Minnesota Fraud Scandal EXPOSED, #NeverTrump is Over, and Pope Leo Confronts Pritzker

And we're live. Merry Christmas to one and all. We are still in the Christmas octave. Merry Christmas, Josh. Merry Christmas, Erika. Thank you. It's good to be together during this beautiful season. On the Feast of St. Thomas Beckett, more on him in the Good News section, but we are here on LOOPcast, just me and Josh Tomazoff across America with his family for some well-deserved rest. But here we are, LOOPcast, brought to you by The Loop, every Catholic's favorite morning newsletter, and I am joined by the founder of The Loop, so founding editor Josh.

Good to have you. We've got a lot to cover, because while angels kept their watch by night, so did some fraudsters in Minneapolis, and it was all blown out of the water by one 23-year-old YouTuber this weekend. Some massive news coming out from Minnesota. We're going to cover all of that. We also have a little end-of-the-year existential reflections going on, as we are want to do in our various movements. Is never-Trumpism dead? What is the future of Trumpism and the conservative party in the United States?

A couple of really interesting essays on that came out, and we have a little church corner. Pope Leo has words for us. He has words for J.B. Pritzker, and we will get into all of that, but we also have good news. We have Twilight Zone, but first, if you have not yet, welcome to the chat. Yes, I missed you, too. We missed you, too, there in Maryland. If you are not subscribed, please hit subscribe. If you're watching live on YouTube, please hit that thumbs up.

Because that tells the algorithm that we're awesome, and more people should discover us. So, go ahead, click the thumbs up. This week, we have a little different schedule, of course. Josh and I are live today. Tomorrow, we have a special episode of The Deep. You can find out all the books I read in 2025, and whether or not you should read them too, or just skip over them and find something else. But my book list comes out tomorrow. Wednesday, we have a pre-recorded episode of The Deep.

New Year's special show with Tom, Josh, and Erika. We're going to look back at the year. We're going to make some bold predictions from the Oracle Petoskey, so find out what's coming next year on Wednesday, and then Friday, we're back here live at 11 p.m. Eastern, so it's going to be a great week, and again, Merry Christmas, but first, we have some serious business to address coming out of Minnesota.

Some of you will be like, okay, you already covered this. We had the autistic centers where there was all the fraud going on. Turns out that was just the tip of the iceberg, and this young YouTuber, Nick Shirley, who has about a million followers, but this video alone, it blew up across social platforms yesterday, really, and just shaking up this national conversation again on government waste, fraud, and abuse. You're going to see a few... Here are a few clips here if you're watching on YouTube.

So, he is 23 years old. He basically just takes a cameraman, and he goes around, and he starts interviewing people and visiting these daycare centers in Minnesota, along with the help of a mysterious boomer, Dave. I am such a fan of Dave, who has been looking into this for years, kind of on his own, working on the hill there in Minneapolis-St. Paul, and finding out about this. So, this was a 42-minute investigative video. And it shows these glaring examples of taxpayer dollars being totally misused.

So, a few examples here. In one clip, Shirley is standing outside of a daycare center that received about $4 million in state funding over the last three years. But he's there on a weekday, and there are zero children. There are no kids inside. Shocker. The windows are all blacked out. There is even a sign on the building. Can we get the Learing Center up here, please? The sign on the building is misspelled. This is so painful.

But maybe we'll just go ahead and play a little bit of this for you. Here, we've got the Learing Center clip. Simon, throw that on up. Yeah, daycare. From this daycare center, we headed over to the infamous Quality Learning Center, which actually spells Quality Learing Center on the outside of their sign. That's how blatant this fraud is here at this daycare. Don't open up! So, this is Quality...

Learing Center, I meant to say Quality Learning Center, they said they felt learning wrong. How do you have ice here, ma'am? I'm literally a YouTuber. Ma'am, what do you think about the fraud that's taking place here in Minnesota?

Ma'am, what do you think about this place being licensed for 99 children and getting $4 million over the... We have a No Kings protester hanging out at the booth. She could literally be one of my liberal aunts. What do you think about that? Are you in favor of that?

You're not welcome here. Shame on you. Are you in pain? Okay. Okay. We have to stop. Shame. Shame. Shame. Shame. Shame on you for noticing, Nick. So, this goes on and on. And it turns out in one afternoon, David, the older gentleman, and Nick, they go around to multiple centers. They uncover over $100 million in fraud, money that was funneled to these storefront daycare centers, most of them in industrial parks. I doubt. Half of these buildings would even pass inspection to pass as a daycare center were you to have children there.

No children anywhere, and they start being followed by these cars full of Somalis who get out and tell them to go away. They're not welcome there. You may not film me. It goes on and on, and this is 42 very painful, but I think necessary minutes of people just being confronted with, this is what's actually happening. And of course, the next day, I'm just going to set it up a little more, Josh, then I'm just going to let you go, because this is your native land, is it not?

The Minnesota land of Josh Mercer. So, Tim Walz's office, of course, had to make a statement, and they push back, and they go, oh, no, no, no. Our administration has been working for years to crack down on fraud. We have launched state investigations, and we shut down at least one problem program.

Now, you're like, that sounds great, but what we're talking about here is not one problem program. In one afternoon, Nick Shirley uncovered close to 90. Problem programs. And you say you have shut down one that had to do with the food thing, like way back, and nothing to be proud of. This is, let's see, let's do Dave here from Shirley Video. Simon, if we could just pull this up. He was interviewed later by a local news channel.

One of the things that I've noticed is there's an exceptional number of child care centers that are set up mostly in Minneapolis, but also in St. Paul, and I said, wow, this, I mean, how many kids are there in the Twin Cities? Some of them are by my office, and I would watch, and I said, well, there aren't any kids there. And I go to another one. There aren't any kids there, and I'd see just some guys, some Somali guys outside smoking cigarettes, so I stopped at one of them, and I said, hey, I'm just wondering.

I've got a grandson who's looking for child care, and I wonder if this might be a good facility, and they said, no, we're all full. We're all full, and they had the door open, and I looked, and there were no kids. There was like a couch and a table with a couple chairs, and I said, well, are the kids out back playing, or what kind of place is this? And the guy said, you go, you go, and he almost pushed me out the door, and then he followed me down the street to my car, and that's when I said, wait a minute, there's something going on here, and that's got to be maybe five years ago.

This fraud is so massive. When the dust settles on this, it's going to be found to be the largest fraud in the history of the country and probably the world. It's that big. Yeah. Elon Musk backed that up, and federal investigators came out saying that half Of the $18 billion, with a B, granted to Minnesota since 2018, could have been stolen by these fraudulent schemes, and it goes not only into child care, but also into housing, transportation, food and health services, and on and on.

So, up to $9 billion in theft in Minnesota alone. So, of course, the question is, what do we do about it? The FBI... It's just worth understanding. Exactly what is going on. You have politicians like Tim Walz who say, I'm dedicated to providing child care. We need to invest in child care, $300 million. And it sounds good. You'd be like, oh, yeah, we've got to help out people. And all it is is a scam. It's a scam to provide millions of dollars, to steal money.

From taxpayers, money that they could use for their own families to steal that money and give it to people that they know are stealing from the Treasury, but they don't care. The Democrats, like Tim Walz, Keith Ellison, the Attorney General of Minnesota, Ilhan Omar, they don't care.

Why? They know it's happening, and that money gets funneled. They employ a bunch of friends, and then the money gets kicked back in contributions to Democrats all across the country. They are allowing foreigners to come to this country to steal us, to steal from us.

It's absolutely, I got to say, I have had it. With the Republicans who are going to tweet about this, Republican officeholders who will put out messages of outrage, I don't want to hear it. I want people in handcuffs.

The Democrats were willing to hire 70,000 more IRS agents to come after Americans who used $300 or $400 on PayPal and Venmo to come after us. They send us letters, you forgot to pay $50 on your income tax five years ago, and yet billions of dollars are going up in fraud, and this is what drives me crazy. My wife is like, she said, my mom had a daycare. They came by every year at least once a year to check in on it, and if someone complained, oh boy, they would be coming all the time.

And yet, all these daycare centers, no one checked in on it because they don't want to find out the answer because they know it's a fraud because they're stealing from you so that they can use that money and 10% for the big guy, right? The politicians get 10%, just like Joe Biden said. It is a scam. Pitchforks aren't enough. If you don't do handcuffs, if people aren't in handcuffs over this, people are not arrested and put in jail.

I worry for my country. Yeah, well, and it'll just continue. It's so immoral, and there was a report out of California that said there is $70 billion in taxpayer funds have been lost. That was done by the California State Auditor.

How do you lose $70 billion? This is how. This is how. Here's the thing. If you have... You know, a large progressive tax system where we're all paying a lot of money, which we do, but the roads are nice, the crime is, you know, is taken off the streets. The schools are good.

Exactly. Right. And people will be all right with some of this stuff, okay? And people are wondering why, like, Gen Z isn't into the bread and circuses, because the bread's poison and the circus is a sham. We've had it.

Yep. And I'm not even Gen Z. I'm Gen X. I've had it. Yeah, I looked it up because I was curious where Dante put fraudsters in his Inferno. So, you had the circles of hell, right? And you've got people who lied, people who committed adultery and fornication. Turns out fraud of this scale, so betraying people who you are not necessarily personally connected to. Obviously, the betrayers are in the bottom circle of hell, right? You've got Judas. You've got Brutus all down there in the ice.

The very closest next level are fraudsters, and they are in the evil ditches next to Satan, and it's the designated layer for fraud committed against those for whom there was no special bond of trust, but there was a social expectation of trust, and that's why fraud is so evil, and it's worse than the fornication, worse than all the sexual sins that we think of when we're like, oh, really, really bad. It's really bad because it betrays The social fabric that binds people together who would otherwise be enemies.

It's the usurpation and destruction of the political order. It's an abuse of charity. It's an abuse of charity. Right. It's totally immoral. People think, oh, you're complaining about paying taxes. You're greedy. You should want to help people. You should want to have money for child care and health care. Boy, you're just selfish in your evil, and I thought you were Christian. I thought you cared about your neighbor. You know, where were you there when they crucified the poor? They give us all this garbage, and then, in fact, no.

It was all a scam. Yeah, and I 100% agree with you, just the frustration in watching Twitter react to this video, and great. I am glad that J.D. Vance is praising Nick Shirley. That is awesome, but then to start to see the senators and Emer and coming out and being like, we're going to have a committee meeting. We're going to get Nick Shirley here on a committee to testify. I'm like, no, I want Kash Patel to send the FBI in there and take out the handcuffs.

We need to deport the people. We need to end the TFP. This whole thing has to be cleaned out, and you have a limited window in which to do that, in which we are in power right now, and it has to be excised from the body politic. This is not a committee issue. Follow the law, of course, like rule of law, but the rule of law has so clearly been broken that it needs to be a swift execution of justice, very, very rapid, and I want to address to you- Yeah, I mean, send in the DOJ.

Into the Minnesota department that's supposed to look over a daycare center. Handcuffs. Send them in. Send them in. The rest of them all. Yeah, I mean, like, goodbye. Or just, like, take over the agency, because obviously they're not doing their job. I mean, this is absolutely stinking. And all federal funding. And, in fact, I'm thinking to myself, okay, I do like closing the Department of Education down and shutting it down. And then the idea was block grants to the state. It's like, what?

I don't know. Do we want to give money to Minnesota? Do we want to give money to California after what they're doing on this stuff? Like, no. I mean, the whole thing is it's a scam. Yeah. Like, okay, honestly, think about this. Someone else brought this to, you know, it's not like this is an original insight, but it's something I agree with. He said, you know, it's an old Milton Friedman quote, there's four ways to spend money.

You spend your money on yourself, okay? You're careful about both the cost and the quality, right? Then you can spend money on others. You care about the cost, but maybe a little bit less about the quality. I mean, it is not yours. You know, you are going to give it to them. Hopefully, it works out. I hope it does not break. Then there is another way of spending money. You spend someone else's money on yourself. Oh, you care about the quality, you know, but the cost, you are not so worried about, right?

Then, of course, you can spend somebody else's money on others. Well, you do not care about the cost or the quality. That, that's how government spends money. Strangers spending strangers' money. They don't care about the results. They don't care about the cost. They don't care about anything.

And for bureaucrats, results don't matter. Procedure matters. We understand that, and of course, now we understand it's about. Fleecing the taxpayers blind. Right, right. Oh, so true. I want to introduce also the idea that we're getting from mainstream media outlets that, you know, shame on Nick for noticing this problem, and the idea that like, oh, well, it's like white people being angry about the brown people coming in, and this is all just racist noticing, and we're not understanding what's going on.

And I... That's all they have. That's the only argument they have. Yeah, that's the only argument that's left. And if you allow them to use that on you, then, you know, it's like, fool me once, shame on me. But this is 10,000 times they pulled that racism card. Oh, yeah. And when it comes to billions and billions of dollars, you're like, of course, we're going to notice that. Of course, you notice that that's missing. And I think, too, like, I blame equally the white liberal Democrats who allowed these people into the country in such droves, and knowing that they could exploit these populations.

Like, you bring in Somalians, you bring in people who do not share a worldview in which things like, oh, Fraud is evil. They just don't share that. If you bring all them in, we can use them to commit massive fraud, and we're going to make ourselves rich, and we're going to have an automatic 100,000 people in Minneapolis who will vote solely for us and keep us in power. And I think it's this sort of, like, it's a both-and. I am absolutely willing to prosecute both sides of this if we're going to go with the race card.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who's one of my favorite sort of commentators on this show, and I think it's a good question. The Islamic mentality. She herself grew up in Somalia, and she emigrated to First Kenya, she goes to Eritrea, she escapes to Holland.

An amazing life story, but she wrote a commentary on the Somali fraud crisis when the whole autism center thing was first blown out of the water in late October this last year, and she talks about how in Somalia and in many Islamic countries, we're talking about a cultural failure to dive with the United States morals, and she refers to Edward Banfield, who was a thinker. He was writing in the 1950s, but he wrote about African systems. So, African Islamic nations, that they have this amoral familialism, which is a system that, quote, seeks the short-term interest of their kin and punishes cooperation outside of the family.

So, when they migrate to somewhere, either Kenya, which was her experience, or the United States, this is what we're seeing in Minneapolis, they migrate as a clan, and the host country becomes not their new home. But a new resource for the clan to exploit. Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. Yeah, exactly. She goes, amoral familialism is a cultural blueprint. It assumes that resources are scarce.

The world is dangerous, and survival depends on extracting maximum benefit for your own family. Nation building makes no sense from that perspective, which is why Somalia is a failed state as well. If a road is built, the question is not how will this help the community, but which family will control access to it. If foreign aid arrives, the question is not how to distribute it fairly, but which family will claim control. This mindset... Mindset explains why Somalia collapsed. It explains the dysfunction in Afghanistan, Haiti, and parts of North and West Africa, and it explains why Minnesota now faces problems it can't make sense of, let alone solve.

And I think of, like, the No Kings protester there who's like, ICE is here, run away. She's protecting this very community that is completely fleecing her, not her, her future, her grandchildren. We're going to have to pay for this through their noses. What she says, what Minnesota, Sweden, the UK, and Canada have all done repeatedly is confuse compassion with abdication.

They assume that if they offer refugees safety, housing, welfare, and job opportunities, those refugees will integrate into modern civic life, because that's a Judeo-Christian assumption, like we're kind to each other, do unto others as they do unto you. No! In societies ruled by multiculturalism, integration never comes. Newcomers revert to the only social model they trust, the family, the clan, and the inner circle. The state becomes a distant entity to be milked repeatedly and without hesitation.

That is nails what's happening. Minnesota nice. Yeah. Yeah, and it seems like, you know, the Democrats picked those areas where, you know. The percentage of liberal, white, you know, like, not exactly strident Christians are, so my home state, my native state, I live in Michigan now, but Minnesota, like, is like ground zero for white, liberal, you know, watered-down Christianity, but the Catholicism and Lutherans. In there, we're both just very watered down, very apologetic. It made me so angry, I couldn't stand it.

I left the state. But what happened was, there was a town hall 10 years ago in St. Cloud. I have a lot of family from St. Cloud, central Minnesota, a lot of Germans, good Catholic people there, and they were frustrated about... The Somalians that were moving in, because they culturally were such a clash, they felt it in their neighborhoods, in their communities, and in their schools. And Tom Emmer, the Republican congressman from that area, Yeah, he's the third-ranking Republican in the House.

He was basically just suggesting that they're all racists for not, like, being okay with this. I read the transcript of that this morning. Yeah, and to listen to it is even more amazing because, you know, like, first of all, his point was they're not illegal immigrants, so you just can't remove them. Right. This is 10 years ago.

They're legal, and the people in the audience are like, well, then it's time to take a breathe, take a breath. Yeah, like pause it. Pause it. He's like, well, I can't do that. And what do you mean, like a national moratorium? And they're like, yes, yes.

Yes, my God, yes. A national moratorium. Different cultures are different. I don't know why Koreans are different than Somalians. Why are we going to pretend like it's not true? And everything is down to race. Oh, you just hate black people. So stupid. Shut up. No, there are differences between different cultures, okay? Yeah. And he said, and then he had the audacity, this congressman had the audacity, this is a Republican congressman, had the audacity to say, no, in fact, they're assimilating, in fact, better than other countries, better than other peoples, and the gasp, the reaction, the guttural instant reaction from everyone in this town hall was like, ugh.

They couldn't believe he would say something so profoundly, so obviously, full of crap. They're like, are you out of your mind? And yet, he's still in Congress, 10 years later. And yet. Like, I'm glad they gasped. Great. But why is he still in there?

Josh, explain it to me. Explain. He's speechless, people. I mean, I'm telling you. I'm telling you. Yeah. There was so much corruption and so much theft and so much, you know, is Tom Edmund on it? I would not be surprised. And I got to say, the time for tweets, the time for show votes in the House, the time for committee hearings and study papers.

It's all over. I'm done. I don't care. I don't want your tweets. I want a bunch of guys from the FBI and the Department of Justice to burst into those offices and bring people out in handcuffs. These are crimes. They are stealing from us. It's absolutely...

It makes me want to vomit, and I'm like, oh, you're just, I mean, they're stealing from my family, my brother, my sister, my mom, and my dad. They're stealing from people I know and I love, and people I don't even know, and it bothers me because there are a lot of families who are struggling, especially the last five years with this inflationary economy. Right. Who are like, well, let's see if we can get our car to last another year. I don't know if we can afford Catholic education for our kids.

I don't know if we can do this or do that. You know, you would think over time, our country would be getting wealthier, but it feels like the standard of living over the last 15 to 20 years has gone down. I'm like, how is that? It's because they're stealing from us. They need to be in bars, behind bars. It's immoral. Yeah. One of the sweet aspects of this story for me was that it was, in fact, blown out of the water by this 23-year-old YouTuber with a cameraman.

Like, that was great. I work with guys like this. Not you, Josh. And I worry for his safety. He is. I know. We should definitely pray for his safety, the safety of his team. And I was doing a quick rundown of the mainstream media's coverage of this fraud. Since, you know, you have people protesting. Well, the mainstream media did cover this. I mean, the New York Times had that in-depth expose on the autism center scandals, and that came out, you know, late November.

Yeah, late November 2025, we get this one in-depth expose on like page 13 of the New York Times, and they're like, well, see, they do care. This isn't, they aren't, they don't have an agenda, New York Times, but I looked through it.

After that story, there was almost zero investigative reporting to follow up on it. The Washington Post had two op-eds criticizing Tim Walz and the response. They had one reporter on the ground. There is no indication that CNN, MSNBC, these places have so many resources, no recurring investigative segments to follow up on the New York Times story. It was just kind of like, you know, ho-hum, business as usual. We are going to pass over this. Even the local news, I was going through the Star Tribune's X page to see, like, is there any coverage of any of it?

Can we pull this up, Simon, and do a little scrolling? Because I was so confused. We have, like, there was a squirrel in a tree who apparently will take nuts out of your hands in the city park. We have energy gas rates are going up. A travel writer Visited every city in Minnesota, eight new restaurants that should be on your radar, Sweden beats Switzerland in hockey, Elk River Senior channeling grief to new purpose. There's one coverage of how are the Assumption families doing this first Christmas after the terrible shooting at their school.

Laid off Minnesotans, we blame Trump, of course. The games that define the twins, nothing, nothing about $9 billion. In fraud in their state, not one story. And sometimes they'll say, oh, we wrote a story on it like four and a half years ago, and we put it, we buried it in like page 48. And it's like, here, there's a YouTuber, this 23-year-old YouTuber, who had a 40-minute video with amazing details and new information that's come to light that hadn't been covered before.

Yeah. It's been viewed a hundred million times over the weekend. This could have been you, Star. A hundred million times. You actually could be famous. Oh, my gosh. A hundred million times. Yeah. And the main newspaper in Minneapolis, St. Paul, has nothing on it.

It's almost like the purpose of journalism is to cover the news with a pillow until it suffocates and dies. Shocking, except it's not. I got to say, the person who needs to be waking up in a cold sweat is actually J.D. Vance. Listen, brother, you are the heir apparent, and you are the shoehorn likely candidate to be the nominee in 2028. Republicans are not going to put up with just talk.

Or tweets. Yeah. We need bold action. These people are stealing money, and then when we object to it, they call us racist. It's absolutely vulgar and immoral, and we expect, it's not like, oh, what can be done about this? You're the Vice President of the United States. Yeah. Make a phone call. Get Donnie on the phone.

Get something done. Yep, 100%. I mean, is Pam Bomedy not the most disappointing pick in the entire cabinet? Has she put any points on the board? She gave us binders. We had Epstein binders, so that was kind of fun. Yeah, the full binders. Oh, my gosh. Bring in the influencers to hold up their photos. What a year. If you want to reflect with us more on 2025. Sean Duffy, he's gotten stuff done at transportation. Yep. Right?

Yep. Hey, Linda. Marco Rubio is phenomenal. Mm-hmm. Exceptional Secretary of State. Pam Bondi. This is your chance, Pam. Nick Shirley, he wrapped it up in a little package for you. Let's get it done. Here's your sign. All right, so we're talking about J.D. Vance. I think this is a good time. We're going to turn a little bit. It's almost 2026. We are 48 hours from the new year here. 48, are we? Is that right? We're going to turn 250 years old this year, and we are about to elect a Congress that will outlive Donald Trump.

He will no longer be president when these people are still in power. So, Josh, we got two articles that I wanted to kind of get your commentary on over the weekend. The first one was in the Claremont Review of Books.

And I don't often read the Claremont Review of Books, but this one got a lot of traction online. It was from William Vogeli, who's the senior editor, and he offered us Never Trump after 2024. How many of you in the chat remember hashtag Never Trump? It came out in 2016 when he won the nomination, and everyone was like, hashtag Never Trump after 2024. So, he's looking in this article, in this essay, he's examining. Yeah, go for it.

You know, CatholicVote, and yours truly. I deal in honesty. I live not by lies, and when Trump first came on the scene, I was a massive thumbs down on the guy because I thought he was just a rich playboy who, you know, and he wasn't going to do anything on social issues. He had been through three wives. I'm going to trust this guy to actually make any difference on the culture wars, to try to reduce abortions. Like, you know, I'm like, this guy, and he's just screaming, yelling, and hollering.

It is all a carnival barker, and I remembered him running for president in 2000 as a reformed party. I did not trust him worth a lick, and I have to say, I usually have low opinions upon politicians, and mine on him to start with was lower than that. And he's the only politician, I have ever said this, he is better, far better than I'd ever expected. I've been upfront and honest with this, just like JD. I was like, low on this guy in 2016, and then since then, love it.

Now, there's other people who are never Trump. And they had their own reasons for being Never Trump. Yeah, and this article traces the people who are... Because they love war. They love war. They love to read books and discuss high ideals and principles. We like a principle project, don't we? So, this article, this essay, it examines that evolution in the current state of those who are still on the Never Trump train, and how they've sort of dealt with him winning his governance and then him winning again in 2024.

There were a couple of passages. I just wanted to run by you, Josh. So, this included their efforts in the 2015-16 cycle to promote alternative candidates and how those failed. It was a little walk down memory lane. But Vogeli writes, the problem is that never Trump's hopes of gaining political traction depend on his identity as an effort undertaken by conservative Republicans. Trump is so dangerous, went the saying. That even people we would expect to support him for partisan or ideological reasons are sounding the alarms, and so that sort of was the argument for continuing the Never Trump.

He talks about how Never Trump never actually developed a broad political base independent of its leadership, though. He says, at no point did Never Trump possess the basic traits of a political movement, a small number of leaders and a large number of followers. Never Trump's leaders and its constituency are still one and the same, and the intellectuals of the movement turned into pundits instead of political actors. They became willing to depreciate their differences with the Democratic resistance. Until resistance to Trump resists Trump, there really is no other resistance, just the resistance.

And so, the movement's insistence that Trumpism is incompatible with American democracy was decisively rejected by voters in 2024, revealing a broader disconnect between elite critique and popular sentiment. So, why is this coming up now? This is coming up now because we are looking ahead now to an era after Donald Trump and what that means for the Republican Party, but also for the conservative movement more broadly.

And the Never Trumpers are kind of like sitting there like, aha, he's going to leave now, and it's our chance. We're going to elevate people. We're going to offer people, like right now, the talk is Mike Pence. He's going to make his comeback now that Donald Trump will be off the national stage. This was the second essay I wanted to run by Josh. We got this from American Greatness Roger Kimball this morning. Oh, Mike Pence, I'm right there.

And he's talking about how now we have people, the Pence mirage is the way that he puts it. Trump's continued dominance of the Republican Party is not surprising, given his populist appeal and record of policy achievements, while Pence's appeal resides mainly with Beltway insiders and pundits, the never-Trumpers, rather than grassroots conservative.

So, Josh, I wanted to ask you. We have answers from Claremont Review, we have American Greatness, but we're looking now into this year where we're kind of going to set the stage with the election, the midterms of the conservative era, the conservative movement post-Trump.

Will it just be continuation of Trumpism? So, there's a lot of things to think about. Return to pre-Trump conservatism. What are we looking at? First of all... This is his second term, but it was a non-consecutive term, so it's a little bit different in that sense, because the memory of the previous administration, the Biden administration, is still fairly, I mean, it's still very fresh. It's not like it was, so like, when a president has back-to-back terms, it's the sixth and seventh and eighth years, which, you know, really start to drag on.

And people in the, you know, the popularity of the president starts to wane. People are moving past you. They're thinking of the future. It's one of the problems with term limits. I mean, I sort of like presidential term limits, but like the problem with it is that, you know. I'm glad Obama's not still president. I know, but I can just wait you out. Well, if Obama would have run for a third term, Trump would have defeated him.

Oh, that's a book. Write that book someday. Yeah. That would have been fun to watch. But the problem is, you know, so then, but so Trump doesn't have a normal year seven, because... You know, like, we still remember what it was like for, you know, the first administration, and then him being in the wilderness for those four years and planning what he's going to do. He's had so much more energy in his fifth year. It's been like a...

Yeah, that's true. It's been amazing, and so, and there's no, he's not a lame duck, because, like, the spat with Marjorie Taylor Greene proved that. She came out against him, and he's like, you're done. She had to quit Congress, basically, and so, you know, he's still exerting a lot of power, and the thing is, there are a lot of Republicans, I think, who share my view that we have We have had so many times, I mean, like, Ronald Reagan accomplished things, okay?

He cut taxes, rejuvenated the economy, and he defeated communism. What did we get from Papa Bush in 41? HW. Not much. What did we get from George W. Bush? You know, endless war and an economy dragging. And then we had a bunch of feckless idiots running John McCain, Mitt Romney, and then Jeb Bush is going to be the next guy in line, and Republicans are like, to hell with this. I want some action on this. The left are coming for our throats, and they want to rob us blind, and they want to slit our throats.

We need some action. And Donald Trump was like, he has accomplished so much. Like I said, it was, you know, like every other, he didn't understand the game. Like, Republicans, Republican politicians were supposed to be elected to fool their own voters and then just do what the unit party wanted. And Donald Trump's like, oh, what, you think that we should move the embassy to Jerusalem? Okay. And he just does it. And everyone's like, wait, what? But you can just do things?

He just did it. What? What? This is amazing. And then he's like, okay, I'll do other things, and I'll appoint people to string court, and I'll make sure that they're going to overturn Roe v. Wade, and you're like, you're supposed to elect these blank slates who are supposed to be super mum and quiet, and he's like, no, I want to find people who are going to actually do it, and then he gets them on there, and then they repeal Roe v.

Wade, and Republicans are like, wait, we can actually just succeed? And so, this idea, like, Like, the bar was so low, and he is crushing it in terms of what he's accomplishing. And, like, having, I mean, like, this Somalia thing in Minnesota is going to be a major test, but, like, the article that came out last week about institutional racism against white men in the workforce.

So, then we had the attorney, you know, the person in the attorney general's office say, if you've ever had any of this done against you, call our office and we will prosecute this stuff. And it's like, what? This is amazing. So, actually have, you know, a president that's getting things done. Right. And so, the approval rating amongst Republicans for Trump is sky high.

Relative to other candidates. The idea that we're going, I mean, Mike Pence embodies the 2005 version of the Republican Party. He is going backwards to an era of feckless Republicans who mouth a few words that we like and then don't do a damn thing.

Fight this evil regime that we're dealing with. Right, well, it's like the pre-Trumpian conservatives who, they wanted to maintain respectability and principles above all. I'm into principles. I'm a practicing Catholic. I like my ideals. I like principles. I aspire to sainthood. But they did so by embracing this, I think the way that Vogeli put it was ineffectuality. They proudly embraced their ineffectuality in order to preserve this respectability. And the fact is that people will say, okay, well, Trump is really good at being against things.

J.D. Vance now has to figure out what he's for. I think we know what we're for, and I think that the urgency of the movement has not diminished at all just because we won an election. The urgency is still there, and the energy is still there, and I don't see voters going back to ineffectuality. What is the whole point of the Never Trump movement?

If it's Bill Kristol, if it's Jonathan Last, if it's Stephen Hayes, these are all former Weekly Standard guys who went on to form Dispatch and what other communist rags they got. These are all guys who are absolutely infatuated with wars in foreign countries.

You know, to the extent that they're embraced, you know, two of those three, Jonathan Last and Bill Kristol, endorsed a communist who just got elected mayor of New York City. Mom Donnie, right. Because he's anti-Trump. That's all that matters. All they are is anti-Trump. And because, you know, if Donald Trump turned around and became like a massive neocon, they would flip overnight, because that's all they care about. They want to bomb, you know, Middle Eastern countries. That's all they care about.

Everything else is a negotiation form, but so that's a good chunk of the never, that's the main rump roast of the never Trump movement. There are some other never Trumpers. Of course, Mike Pence, I understand, he has one ounce of sympathy for me, because I actually believe. As much fraud in the election, I do believe, was stolen in 2020. I do not believe he had the authority in the Constitution to flout the votes of the different states, and that idea that Trump was like, well, just don't certify it, that would have been unconstitutional.

It was a non-starter for me, and you can yell at me all you want to. That is the one thing I agreed with Pence, that it was not within his power. That should have been adjudicated. In court cases beforehand, but once the votes are counted, even if they were fraudulent, you can't tell which ones are fraudulent anymore. You counted them already. It's too late. Too late. But other than that, I have not liked Mike Pence for a good 15, 20 years because he was governor of Indiana.

When there was a religious freedom case going on, and he was in support of a very strong religious freedom bill, and then Eli Lilly and all the other corporations, NCAA, that were in Indiana said, no, no, no, Mike. You're a Republican. You love business. You need to do what we say. And so, he did an absolute 180 in support of the most watered-down religious freedom bill ever. He was a total fraud, total loser.

And, in fact, I remember Donald Trump picking him in 2016 to try to convince conservatives and pro-lifers, like, hey, I'm not going to be, you know, I know I'm— Yeah, I have an establishment guy on board. And I'm like, that guy? Okay, I mean— You don't even know why I'm mad at him, so I'm not going to count that against you, but that was not the guy to pick, convince me.

Massive upgrade to the second vice president, the second vice president, J.D. Vance. So, Mike Pence also loves the wars, though, in the Middle East. That's truly the number one thing he has a problem with Donald Trump, and his job is to tell conservative Christians, hey, you care about pro-life.

Donald Trump doesn't really care about stuff. Look what he did with IVF, and look what he did with this. In nitpicking on stuff, which, look, these are big things, and we have criticized Trump on them before, but you're full of crap. I know all you care about is the wars in the Middle East. Okay? So, no, I'm not buying what you're selling, you snake oil salesman.

Not buying it. Mike Pence. Gosh. He's got the charisma of a paper bag. Cheers. Would you follow him into war? Merry Christmas, Mike Pence. No, I would not. I wouldn't trust him to run my hardware store. Yeah, I don't see him being on the stage for the primary debates. No, I hope he runs. I hope he does. He'll get 1%. And then Ted Cruz is going to run, and Ted Cruz is going to have millions of dollars.

From Adelson, his widow. She's going to give him a ton of money to be, Ted Cruz is going to have millions and millions and millions and millions of dollars to run a primary campaign to show how pro-Israel he is and how evil J.D. Vance is. And all this fight, all that stuff that's going on.

It's online with the influencer and all that other kind of stuff. It's a lot of money being swished around to try to attack JD Vance for not being pro-Israel because he's against wars in the Middle East. That's the kind of stuff that's going on behind the scenes that people don't realize and appreciate.

It's going to be crazy. If Tom was here, he would have things to say about Israel and Gaza for us, and how it all plays out in Mamdani. Speaking of which, Vale Adquivalde, New York City, next time we speak, you will have a new mayor. That's going to be endless content for the online community. But we're into the good news now. Happy Feast of St. Thomas Beckett, one of my favorites. I think if C.V. was going to have a fourth... Oh, that is Pence.

No, get him out of here. Not him. He just popped up on my screen. No, Simon. Yes, there he is. Thomas Beckett. That is the guy I am talking about. Good morning. Today in 1170, Archbishop Thomas Beckett was executed at Canterbury Cathedral.

I have been there twice, and to kneel down by the pillar where he was stabbed to death by the king's henchmen is a very moving experience. Wow. Love it. Highly recommend. If you need a movie night this week, Beckett. I think it was 1964. What year was that? Yes, 1964. Peter O'Toole, Richard Burton. Great movie. Peter O'Toole is so good on that. He's so good. It is, yes. The world doesn't see a lion like that every now and then. I'm going to write that down.

I've got to watch that this week. You've got to watch Beckett. Really good with the high school kids, too, actually. I would highly recommend. And, yeah, so just that's my good news, is that I love this Christmas season, the way that the church has laid out the saints, the memorials for us. So, of course, we get St. Stephen the Martyr. On December 26, the day after Christmas, the first martyr of the church, we get St. John, the beloved, my favorite gospel writer.

We get the Holy Innocents yesterday, and wasn't it cool to have the Holy Innocents coincide this year with the Feast of the Holy Family? We've got a great homily about that from Bishop Robert Barron. I would recommend that as well if you haven't listened. And then today, the great Thomas Beckett. And it just keeps going. Christmas is such a wonderful season. But yeah, Josh, do we have any good news? Well, I do have to say, I mean, the corruption, all the scandal in Minnesota, it is making me so angry and so upset about this, and there is some good news.

Okay, please. So, Mike Braun, good Catholic guy, Republican governor of the state of Indiana, has gone through and routed out $466 million of fraud and abuse in Medicaid. So, God bless Mike Braun for what he's doing in Indiana. The Wall Street Journal noticed the difference, and in Minnesota, they are stealing and scamming. And frauding, and taking money from hardworking families who could use that money to buy groceries or to fix their car. Instead, they're going in deeper into debt. This is why I'm angry about this stuff.

Because it can be fixed, right? It can be fixed. You can do things about it. Yeah, shout out to Governor Braun. So, thank you very much, Mike Braun. God bless you. Good man. All you have to do is follow the steps. That is good news. Go, Indiana. That's awesome. Didn't the Colts win this weekend, too? Or is that just me?

They're not in the playoffs, though. They started 7-1, and they're not in the playoffs. Oh, man. Next year. Next year, Colts. At least you have a great governor. You know, there's that. Well, actually, though, if you think about it, the Colts, they have Philip Rivers as the quarterback, right? Yeah. He's got more children than all these Somali daycare centers combined.

I saw that. That was a really funny meme. I stole the joke. That's what Erika's getting at. That was funny. It was funny, though. I mean, stealing is like the thing that we do. It is all good. Apparently, in Minnesota, it is still the same. But Minnesotans do. We steal things. No offense. We do love you, Minnesota. Simon is from Minnesota, and I do so love you. I was born in Minnesota. I was born in Minneapolis, where all these scams are happening.

Good things do come. Good things come. All right. We have our beloved Pope as well, just to update you on Pope Leo and where his heart is at. We have his pre-Christmas message, which I think I mentioned on our last show. Pre-Christmas message really ties into something near and dear to my heart right now. So, he was talking about this Christmas set the goal of reconciling with one person. If it's a friend or a family member, find one person with whom to make peace.

This will be a more precious gift than any that can be bought because peace is a gift found only in the heart. And this is so near and dear to me that I made a deep episode about it. Simon and I teamed up. We have a great script on it, so if you have not watched that episode of The Deep, it is talking about the phenomenon in our country where one in three American adults report going no contact this Christmas with friends or family, and it is a terrible scourge in our country of loneliness, and talking about ways to address that and think about it in our own families.

So, we will drop that in the chat. Go check out that episode of The Deep about Christmas. But we also got... The traditional Irby at Orby blessing from our Holy Father, and he really spent this talking about the need for peace on a global scale and peace in the world, and he highlighted a lot of the violent but forgotten conflicts and framing them not in terms of politics and blaming this administration or that regime, but through the lens of how we respond to them as Christians, how we respond to them in terms of calling for responsibility.

So, just a few lines from that. He recalled that today, Christmas, true peace has come down to us from heaven, because the child born of the Virgin Mary is Christ the Lord, sent by the Father to save us from sin and death. And he's remembering wars. He named Sudan, South Sudan, Mali, Burkina Faso, the Dominican Republic of Congo, Haiti, Myanmar, Thailand, Cambodia. So, really, emphasizing the universality of the Church and the universality of the Holy Father's care for God's children around the world.

So, we join Him in praying for peace. We join Him in praying for an increase in conversions around the world. And we join the Pope in praying for the conversion of our Governor of Illinois, J.B. Pritzker, who also got a mention this Christmas season, not during the Orby at Orby address, don't be confused.

But he was asked by a reporter about his visit that he had with the Democratic governor, Pritzker, who I believe visited him right in the Vatican, got a little audience with him, a little one-on-one time photo op with Pope Leo, and a reporter asked him what he thought about J.B. Pritzker then hopping a plane back to the United States to sign into law an assisted suicide bill that opens wide the doors. Like, basically, we're in Canada now when it comes to made...

Medical aided dying in Illinois. Right. Lock up granny, because they're coming for her with the needle. And the Pope said he was very disappointed when Pritzker ignored his own intervention, both of him and Cardinal Cupich, and signed the bill nevertheless. The Pope did mention that he had brought this up during their meeting and asked the governor not to sign the bill.

And man, when you just leave the Pope's office and you go do the opposite of what the Pope told you to do, I don't know, Josh. It does not bode well for the governor's soul. I think we need to do some extra prayers of penance for him.

Right, and it's not like you can't say, oh, well. I mean, it just seemed like you were doing it on purpose to try to convince people, oh, you know, I met with the Pope and whatever. I mean, Pritzker's not Catholic. He's Jewish. I'm not trying to, so, you know, but like, the thing about this is, like, it's pretty shameless. You go to meet the Pope and get the photo op, and it'd be kind of cool, and then you come home.

And he signed this bill on a law killing grandma, and you know the Catholics find this so morally objectionable. And the thing is, it's not like the Pope is just, you know, who is he? You know, it's like the previous Pope was from Argentina, the one before Germany. He's from Illinois!

This is a Pope that was from Illinois, and you're signing a bill killing his neighbors like this. Yeah. I mean, it just adds an extra layer of shocking. And at Christmas, too. Yeah, exactly. Christmas. Merry Christmas, or Hanukkah, like you're Jewish, at least during the Hanukkah season. It was very tacky, but here's to Pope Leo, actually. Yes, thank you. God bless you, Pope Leo, for that, but that's Illinois and now New York. Both governors have. Giving the green light to killing grandma.

Yeah, massive prayers. The culture wars continue. Culture of death. All right, we slipped into the twilight zone a little early there, I feel like, but Josh, do you have anything additional? You know, that is a good question. I do have something, but I am going to let you...

Well, I mean, I just... Okay, so here is my twilight zone. I don't know if you saw this over the busy Christmas weekend, but what we had was the, okay, murder, right? Murder in the United States. We are on pace to have the largest one-year drop in murder ever. It would be an absolute record, the total drop. That's good news.

If you look at, and here's a little chart here I'll send along. Sometimes I act like a boomer. Sorry, I'm a little slow on the uptake of this stuff. Let me get this in here. You can see on this graph, in the last year, we see a 23% drop in motor vehicle theft, 20% drop in murder, 18% drop in robbery, 15% drop in burglary, 12% drop in property crime. There's less property crime in the United States than there is in other countries because they know a lot of Americans have guns.

10% drop in violent crime, 9% drop in theft, 9% drop in rape. Huh. Wow. And that just so happens to coincide with the fact that we have completely shut down our border and eliminated, you know, illegal entry in the southern border, and in fact, we've deported a lot of these thugs and criminals. So, thank you, President Donald J. Trump. Merry Christmas.

And that is a happy new year for me. That is a merry Christmas and a happy new year. When you said the word murder, I was getting nervous. I was like, oh boy, this is going to be dark, but that was actually really uplifting. Thank you, Josh. All right, so mine is a little bit off color, so if you have kids in the car, my apologies. Bye. We had a winter storm here in the north. We've had a lot of snow.

It was a white Christmas here in the northeast. New York City got hit with multiple winter storms, and Mayor Eric Adams, he's off to the races, his final days as New York City Mayor. He was warning the people on what you should do.

In the face of the snowy days coming to the city. So, if we could just play that clip. Oh, stay home. This is a good baby-making day. No! Wait, wait, play that again, Simon. Go back. We missed it. Go back, go back. Stay home. This is a good baby-making day. You know, we want to improve the population, you know. So, you know, as my son would say, just do Netflix and chill.

Eric Adams. A man with style. I mean, it seems like this is something that a Catholic would say, but it's just unbelievable. Do Netflix and chill, or it's a good baby-making day? Oh, it's weird when politicians tell you to get it on, but, you know, sure. It's so weird. There were multiple memes coming out after that that were like, Mom and Dad, why were we born? And they were like, well, the mayor said it was a baby-making day.

And that's where Sally came from. It's crazy. Anyway, it's always good. I'm always for, let's actually increase the population the natural way that God intended, instead of importing millions of people from across the world. So, Eric Adams, in his final days, coming out with perhaps some wisdom. Wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute. If you don't import millions of people, who's going to set up fraudulent daycares and fleece us blind? And who will pick our avocados? That's what I want to know.

Slave labor in fraudulent childcare centers. What will we do without them? I have no doubt that native-born Americans can be just as vicious. We will have plenty of fraud and crime without the illegals. I'm not worried about that. No need to import more. No need to import more vice. We have enough of it right in our own hearts. Oh my goodness, you guys, what a year. So again, just this week's schedule. Tomorrow, we have The Deep Will Drop with my 2025 book list, if you're interested.

I thought it was pretty funny to go back and... Do a little, like, reflection on what all that meant. Josh, what did you read this year? Did you have any good, any recommendations for people? He's looking at the pile. That's a good question. I have my pile here, too.

Yeah. I mean, I read so many articles that I don't really get as much time for books. The whole book thing. I don't know. I mean, I went through a little bit more of... Five men shall his blood be shed by a phaser, but I don't know. I read so many articles. I don't read as many, but I need to read more books. So many. So many. So many articles. I forgot the name of it, though. It tells you how stupid I am.

All right, well, I had some good ones this year, and go check that out, and on Wednesday, we have our 2025 wrap-up with the Oracle of Petoskey giving us some bold predictions for the coming year. I asked the boys to predict the Super Bowl, and I'm just going to, yeah, spoiler alert, it was dead silence. It was like I had dropped a complete monkey wrench into the conversation. Very awkward moment, so check that out on Wednesday, and we'll be back. I mean, my mic's choked this year, so I stopped.

Watch it, you know. I think it was just, I brought up really sad feelings for you and Tom, because, yeah, the Lions. Well, his team was expected to succeed. Mine, there was no expectations, you know, and they were mad. There you go.

It's all good. All right, so we'll see you back here on Friday live. Thank you for joining us today in the chat. Again, if you are watching, please give it a thumbs up right now before we go into daily prayer. This is a little bit serious. We're going to do something different for daily prayer today. Really tragic news came out over the days leading up until Christmas.

So, we would like to pray for the five-year-old son of Catholic speaker Paul Kim, friend of CatholicVote, friend of the podcast, for his five-year-old son Micah. He was rushed to the hospital due to a medical emergency nine days ago, and he has been on life support ever since. The family is asking for a miracle at this point and asking for us to pray for the intercession of Venerable Fulton Sheen. So, please join us today in asking. For a miracle for little Micah Kim through the intercession of Venerable Fulton J.

Sheen. So, let us pray in the name of the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen. Eternal Father. You alone grant us every blessing in heaven and on earth through the redemptive mission of your divine Son, Jesus Christ, and by the working of the Holy Spirit. If it be according to your will, glorify your servant, Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen, by granting the favor I now request through his prayerful intercession, the complete healing and recovery of Micah Kim. I make this prayer confidently through Jesus Christ, our Lord.

Amen. Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. Amen. Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death.

Amen. Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit, as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end. Amen. Venerable Fulton Sheen, pray for us. Our Lady of Guadalupe, St. Thomas More, St. Fidelis, pray for us, and we will see you on the next show. You know, with Fulton Sheen, let us pray that in America's 250th anniversary...

That the Bishop of Peoria, who is now going to be the Archbishop of New York, the two areas that we are fighting over, Fulton Sheen, that we can get unity here and figure out what is going to happen, and we can move forward with his canonization process. Amen. That would be a gift to the people of the United States, to Illinois, and the Pope is from Illinois. Let us make it happen. This is the year to get it done. 250, let us go.

Amen. Father, Son, Holy Spirit, amen. We will see you all on Friday Live. Don't forget our special content this week, and yeah, we'll see you back here with Pogo.