Graham Platner's Campaign Implodes, SSPX Officially Excommunicated, And Young Washington Review

Good morning, and welcome back to the LOOPcast. It's Tom, Erika, and Josh. So happy to be back with you guys. My favorite Patriots. I missed you guys over the 4th of July. I hope you guys had a great 4th. A little bit of shout out to the chat. I see it's someone's last day in their 20s. Brother, I'm getting pretty close.

It is so funny people guess my age. Yeah, I am reaching that 3-0 number as well, so welcome to the 30s. It is a great time. I am not going on 5-0, so I do not want to hear it.

And I never tell my age. And Erika is ageless. Erika is actually ageless, and you will never hear her age. She is never going to reveal it. She has nothing to worry about. You go to the LOOPcast channel, and you see the pictures we use, and it is like seven out of eight are Erika. I am like, yeah, there is a reason.

Yeah, strangely, there's almost like a prejudice against Josh. I don't know. Come on, the handsome beard. Hey, it's there now. Yes, we're, we're, we're live. Yeah. Let me know in the chat what you guys did for 4th of July. I'm not exaggerating. Well, first off forgiveness. I'm going to actually in a spare bedroom today, moved into a new space. So I have the sweetest bedroom studio set up of all time. I have a huge monitor resting on a bed that might fall over at any time.

So apologies ahead of time. But yeah, let me know what you did in the fourth. I went to this wonderful small town in Wisconsin. It was just pristine small town USA, and I think they used their entire town budget on the fireworks display. It genuinely was the most impressive fireworks display I've ever seen, and I got to watch it through the lens of my three-year-old, or yeah, he's almost four, and I don't think there's anything better, barring maybe seeing a kid have ice cream, than watching a young child watch fireworks.

It's just pure awe, pure joy. Love this country. It's fantastic. And then we went and saw an 80s hair cover band immediately after. Totally ripped. Best fourth I've had in a long time. Got both sets of grandparents there. It was fantastic. So, I'm coming in refreshed, you know, tanned, moisturized, hydrated, ready to rock. We got a great show for you guys. I'm going to give a quick summary. So, Grant Plattner. Wow. That was the big story. All the signs were there, and it looks like the dam just broke.

A new allegation now on record for sexual assault. Again, this is alleged, but it seems like, based on his response, we're going to get into it. Things are not looking good, and could come up with some very interesting scenarios for what happens in Maine. Josh's favorite politician is spared from a challenger. So, we're going to get into that. I saw the SSPX news. Really, really sad and unfortunate, but we're going to get into all the details on the SSPX. Or, I guess, they're formally in schism now, and I got Erika with all the details on that.

Other than that, we got a little bit of like DSA takeover. I saw a lot of layoffs. That was going to be my Twilight Zone. I moved it up on H1B, Xbox, Microsoft layoffs. That's kind of my bread and butter, so we're going to be talking that as well. We got good news. We got Twilight Zone, and I think just right up top, we got it here. I saw Caleb Williams is posting AMDG and the Pope holding his jersey with the Brian Birch, which I imagine is like the greatest day.

In Brian's life. The only thing that could have made that better is if it was in America, but it looked like just the greatest time happening at the residence over in Rome. So, I want to hear some more on that from Josh, if you got anything from Brian. But before we get into that today, 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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Awesome. And before we get into it, Josh, I'm sure your Fourth of July included your favorite activities, burning things and eating meat. You know, I got to insist, Independence Day. Okay, go for it. Not just a day and a month.

No, I don't like to say Fourth of July. Independence Day. Lovely time with my family. You know, lots of meats, you know, the hamburgers, brats. Big meat guy. No fish. Huh? No fish? Yeah, I don't think so. That is a penance every time I eat it.

And we watched tons of fireworks bursting over Little Traverse Bay here in northern Michigan, and it was quite beautiful. Yeah, it was awesome. It was awesome. It's great. And Erika, of course, you're the closest to the capital. Yeah, here we are on the East Coast and, you know, the land of the revolution here in Connecticut. So, we had a great Fourth of July. We were at home. We had terrible thunderstorms coming through in the evening, so a lot of fireworks displays were.

We're canceled, but we had our own little show. We put it on, just us and our massive brood of children, and we had Cotton Eye Joe. We sang America the Beautiful. I read Lincoln's second inaugural out loud. A few of the children divvied up the Declaration of Independence and did a dramatic reading of the Declaration involving stabbings and large Nerf machine guns in honor of the Second Amendment. It was a rip-roaring time in the Ahern household, and yeah, ate a lot of...

Ice cream and watermelon. Should we make merch here that just says giant brood of children? Giant brood. Did I say those words? My filter's not on, guys. It was a long weekend. Hey, this is an intimate recording of the LOOPcast. We're all in our bedrooms, I think.

What's the trust tree? You call it the trust tree. Oh, yeah. We're in the trust tree right now. Speaking of the trust tree, Josh, take me a little bit into this. First off, the Zeal website. Well, actually, I have a connection right here with the Declaration, too, because I joked with Brian that You know, of course, Thomas Jefferson was our third president of the United States, right? But if you look on his tombstone, it doesn't mention that accomplishment. It says, here lies Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration of Independence, author of the Declaration of Human Rights of Virginia, and president of the University of Virginia.

No mention that he served as president of the United States for eight years, doubled the size of the country, not even mentioned. But I said, Brian, I told him, I said this. Listen, you managing to get the Pope to come to your house on America's 250th birthday, that is a tombstone level.

Josh, before you get into that, did you see the meme about the Dave Ramsey meme where he's interviewing Thomas Jefferson? I did not. Oh, so good. He's got the arms folded, and he's like, so you're telling me you have two different plantations and all of this production? Yes, Dave. You spend it all on books and wine? Yes, Dave. Which is totally what I would do. Can't really fault him on that. Take me into this. This is brilliant. I mean, of course, you know, I think...

Brian and all of us here at LOOPcast, all Americans, would love to be able to see Pope Leo visit the United States sometime during this 250th anniversary year, but I think precisely because what Brian had told the media, precisely because he is an American pope, he does not want to play too much favorite to his own country, and he is a brand new pope, practically. He wants to be able to visit other countries, like he just visited Spain recently. He does not want to show preferential treatment, perhaps.

But he did the next best thing. You know, he visited, actually, he did visit the United States, in a sense, because he went to the U.S. Embassy right there in Rome and visited with Ambassador Birch and his family, and I just think it's wonderful. And he said, you know, as you see that, he signed a baseball, they talked about religious liberty, they talked about the church, there's a lot of things that they discussed that... You know, are not necessarily public consumption, but...

But for Josh's consumption. Maybe. He's saying, God bless America. I love that. That's so good. Yeah, and the thing is, Brian just kind of said, it was kind of funny because of all the things that they did talk about and the things that he shared with the press, it's the jersey that he gave him from that baseball player. You said Kayla Williams, right? No, no. Oh, my gosh. Football player, Josh. From the Hammond Bears?

Yeah, no, I'm sorry. We were talking about the, what's the pitcher? Pitcher, what are you talking about? No, the quarterback of the Bears gave him a jersey, Caleb Williams. Very good. Well, anyway, he gave him the jersey. He said that's what's getting the most reaction, the most press, because, of course, anytime you do anything sports-related, the sports media covers it as well, and it gets in a popular culture, so that's kind of fun. But he did say, like, we talked about so many different things, you know, saying God bless America, and it's just funny how the jersey is what makes all the news.

But, you know, that is just the way it is. I will say, you know, unfortunately, very disappointing performance against Belgium. I love the U.S. jerseys. The waving flag jerseys were sick. Yeah, I thought that was actually really cool. Are you talking about soccer now? Oh, yeah. In which the entire country is done caring about until the next four years, but it was a fun run. I turned it on for five minutes, and, like, we're down 3-1. I'm like, ah. Yeah, it was tough.

It was a rough game. It was a tough all-around rough game. I was watching them. But the other thing that came out of it, too, was I think they revealed that Pope Leo actively consumes X. I think it was, like, that he watches social media was one of the things that came out. Okay, now, here's the thing that came out of this. Someone reported that he had a burner account on Twitter. I didn't see that. That's not true. So, Brian actually jumped on that right away.

He said, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. That's really funny to think about. He does. He does read from Twitter stuff. I mean, he's got a Pontifex account, but there's no... You know, I think it was not like an intentional lie. I think it was just a misunderstanding that some of the media thought that meant he had a burner account. No, he did not say that. He does not have that. I would think that... Yeah, I think he's got some more important things to worry about than fighting with people on X.

It's maybe the least productive thing of all time. Anything else from that before we get to talk about your favorite politician ever? You are so rage-baiting on this, Susan Collins. What are you talking about? You love Susan Collins. I appreciate politicians who are good at their game, even if I disagree with them on major fundamental issues. Your top two are Nancy Pelosi and Susan Collins. Oh, God. I mean, they are horrible, but man, they are amazing at what they do. Yeah, we need to step aside and just have like, all right, put your personal beliefs aside.

Pure political talent. Draft. Nancy Pelosi certainly... If you look at liberals, like five liberals with incredible electoral talent, you have to say Nancy Pelosi. You have to say Susie Collins, even though she's a Republican, she's a liberal. Yeah. You know, Mondami has got incredible talent. For sure, no question. But I don't like him.

AOC, you know, incredible political talent and communication skills, even though I find her, you know, detestable, her views and policies. What do you think about Gavin? Gavin Newsom? Is that raw talent? No, I don't... He turned, what happened is about a year ago, he became what I would like to call a try-hard. He's imitating too much of the podcast style. You know, I'm going on the podcast, and I'm going to have smash-mouth tweets, and it's like, you're misreading it. You know, like, you know, your own audience isn't going to dig it, and it just comes off as too fake.

So, no, I don't think he's got. You know, I think he's stumbling too much on his own. Again, I make the point. It's going to be probably Campbell Harris in 2028, so we'll see. Well, your third favorite politician, but this is a great segue. Well, she doesn't actually have a lot of talent, but like the other four I mentioned. But, you know, speaking of talent, that actually is a great segue into this, because we're talking about Graham Plattner, who the reason why he's back is he's in this contentious race against Susan Collins.

Total outsider, ran to the left of the former governor of Maine. On just about everything. Hard left. Seemingly this new brand of... Current government. Exactly. So, who's going to be running? He was seen as this new brand of Democrat, supposed to be the heir to, say, the Bernie Sanders or the Elizabeth Warrens. For sure, DSA. Democratic Spokesperson of America, yep.

Unapologetically. Newcomer to politics, you know, it is kind of funny, now in hindsight, everyone's going through it, and they're like, he's an oyster farmer, was what he was kind of coined with, which is funny, because that really wasn't how he made his money, maybe technically true. But people are going back and kind of re-digging in, and I think before I even get into the full story, that was... The narrative, that was the feeling, that was why there was the energy in Maine, was that he was one of these really talented politicians that could reach across the aisle, talk to voters that disagreed with him, super raw, a Trump-like figure, potentially, almost a Trump-like moment.

Yeah, their answer to Donald Trump, right. Because I was even thinking about this, too, like, if you were to run as a Republican, a hardline Republican on immigration, I don't know, 10 years, pre-Trump. You would be treated similarly to how they're treating Graham Platner right now. He's like their version of, we're going to rip the institutional Democrats, and we're going to run harder on what people actually care about. Again, let's just set up the caveat here. I disagree with many of Graham Platner's policy proposals, but we kind of got to analyze this in terms of energy.

Why is the energy here? Why was he successful at this point, even with all the scandals? So, I mentioned he was running. So, now the immediate question after this latest scandal drop, when we get into the specifics of the allegation, is whether he drops out of this race at 5 p.m. Eastern Time, July 13th. That would have been shocking to just about anyone a week ago. That is a crucial deadline, right? Crucial deadline that would allow Maine Democrats to pick a replacement by July 27th.

We are talking about a guy who is getting New York Times coverage. He basically forced institutional Democrats to support him. Very uncomfortably, he won 70% of that primary vote. Previous governor just dropped, current governor dropped out of this race, which should have been on this issue. And until that June 30th poll from Fox News, he was neck and neck with Susan Collins in all the polling, including on polymarkets, too. So, he was looking to be giving her a run for her money.

Considered the frontrunner, that's right. Considered the frontrunner, and then we get this Fox poll on, yeah, like I said, June 30th, so over the long weekend. And Collins is sort of seeming to pull ahead a little, little, little bit, and then we get the rape allegation coming from his former girlfriend, and that drops over the weekend. It should be noted that the New York Times had written an article about all of his dating and all the women he had with or whatever, and included, they interviewed a conservative woman who had said that he had...

Lindsay Fifield, right? Erika, you kind of like know... Know someone who knows someone. Yeah, I mean, she's really well-known in circles in D.C. as a conservative writer and thinker and activist analyst, and she's a Republican now, and I think Rachel Bovard is connected with her. So, there's been a lot of pointing out that when this story dropped, I think it was 10 days ago in the New York Times, it included Lindsay. She was front and center, the center of the story, and the way that it was reported by the New York Times was skeptical.

Right, but they had her story out there. And the way that she's... And also, they included that there were two other women who have these allegations, including Jenny, who came out this weekend, who is a Democrat and characterizes herself as a grand platinum supporter. She even says in the interview with Jake Tapper at one point, she says, one of the reasons it took me so long to come forward with this rape allegation was because I supported his policies politically, and I would vote for him, which is, in itself, requires a little...

For our audience, just a second on this, Erika, because I want to make sure people understand. Yeah. Like, the New York Times was interviewing a bunch of these women, and then they told Lindsay, the New York Times reporters told Lindsay, you know, we're going to include your story with other stories of other women who have likewise been abused. And then when the article ran in the New York Times, it was all on Lindsay and all- It was 90% Lindsay. Her accusation, and she tends to be the super conservative woman with all these connections, and it made it seem like there was just this conservative woman who's trying to take out a Democratic Senate candidate, and so- The way the reporters presented it to her, what they were planning on doing, and what ended up as the published story was a complete baloney, and as you said, they interviewed this other woman, Jenny, who was kind of intimating to the Times, like, yeah, he also was abusive without going into graphic detail, in other words, with rape.

And so, the New York Times article runs, and, oh, it's just like a conservative woman trying to sink the campaign. And all the Democrats, Elizabeth Warren goes, he's my kind of guy. And they all circle the wagons around. Okay, wait, let me pause, because I actually have a question on that, because, so, just to go back through the history briefly. He was controversial from the beginning. He kind of owned up to some of his stuff. He's like, I'm going to put everything in the closet, out of the closet.

So, what I have so far, he had these deleted Reddit posts about sexual assault. He claims that he was going through a tough time being an alcoholic, having PTSD, and so he was just angry posting on Reddit. Really, just some disgusting stuff, you know, minimize responsibility of sexual assault. Yeah, just, but so I will just say in general, controversial Reddit. That he was open about, but they kind of found some more and more, and it just seemed like they were digging and they found more.

The second is obviously the Nazi link tattoo, in which, if you want to go and do the investigation, there's a lot of people that have at this point, he claims that he accidentally got this tattoo as a Marine in Croatia and didn't know what it was. And the story that they've presented is...

There's a suspect at best about his knowledge. They said he referred to it as my Toten Kampf at one point, and so it's kind of a- Which is what it was. Right, exactly. So, it's a little bit suspect there, I'll just say. Nothing definitive, but people have defended that. And then the third thing that comes out is that he had been sending sexually explicit messages while married, and so now his wife's involved. He comes out about this, and all of this is very recent.

So, this alleged abusive behavior, as you said, towards former girlfriends, the New York Times story comes out about this. This is about five years ago. This isn't like 20 years ago, 50, you know, he was a kid or something. This is fairly recent, and as you said, this lady, Lindsay Fifield, comes forward. She was the main centerpiece of the story. She was put forth before some of the other women, but the one woman, Jenny, this woman, Jenny Resico, I believe is the last name.

Resico, I think. She comes forward now to Politico, and there's this exclusive interview with Jake Tapper in the Politico story. Of her coming forward and saying, you know, I didn't feel like maybe she wasn't ready, or she didn't think that, whatever the case is, she now comes forward with more detailed allegations, in which she said, five years ago, they're kind of on again, off again, that she texted him something, he showed up at her house uninvited, and that he Uh, I believe she called it textbook rape, so that she was denying, she felt like she had to consent, uh, not consent, but she had to acquiesce because her health was in danger.

She had these messages that she said she sent, like, after she found out she wasn't pregnant, and that he didn't, he saw it, left it on read, and didn't respond to it, and she provided some text messages of him, of her warning other women. So, again, they're actually, I think, asking good, uncomfortable questions about this. Again, this is all an allegation at this point. And she's been unable to provide some things that she promised. For example, the messages that she sent him, she said she deleted because she wanted to get rid of all of it.

The therapist that she claimed would put this on the record refused to put this on the record. So, what we have so far is her testimony, the text messages she provided, and people are really grilling Politico now of, why did you feel, what has been added to this story that has reached this threshold of...

posting this in terms of your journalistic integrity. And now, my question is, and again, I'm analyzing, I think something bad happened here. That's just my instinct. These are allegations. Nothing's been adjudicated in court, and especially with sexual assault, there's plenty of reasons why someone wouldn't come forward, and it's, of course, super intimate and scarring and wounding. I'm sensitive to all that, of course. However, my question, Josh, if I could ask a question to you, you're saying that the New York Times kind of intentionally put forward Fifield to shield, to keep him protected.

But now, you think the same media apparatus now is coming out like this past week and are putting forth like minor, there's not really like a smoking gun. evidence, Plattner's denying all this vehemently, although he's saying he's taking time to reconsider the campaign. Why would this media that shielded him before now all of a sudden come forward and be like, all right, let's sink him with this? Well, I mean, of course, I'd like to rip on the media, but they are not monolithic, truly, you know, and I do think the New York Times was detestable because they They were intentionally lying, you know, to Lindsay.

They're claiming that the story was going to be A, and then they went a totally different direction and focused a ton of the energy and article on her and her political associations to make it seem like she might be politically motivated to try to stop Graham Plantner. So, I'm singling out the New York Times for their reprehensible coverage of her on this, and the fact of the matter is, it should have been another major red flag for this guy. I mean, like, he had a tattoo on his chest, and he, and, And witnesses say he knew, he referred to it as his totem comp, and then he's claiming, oh, I had no idea.

Like, you have no idea what the symbol is that you have tattooed on your body? And in fact, it sounds like you did know. The allegations against Lindsay Fifo were not rape, but they were pretty abusive behavior, like, you know, grabbing her physically, shoving her into a room, that kind of stuff. So, it is troublesome, problem behavior. I guess the Democrats are like, well, she's just trying to sink him, and so the New York Times gave them cover to say it was a politically motivated hit piece, right?

But then, what is the political motivation for this latest one with Jenny Roscoe? She is a liberal. She supports, you know, Graham Plattner's views on just about everything, but she just felt, apparently, really uncomfortable with the fact that the New York Times hung Lindsay Fifield out to dry. She told that to Jake Tapper. And I feel like Jenny was just like, you know, this is, I mean, look, this guy, you know, I have problems. So, I think the reason why it makes sense is there's no incentive.

For her to come forward, I mean, like, she's not like trying to sink this person's campaign. She's just like, look, I got a problem because what this guy did to me. And so, it makes a little bit more sense. And there's no denying that Graham Platner and this woman had met each other. That's like, contrast this with like Brett Kavanaugh. Brett Kavanaugh said, not only did I not do this with this woman, Christine Blasey Ford, I never even met her. I never met her.

And so, all Christy Blasey Ford would have to do is show some evidence that the two were at the same place at the same time, and it would have, you know, it could have possibly sunk his nomination, right? But, like, there was nothing. There was no proof. It was purely, she said, and she was politically motivated to try to stop Kavanaugh. There's no doubt about it, because she had a long history of being liberal and didn't want another conservative on the court that would vote over to rule the way, which is what he did.

In this case, Jenny Roscoe has really... What's her political incentive? I would say that institutional Democrats have a lot of political incentive to take out Platt. Okay, they do, but why would she? They could pay her. You don't think that she could be coordinator or coach? I'm just playing devil's advocate.

I'm just saying that there's, you know, the New York Times could make the case that Lindsay If I feel was politically motivated, you know, and made up the story. I'm saying it seems less political. I mean, you can make the case that there's this attempt to remove him from the ballot, but, you know, maybe. I mean.

I mean, it would be a really spiteful, I mean, it would basically be saying, and this is all hypothetical, but if institutional Democrats are so threatened by Plattner, and they detest him so much, that they would go to the lengths to basically lose this election, instead of rolling the dice and winning it, essentially, with Grant Plattner, which they could, and then maybe they work with him, as opposed to now working with Collins. I mean, I kind of feel like you would want people that are, like, damaged goods.

I mean, like, you know, that was the whole thing about Eric Swalwell. That was extremely useful to him, because they could always blackmail him, and the moment that he became a problem, they got rid of him. So, you know, I get that. But, like, to me, Grant Plattner would have still been useful, right? I mean, because... Certainly more useful than Collins, right? It's not like he sunk, like, in the polls dramatically, like he was down 15 points. So, in other words, I just, you know...

It's easy to say that a bunch of people got Jenny to come forward. You know, who knows? Maybe she just came forward. No one knows. Hard to say. Actually, Erika, I'm just curious. We haven't really gotten your take on all this in general. Is there anything in here you feel noteworthy or going to come up with? I think that several things can be true at the same time, and we talked about this yesterday, that, in fact, Graham Plattner is just a terrible human being who probably just needs to be in therapy and alone for the rest of his life.

And so, that can be true. It can also be true that institutional Democrats are behind the scenes, just like, thank God, relieved that this has been taken off their hands. Could there have been a thumb on the scale that the story came out this weekend? Sure, could Jenny have also had pure motivations of just like, this is wrong? That can also be true. This is just how human affairs work. I think that, for me, the bottom line is the Democratic Party is having a terrible time finding...

Just solid candidates who it can uphold as it tries to navigate this sort of rise of democratic socialism, tries to navigate this Trump, post-Trump world that we're starting to look at with 2028 coming upon us, that these are the candidates that we're coming up with. I mean, Swalwell, he's out. Platner, this is terrible. This is a terrible candidate. I like what you're saying on this one, Erika, because I feel like after Trump won again in 2024.

A little bit of the Democratic Party kind of snapped, in a sense. Something broke a little bit, and they're like, oh my gosh, we need to get... Blue-collar white men to vote Democrat again, and you had spent, the Democratic Party had spent five years, this great woke awareness campaign, saying everything white and male was bad, and the only way if you could be a white male and not be bad is if you were trans or gay, but if you're just a regular white man, they absolutely hated you for a good five years.

I remember that. And then they lose the presidential election in 2024, which they should have, they felt was too long. They're like, how could we lose? Yeah. They're like, gosh, how can we get these racist Nazis? I know, we'll find a Nazi racist a-hole, and they got Graham Platner. It's like, yeah, so thank you for telling me, Democratic Party, that you think white, blue-collared people have Nazi tattoos and just abuse women, and fantasize about joining the military to kill people. If that's really what you think white, conservative men are like, you've got a long road ahead of you of losing elections, because this is a bunch of garbage.

Yeah, I mean, that feels like a talent pool issue. Well, two things. One, we're watching young candidates have to run with social media histories, is like the first thing that comes to mind. I mean, most of the people in the Senate are like 70, 80, and don't have as many things on the record or things you can find on the internet, so you're trying to navigate that for sure. And then the second thing is, is like, yeah, you're saying your talent pool is so shallow, you'll take someone with this many scandals that is charismatic, that can speak, that looks the part, even, like, I just think the...

His charisma must have overcame so much opposition research, because all this stuff is so easy to find. I just don't even understand who was doing the research on this guy. I think that's what it comes down to, too, though. It's not just a shallow talent pool, because I think there must be, there are young Democrats out there, probably even young socialists out there, who don't have this kind of baggage, but it's a laziness issue as well. And the laziness. Comes from almost this willful ignorance of what they're looking for.

Like Josh said, like, okay, everything is so identity-driven that they just have these racist labels, like, we need a white guy who's worked on the shore of Maine. Oh, harbormaster, that sounds conservative and stupid and, like, working class. Like, that's... Yeah, it's cosplay. It is. It's cosplay. Just like James Salarico in a different way. Yeah. He's a Christian. It's like the Maine version. He's Christian. It's like the John Dutton meme, the John Dutton meme of him, like, sitting on the edge.

Remember that Kamala Harris campaign thing where she had, like, obviously gay dudes sitting on the tailgate with his legs crossed? Yeah, totally. White dudes for Harris, remember that one? Yeah, so anyway, I just want to kind of round this out a little bit because now there's some interesting possibilities on the chair. So, why people are saying it's essentially over is because we get Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and then the DSCC chair, Kristen Gillibrand. Basically said, you got to withdraw, and that we're not going to invest in the main Senate race, even if Plattner remains in the balance.

So, he's going to get no more money. But you know what? And she was able to push Al Franken over the edge, if you remember. Kristen Gillibrand did. So, the thought is maybe she could go two for two here. But the problem is, Graham Plattner holds all the cards. If he doesn't want to withdraw...

Democrats are screwed in Maine, so he can go down with the ship. He got 70% of the vote. What incentive does he have? And people online are just like, no, you got to quit. Or he can be like Ralph Northam and not quit, and you'll still back him. So, is that your prediction? You think he's not going to quit? I think he's telling the Democrats in Maine and the establishment.

I get to pick my successor, and if you pick this leftist DSA-type person to replace me, then I'll quit, but otherwise, no. I wonder if there's a scenario, because all the people telling him to quit now are the establishment that he ran with disdain for. No, not just that. No, I'm telling you.

Bernie Sanders. No, no, I understand. I understand. I understand. Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Ro Khanna, they've all said. So, DSA types people are also telling him to quit. Yeah, yeah, for sure. But this would be the most. Middle finger, he could go out in a blaze of glory, you know, these people are, this is a hit job, they don't want to support the cause that I support, and then he could, even though he'll probably lose, can use this as a launch board for, you know, DSA ideas nationally, because he can just be a martyr, essentially, for as long as it's a hit job.

Yeah, he'll serve as a podcast, his own pack. He's well-spoken, yeah. Yeah, and someone was making this point on, I think it was Breaking Points this morning, if he quits now, if he quits and he... He just says, okay, fine. Like, it was too much. I got to go reflect on my life. Then his political career is over. Like, that's just the end. But if he goes out, like you said, Tom, in a blaze of glory, and he just sees it through, he's got the world's oyster, not to you.

Erika. I just had to put that in there. It's true. I mean, we've seen examples of this. Do you think this is the first sex scandal to hit a politician or someone? It is. It is almost like if you can outlast it, it almost makes you stronger. This is a rape scandal, so it is- No, no, no. True, but this has not been, he hasn't been, this hasn't gone through court. There has been no sentencing. No, I understand that. So, this is still an allegation at this point, and I am sure there are ways that you can find to disprove it.

I mean, Trump went through all of this, too. It is just kind of a feature of probably politics since the beginning of time, I am sure. Remember the, well, you were speaking of Thomas Jefferson. Wasn't the big thing that he had an affair with a slave? And that was brought up in... Sally.

So, you know, but I think baseline, if you're just observing it with your own eyeballs, something's clearly off with this guy. He has not solved his alcohol problem. Like, he said that he had a problem with alcohol, and yet he still drinks. So, that's a big red flag. And then, these are like obvious character issues that you would not want anywhere near. Public office, but there's plenty of, you know, hucksters. And the establishment Democratic Party absolutely did not want him to win the nomination, and they're the ones clamoring on him to quit, and so I think he's eventually just going to give them a middle finger back, because they wanted the current governor, Janet Mills, to be the nominee, and she was expected to be it, and the grand platinum got the grassroots excited, and he, you know, came up with a massive triumphant victory.

She actually quit the race, basically. Three weeks before the actual election, because she knew she was going to lose. Totally. And so, what's going on in Maine is not just contained to that. It's what we see with the three elections in New York, within Denver. The DSA is growing, and for them, it's like being a very liberal candidate is not enough. You need to be a socialist, and you need to hate Jews, and that's what's got to happen. I mean, it's crazy.

Yeah. We're going to get into that. We're going to get into that. Thank you for the segue. Let's go into now, Erika, Nazareth Organics. But we do have some sponsors first before we get into the DSA. Nazareth Organics, from God's hand to your skin. Nazareth Organics is a Catholic family-owned skincare company that handcrafts nourishing balms and serums using clean ingredients from nature. I used one last night. Check out their summer combo sale to get you through the heat of summer. It includes...

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Word. Thank you, Christendom. Okay, on to the next section here. We're going to talk DSA, Democratic Socialist America. I think we actually briefly did a little bit of a, we didn't get into it with enough. I think. Because the head of this section is Graham Platner didn't happen to vacuum. He ignited energy in Maine, which should have just been like an afterthought. And so now everyone's trying to get the secret to the sauce, basically, of why Graham Platner was so successful, what animated voters in this way.

I think in particular on the left, in what seemingly feels like a potential MAGA type. Energy. A populism energy coming from the left. Style. Not, of course, in ideas, but also in I am just comparing energy and excitement. Right. So, we have, you know, Mamdani obviously being the most popular of these people, but he went and endorsed other DSA-type candidates. So, we are looking at Chris Rabb in Philly, Francesca Hong in Wisconsin, DAC and Claire Valdez in New York City, who just went on to big-time victories, upsets in a couple of cases.

Malak Kiros in Denver is funny. She was born in Ethiopia and is calling for reparations, but one of the hits I saw on her was she would potentially be the second Gen Z member of Congress. She currently holds no stocks and has up to $250,000 in student loan debt.

I don't think this is the diss that I think whoever came up with that thought it was. I think it actually points to the energy of why people support these type of people, but Erika, you went and got a profile on the DSA and a lot of the demographics of where they've gained ground, who they're popular with, so if you want to get into that now, I think that would be helpful. Yeah, this is interesting. So, just before, I guess, but we'll flip it, before we do the political platform, like what they're actually asking for as DSA candidates.

So, who are the people who are attracted to this? And you've got, no surprise, they are typically, and this includes, I went through polling and surveys of both activists who are active members, but also just people who have voted for the candidates in general. So, primarily under 40 years old, we're looking at Gen Z. The largest cohort of the DSA are 25 to 34 years old. So, right there in your... In your age range there, Pogo, not to tell your age.

Commie Pogo. Yes, yes. So, older Gen Z. They are significantly more educated than the broader U.S. population, and they're mostly concentrated in blue states, especially urban areas. So, we're talking highly educated, college degree or business degrees, upteen graduate degrees, um, large metropolitan areas, college towns, no surprise there, um, and high cost. Coastal cities. Many of them would consider themselves or they qualify as middle class, and they carry significant student debt. Either housing debt, or they are renting at high prices, and unstable employment.

Mostly, those who are employed are in the service sectors. We've got teachers, non-profit workers, probably lots of non-profits around DC, graduate students, journalists, software, healthcare, all of that. And interestingly enough, they are majority white, so we're not talking about this broad-based coalition of the... The POCs, but this is mostly white, highly educated, liberal, says that they're more racially diverse than many progressive organizations, etc. And when you look at the candidate lineup, the people who are winning these primaries, many of them are first-generation Americans, so their parents came over, or at most second-generation.

So, you'll see that their parents immigrated from a lot of... Failed state countries. Maybe you said the majority are white. The majority of supporters, voters, activists, but the candidates themselves, like if you're looking at Mom Donnie, you're looking at, yeah, yeah. So, you're looking at... Francesca Hong out of Wisconsin, governor. Her parents were here as graduate students on student visas, and she was born in this country, so she has birthright citizenship. Right. Love it. Same with DAC, Claire Valdez, Melak Kiros.

So, Kiros herself was born in... Ethiopia, I believe. He's actually herself an immigrant to the country. So, yeah, it's an interesting... Demographic, for sure. And what they're responding to is these political platforms, and one of the reasons why I think this should be on everyone's radar, and we're starting to see it, is that over the weekend, we got a lot of language from Mamdani in a speech, which I hope we can play a little bit of later on, that was then answered by speeches from Trump.

We got a message from Kelsey Reinhart, our president. Bishop Barron came and spoke out. And they're like, guys, we need to start paying attention to socialism again, because it wasn't defeated in 1989, and then communism, which is often equated with socialism, that also came up. This is not quite communism yet. So, from the website of the DSA, they say, we want a democracy that creates space for us all to flourish and not just survive and answers the fundamental questions of our lives with the input of all.

Sounds great and American, right? Now, listen, we want to collect... We want to effectively own the key economic drivers that dominate our lives, energy production and transportation. We want multiracial working class united in solidarity instead of divided by fear. We want to run radical, in scare quotes, reforms like single-payer Medicare for all, defunding the police, the Green New Deal, and more as a transition to a freer, more just life. So, you can hear in there. That element of Marxism, we've got the utopian vision and ideal, and how do you get there?

You get there by sorting everyone into these classes of oppressor versus oppressed, and the democratic socialists are like, we're going to take you, the oppressed, and we're going to challenge the oppressor, which is exactly what Mamdani's speech characterizing the entire history of the United States centered on. So, they're asking for things like universal health care, tenant rights, so rent freezes is what we heard from Omdani's campaign, affordable housing.

Student debt relief, public free buses was a big one on Mondani's climate policy, so sustainable energy, quote-unquote. Definitely no nuclear power plants. Big thumbs down on nuclear. Big thumbs down on coal. Criminal justice reform is what their website says, but what that actually means is defund the police and abolish the prisons.

And ICE. And ICE. Abolish ICE. Big one. And then, of course, Palestinian anti-Israel. Pro-Palestinian anti-Israel. Big, big, like, harnessing of that anger that's in the more populist, leftist, highly educated. In which the DNC just completely avoided in their autopsy, but what was going on in Gaza was completely centered. Like, we've had people, you know, all three of us have recognized the problem with student debt. And we've talked about the need to change this, and sometimes we get some of our older listeners like, come on, I had college debt, and it was no big deal.

But the fact of the matter is, there's charts that show you what college education and healthcare costs, all things that we have tons of, quote, investment from. From government, and the inflation rate is like three times everything else. And so, I do want to avoid situations where you have like this woman born in Ethiopia. She runs for Congress out of Denver. She's never really had a real job. She's just been an organizer her whole life. She's got $250,000 in student debt.

Now, the fact of the matter is, how do we fail as a society to allow people like this to borrow? A quarter million dollars. With, you know, no real ability to pay it off. Not just allow it, but tell them it was the only way to get ahead in life. Like, it was worse than allowing it. Go back to the beginning, though. How could that possibly be worth $250,000? Someone just made up that number. If it doesn't have a value attached to it at the end, it's completely divorced from any competitive forces in the market.

So, how could anything be $250,000? If you go into a bank trying to get $20,000 to start a business, we'll be laughed. Yeah, but we give these kids $50,000 a year to go to school. That's one of the things, the one big beautiful bill, honestly, has done so many good things, and a lot of these policies are finally taking effect like a year later or whatever, but like, we're now capping it. We're capping the amount that students can borrow. We're capping the amount that graduate students can borrow.

We're even capping the amount that parents can borrow on behalf of their kids. We want more. Here's a word that they like to use, sustainable. We need it to be sustainable. We can't allow people to mortgage, like, the equivalent of an entire house before they've actually earned a darn paycheck. So, this is one of the things, and they live in luxury. Like, I went to college 30 years ago. It was not, I mean, now it's like, it's insane. If I may, I do believe that these student loans, and they're in college, and they live.

Like kings, and then they enter the workforce, and they got a crummy apartment, and it sucks, and so they get mad, and it agitates. The socialists agitate for this, and they foment revolution. Yes, and by the way, historically, this is how revolutions start. So as the... The resident, you know, I would be in the Commie DSA demo. I have friends that are attempting to start their lives and be productive members of society. And, you know, it's stuff like this, like Caroline Levitt was on, she was interviewed by Jesse Waters.

And she made this long response after giving her answer, but she essentially was asked by Jesse Waters, like, is it a laziness? Is it an entitlement of Gen Z? And she's like, yes, Gen Z is lazy and Gen Z is entitled. And she came and she qualified it. And to me, I'm like, okay, so if I'm here and I look at the job numbers from 2025, job creation numbers, I'll share this graph.

So, we're looking at the U.S. economy adding 181,000 jobs in 2025. That's according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. That averaged out to just 15,000 jobs per month, making it the weakest year for employment growth since 2020. And then, also, these gains are in things like the healthcare sector, which is not a great sign if you want a healthy country.

Well, it just means that boomers are getting older. Boomers are getting older, and taking care of sickly people that are getting sick and getting older is not great for the future. We are a country of 450 million people. Theoretically, you know, how many illegal immigrants do we have in here is up for debate, but I'll say, conservative estimate, 30 million, probably more. We only created 15,000 jobs per month for a country of 450 million people is insane.

I think we're 390? 350. All right, 350. Maybe that was a mistype, but you get my point. I propose that two things are connected here. Estimated percent of 30-year-olds who are both married and homeowners from 1950 to 2025, if you want to take a look at this graph, it's insane how low that is now post-2020, and it was over 50% in 1950. The cumulative total of foreign-born white-collar workers in the U.S. per year, 1950 to 2025, 1950, very low, 2025, insanely high.

So, Microsoft just laid off a crazy amount of workers and had applied simultaneously for a ridiculous amount of H-1B workers. So much for learning to code. Exactly. Oh, they can learn to code. Right. You know, let's take a look at how many people graduated here. It's just completely unacceptable to graduate 4.7 million college students per year and create only 181,000 jobs. We have 25 college students competing for every new job. That's before factoring in illegal mass migration and people who lost their jobs during COVID.

And the tweet from this guy, Fugitive Caesar, my reaction to these numbers today was pure horror, shock, concern, and the realization we're going to get a civil war if we don't fix this. I didn't think the economy was this bad right now, and it's a huge danger to have unemployed intellectuals like Lenin and Trotsky.

I'm talking to people that did everything right. They worked their butt off getting good ACT, SAT scores to get into a good college, and they didn't do a BS degree. They didn't do basket weaving. They studied engineering. They studied computer science. Very smart people that cannot get jobs are applying over 100 times to different jobs and then are applying to minimum wage jobs and can't even get those, and so you're sitting with a third. Of the labor force just not working.

There's a third of the labor force that just have given up looking for jobs. We have the majority of people now under 30 are living with their parents as a way to try to pay off their loans, certainly, but also because housing is out of reach. And I'm talking about in, like, Michigan. I'm not talking about in New York City. So, I can only imagine what people are dealing with in New York City.

So, I think an easy opportunity for people that believe in private property, you know, would like to have a reasonable police force, and are not insane on the gender spectrum, and the nuclear family, should address this harshly, and it's like, I get so frustrated when I hear, well, those commies, they just want free stuff, but I look around and see the experience of my friends, and not a good response from reasonable people. Instead, reasonable people are saying, as you said, Josh, Well, pull yourself by your bootstraps.

Gen Z's lazy. These are not the people I know that are really struggling. So, easy solution to this is, we need to just destroy H-1B or have a real punishment for doing this. I saw that Toyota's building a factory in San Antonio. That's great news. Hopefully, that brings some engineering jobs or jobs, but the reality is, we're graduating millions of people in which there's no jobs for and saddling them with hundreds of thousands of debt. So, we settle with them with proportionately a lot more debt than people graduating from college 30 or 50 years ago had.

Not even close. A lot more. Proportionately a lot more. Precisely with, you know. As you say, H-1B visas were giving incentives for companies to undercut our native-born labor force. That's a problem. And then, you had Joe Biden allowing 8 to 10 million people coming to this country illegally, which the Federal Reserve just put out a report this week saying that that caused a major jump in the price of both the rental market and the housing market, like 20, 30 percent each.

Yeah, it's a perfect storm. So, like, you know, what you're creating is a big problem. All these kind of cost constraints, and the thing is, I think people who are in their 40s, 50s, 60s, and 70s are like, oh, yeah, I remember what it was like in the 20s, and you're kind of bumming around, and you weren't hyperproductive, and you're just kind of finding your way in the world, and everything was expensive, and you couldn't go out to eat. And basically, the thought is, yeah, I remember those times.

You should suck it up and stop complaining. And what we're trying to say... Is that the times are fundamentally different for those who are in their 20s right now, and if you just go on, if you can't see that, you get these kind of occasions where, like, how did that happen? Well, how didn't they know in the French Revolution that things were going to get really bad? Like, what a bunch of idiots. Can't they see how, like, we're trying to wake you up.

Yeah. Like, there are a lot of fundamental problems, and we can make things better. Now, I do think... Trump administration by, you know, encouraging people to self-deport, and we actually had more people leave the country that came in this last year, and so we're starting to see a release on some of this stuff, but we got to do better, and I do think the changes on the student loan stuff, but it's going to take some time on that, and I'm just...

Begging, because I'm an old cranky dude too, but look, I'm an old cranky dude who understands and appreciates that people in their 20s are facing a lot more today than I did in the 90s, or that some of the other people listening did in the 70s, and I know about the double-digit percentages that you pay on your mortgages. Brother, I know. I know. That's my mom and my dad. They had it.

15, 16% on their house. I get it, but there are things. So, it was tough to raise a family in the We're not even getting family formation right now, precisely because it is category difference worse, and people need to know it. And that's what's fueling PSA socialism. I would like to get in here. So, tomorrow's Deep episode is exactly about this. It's about why Gen Z can't adult, and it's like everything that you guys are talking about here with all the economic factors.

And I think that one thing missing from the conversation is that there's also the fact that we're... We're handing this state of affairs to, when we say like, okay, all these DSA activists and voters are highly educated, but they're not really educated, right? Credentialed, highly credentialed. Highly credentialed, but in terms of education, we're handing this state of affairs to the least civically educated, the least literate, and one of the worst at math ever generations in American history. Probably since the 1600s.

And what the issue there is that a lot of generations have faced terrible odds, right? You can go read stories of the pioneers. It was not a walk in the park. It was pretty bad there out in the plains, right? And it was pretty bad during the Great Depression in terms of family formation. It was bad during the Industrial Revolution for the Luddites in England. People have faced enormously difficult circumstances and invasions, right?

The difference is that if you have a strong mental, intellectual, spiritual core, You can persist through just about anything. The human race and communities have flourished against many odds. Right, but that's not ideal. I wouldn't create a bad situation so that we can flourish in bad odds on purpose. No, I'm not saying that. I'm saying that right now, we have a bad situation and an unprepared generation, which compounds everything that Josh was just describing and that you're seeing on the ground, Pogo.

Yeah. That's what the deep's about tomorrow, so everyone should go watch that. But I think that it's important because a lot of this conversation, if we keep it at the level of we have this economic crisis, right, and it's so hard economically, then the response is just going to be, well, we just need to address affordability. But the lack of family formation is not simply because it can't afford a family. It's a much deeper spiritual and formational crisis that Gen Z is also.

being handed at the same or has been handed at the same time and so to begin to crawl our way out it's also addressing that poverty with the future generation starting with gen alpha yeah and here's here's what's really unfortunate i think is uh i was thinking back to why was that 2024 mega coalition, so exciting, and got young people on board. And I do think that Doge was a major part of this that has just gotten lost in the mix.

It was such a potent political message to just point out all the different areas in which everyone knows someone that's kind of scamming the government, either with entitlements or through a business. Seriously, everyone does. If you just every week were to post This scam that we busted up. You know, we are saving you this amount of money, and so you go out and you just focus on ruthlessly cutting fraud, making things more efficient. We're done with the foreign policy adventurism, which it seems like we just can't get enough of, but we're not going to be spending $1.5 trillion on the military for some unexplained reason other than total dominance that is inflating our dollar.

We're going to focus on the home front. We're going to get inflation under control. We're going to get rid of, we ran on a mass deportation. And I wasn't shy. Trump wasn't shy about that. All the signs said mass deportation now, mass deportation now. It wasn't, let's kind of quietly detain people and see what happens. It's like, no, we actually want 20 million people that should not be in the country out of the country. That was popular. I don't know why we're just not getting back focusing on that.

So, word to the wise, someone's going to solve this economic problem. It could be through socialism and communism, and it's going to speak to people my age that got the college degree, that worked hard, that feel ripped off, and are not spoken to. Unfortunately, what comes with that is no freedom of religion, abortion everywhere, LGBTQ craziness. It just does. It's just a feature of what happens here. So, I'd prefer that the, quote, free markets people that are addicted to cheap labor, H-1B, illegal immigration, would sacrifice a little bit of that.

So that I can practice my Catholic faith and not be under constant harassment from the health authorities and whatever, I want them to win. But at this point, I'm so frustrated with some of these Republicans. Like, I saw Mitt Romney is on the podcast circuit. Awesome. No. And he's like, I can't believe Elon Musk is a trillionaire now. This is crazy because he has so much influence over politics. Now, I'm like, brother, you are the product of an Elon. Like, you are Elon Musk, basically.

Your entire campaign was basically... Allowing for Elon Musk to exist. You refuse to touch things that people actually care about, and that's why you lost. So, you know, spare me if I don't want to hear Mitt Romney or all these other neocons that just care about war. I want to hear how you're improving my life tangibly. That is what politics is all about. You know what would be a nice first step? What? You know, it would be nice for a step if maybe, I don't know, the House of Representatives, you know, passed a bill getting rid of H-1B visas.

Yes. Oh, my gosh. That would go so long. Like, do something, right? That would go so long to actual Americans, because the only people that benefit from that are not Americans, and business owners, by the way. Right. So, it's like, just do something for the average.

You know, middle class, trying to make it in like 20s, late 20s, early 30s. I'm really trying to think of business proposals, because what's happening now, and I'm going to get into it, and my good news, is even like the left, these left populists are like, yeah, we're just going to slash property taxes.

What? Everyone wants to do that because they're all just pandering to people with the most voting power. So, anyway. Unintended consequences are going to happen there. Yeah, let's get into good news now before we get into that. Okay. Erika, talk to me about George Washington. Okay, so over the 4th of July weekend, I did go see young George Washington. We took the 13-year-old and up segment of our large brood to return to earlier phraseology that I used, and you know, it was good.

It was good, and how did I know it would be good? Because the critics on Rotten Tomatoes were like 52% positive, but the fans were 92%. I was like, this will be totally worth my buck, and it was. Josh, have you seen it yet? I have not. Okay, you are in for a total treat. You're going to love it. History buffs. So, it follows George Washington in his early, or his young George Washington, title gives it away, but it centers around the disaster at Fort Necessity in 1755, where he makes a lot of dumb rookie mistakes as a leader of the militia, and it's just, it's a slaughter, and, you know, hundreds of men die.

But then it also, it also portrays the battle with Braddock, who was led by the British General Braddock, who I won't give, I mean, the thing with historical movies is that you know what happens. So, Braddock dies, but Washington survives. Spoilers, no spoilers. Yeah, but it was really well done. It's Angel Studios, and I have to say, Angel has improved a lot. First President Braddock.

So, anyway, Washington makes it, so, you know, it's going to be okay in the end. Happy ending. Totally, you know. I recommend it. Visually, I was impressed. For a small budget, visually, it looked really good. Beautifully shot. Yeah, I mean, it's a little like there's awkward moments with the scripting, and then a couple of the actresses, the women are a little weak, like, you know, come on, ladies. You know my beef? George Washington was too hot, and I know I had that they had to do it to keep people, but George Washington, kind of famously, not a very good looking guy.

But they did make him super tall. They made him super tall, which was fun to see. It was fun to realize, like, oh my gosh, he was. Like, all the other guys are like little hobbits kind of going around.

But not only because he wasn't, and I guess he was a young man, so they had to make him skinny, but G-Dub back in the day, massive individual and thick, too. Like, he was a physically imposing figure, and listen, and the other thing, too, Martha.

Didn't they have Martha in this? No, no, Martha's not in this. No, she doesn't show up. It was his first love, Sally Fairfax. Oh, yes, yes, Sally Fairfax. She ends up marrying someone else, and they had to have a love interest story. My 13-year-old son was like, oh, come on. That's real, though. Sally Fairfax? That was actually a real kind of infatuation in his letters and stuff. Yeah, it changed him when she dumped him. Yeah, it totally changed him. But, yeah, too hot.

I know why they had to do it. But I kind of like imagining George Washington. I feel like I'm doing the scene from Talladega Nights, where I like to imagine my Jesus wearing a tuxedo t-shirt. But I like to imagine George Washington as pretty plain looking, but a physically imposing beast, and that he mastered his emotions. And from what I've heard, they've done a good job. I still have to see it, but I've read enough about his early life to where...

They showed that he was kind of a brash. You know, ambitious guy that really was working on kind of restraining his emotions. But by the end of his life, because of all the trials and tribulations he went through in the revolution, he became someone that had mastered maybe the weaker parts of his temperament and was able to unleash them when he had to, but remain a statesman. Yeah, that was like the really deep thing about this movie and something I appreciated is because a lot of times when We're like, we have to humanize the Founding Fathers.

On the left, what that means is we just have to call them all racists. Yeah, right. Yeah, exactly. But in this movie, it acknowledged slavery, but it also showed that that line between good and evil, that struggle in the human heart, it's about a lot more than just identity politics. This is also about having to master these weaknesses that we have in ourselves, and they did a really, really great job of that.

Sick. Yeah, it's a great, it's a good movie. Should be supported. Good job, Angel Studios. And then before I do, I have to sneak in one more because it just came across this morning. So, for all of my literary nerds out there, the Bishop of Norway has just announced he is opening Sigrid Unset's Cause for Canonization. Sigrid Unset being one of my all-time favorite Catholic writers, and she wrote Kristen Lovren's Daughter, and also the best biography of Catherine of Siena out there, bar none.

Everyone should go read it. But she is now going, her cause has been submitted to Rome. Hopefully, she will be a venerable soon, and I'm just really excited, so I'm kind of geeking out over that one. Norway's on kind of a heater right now. Norway is on a heater, and the Viking row. I don't know if you've been seeing, yeah, the row, and then Erling Harlin. Yes. Talk about physicality. He looks like a Viking. It looks like if a Viking is.

No, that is what I am saying. He looks so much like a Viking. I believe they are going to play England, right? Yes. This is going to be an awesome historical matchup. It is going to be awesome. He is one of the best strikers in soccer. Have you seen the stuff with his dad?

No. Oh, my gosh. I think his dad also played in the Premier League, was also a soccer player, but he wasn't a striker, so he didn't score much, so the one joke they always make is like, you know, I score unlike my dad, but everything else is like my dad, and I believe when he won, it was either the Champions League or some big tournament, he took the medal off and put it on his father and had him drink some of the champagne, and it was just like, some of these moments of his love and admiration for his dad, it just gave me right in the heart, so I'm rooting for him.

Yeah, I'm going to root for him, too. Sweet. Okay, Josh, what do you got? Well, hey, I just want to let folks know, I think this is kind of good news. A week from today, July 15th, I'm going to have a chance to sit down with pro-life activist Mark Hawk, and we're going to talk about his experiences. He obviously had a fight with the very politicized Biden administration, and now he's continuing to fight to save babies, and so join us. You've got to sign up, though.

You've got to sign up to be a champion. It's only $10 a month. It helps out the cause. It helps pay the light bills here at the LOOPcast Studios, and it helps do a lot of the things that we do all across the country. So, sign up to become a champion. $10 a month. You can do $10 a month.

Cups of coffee? No, in Connecticut, that's just one cup of coffee. That is a latte at Starbucks right now. Yeah, that is a latte. Ten bucks. Sign up. Go to CatholicVote. One latte a month. Go to CatholicVote. Sign up to become a champion, and then you can join us for our live webcast where I'll sit down and talk with Mark, and then you can submit your own questions. Maybe we'll use your question and ask Mark what he thinks. Love our champions, man.

Mark Hout, too. The smartest. Most beautiful, handsome, articulate people out there. And me too. And Josh. Okay, so this one is hilarious to me. I call this good news, I guess, because we got this race in Michigan going on with El-Sayed, and Josh, his favorite politician is in order.

Actually, you're not in on this guy, but we're all watching this race, especially as Michiganders, or a former Michigander in this case. So, I'm going to share this. It's a two-way debate instead of three-way, because Mallory McMurrow dropped out last week. True, yeah, she dropped out. So, we had this debate. And this is overwhelmingly 2.2 million views. Everyone is mad at him about this. That's on Axe, which is hilarious. It's like, you could say something, because he's kind of like the new darling.

He's like the grand platter, minus a lot of the scandals, definitely more polished. Maybe. And Michigan's swing state. Michigan's swing state, big election. So, here's what he had to say about property taxes. I think we need to be freezing property tax for seniors. If you paid off your home at some point, we can't expect you to keep up with property taxes that are going up. Now, how do we pay for that? I think we need to be freezing property taxes that are going up.

Now, how do we pay for that? Well, again, if we tax billionaires their wealth, if we were to invest in the Department of Education so that we're paying centrally for public schools in an equitable way, there are a lot of opportunities for us to lift the burden off of seniors who've done their job, they've worked extra hard, they deserve a dignified retirement, and we've got to be thinking about how to offer them that. All right. Oh, my gosh. I have a couple of notes on this.

Please tell me his opponent jumped on that. No, because she's stupid, too. They're all doing this to... Pander to old voters. And the funniest thing about this, he's going to go represent Michigan at the federal level. He has no control over this. This isn't even something he can do at the National Senate level. This is local policy. So, that's how you know it's kind of on the series. Property taxes are not federal, right? Right, property taxes are not federal. So, he actually can't do anything about this.

So, he's just saying this to pander, number one. And then he's getting ripped up and down by all the people that love him, like all the lefties that love him. People on the right are ripping him, too. Now, this is what I'll say, because people always get mad about this when I talk about it on the show. If the goal is helping seniors on fixed incomes, use income-targeted circuit breakers, deferrals, something like that, not a blanket age-based exemption for everyone over 65, especially including wealthy homeowners.

That would be my solution, just before everyone gets mad at me about property taxes, because I think there are some reasonable situations where people don't have a lot of money, they paid off their house, value goes up a ton, and now they can't afford it. I think that's bad, generally. So, yes, make it income-capped. It already kind of is. Like, Social Security is income-dependent. That being said. Or, you could just say, once you hit 65, your property tax could freeze, not eliminate it.

Right. You know what I'm saying? So, it won't grow, or whatever, or grows at a fixed rate, or something. There's things you can do. But that's not what anyone promises. Don't give away the whole farm. Right. That's not what anyone promises. And property taxes are kind of the one tax that I actually...

Kind of support, because it's not like your federal taxes were like, oh, this is going to go to some quality learing center somewhere. It pays for the fire department. It pays for the roads. It has tangible benefits to your local community. Right, the privilege of living in the town, and yeah. Exactly. My brother's a firefighter. Like, you should see some of the things that he deals with. These are the people that we should actually be paying and actually be paying well.

Yeah, I do believe in using it for education. I just wish we were taking it off education. Because if you want good teachers, you have to pay them. Like, this is not a hard calculus. So, if you take property taxes off of the wealthiest, in terms of stocks and property right now, generation among us, then the tax burden either shifts to younger property owners or to a sales tax or to some other tax, in which is not going to be distributed evenly.

It's going to fall on people that are already struggling, as I said. College graduates that can't get a job and a ton of debt. Young people trying to own a house that's basically impossible. So, it's kind of a ridiculous proposal that I see now even the most populist of left-leaning politicians embrace, which is just so ridiculous to me. You're going to do socialism without taxes?

Like, bold strategy, Cotton, and we'll see how it pays out. But the one that always kills me, and I always say, go read this article, Total Boomer Luxury Communism. And again, I love our boomers. I'm not talking about you in particularly. People get so mad at me about this. I'm talking about the general trends, okay? We're talking about the average. This graph says it all. And China thinks this is insane, by the way. Like, they're kind of benchmarking this to China.

Direct taxes and entitlements by age. Take a look at this green. That is Social Security, healthcare, and That is per person in 2021 in dollar amounts. We're up to like $35,000 a year. The heaviest tax burden is on people that are 45 to 54 is where it peaks, and then all of the entitlements go up here. And we're talking about entitlements that apply to golf balls at the range.

There has to be some kind of change if we want. People have kids, and we want to continue. What are we doing? I wish that Social Security, when it was first done in 1933 and onward, would just say, we are going to force you to save a portion of your money in retirement so that you'll have something 40 years later.

For example, most states, in order to drive, you need to get car insurance, but the government doesn't provide the car insurance. It tells you to go get car insurance from the private sector that you need to have it. That's what we should do with retirement stuff, because what the government does, in case anyone out there listening doesn't understand this, what happens is immediate money.

When you earned your paycheck in 1975, or 1985, or 1995, that money was immediately spent. It wasn't like it was put in the savings account that you're going to tap into 40 years later. It was not put to work for you. It was spent on crap, on bad stuff.

And so, then you come calling 40 years later, and you're like, I want the money I put in. Well, it's not the money you put into someone else's money. My point is, I don't trust politicians. Duh. So, if instead... The 12% that's taken from all of your checks for the last 40 years, if the government said, no, no, no, we're not going to take it, go to Fidelity, go to whoever, and invest that money, we would be super wealthy. So, we're not blaming people for the system we have in, unless, of course, you don't realize what the system is.

And it sucks. The system is terrible. The point is, if you would have taken that same money, And invested in the private sector, you would be even more wealthy at 65. Right. This is my favorite meme on it. It's the Democratic-Socialist social contract. Nick, 30, head and hands, and then down to Simon and Linda, 70, P&O cruises, and then in this house, we believe Black Lives Matter, women's rights are human rights, not human rights are legal. Black Lives Matter, man. Let me tell you.

They did a survey last week of independents, Republicans, and Democratic voters, and they found that the Black Lives Matter flag had a higher approval rating amongst Democrats than the American flag. That's crazy. Yeah, I saw that. That's crazy.

So, anyway, basically, this is generational redistribution in reverse. People with homes get the tax break, and people locked out of homeownership get the bill. That is what I am saying. Again, if you participate in the system, I am not talking about you personally. I am talking about making meaningful change so that young people can start a future and have kids and participate in the system. Without becoming socialists. That is actually the point. Without actual communism coming and taking it from you.

Yes. In which you will get. By the way, if this gets bad enough, and it's bad now, so I'm not talking about you. If you're participating, I'm talking about the system. So, this is actually what our politicians should be focusing on at the local level, at the state level, and at the national level, instead of dumb stuff that, instead of like the 40th resolution on Israel. I hate to say it, but like, focus on something that actually matters. This just crossed the wires as we're talking here.

Trump administration launches its first major H-1B visa fraud investigation. From your lips to God's ears, man. Holy crap. They're reading Twitter, by the way, because the Xbox thing is blowing up on Twitter. Yeah, and I'm glad that the Trump administration is launching the investigation, but Congress has to, like, they need to do this.

You can't just be, like, president to president to president. Trump alone cannot get rid of H-1B visas. He tried to make it harder by putting a $100,000 fee to it, but the Supreme Court said no. So, it needs to be Congress. All these... And they're all owned by corporate interests, so they have no interest in doing this.

Again, that's why you've got Grant Plattner up here, all the sex scandals included, and a terrible character, but he's talking about actually changing this. Okay, I want to spend some time here because this is a big one for the Catholic world.

The SSPX is officially in schism with Rome, and tough because I know there's people that listen to this that probably belong to the SSPX. It is a global Catholic. Again, I don't want to get technical with the movement. I'm not going to be able to get technical with the words. I think this is a very sad and unfortunate day for everyone involved, for the church, for SSPX. And so, Erika, I just want to get on the timeline here. What are we looking at?

What is the official proceeding? Yeah, so just like for people who need a refresher, I'm going to go back a little bit further, a few steps backwards here before we actually get to what happened on July 1st, which was the last day that we were recording, actually. So, it was... Just as we were talking last week. So, timeline, back in 2526, the SSPX basically let Rome know, let the Vatican know, that it only has two remaining active bishops left. The rest of the bishops who had been consecrated by Lefebvre back in 1988 and incurring the first schism with the church back then with John Paul II, they were aging out.

Two of them had died. And that they needed to consecrate new bishops in order to ensure the society's future. So, they announced plans. They're going to consecrate four new bishops without papal approval. Over the course of the month of June, we had messages from Pope Leo begging them not to move forward, begging them not to do this. SSPX responds with, well, we asked for a one-on-one meeting with you, and we didn't get it, and we're going forward with this anyway.

There was one more attempt at meetings with leadership, but then on July 1st, at a ceremony in France, which is where the society is based, four priests, one of them an American actually, were consecrated as bishops without the papal mandate. The ceremony was conducted by the bishops who were already themselves in irregular canonical status, meaning they were validly consecrated bishops because they were... It was consecrated initially by someone who was an actual bishop of the church, but it was illicit, lacking papal mandate.

There were thousands at the ceremony. It was live-streamed internationally. And at the beginning of the liturgy, As with all Episcopal ordinations, one of the bishops, Bishop Alfonso de Gallaretta, who was the principal consecrator, publicly asks, do you have the apostolic mandate?

Another clergyman read the response, which was in the form of a bull, which is an official church document, arguing that church authorities since Vatican II have, quote, been animated by a spirit that is contrary to that of the faith, end quote. And it also claimed that... All punishment that they might receive from the church would be totally invalid, right? The Pope doesn't have the authority to give us this punishment, basically. Then the bowl goes on. It says, it is the Catholic and Roman church always faithful to the holy tradition received from the apostles who, in entirely exceptional circumstances, demands that we provide for the upholding of these traditions, that is the deposit of faith, and that we take the means necessary to transmit them faithfully, meaning we're going to go ahead and consecrate these bishops because we have a sacred duty.

As they said it, toward the Holy Church and souls to proceed. And so, again, they say this is out of compassion, this is out of reverence for the Church and tradition that we are doing this, and we don't recognize any penalties imposed by Rome because of this.

We'll get into commentary in a second. And then after the Vatican came out the next day, declaring, yes, now we are in formal schism, the society says, we sincerely regret that, owing to exceptional circumstances, these consecrations had to be conferred without the authorization of the Holy Father. We wanted to meet with you. We didn't, and so we have grave reason to do this thing, which is a terrible wound on the body of Christ.

In addition to schism, there was sort of an unprecedented penalty articulated by Rome in the Vatican's, the DDF's, declaration. That all of the society's clergy members, so all of the priests of the society, and the lay faithful who formally adhere, that's the exact wording, formally adhere to the SSPX are also in schism and excommunicated.

Sacraments of penance and marriage are now additionally invalid. Not only illicit, but they are invalid. So, very jarring for everyone in the church, I think especially for people who maybe attend an SSPX chapel once in a while to go to the TLM. If you remember correctly, it's also confusing because under Francis, it was... The schism with Rome was sort of lifted, not like officially declared lifted, but he said, you can go to them for confession. You can go to the chapel for a mass if you can't get to a valid mass anywhere else.

And so, there's a lot of fogginess there around the SSPX and what it is. Tom, you had asked about, you're like, okay, so what's the steel man argument? There was a great article just this morning in the Catholic thing that I would highly recommend. It is a great articulation of what exactly the SSPX's issue with Vatican II is. It talks about the ties that the SSPX sees with Vatican II's documents and the French Revolution, actually. It goes way back. And so, I would highly recommend we should throw this article into the chat if people are interested in that history.

So, that is where we are at, formal schism, and again, knowing that our viewership, there are at least some of you who probably are affected by this deeply, and it is a terrible time. That being said, Part of being Catholic is you don't get to just declare the Pope to not have authority to do something that he clearly has authority to do, like Christ gave Peter the keys of the kingdom to bind and to loose in heaven on earth, and whether you like it or not, the Pope has the authority to declare schism and excommunication.

You don't get to just be like, well, I have extraordinary circumstances, so he doesn't. That's... In itself is schismatic. It's outside of what it means to be Roman Catholic. I hate to say it. Yeah, papal authority, kind of a big thing for Catholics. A little bit, a little bit big. Yeah, and the whole validity of Vatican II thing, it kind of confuses me as well. So, there's some really great rundowns on social media about how we know a council is valid, Vatican II hitting all the markers.

They say, actually, it would be a lot easier to argue that Vatican I was invalid because apparently, like, the Pope started yelling at a bunch of bishops and wouldn't let them be heard and, like, shut off. He made them leave the room, and a bunch of bishops, like 70 bishops left Vatican I because they were angry about the papal infallibility and supremacy stuff, and so Vatican I is actually more sus than Vatican II at this point, so really interesting. Tired and wired.

Tired, Vatican II. Wired, Vatican I was actually the problem. Oh, man. Maybe a deep episode in the future there. Actually, I mean, I just, I feel like if... Bishops in the United States and throughout the world made a concerted effort to make the liturgy much more reverent than it has been in the previous few decades, and showed an appreciation for Catholics who are nourished by reverence in the liturgy. I think it would go a long way to moving forward in a positive direction.

And people might just leave SSPX, now that it's cosmetic, if you make it comfortable for them to worship the Lord with reverence, instead of this instant oatmeal, instant coffee kind of like, you know. I think accessible is the big thing, too, because there's been so many restrictions on where you can say the Latin Mass. Yeah, obviously, I think Pope Francis, you know, putting the Latin-based liturgy, basically. You know, under, in jail, basically. I just, I think, you know, prudentially, he was such a horrible shepherd.

Well, and it obviously made it more popular and mysterious. I just think it was a total backfire. We're parenting choices, right? Yeah, and I think that we've seen a lot of these responses in the last five or six days from American bishops, and many of them are so pastoral and acknowledging the pain of members of the SSPX at this time, but not just SSPX members. We have a thriving Institute of Christ the King Parish here, you do in Detroit, over there.

And there, they feel under siege and hurt because of all of this as well, and so a lot of bishops just being phenomenal shepherds. Yeah, Hapda had a great St. Paul, Minneapolis. Met many sincere people who worship regularly or occasionally at local SSPX chapels, has been impressed by the strength of their families and their commitment to traditional Catholic values, expressed hope that they would not follow the SSPX bishops. And separating themselves from the successor of Peter, Pope Leo XIV, and from the church he humbly leads.

Isn't it nice to have bishops speak warm and friendly about traditionally-minded Catholics instead of what the previous Pope did? I think that's the big difference. You mentioned it, too, and I see a lot of these debates on the ground, too, and I guess I can only speak for myself. I don't hold an animus against people that go to the traditional Latin Mass or belong to the SSPX. I just feel a deep sadness that we're not able to... ...resolve these issues in the same way that, like, I don't...

Like, any other schismatic or whatever, like, it's not like I personally, like, hate them or hold animus against them. It's really just unfortunate. Yeah, any attack on nudity is bad. Now, of course, we have... What frustrates me is that, you know, those on the right, as it were, get excommunicated or whatever, and those on the left don't. But, like, Jim Martin, you know, Father James Martin, he promotes... The worst kind of stuff on human sexuality and same-sex relations. I mean, they held a pride mass in New York City for Pride Month, and it was, I mean, I watched footage from it.

I'm like, how is this not illicit? And I guess, I guess, well, I mean, it's not like, you know, they consecrated new bishops, which is sort of the thing. Ultimately, that's the Pope's thing to do, and so I get it, but it just is frustrating that.

We don't see any policing of the left. Yeah, and Matt Fradd made this point. He was doing an interview last week right after the consecrations happened, and he made an interesting point, too, that the leadership in the church has kind of created the conditions that would, and again, it is the SSPX's free will choice to go a bridge too far and to put themselves in schism and to defy the bishop of Rome. 100% their free choice, but we also have created these conditions, and he's like, You know, in America, he's traveled all over.

In America, we think of goofy liturgies and Novus Ors, and we complain about it. You go to Europe, and like when he was living at the Franciscan University campus in Austria, he, the Franciscan friars, who are not... Trads, right? They would say, don't go to the local parish. It's an invalid Eucharist, because the priest just makes up the words of consecration, and he's like, yeah, we either stuck to the campus or we had to go into Vienna, and they went to an SSPX chapel prior to the schism, so it was still okay, but they went there because the liturgy was actually valid, and it's that much harder in other parts of the world to find that, and so you understand what would drive people to bring their children to SSPX.

Because you don't want to grow up. Absolutely. I mean, wasn't there also, there's some pretty surprising numbers on conversions in France. I think there was more French conversions to TLM or TLM-adjacent parishes than there were to normal... The SSPX is growing in ways that many dioceses in Western Europe and America are not for that reason. People thirst for reverent liturgy, and I think, like you were saying, the very best of our bishops here in the U.S., just the compassion. That they've shown towards people who are attracted to this movement has been really beautiful to witness, and I hope that it also translates into concrete decisions to allow more TLM masses and more traditional liturgies to encourage Reverend Novus Ordos, priests who want to bring altar rails back, priests who want to offer traditional Gregorian chant.

I hope that it... It does what Benedict was trying to do when he welcomed the TLM back. Well, that is my question, Erika. I do not know if you know, because it might be like a canon law question, but is there a way out of this for SSPX? Only reconciliation. They have to repent and be reconciled to Rome. Which would mean that the bishops that they... Invalidly consecrated would not be, they would just say, I'm not a bishop anymore, or something like that.

Well, there's options. If the new consecrated bishops came forward, you know, like a year from now and said, this is a mistake, I accept the Church's teachings, the Pope, in his wisdom, could decide to allow them to remain bishops and bless that consecration. But I ultimately think, this is what frustrated me so much. I am not even a Latin Mass guy. What frustrates me so much about what Pope Francis did is that, yes, Benedict was trying to allow people who love the Latin Mass to flourish inside of the church, and by Francis putting so many constrictions on it, made it so people would just go, well, then I guess I will leave.

I mean, I only get, we can celebrate Latin Mass in a garage. I mean, give me a break. And so, I want... The way out of this, I think, is to allow the Latin Mass inside the church to flourish. Get rid of these restrictions. Get rid of these things that, you know, oh, it can't be at a regular parish. No, it should be at every parish that wants it. Like, that's what you want to happen. People who want the Latin Mass should be able to receive it, like, easily.

A way of worship for this church for 1,500 years, again, it is not even my thing, but I live in a place, thankfully, where I can get one within a 40-minute drive, but a lot of people don't. And so, if more and more people are given the ability to have a reverent, traditional Latin mass close to where they are, I think a lot of the energy will leave SSPX, and then, you know, that is the way out of this problem. Or, or.

They get more energy. So, if it was, like you said, the availability, clearly the hunger and thirst is there. I think it was an own goal by Pope Francis to make that decision because it just made it mysterious and cool, and then people found out. They're like, this is awesome. What I have is not awesome, and then they start looking back, and so I'm like, does it hurt the church for places like Institute of Christ the King to become super popular?

No, I don't see any issue at all. Like, these are some of the most faithful, holy, humble men that I've ever met. Like, the Canons over there. St. John Canjus, same thing. Like, I think it's a net positive for the church for these things to become really popular. But I mean, Francis legitimately didn't even have a problem with that. He just didn't want it to be at the local St. Matthew parish to also start having traditional mass. I'm like, well, no, that was the whole point of what Benedict was trying to do.

Right, for them to inform each other, which he has done. And again, this is one of those things that drives me crazy. I had a problem with Pope Benedict. I'm declaring John Paul blessed. I did not like that, because it's your immediate predecessor. You shouldn't have done it. You should wait. You should have had no influence on that, because the idea behind being the pope is you actually succeed Peter, not just the guy that went before you, and so I had a problem with that, but I had, obviously, a category larger problem with Francis immediately reversing something that the person that was pope right before him did on this Latin liturgy stuff.

It makes me so mad to have a church that's supposed to be about tradition and building up what the previous person did and trying to do that instead of a complete 180 and rejecting something that he had done. I thought it was disgusting and frustrated me, and I'm never going to let go of it. I agree, and I agree on conditions. One final thing. I think from my understanding, the argument, the dogma argument, is that in a state of emergency, they would have some justification to consecrate their own bishops.

Now, Are they just angry that they feel that that hasn't been litigated properly out in the open? Because it feels to me that People are saying, okay, they're not meeting with, the Pope was refusing to meet with them, or they're getting pushed off, they're not actually meeting.

Like, don't you think that's been discussed? Yeah. And they just think the answer is no? Like, who makes the final decision, yeah, this isn't a legit state of emergency, or this isn't a justifiable state of emergency, therefore you can't do it? Does that have to go through some official? No, only Peter can decide that, right? So, the Pope himself, by the authority. So, for them to be like, well, we don't recognize Peter's authority to decide. The thing that Peter decides. It is just a circle, and I think the way to steel man it a little bit, the response from the SSPX or the explanation has been, it is a state of emergency.

We wanted to meet with the Pope, whereas the DDF's explanation, and even Leo himself, is that, well, when they approach us asking for a meeting, they are already coming with, but we are not going to budge on these items, which are non-negotiables, like they have to do with the validity of Vatican II. Right. You can't go to the Pope and be like, we want to meet with you to tell you that we reject this council. To put it in very simple terms.

There are nuances. Right, right, right. Right, and so the Pope's like, no, I'm not going to meet with you to have you tell me that the council was invalid, because that's just not... So, both sides feel that they have all the nuance and all that, but at the end of the day, for a faithful Roman Catholic, Guy in the Pew... We must remain faithful to Peter. And yeah, all throughout Francis's pontificate, I was critical of certain things that he did, all of that.

But if he had come and said, like, this bishop is not allowed to consecrate bishops, I'm like, that's you. That's the authority given to you by Christ. So, when it comes to faith and morals, dogmatic teaching on faith and morals, that's the magisterial teaching body of the church. The head of the church. And so, again, like... Case closed. Case closed. Case closed when it comes to that. And you know what I'll say? Any SSPX listeners that feel conflicted about this or put in a weird situation, hit the inbox, LOOPcast, at CatholicVote.org.

Yeah, I'd love to hear your side of the story, too. Yeah. Definitely. We're not judging. I'm not judging. I'm not wagging my finger. Nothing. I mean, I... No, this dude, could you imagine? Oh, my gosh. Tough spot. Yeah, definitely a tough spot. Okay, so let us go on now. Josh, Twilight Zone, what do you got? Well, I mean, you know, the Twilight Zone part of this was on the 250th anniversary of our independence. The communist mayor of New York City, Zora Mondami, gave a speech from George Washington's desk, and he turned it around, so it is like you are looking at him and a bunch of people behind him that are going to lecture you about how evil you are and how much your country sucks, and that is exactly what he did.

And I just want to say, the best response to this communist mayor's speech was actually former Los Angeles mayor candidate who had his election stolen from him, Spencer Pratt. Whoa, election denier Josh? He is a generational talent. And he gave a fantastic response to... Generational talent, Josh? That is a strong, strong claim. He really is. I mean, the thing is... I'll listen. You can tell he really believes in what he's saying. I mean, he's nailing it. He's talking in a way that's profound.

Let's watch a little bit of this. All right. He's going from behind the desk. Wait, is there a problem? There's no audio on it. There's no audio on this? Correct. I think there's an X on the audio. Well, why is it not working?

Is it working now? Nope. Let's see. I think you have mute on X or something. No. Reshare, yeah, I'll try it again. Nothing? Nothing. Oh, no. Oh, no. It's not on mute there. Such a wind-up. Like, turn off the screen share completely. I tried. All right, we'll try. We'll try. We'll try. One more time. Welcome to the Trust Tree. I was in the office. Well, I'll tell you, as we're waiting for this to load, I mean, he talks about loving your country, which is what Mandami does not, and he creates, I think, a really good analogy.

All right, what do we see? that's it we all good there we go yeah i didn't watch that vile commie mayor sit on the wrong side of our founding father's desk to try and lecture us about our own history notice how the communist always attacks your history the communist must attack your history why because history is what anchors you it's what makes us attached to something nostalgia is a hell of a drug history breeds an almost irrational attachment to things, an attachment that is more powerful than anyone can imagine.

Erasing history is how you demoralize people, how you unmoor them and detach them from their society so you can take it from them and rewrite it in your image. Think of your country like a home. What makes your home special? It's not the marble countertops or the expensive furniture or the fancy appliances. It's the memories you have there. That backyard is where we got married.

The living room rug is where our son took his first step. Hey, don't touch that. That was his first teddy bear. It doesn't matter how torn and tattered that thing is. You will never get rid of it, and you will fight anyone who tries to take it away. Why? Because you have history with it. You ever buy a new home? Remember those first few months? Even the first few years there, it doesn't feel like home. It could be a million times nicer than the crappy apartment you came from, but it doesn't feel like home for a long time.

Because you don't have history there. It's easy to knock down some walls, change the floor plan. If you have no memories to attach you to it, it's just wood and drywall. Who cares? Get rid of it. Memories make it a home, even the bad ones. Hey, remember when dad hit his head on the rafter in the attic and we spent all night in the ER? That's the avocado tree I fell out of and broke my first bone. Isn't it weird how even the bad memories make us cherish a place?

It's not like we long for those bad times, but bad times are part of what makes us stronger. A part of what makes us who we are. How can you resent those memories without fundamentally resenting who you are? History is so important to humans that even bad memories anchor us to our home. And that's what the communists always start with. What is this music? Oh, we can get rid of that little story. We can knock down that statue. We can change the name of that street.

That's a bad memory from our history. You don't want that memory hanging around. You're not a bigot, right? Is he rapping? Slowly but surely, this wall comes down, then that wall gets sledgehammered, the rafter where dad hit his head, that's gone, the rub where your son took his first step, that's gone, the gash in the wood floor where you stomped the glass on your wedding ceremony, that's gone and replaced with shiny vinyl planks, and now you've got a brand new home with no memories.

Now, do you care what they do with it? Do you care what comes next? What's great about this is, of course... The L.A. officials didn't do anything for the homeowners, like Spencer Pratt, who lost his home, and a lot of others who lost their home, and they won't even let him rebuild, and they never filled up the reservoir, and he's talking about this stuff because they want to torch it all and remake it anew in their own image and sectionate housing and all this kind of stuff.

The guy gets it, man. I tell you. Do you know where he is in this video, Josh? Huh? Do you know what the setting of the background of the video was where he's delivering this? Well, he was, of course, Mondami had the desk, and so he was doing the folding table, and he basically... Right, but what's the location he's on, do you know? Right, it's where his house was burnt down. Palisades. Yeah, it's the Palisades. That still have not been rebuilt.

Right. That's exactly my point. Right. Yeah. No, it's good. So, that was actually my big critique with the Mabdani speech. For someone that's so obsessed with optics, that looked terrible. Oh, it was so ugly. The people behind him were dour.

Little plastic flags. The color was bad. I don't know who did that, because usually he's spot on with that, but that was bad. And then you look at, like, Pratt's was actually, like, well-lit, clearly good cinematography. important place like that he said it was important place it was uh the mayor's office and it was behind but it just looked really weird that was what stuck out i'm just saying that i think i feel like this guy has got a real good understanding of precisely what is animating a lot of the commie left right now and you know spencer Give up on California, brother.

Yeah, what do you think is next for him? Do you think he's got a future? Move to Texas, move to Florida. I think he met with Trump, right? Yeah, he just went to the White House. So, do you think, if you had to wild guess, what's next for Spencer Brett?

The future is very bright. But he's got to get out of California. Well, no, I mean, of course, Donald Trump got elected president out of New York, so, you know, you can be elected from a blue city in a blue state. It's true. It's true.

Okay. Anyway. Spencer Pratt on the radar. I'm saying he needs, you know, but he's got, he's got the... I mean, if I were him... He was a reality TV star. Yeah, if I were him, I'd run for president 28 anyway. You got nothing to lose. Just get out there and... Yeah, just a small undertaking. Run for president. That would be great. I mean, Trump did it with, like, you know... Just a couple millions more. I don't know how much Spencer Pratt has, but...

Um, okay, Erika, what do you got? Okay, I have good news, bad news, and an ode to Tom McCluskey, winner of the patriotic snake draft last week, which you missed, Tom, because you were off. Oh, heck yeah, I love a good snake draft. But we had a good time, and Tom won. But it starts off with dark news. So, you remember the one big beautiful bill a year ago? I had a one-year pause on, I think it was Medicaid reimbursements for Planned Parenthood.

So, it was like a one-year defunding, and To the shame of the United States of America, on our big birthday weekend, that expired, and so this weekend, Planned Parenthood and two other family planning, to put it mildly, organizations, they were able to resume getting those Medicaid reimbursements. They say they're for non-abortion services because they follow the law and the Hyde Amendment to the T, I understand, from their spokesperson.

We are once again funding Planned Parenthood, which gets 96% of its income is from abortions and gender-mutilating surgeries. So, they are announcing at offices like Arizona, they're resuming expanded hours, telehealth options so that they can kill babies in other states. Some services are not resuming, so they're saying like, oh my gosh, we can't have primary care doctors anymore because they were inevitable.

Totally defunded for a year, so it's too late, which is great. Here's how I read abortion every day, once a week, because it's very depressing. It's Jessica Valenti's outfit, and it just exists to make more abortions. But here's how they framed it. This was welcome news after a year that saw tens of thousands of patients cut off from basic health care, meaning abortion.

But, as Nora Walsh-DeVries of Planned Parenthood Action Fund told Politico, the damage is irreparable. So, here's the good news. After all, health centers that have already closed can't just reopen now, and that funding, that the funding is back. Republicans are, here's what they claim though, Republicans are still pursuing a permanent defund law, if only, and a Supreme Court decision last year allows individual states to block Medicaid funds for Planned Parenthood and other clinics. That list so far, Arkansas, Mississippi, Missouri, Nebraska, Oklahoma, South Carolina, and Texas.

So, while this was disappointing, terrible news that this was allowed to expire. And we are once again funding Planned Parenthood with our federal tax dollars. There was what they're calling permanent damage done as a result of this one-year pause. Over 300 clinics closed around the country, so this was good. And here's my ode to Tom McCluskey, because you could just get blackpilled about the Trump administration and be like, they've betrayed the pro-life movement.

Or you can get back on the wagon and start fighting again. And I'm proud to announce CatholicVote has joined this coalition supporting OMB, or Office of Management and Budget, grant reforms that will have, hopefully, The effect of continuing to defund and to draw funds away from abortion giants like Planned Parenthood. So, they're taking a different tactic. Obviously, we would love for this defunding to be reinstated as soon as possible, and we get a permanent defund law. But instead of being blackpilled, Tom McCluskey and his band of brothers back on the wagon.

Uh, so, thank you, Tom, for continuing to fight and not getting so discouraged that you just give it up and go back to upstate New York, which would be equally depressing, probably. Facts. Yeah. Like, I have to go to Buffalo?

No slight on the Buffalo homies, but, um... It's not a great place to be. Okay, uh, mine. Now, I got some questions, all right? The resident conspiracy theorist is back. Someone's got to tell me what's going on with Mitch McConnell, Josh.

So, where is he? What is going on? Why is his wife in China while he's in the hospital? Is he the GOP, Joe Biden? Now, I'm going to lay this out, okay? No one seems to know. So, Mitch McConnell, now age 84, he was hospitalized on June 14th, okay? So, that's a couple weeks, three weeks ago now, at least. And as of July...

7th, last night, 8th today. Technically, recovering in the hospital is what we're being told. His office has released very limited information saying that he's recovering, receiving care, and remains engaged with Senate work. AP reports that aides have not disclosed the specific reason for his hospitalization. Okay, so there's no official story on why he was hospitalized. He's been in a hospital for three weeks. We have no answer. He's also 84.

Now, CBS and ABC reported that emergency medical personnel were dispatched to McConnell's D.C. home that same morning for an unconscious person who appeared to be in cardiac arrest. CBS reported that the dispatch audio included cardiac arrest and CPR in progress, but also emphasized that McConnell's name is not heard in the call, and CBS has not independently confirmed the identity of the unconscious person.

Now, we really got to pretend like, who else lives with McConnell and would potentially have a heart attack? I mean, that's crazy. We can't just connect the dots there, but, you know, I guess it's not been confirmed. So, now we're getting some Joe Biden-esque tweets, even with some of the same language, from the one and only Scott Jennings.

I spoke to my old friend Mitch McConnell this morning. This is July 7th. Yesterday. The senior senator from Kentucky, he's still recovering in the hospital. We talked just shy of 20 minutes about Iran, Ukraine, and the unfolding situation in Maine, my visit to the TR presidential library, and even a little bit of Senate history. I told him we want to see him back at work as soon as possible. Funny, other people posted around the same time exactly the same things. I spoke to my old friend, Mitch McConnell, this morning, the senior senator from Kentucky.

Interesting choice of language, exactly the same. He is still recovering in the hospital. We talked for just shy of 45 minutes. He is so sharp. Just like he always let me do the talking, he is a great listener. After that, we prayed silently a while and had a stare contest. Satire count. I know, I know.

I was joking on the Jack Campbell one, but Senator John Barrasso from Wyoming's spokesperson, Kate Noyes, Senator Barrasso and Senator McConnell had a lengthy conversation earlier this afternoon. Their phone call lasted roughly 20 minutes. Senator McConnell was fully engaged and eager to get back to the Senate. So, there's a couple people that came out. I believe John Thune also said, I had like a 20-minute conversation. Everyone said they had a 20-minute conversation. Everyone's talking to him for 20 minutes, I guess.

Now, the interesting element of this is And I didn't really know much about his wife, but I just saw something. His wife was doing meetings in China during his hospitalization, and not just with anyone, with the Chinese Vice President, Han Zheng.

Local Kentucky outlet WLKY reported several appearances in China amid McConnell's hospitalization. Now, Elaine Chao is not just a random spouse of a senator. I don't know if you know anything about her, Josh. She was the former Secretary of Labor, former Secretary of Transportation, and one of the most prominent Asian American Republicans in modern U.S. politics. I believe she served under Bush. She also comes from a powerful international shipping family with long-running China-related scrutiny, which is why her reported China trip during McConnell's unexplained hospitalization has become part of the story.

I think he said he's retiring, Josh, after this term? No, that is already known. I mean, Democrats and Republicans have already nominated somebody to go up to fill that seat. This November, there will be an election in Kentucky to find out who will succeed Mitch McConnell. The question is, you know, what would happen if he died? If he died, let us say, for example, today.

Actually, ironically enough, the governor in Kentucky would have little power. All he can do is declare a special election, because Mitch McConnell convinced the legislature back in 2024, I believe, hey, change the law, so if there's a vacancy, the Democratic governor of this state won't be able to pick an appointment that will call for a snap special election.

Now, if Mitch McConnell stays alive for another couple weeks or months or whatever, then there won't be a need for a special election. It'll just be the regular election in November that will fill the seat come January. Do you know another prominent member of the House that could potentially run for that seat? He's from Kentucky.

Well, I mean, of course, Andy Barr is a member of the House. I'm not talking about Andy Barr, Josh. Oh, you're talking about Massey, who's got defeated? I'm talking about Tom Massey. Well, so, let's say there were a special election, and the election could be in September, October. They might just make the special election also on November, and the person who would win that race would become senator as soon as the votes were certified.

So, but it would probably just be Andy Barr as well, and so he would take office, you know, like in November, as opposed to waiting until January to be sworn in. So, no, Tom Massey is not going to, in fact. You know, by the way, have you noticed Rand Paul has been like on a heater talking about how bad birthright citizenship is? He's like distancing himself from like the pure libertarianism stuff. He's trying to make sure he's covering his six. Now, of course, he's doing what I call a fake thing.

Rand Paul is calling for an amendment to the United States Constitution to end birthright citizenship, which is no, like, wait till you get one more justice on the Supreme Court and get it right. Or, just pass a law. Like, the 14th Amendment provides in there a provision that says Congress has the authority to declare, you know, provision of this amendment. Like, you don't need a constitutional amendment. I think Rand Paul is just saying that as cover, because he doesn't actually want to believe in ending birthright citizenship, because he's a liberatoid, but that's just me.

Oh, interesting. Almost like Trump saying he's not going to start any new wars. Ugh. Hey. Just say it is a tactic that has been used. Yes, ceasefire is over, I guess, or whatever that meant. We were firing each other the whole time.

Ah, man. Okay, wait, wait, wait. But what do you think? Josh, come on. Not trustry. We are in the trustry. Mitch McConnell had a heart attack, right? There is no way. I would think he had a heart attack, yes, and I think he is not exactly feeling great, but I do not believe he is dead.

You know, because if he was dead, like his wife is a politico. She's not that callous. She's probably was going to come home from China. She had probably this massive thing set up. And the senator said, I'm fine. I'm going to recover. It's going to be a long journey. But, you know, just continue doing what you're doing. You don't have to disrupt this thing that you planned. And he'll be he's thinking, I'm fine, whatever. I'll just sit. So all these conspiracy theories.

Oh, it's, you know, he's dead. He's really dead. They're keeping alive. I just like. For what purpose? And the people comparing this to Biden, McConnell is not the president of the United States. He's not even the leader of the Republicans. John Thune is now. He stepped down from leadership a year and a half ago or whatever. So, he's a senator. The people of Kentucky have a right to complain about this process if they think it's not transparent enough.

It is not like there has been a consequential vote. If, for example, Alito had announced he was retiring, for example, then we are like, hey, buddy, you might need your vote on the Supreme Court thing. Because the Senate is not in session right now, right?

I believe they are out of session, yes, and then they will be back in session soon for a couple of weeks, and then they go on recess for August. August recess. Right. Interesting. And Mitch McConnell is on your Mount Rushmore, probably, of effective politicians, right? He is extremely effective. There's no question. And, by the way, as much as he's frustrated me over Ukraine, because he's definitely the neocon bent, I don't like that, but in this house, we support Mitch McConnell for what he did.

In this house, we believe in Mitch. He opened on the Supreme Court. Cocaine Mitch. Let us fill it by Neil Gorsuch. To me, There's no doubt that conservatives, they were very concerned about Donald Trump in 2016, knowing that he was going to put someone on the court, you know, and he gave that list of 20 names. To me, it was no question that was what caused the election. If we would have allowed Barack Obama to put Merrick Garland on the Supreme Court, that would have just been a death knell.

Yeah. And we're still fighting. Listen. We're fighting because Mitch McConnell kept us in the fight. Listen, hope, hope. He is doing fine. You know, I'm not, like, wishing for the man's illness. Like, I hope he's doing fine. I'd appreciate some more transparency with our government, because remember when Lloyd Austin just disappeared for two weeks? Yes, I do. What is up with this? Why can't we just be honest? If it's a senator or congressman, it's one thing.

But if you are running an agency or running the government, like Biden was, that is a lot different. Totally. And again, Lloyd, if you go into surgery, there is a process for this. Have your second in command, hey, you are in charge now. That was what was so disturbing about what Lloyd Austin did. There is a procedure here.

I think my biggest issue is just, can we get age limits? I am with you, Mercer. Can we get age limits on the Senate? Like, he is 84. The President is 80. Like, three people are turning 80 this year. I forget who they are. Nancy Pelosi is still in there. Nancy Pelosi is there. Still rocking.

She can barely walk. Like, come on, guys. You got to know when to walk up to the Senate. No, I think, I kind of joke, 80 is enough. Would that be your limit, actually? If you wave a wand? I would actually make it.

I think 70 is... Agree. I think 70 is a sweet spot. Yep. We just, like, we need succession planning here. Hand the batons. Yep. Boomers. Okay. Well, good stuff, gang. What was the... Are we still doing the... Hey, it's America 250. We've got Cardinal Burke. It's true.

Yeah, I guess we have been hitting that. We did hit 250. You only turned 250 once. So, we'll end today with the... Prayer by Cardinal Leo. Also, I said on the show, but he is the best, man. So cool meeting him.

It was cool. It was me and a legend, for sure. So, anyway, we will say the prayer. Thank you for tuning in to today's show. In the name of the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen. O sacred heart of Jesus, King of heaven and earth, I place today my nation, the United States of America, into your heart, pierced for love of us. On the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, I acknowledge that true liberty is your gift, and that our lasting homeland is the eternal kingdom of God.

Under the mantle of Our Lady of Guadalupe, patroness of the Americas, and through the intercession of her Immaculate Heart, bless my homeland anew, purify her from sin, and guide her leaders in truth, justice, and peace. So that she may safeguard all human life, respect the integrity of marriage and the family, and honor the practice of religion.

Reign in my home and in my nation, draw every heart into communion with you, that your truth, love, justice, mercy, and peace may triumph in America and throughout the whole world. Amen. St. Thomas More, St. Fidelis, Our Lady of Guadalupe, pray for us. Great show, gang.

We'll catch you guys next Wednesday. Erika, you've got an episode of The Deep coming out on Thursday. Yes, sir. Got to check it out. Check it out, check it out. And Morning Loop from Josh, of course. Yeah. Peace. Always a good hit.