, is sovereignty, basic legal privileges of citizenship, the idea of building. Like, that is one thing that I feel is so obvious to me.

He brought this up, and it's smart, and it's true, and you could debate about whether he contributed to it. I guess we all kind of do, but our best and brightest have gone towards creating, turning us, creating softwares, social media, et cetera, that turned us into better consumers, but didn't actually build something physical, and you look at the crumbling infrastructure of the middle of the country, as I have. But then you go to the town square, and you see the most beautiful building you've ever seen, and it's like, this is the town square of Terre Haute, Indiana.

You know what I mean? How did someone build something so beautiful? And I think it actually kind of is the same question. People thought of their town and their country as something worth building something beautiful for, instead of an infrastructure to make money and to take.

That, I think, he gets a feeling, private heritage, obligation to our neighbors is a big part of that, for sure, and gratitude for country, like a patriotism in the true, like, virtuous sense of the term. It would animate you to do something like that for your neighbors, and I think really the only way, and this is like, I think we've had You know, I'm not anti-immigrant, certainly. I think we've had many immigrants. My parents immigrated here. I don't like when it's used as a cudgel to just import infinity immigrants, and then if you say something against that, it's racist or whatever.

But we really do need to, like, shut down massively immigration to our country so we can actually figure out who's here and what we all believe and actually try to enforce and reinforce what that is. If we're just a revolving door all the time, it's like— An impossible thing to do. Everyone understands this instinctively. I don't think I'm saying anything new. Like, if you had a house, and you just knew people came in and out of your house all the time, just decided to live there for a little while, left for a little while, you wouldn't know anyone, and you'd be uncomfortable, and it almost seems like that would be the point.

Yeah, the only thing where I push back on you is that everyone understands this instinctively. I think that the American education system, for the last, I mean, Gosh, 60 years has almost been designed to kind of beat that natural instinct out of our American children, out of people, which is why we get things like the whole boomer generation, which is the current reigning generation, is really wedded to this idea of creedal American identity, that your family is a chosen family, not a given family.

And those two are very… I mean, you talked about the analogy with your business, even more so the analogy with the family. I released that video last night for The Deep on No Contact Christmas. And this mass idea, this is sort of like the negative image of what we're talking about, but this idea that children, adult children, can somehow emigrate from their family because of toxicity, which is now defined as like mere political disagreement. Yeah, right. That is also the same sort of thinking that as human beings, we aren't physical, we aren't sacramental creatures, it doesn't actually matter where we live.

What blood is running in our veins? It doesn't matter what language we speak or religion we profess. All that matters is this sort of self-actualization and 100% individual autonomy, and that has been the message of our educational system since the breakdown in the 1960s and even amping up more in the Obama years with the racism thing, and then in 2020, even more with the trans thing. So, I think that a... Big reason we're having these arguments and why you see the New York Times publishing stuff like this in order to pit well-meaning people on the right against each other is because we are now reaping the fruits where half the country at least doesn't even know how to think about this, or they're afraid to even talk about, well, maybe it does matter what my ancestry is because, oh, wait, that might be racism or something.

So, I want to say that people instinctively still think this, and I think... Like, it's really sweet that you think that, but I don't think we're at a point in the country where instinct is enough, which is why we need, I mean, yeah, I guess, well, two thoughts there. One, I mean, you just described the immediate appeal for Catholicism.

Catholicism has sacraments, physical sacraments, where you actually have to go and partake in them. You can feel them. You can touch them. You have to go to a confessional to confess in front of someone. You receive the Eucharist. It's physical. There's traditions. You know, Sunday Mass, we're going to have a Christmas Mass, incense, the altar, the vestments, you know, with the Pope, like the pompous circumstance there. It's like, funny, this corresponds to, I've been seeing a lot of stuff about just how casual Christmas has gotten.

Yeah. And how it's like, well, it used to be your grandma had that specific china that she put out, and everyone dressed up, and you sang the same songs, and you ate the same, you know, meal, and then it kind of- And I was all pajamas all day. Exactly, right? Like, it's really casual, and like, oh, you kind of acquiesce from that. Oh, let's not do a dinner. Let's do, like, a party, and then it's like, oh, maybe, hopefully, you show up, you know, whatever, and people, I think, are now kind of feeling like something's missing.

Part of that is because we are ritualistic people that desire traditions. That isn't a small thing that happens. It's on purpose because it serves our needs as human beings, and it makes us feel part of a community and part of something special and have purpose and meaning, and that's why everyone's walking around like, why don't I have meaning?

So, that was my point on Christmas, and I love that you brought that up. The final thing that I want to bring up on this, and actually, I want to highlight Michael Knowles at M-Fest was good, is I think that... One, I think it's becoming more obvious to people in Gen Z, especially young men, because the promises, the rewards of said liberalism of this kind of borderless or an ideas-based country has not directly benefited the people that properly understood it should have been, the next generation.

So, that's why I think there's going to be a lot more of this. It's not the beginning or the end of it. And then the second is, as a country, we have to take ourselves seriously enough and actually believe in what we're about to actually place demands on other people. And I think a big reason for why we're here is because we didn't take ourselves seriously enough, or we were told so many times that we're racist, or that we're bad, or that it was the self-loathing that actually ended up managing the decline of America.

Because when immigrants came here, we didn't have any demands of them, because we didn't believe that actually what we were was a good project, or that it would be even best for the immigrants. That no, it's actually better because we have immigrant cuisines now. The food's better. That actually comes out of the mouth of Piers Morgan, which is just insane to me. As if somehow that replaces a familial bond with the people around you, and your mother country that should be nourishing you and putting you first.

We sold you out for some Indian cuisine. I can't believe people do say that, as like, this is a great thing that this happened. I would trade that in a heartbeat. Are you kidding me? I mean, sure, I like the food. Bring over a few Mexicans to make some Mexican food, but like, that's not a national project. It's so embarrassing. I would rather live in Lake Wobegon, Minnesota, where the only food is like awful casseroles, and have a community and a family that's building something good and beautiful that lives close to the land, that has, you know, all of that, than live in, you know, current places.

New York City, where I could just order any kind of food I want from all around the world. Right, around people that share my Christian faith, around being able to afford one family on one income, have good social services. We have just traded out everything, basically, and they are like, well, at least we got good Mexican food out of it. Yeah. Give me a break. I will play this clip from Mike. I thought people are highlighting it for other reasons. I just thought it was good.

Yeah, this is good. He did a really good job. Yeah, and I love Michael Mills. He had some sanity. FoodCast alumni. Crazy night last night. Yeah. What I appreciate about him, and I guess I only saw a few clips, but what frustrates me is when people get on the stage and they just kind of like denounce this person. You just talk about all the people you hate and why you should hate them and just other people instead of like a positive vision, which I would say the biggest thing that Trump did, and sure, he talks about people he hates, is he offered people that positive vision, the most popular.

Platform of all time, America first. I'm going to put you first, which was racist or deemed whatever. Pat Buchanan originally had it. So, anyway, here's what Michael said. To be on the team, you have to acknowledge that there is such a thing as the American people. We're not just an idea floating in outer space. We are a real people with a real historical lineage and a real historical destiny. We came here on the Mayflower, which is a great cigar brand, by the way.

We came here on other ships as well. We landed at Plymouth and Jamestown. We fought a war of independence and plenty of wars after that. We spread across the continent. We have a real historical experience and character. That is not magically imbued through a few lines of philosophy or a naturalization pop quiz. At different times, we've taken in foreigners. When it's worked, those foreigners have come to act and talk and even look like us. When it hasn't worked, they haven't.

If you prefer the flag of some other nation, the customs and habits of some other people, you are not on my team. If you are and want to be a member of the American people, you are on my team. Simple as.

That's pretty awesome. Pretty simple. No Somalian flags for me. Shout out Mike. Go back to the old flag. Any foreign flag. Any foreign flag. Okay, Erika, you are up for good news. Oh, we had some good news coming out of Massachusetts again. Guys, oh my goodness, they might have a referendum on pot. More on that in a minute. We have Massachusetts now has just announced a policy change. And this is thanks to one very brave Christian couple who were denied their foster care license.

Kids were ripped out of their home because they refused to do gender-affirming care or whatever. More on that in a minute, too. But Massachusetts just announced a policy change and represented that religious families like the Joneses, that was this family, will no longer be excluded from foster care for believing that boys cannot become girls. I cannot believe we had to say that, but we did. And as Kristen Wagoner here says, this is a massive step in the right direction in deep, deep, deep, deep blue Massachusetts.

The case is still open. So, ADF helped this couple bring a lawsuit against the state of Massachusetts. So, the case is still open until this is finalized on paper, signed by the governor, but we are on the right road here to providing kids in need with loving families once again, even if those families will not say, oh, boys can turn into girls and girls can turn into boys. So, that was really, really good news going into Christmas. Out of the state just north of me.

Awesome. Yeah, I'm really happy about that. Josh gave us a good news. Oh, yeah. No, he hasn't showed up yet. We'll see if he busts through the door like the Kool-Aid man. I think that he's not making it home. Oh, yeah. No. Okay, so mine, great news. Indiana's getting the Bears. No, we're not doing the Bears. Yes, I am. Indiana is getting the Bears.

Say goodbye to Chicago. Indiana is getting the Bears. In an open letter, Bears president and CEO Kevin Warren says Illinois state leadership told them the team The team, its proposed stadium in Arlington Heights, won't be a priority in 2026, and so then he said, guess what? We're going to expand our search, including Northwest Indiana. So, what should we name them? The Gary Bears? The Indiana Bears? I'm not sure, but so for those, I guess this is extra funny to me because my in-laws are all Bears fans, and they're from Illinois.

Here is Governor Mike Braun of Indiana. The Chicago Bears recognize Indiana's pro-business climate, and I am ready to work with them to build a new stadium in northwest Indiana. This move would deliver a major economic boost, create jobs, and bring another premier NFL franchise to the Hoosier State. Let's get it done. I mean, that sounds great.

So, I guess the beef, I was looking into the beef over this while they're doing it. A lot of people are saying, like, oh, it's just posturing. They're not going to do it. So, the Bears wanted to build their own. So, first off, Soldier Field is the oldest and the smallest stadium in the NFL currently, and the Bears paid their half. And so, a lot of how this works with NFL stadiums is they have a public-private partnership. So, like, a private owner will pay a certain percentage.

The public owner, the people of, say, Cook County, foot the bill, and they have things like a hotel tax or whatever to try to pay for it. And so, I think the debt on the Soldier Field Stadium is... Uh, outstanding debt, $350 to $550 million. Um, this is taxpayer-backed debt, not a Bears obligation, and Pritzker was kind of, like, trying to bug the Bears to, like, oh, you should put up more for this, you should put up more for this, but the reason Illinois can't pay this is because their state is in debt.

Uh, Cook County... Cook County, approximately $2.8 billion shortfall in this last year as of 2024, and there's a couple of hilarious things on this point. So, the Bears were like, whatever, we're going to move on from Soldier Field. We'll privately fund a new stadium in Arlington Heights, where there used to be a dog racetrack.

So, they're like, all we want is for you to build infrastructure around Arlington, because Arlington is like a half hour from downtown, and we just need roads, electricity, kind of simple stuff, right? So, they're not even asking for them to finance part of the stadium, and well, first off, Illinois has no money. And it's like, we don't have any money to pay for that. Well, they don't have any money, and then also, Pritzker is running for, for sure, running for president, and it would look bad.

If he were to acquiesce to a billionaire, a fellow billionaire, by the way, to give them public money, and I'm not even going to speak on the prudence of doing this public-private partnership. There's lots of arguments saying it actually doesn't really bring a ton of jobs or money, that it just kind of shifts money towards whatever the game in town is. But I will say, I think it is a point of pride for Chicago or people in their city to have their NFL team and Chicago historic organization, whatever.

And so, the Bears are just like not going to be, or sorry, the Illinois is saying not going to be a priority in 2026, so Kevin is going and like threatening Indiana. I looked it up. Gary, Indiana is 31 minutes from downtown Chicago with no traffic. The Arlington Heights track is, I think, like 35, no traffic, and of course, no traffic playing a big role, so not far, by the way. You could still call it the Chicago Bears, and I think probably the most salient point is this, of course, is all about how you manage your money and what your priorities are for.

Illinois spent $2.5 billion housing, feeding, and caring for migrants since 2020. Suddenly, we cannot find a small fraction of that to support the state's most popular sports team. At the very least, we get better infrastructure, new public transit, and a sweet new stadium instead of lighting that money on fire. Now, I am not here to say, you know, people in need, of course. Like, there should be some provision for actual refugees. What Illinois did is they turned their state into a sanctuary state and put them up in hotels and gave them more money than actual American citizens.

To the tune of $2.5 billion with a B, and now they can't balance their budgets, and of course, they can't help finance the Bears. Yeah, the question I have, if Pritzker loses the Bears, will the good people of the state of Illinois finally wake up and stop re-electing this regime that has dragged the state into this morass of debt?

I mean, talk about a culture of death. They just got... Assisted suicide, they've got abortion. Pro-life doctors are going to be prosecuted if they won't recommend patients for abortion referrals. This place is a hellhole, and will it be the loss of the bears? It's the final nail in the coffin. Will there be any nail in any coffin? Wouldn't that be so funny if that is what does it, if it's the bears? That is enough to get people to question.

Not the abortion, not the euthanasia. It's going to be losing the Bears to Indiana is going to do it. It's not the Chicago mayor. It's not the state of the public schools. It's the Bears. I was dying. Hey, guess what? There's how many teams in New York? There's three or four New York teams, and three of them play in New Jersey? Well, there's one in the city, and then like two that play, yeah. Exactly.

So, would you consider, as an adopted Hoosier, an immigrant to the Hoosier state, may I call you, would you adopt the Bears as your team? Oh, bear down. If we steal them from there, heck yeah, dude. Are you kidding me?

The whole thing is so hilarious. I remember coming, I went home to my wife last night, because this has been brewing in a lot of Illinois, Midwest group chats, especially between Indiana and Illinois. And the Illinois people are mad. They are really mad about this, and I basically ranted about how... I was looking at the stadiums. I was looking at comps from other stadiums, like SoFi Stadium fully privately financed itself, and that's kind of coming in. Foxborough? Foxborough. Gillette is fully privately financed, and then I was looking at Ford Field.

Like, Ford Field is a 50-50 partnership, but it seems to have been really good for all the different parties involved because Detroit was really kind of on a downturn, and now it's kind of a destination. So, yeah, basically, however the bears are handling it is the not ideal way to handle it. And part of it is because they have no money. So, you know, everything is a choice. Okay, on to some block. Indiana bears. Got to ring to it.

The Indiana Bears. You have a couple people in the chat who are kind of mad at you right now. I know. It's hilarious. It's hysterical. I love sniping at the Illinois people. We're taking the Bears. Indiana's got it going on. We got mojo. We got motion down here. Okay, this one, we've all been waiting for it. The weed. He did it. Yeah. The weed.

At the same time, the facts compel the federal government to recognize that marijuana can be legitimate in terms of medical applications when carefully administered. In some cases, this may include the use as a substitute for addictive and potentially lethal opioid painkillers.

They cause tremendous problems. This can do it in a much lesser way, can make people... We feel much better that are living through tremendous pain and problems. Forty states and multiple U.S. territories have already recognized the use of medical marijuana.

This reclassification order will make it far easier to conduct marijuana-related medical research, allowing us to study benefits, potential dangers, and future treatments it's going to have. I have a tremendously positive impact, I believe. I love how they let up the laptop behind him. You got, like, nice cracking, like, plastic water bottles too in the back.

Yeah, what is going on here, Erika? I mean, I did a little digging. Obviously, we covered this at length on the last show. CatholicVote had a massive petition going to tell the president, please do not do this. We had half of the Republican senators got behind, I forget who it was, but they got behind a petition to him to not make this change. So, this proposed rule was actually first surfaced under the Biden administration, and this was May 2024, in the middle of the election.

During the campaign, Trump, too, was giving signals that he was up for relaxing federal regulations on marijuana. I was reading through Politico. They were digging into the role that the cannabis industry, which is a massive business, their role in this.

Their write-up was, the cannabis industry has scored what many see as a major federal policy victory under President Trump. It's the result of years of sustained lobbying, political engagement, and strategic alliance building with policymakers and regulators, including people in HHS who are doing research on this. Industry insiders who Politico interviewed, they framed the development as a culmination of years of this effort. Across both parties and all the branches of government, trade groups and business leaders pushed for clarity and parity with state laws, and by aligning their efforts with broader health and economic priorities, including support for medical cannabis research, they were able to turn a longstanding federal prohibition into a strategic policy win.

And the way the White House is framing this is that it is really with the intention of improving medical marijuana and cannabis. Cannabidiol, new word, word of the day, cannabidiol, research to better inform patients and doctors. So, HHS is taking this as an opportunity for more research into medical marijuana. It should not be confused with states that have legalized recreational marijuana. So, yeah, again, we're not happy with this. This is not a good development.

While there might be some benefit to continuing to research and lifting those, you can do research on Schedule 1. That is the thing. This is all such a sham. Of course, this is a win for the cannabis lobby, which is now becoming a multi-billion dollar industry, thanks to all of the... Because this is the dumbest... Every state uses that as a ballot initiative to gain goodwill with the potheads or whatever, and I think this is all some great thing. All the research has been done.

I've read through a lot of the research. Much of the research is done by, say, it's similar with Coca-Cola. Coca-Cola funded studies to see whether or not pop is good for you, and they're like, oh, we found it was kind of inconclusive. No recommendation here. It's like, hmm, interesting. There's plenty to suggest that people go through psychosis, and there's other ways to treat chronic pain. And again, the stupid thing about all of this is If you just want to grow pot in your backyard and smoke it, totally fine.

Like, illegal, but whatever. Like, do it. If you think that's good for you, like, yeah, exactly. Do it. Fine. I'm not saying. Or if you live in my state, you just go buy some down the road and start smoking.

See, but I don't like that. That's what I'm saying. People shouldn't be able to do that if you just want to grow it yourself. It's turned into this Frankenstein industry that makes tons of money. It's creating people. It's literally giving people psychosis. It smells terrible. It's ruining public spaces, and it's not good for you. It doesn't. It's not. And. Because I'm waiting for someone to name someone who's like, this guy who smokes a ton of weed is really killing it in life.

Like, this is really, he's really got it going for him. No one can name it because it doesn't exist. Yeah, not, I haven't heard that before. It's dumb. This is a total bow to the marijuana. That's why we opposed it. It's not good for anyone. So, yeah, very disappointing. Politically, too, it makes it that much harder for people in states who are trying to either walk back the recreational marijuana use laws or... Prevent the legalization of recreational marijuana, because it's just one more talking point for the side of we have to legalize everything.

That, oh, look, it's only Schedule 3. I mean, what are you complaining about? So, it just, yeah, it's going in the wrong direction for MAHA. The MAHA movement is just taking about six steps back with this. So, we are entering a period of public comment. There will be an opportunity for the public. Yeah, who is this benefiting politically the least motivated voting base of all time, and then businesses that take advantage of them? Seriously, like, who is this for?

It is the industry. Follow the money. Follow the money. I was not like this at one point. I was not like this. I remember. When we started LOOPcast, you were a pothead. I mean, not that you were smoking yourself, but that you were like, what is the problem?

Yeah, as an adult that has evolved and seen new information and changed my opinions and lived experience, weed is the worst. I would not say, hey, man. Go for some more of this. This is going to be great for you. No. No. Stupid. And just keep it. We already give people fent, basically, if they're addicted to stuff. We give Schedule 1 stuff to people to treat them for whatever. Why are we doing... Sorry, this whole thing really annoys me. Okay, should we roll Twilight Zone now?

Yeah, let's roll Twilight Zone. What do I have? Oh my gosh, this was crazy. Okay. So, if you can throw Ivana up on the screen there. There's this article in The Argument, which is becoming one of my absolute favorite sub-stacks. Kelsey Piper is killing it. She is actually the same journalist who brought attention to the Mississippi Miracle and the turning around of the education system there.

But she just did this essay on basically helicopter parenting. The lack of independence that Americans are allowing to their teenage children in particular. So, the survey that she highlights asks the question, at what age do you think it is appropriate for a child to stay home alone for an hour or two? And she writes, to my astonishment, 36% of respondents said it was not appropriate until between the ages of 14 and 17.

And to me, as a parent of seven children, this kind of thinking about the kind of supervision that older children require Is absolute death for the mother of many, because if you could not... No, that's actually a really underrated point, and the reason is because people have less kids. Like, if you had more kids, it would literally physically be impossible, therefore you get the benefit of less supervision. Yeah, but it's detrimental to the kids, too, and to not allow teenagers any kind of...

And maybe it's because of the rise of smartphones. They don't want their kids alone on the internet, but that's actually not it. She ties it to... This connection of the rise of sort of surveillance neighborhoods that we live in, and the rise in the number of families who have had CPS, Child Protective Services, or DFACS, whatever your state calls it, called on them in the last five to ten years. So, today, 35% of American families have had CPS called on them by neighbors.

Only one in eight of those families will actually be convicted of some form of abuse, neglect, or harm. The other seven, it was because a neighbor was like, their kid was out in the front yard alone, or they left their 15-year-old home alone. And in that kind of a surveillance state that we've created for ourselves in our neighborhoods, where we have CPS at 35% of families.

Then you start to have this fear of not supervising your kids according to social convention, which is now 14 to 17 years old. The good news about parenting, we're spending more time with our kids. Parents are spending significantly.

Less time, you know, just holed up in their jobs, like dads are more involved, they're playing more with their kids. So, like, those numbers are really good, but the bad news is that we have sort of trapped kids in this perpetual infancy, and they never actually do the adulting thing at teens. There was also another question about when should children be considered old enough to babysit other children, or left alone supervising other children. And another astonishing, like, over 30% thought you had to be 15 years old to do that.

And to me, like, I... I think a competent 12-year-old should absolutely be able to babysit a couple of kids for a few hours in a safe environment. Yeah, here we have someone in the chat who is like 10 years old.

Yeah, be careful what you throw out there. CPS might be crawling through this. I know, right? But yeah, again, we talk about the fertility crisis all the time, and this kind of mentality would be enough to scare people into not having kids. You're going to have to- Well, and the insane- The insane dichotomy that we supervise the heck out of our kids physically, but then allow them complete supervision online, you know what I mean? Yeah, right. It's so messed up.

Crazy. I always love the videos of someone will record their kid, like they'll send in their five-year-old or eight-year-old or something to go order a Chick-fil-A by themselves. Like, here's the money. This is the order. I have it written down. Like, okay, you go in, do the entire thing, and then they come back, and it's like they got a sense of pride.

I did this myself. I can do it. It's possible. That's really good. Turns out. Yeah, so turn off the internet, leave the kid at home, go do your grocery shopping, and come back. Touch grass. Touching grass. Always good. Always good advice. Always relevant. Okay.

Any high schoolers in the audience, you can participate in the subtly named Patriot Games. Trump has announced the Patriot Games with two high school athletes from each state. I'm not sure if he's calling them tributes. I'm not sure if there's a three-finger salute involved. So, we have the Patriot Games next year will pit top high school athletes from across the country against one another as a part of a series of events to mark 250 years since the nation's founding.

One of the events that will be featured as part of the festivities will be what Trump called the first ever Patriot Games, an unprecedented four-day athletic event featuring the greatest high school athletes, one young man and one young woman from each state and territory. Is that sounding familiar?

But, I promise, there will be no men playing in women's sports. Unlike the Hunger Games, where the guys and the girls had to go against each other. Wait, is there a video of this? Oh, it's on Instagram. Give America the most spectacular birthday party the world has ever seen for America's 250th anniversary on July 4th next year. Already, we've had big celebrations to commemorate the 250th birthdays of the Army, the Navy, and the United States Marines, but there is much... Much, much more to come.

We're going to have a good time. As we ring in 2026, Americans across the nation will see the iconic Washington Monument illuminated with festive birthday lights. Okay, yeah, there's no more information on the Patriot Games, which I'm fascinated by. I just, I'm not even going to say, I think it's cool. I think it's cool, I think it's hilarious, and I just love that.

Like, most people would hear that idea, and they'd be like, that's too close to Hunger Games. I'm not going to do it. Trump is like, he read the Hunger Games and was like, yo, can we do this in real life? Yeah.

Or he saw all the comparisons of himself to President Snow, and he's like... Yeah, so it's like, sounds kind of like a cool guy. Kind of sounds like he's got things going on, and he created a great competition that's going to be massively viewed. Yeah, it could be great. This is very The Apprentice, too. Like, you know, he's got the background in reality TV. That's a good point. This is, this feels kind of reality TV to me in a good way.

Like... I long for the early days of Survivor before people had social media, because now the only people that go into Survivor either are fans of the show that want social clout or, you know, are trying to push their whatever thing they had going on. Back in the day, not a phone in sight, just living in the moment. And these people were like teachers, which was awesome, because they would always end up being like horrible villains. Like, there would be people on there that just...

I can't believe, like, you would not do that in the age of social media because you get blown up or whatever, but it's like, oh, you're a teacher from Iowa? Like, stab someone in the back. Who cares? Yeah. Well, so what kind of competitions do you want to see, though? Like, to me, I would think, like, some kind of, like, decathlon or so. There's, like, a bunch of different little events that each of the athletes have to do. I don't know.

What do you want to see? What would I want to see? What would I want to see? Well, it's, like, one from each state, right? So, I don't know how you could do touch football. Yeah, I'm yelling at you now. It would have to be...

I would love to see it be like, what was that Nickelodeon show? I wasn't allowed to watch Nickelodeon. There was a Nickelodeon reality show where they would have a boy and a girl, and there would be like a big Tonga head. And, oh, man, if someone's got this, please send it. And they would have to, like, navigate a maze, but it was 3D, but you could only see a 2D of it, and they would have to, like, climb, but you could kind of see them like an ant thing.

And then they would shoot balls at each other. What was the name of this? This is exactly what I want it to be. Let me look this up. Yeah, I would love, like, an obstacle course around the National Mall or something. That would be so cool. Reality show. I'm finding it before we end it. This might be a five-minute search, but.

What was that? It was so fun. And as a kid, that's like all I wanted. I was like, if I could be in a competition, this is it. It would be that one. Nice. Let's do Nickelodeon reality competition show. It was like an Easter Island head.

Yes. What was that? We could just have a giant bus. Legends of the Hidden Temple. Legends of the Hidden Temple. It was insane. Yes. Actually, that would be really fun. Yes. Do you have a picture? Legends of the... Yeah, let me pull up... Can I pull up a video? Let me look up. Olmec is back, Legends of the Hidden Temple. We're probably going to get dinged for this, but I don't even care. Is this a new one? I love in the chat, imagine Trump eliminating kids for following the rock climb.

You're fired. Wait, oh, shoot. Let me throw this over. Yeah, this is exactly what I want it to be. Yeah, like a survival aspect. ...monic thing that's happening. I feel a sense of excitement, and I'm thrilled. The choices are yours. This is the legend of the hidden temple coming to life in a very, very... It's old. This is like a reboot. It's got to be like 98.

Your challenge awaits. No, this is like a reboot that they're trying to do. This is why I have to prepare before the show, but if anyone wants to know, Legends of the Hidden Temple was insane. That's exactly what I want this to be. Okay, roger. From your lips to God's ears, Trump's ears.

All right, gang. So, we're going to end the prayer, but we got a nice little Christmas break. Yeah, I'm excited. Erika's got her book list. Yeah, I did a book list, guys, of everything I read this year, complete with props. I dropped a 40-pound book on the floor in the middle of recording, so make sure you check that out. That's going to drop between Christmas and New Year, probably the 30th. So, everything I read this year, and some ideas for the next year, too.

I am looking for stuff to read. Send me lists. Send me books. I love it. But, yeah, so we are going to be off next week, except for that book list, so I hope you are all enjoying Christmas with your family. We have got a New Year's special for you as well, so make sure you are tuned in. New Year's special, your interview, going to be good, some housekeeping, but we will end in a daily prayer. We did not get Josh.

No. Maybe he will bust in for this chair, but we are not in prayer. Tom, you have got to let it go. Josh isn't here today. I am sorry, man. Dang. Yeah. All right. One in prayer. Father, Son, Holy Spirit, Amen.

Blessed be the Lord, the God of Israel. He has come to his people and set them free. He has raised up for us a mighty Savior, born of the house of his servant David. Through his holy prophets, he promised of old that he would save us from our enemies, from the hands of all who hate us. He promised to show mercy to our fathers and to remember his holy covenant forever. This was the oath he swore to our father Abraham, to set us free from the hands of our enemies, free to worship him without fear, holy and righteous in his sight all the days of our life.

You, my child, shall be called the prophet of the Most High, for you will go before the Lord to prepare his way, to give his people knowledge of salvation by the forgiveness of their sins. In the tender compassion of our God, The dawn from on high shall break upon us to shine on those who dwell in darkness and the shadow of death, and to guide our feet into the way of peace. Amen. St. Thomas More, St. Fidelis, Our Lady of Guadalupe, pray for us. Great show, gang. Have a great Christmas, and we'll see you next week. Peace.