Marty Makary OUT at HHS: MAHA Dead? Trump & Co Off To China, And Messy Massie Primary

And we're live. Welcome back to the LOOPcast. It's Tom, Erika, and Josh. We have a great show prepared for you today. It's funny, I see we got Tom Kidd in the chat, who I know is a big Massey fan, so he probably tuned in a little bit extra to hear I got that at the beginning of the show. Don't worry, we have a messy primary there. But today, we will be covering Marty McCurry is out at HHS. Split decisions on whether he was, I don't know, the Pam Bondi holding up progress, or he was the one that was actually trying to make progress.

We have some good insight from Tom McCluskey. Erika went and took a look at that. Josh has actually met. Marty McCurry personally, so we have some interesting context to add there. In B Block, we had a lot of information about the economy drop. We had the labor report come out a couple days ago, I think on the 13th, and then as of recent, we got a CPI report on inflation.

So, I promise it's not boring. There's a lot of really interesting under the surface, maybe warning signs in there for the future. We'll put it that way. And then the boys are off to China. Is this the end of the China hawks? I don't know, but I have seen some of the funniest memes possible.

Um, about smoking cigarettes in a wet market with Trump and Xi and... Are we eating that in a wet market? So, that is where we are, but good news, Twilight Zone, always. And then, I will just say, before we get up top, because it was dominating the chat last episode, and I have gotten emails, I promise that I am seeing them, but we switched to a new service, so I am having a tough time responding. So, we shifted the show to one time a week.

I know that that disappointed many of you. We did this prudentially. It was not a rash decision. We took a lot of things into account. We have a lot of different roles here at CatholicVote, and we have a very lean team. So, in order for us to be effective in what we're being asked to do, we were asked to go down to one time a week. We were all on board with that. We're all being team players here. And so, it's not like we're doing it to spite you or because we want to do a worse job.

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We don't always agree. We have varying opinions on how to get there. Some maybe are coming to the surface as of lately, but I promise they're not. From an authentic and sincere place, and I, you know, just want to get that across to everyone so that we don't have more time in the chat about that. Josh, I see you got something. Well, yeah, I mean, so obviously you've got Tom Across America, and Erika's got The Deep, and so now they got me busy working on a new thing where we take the morning LOOPcast, we take just a real quick video hit in the morning, let people know what's going on, so those people don't, you know.

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Erika, what is the story there? Yeah, so this was a shake-up, and news started to trickle in over the weekend that maybe Trump had approved the firing or the forced resignation of Marty Makary. So, the rumors were going wild, and then, in fact, yesterday, we got the news that Marty Makary resigned via text to Donald Trump, which is kind of weird, but that's okay. And there was a growing internal conflict going on at FDA over public health policy.

Pharmaceutical oversight and agency transparency is the official word. Macari had become kind of a more of a controversial figure even than when he was confirmed a year ago. So, people who were fans saw him as a reformer who is an outsider coming in to push accountability inside the powerful FDA HHS bureaucracy. And then critics were saying like he helped undermine.

They're also critics of RFK in general, undermining federal health institutions. So, one of the major flashpoints... As if they couldn't do that themselves. As if they hadn't done that enough themselves for the outsiders to come in and do it.

So, a lot of the scrutiny was over the vaccine communication, drug approvals. He helped to slash a bunch of red tape in the last year in terms of the speed at which drugs can be... But also questions about his ties to the pharmaceutical and cannabis industries in particular, and the approvals there. So, behind the scenes, we had a major flashpoint involving apparently flavored vaping, fruit-flavored e-cigarettes and vaping products. And apparently, the story is that Macari was slow-rolling the approval of these things.

This is, of course, after we got approval of, like, Ozempic, the GP1s, we got approval of the cannabis. Oh, yeah, psychedelics. I mean, psychedelics, and then for some reason... Wait, one notable absence there. ...breakdown with the vaping? I don't know. What was the notable absence there of fast-tracking dangerous chemical that would...

Yeah. Mifepristone still? Yeah, well, so, yeah, this was another, this is another aspect that's being really emphasized in conservative media this morning, is saying that the pro-life movement also was putting the screws on Macari because, and we have expressed this on the show, being unhappy with the failure to really push on the mifepristone, misoprostol, the chemical abortion regimen.

The review, right. Yeah, the review for that. And I talked to Tom McCluskey about this, and yeah, so again, like I said, if you watch Daily Wire, if you watch Morning Wire this morning, the story you got was, this is the result of pro-life activists putting the pressure on because they were unhappy with Macari. This was McCluskey's exact quote. I wish the pro-life movement had that kind of clout with this administration. So, he's like, I think it's kind of wishful thinking.

He said, pro-lifers celebrating his firing, including like Lila Rose is out there. I mean, They're celebrating this firing. He's like, it's like being excited because they fired the violinist on the Titanic because it crashed into the iceberg. Tom sure does have a way with words. I really enjoy my conversations with him prepping for this show. Thank you. Well, what it amounted to is that, you know, pro-lifers, you know, attacked Marty McCary as rumors were swirling that he was in the hot seat.

So then when he gets fired, they're like, see? He wasn't doing what we want. Well, it was actually about e-cigarettes. Vague. According to all available reports. It's not really a dumb strategy to write a wave. And part of it, too, that Tom was talking about. I don't mean that in any offense to Lila or, you know, Sue Manthelis. I mean, I get it. You know, like, attack the guy, you know, and then you can say when he got booted, well, see, he wasn't listening to us.

We want the next guy to be better on our issues. That's good. That's good. You should do that. You should try. The posture like that. We would love the next guy to be better. Unfortunately, the new acting commissioner is a lawyer who has, in the past, represented Planned Parenthood. Now, there's some question that he recused himself, but Kyle Diamantis is hardly a pro-life hero for us to be like, yay, now we have a good guy in there. So, things could get a lot worse, and McCluskey was saying that Rachel Bovard, who's been on the program, friend of the show, she was Marty's Sherpa, as he was being confirmed last year and getting acclimated to his new role at the FDA, Tom McCluskey acted as kind of a junior Sherpa to him, and he said, look, with Macari, it was slow, but at least he was someone who met with pro-life groups.

He would show up at the meetings, he would have regular conversations, and while the pro-life issues didn't drive him with the same kind of urgency that they drive a Kristen Hawkins or a Lila Rose or even, you know, Tom McCluskey, That he was sympathetic. What the issue was, was that he was instructed by people higher up in the Trump administration that he could not move on Mifepristone until this study had been concluded, which was very slow in even getting started. So, we're looking at at least a year from the time he took his seat to when we would be able to make a move on Mifepristone.

And it seems quite clear the administration has put the slow roll on the study itself, because I feel like... The Trump administration doesn't want any action on this until after the midterm elections. Right. We'll see if they can make action after the midterms, but... Right, and there's no sign that the... I'm just telling you what I'm... Yeah, no, I think that's an accurate assessment. I think it's an accurate assessment, but it's still frustrating.

It's still frustrating. Yeah. It's stupid frustrating. Well, and the fact that the administration had no... They didn't demand any studies for the Ozempic, the psychedelics, the marijuana... Right, and that shows that if they want something, they've got to look at this carefully. Right. So, that is the story with Marty Makary. Josh, you interacted with him in the past, right? What are your impressions? Yeah, I had the chance to meet with him several times many moons ago, 25 years ago.

When I lived in Washington, and, you know, absolutely smart as a whip. I mean, that guy went to Johns Hopkins. He's a brilliant mind, and I think in many ways, he's very much with us. So, that corresponds with what Tom was saying, that I think he was under a lot of constraints. It's not like he was allowed to do whatever he wanted to do. You know, like, and it seems like he got pushed out because he didn't push the e-cigarettes fast enough for vape or whatever.

Which I'm kind of with. I'm kind of with him on that, I have to say. I mean, I agree. You know, again. Eric, are you vaping? You blowing fat clouds behind the scenes? No, I'm not. That goes? I assure you. I stick to bourbon. Say we just get back to cigarettes. That's my chemical of choice. Cigarettes was...

I'd say we just, yeah. So, I knew him. I mean, he seemed like a very good man, Christian man, you know, cared a lot about, you know, the issues that we care about, but I just felt like he was under a lot of constraints and was not able to move forward in a meaningful way on, you know, to try to combat or curtail Mephepristone in any meaningful way, and as I said, I think it's because from the top.

Susie Wiles, President Trump, whatever, they think their calculation is that abortion is, you know, just an absolutely last thing they want to talk about until maybe they get on the other side of the midterms. And then, you know, we will see what ends up happening, because as you mentioned, he is a lame duck, so he, you know, he has got no incentive to do anything either.

But the other incentive, I keep reminding people about this. He still has a vice president. Right. And when you get on the other side of the midterms, Vice President J.D. Vance is going to himself want to run for president, and he's going to want to make sure that this is the thing I say. I just don't think. After the midterms, I'm not saying Trump is going to be heroic on pro-life stuff, but I don't think he's going to be sliding far to the left, because then that opens up a window for somebody like a DeSantis, or a Hawley, or Rubio, or whoever, to be like, I don't favor this.

What do you think hurts Vance more, Iran or abortion? That is a valid question. Again, the Iran question remains open because you look at the numbers right now. It has been this on-off, on-off in terms of our battle with Iran, all these different pauses and stops and truces or whatever, but gas is $5 a gallon.

And that is hurting a lot of people. And yet, you look at the latest CNN poll, and they ask Americans, would you vote for the Republican candidate for Congress or the Democratic candidate for Congress? Donald Trump is at his, like, lowest approval rating.

Ever. Right. 70% disapprove of handling the economy. Yeah, that was the latest report that came out. And gas is $5 a gallon on a war of his choosing. There's no question. I mean, he's saying he had to because of the nukes or whatever, but he chose the war is the point. And so, it's not like Congress voted, you know what I mean? It was Donald Trump. I wish they did, but yeah. Donald Trump made this decision. He's the one responsible for $5 gas, his negative approval rating, you know, you said 70%.

And yet, a CNN poll has the Democratic candidates up by only three points. So, sorry, can I get context on that? It should be like eight or nine. Yeah, can I get context on that? You're just saying they asked someone in general, wherever you are in the country. They do these questions all the time, every year, every month. They just say, look.

When the next election is coming along, who do you anticipate voting for for Congress, a Republican candidate or a Democratic candidate? They don't even ask names. They do this nationwide. These polls have been around forever. It is a pretty good barometer to judge how things are going, and usually, Democrats have to win because the polls tend to be a little bit off. Let us say the Democrats are up by like five points. It might end up being that they only win the House by like a seat or two.

You know what I mean? They have to be really ahead, like eight or nine points to really make a big gain. And so, if they are only up by three, again, it is just one poll, but it is like, it is really surprising. It would have been almost. Less surprising if CNN poll had Democrats up by like 9 or 10 points. I would have been like, okay, yeah, that's about right for being in a war, $5 gas, yeah.

So, your answer would be abortion? What I'm saying is I think the problem right now for Democrats is that their party is also in the toilet when it comes to the public perception of it. So, you've got two very politically unpopular parties going on right now. Did you see that AOC passed Gavin Newsom as the top runner on Polymarket this morning? I did. I did, yeah. Actually, I think Pete Buttigieg also inched him out.

Yeah, Gavin Newsom has not been having a good last few months. I still think, honestly, the most likely 2028 candidate at this point is probably Kamala Harris. No way, no way. No, don't say it. No way. It actually, you know what? No way, Josh. Okay, explain that. There's no way. Well, first of all, when you look at the demographics of the Democratic Party, you know, Black voters are also very large. They loom large, and in fact, Black women even more, and she can, she's got a tail that looks like she's got a tail that looks like she's got a tail that looks like she's got a tail.

I think makes a lot of sense to people. Like, look, I was only given about 100 days to run. If I actually had a full year and a half to run for president, I would have won. And the fact is, part of the problem is other candidates aren't going to take her seriously enough until it's too late, and she consolidates enough support and actually pulls off the nomination. So, yes, I actually think she's a very viable candidate. I think she's being underestimated, but like...

She was a former vice president of the United States. Her name ID is Sky High. She is not seen as a threat to others, like other people like Buttigieg or Gavin Newsom. Like, oh, yeah, whatever. She is not going to go anywhere. You know what? That can kind of surprise you. That can catch you by surprise. Do you think the mealy-mouthedness actually improves her chances of getting the nomination because she does not have teeth?

I mean, I think what I'm saying is that she's in that weird spot where people, you know, she's got a lot of access to money, a lot of name ID, and she's going to win over a lot of, you know, institutional support within the party, and she's going to be underestimated by people, so they won't attack her as much, thinking, oh, yeah, she's not a threat. That's the kind of problem, you know, you catch your opposition napping, and you can... Now, obviously, I think that would be beneficial for the Republican candidate to have her as the Oh, for sure.

But it's not, you know, again. I want more debates. I want J.D. versus, or Marco versus Camelot, one of them. That's really funny. When I think back on Marco debate moments, I think back on little Marco. That's maybe the most, sticks out the most. It'll be interesting to see him back. Well, the thing is with Marco, you are seeing a lot of difference now. I mean, like, he's so much more comfortable in his own skin, like, you know, being. You know, he got up in front of the, I mean, you know, some people will talk about the speech he just gave talking about the Catholic contributions to the United States, which is really kind of a cool speech, but there was also just the White House press briefing he gave last week where he just got up there and had, you know, no notes.

It was just very polished. Right, totally outlived. It was great. And, of course, everyone who's grumpy on sort of the populist wing of the party was immediately, you know, Championing Marco 2028, and I still don't see... I don't know about that, but... Yeah, I mean, like... He's institutional. It's the sitting Vice President of the United States is still in the poll position to be the nominee. J.D. Vance would have to trip and stumble, land flat on his face for him not to be the nominee.

Did you see Trump's, was it a press conference that he had in the Oval Office, and J.D. and Marco were both behind him? This was on Monday, I think. And he just started, he goes to the room, he goes, well, I don't know, who here, he told them to applaud. He's like, applaud if you would vote for J.D. 2028, and people applaud. And then he's like, all right, now give me Marco Rubio 2028, and another half room applaud, and he's like, you know.

That was how we decided talent shows back in the day, actually, at my homeschool group. It was like a reality homeschool, it was like the apprentice college. Over and again, and then he's like, you know, I'm not going to endorse anybody, but I think that's the perfect ticket. Vance Rubio, the perfect ticket, but I'm not going to endorse him. It would just be the best. I was like, oh, I don't often pity major political figures, but I did pity Marco and J.D.

They were like two little schoolboys. Tim Dillon's foundational insight to the Trump administration 2.0 is it's just a reality show, and Iran does not make good TV. So, they're trying to get away from that as much as humanly possible. So, it's all just about good TV. That's a great example of it. So, speaking of not good TV, alarming to pro-lifers as well. I think someone said...

IVF is being pro-life, something like that? Maybe an opportunity to... I think he was also talking about the sperm of teenagers, too. We did. We talked about teenagers' sperm counts. That's an RFK special. This was a wild ride. Trump looked like he fell asleep briefly. Here's the moment we're talking about. I just wanted to stress what a huge win for the Maha movement and for the pro-life movement. Moms.gov is one-stop shopping. For IVF, for prenatal care, for postnatal care, for nutrition, for baby formula, and, of course, for Trump Rx.

We have, as Dr. Oz pointed out, a fertility crisis in this country right now. We just found out that we've dropped out of 1.57%. The replacement rate is 2.1. A hundred years ago, we were at 3.27, so more than double than we are today. We are approaching the cataclysmic rates that Japan and China are now experiencing that is threatening their economy. It is a threat not only to our economy, to our national security, it is a direct threat to our Social Security trust fund, to the Medicare trust fund.

President Trump has directed my agency to find out the cause of the fertility crisis, and as part of this program, we're looking at the impact of metabolic challenges, which directly affect fertility, of obesity, which affects fertility, of endocrine disruptors, of pesticides, of this.

Toxic soup that our young women are walking around today. Try to figure it out. The fertility crisis for women began in 2007. For men in 1970, men had twice the sperm count as our teenagers do today. This is an existential crisis for our country.

We had a series of presidents that were trying to discourage childbirth and motherhood in this country. We now have a president that is trying to encourage it, and I want to thank you again for your leadership. All right, so a lot going on here. In the context, I just want to put down for the listeners, for those of you who don't follow. It's hard to listen to for two reasons. It's hard to listen to for several reasons. One, just his voice is hard to hear.

But Moms.gov, this was Mother's Day. They rolled out this website, Moms.gov. You can pull it up there, Tom. It's not the greatest website, but it's this maternal health portal put out by HHS. Apparently, people have been trying to do this for a very long time. And in a way, it could be some kind of response to what RFK was referring to, the discouragement to be mothers. I think the Biden administration had one called ReproductiveHealth.gov, where you could go to get abortions.

For birthing people. Right, for birthing people. The good news here is that birthing people are out, pregnant mothers are in. At the very top there, you'll see, right where you scrolled, that there's a link to a resource where you can find a pregnancy resource center anywhere in the country. It's a search engine. Oh, that's good. Yeah, and that is a great thing. That is a 180 from where we were four years ago, for sure.

That this is tied, however, to what he called the one-stop shopping for IVF. Obviously, massive red flag for pro-lifers, because this is the government trying to address a very real fertility crisis, but it's opening up lines by which any future administrations could address that crisis in any way that they want, or use these lines to, again, go right back to the reproductive health. abortion um abortion resource for people so the the press again like we it is true that we have declining birth rates it is true that infertility has become an issue and it is also true that we want to build up a culture where we're having more babies the problem is that when the government decides to help do that we know that it doesn't work like we've seen this in scandinavia you We've seen this in Western Europe with government attempts to basically replace husbands and fathers for mothers and say, well, we'll offer these services, whereas when the actual root cause of our birth dearth is that people aren't coupling, they aren't getting married, men and women aren't having heterosexual sex, which is what makes babies, and that they're getting married later and later.

This was, so the biggest issue that I had with what was rolled out was that moms.gov rollout came simultaneously with this proposed federal rule, and you'll remember that about a few months ago, Trump put out an executive order saying we need to promote IVF. We're going to promote IVF. Katie Britt was all over that, and we're going to be so pro-life, and we're going to make more Trump babies was the most not attractive line that came out of that. We're just making more Trump babies.

Orange hair. So, the rule was published at the same time Moms.gov came out, and what the rule says is that it's going to allow employers to offer standalone fertility and IVF benefits outside of the Affordable Care Act requirements. So, it's going to treat this fertility coverage the way that we treat dental or vision care.

The proposed benefits in the rule include IVF, fertility drugs, also egg freezing, that was another one that was in there, diagnostic testing, counseling, related procedures, with a lifetime cap of roughly $120,000, which when you're doing multiple rounds of IVF actually is not that much. So, under the proposal, employers would not technically be mandated To provide the IVF coverage. Not yet, that's the key. We're creating this new legal pathway that encourages businesses to offer the fertility benefits with fewer regulatory burdens and tax complications.

Again, this is the federal government normalizing IVF and fertility treatments without... Confronting the ethical concerns and calling it a win for pro-lifers, which it is decidedly not. And as our good friend Tom McCluskey, again, when I was talking to him, he commented, he's like, all it will take is one trigger-happy bureaucrat to change this from highly recommended for employers to offer to mandatory. So, again, not a good direction in terms of addressing the birth-death here. And certainly not a good direction in terms of the future of religious freedom for employers who have conscience exceptions.

And also, at best, you aren't talking to real pro-lifers, because you never would say that IVF is pro-life. No, like, die-in-the-wool pro-lifer is going to be on board with that. And at worst, it's insulting. Like, we've made very clear, the Catholic Church has made very clear on this. There's also many Christians united in this as well, or just people that are medically, have looked into it. It's completely dystopian. It's like a Palantir way to make children. Like, manufacturing children is not pro-life.

And then dealing with all the ethical concerns that comes with it, and the abuse on the people that partake in it, and the expense that it is, it's just all around horrible. So, it's just another frustrating thing. It's like, you just didn't have someone in the room, or...

You know, or you weren't consulting the right people. And it's not even the best way to deal with someone who's got, even if you put aside the ethical concerns, it's like not the best way to try to deal with the underlying fertility problem. Right. There's so many better methods to try to address that fertility. So, you know, again, the number one problem with the fertility crisis is that you have large swaths of people that simply do not. You don't want to couple, as you mentioned.

You don't want to get married, you know, and that is a problem. Actually, one of the problems with that today is, you know, it used to be, oh, yeah, guys are afraid of commitment, guys don't want to get married, but what we're actually seeing right now is where the percentage, like, if you go back to 1993, girls, you know, At this point, they asked the percentage of 12th graders, saying they are more likely to choose to get married in the long run, right?

And so, back in 1993, 83% of girls, yep, they want to get married. That number fell to 61% in 2003. So, from 83 down to 61, that is a big drop. What is it for boys? Back then, it was 76. So, close to what the girls had, I guess. And it's now, it went to 74. So, like, not much of a change in the boys. It's the women, it's the girls who have really soured, you know, I mean, still 61%. And you start looking at the statistics of people, you know, who are, you know, like, the percentage of people who are married by the age of 30.

That was a graphic that was kicking around the internet recently. Go back to 1975. Right? Just a few years before I was born, the percentage of Americans married at age 30 was, for women, it was 91%. For men, it was 81%. And the numbers keep falling. So, by the time I got married in 2005, it was down, the percentage of women that were married by age 30 was down to 50%, 50.5. And for men, 41.1. Today, 2025, 25% of women are married by the age of 30, and just 16.5% for men.

This is a problem. So, if you don't get married until you're like 31, 32, and then you're scrambling because, oh, and then, you know, you get married for a while, and you're like, we want to have kids, and then all of a sudden, you know, you're scrambling, like, okay, let's say we want a kid. It's a lot harder. Just the physiology of the human body. It is a lot harder to have a child, to get pregnant at 35, if you've never had a child before.

And so, this is a problem. So, we're postponing marriage much longer. And by the way, people are... So... All of us, all of us as humans, men and women both, we tend to get more stubborn. When we first enter the world, we leave the house as youngsters.

We're 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, whatever. The world is this wide open space, and actually, you ask people, when was it best? And almost always, people will say the year in which they turned 22, because they're done with college, they're out on their own, they've got their own apartment, they've got their own money they can spend money on if they want to go on a trip, car trip, or whatever. They can do whatever they want.

Erika, you got married when you were 22? Mm-hmm. I got married when I was 22 as well. Like the Taylor Swift song, except the opposite. Okay, disavow, disavow, disavow. I just said I got married at 22 as well. Hey, Josh, Josh, how old were you?

I was 28. Okay, nice. But I guess I will say all those problems, and I'm going to get into the jobs report. I think there's a lot of telling signals in there, too, about this. I can wrap up in one second here, just real quick, and then I'll let you go. Basically, you've got to change the culture first. We can do some things on the margin, like come up with incentives for how to fit car seats in there, because that's a real problem, car seats and cars and stuff like that.

There are things that governments can do on the margins to kind of help out with some of that stuff. Maybe just giving new parents, here's two grand, because there's a lot of expenses that come for when you first have a kid. So, there are things that we can do on the margins. You've got to change, you know, the culture. You've got to get people getting married younger, and then having kids younger, and encouraging that. But that's what I'm saying. I've got a lot of encouraging signs to report.

You know, I guess it is good to always see general trends, and then your bubble. I can say with absolute certainty, and I don't think these are an accident, too, like these church communities that I'm a part of. I have so many people married under 30, already have a couple kids, and like you said, it's because that is the culture. You look around and you see the joy. It's not easy, either. It's kind of like, but that's, I guess, what makes it appealing.

Yeah, this is exactly the conversation that is the deep script coming up in, like, I think it's three weeks. We're going to have one on the secret of happiness, and all the studies point to... The number one predictor of happiness is religiosity, followed very closely by marriage, and which makes sense because the only people getting married are in your religious bubbles right now. Not the only people, but the vast majority of people getting married young are in those bubbles. So, it has been really encouraging, actually.

We know what makes us happy. The Spirit is willing. Yeah, I'm super encouraged. I'm super encouraged, and what was I going to say on that? I'm super encouraged because I see it all around me, and I think that Well, I lost my point there. Oh, no, I saw someone in the chat already. It was like the most radical formation I've ever had was having children. Yeah, Thomas. Getting married and then having children. Shout out to the boy, Tom. And I completely agree.

And that's why, like, I made kind of a quip about, like, all right, Manosphere people, like, you can talk to me when you have a couple kids. Like, it's the great tester of what makes you a man. But I see people around that. They're grappling with it. I will say, I think you can walk and chew gum at the same time. Like, yes, we can work to change culture, but those changes on the margins that help people already having kids, I think really do help, say, have the fifth kid, the sixth kid, or maybe one.

They are not nothing. It's totally not nothing. But what is nothing? I'll say, first of all, it's our seeds. Yeah, we can make it. Yeah, all those things are good things, but what is nothing is saying, okay, we're going to fix the fertility problem by giving women money to freeze their eggs. When they do get married at 35, 36, 37, they can still make babies. Or lab-made kids. That is what is not going to help. Discarded or frozen, not the answer.

Yeah, correct. Let me get into some economy numbers. I think that is illustrative for this as well, but before I do that, we have America 250 guys. If you want to come join us, it is going to be a rager. It is going to be a party. Seal for America 250. It is going to be in La Crosse, Wisconsin at the Shrine. It is going to be a historic Catholic rally. It is going to be lots of prayer, lots of great speakers.

Colonel Burke, of course. Kelsey Reinhart, CEO and President of CatholicVote. Michael Knowles will be there. Joe Lombardi, whole gang, Father Ambrose, Bradley Banning, Steve Cortez. Look at that handsome guy. That's Josh. All spiffed up. There's Erika. There's me. It's going to be great.

And, yeah, I was thinking another benefit of this, too. I mean, there's going to be a lot of people here that potentially listen to the LOOPcast, and I feel like I've just been continually sending out signals like, how are you feeling about this? How are you feeling about this? The various people that have been paying attention to politics at various levels. So, I'm kind of curious, you know, what's the... What's the vibe? What's the perspective, the experience of people in different jobs all over the country?

So, looking forward to mingling with some people that maybe listen to the show there as well. So, it's Heal for America 250. It's going to be Saturday, June 13th. Come join us. You can go ahead and grab a ticket now.

It's going to be awesome, and don't miss it. Okay, let's get into the economy now. Okay, so basically, there's two major reports that dropped. There's the jobs report on the 13th, and then we also had the CPI numbers come out as well. I think that was yesterday. So, I kind of collated a lot of the main takeaways, and we now have this report.

The economy added 115,000 jobs in April, and that was a little bit above, say, what the expectations were. I think we had Reuters at 62,000 jobs, Dow Jones, Wall Street Journal, estimate of 55,000. So, that is more. It is good news. The unemployment rate stayed at 4.3%. Now, the tough part of that is the unemployment rate held at 4.3% with 7.4 unemployed people. However, people working part-time jobs for economic reasons jumped from...

Now, we'll pause on this. 445,000 to 4.9 million people. So, 445,000 people were working jobs, part-time jobs, for economic reasons. That has now jumped to 4.9. So, can I just put a quick caveat on that? It jumped by almost half a million to 4.9 million. Yes, that sounds right. So, it didn't jump more than a half million. Otherwise, it would have been by 4.9 million. It's a different number. Okay, well, read that one wrong. Still concerning. Still concerning. Still like 20%.

That's where a lot of the people went. But that's like going up 15% to 20% as opposed to 10x. Yeah, but it is why that unemployment rate is steady. It is like, well, people are employed, but they just picked up extra jobs, essentially, for money.

A significant portion. And then, specific on ages, and this is where it gets a little concerning, ages 16 to 24 has a 9.5% unemployment rate as of April 2026. That is more than double the overall unemployment rate. As I said, it was about that 4.3%. That is shocking. It's the first time it's been that high since, I think, COVID. So, really tough market for new grads are definitely in that category, people looking for jobs right out of college, or if they didn't go to college, that is tough.

This was the really shocking one. I think for the new grads, sorry, Tom, I think one of the concerns with that is because AI, some of these companies are a little bit more reluctant to do some of these new jobs because they are hoping not to have to fill them. So, that is an added pressure.

It's that. It's tariffs, too. I think there's people waiting to see how that ends up coming down. It's hard when you introduce so much uncertainty in the job market, and the next generation is looking for leadership and training. War definitely doesn't help. Gas, definitely not helping. So, those could be some of the reasons, but I'm just going to go over the numbers. About one in three American men, age 16 and over, are not in the labor force, meaning they are not working, and they are not actively looking for work.

So, men, 16 plus, civilian, non-institutional population, there's 132.67 million. Out of that not in the labor force currently is 43.96 million, 33.1%. That is a crazy number. Really hard for me to even wrap my mind around. A third of American men, 16 plus, are not looking for work. Now, maybe there's some people that are just students in there and not currently working, say a part-time job or elsewhere, but that certainly does not come up with that full number. I mean, that is a shocking amount of people that just discouraged and not looking for work.

Not great. Probably some of the reasons that Josh, you were talking about there. And then, in particular, on the youth optimism, there is a big gap, and the gap actually persists specifically in the American market. I will share a graph here. This is from AP. Let us see if this graph is going to come up. Here we go.

It's fewer young Americans say that it's a good time to job hunt, for obvious reasons, as we brought up, but it's in particular the American market is feeling this. So, if you take a look at this graph, this green line, it's unusual for a few reasons. The first reason is that typically people age 15 to 34 have higher optimism for a job hunt. They think they're going to have better luck, as opposed to older Americans, 55 plus, typically have low optimism.

So, if you go back to 2008 being the crash, 9% of older Americans thought it was a good time to job hunt. And 24% of that 15 to 34 thought it was a good time. So, it stays consistent until you get COVID, it goes down from everyone, and the optimism for young Americans has not rebounded since. Actually, now in 2026, 43% of young Americans say it's a good time to job hunt, as opposed to 64%. Of the 55 plus say it's a good time to job hunt.

So, I don't even know how to read those numbers. What would account for that? I understand why younger Americans would, but in particular, older Americans feel very optimistic about the time to job hunt. Another interesting thing on that note, globally, younger adults were generally more optimistic than older adults. So, as of the globe, instead of America, a median of 48% of young adults were positive about finding a local job compared to 38% of older adults. So, it's inverted. In the globe.

And that is a change as of really the last three years. On to job growth. It's concentrated in a few sectors. We've seen this be pretty consistent. Healthcare gained 37,000 jobs. Transportation and warehousing up 30,000. Retail trade, 22,000. Social assistance, 17,000. One notable area of contraction, the federal government, down 9,000 jobs. Yes. I had a crazy graph on that. Here's a visual of what we're looking at at the federal level. So, if you take a look back 2007, federal employment was down in that 2.7 range.

And then you get high time on the census here. Yeah. Census of 2010. Well, naturally. 2020, naturally. But you get a big peak leading up to 2024, 2025, and then, I mean, you look at a straight free fall from 2025 all the way down to below those 2007 levels, right above 2.65. I did vote for this. This is... That is what I voted for. So, it is another thing, too, because typically federal jobs kind of buoy jobs numbers, so... If you work for the government, typically, you know, the jobs report looks a little bit better because they're employing someone as opposed to being unemployed.

Now, that is not bullying the job market, so you might see tougher numbers in some ways because of that, because you're not getting as much help from, say, the federal payroll, but that was just jumped out right off the page at me. Federal government continues to shrink. Yeah, the only difference is those people, they might be measured as employed when they're working for the federal government, but they weren't really doing much of anything.

So, now if they're unemployed, they're still not doing much of anything, but at least it's costing us less. Yeah, I mean, I guess there's some federal jobs that I still think are necessary. I'm not agnostic when it comes to that. We like to joke about it, but it's true. There was tons of waste, and typically with bureaucratic government jobs, there's going to be more opportunity for inefficiency. So, that's not to say good or bad, just truly.

Campaign promise there. Federal government is shrinking. Wages are rising. However, it was taken over by inflation. I thought that was really interesting for the first time in a long time. So, average hourly earnings rose $0.06 or 0.2% to $37.41. That is hourly. Over the year, average hourly earnings are up 3.6%. However, if you go take a look at the inflation numbers, that actually outpaced for the first time, I believe, since 2023. So, the cost of living has outpaced the average. Paycheck growth in the United States for the first time since 2023.

Surging energy prices drove inflation to a three-year high in April. Now, of course, who does this impact the most? Middle class, especially people that are experiencing poverty. I can't even imagine what that looks like, where your wages are not outpacing your cost of living. That's getting into credit territory, not good. Debt was another thing that jumped out, too. People's debt that they took on was much higher. People are spending more on credit cards. To try to catch up. Not great. Another interesting thing, the spring housing boom did not happen.

I am not sure if you guys were tracking this. I want to get into the housing, but before that, real quick, and we lost time, so it is the perfect time to go for it. I just want to talk about, like, when we say inflation, we just understand inflation commonly as Americans to be, oh, the price of this good is more expensive now, and prices are going up. Now, the whole thing is, why do prices go up?

Over time, you would think prices would actually go down, like they do for TVs, they do for computers, but the prices on other things tend to go up. And I just want to remind people, it's worth noting, your government, both parties, has been stealing so much money from you. Back in 1965, the minimum wage was only $1.25 an hour, but that was five silver quarters.

If you smelted that down, the value of that would be like $35. So, I mean, we have been debasing the currency, especially since the inauguration of the Federal Reserve from the worst president ever, Woodrow Wilson. So, we've had a good run here of 115-some years where the government is just taking money from you.

The thing is, the money that's in your wallet is going to become worth less if the government is just printing it like a printer. Josh, you sound like a big Massey guy, so you're going to be voting for him then. It's absolutely a fact. I mean, it's absolutely a fact.

You and Thomas Massey. The fact is, though, on the housing end of it, we have a problem right now. The amount of inventory of homes right now that are trying to be sold is growing very quickly, and they are not selling as fast. That is part of the reason why, because the people who are trying to sell the homes are trying to get a higher price than the market justifies. Take a look at this gap, Josh. So, number of homebuyers in the market falls to a historic low.

Estimated number of U.S. homebuyers and sellers actively in the market. We now have a gap of sellers outnumbering buyers by 630,000, the largest gap ever recorded. And it really broke away at 2024. There are two things going on here. The first one, which I am sure you will recognize, Tom, is that people who are trying to buy homes are being hit with a crunch.

On a fiscal thing, their wages are going up, but not nearly as much as gas and everything else. Inflation. And they're just priced out of these homes, a lot of these homes, right? But the second problem is, a lot of, you know, God bless you guys, a lot of the baby boomers, they're holding onto the houses, and they're hoping that the prices are going to rebound.

And the fact of the matter is... This is an unnatural market gap between what the price is and what it's being sold at, and so it needs to come down. I don't know what needs to happen for these people to realize, like, you've got this in your mind that the house is worth $500,000, but if you can't sell it and you're trying to sell it, then it's not worth that. Josh, can I cross the divide?

Dare I say something on behalf of the boomers? Because, look, I love my boomers. Part of the issue to me is that that is the people's primary fund of wealth that they eventually rely on for retirement. And so, if you've built up all of your wealth, you've been told, you know, hey, this is going to be in your house, and then you try to sell your house for what you believe you can sell your house for to use to retire. And listen, that's my reach over, okay, because I still do think that's an unnatural gap, and prices do need to come down here if you ever want to sell your house.

As someone aspirationally wanting to buy a house, that would be true. But I am sympathetic in some ways where The property taxes on certain homes have gone up so much to the point where, how am I going to pay for this, and I'm not able to cash out in the way that I thought that it would be because this area has become much more valuable to, say, real estate, outside investment, and now, all of a sudden, you can't live where you previously could live.

I don't know the solution to that, but I certainly see that as a concern. I'm not talking about the boomers with the second or third house. I'm just talking about someone that, blue collar or white collar, worked a middle class life. So, you know, a lot of people have owned their house for most of their life and now are in this situation. So.

Just not a good situation. One thing that we could do, though, from a policy perspective, to try to, I mean, again, part of the problem here is the housing thing went up very high, very fast, and that would have been the time for people to sell, but maybe they weren't ready to sell. And then a year or two later, now the market's kind of coming down a little bit, a little bit closer, I think, to reality. And, you know, your house might have been worth $575,000 last year, but it's not.

Now it's maybe only worth $480,000. That stinks, because that is $90,000. I get it, but this is the problem. Talk to people that lived in Flint after GM left. That is a big hurt. I get it. These corrections happen. Josh, that is why your TVs are so cheap. Maybe if I could ding you on that. Okay, hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on. Now, one thing we could do from our policy perspective, because right now in...

Washington, they are going to be working on this reconciliation bill this year. One of the things that you can do, like right now, homeowners can exclude capital gains on the sale of their house for a married couple $500,000 worth and $250,000 for single filers. That hasn't been raised, those levels. So, above that, that is when we start paying capital gains taxes, right? But that exemption level hasn't been raised since 1997. So, we are due for it. That has been 30 years.

So, you could bump that up so that boomers are like, Wanting to sell their house, they are like, oh gosh, I might have a hefty capital gains tax on the stuff above such amount. Hey, you can make it a little bit easier, make it a little bit less pain, raise that exemption level. So, that is a policy thing that could be done. Again, have prices gone up in 30 years? Yeah, maybe the exemption should rise still.

Yeah, another thing on this, too, is Trump is pushing the Road to Housing Act, in which he would ban institutional investors. Now, this is one thing that I've got to give moderate pushback. Maybe it's a chew gum and walk at the same time thing. If you take a look at this graph, as Josh said, the problem is that it's people that own one house.

That are too high of a rate. It's not, like, in terms of share of the housing market, owners with 100 to 99 units is such a small sliver of the overall owner of houses. Not to say it isn't a problem that BlackRock or whoever else could come in. It makes a great boogeyman, but it's maybe not as big of a problem as it's made out. It's not solving the main problem. It's not a root problem. Yeah, it's not the root cause.

Yeah, someone says sloppulism. I mean, it feels very Trumpian to, like... Try to get in, make a splashy win. That doesn't maybe address the root causes, but he can claim as a political victory. So, I wouldn't be mad, I guess, if it happened, but I would like to address more of this. Yeah, I think that a piece that people get confused about a lot, too, is that while we do have, we have this in the housing market, we have this new gap between the sellers.

We have way more sellers than we have active buyers. But the fact also remains that if you zoom out. We also still have a major housing shortage in terms of single-family homes. So, we're looking at a shortage of, it's like, 4 to 10 million homes a year. Probably take us, you know, if we work really hard, 10 years to build enough homes. And so, A better way to lean on the supply and demand principle of the market is to bring up the supply so that we can bring down prices in that way.

So, we are talking slashing regulations, but also encouraging building construction that Is more high-quality, smaller starter homes for families? Because what we get with these big land buy-ups like in Colorado or Texas is you get these huge new construction homes that end up being already built to be outside the price range of most young couples and families. So, it would be using the government to find ways to encourage Greater diversity of kinds of construction to increase the supply over the next five to ten years, because I think that is also a root cause.

Yeah, I think what you are saying is that developers realize if they are going to be building a big chunk of land, it is better for them to build these McMansions. You know, there are like 3,000 square feet plus, 4,000 square feet plus. Yeah, $1.4 million. Because the profit margin on all these is going to be higher, even if there's, you know, and with bigger lots and all that kind of stuff, then it would be to build smaller homes or whatever.

And yeah, so that's, again, this is one of those things where... For the common good, it might make sense for local and state lawmakers to try to alter the incentives, and this is one of the reasons why I've been frustrated. Look, I hate taxes. Okay, but when people say we should eliminate taxes on people 65 and older, it's like, dude, I mean, it's already so hard. We want more people to get married in their 20s. Why would you buy a home unless you're going to start a family, right?

Most people just don't. But why are you going to start a family if you feel like you can't get a home? We have a problem right now with people in their 20s. We need to be able to get them into homes and start families and get married. And we are not doing that if we are going to make the cost of housing so expensive. So, I say that as someone scratching on 50 years old. I want it better and cheaper. Start, get these starter homes.

I think that would be wonderful. All right, I am going to throw a bomb out there. There is an article called Total Boomer Luxury Communism. And listen, I always get emails like thinking that I am attacking people personally because of their age or situation.

That is not what I'm saying at all, but if we were a forward-facing country that cared about our posterity, we would shift the tax burden that is so completely out of whack right now from Taxing people in their peak earning years, so that would be like, I think, 28 might be where you get the highest burden, and then it just goes down and down and down and down, and then we basically, for our boomers in America, there's all kinds of tax incentives, and even the funny example people bring up is Lauren Boebert, I think, or someone introduced, no, it was Nancy Mace, introduced an exemption to loans for boats, recreational boats.

uh exemption of the tax on that and it's basically a race of all of our congressmen to to try to propose the most niche tax that would give a relief to people with the most money that vote the most in their district which is going to be 65 plus and like the it is actually by uh russ green in the american mind i think it's an interesting article food for thought there's a graph in here i'll share it of this tax burden i'm talking about I mean, to be clear about it, we're very thankful for baby boomers spending 40 years in the workforce, earning a lot of money, and the government took way too much of their money.

I get it. But the problem right now is we have a lot of people in their 20s who, because they listened to what the boomers said about credentials and going to college, and the cost of college has gone up so much, they're burdened with so much debt, they can't get a good-paying job, the wages are stagnant, houses are too expensive, and families aren't being formed. This is a five-alarm fire we are talking about. So, that is the biggest concern. Obviously, if I could fix one thing in the world right now, it would be getting rid of abortion.

We are going to talk about an economic policy. The biggest problem right now is a lack of family formation. It is that 15% of people are married by the time they turn 30. This is a nightmare. We have to change this.

Yeah, if you take a look. Yeah, oh, sorry. Go ahead, Tom. Go ahead. Are you looking at this graph? I mean. Yeah, I mean. So, the burden in orange is taxes. Highest when you reach, apologies for the revision here, but about 45 to 54, you're at your highest taxed, and you get your lowest. That's also your highest income, obviously. That's your prime. And then as soon as you hit 55 to 64, all the way to 85 plus, I mean, your entitlements are just through the roof here.

All this green is entitlements, and then when you actually have to pay in taxes is much lower. And it's great when you reach this place, because we obviously want people to reap the rewards of their hard work. And live lives, you know, because they plan well, whatever else, but it's like, if you're in this danger zone, this is exactly what you're talking about, Josh, with... This is the difference between, hey, are we going to have kids? Are we going to get married?

Are we able to afford a house? Can we lay down roots? It is just getting tougher and tougher. This was back in 2021. I mean, 18 to 24, I talked about the unemployment rate. We are talking about a third of American men not even trying to get a job right now. Like you said, five long fire, any way to possibly help these people, especially if you are having children. Because if we don't, they are going to support people like Mondami, the new socialist communist.

Mayor of New York City, and in fact, I was looking at the numbers in the Michigan Democratic contest. You have three Democrats that are kind of equally divided. Al-Said is going to win. Haley Stevens is the establishment Democrat. Mallory McMurrow is like the MSNBC. California.

Yeah, liberal. And then there is this Abdul Al-Said, right? He is going to win. Here is the thing. They are in a three-way tie, but if you actually, if you look at the numbers of those Democrats aged 18 to 40, he has got 80% of them.

Right. So, the next generation, they are voting from 18 to 40. They are supporting radical socialist, radical Islamic candidates, and they are not just because all of them are in Dearborn. You know, these are... White, black, brown, everyone in the Democratic Party is supporting these socialist Islamic candidates who are calling for radical breaking down of the country. So, if you were to say, Josh, what one economic policy could you, you know, snap of the finger do?

You know, it's not going to be ending the property taxes for people 65 and plus, for the love of God. It would be something like, oh, I don't know, I would end taxes on wages for anyone aged 18 to 35, and that's going to throw Social Security into it, then raise it on those older. We need to get.

Less taxes on people who are working from age 18 to 35, so that they can start families. That is what needs to happen. So, here is where, again, maybe I throw in the grenade. Mamdani balanced the budget in New York City and actually dropped the controversial property. He was going to increase, I think, property tax and then didn't end up doing it, didn't have to.

Now, again, if you look into that a little bit deeper. They got a bunch of money kicked in from the state of New York, I think like $4 billion, which Erika's nodding, and this is what I'm saying. It's a bailout. It's not that I'm naive about what's going on there. New York City also does bring in a lot of revenue for New York. However, his predecessor, Eric Adams, was running an insane deficit. He was running like a $12 billion deficit, something crazy.

And, of course, Mamdani gets to come out with a slick video that he did for his whole campaign and say, I balanced the budget. You know, I found this much waste. We got this much kicking from New York City. I did this and that. Al-Said is, from what I've seen so far, doing the same thing in Michigan, and this is the frustration. This was the trap that Trump walked into when he walked into Iran, because regardless of what you want to say, gas is through the roof, inflation is bad, the jobs report was bad, youth unemployment is bad.

The difference is that they're focusing their campaigns domestic and on affordability and have concrete wins. However you want to say, he got around it, he fudged numbers, he got money from New York, whatever. His campaign focus, one year in, is he balanced the budget. And so, until I start seeing that from Republicans, seriously, I mean, I think we're just going to continue to cede that ground. Like you said, there hasn't been the pickup, say, from Democrat representatives, if you just ask generally, but the frustrating thing is seeing, I guess, people like Thomas Massey, who are like, I hate these omnibus bills.

Why are we spending $1.5 trillion on the Pentagon? Why are we spending this much money and inflation on a war in Iran based on At best, confusing pretenses at worst on behest of a foreign country. These are uncomfortable truths, but until I think they're really fully addressed, you're ceding it to Democrats who, like I said, I'm not a Democrat. I hate abortion. You know what I mean? But I'm watching this unfold, and it doesn't seem like there's any real serious movement from Republicans other than we got to go primary Thomas Massey, who's like, how does that make sense?

And you're spending all this money, so. Anyway, gas bad, still 550. I got the AAA graph here. Erika, I'm sorry, what were you going to say? I think that the 60,000 foot, it's hard to pull all the threads together and to see just the tsunami of generational turnover that we're facing, and what that's going to mean economically, culturally, and not to get too dramatic, but civilizationally as well. So, we've got the... We were talking about this, too, Tom, earlier about the boomer succession plan and how there really just isn't one, right?

You've got boomers staying in their houses. I think 62% of boomers have no intention of selling their primary home, ever. They want to die in it, maybe when they're in the nursing home and in their last days, and that's crazy. We've got boomers who are working longer, who are not making succession plans for their businesses. They still own the majority of businesses in the United States. or a plurality, I think, of businesses in the United States. But there's this huge gap then, like you said, between the...

The boomer generation and their values and everything and their wealth, and then this young and up-and-coming generation. And we're seeing that when we see people like Mamdani winning. Something that was really concerning to me when I was doing research for another deep episode on where the 1970s were, was that starting with the millennial generation, if you poll millennials and you ask them about what they... What their biggest goals in life are. Like, what would be a fulfilling life for you? With the millennial generation, my generation, It flips from family, friendships, fulfilling work, to just money, right?

Money becomes the top thing, and that... It lets you go on those vacations you want. It lets you go on your vacations. It lets you buy the house. It lets you, you know, buy all the luxury goods. It lets you finance your burritos. It's great, and then that gap between family formation and money just gets greater and greater as you go down the generation. So, Gen Z, it's even more important. I don't even want to think about Gen Alpha.

Scary Gen Alpha influencers. But that's another kind of revolution that is very concerning in terms of what people are valuing. And of course, then, if your top value is financial and having a steady job and making half a million dollars right out of college a year, then someone like Mamdani, who can say, look, the government's just going to take total control, all the means of production, we're going to balance the budget. And money will be, money's the king, and we will take care of you.

Then you're willing to give up a lot of basic human freedoms and decency to elect people like that. But of course, what Mandami's doing is cooking the books. You know, he first of all got $4 billion from the governor of New York, and then now what he's doing right now, most of these savings, he's delaying pension payments.

Which will ultimately just make them more expensive. Like, Chicago did this. Chicago delayed pension payments, and it ended up costing taxpayers there $40 billion more than if they had paid them on time. And that is what is going on in Puerto Rico. $55 billion unfunded liability. So, they are just kicking the can down the road, hoping that somehow there is going to be a magical rainbow and pot of gold that is going to take care of all their wishes. It will be a rainbow.

Yeah, I don't think you, that wasn't the exact, I appreciate the added context, but that wasn't the point I was making. I was making a rhetoric point, because I think the other thing that I would share here, too, is like, again, this is the ultimate trap, betrayal, in my opinion, the war with Iran, but Trump speaking ahead of this trip to China in which he brought, like, I think they were worth like a trillion people, trillion dollars worth of business executives with him.

But here's a quote on him being asked about this. The only thing that matters when I'm talking about Iran, they can't have a nuclear weapon. I don't think about America's financial situation. I don't think about anybody. I think about one thing. We cannot let Iran have a nuclear weapon. That's all.

So, not a great quote. Not a great soundbite. It doesn't feel like a Trump quote either. Like, you'd think he would dodge that, but I don't think about America's financial situation. Well, again, the concern is to make a concession because American people are hurting.

The negotiator in him is like, I'm never going to consider anything. I always, everything's on the table. So, it's just like, for him, it's a category error. Like, I'm not, there's no way I'm going to admit to anything. Like, no, everything's on the table. Whatever. Yeah, it all feels like, from someone who has such good political instincts, that you'd be able to avoid that. But, you know, I guess I'm not sure exactly what is the thought process. I've been up all night doing 130 true social posts.

In five hours, you're probably a little tired, you're off your game, that's what happened there, right? Can we talk about that? Take the phone away. Someone take his phone. It was 133 between the hours of, I think, like 1 a.m. and 6. Yeah.

On a social media app that you created that no one uses. And we're all just like, nah, this is chill. On his way to China. I mean, you're on a plane, it's hard to see. Concerning signs. Maybe that was it. And then John Thune said he can't pass the SAVE Act. He's done all he can. So, that's an update on our fellow Republicans. Thanks for the update. I told you that. What I've been saying is for months. You've got, like, senators like John Curry, Utah, you know, Collins, all these people, they're not going to vote for the SAVE Act.

Like, it's not even like, like, that was the point that, you know, we could do this, you know, talking filibuster. My point is, you could keep talking. You don't have 51. It's not that you don't have 60, you don't have 51. That's a problem. I'm just a little tired of hearing excuses, because this is what we actually wanted. It's like, oh, we can do all this stuff abroad that no one wanted, or maybe a vast majority of the country didn't want.

But it's like, oh, when it comes to voter ID that everyone was chill with, 80% of people wanted this. It's like, sorry, we can't really. What are you talking about? I mean, we're on the same page. I know we're on the same page. I get it. I understand the frustration. I understand. Yeah. All right, but bring me up good news, Erika. What do we got? All right, today is a great feast day in the Holy Catholic Church. It is May 13th.

I can't even talk anymore. May 13th, Feast of Our Lady of Fatima, and it's a big anniversary, too. 45 years ago today. Pope St. John Paul II was shot, and yes, that is actually good news, because as he said himself later, one hand pulled the trigger, one finger pulled the trigger, another guided the bullet, and he, in fact, as we all know, survived the shooting. He went on to meet with his would-be assassin, offering him forgiveness, and this was a great moment today in St.

Peter's Square. It happened this morning while I was having my coffee. Pope Leo, he gets out, and he started walking through the crowds. As he's going along there. If you go back to 36 seconds, Tom, speed us up a little bit. There you go. And here you see him. He pauses. There is this plaque in the ground at St. Peter's where Pope John Paul II was shot, and he knelt down. He touched the plaque. He says a prayer, and I love seeing that visual continuity in our church that here is Pope Leo probably praying there for the intercession of the great Pope John Paul II.

Just a real beautiful moment in the life of the church and a reminder that life always wins over death, and yeah. Just beautiful. Okay, but so there's a little... I've got shoes washing there. I mean, obviously... Okay, but that's not... I don't know. Okay, but what?

That's not okay. I'm just saying, like, with regards to, you know, the attempt on his life on May 13, which was Fatima, and of course, Our Lady at Fatima warned, you know, the world about Russia and the errors that Russia would unleash on the world, and what happened? The secrets of Fatima, right? The communists take over Russia.

And, you know, Pope John Paul II, that was the prophecy, one of the three secrets of Fatima, right, that a man in white would be shot. And so then, what does Pope John Paul II do in response? As the world had been, you know, just feeling the pressure of decades and decades of, you know, hot wars like Vietnam, Korea, but then just the specter of nuclear war between these two superpowers, Pope John Paul II on March 25th, 1984.

He decides to consecrate Russia to the Immaculate Heart of Mary. Now, here is a little question for you. Let us think about what happened. In less than a decade, what happens? Well, I am going to say something that happens, and you help me out here, Erika, with the trivia. So, there was a military coup to reestablish communism fails in Russia. On August 22, 1991. What feast day is that? That is the Queenship of Mary for 500, Josh. Yep, there we go.

Okay. I like this game. The leaders of Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus meet together to form a Commonwealth of Independent States to begin the breaking up of the Soviet Union on December 8, 1991. What feast day is December 8? That would be the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, Josh. Wow, very good. I love this game. The Supreme Command in Russia formally approved those accords, establishing that Commonwealth of Independent States a few days later on December 12, 1991. Do you know what feast day that would be?

This has got to be my favorite. That is Our Lady of Guadalupe. Okay, but it doesn't become final, of course, until Mikhail Gorbachev. Resigns and formally ending the Soviet Union, and that was December 25. What feast day would that be? You know, I am going to let Tom answer that one, because I am pretty sure... Wait, wait, wait. Say that again?

I saw Jimmy Akin's in the chat, and I am a big Jimmy Akin head, so... Mikhail Gorbachev formally resigns, thus ending the Soviet Union December 25. Come on, Tom. Oh, come on. That is Christmas. Yay! Today, Mary gives birth to her son.

So, you know, just to think about how, for decades, you know, both these world powers, you know, had so many missiles pointing at each other, and then for, you know, who would have predicted that it would have ended so peacefully? Now, we have problems with Russia and Ukraine right now, I get it, but nowhere near the threat that we had for a good 70 years when Russia was communist.

Amen. Pray a daily rosary, it will change your life. Let us go. All right. Josh. Yeah, go ahead. I am sorry. Did you have? No, no, no. We are good. I want to end with Our Lady. I just, that was so beautiful. That was great. Let us just go with Josh now. I also, you started it off by saying this is my favorite feast day, and I saw the clip, and I am like, the day St. John Paul, like, I did not know St.

John Paul getting shot was a feast day. It is my favorite May feast day, I should say. Okay. Josh, you are up. Oh, dude, this is sick. Good call. I found it. A little return to normalcy. I knew that Tom would love this. I love this one. There is a billboard, I believe it's in New York City, and it is encouraging people to ditch the scrolling, ditch the screens. This is an advertisement that said zero screen time. LOOPcast Trivia, do you know what kind of iPod this is?

No, I never had an iPod. No, you don't know the name? This is the first iPod I ever got. No way! The iPod Shuffle. iPod Shuffle. I had a gold iPod Shuffle. I got it for... Christmas, and that was back when you had to buy individual songs on iTunes if you were a good ethical person and didn't pirate it. It was like 99 cents a song, so you really had to invest in songs that you liked, and then those are the only ones that you could play in the shuffle.

You could clip it to your shoulder when you worked out, plug it. It was awesome. So, the advertisement on this is zero screen time. Downgrade now. I find that fascinating. You know, this guy points out, you know, you've got a thousand songs in your pocket, and you can listen to this, but, you know, you're still tied into reality. You see other people, and the point that he's making is that, actually, constraints can actually create freedom, and we know this no better than when you try to go to a restaurant with a woman, and they give a big menu, and they freak out because they don't know what to decide.

Constraints? Josh, where are you going with this, man? Too many choices. You're wasting your life. And flood the brain. It's the in-and-out effect. In-and-out, they only have, like, how many things in the menu? Yeah, I was actually really excited when the OG, the Olive Garden, they made their menu smaller, because, you know, six years ago, the OG was very difficult to navigate for me. As a woman, I suppose, is what Josh is saying, but I had a hard time. Yeah, that's what he's saying.

Paralyzed by choice, and now it's down to small. It's like the original Cheesecake Factory. It's like a book. I was going to say, I'm not a woman, but the cheese... Cheesecake Factory menu, real short, so it is my brand.

Celine, did you have an iPod shuffle? She is a producer in the chat. She is checking out. She had a Nano. Okay, the Nano was sick, too. My dad had a Nano. That was a step up, and he had the dock that you could pop it in that would charge it, and it was the speaker dock that you could put it in. This was before Bluetooth speakers were a big deal, and that was a big deal in our house. My dad was always bumping random 80s music.

I don't really own songs. Yeah, you don't really strike me as a music guy. No, I do. I stream it. I stream it with... Pandora or whatever, there's stations I've listened to, and I don't have to worry about it. I think you've told me that, and I think I laughed the other time. You're such a Pandora guy. That makes so much sense. And you don't have the premium, right? You probably get the free version? Never, never. Of course.

My kids are like, they hate ads with the passion of the sun. They're like, I'd really give them my money. I'm like, I don't, what, a Home Depot ad every 10 minutes is going to really bother me? You like the music. Dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun. All right, it's commencement season. You know, I've got to give a quick shout-out to the alma mater, Ave Maria Head. Ron DeSantis, governor of Florida, pivotal governor of Florida, there to give a commencement speech.

Now, listen, we're pretty much known in the streets as the Notre Dame of the South, or the inverse, I'm not sure what. I mean, you keep saying that. Getting the governor of Florida, Catholic governor of Florida, to give commencement.

Great poll for my blue and white. I think we're blue and green. Blue, green, and white. I mean, we never really said that kind of thing, but the Giareans. Oh, whatever. So, yeah, there's Tom Monahan. I can't believe he's still going, man. Awesome. So, shout out, Ron DeSantis. I heard it was good.

What did someone say? Like, Erika, you said you had someone there. It's just like such a classic description of DeSantis. I had a few different friends. Yeah, congrats to all the grads. I had a few different friends with kids graduating, and one of them was... Like, yeah, you know, Ron DeSantis, he's not the most, like, dynamic speaker, but he's solid. You know, solid Ron, so.

Ron for SCOTUS. I'm here for the Ron for SCOTUS. Yeah, that's just like, he's perfect, you know. Exactly, yeah, exactly. Like, that's basically the description of Ron DeSantis that I've heard. I knew some of that worked in his office, too, is he's just like a machine. So, when you get him into rally mode, it doesn't translate, because he's just a machine.

I mean, he'd be a great emperor. The other ding on him was someone sat next to him at Mass in the oratory, and apparently he reached out his hand to hold hands during the Our Father, and that was a big Catholic ding, too, you know?

But he was at Mass, though, which is good. We'll give him points for that. I'll go with that. That's the other thing. I know Marco Rubio says he's Catholic, but I looked up his conversion path. Wild. He was Catholic, then he was Mormon briefly, and then he was Episcopal. And then he's, like, kind of Catholic? Like, he is Catholic? No, not kind of Catholic. Okay, he's, like, Catholic now. He's good standing, and he goes to Mass every Sunday. Sometimes he will also join his wife in going to the evangelical church that she likes to go to, but he fulfills his Sunday obligation by going to Mass every Sunday, and he also goes to daily Mass on a, you know, when he can.

Which, he's the final boss of Florida politics, because if you have the Catholic and evangelical... Coalition tie-in there, you're unstoppable. And you're Cuban. Cuban, too. Yeah, he really is, like, he's the Kamala Harris of Florida. Like, he checks out. Nah, I can't insult him like that. That's a terrible thing to say. Come on, he would think it's funny. He's a LOOPcast alum. He would think it's funny. Shout out to him. He also plays football. I love when people make the edits of him playing football.

I think his son might have walked down at Florida. Okay, is this a true story? So, I was trying to figure out this AI generated, but did he actually wear a replica of Maduro's tracksuit on the plane to China? There's like this meme going around of Marco Rubio wearing Maduro's tracksuit. You might have gotten God on that one. I don't think that one's real. But I do think the video of Trump, Xi Jinping, Tim Cook, and the other guy smoking in the wet market in wife beaters is legit.

That is Elon Musk. Yeah, I think that is legit. That is a great segue, Tom. It could possibly be AI, you're saying. Could not. Not possible. Totally legit. Okay, China visit, okay? We got video of Trump off the plane.

Wild. Where do I even... I didn't see this show. So, let's just say I'm going, these are the things going around my head. There's lots of speculation. The end question is, have we ended decades of being a China hawk? Like, are we getting back to the Nixon open up China era? That's what I'm going to end with. But I'll just say, this is what I've witnessed so far. Here's the gang walking off the plane to flags waving. It looks like the Chinese flag and the American flag.

And if you take a look at the crew here. We have Trump, we have Elon Musk, Jensen Huang, which is... CEO of NVIDIA, I have some interesting background on that, because he actually wasn't going to come, and then the last minute came, and then Trump was hyping him up right before, and many are seeing that as kind of a strategic move. To be precise, we picked him up in Anchorage, Alaska, during a refueling. Yeah. Also, potential AI video can confirm of him jumping on the plane like Tom Cruise in Mission Impossible.

So, we have Tim Cook, CEO of Apple, Larry Fink, CEO of BlackRock, CEO of Blackstone, CEO of Boeing, CEO of Citigroup, CEO of Goldman Sachs. All on there. In total, the combined net worth of these individuals is, I think, a trillion, $1.065 trillion. Some are joking we sent the entire economy on this plane to China. Some background on Jensen Huang, which I thought was interesting. Basically, he holds all the keys because he has the hammers and picks of the new AI economy that's booming here.

He makes chips, and the chips make a lot of money. He's the CEO of NVIDIA. So, China has been a big market for NVIDIA historically, but the US has export controls on what type of chips can get over to China because we see this as kind of an arms race to who develops better AI, reaches AGI, whatever they've been saying now. But we have restricted these AI capabilities. So, he wasn't actually supposed to originally be going on this trip. However, because the original signaling from the White House was, we're going to be debating agriculture, commercial aviation, energy, and other trade issues, as opposed to the AI issue entirely.

And it seems like at the last minute, we get Trump personally calling Wang, inviting him, and that he flew to meet Air Force One in Alaska, as he said. Trump praised him as the great Jensen Huang. Then turn the story into a viral, meme-worthy event in Chinese social media, as we've seen. So, it seems the messaging is AI might be potentially on the table for some type of deal. Again, kind of... Picking a little bit more towards the China hawks being kind of over in terms of their influence.

Also, a side note before we get into some speculation, Trump pledged again to ask about releasing Jimmy Lai, pro-democracy Catholic. I'm really praying for that. I'm really praying for him. Praying for him. He was imprisoned by China. He was formerly in.

What is the vast state of Hong Kong? Hong Kong is a satellite of China now. It used to be free. Right. 99 years were up, and then the British relinquished it, and now it is basically China. So, he is going to bring them up. This is all speculation at this point. The meetings are going on now. Was this surprising to either of you, considering the last couple of decades of policy towards China?

It wasn't surprising in that the meeting's been planned for a while, and Trump's talked for a long time about wanting to meet Xi Jinping in his second term. So, the fact that it happened, and it was delayed, it was supposed to happen back at the beginning of April, but with the Iran war, it was delayed until now. So, you know, nuts and bolts, not a shock, like, oh my gosh, we're going to China now. It was a surprise to see the...

The array of businessmen who were brought along. It will be interesting to see. Obviously, this has become much more of a— A negotiation about economic concerns than human rights, but I think it always was that. There's talk here about, I mean, you'll hear it from pundits that, you know, Trump, because of Iran, he's going into this vulnerable, and, you know, he's going hat in hand, and we need this, but I think that that's really looking at the picture in a one-sided way, because there's a lot of ways in which I think China is more vulnerable than the United States right now, and in a way...

I think China needs American consumers more than America needs, for sure, Chinese consumers, because they're dirt poor. The GDP is like 16,000 right now per capita compared to us, which is, I mean, we're more than double them. But that China is also heavily reliant on foreign imports for energy, so it's 70 to 74 percent of their oil. And like 45% of their natural gas. And that's been squeezed by the Panama Canal, by Venezuela, and now by Iran. So there's a vulnerability there, too, that's not being emphasized in the mainstream media.

But you're right in the sense that, you know, China, I mean, America, you know, China relies on American buying their imports. That's true. The thing that America depends on China, or has for a while, has been them buying up our debt.

We'd love to sell to their consumers. We're certainly trying in many ways, but that's the bigger thing. So, that's the other half of it. But the problem is, it looks like China also has problems with its debt. I think you had some numbers on that.

Yeah, so this is really interesting, and I just learned this yesterday. So, America's debt-to-GDP ratio is 124%, which is not good. If my house had that ratio, we would be in penury. Like, this would be absolutely awful. But China reports numbers as well, and it's really hard to get an accurate number, but even at their putting their best face forward, If they're not fudging the numbers, their ratio is 336%. That's double. That's more than double. That's way more than double ours.

And so, when you're comparing the situation of our national debts, again, China comes out on the bottom there. So, I don't think everything is doom and gloom and, you know, Trump's hat in hand. That's the narrative that Trump foes would like you to believe. But I think the meetings are going to be much more interesting and could be much more in American interest. And, again, I don't think that, you know, you're hearing a lot of, like, global parody talk coming, like we've got, okay, this is proof that now it's a multipolar global reality with Russia and China and the United States.

I don't think the numbers bear that out. What we just cited, the fact that our GDP is so much higher, and also that China is, and we brought this up earlier in our conversation, Tom, China is still highly dependent on the American Brain Trust, American Innovation. We might buy all of our cheap gadgets from them, but they send all their students to American universities.

Which I hate, and I think they should stop. Exactly. I really don't like them being here, and they're watched very carefully while they're here. It's terrible. They also seem to be infiltrating our city councils. We just had a story of the mayor in California who's going to probably end up in prison for being a Chinese agent. We had Fang Fang and Eric Swalwell. Remember her? And they own a concerning amount of farmland next to military settlements. Yeah, they're buying up our farmland.

I would love to see us solve the beef production problem. I want my burger price to go down if we just seize all the Chinese farmland. And start putting cattle on it so that we can eat beef again in the middle class here. Yeah, I don't know. Maybe I lean a little bit more towards the multipolar moment. And I guess my reasoning would be like a lot of those investments, like you mentioned the debt ratio, but those investments aren't like hard.

So, like they're BRICS agreements with much of Asia and now getting in the Middle East. Yes, that's debt, but it's what type of debt is it? And those are, in my opinion, I guess, predatory contracts that they're signing with all of these different countries that they now align their interests. And we kind of do it, too, like through the dollar. Like, we use the petrodollar. It's somewhat predatory, I guess you could say, in terms of it works in our interest because we control the levers on how valuable that dollar is.

I think it's most predatory, but it's certainly an advantage. There's no question. No question. So, they're leveraging that. We're leveraging this. You could say we control now Venezuela, which is the Panama Canal, which is helpful. They now maintain control by proxy over the Strait of Hormuz. So, I think you were mentioning, too, like, what if this meeting is just they get together and be like, hey, we've done a lot of bashing, right? Like, we've just smashed. The previous order with the war and then Venezuela, you know, how are we going to come together here?

I have one prediction. One prediction, because, again, this is all speculation. I think we get Chinese cars, EVs, in the market in North America. I think that is going to be a concern. You think Elon is going to sit there and let that happen? We allow Chinese electronic vehicles to be sold in the United States. Yes. Okay. Yeah, that would be my...

My bold prediction, I don't think Elon would be happy about it, but I think that would be a concession that Trump would be willing to make, considering how advanced, based on my cursory read of it, their electric vehicles are. Cheaper, better, more advanced than what we have here. But that's because they've invested a lot of state into that enterprise. But they can't sell it. Again, they have the good stuff, but they can't sell it on the market. So, that would be like a leverage that could potentially be pulled.

I really know nothing. I just see the memes. So, that's what I got. Okay, 12-0 now, Josh. Just real quick, the high debt that they have, they felt like they could ride the wave so long as Americans are just gobbling up tons of their cheap imports, and so if by putting tariffs on it, by putting restrictions on it, and cutting that down a little bit, it makes China, I wouldn't say desperate, but like needing to make a deal. Wait, what tariffs?

I thought they got repealed. I know. Well, they were there for a while. What are you talking about? The leverage is gone. Long enough to make a dent, though. I guess. Yeah, made a dent. I don't know. Unfortunate all that got repealed, but okay, Josh, what do you got? Okay, so in honor of Stephen Colbert's last week, here is the funniest moment on his TV show, and it was by accident. Wait, what? I'm so excited. He's out?

Isn't he out? This is the final week. Yeah, this is it. May 21st is the date, and don't ask me how I know that. I haven't been tracking Colbert very close, apparently. Am I on Colbert Watch? Not on Colbert. I'm not a Colbert head.

Here, I'll share this one. I know you guys are objective over there, that you just report the news as it is. Oh, I know. CNN makes a... Was that supposed to be a lab lie? It wasn't supposed to be, but I guess it is.

Hey, you got to give him credit for that. That was funny. That was actually funny. Yo, hand it over for that one. He played that pretty well. It does not make up for the dancing vaccine syringes, though. He's earnestly just trying to glaze CNN, as the kids say, and just steps in it.

The whole audience laughs. Here is my beef on Colbert, and this is the thing. I don't, it is so annoying that they, because there are people that are like protesting this or whatever. Okay, but no, here is the second, this is the other shoe. So, here is the other clip. What is the other shoe?

The next clip just shows you exactly what happened. So, a reporter from, I don't know, it was like the NBC affiliate in Los Angeles is interviewing. Javier Becerra, he used to be Biden's Health and Human Services Secretary, abortion, claims he's Catholic, horrible guy. He's now running for governor, and he's doing this interview with the press. So, the whole laugh line with the Colbert thing was like, you're a really good, you really try really hard to be objective, and the whole audience laughs, because like, yeah, CNN trying to be objective, the media being objective.

The audience, a liberal audience is even laughing at that, right? Why is it that people believe that the media is biased? Here is, I mean, just a hilarious, you know, they say a Kinsey gaffe. Is when a politician accidentally tells the truth. This politician is saying something on camera that they probably always say to reporters off camera, but he's an idiot for saying it while the cameras are rolling. Here he is with KTLA in interview.

By the way, this is a profile piece. This is not a gotcha piece, right? Well, look, I think these questions are fair. It's in order to learn about you as a candidate. So, why is it about the profile? I don't know how you define profile, but I'd like to begin the interview. The way I describe profile is you talk about all the things that I've done, things I want to do, and along with some tough questions. But not only tough questions.

Oh, my gosh. Working the refs, as they say, right? This is what Democrats are used to. They set the parameters. No, no, no, no. I am going to give you an interview. It is a profile thing. You are supposed to make me look wonderful, talk about all the great things I have done as Attorney General of California, as Health and Human Services Secretary, and now I am running for Governor. Maybe a tough question or two, but this is a profile thing.

This is not the only time in God's green earth that a politician has talked like this, but you're doing it while the tape's rolling. Are you an idiot? This is why we don't think you're objective. Katie Porter is my favorite, personally. Katie is. Katie is. But go check out Katie Porter's highlight reels.

Well, there's now somebody running for governor, Matt Meehan, who just did an ad spoofing Javier Becerra for this, and also Katie Porter, who was, remember, she was yelling at this reporter. Get out of my frame. It's my favorite. Get out of my frame! The entitlement that these politicians have. Me with my kids. And the Democrats. Because Republican candidates for office are used to the reporters being against them from day one.

Pause. Okay, let me push back briefly. I don't think Fox News is doing real hard-hitting journalism, okay? They're the institutional voice piece of the right. They are. They're not asking tough questions, Republicans. You can't even get on Fox News unless you're in the good graces of President Donald Trump right now. That's just the truth. But, I mean, Fox News has influence, I know, but when you compare it to Washington Post, New York Times, ABC, CNN, NBC, The View, all these different things, there's so many more outlets that are on a liberal viewpoint than for Fox News.

Fox News is not equivalent to... It's not like 50% of the media ecosystem. Sure, but I guess my counterpoint would be, I don't think that they're very influential anymore anyway. And so, even in the case of Stephen Colbert, like Jimmy Kimmel, etc., they feel entitled to be on air for some reason, which I don't understand. They could go into the open market of social media, whatever, build their own brand there. A lot of them won't because they don't have the talent to or they couldn't.

Okay, but... You're saying, you don't watch Jimmy Kimmel, you don't watch CNN. That doesn't mean they're not influential. Right, I also don't watch Fox News. There are millions, of course, there's millions of people that watch it, and I would say you're right that a Republican politician can go onto Fox News and get a softball interview and get questions that are not tough at all.

But when it comes to a Democrat's running for office, most Republicans, when they're running for office, they are ready for a hostile media, because most of the reporters that they're going to be dealing with are trying to slant everything against them. That doesn't mean that Republican politicians are always right. I'm not saying that. I'm just saying that Republican politicians are used to a media being hostile to them, whereas Democrats, as we look at Pelosi and Katie Porter and Javier Becerra, And Chuck Schumer, they're used to a media that doesn't give them tough questions at all, hardly.

One or two, oh, you almost got me there, ha, ha, ha. But in fact, they're used to being treated like royalty. Yeah, it's true. I agree that's the legacy thing, but I think now looking forward, that's over. And now you're seeing, even this is a good example of where they're getting tough questions because they're in the wilderness. And the new metric of success. Is whether or not you can last in hostile environments in the open market of social media, et cetera.

I'm looking forward to a future, as you're saying, which suggests that the Democratic candidates for office will also get hostile questions. Will they get tough questions more and more frequently? But for the most part, for the last 20, 30, 40 years, they've been getting so many softballs that they're rusty. They don't even know how to talk. In fact, they don't even... This is part of the problem, and they end up in blue enclaves. So, like, has Gavin Newsom even run a competitive election?

No. And Kamala Harris's first competitive election was for President of the United States. I mean, obviously, she ran for Vice President, too. A hundred days. A hundred and seventeen days. When she ran for Senate, when she ran for Attorney General of California, the contest was the primary. And once you won that, well, it was easy sailing. Right, right. And I think, Tom, that part of it, too, what's going to be the measure of success. Going into 26 and 28, probably more 28, maybe a little more longer on-ramp, but it's going to be also your ability to hang with the podcast bros, right?

I think that, yeah, social media in terms of reactions and clipping and probably AI-generated deepfakes, all that, but also the ability to hang with the podcast bros. And we saw with Harris and Vance and then Harris and Trump. That she just couldn't. Like, she couldn't do long-form anything, like, regardless. And I think a big part of that is that being the underdog, it does force you to sharpen your skills and be able to get up there. I mean, we saw it with Marco Rubio with the press conference.

Like, he could take questions from anyone, friendly or hostile. Right. And he was perfectly comfortable. Can you imagine Kamala Harris getting up and doing that? No. Well, Kamala Harris in 2024 was unable to do that. The question is, over the course of the next three years, is she going to try to improve and develop some of these things so that she can run better? In other words, if my prediction is right and she becomes the nominee, Republicans would be foolish to fight the last war.

That is the mistake of everyone. You fight the battles of the previous engagement. You have to consider the fact that she might actually have tried to improve herself and learn to do longer-form interviews, learn how to get beyond just the mere soundbites. We'll see. Yeah, I think I actually agree on the legacy, and I think the point you made earlier still makes a lot of sense. Why are Dems still unpopular, congressional Dems still unpopular, despite inflation, despite all these problems? And I think it is an atrophy.

They have not faced a hostile media environment where they're out of power, they're really disappointed in 2024, and there's a new media environment to navigate in which they have no experience, largely because the way to get your points across run extremely friendly. Liberal or left-leaning media outlets, you know, barring Fox News or whatever. But the new path to convincing people is authenticity. Either you can fake it really well, or you actually are authentic. And I think people are confused. Why is Graham Planter?

Doing well. He understands how to navigate this environment. Why was Zoran Memdani popular? He understands how to navigate this environment. He did take tough questions. He was working with influencers, but that is the new, you cannot just do the reliable, I am going to get a profile from CBS, wherever, and they are going to ask me softballs, and then they are going to promote me, and it is going to be great. It is like, that is just not what it takes anymore, and that is why so many Dems are floundering, partially, I think, because of age as well.

Many of them are older. Javier Becerra, how old is he? He has got to be like 60. Plus. Well, right, and Nancy Pelosi is like a thousand years old. Oh my gosh, exactly. And actually, part of the problem right now, we're having this big debate in this country about redistricting, and of course, what's going to happen is more and more states, both blue states and red states, are lining up their maps in such a way that the number of... That red states are adding more seats to their side, Dems are doing it on their side, and that the total number of House seats that are going to be actually within the realm of being swing states, swing seats, I mean, are lowering.

And so, that means more and more congressmen on both the Democratic and Republican side in the House are representing lopsided districts where they can kind of get away with a little bit more, you know. And their voters are like, okay, well, fine, we'll let it go. So, that's a problem for both parties, but in this redistricting thing, it's bringing to light other things. First of all, The Democrats have had structural advantages in the House of Representatives. They have had these race-based DEI districts, which have given them at least 12 seats in the Congress to start with, that they really had no right to by just the sheer numbers, okay?

Then you also have the fact that illegal immigration in the United States, flooding blue states, gives them more seats in Congress because our census by the Constitution It has to count all persons residing in the state. So, states that are super friendly to illegal immigration, like New York, Illinois, California, they invite millions of these illegal immigrants in, and they get more representation in Congress. So, those two things have allowed the Democratic Party to, like... They become, drift further and further to the left, but they're not as open to the voters being corrected because they're in these safer blue districts.

And so, you're seeing kind of this tension right now. And now? What it's allowed them to do is Democrats don't even compete in rural areas. I moved to northern Michigan in 2005. At the time, I was represented by a blue dog Democrat, Bart Stupak, right? But that was actually kind of relatively normal. And not just in the House. Democrats would win rural states. There were two Democrats in North and South Dakota each when I graduated from high school. Montana had a Democrat.

This was not... They're rare, but they're gone. They've gone the way of the dodo bird. Democrats have realized now, with the new gerrymandering and all this other kind of stuff, because they concentrate in big cities like Chicago and New York, L.A., whatever, they're not even competing for these rural areas.

And it has made the Democratic Party far, far more to the left, because they do not have 20 or 30 Democrats in the House saying, hold on a second, my rural district is not going to like giving trans surgeries for minors. They are not going to want taxpayers to pay for abortions. There is a break. There is someone tapping the brakes on the Democratic Party, preventing them from going too far to the left. It was these rural Democrats and southern conservative Democrats.

They're all gone, and so what we're seeing now is a rump of the Democratic Party that's gone way far to the left. We'll see what happens. Erika, what do you got? All right. I'm going to do a little church corner here. You might think of the Synod on Synodality as something long in the distant past that you tried to forget, because what was it anyway? But the synodaling has continued. This is Francis's legacy. The Synod and Synodality, they have begun issuing reports from these study groups that were break-offs from the meetings that were held in 2024.

And this week we got, or last week we got, from Study Group 9, which is one of these continuing study groups, and which was charged with what it calls the Theological Criteria in Synodal Methodologies for Shared Discernment of Controversial Doctrinal, Pastoral, and Ethical Issues. That's all very synodaling speak for LGBTQ plus issues, which they have now rebranded as, instead of controversial issues, emerging issues.

And the language, really, it's this effort from the highest levels of the Vatican, advising the Pope, and sending out advisories for different dicasteries, an effort to really reopen these debates that the Church has considered settled. So, the final report of Study Group 9 are subject to a process of evaluation and then implementation.

That can affect the diocesan level and also national episcopal conferences, like the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, starting this summer. And then, of course, in October 2028, when we are all busy with our presidential election final push here in the United States, we'll culminate in a final ecclesial assembly at the Vatican to do the final report, the final, maybe magisterial, maybe just advisory teaching from the church in Rome. So, this report, though, was troubling on a few different levels. It repeatedly referenced these rebranded emerging issues.

Tied to sexuality, gender, authority, and inclusion. Father James Martin was very excited. The key themes were that it called for a greater reliance on lived experience. I felt like I was back in the 70s again, in evaluating moral questions. It suggested that the Holy Spirit is now leading the church to new understandings through the synodal listening process, and comparing today's disputed moral issues, namely gay issues, and the ...early church's discernment over Gentile converts in Acts 15, which was the Council of Jerusalem.

Again, it used language like paradigm shift when it came to theology and pastoral practice, and... The reason Father James Martin got so excited was that the report chose to include two testimonies from gay Catholics who claim they are married to people of the same sex. The second testimony was written by an American married to a man who was actually one of the men blessed in that famous photo of Father James Martin blessing the same-sex couple after fiducia supplicans came out.

He began by saying that his sexuality isn't, quote, a perversion, disorder, or a cross. It is a gift from God. I have a happy, healthy marriage, and I'm flourishing as an openly gay Catholic. He said that he joined Courage International while he was at Notre Dame as an undergrad, and he made it a point to say that it works with people who suffer from same-sex attraction, and then, of course, he objected to the language that this is a suffering.

The author of the testimony maintained, That Courage International did little to help my spiritual and psychosexual development, and he added that the people he met at Courage International were lonely, hopeless, and often depressed. He also said Courage had been recommended to him by a conversion therapist, and then conflated, the report's authors then conflated his words with the erroneous claim that Courage International was pushing reparative therapy. Which had, quote, the effect of separating faith and sexuality.

And to me, this is one of the more insidious turns of this report, that they would take the testimony of someone who was living a life directly contrary to church teaching and celebrating it and asking others to celebrate it and use it to malign Courage International, which is one of the church's only, if not the only, international global effort to help Catholics pastorally who suffer from same-sex attraction to live a life of chastity in accordance with church teaching. And for that to be allowed, Current International came out.

They responded to the report and said, we were never contacted by the report's authors. They never reached out to us to ask. We have nothing to do with recommending therapists. We don't do that officially. This is not our purview. And this is, again, these reports, you could kind of scoff and laugh them off.

They don't mean anything, but they actually are used for recommendations to specific dioceses, and that this would be the final report of this committee. It just speaks that perhaps the smoke of the Lavender Mafia has not quite evaporated from the synodal process, or from the Vatican itself. So, Again, a lot of confusion coming out of this, a lot of making a big mess without a lot of clarity, and definitely hoping, looking forward to the continuation of Leo's pontificate, to perhaps bring a crackdown, call for some greater clarity from the synodal groups, or just shut down the synodal groups.

Like, do we really need them to finish giving us reports? That's my take. Thank you for your take, Erika. You're welcome. Shout out to Courage International. Fantastic. Yeah. Keep it up, guys. Tom Kidd made it to the end of this. Here we go. Kentucky 04. It's a Republican primary. I think this is the most I've ever paid attention to Republican primaries in 2020, like an in-between year. Ever?

Thomas Massey has been in Congress since 2012. He's an engineer from MIT, a very well-known libertarian, made a lot of national news because he has been key in getting the Epstein Transparency Act published amidst lots of backlash. He reached across the aisle for that one, and has been constantly attacked by Donald Trump, a very on-and-off relationship. I think he was called the smartest man in Congress, and then a piece of human trash. Direct quotes at different points.

The reason I am focused on this race is I am seeing AIs here, by the way, in terms of politics now, and let us just say a lot of the attack ads typically were not very high quality to begin with, but now we are getting AI helping out with that. Here we have an ad of him being in a throuple with AOC and Ilhan Omar. Here is a look at what that one looks like. So, here is an AI video of Thomas Massey holding hands with Ilhan Omar at AOC, dining with them, taking them in a car, and I believe ending up at a hotel.

Yeah, here we go. Do not disturb in a hotel. Real classy. We're getting real nasty in Kentucky 04, and then his opponent is using AI as well, except he's using it and forgetting to not copy the prompt that he used for his Instagram post. It says, here's a poll for Congress 2026. Here's a polished social media post in your usual campaign community-focused tone. And then below it says, today I had the opportunity to visit with folks at Vansburg Mayfest in Vansburg, Kentucky.

Rookie mistake for whatever intern, maybe it was at himself. Hey, I've done that, guys. That's tough work. You'll come back. You'll come back from it. But, of course, the real takeaway, other than the nasty AI attacks, is it is the most expensive in recorded history U.S. primary race ever. At least 250, sorry, $25.6 million in ad spending. 14.3 million supporting Ed Gellerin versus 10.7 million supporting Thomas Massey. Now, most of this is outside money and PAC money. Ed Gellerin, for a little background, he is a Kentucky farmer, retired U.S.

Navy SEAL, Republican congressional candidate challenging Thomas Massey in Kentucky 04. He previously ran in the 2024 Republican primary for Kentucky State District 7, narrowly losing to Aaron Reed. Basically, Trump ...was threatening to primary Massey, and a lot of people threw their hat in the ring for, we want to be the guy, and it looks like Ed was chosen.

The biggest anti-Massey pro-Galloran force appears to be MAGA Kentucky Trump-aligned super PAC. Tied to Trump World operatives, including Chris LaCivita, the Lexington Herald-Ledger reported, MAGA Kentucky raised $2.75 million in 2025, including $1 million directly from hedge fund billionaire Paul Singer, $750K from America 21 PAC, which is also funded by Singer. 750 from a PAC tied to Miriam Adelson, and 250K from John Paulson, if you're curious about what they all have in common. They're major Israeli billionaires within the country, very active politically.

Miriam Adelson famously donated, I think, 200 million to the Trump campaign. And so, the reason they're all mad about this, also United Democracy Project, it's an APAC-linked super PAC, Jewish Insider reported UDP launched a $790,000 TV and cable ad buy against Massey in Cincinnati, Louisville, and Charleston media markets. So, yeah, Thomas Massey is... Libertarian conservative, as many know, thrown in the side at some times. Anti-spending, anti-foreign aid, pro-gun, anti-surveillance, and frequently willing to break with GOP leadership and show up when he thinks a bill violates his principles.

I went and actually found all the times that he did break. If anyone is curious, I can throw that somewhere. But he has been in since 2012. He has never actually had a competitive primary challenger. This is the first time.

But he is getting a lot of money from Kentucky First PAC, spent $1 million on a pro-Massie ad buy in December. It is funded 1.01 million contribution from a group founded by Jeff Yass, Pennsylvania billionaire with ties to Rand Paul. So, it seems like a clash from, say, the libertarian wing with the Israel first wing in terms of Paul Singer, who also notoriously funded LGBTQ activism in America as well.

And so, we get now a hit piece come out this morning from Axios. Thomas Massey's ex accuses him of hush money offer. So, as I understand it, there was no... So, I looked into this. There was no ethics complaint. Nothing was ever officially filed. They basically simulated what looks like a deposition of some kind with a woman that accuses him of... I think he reached out via Twitter DM.

And then they started dating, said that Massey got her a job with Victoria Sparts. Victoria Sparts fired her after six weeks. She filed a lawsuit, a wrongful termination lawsuit against Victoria Sparts, and then said that Thomas Massey wanted to pay her $6,000 to be quiet about it for some reason, and did it with cow money, which she implied that he didn't report his... What's cow money? Cow money would be money he makes from his ranch. Oh. So, because he raises cows, he has a farm.

Right. It's off the books. It's not part of his campaign. Got it. Off the books, Thomas Massey responds, it's sad that a week before this election, people are making false and unsubstantiated allegations about me in an obvious attempt to influence the outcome of the election. All of the claims of inappropriate conduct are false. I've never offended anyone, offered anyone money in exchange for their silence. I report all of my farm income, including cash to the IRS. There are no ethics claims filed against me, nor have there ever been any claims filed against me in my 14 years in office.

I've consulted legal counsel. We are considering all options. So, it's getting pretty nasty at this point. Do we have polls or anything? Like, he's clearly... I have Holly Market. ...favorite. We're talking about polls because you're talking about a congressional race. You know, when you're running for governor or when you're running for Senate or president, it's much easier to get a statistical amount that you can get good numbers on. When you're talking about the congressional race, and then in this particular case, you're talking about only the Republican voters, because it's the Republican primary, so you can get wild variations.

Someone might be up by seven points, and then the next day he loses, because it's like, well, it's hard to get a really good sample. So, polling is hard to discern. The polling markets is where people who are betting their own money are going to say, this is who we think it is. But, of course, even that... Can we influence? Some people will use money to drive up their stock on there, try to help their candidates. So, that also is kind of, you can involve some noise, we'll see.

Yeah, our campaign is going to have to budget from now on for polymarket influencing. Yeah, potentially. To go forward. But yeah, some sample polling, I think this largely bears out to my opinions. We have age 17 to 25, Massey's up 25%. Age 26 to 35, Massey up 56%. Okay. Age 36 to 45, Massey up 38%. 46 to 55, Massey plus 17. And then Ed Gellerin is up. Everything above 56 years old to 75 plus, he is up in all of those categories in similar margins.

So, it seems like we are split age-wise as well here. So, Tom and I were going a few rounds on this before we started the podcast here. It is funny because we have a lot of questions here. So, let us get started. You know, the Libertarian Party itself, there actually is a party, Libertarian Party, and it is completely ineffectual. The only Libertarians that have made any progress or got elected to anything of consequence have been Republicans who are Libertarian in nature.

So, Massey here in a congressional district in Kentucky. Also in Kentucky, you have the Senator Rand Paul, and then his father, who was a congressman out of Texas for many years. Also, by the way, his father was an OBGYN. So, Dr. Ron Paul actually delivered a baby that became that pop singer, Selena.

Really? In fact, yes. That is a fun fact. Wow. Now, Thomas Massey, he has got all the right enemies. I mean, like, you know, the fact that he is not in favor of... Foreign wars. You know, he's getting AIPAC and Singer and all these guys to campaign against him is a plus in my mind. So, I was giving Tom a little grief about Tom asking him to go to the show. The reason I do not like him, though, in general, is not on the foreign policy stuff, which was getting him all this money being spent against him.

Yeah, obviously, in my opinion. The thing I don't care, though, about is I wish he would, he has a large problem with the vast, you know, burgeoning welfare state that we have in the United States. It's an obscene amount of money that is spent, all the stuff that's misdirected by our federal government. And I actually, I mean, obviously, I agree with it. I wish our government was much, much, much, much smaller. And a lot of these things would be kicked down to the states and done that way.

But the problem I have with Thomas Massey, as well as for Senator Rand Paul, is they're almost like a guaranteed no vote on a budget. In my mind, it would be better if he made it available, but just had really strict terms for like, okay, if you want me to vote yes on this horrible bill, which I think stinks to high heaven, I at least want this done, you know, this regulation repealed, or this. Offer something, even if it is a really high mark, but if you never really make your vote really available, then the nose counters.

They need their 218 votes, or 215 if the House is smaller, and if they know they can't get it on you, then they've got to give, you know, then their margin for error is that much smaller, because we have like a three-, four-, five-seat majority. Then we know you're just enabling like three other people to go, well, we're also not going to make it available, and then you just, you really constrain. The ability for that, because you know that 215 or 14 Democrats are going to obviously vote no, and so if you have got an automatic no on your side, it really gets that much harder to pass legislation in a meaningful way.

I mean, I wish, obviously, we had a larger majority of Americans that wanted smaller government. I mean, I would love that. Can I push here? So, I would push back briefly, because the one that comes up all the time is he voted against the Big Beautiful Bill, which was the spending package in 2025, and he's being attacked as like, oh, you were against tax cuts, you're against the border wall, you're against the social policy provisions, but he, on principle, said, I don't like omnibus bills, in which we complain about just about every time it comes up here on the show, how they use that as a vehicle to get in tons of terrible spending, poor, horrible things.

It says, I'm not going to do it. I'm not going to vote for it. It's bad. It's bad on principle. I'd rather withhold for those exact exemptions that you're talking about. He actually recently just did this with the farm bill that was about to be passed because they had a protection for Monsanto Bayer, which was protecting people from suing users of glyphosate for causing cancer in local communities. Now, he said, I'm not going to vote for it unless it's taken out.

That needs to be a provision. I think Ana Paula Luna actually was the one that put something up to strip it out, which is fantastic, but... To me, isn't that exactly what you would want in Congress? Wouldn't you want someone that is principled, that could work across the aisle, that is preventing, say, the sheep that would go along with this mission, that gets all the pork put in, that we constantly complain about? Like, to me, he's one of the only ones that will actually, on principle, say, no, I'm not going to do it.

It's bad for the country. Yeah, sometimes he does things like that. I do remember that discussion over the last week or two on that, and I thought that was very helpful. I think that was an advancement. And other times, he gives me heartaches.

I'm not saying I would vote to remove him. I'm not saying I'd vote for his primary challenger. And I guess, yeah, that brings the broader frustration. Why is Trump spending gunpowder going after Thomas Massey, who's with him 90% of the time? The reason is because the Epstein files and Israel. Just for anyone paying attention, those are the two reasons. All of his biggest donors are obsessed with Israel. Well, I think the third reason is certainly also that he makes that 218th vote harder to get.

So, you always know. You know, it's a cumulative factor for Trump, obviously. Trump hates what he perceives as disloyalty, and I think that Thomas Massey, there's a personal aspect to it as well. Sure, but what's frustrating with Trump with that aspect, too, is he ran on all of these people that now, you know, glaze him, basically. Like the Mark Levins, the Ben Shapiros, who are all anti-Trumpers, and now love him because he attacked Iran. And now he takes those people for granted, the people that he actually respects.

What he perceives as strong leaders are people that are principled, because he flip-flops, depending on where he's at with them, in the case of Massey, because Massey was with him on the election stuff in 2020. He was with him on the COVID stuff. So, at one point, it's like, I hate you because you're taking a principled stand against me. You're disloyal. But then, as soon as you agree with him in the camp, he pragmatically comes back and is just like, you're the best, great patriot American, and then now we're right back to you're mad at him, so you're going to attack him.

So, I guess I actually like Massey a little bit better because if nothing else, he's been principled as opposed to this chaotic flip-flopping that we've seen from Trump and his willingness to betray voters that in the case of going to war in Iran on these kind of flimsy pretenses, instead of say, going to bat for the SAVE Act and attacking Republicans that are not going to be strong enough there. Like Josh, you opined, we have all these weak Republicans, right? They can't get it done when it comes to the SAVE Act.

That's what all the Americans actually want. The senators that have been not helpful in the SAVE Act, too. I think he should save the gunpowder for those people, as opposed to the people that are with him 90% of the time and are a little bit of a thorn in the side, but actually represent a contingency that is a part of his coalition, instead of this is a direct attack on people in his coalition that are really mad about the foreign intervention and the obsession with Israel.

So, I'm actually curious to see how this pans out, because Polly Market right now has it at pretty much a dead heat, 50-50. We'll see. The allegation seems like it reminds me a little bit of the... Blase Ford accusations with Kavanaugh, right? Like, super convenient, someone with a history of doing this kind of thing, and no concrete allegations. So, I actually wonder if that backfires a little bit, because it's like, oh, like, everyone kind of sees through this, and now the attention's there, and then, so, I don't know, we'll see.

I mean, I just, what you said he did with trying to negotiate to get the thing out of the farm bill, I want him to lean into that kind of stuff more, and less into, I'm just. You know, the principles stand against any omnibus bill. I think the problem with that is that, man, I think the one beautiful bill could have been a lot better, but it was pretty dang good. There's a lot of good things in there that really could have been helpful, and having his vote available as a potential could have made it a little bit stronger.

So, you wouldn't have to go after it. So, anyway, I get it. Yeah, and maybe just a general overall frustration with Trump just seeming to attack everyone in his coalition now all the time. Like, people that he smartly before were like, oh, you know, we can cut deals, we can make everyone happy, you bring in, you build a broad coalition, there's a ton of momentum, and then it just seemed like we've had a year of just... It's attacking inside all the time.

Attack, attack, attack, attack, attack. And it demoralizes people, and it makes people feel betrayed instead of, why aren't we going after the Democrats that you crushed or our perceived enemies that you ran on attacking? This internal, this new Trump where it's, like, just shooting off at people that were there supporting him in 2020 when people deplatformed him. And, like, all the times it was actually dangerous to be a Trump supporter have been there since day one are now getting, you know.

Kind of like, it just seems like senselessly attacked. I don't understand it. It doesn't seem smart politically, and it certainly is demoralizing emotionally. So, we'll see where that goes. I'd recommend focusing your firepower elsewhere instead of people that actually are with you on quite a bit of things. All right, daily prayer. We have Prayer for America 250. Again, if you guys want to join us there.

It is in Wisconsin, June 13th. It is going to be awesome. Go check out the website, so then you can throw it in there. We are going to end the prayer. The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, Amen. The Sacred Heart of Jesus, King of Heaven and Earth, I place today in my nation, the United States of America, into your heart, pierced for the love of us, on the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, I acknowledge that true liberty is your gift, and that our lasting homeland is the eternal Kingdom of God.

Under the mantle of Our Lady of Guadalupe, Patroness of the Americas, and through the intercession of her Immaculate Heart, bless my homeland anew, purify her from sin, and guide her leaders in truth, justice, and peace, so that she may safeguard all human life, respect the integrity of marriage and the family, and honor the practice of religion. Reign in my home and in my nation, draw every heart into communion with you, that your truth, love, justice, mercy, and peace may triumph in America and throughout the world.

Amen. St. Thomas More, St. Fidelis, Our Lady Guadalupe. Pray for us. Amen. We will catch you guys on the next episode. Erika's got a great episode of The Deep coming for you on Thursday. Yeah, pumped. We're talking about Disney villains, so those of you who need a little getting primed for summer blockbusters, here we go. Yes. Oh, maybe you got to do it on The Odyssey, too. I've not seen good things so far. Oh, my goodness, no. They killed my boy.

What have they done to my boy? They massacred my boy. I know. Atticus is being played by a trans-something. Do not watch. Or an animal farm. You should just do one of the movies that they're massacring based on consequences. Great literature that's being massacred. I mean, that would be a clickbait one, I think. I might have to go there. Alright, gang. Catch you guys later. Peace.