The Charlie Kirk Effect: What The Reactions Reveal About America

We're live. Welcome back to LOOPcast. It's Tom, Erika, and Josh. LOOPcast, of course, brought to you by every Catholic American's favorite morning newsletter, The Loop. Go check it out if you're not there. So, I got to start up the show up top. I really, really appreciate it. I got a lot of emails, a lot of texts. I got some calls after Friday's episode. Some very, very nice messages. I continue to be shocked at the reach, I think, of this story.

kind of cathartic episode we had on Friday, so I really appreciate all the kind words, and I spent a wonderful weekend with my wife and family, and, you know, I think it's tough for everyone here at CatholicVote. I'd also like to just say up top, you know, we do this show live, and I see a lot of people in the chat, and we were kind of doing it on Friday, but I think it's just a continual process to talk about how you're feeling, and so if you want to send another email, LOOPcast.CatholicVote.org is where you can do that.

I've really enjoyed a lot of the touching stories, some of that new Turning Point USA or Charlie personally. But also, maybe something that happened on Sunday, maybe you guys had a good homily or a good experience with family. Go ahead, you can throw them in the chat. We love seeing that.

So, the plan for today's show is we got updates. So, Governor Cox gave some updates about what we now understand about Tyler Robinson, the alleged assassin. He's currently not cooperating, but the people around him are, so we're going to get up to date. What do we know about that? The second, and Josh was very astute on the Friday episode, preempted a lot of the response. Some good response, but many bad response. And so, I want to get through what we're calling now cancel culture, I guess, is what it's being called.

People losing their jobs over reactions, debate over that. And then also, we have some movement in the UK. Yes, there was a vigil for Charlie Kirk over in the UK, but massive, massive rallies over the weekend. So, we do have some other news stories. It's not just going to all be Charlie Kirk. But before we get into that, Erika.

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I don't know. If it was supposed to go to Erika, but it's sent to the office, and guess what? I used it, and I mean, if you can't tell, I'm glowing right now. You look tiny. I'm glowing right now. I used it. It smells great. It feels great. My wife loved it. She tried to steal it. I said, no, Colette, this is my time. I need to get the towel on my face. We do share it. We do share it, but Naz, she's like, I think I'm going to get some.

Not all of us are as blessed as Josh. If we could all be so lucky. If you need help, Nazareth Organics. That is a joke, people. Yeah, shout out to Nazareth for sending that. I don't even know. I can't remember who it was even supposed to be until I took it. I'm going to be honest. I took it. I said, I need some time to tell. You know, Pogo, you can have it. You can have it. You don't know that it wasn't for you, so why not?

Very true. So, it's mine now. Okay, so we got some updates on what we know currently about the situation. So, Utah Governor Spencer Cox spoke to NBC News, Meet the Press yesterday, giving some more details on the shooter of Charlie Kirk. Currently. Tyler Robinson is in a special housing unit in Utah County Jail until he is cleared by the medical staff as he waits for formal charges. After the medical staff clear Robinson, he will be placed in housing according to the charges he's booked on, which include aggravated murder, felony discharge of a firearm, causing serious bodily injury, and obstruction of justice.

And they are seeking capital first-degree felony conduct, so that would be definitely. Tyler has currently invoked his Fifth Amendment rights and is not cooperating with police. Though, all people around him are cooperating, which is very interesting. There's a lot of speculation on the motives of the assassin, people trying to claim both sides of the aisle, which way it's going. We did now learn that Robson has a boyfriend-slash-roommate who is, quote, transitioning from male to female, so to be specific, a biological male.

And he has been, quote, very cooperative with authorities. He did not have any knowledge about Robson's plans, supposedly. That's what he says. Authorities believe at this point he acted alone. I think there is a lot of interesting going on in the story. I am not sure. I cannot confirm or deny that. There is probably more to come out, but that is what we know at this point. Some more information we know about the shooter. Robinson is a 22-year-old college dropout. He dropped out of Utah State University after less than one semester and moved back to Southern Utah.

He had been an academically strong student before that. There is video out there he received a massive scholarship to go to school. According to Robinson, family members and people investigating are interviewing. Robinson comes from a, quote, conservative family, but his ideology is very different. State records indicate Robinson registered to vote as unaffiliated and didn't vote in the past two elections. And so, here's Spencer Cox specifically on that point. I'll share this section of Meet the Press interview.

You told the Wall Street Journal that Tyler Robinson was deeply indoctrinated with leftist ideology. Have investigators uncovered evidence? To show that? Well, so far, that has come from his acquaintances and his family members. That is where that initial information has come from. Certainly, there will be much more information that is released in the charging documents as they are bringing all of that together. I would just like to remind people that that press conference on Friday, we had been up all night trying to get as much as we could in a very short amount of time.

We are collecting much more, including forensic evidence that is coming back from Quantico that will help. So, that's all being processed right now. And there will be much, much more information on Tuesday when that document is filed with the court.

So, there you have it from the governor. The next thing that I thought was interesting, and I want to get into more of the reactions after this, but finally. You mentioned about the family or whatever, but like David Schuster, a former MSNBC journalist, and a lot of others online, including Randy Weingarten, head of the Teachers Union, were all claiming that this shooter was a right-wing conservative.

And it was on Saturday on X, you know, which is former Twitter. Like, it read, like, MAGA was a shooter. I'm like, what the hell is going on? Like, come on, Elon, wake up. But like, I mean, it's like total gaslighting. Like, he's having an affair with a transvestite furry. He used bullets saying fascist catch, but, you know. He was a right-wing MAGA, right? Absolutely.

Well, we learned a little bit more, too, because I think the one thing pretty much everyone is in agreement on is he was very, very online. Terminally online. I think I saw some comments like he's kind of a Reddit kid. People more my age probably understand that.

So, he's very active on Discord, which is used a lot in, say, gaming communities. It's like a messaging platform. It's similar to Slack, but just imagine. For more social purposes. And so, apparently, they were digging through his Discord messages, where he has a long history. He flippantly joked with friends on Discord that his doppelganger was the one that shot the conservative activist after the feds released the photos while he was on the run. A report said 22-year-old... You're saying he joked about how he looked like the shooter after the shooting happened?

Yes, on this messaging platform, Discord. Wow. It said his friends lit up the social media messaging platform. On Thursday afternoon, when the FBI released grainy images of a lanky, college-aged man in dark clothes during their hunt for Kirk's killer, this is reported by the New York Times, one of the virtual buddies noticed the similarity and tagged Robinson in a post with FBI images writing, where are you?

Oh, Tom's gone. No, he has no sound. No audio yet. All right. Got that out of our way. Oh, he got it. Now we're here. WIA, short for where you at, alongside a skull emoji, Robson accused the blasting.

He shot back within a minute, shamingly insisting that it was a lookalike trying to, quote, get me in trouble. One member joked, suggesting that Robson turned himself in to claim the FBI's $100,000 reward, all while a massive manhunt raged. Quote, only if I get a cut, the alleged assailant sneered. Assailant snared using an avatar of John Arbuckle, Garfield's perpetually confused owner.

Quote, whatever you do, don't go to a McDonald's anytime soon. That was a reference to the CEO killer, Luigi Mangione, where he was caught. Robinson then agreed, cautiously, callously jesting that he, quote, better also get rid of this manifesto, an exact copy of the rifle I have lying around.

So, I think we're going to learn a lot more when we get into social history. Clearly very online. I'm hoping that there's records just about all over on this, but that seems to be the one thing everyone agrees on outside of, say, like political bend, but Josh, I think you, you know, it's pretty, it seems pretty clear. Yeah. Go ahead, Erika. Sorry. I was just going to say, there are a couple of pictures of him as a young boy circulating as well on Twitter this weekend, and I think it was Ed Fazer posted this one picture of him when he was like 10 years old, and he has a laptop, so the screen's up, he's got a microphone, another laptop, and like a big monitor, and Ed Fazer is just like, you know, here's the icon of...

What is being done to our boys? And I think the extreme online life here, there were several guys who posted videos trying to explain the inscriptions that we saw on those casings from the rifle, so there's the really strange sexual explicit furry one. There's the dashes, which apparently in some video game that's very popular in Discord, it's actually an instruction to go blow up something. But these were all, like, essentially, what this assassination was, was real-life trash posting, and there's a more explicit way of saying that.

But this idea that you're going to, like, put out there this shocking act, you're going to, like, post all about it, and you're just going to disrupt the conversation. And he was saying, like, we have no idea how many of these young men have lived their entire adolescent and now adult lives in these dark... Corners of the web.

Where half the people are bots, and the other half are these lonely young men. What's that frog meme, Pepe the Frog? And that there's just this idea that the world they swim in is this world of isolation, loneliness, and this constant barrage of messages saying, you're never going to get out. You're never going to make it. This is the end. You're always going to be alone. And the idea that... Somehow, the rhetoric that we've seen on the left for the last 10, 15 years doesn't seep down and trickle into these dark corners and actually move some of these young men to action.

I mean, the lack of self-reflection on the responsibility for that and the vulnerability of this population has been shocking. Yeah, I mean, I'm probably closest to it in age. I could speak to it. Someone sent this in, too, and I agree with it largely. We're not really going to know the effects of COVID totally. Until, or rather, the response to COVID until many years from now, and I think we were basically told, because this screams nihilism to me, and there is a real deep nihilism cynicism in these online communities, but what were we told during COVID was that your job's not important, your religion's not important, we get to decide when you can go outside, you can't go outside, and people are kept out of schools, and where did everyone go?

People went online, so it was just a direct and direct question. Right. We essentially turn the country into a prison, and then, I mean, I have a list coming up later, but the great cultural revolution of 2020, pair that with BLM riots, it was a really dark time to be alive, and I just think doing that to impressionable, say, like, I don't know how Tyler was at that age, but these are the ages where you really are cementing your personality, your confidence, how you interact with the world, your future plans, and a lot of...

So, I mean, I experienced it personally. Fortunately, I was a little bit on the older end of that, but I think it really did kind of just. sink in this deep nihilism, which, funny, by assassinating Charlie Kirk, he was kind of like people's older brother, like Gen Z's older brother that was giving a voice to people that didn't really have a voice during this time. Like, someone above you just decided that, you know, your college isn't important, your social life's not important, your religion's not important, and you didn't have the voice or any means to actually fight back to that.

You were completely controlled. And so, he was telling people, what was the advice he was telling people? To go get married, to start a family, to build a life for yourself. Um, to get out of these kind of, you know, situations. Go to church, meet Jesus, right?

And yeah, he was just taken out. So, um, but a couple of things that were really encouraging that I do want to bring up. It looks like JD Vance is actually going to host an episode of the show, uh, Charlie Kirk show from the White House, um, right after we get done here, right after we're off. So I'm definitely gonna be checking that out. Um, I think that was really classy that how he handled everything by going to take the casket, um, taking care of the family was really classy.

Um, but Erika Kirk gave a, an address as well. And, um, One part of it. I mean, the whole thing is very powerful. I think it was about 10 minutes long, but I'll play a portion of the speech for those who haven't seen it. The BBC carried it live, but not our networks in the United States. Right.

Responsible for my husband's assassination have no idea what they have done. They killed Charlie because he preached a message of patriotism. faith, and of God's merciful love. But they should all know this. If you thought that my husband's mission was powerful before, you have no idea.

You have no idea what you just have unleashed across this entire country and this world. You have no idea. You have no idea the fire that you have ignited within this wife. The cries of this widow will echo around the world like a battle cry.

To everyone listening tonight across America, the movement my husband built will not die. It won't. I refuse to let that happen. It will not die. All of us will refuse to let that happen. No one will ever forget my husband's name, and I will make sure of it. It will become stronger, bolder, louder, and greater than ever.

My husband's mission will not end, not even for a moment. Powerful stuff. Yeah. Well, I mean, I think she is an astounding human being. What a woman. And there are a lot of people right now who are inspired. I just want to take one step back from that for just a moment because, you know, I think... I mean, you know, we all have moments where we're like, shoot, you know, where God's testing us and seeing whether or not we have the courage to do something.

Man, I hope I have 1% of Charlie Kirk's courage. I mean, the guy always went into the lion's den, surrounded by people screaming and yelling at him all the time, and they kill him for it. And I think so many Americans, so many conservatives were like, just... It's like a triple whammy of shocks, because we had the killing in Charlotte of an innocent woman from a man who had 14 mugshots and was arrested continually and just let go.

That was extremely shocking for a lot of Americans who didn't quite understand the 2020 George Floyd soft-on-crime wave that we've had since then, and then to see that Charlie Kirk is just debating. He's just debating these people, and they murder them in cold blood.

Then, let's see, right at that moment when you shot, there was that one hippie dude with the long hair right near him. He's within yards of Charlie's dead body, or dying body, I should say, and he jumped up and he cheered. Yeah. You know, like, that is chilling, and then we see it on social media. Like, people that we went to school with, people who are in our communities, and they're cheering his death.

And so, we're seeing this backlash now against those people, and they're like, well, you expect me to mourn this guy? I didn't ask you to mourn him. I don't want you to celebrate his death, you freak, you vile human being. What the hell is wrong with you? Like, what is wrong? And so, I think we're, like, Americans are like, wow, I just did not appreciate the fact that there was this much hatred.

Amongst my fellow countrymen. Yeah. You know, I mean, like, I, look, when Bill Clinton was president, when Barack Obama was president, and Biden, like, these guys drove me crazy. I would never want them assassinated. Right. And then, like, you get these lefties, you know, like.

These commentators, they just drive me crazy. Why would I want them murdered in cold blood? Are you out of your mind? Like, I don't understand that. Tim Waltz casually joking about Trump potentially dying when the rumors were spread. Well, and that's the thing, right? Donald Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania, at the last microsecond, feels inspired to turn his head to point to this thing. The good Lord saved his life.

He saved Donald Trump's life. Donald Trump says it. I believe it. I think we all believe it. Like, why is it that God allowed Donald Trump to turn his head just like that, just at that exact moment, so that that bullet, otherwise, he'd have been murdered in cold blood right in front of everyone, the whole world to see. Why is it that, though, Charlie God could have done the same thing with that bullet. God could have spared Charlie's life, and he did not, and maybe because, again, in both circumstances, God truly is in control.

He allowed this to happen. Why? Maybe so that all of us can step up to the plate. And have more moral courage, and do the things, and to continue the work, and to rush into battle. And I think we're seeing that, right? I mean, Tom, you have these amazing stats over the weekend from Turning Point. Yeah, I do. I mean, so TPOCA received 32,000 requests for new chapters across the U.S., according to one of their employees. Before that, they had 1,200 high school chapters with a presence of 3,500 total.

What is that, like 1,000% increase? That's just starting. Give it another look. That's totally insane. Yeah, you're right. It is just starting. And I, go ahead, Erika. Well, and I think like some people will be like, oh, you're justifying or you're like theodicizing Charlie's death. Oh, Josh left after he made his point. You're theodicizing like a death and all that. And it's like, no, we're not saying that God does evil, like God does the assassination. But we're saying that when he permits us in our freedom to do terrible things, it is always with the view.

That there will be a resurrection. And I think we're starting to hear that in Erika Kirk's voice there with the clip you just played, that you can hear it in her voice. It's almost an instinctive thing, but also her words indicating, like, you have no idea, like, he is more alive now. Literally, Charlie's more alive now because he stands before the face of God than he ever was here on earth. But his mission is also more alive now than it ever was.

I hate to debase this to Star Wars, but when Obi-Wan Kenobi gets killed, you'll become more powerful than you'll ever imagine. I mean, that is immediately what I thought of. I mean, like, I'm a Star Wars kid. I was like, that was pretty cool. Immediately, that is what I thought of. And yeah, it actually gets back to the fundamental question of Christianity, is why does God permit evil? And I remember going back, and the other thing, too, is a lot of Charlie's social accounts have exploded in followership, and people have looked at his content.

And that was honestly an experience for me because I was aware of Charlie Kirk, but now just to see all the different moments, I mean, what a special talent. There will never be another. Yeah. But one thing that he often talked about is, like, I'm Christian because I don't have enough faith to be atheist. Like, if there was no evil, then we would have nothing to benchmark to understand what good is. And in that respect.

How would we know something is good if we don't know what is bad, and what is evil? I love all these videos of him, but my timeline, I love it. Yeah, I know, and I can't get enough of it. It's not morbid either. Like, I'm not looking at it morbidly, I'm just genuinely shocked by his talent, his conviction. I think one of the things that he brought up that I keep thinking about is his talk about virtues. It's like, if you could only have one virtue, what would it be?

And it would be the virtue of courage. Without the virtue of courage, nothing else follows. There's no justice. There's no temperance. If you're not courageous to do what you're convicted in, then you have no opportunity. You have to act on your convictions, right? Yeah. And, man, that's one thing that came across to me. Yeah, and Victor, I was just going to add to that. Victor Davis Hanson, he was reflecting, and he knew Charlie pretty well. He was on his show a lot and vice versa, and he was saying, looking at who Charlie was, there will never be another.

Because not only do you have this photogenic, able to go on there and say... Speak publicly. Also, to do it without notes. It's so clear that he's not scripted. It's just him. This is really what he's saying and thinking on the fly, reacting to people, the compassion. My favorite videos are where some lost soul, like a girl who's had three abortions and she's only 21, or a man who's dressed up as a woman, and they come up and they're like, what would you say to me?

Or when he appeared twice on the Whatever podcast, which is just a bunch of prostitutes from OnlyFans. And he was so compassionate with them, so you have the compassion of that. I mean, as you should be. I don't mean to say prostitutes. I mean, digital prostitutes. Digital prostitutes. But again, the way that he spoke to them actually was so compassionate, and by the end of that episode, he had won many of them over, and the way that he spoke about his wife, about his daughters, and it's like, how do you not, when you go into the lion's den like that, and you leave with people ending with more respect for you, that is pretty amazing.

It hasn't been morbid, right? Because it's like, this is a man in full, like... I saw this. This isn't celebrating his death or whatever, but one of the really annoying things that I saw was like, why are we pretending like he went and had good faith conversations with people on college campuses? He went and was predatory and took advantage of college kids that didn't know what they were talking about. Have you watched it? It was so clear to me that.

That, to me, in itself, is such a bad argument, because he went everywhere all the time, offered a mic to anyone, professors included. Well, and he did it for 10 years. He's just a high school graduate, right? He didn't start off with a million years. Exactly. That's the beauty of it, right? It's like he's just a high school graduate. Yeah. Really. And what I loved about it, too, was it wasn't just sophistry. Like, it wasn't just, because I know people that are really good at debating for the sake of debating, right?

And they can use it. I mean, it's the Pharisees, right? Like those Oxford Union kids. Yeah, right. But it wasn't, because he went with conviction and what he actually believed in, with an end goal. And I think his graciousness and debate really spoke on that. But I thought that was so annoying. It's like, okay, so what, we never go on college campuses? What, so we never talk to anyone? Who are the people that actually need to be talked to the most?

Those college kids that are getting clearly indoctrinated because they can't explain why they believe what they believe. They just throw dogmas out there. And none of that was more clear to me than the transgender conversation. Because you can never actually have an intellectually honest conversation with someone making arguments on behalf of the trans movement, because they just come back to the same dogma, the same circular logic, which is essentially that anyone that thinks that they can become a woman, anyone that thinks that their woman is a woman, which of course isn't logically consistent and has no scientific backing, makes no sense.

But it reveals that from college kids all the way up to the biggest academics say that Matt Walsh revealed, they all say the same things. There's no levels to it. It all comes back to the same thing, and it crashes down. Those kids need that interaction for someone to actually have the guts to talk to them about it. But anyway, we got to hit another reason we do the show before we get into more of the reactions. So, home title lock, Erika.

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Click the link below and remember promo code LOOP60. Thank you. Home title lock. All right, awesome. And Josh, I want to dig a little bit deeper, and you said, you know, fundamentally, you were just maybe surprised with the rot or the hatred amongst fellow Americans that you would think could, you know. Not myself.

I don't think we were surprised. No, no, no. This is, I mean, you have to understand from my perspective. I feel like over the last 20 years or so, I have been trying to warn people about the rot that is going on. And you get a lot of Americans like, my own mother. They are like, oh, I do not believe that.

Okay, yes. People are so good. We're still good at hard work. You trust the CBS Nightly News to provide you the news perfectly sanitized for your consumption, but listen, there is evil that is out there, and we have, because people are, generally, we have a good country and good natured people, and so they just, they can't understand, for example, what happened in Charlotte. Wait a minute.

There would be a district attorney and governor that would just allow hundreds of people that are hardened criminals who have been going through with 10, 12, 14 mugshots and just let them out. That can't be true. Yeah, Josh, I have maybe a more specific question to ask you, and sorry I set that up poorly, but I have a couple examples here. So, a Canadian teacher allegedly showed Charlie Kirk's assassination to 10- and 11-year-olds and told students that he deserved to be killed.

A nurse at a children's health care of Atlanta who said, especially that B-word that birthed him has been fired. American Airlines has said it has initiated action to address hate-related behavior. After two pilots mocked Charlie Kirk's death as the cost of our liberty, and then a Secret Service agent wrote on Facebook, at the end of the day, you answer to God and speak things into existence. You can only circumvent karma. She doesn't leave. As a result, the agency told USA Today that the employee has been put on administrative leave and is under administration, and I'm sure is going to get fired here.

Another one that was really gross was there was a man that just trampled on his memorial outside. Here's a video of that. Some street justice here, fortunately, people yanked him off, but he's being taken off to jail. I think the question that is on people's minds clearly in the chat here is, maybe it wasn't surprising that these people exist, but it's surprising how brazen they are of just doing it on their public profiles.

And then people are now talking about the precedent, like, is it a problem for, say, the First Amendment that people can't express? I think I saw Crystal Ball over from Breaking Points hilariously, in my opinion, said, Here's the exact quote. The policing of everyone's thoughts and emotions around Charlie Kirk's death is wild. Cancel culture on steroids backed by the full force of the government. Oh my gosh. And I can't even play this clip because it's so vulgar, but they were just celebrating someone getting fired for their appearance on Jubilee because he said he was a fascist and said there's a bright red line that can't be crossed and we should be going after these sick Fs.

So, about a month difference between these two. Hilarious. Do you think there's any credence to that, Josh, of, you know, people shouldn't be getting fired for celebrating someone's death because of America or something? So, I mean, this happened when I was only four years old, so I don't have memory of it, of course, except for in history books. But John Hinckley Jr. wanted to impress actress Jodie Foster by trying to shoot and kill President Ronald Reagan.

Now. Jodie Foster, who I don't care for her politics that much, was very classy about it and would refuse to ever talk about the incident because she didn't want to provide more air to that, like just never said anything. And she told every publicist, never talked to her, never asked her about it because she didn't want to keep that up. She didn't want copycats and that kind of stuff.

But like Mary Catherine Hamm is a conservative activist. She's awesome. She's on fire. And she said, just imagine the scenario where. After John Hinckley Jr. almost killed Ronald Reagan, the President of the United States, imagine if healthcare workers and teachers went around their town with writing up a sign like, too bad Hinckley missed, and stapled it on flagpoles all around town.

Who the heck are you? You are a freakazoid. That is a vile thing that you would actually write, that you would type that up, put it on a paper, and walk around town and put it on flagpoles, but of course, with the internet, we're able to just have that instantaneous vile thought, and there's no editor in your brain saying, okay, maybe don't publish that thought. Right, and you just hit enter return. The government is not policing your thoughts, and by the way, it's not the government.

These are businesses who are rightly deciding. They do not want to employ people who are psycho, because first of all, what happens down the road? If this doctor or nurse … You could open yourself up for a lawsuit, like, well, he didn't treat my, you know, he let my sister die on the table because he doesn't like MAGA people. So, it's just a liability issue. So, they're like getting rid of these people because, but also, again, we're not policing just like in your internal monologue, your internal thoughts.

You decided to think of something vile, and then you shared it with the world on social media. So, yeah, I'm sorry. If you, we don't, again, we're not asking you to mourn this guy. Just shut up. It's an option. You can just shut up. Right, and they're like, oh, this is putting a chilling effect on civil discourse. Well, I think civil discourse, to have a civil discourse, you actually need some parameters and guidelines of what is acceptable speech, and the problem is that we as a society have totally blown that up.

We've lost the idea of how do you have civil discourse? How do you have a debate? And again, Charlie was a master of this. He could take the heat from anyone throwing anything out of the most vile things, and he could model a response. But the problem is that he's dead, and people out there celebrating his death just expect that they should get a free pass because free speech or something. No, like Josh said, if I have, I mean, even to have this in classrooms where you have teachers who are talking to 11 and 12-year-olds and telling them, Look, here's a video of a man getting shot live in front of millions of people on TV.

We're going to watch this. One, that's disgusting and depraved. Two, I'm going to tell you that he deserved it, and that this is something you could aspire to, too, little kids. You could also shoot bad guys, right? That is not...

What the purpose of free speech is. It's not the purpose of civil discourse or debate, and to be calling down, like, for Crystal Ball to be out there saying, like, oh my gosh, how are we going to have a free society anymore? Like, no, we shouldn't call for people to die.

Are we forgetting? I haven't, Josh. I haven't forgotten. These people can... Here's an NPR headline. Thousands of workers are opting to get fired rather than take the vaccine. 2021. Okay, but that's four years ago. I mean, I have always said that that was very wrong, but you could almost see an argument for which the threats to the public health, thousands could die. There's a better one.

Remember this little controversy? Do I? I do, yeah. Remember the Coast Guard was removed from Hurricane Florence relief efforts after he flashed the OK sign? Because the Washington Post and all these other left-wing outlets went on a media hunt because of the OK sign, because it was adopted by the radical. Right, Pepe the Frog, people online. So, they went after some Washington staffer during a congressional hearing because she went like this, and they tried to torch her public life. So, like, this idea that, like, wait a minute, I am a nurse at a hospital, and I was cheering somebody being murdered, and now I am like- Now the hospital does not want me.

It is like- Yeah. I mean, these guys are so full of crap. Yeah, maybe we need to establish one thing. Because the argument's over who's the bad side, who can be dealt with in good faith. Charlie wanted to argue with everyone. I think we've now fully established there is a non-zero percent of society that willfully, publicly, on their LinkedIn profile, cheer for the assassination of an innocent man in front of his two children. There is a percentage of people that cannot be reasonably debated with.

They just need to be removed from polite society. You cannot have good faith discourse with people where that's the standard. And that's why these things exist. This is kind of outside of, say, the First Amendment or whatever. Businesses have the right to draw the red line of where you can cross and can't cross, and it's a healthy function of society to create good taboos and ostracize people. It's the same reason why pedophiles don't work in schools, or people that would make pedophilia jokes don't work at schools, hopefully.

There are things that you need to just have in place to have, as we said, a civil society. So, this is actually, in my mind, a very good function of that. I'm reminded, though, of when this small 1% was in charge and what they did. We underwent a legitimate cultural revolution in 2020. I mean, I have some receipts here. Someone did a good job of going back. I'm like, these are the people. The people that told you Nicholas Sandman, the kid from Covington who just smiled wearing a MAGA hat, was like the scourge of the earth, basically deserved to die, should be in jail for the rest of his life for doing nothing wrong, by the way, all for a false headline in which he sued and won later over.

I remember how that was treated. White people are racist, yada, yada, yada. There's a whole list of people, professors, for doing their jobs, suspended for a job, for politely asking why it made sense to give black students special treatments on exams. He lost his ability to teach, lost tenure. BBC radio host lost his job for questioning white privilege and saying that all lives matter. I mean, I remember this. It wasn't long ago. Not long ago at all, in fact. I remember when half the country was rioting, and Democrat politicians in the news were saying that it was actually a good thing, and that they were mostly peaceful, because insurance companies would just pay for the damage.

Like, these people were in charge of everything, not long ago, and now they're trying to... Create some type of equivalency for saying that someone should get assassinated. It's good. It shouldn't cause you to lose your job. I mean, it's just so rich. I have a memory. There is no moral equivalency here. There is no moral equivalency. MIT chaplain was fired for saying that George Floyd's life wasn't virtuous, which is objectively true if you look at his rap sheet.

I mean, seriously, like these people, I give no credence to at all. Like, I have no patience for these people at this point. I feel like most people are at that point as well. I mean, just seeing how outrageous the response has been. So, yeah, I would like all those people removed from polite society. Anyone that is protesting, they completely deserve to lose their job. We could actually do a thing where we point by point take down every last little thing and say why their arguments don't make sense.

There are reasons why an employer would justly fire somebody for comments that they make. For example, cheering somebody's assassination. But, I mean, like, if you're at a hospital, and you're working the front desk, and you're, like, recording people, ooh, you look pretty, ooh, what's your phone number? Like, dude, that's not appropriate. What are you doing? You look like, you sound like a creep. Like, wait a minute, now I'm being fired for free speech? Right. Give me a break. Like, we have standards in our society for proper conduct.

And if you spew vile hatred, yeah, you are going to be asked to leave. And maybe, we are not saying you should have a black scarlet letter around yourself and you should never be hired again, but maybe you reflect on the fact that, oh my gosh, now I have to actually go out and get another job, and I have to go to my new employer and ask them to hire me. So, what happened? Why aren't you working at the hospital anymore?

Well, you know, I... Cheer for somebody's murder, you know. But I'd still like to help your patients. So, maybe that person would have to actually, that's a good thing, because they would have to say, I feel really bad about cheering for somebody's murder, and that was very wrong, and I feel horrible about it, and I'll never say anything like that again. Trust me, you can hire me. So, they have to go through this kind of. Ritual, even if they don't even believe it in their heart, they would have to, like, make it part of their personality.

So, yes, that would be, it's a good thing. Yes. I think what's unfortunate about this is this, maybe what people are seeing now is that, like, policing, like, societal policing of unacceptable Speech, basically, is a good thing in itself, but we, for a while, had the definition of what is acceptable speech hijacked by people that Do not have the proper understanding. It kind of reminds me a little bit of the Trump phenomenon, right? It's like, all of a sudden, I'm going to wield legitimate power for the common good.

And people are like, well, you got to be careful. What if the Democrats get it back, and then they do it? And it's like, okay, so you just never do anything, right? So, what happened was, over 2020, it'd be like, if you don't use the proper pronouns and allow this man to use your bathroom, you could get fired from your job. And that actually did happen in a lot of places. It wasn't the function of, say, Policing the mores of the people, social policing by other people, in itself is bad.

It is that what was being policed was not correct, was wrong, and was hijacked by activists. Right. It reminds me of the whole point of the anger over Christian nationalism, and there are many videos of Charlie being told, oh, you are a Christian nationalist. And the point being that he is like, well, I am a Christian, and I am a patriot, and the problem is that we think that we could just strip. We can strip our society of Christianity and strip it of all these mores.

We're going to smash the patriarchy. We're going to smash all these norms. We're going to smash all this, and then somehow that will make us free, and that will make us a good society and a better society in this post-war order of just progressing beyond all of these Christian mores that are holding us down.

And then when we get to the post-Christian order, when all these morals have been stripped, it's not pretty, because this is what we get. We get people policing things like, you can't say a man can't turn into a woman anymore. But we also get things like, but it's fine to say, I think it's great he got shot in the neck, but, you know.

Right, right. This is the problem. If you don't like Christian nationalism, I'm going to tell you what you don't like. You're not going to like what comes after it. Certainly not. I think that's what people are feeling. It's this crossroads, this fork in the road here, and we've been yelling about it. Not yelling. We've been speaking calmly. We yell sometimes. We've had a little discourse about it for years, and now people are like, wait, oh, they were right. It's happened. Uh-oh.

Right. That's the whole point that we've been trying to warn people about this for 20-some years. Guys, like the left, we're like, what you're doing is reckless. What you're doing is dangerous. It is not going to be good for society. You need to turn this stuff around, and that is why this lefty on Twitter, he said, so you are saying there is a group of people on the right that are more extreme than Charlie Kirk? It is like, brother, you shot and killed, they shot, your guys shot and killed the nice guy.

Yeah, you're not going to like what comes after. You know, as far as I'm concerned, you know, Utah has the death penalty, and that- They actually have a firing squad. They have death penalty. They have a firing squad. But the thing is, like, we need reform on that, too. You know, reform of the death penalty. Like, why- this trial should be able to be done within three, four, or five weeks, and then- Fast. 24 hours later.

Mallory brings up this great point, too, and I think it's actually relevant in regards to the reaction thing. So, when people, in my experience, when people on the right want to go say an edgy take, they make a burner account, link it to a fake email, and then toss it up. An edgy take like make America great again. Yeah, exactly. Say make America great again, or like, I think my country is actually pretty good. But we just witnessed, like, people on the left celebrating literal assassination.

...of a political opponent on a LinkedIn profile. So, like, what kind of, like, psychological conditioning... With their own photo and names. Right, exactly. With their real name, their real photo, with their employer in their bio. Yeah. You would... What kind of online psychosis would have to take place where you would feel that it's acceptable to say that?

What's associated with your real name? So, I think that's an element to all this, too. I don't know if that's an internet thing. I don't know if that's just a weird disconnect. Like, this doesn't have a consequence for me, right? That cultural revolution you talked about in 2020, for the last five years, the left has ratcheted up their rhetoric so many times, right? And all through the Biden administration, and they're bullies. Like, these people, the left, they pretend like they're the victims, but they're absolutely the bullies.

They are the ones that are trying to get people fired from their jobs because they say men actually can't give birth. What? Hello. And they cheer when somebody gets murdered. They're like, what? I thought you had free speech.

Just shove you in a locker, man. Like, people, seriously, like, just go away. Like, these people. I can't believe that anyone would ever say that, but we just watched a lot of it, and I think it's important to face that head-on, is that there's a significant portion among our ranks in healthcare, in teaching. I feel comfortable doing that. But anyway, we got to get on with the news now. Let me cap it with what Lila Rose said. Did you see this?

No. She was at her sister's wedding this weekend in her hometown, and she said, I saw a girl I used to babysit years ago. She's in college now. She said, I was so happy to see her all grown up, and we started chatting. She shared that in her first semester, her professor publicly named me, this is Lila Rose, as an example of hateful oppression against women's rights.

She sat there dumbfounded to hear him talking about me, and she said, just thinking about the sweet woman who used to babysit me. So, Lila's point was, it's just incredible to me that this is the state of our broken education system. Far-left ideology via social media is darkening the minds of so many, but college campuses today are responsible for this insanity.

The most professors are radicalized, far left, anti-God, anti-marriage, anti-left. Why do we encourage our young people to go to these schools? That is the question. Why are we encouraging them to go to schools, and why are we funding these citadels of hate, and federal and state funding of colleges now? Done. Done. I was in line at Walmart.

This weekend, and I do not usually go into the cashier, but it was going to be faster, and the cashier is talking to the woman in front of me who loaded up her cart with all these school classroom supplies. She is clearly a teacher, so they are talking about education. The cashier turns out as a substitute teacher all week at a local public school.

They were talking about the kids, the online, the reactions to Charlie Kirk, how vile it was this week, how horrible. And they turned to me, and they're like, oh, are you a teacher? Because I had also loaded up my car. I was like, well, I homeschool my kids, so I guess I'm a teacher, too. And they both were just like. You're doing the right thing. Don't doubt yourself. They were like, just keep doing it. And I'm like, okay, is this where the teachers unions got you guys?

Because you have no power to change anything. You're miserable. The kids are miserable. And it was a very strange Twilight Sony experience. But anyway. Speaking of Erika, that kind of segues into your good news. It does. It does segue. So, my good news is, yeah. Really dark week last week. Really dark four weeks. We started with Annunciation shooting. We had the stabbing in Charlotte. We have Charlie. But here's one of the cool fruits.

And this is the resurrection, guys. And this is just one example, one example of probably hundreds that I scrolled this weekend. This is a guy, Phantom Volante. He's not that huge on Twitter, but this post went viral. He wrote, I grew up Catholic, went to Catholic school first to eighth grade. I haven't been to church other than funerals and weddings since I graduated high school. I am going to mass tomorrow for the first time in many years. What happened to Charlie Kirk has shaken me in ways I don't fully understand.

Scroll down to this next one. I love it. Then he follows up the next day. I went to the 8 a.m. Mass at Holy Rosary in Houston. I've been there. It's awesome. Dominican Parish. I've never been there as I grew up in the suburbs of Pittsburgh, and that's where I attended Mass growing up. They were founded by the Dominican friars, who I'm not really familiar with, but it felt like a more traditional Mass. His homily really hit home with me. He didn't touch on recent events without, he did touch on recent events without naming them, which really spoke to me a lot.

And this is a cool story. I'm really happy for him. I hope he continues to go back, go to confession, get right with God. And shout out Holy Rosary in Houston, too. Yeah, shout out to our Houston peeps. I know people who go there, who I worked with at Regina Chaley before.

This was one of hundreds, and I am sure thousands. It was amazing. If the one fruit of this is, you know, a hundred people, a thousand people go back to church, go back to Mass, Charlie is going to be like up there being like, yep, it was worth it. It was worth it. I mean, I would love to see more. I don't necessarily need priests and bishops to talk about Charlie Kirk, let's say, in a homily. I am not suggesting that.

Some people are not. They better say that, or I'll, no, no, no, that's not it. But I do, I do actually expect Episcopal courage, you know. I gotta say, this, I don't even know who this Kevin Wells is, but my friend shared this comment, I thought it was pretty spot on. He said, Charlie's martyrdom came on behalf of a Catholic hierarchy that refused to be like Kirk.

He confronted a modern, modern-day Babylon. Through reason and sound doctrine, thousands were brought from the tombs of confusion. He is the Baptist whose head Herod took for Darren to speak of sexual sin. That was pretty amazing. Accurate. Wow. Yeah. Something to think about. That sounds like a deep episode to me.

What do you think, guys? I got some good news for you. You know, over the weekend, our good friend and ambassador, Brian Barch, presented his credentials to Pope Leo. And he had three gifts for him, one of which was a painting of an Augustinian center in Chicago that was painted by one of his daughters. He's got his kids. He also had a relic of Father Stanley Rohrer, who was martyred in Latin America. It was in Latin America contemporaneously when Pope Leo was in Latin America.

And he also gave him some cake. From a bakery on the south side of Chicago, because the next day, which was yesterday, was his birthday. Pope Leo turned 70, so happy birthday, Pope Leo. Happy birthday, Pope Leo. My kids are so excited. All right.

Can I ask a fashion question really quick? So, Brian's kind of posted up in the conductor fit, like he's conducting the orchestra. He's got the long tail on the coat, and he's got the white bow tie. Is that a customary thing?

Well, I mean, he's met now, and he's dressed very formal, so that's a very formal... He looks good. Yeah, that's good. Good-looking guy. Good job, Brian. Also, I don't think we have him, but there's the cutest pictures of, I think, his grandkid playing with some of his daughters at a Vatican table, just off to the side. Like, this is so awesome.

Yeah, I got to see some of the behind-the-scenes photos, too, and it was nice. But Publio extended to Brian, you know, his... He said that he would be praying for... For Charlie Kirk, for Erika, for their kids, so that was very fun. That's awesome.

So, mine is encouraging, and I don't even think in a morbid way. I mean, many people saw it. You know, I was pretty emotional on the last show, and I thought a lot about martyrdom. And Pope Leo honored the Carmelite martyrs of, can you pronounce that? These are my girls, of Compagne. Can you pronounce it?

Compagne? Compagne. It's French, so you only say three of the letters. Great. I'm not French at all. So, I just wanted to bring, this story seems like perfect timing to me, but such an amazing story during the French Revolution. So, September 14th, 1792, the Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross, the Carmelite nuns of Compiègne made a collective vow to offer their lives as a sacrifice to restore peace to France and the Church. This bold act came as they faced expulsion from their convent under the revolutionary civil constitution of the clergy.

Historians speculate that this vow may have spiritually influenced the end of the Reign of Terror, which ceased just 10 days after their execution on July 17, 1794, with Robespierre's downfall. Yes. So, they were led to guillotines in front of everyone.

As they were transported to the guillotine, the nuns chanted the offices of the Vespers and Compline, or Compline, I'm not sure how to pronounce it, thank you, including the Miserere and Salve Regina. At the Place Dutron, they sang the Te Deum and Veni Creator Spiritus, renewing their vows before the execution.

Eyewitnesses reported that the unusually hostile Parisian crowds fell silent, moved by their serene defiance. A rare moment of unity amid revolutionary chaos. Sister Constance, the youngest at 29 and still a novice, made her final profession of vows on the scaffold. After kneeling for Mother Teresa of St. Augustine's blessing and kissing a small statue of Our Lady, she intoned Laudate Dominum Omnes Gentes. As she approached the guillotine, her courage set the tone, with the nuns following an order of profession, ending with the prioress.

The 78-year-old Sister Mary of Jesus, crucified, forgave her execution. saying i forgive you my friends i forgive you with all the longing of heart with which i would that god forgive me this echoed the priors his final words forgiving all before her own death showcasing radical commitment to christian charity even as the blade fell i mean i gotta say something that is just amazing because something like that happened to me i'm not sure I think I'd have had some words. I don't know.

I mean, maybe that's why, you know, you're not a French nun, Josh, but these women, I have no doubt in my mind, contributed to the end of the French Revolution. Oh, my gosh. What an insane. And there's so many stories like this, too, which I guess I love about Catholicism. I mean, when they say the blood of the church, or, sorry, the seed of the church is the blood of the martyrs. Amen. What would be so important to someone that they would die such an unusual death?

Singing songs, professing their vows, joyfully going to their execution. It makes no sense. Christianity makes no sense to earthly logic. And thanking the men who were about to behead them. This is not like a sanitized death, either. This isn't like you lie peacefully on your bed and off you go. This is like you're watching blood spurt out of the jugulars of every woman who goes before you, and you turn to the man who's about to do it to you, and you say, thank you, my friend.

That's the other way we can live, right? That's the sign that there is another way to live. We can get off Discord, get off Reddit, wherever you guys are. This is how you can live and make these beautiful ends. It's just amazing. I was thinking a lot. I was trying to think of like, okay, who's our saint? Who's our Charlie? Like the saint.

That is like what Charlie just went through, and like what people face today, like, you know, you can see, like Michael Knowles, you can see Matt Walsh, considering that this could be their death as well in their minds, right? Lila Rose is coming to Yale tomorrow night. I'm going to get to go watch her debate. Francis Kissling on abortion, right down at Yale, 20 minutes from my house. The security is through the roof. It's crazy. And I was talking to my friend Nancy, who works with Lila, and she's like, You know, Lila had to really confront the fact, I could die, like, going to this event.

Am I going to still do it? Of course I'm going to do it, right? I'm going to do it because I'm inspired. I was like, this is how the revolution ends, right? This is how... So, the nuns here, the end of the terror, this is how the terror ends. It's by people being willing to do that and to die like these women did. So, I'm so glad you read that story. And to see it from those nuns was beautiful because it's one thing for...

You and I and Charlie, all people, lay people, whatever, but when ministers, when clergy, when bishops step up to the plate and have that courage, it can really, it can move mountains, you know? I mean, like those nuns singing, those traditional prayers, that's just, as you said, it had to have just gutted the audience, like, oh my gosh, what are we doing? What are we doing?

Yeah. It's, I mean, it's only God's grace that works through us. That type of courage doesn't just come from you. I mean, I think of St. Maximilian Kolbe giving his own life. I think of St. Maria Goretti, whose rapist ends up converting at the end of his life.

That is what makes Christianity so compelling to me. I feel like, I was just having a conversation with my wife yesterday about just what appeals to me about certain priests, and I'm a guy. I'm a guy's guy. I'm a red meat. I play sports. So, I feel like sometimes we have a bit of a feminized Christianity, or maybe there's a message that lends itself more to the women. Say like, Jesus loves you, and you kind of got that safe space. You can go.

Like, as a man, what inspires me is people dying for their faith. And nothing, it just, it would make no sense on rational logic, and so there has to be something here. Like, thousands of years of martyrs in heroic virtue, St. Joan of Arc. Man, I mean, we just have so many examples. I love it. St. Thomas More, like, St. Thomas More was, I wanted him to be my confirmation saint, but my first name was Thomas, so my priest said that I couldn't do a double.

I don't know if that's legit. I don't think it is, but, you know, St. Tarsus is sick as well. You can't do a double. It is Thomas. It is a lot for the bishop. He just had more. That is his name. More.

More. But St. Thomas More, you know, losing his head from a friend, too, and it would have been easy. Like, a lot of these would just be, it would be really easy. You could just fold. You could just deny your faith. You could just, you can live. You could have had a great life. There are legions of such stories, and they are not marked and remembered on our calendar, are they? No. Okay. Erika, I told you to look into the protests going on in England.

You have a special place in your heart for England. What was going on over the weekend? I saw places everywhere. Yeah, so this was really neat. This was a protest. It is called the Unite the Kingdom Rally, and it has been organized for months. This was not just a show up and like, oh my gosh, this happened spontaneously, but Tommy Robinson, who is an activist over in the UK, he served prison time. He is very much of the flag of St.

George. Take back the country, anti-mass immigration, and he's been, he had billed this as one of the UK's largest right-wing protests, and about 110,000 people showed up. Of course, Tommy Robinson is saying it was over a million, and I have to say, the footage from above, I've got a couple of clips down here, it does look like it might have been a little more than 100,000. Wow. Look at that. Wall-to-wall people going over the bridge, over the River Thames, and then through the streets, multiple streets, on the course.

There were just so many people. They had a very strict, the UK police were like, you have to stay on this course. There were so many people, they were spilling over. And again, the themes were anti-mass immigration, British identity, the British flag, free speech, but also you had a lot of groups coming in that were pro-life, and you had a lot of Christian, actually Christian ministers showing up. So, you had multiple Anglican prelates were there. You had Catholic priests showing up.

The Orthodox marched as well. So, this ended up attracting far more many people. You have to understand, we've been covering this all summer. The UK has been having a lot of unrest. There have been protests outside of these migrant hotels. There have been rallies. There have been incidents with police, the free speech issue, but none of it really took off the way that the conservatives were hoping, right? Nigel Farage just could not get the people. There weren't massive protests in the streets like this until Charlie died, and I have to say.

The element that they did not plan here, there were pictures of Charlie Kirk everywhere, the crowds were chanting, Charlie, Charlie, Charlie, and I have no doubt that they finally got the rally, the size rally that they were hoping for all summer, because of the martyrdom of Charlie Kirk, the assassination.

Elon Musk made a virtual appearance with Tony Robinson, so Tony's up, or Tony, sorry, Tommy Robinson. So many Robinsons these days, my Tonys and Tommys. Tommy Robinson up on stage, Elon's up on the screen. He said some, he was clearly emotional speaking about Charlie, and got, you know, he said the left is the side of murder. Got very dark. That's what people are covering today, is Elon calls for murder. That's not what he was doing. He was saying the left is the side of death.

And that, but also a very positive day as well. I'm hoping that something changes over there, but they've got to keep the momentum going. But it was a good, it was a sign of hope. Really moving day over there. There is a, there's a video, Konstantin Kissin of Trigonometry. He did a great man on the street video. It's about seven minutes long. So, we can throw that in the chat for anyone who wants to really dig into what happened.

That's good. Video. Josh, your twa zone. A miracle in Portland. Hmm. I like a miracle. Portland is, of course, absolute psycho land, you know, just like Seattle. Which Portland? Oh, wait, both of them. Yeah, well, one in Oregon is that much more radical. So, this guy, he's conservative. He went down to downtown Portland with a, you know, a sign to honor Charlie the Kirk, and this total, like, punk-looking guy, leftist, Mohawk, kind of freakazoid, comes up to him.

And, like, gives him a hug. Oh. Like, he said the amount of support I got from liberals was astounding. It was kind of shocking. That's awesome. And it just reminds me of a story of another de-radicalization moment. There is a black left-wing supporter of Malcolm X.

Who in 1972 at Yale lost his wallet, and this white student found the wallet and returned it back to him. It was just like this simple act of kindness was really transformative. The white student was John Bolton, of all people. Whoa.

Wait. And the black student was Clarence Thomas. Oh! My world just got collided in my head. It helped him rediscover what conservatives thought, so it really was a major change in his life. Wow. I always love when people make up stories, and it's like, and that kid grew up to be LeBron James.

It's really a fake story about someone. This one was real. That one was real. That is a crazy mashup of names, Josh. So, I mean, I don't care for the mustache, it's foreign policy, but that's something you did okay.

Okay, Erika, it looks like we have the same one. I think it's worthy of it. Yeah, I think it's the same one, and I'm going to let you just take it and run with it, because I actually switched mine four times at this point during the show, because all my Twilight Zones were the show, because we live in the Twilight Zone, so I'm going to let you just take the lead. That has been the best appreciating decision I've ever made in this show, was to have a section called the Twilight Zone.

And it just continues to live on. So, this is a FIRE study. Student acceptance of violence in response to speech hits record high. Over the past five years, it's gone up almost 80%. So, let's see. The sickening assassination of Charlie Kirk on campus speech this week has brought attention to wearing trends of political violence, and the public stated support for it. According to FIRE's annual college free speech ranking survey, in 2020, the national average showed about one in five students said it was ever acceptable to use violence to stop a speaker.

That number has risen to a disturbing one in three students. That's crazy. I mean, you were talking about courage from Lila to go talk at a college. Yeah. I mean, statistically, she's not wrong. I was shocked. I mean, even if you look at, I wonder how much I can zoom here, but you would think, okay, it's more of a left-wing thing, like you hear the shouting down and whatever. This is kind of all sides. I mean, I'm seeing very liberal. So, purple is.

A democratic socialist, unsurprising, is up here at about 50%, by far the top, but, you know, right in the mix here is, I think, very conservative, is at about a little under 40%, just about everything since 2020. Again, the impact of COVID, I don't think we're going to fully understand for a while. But everyone seems to be okay with that, some type of violence to stop a speaker, and that seems like a new trend. One that really got me was the light gray line.

I know it's hard to read if you're on YouTube right now, but I'd encourage you to click in and look through the whole report. But it's a group of kids who thought, I haven't thought much about this, meaning they ask the kid, and they say, I just haven't thought about my political affiliation or my political ideology.

But that group is one of the steepest climbs into, it's acceptable to use violence to stop some speakers, which to me just speaks to the tension and the nihilism and the... The temperature that we're at right now with Gen Z, that even kids who haven't, or especially kids who haven't thought much about political ideologies, they're like, yeah, sometimes it would be fine to stop someone using violence. And like you said, Tom, all of it's very, very chilling.

Chilling, but the government was sure happy to use violence to keep me in my home in 2020. Keep me from going to my place of worship, shutting down my schools. To me, this is just such an obvious byproduct of draconian government measures that were inflicted on a country that thought we were safe because we have a constitution. We have a bill of rights and everything was completely thrown out the window for supposed to be two weeks and ended up being two years.

Yeah, draconian government measures inflicted on a population that is, you know, three generations out from the sexual revolution and three generations out from the total loss of meaning that we saw with the end of... The post-war era. Sure, and maybe it was kind of a slow burn over a while, but it was just like you cranked up the stove to high during COVID. Not only did the government shut my entire life down, but they lied to me about the source of the virus.

They lied to me about the solution to the virus, in which the side effects to said solution directly impacted my exact areas. Young men were having heart conditions. I just lied to you about that. Lied to about solutions to said virus, and then called it horse dewormer. I mean, truly, if you were to just, in a lab, sit down, how can we gaslight and lie and basically destroy the prospects and hopes of a generation of people as quickly as possible? I don't think you could have done it better.

And now they're like, oh my gosh, the CDC. People are getting fired from the CDC, who I believe is the chief architect of said problem. Yes, I wanted them all fired like two years ago. At least three years ago, I wanted something done, and nothing was done. Well, and again, it's like, of all the things with regards to the whole COVID thing, the one that always just burns me the most was... You know, I lived in Michigan. You were in Indiana.

Michigan was much more draconian because the Democrats here were... I was in Michigan for a little while. When Gretchen Whitmer decided I couldn't get paint for my house, but I could get... It decided what I could get in the grocery store, yeah. Yeah, you know, I could go to a strip club, I could get an abortion, I could get marijuana, but I can't get, you know, seeds to start a garden. Yep.

But the cherry on top... Was, of course, like, oh, he can't be in groups of more than, you know, six people, he got to be six feet apart, all this stuff, but then they want to have public, you know, marches for George Floyd. Well, we don't want the COVID thing to be used as an excuse to stop, to say no to injustice. You guys, it was so, like, you guys lie to our faces so fragrantly, it's like...

Gosh, the gallows would be good for some of you people, like in government. It's just absolutely asinine. You know, it's like they have, it was Soviet in the level of lying to you. You know, gaslighting. It's like, you know, you're like, am I going mad? Am I going crazy? No, it's our government. Well, you're not even bringing up to they encourage people to come to our country from all over, because our borders wide open. And they just handed them money.

They handed them debit cards, they stayed in hotels. Well, I couldn't leave my house. Like, COVID, if COVID's so bad, then maybe we shouldn't have millions of people cross into our border illegally. Yeah, wouldn't that cause some spread? I mean, nothing. Where it was from? They said that you were racist, if you thought it was from China. It was Animal Farm. Next to the lab, that creates coronavirus. Animal Farm is accurate. It couldn't be there. Someone had to eat a bat.

Guys, you're going to watch me crash out. Everything about it, you were just completely lied to. Oh, and they shot the president. Yeah. What is going on? And then they raided Trump for the same thing Biden had. The documents were in both places, in the Corvette.

Oh, yeah, and they told us that Biden was sharp as a tack when he clearly had dementia. Better than ever. Don't you remember that? Sharper. Never been stronger. The only thing that kept me sane, and seriously, I think this is why you're dealing with guys like Tyler, unfortunately.

I got married and started having children, and had a great faith community, and a good parent structure. If I didn't have those things, I'd probably be crazy. Like, I look at, I'm not far removed from people that now feel comfortable cheering someone's death online. If a couple different decisions go the other way, or maybe I didn't have the benefit of two parents at home, totally the grace of God. Or they send you to Michigan State instead of to Auburn. Yeah.

Yeah, a lot could have changed there, man. Watch those cuts. Maybe I'd have blue hair and a lot more piercings, but, you know, ain't nothing against that. See, we saw people coming together in Portland, Josh, which I like that you added. I was just telling you. Yeah, gosh, I'm so glad that I am where I am. Shout out to God.

Okay, good show today, guys. Go check it out. If you want your skin to glow like mine, Nazarene Organics. First, just a huge shout out. What a little treat that you showed up to the office, and now I have to tell them. Or hometown a lot. Go check them out. You want to email us, LOOPcast at CatholicVote.org. Join the Champions Club. Best way to support us, CatholicVote.org slash champions. If you really want to be a part of what we do here, can't do it without our champions.

So, go ahead and join. Thank you so much for that. But we're going to end in prayer here. Today, we have the Feast of Our Lady of Sorrows, so we are going to say that. In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

Remember, O most gracious Virgin Mary, that never was it known, that anyone who fled to thy protection, implored thy help, or sought thy intercession, was left unaided. Inspired by this confidence, I fly unto thee, O Virgin of virgins, my mother. To thee do I come, before thee I stand, sinful and sorrowful, O mother of the word incarnate. Despise not my petitions, but in thy mercy, hear and answer me. Amen. St. Thomas More, St. Fidelis, Our Lady of Guadalupe. Pray for us. Great show, guys. We are going to see you ready to rock on Wednesday. Have a great day. Peace.