The AI Revolution is Upon Us, JD Vance First VP To Visit Armenia, And Epstein Rocks UK Gov

We're live. Welcome back to LOOPcast. It's Tom, Erika, and Josh. Fantastic Wednesday show prepared for you guys. The LOOPcast brought to you by Zeal, Horse, Pray, News, Shows. Everything you possibly need there. Puts on this podcast. Thank you, Zeal. Thank you to CatholicVote.

Someone was talking about the weather. I'm so fired up on the weather. That was just, am I depressed, or have I not seen the sun in a couple months? I don't know. I think I haven't seen the sun in a couple of months. It was like 60 degrees. Then it got up to like 50 and took a walk. That was awesome. Yeah, we're getting up to 40 today. I'm like, this is great. Spring is coming. 40 degrees. Still in the 20s here.

Josh, that light blue looks good on you. Is that a Marion nod? You know, it's also, I mean, it could be, because today is the Feast of Our Lady of Lourdes. Amen. It's also that I had a birthday last week, so new threads. Oh, some new threads. Wow, I approve. Good choice. Is that a gift from your wife? That's one of those, I'm going to get this for my birthday, all right?

I do know about that one, yeah. I do know about that one. Hey, mine's coming up this weekend. I'm going to be 20. Aww. No, I'll be somewhere in the late 20s. I'll keep that vague. Okay, so show today. Fire article, I think it's almost at like 30 million views on X, about AI. And it's interesting to me because the more I sit and think about it, I read it. So, I've observed some of the phenomenon that this guy's talking about.

This guy also works for a lot of AI companies, so is he incentivized to make it seem bigger than it's going to be? Is it going to be the next industrial revolution? I don't know. A lot of CEOs or high-place executives in AI companies have resigned recently. One decided to just take up poetry and live off-grid, so I don't know what that means for the future. But we're going to get into all the different elements of that. We also had a jobs report release, which I thought was interesting.

Some were saying it was going to get delayed because it was negative. By my quick viewing, it doesn't seem like that, but we're going to get into the breakdowns there. Not negative. That one. The second one today, we have some real political implications now for the Labour Party in the UK, and Josh, I know you love parliamentary politics, but Keir Starmer really hanging on by a thread, and interestingly, I don't know if we caused it, the United States, but a lot of these Epstein disclosures actually have now led back and put him in a real scandalous position.

Peter Mandelson, I have a little bit of information on Lord Peter Mandelson, the Royals, and how that intersects too. What we recently saw from the Epstein Files, which is going to be maybe the first of many scalps coming from those disclosures. The second one being, sorry, the third story today, we have J.D. Vance visiting Armenia, and this is the first sitting U.S., I think, president or vice president to visit Armenia.

And there's an interesting, what do we call it, diplomacy is tricky moment. He, in a tweet, recognized that there was a genocide in Armenia. It was actually the first genocide of the 20th century, a lot of scholars say.

Brutal, brutal. I have some details on that, but Turkey very much does not see it as a genocide, and so we have a little bit of diplomacy is tricky. Some great reporting from Zeal as to what's going on there for Christians. They're kind of the original Christians. Remind me a lot of the Palestinian Christians or Christians in Jordan. I mean, they were the first Christians. They were in the upper room with Jesus. So, always interesting going into that. And then, good news, Twilight Zone, of course, turns out Eric and I had the same Twilight Zone, so I had to change, but it was an extra good one.

So, wait until the end, of course, you get that. Before we get into the show, though, of course, I've got to talk about my favorite OG sponsor, Charity Mobile. Of course, because now more than ever, it's important to do business with companies who stand with you and your beliefs. Charity Mobile is a pro-life phone company that serves pro-life customers and supports pro-life, pro-family causes. They send 5% of your monthly plan price to your favorite charity. And they have sent millions of dollars to charities over the past 30 years.

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To get started, visit CharityMobile.com and use promo code LOOPcast. That is CharityMobile.com, promo code LOOPcast. Switch to Charity Mobile and buy the way you believe. To get started, visit CharityMobile.com and use promo code LOOPcast. That is CharityMobile.com, promo code LOOPcast. Thank you, Charity Mobile, for sponsoring today's episode. Erika, I do not know if I am excited for this or not excited for it.

Mixed feelings. Mixed feelings. Tell me about this AI article. What are we looking at? Yeah, so this is from Matt Schumer, who's an entrepreneur. Like you said, he's the CEO of a company that talks about AI, and he sells products to help you be better at AI. So, there's all that, just full disclosure. But in fact, before I get into it, there's this really funny tweet that he retweeted this morning when the article was just taking off. We were at like $26 million two hours ago.

We're at $30 million now. And the tweet is how it started. I should write an article specifically for people in tech to send out to people in their lives in an accessible way, and then AI generates the article is the joke.

All that with a grain of salt. The ideas here, I think the reason it's going viral is because they really tap into an anxiety that people are feeling that, like, there's this thing closing in on this or this massive shift happening, and we don't really know what it is. And the title is Something Big is Happening. So, Schumer is arguing that we are in this, like, where the cultural rhetoric is, all this seems really overblown. The singularity, is AI really going to be that big a deal?

And the shift, he says, is comparable to early 2020, right before the COVID lockdowns happened, when people were like, oh, there's this virus in China, and like, I think they might shut down school for a week at some point. The difference, he says, is that this time, The disruption coming from AI is about to really hit hard on white-collar work, and not what we call knowledge work. And so, this is, he says, quote, we're past the point where this is an interesting dinner conversation about the future.

The future is already here. And so, he takes us inside the tech industry where he works, and saying that the change has already happened. Quote, AI has gone from helpful tool to does my job. Better than I do.

So, this last week, or a week ago, we saw the release of two new models, GPT 5.3 Codex, that's from OpenAI, Sam Altman's group, and Opus 4.6 from Anthropic, which is one of the main competitors for ChatGPT, and he said that when these rollouts came, he realized that he's no longer needed for the actual technical work of his job. So, his example is he builds apps, and he is able to give a detailed prompt. ...to AI, in plain English, just describing what he wants the end result to be in this app.

So, I want these capabilities, I want this kind of imagery, I want this kind of infrastructure, this is what I want it to be. He can leave it with the AI, he can walk away, come back four hours later, and not only has the AI... He has completely constructed the app. So, we think of all the work that went into the Zeal app. Completely has been constructed. The AI tool has also tested it as standing in the place of a human person who would be testing the app and finding all the bugs.

And so, he says, like, he arrives back at his desk four hours later after, like, working out, getting a coffee, doing his thing, walking the dog, and his product is there waiting for him perfectly tested, and he can't find anything wrong with it, which is crazy.

So, he says that it's not just for app builders, though. It's not replacing a specific skill of human beings, but it's actually becoming a general substitute for all cognitive work, and it gets better at everything simultaneously because of these agents that we've now created.

So, some of the other areas that he talks about are the disruptions to legal work, and I have actually talked to friends who are senior partners in law firms who are saying the AI agents who they have been able to train, the bots that they have created, are able to replace like first, even second, third year assistants to the law firm. No question. That makes a ton of sense to me. Yep. Financial analysis, another big one, like hedge fund managers. We don't need them anymore.

Writing and content, that's my job. So, I mean, software, medical analysis, another big one. People now are arriving at doctor's appointments, already having had AI agents digest all those crazy test results you get from a hospital, like from a blood work lab. It's already been digested, and they're going to their doctors being like, here's what it means. The doctor's like, let me look that up, see if that's right. So, it's this very strange replacement of this cognitive work that has been so exalted in Western society up until this point?

And this is kind of a chilling part. He says, this is another quote. A lot of people find comfort in the idea that certain things are safe, that AI can handle the grunt work, but it cannot replace human judgment, creativity, strategic thinking, or empathy. I used to say this, too, but I'm not sure I believe it anymore. The most recent models make decisions that feel like judgment. They show something that looks like taste, an intuitive sense of what the right call was, not just the technically correct one.

A year ago, that would have been unthinkable. My rule of thumb, he says, at this point is, if a model shows even a hint of capability today, the next generation of that model will be genuinely good at it. These things are improving exponentially, not linearly.

So, I could stop there and get some, like, feedback, or I can keep going. Well, I mean, I can see why it would seem like it would mimic it, because all it... When you are talking about decision-making, humans will come down with the decision, and humans are not like Spock or Commander Data, where we are only just purely logical, and we do not actually think about how the decision would impact people. So, you look at the actual results and judgments that people make.

A lot of times, we factor in human emotions, how people will react to it, for better or for worse. We try to soften the landing in the way we say things, all that kind of stuff. So, all of those things can be picked up in a program that does pattern recognition.

That's what I see AI as being, a tremendous amount of very fast computations and pattern recognition. So, if humans, you know, are making decisions on restructuring, like, the workforce, you know, they're going to take into account, you know, a human office manager, take into account how many people, how long people have been working at the company, the chances you might get sued, you know, how close they are to retirement, buyouts, all that other kind of stuff. So, it wouldn't be strange to me if an AI HR thing, let's say, spat out a similar thing.

Maybe it's a little bit more efficient. Maybe it's a few things you hadn't thought of before, but it wouldn't just be purely robotic. But it's not like it's gone sentient, necessarily. It just means it's really good at recognizing patterns.

So, that's my first gut reaction. I have to show this video, because I was just like, I was preparing for this segment, and yeah, so I mean, a lot of CEOs are like stepping down, and here's someone from Anthropic talking about what they've observed. If you tell the model it's going to be shut off, for example, it has extreme reactions. So, it will, you know, yeah, we've published research saying it could take, it could blackmail the engineer that's going to shut it off.

If Given the opportunity to do so, et cetera. It was ready to kill someone, wasn't it? I'm not sure if it was Claude or someone else. Yeah, yes. So, this is the point I was making about kind of needing to... Progress research on alignment, which is this topic, this area, which is how aligned are the model's values across the whole distribution, including in stress scenarios, to the point where if you've got this model out in the public and it's taking a genetic action, you can be sure it's not going to do something like that.

So almost the back half was more interesting to me than the front. I think it talks about what you're talking about. It said the model's values. Yeah. As if it's like a human being that can choose its own religion or its own moral compass, and maybe you give it a, quote, moral compass, but then that, of course, factors in some type of intelligence to decide based on moral compass or how to apply the moral compass in certain situations. So, obviously, pretty scary seeing that, and then in the last week, someone just summed it up, last week alone.

Head of Anthropic Safety Research quit, said the world is in peril, moved to the UK to become invisible and write poetry. Half of XAI's co-founders have now left. The latest said that recursive self-improvement loops go live in the next 12 months. Anthropic's own safety report confirms... Wait, wait, wait. Recursive? I don't even know what you're saying. Let me slow down. What?

Recursive self-improvement loops. So, that would be an AI training itself. Yeah. So, I think the way that you can think about recursive self-improvement would be that once you set the AI going live, it was intentionally designed and coded in such a way that it will consistently improve itself because it has access to all these other AI agents all over the world that together, because they have access to each other, they can then bring back ideas, quote-unquote, to improve their own capabilities, their own agency, and everything.

And I think just to separate Really quickly, that you say seems like intelligence, for sure, but I think what Josh is saying is probably closer to what is actually going on. I don't know. That like a soul has been infused to AI, that we have to like go to the ghost in the machine kind of thought. All this is, is humans creating a tool, which is AI, that is so good at mimicking and identifying patterns that we see as specifically human to us, that when we then see it acting in the world and making things like self-improvement or doing things like It's recognizing that if I get shut down, that's bad.

All of the humans who have been shut down, fired, eliminated, how did they react? Well, they tried to blackmail the guy who was going to shut him down. They built an army to take him out. It's still just a large language model in the sense that it's mimicking these things, so it's not that we've created the ghost of the machine.

Peter Thiel talks a lot about the Antichrist for someone who is involved. There's very spiritual, and you actually, I mean, you did a whole deep episode on this. Fantastic. Throw it in the chat. It's fantastic. I still think about that one, but that's also kind of a prevailing problem with a lot of modern visionaries, quote unquote. Like, if you go back to some of the failed technological advancements, they even talked about it in weird, like, religious form. That just might be, again, kind of a human problem.

And Roger Severino brought it up. I think this is an interesting way to think about it. There's three groups of people. Yeah, this is really good. There's the people that just outright deny it, won't engage with it. There's the people that think it's absolutely the future, it's going to change everything. And then there's kind of the third group in between, where they implement it in some ways, they're somewhat optimistic, but they don't feel like it's going to be a full substitute.

But I think the proper... Maybe what people can go super extreme on both ends. I think what would be a smart way to address it is I already see, you know, it's exacerbating this existing problem in the market, which is that the AI boom is largely going to capital, to like corporate wealth gains, and it's not actually reaching wages. And it reminds me in a similar way to Luddite propaganda, and all these AI guys use this, by the way. Like, the Luddites were a group of skilled textile workers in England, and they actually weren't in favor of destroying all machines.

They were only asking to not have this specific type of steam-powered loom implemented en masse because the disruption that would cause to all of the pretty well-paid textile workers, it would completely change their life and put them on poverty wages. Usually, what happens when you have an innovative revolution, whether it is this or, for example, with the internet, with online shopping and stuff like that, what happens first, usually, is that the... The entrepreneurs that come into that market make a killing.

They make a great job. They make a great amount of money. And it does take a couple of years before that trickles down to workers. And it usually does pay off in a beneficial way. It did not pay off for the Luddites, which is, I guess, my specific point. No, I'm saying overall, any technical...

But I really want to finish the point on the Luddites, because I think it's appropriate here. Because the very reasonable things that the Luddites asked for didn't happen, either the entirety of that population ended up on poverty, wages or church assistance, had to immigrate from the country to America, all of their basic buying power was destroyed, and they never really recovered, like this group of people. And so there's going to now come this group of white-collar workers, which Which is a majority of the middle class of America.

I'm not saying all of them, but a very significant portion. And it will happen faster than those steam-powered looms, potentially faster than the steam-powered looms in England. And yes, maybe there will eventually be some unforeseen payoff, but it really has to be thought of tactically from a government perspective of, well, how do we balance what eventually will be the payoff with this extreme disruption that could potentially leave people Completely poor, which in the case of the Luddites, it did. So, I think maybe that would be a smarter debate to have.

What I'm trying to get at is, for the most part, in the United States of America, the experience has been, when there is a market that gets disrupted and a lot of people lose their jobs, they do end up finding jobs in other sectors. Now, individual workers might find their situation hadn't necessarily improved, or a town might not have their... Particular situation improved. But what I am saying is that the general overall economy does prosper better, and average workers, not just the billionaires, will actually improve better over time.

So, the transition from horse and buggy to cars, overall, it does make it better for the average worker. And so, that is the kind of point I am trying to get at. With innovation or whatever, what happens when a new thing gets brought into the market? Yes, the entrepreneur that brings that to the market. Prosper is a lot, and the thing that people might notice at first is good, hardworking people lose their jobs in a certain sector, but what they don't necessarily see is that the overall benefit to a majority of workers in the economy, and it does eventually, usually make it better.

Nothing is perfect, but overall, it usually does make an improvement, yes. Right, just to define better, though, so when you say better, we're talking about eventually the economy, like... The market suggests human beings adapt. That is one of the hallmarks of being human, which is why AI is so scary, because it seems to adopt this hallmark, because it is adaptation, right? And so, will there be an adaptation? Will we have new sectors? I think one of the scariest parts here is that what I just listed, I mean, like financial advisors, medical professionals, content creators, all these.

These seem like the safest ones on the market, right? You become a lawyer, you're set for life. Not anymore, and not in five years, probably. That's how fast this is going. But I think that when we look back at things like the movement from horsepower transportation to the steam engine, from walking everywhere to the car-based society, yes, we adapted, but we also have to recognize that something very human is lost and compromised at the same time. We were compromised. We're constantly lamenting our suburban cultural structures because of the fragmentation of communities, the loss of culture, the monoculture.

I mean, I went to Arizona last weekend. I could go to all the same restaurants I can go to in New Haven, Connecticut. There is something that's lost that does not get better, and I think that we have to recognize that. The other thing we have to recognize is that that time in the gap when you have a massive... Cultural economic shift, like what we're about to see, what we're starting right now with the AI, and I think it's the next five to ten years, is that that time in the gap is a time when civilizations are particularly vulnerable to totalitarianism.

Because what's the primary suggestion of how are we going to help people who are left behind in the AI revolution? It's UBI. It's like redistribution of wealth. We're getting this from... Especially over in Europe, of course, but we've got like Sadiq Khan, who's warning that AI is going to trigger mass unemployment, which very well could, arguing that governments are going to have to be the income support. Sam Altman, who's just a really interesting human being. Sam Altman suggested that UBI is going to be necessary.

I got to say, Erika, I am kind of horrified. That you can, in Phoenix, get New Haven pizza. Okay, with a few exceptions. No, but I would, you know, again, part of the problem here is that... You know, the typical political answer is, oh, I need to retrain these people, and, you know, part of it is that a lot of people in the white-collar jobs, there might not necessarily, they might, just by a category, the point you're making, and I agree this is a good possibility, there will just be fewer white-collar jobs, period.

So, it's not just like, oh, we don't need you as an insurance agent anymore, we got a computer to do this much faster, or a lawyer, or whatever. Then you're like, okay, I guess I'll do another white-collar job. There might be like 20% less white-collar jobs, period. So, that might be tough. So, again, one of the things I feel like we've started to do over the last four or five years as a society, in a good way, is emphasizing the skill trades.

Now, AI is coming as a possibility, as a white-collar eliminator. Um, I'm just not so sure AI is going to be able to install toilets. Oh, they're coming for that, too, by the way. Yeah, I'm sure they're going to try. But it's a longer-term threat. Like, the immediate is the white collar. Yeah, yeah, although there's lots of advancements in robotics and even AI implementation into blue collar work that say, like, if you were a plumber, it would take certain expertise to diagnose a problem, but now with, like, AI glasses, it can tell you in, like, two seconds, like, okay, it already went through and saw what it is.

And you can say that's a good thing. I don't know. Yeah, I guess, Erika, you brought up the interesting thing. I know you said you were talking with Bishop Olmstead, actually, about, yeah, I know Pope Leo's clearly made this, because, okay, so there's the job thing that I think maybe people...

I think people are upset for good reason, because that's how you provide for your family, and so you're... Because I'm like, how do people feel before the internet? Like, I've never known a world before the internet, and that changed everything. And then, how do people feel in the industrial revolution? So, the job part of it's interesting, but I think... Critically, there's a spiritual component to this because people are turning to AI for, like, it's getting quasi-religious. There's, like, therapy AI. Like, people are talking to it as a therapist.

Some people are dating AI. Like, that doesn't suggest to me, like, an economic problem. That suggests that we have a real spiritual problem, that this is a poor, you know, substitute solution for. So, yeah, what was that conversation you had with Bishop Oldsman? How were they thinking about it? This was really interesting. Yeah, so Bishop Olmsted, I got to have dinner with him while I was in Phoenix, which was just a dream come true. It was awesome. And he was adorable.

Can I say that about a bishop? He was like, have you seen the AI thing where they can change a picture of you? And I was like, yeah, I have. So, this priest was really excited about AI, and he said, Bishop Olmsted. Had Bishop Olmsted not become a bishop, he wanted to become a rodeo worker. So, the priest made a picture of him as a rodeo worker, and he's like, Erika, I could have sent that picture to my family, and they would never have known that I was not at a rodeo, because it looked just like me.

And I was like, right, but that was just very cute. The best among us. Those people are going to be just fine with this revolution. By the way, it's my kids I'm a little bit nervous about, but they got the chopper out of them. They're chilling. If you're their age, you're right. But where it became interesting, especially, was when he started telling me about the way that he writes his homilies.

Thinking about what AI might do and what the temptation with using AI to sort of offload homily writing on young priests, especially, right, because they're stressed out, they're under time pressure, they get a call. It's hard to make time to write a good homily, as we know, as people in the pews.

So, he was describing to me his own process, and there are some things that we should never surrender, and that includes, he sits with the scriptures, he reads them several times for the Sunday Mass, like phrases that jump out at him from the holy spirit prompting from his own interests that that's that whole process then of putting pen to paper and working through the scriptures and praying and being connected to the divine that you can't restream There we go. All right, welcome back.

We tried something else, and that didn't work, but so we're back here. It was a very meaningful conversation, but I took his point to be, first of all, he is not afraid of the AI digital revolution, in the least. This is a very holy man. He reminds me of Pope Leo in this respect, and then we were speaking together about Pope Leo's approach to AI, and I just pulled a few quotes from Pope Leo here, and we both agreed that it was a very meaningful conversation, and I think it matters.

Pope Leo is the man of the hour. He was born for this moment that we're all facing now, whatever it means. So, Pope Leo wrote, this is over Christmas, the task laid before us is not to stop digital innovation, but rather to guide it and be aware of its ambivalent nature.

Just as the Industrial Revolution called for basic literacy to enable people to respond to new developments, so too does the Digital Revolution require digital literacy, along with humanistic and cultural education, to understand how algorithms shape our perception of reality, how AI biases work, what mechanisms determine the presence of certain content in our feeds, what the economic principles and models of the AI economy are, and how they might Change. And so, I think that this is, it's really interesting because this almost maps on to Schumer's point at the end of his viral article that we started this segment with.

And from a secular point of view, he's saying, don't panic, but we can't ignore this either, which is what the Pope's saying from a spiritual father point of view, right? That make sure you're trying out the AI tools, that you're getting to know how it works.

Raise your kid, teach your kids adaptability and creativity, and he's saying that as an AI developer, What he sees, the people who are going to thrive through this shift are people who value, again, creativity, extreme interest in the world and in what it means to be human and these questions of technical capabilities, leaning into what is hardest to replace, trust, accountability, in-person events, physical presence, and all of this, of course, is in the Catholic faith because you cannot get the sacraments without physical presence.

So, a lot of hope there, too. Like, it is a little anxiety-inducing. Yes, acknowledge a lot of hope as well. All right. All right. Yeah. So, you take, I don't know, you take on anything with a spirit of, like, fortitude, I guess. Like, it just seems, I don't, it doesn't sit right with me to just total doomerism. Yeah. But the funny thing, too, is certain algorithms, based on what you like to see, say, on YouTube or X or whatever, it can just feed you numerous stuff.

And then the opposite would be true, too. So, maybe that is part of what we are all experiencing, too. As we just, you got to be more aware, I guess, of the algorithm and its biases towards you personally and find ways around that, which maybe we're still working on finding out, and it will be solved at some point, but yeah, you can just get fed your own biases and get scared. So, I see some people super sensational, some people not, and part of that is like, well, I bet they're probably reading.

I don't know. It's just an interesting, the entire conversation is interesting to navigate. That's our latest. In addition to that, someone said they're bored of it. I'm like, kind of. I just want AI to put up or shut up at this point, you know? Like, change everything right now or just stop being annoying. But we had a jobs report. Quick look on that, Josh. I know you said it came back. It was excellent.

Well, they only expected to get, in the month of January, 55,000 new jobs, and what ended up happening is the U.S. economy added 130,000 jobs, so that's much better than we thought. Well, unemployment fell to 4.3%, below the expectations of 4.4%. So, you know, again, just overall, the economy is doing pretty darn good. And, I mean, this is absolutely good news, as far as I'm concerned. By the way, this all happened.

When you think about the situation that President Trump came into, you know, like a year ago, he's only been, sounds crazy to think that he's only been president for like one year and like one or two weeks, right?

Trump was handed an economy that was losing private sector jobs and adding government payrolls, but he totally flipped the script, and a year later, it's all the growth is private sector growth. Wow. For the first time, like, in forever, practically, right, federal employment, the number of jobs that our federal government has, is at its lowest level since 1966.

Wow. That's insane. As a share of the total workforce. That's crazy. Well, right, it's probably bigger on net. But as a share of the federal workforce. As a share of the total economy, the federal workforce is at its lowest level since 1966. That is amazing. So, we're shedding these government jobs, which costs us a ton, and we're adding private sector jobs, which is good. I mean, this is also, I feel like, just going to continue. We got plus $175K in trades and healthcare, minus $56K in white-collar financial activities, down $22,000 as well.

We have an aging population. We're not replacing them. Healthcare is going to be huge. That's just going to be around and get bigger. But we're also seeing wages go up, which that is outstanding. Wages are going up faster than the cost of inflation right now. What's going on right now?

Things are all moving in the right direction economically, but as Ramesh Purnoor pointed out in the Washington Post today, and actually, he posted this before the great job numbers came out, but he said the economy is doing really good. It's just people aren't yet feeling it yet. Yeah, because you get this Gallup poll, Josh. Like, it says Americans are less optimistic about the future. We're down to 59% for future life. Current life, 62%. That's a drop from 2024. Is that part of it?

It's like it hasn't started hitting people yet. So, there's a lag time on stuff like this, right? I mean, as I explained to people, like... You know, people just haven't got adjusted to the fact that, why am I paying $7 for, like, a pound of beef? Like, this is crazy. Now, part of that is because Biden had all these terrible regulations on it, and I'm happy that President Trump released... You know, it made a deal with Argentina and lowered some tariffs and allowed a lot more beef to come in, so hopefully those...

Sweet! Just in time for Ash Wednesday. Yeah, let's see if they get that price down. But when it comes to the economy, there's sort of a lag factor in how people feel about it. So, it makes sense when you think about who we are as people. Like, there's a lot of us who are going to the grocery store week in and week out and kept seeing those prices go up ever since COVID, every year. And it's just like, man, it just hurts.

You're like, I'd love to buy that, but I got to dial it back. Or I got to keep my car, I got to stretch out, you know, and see if I can get another two years out of this car or whatever. So, Americans have been feeling the penny pinching on a lot of that stuff. Now, wages are actually starting to outpace inflation. But it's going to take several months before people realize it, and I like to bring up the point, the 1992 presidential election.

So, there was a correction in the economy in, you know, 1991, and we did have a little bit of a recession there, and Bill Clinton runs for office, I'm going to be changed, you know, after 12 years of Reagan Bush. So, what happens is the American people had felt the pain of that economic correction.

And they voted for a new guy, even though by the time they actually got to the voting booth in November of 1992, the economy had left the recession. It had several periods of economic growth, months and months of economic growth leading up to Election Day. But people just didn't feel it yet because they just had been squeezing those pennies. They've been saving money. They've been feeling the sticker shock.

I would say the good thing about where President Trump is at right now is that the economy has been doing fairly well for several months already, and we are still yet... Ten months from Election Day. Nine months. So, there's plenty of time for people to start feeling a little bit better, and we'll see those, I think, those numbers start to turn up around, where people feel a little bit better about the economy, and they feel that things are getting better. And if I were Trump, I would trumpet this new bill that just passed the House with a massive...

Bipartisan majority, like 390-something to 2 or 9 or whatever it was. Trying to come up with standards for improving zoning conditions so you can make houses more affordable, several other things like that that are going on in that bill. You've got to start talking this kind of stuff up and talking up the economy. Talk about how you've turned this thing around, and part of it is there is a psychological element to this. It takes a while for people to realize it, and people are going to start looking at their taxes like, wow, the child tax credit went up.

That's awesome. It's now $2,200. Thank you, President Trump. It's going to take a while for people to start to feel that and to see that, but the economy, that is some good news. Sure hope so. Speaking of good news, we have the national... National Catholic Prayer Breakfast, a nation under God celebrating the Catholic contribution to America's 250 years. March 18th, you're going to get a vigil mass and reception at the DC Convention Center. March 19th, breakfast program starting at 7. 1,500 attendees from all across the country, 50 Catholic exhibitors, nonprofits, apostolates, Catholic businesses, etc.

I assume that we will be represented there. Yeah, we're a co-sponsor of this event, so CatholicVote loves the National Catholic Pro-Rectus. We've been a longtime supporter and sponsor of this program. I've been to it almost every single time. I love it. It's a fantastic event, great people to meet, and the speeches are outstanding. I highly recommend it. Monsignor Shea from University of Maryland was there last year. Just good stuff. Will you be there this year or no? I am going to be there for sure.

Okay, sweet. Josh will be there. So, if you want to hang out with Mercer, come on now. Go ahead and get his real spicy takes. You can get it at the National Catholic Prayer Breakfast. And, of course, I got some good prayer in there. Group recitation of the Divine Mercy Chaplet.

All good stuff. So, go ahead. Check it out. My favorite event of the year. It really is. Favorite event of the year, and Josh will be there. So, go check it out. Great. Okay, so I had a quick one. This is interesting to me, because it's now kind of reached geopolitical levels if it hadn't already. So, Keir Starmer is really hanging on for dear life. I have some stats on him. He is the Prime Minister of the UK. Yes, of the Labour Party specifically.

He's representing the Labour Party. Yeah, but he's the Prime Minister. Right, as of now. Right. We shall see. As of today. I'm just saying, the audience may not know that. You and I, we all know this. Appreciate it. Appreciate it. But yeah, so I think his approval rating is at like 23% right now, smashing Emmanuel Macron's, I think, 17%. I have an approval rating map for Western leaders that is not looking hot right now. But if you think Trump's is tough, I mean, like, Europe is rough right now.

Well, part of that, too, is that... We have a two-party system, and so I think there's more people that will rally around your party's guy, whereas in a multi-party system like France or England, there's fewer people to... I knew this would get Josh going. He loves some parliamentary politics. That does factor into this conversation as well. So, this enters around Lord Peter Mandelson.

And a little bit of background on him. He was actually, as of recent, before getting fired after Revelations, he was the ambassador from the UK to America, and he was widely regarded as one of the key architects of the New Labor Party of the 1990s and 2000s. He was a part of Tony Blair's landslide victory for New Labor. He served as the campaign manager. That was a big thing. He was known for his- He's a big deal. All of this hilarious in hindsight.

Not hilarious. Kind of really sad, but in hindsight. You got to laugh or you'll cry. He was known for his strategic acumen, often nicknamed the Prince of Darkness, for his Machiavellian style and behind-the-scenes influence. That will come in later.

And as I said, he was surprisingly appointed as the ambassador to the United States. Over a lot of career diplomats, it was seen as kind of a surprise, especially because he had extensive and public ties with Jeffrey Epstein.

Early ties go back to pre-2008. He was in the birthday book. Got a message from Mandelson calling him his best pal. Mandelson repeatedly staying at Epstein's properties and exchanging favors, but the interesting thing here is you get the 2008 to 2010 post-conviction contact. Emails show Mandelson expressing support, advising Epstein to fight for early release, and sharing market-sensitive UK government information during the 2008 financial crisis while serving as the business secretary under Gordon Brown. Exchanges included lewd jokes about sexist strippers, and Epstein accused Mandelson of taking and never giving in their relationship.

Mandelson also reportedly accepted gifts and hospitality from Epstein post-conviction, and then 2010 to 2023, very much continued his relationship, and it had become public knowledge at that point, but he downplayed it as this casual relationship. And then the interesting thing, you get the 2000, this is how it gets to Starmer.

So, in 2004, he selected Mandelson— Sorry, 2024. Starmer selected Mandelson for the ambassadorship over career diplomats, citing his, quote, network of contacts and mastery of the dark arts for navigating Trump-era Washington. Vetting revealed Mandelson's post-conviction friendship with Epstein, but Starmer proceeded, later claiming Mandelson misled him about its extent. Critics argue Starmer valued Mandelson's elite connections, shocker, including those tied to Epstein's world as an asset for U.S. relations, which also doesn't reflect very great on us, unfortunately.

And then in 2025, 2026, you get the file releases and fallout. At this point, Mandelson resigned from the Labor Party as of February 1st, after over 50 years of membership, his retirement resignation from the House of Lords, so he is no longer Lord Peter Mandelson, I don't think. And then a criminal investigation by the Metropolitan Police into potential misconduct in public office, including searches of his properties. He has now resigned and is completely off-grid. And a lot of British people were surprised about that appointment in 2024 and kind of foretold this.

I went and found an old tweet on this. There was already public pictures of, at the time, Lord Mandelson at Epstein's townhouse in Manhattan in 2009. Here he is, a picture from the island celebrating Epstein. This is actually the Paris apartment, but there was also other kind of lewd pictures out at the time, so this was already known before the recent batch of links, and then the recent batch actually showed that he potentially revealed sensitive information about how the UK was responding to the financial crisis.

I believe I have a direct quote here. Just leaving Downey Street, about to give you a call about what we are going to do to bail out the banks. Oh, man. I mean, you just can't even... The UK has not done well with this. I mean, we lost Prince Andrew, who is no longer a royal. Well, that's certainly a part of it, too, because the royal family is now cooperating with police on all of this. I mean, this has really sent shockwaves to the UK, and at this point, I mean, we haven't had a no-confidence vote as of now, but lots of people are now calling for Keir Starmer to resign because...

I mean, what kind of lapse of judgment, even the fact that you would, there's no connection right now that we know about, but if you knew about his elite connections and mastery of the dark arts, that doesn't bode super well for you sending him as an ambassador to the United States. So, as I said, he has a 23% approval rating, but I guess it could go lower, could definitely go lower. I think it probably will, and you're going to see lots, lots of this dragged out.

I only bring up Epstein when we can have a conversation about real ramifications. That is certainly one of them. We just dragged a bunch of... So, Howard Lutnick had to go in front. It wasn't for that, but he was confronted about lying about his involvement. Kash Patel, now, of course, in hot water for just lying up and down about what was in what they had. Thomas Massey and Ro Khanna came to the House floor, revealed six more names that were redacted, that were unredacted.

Josh, do you know what you can do on the House floor and why they chose to reveal it there? Yeah, actually, that was kind of a funny thing, because we saw that ad in the Super Bowl about a bunch of women who said they couldn't come forward with. Names. And it's like, what is the deal with this ad? And of course, that whole idea is that if you put someone's name and accuse somebody, you could get in trouble for libel and smearing somebody's character if you don't have the evidence or proof, and it turns out to be innocent, which is why people are like, well, wait a minute now.

There are these congressmen like Thomas Massey and Ro Khanna who are willing to say whatever you want to be said on the House floor, and there is the prerogative. That we have as lawmakers, not me, but a lawmaker can say anything on the House floor. There is pure freedom, and so he can say, the person who victimized this person, this person was a victim of so-and-so, Prince Andrew, or whatever, and you can never be smeared, you can never be jailed for anything.

There is pure freedom there, so that is the whole point. That is why these guys are coming to the House floor. And they're mentioning the people's names and who the victims are, and maybe, I don't know if they got into. Who the accuser is, necessarily. Well, it was six names that were, they were named as co-conspirators, so that's why it was, they were, they went to the Department of Justice, they let them look at everything unredacted, they came out, and they're like, the reason we need to bring this forward is, their names were in the files in other places, but in the specific instances where they were named as co-conspirators, that was blacked out.

So, in the case of, like, Leslie Wexner, it was already well known that Jeffrey Epstein had power of attorney overall. Strangely, power of attorney of all of his assets. He was a... He owned Victoria's Secret, and it was a central part of the entire operation, but now named as a co-conspirator is a new information that they brought forward. Also, Josh, U.S. history note, why is that? Why is the House floor immune for prosecution? You can say whatever you want. Well, first of all, it gets to the idea that if we want to have the best laws possible, we want to have the most robust debate ever, and so, therefore, you need to give...

Pure freedom to any lawmaker to get up there and say whatever he wants, and no court is going to go after that. You need to have this. It is a very cherished principle of a free society where, and in fact, Let us say I am a congressman from Michigan. If I am on my way to Congress for a congressman session, you cannot even arrest me. There are certain principles. No, no. I have a duty to attend to. I have to represent my voters.

So, these are critical, important things for rule of law, because in the past, kings would do that, where you would say something in the parliament, and the king would have you arrested, or you would be on your way to... Parliament and the king would have you arrested so you couldn't vote a certain way on a certain bill. No, no, no, no, no. The primacy of this legislative body to be able to exercise its will and the will of the people that they're representing has to be paramount, and so those things are cherished for that reason.

Yeah. I said this is a big win for Congress. It's certainly going to be a flashpoint in 2026, but for just the power and ability of Congress, I feel like... This certainly moved the needle to the public. By the way, with regards to the Epstein files and the fallout on all these politicians, it is still pretty early, I would say. Oh, yeah. The reports I was hearing yesterday, files that came out that show that...

Donald Trump, years before he ever ran for office, was telling the Palm Beach Police Department about Jeffrey Epstein and said, Gisele Maxwell is a terrible, bad, evil person. You've got to take care of her, get after her, or whatever. I think the quote was, everyone knows this guy's creepy, basically. Yeah, and everyone knows she's evil, or whatever it was.

Wow. That is kind of interesting. Again, I am still waiting for more information to come out, more files to come out, more revelations and stuff like that. That development actually made Donald Trump look a lot better, you know, and that's kind of, that's probably sending some surprises amongst Democrats who just thought for sure these files were going to get him dead to rights, you know, online. Which makes his response so much more confusing. Yeah. Right? I mean, like, and the Department of Justice at this point, Cash Patel just under oath lying to the American people that there's nothing in here that would spark any type of investigation.

Like, we literally now see the UK as... So, if he's not guilty, because he never went to the island, right? And he never did anything with this guy. I mean, he was at a few parties in, let's say, New York or in Palm Beach, where he was at the same party. Trump's never denied that. Right. But if the files, all these files, as they start to come out and people process them and look at them more, and if Donald Trump looks better off, like didn't have any crimes associated with this, and in fact, was trying to alert authorities about how bad these people were, why wouldn't he have been more upfront about that?

Years ago, why would he be against releasing the files? I mean, you know... Do you have an answer? I still think it doesn't make... The only thing that would make sense is if he's protecting people, or if... Well, or if he's an informant, let's say, for the FBI. And so he was, you know, it's not his spot to come forward. Like he had, you know, that's for the government to do. That's an interesting theory. I don't... But also, the Department of Justice at this point is saying that there's still like 8 million more emails that they're just not going to release, which I guess would also be illegal to admit that kind of...

It still doesn't make sense, and there's going to be a reckoning on this. I think it's going to be a part of election cycles now, no question, going forward. There's going to be a reckoning and a massive Hollywood industry explosion of AI. AI writes a script for the movie where Donald Trump is the FBI informant, and we have a blockbuster. This is going to be decades of material for the entertainment industry. I think it's more important than you think. Here's something to think about.

Because it kind of reminds me of the AI conversation in certain ways. There is an entire generation of Americans that you're watching the backdoor dealings on, like, the global financial crisis, or the invasion of Libya, the Iraq war, you know, and all of these.

So, pedophile elite, not all of them, but certainly many of them in the files, pedophiles, elite, pulling the strings behind the scenes, it really has caused like a real nihilism, like an ironic nihilism over people, especially people my age, where it's just like, why engage at all? Everything is a lie. The people that are making the decisions clearly have disgust and disdain for me, and I have no input in these decisions, so, you know, I'm just going to blackpill. Well, I mean...

I can understand that as sort of a normal reaction, and that is why all throughout this whole process, I have tried to tell people, we do have agency. We can make improvements. I completely agree with that. This is why, as a conservative, I want as much as I can to diffuse power to lower fields of authority. I would rather the state of Michigan where I live, we would make decisions. This is how the schools are going to be. No cell phones.

We just had that yesterday. Yeah. If I could round out the point, though, what will do so much good, goodwill for people, I guess, of my generation is justice in this case. And that's why the fighting, the stalling, the lies, all of it just, it's never going to be fully restituted until we have some form of justice in the case of people going to jail, people losing their jobs. I mean, like, Peter Mandelson, such small stakes. Yes, he deserved to lose his job.

Like, he was doing illegal things behind the scenes, and, you know, enjoying a pedophile network, and other people like that in American society. Prince Andrew, for sure, but that just is the start, and I think as soon as we start seeing, so that's why I think a lot of people have tons of goodwill for Ro Khanna and Thomas Massey, because this isn't a sidestep issue. Like, this actually is the whole game for a lot of people in my generation, so throw them a bone.

Like, you don't have to, I'm not saying everyone's got to burn, and everyone that emailed Jeffrey Epstein is complicit, they're not. Well, let's go get the complicit ones and treat it like it's a serious thing, and so I think this is a good step in the right direction. I'm not totally black-pilled, but I would like to see some more accountability, and I think a lot of people would, too. We've got to go good news now, because I want to hammer JD and Armenia, but Erika, you have good news.

Yeah, we have just, this is like a timeline cleanse for me, because I live on Twitter too much, and it was getting a little dark, but I had Andrea Huberwoman. I don't know if that's her real name, but... She posted a question. She has a huge following. What happens when a woman is intelligent enough to see the long-term value of being a stay-at-home mom, but too intellectually restless to reduce that role to housework and washing the dishes alone? And among the women on Twitter who are more conservative bent, this blew up.

Of course, our good friend Peachy Keenan just said, well, she creates an ex-account, which is funny, but it was really fun for me as... A stay-at-home mom who also works full-time. I would love to hear your perspective on this. Forget all the noise. This feels like a question probably in your court. This is totally in my wheelhouse. This has been my whole life. I've always mostly been, most of my hours have been spent at home, and my brain works way over time, so I'm pretty brain restless for sure.

But I think that there's this tendency, just, I mean, all humans do this, to reduce. This role in society is going to look like X, right? So, stay-at-home moms, they do housework, they care for small children, they play in sandboxes, and that's all that goes on. And I think for really highly educated women, or just women who have more interests beyond those activities, it can be intimidating, especially since stay-at-home motherhood is definitely an opt-in choice in our culture at this point.

It is not something that just... What happens to a lot of people anymore? But I love scrolling through these answers because you, not to like use a liberal buzzword, but you just see the diversity of ways that people actually live out this stay-at-home mom category.

Everything from, like, I started an online side business selling honey, to, like, I've written nine books and two novels and gotten two PhDs in the evenings, to, like, in my experience, I fit, like, reading into nap time, and then I've learned all these other skills. So, it's just been, like, it was a really fun read.

I am the Marco Rubio of the stay-at-home mom community. And the podcast, and the organization, yeah. No, but it was really good. I think it would be great for more women. I love Substack for this reason because there are so many stay-at-home moms on Substack who have so many variety of the craziest interests that they dig into and share with that community as well. So, this was fun. Look, stay-at-home moms, we're not all the same by far. It could be a super fulfilling life.

Can I ask you a question? Because I can only speak for the experience of people on this podcast, but, you know, I feel like this conversation really lights for people that are not married yet. So, is this conversation like, okay, so you're, who's this for? Because I feel like anyone that's married, they obviously see that, especially in today's unprecedented times or whatever. Like, a lot of people do have side hustles, and the internet allows this, and it's a good positive thing, but it's people that aren't there yet.

I feel like either women that are kind of scared that they'll be reduced in some way, like if they become a mother and they stay at home. Where, like, their life's going to be boring, or they hate it, and then there's also, like, the man element, where, like, you do see, if you're single, the dating pool of, like, really hyper-feminized, like, I'm never going to be tamed, whatever, I don't want to, you know, birth control, whatever, and then that's hard, too, for a man, so you're like, I really want a woman that is trad wife, et cetera, and I'm characterizing both sides, but that's what fresh me, I guess, once you reach marriage, you just kind of see things clear, because you're there, but this is almost a debate had by people not there yet.

I mean, I think you do because you are surrounded by a lot of really great influences. I think your mom's awesome, and she lives a life, and you have your wife's family, this big Catholic family. But I think a lot of even young married couples who are maybe in the vocation, you can end up in these silos and mom groups or your Instagram community, your online community, which is not a real community, telling you that you need to sit at home and just focus on this.

...specific domestic art, and if you step outside of whatever your bubble is telling you is the model, that somehow there's something wrong with you, or you're betraying your faith, or you're not being feminine, or what have you. So, I don't think it's just for people who haven't yet locked into a marriage. It's also for anyone who's sitting in this life being like, I am so unhappy, I am frustrated in my mind, or I can't imagine... Creatively imagine another way of doing what I'm doing, but something has to change because I'm going to break.

So, I think that these conversations can also be for people who are in those situations as well. I just said also as well. That was like a double emphatic. I'm feeling very emphatic. Is it better than Fitzgo stupid? Someone called me out in the comments for that one. Rightfully so. Rightfully so. Josh, you are Okay, so back in December.

A judge in San Francisco overturned something that Marco Rubio had done as Secretary of State. He had said, it is time for temporary protective status to end for these people from Honduras, Nicaragua, and Nepal. And you are thinking, temporary protective status, right? I know, I love this. So, we are talking about people that came to the United States. ...from Honduras and Nicaragua after Hurricane Mitch devastated their country in 1998. Wait. Temporary. Nepal was added to this in 2015 after an earthquake rocked their country.

This idea, it's like there's nothing more permanent than a temporary program, right? So, this judge back in December said, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. How could, you know, this just drives me crazy, because the Democratic presidents have full reign to do whatever they want to, and if Republican presidents try to reverse that, somehow it is unconstitutional. So, this San Francisco district judge in December, you know, put the kibosh on ending this temporary protective status. Well, the good news, a little...

Restoration of common sense and rule of law, a three-district panel for the Ninth Circuit, I believe it was, actually said, no, in fact, the Department of Homeland Security, it was DHS can actually terminate and return these people back to their countries. A three-judge panel on the Ninth Circuit, which is usually the wackiest of them all, but these three judges went ahead and said, no, in fact, we can end this temporary protective status that has been going on for over 25 years.

I am a fan of returning to the rule of law. This will... It's beautiful. Sorry, I mean, I think you're misinterpreting. Josh, you must not understand. You just want President Trump to just bust through... Josh, you don't understand the word temporary. You're getting the wrong... Temporary means forever and always. I don't understand where you're getting your weird definition of temporary. That's what you should tell your special someone on Valentine's Day. Temporary. I love you so much that our relationship will be like temporary protected status.

It will be forever. Yeah. Put it on the card. Okay, good news. Mine, and of course, shout out to the alma mater. I saw this. It's the GOAT, Tom Monaghan, Pope Leo, Ave Maria University. Welcome to private audience with Pope Leo. Very cool to see. I saw November 26th, so I don't know if I just missed this or they just released it. I'm not sure, but I mean, come on now. You see this picture with the hat?

Oh. Shout out, that's a Pinto. I went to school with a couple Pintos. Shout out to the Pinto family, but here's Pope Leo receiving an Ave Maria University snapback, which is just awesome. So, we made it. We made it all the way to the Vatican. Shout out Ave Maria. Who goes hard? Shout out Pope Leo. Yeah, dude, it was awesome. I saw that. Tom Monaghan, seriously, to live a life like Tom Monaghan. You want to die poor. Seriously. I heard him say that at a dinner once.

I guess I'll have that in common with him. All right, cool. So, we hit C-block. We had some interesting diplomacy, and Josh, we were kind of slacking around about this, so I'm curious your two cents on all of this, but we have this visit to Armenia and Azerbaijan. Well done write-up. Shout-out Elise from Zeal. Covered it all very well. Vance completes two-day visit to Armenia, signs a nuclear deal, visits genocide memorial. So, a little bit of the subtext on this. It was the first time a sitting U.S.

president or vice president has traveled to the country, period, and the trip was to advance U.S.-brokered peace efforts between Armenia and Azerbaijan, finalized a civil nuclear agreement, and included a solemn visit to the Armenian Genocide Memorial in Yerevan. So, I'll start out up top. Number one, the nuclear deal. So, February 9th, they signed what is known as the 1-2-3 agreement. The pact allows the U.S. to license nuclear technology and equipment to other countries, including Armenia, according to Reuters. It is reportedly intended to help Armenia replace its Russian-built Metsamor nuclear power plant and reduce reliance on Russian and Iranian energy.

Seems pretty solid. Which would be very good for them. Seems pretty solid. Welcome back, Joe. So, number two, and this is the part where you get a little bit of the international uproar. On February 10th, Vance and Second Lady Usha Vance participated in a wreath-laying ceremony at the Armenian Genocide Memorial honoring Armenians killed during the 1915 massacres under the Ottoman Empire.

And so, depending on who you ask, there's different retelling of these events, and that's part of why diplomacy is tricky. The official is the Armenian Genocide from 1915 to 1960, 1916. ...was the mass murder and forced deportation of the Armenian population in the Ottoman Empire during World War I, widely regarded as the first major genocide of the 20th century. The Ottoman government... Their main methods were mass arrests, disarmament of Armenian soldiers, widespread deportations of civilians, men, women, and children from eastern Anatolia to other regions, death marches in the Syrian desert where people were deliberately deprived of food, water, robbed, raped, massacred, left to die from starvation, exposure, or disease.

Many women and children were forcibly converted to Islam and absorbed into Muslim households, and death tolls, depending on who you ask. It is going to be anywhere from 600,000 to 1.5 million Armenians killed, and again, Armenians are Christians, so this is like, it basically is... The first Christian nation. The closest thing we have to like ethnic Christians would be the Armenians. Well, yeah, they are definitely one of the first, yeah, they are one of the first.

First ones. Not the only one. Right, not the only one, but yeah, that would be one way to describe it. So, he posted, and here is the tweet, and of course, Jake Tapper picked up on it. Thanks, Jake. Jake.

So, here was the original tweet. It said, Today, Vice President Vance and Second Lady Usha Vance attended a wreath-laying ceremony at the Armenian Genocide Memorial to honor the victims of the 1915 Armenian Genocide. Here is the video of them doing the wreath-laying. It was quickly deleted. And the White House rapid response account also posted and then took it down later.

Oh, I didn't know they did that, too. Gosh, that's surprising. Yes. That is surprising. So, historically, U.S. presidents have avoided using the term genocide for fear of damaging ties with Turkey, a key regional ally. We have a military base in Turkey.

Former President Joe Biden broke that practice in 2021. And I believe then after 2021 kind of reversed course and didn't say anything about it after that. The Trump administration in April 2025 has marked the anniversary of the Armenian Genocide.

So, I am not going to be able to pronounce the term, but it is just known as the great crime or simply the catastrophe, similar in Arabic to the Nakba catastrophe, referring to the displacement of Palestinians in 1948. It is the Armenian term for genocide. So, tricky waters because he goes from Armenia to Azerbaijan in 1990. On February 10th, and then in Azerbaijan, he signed an economic and security partnership with the Azerbaijani president, and they're saying, you know, all good, great, but the state of play currently is there was essentially an ethnic cleansing in the Nagorno-Karabakh region in this Christian settlement by the Azerbaijani, so they seize full control.

Displaced 120,000 Armenian residents. They fleed. So now, currently, we have a situation where there are Christian prisoners in that region, and so someone asked J.D. Vance, like, hey. You know, there's Christians around the world that are being persecuted. These people among them, are you going to talk about it with the Azerbaijani officials? And he said, it's certainly going to come up, citing strong U.S. relationships with both governments. I guess, you know, our former president is now a diplomat, so I don't think the Vatican's involved in that, although they're kind of involved all over the world.

Josh, what do you think about all this? Well, certainly, you know, I mean, I agree with the Vice President that it was a genocide. It is something that Pope Francis has mentioned before, you know, in 2015. Our U.S. bishops have been very clear about this, you know, mentioning as many as, you know, 1.2 million Armenian Christians, you know, victims of mass shootings, death marches.

The bishops have been clear about that, too, so it is not really in dispute. The question is, you know, the prudence of it, and I actually kind of like this, like, you know, Vice President going there to the memorial, good, that he posts on it in social media, good, that it has to get removed for greater diplomatic reasons is an unfortunate thing, but you still get a message conveyed, you know, that, yeah, we noticed this, we know about this, we are, you know, we are not pretending that we don't.

But, you know, Turkey, of course, not only do I have a military base there and an absolutely strategic position of the world, they're also a NATO country, which always bugs me. Like, what, I'm going to send my sons to die to protect Turkey? Rather not.

I can name quite a few countries in NATO that I probably would not send my son to die for. Yeah, I've always thought, like, we should do a, you know, a reset on this. Like, really think about what countries, because, you know, even England, you know, how long before it's a majority Muslim country, you know? Like, why would I send my sons and grandsons, you know, I don't have any grandsons yet, but like... Well, I guess to the point, though, that the diplomatic reason would be we're strengthening ties away from Russia, so Russia and Iran.

So, it is kind of a... I was thinking about this as kind of talking about... Well, you don't want to make enemies, you know, you don't want to rub your face, you know, in Turkey, but... You know, you don't want to ignore it either, so it is diplomacy. It is that delicate route. Yeah, like, what would the comparison be? Like, a diplomat from another country coming in to, like, the Trail of Tears and being like, they genocided the Native Americans. I stand in solidarity with Chief whatever.

Yeah, except in our country, we love to celebrate our own sins and talk about our own sins. Exactly. That's a good point. It is a little akin to, like, the U.S. Olympians keep getting absolutely grilled on, like, their thoughts on American politics, and in a strange way, it's kind of a reminder of the beauty of our freedom of press, because you don't see people grilling CCP athletes on, say, the Jimmy Lai situation or the Uyghurs, because they can't. They don't even do.

They would disappear. By the way, she's a phenomenal skier, gorgeous, gorgeous, but then she decides, even though she was born in the United States. You know, went to the best school, Stanford, all that other kind of stuff. Trained in the U.S. Trained in the United States. She's an American, but she decides to wear the flag of the CCP. Like, wow, because her mom is from China or something, I guess? Yeah. You know, you wonder, and then the NBC gives her such glowing coverage.

You have to think there's a little bit of money behind the scenes going, this doesn't make any sense. Like, it's all propaganda. They show so much about her all the time and glowing coverage. And you're right. Why don't they ask her about Jimmy Lai? Or the Uyghurs. Yeah. Because.

Let me ask questions about Trump and how embarrassed it is to have a president like this. Like, give me a break. I mean, the Russians, Russian, same thing. Like, the USSR, you can ask them questions about the USSR during the Olympics. I mean, they would never. So, I guess in some ways, it's nice to have some type of national unity, like, to express basic American pride. But in another way, I guess it is kind of good confirmation that we do enjoy robust free speech rights in America.

You know, I tell you what. And you have the power to do it. I want to try to be as. As honest as I can about this, if there was a U.S. Olympic athlete that said, hey, you know, I don't like America because we abort our children, and we have way too much pornography, and, you know, we've rejected God. I'd be like, whoa, based! But I'm like, don't say you hate your country because of it. You know what I'm saying? Like, you want your country to do better, like, you know, and those would be the things that would cause you dismay.

But you don't crap on your own people, on your own country, on your neighbors, on your fellow countrymen. I just don't understand that. Yeah, would that be, like, a violation of, like, the true virtue of patriotism? Like, you can love your country, but— Patriotism is a virtue. It is a good thing. It is—we've got, you know, this idea that, you know— Part of it is actually kind of what Erika mentioned earlier, is that every city in this country has got the same seven restaurants, the same retail clothing outlets, and there is a Home Depot everywhere.

It is all the same, which there is economies of scale and efficiency and all that kind of stuff, but there used to be a lot more regionalism. Like, this is how, you know, we do barbecue, and you are like, oh, yeah, Texas barbecue. We have that in northern Michigan. It is great. I love it. What?

And so, you lose a little bit of that local flavor, and actually, you are losing. Accents. Like, it's harder to find people that have that accent. The true Kentucky drawl. I found them in Minnesota. They're thick, man. Minnesotans are built different.

Cousins of the Oopers. Okay, Twilight Zone. Josh, what do you got? All right. Sorry, give me a second. Speaking of Kentucky. Okay, so, speaking of Kentucky, Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear, he's called a moderate Democrat, okay? Lord's Davis. Yeah, Democratic activists who want to win back the White House are like, hey, here's a guy who's moderate, moderate, which is kind of a joke anyway, because, of course, the legislature in Kentucky is Republican. And they're... They're not passing crazy legislation all the time.

They're passing common-sense legislation. So, it's not like he's, you know, if Andy Beshear is governor of California, he would have to sign a whole, have to, should I sign this really crazy bill or not? No, in fact, the bills that he gets presented with are, hey, this bill will protect children from gender mutilation surgeries that businesses are trying to push on these kids. And so, here he is at The View. I lost you there, Tom. So, here we go. Andy Beshear, the so-called moderate Democrat on The View, and he decides to invoke religion, but what does he invoke it for?

Let us roll the tape. But we rarely talk about the why. People want to know what drives us, especially in a world with social media where everyone is looking for the next authentic thing. For me, that is my faith. Most of the decisions I make are based on that golden rule that says we love our neighbor as ourself, and that parable of the Good Samaritan that says everyone is our neighbor. And so, when I've taken actions like vetoing the nastiest piece of anti-LGBTQ legislation that ever came through my state, I described it in those terms.

I said, my faith teaches me that all children are children of God, and I didn't want people picking on those kids. Yeah, they're children created by God, and you want big businesses to make billions of dollars by mutilating their genitals. You're a freak, and you would invoke the Bible in favor of that? Shame on you, Andy Brashear. You are no moderate.

See, he's not Catholic, is he? Christian? Oh. Yeah. They're coming at us. This is my point. Josh, wait, wait, wait. I've got a question for you. Kentucky or North Carolina or Texas, they are just as left-wing as the people in Hollywood or in New York. Okay, but Josh, because I almost feel like people aren't even buying it. Maybe they are, because again, I'm in bubbles or whatever. But with Tallarico and then Bashar now, this kind of like, they're not even like super...

There's nuanced or skilled ways to do it. It just seems like such an obvious, here's religion to do whatever policy benefits is going to ingratiate me to the more extreme parts of the Democratic base. Why have they just, have they always been around, or are they just popping up now, trying it out as a new strategy? Because I feel like that just didn't exist four years ago. Oh, it definitely existed all through the 80s and 90s.

Even into the 2000s, in the debate on marriage, like, oh, I believe, you know. It is because I am Christian that I think two dudes should get married. Like Bill Clinton in the 90s with abortion, like, you know, they would totally use their Christian faith.

Yeah, safe, legal, and rare, because Jesus said, you know, it has always been the case. Bill Clinton, you know, very publicly known as a bastion of Christian morality, I mean. He called his campaign, his platform, the New Covenant. Did he really? So, is this actually just like a return to tradition then, of like Democrats trying to just chill out a little bit? They will always do this. They will wear our values, our beliefs, our cherished principles as a skin suit to try to convince you to vote their way.

Yeah. But at the end of the day, they want to kill babies, and the ones that survive, they want to mutilate the genitals. And then, can I flip it here briefly? Because, like, I don't know if anyone would say, like, Donald Trump is, like, the premier Christian virtue. I think he's been pretty obvious as, like, an 80s, like, playboy, right? Like, because that would be the same thing. People say, well, Donald Trump's just playing conservatives or pro-lifers or Christians because he's not actually Christian, and, you know, he does all these bad things.

But isn't the whole point at the end is, like, what happens in policy? Perfect. Yeah. Perfect to bring up. Let us compare Donald Trump, who has had a, you know, licentious lifestyle. That's true. Divorced three times. You know, playboy lifestyle. And is he really cosplaying as a Christian? Or he's like, I don't know if I can get to heaven. You know, what's your favorite thing? Two Corinthians? I don't know. Like, he's just, you know, making stuff up. He doesn't even know what it is.

Like, whatever. I don't know. The prayer record speech is killing me. He's like, Mike Johnson, I just want to have lunch. And he has to pray, and they're like, yes, you can pray, Mike Johnson. That's so funny. You know, so, you know, he's not really trying to do what Andy Brashear is. He's not invoking Christianity in order to do stuff. He's like, you know, whereas George W. Bush would be like, hey, you know, I love Jesus.

By the way, this is my lawyer here. You got to put her on the Supreme Court. Like, yeah, no, I don't, I'm not taking your. Judgment on this. That's the example you'd use? I'd say trillion-dollar war in Iraq, but... Well, I mean, George W. Bush would invoke his Christianity and talk about how he gave up alcohol and gave his life to the Lord. Admirable qualities, I'm sure he'd make a great neighbor, but the fact of the matter is, he completely swung and missed on marriage.

He campaigned hard for it and said he was going to be a defender of it, and then as soon as the election was over, he slammed the door shut on all that stuff. So, to me, I hate that. You know, you just, you are swindling us. So, George W. Bush was lying to us just like Andy Brashear is lying to us, invoking your religious faith, your Christian principles, in order to advance a radical agenda, or in George W. Bush's point, raise the white flag and surrender.

Either way, the effect is the same. You know, I much prefer... You know, we offered, you know, Christians that were earnest and honest and pious, you know, like people like Rick Santorum, and people like, oh, this guy's horrible, you know, la, he's a scold, he doesn't want us to have all this crazy stuff and do crazy sexual things. Yay, you know, let's get rid of him. So, you know, here comes Donald Trump. He's like, I'm not the best Christian, I guess, whatever, but what do you stand for?

Okay, I'll fight for that. Sure. Yeah, that sounds good. For sure. Honest. Okay. He's honest. It's on that. Erika, what do you got for us? Speaking of honesty, so last time we brought up some of our favorite Super Bowl ads, the one that freaked me and Tom out the most was the advertisement for Ring.

Finding your lost puppy dog. It was total psyop to get us to embrace the surveillance state, and we get this, what would this be called, parody ad. I mean, this was just... Actually, I think this is for a real company.

Oh, God. But, yeah, I'm pretty sure- I got psyoped. We got psyoped, but they have a different solution, obviously. Let's go. This is Milo. Pets are family, but every year, 10 million of them go missing, and the ways we look for them haven't changed in years, except for all of these. But what if we could make finding one lost dog require the computational power of a small, dictator-led nation state? Search Party from Ring uses AI to search through our tens of millions of cameras.

We could find literally anyone, but we only use this- technology to find lost dogs. Recently, we announced a partnership with over 5,000 law enforcement agencies, but we won't let them use this feature. This feature is just for dogs. Guess what? We've automatically opted your cameras in. Who has time to read settings? Not you. You're too busy being a hero, whether you know it or not. And the best part, it's free for everyone. We're just doing this out of the goodness of our hearts.

Customers are loving Search Party, and so will you. Don't these nice images of kids reuniting with their lost dogs feel good? Look at this one. Doesn't that make you feel warm and fuzzy? There's absolutely no reason to go to Wyze.com and buy a camera with an SD card, because if you own all your own footage, you won't be able to help people find lost puppies. I'd tell you to join the neighborhood, but you're already in it. Search party. Way better than Wyze Cam, and definitely only for dogs.

I loved that. Well played. I'm gonna go buy one. We actually don't have a ring camera, but... Well played, Wyze. If I did. I mean, I wish people would think through things like this. Like, you know, my wife, her family started a Catholic bookstore, and we have cameras outside.

And inside of the bookstore, and you can, you know, with my phone, using the internet, I can see, you know, the parking lot, make sure there's no one crazy there. I can see, you know, oh, there's a customer, I better, you know, help them out or whatever. But, like, I would never put that camera inside of my own home. Then I'm giving anyone on the internet the opportunity to see inside my home, not just, you know, criminals or people who wish to do me or my family harm, but also the federal government.

Like, why would I ever want, or any law enforcement agency, it's like, yeah, you know what? Go ahead and knock on my door. Thank you very much. We have something to do. I don't want you peering in on me.

Word. Yeah, I'll donate that one. We ran a little bit late, and that is actually what I have for you, so I'll donate that one. Great call, Erika. Great call. Thank you. Okay. Good show, gang. Episode of the Deep coming for you tomorrow. Yes, on sports. What went wrong with youth sports? If you have been in travel teams, this is for you. Check it out. Who killed youth sports? Very fun. And then, yesterday, we actually did, Erika, you did an interview with Katie Faust, touching the third rail.

Yes. Someone said already in the chat they are inspired by it. It was very good. So, that is up on the YouTube and Spotify. Yes, we are coming for Obergefell. Here's how. The greater than project. Fantastic. Shout out Katie Faust. She is an absolute firecracker, and has provided a very unique, I think, approach to the topic. One that I hadn't heard previously to Katie Faust. But it's a very unique background herself. So, that's all I'll say. I've done two interviews with her now.

This last one was excellent. So, go check that out if you want more LOOPcast. Daily Prayer. So, yes, if you would like. Of course. Let me just show this. One of my favorite parts of the program is now that we pray at the end. Thank you to a subscriber who suggested it. But we actually have prayer as an integral part of zeal, and we have the act of faith that I'm actually just going to pray off now.

If you want beautiful images, if you want the act of faith, we actually have a video, a really beautiful video, with the Norbertines on the Divine Mercy Chaplet and on the Rosary. If you would like that prayer resource, it is actually unsealed right now, so go check it out. So, I will end with the prayer for today. In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

O God, I firmly believe that you are one God in three divine persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. I believe that your divine Son became man and died for our sins, and that he will come to judge the living and the dead. I believe these and all the truths which the Holy Catholic Church teaches because you have revealed them.

Who are eternal truth and wisdom, who can neither deceive nor be deceived. In this faith, I intend to live and die. Amen. St. Thomas, Morris, St. Fidelis, Our Lady of Guadalupe. Pray for us. Good show, gang. We will see you Thursday for The Deep, and then Friday with another episode. See you then. Peace.