Iran War Day 25: 3K Troops Deployed and Hormuz Negotiation, Project Hail Mary, And Church FB Groups

And we're live. Welcome back to the LOOPcast. This is Tom, Erika, and Josh. So happy to be with you on this Wednesday. We have a great show prepared for you. Happy Annunciation to those who celebrate, and if you don't, still happy Annunciation. I do love when I accidentally dress liturgically, because I'm spotting a little Mary in blue. I'm spotting some dark blue. Very nice. The whole game has got blue today. We're all blue for Our Lady. In England, it's called Lady Day, so happy Lady Day.

To all of you. All right. They can do their thing over the pond. That's a cool fact. Don't like that. Feast of Annunciation. All right. Shout out Ave Maria University, our ladies' university. Some are saying Notre Dame is the Ave Maria of the Midwest. We have a huge rager, every Annunciation.

Nice. It was the best. They would bring out someone to do a concert on the lawn. We would have steaks. It was awesome. It was the best. It was always. And then now people come back for... As alumni, that's a good time. I haven't in a while. I'd love to, but they always do it up for annunciation, so I always, therefore, remember it. It was the favorite feast day of the university's founder, Tom Monaghan.

It's a good pick. It's a good pick. And we had incredible news. Breaking news. Wait, what's breaking news? We had breaking news. Today, on Annunciation Day, we find out that Fulton Sheen has a date. We have September 24th will be the beatification of Fulton Sheen. We are so excited. Out in St. Louis. A date? I'm like, he's celibate. What are you talking about? He's dead. He's got a date. Oh, we're going to talk about dates. Has there been anything more up?

Then the Midwest. The Big Ten has six teams. We are on a run. In March Madness, Michigan, Michigan State, Iowa, Nebraska. I'm missing two. A Pope. We got Fulton Sheen's got a date now. I mean, the Midwest is on a date. Ambassador? The American ambassador.

I mean, guys. Yeah, all good points. Okay, but before we get into today's show, a little bit of an overview. We have the Iran war coverage from Zeal. It's been fantastic. We are currently in day 25. I'm going to get us up to speed on what's going on there. The second segment we have is DHS confirms Mark Wayne Mullen, and we have ICE now at airports. The Senate confirmed him. The Senate confirmed him. On his way, potentially. The only holdout was Rand Paul, who is not a fan of some of his previous comments.

That was the closest we've gotten to a Senate duel in a while, by the way. Sidebar. Erika saw Project Hail Mary. Awesome. Very fun. Want to hear about that. And then we have somewhat of the internet debates going on right now in regards to, one, commenting in Facebook group chats about finding churches with available young ladies, and then the other one being sharing your wife's testimony of having a checkered past when it comes to intimacy.

The debates are raging. That was very diplomatically put, Poco. I'm trying, man. I'm trying my best. I'm trying to... So, anyway, we've got a great show. It's going to be fun. We're going to cover it all up. It's going to be awesome. Thank you. Selene, you've given me credit. I appreciate that, Selene. But before we do that, of course, we've got to talk about... Charity Mobile. I mean, what's better than Charity Mobile? Because it's important to do business with companies who stand with you and your beliefs.

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Thank you, Charity Mobile, for sponsoring today's episode. All right, I say we get into it, huh? Iran war, day 25. And I just, again, can't do it enough. The Zeal News team has been fantastic. They give daily updates, obviously very fluid situation. Things might even be changing as this episode goes. We're going to give a huge shout out. They've been keeping us up to date. We're going to do a quick overview of what's happened this week, leading to the news of day 25.

So, over the weekend, President Trump issued a public ultimatum via True Social. Iran had 48 hours to fully open without threat, straightforward moves to international shipping, or the U.S. would hit and obliterate Iran's. Power plants and energy infrastructure, starting with the biggest one first. This was framed as a response to the fallout. Obviously, global energy prices have been up. If you guys have checked out your pumps, I'm definitely feeling it here in Indiana at this point. The original deadline was set to expire that Monday, March 23rd, Washington time.

But as markets opened or reacted, some would say on Monday, Trump announced a reversal extension. He cited very good and productive conversations with the Iranian officials via mediators or directly Tehran. ...figurously disputes this. There was some conversation that Trump was potentially negotiating with himself. I'm not sure. Iran says no. Trump says he did. They had good conversations. He described giving Iran one more chance at the deal to end the conflict while warning that failure would mean resuming heavy bombing. Markets responded positively at the time.

U.S. stocks rose and oil prices dropped on the de-escalation signal. Interesting tidbit, too. Some people made a lot of money on very high-volume trades. I think 16 minutes before this announcement was made, so we got some strange trading going on, probably some insider information if I had to posit a guess, but that is what happened. We had a quick turnaround. Right after that, Israel, 40 minutes after, Israel resumed heavy bombing, targeting infrastructure of the Iranian terror regime across Tehran.

I think there was reports initially that they were attacking civilian infrastructure, which I will say, considered a war crime. But these targets happened to command centers, other regime targets. It does not appear that they were the energy power plants that Trump had just paused on, so that's good news. But yeah, it seems like we got more debates about the different objectives of the U.S. and Israel, or if they were coordinated, if this was kind of a bait-and-switch negotiation tactics. And I do want to say, I saw this chart, and it was funny, Josh, I think you might have seen this too.

They always do this, but Fox will send a news crew to the beach during spring break and ask spring breakers, which I think as a practice is really dumb, but the answers were saying, like, who's the Ayatollah? Who cares? We're at war. No one even knew, and I will say the one area, and I think this is particular- And you do that to show girls in bikinis on TV. Exactly, exactly, but I think one of the main takeaways for a lot of the commentators was- Iran has a major leverage point here in that Trump is rightfully fearful of markets.

If you look at the approval of how the president is handling the economy, according to this Reuters Ipsos poll, we are looking at 29% approval. This is lower than Biden's approval rating ever at any point in his campaign, and I'd say $4 gas will do that to you. I think Josh also said that. So, that is a big pain point. Go ahead. Yeah, I mean, and that was just the thing, like, was it Harry Enten on CNN was saying that, like, What's crucial to Donald Trump's support in 2024 was young men who voted for the president in the 2024 election in large numbers, and that's exactly the people who have broken away at the first from Trump and his approval numbers right now.

And so, that has to be concerning because, but again. They are, I think if the war wraps up, you know, and the economy starts improving, they'll be the first to come back. But it is a worry sign. It is a red flag.

I think it's like major, right? 14 points underwater with young men. And I think that's what people are missing, too, on these polls. Like, are self-identified MAGA people a fan of the strikes? Well, it's like, well, you're kind of answering that question. It's like, oh, so we're just doing fake polls now? Like, of course people that self-identify are going to say that they're 100% MAGA. Well, this is one of those things where they made a big deal about the fact that they asked people, are you MAGA?

And then if they said yes, they said, do you support the president? And it was like, 100% of people who are MAGA support the president. And so, it's one of those things where, okay, well, that. That's meaningless, because basically, the first question answers the second. It's a tautology, yeah. If somebody, you know, five months ago, if someone five months ago, and I said, yeah, I'm for MAGA, and yeah, I'm going to vote for Trump in 24, or whatever, it's just, it's essentially one question, because, you know, like, if you said you were MAGA eight months ago, but aren't MAGA now, it's because you've soured on Donald Trump, the man.

It's not like you've changed fundamentally everything else. Yeah, I'm going to table that discussion a little bit, because we've all been reading these posts. I just wanted to give a little context. 100%. I appreciate it. But that brings us to today. And so, according to Zeal News, we're day 25. Trump says Iran talks are ongoing. The country has agreed at this point to no nuclear weapons. His press conference was... Josh, I don't know what you made of this. He said he got a big expensive gift.

Yeah, that's so weird. That's only because I know you. But if I didn't know you, I'd probably have more trust. Sorry, he just insulted a reporter before. But I don't trust anyone. Why bother talking to them? Why do you say what makes you trust? Do you think I trust them? I don't trust them. Then why bother talking to them?

Because they're going to make a deal. They're going to make a deal. They did something yesterday that was amazing, actually. They gave us a present, and the present arrived today. It was a very big present worth a tremendous amount of money, and I'm not going to tell you what that present is, but it was a very significant prize, and they gave it to us, and they said they were going to give it, so that meant one thing to me would deal with the right people.

Can we make sense of this? What is even going on here? You got a big present? I saw some speculation. It was, they basically made an agreement to let non-threatening vessels through the Strait of Hormuz, and that potentially is what he's alluding to. Non-hostile ships can transit the Strait of Hormuz, sent to 176 member states of the International Maritime Organization.

Of course, that didn't include the U.S. or Israel or nations it deemed threatening to its current existence, but maybe to the general, broader oil market? I'm just trying my best to work through. I think what he's trying to signal with smoke signals, this was like, what he was trying to signal there, you can tie it to his remark following, where he's like, I'm dealing with the right people. Because at this point, you have so much of the leadership of the Iranian regime.

Has been killed or destroyed? Just over Sunday, they hit another in-person meeting of these top officials who were meeting together in person in Tehran, and they took out another 12 to 16. So, the question then becomes, who do you actually negotiate with at this point? Who represents the regime if you are reduced to these sort of separate military leaders and members of the RIGC who are acting, it seems, independently in some areas? So, the fog of war is just so thick.

How do you know you're even negotiating with someone who could rein in all of those leaders? And so, I think what Trump is trying to do here is like, well, they gave me such a big present that I know they have leverage in Iran, so we are dealing with, I don't know, was that supposed to comfort people listening or what have you? But it was just, to me, more confusing, not at all cute.

What I typically do when discussing, you know, trying to ascertain this, I just go right immediately to the oil markets. Yeah, follow the money, buddy. You know what I mean? Like, you know, the people who are betting their own livelihoods, their own fortunes on this, what do they think about what is going on? And, you know, obviously, in the, you know, before this ceasefire or pause or whatever you want to call it.

It was mentioned that crude oil was over $100 a barrel. It got up to about $108, and then that pause was announced, and then it has been just about under $100 all week. It kind of came close to $100, and then it has dipped back down. It is down another $4 today. That is what I basically look at. I look at people who are betting their own money. Do they think this is... Because, you know, you can't lie about barrels of oil.

You either have it or you don't. It's not like a lot of these paper stocks. Or you have insider information, make a trade 16 minutes before there's a massive reversal. Well, that's one thing. Obviously, when he's going to announce a pause, people should investigate that because I think that's potentially criminal activity. Yeah, for sure. Outside of that, I'm just saying that, you know, my takeaway from that is I'm actually happy. To have a president of the United States who's sensitive to the global markets, you know, like, I think George W.

Bush was a total failure in that, you know, he just, you know, like, la, la, la, la, I'm going to keep doing this war no matter what. Can I make a counter-argument? If he was really sensitive to global markets, would he have started a war of choice in Iran that upset the straightforward moves, which we can't tamp down right now?

I'm saying he's not impervious. Like, the thing is, George W. Bush was completely impervious to market forces and also political, you know, opinion. When opinion soured on it, he's like, well, I mean, he carried, you know, he was like a Woodrow Wilson. He felt like he had, you know, I got the... I am completely justified in everything I'm doing. It's a divine mandate, right? Yeah, and it's like, Donald Trump doesn't have that. He thinks, hey, I can bomb this shelter with a bunch of these evil Iranian guys in it.

Cool, I'll do that. But then, you know, almost a month later, it is like, okay, oil is getting really expensive. Voters are getting grumbly. Maybe I need to do a pause. And Iranians are like, what? Okay. Early Twilight Zone, but did you see that the Mar-a-Lago district in Florida flipped blue?

Yeah. I am telling you, that is a sign. Florida is deep, deep red. Mar-a-Lago has been red forever. That is a sign. Like, there are the signs now at this point that, politically speaking, I was like, whoa. And the people are going to make too big a deal of that, for sure, but as you're saying, Josh, it's like, reading the tea leaves right now, the voters that you need to win over, that won you the coalition, are jumping ship. And that's the thing, it's like that talk about, I'll just, in just a second, but like, the vast majority of conservatives and Republicans are still Even whether or not, whatever they think of Iran, they're still mostly with the party and with Trump.

But you're right. It's those on the margins that were absolutely necessary to win in 24, like the RFK moms, you know, the Maha moms. Peaceniks. And the young men who are concerned about, yes, they're concerned about war, but also, I think the bigger concern for them is, like, affordability. Right. Economy. Jobs in this economy. Can I build a family if I want to? Can I ever purchase a house? You know, it's not like they're, in other words, I'm not saying that they're indifferent to the war.

I'm sure they're against it, but it's not like they're getting drafted. It's not like a Vietnam thing. They just think this is a ton of treasure. We sucked up to pay for it, deficit spending, and it is going to make us all poorer. That is, I think, the biggest problem. You know what I mean? Yeah, I do. Wars have become much more efficient. They are still extremely expensive. I am not being callous about the number of lives, but it is like the number of lives that we lost in World War I, World War II, Vietnam, Korea, Civil War.

The numbers are staggering, the amount of bodies. Thankfully, war, I am not... Pro-war. I'm against this war, Iran, but it's like, the big problem is, it sucks up an enormous amount of resources. It's a billion dollars a day right now, is what's being reported from the New York Times, is this war is costing us a billion a day.

Congress asked for $200 billion to fund what we've done so far. Right. And that's, you know, like, what I like about that, you know, it's like, am I happy that the Pentagon asked for that? Well, I mean, obviously, I don't want to, I don't want this war. But I'm happy that that happened, so it's like, we're not just kind of in an esoteric argument here. Like, this, we need to think about this. Do we want to spend $200 billion on this?

Yes or no? And, you know, like, we should, you know, have that discussion. Right, at least they asked Congress. No, I mean, they have to. Yeah, well, yeah, they have to. Which, of course, ends up inflating our dollar. I mean, yeah, I agree. I appreciate... The clarity, Josh, I think you're making a very cynical, not cynical, a very political, pragmatic argument for, but I think it's both and, right?

There's the frustration of misplaced priorities, especially misunderstanding your mandate, but then I think there's also a really underestimated element where young people have grown up in the age of failed Middle Eastern theater, but then also are more attuned to the human suffering that comes from wars like this. So, for example, an apartment building in Lebanon was just blown up after pamphlets dropped. Thousands of people at this point have died in Lebanon.

That is a direct consequence of starting this type of interaction. A girls' school was blown up in Iran. I think it's just harder now. I saw an argument like, this is actually way not as bad as Fallujah. And I'm like, could you imagine if we had social media during Fallujah, how angry the American people would have potentially been, or how radicalized, on a human level, and on a Catholic level, good, because everyone has human dignity. We're just more attuned to the- Maybe.

I mean, I would just- It might not be as politically- Potent. No, I know. I just, I'm trying to think of a way to explain it. Like, for example, my generation, Generation X, probably has the least amount of My experience with carnage war, let us say, because myself, my brother, whatever, there was no massive war in the 1990s that Americans were involved in. We did a little Bosnia, Kosovo, this kind of stuff. But for millennials, you are right, you have this visceral memory of Iraq.

In Afghanistan, a lot of our young men went to fight in those wars. That was not my generation, necessarily. So, I mean, not that Gen X didn't fight. I'm not trying to say that, but fewer, proportionally, but I would only add as a caveat, baby boomers fought and were very up to speed with all the carnage that happened in Vietnam, which is on a scale significantly higher. So, I didn't experience it, my generation, necessarily. It's not like I knew a lot of kids that I went to college or high school with that ended up going off at war and dying.

Like a lot of boomers did. They did. They knew a lot. And they were, and like, you know, Life Magazine, the one issue they had where, you know, here's the 242 men who died this week. And it was, they did a photo spread on that. This was like in 1967 or whatever. That probably more than anything else had changed public opinion about the war in Vietnam. You know, so, you know, like, yes, social media allows you to... Spread it more rapidly.

I'm not going to deny that. I'm just saying that, like, you know, my mom and my dad, that generation, they remember stories from their parents about World War II, and then they had their own, you know, Vietnam War experience. I'm just saying that my specific generation is a little bit different, like, in the sense that, thankfully, we had, you know, a relative, you know, peace dividend there for a while.

Yeah. If I could just... And she's gone. Did I leave? No, yeah. I'm like, who censored Erika? Yeah. Oh, my gosh. I'm back. That was so, as soon as I'm like, I have something to say. Shoot. All right.

What I want to. To do there. Am I still here? I think you're good, yeah. What's going on? Yeah, what do you want to do, Erika? Come on, guys. Stay with me. So, something else that happened, I think it was yesterday or Monday. What day is it? Trump comes out, and he has this statement where he's like, we've won. We've won the war, and that's been increasingly the language that I've heard, along with the sort of like, Iran's ready to negotiate.

They're going to say no more nuclear weapons, and then Iran's like, whatever, and I think the reaction that I have. To that is I have this flashback to George Bush standing on the deck saying, mission accomplished, right? And I think that it's so... It's easy in a way for Trump to make that claim because we have been so tactically successful, so making a distinction there between, like, what does it mean that the war is over, and just the raw reality of American military dominance.

Like, we have air supremacy, we've destroyed their navy, we have, like, there's this tactical win that he can claim and point to. Uh-oh. I don't know if the internet is getting a little funny for everybody. It is. My internet is in and out, and I don't know what's wrong. But anyway, if I can make the distinction before they kick me out again. Yeah.

The tactical win, there's a difference between tactical dominance and strategic resolution, right, which is what I think we are looking for, and most people are most nervous about us not achieving, which would be strategic victory, strategic resolution. Because that's where we get this nervousness about they're sending 3,000 more troops over from the Army 82nd. We have this, you know, continuing buildup talking about the island at the Strait of Hormuz that maybe we'll have to put boots on the ground. And I think that part of the reason why we can have this sort of dichotomy between our military dominance there, which is almost unquestionable, together with Israel, and a lack of resolution.

And this ongoing unease that we're in a forever war is that There still is not an articulation of what does the end mean, right? We also have our allies over there with many different stories about what the end would mean. So, Saudi Arabia, over the last two days, has said, we don't want to end the war. We want to go all the way until the entire makeup of the Middle East is transformed, right? That's Saudi Arabia. Then you have Israel saying, we're going to do Gaza 2.0 in Lebanon.

And basically just annex the bottom 10% of Lebanon, and then you have Trump still saying, well, we just don't want them to have nuclear weapons, and the reality is this is a war of many, many combatants, and if we don't have strategic unity with our allies, it makes it much more likely that this is going to be very messy. And as our friend Peter Wolfgang has pointed out multiple times, and Eric Sammons pointed out, Social conservatives in the United States are tied to the outcome of this.

Like, if this fails, we go down, and it's already, we're already going down. Well, except for a major setback, which is true. Just wasted opportunity. Certainly wasted opportunity, and you lose all your gunpower. Sorry to use that phrase, but that you could be using on domestic front issues. Like, if you were to take all the money, the $200 billion, and build the greatest wall known to mankind on the southern border, you could beef up ice. You can give $5,000 to every family.

But if I make... Cut taxes for... Cut taxes. Pre-Twilight. Oh, is that Lindsey Graham on my screen? What are you doing? What are you doing? Lindsey Graham. It is funny that you brought this up, Josh. He said that we could do another Iwo Jima.

No problem. We can do another Iwo Jima. We, and I may add air quotes on we, because he's not going, and he's not going to send his kids. His kids aren't going. All of the people that go on TV, go on Fox, and say stuff like this should have to volunteer their children.

Iwo Jima was one of the bloodiest and deadliest interactions with American troops that I can literally think of right now. To just say so casually that we can go to Kargh Island in Iran and somehow afford another Iwo Jima, we can do it. This isn't a podcaster. This is a senator. I don't understand why senators feel so comfortable saying this. It's so insulting to me as an American, and because, again, I know the guys that would be going over there. We know people that have been there.

We have a chaplain in Kuwait from our local church. I have people in National Guard that are going to get deployed. This isn't like, this, I guess, and I was talking to Josh about this, this kind of frustrates me about Trump. Like, Trump is the...

When he talks about stuff that's like leftists being dumb in Congress, right, or fake news media, in which they truly are awesome, right, like him being kind of funny and flippant and making fun of people, insulting people that deserve to be insulted, great. But now when it's coming to war, and he's like, so Joe Kent, he was asked about Joe Kent in Air Force One, he's like, yeah, he remarried immediately after his wife died, like trying to get a jab in at him.

After Joe Kent served the country for 20 years and didn't do anything. I think Jab also meant to be like, because there's rumors of her ties. Sure, but it's not true, Josh. I'm just saying, he's playing into that. I'm not defending him. So then, when it comes to war and tact and stuff, we're talking about American service members that have died or are going to be injured.

The fact that I can't, maybe I could never trust anything coming from the president ever when it comes to war because of fog or whatever, but it just feels extra disrespectful and irreverent, especially to people that... principally and in good faith oppose this military action in iran and have been banging the gong of this is going to upset global oil markets this is going to cause mass deaths and starvation around the middle east it's not going to make the region safer and this is bad politically for people at home it's bad for everyone domestically and did you see the flippancy and like i am maga lindsey graham and ted cruz are the goats like he's tweeting out how much he loves them and then hearing him say iwo jima stuff it's just you keep talking about young men it's like it's just too much for me Like, it really is too much.

I did enjoy, like, Joe Kent, I guess, was like a big topic, and I was listening to him on all the different talk shows. He went on Mark Levin's show, good for him, and then he went to Tucker first. He's kind of been going around. The one thing that I really appreciate with Joe, and like, I would encourage people to listen, he... He wasn't bad-mouthing Trump. He, if anything, said, I can't good conscience continue. I had these issues, and he stated them very plainly.

They weren't bombastic, or he didn't do the mean girl gossipy thing, and then he just delivered that everywhere he went. I'm like, this is a guy that served the country for 20 years, had the highest level of security clearance, and was crystal clear, and he didn't even give in to... Tucker, I think, was giving him the option. If you really wanted to go mean girl, like... Get in on people on the inside, and he declined. I'm like, I really respect that.

I don't know. That's good. Anyway, I kind of just, sorry, I tend to do that. Yeah, something that the Joe Kent rounds really brought to mind for me is just remembering how the president... Iran is also a member of the attention economy that we talk about, because what Joe Kent was putting forth as sort of his theory of why we launched this war, in a way, it was because the people who have closest access to Trump were putting in front of him various narratives, including the narrative that Iran was weeks from ballistic missiles, possibly nuclear warheads, and then...

That Israel, you know, they're going to strike, so Iran's going to decimate our troops in the Middle East. And he was saying that one of the reasons why he ended up resigning last week was because he felt that he no longer had access to the president. He wasn't able to make any kind of alternative case because the president's attention had been so turned to this one narrow interpretation of what was going on with Iran in the Middle East.

Yeah, and I, yeah, like I said, I had criticisms of him last week, and I think those stand. I think his letter could have been a little bit better, but, yeah, watching him make the rounds and make his case and use the level of charity that he did certainly gave him, it's worth listening to, for sure. And I would just add, as a caveat, just to be, you know, we try as best as we can to... Educate people about, you know, not only what the Catholic Church's historical teachings on just war, which I thought Kelsey had a, you know, really good email, our president of CatholicVote, on that a couple of weeks ago, but also just to understand that there are different actors that have certain incentives, and, you know, am I happy when Fox News dunks on the left for their Horrible DEI stuff, or their attempt to trans kids, and all that other kind of stuff.

Yes, I'm thankful, but let's be honest. Most TV networks love war, and Fox News is definitely one of them. They love war because it helps them sell more TV ads, and so, you know. That is an economic incentive that just has to make you give pause. Like, why is it that they're giving airtime to Ted Cruz and Lindsey, bomb everyone, Graham? It's because they want more war, and war is good for their bottom line. I hate to be that cynical, but, like, I always thought about that, like, when I was growing up, like, you know, because back then, like, 1991, I'm 14 years old or whatever, and we got the Persian Gulf War.

And I'm like, well, CNN's liberal, so they must be against this war because it's a Republican fighting it. And I'm like, no. All of a sudden, my eyes, the scales come back. I'm like, wait, wait, wait, wait. This is going to help them sell many more shampoo commercials. They love this. Now, that doesn't inherently mean that it's wrong. It just means.

Wait a minute. Who are they putting on the TV? How are they presenting this? What incentives do they have? It is the same thing with regards to sports. You know, like sports gambling and all this stuff. You start to see, like, wait a minute, this is starting to influence the owners of the TV channels. It's starting to influence the owners of the sports teams. So, just to be mindful of this kind of stuff. Not that it means, again, oh, I'm not one to jump immediately to conspiracies like Pogo Conspiracy Boy here, but I'm just going to debunk what I've said.

I would argue with the mainstream media, because you are right. It is both left and right, and it has been that way every time the war drum beats. I think that it is actually more related to access, because your argument about incentives may have been more true, but I think there is financial incentive to be against the war at this point. Selling ads and getting access. Yeah, exactly. Because I think, like Tucker Carlson, name whoever your biggest opponent to this war is.

They are making tons of money off of ads and attention and whatever. It is just the opposite side, because the demand is there. The eyes are there. But I think it's more like with Fox and CNN, a lot of the bigger ones, they need the access to the politicians and to Trump himself, and Trump himself is not going to be going on there or they're not going to be sending people on there if they're not going along with whatever the narrative is, and that's why the narrative ends up being very positive.

At least not against them, yes. Who is the audience for Lindsey Graham saying, let us do another Iwo Jima? I do not think it is as authentic as you would think. A lot of times, it is actually pretty insular and directed at DC, and it is more of a control apparatus. That is why most of those advertisements you see are like big pharma commercials. They are all like 70% of TV advertisement is that. It is all kind of a self-insulated system in which there is not a whole lot of...

The authentic eyes. And you can make the argument, I guess, for social media. It's a little bit algorithm dependent, but I have been, this time around, really surprised at the appetite for anti-war content. I think that a lot of the numbers really speak for themselves and are a good proxy for public support in terms of you can just literally see. And I know there's some funny business going on with that, too, but yeah, just cautious. So, anyway, B-Block now. Erika, I had you look into What is going on with ICE and airports?

I hear airports are really bad. Yeah. And then the Senate confirmed Mark Wayne Mullen. Yeah, let us set the stage for all things DHS block. We will say that this is what we are going to do now. DHS block. So, the Senate confirmed Mark Wayne Mullen of Oklahoma yesterday.

Oh, sorry. He was sworn in yesterday, and he has replaced Kristi Noem as the head of DHS. It was a 54-45 vote for those following along. Nearly unified Republican support. I believe Pogo alluded to our friend, Senator Rand Paul, who apparently objected to Mullen calling him a dirty snake during the previous... I mean, it's hard to get over that. He alluded to him cheering on... I think he said... That he deserved getting hit with a hammer for opposing whatever policy at the time, if you remember.

No, it was kind of like his neighbor. His neighbor, like, beat him up or something. Yeah, while he was riding a lawnmower. It was crazy. Yes. It was very, like, antebellum Congress vibes going on there. So, Mullen has an unconventional resume, to put it mildly. So, he was a plumber for a while. We could use some of unplugging there in Congress, apparently. MMA fighter. Businessmen and now Senator, now? Cabinet member. Critics pointed to his limited direct national security experience as they were complaining about him, but nevertheless, he made it through, and he has entered DHS at a moment where they have funding, quote, uncertainty, to put it mildly.

There's a partial shutdown, and as I'll get into in a minute, growing strains on TSA operations nationwide. Just a couple of interesting notes from the hearing. How things could be... Two seconds before you do that, just think about this for a minute. I will.

He's a senator from Oklahoma. It's a red state. If he doesn't do anything crazy, he could have been re-elected until he was 90 years old. Yeah. And he gave that up to serve as Secretary of Homeland Security for what, like two and a half years?

It's just kind of interesting. I mean, maybe it says something good as a man. I don't know. Or, okay, to be cynical, could he have been promised something greater in the future? What's better than a cabinet post? Like, no one's going to offer him VP.

What if you want to get out and then have a more influential position outside of Congress? I'm saying there could have been a deal. There had to have been. Who knows? I mean, I don't know. It's just, it's, I mean, I'm not, that's not negative on him. I'm just like, you know, he literally could have stayed in the Senate for another 40 plus years. Yeah, I mean, the man has had an unconventional road to the cabinet, and I have no doubt that it is an unconventional road from here on out as well.

Mark Wayne Mullen, father of six. Josh, you have something in common with him. He is a devout Christian. Our five of his six kids, you know, with the stomach flu right now. Oh, Josh. See if Josh makes it to the end of the show. Pause and pray for the Mercer household.

Josh is coming to us live from quarantine. All right. Erika, why is Isis in my airport? Sorry, sorry. All right. So, a couple of differences. We are looking at changes from Christine Ohm's tenure as the Cabinet Secretary for HHSG. He promised during his hearing, promised that he is not a micromanager the way that Christy was, so he will not be reviewing personally.

Single contract over $100,000 that comes across. He does not like red tape, promises to slash it. He also promised to require judicial warrants for ICE and CBP to enter people's homes or businesses unless they're pursuing someone. So, a slight walk back on the way that ICE is carrying out deportations and arrests. So, so much for Mark Wayne Mullen. DHS, though, Is still partially shut down. We have a hearing this morning on the House side of Congress about the shutdown and its effects.

I'm tired of hearings. Let's just get something, for heaven's sake, get something done, Congress. A couple of questions here. The shutdown has not apparently slowed down ICE's arrests or deportations. According to, I looked through some local outlets, Houston area, Seattle, the deportations are continuing. So, that has not slowed down. That's because the, you know, the one big beautiful bill financed ICE for three years, and that's why all of the Democrats saying, oh, we're not going to pass this. A appropriations bill on Homeland Security, because we're upset about what's going on with ICE.

It's like... All you're doing is creating long lines at airports. Yeah, so here's where it's really hitting ordinary Americans, and where you've seen the stories. The clips on social media of security lines are crazy. The worst lines right now are out of the Houston airport. So, both airports, four to six-hour lines for domestic flights, and that's due to a 30 to 40 percent call-out from TSA agents. This is even affecting programs like PreCheck. And Clear, which our pre-check has been the first to be shut down when they don't have enough agents, and so you aren't even...

Yeah, Crimey River, says Tom. Other airports have been... I'm the least open-minded of the pre-check people, but go ahead. I know. I love the Clear. Clear drives me crazy. But anyway, the other airports that have been affected, Atlanta.

JFK in New York, Louis Armstrong out of New Orleans. We're looking at two to six-hour lines. Very unpredictable, depending on when you arrive at the airport. And the most highly unpredictable, you could either be in line for 15 minutes or four hours, would be Newark, New Jersey, LaGuardia, and Miami. So, if you're flying in and out of these airports right now, Dulles outside of D.C. was pretty bad until a couple days ago as well. Gee, I wonder why they cleaned up Dulles.

Maybe it's because... Congress is going on recess for Easter this weekend. That's like checking the oil markets. It's like, when is Congress going to leave on a plane is when we know it's going to come out. I know. We've got to do this.

So, Trump actually... You know what? Are not experiencing major delays. What airports? Kansas City, Orlando, San Francisco. You know why? There's about 20 airports that use TSA-approved private contractors, so they're not dealing with this garbage. I mean... Hey, guys, maybe you should tell your local airport to use private contractors that get TSA-approved, and then you're not worrying about whether or not there's a stop, you know, gap in funding. Wait, so how does that work? Does the airport pay the private contractors?

Does the government pay the private contractors? Yeah, I mean, if they're private security, you know, it's the airports that are paying it, you know, so. I need to do a deep dive on how airports work, because a lot of them are public-private collaboration, right? Right. So, it's kind of intermixed, but regardless, okay, so just put that aside for a second. I need to figure out how that works. What's annoying about this?

It feels like it has to come to something that makes life miserable for average Americans for Congress to actually do something. This is a leverage play by Democrats to try to get concessions on ICE. So, it's like, well, we got to make everyone suffer, normal people suffer, so that people get mad enough, so that we can make some type of deal. And then it always ends with Republicans folding on something. Always. Not always.

Come on, dude. SAVE Act. SAVE Act and, what's the other one? FISA. The FISA, the spying on Susie Wiles and spying on everyone. Oh, my gosh. Arctic Cross. There's like a cheat tent on that. Come on, man. How many people have been arrested for Arctic Cross? We've seen the most. So, Democrats thought. They would have Republicans over a barrel on this one because, of course, they have the large media on their side, number one, and number two, as the lines kept getting longer and more troublesome, people will get upset, but Donald Trump sending in the ice into airports has alleviated a lot of these lines in a lot of these places.

It's just gotten a lot better, so it's bought Donald Trump some time here on this. The other thing that's playing a factor is, guess what? Delta decided to suspend the special service for members of Congress during this time. I saw that yesterday. Because they would give them, like, members of Congress because they're voting on stuff, and then they come to the airport, and they go, okay, yeah, we know who you are. You can cut in line and jump on the airplane.

Delta's like, yeah, we're done with that. No more Delta Lounge for you. Yeah, get in line, just like the rest of everyone else. I'm like, book me on Delta. Yes, book me on Delta, and hopefully all the other airlines follow suit, so there is no cushy ride for anyone. That's the kind of thing that makes a difference, when you've got these 535 critters realizing, you know, wait a minute, we're not just playing games. This affects me.

Oh, imagine that. Whoa. All right, Erika, bring me up now. Good news. I want to hear about... Oh, my gosh. Yes, we went to the theater. We actually went to a movie theater, which we don't do very much anymore because movies suck now. But we saw, Todd and I went, we saw Project Hail Mary, starring Ryan Gosling and a rock. And it was great. This was a great movie. It was just pure storytelling. There was a... It was a great movie.

There was a hero and frightening parts. There were fun parts. I laughed, I cried, and it was just really endearing. And we love to talk about looking for the end of irony. The Marvel movie is great, but all the humor is very ironic. Everything's ironic. It's not sincere, inauthentic. This was just... A sincere movie, and Ryan Gosling is just really good at being authentic on the screen.

I also appreciate, not only was the acting authentic and the script, but also the movie making itself, the process. There were no green screens used during the making of this movie. It was puppeteering and special, like good old-fashioned special effects. I don't know if you can pull up this. This clip here. Am I going to get dinged? I don't know. Yeah, you probably will. Probably going to get dinged. Oh, man. Okay. Go to YouTube and watch the trailer. Awesome. Yeah, go watch the trailer, and then we have other footage of them actually behind the scenes, like puppeteering this little robot dude, and then Ryan Gosling acting with the puppets, and it was just great.

And for those of the Catholic heads, we have a couple Catholic heads in the chat, probably. For the Catholic heads. But Bishop Robert Barron, of course, came out. He's a cultured dude. Uh-oh. I wanted him. And he's like, this is amazing because... So, everyone thinks of Project Hail Mary, well, it's because of the Hail Mary Pass, and they reference that in the movie, but it's also highly Catholic because the name of the project and the ship itself that Ryan Gosling goes out to find this star to figure out what's killing our son here on Earth.

So, he's sent out. It's the only one who survives. He's in a ship called the Hail Mary, and his character's name is Dr. Ryland Grace. Get it? Hail Mary, full of grace, and his best friend, hey, and his best friend is a rock.

Who's a rock in Catholicism, guys? Tom, help me out. Petros, right? Boy, St. Peter. Boy, St. Peter. So, very little Catholicism there. Was the writer Catholic? Was the writer Catholic? That is a good question. I actually do not know the answer to that. Let me look that up. It doesn't have to be. That's why I have this power. It doesn't have to be, but yeah, I read the book, and then unfortunately, I only got halfway through and had to return it because there was tons of holds on it because the movie was coming out, so I literally got right up to the scene that you're describing and then had to hand it back, but very fun.

Clearly, this guy loves science. There's a lot of science talk in the book, and funny you should mention that about Marvel Irony. I did that interview with Andrew Shemin. I posted that yesterday. He's the director of the indie film Breakfast of Champions, available on Zeal. Yeah. And we literally had that conversation. It was like, I'm so tired of the... The title might jar you. The title of the interview is, What if someone went bar-to-bar advertising euthanasia?

And I'm not exaggerating. That is the concept of the short film. Sounds like Canada. Okay, so that was part of the thing. And obviously, a very dark, real subject. The whole reason he wanted to do it was because he's like, people aren't ready for this culturally, but in Canada, it's the second or third leading cause of death. They've already surpassed Denmark way faster, and they passed it a long time ago, and they're expanding definitions. So, the concept is really potent, and it's a salesperson comes into a bar, and it's having a discussion.

A very, let's say, there's a lot of euphemisms, but it was obviously with a lot of pressure on the bartender to adopt this, like, company, essentially, that was promoting euthanasia in front of two old people at the bar who weren't saying anything.

And he's just like, yeah, I think that the... There's a huge opportunity in the market right now for people that understand human truths and can be creative in expressing that, because without the gravity, without the seriousness, you actually can't have good comedy, because there's no stakes. If everything's super flippant, then nothing matters, and it's like it's just stimulating your brain in weird ways. So, yeah, check out that indie film. It was really cool. I've watched it twice, and each time I watch it, I know something different, and the actress is phenomenal.

And so, I just feel like there's a lot of positive reception around the boy, Ryan G. And Project Hail Mary as well, so I love that stuff like this is still getting made, the practical effects, as you said. I'm a big Ryan G guy. What was the name of that Zeal thing, the film you just mentioned? Breakfast of Champions. It's fantastic. Breakfast of Champions. Okay. All right. Just like we do. It's okay. Got it.

Oh, the writer, Andy Weir, is not Catholic. I believe he is agnostic, but hey. Yeah, it does not matter. It does not matter, dude. We got him. It is still pretty cool. Yeah. Cool. So, I highly recommend you should go watch it, and I would say probably 13 years old and up, maybe 12 years old and up. If your kid can watch Lord of the Rings, he can watch this movie. So, if you needed a parent take on it. Okay. Sweet.

Josh, what do you got? So, you know, sometimes when a congressman or a senator makes a recommendation to try to fix something that, you know, small, let's say, a small problem, people go, who cares? This doesn't matter. You know what? I would love for the United States Senate today to say no abortions from coast to coast. I would love that, okay? And to say marriage between a man and a woman. I'd love it.

But that doesn't mean that it can't try to fix something that, you know, is a problem. Yep. So, Tommy Tuberville used to be the coach of Auburn, right? Am I getting that right? Yes, correct. Now, he's the senator from Alabama. He's going to be running for governor. He's recognizing that there's a problem in college sports. He said the transfer portal has screwed up college sports. He's got a new bill. His legislation is fairly simple. He says, Here's what happens. You get five consecutive years to play five seasons, and you get one transfer.

After that, if you transfer again, you sit out a year. He said this will fix 80% of the issues affecting college sports today. I think this is a great idea, and it's like, who cares, college sports? But I mean, like, a player...

Playing on like four teams in four years, that's not good. It's not good. You know, you need to have some time to work and understand the team. Like, one of the things that Tom Brady talked about, and he wasn't even like a star, superstar when he was in college, he had to become great in the NFL. But he talked about, you know, being at Michigan, there was a Michigan system to the way they did football. And, you know, The great programs would have, and it would take a while to understand it before you get better.

Well, the problem is, if there are so many colleges out there, you are like, well, why do I want to wait here when I can play over there? So, you know... Can I engage in this debate, Josh? Say again? I would like to engage in this debate. I'm fine. I think that there needs to be some level of contract beyond just a year. I'd be comfortable if they did like two-year contracts or three-year contracts, but I think whatever you apply to the players has to be applied to coaches, because the primary problem that I think NAL opened up and somewhat solved is that coaches would go somewhere, and they'd recruit certain players, and then they would leave.

So, the player... They wanted to leave somewhere else to get a better opportunity, because if a new coach comes in, they bring their own people, get the same opportunities. How about this as a caveat then, Tom? Yeah. If the coach leaves, then they get an extra transfer.

Yeah, I think that is a good idea. You can make that into it, but otherwise, if the coach does not leave, you just get the one transfer, and that is it. Yeah, because I do think it's good for the players to be able to seek out the best possible situation for them, as evidenced by how awesome March Madness is this year, because there's guys that were on small schools or maybe didn't have the right opportunities, transfer the perfect piece for some awesome team, and then they come up.

There's not as many upsets because of this, and I will hand up that is probably the case, is because the talent is being sucked up to... The bigger schools, but the games are fun and awesome. So, I don't know. It just depends on what your flavor is there, but I like that starting suggestion from Coach. He's a LOOPcast alum. I interviewed him a long time ago. Yeah, he's a good guy. And then, another real quick bit of good news, you know, like when landlords increase your rent, That means they're greedy, right?

They just want more money. They're just super greedy. Well, I'm here to tell you that there's landlords all across the country that have suddenly become not greedy. So, here are 15 cities. Someone threw up this chart, best rent cuts from 2022. It starts with Austin, Texas. The average rent back in August of 2022 was $1,636. Now, it is $1,272.

That is a 22% drop in rents. I mean, it's just amazing the altruism that's spreading in Austin, Texas. It's conversion fever, Josh. Maybe they all decided to sell their apartments and become owners of gas stations, because gas station owners are obviously greedy now, but people who rent, it's only about the personal greed of the business owner. Obviously, that's what the left tells me. Right, that's nonsense. But why? Is it just Austin, Texas, though? No. Fort Myers, Florida, rent has gone down by almost 20%.

Colorado Springs, down almost 16%. Phoenix, Arizona, down 14%. San Antonio and Raleigh, almost down 14%. Why is this happening? What could possibly be the case? Maybe it's supply and demand. Now, we haven't seen... A tremendous explosion in the number of available apartments being built over the last two years. What has been the biggest change? Maybe it's on the demand side. Is it that so many people are buying houses and they don't rent apartments? Certainly not. I think it's we've deported millions of illegal immigrants, and a lot of have self-deported.

What is possibly driving this? It's a change in the demand. Less demand. Price has to drop to compensate. Good news. Interesting. Very interesting. I always love that, though. As soon as oil prices go up, the left are like, oh my gosh, oil companies are so greedy. Because right now, it's $4 a gallon. And that means the guy at the Amoco station is super greedy. The guy at Exxon is super greedy. Well, that's all we heard the whole Biden administration.

Why is he greedy today, and why wasn't he greedy last year when it was $2.79? I don't understand. Yep. Yep. Okay, real stumper there. I'm going to bring you guys up, Restore Your Faith in Humanity. Cool story coming out of, well, not cool, somewhat tragic, but inspiring story coming out of Ecuador. Two priests give their lives to save altar boy from drowning. Zeal news.

Diocese in Ecuador are mourning the loss of two priests who died this month after they rescued an altar boy who was caught in dangerous waves while they were all in retreat, ultimately losing their own lives in the water after saving them. It was at a Lenten retreat for altar boys, Father Alfonso Aviles Perez and Father Pedro. Oh, man. As it took we. Sorry, Alejandro. The first one was 60, and he was 43. Jumped into action when one of the altar boys had trouble swimming in strong waves.

They helped the boy get to safety, but the current swept Father Perez away. And then the other father attempted to save his brother priest, but the force of the water overtook both of them. Pray for the repose of their souls.

Yeah, I mean, that's really, it doesn't get any more heroic or masculine than this, and then I love the quote from a former altar server. They went and found, you know, the impact these men had on them. He raised us with temperance. He instilled in us the aspiration to be gentlemen, heroes, warriors, upright individual, and good sons of God. Wow. Yeah, a shepherd's death, quote, always leaves a void, according to PCN. Simply reacted as a shepherd would react if he sees that one of his lost sheep is in danger.

Love it. Heroes. Seriously. Total heroes. What an amazing sacrifice. Lord, give us hearts like them. Seriously. I saw that today. I was just like, oh, there's just sometimes where it just so crystallizes what true heroism and like a paternal protection instinct is, and I mean, that's such a gift. It's incredibly tragic for the communities, but I'm really grateful for their courage and action there. The other one that I have, Josh, you agree with AOC on something. Yes, isn't this crazy? This is crazy.

This is almost Twilight Zone. Some heroes have introduced a bi- Now, I almost need, like, we need a whole episode to talk about how stupid this loophole is, because in even a lot of the sports, and listen, I'm not carrying water for FanDuel, okay? I just generally advise just to stay off of it. I think it's bad for society. You can't bet.

On sports stuff in certain areas, but if you do it on a, quote, prediction market, calci, whatever, like, this isn't betting. This is a prediction contract, and it just so happens that 80% of the prediction contracts during football season happen to be related to football. You're like, no, no, no, this isn't, no, it's not the same, not the same. Of course, we're just predicting or not. Yeah, exactly. Of course, it's gambling. What's that line from Shakespeare? It's like, first, let's kill all the lawyers.

Is that Richard III? I think that's Richard III. Mom, if you're listening, I'm sorry if I got that wrong. Oh, also, Erika, I watched The King on Netflix. It was inspired by Henry V by Shakespeare, so that's the closest I've really felt to Shakespeare, probably. Very sick. Timothee Chalamet, very sick. Very chill movie. Super violent, but really well done. You know, not as violent as I thought, but cool. Maybe I wanted more. I don't know. Medieval times are one of more nights, but that's besides the point.

This is great news. Everyone should like this. This is an insane loophole. This is a good example of senators acting on the benefit of consumers. This is something that our regulatory agencies should have cracked down on a long time ago, and I'm really frustrated with that our regulatory agencies have basically no teeth when it comes to obvious loopholes like this, or like marijuana, or like many other vice-related industries. This is where I break. With maybe more of my free market compatriots, I think this is terrible for society.

I think there should be more friction when it comes to addictive vices like gambling, drugs, pornography, certainly. Because when you have a society in which you live among vice and have vice be normalized, I think often in places like Denmark that normalize brothels and prostitution, you're really punishing your citizenry and having to live in an unjust society like that. I would much rather be discouraged and actively make it harder for people to engage in that because it's what's best for the soul and the polity.

Right, and it's so obvious with these clear vices that destroy lives, this sort of addictive nature of things like gambling, but also the pornography. Just note that OnlyFans, the owner of OnlyFans was Leonid Rudvinsky. He died this week at 43, and you see those headlines. Also, we had Kermit Gosnell died, the abortionist who was convicted of butchering infants who survived abortion in his clinic and leading to the deaths of hundreds of babies, if not thousands, and multiple women as well. But you see these headlines of these.

These people whose lives, that they'll only be remembered for partaking in or driving the most horrible things that humans can do, like killing the unborn, exploiting women's bodies, and it's so sobering, right? Because you want, first of all, pray for their souls, because who wants to answer for that?

Well, the owner of OnlyFans, as you mentioned, I mean, he's 43 years old, three, you know, like he made billions of dollars, like... Almost instantaneously. He was the world's biggest pimp. But he wasn't able to save his life. Like, you know, he dies of cancer at 43. So, it's like there's a mortality there. But also, it is kind of, it did, his, the wretchedness of his, of what he created, of course, horrible. But it was interesting, though, there was a myth, there was at least a belief.

That was promulgated for many, many years that, well, women enter prostitution because they feel like they have no other choice, and I am not saying that there were not those who did that because they had no other choice, but the fact of the matter is this creator of OnlyFans, unfortunately, demonstrated that there are actually tens of thousands of women who will not only do this online prostitution at the hopes of getting money. It was not like, oh, I am only drawn to this because I have no other choice.

Right, it was a gig. Some did. Some may have had no choice. I'm not saying that, but like a lot of them are more than willing just to participate in this kind of stuff, and so we hear a lot about men.

So, purchasing this stuff and wanting this stuff when they shouldn't, I totally agree with that. But there's a lot of unfortunate willing suppliers. You could have made the case like 40 years ago, 30 years ago, 20 years ago. Well, there's only a small percentage of women that are participating in pornography and they're trying to grab the eyeballs of all these men. Well, unfortunately, there are.

A lot of women who are willing to participate in this. We do need to pray as a country for purity of hearts, of minds. Yeah, you know what? Someone said it a little bit more callously on Twitter. It was better for our country when men had to work harder to see Women naked. You're correct. I was actually literally about to make that point. Yeah, more barriers, the better. We've created this weird situation where it feels like there's no, we've continually removed limits that you would be physically limited in that scenario, right?

Like, if you wanted to be a prostitute, you would have to physically go to a brothel, or if you were a prostitute, you'd have to be in the brothel, and then you'd have to deal with the physical consequences of living in that way, STDs, et cetera, all the physical, psychological drama. Or going to that one. Or on the other side of town, buying a magazine and a brown paper wrapper and feeling like a criminal. And that would be limiting, in a good way.

It is the same thing with gambling. If you want to place a bet, you would have to go to a sketchy bookie that you maybe knew in town, and it would be much harder. You can't just do it on your phone. Yeah, exactly right. There are all these proper, like God gives us.

In our human nature, it's good to even create friction in your own lives to limit your access to vice, period. Anyone, all the time. And it's hard when you create a society in which the broader system incentivize no friction towards vice, because then it just lands on the individual to have to live in a counter-cultural way that makes it much harder and much more arduous. And that's why I think the conservative vision, I'm trying to figure this out. The difference between conservative vision and maybe others is that the state actually does have proper authority vested by God to act in the best interest of the citizens, the polity, in that, like, your soul, how it's organized, properly understood, the polity would be organized in what is best for the soul's flourishing, and that everyone has a human nature written on their heart that we can ascertain, and therefore, the state has legitimate authority to act in benefit of that soul.

Now, we can have a debate about what that is in each individual case, and of course, that's what Congress, that's what our lawmakers are for. But to just throw your hands up and say, well, no one can ascertain it's not worth it anyway, as long as you make money, it's good, I think has landed us squarely where we are right now. And we're seeing, I mean, OnlyFans has to be the biggest and most in your face. That one in gambling right now, where it's like, something went horribly awry here, and there should be some legal recourse to protect people.

We need some bishops to confront this. Yeah, no doubt. No doubt. No doubt. All right. Culture Block actually got a question, a good question, for big family havers. I think someone's in the chat. He's like, turn it up. Whenever you ask Erika a question about raising kids or education, it's like my wife said, turn it up. So, this is why you turn it up.

Hi, Tom. Here's to the wives. I hope you and your family are doing well. I'm in the same boat as you with 203 and hope to have more kids in the future, like Erika and Josh, God willing. The question is mostly targeted to them. What are some practical things that make having a large family more manageable? I'm talking bunk beds, sprinter vans, longer dining room tables, considerations that smaller families wouldn't even think about. Oh my gosh, yes. We have gone from having a Springer Spaniel to a Great Dane.

This is like, you know how when your dog's bigger, you have to up all like 40 pound dog food bags. Anyway, I'm so excited about this question. So, we recently became the proud owners of not one, but two eight-seater minivans.

You split it down the middle. You didn't want to go 15 passengers, so you're like, I will go 15. Yeah, we're like, no, we'll split the ride, but we'll get two hybrid minivans with eight seats each. So, any one car can almost fit all of us, as long as our daughter in college is not in the house.

But when we have everyone home, we have to take two cars everywhere. But there's also the suitcase problem. So, if you're actually going on a road trip, not only do you need enough seats for everyone, but you need their stuff. The topper. That's why I got a topper. Yeah, well, we have toppers. Yeah, so there's all kinds of practical things. Bunk beds, yes, massive fan of the bunk beds. You know, actually, Erika, on the bunk beds, though, here's what I found.

I try to build the bunk beds the week before Father's Day. Just a little hack there. Dad hack. Okay. And then the wife is like, oh, honey, another bunk bed, and she really does up Father's Day. I'm just imagining the scene from, sorry, Age Appropriate, probably not Age Appropriate, but Stepbrothers, when they were building the bunk beds. It was like, we have so much room for activities. I'm just imagining Josh and me trying to build a bunk bed together. It's like, all right, we're going to build bunk beds.

It's going to be so fun. Yeah, Ikea has great bunk bed frames you can get with triples, so you can get a triple bunk bed, and that frees up a lot. There's DIY stuff online. I thought it was easy. I built my own bunk bed. There you go. Not for me, obviously, but for my kids. Yeah, I was going to say, Josh on a triple bunk bed. I agree with you. We did the 12-passenger van for a while, but then we switched back and just had, like you, these two SUVs.

And then, of course, one is like a seven-passenger, though, and the other one's eight. And so, the seven-passenger one, of course... 8-1 was in the shop, and then we all had to drive somewhere, and I'm like, what are you going to do? You've got to be the dad, right? So, my wife's driving the car, all the other kids, and I'm in the trunk with no seatbelts on. I don't care. We're driving down the road, right? And someone's stuck in the snow.

And so, I'm like, pull over, honey. She's like, my gosh, we can't do this, Josh. We pull over. This guy's like, oh, someone's stopping to help me. I pop out the back. The person just about lost it. They couldn't believe what was going on. I'm like, hey, man, I'm here to help. I heard you needed some help. That's so funny. These are things small families don't think about. When dad comes out of the trailer.

If you ever get a flat tire, just close your eyes, and Josh will pop out of the back of a 15-passenger to come save your car, to come give you a new wheel. Yes, Thomas, we have Siennas. We do love our Siennas. Great mileage. Okay, can I ask a more specific question? What are considerations that people wouldn't even think about? So, it's like stuff when you had a lot of kids that, say, someone with like one or two wouldn't even think about, and now it's like, oh, this is just normal for you guys.

Well, the one thing for me, it's like realizing that you need two hotel rooms, you know. So, it just doubles the cost, which, you know, I hate paying for hotel rooms anyway, so. Like for cars, though, rather than the 12-passenger van or whatever, I just like Suburbans, and the fact of the matter is, most of the time you're traveling, like, you know, even if you had, we have eight, we can fill a Suburban completely, but now our kids are getting bigger, so sometimes we take two cars anyway, but most of the time you're traveling, you're not necessarily all, everyone in your family is going necessarily, except for church, and that time, like, I'd rather go with two cars.

It's only when you're talking about vacations where you have to be a little bit more, okay, what are we doing? That kind of stuff. Yeah, I think, too, something I never really anticipated was how many memberships I would acquire when I had a lot of children, because if you take one trip to the zoo for the year with the kids, you automatically are paying enough for a family membership. So, you have the aquarium, you have the family membership, you find as many free museums as you possibly can.

It can. So, that is another thing with leisure time as a family, is finding, just being forced by the shape of society and the cost to find more free things, which I think is actually a really good way to live. Well, that is why state parks are good. I mean, Michigan, we got a state park sticker, you know, so you pay the 20 bucks a year. State parks, good one. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then, of course, I happen to live right on Lake Michigan.

Petoskey is beautiful, so let us go to the parks. We do it all the time. That is awesome. So, let us go there, and then we get some... $5 pizzas from Little Caesars afterwards, and I feel like it kings. Dude, there's $7 now. That was crushing to me. I went recently because I grew up in the metro Detroit area, and that was the officially licensed pizza of youth groups everywhere. That's how you know a place is real. Yeah, you're getting Little Caesars, $5 pizzas, and they're actually not bad.

And then I recently, just a couple weeks ago, got them. I was like, $7. Hurts my heart. We can't say too many times. They're not advertising, but anyway. Yeah, sponsor me, Little Caesars. I'd love that. State parks are a great way to spend a lot of time together as a family, you know, bring the Frisbee, if there's a lake, you'll swim or whatever. Great way to spend time, get out of the house, and it's not, you know, super expensive, obviously. Yeah, I like the fact that we're raising kids who feel like going to the local pizza parlor is going to a very fancy restaurant, which is a direct quote from my six-year-old from a couple weeks ago.

Can we go to the very fancy restaurant? Because it is. By which she meant, like, the local Italian, and it's great. To her, that is. It's all relative. That's like the OG vacation with young kids is just going to a hotel across town and then using the pool. Yep. It's like, this is the greatest travel experience of my life. Like, we're really making it out the hood.

And then, I feel like there's the cool, okay, so I can only say this, first off, huge shout out to my in-laws, love them to death, eight kids. So, it is interesting getting all of this from the perspective of my wife, because I have three brothers. So, I guess big, considering like secular or whatever. We were big at the church we went to until we went to a more orthodox church, and then we became small. But anyway, so what is interesting about her is.

Uh, they did live, um, a very simple, uh, life. They were homeschooled. They obviously did things together, and they're all super close as adults now. Um, but the cool thing was, was she eventually went to Ave Maria, and then it's like, oh, when you become a teen, you start working your own job. You can start supporting yourself. So, I think maybe, uh, people...

And I share this, too, as the economy's inflation and everything is getting sketchy. You're like, how could I afford this? But then, at a certain level, I've been told it gets better because your kids can start watching the other kids, and then when they get older, they can start getting a job, and then they can start supporting their own things. Oh, yeah, totally. You know? I agree with that. It's hard to think of it now because I'm in the position that the person who emailed us in.

You know what it is, Tom? It's crazy. If you and your lovely wife have another kid, it's just like you keep the... The two young ones, you just suddenly add a four-year-old. That is basically what it amounts to. Yes, there you go. That is why we say every time we get pregnant, we will be like, well, we reset.

We just still have to get in diapers. That is all. What is good about it is that you start to economize. You start to think about what are things that we can do. We just establish a difference from the culture. Everyone thinks, oh, you are going to go to Disney World or whatever. That is a waste of money, and that is dumb. You know, we like to play cards, you know, or board games at home. I mean, there's great ways to bond as a family, and then you can also do stuff like raise chickens or grow a garden, stuff like that, which can also actually help you save money.

Like, you know, kids like to do that kind of stuff. Yeah. Very cool. All right, best of luck. I'm right there with you. Okay, on to Church Corner now. Erika, there's a very controversial chart going around, and fortunately, you made an entire presentation in the arena. So, this is the chart that went around. I'll just explain it briefly. So, the caption, Catholic converts in the U.S. have reached a near 20-year high with Catholics on track to become the largest single religious group surpassing American evangelical Protestants.

Protestants as a whole will still likely outnumber Catholics. But the trend suggests that the U.S. may be entering a new era of religious leadership. Here's the chart. We have number of adult members on the, that is the y-axis. Oh my gosh, we're just going to use, is that the x or y? That's y, right? Y, y is vertical. X on the bottom, 2020, the years, and then it looks like a checkmark here. We have going down from 2000 to 2020, and then a pretty straight up line from 2020 to 2025, topping out at 160,000 new adult members into the Catholic Church as of 2025.

Many cheering, many saying this is nonsense. Erika, you have dug into it. What should we think of this graph? Yeah, so this particular chart that you just showed, it was posted everywhere yesterday. Everyone picked up on it because everyone loves a good turnaround story, and it was very dramatic. It's a suspicious, I can't talk anymore because we're in the second hour, suspicious chart because you'll notice that the downslope there every year is like exactly the same subtraction. In the number of converts, and you're like, wait a minute, what's going?

So, whatever program generated this, I probably fudged the numbers. So, we might be talking AI hallucination or something here. The actual numbers, if you go to the second link there, Tom, that's from Kara out of Georgetown. Their numbers are very reliable, and what you'll see there is the Easter vigil numbers for adult. Baptisms and receptions into full communion. And there you do see that same downward slope, but it's more uneven. And so, that tells me this is more likely to be true.

And you'll see that in 2020, kind of tanked out, understandably, with just under 90,000 converting. And then in 2025, we're seeing this uptick, 90,000. Yeah, but from 89.3 to 91 is... You know, it is an uptick, but it is not enough. We have to wait to see if it is anything more. Exactly. So, what I did, I gave a presentation on this to a Legatus group here in the Northeast last week, and what I did was I went into the reporting from individual dioceses, and not every diocese reports these numbers, but a few did this year.

Last year, you might remember, the Pillar had this amazing report where they collated all this information. So, in 2025, a year ago at the Easter Vigil, we had 26 diocese report, and this is out of, I think there's 143 in the country, if I'm remembering my number correctly, but 26 reported an over 50% increase since 2020 in the number of converts. That was not a one-off, because this year what we're seeing is many of those same dioceses seeing even more increases.

So, for example, the Archdiocese of Boston They will have 680 catechumens entering the church next week. That's a 51% increase from last year in Boston, which is not exactly like where you go for a revival in the church. Archdiocese of New York, they're reporting 1,600 new Catholics, a 34% increase from last year. Detroit, shout out Detroit, 1,428 converts. That's the highest number in 21 years, and it's up 46%. From last Easter, if you want to go south, we have Venice, Florida, breaking records with over a thousand converts, doubling last year's total, and Atlanta.

Archdiocese of Atlanta, 3,400 new converts, and that is compared to only 2,900 last year and just over 1,200 in 2024. So, we do see in pockets of the United States this very exciting trend where the number of people incoming is increasing. Now, that being said, and it's really important to point this out, Ryan Berg over at Religious, his sub-stack about like, Religion graphs, graphs about religion. He emphasizes this, that the number of people leaving the church, while it has slowed significantly, is still going on.

So, among Gen Zers who were raised Catholic, only 11% of them currently attend Mass weekly, according to surveys. And so, we're talking like 9 out of 10. It's not a great number, not a... So, we're still losing Catholics. But that being said, something is definitely happening in these pockets in America. And just before, Josh, I let you loose on this one, I went back and I dug up, Joseph Ratzinger gave this radio address and interview back in 1969, and I would encourage everyone to go look this up and read the whole thing.

And he talks about what is going to happen. In the church, and already in 1969, post-Vatican II, they're seeing the immediate aftermath of the spirit of the council, and it's disturbing. We have nuns leaving the convent, deep on that coming up in a couple of weeks, so make sure you stay tuned. We have the priests leaving the priesthood. We have people leaving the church.

And he saw hope there, and I think this is what he was talking about. So, I'm just going to quote, the future of the church, once again, as always, will be reshaped by saints, by men, that is, whose minds probe deeper than the slogans of the day.

Who see more than others see, because their lives embrace a wider reality. In contrast to an earlier age, the church will be seen much more as a voluntary society, entered only by free decision. And as a small society, it will make much bigger demands on the initiative of her individual members. And he went on to describe what the priesthood would look like, but he talked about a smaller church, a poorer church, but a stronger church. Because of that. So, numbers with caution, but there is no denying that there is certainly some kind of renewal going on.

I agree overall with what Ryan Burge is saying about the numbers. I just don't know, but that 11% seems really low. I'm not sure I buy that argument, but overall, there is a concerning trend that a large amount of all generations, quite frankly, we aren't getting anywhere near the participation rates that we should for Gen Z, for millennials, for Gen X, for baby boomers. All of them need to be higher. They're much too low for all of them, but the fact of the matter is the transformation that we're seeing in the church right now is, you know, we might see 10 people who are not going to church anymore that are Gen X or boomers or whatever.

They went through the motions. They were baptized. They got their first communion, but they haven't gone through a church in 10, 12, 15 years, and so they're lost, and that's unfortunate, and we wish we could bring the sheep back. From a material number standpoint, our numbers aren't better, but shedding 10, 15 people who don't really care and getting adult converts who have a relationship with Jesus Christ and love him and want to share that love with the world, Even if the numbers are, you know, we lose 10, you know, baptized Catholics who have fallen away, but we get three, four adult converts who are on fire with Jesus.

I will take that trade any day. It is called renewal. Right. I will take the trade, for sure. So, the raw numbers actually might end up looking down, but the church ends up being better, and that is absolutely what Ratzinger said. I did not see that quote. Share that link, would you? But Ratzinger has been clear about that through his entire life, or was, and that is why I loved. In his book, The Ratzinger Report, where he did that full-length interview, and he talked about the need for a reform of the reform.

That was back in 1884, and he was already talking about how we need to change the aftermath of Vatican II, which had gone awry. He did such a great job of that. Then, in their pontificates, John, Paul, and Benedict, they were actually trying to reform the reform. Only for it to be forestalled for the success of the pontificate, but... Yeah. I think the one element that... Because people beat this to death, and everyone likes to confirm their biases, right? Like, either the evangelicals are going to keep their throne, or the Catholics are going to take over America.

Insurrection Barbie. But, put that aside for a second. I do think... I have actually heard from a few people I have emailed in, and the Archdiocese of Detroit is going through this, even though they have had... They have had adult conversions. There's going to be very uncomfortable periods of time of consolidation. Like, if you really do think there's going to be a smaller, more private church, that means that we have a lot of empty churches right now, or emptying out churches.

And the diplomacy necessary to try to mitigate people that are very attached to their church, and to have to consolidate purely on a financial level or on a numbers level, I don't envy the position that a lot of bishops find themselves in. There's people that are doing it better than others. I don't know. I'm always curious, and email in, lucas.CatholicVote.org, that people are going through the friends of parishes type thing, and you could argue whether the model is good or the model is bad.

I think the reality remains that we are going to have to close a lot of churches, most likely, and I do really appreciate places like Institute of Christ the King that are going in and saving a lot of the really historic, beautiful cathedrals. I think they actually just got a retreat center up in Wisconsin and shot it to them. Yeah, saving church treasures. Now, again, maybe you watch Erika's episode of The Deep for which churches are ugly and which churches are not, and aesthetics should certainly be considered.

But yeah, going to be a very uncomfortable... That's like people are happy. I'm happy, too, that we are going to have a more fervent church, but the practical realities are going to be really hard, I think, for people. It is hard, because the fact of the matter is you get people have a very... How could they not? Have a very personal relationship with the place they worship every Sunday, or the place that they saw their son come down the altar after they got married, watching the kids get baptized, and all that kind of stuff.

I knew a good priest friend of mine. He was assigned at a place where it was obvious that the school at that parish was... Dead. The numbers were way off. People weren't, you know, they're just kind of going through the motions, and he was the one that said, the patient's dead. Like, this isn't working, and he shut it down, and then they all had their animus towards him, and the bishop, as a good shepherd, said, it's time to move you somewhere else.

It's time to move you, right? It happens here all the time, right? And because it's like, you know, shoot the messenger kind of thing, and, you know, I... I have to say, I agree with you, Tom. Of all the things, because of the demographic changes that are happening, I feel for a lot of these priests and bishops, and I think that is what I am saying. In the arguments about immigration that we get, I don't think, oh, the bishops are just doing this to get a bunch of money.

No, I think they look at it as like, hey, more people in the pews, we can solve this demographic problem. And so, that is where I feel like their hearts are, you know, and that is why they are trying to do this. And I am like, well, that is not necessarily the answer anyway. And by the way, the real deep cut on this one is, what happened? Everyone always kind of points to, like, what decade is being good for prosperity and family building?

The 1950s. Right? Well, what happened 20 years before the 1950s? The Congress went, and cut immigration big time. So, if you want immigration restriction, that is going to actually help. You know, families with incomes and stuff like that, it matters. And then people can feel like they're invested, and they can get the home. But if you just allow millions of people to crowd in, that's not the answer to the problems in the church. It's to just flood it with millions of people who are here illegally.

That's not the answer. I hate to be political on something like this, but that's what's looked at as a solution by many of the shepherds in our church. I feel for these shepherds, because making these kind of decisions to close parishes, Brutal.

I would not wish that on anyone. It is a tough question. It is heartbreaking. Well, I was going to say, I think that it has to be seen as a multi-generational, very long-term project to bring about the renewal in the church, and the analogy that I draw is we are not on Easter Sunday yet, right? Like, John Paul II came along, we are going to have a new springtime evangelization, and when it was 2000, and I am a young person hearing that, I am like, when do we want it?

Now! Like, it is going to happen today! Not realizing that this could be a 150 to 200-year project that we're looking at here, and one of the greatest signs of hope, I think, for me, came out of that survey from the Catholic Project last year of young priests, and what it showed was between priests who were ordained in the 70s and 80s, and earlier than the 70s and 80s, and priests now who have been ordained in 2010 or beyond, we've had a complete flipping.

Not only in terms of theological and political conservatism, but so we have like, you know, priests ordained in the 70s identify, 70% of them identify as politically liberal and theologically progressive or very progressive, right? Then it completely flips. In 2010, priests ordained after that year, it's 70 to 80% identify as politically conservative or theologically conservative, right? Or an orthodox.

And then that spills over into pastoral priorities. So, the young priests we have today, they prioritize the Eucharist above all things. The Eucharist took second to last place for priests in the 70s. That alone tells me that the little baby priests we have now, who will be the bishops someday, they are in a much stronger position to bear the weight of the closures that are going to have to happen and the sort of retrenching that is going to have to happen, because their priorities are straight and rooted in Jesus Christ.

Not in social programming the way that it was back in the 70s and 80s. So, there is a lot of hope there, but it is not like, oh, everything will be sunshine and roses because millions of people are converting. We are going to overtake Protestants. All right, Erika, let us get to the flock here. Josh, I am not sure if you… It is on nuclear on Twitter. Okay, it sounded a little fun, okay? 33.4 million views. You guys may be aware if you guys are Twitter fiends.

Like us here at the LOOPcast, this one went viral, okay? This is the picture. I'm going to have to paraphrase because it's very long, okay? My wife was formerly promiscuous. I was a virgin. She was then radically born again, committed to church, evangelized, constantly puritan books in the bedroom, prayer journals, grief over past sexual sin, etc. We got to know each other for well over a year, dated for four months, engaged for two and a half, and didn't sin sexually with one another.

Our first kiss was with each other. On the altar of our wedding day, reaction pick attached. We've been married for over five years now. She's been the most wonderful and godly wife, mother to her three children, homemaker you can imagine. She's more pure than most virgins, as biblical purity has less to do with past sins, although they certainly matter, and more to do with one's current posture of the heart and daily decisions to honor the Lord. We're far too quick to forget the story of the woman labeled as known sinner, likely a prostitute, in Luke 7, 36-50, who was washing Jesus' feet with her tears.

While kissing them, too. The Pharisees were shocked. I can read all of it, but yeah. Okay, almost there, almost there. What was the... I think there was one other thing that I had to hit. Okay. Okay, yeah, there's nothing else I have to hit. That's basically the situation, and... And he posted a picture of his wife as well. Yes. Right. And, yeah, people were freaking out. The internet's hair caught on fire. Why do you think...

I'll just leave it open-ended. Thoughts? Now, context, before we get into this, because I saw this this morning. She has been posting for, like, years, I think, about her. She's been very open about her. She's been very public about it. And just to be clear, this is an evangelical Protestant couple. Yes. And he's a marketing, like a social media marketing. Well played. Hey. Which might be the core of all this. He's good at his job. He got 34 million views over the weekend.

Yeah, I think, so, I mean, I grew up. Partially evangelical Protestant, then we converted, but the whole purity culture. I'm from New England. Yes, I am. What this smacked to me of was a tendency among converts, especially, to sort of have this one-upmanship on your past sins, and like, look at what a great sinner I was, and now I've been saved by the love of Jesus. And again, the end goal here, yes, it is good and right to sing of the mercies of God, to proclaim His goodness.

To say, look where I was, like the woman at the well in the Gospels. I was dead in my sin, and now I'm alive. St. Paul does this, right? So, there's some precedent for doing that. However, that being said, I just can't. Calling your wife a former prostitute for the whole world to see. There is also, I think Michael Knowles said, there are many virtues here, but there is also the virtue of discretion. Prudence, yeah. Of prudence and discretion, and not every former sin that you've engaged in needs to be publicly confessed.

And given out in quite detail. In detail. And by your husband, Erika. You said I. You kept saying I. Referring to personal as if it was her posting this. That wasn't her posting it. Yeah, no. That was her husband. You can't have your man doing that. That's all I'm saying. I'm going to take a real lowbrow.

You cannot put your wife on blast for her. It's just not your thing to do. Even if she allowed for it, it's her story to tell, not yours. Right. And at least not in that much detail. Yeah, and just because she's like, babe, I'm fine. You can say whatever you want about me. Doesn't mean you should.

No. No, no, there is, there is, I do. That's why confessionals exist. Yes, Catholics have the way to deal with this, people. You know, I have to say, like, you know, I didn't have the same kind of experiences that she did, but I was, I had left the church. I had, I was a professed atheist for three years. I had a quite crazy journey of my own made for A long and interesting confession.

There's a lot of people on staff here at CatholicVote. They had no idea. They've been working with me for four, five, six years, and they had no idea. You were once an atheist? I'm like, yeah, because I don't feel like I've got to go and proclaim to the world how I've triumphed, and look how horrible a sinner I was. I denied God. You must have been so annoying as an atheist. I can only imagine. I probably would have been very annoyed with you.

Very, very annoying. The world's most annoying atheist. And I love you now, but I'm like, imagine. Memoir. Oh, my gosh. Atheist Josh starting debates about God in the cafeteria. It would have just been like, oh, okay, I got to do this again. Josh, I am happy to have you here, man. My conversion at Hillsdale was quite the news story. I bet it was. Yeah, sparks were flying. They probably shot off fireworks in the quad. Oh, they were so happy. Josh converted to Catholicism.

Well, no, they didn't like the Catholic part, but they were. Yeah. Yeah, and also, okay, sorry. But I mean, in general, I just feel like, you know, I do think it's kind of weird, and like some people are like, you know, I've even, you know, like, oh my gosh, I wish I had a great conversion story like Scott Hahn or this or that. I'm like. No, no. Be blessed. Be grateful. Be thankful that you were raised in a family that you never strayed from it, because the fact of the matter is, you know, like, oh, it's so cool to be the lost, you know, the prodigal son, or, you know, the lost sheep that comes home.

It's like, yeah, but you know what happens to a lot of people that leave the reservation? They don't come back. Right. There's a lot that don't come back. Well, there's still the reality of the suffering that your sin caused, right? And so, I interviewed, back when I was doing the long-form interviews, I interviewed a former Brazilian prostitute at one point and a former OnlyFans star. Those were two of the interviews that I did, and these women have incredible stories to tell, but there's a way of framing it that respects the dignity.

Of not only you and your past, but also the people that you hurt, where not every sordid, salacious detail has to be shared in order to emphasize the great drama of your conversion. And I think for both of those women, that's what impressed me the most, is they weren't like all the gory details of what they'd done sexually. And I don't think this post went as far as it might have done, but it certainly went farther than it needed to. But I think that What struck me, too, was that, yes, these women had been the prodigal son.

And there was so much suffering, but neither of them were saying things like, I am glad I did it so that the mercy of God could be shown so gloriously in me, and that there really is something to be grateful for if you are one of the older brothers. If you are the older brother in the prodigal son parable, you should be very grateful for that and just be a better older son than the one in the gospel, right? Yeah. Welcome your brother back, but do not be like, oh my gosh, what was it like in the pigsty?

For the most part, it is a good thing. Right. So, I guess to dig deeper, Erika, because you had a past, I don't understand, don't have the same experience or understanding of the evangelical approach to this. I can only speak to the cradle Catholic approach to this, because we always joke there's a difference between Irish Catholics and Italian Catholics. It's like Italian kids are like, ah, I messed up, I got to go to the box. I got to go talk to a priest.

There's a converse, yeah. Yeah, because he keeps posting, the guy's like, oh yeah, she was a cam girl too. So, is it almost like, in the psychology, it would be like, I'm just going to toss it all out, because it does show God's mercy even more, even though everyone is saying, like, dude, stop doing this to your wife.

It feels like it's more about them than God at this point, if they keep posting stuff. Yeah, because isn't the point, I guess I can only speak from the Catholic perspective, if you go to confession and God forgives you, it would be bad for you to continue to dwell upon in a self-defeating or... In a way that does not produce humility or acknowledgement of God's grace and forgiveness. What fruits are you cultivating? Right. You know what I mean? It is over.

God forgives you, so why are you continuing to think about it and dwell upon it when he said that he forgot? God forgot about it. You can forget about it. That reminds me of the story of Margaret Mary Alcock, who had a vision that she had of seeing Jesus Christ.

And so then she tells her spiritual advisor about it, and the spiritual advisor is not really super sure that she is meeting with Jesus or whatever, so he says, okay, well, the next time you see him, ask him the last mortal sin I committed. And she says, okay, and she goes and meets with Jesus, and she, of course, asks the question that her spiritual advisor told her to ask Jesus, and Jesus said, I forgot.

Oh, nice. And so, when St. Margaret Mary told the spiritual advisor that, the spiritual advisor goes, he knew it was true, because, of course, he had confessed it. Well, I read a book by that guy. I forget the name of him. He wrote a good book. Gosh, I'll have to find out. I just think that's what we need. I think that's the point.

I have only talked about my conversion story once publicly. It was pretty intense. I did it at my wife's marrying conference. People were crying. It was great. But for the most part, the whole point of it is that Jesus forgot, so can I. Let us move forward. Yeah, okay. Here is something else. We are getting into Catholic Internet discussions right now. This is something I feel very strongly about, and I was fighting our producer about this morning. We had massive fights this morning.

Here is the tweet. It is about a Facebook post. Yeah, there she is. I see her. Is that a cat? Okay, yeah. It is just like a meme with it, but here is the basic premise, okay? And we got to toss this around because I feel strongly about this because I got single dudes that need to find good wives, okay? Man posts in local Facebook group, moving to area, asks which Catholic parishes have thriving community, would be best for single man to attend, quote, is successful and seeking wife soon, plus same faith is priority, entire comment section berating him, church is not for dating, direct quote.

You know why the whole group was berating him? It's because Facebook is dominated by women. Bang, dude. That's what I was saying. It's like Facebook groups, it's just, I swear. All right, let me get to the principle of the argument. Where would you rather have him meet a woman? A bar?

What? Tell me, what is wrong about this? The whole point of marriage, you want to marry a good woman that you can live the vocation of marriage with, and shares your foundational faith and morals, and is actively participating and practicing that herself. Of course, you would want to go to a church in which you could find that person. It is a key part. Marriage is the natural vocation that everyone is drawn to. Yeah.

Now, you can make a technical argument on like, is successful in seeking wife soon might be not the most tactful thing to say, but I will say, I know a lot of these guys who are like 25, 26, and now they went to college, they've worked for a little bit, and they're not finding what they want. They want a Catholic wife to marry and build a life with, and so now they're having to do the same thing, have the same conversations, and maybe the reason that they didn't get married at our Catholic college or whatever.

Is because they, you know, lacked a little bit of purpose, a little bit of tact or whatever, and so they're dipping back in. They're trying to figure it out. This is where you just take your bro who does this, and you just give him a little bit of noogie, you know, like, didn't need to say it's successful. You're getting a little too intense, you know what I mean? Like, you could just go. You could go to the church. Here's a good one.

Yeah, but there's a lot of young men in their 20s that are just playing video games or whatever. This guy's saying, I'm not a slough. I'm able to provide for it. You would think women, of all people, would be like, He's outstanding. He's not a deadbeat loser. He's got a job he's willing to provide for. He has purpose. He's taking initiative. And he's looking in the right places. He's not going to bars.

Everything about this is good, and any women who are kind of catty about this, that's why there's a picture of a cat there. We should go to confession. Whoa! And apologize to our Lord. Do you want a church that's thriving, or do you want a church that's dying?

Amen. It's not crying, it's dying. Yeah, and I think especially today, where it is so hard to find a parish that's thriving with young adults, at least here in the Northeast. Our parish is thriving. There's two young adult groups in New Haven. It's pretty amazing, but if you go outside of our little bubble, you go to Mass on Sunday, and it's all the gray heads. There's no one there, and you're just like- Which, love gray heads. This is not a diss on gray heads.

Love me some gray heads, but if you're a young guy. Yeah, if this kid can, like, cut through the chase, he goes on Facebook, he's like, where are all the young people at? And someone can just tell him, and he can just go, that's amazing, that's great. Take the W. It's not creepy. This is not creepiness. As opposed to, what's the alternative? They're just on the phones and doing the swipe right or whatever it's called? Exactly. Oh, hitch or whatever, yeah.

Don't, this is what I'm, dude, I hate to be, like, I feel like I'm going to come across as, like, a meninist or an incel or whatever, but, okay, don't we want... Are men to be direct and take initiative and be honest in their intentions?

Because the answer is yes, you do want that. And if you do come out swinging at this dude for doing this, you're encouraging the opposite behavior in which women also complain about. Like, women also say, he doesn't know what he wants. He's not direct. He won't say anything. And so, it's just like, what do you want him to do? Like, if anything, we should be encouraging this. The alternative is the stupid man is free.

They cut him off. The producer cut him off. The producer cut me off, and I will say, I need to double down on that point. I have my experience on Facebook, like, what do you call it, like groups or comment sections, which I'm not a frequenter, but my wife will tell me what goes on here. I think I say people that are a little bit unsatisfied with their current situation tend to get out their frustration on random people's Facebook. Oh, social media.

Like group chats or whatever. I mean, it's just social media in general. Cathartic. It's like the, it's just the nastiest, most like, there'll be like a post about, oh my gosh, I went on a date with, first off, you should just say, if you go on a date, talk to your friend or talk to a family member, okay? First off, you shouldn't even be airing this out here, most likely. But if you do, you will get women being like, um.

So, the person will say, I went on a date, and the guy had bad table manners. He's perfect everywhere else. He's great. He's got good faith, whatever, but table manners are not great. And then, like, you'll just get so many comments about, like, break up with him, huge red flag. This is, like, no one would actually say this in real life. You'd be like, this is awesome. Maybe he's a little rough around the edges. Bring him in. Give him a little noogie.

You're like, hey, dude, like, put the napkin over the collar. I like the noogie. Anytime in social media, you know, there's that difference between what you say behind a screen when everyone's just jumping in with comments. As opposed to what you say face-to-face.

And then, so, there's always that dichotomy. And that comes out in a case like this. The other one, though, is... You said about men being direct. You got your wife by being direct. So did I. So, we want men to be direct, and I was direct with, hey, girl, let's go, and a lot of the girls were like, nope, not you. I'm like, okay, that lets me know, and move on to the next one. Is this where I say I got my husband by being direct?

Shoot or shoot. But, I mean, you got to, yeah, take your shot, man. I mean, that's the thing, and the thing is, some of what you're getting at is like, Some women, they get kind of in a frumpy stage, and they're like, no, no, because they want everything to be absolutely perfect, and they're just tossing out. I love you guys. We've talked a lot in our country over the last generations about all the failings and foibles that men have, but let's talk about one.

That maybe the women have, huh? Oh, uh-oh. Which is to say, the men are very direct. I'm out of coffee. Men are very direct with what they want. This is what they want, this or that or whatever, and sometimes maybe we're too picky, maybe sometimes women are too picky, but there's always this, a lot of women, there's a gulf between what they say they want and then what they actually really want. And so, it can be really confusing, you know, like, so, like, you know, women are like, exactly what your point was saying at an earlier time, like, women are like, where are the men?

Well, presumably, at churches. That is what they are trying to find you. So, then you get mad at a man for being at a church, and like, why won't a man just come out and ask me? And the men say, hey, where can I go to ask those out? You are like, oh, that is terrible. Churches are for dating. What is? Okay, I think, I feel like we are devolving a little into like. The Barbie version. Like, this is the Ken, where Ken's like, it's so hard to be a man, and Barbie's like, it's so hard to be a human.

Now, being a man is sick. Okay, here's what I'll say. I'll pledge this if the ladies can come off the ledge a little bit. I will noogie the homies. If they're being a little bit weird, or if they're like, oh, the first date, we got to get married or propose, send them my way. I'll give them a little noogie. You're just like, hey, you don't have to be this intense. Because I actually feel like most of the problem with the dating, actually, is because if guys don't have good male friends that will actually, you know, make fun of them or rib them or actually kind of set them straight, like fraternal correction in the best way, right?

Like, go hang out, go have a few beers, whatever. That's where you have the real conversations, and that's where you can say things you don't say online. And so, I promise, if a dude's being a little weird but has, like, good intentions, I'll noogie him, and I'll have the homies noogie him, too. Because, and the whole reason this is firing me up is because marriage has been the greatest blessing in my life. My life completely changed when I got married. My children are the greatest blessing in my life.

Everything is different, and I'm, again, we're talking about just accepting what you've been given by God. I'm super grateful for that. Like, I got married young, and I love that, and it completely changes you in every possible way, and so I want that. We should want that, especially for our, like, young Catholic men, and the thing is, like, you and Catholic women, so. So, fraternal and feminine correction, in this regard, is good because you're changing them for the better to be better prepared to enter in the vocation in which they potentially are called, and you might not be perfect going to that.

It's like you can help each other along the way, and so be nice to each other on Facebook, Marketplace, talk to your boys if they're being a little bit weird, or if they're too shy, because as Josh said, shoot or shoot, all right? The worst thing they can say is no. I do love saying that because There's really brutal ways you can be told no, but guess what? You're the man in the arena. It's your life. You need to go out and get what you want in a respectful, gentlemanly way.

Be a gentleman. So, shout out to this dude. I think this dude who commented in the Facebook group, Chad. I respect him. Shoot or shoot, you're saying what you want. Maybe you need a noogie, but I like the direction. We need more of that.

Okay, Twilight Zone, thank you. I really had to go off on that because Selene was giving me a hard time this morning. I'm like, no, I'm bringing that up. There's no way. It was totally wrong in a wrongness.

Okay, Josh, what do you got? We love you, Selene. Don't make us look ugly on social media. Oh, man. Okay. So, this week brought the anniversary, the 16th birthday. Of Obamacare. You know, and Democrats are celebrating it. Like, oh, we brought so much health care to so many people. And it's like, no, like what you did has been an absolute and total disaster. So, we got the, you know, premium increases. The average cost by 2022 had risen 568 to 133% increase.

As of this year, the Kaiser Family Foundation predicts a huge 18% average annual increase. Like, families are just not able to afford this stuff anymore. It's pinching people in the lower middle class, and people are just like, you know, they're downgrading their healthcare, or they're abandoning it, especially those who don't get it through their employer.

It's causing a major, major problem, and, you know, people get frustrated because it's like, you know, you go in for healthcare, and it's like, you know, people just have to get, you know, they stop buying insurance, and then they go in for urgent care.

And, you know, the elite guy is like, okay, so the illegal alien that just came in, he got free health care, but then I have to pay $200. You know, it's like, and I'm a citizen of the country? Like, why is it that being illegal is considered greater to the Democratic Party than someone who is a citizen? It's always just such an assault. $200 is nothing, Josh. Try $2,000. No, I know. It's so unbelievable. You don't have insurance.

It's the most expensive form of healthcare, and it's what people are being driven to utilize, because they wait until they're desperate, and you're in an emergency room, you're in urgent care. Okay, well, a guy actually just spent two days in the hospital, and recently was like, I'm just not going to pay, because it's outrageous. My employer doesn't provide it, it's outrageous. And the bill was $24,000, and when he got done with it, it was $2,000.

And that would have been, that was still cheaper than what he would have paid if he had paid the premium and then paid what he would have to pay to the deductible after the premium. So, it's like, we are truly in this insane upside-down situation where it's actually...

Better, it's cheaper for you to not carry insurance, which of course is not possible for many people, but like, you know, a young man situation, it's totally better. And so, it just is going to have to take a hammer to come through and smash all the dumb middlemen in the insurance or whatever. I don't know who has the will to do it. The lobbying arm is so strong, but if we're in a position now where it's cheaper to not have insurance, and the cost will go down $22,000 on a $24,000 bill if you don't.

I mean, more people are going to start doing it. It'll probably just be out of necessity, because no one will have it anymore, and everyone will just switch. It's frustrating, because political leaders are like, we need to solve this. We need to throw a lot of government money at it, and then the price goes up, and like, oh, this is terrible. We need more help. We need more government money, and it's just, you know, that's what's causing the problem. Right, right.

With college education. Just like education. I was just going to say. Yeah. That's the problem. Unbelievable. Not happy birthday, Obamacare. No happy birthday wishes for me. We're not going to sing. Erika, what do you got? Oh, man. So, the California governor's race, this is just total California for you. So, they have the governor's race to replace Gavin Newsom, who has aged out of the system, but is now running to be governor of America. So, we have this debate was going to take place at University of Southern California, USC, less than 24 hours before the debate would take place.

The university cancels it. And why? Because it was all white people up on the stage. Now, you might ask, well, how did they select the candidates who would be invited to debate on the stage? Well, it was actually...

Pretty common sense. They said the candidates who will debate here will be those who are polling the highest or have met a certain threshold of fundraising. So, they ended up with six candidates. There were two Republicans and three Democrats who were polling at the top, and then there was a sixth candidate who had met that fundraising threshold, and that would have been Matt Mann, the mayor of San Jose. But there was an outcry, not only from the other candidates, but from The good students at USC saying, we cannot hold this debate because you have not done DEI thing.

You have not included any of the minority candidates, all of whom are polling 1% or less. So, the candidates who were excluded include... Javier Becerra, that name may ring a bell, the former HHS secretary who is a Latino. Oh, gosh. Then we had Antonio Villaregoza, the former Los Angeles mayor, Tony Thurmond, California State Schools Chiefs, and Ms. Yee.

Who is an Asian American? The excluded candidates held a news conference on Friday, calling on the six acceptable participants to withdraw from the debate, saying that this shows that USC is not ready for the changing demographics of America, they are racist, and sure enough, the university just canceled the whole thing. So, we're not even going to have the top candidates in California publicly debating one another on their ideas.

Because it would be all white people on the stage. California. I was imagining it would be like a real place. You know, like, that's stupid. Like, if I were, like, the fourth candidate, you know, I would have, like, scrambled and tried to find a hotel that would agree to do it, and she could still have this thing. But a day before, it just didn't really give you enough time, because you're counting on four to six people and all their busy campaign and their schedules carving out that time.

So, it really is a jack wagon move by the USC. These things are just going to go the way of... The horse and buggy, right? Because you can just get an iPhone, set it up, live stream it, if you wanted to, with other candidates, especially if you're an outsider candidate, you know? Like, you can have a debate anytime you want, anywhere you want. There's no, like, broadcasting restrictions.

Especially if you come up with stuff like this, where you're just like, okay, you're just going to force the actual real candidates to the outskirts anyway, and they're just going to happen. Who else would ever want to schedule a debate with USC if they're going to cancel the day before on something so stupid? It's not like it was an earthquake, or there was a school shooting, or something like that. This was just a nonsense reason, and so no candidate ever. Why would you ever accept a debate at USC again?

Because they can do a poll stunt like this? It's dumb. Yeah, it'll be really interesting, the next presidential campaign, to see if we get the, I mean, the debates between Biden and Trump were, and Harris, were just so incredible, incredibly bad. You wonder if we're going to see something like, would Joe Rogan host both candidates? Would they say yes to something like sitting down with Joe Rogan for three hours and hashing it out? Maybe we'll get some of that. I would be much more interested in something like that than another.

Oh, NBC is going to host and answer. Candy Crowley running interference for Obama, yeah. Remember that? Yes, I do. All right, I'm going to round us up. One will be serious, one will be funny. Saw this come across Zeal, and maybe the Twilight Zone is, I'm having people that don't agree with me on much agree with me on this one. So, we have been seeing radical Jewish settlers rampage through the West Bank villages, torching homes and cars. This is Elise Winland.

And I've actually seen a lot of people who I very much disagree with on the Zionism issue. On American foreign policy issue. On Iran. On Iran, all come forward, and I think we could have a much more sensible path forward if we can just all blanket condemn the situation where, I mean, they're going into Bethlehem, they're going into Taiba, majority Christian areas. These settlers are just coming, and they're lighting things on fire, they're punching old ladies. It almost sounds unbelievable, unless you've seen the footage, and it's being reported on places like Times of Israel have reported on it.

This is not just... People from the outside, we have footage, and basically, they are going into the West Bank, escorted by IDF, and they're harassing the people that have lived there forever, basically kicking them out, burning their olive trees, lighting cars on fire, intimidating them, and taking over the land, and then settlements appear on these areas. Now, I will challenge the people that, even if they say, this is bad, we need to tamp this down, I completely agree, this needs to be- Completely stopped.

Full stop. I mean, it's just harassment. There's no way for any of these people who have lived there to defend their homes or to fight back, because if they do, then they're accused of terrorism, and then they're killed.

But these settlements are funded by evangelical Christian organizations in America, and they're funding the radical elements of Israeli society. Listen, you can hash that out, but this is certainly radical, are going over and starting settlements in Christian areas of the West Bank and doing things like this. Killing people, harming people, taking their land, stealing their livelihood. So, it is not enough to just be like, this just needs to stop. You got to look where the funding and the support is happening, and this has the support of sections of the Knesset, because then eventually they can just take it over.

They can take it. And what is happening now in Lebanon, in the Christian region of Lebanon. To take it up to the river, to give it the Gaza treatment, quote-unquote, is crazy. It's impossible for me or any other Christian around the world to look away from this and be... This is just such a humanitarian crisis. There's no defending it. I've never seen anyone mount a good defense as to why this settler situation exists in the West Bank. So, basically, my twilight zone is I was happy to see a lot of people agreeing, just like, this absolutely needs to stop.

It does. There's a great organization I can point people to. I actually had a friend just join them. Let me find it. So, my friend joined the Equestrian Order of the Holy Sepulchre of Jerusalem last year. They have chapters all over the country, and they do a great job of communicating with the patriarch on the ground and in greater solidarity with the Catholics and Christians in the Holy Land area, and this is a major, major, major source of concern for them.

Vatican News was reporting it on as well. So, I would encourage people to go towards that direction for good Catholic organizations that are trying to support the Catholics in the region. Trying to protect the Christians and trying to uphold peace in a very volatile and war-torn region.

So, that is what I have to say on that. My other one is Melania Trump walking with a robot to the White House Summit on Empowering Children with Educational Technology. Is there any way this ends well? This is not good. This creeps me out at all the levels of my being.

And Sora shut down yesterday, by the way, so this can't be Sora. I don't know. This isn't AI. I think this is from C-SPAN, so I don't think I'm getting got. Yeah, no, I mean, that's exactly the sort of robot that, you know, China's been bragging that they have, Elon's been, you know, showing prototypes of, and this is coming at the exact moment that we are getting all of this research on edutech and the disaster that it has been for child development, for the development, I mean, I hate to be like just pragmatic, but of the American workforce, and what it does to our brains.

As developing children. So, I mean, for the White House, I'm all about education, but this is not education. It's like, here's another robot for the kids to be friends with or to teach. This is just a no. No robots near my kids. No robots near education. Yuck. Yuck.

Strut walk with Melania. All right, we'll round out. We got Daily Prayer for America 250. In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, amen. 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 love, justice, mercy, and peace may triumph in America and throughout the world.

Amen. St. Thomas More, St. Fidelis, or the Lady of Guadalupe, pray for us. Good show, gang. Thanks for stopping by. I've got a great episode of The Deep coming for you tomorrow. Go check out the interview I did yesterday if you want more LOOPcast, and we'll see you guys in the next one. Peace.