Joe Kent Resigns: "Iran Posed No Imminent Threat", Population Bomb Author Dies, And St. Patrick!

And we're live. Welcome back to the LOOPcast. It's Tom, Erika, and Josh. We get a bonus. We get Josh today. We thought you would be at the National Catholic Prayer Breakfast because of conditions on the ground in northern Michigan. That is not the case. Is this true? No offense, but I'd rather not be with you, Tom.

Condolences, Josh. I mean, National Catholic Prayer Breakfast, good people. I love going. It's my favorite event of the year, and it was started by... CatholicVote co-founder Joe Sella, and he's still involved with it. In fact, he had his own trepidations getting from Michigan to the prayer breakfast. He got rerouted to Nashville, but he is on his way. But yeah, no, I love National Catholic Prayer Breakfast, and we got a lot of our CatholicVote folks who are going to be there.

But yeah, I literally just got to my mailbox half an hour ago. A lot of snow. Happy spring. It really do be like that. 28 inches, I think, in total. Oh, my gosh. Crazy. Yeah, just Michigan things. But welcome. Welcome to everyone joining here live. Yes, live, 11 a.m. on Wednesdays now. I feel like I miss you guys a little bit. There's obviously a lot of things going on, and we're going to try to do our best to be comprehensive here, so we have updates when it comes to the Iran war.

Joe Kent has resigned, probably the first high-profile resignation from the Trump administration. So, Josh set forth a lot of things in motion. Very interesting there. We're going to cover it all. We have the Strait of Hormuz, Trump trying to get support from NATO allies, NATO allies saying no thank you, and then a couple other elements on the Iran front. But after that, we're going to be covering rest in peace, pray for the repose of his soul, Paul Ehrlich. He was the author of the population bomb, pray for his soul, because he set forth a lot of things that had a lot of impact.

So, Josh is excited to talk about it. We have good news for Wild Zone. We have a fun Q&A this time. I thought we could incorporate Matt Walsh changing his opinion on something. A very prescient topic of whether or not to kick out your kids when they're 18, and he has done 180 on that. We have some kid-havers on this show, so I'm curious, Josh and Erika, your two cents on that.

So, it's going to be a great show. Stick around to the end. Before we do that, we're going to introduce you to, of course, the OG sponsor, Charity Mobile. Of course, now more than ever, it's time to do business with companies who stand with you and your beliefs. Charity Mobile is a pro-life phone company that serves pro-life customers and supports pro-life, pro-family causes. They send 5% of your monthly plan price to your favorite charity, and they have sent millions of dollars to charities over the past 30 years.

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To get started, visit CharityMobile.com and use promo code LOOPcast. That's CharityMobile.com, promo code LOOPcast. Thank you so much to the Charity Mobile gang for sponsoring the podcast. Please go check them out. Fantastic company. Okay, and I guess I'll start up top with, I really wanted to kind of grab five different sections of the ongoing war in Iran. That would be important, but of course, you can actually get daily updates on Zeal. So, we have Iran War Day 18, U.S. official resigns, airstrikes, and humanitarian warning by writer Mary Rose.

She's been doing a fantastic job. Shout out to the Zeal team of just giving daily coverage at this point, if you're not looking at it, it's time. But we get our first high-profile resignation. In regards to the war. So, I will zoom in here. This is Joe Kent. Here's the statement. After much reflection, I've decided to resign from my position as the director of the National Counterterrorism Center effective today. I cannot in good conscience support the ongoing war in Iran. Iran posed no imminent threat to our nation.

And it is clear that we started this war due to pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby. It's been an honor serving under POTUS and DNI Gabbard and leading the professionals at NCTC, may God bless America, and you get the statement. I think one thing that particularly jumped out to me was as a veteran who deployed to combat 11 times and as a Gold Star husband, I lost my beloved wife Shannon in a war manufactured by Israel. I cannot support sending the next generation to fight and die in a war that serves no benefit to the American people nor justifies the cost.

Of course, this set off quite the firestorm online of old clips from Joe Kent, accusations of anti-Semitism. Joe Kent's history as like a strong MAGA guy, so the left is like, happy someone resigned, but still hate him. So, yeah, quite the firestorm. Just a little bit of a primer before we start the conversation. Joe Kent is a retired U.S. Army Special Forces Green Beret veteran, former CIA operative, Gold Star husband, and national security figure. Particularly with America First leanings. He was a very hardcore MAGA, if you remember.

I believe he ran endorsed for the state of Washington and lost at least one time, I think twice. But he had a 20-year career in the Army, 11 combat deployments, as we said, in Iraq, Syria, and later as a CIA field operative. He did lose his first wife, Shana Kent. She was in the Navy. She was killed in 2019 ISIS bombing. They have two sons. He later remarried. And he was appointed in 2025 by President Trump. Again, he was endorsed by President Trump.

He was seen as this very hardcore, populist, America first type figure. Trump loved him. And then he was directly under Tulsi Gabbard at the DNI. So, seen very much as like an acolyte of the no more forever wars were done in the Middle East. I think Tulsi Gabbard sold t-shirts saying no war with Iran at one point. I think she's testifying today. So, very much of the, I think people are painting. Like, Tulsi, J.D. Vance, and now Joe Kent kind of all on the same ball.

So, yeah, I guess before we get to, we have responses from the administration on this, but just first thoughts, Erika and Josh, what did this say to you? I kind of had two thoughts here, and the first being, in a way, like, I...

I admire anyone who is going to leave a lucrative job, perhaps open himself up to... I mean, there are people saying, oh my gosh, now the whole federal government is going to come after him. I don't know. We'll see. But you got to admire someone who does this kind of thing. I think it's good for the administration in a way, too. If he's really not on board and is truly thinking that this was an existential... If there is a mistake by the Trump administration that betrays the constituency, betrays the American people, then yeah, you should resign and leave.

So, in a sense, good. I was a little confused because in my head this morning, I was remembering that he was hired as counterterrorism. So, I was like, I wonder what he had said in his opening statement. I went back and pulled it. So, when he was giving his opening statement for his confirmation hearing, it was just a year ago, so it was last April. I mean, he specifically called out Iranian-funded militant groups. He talked about Hamas as being one of the biggest threats that the counterterrorism initiative would have to address under himself, and then I have this quote.

He said, Meanwhile, our brave men and women in uniform remain in harm's way in the Middle East as Iranian-backed militant proxies, this was in addition to Hamas, continue Iran's bidding across the region. As they have for decades, he also mentioned the rise of a new al-Qaeda branch in Syria, and he said that he would spend his time in the administration refocusing National Counterterrorism Center's efforts to address those particular things. Now, maybe he, since then, has... I've been privy to new information that made him rethink those claims that he made in his confirmation hearing, but I think it would have been a more honest statement for him in resigning to mention how, hey, a year ago, I said that these were the top priorities for my counterterrorism, and now I've changed my mind because of X, Y, Z, or I can't tell you because it's under the Secrets Act or something.

So again, I think that... Great statement. Again, everyone loves someone who stands up for what he believes against the big guy, but the statement itself, I think, could have been more forthcoming and self-reflective in a way that convinced me.

That's a really reasonable take, Erika. Really? Well, thanks, Tom. Yeah, it was. Approved by Tom. Josh, what do you think? No, I genuinely was taken aback. I was like, wow, that was very eloquent. Thank you, Erika. Josh. Well, and it's like, you know, he even had a tweet like, you know, a few years ago where he was saying, you know, that he trusted You know, Donald Trump and his plans for, you know, engaging with Iran, because there was, you know, we bombed them like, you know, a few years back.

And, you know, it's like, to me, it's like, you know. I don't know. I delete stuff if I don't believe it anymore. Maybe not everyone does. I mean, yeah, to that point, and he was a regular on kind of like the broadcast circuit, so he was on Tucker's show, and basically described to a T what would happen if we went to war with Iran. Basically, exactly what's happening right now. But then he was on Sean Ryan's show. Which would be what?

I can play the clip if you want. No, no, no. No, just summarize. You are just sort of like, oh, he said this all, and it has all come to pass. What is your assessment so far, then? I will play the clip. I mean, I am not going to put words in his mouth. Let me just ask you one last question, because he called it 60 years ago. You referred to what a war with Iran would do to the United States, and I don't know that a lot of...

People in this country fully understand what Iran is as a nation state. It's not Afghanistan. What do you think the immediate and then longer term effects of a war with Iran would be on the United States? Immediately, it would be very bloody. I have no doubt that we could probably defeat some of their air defense and go in there and have another shock and awe campaign, but again, we saw how the shock and awe campaign in Iraq really didn't actually work in the long run.

So, I have no doubt that we'd have some immediate results that people would cheer about here in the United States, but Iran, Persia, has always been an empire. It's been around longer than any of the other players in the modern Middle East right now, and they are not going anywhere. And right now, Iran has a lot of There is a lot of internal problem. They have a lot of internal strife with the Ayatollah and that government. It's only been in power since 1979.

But again, if we start conducting strikes in Iran, everyone in Iran will rally around their leader and they will become even more revolutionary. And then we will have Iranian proxies throughout the entire region that will be conducting attacks just like we had in Jordan. And really in the long term, Tucker, the axis that has been built really since Putin invaded Russia and we decided that. Since Putin invaded Ukraine and we decided we were going to throw this massive sanctions package at them, China has come in as a major player, and we are deeply compromised by China.

They control a lot of our economy. They control global manufacturing. They're deeply embedded in Wall Street, and they've also made deals with the Iranians. They want access to Iranian petro, not to mention the fact that Biden killed off U.S. energy independence, and now he's going after LNG, and the world's biggest LNG exporters are Iran, Russia. So, this axis would become very powerful. If we get deeply involved and deeply entangled with Iran, we are playing right into China's hands, because China would like nothing more than for us to be committing our military industrial base to a war in Eastern Europe, in Ukraine, and then to be committing our conventional military power, our blood and our treasure, back in the Middle East.

That will make the Pacific, our actual border, extremely vulnerable. To Chinese aggression, or China will simply just watch us bleed out economically as we bleed out on the battlefield on these couple different theaters. It's absolute insanity. That's good. Yeah. I mean, that's presuming that we would do a massive, bloody land invasion, which... Hasn't been ruled out. Yeah, but I mean, that's like a big if, which we haven't committed to. So, there are like two thoughts there. One on, I mean, this is the narrative that you're hearing.

It's like, oh my gosh, we're in a quagmire. This is so bloody, like all of that. The reality, I think we have to look at the actual numbers here. We have been in for 19 days, right? We've had 13 tragic losses of American life. So far. And compare that to Gulf War I, right? How long was that? Was that 40-something days, Josh? That was like 42, 45 days. Right around there. Right around there, and we lost 300 American troops. And so, to say that the bloody quagmire has come to pass, I think, is highly premature, and we should be a little more agnostic over how we assess what's actually happened so far.

Yes, I hope we are out. In under five weeks, 100%. I think that if we get to five, six, seven weeks, if we get to September, and worse, like the end of the year, then we can start saying, oh, Joe Kent was right. But before that, I think it's super premature. The other thing, though, where I actually agree with him here is the Chinese concern, right? I think that the Strait of Hormuz being, we can get into that in a minute, that's a big, big issue.

That's the quagmire to me. To me, that's where the danger could be. But also, that in America, having all of its attention trained on this particular theater of war, it leaves a huge opportunity for China, and we've been seeing machinations out in the Strait of Taiwan. And it's interesting, you put in here the Port Watch website, right? Yeah, Port Watch. And if you look at the ports around the world and the amount of traffic going through them, the Strait of Hormuz is… If you take all of the assets and resources that go through the Strait, it's actually far below the Strait of Taiwan on how much the actual number and bulk of what resources go through there.

And I think that the actual threat here is that we've given China, in a way, an opening to perhaps realize some of its empire ambitions over in the Strait of Taiwan, the Strait of Malarka in Indonesia. In the Asian theater. So, I think Kent's pointing out that as another factor that we shouldn't be distracted from because shiny thing Iran, like with shiny thing Ukraine a few years ago, is that there's a whole other theater conflict that we don't think about a lot, but that China and Russia think about every day.

Yeah, I think about it quite a bit, too. I mean, even like we've moved our THAAD missile defense system from South Korea. Which presumably protects Taiwan, Japan. The Pacific region, which is of strategic importance to us, and so we are moving those assets that were there previously to the Middle East, in which we've kind of unsuccessfully defended a lot of the GCC countries and have withdrawn a lot of the interceptors back to Israel. So, I think another issue here of the kind of quagmire conversation that doesn't get talked about enough, I think I always start with the risks and the costs.

To me, based on the reasoning from the Trump administration. It was not worth 13 American deaths. It was not worth, and I don't think we're really being forthcoming with the true numbers. I think it's going to be higher, but that's conjecture. But also, the damage that's been done to... You're saying it's not worth the 13? No, I don't think that's my opinion. And then also, based on the reasoning given by the Trump administration, which could come to pass, I'm not sure.

Well, I mean, again, the thing is with Trump, he provides... I mean, he's kind of erratic in terms of he'll say a million different things. That's an understatement. But the fact is that the basic justification for this, you know, from my standpoint, I wasn't enthusiastic about it because it It remains a war of choice. Like, we don't have to engage with Iran, but I also feel like there have been a state sponsor of terrorism for, you know, 48 years. So, there's, you know, from a just worry theory, like taking out the leader and saying, you know, enough of this.

You know, that's one thing. We're great at that, though. I don't know if I really want to go in. Well, I'm very two thumbs down on any kind of a land invasion, of course, but the fact is, like, any kind of a military engagement of this kind is going to be involving a lost life on both sides. So, I mean, you know, I don't want any lives to be lost, but, I mean, you think about 13, I'm not saying, you know, it's like.

It is not like I am trying to be irreverent about the loss of life. It is just like in the Vietnam War, we had, what, 25,000 men die. We would have 500 a week or so. I wouldn't accuse you of that. That's why I don't even want to, like, because I think people are too flippant about that. But again, because you said it is, it was a war of choice. We didn't preempt anything. We weren't attacked. And then a lot of our bases in the Middle East were kind of sitting ducks.

I mean, we're just sitting there. And then, of course, responded to immediately. And that's where the American death, especially in Kuwait. And like, I know people in these regions right now that I'm nervous about. And then also to look at Lebanon now, like there was just an apartment building that was blown up in which. Hundreds of people died, and it's kind of like, well, why is Lebanon now being, there was a warning given before, and then this apartment building was blown up.

It's like, well, what was the point of giving the warning? So, anyway, of course, this just spirals. And then I think with the GCC region, it was kind of this shiny new money, you know, becoming more secular, a regional hub for the world. And now after places like Riyadh have been attacked, that really shatters the safety image. And much of their economy related to It's tourism. It's kind of like the connector between the world. People might irrationally never go there again.

Those countries also found out that we- Or rationally. Or rationally, yeah, for sure. But then those countries found out that the United States actually wasn't really too serious about defending them from these attacks because many of them have been hit in their prized cities. What's the point of us having military bases if we can't defend them? So, I don't need to get into the whole thing now. I think in particular with Joe Kent, what's interesting to me is he's going to go on Tucker Carlson's show tonight.

And I didn't get to it, but there's that Sean Ryan clip of him basically saying the opposite. Sounds like must-sleep TV. Maybe not interesting to you, but interesting to the rest of the country and the world, maybe. But he said the opposite on Sean Ryan's show of, like, Iranian proxies and whatever. And I guess we've heard a lot of admin officials going on shows and saying the opposite thing. I mean, the entire justification for this war leading up to the 24th, the Party of Peace, J.D.

Vance, we're not going to go to war with Iran. It's the last place we want to go to war with. Pete Hegsath, we're tired with these. You know, I think ricocheting around the world, starting these fights, I mean, it's just been a complete inverse. So, I'm interested to get kind of an insider perspective to the world now. I think he said he'd go on Mark Levin's show, too, which is interesting.

That would actually be worth watching. Exactly. That's why I'm like, he's saying he's going to go everywhere. We'll see. And, of course, a lot of this is based on new information, and you're trying to get inside Trump's head. Like, did he see new information that made him do what he's doing now? Did Joe Kent see new information? But all of this, of course, being like day 18, 19. Into a war that's now spiraling to the broader world, and as a country that's like, I hate to bring it back domestic.

Why do you say, you've now said it like two or three times, it's spiraling. Yeah. Explain to me. Sure, I'd be happy to. We preemptively struck Iran for Israel. Marco Rubio said Israel is going to strike, and then if they struck, they would hit our bases, so we joined the effort. We are now wiping out the regime, even though the priorities, again, as you said, Trump is very erratic. He said at one point, it is just about nukes. Then he is saying regime change.

Then he is saying he wants to negotiate with someone. We have wiped out the entire leadership class. We have contributed to efforts to cause strife in the country, to start some type of a civil war, some type of... Uprising. Israelis said they're kind of agnostic to what the result is there, meaning we would have a massive refugee crisis if that comes true. The Strait of Hormuz is now closed, and we are unable to secure it by ourselves based on the admission by the president.

We're now trying to involve the UK, who said no thanks. Germany said no thanks. All the new countries say no thanks. What's happening to the traffic that can't go through there now, of course, it's very expensive to us to have to do that. Basically, impossible because they're using drones in the mountains that we can't counter right now that I know about. So, that means all the countries that rely on oil from that region, now their prices are spiking, and they're looking elsewhere.

They're looking to places like Russia, they're looking to places like China, and they're now becoming close to them. So, that has now immediately done that. I have Bangladesh closed universities, South Korea capped gas prices for the first time in three decades, Thailand is encouraging work from home, local governments in the Philippines ordered civil servants to work four days a week, Pakistan shut schools. I believe Pakistan just hit Afghanistan at this point. Israel is now invading Lebanon. Am I missing anything? I think Saudi Arabia and oil fields hit.

This is a regional war now. Well, the Strait of Hormuz is... There remains a problem that needs to be handled, but this idea that it's spiraling, as if everything's gone completely haywiring out of control. I think I'd say it's escalated. I need to be more specific with my terms, which I appreciate. It's escalated. I don't think anyone could say that. These weren't strikes that hit Iran, and then it ended, and that it's just between the United States and Iran now. Now, this has become a global problem, and it's hard to imagine.

That the Trump administration was naive to that fact going in. Like, they wouldn't know that the Strait of Hormuz would become a problem, that they couldn't handle when they did it. They at least are unable to handle it just right now. Sure, right now. I don't foresee it to be a thing where months we won't be able to have passage in the Strait of Hormuz. I don't see that as it. So, like, it is a temporary issue. That I don't disagree with.

I mean, that's undeniable, but the question of whether or not we'll, oh, well, we'll never be able to do anything because of that. It's going to be months and months before that's opened up. I just don't believe that. Yeah, and that is okay not to believe, but I think maybe getting back to my first principles on foreign policy, every single dollar spent, every single live spent on this effort could have been used domestically. So, the trillion dollars this is going to cost and inflate our dollar.

There is no question about this. We are going to have to pay for it by inflating our dollar. You could have used every dollar on that to put $4,000 in the bank account of every American having a kid. You could have built a park in every country in America. You could have built the best border wall possible. And part of my problem here that I think really frustrates me is it feels like the executive is incentivized to start these kind of strikes because basically Congress is irrelevant now, as we've kind of seen for declaring war.

I mean, the president just can basically strike whoever they want. That goes back Obama, Biden, et cetera. And it's easier for them and more politically salient for them to just hit a foreign country. Look at Venezuela, whatever, than it is to actually deport illegal immigrants in our country. Domestically, everything is harder, so that creates a perverse incentive to do things like this and destabilize the world, as I have said. To me, that is unsatisfactory as someone that voted for no more craziness, the end to wars, and then more focus domestically.

I just see the results of this that I see coming. It is going to hurt our economy, and it is going to inflate our dollar. And we're going to have a refugee crisis if Israel gets what it wants in terms of a bloody civil war or an uprising of some kind, and we are going to absorb immigrants from that. I have no doubt about that. Right. I think that it is 100% true that the administration...

...has to make a better case to the American people that connects the pain at the pump and the war and the eventual benefit, right? I think that what you're expressing, Tom, is exactly the unrest and the feeling of spiraling out of control and all this, whether or not it all turns out for the better by July or something like that.

Absolutely true that the administration has to make a better case, and it could be that the Trump administration went into this war so highly confident. They saw Iran as already economically damaged, as already weakened by the protests, and as politically damaged from within, that the regime is unpopular, it's weakened, and that a quick decapitation and going in, much like we did back in June, would... That would not only win the war, quote unquote, within days, and it still could. We're still only 19 days in.

We're not even close to the four to five week mark. That would also, at the same time, win over public opinion, right? That, okay, Americans love a good win. They love to see the bombs going off and hitting the target, and this will win people over, and I think that the last three weeks have shown that that was not the case, and so perhaps the administration ... I don't think it's ... It's likely, given the decades of wargaming at the Pentagon, that they didn't anticipate the Strait of Hormuz being closed, and they haven't gamed this out in multiple scenarios.

Like, that, to me, like, unlikely. Pete Hicks has just been surprised based on their public-facing stuff. Pete Hicks has been permanently, like, surprised in his head. He's a Fox News anchor, for heaven's sake. Yeah. No, but, like. Can I ask you a specific question? Yeah. Because I think this is helpful. And I'll give a shout-out, like, Lomas and Rufo did a show. And they had on Will Chamberlain, and they had on Kurt Mills, and Will Chamberlain made the... It was good content.

It was good content, because they needled people with good debate-type questions of, you know, what does victory look like for you? What would, you know, defeat look like for you, to the opposing sides? So, I guess, for Erika, you're saying, like, okay, they had to have thought that... It's hard to imagine that they...

Didn't imagine being in a prolonged... They must have thought that one strike and we're going to be good. It's going to be like Venezuela, but it clearly is not at this point. I don't think... But it also isn't a year or whatever. So, at this point, what would victory look like for you? What would you say? You went in, you're like, okay, this was a win.

Yeah, it's easier for me to imagine defeat because I think there's so many like doomer scenarios that just claw at my brain at night, right? In terms of what would sort of vindicate the administration's decision to go in without adjudicating this with the American people, I'm not really sure there's any scenario where I would be like, yeah, you did not need to make your case before doing this, just because I actually believe in like we're going to do this. Maybe we can one day be a republic again.

I don't know what we are right now. But I think that in terms of best possible scenario outcome, we are done. We are out by April 1st. Iranian regime that oversaw the execution of 30,000 protesters in the last three months is never again able, it's so decapitated, it's unable to retake power. So yeah, for me, there would be some kind of regime change that the Iranian people themselves bring forward out of those protests, which I don't even know if there's enough of them left to do such a thing.

We just don't know, we're not on the ground. But the Strait of Hormuz opens. The gulf states in sort of a... A new Abraham Accord begin to control the rebuilding of Iran, whatever that looks like, and we're able to withdraw ourselves with the confidence that the Strait will remain open because of regional support, not because of our troops being there permanently, and that the three H's, Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis, are also so decapitated that they cannot threaten. American troops on the ground in the Middle East, again, within our lifetimes.

For me, that is the best possible outcome. Sure hope so. I think it is hard seeing that. You mentioned the Houthis. I think if I were to just, please, Trump, just leave. I think it is possible for him to just leave right now, say we won, we decapitated them with the strikes.

Just get out. It is the same thing that the Houthis would be the precedent for this. Like, we bombed the Houthis. Remember the signal gate thing? Oh, I do. I think he did, too. The four H's, maybe. Yeah, exactly. We hit the Houthis, and they were pirates messing with ships on the coastline, and we left. We were not able to defeat them, but we could leave saying that it was a win. The Houthis are still operating, but because of what would be required, like the risk and the blood and the treasure, you would have to put on the ground in that country to actually solve that problem.

It was not worth it, so we left. And so, I think there's a scenario where President Trump, declare victory. Get out. I don't think there's any reason for us to be there. I think that we can start scaling back in the Middle East significantly in a way that isn't disastrous, like the Biden administration, and refocus on the home front. Because I think if this continues at the popularity rate that it's at right now, you will be out of power and your party will be out of power for a very, very long time.

The longer that this goes on and the more... I agree that we need the exit strategy, and I want to get out as soon as possible, but I think if we withdrew today, The issue would be, maybe we can get out of there without the sort of like Afghanistan debacle that that withdrawal was. But if we withdraw today, the fact is that the Iranians are still able to close the Strait of Hormuz and whatever is left of their regime.

Is able to then say, oh, look, well, we just, all we had to do was close the Strait, and the Americans left. Like, it's not, I don't know if today would be the day. So, what do you think the play was there, Erika? Like, if, because they could, why are we asking NATO to do it? If we could have always had this power? Yeah, why, Josh? I'm actually curious on that. What was the whole debacle there? Again, I say it for the record, I was not enthusiastic about this.

I do consider it a war choice. I'd rather not have to have done it. But I think Trump's play here on asking other countries, hey, would you like to be, you know, would you like to participate in helping us regain control of the Straits of Hormuz? It's giving them an option to be, you know, to contribute, because what is Trump's biggest thing about Western allies in Europe?

They never talk in the game, and they never open up their damn wallet, right? Making fun of them. So… So, this was their chance, but see, now that they're not, he's like, okay, so the United States is going to do it by themselves. Our Navy is going to open it up, and then once it does, then it's like, hey, wait a minute. Now, you're just expecting to get all this liquid natural gas, all this petroleum without giving us a cut? No, no, no, no.

We're going to use that as a negotiating leverage against all of the countries. So, I think that was a, you know. The idea that it was obviously just a bundle, and he's like, oh my gosh, grasping for air, help, help, help, help us. No, I think it's more he's using this as leverage. You know, to these other countries that rely on it more than we, you know, we're much more obviously energy independent or not as much energy independent as we were because of Biden.

But we're still, we can handle the shocks of this a lot better than, as you mentioned, like some of these countries like India and Afghanistan or even China. Yeah. Yeah. That's what's interesting about, that's an interesting perspective on the Hormuz thing because if you just look at the raw data, we actually don't get a lot of our energy from there. So, it seems like we have kind of also thrown a big portion of the world into… A huge problem if it can't be solved.

It has ripple effects, of course. Right, exactly. So, like, you know, all of our trading partners. We will get our oil and natural gas from there. But our trading partners do. It's going to be, we're going to pay more at the pump because people can't buy it from, through Iran. They're going to have to buy it other places, and so the price goes up overall. But our ability to weather the storm is significantly greater, precisely because domestic oil and natural gas production has gone up so much over the last 25 years.

But I do think, yes, you know, I do think this was an attempt for Trump to say, hey, let's work together, and their unwillingness to do that is going to probably, he's probably going to use that against them. That's my guess.

Yeah. Okay. Interesting conversation. Final thing, and we're going to get more clarity because we got to wait for the patriarch on this, but there's people bringing attention to the fact that the Church of the Holy Sepulcher has remained closed. Israel was responsible for closing it beginning in February 28th, and I think there's now becoming more questions as Holy Week comes about, will people be able to go to this? There's not really a lot of precedent for it being shut down. I think in fairness, I saw Mike Huckabee shared this, like, All of the sites are closed down, so Al-Aqsa Mosque, the Western Wall closed down.

I think there was shrapnel from a missile nearby, I think part of the reason there, and then also the only other time this happened was during COVID. So, someone from Israel has confirmed this. I think I have. Israel's civil administration confirmed all holy sites in the Old City of Jerusalem, including the Western Wall, Temple Mount, and the Church of the Holy Sepulcher will remain closed. For security reasons in light of the current tensions in the region. Yeah, it has got people really riled up, I think partially because it has almost never been shut down, regardless of whatever strife has been going on, literally probably since Jesus was in that tomb.

So, got to wait for the patriarch. I am sure they are probably negotiating behind closed doors about this. This is a huge deal. I don't know. Do you feel like this is a huge deal? I think that is, well, I can't help but laugh that you decided to bring it all the way back to Jesus being in the tomb. You could have gone to, you know, like 125 years at the beginning of air warfare, but go ahead.

I'm pretty sure the Muslims might have closed it down for a while, too. Actually, I'm not sure. The Saladin, are you serious? They slaughtered all the inhabitants? Okay, I can't speak for the entire history, but there has been times where Jerusalem was under Muslim control where they did allow access to the Holy Sepulcher. That is also true, yeah. Not very well. I'm not making a... Like a grandiose question. Yeah, yeah, I got you. I got you. Jeez, man. The corners you guys paint me in is crazy.

I'm like, I'm just trying to bring up the news here. I'm trying to prevent you from being reckless. From being reckless. Appreciate it. Oh, and then final note on the international front, we might take Cuba. Yeah. So, back to... Once again, I think my case is that I'd rather, you know, I like the Don Roe Doctrine. I prefer mixing it up in Venezuela and Cuba. Let's get back to the Western hemisphere. I've been very clear on that. Yeah. Really hilarious. Not even hilarious.

I mean, crazy casual. What is it? I think I can do anything I want with it if you want to know the truth, Trump told Fox. When you say Cuba's next, it's Cuba. Whatever you do with the military there, it seems like... Something. Will that look more like Iran or Venezuela? I can't tell you that. I can tell you that they're talking to us. It's a failed nation. They have no money. They have no oil. They have no nothing. They have a nice land.

They have a nice landscape. You know, it's a beautiful island. Crazy. I can't even. Classic Trump. All that was fun until we talked about just, like, taking over the world. And I was just like, oh, man. So stressful reading it. Just like, dude, what is going on inside this guy's head? Okay, B Block, Paul Ehrlich.

He has passed away at age 93. Now, we had a conversation before. It is about the founder of the population, Baum. I immediately said, I do not care. Most people my age that are Catholic, that are Orthodox, do not use birth control and are actually looking to have children. Why is his death interesting and relevant to Catholicism? Cast a big shadow.

Tell me about it. Well, okay, so... In the 1950s, actually right after World War I, 1946 through the 1950s, we had a baby boom, and I would like to point out that baby boom happened not just because we got done with the war, but because if you look at it, we had a massive restriction of immigration over the previous 20 years before that that started a baby boom. That is a hint to current policymakers today. Hello. But then we had lots of babies being born, like, you know, a massive baby boom, including the first year, 1946, where we had three future presidents, Bill Clinton, George W.

Bush, and Donald Trump, all born in the same year, 1946, including my dad, lots of people, my father-in-law, 1946, big year. Lots of babies, lots of babies being born. And, of course, having babies is joyful and wonderful, and it is expensive, and now we are becoming, okay, how many kids can you fit in a car, and, you know, all that kind of stuff.

And so, people are starting to wonder in the late 50s, you know, like, hmm, is this, you know, should we continue at this pace? The birth control pill comes in 1960, and Catholics are starting to wonder, and other Christians are starting to wonder, hey, can we take birth control? And a lot of liberal theology professors taught it, your alma mater.

Catholic University. Not mine, I was going to say. Oh, Catholic U is a hotbed. For eight years, Catholic opinion on contraception just started deteriorating badly, and the Pope finally came out with Humanae Vitae, but I think you waited too long. You should have done it four years earlier. It might have stemmed a little bit of this tide, but all this stuff, and people are like, you know, so people wanted, you know, they want to start families, of course, and they wanted to have kids, but they didn't necessarily want to have four, five, six kids.

They wanted to have, like, maybe two or three. And along comes Paul Ehrlich with The Population Bomb, and this book came out in 1968, where he said, if we don't do something about the number of babies being born, there is going to be global mass starvation.

Hundreds of millions of people are going to die, best case scenario. In fact, it could be a billion could die. It is going to be an absolutely apoplectic hellscape, and he won over. The media. He won over the American people. He won over Western civilization. Al Gore was very much influenced by this guy.

Movies were made about it. Soylent Green, you know, made of people. I mean, there is so much. This guy cast such a massive shadow. And by the way, there is an interesting thing about this. You have got Paul Ehrlich on one side, and you have got Norman Borlaug on the other, University of Minnesota graduate from Iowa. Norman Borlaug was the Green Revolution. He came up with a new way to make, you know, lots of grain, and his techniques saved a billion people.

From starvation. And so, all of Paul Ehrlich's horrible things, I mean, would he make 60 predictions, Erika, even one? And like, all of them failed. Over 30, yep. In 1980, a free market economist by the name of Julian Simon, professor at the University of Maryland, by the way, the brilliant guy who told the airlines, you should actually overbook. Smart. Get into that later. Still hate that, but go ahead. It's smart, though. Julian Simon. I still hate it. He's smart. I hate getting bumped.

Go ahead. Well, it's an economic thing. Julian Simon said to Paul Ehrlich, let's do a bet. A thousand dollars. And then you can invest, you pick the name of any five commodities, metals, whatever you want, and after 10 years, your population bomb, of course, everything's going to get more scarce, and everything's going to be more expensive, right? And so, you pick it. And so, Paul Ehrlich picked like tungsten, steel, and well, silver, whatever the metals were, this combination of five.

So, in 1990, what happens? He lost. Paul Ehrlich was totally wrong. All the things became more affordable because we were becoming more prosperous and a wealthier country, and he had to actually cough up the $1,000 to Julian Simon. But see, the thing is, he had too much pride. He had his wife sign the check.

This had a massive impact, precisely at the point where, culturally, the baby boomers drunk this Kool-Aid in a massive way. It affected my Generation X. A lot of people are like, I do not want to have kids. We began this thing in the 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s, and to this day, we are like, I do not want to bring my kids into this world, which is, to me, amazing.

We had a lot of stuff thrown at us over the last 200 years. Look at World War II, like London bomb, Paris taken over, economic stress for the previous 20 years, and people still said, I want to believe in the future. I want to have children. I have hope. And to think, we're so much wealthier now. We're so much wealthier in 1970 than we were in 1950. So much wealthier in 1990 than we were in 1970. Wealthier now than we were then.

And yet, people are like, I don't know if I can bring myself- I could never do that to a child, bring them in such a horrible world. No, Paul Ehrlich- If you want to make the world better, bring more kids into it. Exactly, exactly. No, Paul Ehrlich is sort of, to me, the icon of the evidence-be-damned science celebrity, because regardless of the fact that not a single one of his predictions came true, his death was met with so much- ...exclamation and aplomb from the New York Times, for example.

This was the headline that they did when he died last week. His best-selling 1968 book, which forecast global famines, made him a leader of the environmental movement, but he faced criticism when his predictions proved premature, in spite of the fact that not a single one of his predictions has even gone close to being true. They're like, no, no. Just wait a little longer, and it will all come true. We also saw this. He was interviewed a couple of years ago on 60 Minutes, and there, Scott Pelley gave him this glowing sort of introduction of how you've lived long enough to see.

You might have seen your predictions come true. He didn't actually say, oh, none of them did. You're a terrible social scientist. Your biology sucked. He was like, just give it a couple more years, Paul, but dead at 93. Unfortunately, his ideas lived on. I think it is hard. There are many threads in what contributed to our current child-free culture, and this sort of waves of op-eds in the New Yorker magazine of, I regret having kids, all of that coming out the last few weeks, and we see these from time to time.

There are many factors that contributed to that, but it is also true that in any cultural movement, like the anti-child movement, There are key figures, and Paul Ehrlich was one of them, and you hate to speak ill of the dead, but the only good thing I can say about him is that we should pray for his soul because he was a child of God, and his influence, it's hard to... So, this was my one example I wanted to bring up. For people who don't understand this, and Tom, you're like, oh, my generation doesn't care.

We're not using birth control. Yeah, you're like 1.6% of your generation. I understand I'm the minority. No, the fact that your children are going to grow up in a world where we are shutting schools down because the population declines can be directly traced back to this man's celebrity influence in the United States and beyond. This, however, is where...

I absolutely lose it. So, he actually had direct influence on United States foreign aid policy. You'll remember, back in the 1950s and 60s, we started to send these massive amounts of foreign aid out, USAID, which I know we love to talk about Marco shutting it down.

He made a recommendation. He urged the United States in the 1960s and 70s and 80s, actually, he was a celebrity, like I said, to tie their aid to population control. So, for example, in India, he argued that food aid to India should be conditioned on forced sterilization of all men who had three or more children. He called it coercion in a good cause. And he was, quote, astounded that libertarians objected when the American government actually took up his suggestion. In 1975, the Indian Prime Minister, Indira Gandhi, was threatened with the loss of World Bank loans at the behest of the United States, unless she began sterilizing people.

She obliged, and her son, Sanjay, carried out a program making permits, licenses, rations, and even housing applications conditional upon... Sterilization. Over 8 million people were sterilized, and that, Tom, is why you should care about this. Well, yeah, because the mantle was kind of carried by Bill Gates then, too, of all the sterilizing drugs. Yeah, bringing it into the climate freakout. Paul Ehrlich was making recommendations that the FCC should tell television programs to disparage big families in TV shows and stuff like that.

This guy is just nuts. It's like, I get it, you hate babies, but maybe just shut your mouth. Yeah, conditioning anything on sterilization is pretty insane. Yeah. And it's not worth it. That's what I just, the thing, and I brought up the... The bet that he had with Julian Simon, and Julian Simon, I don't think, I don't know of his religious background. I think he was an agnostic Jew, if I remember correctly, but I don't remember. So, he's not like a Catholic.

I'm not bringing it up because he's a Catholic figure. I'm bringing it up because Julian Simon was the anecdote to this guy. Antidote. There we go. Be reckless, Josh. Be careful. You might be reckless in your speech, anecdote.

Go ahead. He is the anecdote. But Julian Simon would talk about, like, because... The leftist economists like Paul Ehrlich and these guys were obsessed with numbers, and they always saw the planet as a zero-sum game, and there is only a finite number of resources, and the more people we have, the pie is not growing, so we are going to get smaller and smaller slices of the pie. And that is the Malthusian way of looking at the world, and it is fundamentally wrong.

And it is not a leap of faith, but this cuts to so much about what is important about our world. What we need to understand is actually what Julian Simon talked about. He says, what is the ultimate resource?

And that is human ingenuity. And human ingenuity, of course, is the greatest gift that... It is on this planet, because it was given to us by God. We are made in His image. So, the ability to look at a resource that normally would have no value, like sand, and say, wait, we can make fiber optic cables out of this. Yeah. Like, that is amazing. Like, we are able to, you know, like, and like oil, like 400 years ago, people were like, what is this?

What good is this? But we can make something out of it. Like, hey, let's refine this. Wow, we've got the stable fluid that we can, you know. Run engines. This is amazing. So, we can create wealth. We actually make the pie bigger, and our planet now can handle millions, billions more people. So, again, we have great people like Norman Borlaug, who did the Green Revolution, were able to feed so many people, but all we hear about is, Monsanto is evil. Like, okay, I'm not defending everything that corporation's done.

I'm just saying. We are able to feed billions of people. Now, I have said this before, but Oren Borlaug is such a great American that they could make a 100-foot statue of him in Des Moines, and it would not be overkill.

There are literally 2 billion people alive today because of him. It is amazing. It is amazing. Sweet. Okay, on to good news now, Erika. All right, so as an antidote to Paul, we're like... I'm sorry. I made a mistake.

How many hours have you spent shoveling snow? So, I have Josh is exhausted because he has been shoveling snow for four hours a day for the last three days, and Tom is exhausted because he has two kids under the age of three, and he does not sleep anymore. So, I alone am left to tell, but as an antidote to the Paul Ehrlich population bomb, this is the only Oscar content you need to even be aware of. It's the only Oscar content I actually consumed, and I only consumed it because my beloved Celine, thank you, shout out, sent it to me to react to, but here we go.

This was Best Actress. You, Fred, I love you, man. I love you. You're the most incredible dad. You're my best friend, and I want to have 20,000 more babies with you. I do. I do. And Isla, my little girl who is eight months, who has absolutely no idea what's going on, and is probably dreaming of milk, but this is kind of a big deal, and I love you, and I love being your mom, and I can't wait to discover life beside you.

Chloe and Maggie, you, to get to know this incandescent woman, and journey to Understand the capacity of a mother's love is the greatest collision of my life. It's Mother's Day in the UK today, so I would like to dedicate this to the beautiful chaos of a mother's heart.

I was just saying, Irish? She is Irish. Isn't that not cool? I can't talk anymore. Very appropriate. Yep, very beautiful. So, Jessie Buckley, congratulations on your Oscar, but more congratulations on your little baby girl, and I hope you do go on to have many, many more children, because Ireland and the UK need it.

That's awesome. Okay, Josh. That's good for Oscars. I mean, they totally snubbed. Bridgette Bordeaux and Robert Duvall in their memorabilia. Yeah, what was that? Wait, what was the... They always do these tributes to all the stars who have died over the past year. Wait, sorry, first, what is the Oscars? It is an award show of some kind? Yeah, some kind of award show. People pay attention to that? It happens once a year. It is a little gold statue of a naked person.

A lot of people. Maybe it should not. I do not really watch it ever. I have not watched it. I don't remember. Never really. But anyway, someone got snubbed from this event. Well, Robert Duvall is a conservative and a great actor over the last 40, 50 years, and they didn't even mention him in their memoriam. Excuse me? So, it's obvious that it was a... You know, the libs in Hollywood don't want to recognize themselves.

Those nasty libs in Hollywood. That's a no. But let's go to good news. So, I just can't help it. The NBC talks about this, like, they're from, you know, again. A generation ago, Poland rationed sugar and flour while its citizens were paid one-tenth what West Germans earned. Today, its economy has edged past Switzerland to become the world's 20th largest, with over $1 trillion in annual output. That's quite a comeback story. Yeah, so they do that with, you know, they were poor when they were communist.

Now, they have a market-based economy, and what have they done differently than just about every other country in Europe, other than not embracing, you know, the soft socialism that we have seen in other Western European countries? Sure. They have closed their borders and not allowed hundreds of thousands of Muslim immigrants from the Middle East to come into their country, and yet their crime is down and their wages are up?

It is so shocking. Huh. I have to think about that one. Could correlation also be a combination? So, I am going through the article I see. Included independent courts, anti-monopoly agency to ensure fair competition, strong regulation to keep troubled banks from choking off credit.

They joined the EU. They are not a libertarian paradise by any means, but they are doing things great. Some might say that contributes to not have monopolies. Uh, electric bus ride to success? Your takeaway was not the takeaway of NBC News. Yeah. I have been to Poland, and I can tell you, they are on their way up, and they're going to eventually pass the United Kingdom. Incorrect, Josh. NBC News in the article said it was because of electric buses. Ah, well.

That is a case of projection, I think. Josh liked the headline, and then was like, this is the real reason. But if you click into the article, it is actually electric buses. Yeah, news by communists? Listen, if we had six electric buses, maybe we would be there too. Okay, my good news is going to preempt my Twilight Zone, okay? So, I'm actually going to bring to you good news from a mysterious shadow force, according to Ted Cruz, that is contributing to trying to make Protestants second class.

Citizens in America, again, endorsed by Ted Cruz. I'm talking about that nasty shadow organization called Catholic Answers. They are terrifying, if you've ever seen any of their stuff. But that's preempt, of course, because I'll get into the accusations. But it's March Madness, one of my favorite times of year. I'm a big March Madness guy. Love March Madness. Gordon Hayward, March legend. Got interviewed by Catholic Answers. Background context of Joe is that we played against each other. We played in the same Final Four.

Now, he's a coach of mine, but he was another guy that I would confide in, and we would have cigars together and go out to eat on the road. Joe gave me the book, The Eucharist is Really Jesus, and that was kind of like the piece that slid out in Django, where it all kind of just came together, and I was like, I got to do this. I got to become Catholic. Yes! Very sick. Joe Magula, total psychopath in the best way.

Love that dude. Can't look away. He really is one of a kind. But yeah, shout out Gordon Hayward, March legend. I'll never forget him almost beating Duke in a championship game by rimming out a half-court shot. I think I had a Butler jersey back, or I had like a Butler t-shirt back in the day. It was so sick. I distinctly remember watching that as a child. It was awesome. One of my favorite memories of March Madness is when a team called Mercer beat Duke.

Ah, Mercer University. Wow. Is there any overlap there? I wonder why. You're talking about Duke. Does anyone beating Duke is also kind of my favorite, but... Okay, on to St. Patrick's Day. So, of course, we had St. Patrick's Day.

Very chill. I just wanted an opportunity to talk about St. Patrick. Of course, Zeal, the confession of St. Patrick shows the deep humility of the saint who converted Ireland. Also... Kind of a rough life. Yeah, right. You just drink for St. Patrick's Day. It's like, all right, bring on the shamrock shakes. We're going to put green in the river, and everyone has a good time. But then, I'm looking at this guy's life, not very comfortable. Slave. Negatory. Escapes. Comes back.

Converts the entire country, and now is obviously a national legend. I believe, what is it, the prime minister called him Patrick? Pre-Twilight Zone, just Patrick. The story of Patrick's life serves as a reminder of the resilience and courage of migrants, the invaluable contributions that they have made and continue to make to the countries they now call home. Yikes. Patrick. Wow. That's great to see you. Here's the deal. This is President Catherine Connolly. Yeah. Just Patrick.

You know. Many people have become immigrants to the United States. We've had Irish, Germans, Italians, but I would not call Blacks in this country immigrants, because they were brought here as slaves, and Patrick was a slave. So, like, the idea he's an immigrant, like, it's just like... Well, I guess he did come back. I know, but it's just like still like... You know Patrick. Everyone knows Patrick, right? You never refer to him as St. Patrick, as everyone says on St. Patrick.

Even secular people that just want to drink are like, it's St. Patrick's Day. I don't want to just say Patrick. Right. But then we get, yeah, shout out Riley Moore, and Tinfoil Tom, big Irish guy. Shout out Tinfoil. Contribution of Irish to America, St. Patrick's Day.

Yeah, the congressman from West Virginia has got this resolution honoring the Irish contributions to the American Revolution. Pretty cool stuff. Which is actually very cool. Yeah, because we think about the Irish immigration wave as being like the potato famine, right? But I love this resolution. I learned a lot because I did not realize we had so many Irishmen already here. I am wondering how many of them were Catholic Irishmen versus like the English Irishmen. Charles Carroll. There you go. Charles Carroll, Irishman.

Very cool. East. Yes. Yeah, so I'm reading, have you guys read, oh, this is a test for you, Erika. Have you read The Conservative Mind by Russell Kirk? No, I have not. It is a hole in my education. I'm getting in that bag right now. I just got it from the library, and I was looking- I read it like 40 years ago. Yeah, because I'm trying to figure out what the heck it is. Everyone says they're conservative. I just finished Ellen Bloom, so maybe I'll do Russell Kirk next.

I did Ellen Bloom, and I was like, great. And then, it's so funny, in the 50s, I think this came out in the 50s, he was a professor at Michigan State. And he was like, no one's even going to know what conservative is. We're at a crisis point. In the 50s. And so, I'm like, could he have imagined? What people call themselves conservatives and believe now is crazy. So, anyway, they go back to Edmund Burke, and Edmund Burke was, I think that kind of like, it's basically Anglican, right?

Like, it was, in order to serve in government at the time, you had to be Anglican. You could not be Roman Catholic. Church of England, right. Yeah, Church of England, and so he was, but his sister was Catholic, so it's kind of interesting, but then he was advising Thomas Paine at the time of the revolution. And he actually was like, the conservative case, sorry, we're going to get super philosophical, but there's people that are still Tories that were like, we shouldn't, it wasn't morally legitimate to have the American Revolution.

Edmund Burke was not one of these people. He had a conservative case to preserve the liberty of the colony. So, he was kind of advising Thomas Paine and involved at the time, which was very interesting. So, anyway, I'm just, you know, I'm going back and rediscovering, checking the notes. Solid, dude. So, yeah, very chill. And then, yeah, Patrick. Can I ask a question? Yeah, what's up? Does Josh have a favorite Irish-American?

Well, I mean, I... I mean, from that time, I would go with Charles Carroll. I mean, he risked so much. He had massive land holdings in Maryland, and he risked just about everything to join the revolutionary cause. I mean, this is the thing people forget. If it goes south, we have to stick together, or we hang separately kind of stuff. Yeah, they were all going to be killed if they were caught. Personal favorite of mine, an Irish goodbye.

An Irish goodbye. Like the song? No, do you know what an Irish goodbye is? No. You just dip. You just leave. You don't say goodbye to anyone. I like that kind of goodbye. When my social battery expires, I leave. Yeah. You won't hear from me. That's probably, I'm not any Irish, but that's the most Irish part of me. It would be like that. Exactly. Midwest goodbye is like so frustrating to me. That's the thing. That's the thing. I hate it. Midwest goodbye is so daunting that sometimes you got to go the Irish option.

So, it's like, wait, wait, wait. I don't know the terms. Yeah, yeah. So, the Midwest goodbye is what, like you announce to everyone in the room, I'm leaving. Oh my gosh, Midwest goodbye is like a half hour. Right. You got to say goodbye to everyone, and then you start a small conversation. That is a no-no. And then you try to go to the next person, and they start a small conversation. And by the time you are out of the door, you are out of the way.

So, it is almost like the Midwest goodbye kind of forced me into the Irish goodbye situation. I am unfamiliar with the coastal goodbyes. Maybe that is more of a reasonable time frame. Maybe you just say, good day, and you shake hands, and then you get out of there.

I do love elements of the Midwest goodbye, though, because it shows love. I do like Midwest culture, but that is a little overkill. Yeah. Okay, Josh, I want your two cents on this, okay? Matt Walsh changed his opinion on this. Interesting for the sake of discussion. Here is the tweet. I used to be entirely in the camp that said you should kick your kids out at 18 and force them to live independently and make their own way in the world. I don't feel that way at all anymore.

I want my kids to live with us until they get married, even after they are married, if they want to live on our property. My wife and I would love that. The important thing is to teach your kids responsibility, which we're all doing. They need to contribute and help around the house, which all of our kids do from a very young age. Provided you aren't raising ungrateful, useless moochers, that's a very Matt Walsh-ism, why kick them out? Why drive them away from your family home?

I don't see the point of it anymore. I actually like my kids and like being around them. Maybe they'll all end up scattered to the wind, but I'd prefer to keep the family together. Why wouldn't I? And he said he did change his mind on this, so... Josh, do you have any strong feelings? I'm kicking the kids out of here. This is one of the things where I'm very much against what was the boomer mentality. I agree. I'm glad to see Matt Walsh come around to my way of thinking, because I called him out on this two years ago.

Yes, you did. But, I agree with this. I mean, I moved in next door to my father-in-law, and he's my neighbor, and we work together. We help each other out, and I want my kids, I'm like, don't do what I did. Don't move 600 miles away from home. I'm going to try to do whatever I can to try to buy property so that they can build houses right next to me and stay in as long as they want. I have kids who are over 18, and they're still in the house, you bet.

They are. Why would you like, oh, I am going to just force them to pay $600, $800, $1,000, $1,200 rent to someone in downtown? That is dumb. Stay here. Conserve resources. Build up wealth. Can I ask you a hypothetical? Could you imagine a situation in which your child is unmotivated and doesn't... Doesn't have a strong drive to leave the house or start a career or really get after it, and so they're kind of just hanging out, not paying rent. So, I guess, what would your advice be to someone that has that situation?

Because that, to me, would be the opposite of this. It's like, if you like your kids, you teach responsibility, they got drive, they contribute to the family, great. But if that's not happening, what is the solution there? Well, you know, if they're done with high school, they're either going to be enrolled in college, or they're going to have a job. You know, I mean, but so that is my point. Like, if they are just, oh, hey, Dad, this is cool. I am going to live in the basement, and I am going to play Nintendo all day long.

No, I will find my foot to their rear end and kick them out. So, you would kick them out? I would say, get a job, or I am going to kick you out. And if they get a job, and they work full-time, I do not expect them to suddenly rent an apartment. Like, why do you just stay here and conserve money and build up? Some wealth, so that when you're ready to get married, you know, you've got a leg up.

Yeah. Erika, thoughts? No, I mean, the idea that they have to become sloths, like, no. Yeah, I agree with Josh in terms of we want to build family. If the whole goal of getting married and being open to life and having children, if that whole project is going to just end with a guillotine slice when the kid turns 18 because of some American bootstraps, like, oh, well, they won't be independent if you don't do that. That makes no sense to me, but if you approach your family life in a more organic, natural way, Like, stages of life people go through approach, and like Josh said, if you raise your kids with the expectation that living together means we all have something to contribute, and we all have periods of dependency, too, right?

Like, my husband and I are going to get older, and maybe we'll be the ones, like, we need someone to change our diapers. Not today. I changed a lot of diapers this morning, but it's all going to flip, right? And so, but if you have this approach to family life, Then, the idea of having adult children who live either very close nearby, or even in your home for a period of time, it's just a more coherent way of looking at the family.

It's a Catholic way of looking at the family. Amen. I'd say it's much more like WASP-y Protestant to have this sort of like, we live in these silos in our lives where you're allowed to be with your parents here, and then you have to go to daycare at this point, and then you have to go to school here, and then you have to be completely independent 100% when you're 18. I don't know if it's WASP-y, but it's good.

It is definitely a secular American individualistic kind of thing. That is the thing. My mom and my dad, when I was growing up, I would ask them for advice. Like, okay, so you know me better than anyone. What do you think I should do for college? Dating? What should I do for a career? That kind of stuff. And they were so hopped up. On the, you know, the baby boomer thing, like, go your own way. I don't know. It's up to you.

Whatever you want to do. The Disney princess anthem. I know it's up to me, but I'd like some help. Like, give me some advice. You know, like, I mean, come on. Well, it's interesting if you zoom out. As you were saying, Erika, like, it does, I can't speak to the wasp, although Trump called Mike Johnson a super wasp, and I just thought that was the funniest thing I've ever heard. I was kind of here for that, yeah. Super wasp. That's pretty funny.

But, like, if you were to talk to someone, like, someone that lived in Italy, like, an Italian person, the idea, the concept that you would leave your family completely, barely talk to them. Somewhere in a different country to them, because Italy is basically like a state, and then all your generations would be separated. It would be so bizarre to someone, most European cultures, and maybe I can't speak to like secular European cultures, but I do think that's a uniquely American.

I don't think it's necessarily all inherently bad to have an independent streak, want to strike out on your own. That does feel like a very American... Right, there are going to be kids who want to do that. Yeah, it feels like a very American... But that's an M.O., right? Yeah, but that is kind of the American M.O., but now it just...

I think the payoff often doesn't meet the reward. So, what does that mean? You go to California and get a sick desk job, and you get to go to school. And can't afford your housing? Yeah, exactly. You can't buy a house? Yeah, yeah. So, I think it actually is just becoming more of an economic necessity to give your kids a leg up. I was literally just talking to my wife yesterday about people that just went to college, came out with $80,000 in loans.

I'm like, how could you? And not to say this is a man or woman thing, but also as a woman. So, I was like, well, if you want to get married and have children and stay home. You've got to pay off $80,000 in loans first. Someone does. So, she's living at home, and then hopefully getting a full-time job, and then that, to me, is the only possible way you'd be able to do that. I think the government should intervene at this point and just not allow anyone to take out that much in loans.

I just think it's completely unconscionable. Well, we're seeing those. I've told you about those. They've already made adjustments on this. Not nearly enough. Not nearly extremely enough. Not nearly enough. That's on graduate loans past a certain level. I'm talking about... No. It's undergrad. How much? What is the limit? Kids can only borrow $5,500 a year. What? Yeah. $5,500. I just went through FAFSA. Yes. So, anything above that, the parents have to get a loan in their name. Oh, Parent Plus or something like that?

Yes. Okay. Yeah. Very interesting. So, if you go to school for four years, you are in for about $23,000. That is it. Yeah, and I imagine that tuition is going to shockingly come down significantly, or they're just going to keep taking Chinese students or whatever, because that's not a thing. But anyway, totally besides the point. Well, it's good, though. It's good. It's good, but you just... I have issues with importing foreign students, but that being said- We all do. Because this is my homeland.

That's the point. The point is, it's so bizarre and anti-human- Except Irish students. We could take, because it's St. Patrick's Day. I guess. JK, JK. Just, no. America first, all right? Just think of Americans first, geez. But if this is your homeland and you want to build a home, part of that is multi-generational. And even just to see my parents interact with- I mean, I don't live in the same town. I live close enough to drive. I'm really grateful for that.

But I just think it's going to become more of an economic necessity. And then there's going to be real human benefits from the interaction of various generations, the pooling of resources. I've even seen some things about the Catholic land movement, which I'm not super familiar with, but it seems like a really interesting concept. I guess there's a chapter here in Indiana. But yeah, the idea of pooling resources together, it almost feels very Amish in a way, but actually having land that you can build on, and it's just going to become more and more necessary because on an individual level, we have much less economic agency than people did, say, in the 50s or 60s.

Houses are more expensive, healthcare is more expensive, everything like that. The necessities have become more expensive, and I unfortunately don't see a ramp off of inflation. But I want my kids to succeed. Yeah, absolutely. I want to know my grandchildren.

Yes. Erika, one more question for you that we'd hate because you are the expert. Hi, thank you for all you do. Huge fan of LOOPcast. Wanted to ask a question. I'm a mom of a 21-month-old with hopes of having many more kids, God willing. My husband and I are interested in homeschooling our kids, but neither of us were homeschooled, so we don't know the first place to start. Do you have recommendations for books, podcasts, websites, etc. for learning more about the nitty-gritty details?

Excuse me. For overarching homeschool philosophies, any tips are welcome. If it's helpful, we are located in Northern Virginia, and we heard Virginia is a very homeschool-friendly state, but don't know any details. So far. So far. Yes. I'm so excited about this, first of all. Congratulations on a 21-month-old beautiful child. I hope you also can have many siblings for said child. Number one resource that I like to go to, or send moms to at this point, Lila Lawler. Has a fantastic set of books called, I'm going to get it wrong.

That was wrong. No, I don't know what they're called, but Lila Lawler, go look them up. Domestic, that was it. Domestic Church. Hold on. Let me find it. I read her website, but I don't actually know. So, Like Mother, Like Daughter is her website. She also has a sub stack now. It's called School for Housewives, and a lot of domestic stuff in there, but also the best homeschooling advice I have ever read, including how she did it with her kids at different ages and stages.

She's like, here's my schedule. Here's how I did laundry while I was homeschooling. Here's phonics. It's all in there. So, again, Lila Lawler. She is not paying me. Oh, here's the title. I cannot believe I didn't remember this. The Summa Domestica. So, check out those books. I would also highly recommend the best way to understand and start to get a sense of how you want to conduct your homeschooling is to find homeschoolers. There is no substitute, no blog, no book can substitute for actually interacting with homeschooling moms.

So, I would go to a Catholic church. Find the priest, find someone there, find the mom's group, and start to get in. And homeschoolers love to talk about homeschooling. They love it. They want you to come and watch them homeschool. They want you to come and hold their kids, their babies, while you watch them teach the older kids.

Reach out and find someone in your area that you can get to know in person, and that gives you a lot of moral courage as well if you are embarking on something you have no experience of yourself. If you can see someone that you can call and say, hey, this isn't working out. A couple different approaches. There's school in a box, which I do not recommend, but if you are a former teacher, it's a good place to start. You literally get lesson plans for every single subject.

You follow the lesson plans for 30, 32 weeks a year. Check. Done. Awesome. There's classical approach, which we use with like the Mother of Divine Grace School or Colby Academy. These are also great options to look into. One of my favorites is Memoria Press, which is a mixture of the two, the classical approach with School in a Box, and that's been great for our family. But again, check out Lila Lawler. Go find some boots on the ground people in Northern Virginia.

They're everywhere. They're under the rocks. They're behind the trees. Just find them and get to know them. Erika, you're very intelligent and well-read, and I think many people are more than they think, but to me, if you could maybe answer this part of the question, there's obviously the tactical stuff and the curriculum stuff and the practical stuff, but I think for most people, they might have that desire or feel that spark or the need to do so or the desire to properly educate their children themselves, but maybe lack the confidence or the first jump, and what would you say to someone as you've gone through this process yourself?

What helped your Confidence to just get over the hump, decide to do it, and what advice would you give in that regard? Yeah, so in terms of building confidence, I think talking to your husband and really boiling down your why, your reasons why you want to do this radically countercultural thing, not as radical anymore, but still radically countercultural thing with your children, and as someone who has now been homeschooling for almost 20 years, and I think that is a very important part of it, and I think that is a very important part of it, One of the greatest benefits is building a family culture where all the siblings and the parents cohere together in this project of education.

The time that you're allowed together, it's not like it's all this amazing quality time all the time, but the quantity of time that homeschooling gives you and the pace of your family life together builds a very beautiful culture. And now that I have children leaving the home, so my second will go to college in the fall.

Looking back, I would not give up any of those hours that we got to be together, even the really hard ones. Yeah, that's what I think the baby boomers always talked about. Again, not to try to crap on them all the time. Watch out. I'm mainly talking about the liberal boomers, guys, okay?

Not our good ones. The justification for divorce and all that other kind of stuff as well. I'm going to spend quality time. Not quantity. Like, you know what? Kids need quantity. Quantity is needed, too. They need the quantity, for sure. And, of course, the face. I mean, there's... One of the major reasons why people homeschool is because they don't find an outside resource like a school, a private school, maybe in their area, that's going to work with the parents on both education and transmitting the faith, which really can't be separated, right?

And so, bringing them home has allowed us to have a family culture centered on the liturgical year and centered on family prayer and integrating. Showing how the faith is integrated and is the driving force behind everything you do academically. So, I think that would be my last why and plug for why it is worth persevering when the going gets tough with homeschooling. And did you guys just the entire time do kind of one-room schoolhouse, you are all under the same roof and didn't do co-ops?

Were there extra add-ons that you were able to do? We've done like everything under the sun at this. So, we were part of Regina Chaley Academy for many years, as you were. So, two days a week, university style, two days of classroom work, three days at home. We've done one-day-a-week co-ops that are more non-academic, supplements of social life together with other homeschooling families, and we've done unschooling because we've had periods of terrible sickness in our family when mom's not. unschooling anyone for months on end.

In fact, it was so funny. I was doing the lesson. Unschooling, sorry. What is unschooling? So, unschooling is more of an approach where you don't have a set lesson plan every day for every subject, and there's wide ranges of unschooling, but for us, it has meant we do the cumulative stuff, we do math and Latin, and everything else is, here's a pile of books.

Go read for 20 minutes. Go read for two hours. Go read for three hours this afternoon. Go out in the woods for science class. That is unschooling. Bang some trees with a stick. See what you can find under that rock. I don't know what's called unschooling, but I feel like there's a lot of arguments on behalf of that, like the structure of public schooling doesn't allow for, say, sessions of boredom, which would be more in line with your experience post-public school.

Like no one's, I guess, like in the workplace, I guess you get told to do, but outside of that, it's like, oh, you kind of do have the space to. Discover your passions or go after whatever, you know? Yeah, I found with my kids that when I give them long periods of unstructured time, they learn how to structure it for themselves. There might be a few weeks where they're rolling around being like, oh, I'm so bored, and I'm like, that's your problem.

But after a sustained amount of time where they're like, you know, I'm actually the master of how I approach this opportunity. I can roll around and be miserable. And mom's going to give me really hard chores to do, like carrying wood, or I can start to figure out. Get up and read a book. Yeah, I can get up and read a book, or I could draw, or I could look something up and teach myself to do something or make something. And yeah, it's neat to see them develop those skills, because like you said, in real life, and everyone's like, oh, homeschooling is not real life.

I'm like, actually, I think it's really real life. Right? You are going to have to be the driver of how happy or miserable you are. You are the driver of those. It is a choice. Yeah. I am sure you have probably become trained to identify the look in your child's eyes where they do make the decision to like, I am not going to be miserable. I need to make something happen here. You know the exact moment. I can see it. Very cool.

Well, thank you for that, Erika. On to the Twilight Zone now, Josh. So, John Cleese is a liberal actor, a famous British comedian, and he has been ripping on Donald Trump and all this stuff for years and years and years. But, I don't know, man. Seems like he's kind of sort of waking up a little bit about what's going on in his home country.

Better late than never, John. He retweeted this woman who said, we must fight for our culture and remain a Christian country. It is essential we bother to go out and vote for politicians that have this country's best interest at heart. And John Cleese adds, the UK has always been based at the deepest level on Christian values, regardless of dogma. Despite the many mistakes made by churches, for centuries, British people have been influenced by Christ's teachings.

If these values are replaced by Islamic ones, this will not be Britain anymore. Uh-oh. What? What was he in? Oh, I mean, all those, you know, comedies. Oh, Monty Python. He was one of the original Monty Python dudes, right? Doesn't get more British than that. The Ministry of Strange Walks or something.

He has been good for many laughs. I just, this was absolutely. The philosopher football game. One of my good Twitter followers, Gray Connolly. Mr. Cleese, you and your boomer celeb ilk mocked Christianity relentlessly, and not just through Life of Brian, and now you are wondering what happened to the Britain of Christian values. Do you read what you have written? Hey, better late than never. You know what I am saying?

I sound like I am walking aboard. Hours nigh, but yes. Walking aboard. You know what I am saying? That is the message of Christianity. We have a wide tent, a big tent here. Now, very Dismas of him. Yes, last second, bro. Thank you. We appreciate it.

Very Dismas. I like that. I might use it. Actually, I say that because Dismas, I think of it, he's one of my favorite saints, and I think of him because I myself at that moment, like it happened to me, thankfully.

When I was very young, but who knows how many days you're promised. You're never promised a tomorrow. That's true. I was going to say, how Dismas is it if it happened young, then? It would be at the finish line, brother. I love meditating on Dismas as we approach Holy Week. I had a pretty wretched life, and I'm like, eh.

You don't know this, but I do. Just for people who don't know Dismas, the good thief on the cross, right? That's right, yeah. Okay, just want to be clear. Eric, that's a good thought train. Eric, what are you meditating on? You know, but actually, the apocryphal thing about him, there's a story that he was the thief that, you know, as the Holy Family were on their way to Egypt, and they stopped, and they said, no, no, no.

We're not, don't, don't attack them. That was, I mean, who knows if that's true, but that's like one of the apocryphal things that are said about Dismas. Wait, what is apocryphal? It's, it's, it's not like a canonical story. It's not in the Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. It's like an other story. It's not canon?

It's not canon, but it's like, it is, there, there is a tradition, a legend, that the, that he actually was approaching. He saw the Holy Family, and he thought, no, not these. We're not going to attack them. We're not going to steal from them. Interesting. And let them go. I did not know that one. Before we move on, Erika, I like good Lenten meditations. What has been on your mind this Lent? My own failures and weaknesses as I slowly fail to meet all of my Lenten That's real.

It doesn't get more Catholic than that. Yep. I'm looking forward to my confession next weekend on my silent retreat. Very excited about that. Maybe I'll turn this around. No, I was hoping to recommit to my Bible in a year.

We've pretty much had either the stomach bug or a massive virus, like one child's been terribly ill every day during Lent, so. I feel a little bit just bowled over. So, yeah, I've just been cast back upon the mercy of God this Lent, if everyone was wondering. Really hard to go wrong there. Yes, but I do have a three-day silent retreat with Opus Dei coming up. I'm not Opus Dei, for those of you who are going to go crazy and wonder, but they give awesome silent retreats.

Ted Cruz told me they're a shadow organization that is going to- The Illuminati are real. Yeah, it's essentially Illuminati Catholicism. Yeah, no, but- That's what I was told. I got to tell you, Erika. Yes, sir. At the Mercer Household, we've had a six-day unsilent retreat weekend because we haven't had school since Thursday. Oh, yeah. Oh, my goodness. Got a lot of unschooling going on. Yeah, it's a whole lot of unschooling. A whole lot. Thank you. Oh, man. Okay. It comes for us all.

Good stuff. Yo, two things to think about. Okay. Sorry, not to- It really isn't about me, but this line, I've been thinking a lot about this, partially in regards to the show. Navigating war news is so distressing, and also the responsibility to have to come and try to present my honest view of how I'm seeing things amidst so much confusion is challenging.

And I think I've just been praying a lot, and maybe this will help other people feeling in the same situation. It's hard for me to see so much death. It's hard for me to see things that I just feel are going the wrong way. Having to be a critic, no, that's going to be unpopular.

So, praying the litany of humility and the litany of trust have helped me tremendously. And I think it applies to just about everything, because at the end of the day, you are in charge. You have to have so much trust in Jesus Christ because things don't make sense right now, and if you try to make them make sense, or worried about your reputation, or like being perfect, or being perfectly interpreted, like one of the things in the Litany of Humility is like, free me from the need to be properly understood, essentially.

I know that's like a bad paraphrase. I've thought about that a lot, and so I think it's just been a good meditation to So, give me the right frame of mind for Lent, and then I've been thinking a lot about the Sermon on the Mount as well, of Jesus himself demanding what would be shocking to the Jews at the time, but his commands. I think we were having a conversation about tithing.

You know, you get the 10% number, and the 10% number is actually old Jewish law. So, technically, right now, paying 10% does not get you to heaven, essentially, is the thinking. So, in a way, you're like, okay, that kind of frees you from that. But then what Jesus actually commands of you is way more. He said, who is on the coin? And it was Caesar. He said, okay, give unto Caesar what is Caesar's, but give unto God what is God's, saying that you are made in the image of God.

Therefore, you have to give everything to God. It is actually way more than 10%. You have to give your entire life, your entire livelihood to God, because that is who you owe it to. And similarly, with the Sermon on the Mount, it is like, Not only do I say you look at a woman with lust, you haven't just committed adultery, you've committed adultery in your heart, and that would have been so shocking to someone at the time, because it's like, well, I haven't even done anything, you know?

It's not like I just had that thought, or I'm just in my head, and again, it's just like, Jesus, you can look at it one way of like, he's freeing you from the old Jewish law, but in another way, it's actually much more commanding, and I've just been trying to like grapple with that, of just how that applies to My everyday life, like the commands of Jesus are so strong, and of course, they're impossible to do by yourself, and like all these kind of destabilizing events or whatever, confusing news, etc., just continually remind me is like I am sustained through Christ alone, Jesus Christ alone, and it'd be doing a disservice to like not.

To just do my best to honestly present what I have seen and what I've researched and tried to understand, and then let the chips fall where they may. Have the courage to say what I believe and not go over the top and be vindictive or feel that I have to be perfect or like the expert or whatever. Just do that job, provide it, and then go on. Because at the end of the day, what is most important is Jesus' sacrifice on the cross, which gave us life into eternal life.

Yeah, I just started to make it, like, serious all of a sudden, but it's really been, like, heavy on my mind, and hopefully we do the show, we talk about the news, but that never gets forgotten. Like, that is the reason, I guess, we all do anything. So, on to Erika's Twilight Zone.

I have mega PSYOP in Ireland, and I'm related. That's right. That's right, and it's you, Tom. It's you and your alma mater have been exposed. So, we covered a few, two weeks ago, that Ave Maria University was in the process of purchasing this Cistercia Monastery in Ireland that was on, it is on the brink of closing because they don't have new vocations. So, Ave Maria University comes in. They're going to have a campus. ...in Ireland and Waterford County, and they're going to bring students there for their study abroad, but also hoping, as the university said, that some of the students will stay and will help to reinvigorate Ireland and be missionaries back to Ireland, because Ireland has given so much to us.

Well, all of those pretty words have been unveiled for what they truly are. People Before Profit, which is an Irish political party, which you probably haven't heard of, but in Ireland, you would have. The Waterford branch of this party have called for the Assertion Order, the monks, to hand the site over to Waterford City and County Council instead of selling it to Aave, because Aave, it turns out, is an extreme right-wing MAGA-based institution. It's a PSYOP to try and take over Ireland for Donald Trump.

You never knew, but now we know, Tom. I wish, again, this is one of those cases, I wish that Ave was half as extreme as what they're accused of being here. Ultra Christian right wing. I'm not going to say like mad or whatever, but just like so intense in their convictions in Catholicism that they would be deemed a threat by Ireland, supposedly a Catholic country. Well, apparently they have been by the People Before Prophet Party, which is...

Inspired by Leon Trotsky, one of their inspirations in founding this party in Ireland. No, no, not very chill, dude. So, let us hope the sale goes through, and people before profit can actually be perhaps evangelized by the new American Patricks who are going to come over.

What is people before profit going to do with it? They are certainly not going to use it for Catholic purposes. No, they want the state to see. They want the state to have it, so the monks need to give it back. To the city, the county, the state, so that the government can oversee it, instead of a bunch of PSYOP, ultra-right-wing constituents. This move is apparently the mega-movement's attempt to establish a base in Ireland and Europe. Hilarious.

Wow. A beachhead. A beachhead in Ireland, dude. It's like Ireland. So funny. We are all the star players in our own drama, I think, perhaps. There you go. All right, so listen, I don't know what's been going on with Ted Cruz lately. I'm just going to come out and say it. I really don't understand it. Can we get a wellness check on Ted? We need a Twitter. If Congress could come together and pass a law limiting time on Twitter, I think it would be better for everyone involved, including the senators.

So, he tweets out, read every word of this. It is the best and most comprehensive explanation of what we are fighting. And it has been hilarious. Taylor Marshall did a rundown of this, and it was so funny. Serious Catholic commentators having to address this because the name of the account is Insurrection Barbie with an AI profile picture. So, it would be like, well, this thing, Insurrection Barbie said this. Hysterical. It is a really long article. I am not going to read all of it.

It was clearly produced by AI in some format. And factually wrong, up and down. Said Nick Fuentes is SPX. That's not true. Mistakenly thought Pope Francis was still alive. Oops. The grand, not alive, spoiler alert. And then also, Catholic answers caught a stray in here. They're like, they have this, and I was like, Catholic, that was where I was like, this is too far. They mentioned, it was so funny, they're mentioning Catholic integralists as the grand string pullers of all of this.

I'm like, what the hell are you talking about? I'm like, what the hell are you talking about? You mean three dudes that basically don't exist anymore? It's like a boutique Catholic ideology that barely even Catholics don't even understand, apparently is part of the grand conspiracy from the inside to take over America and make Protestants second-class citizens is legit what the claim was, and insane. Catholic answers is- And Jimmy Akin is going to take over the world. He's going to take over America and cause these problems.

Well, and just what an embarrassment. What did Ted Cruz call it? He's like, this is the best and most comprehensive explanation of what we're fighting. Like, really? The only thing what he's getting at, presumably here, is that there are Catholics who have decided to question sort of the unquestioned support for Israel that we've had over the last 30 to 40 years, right? Yes. And so, some Catholics are like, maybe we should revisit this and think anew about what it should be like.

Some are saying, completely get rid of Israel. Israel is terrible. Others are like, well, I don't know if I go that far, but maybe we should adjust what we're doing. That's kind of my camp. I'm on it. But this is like...

Freshman college, goofy, midnight essay, a couple of beers and a couple of pizzas. I mean, what are you talking about? Yeah, I saw a good take from someone on Twitter. Until 100 years ago, Catholic Bibles came with a note that the Bible should be read under supervision of a priest because reading slash interpreting it on your own was, quote, dangerous. I thought this danger was spiritual corruption. Now I understand that it is, in fact, nuclear war.

Yes, this is exactly what it's doing. The Catholic Church, of course, has never endorsed spiritual Zionism. We have a supersessionist ideology in that Jesus is the supersession. He supersedes the old law, and now anyone can become Israel if you believe in him. So, Ted Cruz, on tape, has said, you know, those who bless Israel will be blessed. Therefore, we need to full-throatedly support.

Netanyahu. Modern-day Benjamin Netanyahu, Likud Party Israel, which is just so insane on its face, but there's a big, like, American evangelical contingent that believes this because of things like the Schofield Bible, which is, like, fairly new, and who, like, full-throatedly support it. And that's why you saw, like, the dust-up over the Carrie Prejean-Bowler thing, because... It is true. There is no dogmatic teaching in regards to Israel having some spiritual claim to the land. It becomes a prudential, practical question regarding the usufractory right, the fact that they're there right now, and the actions being done by Israel right now under the name, under the auspice of Zionism are so extreme and radical, in particular, their treatment of Gaza, the mass killing and destroying of infrastructure of thousands of people, women and children included, And now, bombing places like Lebanon, I saw an apartment building.

They warned an apartment building and just blew it up in the middle of Beirut, and it's just like, what could possibly be the justification for that? It's so crazy. So, Ted Cruz is just fully in support of that. The other thing that I wanted to bring up, too, that's just not helpful, Mark Levin. I know Joe Kent's going to go in there, but we get the long, true social thing about... Mark Levin, a truly great American patriot, is somewhat under siege by other people with far less intellect, capability, and love for our country.

Mark is tough, strong, brilliant, hence the nickname, The Great One, conceived by our MAGA friend, the wonderful Sean Hannity. I mean, all these people are very much in the same camp. And it is just this long thing about how much to defend him. But if you go to his show, talking about other Americans that do not support the war.

Donald Trump is operating in the tradition of our greatest. Peace time slash wartime presidents. Despite the outrageous media coverage in this country, despite the constant efforts under Operation Sabotage by a Democrat party that is hell-bent on losing this war, that is hell-bent on undermining the commander-in-chief, that is hell-bent on undermining our armed forces, and yes, is giving aid and comfort, propaganda. To the enemy, as are individuals who I call the woke, ripe neo-fascists, who are stirring the anti-Semitism pot, who are stirring the trash Christian pot.

They are no different than the same voices we heard in the 1930s, and just as disgusting, evil, and reprehensible. All this talk about this war wasn't imminent. Why did we decide now? All this talk about what is the mission, all of this is used to try and obstruct, undermine, dispirit, and divide this nation. Now. The time when Donald Trump is doing what great presidents do. Shame on you, Democrats, for what you are doing to this country.

You will be remembered forever. You will remember as the isolationists of the 1930s. Shame on you, woke right neo-fascists. You will be remembered as the unpatriotic, anti-American Jew haters that you are. I ask you, what do you think Jefferson and Madison would do in these circumstances today? What do you think Franklin Roosevelt would do in these circumstances today? Or Abraham Lincoln, or George Washington, or even Ronald Reagan when they didn't have nuclear weapons in Iran? What do you think they would do?

Can I just parse out? There's a lot going on there. There's a lot going on there. To drop in the last segment. This is what Tom does. Yes, this is what I do in this section. I'm skeptical of this war. I am an American with my First Amendment right. Therefore, the logic follows. I am a woke, reich, neo-fascist Jew hater because I don't fully support this effort. The combo of Mark Levin and Ted Cruz.

Not helpful. This is not going to make people more favorable to Israel. It's not going to make more people more favorable of the war action going on right now by President Trump. If anything, you're just attacking people for no reason that could be convinced by giving better arguments.

If the pro-Israel crowd wants to come and make good faith arguments on behalf of the relationship between my sovereign nation, America, and Israel. You need to deepen the reasons. Calling people critics, calling people that are rightfully skeptical and critical, Jew haters, is the exact thing that you do not want other people to do. By conflating Israel and Jews, you're causing this problem. And it's crazy because I'm like, I'm seeing this. It is unsurprising to me that anti-Semitism, real anti-Semitism, people that hate Jews based on their blood, is probably going to increase because of this type of treatment.

It's just so beyond any type of rational argument, and it's smearing fellow Americans, too, on behalf of- It's completely irresponsible as a public figure who has millions of viewers to- Look, some people get stuff wrong. Some people mischaracterize situations. Maybe you didn't have all the information, but this kind of rhetoric, like you said, Tom, it's just going to drive people more and more into there.

Tribes and conflating, like, are there people who have, like, bad intentions and bad motivations towards America in this situation? Yeah, but conflating that with anyone who has questions is, like, exactly what you're accusing them of being. This is where I get to be really kind of boring, I guess, in my critique, because it's like, there's accusations of funding. You know, like, somehow you're being supported financially. You know, you have, like, I think we shouldn't, you know, it's fair to bring it up if you've got some sort of evidence, but, like, there are people that are against the war, probably for financial reasons.

There are people who are against the war because they really hate this idea of a war and think it's bad. Like, there are people who are in favor of this war because they are probably true blue believers. There are people who believe in this war because maybe they care about Israel almost more, or as much as the United States of America. That is probably true. There are people who have dispensationalist reasons for it. There are others who just think Iran is a really bad sponsor of terrorism, and they think we should take them out.

There might be people in any one of those groups. There might be people who are not financially motivated and still believe it. And that's why I want to focus on the arguments. Is it a good argument? Should we do this? What's the end game? I think those are all fair questions, and we should be open to it. But yes, we can ask questions like, hey, wait a minute. Is there a reason that you support this? It seems like your priorities aren't necessarily what should be.

I think it was fair game to bring that up. Maybe it's just a general exhaustion. Well, he's just been like, All caps tweeting, like, take out Kamani. I mean, this has clearly been on his mind for a long time. But as you said, it distracts from arguments based on ideas and substance. So, that is why I liked the Rufo interview, because it actually forced people to go back to first principles. I thought that was super productive. Maybe I am just expressing a general exhaustion from the, quote, podcast wars or whatever.

Kind of all sides. If you go to how it is clipped up on YouTube, it is just like… Ben Shapiro, idiot, said this thing, and then it'll be like, Tucker Carlson, Qatar spook, said this thing, and it's just like, who cares? Drop the name-calling and just, yeah, what's the quote? It's like, Great minds discuss ideas. Ah, Eleanor Roosevelt, right? No, it was not her. Oh, is that a fake Eleanor Roosevelt quote? She stole it, and I do not want to bash a person when I am doing this quote, right?

Great minds discuss ideas. Average minds discuss events. Small minds discuss people, right? Not Eleanor. It was actually a Henry Thomas Buckle, I believe, who was like an obscure novelist. He just had one good line. But yeah, I think about that often in our... Well, we all have to do that, too, you know, not just on this podcast, which I think we're trying to do well, but also when we're engaging with other people, you know, whether it's social media or friends, neighbors or whatever, like, there are legitimate Concerns or questions.

People are entitled to look at the world differently than we are. I feel like we just have to understand. I just, in general, get really crazy when people just scream, oh, you're in favor of terrorism? Why would you? No, shut up. No. Well, you're expressing an American ideal, right? That we have the First Amendment, right? That you have the God-given right to speak your mind at any time, regardless of the view. If it's disgusting to some people, if it's not disgusting to other people.

I'd say two ideas-based critiques of what Mark Levin and some other people are doing. If you call Americans Nazis, you are inviting violence upon them. I don't think there's any question at this point. You need to find a way to critique people's ideas without blanket calling people woke right, neo-fascists, whatever you want to say, because how much time do we spend after Charlie Kirk's death about the left, calling him a Nazi, calling him a fascist, what that encourages upon them? And I'm just seeing all of the same mechanisms weaponized against people that should be in the same coalition.

You agree on 90% of things, 95% of things, and you're choosing this issue. To just blow all of your credibility and goodwill to a point where, why would I ever work with someone that calls me a Nazi? That is inviting violence, essentially, upon me by using that terminology. Don't be naive as to what that does, and it's the same thing with Ted Cruz. Ted Cruz, stop retweeting poorly written AI attacks on Catholics. There's plenty of places where Catholics and Protestants can work together in a coalition.

Why would you choose now to insult and attack Catholics when you... Oh, sorry, do you have an answer here? That's the question. No, I'm just saying, it's not like we're above or beyond any kind of critique, but don't give us this ham-fisted, sloppy crap, like Catholic Answers isn't wanting to establish a theocracy or something like that. Like, dude, what are you talking about? And he's a senator, too, so to just totally make In other words, you and I have been very good about I think we are being respectful about it, but we have pushed back at the sort of dispensationalist Protestant theology that sort of has, we think, a very bizarre view of the government of Israel, right?

And we are critiquing that. We think, hey, you evangelicals, you Protestants, you Baptists, whatever, a lot of you believe this. We think it is bizarre, and it has these bad effects. I am not trying to attack their relationship with Jesus Christ. I am trying to question their relationship with the government of Israel.

But I think that is a fair criticism, and they can come back and say, well, you know, I think there are problems with Catholic theology leading to this and that. That is fine, so long as it is not sloppy, and like, what are you talking about? Yeah, or come back with, like, focus on the question that you are challenging them on, instead of being like, well, I do not like Catholic ideas, blah, blah, blah. Just be like, okay, so give me the evidence for the question that I am actually challenging you on, and let us have a back and forth.

Yeah, like, why don't we talk about why Catholics should be Zionists? There you go. Give me a case. I want to hear the case. Stephen had a good interview with a guy who had a pretty novel and unique case on Catholic Zionism. It is like new Catholic Zionism. It is a break from church tradition, but he made it in good faith, and I think he was much more honest than many of the online commentators are, because, again, you go to motivations.

I do not know if people can pay or whatever, but I was like, if anyone had this kind of conversation that he had with Stephen, it would be a much more sensible. Topic of conversation. I think also as an American, I'm really, I thought that I voted for, Stephen Harriot did a good interview with Gavin Acosta on that. I, as an American, voted for no more identity politics, meaning, it was so funny, like we were talking yesterday, my wife and I, and she used some terminology that just like sent PTSD down my spine.

I think it was like fat phobic, something, you know what I mean? Like some crazy word that I haven't heard in three years, because it's kind of dead at this point. But seriously, it wasn't, was alive and well. Totally enforced by the White House, like the trans stuff, gender identity, respect my pronouns. You just don't hear it anymore. The American people as a whole, as a majority, popular vote, said, we're done with this. We don't want any more of it. We don't want protected classes of people that you can't criticize in good faith without the full weight of the law coming upon you.

Clearly, right now, and this happens during wartime, but it was happening even before this, the lead up to the war. Israel is a topic that you cannot talk about openly without being accused of anti-Semitism by, in my opinion, bad faith actors. And it's not going to further the debate. It's not going to win over younger people, who at this point, all polls suggest are completely done with the current state of Israel. There's no future for them in terms of public reception, unless this question gets addressed in a responsible, respectful, persuasive way.

And so, I just see this as kind of the We voted for no more identity politics, and we just get this new form of identity politics from the party that said they were done with the identity politics. And so, yeah, I don't know. I'm just kind of like ranting into the mic at this point, but it's so frustrating navigating all this with that lens attached, because it feels like we should be able to have better conversations, and it just seems like we're not.

Let's stay away from Mark Levin. I don't know what. It was like him and Ted Cruz lately. Oh, and Lindsey Graham, if I could say two. So, Lindsey Graham, his bloodlust is so obvious in his tone. It is hard to look at him and just be like, are you possessed by something? That is the only thing that I could possibly think of that would lead someone to say, yes, we are going to. I think he was saying that we bombed Nagasaki and Hiroshima.

We turned them into glass, and that is a good thing. We can do that to Iran right now. We should do that to Iran right now. That is an insane, why would you ever want that to befall anyone else? That's terrifying.

And of course, then that makes you into God and then justifies all kinds of war. There's actually a great Fulton Sheen clip on that. About dropping the bombs, and that, like, you get this bloodlust, and then you feel like you're God, and then you continue, you get too accustomed to war, and then you do it. So, just, I don't know. I just, I hope that some cooler heads will arise here. I'm curious what Joe Kent has to say, and I would love, like, please, I've just been praying so hard, like, Trump, just leave.

Like, you can just say victory now, some form of peace, and of course, that's on both sides, right? Like, Iran, I hope that they're able to come to some type of agreement. To prevent the mass bloodshed and starvation that will probably happen if their country goes into civil war, and that would be horrifying on a human level. Everywhere. The bombs falling in the Holy Land. The bombs falling in Israel. Like, everywhere. Just pray. I do believe more in the power of prayer now than I guess I ever did before.

And as Catholics, like, we're… You want to debate people based on the people that you're advocating for, not based on ad hominem attacks or out of hatred for an individual. And so, I've been trying to grapple with that myself and just take a pause, pray for them, pray for the country. And maybe I guess we can do that at the end of the show. Yeah, I think it's so important right now to kind of weigh how you're spending your time thinking about these things.

It's really dark things, right? And if you're spending less time... More time reading the news and glutting over all of the horrible things going on than you are bringing it to prayer and asking Our Lady, and not just like you have to spend three hours a day praying if you're spending three hours a day on the line, but that you're constantly asking Our Lady of Peace, Our Lady of Fatima, to be with you as you encounter these things and to bring about the kingdom of peace, that that might be the cause of Like some misery and anxieties that you're having over what's going on in the world.

For sure. We're all in it with you. We're all in it with you. Speaking to myself. I was like, half of this is literally just speaking to myself. It's called externalizing. Thank you, Erika. Thank you for the proper term on that. Maybe we need an anecdote to this situation. All right.

Oh, Josh didn't even catch that one. I love this show. You guys are the best. Okay, end in daily prayer. We have the Daily Prayer for America 250 by Raymond Leo Cardinal Burke. We'll end in prayer today. In the name of the Father, Son, Holy Spirit. Amen.

O sacred heart of Jesus, King of heaven and earth, I place today my nation, the United States of America, into your heart, pierced for love of us, on the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. I acknowledge that true liberty is your gift.

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, guide her leaders in truth, justice, and peace, so that she may safeguard all human life.

Respect the integrity of marriage and the family, and honor the practice of religion. Reign in my home and in my nation. Draw every heart into communion with you, that your truth, love, justice, mercy, and peace may triumph in America and throughout the world. Amen. St. Thomas More, St. Fidelis, Alejo de Lupe. Pray for us.

Yeah, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, amen. God bless, guys. Have a great day. Erika, you got the deep coming out tomorrow, right? Yeah, the deep comes out tomorrow. So, if you find yourself at Mass in a modernist, iconoclastic box, like an ugly church, then tomorrow's episode is for you. We talk about the reclamation of the churches, but also the churches and parishes that are choosing to come back from that and restore Catholic beauty to sacred architecture. It is going to be awesome.

Major zeal feels going on. With tomorrow's episode, so make sure you are subscribed. Simon and I work on the thumbnail for that, and we'll see if this materializes, but we were starting an Ugly Church starter pack, and it was like green carpet, felt banners. I saw that one. It's awesome. I really hope this comes to life. You guys, yeah, this is a great episode. Everyone's been in them. God bless, guys. I'll catch you guys on the next episode. Peace.