Darlene Graham Wins, Everyone Loves Dolly Parton, And "Why I Hate The Old Latin Mass"

And we're live. Welcome back to LOOPcast. This is Tom, Erika, and Josh. Tom McCluskey, thank you for your talent. We're very happy to have Erika back. I think you said your husband tuned in and then tuned right out.

Todd was keeping tabs on the gentleman while I was away for a couple weeks, and he said, Erika, your job is secure. I mean, it is not wrong. All right. You don't have to rub it in, you know? No, it is not good. We just didn't have the juice, you know? We didn't have the juice.

We missed you very much. We are excited to have you back for the show. We have a lot to talk about today. Pogo would be gone for a month, and people would not know. Well, true. That has already happened.

So, actually, I was gone. The one I was gone for, I was in Wyoming. I just posted that episode. Yeah, beautiful. It was... Like, every one of these, I'm like, I just make the best friends with total strangers, and I'm like, I just, why can't I live here? Every place I've gone so far. Now, maybe I'll go to Ohio, and that will change. But no, I'm just kidding.

Hey, look, I want to get to all 50 states, but Wyoming, you know, blew my mind. Hey, you know, actually, I have been to 49 states so far, so. Which one are you missing? I'm going to get you to 50. You're missing Hawaii?

Alaska. Alaska. If I go, because I actually have a friend who used to work. He paid for his college education by working on a salmon boat, so I have a connect. I might be able to get out there. Josh, I'll take you. That would be a really nice full circle. We get his 50th. We get him in time across America. It would be sick. That would be great. Actually, someone sent in a picture, not to be creepy, of you on a boat in Michigan.

Do you know what I'm talking about? Or was it in Minnesota? That's creepy. Someone said, look, Josh is on a... Were you on a boat recently? Oh, yeah. I was on a boat recently in Lake Michigan, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, look who he is. Like, Josh in the wild, man. Well, that's true. I was, yeah. That's very cool. Well, anyway, we got lots to talk about today. I was kind of sad humming 9 to 5 before this. Rest in peace, Dalton Park.

I think it's rare to see... Had to pour myself a cup of ambition. It's rare to see an American so universally beloved, and we got interesting perspectives here because we're different ages, although I'm a huge country music fan, but I kind of was on the tail end of Dolly, even though she was still kind of popping. I think I actually went by Dollywood before, but so I was digging into her history a little bit. We got a lot of the tributes coming out, left, right, and center, so I think it'd be good to talk about a great American there.

We have some primary results. Darlene Graham did beat Ralph Norman, and then we had some results in Oklahoma, so we're going to get Josh on that. We got Thomas Reese coming out with a hot take on the Latin Mass. Oh my gosh.

Such a cold, cold, frigid take. So, freezing cold take, although, look, we're in the take business, so I almost got to tip my cap, but we have good news. We have Twilight Zone. We got a nice hodgepodge on a Wednesday. Feeling nice and loose. I'm feeling the energy. Glad to have Erika back, but before we get into that. We have Charity Mobile. Now more than ever, it's important to do business with companies that stand with you and your beliefs. Charity Mobile is a pro-life phone company that serves pro-life customers and supports pro-life, pro-family causes.

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Switch to Charity Mobile and buy the way you believe. To get started, visit CharityMobile.com and use promo code LOOPcast. It's CharityMobile.com, promo code LOOPcast. Thank you so much, Charity Mobile, for sponsoring this episode. And Josh, our resident primary obsessed watcher, we have Darlene Graham, sister of deceased Lindsey Graham, defeated Ralph Norman.

52% to 48%, depending on where you look, she'll face Democrat Annie Andrews in November, but, I mean, Josh will probably say she pretty much won in South Carolina. Now, a couple interesting tidbits, and I want to get your thought maybe on the philosophy behind this. Trump actually campaigned with Darlene Graham, and I think was a part of encouraging her to run. This was confusing to a lot of people because Ralph Norman, he's not some nobody with no bona fides. I mean, he was a part of the House Freedom Caucus.

Pretty hardcore conservative, seemed like a good representative of South Carolina. He also spent $827,000 on calls and texts ahead of this vote in just two weeks. Graham and her allies spent more than $7 million. Norman only had $2 million. Of course, I guess the way that I am looking at it, I am curious how you see it. We have the sister of Lindsey Graham, who is very focused on foreign policy and very tapped in with a lot of lobbyist groups. And you're now looking at basically a blank slate that's probably going to carry on this.

Not a lot of experience in Washington, self-admitted. And as a lobbyist, this would be like, I'm getting huge money eyes of, you know, ability to influence in a way that you wouldn't be able to influence Ralph Nolan. Well, I don't know about lobbyists, but she's certainly going to, she owes her success here to the president, and she's going to be a fiercely loyal vote for President Donald Trump. And there's a lot of people. You have to remember, South Carolina's got a pretty good mix of, obviously, people who are from South Carolina, who were born there, but then you have a lot of people who have moved into South Carolina.

They're either from the military or they're retirees. And those people, you know, they may have been from Pennsylvania or New York or New Jersey or whatever, and those are people who, you know, typical Fox News viewers, they're going to be very supportive of President Donald Trump, and for them, Donald Trump says, this one, this person's my person, my candidate, I support, then that's going to be good enough for them. You know, my concern, of course, is that, you know, Ralph Norma is a really good guy.

He's a great candidate. He's good on the policies. He's rock solid, pro-life. You know, I tend to prefer the candidates that I know has cast the hard votes many times before. And so I thought he was a really good candidate. He almost pulled it off. At the end of the day, I think what's going on here with Donald Trump, you know, Ralph Norman, you know, he's not, in Donald Trump's mind, Ralph Norman isn't as bad, quote unquote, as like your favorite candidate.

Who's that? From Kentucky, Tom Massey. So, you're of the opinion that you want Republican candidates to go in there and be strong no-votes and blow up the system and gum up the works for the most part. I'm not trying to slam Paul. Are you putting words in my mouth?

Well, I mean, you like Massey. Well, Massey's concerned about the deficits, so am I. Seems like Trump isn't. No, I mean, not a single politician. Paul. Not a single presidential candidate. Sure. In the last 30 years. Is this Jimmy Carter? Right. No, Ross Perot. Oh, Ross Perot, huh? I'll give him credit for that. So, anyway, my point is, Tom Massey distinguished himself as like a persistent no. He's always going to vote no on stuff. Therefore, when you're trying to get 218 votes or whatever is needed to pass legislation, we just knew his vote was off the table.

And so, you know, you can't, you never even negotiate. You don't count, right? Yeah, so he's like, okay, so if we need to get this bill passed, and you need legislation to pass, there's always going to be a budget passed, then it's like, you've just taken that vote off the table. You're not as much of a team player. So, that's been very frustrating to people who are trying to get legislation through. Now, I'm not saying Ralph Norman was like that, but that's part of the reason why I think Trump's like, hmm.

Yeah, stick with what I know. You own the person. He owns Darlene Graham. Well, obviously, there's going to be a lot of loyalty there. So, I mean, that's just kind of the calculation that goes into it, but... Yeah, I think that's a good analysis. Putting aside, you know, whatever you think about it, personally or historically or whatever, like, political calculation makes sense, for sure. So, then, over in Oklahoma, there's a candidate running the Attorney General, Gentner Drummond. Who loves to call, you know, conservatives extremists, you know, ripped on MAGA people as just, you know, having a six-pack of beer in their lazy boy chair.

You know, this guy is just an absolute total rhino, but he had a lot of money and a lot of, you know, campaign behind him. And this is one case where. I do thank God for Donald Trump, because Donald Trump said, no way, no thanks, and he supported the other candidate. Mike, I'm forgetting how to pronounce his last name, Mike Mazzei, I'm butchering his last name, and that candidate, yeah, M-A-Z-Z-E-I, he won by like a sliver, and so this is where it's like, you know, so there's a lot of people who, again, are upset at Trump because he's not as, you know, hardcore as they want, like with a Rand Paul or...

Uh, Thomas Massey, but, like, I'm just saying, like, we're so much better off as a party overall, because, like, the rhinos are being, you know, like... He's backing these other guys instead of these total deadweights. So, it's like, you know, when people say, oh, it's just so frustrating, it's like, it's going to take a long time to clear out a lot of the deadwood in the Republican Party. And I think overall, absolutely, I'm convinced that Donald Trump has been a force for good on that, despite some times where I'm like, I wish he would have gone the other way on one of these.

You know, I get that, but. Um, spin zone on Darlene Graham's foreign policy take. Here we go. You said last week that you weren't that informed on national security, but of course, it is an important role as you are a U.S. Senator. What have you done in the last week to kind of catch up to speed on that? You know what I've done in the last week? I've gone around this entire state talking to as many people as I possibly can, and you know how many of them brought up Taiwan or national security?

Not one. They're talking about the rising cost of health care and affordability. Affordability. So, that's what's important to me. You said last time. Okay, so that was a great answer, actually. That was a good answer. Yeah, that was a great answer. That's what I'm saying. You should have said that the first time. I was good.

I was like. I was like, that's a good answer. You knew I was going to love that. You knew I was going to love that, Tom. Dude, I knew. I knew you were going to love that, and I did it because I was like, first off, spin zone. She went around and asked people, and no one is talking about Taiwan or what we're doing overseas. And, you know, Josh, I want to ask, because, like, this keeps coming up, and I swear...

And I'm not a Darlene fan. If I was voting in South Carolina, I was going to go for Ralph. Right, but I'm just saying, like, based on, you know, how to approach the midterms, there's been a lot of interesting sets of priorities from the president and the party.

Just curious on this. Here's Lauren Inkrum on low-propensity voters in the midterms. Ned, first of all, it's about 7-8% of the results in so far in South Carolina. Darlene Graham has a sizable lead. But, you know, it's still too early to call, obviously. First of all, your reaction to what we're seeing in South Carolina in that race.

I think it is going to be close in the end, Laura, one way or the other. I think it is probably going to be five points one way or the other in this race, and then we go on to the general, and I do not think it is a given. I mean, Andrews is going to be a tough candidate in the general. I saw a poll a few weeks ago. She was up one on Graham, but down five to Norman, so that is a pretty competitive race for South Carolina, and I think this is one thing that we are ten weeks out from today from the midterms.

I think Republicans are kind of whistling past the graveyard on some of these Senate seats that they thought were safe, whether it is South Carolina, whether it's Alaska, whether it's Iowa, whether it's Nebraska, Ohio. We've got to kick it into gear over these next 10 weeks, or we're looking at not only losing the House, but losing the Senate as well. How many times have you and I talked about this, Ned? Paxton in Texas, I don't even see him campaigning at all.

Is he campaigning? I haven't seen much of his campaign. I mean, I guess he's hoping Trump and Elon must save him, but he better get going in Texas. This is the thing that concerns me. I think there's a great deal of apathy with some of the candidates, but what concerns me even more, Laura, there's real apathy in the grassroots. I think some people are thinking we gave Republicans all the power in 24, House, Senate, White House. It really didn't follow through in some of these promises.

The Senate's thumbing their nose at the base over the Save America Act, gas is $4.10 a gallon. You know, they're not seeing a lot of the things that they voted for. The Iran war is killing us, and we're 10 weeks out, and the problem that we have is that Trump's base is mid to low prop. It's tough to get them out in a non-presidential year, so not only are we suffering on the issues, we're suffering on just a basic turnout, and they're really low-propensity voters, which means it's going to be hard to get them to the polls November 3rd, unless we give them a...

I mean, there's some truth in there. Wait, Erika, you were about to speak. Do you have thoughts? Yeah, the low propensity vote. I do think turnout is obviously, I mean, Josh is the expert on this, but I think that saying it's low prop voters on the Republican side, when they're fired up, they're certainly not low prop. And you could say the same thing on the Democrat side, like they've had low prop moments and stuff. So anyway, I don't know about that argument, but I...

What I'm actually more curious about is, and maybe you all talked about this last week, is the spending issue, because we're, like, we have this huge war chest on the RNC side that we're always, what are we up to, like, $250, $300 million war chest, and it seems like we're not spending on some of these races. So, sort of, like, what my question would be is... Is it a will thing? Like, have we already seeded the midterms, and we're just like, well, we're going to lose, we're going to lose, we're going to get washed out, and so we're not spending, we're not, the will just isn't there.

I'm not aware of Ken Paxton's campaign. Like, is he low-energy out there? Well, he just showed up at the WNBA game with his daughter, and they were wearing... Well, hey, and Josh, before you get into that, two things. I mean, I've seen nothing but James Tallarico. On YouTube ads. Literally, I see them all the time. And maybe it's because they're targeting hyper-pensivity, you know, people that are paying attention to politics. The second thing being, I saw, well, hold up. And then, Hakeem Jeffries met with Jared Kushner in what seemed to be kind of like a, hey, we know you're coming in.

These are kind of, they talked about affordability, I guess. He made a weird video. I was like, outside the project saying that he met. That kind of seems like a concession type meeting to me, does it not? Well, Kushner's been less involved in the domestic policy of this White House during this term anyway. Much too involved foreign, if you ask me, but go ahead. Well, right. That is what I am saying. He has been involved in foreign policy, but this idea that he is the broker on the domestic policy stuff, that is why he would meet with the Democratic House leaders.

Now, it sounds like he is meeting with them to talk about foreign policy stuff, so I did not take that as a concession that they are already measuring the drapes, conceding the election. I do not see that at all. I am sorry. Not for that. That is not the data point. Until Rico is... He's got so much money, he's blitzing everywhere. So, somebody, where were you watching that video? Were you in Texas?

Or were you in, like, Indiana? Like, I mean, this is what I'm saying. Like, he's doing those ads to let everyone know, like, look, I got a chance to win here in Texas. Donate to my campaign. That's why he's doing those ads. Otherwise, why would you target people outside of your own state? He's trying to do that to raise money. You know, ultimately, again, we're in the summer doldrums of polling. We'll see. I mean, if the polling is this bad in mid-September, then, yeah, it's a nightmare scenario.

But, like, you know, even the polling is starting to turn around in Iowa. You know, the Senate candidate there for the Democrats is now down by about four or five points. You know, Ashley Henson is not perfect, but she's going to absolutely win that race. I'm not worried about that. In Alaska, you've got four candidates on the ballot, ranked choice voting. Ranked choice voting, yeah. You've got the fake Dan Sullivan on the ballot. He's real. He's a real.

He's a decoy. His real name is Daniel Sullivan. I'm a believer. Well, he tried to actually submit his name on the ballot with the same... Not his actual middle initial, but the middle initial of the incumbent senator. Like, that just tells me you really are intentionally trying to deceive voters. I mean, it's an absolute sham. So, hopefully, voters in Alaska will not only re-elect. The Senator Sullivan, but they'll vote to get rid of the ranked choice voting, which is on the ballot in Alaska this year.

So, overall, I mean, like, you know, Tallarico is, you know, his whole hope is to just spend so much money on ads and get people, you know, pump up the poll numbers. But see, when you talk about polling, So, this is what, like, a lot of people who are, I think, high on hopium, Democrats, are just hoping that they can win the Senate race. Texas, for Democrats, is like the giant white whale. They are totally Captain Ahab over this, and they want, if they can just win Texas, then they can just have America come to, crawling, you know, down to it on her knees.

But the fact of the matter is, and so people are like, well, wait a minute now, Tallarico's doing better than Beto O'Rourke, because Beto was never really leading in the polls. He was really, really close a lot. But he never was leading. And that's because he was going up against someone who was an incumbent senator. So, people are like, oh, yeah, Ted Cruz. I know who he is. Whereas Paxton, it's like, I voted for that guy a lot, I think. But what's his name?

Because he's Attorney General. So, you're not really thinking as much. You're just, oh, Republican, click. Republican, click. But he has been a very successful Attorney General, one of the most successful Attorney Generals in the United States. He's been very great in office advocating for. Pro-life, conservative values on everything. So, I think when we get to the, now we're getting to the turn here with Labor Day, and we're going towards the general. And, you know, again, we have a money, Republicans have a general money advantage, but Ted Rico is like raising so much money because people are like, oh my gosh, we might do it, we might do it, we might do it.

Guess what? It might be a little closer, but he's still going to win. I mean, in other words, Paxton's going to win, yeah. Yeah, I mean, I'm not. Okay, yeah. You don't take anything for granted. You got to run the race, of course. Right. Speaking of summer. But it's worth saying that, like on the low propensity voters, the midterm election 2018, Donald Trump wasn't on the ballot, and we won two Senate seats. You know, yes, we did not so great in the House, but I mean, like, so.

It's going to happen. It's possible. So, yeah, we are in summer doldrums. One thing that really did grab headlines, I think it was actually top of the loop, was this Al-Said, Jesse Waters' primetime interview. Now, like, a little bit of an up-top on this. It's kind of objectively ridiculous.

Jesse Waters, primetime. A little bit bombastic. I don't want to denigrate anyone. If you're a fan of the program, I mean, I think it's a little bit ridiculous. It's over the top. You know, it's Fox News. It totally imitates to me, you know, Bill O'Reilly. I mean, he studied under him. Yeah.

Totally fair. I'm just saying that this is what it is. It's not wrong. Right, right. It's not wrong. It's not everyone's cup of tea, but Al-Sayed, you know, going to the lion's den of like, you know, this is the environment. It's going to be a hostile interview. Right, right. Now, if I could give you... Respect, yeah. Which, yeah, respect, and Jesse Waters actually admitted afterwards and during. He's like, I kind of like you. Like, I don't like any of your policies, but I kind of respect that you're coming on.

Well, of course. It's good for him. It's good TV. Everyone's talking about this. Of course. It's great TV. You know, it's all a good show, basically. And now, if you had to ask me... I think he went on because... He needs to win over moderate black voters in Michigan, and this is like clipfarm.com of like, so here, I'll show you a clip of one that I'm like, this is going to go all over the, you know, Facebook clip circuit. Here, I'll play it.

So many folks in the community to give kids glasses, take on corporate polluters, eliminate medical debt. I'm looking forward to continue to have those conversations, and I feel really good about being able to bring communities together and beat Mike Rogers, who you and I both. I didn't agree to that, but that's funny.

Reparations. Do you support that? But you laughed at it. Because you didn't say you didn't agree. Like, Jesse, you're very good at telling me when you don't agree with me, but you actually laughed at that joke because you actually agree. Sorry.

So. Whatever. That is what I am saying. I am like, this is just going to be on Facebook, you know, it is combative, but there are two clips in particular that really stood out of like, I would say Al-Said, you know, for someone I disagree with many of his policies, but like did a pretty good job. Like, he is not a... He doesn't like confidence in himself. He doesn't like confidence. He's very confident, but he's not giving consultant-type answers. You know what I mean?

We all know the type that go on these. They sound like a robot. They're clearly reading legalistic answers. He's pretty comfortable mixing it up. But then, of course, there's a time where you get a little bit too far over your skis, and I'd say maybe this was one of them. So, here's one of the two.

So, getting rid of Sharia law's white supremacy. Can you explain that one? Do you know what canon law is, Jesse? I assume you are a Christian, right? Yeah, tell me. All right, so canon law is the name for Christian law. I do not begrudge you your right to practice your faith as you choose. I do not know why the idea that I could practice my faith as I choose is a problem. Nobody is trying to push Sharia law on anyone else, just like I hope nobody is trying to push canon law on anybody else, because we live in an America where you should have the freedom to getting rid of Sharia laws.

Yeah. We want to push canon law on more Catholics. I am like, I would pay attention. I want to crack the whip on my own. Well, that's an internal church discipline. That's an internal. Right, exactly. Exactly. Sorry, Erika, I'll give you the first crack. This is precisely the category. I mean, he makes a couple of apples to oranges, or even like, I'd say like apples to slabs of bacon comparison. There is no parallel between canon law and Sharia law. And I mean, people will be like, oh, canon law, it ends with law.

Well, they must. And that's not it at all. Like, canon law is internal church governance. It's like, which kinds of oil, what kind of wheat can you use for the Eucharistic consecrated host? What kind of oils can you use? Can they be plant-based or animal-based? Like, that's what we're talking about, internal church governance. Sharia law is an entire system, and it's God's law, and it applies to all areas. There's no distinction in Sharia law between church and... state or this understanding of the secular authorities versus church authority.

And so it, when you talk about it, like these are just, you know, it's just another way of expressing your religious belief. There are categorically different ways of understanding the interplay between religion and, and Sharia law is incompatible with the American constitutional order. So this kind of throwing it around and then the whole like Do you know what canon law is? Like, this is a gotcha. It's just actually showing how ignorant you are. Can I ask you, Erika? Yeah, please. Ask me.

I feel like it's almost important to make the distinction here. To my understanding, Sharia law would be interpreted by your religious leaders, passed down on certain practices. So, I am not going to eat a certain meat, or controversially, you can have multiple lives, or something like that. Listen, I am not an expert in Islam, but if you are a Muslim in America, and you wanted to personally practice certain elements of your faith, which is basically an interpretation through Sharia, is that legal?

Because that is basically, I think, what Texas was saying to ban. I think the comparison to canon law is completely ridiculous. No Catholics have been like, hey, go practice canon law. Some priests were like, go practice canon law. This is different. This affects personal principles, but under religious freedom in America, do you not see an issue with that? So, there are elements of Sharia law that are totally compatible with living here as a United States citizen. However, and here is another issue with Islam, right, is that the interpretation of Sharia law can vary greatly depending on what country you live in, what mosque.

Whether you're in a theocracy, or you're in a democracy, or what mosque you attend. There was a YouTuber who followed around different mosques in London, and each mosque interprets jihad very differently from the next mosque, right? So, the issue is that under Sharia law, there can be communities of Muslims who are actually living in violation of the United States. So, for example, female genital mutilation is considered child abuse. But there are Muslim communities that will practice that. And so, the Muslim communities would say, well, we're just following our religion, and at some point, that bumps up against the laws that we have protecting children from genital mutilation, which brings us to the next clip.

But basically, the issue is that, in general, the Islamic view of Sharia is that it is a complete system. As a complete system creates a two-tiered government. There's two tiers or two different government systems governing your life, and when your Islamic interpretation of Sharia bumps up against the United States, you're going to go with the Sharia. And could there be, people often draw the analogy of, well, there are states where you can have abortion up until including... Right, we think of the Massachusetts, the horrible law signed in by Governor Healy while I was out.

And so, those Catholics are living under a law that is unjust. And the difference, of course, being that The Catholic teaching is you're going to follow the law to overcome unjust law, or you're going to become a martyr, whereas Sharia law is, again, it's a complete system, and eventually, the goal, as we see in Dearborn, like with the city council, is to have it supersede the American legal system.

Yeah. That's my understanding. Correct me if I'm wrong. I'm sure we'll get a couple of emails on that one. Oh, I appreciate your perspective. I'll make a look at the history. I mean, like in Spain, when they had the caliphate, the Muslims took over, like Christians didn't, were not, you know, there was a two-tier system. Christians didn't have as many rights as Muslims did. They couldn't hold higher office. You know, they were barred from specific things. They were forced to pay discriminatory taxes, like, you know, that would finance.

You know, the Islamic State and building of mosques. So, I mean, like, you know, like, Islam, you know, has not had, you know, the kind of, I mean, I hate to use the term Reformation, because I generally think of Reformation, of course, as a very negative thing. I'm Catholic.

But Islam has a real compatibility problem with living in a, you know, multi-ethnic, multi-religious republic. There are some. That, you know, some place... Notably some that we're very tight with, like Saudi Arabia is very tight with this Trump administration, 200 billion to Jared Kushner or whatever. They have the most intense interpretation of Sharia law in their country's constitution of a lot of the countries we're talking about here. There's a big difference between you can be tight with the United States administration and have a foreign relationship with this country and actually trying to integrate that country's...

Yeah, I'm not making that argument. I'm just saying that when you look across the globe, the number of countries that are majority Muslim that allow for wide open religious freedom amongst all peoples is pretty rare. The exceptions kind of prove the rules, kind of my point. Yeah, I think kind of the broader principle would be we have a set of laws in America, those set of laws you can trace back to Christianity. Uh, if you live in America, and as you said, there's different interpretations depending on mosque or sect or whatever.

They don't have the same uniformity blessing that the church does. If that does not fall under American law, you can't do it. It would be like Mormons trying to say that Utah is theirs. At one point, they basically did, I think. Like in Illinois, they're like, this is our own autonomous zone. And the U.S. government is like, no, you can't do that. It would be the same thing here. And then they finally went to Utah, and they were only admitted as a state when they put into the Constitution that they would not allow for multiple marriages, that it was just between one man and one woman.

Exactly. But, I mean, like, you know, again, it does get to these larger discussions about what it is that we want for our immigration policy. You know, for the first hundred and, you know, 50-some years or whatever as a country, we only, for the most part, you know, there were exceptions. But, you know, like, we allowed a lot of Chinese to come in to build the railroads, but many of them didn't actually stay. So, you know, some did, you know, but for the large part.

It was that we were taking immigrants from Western European countries, and then Central European, and then maybe Eastern European, but the idea was that there's at least a common, you know, Christendom, the Western civilization. There's a common heritage here, and it's not even like an anti, you know, oh, you're Josh, you're anti-Islam. It's like, no, actually, I mean, there's lots of cultures in the world. There's, you know, the Oriental countries. There's, you know, India is a very unique culture, you know.

And obviously, Sub-Saharan African or whatever, you know, these are all interesting cultures, but they're very different in kind to the United States, and there's been people in this country who really feel like, hey, great, we could make the United States.

into the United Nations, in a sense, and we'll just allow everyone to come in. And it's like, well, I mean, that does begin to cause friction. It's better to have a country, you know, that shares kind of a common historical heritage. You know, they don't all have to become Christians, of course, but it makes more sense. And then in the last, you know, when we got the Hart-Seller Bill in 1964, we said, no, we can't consider national origin. Yeah. And then we...

Proliferation of H-1B visas in the 1990s and onward, then people start going, oh, wait a minute now. Why is it that, you know, all these countries, like, you know, China can be for the Chinese, Japan can be for the Japanese, but then we can't have our own culture? Why can't we be, you know, there's this thought that. You know, when you ask people about it, well, the French should be able to be French, and the Italians should be able to be Italians, but Americans cannot.

We're the one country that cannot. We have to just allow everyone in. Like, I don't understand that, and frankly, no, I don't agree with that. An interesting point, too, that I saw is someone was like, well, he should have talked about the Ten Commandments, not canon law, because canon law is actually pretty specific to Catholics. I think the Anglicans have a rough version of it, but they were like, well, what about the Ten Commandments, right? So, he should have been like, well, Jesse, you like the Ten Commandments.

Why don't you live by the Ten Commandments, and I live by Sharia law? That would have been a better comparison, but again, I don't think so, and it goes to Josh's point that the Ten Commandments from the Old Testament, they express, according to the Christian convictions that undergird our entire republic, they express the natural law. Acknowledged by members of the society, they acknowledge the natural law, and that in itself is what makes America possible. It makes civil discourse possible in the constitutional order that the framers put together.

And it's hard to express how unique that sense of morality is, that it's something we can discover through our reason. That not only did God give us commandments, but we can discover them through our gift of reason. We have revelation, yes, but that conviction that our country is built on that says we are going to use our reason to live together and apply these laws to the changing historical times we live in. When you bring in a civilization that is built on the idea of submission, which is what Islam...

Is built on. It's not built on reasoning out these things, although the Islamic world has... Or the caste system of India, frankly. Right, or the caste system, right, that there's this given order that we all conform to. That's antithetical to the way we were designed to operate as a public community. And so, you know, that's pretty like... Up in the air, academic, blah, blah, blah. Our heritage is Jerusalem, Athens, Rome, London, Philadelphia. Like, get with it, people. This is what we are.

Oh, gosh. That's crazy how silly that is. Hey, that's where we signed it, bro. LeBron James. Silly. Yeah, no, I think... I think all totally fair. It's weird how this conversation just gets everyone riled up, rightfully so, because you see the impacts of what, like, a real mass immigration agenda has done to Europe. And I think it, like, really... For perspective's sake, I think it's important for people to think. Well, and to us. That's what I would say he's about. Right.

He wouldn't be a candidate if we hadn't done this, right? True, but I'm thinking, like, it's hard to wrap your mind around how Christian Europe was at one point. I mean, like, it's just in the water, you know? And now, you look at these churches like they're total relics, and it's because, one, like, people lost their faith, and then, two, of course, demographics are destiny. And it is, like, I just... The fundamental principle I go back to is you, as people of your nation, get to decide who and how many, and from what culture, people that come to your country are from, because you are the inhabitants of the said country.

And you can make... And don't let people probably eat you. Yeah, I don't want anyone... It's okay to discriminate when you're making those decisions, right? Exactly, because it'd be like a team. It'd be like, yeah, if you had a basketball team, they're like, no, you just have to take anyone off the street. You need to take... Whoever I tell you to, and it's like, well, no, like, we want the team to be oriented. Boys, girls, yeah, boys, girls, whatever. And there's like, you know, there's beautiful parts of every culture, there's terrible parts of every culture.

There's like elements of, say, like, you know, it's just like anyone who's traveled or been around the different cultures, like Indians, for example, like, I would never want to import their caste system, ever. I know a lot of great Indians. I think you can have great American Indians, but we cannot have your caste system here. Like, that is anti-American. And it'd be the same thing with... Go ahead, Josh. I'm sorry. Go ahead. Are you talking to the airport? People abusing the airport?

Sit down. There's this American woman who got a one-year visa to go to India, and after one week, she's like, I'm out. I can't stand it. Yeah, which is like, and I guess what excited me in the beginning about Trump's tour in the Middle East, and now I just look back at that of like, oh, I feel like there's a lot of in-kind payments for a certain war that's going on now. But like, he spoke to the Arabic people of like, you have a proud history, and that's something that you should be proud of.

The advancements that Saudi Arabia, UAE have made in terms of modernizing and making their societies better are genuinely commendable. I don't want Just because, so you talk them up, that's great. You can do your thing over there, but we don't want our country to be your country. And, like, it's kind of a fundamental difference I have with a lot of the neocon philosophy of, like, we need to continually spread liberal democracy throughout the world. Or even if that was just lip service and we just wanted to take the oil, I don't know.

But, like, clearly, our values, what we've created here, is not compatible in much parts of the world. And I think it actually is wrong of us to force it on other parts of the world because it just didn't work. It's expensive. It didn't work. Cause more chaos. And so, I'm not in the business of how every country runs themselves, and I'm not going to use... That's the funny thing about the NGO and USAID conversation.

We were just using that as a means of soft power to influence what went on in countries. If you go take a look at what we were actually doing, like funding soap operas in Afghanistan to discredit men, what are we talking about here? It is not like Trump has decided to weaponize USAID to promote, let us say, pro-freedom, pro-free market stuff. He is like, no, I just do not want to try to force it on them. He should not do it at all.

That is actually very good. I agree with that. But you mentioned the Ten Commandments, Erika, and I would just say with El-Sayed, we do not have to air the whole thing. But there is a discussion about where Jesse Waters asked him, you know, would you support gender transformation surgeries on minors?

And then El Sayed, you don't have to put it if you don't want to, I mean, whatever. It is good. No, no, no. This is actually the one. This is actually the best one, yeah. Let's see. And sex changes for minors. Do you support that?

Look, you know, I remember having great conversations with my conservative friends about right-to-try legislation, the idea that the government shouldn't tell you what kind of health care you should have. I just think the government shouldn't tell you what kind of health care you should have, and if you're a minor, it's between you, your doctor, and your parents. Now, if you disagree with that, if you disagree that health care decisions need to be made by a doctor and their parents and a patient, then I just think we agree to disagree, but, you know, you want to put government...

So, Abdul, you're a doctor, right? Sorry. I mean, I am. So, you think it's okay for a parent to slash his kid's thing on the university? You think that's okay? I mean, do you really want to have this conversation? Are you circumcised? Oh, my gosh. Yeah, yeah, but I mean, that is a personal question, doctor. So, you probably should want to move on. You probably should want to move on. Is circumcision different than castration? I think it is a problem. It is a problem that you think, that you get to decide what happens between a doctor and a patient.

And I am just saying that, yes, circumcision is surgery on a... So, if you really want to bring that up, you can. I just think you guys are really selective about how you want to talk about these things. Abdul, Michigan's not going for that. That is sick stuff.

Okay, so first of all, this is a guy who is, you know, he received his MD. He never ended practice, right? From Columbia University. Yeah, and so he apparently doesn't see a distinction between, you know, removing... You know, the genitals of a child, as opposed to just removing the foreskin, like, that seems to come like of a big difference. I think a lot of men in the United States would recognize the difference. Yeah, I am not a man, but I am pretty sure there is a big difference in outcome there.

Yeah, one would eliminate the ability for you to have any children, you know, and again, so that is number one, but also, you know, like. We do not allow parents to have medical experimentations on their children, or we should not. That is a problem. I do not believe in complete total freedom. If parents are like, I do not know, maybe this wonder drug, which has not been approved, would cure this, so let me just give it to my kids. It is like, well, hold on a second.

You do not have a complete freedom to do whatever you want to your own children. I am sorry. Oh, you want the government involved? I want to prevent. People from doing reckless things. Yes, I do want the government to prevent moms who are wine moms to pay doctors to remove a kid's genitals. No, that's not cool. And also, he is a Muslim. You're just going to make light of what a circumcision. Muslims are Aramaic as well. This was a covenant between our Lord.

Right? Between God the Father and Abraham. And so, Muslims consider themselves, you know, part of that same code. Abrahamic? Yeah, it's hard at work to say. I don't know why. To me, to make light of that, like, I just think, like, of all things, like, you know, come on. But again, he's not even a good Muslim, because he believes in gender. Do Muslims not sacrifice?

Well, I don't know if they are or not, but they should have an appreciation for God and Abraham, but the other point is, he's not even a good Muslim. Do observant Muslims really believe that there should be gender...

Transformation surgeries, like, you know, like, we're going to pretend, like, little Billy is now Sally. Oh, no. Yeah, they don't do that. Remember in Maryland, all the parents who, the Muslims and Catholics and Christians all got together because of the LGBT to trans spirit things, and yeah, they were allies on that. No, he knows exactly, he is not confused. He knows that circumcision is different from castration. So, there's... He just can't help... He can't help himself because he can't say... No, it was cocky.

Yeah. There's all sorts of, you know, contradictions in this new progressive left. You've got, you know, communists. Then you've got, you know, the transgender, you know, the rainbow jihad people, and then you've got, you know, Muslims, and it's like, they just all have common cause, and that they're, well, we don't like, you know, free markets, we don't like, you know, Christian conservatives, you know, so I guess we'll unite, you know, the enemy of our enemy is our friend, and it's just like this weird, that's what Kelsey called it out, this like weird red-green alliance, and I would put the rainbow crew in that too.

I think this is just pretty obvious for Muslims, and again, I don't know how much of a representative I'll say it actually is. They just detest what the U.S. and Israel have done in the region. No question about that. That was part of why they voted for Trump in 2024, because he said, no war with Iran, we're going to bring the boys home, we're not going to be doing this global imperialist thing, and they went from Kamala. And that is now why they're switching to Democrat, because Democrats are breaking with Israel.

That just is the simplest to me. No, I don't disagree with that. I don't disagree with that at all. You're like, why are they pairing up with these people? I'm like, well, it's a coalition of people against American imperialism, what's going on now, and it's actually demoralizing a lot of people on the right. I don't think that there's any way they don't... I don't think it's imperialism, but it's interventionism, and I have a problem with it. Well, I think there's a lot of people who like to get our bases out of the Middle East, me included, but I think certainly a lot of Muslim countries now, because they're like, well, you know, if the...

I don't know. The trade-off was, if they're here, we'll be protected. And then they're like, oh, we weren't protected, all these bases are smashed, and now all our infrastructure is blown up. So, we're going to see a change there. But, yeah, anyway, and then the other thing, too, I guess we're at 45. I'm trying to see. Yeah, we'll talk Dolly.

Actually, no, Josh, I want to hear your thoughts on the mail-in stuff. So, I was a little bit confused by this. I saw that it was about a scopes decision. Maybe I will read a little bit of Axios, give a little color here. Well, I think Axios got it wrong, frankly. Here is what is going on. Okay. The Trump administration put forward a proposed rule that would involve the ballots that are cast through the mail.

A lot of Democratic attorney generals across the country immediately sued on the proposed rule, and what the Supreme Court just announced this week was like, okay, well… Wait until the rule is final before you sue. Right, there is no harm done yet.

What are you suing? I mean, there is no standing. And now, actually, I think the rule has been finalized, so, like, as of, like, three days ago. So, now they're going to actually, all the lawsuits are going to start again, so we're going to have another round, and so then the court will have to decide on whether or not it's allowed. So, that's kind of like, I think Axios didn't really get that right. Some of the news stories were, we made sure on our side.

Now, hold on a second. Make sure you get it again. Oh, pass it up, Zeal. Zeal got it right. But basically, if people want to know what's going on with this. Right, because Tom and I were talking about this behind the scenes. Tom's like, am I not right that the states have control over their elections, even for federal races? And that's absolutely 100% true. However, with regards to using a federal agency like the United States Postal Service, Donald Trump wants to make sure that there's at least some policies in place here.

And what's going on here? What they're asking the states to do is to provide a list. Of all the ballots that they intend to mail out, then what the Postal Service is going to do is assign a unique barcode for each. So, when the ballot is mailed out, they scan the barcode to ensure its uniqueness and that it matches what the file says.

And then if there is no match, wait, this isn't getting delivered, you know, or something like that. But if it matches, then they send that ballot out to the voter. The voter gets the ballot. They fill it out. They mail it back. When it comes back in, they scan it again. Oh, looks like we got it. Tom Pagasic, mailing by vote. Scan, you're good to go. If another one comes in, the same Tom Pagasic, I'm just like, wait a minute, we're not doing two of these.

What's going on? So, you know, again... What if I call in and say, I voted for the wrong Dan Sullivan on accident? Too late, buddy. Give me back. I need it back. Should have checked twice. Well, it... The thing is, you know, in Michigan has things that Wisconsin, for example, doesn't. You need to know the law. So, there are people in Wisconsin that voted for a candidate that dropped out of the race, and so they went and said, I want to vote for someone else, and Wisconsin's like, we don't do that here, sorry.

But in Michigan, I was going to vote by mail. I cast the ballot, but I didn't mail it in, and then that candidate dropped out. Okay. So, I go into there, and I spoil my ballot, and get a new ballot, and they had to make sure, you know, it's marked down the proper way, and all that kind of stuff. But that was in person, obviously, when I did it that way. But what the Postal Service is just doing is making sure that we're not going to have, you know, like multiple ballots, and that we have an idea of exactly going into the election, how many ballots are going to be mailed out.

And, you know, to me, it's just whole hilarious that, you know, Democrats, when it comes to governance, always operate from a standpoint of power. Then, you know, if anyone says, well, wait a minute now, does the Constitution really give the federal government the power to, they don't care. It's, you know, no rules matter. I never care about the Constitution, but then as soon as, you know, something goes away they don't like, I mean, they sound like James Madison. I mean, wait a minute a second here.

The states are supposed to control the elections. Yeah, we know why you think that, so you can go on for four months counting ballots in California. It's so funny to hear your assessment of this, because I'll listen to hard lefty people talk, and they say the same thing about Republicans now. Which might make your heart a little bit warm, because you're like, finally, Republicans are stepping up and playing ball, but it's like, all Republicans care about is power. Whenever they get the chance, they're going to take it, and then if they're called out on it, they all of a sudden become constitutionalists, you know what I mean?

And I'm like, man, I guess that does warm my heart a little bit. Well, I mean, it's true that Republicans only care about the deficit when the Democrat is president. I mean, there are some things about life like that. Inflation, for sure, yeah. But this idea, I mean, like, I have long felt that... You know, Democrats have been craving for power because power is the means by which they reward their friends, and they use funding for USAID and all these other agencies to kick back all money to all their friendly organizations and all that other kind of stuff.

That is how they thrive, and they make sure universities are well taken care of. Subsidies for this, subsidies for that, loans for this, loans for that. Republicans are like, can't you just cut the government, and then I can go back to golfing? That's what most of these Republican politicians, and they don't understand, like, dude, these people want to step on your throat. Like, I saw another guy today just posted a comment about, like, he's counting down the days to the Kirkiversary when Charlie Kirk was assassinated.

I mean, these people are bloodthirsty. Like, you know, and my biggest complaint about politics. I'm going to tell this to anyone who listened to 20 years ago when I first got in. It's like, we are fighting asymmetrical warfare. It's absolute Kelvin ball. Like, the other side just doesn't care. They'll do whatever it takes to win, and we're like, well, I don't know. We can't change the filibuster. It's like, dude, they're going to kill you. So, at least Mitch McConnell started on some of this stuff.

He warned them, don't change the rules, but if they did change the rules, okay, well, we're going to blow you out of the water, and Trump was the absolute pinnacle of this. He's like, screw this. Like, stop. And Mike Pence is like, well, actually, maybe we should go back to 1995, where we're the whipping boy. It's like, no, this is stupid. Did we talk about the Mike Pence thing? About the transgender officer in the CIA that was like... Oh, my gosh.

Oh, he treated me so nice. We talked about that? Funny joke. Oh, yeah, Tom McCluskey hit the... Wouldn't have dinner with him, or would have dinner with him. No, leave the door open. But, no, you actually bring up a different point, because I... I was thinking about that, and my first instinct, call me, this is Lib Tom or something, of like, yeah, I guess, you know, wouldn't you want to treat everyone with respect?

Then I thought about that more, and I'm like, wait a second. We had someone that basically has a document of mental illness in charge of power at the CIA, and Mike Pence's instinct wasn't, hey, this person has a mental illness, they need to go, they can't be in charge of this. And it's like, oh, you take like one step of like, oh, yeah, maybe it is kind of, but then you're like, wait. So, we're just going to run, like, it's kind of basically what you were saying, of like, We're actually going to run hard on objective truth here and make decisions that make people uncomfortable because they wouldn't do it in a polite setting, but because it's necessary to have a good functioning system.

That's not to discredit a lot of, I just think, pretty open questions from the Trump administration. Getting back to this Postal Service rule, though, the Democrats have been resistant, absolutely resistant, to have citizenship verification. You know, requirements for voting in federal elections. That is what the whole Save America Act is about. If Republicans wanted to pass a bill just saying you needed voter ID, that would probably actually pass. It would still be a fight, but it would probably still actually get through the filibuster because some Democrats are like, ah, I better do it.

But, you know, you can have a state ID and be an illegal alien in many states. So, like, yeah, conservatives are like, well, no, we are going to go for citizenship verification. Because that's actually what matters. Okay. The Democrats have said, no, we don't want the federal government to regulate our elections because we like to cheat, of course. They don't say that, but that's true.

And so, what is Donald Trump? He is like, I got an idea. Okay, I can't change the rules in California. I can't change the rules in Wisconsin to make sure these people aren't cheating. But what I can do is I can prevent them from using the mail, which is a federal agency, which all of us in the United States have a right to have our president exert some political... Power over. We elected these representatives. We elected Donald Trump president to do something about it, and he is doing something about this.

He's going to say, listen, if you're going to use the United States Postal Service to send out ballots, we're going to make sure we're not sending like a thousand to one address. And you watch videos like this where- You know, the guy, what was the guy? Keefe. Keefe was going into Detroit, and like, well, there's, how come there was 18 ballots sent to this address, and it's like a home that would fit three or four people? And like, then the one guy with the dog comes out, and he's like, okay, I think I better leave.

Maybe it was Dolly Parton's family. I think, does she have 12 kids? 14 of them? She was one of 14. One of 14, yeah. One of 14. Speaking of. Speaking of Dolly. You know, rest in peace, passed away at 80. I guess maybe this is a good way to set it up. I saw this as the equivalent of the Bloods and the Crypts tying together the different colors and piece for one day, but we got a tweet from the DSA. Democratic Socialist of America extends our deepest condolences to family, friends, and fans of Dolly Parton, hero of the working class and inspiration to us all, and to get a Trump truth.

Very sad to report that Dolly Parton, one of the greatest country singers and far beyond ever, passed away. This is a true loss for millions of people. There has never been anyone like her, never will. In her honor, I am lowering the American flag throughout the United States for a one-week period beginning tonight at 6. Rest in peace, Dolly. The world loves you. President Donald J. Trump. That is true. Never again. I think the closest I can think of, and he was not even universally as well beloved, was when Toby Keith passed away.

I was like, oh, I felt that one. I just listened to a lot of Toby Keith. But this one, I dug into her history a little bit. Erika, you were actually going to put this as part of your Twilight Zone, but I thought it might be time to reflect on just her life just seemed like a great American. Yeah, no, she's amazing, and what an all-American story. So, again, just for those of you who want to reminisce a little bit, Dolly Parton, born 1946, Tennessee, and a hauler.

And yes, she was the fourth, I'm sorry, not 14, the fourth of 12 children, and her dad never read. He's never able to read. He was a sharecropper, subsistence farmer, and you can see pictures online of the little one-room cabin where they had their 12 kids, like no electricity, a couple windows, that's about it. But man, she could. Sing from a very, very early age. She was singing at church. She's singing on the local radio, television programs. Graduates high school. That next morning moves to Nashville, Tennessee, and she just starts to take off, and I'm not going to go into all the details.

Everyone's saying two most famous songs, I Will Always Love You. Obviously, Whitney Houston picks that up. Is that in dispute? Not in dispute. No, no, that's the top one. That's the top one. Next one, Jolene, and she wrote those, so those two songs, she wrote those on the same day in 1973. She spits out these two songs, and not only was she an artist and a great singer, but she was a genius businesswoman. There's this story going around about how Elvis Presley wanted to take I Will Always Love You, and to get the publishing rights for it.

And she'd get like 50% or something, which is a great deal. Elvis is going to record my song. And she's like, no, I don't know. The way she tells it is so cute and feminine, and she's just like, I don't know.

Just keep all the rights, and sure enough, she ends up making tens of millions of dollars off this one song, because she didn't take the first good offer she got for it. She waited until she could retain rights, and yeah. And then I love the story of her and her husband, Carl Dean.

They were married for 59 years. He passed away just a year ago, so it hasn't been that long. They were separated, and I love this. This is so hillbilly. They met outside the wishy-washy laundromat. In Nashville, Tennessee, the day she moved there. And how cute is that? The wishy-washy. Apparently, he walked around Dollywood just completely unrecognized because he was never in the public eye. He just worked on an asphalt. He had an asphalt company. The urban legend is he only ever went to two of her shows, their whole marriage.

It's crazy. Well, I mean, it's just funny, though. Jolene, she says, based on a real story, that some little... Redhead Hussey at the bank was trying to go after a man, and they had a little fight, and I'm just thinking to myself, like, you know, good golly, she's just such a credible woman. And there's so many stories about how her philanthropy, obviously, she paid for so many books. My son gets them. The Imagination Library. They get it from the Imagination Library, and seriously, it's like her favorite book.

I'm like, this is such a sweet... And there are literally hundreds of different stories about, you know, her charity, her warmth, but she did some things like... Kind of behind the scenes, very low-key, that she absolutely was not trying to get attention for. There's a story about the actor Barry Livingston was talking about how he had a friend.

And who is a paparazzi? You know, these are the photographers that go around and getting pictures of celebrities going here and going there and going everywhere, and they make money selling these, you know, that's what they do. And actors and musicians, for the most part, I mean, sometimes they hate it, but sometimes they like it because it's good for publicity or whatever. But there are, you know, there are deep questions that, you know, can be dark. You know, what can you do?

And there's a, this particular photographer actually saw River Phoenix overdosed outside of a club like in Hollywood or whatever, and the photographer is like, oh my gosh, what do I do? No cell phones at this time. He runs to a pay phone, calls the paramedics. And, you know, the paramedics get on the scene. Unfortunately, you know, couldn't save his life, but a lot of the paparazzi guys were like, dude, what did you do, man? You should have taken a million-dollar photo.

You would have made so much money on that photo, and it would have set you up, and he just, the photographer's like, I just didn't feel right to do something like, you know, something like that. Well, Dolly Parton heard about this.

I invited that photographer, paid for him to fly to Nashville and do a photo shoot in which, you know, he would be able to make a lot of good money on the photo shoot or whatever, and it was just like Dolly Parton's way of thanking somebody for doing the right thing, and I'm like, that is just awesome. God bless you. Rest in peace, honey. Amen. There's one thing, too, and a few things here. Obviously, she had, like, a really iconic, seemingly strange look.

She had some... She called it the trashy aesthetic, yeah. That's a lot of money to look this trashy, she said. Yeah. Took a lot of money to... To dress this cheap. Yeah, but there was one thing, and I'd be curious.

I was kind of digging in, and this is the clip that stuck out to me. She was getting an interview about her success, and she was talking about a lot of the men in her life, or the men that she worked with, and to hear a female star speak this way about men, even that they're related to, was so foreign to me. So, I guess I'll just play it with that in mind. You've been a remarkably successful businesswoman.

How has that happened? Well, my dad... It was like that. My dad raised 12 children. My daddy could not read nor write, never had a chance to go to school, but my daddy was so smart. You know, I've just always wondered what all my daddy might have been able to do had he had an education, but my daddy, I watched him maneuver. I watched how he could trade and barter, and, you know, it's like he would, well, they call it good horse sense or horse trading.

They call it street smarts if you're from the city, but good old country horse sense. My daddy was so smart, and I just watched him through the years, and my daddy was also one of those people that was really willing to work. All the time, up early, having to farm before he went to work on construction or doing whatever he had to do to keep food on the table. But he always just managed to make some of the best deals and some of the best choices.

And I was very influenced by that. Now, I got my music from my mother's side of the family. And most musical people, musicians, don't want to work at anything else. So, I got my work ethic from my dad. I got my music from my mama. And I tried. In the early days, when I would think about it, and I started seeing that I could make money at this, I thought, well, they do call this the music business, so why don't I kind of lay a little heavy on the business side of things?

So, I got to thinking, you know, what I should do to make it really Profitable, not just to sing and just let the money roll in and let it be gone before you think about it. So, I started thinking about keeping my publishing.

To myself, you know, publishing my own songs, starting my own publishing company, and just different things like that that I thought would be, you know, smart business. So, through the years, I have been lucky and made some really good choices, but I've got a lot of good people that's helped me a lot, too. I owe a lot of my success to a lot of smart people. But I'm thinking of an 18-year-old Dolly Parton in Nashville trying to make it. Talented. In that period, there weren't many opportunities for women.

Bluntly put, how did you keep the men off of you? And keep your mind and their mind on business, and therefore build a business, which is now tens of millions of dollars a year of business. When I was young, you've got to remember, I, first of all, believed in my talent. I really believed that I was heading to Nashville with something to sell. I thought my songs were good, and I thought I was a good enough singer that I could pull that off.

And I had all these brothers. So, I knew men. I had my dad, my uncles that I loved, and my grandpas. So, I knew how men thought. I knew them all so well. And I always said, I look like a woman, but I can also think like a man. So, I was not intimidated. And I was a right pretty girl, you know, for the times, you know, a little overdone, of course. But I used that. You know, I was not intimidated.

I took it as a compliment when men thought I was, if they thought I was pretty. I thought, well, this is all good. I can use this to my benefit. But I did not. Well, I didn't use it for anything other than to know what to do. I knew that I had something, and I would say things like, look, I think I can make us both a lot of money if you want to, you know, work with me on this. And if sometimes, some men did get, you know, a little out of line, a little out of place, but I knew how to manage that without hurting their feelings, to compliment them or not to take it as an insult, because it wasn't, but if someone did.

Get out of hand. I would know kind of what to say. So, I never slept with anybody to get anywhere. If I slept with somebody, it is because I wanted to, not to try to get ahead in the business. So, I just... With some people, especially with me being overdone and over-exaggerated with the makeup and the hair and the way I dressed, some people might have thought I was done, but I would have the deal done and gone before they realized what had happened.

I love that so much. She came from all this poverty, and Mary Catherine Hamm made this point this morning on her podcast. She wrote something like, in the era of trauma farming. Right? Dolly Parton wasn't farming her trauma. She wasn't farming, like, you know, I was so put upon by these guys, and blah, blah. But she was, like, joy and gratitude, and, like, acknowledging where she came from. It wasn't just, like, a storybook appellation. There was, like, real grinding poverty going on in her childhood.

Absolutely. But she talks about it, and she acknowledged it, and she always kept her good humor about it, and her gratitude. For where she came from and her pride in being from Appalachia and that approach to life. Was, you know, even beyond her business, Acumen, which was so sharp, is really inspiring, and it's a massive contrast with most of what you get in the entertainment industry today. Yeah, her self-deprecating humor can be really, you know, disarming. She says, I never get offended by all those jokes about dumb blondes, because I know I'm not dumb, and I know I'm not blonde.

So, it's pretty funny. I mean, you know, she's just an American original. That's awesome. There was a time where... She was on TV with Lily Tomlin and Jane Fonda, of course, her co-stars from the 9 to 5, you know, movie or whatever. This was within the last several years or whatever, and they're making joke, or they're attacking Donald Trump, you know, because they're talking about how the movie was against the sexism and misogyny of the, you know, late 70s, 1980. Jane Fonda is like the opposite Dolly Parton.

But, you know, Dolly's, and she felt kind of uncomfortable about this, because she doesn't really want to get into, you know, attacking things in politics. She just wanted to try to make people happy, joyful, be an entertainer, and so she made a joke about, you know, her bosom, which is very famous, as a way to try to disarm the conversation, because she really doesn't want to get into this, where, like, she's getting very political, you know, and she just resisted that, and I think that's one of the reasons why people liked her.

She understood, like, even before Michael Jordan did, like, Michael Jordan's famous quip. That he doesn't get into politics is because he knows Republicans buy sneakers, too. Yeah. Speaking of another fun Pat Riley quote, it's like, if I needed someone to make a shot to win the game, I would choose Michael Jordan. If I needed someone to make a shot to save my life, I would choose Larry Bird.

Shout out to Larry Legend, the Hoosier. But, yeah, maybe it's so interesting to hear both those observations on that because... I just contrast this, and I don't know if it's social media that is just putting a lot of people in front of people, but you hear a lot of the female stars now, and a lot of it is based on grievance, or it's kind of funny, it's grievance, and it's like, oh, we're being so objectified, misogyny is keeping us down, white supremacy, you name it.

And I'm like, I feel like now more than ever, it's actually... Possible to become a female artist star? Probably more than ever, literally. Certainly. Like, Dolly Parton actually probably had real opportunities for grievance where she was discriminated against because she was a woman, but because of the good sense of humor, the wit, the smarts. The lack of resentment. Yeah, exactly. And it didn't wear on her. Like, even at the end of her life, she was still cracking these jokes. She was still kind, whatever.

Like, you could just see it turned some people really cynical. Even if they have legitimate grievances, it kind of is corrosive to your... It's corrosive to your soul at the end of the day, and that shows through your personality, but it just kind of felt like she had a real... And not to say all the stuff she was engaged in was super wholesome or above board. Yeah, no, I get that. But that being said, you can feel a real light quality to her soul.

I like that. I'd love to see more of that. I'm sure it's out there. I'm sure I'm just not thinking of it now, but it just felt like such a contrast to the modern female pop star or whatever. There's some country stars, I feel like, that are coming back that are just a little bit more in the Dolly mold, which I think is due for a comeback, probably.

Country also kind of attracts that, I feel like, a little bit more than other genres. Hopefully. Yeah, and I think it shines through in how she addressed the issues of the day, because people are like, well, she wasn't an activist, but I think she was actually much more effective activist than any of the, you know, pop stars who are out, like, accepting their awards and talking about free Palestine or Ukraine or what have you, like, because instead of just getting up and, like, putting a filter on her Facebook, She actually gave her own money, and there is this great story in the 1980s.

She actually sat down with every single 7th and 8th grader in her county from Tennessee. She brought them all into a room. She sits them all down, and she gave them talking to you about staying in school. She gave them her own money to stay in school, and some of the dropout rate went from 38% to 6% that year because she actually got in the weeds, boots on the ground. She touched grass, and she didn't forget that that was how... You make the world a better place, not just like spouting off on social media.

So, massive respect to her. Well, and she, I mean, she was certainly for female empowerment. You know, maybe a little bit more feminist than traditional Catholics might be, but she didn't like the word feminist because she said she associated it with being anti-men, and she was not anti-men. Clearly. Clearly not. So, that's a value. Which also, like, table stakes. You're like, it is kind of crazy that we've gotten to a place where, in order to advance yourself, you need to trash men.

I guess that maybe that's... Kind of how we got into the predicament we're in today, but even just saying something nice about them. And what a testament to, like, a good, hardworking father. Just love him. Yeah, my daddy. Yeah, so much respect for him as a businessman, illiterate, but could you imagine now, the hustle, like, waking up, I think he paid for her birth with a sack of cornmeal. Yeah, I heard that, yeah. We should talk about being a good businessman, but...

Yeah, waking up before you go work construction, tilling your farm, and then probably doing stuff when you get home, and raising 12 children. It is truly hard to wrap my mind around in terms of the fortitude that you would have in a father. Think about the impacts that a good father can have. You produce a Dolly Parton, and it is just, yeah. Her dad, I love hearing about her dad, and her mom, too. What an amazing story of raising all the kids.

I think she was sick a lot, but she started on a homemade guitar, from what I heard, and then her uncle finally got her a real one, and I am like, oh my gosh. Crazy. Amazing. Makes me smile. What an American story. American original. American original. Rest in peace. Rest in peace.

Okay, Erika, you got good news now. I do. I have great news, and I was blessed. The last week, I was out. We were dropping off another daughter, our second child. We're now two down, five to go, and we're dropping her off at the Franciscan University of Steubenville. Shout out to the Barons who are all there, and I met some fantastic CatholicVote fans. They're all like, and nobody asked me, oh, are you Erika from The Deep? Nobody asked me, are you Erika from LOOPcast?

They're all just like, are you Erika from CatholicVote? And I was like, I sure am. I'm very proud to say it. Oh, and we got some Josh fans, too. Everybody loves Josh. Oh, all right, all right. Yeah, a little shout-out. Sorry, Pogo. I think it's outside your demographic.

Mom's dropping off kids at college crying. They think of Josh, not you. I don't know. But anyway. Yeah, go to a pickup basketball game in a church. Wonderful things happen. Ladies, I'm taken. Yeah, okay. We're all taken on this podcast, so we're hoping you find yours. But that being said. Wonderful things happening at all these beautiful Newman Guide schools, but I was watching also a couple of viral videos from Secretary of Transportation, Sean Duffy, and one does not, in the past, you have not been like, Secretary of Transportation, ooh, viral, but he had viral content because they sat their daughter down, Paloma.

He's getting back to his roots. Yeah, they sat her down. She's like, guys, I got into Harvard. And their faces fall, right? This is all stage, obviously. The faces fall, and it turns out she was really only waitlisted. But she gets in, and they're like, well, we don't want you to go to Harvard because, you know, they've made an industry of blah, blah, blah, and like heaven, not Harvard, which I'm totally on board with. And I get down on the Ivies a lot.

We've had a couple deep episodes that have done very well because, I mean, the Ivies, the educational industrial complex sold out, blah, blah, blah. But there is hope. And this is my good news. So, the Duffys went to Harvard. The Duffys sat down with the Catholic chaplain at St. Paul's there in Cambridge, and this is actually great news. Can I also do a physiognomy check? Oh my gosh, yes. What? So, what is the Catholic culture like? Yes. Yes, no, that is helpful.

I think we have the best Catholic center in the country, so you should come here. Why do you say that? Student involvement, but the biggest one is conversion rate. The largest class of people becoming Catholic in our history this year. We'll have about 80 people entering the church. So, there's something really exciting here. Student mass attendance is great right now, definitely up 10 to 20 percent over the last couple years. Because of the fact that we have very high achieving, intelligent students, the Catholic Center has a different feel.

We can give talks on a range of issues, and the students ask great questions. I'm really... All right, so this is good news. Now, Texas A&M is going to have... I have been inside the church. It looks stunning. This is like a beautiful... Yeah, I mean, it is Cambridge. It is Harvard. There is a lot of capital floating around, but good news here, and I can already report here in New Haven, our parish, too, is looking at another record-breaking year. Of converts coming in from the Yale University of New Haven community, and I just can't wait to do an update on conversions after the Easter Vigil, because I think it's going to be another amazing year for welcoming people into the Catholic Church.

I mean, I would just say that, you know, the initial clip that Sean Duffy, where he says, I don't want you to go to Harvard because it's going to trash you, and all that kind of stuff. I, in general, really love that, because that was a case where a father, most of the time, fathers are like, my kids. I mean, I don't know if it's going to Harvard and they care about how it makes them look to their friends, even if it might sacrifice your kid to this woke empire that's going to destroy them and have them completely transformed and changed.

I want my kids to value the heritage, you know, and the faith of my family rather than just, you know, but I did like this clip, too, where it's like, actually, no, there are really good. Catholics at Harvard, and I know that because former CatholicVote employee, Scott Landry, he was at Harvard and his twin brother. Yeah, Robin. And in fact, you know, he would talk about how, like, because his twin brother would get involved in all these, you know, Catholic debates on campus, and people come up to Scott thinking it was him, and he's like, oh my gosh, my brother's embarrassing me because he's, you know, out there defending the faith so much, and it kind of nudged him to get more serious about his own faith, so it's just kind of funny.

Another member of the club of the chosen few with perfect heads, both brothers. I'm still not sending my kid to Harvard, though. I'm going to make two very superficial observations here that excite me. That's why we keep you around, Tom. We want superficial observations. You're going to be super superficial.

This priest is a good-looking guy. He's in good shape. And what did he do here? He, I mean, cameras around or whatever, his answer was, we have the best Newman Guide Center on campus. Now, that is a Newman Center. That is, that fires me up. That's like, as a man, that's what you want to hear. Like, I actually don't want to hear a priest be like, well, you know, like. We're super inclusive, and we have all these interfaith dialogues, and we're just, we're open to everyone, we're really trying to whatever.

No, like, we have the best one in the world, in the country, and we have the most converts. So, we are aggressive on two fronts. This guy's a young, good-looking dude. This is like, I was funny, I was having a conversation with another priest about this, like, I think he became a priest about 20 years ago.

And he's like, I had people ask me when I was becoming a priest, like, oh, like, you don't look like you'd become a priest, because they knew what priests looked like at the time. Again, superficial observation. We had some problems in the church with the type of people that are becoming priests, maybe for some of the wrong reasons, who are no longer priests anymore. And they don't look like this. You look at all of the polls on how they lean, Orthodox or Progressive or whatever, they're all Orthodox.

They're actually out here staking flags, being like, yes, we're actually trying to convert. Beyond the reality show of it, if every Newman chapter priest talked like this, we would have... A serious force. And maybe we are. Maybe this is what we needed. This is what I want. I want way more of this. Shout out to this guy. I want to hang out with him sometime. Awesome, dude. Super fired up. Vance actually went to Yale. Yale. Yale Law School. Someone said in the chat when they went to Harvard.

I mean, adjacent. We actually have a Yale-y on staff as well. Yes, we do. Shout out, Scott. The former, the offensive coordinator of the Lions coached him. Fun fact. Uh, okay. Josh, what do you got? Okay, so I think a lot of our problems in our politics today could be made better if there was just some basic economic literacy. It's not going to solve everything, no questions. I know that. However, just having a solid understanding of different policies like rent control and how that could backfire is actually very helpful.

And so, Emma Camp is over at the Wall Street Journal. I don't agree with the Wall Street Journal on everything, but she did this real quick one-minute video on rent control, and it's awesome. We need people in their 20s to watch this kind of stuff.

Can rent control fix the housing crisis? No, it's time for some Econ 101. Rent control sounds like a simple enough idea. Housing is too expensive, so why don't we stop landlords from charging so much money? Yay! Wrong. The main reason why rents rise is that there aren't enough housing units for the number of people who want to live in a given city. With many people competing for the same apartments, landlords rationally set rents at the highest amount they think someone is willing to pay.

Rent control sets a ceiling on how much landlords But it doesn't solve the underlying housing shortage. It actually makes things worse, because developers don't want to build new units if they think they can be legally prohibited from charging enough to earn back their investment. Almost half of the rental apartments in New York are rent-regulated. About 50,000 of them stand empty, many of them because their landlords can't charge enough to make up for the cost of necessary repairs. So how do you lower rents?

Build more housing! Cities like Austin, Denver, and Phoenix have recently seen a huge increase And a decrease in rents. Lots of people want to move to these cities, but the housing supply can keep up, so landlords have to compete with each other to attract new tenants. Which they do buy.

Lowering prices. Hey. Hey. Love it. That was a great explanation. I'm glad she used examples of those three cities in the United States, but it's also true that, like, you know, Malay and Argentina slashed all the rent controls, and we saw the inventory go up, and prices went down. Like, I mean... Did you see we just recalled his beef, though?

Yeah, I know. Tough. Did you also know that if you play Marimba behind whatever take you're giving, you're 100 times more academic and true? Oh, I need more Marimba on the deep. I always love, like, whenever you hear the Marimba come out, you're like, oh, this person's right.

Mental note. Yeah, put that one in the back pocket. It's like the Wall Street Journal special. Yeah, great video, Josh. Okay, so I... Listen, you guys know this is near and dear to my heart, maybe borderline top concern.

Number one, baby. The H-1B visa program is an insane scam. I can't believe it was even started by Bush. It's never really been used for what it said it was supposed to be used. We needed specialists to do this. Bush won. And that wasn't true then. It's not true now.

It's abused up and down the ladder, allows companies to get cheap, controllable labor, and it does not allow Americans to get the jobs that they should be getting, that they're qualified to do, and that they're talented. And of course, we talked about different cultures.

The vast majority of H-1B holders are Indian. They come from a different culture. They have different standards when it comes to credentials, workplace norms, etc., and so it typically ends up being a massive waste of time for everyone involved because they can't actually do the thing.

All for doing this the right way, the H-1B visa program is not the way to do it. If you were talking about geniuses, you can do the O-1 visa program. I don't even love that, but I guess if you got to do it, do it. So, the Trump administration slated to set $103,000 fee for temporary worker visas, proposed policies touted by administration officials and immigration policy experts alike as a means of protecting and promoting American workers.

Well, and just as a denominator, we're going from $2,500 per worker to over $100,000, so massive. This should have been done. This is the easiest low-hanging fruit slam dunk of all time. This isn't enough. I think that the program should be destroyed, but this is a good step in the right direction. Thank you. Well, that's all he can do, just as president only. Congress would have to abolish it. He can't abolish it on its own. He can do a lot to restrict it.

Charge more, that kind of stuff, but he's not, as president, he doesn't have the power to eliminate it, but, you know. If American corporations need workers that should hire and train Americans, J.D. Vance, from your lips to God's ears, this is insane that we do this.

And, you know, this idea, I mean, as someone made the point, this idea that there's jobs that Americans can't do, I mean, as someone noted that we have 20-year-olds from Kentucky. That the Navy is able to train to operate nuclear submarines. I think we can handle this, you know? And the fact is, especially when we're talking about the internet, you know, omnipresence, like always on the clock, like, why would you need to import a ton of people into this country? Like, you can have them, if you want to hire foreign workers, you can hire them in foreign countries.

You don't even have to bring them here. So, a lot of these arguments are kind of silly. Like, University of Pittsburgh just posted that they're going to do an H-1B visa for somebody who's going to be an events planner for $45,000. It's like, well, I mean... Ohio, the University of Ohio. So, the most insane... Can't get anyone in Pennsylvania to take that job? And then public universities that take public tax money are taking that money and hiring H-1B visas to do administrative-type work.

Instead of using an American. I'm like, you are being subsidized with taxpayer money, and you're farming this out to an H-1B. It makes me so mad. It's such a slap in the face. But they get to call the other side bigots, and that they don't like other people. Right, you're racist. It's white supremacy. I don't care. Vivek Ramaswamy is in favor of H-1B visas. That's the whole reason he had to crash out over Indians being better than Americans in terms of work ethic, whatever.

That's why I'd never vote for him. It's literally so personal at this point. You could do nothing to solve that. This needs to be destroyed. It is not good for the immigrants that use it because they get stashed in body shops, and they are put on a bench, and because there are backdoor deals between all the people that source the H-1B talent from overseas, and so they are getting kickbacks in the middle. Hey, by the way, this fee does not apply to new applicants only.

It is for people who are already in the United States. Right. Everyone. And you notice there is this one. Suburb of Dallas, which is like 10% of our Indians, and look at what's going on in the housing. All the prices are going down because a lot of them are in Mac. What's that about the supply? Actually, there's literally no defense for it. I'd love to hear one defense for A1B. There's zero. Okay, so here, I'll do my best. I'm going to do my best to deal man here.

So, because this has been in place for so long, there are going to be people who are here for good reasons. Who are working for good organizations who perhaps cannot be easily replaced, and an example would be someone who, say, has been hired by, I don't know, the Knights of Columbus to run their Ukrainian relief fund. Now, the best person to hire for that is going to be someone who knows boots on the ground stuff over there, and perhaps because H-1B has been available for so long at such a long cost, that person has built a life over here, and now It's going to have to be all re-adjudicated.

And so, this could be very disruptive to that particular person. Again, this is a hypothetical. I'm not speaking about anyone in particular. It sounds very specific. Well, but then on the flip side, so like steel manning it, there are good causes that because this has been available, they have built up an infrastructure to pursue their good cause that seems to be destroyed by this. That being said.

I actually know Knights of Columbus who live in Poland, live in Ukraine, who run these programs, and are able, as Josh was pointing out, because of our communications now, they're able to do that while living over there. And so, I think that a lot of Catholics are like, oh my gosh, this is going to disrupt charities that we've built up. Yeah, there's going to be disruption, and we're going to have to change things, but we also have models that are working that we can adapt to.

We are going to adapt to this. And I think the payoff, the benefit, is going to far outweigh the malefic. What's the opposite of benefit? Malefic? Right, I mean, costs, benefits, costs. I mean, the thing is, what Tom would say is like, well, yeah, it might be disruptive to move away from this policy. There will be some disruptions, and there might be some sympathetic cases and causes, but it's like, I think that's ignoring the hundreds of thousands and millions of voices have been already disrupted by this currently terrible policy.

Exactly. So, anything to do, I'd love to get rid of it. Yeah. Well, and also, breaking news this morning on the immigration front. So, Marco Rubio announced that we're pausing all foreigner visa applications worldwide, which is kind of crazy news. I did not have time to dig into this before the show, before we went live, but the headlines are that they want time to train the staff to assess whether migrants We'll need to live on welfare when they come to America or not, and that's just going to take time.

So, they're pausing all the interviews, both in the country and outside the country. And which organization? Is suing Secretary Rubio over this? Tell us, Josh. A Catholic organization, a clinic, the Catholic Legal Information Network, or whatever it's called, and that organization has a multitude of different bishops on their board, from Wenske from Miami to Seitz from, you know, he's...

Most stridently pro-free open borders. He is out of El Paso. So, I just feel like Catholics should be informed by this. I just feel like, again, this is one of those things where as we are You know, Kelsey has started this conversation with the bishops, like, hey, you want to talk about accompaniment? Like, why don't you, you know, and I just feel like the bishops for the longest time have been like, well, we're right on this, and our sheep are way, way, way wrong on this.

And I just feel like, hmm. I don't know. Get the smell of the sheep here a little bit. We're not all evil, racist, xenophobes. I mean, that's garbage. A country has a right to its own culture, and we can welcome some people in, but not have the door wide open. The disparity, the gulf, the chasm between the bishops And the lay people on the church is no greater than on this issue, and I think part of it, you know, people like to assign the monetary stuff.

There is the considerations, because, you know, I think it's less about that. If you ask me the main reason, I think it's the case. I think the bishops look at the demographics of the church, and we all know that as the boomers go on to their eternal reward, hopefully to heaven, the Generation X, I'm the next generation through, and then the millennials and all that kind of stuff, the church is going to be smaller in size. We've heard about church closings over the last 10, 15 years.

It's going to triple soon, and so I think they look at it like, well, why wouldn't we want to bring in people from Latin America, and then we'll fill the pews, and I just think, well, I mean, they're leaving their own country, and it's not like their countries are bursting at the seams with fertility either, so how is that good for their church to lose that many people? Again, it's crazy.

To address the argument that Erika made, again, for the people that come from third world countries, that this is going to be magnitudes better than they could probably do there. I don't fault them. I would probably try to do the same thing. When you make legislation for your country, you take care of your family first, and then what is going to be beneficial then. Once your family is taken care of, a third of the American labor force is not engaged.

There is no skill that you cannot learn via the internet. If you feel that you need to be... Engage in a different part of the world. Start up an organization over there. Employ people according to their country's laws. We have way too many people here that are getting taken... I think in a way they're getting taken advantage of. Not in a way. If you get stashed in a body shop and your ability to stay in America is in the hands of an employer that's paying you less money than they would be paying a worker that they hire in America...

Yeah, there's a name for that. That is unjust. The only people that win are big business, and that is why, from the beginning, I was like, if Trump really wanted to, and I am like, he has made some good strides with ICE. It has not been as much as I wanted to. I don't think he's going to do it because these are all his business friends, Brooke Rollins, whatever. I would go after all the organizations that are hiring illegal labor. You can stop it immediately.

Stop sending back remittances, go after the F-1 visas. We have a problem where the entire world sees us as an economic opportunity zone and a piggy bank, and so you as an American that are doing everything right, going to college, getting good grades, not being lazy. Studious and entrepreneurial do not have opportunities in your home country because you can be undercut with wages of people that are desperate from the third world. It is not a just way to run your country because the United States is not in service of some religious free market, open borders, whatever.

The economy exists to serve Americans and American families. Well, I think going after H-1B visas first makes... It's low as hanging. There's a lot that still needs to be done, but this is absolutely the start. So, you know, and like all this would be said is like we can have hard policy conversations that will have friction, and there are going to be people that are personally impacted by that. And you know what? I'm really sorry for that. Like, I'm not doing this to be vicious or to attack individuals that are taking advantage of a system that benefited them, but the entire promise of at least the first time around for MAGA was...

America first. We're going to take care of your country first, and that was the most popular platform of all time. That's why he won in 2016 and why he won in 2024, and that's why people are frustrated with him now. Well, he does more of this stuff, and people will be happier. Yep, most definitely. Okay, let's get into Thomas Reese. I have not heard from Thomas Reese in a while. It looks like he popped back up onto my feed. I literally was like, are we even going to have to talk about this?

We are, Josh. Why I hate the old Latin Mass, a confession. The old Latin Mass is like a zombie. We thought it was dead, but it keeps coming back. Yes, it does. You know what also died but came back?

Jesus. I mean, it's just like, why wouldn't you use something from your own faith rather than zombies, which we don't, I mean, come on. No, I mean, you know, I've been, this just bothers me so much, because in a true sense of You know, I'm not fighting for the Latin Mass because I go. I actually don't go. I've been maybe a dozen times in my entire life. I've said this a hundred times. It's not necessarily my thing. I have access to it, so I could go every Sunday if I wanted to.

It's not really that far away from me. I have a deep love and respect for it. I will support the right of anyone to go to it. I have always been so outraged at the vitriol from mostly, you know, like Jebbies like this, Reese, you know, like, what is with it? Why are they so viscerally offended by people who want this? Now, these are people who, for the most part, will... We'll scream bloody murder about diversity and how we have to accept other people and their differences.

Except, I guess, when it comes to someone who wants the traditional Latin Mass. Like, oh my God, well, not that. Not diversity for that. Not respect for that. It is just absolutely mind-blowing, and I just, what is it that, and for them, I think it is like, well, it is hitting rewind on a lot of the experiments and changes that we have done in the Catholic Church over the last 50 years that they have approved of. You know, and they just look at it as like, you know, we're somehow erasing everything.

We're getting into a DeLorean going back in time before all this garbage that was put forward in the church. But, I don't know. I mean, I just, it just drives me batty. Yeah, I mean, I think reading this piece, I was... Are you going to talk about the style a little? Is anyone going to mention that? I mean, okay, yeah. So, let me just lay it out here. Thomas Rees, he imagines himself as a penitent going to confession with this priest to, spoiler alert, in the end, absolves him in Latin and tells him he's arrogant.

So, like, oh, poor me. Thomas Rees is the penitent, and he's like, bless me, Father, for I have sinned. I hate the old Latin mass. And then he goes through all these... It's just kind of like very bizarre, very childish sort of way of making his argument without presenting it as an argument because he doesn't really have one. But I was just really sad reading through it because He just kind of, like, repeats the old pot shots at traditionalists that are, you know, rehashed every time this topic comes up, including, like, their judgmental, and then, like, these lines about, like, in the Mass, we don't pray to Jesus, we pray with Jesus, and just, I mean, all these sort of, like, tired tropes that he takes a pot shot at Cardinal Ratzinger.

Because in 1998, Ratzinger rejected the... In no way. Yeah. Because why? Well, I know. Sorry, you can... Sorry, it's funny to me because I know why, but go ahead, Eric. I just can't believe you did that. You removed him as the... Editor of America. Editor of America magazine. Yeah. So, he works him in, and he's like, well, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, who was a native German... So, how dare he tell us how to pray in English? He rejected the 1998 translation that we had that was going to be so great.

No, the reason Ratzinger and the Pope at the time, John Paul II, rejected it was because it was so loosey-goosey that there were questions about the validity of a mass said with this particular translation. It had nothing to do with, like, oh, is it good English or not? And besides, I think in some ways Ratzinger could write better English than Father Rees, but that is a whole other topic.

Yeah, and I mean, when I was doing the episode on The Deep last week that was about why we have bad Catholic music, and sort of— The story of the coming about of the Novus Ordo in the 1960s, I did not realize that between the time of Sacrosanctum Concilium, so Vatican II's document on the sacred liturgy, and its encouraging of active participation and maybe working in maybe a little more of the vernacular, in our case, English, there was actually a gap of four or five years where we had these interim liturgies coming in before we got the Mass of Pius VI.

During that time, there was this sort of going crazy vacuum of like, we went all English all the time, and we weren't really even sure what was going on. So, this idea that Thomas Rees is presenting that out of obedience, he received this new liturgy that's now so much better because we're not praying to Jesus anymore, and the Mass isn't just a sacrifice anymore, which he literally says in here, that That somehow, what does he say? Our tradition is to change.

And that's just totally ignoring the utter loss, the loss of faith, the loss of priests, the loss of nuns during that period of massive upheaval and change, and the sort of papering over of those very disruptive decades, for which we're still paying the price, right? Like, we're still, you talk about church closures are going to amp up in the next few years. Yeah, this is precisely why. But this whole thing was so sad because he is so stuck in whatever was going on in the 60s, those five years in between the mess.

That gentleman at Harvard, I guarantee, probably right after he said we have the best Newman Center in the country and that we're converting a bunch of people, said, you know, actually, our tradition is to change. Yeah. Love that. So sad. Well, you know.

Rhys and Francis have a common heritage there. They are both Jesuits. They both hate the Latin Mass. If I had been elected the Pope, I would have taken the name of Clement XV to honor the previous Clement who suppressed the Jesuits.

Strong choice. Clement, baby. Clement's a great name. That was Clementine. Clementine. Yeah, we're back, boys. Erika, if you were the pub, what would your pub name be? Oh my gosh, Joan. I mean, hello. I'm kidding. Do not clip. That was a good question, and I got you, and I destroyed you. Feminist. Destroyed. You're clipping right now. Celine Goddard, you walked right into that trap. Welcome back to the show. Totally fired.

Yeah, the ending did, you know, I see Peter. Although it reminds me of what happened, you know, William F. Buckley ran for mayor in the 60s, you know, just to attack, you know, James Lindsay and all these other guys, and someone says, okay, well, if you got elected, you know, mayor, what would you do? He goes, I'd demand a recount.

Election was stolen. No way I should have won. Oh, so you did. I can't even speak. You did the video about sacred music, and you got to go through some of the hits. We've done this too much on the show, but table planning, what are your thoughts? Oh, man. I think we did. We talked about singing a new song, like singing a new song. Eagle's Wings.

Eagle's Wings, always difficult for me. That one's hard, because Eagle's Wings, and I say this in the video, is that it's been played at every family member's funeral, so I have like a nostalgia. I have an emotional reaction to it. It was actually Joseph Ratzinger, though, his writing on sacred music that kind of encapsulated my thesis for me in that, because I was trying to understand, like, what is it about this utilitarian folk music stuck in with Peter, Paul, and Mary?

Like, what is it about it that's not sacred? And he talks about how it appeals to a very limited range of emotions. And you know what you're supposed to feel when you go into Mass and these songs start playing. You're supposed to feel bubbly, like with some of these entrance songs that are overplayed, and you're supposed to feel deeply moved. And it's so centered on this very limited range of human emotion that it doesn't actually put us in touch with what's going on, the majesty and the awe of what goes on in the Mass, regardless of what we come into the church feeling that day, right?

And I remember, like, A couple of masses that I've gone to that were like folky guitar masses, and we start singing like, oh, gather us in the lost and forsaken, and my kids are dancing, and like, I just had two people die in my life, and this friend of mine is getting divorced, and I'm like, I don't feel like singing this song, but those songs can't serve those feelings, and you're like, you need to conform to this. Whereas, The majestic polyphony or the Gregorian chant, it transcends whatever you're going with in your life, whatever's going on in your life at that moment.

So, the Gregorian chant, in that sense of human emotion and human tragedy and human triumph and greatness, Gregorian chant is far more inclusive than any of these songs singing about being inclusive. It doesn't have to be just Gregorian chants. It can be just basic... Or polyphony. The hymns. The traditional hymnody, right. Hitting Jesus Christ is Risen Today after Easter Mass is like my version of the Hugh Freeze speech for getting people excited for college football season.

You know what I'm talking about, Josh? Yeah. It's like family parked five miles away from the stadium, went all the way to the top, saved all their money all year to come watch your day of play football. You owe it to them, and then it'll always be, like, a compilation of dudes getting hit hard. Like, that's my, the Catholic version of that is Jesus Christ's risen today. Out of Easter, dude, fires me up. Yeah. Oh, God, be so praising. Talk about crazy.

People were laughing at my reaction to you saying that it was a pretty common thing for someone to say that Jesus didn't actually multiply the loaves. Do you remember that? Yeah. Someone sent in, it was like, I couldn't believe how you laughed at that, because, like, I had been told that. I've heard this homily multiple times. Yeah, like. Dude, talk about life comes at you fast. I remember we went to Green Carpet Church growing up. Tom, you have no idea. No idea how bad it was.

No, I really don't. It's like the Republican Party 20 years ago. Brother, you have no idea. One of the theses I've been working on is... I genuinely, I'm just off the Trump train at this point, if people can't tell, but Trump was the formative politician of my lifetime, and so my standard for what my tastes are for a politician is Trump 1.0 in 2016, and so I didn't experience the George Bush phenomenon. I didn't experience, personally, Obama, whatever. I was a young kid, and so my standards are high, and so I'm like, well, you said you're going to do this, and you didn't do these things, and then Josh is like, well, he's at least doing...

These things that are, like, light years better than Mitt Romney ever would have accomplished. I'm like, yeah, it's fair. I think we both come to the table. Can I give you, like, a 10-second thing? I mean, like, in George W. Bush's sixth year, he was pushing amnesty proposal through Congress.

Right, a different... Donald Trump's sixth year, he's putting a $103,000 fee on H-1B visas. Yeah. These are not the same. These are not the same. I remember, I was talking... I was in a bar in Washington, D.C., talking with a bunch of these RINO Senate staffers, like, we've got to do amnesty. We'll never win the Hispanics if we don't do amnesty.

And I'm like, what are you talking about? Like, come on. And Donald Trump proved them right, because, in fact, he won Hispanics. He's like, what's your plan for immigration? So, yeah, let me connect this. So, we were at a green carpet church in Michigan. I know for a fact the priest gave homilies out of America Magazine, straight off of America Magazine. I think he opened it up and gave a homily, and my mom was in the choir and literally sang On Eagle's Wings.

I distinctly remember this as a young kid. And then my, this same mother is going to solemn Latin Masses and failing. Yeah, she goes to the Institute now, right? She's playing in a sacred music choir at the Institute. It drove her. It is crazy how, yeah, it's crazy how things change, you know?

So, shout out to my mom. And the funny thing is, and maybe this is worth bringing up, of course, everyone gets fired up about this. My mom, very, very pious woman, cared very much about her faith, even when we were at the Green Carpet Church. But of course, people have different faith journeys, they learn different things, and then they advance. And I really think, because of my mom's sincerity, she has followed a lot of the different avenues in which she was like, okay, I'm just following.

What I'm learning, and then, of course, then what I'm convicted, of course, you know, getting spiritual direction, all of that. And so, people that enjoy On Eagle's Wings, I don't think there's anything wrong with you, per se. Like, I don't even think there's, but of course, when you go a little bit deeper, like, okay, we have the germ, and there's pride of place, and it's like you start to understand things in context. It doesn't have to do with your base sensibilities.

Then it's like, oh, we're a part of a broader project. What's that broader project? Proper worship of Jesus Christ, and then you get there, so. Anyway, shout out to my mom. All right, let's rock to Wild Zone now, Josh. What do you got? So, I'm going to go back to Al Sayed for a second. He's the Michigan Democrat. He's running for the Senate race in Michigan, and he called, you know, over the many times in the past, he's called for reparations.

You know, it's time to reimagine. By the way, he's worried about getting Black votes, so I'm sure he's going to even do more talking about reparations for slavery. And so, conservative activists kind of tongue-in-cheek said, yeah, I like reparations. We should have Muslims pay the victims of 9-11 families.

So, of course, you can imagine how this went on. MSNOW's Mahid Hassan went, whoa, a conservative pundit blaming all Muslims for 9-11. Well, to which the conservative pundit said, huh, are you saying it's wrong to demand people compensate others for an atrocity that they had nothing to do with?

Almost sounds like you're against reparations for slavery, then. Mehdi Hassan got caught on that one. Like, walk into the trap, brother. Do you want to talk about rhinos? This is all Republicans do, is like, whenever they get something like this, like, could you imagine if the other side did this? And so, it's pretty sick to see Mehdi Hassan getting caught in that. Could you imagine Olympics?

Could you imagine? That's all we do. That's the problem. I agree. Yeah. We're on the offense now. Okay. Erika? Yeah, so, as a writer, the AI thing, like, how much do you use AI to help with your writing? How much do you, well, now we don't even apologize for it. Now, it's just a fact of life, apparently, even at the Wall Street Journal, which J.D. Vance took a pot shot at this last week, which I did savor that pot shot. Oh, I didn't see it.

Howitzer. Yeah, that's true. Okay, Howitzer. There we go. And I was with him for that one. But, basically, this Stanley Druckenmiller, who's... He's with Harvard, and he's a former hedge fund manager. He wrote a Wall Street Journal op-ed criticizing Scott Besson's work with the U.S. Treasury, saying that his bond market intervention is bad and all that. And you read the op-ed, and as someone who has dabbled with AI, it's pretty clear AI wrote it. It has the classic, it's not this, it's this.

And then, like, The three P's going on, all of the markers. So, he's confronted with this, and he's like, of course I used AI. It's 100% generated with AI, but it's still my ideas. And he's like, there's a reason I moved from an English major to being an economics major. I'm not embarrassed by it. I write everything using AI now, for the same reason I use a calculator when I do math problems.

Which is, as they say, an analogy that limps a little bit. But the real kicker here for me was that the editorial page editor for the Wall Street Journal, Paul Guijot, He came out and defended not only Druckenmiller using AI, but his own editorial staff for just passing it through without a thought, apparently. Just, yeah, our guys are going to, and this is what he wrote, AI is a fact of modern life. People will use it to assist in their work and their writing, including with research, checking grammar, editing, and more.

The question for us is whether what we publish from contributors reflects an author's original argument, and if the author has The standing and credibility to make it. Basically, are you a billionaire hedge fund manager from Harvard? In Stan Druckenmiller's case, we have had a relationship with him for many years, and nobody can doubt that his op-ed is his genuine opinion. My problem here is that to use AI to generate an opinion piece...

Is not the same as using a calculator to crunch a few numbers. If you didn't write it, I'm sorry, you didn't think it. Because it would be the same thing as me reading like a Ross Douthat column and being like, oh, that's my opinion too, and just copy and pasting. It is not you, it is not your genuine work that is writing an expression of your hard-won arguments through your expertise. When people open up the op-ed page of the Wall Street Journal, they're expecting to get...

What the expert has thought on and worked to earn and considered hardcore, not just feeding into AI, okay, here's a bunch of data, and this is my opinion on it, write me a 300-word op-ed, so I don't have to actually do the writing.

And this is part of, again, this was another deep episode, what happens when we stop reading? And now I want to do one on what happens when we stop writing. But again, the fact that... The Wall Street Journal just lay down and took it, when what they should have done has been like, we made a terrible mistake. Our editors, then they must have known, because it was so obvious to anyone who has written anything in their life. They knew what they were doing.

Did they even read it? Did they even read it? Okay, pass it through. It was Stan, our buddy. We have a relationship with him, so we're just going to pass it on. So, to me, the New York Times is dead because Ross Douthat is gone, and the Wall Street Journal is dead. Yeah, I mean, again, it's one thing if you say, I used AI to assist in helping me prepare for this, but ultimately, it needs to be you that's putting forward the argument.

Just to have 100% AI, because you could do that. I can go into AI and say, give me an argument for why Catholics should vote for Mike Rogers in Michigan, in Josh Mercer's voice, and it could spit it out.

And it gets better every week. It improves every week, too. But it's still not you. Ultimately, you have to put in the work to it. Otherwise, it's not yours. Yep. Yeah, all the signs are there, whenever you get the three, the, it's not, not this, it's that. Not this, it's that. If you see a dash like this, no one writes like that. You got to make sure to remove the last line, too. Would you like another article? Yeah, right, right, right.

Yes, would you like? People have got on that. People have been got on that, where they don't delete that. People have definitely been got on that, on like social media posts or politicians or whatever. Part of me, though, is a lot of the stuff that's generated there wasn't actually worth doing or thinking that hard about, so I don't have as much problem with that. I think in this case, because it was an opinion piece, and you're trying to put out a...

Thought out argument in long form. Yeah. Yeah, bizarre, but I guess, I don't know, I don't feel bad for like social media posts, or like if you're trying to collate information or whatever. Everyone's trying to find where. Yeah, I mean, like if it's a news article, and someone, you know, it's like a press release on, you know, the boys basketball team, and you're like, okay, you want to run it through AI to write it in a news story, and then if you just publish it without looking at it, that would be bad.

If you look at it and go, okay, let's add a little bit to it, you know. But to have the first draft done by AI in a news story like that wouldn't bother me, and then you edit and tweak it and add additional stuff to it. Because it's very formulaic.

Yeah, I mean, it's just, you know, okay, do the first draft, but an op-ed, bro, like, I don't want... You know, Chet GBT or Google Gemini, I want your opinion. You are the hedge fund manager. You are the billionaire who has made a whole history on this. Tell me what you think. Right. Because, I mean, AI is just, again, AI is, in large part, pattern recognition. So, it is looking at all the previous knowledge based on the stuff. Sometimes it gets it wrong, by the way.

But it is looking at the pattern recognition, and it will spit out information. But if you're the expert, you're the ones who say, oh, actually, some people got that wrong, and here's where it's going to be going in the future.

You're adding to it because, you know, you should be the one sending the information. Well, you should be the one continuing the conversation, and one of the objections to this that really bugged me was, you know, coming from some of these ethics experts at the University of Alabama or something, and this was in the notice write-up of it, and they're like, well, we are seeing a ton of this, and we need to learn how to avoid the blowback that comes when you take humans out of the communication process, because when humans read opinion pieces, they want it to sound like another human.

And it's not just about like, okay, well, maybe the tool just isn't good enough yet, but it's the reason people are bothered by this is because when you take humans out of the communication piece and the conversation in the public square, one, you're not Yeah, well, just the bottom line is, it is not another human, right? It is not that it does not sound good enough. It is not that the prose is stilted or something. It is that the fact of the matter is, you are not communicating with another human, and you are just rehashing, like Josh said, of what other humans have said before about this topic.

All right, I propose a solution. All right, give me a solution. You know, when this whole thing just shuts down, inevitably, we are going to go back to the street corner. We're going to go Athenian, and you're just going to have to orate from a stone's throw, and there will be a crowd that gathers around, and you will be able to tell based on the reaction of the crowd. Well, we will. It'll be a premium on in-person events, and I think we're already seeing that in the success of public debates or public...

You get the neural link chip, and then you start using em dashes and triples and not this nor that. So, I was annoyed because Grammarly started, when you do the automatic double dash, it automatically started going to the M dash. So now, even if I'm using a dash in my writing, it looks like I'm using an M dash. I'm like, no! No more dashes. I like the long dash, damn dash.

I'm always like, everyone thinks you're AI. No one used that before AI, you're going to be accused. That is also a fun moment of this. I don't care. Now people, there's like a big kind of witch hunt for people. So, it's like if you use something, like if you were a person that loved to do, if not this, then that, you're now AI. So, it would be like being named Karen. Yeah. And then now like... How do you think these are named?

They got it from the original. Whoa, AI took it from Josh. That's a funny one, and then I've also heard that I think Claude is putting an unseen watermark on things generated by AI, so now if you have the thing to see the watermark, you can see whether or not it is, which is kind of interesting. I think the EU forced them to do that. Yeah, they need to do that. One of the AI detector websites, someone fed some classic work, like E.M.

Forrester's Howard's End, into it, and it was like, this is 100% AI, and you're like, no, that's... That was written in 1894, but yeah. So, some of the detectors aren't working either. Maybe a watermark would be better. Oh, hilarious. I was like, these are already making ads by hand again, e.g. stop motion. The pendulum is swinging back. So true.

All right. Hey, I'm doing what I said I'd never do. A little cherry on the top. You know, this podcast had a real shaky moment. It almost ended when I brought up that perhaps maybe I'm not a huge fan of the WNBA, and I think that we talked about it a little bit too much. And you know what? I love Charles Barkley. I think he's hilarious. He's the best. And so, I'm going to play a Charles Barkley clip, and we can talk.

I always support the gay community. I always support the transgender community. I got love and respect for gay people and transgender people, but under no circumstances do I think men should play against women. Zero. I'm disappointed in Adam Silver and Kathy, the commissioner.

First of all, you can't let stupid stuff go out to the internet, which is one of the worst things that ever happened to the world. They should have come out two weeks ago before all this. The people are looking for attention now.

Including this guy. But he has a point, though, because Kathy and Adam haven't said, hey, it's in the title, WNBA. We're not going to have transgender people in the WNBA, and we're not going to discuss it again. That's what Adam and Kathy should have done two or three weeks ago before they turned it over to the Internet and every fool, idiot, and jackass to have an opinion on.

Adam. Adam should come out, and Kathy. I like both of them a lot. Women can all, there's no transgender people going to play in the WNBA. If you don't like it, kick rocks. And we're not going to discuss it anymore.

And Ennis is trying to get attention, because here, listen, if he did all the operation things. No, we're not doing that either. The WNBA is for women, and listen, this is the last time we're going to discuss it. We're not going to turn it over to the fools on the internet. We're not going to turn it over to Congress and things like that. The WNBA is for women only, period. We're not going to discuss it again.

Mark? I have a few things I'd like to say. I obviously disagree with him on term usage or whatever. But he's describing basic leadership, and he's played a lot of basketball. I understand this. I've played a lot of basketball. I understand it, too. If you don't have good leadership, and you, I think of this in the course of refereeing, so you have a set of rules that you referee the game by, and when players start going outside of bounds on those rules, for example, harder fouls, grabbing jerseys, pushing the limit, and it's not properly policed or taken care of by the league, players take it into their own hands to self-police, and that's when you can get a dangerous situation.

Where guys are hitting each other dangerously, going up for layups or whatever else. I'm using a basketball analogy here, but he just made the fundamental point. Strong leadership in the beginning, in which the reason why I'm so annoyed that the fact that WNBA is even in the conversation is because they're literally artificially pushed by and subsidized by the NBA that people actually, there's a big fandom for. The WNBA Got their chance by having, like, truly a generational talent, Kaitlyn Clark, come up, who, like, even as a guy who's watched a lot of basketball, I've not really seen much like Kaitlyn Clark, and as soon as she got in the league, you know, she was snubbed in multiple places, hard fouls, and the coaches defending the person who fouled her, like, to anyone that just understands sports, like, oh, this is just so backwards, and it almost felt like they didn't want...

To do what would have made sense, which would be utilize this generational star that came forward to embrace the popularity that came with that. Instead, it was almost like a little bit resentment, like we kind of want to be popular on our own terms, and we don't want to have it be done by this person that we perceive, and we have all these whimsical, ridiculous identity politics type rules.

But they could have solved this problem by coming out and saying the obvious, we're not going to have transgender, whatever you want to identify, play in the league. You could even use his terms if you want. And then, now I caution here at this point because Ennis Cantor and Royce White have really been pushing the issue, and to Chuck's point, they do have a point. When I saw him at that game with the shirt on, walking towards the woman, he's obviously a humongous man.

The optics on that, he's bullying women in this case. He's pushing the issue. Perceived, yeah. Perceived like he's menacing over a woman. Basically, the WNBA has enough rope to hang themselves. They don't need you to go and push the issue. And he's got a very interesting history, but he's addicted to being the face of different causes. Sometimes I agree, sometimes I disagree, but he's clearly looking for attention. And I think it's actually counterproductive to the principle that we're trying to achieve and put into good policy in many places, which is, obviously, men and women should have their own separate sports categories.

And I'll mention Because I'm taking this seriously now, as I've said, and I didn't before, I'm taking it seriously. Obama was actually the first person to make this political. It was not Trump by coming in and trying to do this. Obama made the Title IX rules that had to apply broadly to high school sports and below across the country. And gender identity, right? Exactly. And so, you need a true policy to come from Congress, but that's a separate conversation than what this league could have done.

And the league has handled it like they've handled the last... Four or five major decisions they made, like a total blunder, that makes them look stupid, and I'm not even mad. I've played more, if I could pause, I have been, I've witnessed more women's basketball than anyone else in this podcast, barring calcium or organization.

My dad coached for 30 years. He coached girls teams. There's pictures of me in the paper when I'm like five with winning ninth grade girls teams, okay? I scrimmaged against these girls when I was like eight to ten, and I was, you know, I'm not going to say how it went, but I was aware of the disparity between men and women, basketball ability at the time from a very young age.

And the funny thing is, and maybe this is where everyone got mad at me, there's actually tons of virtue, and there's so many great experiences we had. With some of these wonderful girls teams, like many of them actually babysat me. They grew up to become fantastic people, and there's good competition. Like, I have cousins that play girls basketball, too. Great basketball players. Nothing against them, and to have someone like Caitlin come up, and they also play and appreciate, I'm okay that there's, you know, a niche interest out there for some type of sports league for girls basketball.

Like, that's not my issue on principle. It's just that this league is so ridiculous, and, you know, even... Charles Barkley is pointing out, like, this is... I don't know how you've managed to fumble four or five decisions in a row at this point, so that's what I've got to say. Yeah, I mean, I just think if the end was to have a great sports league and a great women's basketball league, if that was the purpose of the system, then yeah, you could be like, okay, the leadership should be better, blah, blah, blah.

But I don't think it's the purpose. I mean, at this point, notoriety and outrage seem to be the purpose of the WNBA, sadly. And so, like, yeah, they could have shown strong leadership three weeks ago, but then they wouldn't have all the attention still that they have either. So, you know, if they'd come out and just been like, oh, women only, let's play our game, because that's the point.

Then this would be a whole different story, but that was enough of a point. And if you look at the average, and of course, this is all in the backdrop of how insane the 2020s were. Like, there was literally a Nike ad in which they suggested that women were literally better at basketball than men. And, like, I'm just saying this because it actually happened, and you can go Google it, and I almost put that in the back burner. And Nike's stock has gone down.

Exactly. And I'm like, I put that in the back burner because it's so ridiculous, but the fact that that ever aired, ever, and got past layers of approval, and someone said, yes, this is what we're going to go with for, like, the same brand that Michael Jordan was a part of.

We really did go through a crazy time there, and it's like, you can basically admit that men are better at basketball than women. Like, another example, Candice Parker, who's kind of a beloved WNBA player, was in a dunk contest against three men, and she dunked the ball four times in a row, and she won the dunk contest, okay? Now, the guys were like throwing it off the backboard, windmilling. Candice was just barely getting in. Yes, it's an impressive feat for a woman to dunk a ball.

No, it's obviously not better or entertaining or more athletic than windmill dunking off the backboard. And I actually wonder with this conversation, too, I've been reading a lot of Ethan Strauss' Become One of My New Favorite Sources on Substack. Part of it, I think, is this gender war stuff where There is a natural impulse within men to be deferential to women.

And if a woman is in the room with other men, it changes the atmosphere that was there before. And if you look back to a lot of the old Dream Team teams, what was going on in there? They're hitting each other with towels, they're ripping male jokes, and then you put a woman in there and people pull back. And so, I think part of this thing with the WNBA is...

People aren't willing to actually be, maybe it's impossible to be fully honest about what's going on there because they don't want to come across as demeaning to the women there because they want to naturally protect them or they pull back or just changes the environment, and so you can't be fully honest. And then there's also the feminism angle where it's like, am I betraying feminism if I admit that we're not as good as men and that this isn't going to be the same product as the NBA?

And so it just kind of makes an honest discussion about it. Basically impossible. Yeah. I like your Nike ad. For me, the tip of the woke era ridiculousness was when an Asian sportscaster was asked not to broadcast a Virginia game because it was right during Charlottesville and all that stuff, because this Asian name was Robert Lee.

No. He wasn't forced. He did it on his own accord, but I'm like, what are we doing here, people? Oh, that's so bad. Damn. Robert Lee. How crazy were we? Yeah, it was pretty crazy. That was crazy. Man of the South.

As AOC said last week, woke one was crazy. Woke one was crazy, fam. That was... Oh, we're not crazy anymore. LOL. Yeah, we just think circumcision is the same as... Yeah, and I'm going to publicly stab myself with egg-freezing hormones. We're not crazy anymore. AOC's been on a heater of breaking up with her fiancé, freezing her eggs on livestream, saying Mo Kwon is crazy.

Yeah, she's prepping, man. She's ready to rock. Okay. Great show, gang. It's good to have you back, Erika. Another episode of The Deep coming for you tomorrow, and if you want some time across America, I have my Wyoming trip captured. Cowboy culture. Very cool.

End today with our prayer. In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen. Breathe in me, O Holy Spirit, that my thoughts may all be holy. Act in me, O Holy Spirit, that my work too may be holy. Draw my heart, O Holy Spirit, that I love, but what is holy. Strengthen me, O Holy Spirit, to defend all that is holy. Guard me then, O Holy Spirit, that I may always be holy. Amen.

St. Thomas More, St. Fidelis, our Lady of Guadalupe, pray for us. Great show, gang. Good to have you back, and we're on to seeing you next week. Peace.