Hunter Biden Goes Nuclear on Dems, Answering Listener Questions on Gaza, and Gen Z has Regrets

And we're live. Welcome back to the LOOPcast. It's Tom, Erika, and Josh. The LOOPcast is, of course, brought to you by the Loop, every American Catholic's favorite morning newsletter. We have a great show prepared for you today. We're starting up top. I watched a three and a half hour interview with Hunter Biden from someone who was on Hunter Biden's side. Now, is Hunter Biden the Democrat antihero that we've always been waiting for, or a crazy old vinegar-filled man shooting missiles at?

Fellow Democrats, I don't know. I saw the whole thing. We're going to get into it at the clips. I bleeped it out myself. I spent the time. It's going to be fantastic. Next, we were covering the Gaza church that was attacked. We've received a lot of... Feedback. And if you've noticed, the loop has changed coverage to really cover a lot more thoroughly the Catholic response and then the situation in Israel-Gaza as it currently happens. And I think we owe people an explanation, and we did actually receive a lot of good questions, some really good faith questions about how we've been covering it, why we've been covering it the way that we have, why the Catholic Church has suddenly, seemingly taken an interest in what's going on, and we're going to address it.

So, I'm happy we got some listener feedback there. We also have good news. We have Twilight Zone. My cohort has spoken. You're going to hear what Gen Z has thought about President Donald Trump's first terms, and I have my thoughts on that, of course.

Josh, yawning in a corner. But it's going to be great, but before we get into that, first, we've got to talk about Charity Mobile. Now more than ever, it's more important to... Okay, Tom, hold on, hold on. I was attacked. You've got to start again.

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That is Charity Mobile.com. Promo code LOOPcast. Thank you, Charity Mulver, for sponsoring today's episode. What a deal. What a deal. Speaking of a deal, we got a three-and-a-half-hour-long interview from the YouTube show Channel 5 News. I've actually brought him up on the show, Andrew Callahan. Some are now calling him the Joe Rogan. Liberal Joe Rogan has been hiding in plain sight. I was shocked to see a full-length interview with Hunter Biden, who has been notably very quiet.

In the interview, he revealed he was just told to shut up. He was told not to say anything about it, told not to fight back. He's decided now is the time to come out swinging. He's been on a couple podcasts at this point, but it really was a, I mean, three and a half hours. I invested a lot of time into this full circle. So, started in the beginning with when he was growing up, ended all the way with his thoughts on the current Democratic Party.

So, I will say, let's start. With this clip, this is what happened at the infamous debate where everything turned. I know exactly what happened in that debate. He flew around the world, basically, the mileage that he could have flown around the world three times. He's 81 years old. He's tired as shit. Give him Ambien to be able to sleep. He gets up on the stage, and he looks like he's a deer in the headlights.

I really did spend a lot of time censoring, and that one got missed. We apologize. Well, considering that, like... 35% of the airtime of this interview was at the F-bomb. It's okay that you missed the S-word. Okay, first of all, before that debate, so many falsehoods here. Before that debate, Joe Biden had two weeks of prep time sitting in a studio in Pennsylvania, so he wasn't even traveling around the world leading up to the debate. And then the idea that, oh, he was high on Ambien, and that's why he was a deer in headlights.

Okay, if someone hands an 81-year-old guy an Ambien pill, like, Even 12 hours before going on the biggest debate of the whole campaign, I mean, they're kind of like setting him up, right? Well, the idea was that he was so fatigued, they gave it to him beforehand, because he couldn't sleep, so he could sleep coming up to it. But yeah, am I to understand, Erika, that you don't trust Hunter Biden's word?

A little bit. A little bit. I think that's where I'm at. I mean, just trashing the experience and the testimony. I'm a Ukrainian energy executive like that, Erika. I just... He did address that. I'm an extremist. What can I say? I'm a Christian nationalist extremist. I don't know. So, on the laptop, interesting. It was a longer section, so I'll just summarize. Basically, he did confirm it was his entire digital profile, and the start of the interview was interesting because we finally got an interview with Hunter from someone who was on his side, which didn't exist before that, so it was interesting.

Basically, he's very upfront with his drug use and problems. He didn't deflect, he didn't deny. He's like, yes. I was hooked on crack for a long period of time. I had an alcohol problem. It ran in my family. I own all of that. It was at low points in my life. I think it was specifically 2016 or 2019 was really bad.

It wasn't when Joe was in office. It was when Trump was in office, and when he was asked, you know, he said that my entire digital life, including pictures and everything, of when I was at my lowest is online, and then the interviewer was like, well, you know, that's terrible, and it was total tabloid fodder, and it was, but what most people were concerned about was, you know, business dealings, connections, was there real corruption? I've been dragged in front of Congress many times.

There hasn't been enough in there to indict me. He still holds to the fact that he was qualified for the board positions that he held because he was on the board of all these other different UN, USAID-type things. He was actually on the board of Catholic Charities in Washington, D.C. at one point. I know. His argument was that he went to Yale Law School, he's held a ton of board positions, and he was an expert in corporate governance, I believe was exactly what he said.

Now, do I believe that in regards to his energy position in China and Burisma? No. But, I don't know, Josh, you're on the other side of that? I guess I just, you know, when it comes to him, like, oh, no, no, I had legit reasons. I had been on all these other boards. It's not just because of my dad. Well, then how come your artwork sold for a ton of money while your dad was president, and then as soon as he's out of office, no one's buying your art anymore?

It's because we all understand it was buying influence. We were buying art from you, and then they could turn to the dad and say, I just bought Hunter's crap art for $70,000. You know, it's all influence peddling. I mean, come on, like, this is obvious. Like, you were put on all these boards because the hope was that you would have access. Once the access is over, you don't matter anymore. I'm sorry. It's like, what? Yeah, and there's something really just unseemly about a 54-year-old, is he 54, 55-year-old man going on this, like, talking tour and spending three and a half hours, you know.

All of it. Touching on every controversy that he went through in the last 15 years, and explaining himself as like, poor me, my whole life was online. Poor me, I was dragged before Congress. And you're like, no, you don't get to have it both ways, where you get to cash in, and like you said, Josh, influence pedal based on your family's last name, make millions and millions of dollars because you're a Biden. And then be like, oh, and all these. People want to expose me to the world and the tabloids, and you don't get to have it both ways.

But, I mean, the interviewers and Hunter both were so soft-pedaling and all. Like, yeah, the laptop. I had my whole digital profile. All the embarrassing photos of my life and websites I saw and all that kind of stuff. As if the media had just decided to descend on one of us, and our computer habits. Like, oh, gee, did you go to confession for this? You know, browser history. Like, dude, no, that's not what this is about. I mean, yeah, there's some embarrassing photos of you.

Crack pipe or something, but the real crime here is that you're influence peddling, that you have these business dealings that make no sense in and of themselves. If you had the name Hunter Smith, you wouldn't have any of this. It's because Biden is your last name, because the president was your dad, is because you're getting all these business dealings. That's the scandal, not your browser history, not stupid photos of you and a prostitute and a crack pipe. I mean, not that no one cares about that.

Ooh, it's kind of sizzly and tabloidy. But that's not the crime. Yeah, because there's plenty of presidential family members throughout American history that had kids that were kind of messed up. Yeah. This isn't a new phenomenon. By the way, funny you say that, because George W. Bush, when he was a drunk in the 70s, and he gave up alcohol because he couldn't handle it, which, that's fine, I get that.

But sometime in the 80s or whatever, late 80s, he said to Karl Rove, could you just do a study on all the different descendants of presidents and what they amounted to? And it is just, with the exception of John Quincy Adams, it is like a trail of misery. A trail of misery. And he looks at this report and is like, oh my goodness. And so he is like, I got to have something to do with my life. I got to do something.

And so he uses some business connections and dad and all that stuff to get him to be the... manage the president of the texas rangers baseball team and he does something with himself you know and then he gets elected governor and then he becomes president you know he actually decided to actually do something with his life instead of just coasting off his dad so if hunter would have done something productive like that we all would have been better he would have been better well the the funny thing too is well i went to yale law school i was successful i started a law firm i was a successful consultant I was like, no connection to your uber-powerful politician dad, right?

Like, you never had any overlap there with clients, and of course, that's the truth. Well, I mean, yeah, Bush got to Harvard and Yale probably because of his dad. I mean, I get that. Right, so here's— It's one thing to use that influence on. What are you going to do with it? Yeah, so here's a clip that I think was illuminating everyone pointed to. I spent like 10 minutes censoring this. Kim and everybody around him are not to be nice. Number one, I agree with Quentin Tarantino.

George Clooney is not a f***ing actor. He is a f***ing, like, I don't know what he is. He's a brand. And by the way, and God bless him. That's actually true. He supposedly treats his friends really well. You know what I mean? Buys them things. And he's got a really great place in Lake Como, and he's great friends with Barack Obama. F*** you. What do you have to do with f***ing anything? Why do I have to f***ing listen to you? What right do you have to step on a man who's given 52 years of his f***ing life?

to the surface of this country and decide that you, George Clooney, are going to take out basically a full-page ad in the New York Times to me and James Carville, who hasn't run a race in 40 years, and David Axelrod, who had one success in his political life, and that was Barack Obama, and that was because of Barack Obama, not because of David Axelrod. And David Axelrod and all of these guys, and the Pod Save America guys, and the junior f***ing speechwriters on Barack Obama's...

Senate staff who have been dining out on the relationship with him for years, making millions of dollars. The Anita Dunns of the world, who's made $40, $50 million of the Democratic Party. They're all going to insert their judgment over a man who has figured out, unlike anybody else, how to get elected to the United States Senate over seven times. How to pass more legislation than any president in history. Oh my gosh, no. How to have a better midterm election than anybody in history, and how to garner more votes than any president that has ever won.

What is he talking about? Not to mention. Who's Jake Tapper's audience? Jake Tapper. My mom or something? I don't know. Well, I don't know. For real, though. I don't even think it's your mom anymore. No, no, no. Because by the numbers, what influence does Jake Tapper have over anything? He has the smallest audience on cable news. And beyond that, I think that the book is right now on Amazon that he put out. I mean, his ratings just went to sh** after he put the book out.

You know, they did a two-week infomercial for it. I mean, it was such a money grab, such a disservice. He's right about that, by the way. Yeah, and he didn't even write the book, really. I mean, he just, you know, went for a few edits on, it was really Jake Thompson's book. Okay, here are a couple of my thoughts on this, which is hilarious. I'm pretty sure he mentioned how, like, Trump... He is responsible for why everyone is so nasty and vindictive now, or that's kind of infected the political mind after dropping.

I spent like 10 minutes censoring this rant of like nasty, vindictive things about the rest of the Democrats, which I'm just saying, hilarious. He's correct about a lot of these people. By the way, he is. And so, that's why I almost kind of liked this interview in a way, because someone's airing out the fact that people have been riding the gravy train. I mean, do you really think Kamala Harris's $1 billion that she spent on the election didn't go to some of these friends and didn't hang out, you know, with the Anita Dunns of the world?

But what was ironic, and you guys were bringing it up before, and then I'm making this point after this segment, is he, in this interview, seemed unable. He loves his dad. I think that's admirable in some ways, but he was unable to separate that from the fact that he was a part of this kind of protected Democrat elite class in which he cashed in his entire life of wealth, influence, everything, until Biden was no longer useful to the party, and then they dropped him like a hot rock, and he's like, oh, look at all these other grifters.

You know, they haven't done anything. They wrote our coattails or whatever. It's like, without being able to acknowledge, like, hey, man. I did that, too. Right. You directly benefited from this until it was no longer possible. Kind of revealing, I think, this, I think there's a political machine.

In regards to Democrats and Republicans, but certainly this is kind of blowing out this whole idea that Democrats are the party of democracy, yada, yada, yada. It's like, oh, they got their mechanics on the inside, too. No question. I mean, when you lose, the knives come out, and so he's going after James Carville, and he's going after David Axelrod. He had one victory. It was Obama, and it really wasn't even you. It was Obama. It was just delicious. I'm just eating my popcorn.

I don't even like popcorn. I'm eating the popcorn. Corinne, I'm loving this. This is great. And ragging on the Save America podcast. Yeah, the podcast. A bunch of losers. And he makes this point, like, what do you really have? What have you really done? You know, you had like a... It is like you won an award 15, 20 years ago. What have you done lately? All of this is kind of funny, and it is true, but at least they have something on the resume.

You are literally, I am the offspring of a president. That is literally all you have. It is not like you have faked anything else. But he was more defending his father's honor and legacy, which I do think you have to give Biden a lot of credit. I think he did pass a lot of this legislation, whether or not you disagree with it. It was very like man in the arena. Who are all these people grifting? Because as soon as they saw the opportunity, the knives came out.

Clooney's knives came out. Well, he was like Lyndon Johnson. Carville's knives. Yeah. So, Lyndon Johnson was in the Senate for a long time, and then when he got selected president, he knew all the levers to push, and Johnson got tons of legislation passed. A lot of it horrible, some of it good, some of it okay. Biden got a lot of legislation passed, most of it contemptible. But the real thing, you know. The real eye-opener on this whole interview for me was that he just conceded.

It was Nancy Pelosi that pushed out Joe Biden. Now, Nancy Pelosi was not Speaker of the House. She was Speaker Emeritus or whatever, or Emerita, right? She's got that. Think about Nancy Pelosi again. I mean, we're going to be studying this woman for generations.

Of course, I can't stand her because she's this, you know, she's abortion grandma. She invokes her Catholic faith to support abortion at every turn, and she, you know, scolds you, but make no mistake, love her or hate her, and I mostly, obviously, do not like her. She is a woman with undeniable power. She's not even formally Speaker of the House anymore, and she gets Joe Biden removed from the ticket. Like, I mean, dude.

That was power. I don't think that's ever been done before. You'll never hear me speak about Nancy Pelosi in a way that doesn't at least acknowledge her. She's very powerful. There have been times when a political party will not re-nominate a candidate, but this was the first time it had happened in like 100 years, because it just doesn't happen in modern history anymore. You ride or die, and Lyndon Johnson made that decision. My dad, he goes, I still remember, he's watching TV when Lyndon Johnson made that speech, I will not seek or accept the nomination of my party.

And my dad just had his mouth, just couldn't believe it, because it was so shocking. That was 1968. So, again, you know, when a candidate decides he's in, then you just think, okay, well, he's in. You know, you've got the presidency, no one's going to be able to dislodge this guy, and Pelosi did it. I mean, into the summer. I mean, I just...

It is interesting, though, too, because according to Hunter, right, he also mentioned the Obamas in there. He was talking about how the Obamas were also involved, but it was Nancy Pelosi, it seems, from his account that was the primary power behind it. He also, though, talked about how Pelosi wanted an open convention. They were not. Oh, yeah, that was ridiculous. That was never going to happen. I mean, that would have been the smartest thing to do, but the Democratic Party can't do that, right?

No, no, no. But the other element to this that was interesting to me is, so for example, James Carville wrote actually an op-ed in the New York Times. The day this interview dropped, right? Yeah, basically the day this interview dropped, and I mean, everyone's mudsling at this point. Here's the top line. Constipated, leaderless, confused, a cracked out clown car divided.

These are the words I hear my fellow Democrats using to describe our party as of late. The truth is not wrong. The Democratic Party is in shambles. And I actually thought it was interesting. Listening to Hunter say, you know, what's the future of the Democratic Party, and did he give any, like, policy proposals, things he thought we should be doing differently? Here's his bid on immigration. I was like, ah. So, two things. He gave his bid on immigration. He said Kamala Harris and Tim Walz are the future of the Democratic Party.

He thought they were both great. Hunter said that? He didn't mention, like, Kamala. Hunter said that? Yes. He said they're both great. He said Kamala was loyal, which I guess you can't fault her for that. But yes, he thought they were both great, and then he posited this for immigration. Well, that is why he is saying it out of such loyalty, I guess. Well, for someone, it might be like all these Democrats say, you have to talk about and realize that people are really upset about illegal immigration.

F*** you. How do you think your hotel room gets cleaned? Oh, my gosh. How do you think you have food on your f***ing table? Who do you think washes your dishes? Who do you think does your f***ing garden? Who do you think is here by the f***ing chair?

Just grit and will that they figured out a way to get here because they thought that they could give themselves and their family a better chance, and he's somehow convinced all of us that these people are the f***ing criminals?

Okay, so by the way, I just want to make a note for the record. My wife used to clean hotels. I used to work as a dishwasher. These are jobs that Americans can and will do if you actually pay them good money to do it. Oh, Josh, wait, wait, wait. Hold up. For the record, because we've had people in our comment section saying that your daughter being able to find jobs in the summer because we've had a crackdown on illegal immigration is racist.

What would you say back to that? Oh, I care about the comments? No, I'm just, you know, I just saw it. No, I mean, the fact of the matter is, business, there are a lot of businessmen in this country who have gotten rich by undercutting wages, by allowing, you know, giving wages to illegals.

I don't know why we think it's a good thing in this country to exasperate sort of a Mexico system where the ultra-rich become richer and richer, and the middle class are getting cut off, and the working class are being cut off their ability to climb up the ladder. I don't know why that's a good thing.

So, sorry. And by the way, race. What does race have to do with it? The race obsession is hilarious to me. There are, of course, what is the thing, what is the number one thing, love Trump or not, what is his signature issue for the last 10 years?

Immigration. Fighting illegal immigration. Mm-hmm. Okay. What is the, what, what? What happened with the election of Donald Trump in this last November? We saw something amazing happen. He lost a lot of white liberal women, but he won tons more Blacks and Hispanics. Huh.

Kind of weird. Weird for a racist. Like, worst racist ever keeps winning more Blacks and Hispanics, more than any Republican president has ever done. Why? Because Blacks and Hispanics realize the importation of tons of cheap labor and the importation of cheap goods has had a bad effect on the middle class and the working class. And Donald Trump's like, hey, I don't care. These policies of importing cheap slave goods and importing cheap slave labor is good for Amazon. I do not care.

It is bad for the American people, and I am not going to go for it. Thank you, Trump. I am with you. I would say that is the only issue I would give him probably an A on this time around. No, there is another.

Yeah, I know. I know your thoughts. That is just me. So, moving on to the B block now. Okay, this is going to be, I'm trying to think about the best way to get this. I got a lot of information to get across here, and I want to give you both an opportunity to speak as well, but basically, after the only Catholic church in Gaza was struck by a tank, we've been covering the situation a lot more with our editorial team, and I'm happy to have Josh to speak on behalf.

If you guys have been tuning into The Loop, it's been heavily featured in the morning newsletter on this podcast, and this includes reaching out directly to the pastor of Holy Family Catholic Church, Father Gabriel Romanelli. Rosie, if you can throw some links in if people are curious. I've got to find a way to get all these to the description as well. But this includes reporting on public statements and the activity of the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, Cardinal Pier Battista Pizzaballa. I finally got that name right.

And what has caught the most attention is the statements of Pope Leo XIV himself, and we've been receiving a lot of feedback on this. And I think this one encapsulates a lot of what our audience is thinking right now, potentially maybe you would like us to address. So, I appreciate it. I think it's in good faith. I'd like to kind of offer a perspective here, me personally, and then you guys can join in as well. So, here's a comment. I have always liked you guys and your loop cast, but are you really saying that there's no possibility that this was an unfortunate mistake during war?

Don't think I can hang with your indignations about Israel on this. I don't side with whoever this bozo was saying that Christians in Gaza aren't real Christians, but what is going on over there is war, and I realize none of you have ever been soldiers, but very bad things happen in war zones. It doesn't mean it's right. It doesn't mean it's not terrible, but remember, war is terrible, no matter who thinks right is on their side. I don't mean to insult you guys, as that is not my intention, but it seems you're being almost as reactionary as a lot of the other voices out there.

So, I think this is a very reasonable question. I think a lot of people have been wondering, and on today's show, time permitting, I'd like to present the situation as we understand it, as I personally understand it, to maybe give some context as to my other comments regarding Israel, the war itself, Christians in Gaza, etc. Josh, do you have anything you want to say before I get into that? Well, I don't have a particularly strong opinion on the matter of whether or not it was a mistake or not.

The Christians on the ground there believe it was not a mistake. I don't have enough knowledge. I mean, I've said that before. I don't know. How am I really to, you know, if it was dropped from the air, it would be maybe easier to say it was, you know, a mistake, but like a tank from the ground, it's okay, but maybe it is. Whatever. I don't know. My biggest concern here, though, is that, like, there... There's so many people in the United States who are like almost robotically pro-Israel that they forget about like there's other peoples in this region and that they're kind of caught in the crossfire here.

And that's kind of what we're trying to get at here. And again, just because there's that there's a wickedness in this sort of fanatic Islamic extremism. And so that you can say, well, anything is justified to combat this evil. It is like, well, not anything is justified. I mean, certainly, certain things are obviously justified. Yeah, you can go to war with them and try to stop them from killing you. Yes, of course. Israel has a right to defend itself. I mean, I have never denied that.

That has always been the case. But I am just saying, hey, that does not mean that anything and everything is excusable, and it does not mean that we should be able to question. The Israeli government and some of their actions. Now, they say it was a mistake. I mean, I'll take them at their word. I don't have any evidence to refute them. But, you know, we've seen a lot of, you know, the talk, the concern, the talk online that concerns me now is the disparaging of the Holy Father I've seen.

I've seen a lot of this from voices, people born in Iran that worked for Trump, they're just spouting off stuff, and they're saying that blood libel from the Pope, because they're like, he only comes to Russia to defend the Christians of Gaza, but he says nothing about what happened in Iraq, or he has said nothing about what happened in Syria, or he said nothing about what happened in Africa. And it's like, oh, yeah, as one guy said, that would be a great talking point if it weren't full of You know what he said.

The fact is, you know, Pope Francis and Pope Leo have been very outspoken about attacks on Christians in Africa and in Iraq. In fact, Pope Francis visited, it was right in the middle of the ruins of this church that was bombed, like in Mosul or whatever. Like, all these lies. I just, I mean, it would take you two minutes to Google this stuff. Why are people spouting off such baloney? Like, stop it. And you would attack Pope Leo over this kind of stuff?

I mean, it's so stupid. So, again, getting back to the issue that this person brings up, I'm a little skeptical whether or not it was a mistake or not, but I'm going to take them at their word because I don't really have any way to disprove it. But I am frustrated by people who are reflexively pro-Israeli government on no matter what happens. I think we need to be a little bit more like, okay, let's hold them accountable, make sure that they're engaging in, you know, just war.

Like, we should demand that of everyone on every side. Especially people we fund. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. We have more responsibility to care about it, precisely because we're funding half their stuff. Yeah, and Erika, I want you to chime in as I go along here, but I provided a lot because I was just talking to Producer Rosie about this, and she just wants me to get granular details on a lot of this. So, here's the image of the church that was hit, Holy Family Parish in Gaza.

So, image of the roof, completely destroyed. It's a direct hit on a known civilian refuge, especially one housing vulnerable populations. ...and whose coordinates were shared with the IDF before the war started. So, this raises questions about targeting precision. With tanks, they're using electronic targeting, so it really, the explanation of, oh, it didn't hit what it was aiming for, is kind of hard for me to believe. I know there's fog of war stuff, but Father Romanelli from Holy Family Parish said he was sheltering 500 to 600 refugees, including children and many elderly, sick, and disabled people, and this strike killed...

Two elderly women, I think a third ended up dying later, and the church's gatekeeper injured many others, including himself. So, the IDF, an Israeli government position, is that Benjamin Netanyahu stated the strike was a, quote, mistake caused by stray ammunition or fragments from a shell during operational activity in the area.

The Holy Land Christian Ecumenical Foundation and others have expressed doubt about the accidental nature, citing a pattern of targeting civilian infrastructure in Gaza. It is also not the first time that religious sites have been destroyed by the IDF.

There was a convent of the Sisters of Mother Teresa, destroyed its generator and fuel supplies, rendering a building housing over 50 disabled people, uninhabitable. There was the Church of St. Porphyrius, a Greek Orthodox church, Porphyrius, destroyed as well, killed 18 Palestinian civilians, a three-month-old baby, and injured many others. Over 450 Christian and Muslim Palestinians were sheltering in the church at the time. The IDF claimed the strike targeted a nearby Hamas command post, asserting that the church itself was not the target, but the attack caused significant structural damage, including the collapse of an administrative building.

So, I think the issues that I am going to bring up next So, whether or not it's intentional, we probably are never going to know, and the IDF says it's investigating. I think it's reasonable to put up suspicion, especially from our church leaders, Pope Leo himself, and then the patriarch on the ground, talking to the people, understanding what's going on, and seeing kind of the repeated pattern of indiscriminate bombing going on in Gaza. I came with a lot of receipts, so this is kind of my, you know, What are reasonable, legitimate humanitarian criticisms about the state of Israel has conducted this war in Gaza?

So, on the topic of bombing. Buildings and infrastructure, 59% to 69% of Gaza's buildings have been damaged or destroyed. The damage cost estimated of $33 billion. The scale of bombing is 40,000 locations across Gaza, dropping 70,000 to 75,000 tons of explosives, exceeding Dresden, Hamburg, and London combined. Over 500 craters from 2,000-pound bombs were identified with a 365-meter lethal radius. And this includes a lot of civilian infrastructure. Almost every hospital in Gaza right now is, I think, only four, partially functional, and then also water and energy have been cut off, so functionally, they can't operate.

One-third of a 2,000-pound bomb dropped near hospitals, causing significant damage. 534 of 564 school buildings have been damaged and destroyed, including the Catholic school that operated there before. Many of these were used as shelters, but still targeted. And then water and sanitation systems have basically collapsed, with 50 million tons of hazardous debris causing asbestos, things like that. 1.9 million displaced currently, 90% of the population. Areas are uninhabitable right now. Debris clearance could take 21 years, rebuilding decades, costing $40 billion. It's described as one of history's most destructive campaigns, surpassing Aleppo, Maripol, and Mosul.

And I have a visual reference from the BBC with maps and images, a lot of people working off satellite. So, that, of course, with that level of carpet bombing going on in a lot of civilian places and cutting off energy and water and everything like that has caused a lot of civilian casualties.

Again, I tried my best to find independent sources here, so I'm working with the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor, Oxfam International, Cost of War Project, Nature, and The Lancet. Another issue I'm going to get to as well is that they've cut out access to journalists to be on the ground. And the journalists there have been killed at a higher rate than anything we've seen since 1992, so it's hard to get good information.

But some estimates, 64,000 with 80,000 by January 2025 have died due to traumatic injuries alone. Many of these civilian estimates are up to half women and children, because mostly there are women and children there, compared to, say, Israeli deaths at about 1,983 total, including 815 to 1,200 civilians. So, a great disparity there in death. All of them unfortunate, right? Like, this war is terrible. I'll be the first to say October 7th terrible, and I really would like some explanation for how a security lapse happened that poorly, which I still don't think we've gotten at this point, but horrific and deserving of a response.

The question is, is this response becoming of a developed nation that we support at this level? Of course, all of this has led to mass starvation. So, I have from Israeli news. Hospitals in Gaza Strip reported on Tuesday that 15 people had died as a result of hunger and malnutrition in the past 24 hours, including four children. This brings the total number of people who have died from hunger and malnutrition in the Gaza Strip since the start of the war to 101, of which 80 are children.

Hundreds of patients are arriving with severe hunger systems, symptoms, including children, infants, and critical condition. This is because all aid has been cut off to Gaza outside of the GHS, which I'm going to get to. Basically, at this point, starving the entire population. So, we're reaching the point, because you don't starve immediately, it takes a while. So, we're reaching the point where we're seeing a crisis. The French news agency, AFP, issued a statement that its journalists in Gaza are at risk of starvation, and so they have pulled out.

They're warning they're no longer able to report on what's happening there. And then the CPJ, yep, go ahead. By the way, on this note, CatholicVote has actually supplied 20,000 hot meals to Christians in Gaza. True story. So, we are not just talking about this issue, we actually care a lot about, Pope Leo asked for people to come to the aid of these Christians in Gaza, and we delivered. Yeah, which I think is great, because there are plenty of people that are suffering right now, Christian or otherwise.

And I'll be the first to condemn Hamas, but there's a lot of people there that didn't vote for them, don't want them in power, but have been there for thousands of years with their families who are dealing with this. Back to the journalism problem, the CPJ has showed at least 186 journalists and media workers were among those killed in Gaza, the West Bank, Israel, and Lebanon since the wars began, making it the deadliest period for journalists since the CPJ began gathering data in 1992.

Israel has effectively banned foreign journalists from entering Gaza independently. Since the onset of the conflict in October 2023, the Israeli military has restricted access to Gaza, allowing foreign reporters only in tightly controlled military-supervised embeds. So, it is a really hard idea to get an idea of what is going on in there because journalism has been so targeted.

So, can't they just leave is the question that I think comes up. It's like, these people, they're getting bombed out. Can't they just leave? Can't they go somewhere? So, unfortunately, the answer is no. They can't go anywhere. Physically, Gaza's borders are completely sealed, and Israel controls Erez and Karim Shalom, and Egypt controls Rafah. Egypt is not letting people in. There's financial barriers. There's high fees at Rafah, often described as bribes, leaving unaffordable for most. For example, one family paid $20,000 to exit.

No one in there has that kind of money. There is also fear of permanent displacement. Many Gazans fear leaving due to the Nakba, where 700,000 Palestinians were displaced in 1948 and denied return. And statements from Israeli officials like Avi Dichter and plans for Jewish resettlement fuel concerns that leaving means permanent exile. Again, these are people that are blood related to Jesus, have been there for thousands of years, that would not be able to return to their home. No one wants to host them, and so Israel is basically trying to offload these people they've met in America.

They've tried to go to Egypt and Jordan, but they don't want to accept these people. Other Arab states and Western countries also have been reluctant to offer asylum because they might not be able to return. And then Hamas, of course, adding to all of this, making it terrible too, is not letting people leave. They're restricting exits, particularly for critics or medical professionals to maintain control. So, it's just, it's a terrible situation. One thing that I wanted to address too is this aid crisis.

Josh talked about us being able to get some aid in with Pizza Ball, which is amazing, but part of the problem is since March 2025, Israel has restricted all aid entering Gaza, reducing UN aid sites from over 400 aid sites to none. And the placement of these aid sites, they're basically like football fields with barbed wire around them. It's done by the GHF, and so the GHF is an Israeli and American combined effort. They have four of these. Three of them are in active evacuation sites, so bombs are falling in these areas, so not safe for people to go to.

One of them is at the real south area of Gaza, kind of fueling the speculation that they're really actively trying to displace people from their homes. You have to travel many kilometers to get to them. When you do get to them, the aid that you do receive is not suitable to become ingestible food. A lot of times, they require clean water, energy to cook, and they're not able to do so, so that kind of fuels this problem as well. Many people made this trip and weren't able to actually get aid because people are so desperate and hungry.

Water scares. Water scares. There's rioting at these aid sites. There are some people that shot bullets that were causing the tanks of water to leak. I mean, everything is just bad right now. And a lot of these aid sites they are being shot at. I think there are reports of over 1,000 people have been killed at these aid sites by IDF bullets. Well, not only the IDF, but just to add to that, there are issues with the IDF.

...popping off at these sites, and so women and children die. But also, on the Hamas end of things, if Hamas has tried to take over the aid site to get the supplies for their own fighters, and they find that they're blocked by the IDF or other third party, they will actually start just shooting indiscriminately as well. So, they have accounts of, from both sides, aid to the innocents in the war is being... And I think that was part of the criticism against the UN system of aid before, where there was 400 sites, was that they were aiding Hamas, which I think in some cases is possible that they were taking it over.

So, they moved to the GHF model, but the UN and aid groups accused the GHF of weaponizing aid, violating humanitarian principles, and potentially aiding Israel's plan to depopulate northern Gaza. The UN's Tom Fletcher called it a cynical sideshow, making starvation a bargaining chip. And then the GHF leadership, Jake Wood, He was a U.S. military veteran leading GHF, resigned, citing inability to uphold humanitarian principles. So, terrible situation over there as well. West Bank violence. There has been the burning of St. George Church over there by Israeli settlers.

I've seen this disputed. I have a great thread here I want Rosie to include of footage of Israeli settlers doing this, burning fields people are working in. And all of this kind of leads, I think, to this Benjamin Netanyahu situation. A very cozy relationship with Trump, clearly. He's visited, I think, three times at this point. He faces some pretty serious charges of bribery and fraud and breach of trust in three cases that would lead up to sentences of 10 years, and there's plenty of critics in Israel of him.

They accuse him of undermining democracy through judicial reforms, prolonging the gods of war for personal gain, causing political instability, and living extravagantly at the public expense. I don't know enough about the Bibi corruption charges, but I do know that there's a lot to get to. You know, Israel was really close to practically breaking out of the civil war and very divided polity right now. And every time things look like, you know, his government's about to fall apart, because, you know, they have a parliamentary system there.

It's different than where we have regular elections for president every four years. So, at any moment, the prime minister there could lose the coalition, it would fall apart, and you'd have to call new elections. Every time he gets close to that, he just engages another front in the war, and so, well, is that a coincidence? Maybe not, you know? I mean, again, that is what kind of drives a lot of this. It seems like he is using this war as a means to stay into power.

I hope that is not true, but there is a lot of corroborating evidence that suggests that might be the case. So, again, you wonder if a lot of these people in, you know, the Christians and Gaza or whatever are suffering because of, you know. It is not really the best interest of everyone at heart. Yeah, and there is a protest actually yesterday in Tel Aviv.

Not everyone supports this. In Israel, it is actually very contentious how they have been treating the Gaza question. And I have some footage from that protest. We are marching now in Tel Aviv. Holding bags of flour and the pictures of these children that have been starved to death by our government and our army. We demand to stop the starvation in Gaza. We demand to stop the annihilation of Gaza. We demand to stop the daily killing of children and innocent people in Gaza.

This cannot go on. We are Israelis, and this does not serve us. This only serves the people that lead us, lead us to our demise. All the Gazans will be annihilated. We will be annihilated. We cannot agree with salvation. We cannot agree with death and killing. We must do something. So, we call from here to people to just refuse. Refuse to enter Gaza. Refuse to serve this death and annihilation. This is the only possible answer right now. I don't know how much of what this guy is even saying is true, too, but the only reason we put that video up there, again, we're not necessarily agreeing with everything that that person said.

But we're trying to show that even in their own government, the Israeli government, there's a lot of dissent and a lot of, you know, it's not like it's a grand unifying thing, everything that's going on in Gaza. So, I just want to make sure people understand that we're not... Signing off on everything this guy is saying, per se. No, I can clearly speak for my position here. I'm just saying, people have been telling us on the podcast, like, you can't speak confidently because you're not a soldier, and war is confusing, and the sources aren't good enough.

I think that there's plenty of information available through the internet and through credible sources that what's going on currently in Gaza should at least give pause to full-throated support of everything that Israel is doing. And I'm saying this also as a warning to people who are older than me and don't understand how young people feel about this. Everyone under the age of 35 that I've spoken to feels that this is a genocide. Now, whether or not that's true or not, I don't know, but something about the information campaign that is being waged upon, say, Americans of the Western world is breaking at this point, and people don't believe it.

They don't believe that it's authentic. They don't think it's genuine. It's hard to see so much death. It's hard to see so much bombing. It's hard to see so much displacement. Of people, Christian or otherwise, and just say, well, you know, this is just war somehow, because so many just war theories are being proven wrong in this case. A lot of these are actually genuinely war crimes. Currently, Benjamin Netanyahu is wanted as a criminal by the International Criminal Court over actions of war.

I don't care for the ICC at all. Right, I'm just saying, I'm just saying, there's enough here to be like, okay, maybe we should take pause. Pope Leo is speaking this way. The patriarch on the ground is speaking this way, and now this issue has impacted Catholics personally, so people are now entering into this whole conversation two years after the fact, and being like, okay, let's go through some of the information here. I'm just saying. Not always going to be wrong, but I think that we should think of human dignity first.

The people in Gaza that have been there thousands of years, that are literally descendants, potentially from Jesus' lineage, are not going anywhere, and they shouldn't go anywhere. The answer isn't just to kick them to America or to Egypt or to greater Israel. Yeah, I mean, I guess the point is, when the person wrote in on that, it's like, you're not soldiers. Well, I'm not a soldier. My dad, my sister, my brother. They all served. So, I know I haven't experienced it firsthand, but I have enough pause to say, yeah, actually, that would make us want a ceasefire.

That would want us to make sure, let's not do what's going on in Gaza. Take a beat. I would hope that the United States government, because we have heavy influence with the Israeli government, would exert that power and say, hey, we give you so much defense. We give you so many weapons.

Could you take a beat here? Could you pause? Stop what you're doing, because it looks like a lot of this stuff is bad news. So, yeah, I just want to jump in here for a second, too, because an argument that I've seen quite a bit is that, well, Hamas is so bad that we're not talking about two parties where there's some kind of endgame that they can agree upon that would be acceptable to the other side, right? So, the example being, I listened to this crazy interview between Ross Douthat and Brett Stevens over at the New York Times, and Brett Stevens is like, Pro-Israel, and he even gets to the point of being like, yeah, Dresden bombing, totally justified.

Yeah, Hiroshima, absolutely. I mean, because he has to go there if he's going to defend the extent to which even he is saying Israel has gone in many of these cases. But what he ends up saying is, oh, well, the only possible solution here is a two-state solution with Palestinians and Israel living side by side in countries and getting along just like every other Peaceful border gets along in the world, and of course, the objection to that is, well, that's not what Hamas wants, because Israel, I mean, and I think it's telling that we just saw protest marches in Tel Aviv.

You know what happened in Palestine, in Gaza, when they had protest marches six weeks ago? Yeah, Hamas kidnapped all the leaders of those protest marches, tortured them to death, and put their decapitated bodies, hung them from telephone poles for people to see.

Two very different combatants here, right? We're not talking like Germany-France, which was horrible, but at least you had some kind of common, how do we get to an end point goal in mind, right? That being said, when I get emails saying things like, well, you just don't realize that this happens in war, and war is hell.

I think what Josh's point, like, I keep coming back to is, when you're confronting an enemy like Hamas, and you find yourself going to the extent of a Bret Stephens and saying things like, anything's justified, Dresden's justified, you've become so warped yourself that you've become, you've become your enemy, right? The monster you seek to destroy. Exactly. You've become the monster you seek to destroy. And... Yes, war is hell, but that doesn't mean that anything is therefore justified, or that we as Americans who are funding all of these weapons going over there don't have a moral responsibility to say, let's put the pause on.

I would love, can we just get some kind of, what's the state of Hamas right now? Like, if there were to be a ceasefire, could Israel, with our weapons, with their technology, with their boots on the ground, with the... Millions of conscripted servicemen and women that they have, that they could hold Hamas to some kind of ceasefire until we have some kind of relief to the humanitarian crisis going on over there. But I don't see that kind of an assessment being put out to the public.

Have you seen it, Tom? Well, the last major, the agreement before... Both sides are disputing. It ended with Israel bombing and killing, I think, about 200 people and breaking the ceasefire. So, people are saying, well, it's because they didn't release enough hostages, which was a term that was added later to the agreement. So, there's negotiations still going on. I think some of the other frustration as well is, well, if this is really about the hostages, Benjamin Netanyahu, Israeli government, then why aren't the efforts not redoubled down upon getting them out, finding a solution that would actually end the killing on both sides?

I know that's easier said than done. But it's, oh, no, now we need to do regime change in Iran. We need to now go hit Syria, which they've just hit Damascus. We need to do these hits in Lebanon all at the same time. So, it feels like kind of a moving goalpost, and I think from our America's perspective, this is not – so, like, we're talking about the morality of this because we're Catholics, and I care about human dignity. Whether or not you're Christian, Arab, Muslim, Jewish, it doesn't matter because I think a lot of this actually makes the lives of Jewish people all over the world much worse because of this very extreme action.

Indiscriminate bombing that we're seeing in Gaza right now. So, I don't think it's good for anyone, but if we're talking about an American national interest perspective, how is it in the American national interest to conduct warfare in this way, where you've cut off water and electricity, you've bombed all the hospitals, you're bombing churches, you're displacing all the people, and you want them to be refugees now in America somehow, as if that's a solution to this problem. It's not, and it's also not good to continually partake in regime change in the Middle East, as I've continually brought up, say, either Iran.

Or in Syria, look what happened in Syria. They got rid of Assad. Somehow, that is a big win, and now, all of a sudden, Muslims are beheading Christians in the region, as I said they would, as many said they would, and so now, the answer is, well, we got to keep bombing them. We got to keep attacking. We have the power to end this. The United States does, and I will say a big critique on the Trump administration from people who voted for him for no more wars, especially younger people who grew up with the pain after Iraq or people that went to Iraq, and we are now conducting more war after being told we are not going to do it.

We're not going to be doing this forever, whereas we're still in it. It seems like a no-brainer to move towards peaceful solutions. We have the power to do so. We could, and we're just not doing it right now, and that frustrates me personally. So, the coverage will continue.

I hope people are able to see, too, and then also Benjamin Netanyahu went on the Nelk Boys podcast, which is an insane sentence. I can't believe I'm saying out loud. They're like prank YouTubers, and everyone was kind of rightfully making fun of it because they came out to start the episode by saying, we're idiots. We don't know what's going on, and then you just let this guy come on and say like Western slogans that felt inauthentic, and he's clearly trying to get to this younger demographic.

I also saw reports of the foreign ministry of Israel trying to fund MAGA influencers to go to Israel as some type of like... Israel 365. I'm telling you, this is the same approach that the DNC took to try to buy votes for Kamala Harris, who was inorganic and it didn't make sense. I think lasting peace and not bombing Catholic churches, and then not accusing Pope Leo of somehow being in bed with Hamas, it's not going to win you. That was not the Israeli government, though.

No, no, but pastors in America have. I'm just saying American officials have. So, this is not a winning recipe if you're trying to. Not alienate what support you have left for how you're conducting yourselves in the Middle East right now.

So, I got it off my chest. This is the episode we'll be referring people back to. This is how I feel. This is the information that I would like to get out. So, if anything, maybe serve as a reminder, like, there's another side to this, and that it's worth considering, and that human dignity should be put before everything.

Not forgetting that your opponent has no concept of those shared values. We just got to, like, Yeah. Include that. Great, and people in the chat, did your children serve in Iraq? No, my children didn't. That doesn't mean I can't have an opinion about news that's going on right now, so I'm not going to stop talking about it. Sorry. I don't know what to say. Good news. Erika, what do you got? Okay, now for something completely different.

RFK Jr., I just want to do my weekly RFK Maha Moms Wins segment right now. So, we got great news, I guess, like Fruit Loops is also, I don't feed my kids Fruit Loops because gross, but they're not going to have dyes anymore. So, if any of you love Fruit Loops, great news, but this is more important. This is the real good news coming. Our email is the only loop you need in the morning. Yeah, the only loop you need in the morning is the loop.

If you're not subscribed, what are you doing? Get the loop. Go ahead. All right. But what I was really worried about were people coming in and snatching my livers. There was this old Monty Python sketch that, I don't know, this is like East Coast elite kids grow up watching Monty Python research, I don't know, reruns. And there was this sketch of the guys from the NHS going to a house, and they're like, let's see your liver organ donor card. And the guy's like, here it is.

And they're like, great, we're taking your liver. Okay, all this to say that there was this report that came out, and I've known this my whole life, do not be an organ donor on your driver's license, because it is known that there are abuses of the situation, the Organ Procurement Office, which is a federally funded federal level office, where they've actually harvested the organs of still living persons. And this big report came out from HHS this past week confirming...

The... Confirming horrifying statistics like 103 cases, 29, almost 30% of cases of organ donation show concerning features, including patients with neurological signs incompatible with organ donations, meaning neurological signs like they were still alive and semi-conscious. It was so bad and ugly. But here's the good news. We're actually going to do something about it. Yay!

So, HHS is putting in place, they're giving the ultimatum to the OPO, the Organ Procurement Office. They're giving them the ultimatum saying, you have to get your crap together and stop harvesting organs and demonstrate that you've stopped doing it, or we are going to decertify you. They are going to mandate, they are mandating strict corrective actions for the OPO and system level changes to safeguard potential organ donors nationally. The OPO must conduct a full root cause analysis of its failure to follow internal protocols, including noncompliance with the five-minute observation rule after the patient's death.

In other words, not checking to make sure that they're actually dead, only a little dead. He's just mostly dead, right? A little princess bride for you. And develop clear enforceable policies to define donor eligibility criteria. Additionally, it must adopt a formal procedure allowing any staff member to halt. A donation process if patient safety concerns arise. This is because of absolutely hair-raising stories of nurses being like, no, no, no, they're still alive, stop the process. And the doctor's like, nope, sorry, taking the liver, taking the kidney, we need it.

Brain, out it comes. So anyway, I'm just really excited. And also the title of this, this just smacks of there's a Catholic in here, drafting HHS memos, HHS. Find systematic disregard for sanctity of life. This is what I voted for. RFK, HHS for the win. That's true, though. That's why I don't have organ donors on my board. I can't be the only one that's been like, yeah, it's a little sketch. Yeah. It's unfortunate. I'm sure someone's going to email in that works for the organ donor situation.

Like, you guys should do it. I'm open to all opinions, but that's exactly why I didn't do it. Josh. Okay, so, I mean, Paramount, CBS announced that they were going to renew Stephen Colbert, late night talk show host, you know, and instead of saying, oh gosh, I guess that makes sense because that program is losing, you know, $40 million a year, all the commentators are like breathless about this, you know, like even my liberal friends in high school were like, I can't believe this.

What does it say about our republic? That you can't criticize the President of the United States. Oh, my gosh. And so, I put it, I'm like, well, before you start the clip, I'm like, oh, yeah, you know, because where else are we going to go for anti-Trump humor?

Colbert was the sole brave figure standing up for Trump. Yeah, it's all out. They're all gone. No one else will give me a break. Oh, right. So, the media has been mourning this like a funeral for the last several days.

And I have to give credit where credit is due. One of the anchors on the CBS, granted, it was CBS, so maybe he's being pro his company. But Tony, Doc, his last name has got a Greek name. I cannot say that. Anyway, a little reality check. When all the other liberals on the thing were like, this is so terrible. This is happening. I cannot believe this is happening. He offered a little bit of a respite from their morning. Let us hear what he has to say.

So, that's why people are reacting the way that they are. No, I understand the emotional points, but I don't have an MBA. But he's not right that the merger, the $8 billion, is based on reruns of a comedy show. No, people are buying the movies and the sitcoms and the sports. They're not based on reruns of us, either. So, I think he's wrong about that. He's saying that it contributed to it. He's saying it's all encompassing, the total package of it.

That already happened in the past. And he also acknowledged that these late-night shows are what he called like a blockbuster kiosk inside a tower record. So, the business is broken, and what no one seems to acknowledge is that the politics also changed. The business changed, and so did the politics, and it got way more one-sided than anything Johnny Carson was ever doing. I think we should reflect on those changes as well. It has been a big shift culturally in that regard also.

I hear you, but I think many people feel there is another way to do it. It is a very difficult position to be in, to disagree with something that a company is doing, but also still loving your job and loving what you do. Of course. I feel for Stephen Colbert.

I feel for the whole staff of both those shows, and whatever comes next for everybody. I do, too. I think people will miss those shows when they're gone. Yes, no doubt. And I don't believe that he's going anywhere when it comes to this industry. He's going to land somewhere for sure. That guy right there was great at catching footballs to my Vikings, but not a great commentator. Nate Burrows, I still love you, buddy. Shut up and play, buddy. Shut up and play.

Yeah, no, I mean, again. That was so devastating. It wasn't his line. He quoted it from someone else, but blockbuster kiosks inside of Tower Records. Dang, dude. That is nuclear war, man. That was pretty awesome. That is so true. I mean, like, it is possible that if late night...

All these guys like Seth Meyers, Stephen Colbert, Jimmy Fallon, Jimmy Kimmel, if they hadn't gone with a hard left political stuff, we all rip on that. Why can't you be like Johnny Carson, rip on both sides? I've said this before, but maybe, honestly, it wouldn't have saved them, because maybe it's just a dying industry anyway. Who cares? The fact of the matter is, we had a lot more celebrities that could actually draw eyeballs in the 70s, 80s, and 90s, and even into 2000s, but not Not lately.

Tom Cruise is like, how many movie stars do you have? Oh, my gosh. Do you know who the guest was supposed to be for his last show, and then it got canceled? What? For whose show? Stephen Colbert's? Yeah. I mean, he's still- Do you know? No, I don't. It's Adam Schiff.

Oh, my gosh. Well, the last one he had before the announcement. Before the announcement was Adam. Yeah, I think it was Adam Schiff. Yeah. Yeah, he had Stacey. I'm like bringing a California speaker on. It really jazzed up your audience. Yeah, but I do think... The other thing that, well, first off, the show cost $100 million, I think, to make, which is insane. Yeah, and it ran out of time. Okay, but if it's making a profit, like, but okay, and that's what I'm getting to here.

Before we get to that real quick, because the CBS morning show, like, the morning shows make tons of money. The late night shows used to make tons of money, too. They don't anymore. Yeah, but I think, like, you know, Johnny Carson and David Letterman, they used to be, like, curators of mass culture. So, you get there, and you're like, oh, they're going to tell you what's going on, and mass culture is dead. The only way forward, really, is you have niche, curated people that curate culture for you in your little bracket.

So, it's almost impossible to recapture the magic from Johnny Carson, even if you were good at it. There's no real curator mass culture show anymore to deliver to people waiting all at the same time. It happens all day, all the time, and these people more than deserved to lose that title anyway, because... They're not funny, and they became way too one-sided politically. I think Jon Stewart came on one time and was cracking jokes about... If chocolatey goodness escaped Hershey, Pennsylvania, we have no idea who did it.

Like, he was making jokes that everyone knew about COVID and it being released from Wuhan. At the time, super kind of like, well, you don't do that. Even Colbert really couldn't even lean into it because- He, like, ended the segment. ...dance that everyone makes fun of. Like, the only time I've heard Stephen Colbert talked about, or even have come across my radar, was the vaccine dance. That was insane. And him getting fired are the two- Yeah. Since then, I've literally not heard from him one time, and he's not in the coveted, you know, 18 to 40 demographic that advertisers are chasing anyway.

The only people watching were, you know, older generations. Well, it's really interesting. Yeah, so when he came on, when they brought him on the late show, the average viewer age was 60, and part of the thought was, oh, Stephen Colbert, like, he's the Colbert rapport, you know, Jon Stewart's sidekick, like, he's going to bring all the young people. You know what the average age right now of the late night show is? It's 68. He did the opposite. He did a lot of what he was brought on to do, and I think that Charles C.

Cook does a great analysis over at National Review on this, and I think Stephen Colbert, he's not an untalented man, right? He had something going for him. He was all right on the Colbert Report, but when he took on this role, he made a very conscious decision that he was going to lean into the message, that he was going to So, basically, like, instead of being the variety show, the showcasing America, you know, the sort of broad mass culture that you were referring to, he was going to Bring forward a very particular, very small political agenda, and as a result, whenever he had guests on, like he would have some actress on or something, there was nothing interesting to say, right?

Because if you went on his show to do an interview with Colbert, you knew exactly what you were allowed to say, and what you weren't allowed to say, and what he would be like, you know, mock you for. And so, as a result, like nothing interesting ever happened. Other than, like, you're looking really good, you're wearing a really short skirt, can you sing a song with Colbert and the band? And it just gets boring after a while, whereas, like, you know, an old...

That sounds interesting, but... Yeah, right. But again, like, for... Okay, I'm not going to insult you, Mercer. I'm going to be above that. I'm not going to become the monster I'm confronting. Hunter Biden, America. Let him have it.

But, like, that's, it was just boring and oafish, and he made it very clear that he hated America. He hated more than half the country, and it just was stupid. Interesting analysis on that, too, was they talked about Jon Stewart when he was a late-night host, and then he actually moved to do an Apple show. So, he left, I think, about 10 years ago, went to do an Apple show that honestly did very mediocre and was canceled after two seasons. And it was kind of supposed to be this continuation of the Jon Stewart kind of sharp humor, political commentary that he did before, and it didn't really do great on Apple, and now he's kind of back, and even since he's been back, it hasn't reached the peak where it was before.

So, I actually think, in a lot of ways, it's not actually the talent. It's... It's the medium. It's an impossible medium to survive in. It's kind of a both-and. It's a changing business model, and it's a fact that the artists in question made very distinct choices about what they were going to do, and it wasn't comedy anymore. I agree with someone in the comment, though. This may count as a milestone, maybe the beginning of the end of broadcasting TV. I'll amend the comment, but yeah, it really...

I mean, with the exception of live sports, what is there to have for broadcast TV? So far, the morning shows, like I said, CBS Morning Today show, they're still making a profit. They're still making sense, but you're seeing lots of other stuff crumble.

Yeah, it's moved all the internet. Okay, so I was supposed to do Good News and Twilight Zone. I guess I'll do a mix of both to hit. There was a YouGov poll that was just released. And this is from January 2025 to July 2025 on Trump approval rating. And I know Josh and I somewhat disagree on this. So, Trump is down 40 points approval with young people, down from roughly even the start of his term per YouGov. So, the question was, views of Donald Trump by age in his second term.

Do you have a favorable or unfavorable opinion of the following people? Donald Trump, percent with a very or somewhat favorable opinion minus the percent with a very, or somewhat unfavorable opinion. So 18. So for the video watchers, you can see this 18 to 29 year old goes from slightly positive down to under 40. Um, the rest have decreased somewhat. Um, But not nearly as extremely, and a lot of people are now kind of grasping for straws, like what went wrong? Why are people so negative on Trump?

And I actually went deeper into the YouGov poll about issues that were important to them, and he's getting destroyed on economy. He's getting destroyed on inflation. But I think this question specifically, that was like what's most important. So, I think what Josh says about it is partially true, but this is just about... Favorable or unfavorable, it's not about specific issues. And I will say, for my cohort, who wants to be able to afford a home, wants good job prospects, so economic for sure, but we're also extremely online.

And if you're extremely online, what has this presidency been defined by in terms of the message and the tone? As hard as the Trump team has tried, but I mean, I think the Epstein problem is... At this point, a defining issue of this first part. I see Doge tried and failed, huge blowup with Elon, which his thing about him being on the list is now, you know, who knows, but like, given a little bit more credence.

We have, I would give them points on immigration. I think I voted for that, and I got it, but I would say for most people, they're not as hardline on immigration as I am, so I'm probably not going to be in that camp. And the positive effects of it for the younger generation might take a little bit longer to materialize. That's another thing.

But if I, let me pull up. But also, another thing that he's done is shutting down these child, you know, gender chop shops, so that's good. Yes, but I will say, for most people my age looking, housing prices actually went up recently. You're glad he's doing it.

Inflation's still bad. It doesn't directly affect you. And then the Epstein thing is just so insane after running on this, having your whole cabinet being like, nope, it's actually a Democrat hoax, stop talking about it, and now it's like, oh, what are we going to get glained on? I totally think that the Trump-Vance administration should make a major initiative to try to help drive down the cost of houses, get rid of regulations. Create incentives for local and state governments to allow for, like, you know, homes to be built that are smaller, let's say, and just do whatever it can to try to drive down the cost of houses to get more young people into homes, you know, and provide that kind of security.

I think their one step that they announced last week. Where they said that they were going to allow rent history to be shown as a way to get a house? That was like one of those, how in the world did it take this long for this to occur? Like, if I can pay $2,000 in rent, I can afford a $1,400 mortgage, of course. Hello, I've never understood that.

Yeah, and I think... Yeah, and more measures like that, because that is something that can take effect much more quickly. I mean, turning around the housing crisis, that is probably not going to happen in two years, but something like that measure could affect someone's application this fall, right? Yeah, but even the minor steps you would make on this, that would be one. If you push through other regulatory relief on that, then the… The business world will start to see this, and like, oh, we can make money again, building houses that are more affordable, and we'll get more buyers, and the market will start responding.

So, again, any relief in that direction would help. It helps people on the margins, and eventually help more and more people. And especially the younger cohort who, yeah. Yeah, who is, I think, increasingly becoming pretty nonpartisan and fed up with kind of the old party apparatchiks of the Democrat Party, and then also the Republican Party. I think a lot of people thought that maybe we left that behind with this Trump firebrand of America first.

Well, and I will say he delivered on immigration. I'm harder on immigration than most people my age are. They're actually pretty comfortable with some level of amnesty the majority are. So, you know, we got in what we promised. Cuts to the government didn't happen. We gave the Pentagon, you know, a trillion dollar check. So, cuts didn't happen. Huge bill. The Epstein stuff is like so outrageous and unbelievable that there was 180 on that. Okay. Foreign involvement that no one voted for my age.

So, it's like. That is defining this first part. I understand this. That's why I'm saying the perception there. I'm just explaining the pull. Yeah, no, and here's the thing that people need to understand and take into effect. You know, each different generation, like, age cohort. Um, the younger you are, the more volatile those numbers will be, right? So, you know, again, people aged 18 to 30 are like, they were more pro-Trump, and then wham, as this poll is showing, they're very negative on them right now.

That doesn't necessarily mean they're going to vote for Democrats. You know, some of them are people that are upset over Epstein stuff. Some of them are upset that they're still, you know, taking a long time to try to be able to find a house. Again, that's why I would, I really feel like the Trump-Vance administration should make a rallying cry, housing affordability, because it is something that is a major problem and that we do need to work on. Yeah. They've taken one step, they need to do more.

All right, Twilight Zone Quick Hitters. Josh, what do you got? Well, you know, there's a thing called, what's the name, I used to be an editor of Slate, Michael Kinsley, I think. He made this point that, you know, in Washington, a gaffe is not when you make a mistake, it's when you accidentally tell the truth.

And this Democrat admits the truth. She wants the illegals in her district. Why? In New York, we have a diaspora that can absorb a significant number of these migrants, and when I hear colleagues talk about the doors of the inn being closed, no room in the inn, I am saying, I need more people in my district just for redistricting. purposes. So, here is the funny thing about this. One of the stupid things we do in this country, I think birthright citizenship is stupid, but another thing we do is for the census, we do not count just the citizens of this country.

We count everyone, including illegals that are in this country. Therefore, Democrats get more states with tons of illegal immigrants, like California, get like three, four, five extra seats in Congress because of this. States like New York, probably three extra seats. And this woman is saying, like, her district, because there's a ton of illegals in that district, I get that number, because each district in Congress has about 750,000 persons.

But they're not citizens. So, if she's got like 100,000 illegals in her district, then she can have a smaller district and doesn't have to expand to include these nasty Republicans. She keeps it smaller, and she's got lots of illegals. It's not about them actually voting. It's that they've lived there, and they count towards her district, which makes it stay super, super blue, super Democrat.

So, hey, thanks for telling the truth. This is horrible. And the Trump administration, in its first term, tried to amend this through the Commerce Department when we were doing the census, saying, no, no, no, no, let's just count citizens, not just everyone who's here. And the people are like, oh, my gosh, don't you remember we have a 14th Amendment for this? We have to count all persons. The purpose of the 14th Amendment was making sure we were counting all people.

Not that we had, if they were not anticipating this idea, we'd have 40 million or 20 million people in the country illegally? Give me a break. Absolute garbage. Absolute garbage. Saying the truth out loud. All right, really fast. So, we had this fascinating study out of, Fortune was reporting on this this week. Gen Z, one in four Gen Zers has regrets about going to college. One in four say they wish they hadn't gone to college or would have picked a higher paying industry.

And 19% of them said this dissatisfaction in part was because their degree that they took doesn't or did not actually contribute to their current career or job. So, they feel like it was a waste of time. 38,000 average debt coming out of college, and another interesting stat here that kind of caught my attention are the parents coming around, too. So, the second survey by the American Student Assistance of more than 3,000 middle and high school students showed 70% of teens report their parents.

Are more supportive or foregoing a college education for a different pursuit like trade school or an apprenticeship? So, is this like a cultural shift, not only among the recent college graduates, but also among parents right now? I mean, no surprise there. They see what they're going to have to pay, and they're like, oh, yeah, maybe you should consider trade school. I can't pay $100,000 for you. Or it took me until I was 38 years old to pay. This isn't me personally, but it took me until I was 38 years old to pay off my debt, and I don't want my kid to saddle themselves with.

That, considering the outcome, and the fact that, oh, for Gen Z men. They have the same unemployment rate, whether they had college or no college. Yeah, this is nuts. Shocking stat. This is nuts. I saw that study, too, and it's like, so unfortunately, these numbers are just going to keep going up, and unfortunately, there's not going to be a quick solution because a lot of these colleges, if you want to look up how many colleges currently exist in America, it is unbelievable.

It's its own kind of like third rail industry. They're all just going to have to die really slow deaths. I don't think they have it in them to actually make adjustments. And so, it is just going to be, because actually, we have peaked with the amount of high school students that we have currently. It is all going to be downhill, so enrollment is going to go down.

And I also think, if you were to ask, say, the average person graduating now, almost all would say most of their classes were pretty much a total waste of time, because there is the... The impression given to them is that, oh, this is somehow, you know, going to be great job training, which it never is, and wasn't the original intention of university. Exactly. That's my next point. Go ahead. I was going to say, you can think about it or not. The point, the reason why, though, college was a waste was because we've set up college to be this really, really expensive, like, everyone has to meet this bar to even get an entry-level, an interview for an entry-level job.

Like, you have to have the college degree. And that somehow it's going to qualify you for a high-paying career, which just turns out not to be the case in so many situations and for so many kids, and that's what they're realizing. But it's not a waste because it didn't contribute to your career. It was a waste because it didn't, it was not forming you to be a free person, which was the point of education, the point of a university education, was originally.

To form a person for leisure. So, you work, you work so that you can have free human activity and be a fully formed human being. And when we walked away from that. Over the course of the last 120 years or so, that's when it became a waste, and now we're finally just catching up because the economic reality of the waste is really gobsmacking us in the face. So, we have to reorient the purpose of a college education. Because there's real impacts of this, too.

Like, I'm seeing Hannah in the chat saying student loans kept me from staying home with my kids for two years. Yeah. I know people that are... Prolonging getting married or having children because of the amount of debt that they've incurred through this, which those are real human problems, completely avoidable if we had a better system, that are the things that actually make people the happiest and most fulfilled by all means. That's the point of life. Right, that is the point of life.

That is against the point of life meaning. Right. We've lost the plot. We have two things, where college has become disproportionately much more expensive than it was 30 or 40 years ago, and houses are much more expensive than they were 30 or 40 years ago. Now, part of the housing thing is that people are just wanting larger and larger and larger and larger homes, so that's part of what's driving it. Well, the homes are also not available that are smaller. No, I know.

Again, yes. Again, I'm with you. I'm within the zone. That's what I said. But I'd encourage people to check out SkillsUSA. I was watching them. It's an organization dedicated to help people, teachers, parents, all this kind of stuff, understand all the different opportunities that are available in the skills trades. It was something that Mike Rowe endorsed it. Yeah, you know, so, and I just feel like, I mean, I went through high school, a public high school, and I don't feel like I got a great education, so going to Hillsdale provided me a really good liberal arts education, but my kids are like, Getting a fantastic education.

It is not as good as Hillsdale, but in high school, these Chesterton Academies are phenomenal. You are learning so much. I feel like you are almost better off at 18 than I was at 22, and you do not have to necessarily go for four years unless you have a plan, some sort of an idea of how you are going to be able to afford it. Because if you want to go and start a family, maybe this is not necessarily the default.

Just because there is the default for everyone. For decades, it doesn't mean we can't question it. Yeah, because what was the compact, or the agreement basically was, if you go to college, you're going to become a liberal thinking person, as in like the true meaning of liberal, that's not happening anymore. You're going to be able to make more money, that's increasingly not becoming the case anymore. And it's going to like measurably improve your life, which it hasn't in many cases, because people go to these like alcohol and sex infused, late adolescent.

They get their STD, and then they leave, and they're in debt, and can't actually have a family or do anything. So, yes, someone asked if it was a scam. Yeah, I think it's like a self-gratifying academic cartel that we currently have operating many of these colleges that are cashing off the government, which there's some things being done about that, but yeah, and the loan servicers and everything, it's not worth it in 95%. The system is taking care of itself, but it's not taking care of the people.

All right. It is not for the students. You got a little extra today, huh? Oh. Long show. Yeah, we did not even get to Obama. I went in the chat, I was like, what about Obama? I am like, I had a whole segment. We did not even get to him. I am not here on Friday, and I am trusting you guys to bring, to talk Obama. Oh, yeah. We are going to have a little boys' casks. That is right. It will be fun.

Just the thorns, no rose. I will be by the pool. Sweet. Making sure my toddler doesn't drown himself. Yeah, no, Todd's going to have a ball. Okay, great show, guys. If you want to help us out, check out Charity Mobile. Thank you for sponsoring the episode. If you want to email me, LOOPcast.CatholicVote.org. You can join the Champions Club. It's the best way to support us. Appreciate all of our champions listening today. Appreciate you, the audience, for hanging out. If you want to join, that's YouTube.

Subscribe there. Apple Podcasts, Spotify reviews, all that good stuff. Also, towards the end, I think her surgery is coming up, but... Trent Horn's wife, I believe, is having that brain surgery tomorrow. So, if you guys, we're going to end this episode in prayer, but if you guys could also just keep her especially in your prayers in the Horn family. It's really scary stuff, so pray for them. But yeah, we'll end with a daily prayer here. In the name of the Father, Son, Holy Spirit, Amen.

Father of truth, behold your Son, a sacrifice pleasing to you. Accept this offering of Him who died for me. Behold His bloodshed on Golgotha for my salvation. It pleads for me. For His sake, accept my offering. Many are my sins, but greater is your mercy. When placed on a scale, your mercy prevails over the weight of the mountains known only to you. Consider the sin and consider the atonement. The atonement is greater and exceeds the sin. Your beloved Son sustained the nails and the lance because of my sins.

So, in his sufferings, you are satisfied, and I live. Amen. Amen. My Father, Son, Holy Spirit, Amen. St. Thomas Morris, St. Fidelis, Our Lady of Guadalupe, pray for us, and we'll see you guys ready to rock on Friday. Erika, we got a deep dive coming on Thursday, so stay tuned for that. Yeah. Peace.