Erika Kirk Forgives Killer, Left-Wing Violence Surges, Bishops Take Bold Stand

And we're not live. Welcome back to LOOPcast. LOOPcast Light on Monday morning with Josh and Erika, brought to you by every Catholic's favorite morning newsletter, The Loop. If you are not subscribed, what are you doing? Go to CatholicVote.org and get yourself on that list. It's the best. We are going to talk all things Charlie Kirk Memorial. It was an incredible day. We've got highlights, reactions, and Josh will tell us. What it all means for America and the future of the West.

Nothing too heavy for Monday morning, Josh. We've also got more. I know we covered this on Friday, but over the weekend, we have more updates on left-wing violence in the United States and the direction that that's going, and then a battle of the bishops. Is that what we're seeing here in the church?

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So, it was very beautiful. It was quite an event, and just the reaction from so many people has just been overwhelmingly positive. It was great for our country to have this. Yeah, this was a great day. So, the Charlie Kirk Memorial, and for anyone who's ever thrown an event together, they threw this together in, I think, seven days start to finish from the first planning meeting until this happened. State Farm Stadium in Phoenix, Arizona was filled to capacity. Over 63,000 people attended the memorial for Charlie Kirk inside the stadium.

Thousands more waiting outside or watching in overflow areas. The total estimates are 200,000 people were at this, making it the largest private funeral since Martin Luther King Jr., which is... Stunning. That was good. It is stunning, although I noticed a difference in the crowd. It was a lot younger, more male. Most of the crowds we've seen on Liberal Things are 65-year-old cranky women.

It is true, and the lineup, too, the national leaders who were present, we had President Donald Trump, who you mentioned, the Vice President, J.D. Vance Spoke, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Pete Hegseth, Health and Human Services, Robert R.F.K. Jr., Linda McMahon was there, Tulsi Gabbard. I mean, they would pan that part of the audience every few minutes, and it was kind of stunning to see pretty much like the whole cabinet was there.

Yeah, Trump even said at one point, I can say every member of Congress was here, but it'd take me all day. Yeah. There's a lot of people there. It was amazing. It was amazing. Yeah, you can see it up on the screen right now, for those of you on YouTube.

The bagpipes played Amazing Grace. There was about four hours of Christian praise and worship music leading up to the event itself, so people who were coming in. Security was nuts. It took like three hours for people to get through the main security. Some people had been Staying overnight outside the stadium up to 48 hours. This night slept for two nights just to be able to get in for this. It was an incredible, incredible event.

Yeah, let us go through a couple of the talks here. I would like to start, actually, we will end with Erika. Let us start with Marco Rubio. He had kind of a funny moment here, but I love listening to little Marco. Let us pull him up.

...easier, like for example, and I remember thinking back then, I was, I'm going to admit to you guys, I was a little skeptical. I said, college campuses, you're going to do that? Why don't you start somewhere easier, like for example, communist Cuba, you know?

But my skepticism was proven wrong. In place after place over the last 12, 14, 16 years, we've seen this renaissance. Understand where we were at that time in our history. Understand where we are still today in many places, where young Americans are actively told that everything that they were taught, that all the foundations that made our society and our civilization so grand, they were all wrong, they were all evil, that marriage is oppressive, that children are a burden, that America is a source of evil, not of good in the world.

And I remember thinking that. That was really kind of funny, right, Communist Cuba? But then he gets into this. Can we play the next clip there, Simon? Well, before I came to CatholicVote, I spent three or four years in college activism, and my contribution to try to fight against this was like a tiny grain of sand compared to the giant that Charlie Kirk was in this field. I mean, what he was able to do And I can't even get into how amazing it's been, this legacy.

So, I just wanted to give him props. I mean, like, through God's grace, he did it, but a lot of his own hard work and ingenuity, he was amazing. Yeah, incredible. We'll get into that in a second. I do want to play the second part of Marco's speech here. Go ahead. One of the things he wants us to take away from this, from all of this, is the following. His deep belief.

That we were all created, every single one of us, before the beginning of time, by the hands of the God of the universe, an all-powerful God, who loved us and created us for the purpose of living with Him in eternity. But then sin entered the world and separated us from our Creator. And so God took on the form of a man, and came down and lived among us. And He suffered like men. And He died like a man.

But on the third day, he rose unlike any mortal man, and then, and to prove any doubters wrong, he ate with his disciples so they could see, and they touched his wounds. He didn't rise as a ghost or as a spirit, but as flesh.

And then he rose to the heaven, but he promised he would return, and he will, and when he returns, because he took on that death, because he carried that cross, we were freed from the sin that separated us from him, and when he returns, there will be a new heaven and a new earth, and we will all be together, and we are going to have a great reunion there again with Charlie and all the people we love. Thank you, and God bless you.

And that was amazing to me. For like five hours, you listened to people from Turning Point, and then a great percentage of the Trump administration, all standing up and proclaiming the gospel. And I thought Marcos was so beautiful, because he was like, you know, salvation history there. But every single one of the people who spoke, with one exception, we'll get to in a minute, was proclaiming the truth of Jesus Christ to hundreds of thousands of people there in Phoenix. Millions around the world were watching this, and what an incredible public testimony to what drove Charlie most fundamentally, which was the love of Jesus Christ.

This was a revival. Yeah, and as somebody on social media pointed out, in England... They're happy if they get some breadcrumbs, you know, if Queen Elizabeth, who's now gone, would say a sentence or two about Christianity in a Christmas message to the country. Like, that to them would be a cause of celebration. Like, you know, it's almost as if it's an afterthought, just the slightest touch, just a wee bit, and here it's like...

Five hours from the water hose, fire hose. It's just outstanding, you know? It's amazing. It's amazing. It was so cool, and yeah, of course, the highlight for a lot of people was, and I think for me personally, was Erika Kirk's message.

Yeah, it was amazing. A quick note, this was actually a cool little tidbit that came out. The New York Times did an interview with her, and it was actually printed, and the one little nugget, I guess, as Josh would say, would be that Charlie was wearing a St. Michael the Archangel medal when he was shot with that cross. So, the cross that you see, there's a little tiny St. Michael medal there, and she's been wearing that ever since, and it has a little of his blood on it.

And I just thought, wow, this evangelical Christian dude wearing the St. Michael medal, and right now we're praying the Novena to St. Michael. This was just a really beautiful little tidbit about your little detail there. It was a very beautiful tidbit in an article by the New York Times that, for the most part, was just very beautiful because it's a lot of the... The raw and tender moments that Erika had to deal with in the immediate aftermath of his death, but I just can't help it.

Like, the New York Times, they've got to get their digs in. Yeah. They describe Charlie Kirk and why conservatives like him, because he's against civil rights. It's like, my gosh. Where did that line come from? You cannot, you know, pass an opportunity to smear everyone, even when you're talking about someone who died. They've got to get their digs in, because it was like. Charlie Kirk had once said some things about the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which had some negative consequences, which...

He's not against it, and he praised Martin Luther King Jr. for everything he did, you know, for civil rights. So, it's like, you know, New York Times, I mean, I just, you can't hate him enough. You can't hate the mainstream media enough, but. Yeah. Although, did you see the, did you see Van Jones' interview with Anderson Cooper over the weekend? He, it was actually interesting. He, Van Jones is not my favorite. It's a stock clock. Once or twice a day, he's absolutely on the money, and then the other times, he sounds like a total.

Raving psycho Marxist, you know? Yes. He has those moments of lucidity and like, you know, like I said, non-psycho-ness, but... Yeah, he was saying how this was one of his rare moments of lucidity, where he said that he was told by his staff the day that Charlie was shot that night. His staff was like, Charlie was trying to get a hold of you, and sure enough, Charlie had like DM'd him the night before. He wanted to sit down and have like a gentlemanly debate.

On camera and film it, because they'd been going back and forth on X and social media. And Van Jones was like, you know, that really made me stop because it made me realize, like, when someone dies, like, when someone's killed like that, that's the time then you highlight the good that they've done. And I always want to highlight that he did reach out to me, and he did want to speak as a gentleman. And I was like, good for you, Van Jones.

Like, thank you for saying that. Maybe the New York Times can take a note from him that this is the time when we... We don't have to be like, but he blah, blah, blah. Anyway, so speaking of forgiveness and graciousness, Erika Kirk, my goodness. I watched this after the fact. I pulled my teenage girls in. We're sitting in the living room with my husband. We're going to watch it, and I'd already seen all of her social media that she'd forgiven.

his killer. So I knew what was coming, but it was still, it still just blew me away. So let's do the first clip here. This is a great line from her. After Charlie's assassination, we didn't see violence. We didn't see rioting.

We didn't see revolution. Instead, we saw what my husband always prayed he would see in this country. We saw revival. Amen. Yeah, we light candles in a prayer or vigil. They light up houses and stores and burn their towns and communities. That's a little bit of a difference to me, and if you can't tell the difference, Maybe there's something wrong, you know, with you. Yeah, it was amazing to me to even see reactions like from the mainstream media or online of people saying, oh my gosh, this looks like a Nazi rally.

And I'm like, are you even looking at the same screen I'm looking at? Are you even hearing the same words that I'm hearing? I do not understand how you can listen to these speeches, which were about forgiveness, which are about The love of Jesus Christ and the mercy of God that is open to everyone, and be like, oh, they are going to burn it all down. They are just the fascists here. I just... Well, I guess what's going on here is you're expressing what I would consider a very normal attitude.

Like, wait a minute now. You're calling this fascist or Nazi or racist or homophobic or evil. Let me explain to you why that's not the case. And it's like, they know what they're doing. They are smearing good people's names. They're not trying to have an honest conversation.

The left and their rhetoric for the last 20 years has been to throw mud and to smear and to attack and to say, you're racist, you're homophobic, you're evil. I mean, have we forgotten that the mainstream media tried to mobilize their entire death star against an 18-year-old, 17-year-old boy?

From Kentucky, who smirked. That's the worst you could get him on, is that he smirked. He just like politely smiled as this psycho activist sort of beating a drum and yelling in his face. So, like to me, it's like, well, wait a minute now. Let us sit down together and explain rationally, and then after we do that, everything will be fine. This is what I actually consider to be, I respect the intellect of Robert George, but I just feel like... Again, he feels like, well, if we just sit down and talk about this rationally, then we can get some sort of dialogue, and we can come to some sort of common agreement.

There is no desire for common agreement. The left wants to mobilize its power. And convince the American people that the other side shouldn't be listened to because they have hate in their hearts, and they scream and yell at everyone else. So, they don't want dialogue. They want to have us to be shut down. So, it's very important for us to realize, like, we try to argue, which it's a corrupting influence because it can corrode even us as we're trying to combat these kind of lies and smears.

Like, we would love nothing better. To have an honest conversation about stuff like this, but... The left makes it that much more difficult because they are just like, oh, it is a Nazi rally. It is a Nazi rally. They said the same thing about the Trump rallies. Anytime you get 40,000 people who are patriotic and love their country, it has got to be evil. That is the script, right? That is just like the knee-jerk reaction. Yeah, someone was saying how Jimmy Kimmel spent his entire career basically training you when you hear the name Donald Trump to immediately anticipate.

Some kind of nasty slur. And over the years, people listen to that garbage enough and enough and enough, and they hear it again and again. They hear Trump slur, Trump slur, you know. And pretty soon, they're just brainwashed to think they hear the name Trump, and they have this allergic reaction. They're like, Jimmy Kimmel was a brainwasher. And you think, yeah, it's hard to forgive them, which brings me to Erika Kirk's next clip.

Because this is what it's all about. And we roll the next one, Simon. That young man on the cross, our Savior said, Father, forgive them. For they not know what they do. That man. Forgive him. I forgive him because it was what Christ did, and is what Charlie would do.

The answer to hate is not hate. The answer we know from the gospel is love, and always love. Love for our enemies, and love for those who persecute us. I mean, that is supernatural. It is divine. It is the Holy Spirit working with and through her, because none of us would be able to do that without contemplating our Lord saying that. And, of course, that is why one of the reasons that Jesus did say that is so that if we ever had a cross that heavy to bear, that we would have those words to invoke.

And ultimately, you know, to forgive him, it will make it easier for her to heal. You know, it was interesting, they asked her, too, at another time after the rally, you know, do you think they should go with the death penalty? That was the Times interview, yeah.

Which is, obviously, remains a controversial topic, especially amongst Catholics. I understand in today's age, you know, you're going to ask that question, I suppose. My thoughts on that would be I wouldn't actually ask a grieving widow what to do in that scenario. I wouldn't ask that question because then you either get somebody to be like, yes, I want to see blood, which, you know, like the vengeance stuff, or they... They say, well, the desire to not want to be so vengeful, that you want to be so full of grace that you say, you know what, I don't want him to be.

I want mercy. She actually said the very best thing, which is, I don't want to make that decision. I don't want that on my soul, which is actually the right thing, because you don't ask a grieving widow that. The community beforehand, not afterwards, the community beforehand has to establish through the elected representatives, what is it that we will do in these circumstances? I live in a state like Michigan that hasn't had the death penalty in well over 150 years. We're not going to do that.

I've made sense on this program before that I'm actually in favor of it, whatever. Arizona and Utah, they both have, well, I know Utah does, has the death penalty. So, again, it's one of those things where. It's actually not really, again, for that reason, you don't want to have that person thinking like that, but this is the society. You want to ask everyone all these questions. Right. I feel like we've seen that before, that the way that she responded to that question, for me, it recalled other moments of grace in church history.

I think of Joan of Arc at her trial. Where they would ask, they asked her, oh, are you in a state of grace? And of course, they're trying to catch her, because she says, no, I'm not in a state of grace. She's saying she's a sinner, and she's going to hell. If she says she is in a state of grace, she's being presumptuous, and they could be like, oh, you think you're, you know. And another, of course, the way that the Pharisees would try and catch our Lord and say, you know, should we pay taxes?

And he's like, render unto Caesar what is his. And they thread the needle, and that's a supernatural gift. So, when I saw that that's how she had responded, I was like, That, like the forgiveness that she offers to the young man, that is a supernatural grace, and for all of you who have been praying for Erika these days, this is a tremendous burden, not only the grief, but to know that you're grieving in front of the whole world, and that you'll be called to give testimony like that.

I think that that answer that she gave to the times is evidence of God's grace answering those prayers. Yeah, we've been building her up through prayer. That's what the community of Christ... It's a real power. Yeah, it's not just like thoughts and prayers. It's a real power that gives you, in the moment, the words to say. And I think that was evidence of that. The other thing on the moment of forgiveness...

It's when you have events like this that are so public and watched by so many, many of whom are not Christians or never have contact with this kind of world. I mean, I grew up evangelical Protestant, and I felt like I was returning to my childhood, like prayer rallies and stuff. It was just so normie Protestant. It was great. And then, of course, all these Catholic people from the administration are speaking. It was awesome. Bishop Barron was there. I saw him at a couple of cameos there.

Um, but... Watching it, you kind of see the gospel and the preaching of forgiveness through the eyes of people who are on the outside, and you realize again just how radical Christ's message of forgiving your enemies is, because you're seeing it again through the eyes of people who are like, wait, what? What did she say? Because to us, we hear it all the time. We pray the Our Father multiple times a day. Hopefully, it sinks in. I hope that I would have that grace.

If that ever came to me, but it is neat, I think, as a lifelong Christian to watch people confront it for the first time. It's kind of like when converts enter the church, every individual, and you're like... Yeah, there's a lot of Americans that really haven't experienced a sort of radical presentation of Christianity in years, or maybe ever in their life, and so this is a remarkable moment. The only thing I would just want to button up last thing is, in other words, in my mind, There's no contradiction between mercy and punishment, just punishment for evil doing, you know what I mean?

So, it's like people, that's a problem in our society today, people have conflated that. But just to go back to, yeah, this funeral, I mean, we saw hours and hours of beautiful Christian testimony, and Christianity, you know. Not this kind of lukewarm stuff, like real, like, you know, care. Like, this is what God has, you know, like, you showed that clip from Marco Rubio. Someone said it was like Father Mike Schmitz in 90 seconds. It was awesome. Yes, it was. It was just, like, powerful.

You know, and I don't know, you know, I've always been a fan of Marco Rubio. You know, I... Something happened this year. He's just gone to a whole nother level. So, I mean. Pray for him, too. I mean, I think it's, you know, I've said this before, but I think, you know, a Vance Rubio ticket would be impressive.

Yeah. Yeah, and this has so elevated J.D. Vance as well. I mean, he said in his remarks that he hasn't spoken this much about Jesus Christ in public as he has the last 11 days in his entire political career. He's like, this has been incredible, because we're remembering first things first.

Well, I mean, you know, in the sort of hillbilly area, he grew up in, you know, Kentucky and southern Ohio. These kind of, it was, people did go to church and stuff like that, but having it top of your mind, on your tongue all the time, was not necessarily his upbringing.

And then you converse to Catholicism intellectually, right? And Catholicism is a little bit less, you know, it's a little bit more, it tends to be in this country, at least a little bit more reserved. Like, I'm Catholic, and let me explain to you why, but it's not like we're, you know, we're not the guys out there with the bullhorn on the campus, like, repent and believe in the gospel, necessarily. So, I get it. Maybe we should be. Maybe we should be.

I like this. I liked this. This is a good news, and it starts. Let's do it. And then, of course, let's just end with the picture, the beautiful image of President Trump. He called, after his remarks, he called Erika back out onto the stage. Yeah, that one. And he went in to shake her hand, and she just embraced him full out. So, we get this incredible image of the grieving widow, President of the United States.

And what a fitting send-off for Charlie. I mean, the only experience that the left has of Donald Trump is when he's, you know, kind of a jerk, and he says horrible things about people and stuff like that. And I'm not going to excuse everything that Trump does, but they never see this other side, which I would love to see more, like the humane side of Trump, where he's just like a dad. You know what I mean? He's just like giving her a...

A hug, and they put it on the front cover of the New York Post, because it was such an amazing image, you know? Like, yeah, more of this Trump. That would be nice. This is good. This is very good. And I like Trump. I'm not trying to dog on him, people. No, not at all. He's just, he is perfectly himself. The man is perfectly himself, but beautiful, beautiful tribute for Charlie Kirk, and I can't wait to see what God's. Doing next.

What a time to be alive. This is amazing. All right, but before we get into maybe the flip side of that beautiful event this weekend, what else was happening in the United States, I would like to call upon our second sponsor. We have Home Title Lock. Did you know? That American homeowners have over $32 trillion in equity, and, of course, criminals are targeting it with a growing scam the FBI calls house stealing. Scammers can transfer your title out of your name using a one-page document they file at the county, then they can take out loans against it or even sell it behind your back.

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Or at least they said. At least they said so. Yep. I just want to give a shout out to our friend Tim Carney over at Washington Examiner today. I had started to go through each of the incidents on the ADL report on the heat map there, and he did such a thorough job of debunking all of these. Reports and polls, and it was great. So, we're going to throw that in the chat for you, or put it in the show notes, I suppose.

We'll put it in the show notes for you. So, thank you, Tim Carney. But we'll start with this. 96 Democrats on the House floor. The Senate had unanimously passed a resolution on Friday condemning the assassination of Charlie Kirk. It goes to the House floor. Where Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez stands up and explains exactly why her colleagues should not condemn the killing of Charlie Kirk, who was apparently racist and homophobic and all the blah, blah, blah. So, 96 Democrats either voted against or present on that resolution.

It passed. But one would have hoped that after the June resolution, in which it was a unanimous condemnation of the killing of the Minnesota congresswoman and her husband, there was no pushback at all. State representative, yes. That we could have seen something similar, but so much for unity.

It was, yeah, we have the names of them all, unfortunately, several. Self-identified Catholics on that list. I'll have that all for you in the loop, so make sure you check it out. So much for unity. So, they refuse to condemn this politically motivated killing. Meanwhile, over the course of the weekend, we get more politically motivated violence around the country.

One of them was Friday night. We had a man shooting up an ABC affiliate station in defense of free speech martyr Jimmy Kimmel. 64-year-old man, allegedly, he did fire multiple shots from a vehicle into the lobby window of ABC 10 in Sacramento on Friday afternoon. At least three bullets struck while the building was occupied. No one was injured. The suspect was Anibal Hernandez Santana. He has been arrested on state charges. He was released on bail. And then immediately arrested and taken into federal custody, where he remains.

M.K. Hammer, one of my favorites. I love her. She posted on X, this is by my count six arrestable offenses since Charlie's murder, and they are all left motivated violence and damage. There is the crazy guy protecting the shooter, we covered him last week, the assault on the Kirk mourners in Texas, the vandalism of the Kirk Vigil Memorial in Phoenix, Arizona, the attempted bombing of a Fox News truck, and now the shooting at I didn't hear that last one. The bombing?

Attempted bombing? Yeah, there was a bag with a bomb in it found underneath a Fox News truck. My goodness. That was covering Utah at the place where Charlie was shot. What is with these people? Yeah. So, as Erika Kirk said in her memorial, we didn't get this writing at all from the right in response, but it seems that...

I don't know, Josh. There was some emboldening happening here, that these incidents we're talking about, one every other day, one event every 48 hours since Charlie's assassination, coming from the left. To what? To what end? To further what was happening, what they did with Charlie? I've got to just tell you something.

I was in Minnesota in 2002, my home from my native state. I live now in Michigan, but I was in Minnesota in 2002, and Minnesota tends to be a liberal state, hasn't voted for a Republican president since 1972, so my entire lifetime has not voted for Republicans. The only state that's never done that in my lifetime.

And there was a very popular left-wing senator named Paul Wellstone, and actually, he was a family friend, close friend of my aunt. So, I mean, I knew him, okay? And he was campaigning. It was just within two weeks of the election, and he was on a plane up in northern Minnesota, and it crashed, and he died.

And my initial thought was, oh my gosh, my aunt, and this is before, I mean, 2002 is like not as much rapidness of the, you know, so I called her on the phone because I felt sorry. I wanted to make sure she heard the news and she had, oh, was already crying. And so I, you know, and then I, you know, I prayed and I, then they actually also in Minneapolis, they had a big. A funeral, too, much in a similar way that Charlie Kirk did, except there was a lot less gospel hymns, but a lot of the Democrats got up, and they spoke, and they talked about all the different things, and out of respect, the governor of the state of Minnesota, who was not a Republican, he was not a Democrat, he was an independent, Jesse Ventura, he came to the event, and the crowd Booed him.

For coming to a memorial? He's coming to pay his respects. And they booed him. A Republican, a very, very liberal Republican, Jim Ramstead, came to the event. He was also booed, and somebody who gave a memorial speech, one of the Democrats, basically said, you should convert. You should become a Republican at a funeral. You said that?

To me, yes, okay, fine. It was 20 years ago, but I remember this kind of stuff. It didn't occur to independents or Republicans to... When you politicize somebody's death, Democrats did it on their own guy. So, to me, it's like everything is politics for them. Politics is their religion, and so it just sort of strikes me, what is going on with these people?

Charlie Kirk dies, and we saw on social media so many people like, oh my gosh, wonderful. They said all sorts of vile things because they just don't like somebody like that, and they were happy and gleeful that he died, and they were laughing at us like, your guy, one of the first women.

And TikTok was like, and the best part about it is that he'll never be remembered. His death won't mean anything. He's not martyr material, was I believe the quote. Yeah. Right. Talk about missing the mark on that one, girl. And so you're like, but then they just don't have the discretion.

To just shut up. Yeah. Like, you know, I didn't like Paul Wellstone. I hated his politics, but I wasn't happy to see him die. Right. And I actually felt bad for people who loved him. It reminds me of something my mom used to say. She was like, if you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all. Right. Right? Yes. Especially at a funeral. But again, I just sort of feel like, you know, maybe it would be better if we had more Christianity.

And this idea... That the left has, that we could have the same society that was built by Christianity, and just jettison all of religion and maintain what Christian society built. How's that working out for you? It can't. It can't hold. Yeah, it doesn't seem like it's working. Yeah, it cannot hold. Well, we had another event over the weekend that I think kind of encapsulated for me the coverage of it. Now, if you can pull this tweet up here from Charles C.

W. Cook, Simon. This is in New Hampshire. It was not even half an hour from where my parents live, but there was a shooter who went to a wedding reception at a country club outside Nashua and shot it up. He killed one person. Two others were very badly injured. The American coverage, and this was at the NBC story especially, Charles C.W. Cook.

This story, he said, consists of 20 paragraphs, and at no point in any of them does NBC relate that the shooter shouted, free Palestine, before he opened fire. To find that out, I had to read the British left-wing newspaper, The Guardian, and it was true. The American coverage just could not admit that this was a left-wing motivated. Shooting, and I doubt. It is inconvenient. It doesn't fit the narrative that we have this rising tide of right-wing, proud boys violence in the United States, and you don't hate the media enough, and that is how we get to the point where we get this YouGov poll over the weekend.

The majority of Democrats either don't know who or think that Charlie's killer was motivated by right-wing politics. This is, to me, stunning. It is a stunning indictment of the mainstream media, whose job it is to just report facts, and if they would just report the facts, we wouldn't have this, but if you pull up this poll... So, you have to ask yourselves, are people better informed because they heard about the news from the mainstream media? Of course, no, they're not better informed.

They are told myths... Mis-truths, lies, half-truths, balderdash. I believe it's called misinformation. Hogwash. Hogwash? Dog water. Bunch of crap. I like it. So, that's it. Stick to the LOOPcast. Get the loop. Get everyone you know to read the loop, because this is crazy that you would have a majority of Democrats not knowing, because of the media they consume. And it has consequences. It has bad consequences. There's a lot of far-left groups who talk about this before, Southern Poverty Law Center, and they put up these hate maps, and then what happened is some psychopath tried to murder people at the Family Research Council.

Our good friend Tom McCluskey was there at the time, and so we've been talking about this the last few episodes, but the frustrations that we have with the persistent lies, half-truths. The media should be informing people, and obviously, they have an agenda, and they won't tell people what happened in this news story, because if they actually said it, people might go, oh, gosh, sounds like there's a lot of crazy left-wingers out there, but they don't want that, and so some people have written into the podcast and said, you know, you guys sound so negative, you sound so frustrated, you sound so angry, and yes, I mean, I have to say, there's a reason we have some of these frustrations.

Because what the mainstream media is doing is harmful to the body politic. If they just simply adopted them, like Fox News is conservative or whatever, but their tagline does have a point. It is a little tongue-in-cheek, but it is serious. We report, you decide. Just tell us the way it is. I have watched Fox News, and they have reported on news that was damaging to the conservative side, you know?

I have watched, but when it comes to watching mainstream media news coverage, if it is bad for Democrats, they bury it. They obscure it. Yes. So, stick to the loop. But we do cover good news, don't we, Erika? Yes, we do, and I would like to go into that now, because I'm so excited about my good news today. Yay! So, President Donald Trump announced on Saturday night that Dr. Ben Carson will be awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, and I am such a fangirl of Dr.

Ben Carson. My dad used to follow his career when I was growing up, and then I got to actually see him speak a Well, no, he was in the primary, so he was on the big panel. He was running against, with Marco. He had Marco Rubio up there, was on stage, right? We had President Donald Trump, Ben Carson. But he's best known, I mean, he should be best known, for his groundbreaking work. In pediatric neurosurgery, he was the first, he led the team that conducted, it was the first successful surgery on conjoined twins.

Back in 1987, they were able to separate the conjoined twins for the first time who had been joined at the head. This is just amazing stuff, but he actually ended up serving under President Trump in the first term as the HUD secretary and served there. All the way through the administration, he founded the conservative think tank, American Cornerstone Institute, Faith, Liberty, Community, and Life, and what a public servant. Long overdue, very well-deserved. Congratulations, Dr. Ben Carson.

All right, Josh. Well, so for my good news, hey, you know, my good friend Brian Birch is now the U.S. Ambassador to the Holy See. Very cool. And he's only been in the job for like a little bit over a month, and what does he do for his first event? Well, he gets Justice Samuel Alito to step on by. and talk about the threats to religious liberty that's awesome i mean i gotta say uh that's gotta be kind of cool um now he did he you know justice alito said to the extent religious freedom is under pressure in the united states and europe it pales in significance compared to what is happening in countries like nigeria china and iraq It is a great matter of concern and something that I think all Christians should be concerned about and should try to find ways to combat, find ways of combating this problem.

So, a pretty successful event to have a sitting Supreme Court justice come by. And to talk about something very important and a very international issue, and by the way, an issue of which the United States and the Holy See have much in common. So, that was a great, great event. Hit it out of the ballpark. Congrats, Brian. Congrats. Am I allowed to call him Brian? What do you call the ambassadors? Like your excellence, your holy?

I call him Brian. Hey, Brian. Good job. I've known him for 20 years, you know. Yeah, what a great. I would only say ambassador to him, jokingly. My phone rang the other day, and I'm like, oh, hello, ambassador, and my wife's like, okay, which ambassador was that?

Ambassador to Greenland. You're coming for it, Josh. It's going to be great. Yeah, right. Yeah, right. All right. Speaking of Church Corner, we are just going to briefly touch on updates here. This was Tom McCluskey's Twilight Zone. On Friday, we had just gotten the news that Cardinal Blaise Stupich of Chicago, through his Office of Human Dignity and Solidarity, ironically, was giving a Lifetime Achievement Award to Senator Dick Durbin from Illinois. Yeah, they announced that they were going to be doing it.

Right, they announced it. Over the weekend, we got responses from Bishop Thomas Paprocki of Springfield, Illinois, which is actually Durbin's home diocese, and then a statement on X from Archbishop Cordiglione, and someone who is no stranger to pro-abortion, self-professed Catholic politicians. Bishop Paprocki...

It says that the planned award ignores church teaching and risks, quote, grave scandal. He emphasized that Durbin has consistently supported legislation expanding abortions access and opposed protections for infants who survived failed abortions. Also, a massive supporter of so-called same-sex marriage.

And Paprocki said, quote, this is directly from the statement, honoring a public figure who has actively worked to expand and entrench the right to end innocent human life in the womb undermines the very concept of human dignity and solidarity that the award purports to uphold. And he urged Cardinal Cupich to rescind the award in that statement. And then... Archbishop Cordelione, he retweeted a story on this on X, and he said, I stand in solidarity with Bishop Thomas Paprocki of Springfield, Illinois, in urging Cardinal Cupich to reconsider giving Senator Durbin a Lifetime Achievement Award.

He has expressed, Bishop Paprocki has expressed shock that the Archdiocese plans to honor Senator Durbin, who, although a self-professed Catholic, supports access to abortion so radically that he has even opposed legislation to protect babies born after an attempted abortion.

And I hope this clarion call to all members of the body of Christ to speak out, to make clear the grave evil that is taking of innocent human life. So, again, he calls on Cardinal Cupich to reconsider as well. Now, Mr. Mercer.

Is this as, I mean, the left-wingers are just like, they love this kind of controversy among the American bishops. Have we ever seen this kind of strong statement before from one bishop to another saying, dude, you have severely sidestepped here?

Yeah, I mean, of course, in the Church, you know, the ordinary, the bishop for that person in question sort of has precedence, and so in this case, Paprocki is the bishop for which Durbin is. Now, of course, Durbin just sort of has since then.

He goes to church inside the Archdiocese of Chicago, so he's sort of like getting around it. Well, because Proprachy had banned him from receiving communion in Springfield until such a time as he repents, right? That's right, and, you know, again, so what happened is, you know, you've got this situation where, I mean, Dick Durbin, when he first ran for office, like in 81 or 83, I forget what it was, he was pro-life, and he would eventually abandon that position. And become just, you know, there was a lot of them.

Jesse Jackson was once pro-life. Al Gore was once pro-life. And they all abandoned themselves on this issue in order to advance inside the leadership of the Democratic Party. Dick Durbin is the number two Democrat in the Senate, but he's retiring.

Again, this has been the deal for the last 40, 50 years. Democrats, in order to advance in the party, would have to turn their backs on the unborn. But they still try to do it in such a way as to say they still remain part of the body of Christ, and they should still be able to receive him in the sacrament. It just boggles the mind.

How do you see that this is okay, that we would allow a million babies to die every year, and you're just going to wash your hands of it like you're Pontius Pilate? To say the least, that he also embraces the Democratic Party's view on all sorts of other horrible things. He believes in gay marriage, so-called gay marriage. He is completely on board with the Democratic Party's gender ideology, that radical view that men can give birth to women, or can give birth to babies.

I mean, what is going on? It was one thing where in the 80s and 90s, it was like, well, the Democrats probably, all right, I'm sorry. Catholic Democrats try to play this two steps, like, well, there's one issue that we kind of disagree, but Republicans worship money, and they hate the poor, and therefore, we can't be as bad as they are. But it's like, well, now, it's not just abortion, euthanasia, it's...

You know, transgender ideology, it is redefining marriage. The list goes on and on and on, and he has not been a leader, in fact. He has been going along with it. He has been a follower. He has been a weathervane, right. He spins with the wind. So, the justification or the reasoning from the Archdiocese of Chicago, Office of Human Dignity, which the irony does not escape one.

Their reasoning has been because he's done such great work caring for immigrants. That's why they're giving him a Lifetime Achievement Award. Well, look, I don't think the open border policies have been helpful to immigrants. I think what is allowed is coyotes and smugglers to use, you know.

It's not just the sex slavery stuff, which is massively horrible and evil. It's also just like literally wage slavery. Like, you know, that's what they found. Like all these people that were from Nicaragua inside this was a Nissan plant the other day in South Carolina. It's like, so. The open border policies have allowed the very wealthy to exploit migrants, but then they say, I love migrants, therefore, it's okay. I don't understand this. The Democrats figure, well, the more migrants we allow in this country, legally or illegally, they'll eventually have children, and those children will be U.S.

citizens because they're born here, and they'll get welfare benefits, and they'll become Democrats, and it's like this vicious debate. Dependency cycle. Yeah. Like, Democrats should celebrate their party, and they should celebrate Dependence Day, because that is actually what they want. They want people dependent on the regime so that they do what they are told. Yeah, this all seems very rational to me, Josh. So, if you were going to put odds on Will Cupich rescind the award, what odds do you give it?

Is he going to hear his brother bishops and listen to reason? I put it at only one in four chance. I mean, it's going to take a lot of public heat and a lot of public pressure to be able to move the needle on this one, unfortunately.

Yeah. I don't know. You know, this is a, it's a scandal because You know, who is the pro-life Democrat from Illinois that you could actually honor with a Lifetime Achievement Award? That would have been Daniel Lipinski. Yeah. That is who you should have given an award to. I like Daniel Lipinski. Do I agree with him on everything? No, he and I have lots of disagreements on policy issues. But you know what? He never turned his back on the unborn, and when he retired from Congress, I did not hear anything from Cupich.

I did not hear anything from the Archdiocese of Chicago, any kind of Lifetime Achievement Award. So, what I would like Cupich to do is to say, let us give this Lifetime Achievement Award. The former congressman, Dan Lipinski, he is somebody who deserves it better. I think that is a great idea. That sounds great. Maybe in a twilight zone. All right, Josh, speaking of, let us go on into the twilight zone. What do we got? Okay, so President Donald Trump imposed a $100,000 fine on, fee basically, annual fee for H-1B visas, and so what this is going to do is to put a lot of economic pressure, kind of level the playing field.

Because what is happening is, businesses in the United States want to bring in college-educated migrants from countries like India, because they can pay them a lot cheaper than they can someone who is from the United States, right? So, he announces this decision, and some migrants in this country, immigrants from this country, Immigrants into this country from places like India were very upset by this. Like, hey, we have mortgages. We've been established here for many years. This is very unsettling to us.

To which, of course, a lot of people are like, well, how do you think the H-1B visa program has been unsettling to us for the last, you know, so many years? And so, a little bit back and forth. This one Indian migrant actually popped off on X, and he said something I thought was pretty gross, actually. He said, Sorry, but I've never met a technically adept person from Kansas or Idaho or wherever. Those people couldn't reverse a list without importing 100 plus NPM packages.

Now, by the way, I'm not a tech guy, so I don't even know what his insult means, but I'm sure in the tech world, I'm not trying to pretend I know the tech stuff, okay? But I know enough to know he's insulting good people from the heartland, places like Kansas and Idaho. You know what I'm saying? In other words, he's saying, you need people like me from India because you guys in the heartland are too stupid. I don't think that our tech people here at CatholicVote are Americans.

So, I just want to say a little more gratitude would be appreciated because it was a random farm boy from Iowa named Norman Borlaug who literally saved India. The Green Revolution, the late 60s, early 70s, Norman Borlaug came up with this idea, and what he did is he dramatically increased the yields, and he showed people in these foreign countries what you could do to produce a lot more grain. Countries like Mexico became exporters of food rather than importers of food. India, worldwide, Norman Borlaug saved, they think, a billion people.

Whoa. A billion with a B that did not die from starvation because of his ingenious farming tactics. In fact, he won a Nobel Peace Prize, and he said when he won the award, you know. Something to the effect, he said, you know, you can't have peace on an empty stomach. Like, you know, like, it's like, this guy was awesome. That's true.

And so, you know, I'm the kind of person that thinks that the state of Iowa could do a 50-foot tall statue of Norman Borlaug, and that would not be overkill. I think that, you know how France gave us the Statue of Liberty? Maybe we could give India the Statue of Norm. That would be, wouldn't that be cool? Just holding a bunch of grain, yeah. Yeah. Like, yeah, that would be great. I would think that would be awesome. Now, the fact of the matter is that the H-1B visa was part of the Immigration Act of 1990.

You can thank George Bush, the elder, for that. Thank you. And it has, you know, somebody put this graph together. I haven't had enough, you know, chance to check the veracity of all the claims, but it does look kind of interesting because it shows amongst the wealthiest in our country that the top 1% of their wealth has gone up since the Immigration Act of 1990. You know, advent of these H-1B visas, but the wealth of the middle class, we used to have 35% of the wealth in this country.

Now, we are down to 25%, and the wealthiest top 1% used to have less than 15%. Wow, that is a stunning visual. More than 27%. So, now I will say, I haven't checked the veracity of this, and what I meant to say on the last program, I want to correct the record, I meant to say Jimmy Kimmel only had 159,000 viewers of the key demo, age 18.

35. I meant to say that, not all viewers, so that was my mistake. I like to correct the record, but anyway, so. I appreciate that. That's crazy. All right. Yes, I mean, so, you know, again, a little gratitude, you know, from people from India, for us stupid folks from the Midwest, would be appreciated.

You're not all bad. My mom's from the Midwest. I love Midwesterners. Very grateful. Good. I mean, come on. We got the Pope. He's from the Midwest. Yeah, Pope Leo. He's like a good Midwestern. Yeah, the point about gratitude, though, I think that's a good... Let's have more gratitude. That'd be nice. Yeah, okay. We have... This was crazy. I mean, the Washington Post continues to just die in darkness, and the...

They had an op-ed this weekend from Kevin B. Blackistone saying that, I mean, yeah, abortion, states that have abortion restrictions, the question is, do state abortion laws affect women's recruiting? That's up to the athletes. So, the case that he is making is that for states that are restricting abortion, young women, the top tier of young women, athletes, and then he goes on to expand that to academically gifted young women, they are not going to want to go to college in a state where they can't get an abortion easily enough.

So, he quotes the study, abortion bans cause a 2.7 So, if a girl wants to go to school, she lives in Connecticut, where there's no restrictions at all, up until and including birth, she's not going to go to a school like in Texas, where there is a heartbeat bill, right?

So, they were larger, as well as for applicants from the most liberal counties in the United States, and he says, quote, this is a reminder. Of the agency that athletes, particularly at the collegiate level, can and need to exercise, they can have an impact. They can reverse fortune, meaning put pressure on states that if you want to have a great girls basketball team- You should let them kill their babies. You should let them kill their babies. And then he ends it with, he ends the piece with, states should change or else, period.

Yeah, I mean, you know, I can't, were there some women that made this decision? I guess there probably were some, but like, is it statistically significant enough to really make that much of a difference? Like, in other words, I'm challenging even the claim here on the math, like, you know.

The increase that was done, maybe only a portion of that was the reason. The other reason could have been other factors, like more and more college kids are going to schools in the South, because schools in New England are associated with school marms who scream at you, and they just want to have fun when they go to college.

So, who knows? Like amongst athletes, maybe they're like, you know, I don't want to go. I don't want to live in a conservative area. That might be the case. Who knows? I think he's maybe just hoping that the math leads him to the conclusion that he already had in his heart, you know? Yeah, I think so, too. It was a very sad, very sad article. And yeah, other factors, including like from here on out, high school classes, graduating high school classes are going to be progressively shrinking, especially from liberal states, because we have a birth dearth, and it started to hit about a year ago.

So, there's other factors like that. Also, just not as many students are going straight from high school to college because of the debt. And so, I think there's a lot of other explanations besides all these states need to suddenly get rid of their heartbeat bills or else. Come on. Yeah, no, I'm just the stick of college, the stick of shock. I'm like, what? I looked at the state school.

Oh, right. And I'm like, you're charging $16,000 just for rooming? Just for the room, I'm like, what is this, a Manhattan? Like, what are you talking about? It is. It's a country club. It's insane. So, I think the fact that we've had, you know, 60 years of the federal government pumping money into colleges has inflated the cost well beyond recognition, and I don't know. Get out of the business. It's a little crazy. It's crazy. All right, but you know what's not crazy?

Praying the St. Michael Novena. It is not crazy, and it's not too late to join. We're fine in CatholicVote, praying that St. Michael Novena, today's day three, so you can definitely hop on that bandwagon, just catch up, just do a couple extra prayers for you. Sign up sometime today, you'll get the next day's prayer will come to your inbox. That's right, and I'm so excited about St. Michael. I sat down with Heather Johnson of Catholic Moms Life. We had a great conversation about St.

Michael. It was really fun, got into St. Michael's sword, and I believe Celine has a little gift for us. We're going to play a little. 30-second teaser here to close this out. Oh, wow. Yeah. Pope Leo XIII, he had a vision of demons and the future of spiritual warfare and just how prevalent it would be in the future. When he woke out of that, he came up with this prayer, and it's pretty much a spiritual exorcism. The St. Michael prayer, the devotion to St.

Michael and the archangels, as a way to combat the evils of today. Satan was questioning God. St. Michael stood up and he was like, who are you to talk to God like that? We have a sword for a very specific reason.

Well, we don't have to do the full Novena Day prayer today, but we should at least do the St. Michael prayer. That is how we are going to end it, for sure. In honor of St. Michael, and to ask him to protect our nation and reclaim the soul of America.

In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen. St. Michael, the Archangel, defend us in battle. Be our protection against the wickedness and snares of the devil. May God rebuke him, we humbly pray. And do thou, O Prince of the Heavenly Host, by the power of God, cast into hell Satan and all the evil spirits who prowl throughout the world seeking the ruin of souls. Amen. St. Thomas More, St. Fidelis, Our Lady of Guadalupe, pray for us.

Thank you to our sponsors. Thank you to Nazareth Organics and Home Title Lock. And we will be back on Wednesday, 11 a.m. live with Tom Pagasic. And he shall never leave us no more. Have a great week, guys. Maybe.