Trump Berates Netanyahu Over Lebanon, Bill Pulte at ODNI, And Dream American Movies

And we're live. Welcome back to the LOOPcast. This is Tom, Erika, and Josh. Pray for us. We've been having some tech issues this morning. We'll see if Erika lasts. We'll see if Josh lasts. I feel like I'm pretty good. I was just, you know, sipping on some Wawa coffee this morning, but happy to be with all of you on this Wednesday. We have a full slate of news. Glad that we record on Wednesday and not yesterday because there was reports put out by Barack V of a very tense phone call between President Trump.

And Benjamin Netanyahu, it involves some F-bombs, it involves accusations of keeping someone out of jail. Very salacious. However, people are like, oh no, it's fake, it's fake, it's fake. And then, of course, Trump gets on an interview this morning with Podforce and confirms all of it. Confirms all and more. So, we got more information there. We have some clips from that. We're going to go over what's actually going on, current state of play with Iran, what's going on in Lebanon, what's going on in Israel.

Key news for hopefully ending this war. So, we have that. We also have Bill Pulte. Is it Bill Pulte? Is that how you pronounce it? Bill Pulte is now a mortgage guy. Pulte, you might recognize Pulte Homes, is now in charge of all of our intelligence agencies. He was not now in charge. He has been tapped to be in charge of ODNI. Now, I guess I just have a lot of questions about that to start with, and we will see where that goes.

Josh, maybe you have something to say. Please, Josh, tell us what to think about that. Yes, please tell me what to think about that. Also, we have one man. Has single-handedly raised my opinion of French people so high? Hometown hero, Cannon Cummins, was on Fox News. I'm going to get to it in my good news, but I have attended this church. I've seen this man. I smoked a cigar with him once. It was awesome. He is now getting some attention as a local hero, so I will get into that on today's show.

We have good news. We have Twilight Zone. We also have kind of a fun prompt. Matt Walsh was talking about the desire for American historical films to be done at an A-list level, potentially at a rated R level, and we just have so much to draw from. And he was mentioning a few. We were talking about our favorite Americana movies as we move towards the 4th of July.

With America 250 coming up here, so forgive us. We were dealing with a lot of tech stuff. We were doing some work for America 250. We are going to do our best. We will have fun. It is going to be a good show. We will get through it together, but before we do, of course, we have got to talk about Charity Mobile, my favorite sponsor, the OG sponsor, because now more than ever, it is important to do business with companies that stand with you and your beliefs.

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Before we get into it, how are we feeling, Josh and Erika? Love it. Love Charity Mobile. Bring the juice. Okay, so we got a little timeline here. I had Erika go take a look at it. The big thing that dropped that I think I was paying attention to, and I will share it on the screen here, is this Axios article. It might look familiar. Barack Ravid, I believe, was formerly Sorry about the French.

Oh, are people in the chat mad about the French? No, I'm just thinking if my kids were watching it. Oh, yeah. Sorry, sorry, sorry. Yeah, I'm just kidding. Not actual French, Tom. Swear word. Our president said it. He confirmed it. No, sorry. Now, my new favorite French guy. You're effing crazy. Trump fumes at Netanyahu and call on Lebanon. This is from Barack Obama. This might look familiar. A version of this argument has happened, actually, for the last four presidencies, which is an insane testament to the longevity of Benjamin Netanyahu.

I was actually going back. Ronald Reagan wrote in a memoir, I believe, about a conversation almost exactly like this with Benjamin Netanyahu himself, which is crazy that he's lasted this long. So we get this conversation, a little bit of details here. If we go to the timeline, Monday morning, Israel announced renewed massive strikes. This is, of course, amid a ceasefire, quote-unquote, which is confusing, and Trump actually addressed the kind of confusing nature in this interview, so I'll save it for that.

We're in a ceasefire, apparently, but there's a lot of firing during the ceasefire, from all sides. Right, like most Middle Eastern ceasefires, there's a lot of shooting during the ceasefire. Yes, Iran is shooting, we're shooting, Israel is shooting.

Well, we don't want what's going on between Israel. You know, all that fighting, because it affects what we're doing with Iran. We don't like it in and of itself, obviously, but the secondary effect is also very annoying. Yes. Thank you for clarifying the frustration.

Why are we sacrificing this? Israel also invaded and chose no intention of giving back parts of southern Lebanon, which is a key part of this, too. Eric, you said they took over a house from the Crusades, right? Not a house. They took over a castle. So, this is Beaufort Castle. It is the farthest they have ever been inside Lebanon in decades and decades. The interesting thing there was that Hezbollah was entrenched in this castle, and you look at it, and... It overlooks all these valleys.

You can see why it's really strategic for seeing invasions coming on up the valley. There were Hezbollah embedded in there, so the IDF comes in, and they start posting all over social media. We took the castle, we took the castle, and there's pictures.

And Hezbollah sees all the social media posts, and they send in a fleet of drones and kill three IDF soldiers, because they're like, oh, we know exactly where you are in the castle. It was just one, you know, the brain trust of the IDF was up there doing that. But it would be. The reason why it's so important is that it is so far from the Israeli border. It is so deep into Lebanese territory, and it's a symbolic victory. Symbolic victory, and the justification of the IDF is we need to create a buffer zone, quote-unquote.

I mean, it's very similar to what they did in Gaza, and now what they're doing in Lebanon, and the Lebanese are kind of like, well... Are we going to get this back, you know, to respect this border, the attacks from Hezbollah, kind of like, well, we're going to attack you if you're in our territory, and then to frame that as somehow a defensive action. So, all of this, as Josh said, is interfering with our ability to actually make a meaningful deal with the Iranians.

The Iranians actually completely cut off negotiation over this. They said, if you will not stop this aggressive action in Lebanon, it's already killed about 3,000 civilians. They've blown up a lot of the buildings and infrastructure. I love that, though, that assumption. Like, what, the United States owns Israel? Isn't it kind of the other way around?

You said it, not me, Josh. You said it, not me. Listen, I have been accused of all kinds of things for suggesting such. Wow. We are going to hear from the chat. I mean, it is a little bit of a joke, but I was just going a little Pat Buchanan there on the... Thank you. We always love going a little Pat Buchanan. That is correct. Welcome, a welcome. So, anyway, we are in this problem. Iran says we are stopping. We are not going to negotiate if you keep doing this.

That is when we get this phone call. Now, Mark Levin... Sorry, I don't like to make this about all the personalities, but Trump himself posted on True Social, hey, go tune into the Mark Levin Show at 8 p.m., like, it's going to be awesome.

We get this tweet from Mark. We have, the leak in Axios was a violation of federal law and provided support to the Iranian regime and its Hezbollah propaganda. Let me zoom in a little bit. Whoever leaked that story to Barak Avida at Axios did a grave disservice to our president, to Israel, to Israel's prime minister. God forbid. The Iranian regime will benefit from that leak, viewing us as weak and desperate for a deal, even coming to Hezbollah's defense. The Israeli people will also be furious.

The missiles are aimed at them, not Washington. And for a hundred other reasons, what was thought to be a devastating political hit on Netanyahu by the leakers about a private phone call between heads of state has done much damage to us and our military and our diplomatic strategy. And if the leakers or others believe Israel should abandon its survival for some deal, they will have a very hard lesson to learn. If the substance of this call is accurate, is it bad enough?

It is bad enough, in my view. Will there be an FBI investigation to determine who leaked? If not, why not? So, there's a lot of people saying, like, well, this isn't true. I saw a lot of takes, too. This is very similar. Actually, Barack Obama did the same thing under the Biden administration. It would be Biden, I believe, called him an a-hole on a call. Over the ethnic cleansing going on in Gaza, that, of course, is very unpopular domestically, and then for the Democrats, and then you get to go away saying, hey, look, I was stern with Netanyahu on the phone.

I don't like what's going on here. But when it gets leaked over and over and over again, as we said, four presidencies, it really is kind of like, it just. I can say, just personally, it feels like this was an intentional leak. It feels like this is kind of, it gets to satisfy the bases. Israel gets to look like they restrained themselves. Trump gets to look strong to people that are very frustrated with Israel and the war, what's going on. And so now, Trump comes on Pod Force One in the morning and just absolutely confirms everything.

So, we have a clip from him. I think you're right, though, about that assessment. It does feel like it was a planned leak. Yeah. And Trump has a long history of doing this kind of thing, and using the media. Like, actually funny, I think back to Theodore Roosevelt. Theodore Roosevelt was a media wizard. He needed to get things out to the media to tell his side of the story, set the narrative. This feels very, you know, Trumpian, and people kind of see through it, I think, now, because it's just, it happens too much.

But here's the clip of him confirming on the show the next morning. Today. Now, Axios reported that you had a phone call with Bibi Netanyahu, the Prime Minister of Israel, in which you were angry with him. You said, are you effing crazy? What are you effing doing? I helped you stay out of jail. Is that true? Did you speak to him in those terms? I did. I wouldn't say angry. I was a little bit perturbed at his constantly fighting with Lebanon.

You know, at some point, as it may be, we've got to stop this. We've got to stop it. Today. Uh, also, some of my other favorite, uh, I mean, this one, I just... Well, I mean, real quick, real quick. Yeah, go for it. If he, you know, did not want the leak to get out, he would have said, I never said that, or I don't want to talk about that, but he was perfectly willing to talk about it, so that kind of confirms your theory, is my point.

Thank you, Josh. Also, Benjamin Netanyahu was asked in an interview, I believe this morning as well, who basically confirmed the same thing, all but the staying out of jail part. I think he said, well, I'm not going to go into details on that because, you know, he is undergoing a corruption. ...trial that has been on pause since the war started. So, both of them being kind of chummy to media afterwards kind of suggests to me maybe this was planned. I'm not sure, but there's a couple clips from the interview I'll get to before we get into the broader story.

This one I've just thought about a lot personally. I'll play it on confusion. So, everyone said it was going to be $300, $400 a barrel. It's $98 a barrel. But that's not a big price to pay if you look at the possibility of them having a nuclear weapon. It's not a very big price to pay. And are your tactics where you say something and then change it and then do a peace deal and then break the ceasefire or whatever, is that all about trying to keep the Iranians off balance?

Sort of messaging to them? No. Because people at home, sometimes I hear that they feel anxious and confused. That's good. That's good. They're confused, and the Iranians are confused. Right. But, no, it's just the way I am. It changes. I mean, I could... So everyone says, that's good.

That is the way I am. That is the confusion. I am confused, too, President Trump. I mean, he wrote a book on it. I mean. Very true. And then, also, I believe there is a meeting, potential meeting with a gay Ayatollah, I think, came up in this. I did not even, is that true? Is there a gay Ayatollah out there? It is Pride Month, I mean. True. So, who is making the decisions? Well, they say he is giving approval, because that is the way it has been for a long, long time.

His father and then him, I guess it's a succession. But we seem to be getting along quite well. Would you like to meet him or meet any of the Iranians in person? I've never thought of it, actually. It's a very good question. I'll think of it. Yeah, I'd like to meet him. I'd like to meet everybody. I'd like to meet him. We probably will meet at some point, depending on how it all works out.

Sorry, the question before that got clipped out was like, there's a gay Ayatollah that's now in charge. And he's like, I think he's in charge. It's crazy. So, anyway, that and then the musical acts for America 250. There is another clip there, but just to keep it on that, I guess I will just leave it at there. Erika, how do you feel about all this?

Yeah, I mean, here we are. We're now 13 weeks into the war that was going to last five or six weeks tops. Things are not looking good on the oil supply front. I think we're getting eight ships through the Strait of Hormuz a day. We were doing 120, 140 before the war broke out. So, right now, it feels kind of like, I know that there's still firing going on, but it feels like there's this sort of stillness and waiting. And the biggest problem, of course, is that I think both sides, both the United States and the Iranians, have found that they are at an impasse, and that their mutual demands are irreconcilable.

I mean, Iran is not going to give up its nuclear enrichment program to the extent that Trump demands, and the United States is still very much, you know, you have to give it all up. You have to... I think Iran is also like, you know what, we actually control the Strait of Hormuz now, like, why would we want to go back to not profiting off of that? And I think the challenge is, and where Iran, the Iranians are throwing all their money, is that Trump is facing Political upheaval here, or political lack of enthusiasm, shall I say, here at home, and for him to push the negotiations forward, he is dependent on the Iranians either breaking economically or coming back to the table because something changes in their leadership, which there is no sign of that happening, or he has to put boots on the ground.

He has to escalate it. And they're just banking on the fact that he's not willing to do that because he utterly lacks the support for that with the American people. So, of course, that's the big argument right now in Congress among the rhinos and the war hawks and then the populace. It's like, do we finish the job, quote unquote, which means getting our boots embroiled on the ground, or do we just settle in for the long haul? Which is going to be really damaging to the Republicans, I think, in November.

So, it is not a good situation. I think we found out again that, as they say in the Princess Bride, you should never start a land war in Asia. I decided to take all of my political advice from the Princess Bride. Yeah, the Sicilian.

Josh, anything to say? Well, I would just say, I mean... This is different in kind to what we did in Iraq. I mean, we did not do a land invasion like we did in Iraq. You know, Iraq, we were there for months and months and months and months and years and years and years, and had so many of our soldiers come home maimed, you know, and stuff like that. So, it is a category difference. Obviously, the Strait of Hormuz being closed, or mostly closed, restricting the oil supply is causing, you know, economic pinch at home at a time when people need more relief, and that is why we at CatholicVote are calling for Congress to hit the brakes on the federal gas tax and give some relief to some American families here.

But it is different. I mean, we're not having the massive amount of men and women coming home from combat injured like they were. So, it is a different category. I'm not suggesting that it's no big deal. Americans still aren't so happy about it, particularly, and Trump's poll numbers have definitely taken a dip so far, and I think that there needs to be some sort of resolution before we get to November, but, you know, it's not exactly fantastic for Republican officeholders who are trying to get...

The agenda moved forward, and Heritage Foundation came out with a really good reconciliation package. A lot of different policies they have come out. They just released it, I think, yesterday or this morning, and these are great policies that could help the American people, help American families who are kind of in a pinch right now, and they could use a little bit more affordability. We would love to have the federal government spend less money, less money on war, for example. It remains to be seen.

The thing is, in politics, a week, a month can be forever, you know, and that is what I said. You and I, Tom, were talking about this earlier, you know, like I had hoped that this would be wrapped up after about five or six weeks, you know, not exactly Pollyannic about it, like, you know, I know it might take longer, but if this thing does get wrapped up, let us say, And there's several months after it being wrapped up before we actually vote, the American people's attention might be turned to something else, and the economic effects would still be a factor, of course.

Yeah. The unfortunate thing is you can't just leave and then go back to normal. You're not going to be able to go back to normal economically. You're certainly not going to be able to go back to normal for all of the people that were previously part of the coalition that feel betrayed. I sent you the Matt Walsh thing, and I think it kind of sums it up because this is how it's kind of felt, wading through what just seems like a really short-sighted, obvious mistake that's now dragged on for months.

Pretty much all of the prominent voices who supported the Iran war assured us it would be over by now. None of them will admit that they were wrong. Even less will they admit that their initial assurances were based on nothing but their own wish-casting. This whole show has been an enormous waste of time and resources, and our country has not benefited from it at all. Its advocates have moved the goalposts repeatedly, and have even to this day refused to clearly articulate what constitutes a victory and how we'll know that it's been achieved.

2.6 million views. I thought that was a pretty... Well, so I have a question, because what comes back, whenever Trump or one of his mouthpieces is confronted with that statement or statement like that, the response is, well, the benefit is that Iran does not have a nuclear weapon. So, I guess, Tom, my question for you is just a hypothetical. So, say in two years, there's incontrovertible evidence presented that, in fact, Iran was about to go nuclear and to get the H-bomb and whatever bomb we're on now.

And this decision to go to war prevented that or kicked it down the road five to ten years. Would that change your estimation of what we had decided to do in March? In that potential hypothetical, yes. I mean, as would, I guess, with Afghanistan, you know, did Iraq have a WMD? If we find out 20 years, you know, whatever, in the Middle East, someone in that Middle East area had it, and we invaded, and we prevented it, then yeah, then yeah, that would be a great deal.

We found that to be false, and I guess what we have so far to go off of. Is that Tulsi Gabbard, the head of ODNI, who's sat down and now being replaced, testified that the intelligence community has verified Iran does not have a nuclear weapon, they're not building towards a nuclear weapon, at least at that point in time. And, like, we can't make decisions off of wish-casting. Which was week two of the war, right. Week two of the war, wish-casting, what we knew at the time.

And then the stated reason immediately after, well, one, I guess the issue is there's no case made to the American public to even do this. And then immediately after it was done, it was, well, they were going to strike Israel. So, we needed to get involved before they struck Israel or our bases in the Middle East. And that's straight from the mouth of Marco Rubio. The story has since changed, you know, many different times, but... I guess I'm confused by that anyway, though, because, like, let's say Iran did get a nuclear weapon.

Doesn't, you know, I mean, Israel certainly doesn't enjoy that, but they have the Golden Dome, and we do have Star Wars, you know, SDI. There are ways to prevent an improper nuclear weapon being fired. You know, I'm just saying, like, you know, it just seems to me like You know, the excuse, I mean, I don't know, I guess I'm shell-shocked, because I remember in 2003, in this build-up, when Secretary of State Colin Powell was going before the United Nations, and I said, what are the words at the time?

I'm not going to pretend like I didn't. You know, my biggest contention was that Saddam Hussein had violated the nature of the peace treaty that he had signed to end the war, but that didn't necessarily mean we do a land invasion. And, you know, we're told there's these weapons of mass destruction, you know, and we go in there and there wasn't. You know, I mean... Crazy that a regime would lie and say it was more powerful than it was. Duh. You know, so isn't that also the case?

Couldn't that also be the case here with Iran? Like, oh, we're only weeks away from a nuclear bomb. Ha ha ha. Like, yeah, maybe you are, or maybe you're not. Iran wasn't bragging that. Israel was bragging that. That was Benjamin Netanyahu's time for 40 years. Fair enough. But I mean, again... Which, again, would another regime lie to get us to use the most powerful military in the world to attack their enemies? We've seen that just to be true over the last 30 years.

So, yeah, I mean, of course, in that hypothetical, yes, like if some evidence emerges. I think the problem now is this is. It's almost worse than all of the travesty. The trillion dollars, the American dead, the wasted opportunities, all for a more agitated, not more safe, you know, thousands of people in the region displaced or killed. It's not a more peaceful or settled region. The whole promise, like maybe I just feel too personally on this, but the whole promise of Trump coming back, the reason he stuck out in the primaries, was two things.

I can't be influenced by the lobbying groups that have influenced me. ...previous politicians. He pointed it right to their faces. Ted Cruz, all these different people. He went right to the Jewish coalition and said, you're not going to like me because you can't buy me. You can buy everyone else, you can't buy me. He went and did that to all the lobbying groups, and that was a convincing argument to me at the time. The second argument was, Afghanistan was a mistake.

We should not have been there. It's not made the world more peaceful. It's expensive, and the Bushes were a part of orchestrating an obvious lie that cost us American lives. Dollars, peace... More than Afghanistan. Iraq, which of course is like, I mention all of them because Obama's complicit, Biden's complicit in some ways. So, yeah. So, what I'm saying is the general policy... You're right, though. There's two things that Donald Trump, when he first ran for president in 2016, two ways he was categorically very different from the rest of the Republican field.

Number one, he was totally against amnesty. He was against illegal immigration, and he campaigned very hard on it. And number two, yeah, I remember those debates. He just turned to Jeb Bush and said, you guys were stupid. We were stupid, stupid, stupid to go into Iraq. That was really, I mean, just dumb, dumb. He just called it completely stupid. So, I think it's perfectly fair for those who don't want foreign entanglements and do not want us to be involved in foreign wars to say, gosh.

Wouldn't Donald Trump 2015 call this president dum-dum-dum for doing what he's doing in Iran? Same guy. Yeah, and all meaningful dissent has just been rooted out and then ruthlessly mocked by the president himself or whatever. It doesn't feel like there's voices in the room that...

Or at least publicly saying, hey, maybe we should pull back, maybe this isn't a great idea, and those people would be representative of a lot of the American public, in particular, a significant portion of the Republican Party or conservatives or whatever you want to say. So, I think the further problem here is because the case wasn't made, and it was such a betrayal of a core promise, the trust isn't there anymore. So, now, every time that Trump, and this gets to the confusion point, like, well, we don't trust you, I know you're trying to confuse us on this, but if you come forward years from now and say, well, look, we found this.

I think I am less likely to trust. I have just become so cynical because there has just been this obvious propaganda going on, no case made to the American public with convincing evidence, to where now there is a messaging problem, there is a trust problem, and I see that actually tainting now, say, Marco Rubio, J.D. Vance, all the people associated with this administration, and so that is why there is a lot of skepticism now for them going forward. It reminds me a little bit of the Kamala Harris thing.

Especially with JD, which I'll get into later, but... He's being sent to go defend some of the least popular, strangest moves by the administration, like, I'll blow a twilight zone, like, he was sent out to go defend the slush fund that people are calling it. It was a bad idea. It was the anti-weaponization fund. They're not going to pursue it, yeah. They just dropped it, right? So, they dropped it because of the backlash, and because it was a bad idea. There's loopholes, it's bad policy.

It might be bad politics, doesn't mean it's necessarily bad policy, but, I mean, go back to what you're... To saying about the Iran thing, the only distinction I would add to this is that, so far, you know, it is very expensive, and there have been some of our troops that have lost their life, of course, but it has not yet been as...

It's comparable to the complete debacle of Iraq. So, that's the only hesitation I offer. I mean, I agree with you that there's a lot of people still very frustrated about it. The American people don't really want it. But I'm just saying, at least it's not as catastrophic in terms of its, you know, the amount of troops, you know, that have, you know, lost their lives and that kind of stuff. The totality of it, the scale of it, thankfully, is not quite like what Afghanistan or Iraq was.

So, that would be my only... Yeah, I agree with you on that. I guess I would just say it hasn't yet. It hasn't. Pray to God, it hasn't. But there's a lot of things that are kind of reminding me of it, I guess. And then the other thing is, it almost feels like, it's almost, not worse, because of course American lives are lost, and all of the lives lost, innocent lives in the Middle East over these wars, of course. And there's been a lot of innocent lives in the Middle East lost because of this going on now.

But the other thing I'd say is it just feels like a really missed opportunity. Like you mentioned, Heritage put out a lot of good stuff. That could be the focus. Like, if we weren't in this right now, if we weren't, you know, saber-rattling Venezuela or Cuba's the next one, it's just like everything's been so foreign. um facing that we're missing on a lot of these fights that i feel like the american people wanted like the american people wanted to fight over immigration deportation the economy uh safety in our streets like all these things so it's almost i feel like more of a missed opportunity that maybe hurts more because you're like this thing had so much potential and it's just evolved into a series of like the tariff blunder uh dapstein files transparency um and now the iran war and it's like we're just in this we can't get out we can't get out we can't focus on we want to And it's a blown opportunity.

And I will say, Josh, you bring up all the time, and I agree, there are Democrats that are just waiting to get back into power, and we saw how they acted in 2020. Like, I was going back to some of the 2020 posts. It was crazy what the government was engaged with, legitimately. Like, to the point where people that are reasonable, you know, conservatives... This is what happens often, though. Presidents get impatient in the second term, and they focus on foreign policy because they don't want to go through the hard work of trying to get policies passed.

You thought if someone could, it would be Trump. So, I just got footage, too, of Iran's struck an airport in Kuwait. That does not seem to me like peace talks are going well or going in the right direction, so we could be looking at... Unfortunately, a lot more war. So, that is what we got in that spot. I will move on now to the next section, but before we do, we have America 250. We were just recording something for it yesterday.

It is going to be an awesome event. It is in June. Now, I do not want to give the wrong advice out. I think we sold out, right? That is what it says. I think we sold out, which is awesome. American TV sold out. Amazing.

So, what happened is we did sell out. We did hit the mark, and then, as sometimes happens, a few people cancel whatever, so we might have a few tickets. So, if you are able to register for tickets, that means there is a few left, but I do not want to promise anything because we just released a little bit, and then they got gobbled up. That is why we are trying to tell people, go ahead, and if you are not sure if you are going to be able to make it, if you can try to get tickets, great, but if not, we always have the live stream that is going to be available, and we have people tuning in from all over the country that are going to be watching it.

Fantastic speakers, from Kelsey Reinhart to Cardinal Burke, as you mentioned, Michael Knowles, Isabella Brown, and Cecilia Jean. A lot of people like her content. She is amazing. We have her at Zeal, so I'm looking forward to this. I think it's going to be a great event.

Me too. And then if you can't, you can join the prayer movement or join the live stream. So, if you can't go in person, go check out the prayer movement. I just put the chat in there. I've been thinking a lot about... Praying intentionally for the country as the 250th is coming up here, I think it's just really powerful and important. And to add to that, you can start the prayers up today. I know we've been praying the prayer that Cardinal Burke wrote for America 250, but it is also the first day of the Sacred Heart Novena.

So, you can rev up with your family for just one of my favorite feast days of the whole year, Sacred Heart. And that also means that not only we have the Feast coming up, but you can do First Fridays.

So, Kelsey Reinhardt has been encouraging people to practice the nine First Fridays devotion. Hey, get started this year, even if you have not done it yet this year. Start it this year in the special anniversary year, and hit that First Friday for nine consecutive First Fridays in a row to honor the Sacred Heart of Jesus that was... There are lots of spiritual promises that Jesus gave to St. Margaret Mary.

So, go for it. Get started this week. Go to First Friday Mass this Friday. Okay. Awesome. Okay. Do you want to touch AI briefly, Erika? Yeah, we can just go through a few updates on the AI front. This is kind of a potpourri for everyone who's interested in these little sort of tidbits on what's going on in that sector. So, we got another lawsuit. We had Florida this week filed a lawsuit against OpenAI, and specifically its ChatGPT platform for concealing risks.

While giving teenagers, specifically, advice on how to commit suicide. And providing instructions on how to plan mass shootings and other crimes. So, Florida's Attorney General, he got out there, and he's like, we're taking them. They can't do this in our state. And again, this is joining sort of this growing movement of lawsuits from parents, parent groups, state attorneys general against these giant open AI platforms for operating without... Speaking of protections for young people who are most vulnerable here.

Speaking of protections. Go for it. Speaking of protections. Trump finds an AI policy he can live with. The president signed a downsized AI order after postponing a similar measure last month. Yeah, quick background. Signed an executive order yesterday asking AI companies to voluntarily submit powerful new models for government review just 30 days before public release, a significantly watered-down version of the policy he was set to impose last month, which he rejected hours beforehand, saying it would get in the way of America's competition with China.

Yeah, so specifically... Specifically, what he was watering down there was, originally, this was a 90-day review period, so giving the government much more of a ramp, an on-ramp to really dig into what were these AI capabilities, and over the last few weeks, he's been on and off, like, I'm going to sign it, I'm not. Finally, we water it down to 30 days, and like you said, the arms race in question here today seems to be an AI arms race, rather than...

Rather than weapons or bombs or missiles or planes, we're looking at an AI arms race with China there. The other big news on the financial front with AI is Anthropic filed to go public this week with the IPO following. And the IPO filing for this, so the initial public offering, it's built tens of billions of dollars. And so, Anthropic is now joining the other public market. The other public platforms are expected to be among three high-profile companies preparing to go public this year, joining SpaceX and OpenAI, which started the whole AI boom in 2022, and their IPOs, which will be among the biggest ever.

Could create a tsunami of investment and employee wealth, and mint the world's first trillionaire, Elon Musk, who owns about 50% of SpaceX. It's also expected to supercharge the number of billionaires in the United States with the amount of money that this could generate with these three companies going public.

I mean, a lot of nervousness about that. They can always donate to the LOOPcast, I'm just saying. Yeah, you got extra money. We know what to do with it, for sure. Why? Or the government could take 50%. That's the other option. I saw a Bernie Sanders suggestion, AI is a public resource, you should own half of it, 50% tax. Yeah, so Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, their solution is to just start taxing it all at 50%. If you pull up the Bernie Sanders op-ed, this was in the New York Times, I just love how they went full-on propaganda Soviet artwork for the header of this one.

Of the opinion article? Yeah. Yeah. Oh, my gosh. I'm sick on all that. Yeah, that's all there. What's the argument there? Yeah, the argument is, well, if we're going to get the AI revolution, it should belong to the people. And, of course, by the people, he means the government taking half of the revenue from AI and taxing these countries. Or these countries. They are like countries. They're all small countries. And big economies. Taxing these companies as much as possible.

That's the argument there. Hopefully, I mean, they're also hoping to just slow it down, because I'm not sure American prosperity really is Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren's ultimate goal. It's more just, let's just slow the growth on the AI. No, they want to control. They want to control as much as they can. I mean, these are little commissars, and they want their little Oyster Grubin guy or whatever in Maine to join them. Graham Latner. So, we're stuck between commies and lizard people.

People that give me lectures on the Antichrist. It's essentially the choices we have before us. You got it. All right. Glad we did an AI checkup. All right. Please give me some good news, Erika. Okay. I love good architecture. I love beautiful public spaces, and Columbus Circle is back, baby. I'm so excited about this. Doc, we are still doing good things here in the United States. So, here we have Secretary Doug Burgum posted. Secretary Sean Duffy officially opened for the public Columbus Fountain.

Now, I lived in D.C. for four years for college, and I worked in D.C. in the summers. I went by this fountain every week, and I didn't know it was a fountain, but now we know. So, the restoration, yeah, it was beautiful. They scrubbed down all the beautiful white marble. They cleaned out the pool around it, and now it's bubbling again, and people cannot believe it. They're like, DC is beautiful. We can just do things? We can just clean the fountains.

It's amazing. So, this was originally designed. I did a little digging. Columbus Fountain, the statue there, it is beautiful. Walking out of Union Station, it is so impressive. You see the monument, and then up the hill, you see the Capitol Dome. It is a stunning site, and even more so now. It was dedicated originally in 1912, and it was part of this public works effort in D.C. to really elevate the city. And the Columbus Fountain...

It was, the sculpture was designed by a member of the Taft family, distant relative of the president, and it's got all these allegorical figures from the old world and the new world, and the ship's prow sticking out into now filled with water, a sea. It's just beautiful. So, this is the time to visit D.C. before the Democrats get back in power, because not only Columbus Fountain, we also have the reflecting pool. ...has been scrubbed out and cleaned in front of the Lincoln Memorial.

You've got the fountains at, I think, DuPont Circle, Lafayette. They're all cleaned out as well, so get yourself down there for America 250, but not during America 250, not on July 4th. Say it again? Maybe not DuPont Circle, but... Yeah, maybe not DuPont Circle. Off of Union Station, and then, you know, it used to be Union Station in the 80s was just horrible. I mean, you know, and then it was cleaned up in the 90s. When I got there, the fountain still didn't work, though.

But when I lived there, it was, you know, it was a much nicer place. You would actually go to Union Station. You know, 10 years, that has not been the case. It has been just vagrants and terrible, and you watch more and more businesses leave, and homeless people in camps and tents right outside, right by the fountain, the fountain that no one knew had water. Yeah, you are right. I mean, it is like, no, it had not been like that for 25, 30, 40 years.

So, it is nice to see. Nice to see. If this is what fascism means... You know what I'm saying? It'd be nice to have some clean monuments, all right? I'm sure the monuments are nice and clean in China, in Japan, in Russia.

Yeah, I'd rather not have clean monuments of China. I would like to chew gum and walk. I'm pretty sure that that's Uyghur labor. I would like to chew gum and walk at the same time. I would love some democracy, but I would also love for public works of art and statues to actually be clean and functioning. Is it possible? Is Trump clean?

You're right, though. The warning here is if you keep telling people that to have clean, you know, public monuments and to have safe cities is fascism, people are like, oh, okay, well, I mean, I don't want to see, you know. You know what I'm saying, though? Like, they will say that's fascism. Kicking out the vagrants, cleaning stuff up, punishing people for doing graffiti, that is accused of being fascist, if that's what it is. Or allowing 50% of all new jobs in the last decade have gone to foreigners.

Like, I'm sorry, like, you keep saying, yeah, I mean. Listen, listen, and you know, I'll say the name that shall not be spoken, but Tucker Carlson did an interview with the trucker. This guy's a trucker. Now, listen, I know he's a controversial name. He's a controversial name. Some are fans, some are not.

Well, so is Josh Mercer. Not the same category, but yeah. Very true. Mercer, maybe we have to preamble if you interview people that way, but he had a trucker on who had great command of what has happened to the trucking industry. He's a Canadian gentleman. I think he might be American now, but was talking, you know, previously the trucking job was a middle-class job. Most American white men without college degrees were truckers. I was the biggest employer of that demo. And you could make a good living, you could learn operating skills, and because of legislation passed down, it basically made the job unworkable, so the wages were too low.

And, you know, free market economy, you would think, okay, well, in order to incentivize good truckers, you would increase the wages. Instead, it just got opened up to foreigners. And so, you see people on the road now that... Don't have a proper CDL that can't speak English. I mean, these are like baseline things that we should want, and the trucking companies use shell companies, contractors, so that they don't have to be associated with the training, the operation, or whatever, and that's how we get ourselves into this predicament.

And as you said, Josh, it's like, well, if all the jobs are going to foreign-born, and there's manipulation on behalf of regulation and companies absolutely selling out the American worker, this is... Like, how do we fix this? You know what's the problem with it, though? Even our current U.S. Supreme Court, like, they wouldn't hear a court case between Florida and California over the dispute of CDLs. It's like... Well, did you see what John Duffy did?

You can't just do this. So, Sean Duffy goes to the state of New York, right, because New York has been issuing these CDLs with no testing requirements to foreign-born immigrants. And so, he goes to them, and he says, you need to revoke your illegally issued trucking licenses. And New York says, no, we're not going to do that. We're not going to give you the information. We're not going to help you out. So, Sean Duffy says, fine, I'm going to withhold your $73 million.

In whatever the Department of Transportation gives them. And not only that, but now he's saying, since they're still not complying, he's going to revoke the state's right to even issue these CDL licenses in the first place. So, we can just do things, and we can take steps to punish states that are doing this to the American people. And say, why not California, too? We currently have...

People, so it will be a company in America. They use a contractor, a non-American contractor, that take contracts that move U.S. military equipment right now. Which seems insane when you say it out loud. It is insane. It is insane when you say it out loud, but that is the current state of play. Now, it's one thing, and I think he's saying, like, Sean Duffy genuinely is trying to do a good job, like, by doing what you just said. Oh, amazing. But the issue goes so much deeper than that.

Like, you need to punish the companies. You need to go after the companies. Yes. It's like, but, I mean, how is it that you can't put forward a bill in front of the Congress saying, We have to stop New York and California from giving out driver's licenses to foreigners who are here in the country illegally, who don't speak or read English. And how does that not get 90 votes in the Senate? Like, the Democratic Party is absolutely... It's not just Democrats, Josh.

The most illegal ones in Florida and whatever else. But I think to add to your full point is the people that represent all of our states are paid by lobbyists to keep this cheap kickback system going. The only people that are getting shafted by this are American workers. It's not the foreigners. And I don't even blame, again, I'm not like a, you know. Ethically anti-foreign or whatever, but like, an Indian that is coming here to make more money than they would make in India, I don't blame them.

That's trying to maximize their opportunities. America should act like a labor union for Americans, instead of selling out on behalf of other countries' interests, other business interests, instead of the people, again, the white. A high school educated man that had a good life, a good way to provide for their family, and now don't. And then it all got shifted into financier and dropshipping, like whatever weird stuff is running our economy now, AI. Citizenship should mean something.

Right, they should, our representatives should put forward a bill to actually go after these companies, but they won't because they're paid by them and they benefit from the status quo. And that's the frustrating thing. So, I was just railing against the wall. It's like, how long can we go after this until...

We can change, and I don't know what's going to happen. Anyway, go listen to the interview. That's my good news, yeah. Thanks, Josh. My good news is Pope Leo was giving a talk to educators. Actually, it was today.

And he talked about, you know, he talked about artificial intelligence, and that actually might require, you know, teachers to be better prepared to make sure that, you know, that maybe adjust the way you teach and the way you grade stuff so that, you know, kids can't just coast through by using AI to write papers and that kind of stuff. But he also did, at the end, he finished the talk by saying, dear brothers and sisters.

As you continue to carry out the church's evangelizing mission, it is my hope that students will always be able to find in your institutions the sound doctrine entrusted to the church that will serve as a true and lasting foundation, not only for their lives, but for the future of the nation.

In thanking you for your presence here and your dedication to Catholic education, I cordially impart my apostolic blessing, and I wish to extend to the people and their communities and the institution you represent. So, I love it. A call for Catholic educators to teach sound doctrine. Thank you very much. I love it.

Basically, not to continue the summer of Leo, but his entire, like Villanova, the New York Knicks are all Villanova graduates. It's basically like a full team of Villanova grads. So, there you go. I'm not kidding. It's like four of their starting five are from Villanova.

So, very eloquent, Josh. Thank you for that. Wait, aren't the Spurs in the finals? Spurs are in the final, and the Spurnuns. And they have the sisters, the Spurnuns and the Villanova. May I say, Luke Cornett got the blessing before the game from the nuns. He had the game-winning block. That was the play of that game, was the block. It was a four-point swing. That could have kept it close. I think they ended up winning by like four or five points, so again.

I'm cheering for him just because of how stellar he was in standing up against the absolutely atrocious... Atlanta Hawks promotion they had with the strip club. So, Lou Cornette, when someone does something wrong, you can kind of roll your eyes and not like it, but he actually stuck his neck out and said something about it and called attention to it. So, I don't really care much for NBA or whatever, but I am sure for him.

And Wembanyama is so fun to watch, and it kind of brought back after they beat the Thunder. There are some cynical people that were like, because he was basically crying after. He was crying. It is a young team. He has had a lot of expectations. There is a tough series. You get to the end of it. He is hugging his teammates. All the talk was about the teammates, the team, how much it meant to them, the city. I was like, this is awesome.

It is just like the return of how it should be. You know what I mean? Yes, you want to win hard. You want to be emotional. You do not want to make it all about yourself. It is a small market team. You are going up against these juggernauts with the Knicks.

Yeah, I just love the storylines. Shout out to the Spurs and the Spurnons. All right, I'm super excited to talk about both of mine. I'm not sure if this has reached your radar, but I'm kind of a bird-watching guy now. I took some sweet pictures of birds on vacation, and I'm fired up on it. There is this young man from Oklahoma who is showing off his talent to his classmates, and I mean, I just got to give you guys a little sample here.

So, this went viral, and then I dug through the story on this one. His name is Samuel Henderson. He is an 11-year-old boy from Choctaw, Oklahoma. He can flawlessly imitate the calls of nearly 50 species of birds. He is autistic and has Tourette's Syndrome. He began mimicking birds at age four after seeing a great-tailed grackle at a local zoo. He spent years practicing the calls in secret along the back fence of his school playground before wowing his classmates at a school talent show.

A year ago, I think CBS went out to go interview him. And, I mean, this kid is just Electric Factory. I love this so much. Let's see. Those sounds are all coming from a Samuel, an 11-year-old Samuel Henderson. I actually quite enjoy this.

Samuel, who is autistic and has Tourette's Syndrome, can perfectly imitate 50 birds. What's the hardest bird to do? Probably the barn swallow. How does that go? Do you ever think you might be a bird? Yeah. Oh my gosh. This kid is electric. That's genuinely impressive. Yeah, that is like an awesome skill. I love, so that is what childhood should be, is becoming obsessively good at something really niche, and then wowing your classmates with it is just so pure.

And amazing. And you get older, and people get cynical, sarcastic, or whatever. You can't be that way when you're 11, and you love birds. You get to show off your sick talent. Shout out to the bird watchers everywhere. Shout out to this kid. That one just really made me smile. Well, I should say that CBS This Morning, Sunday morning, whatever show, that is a fantastic news magazine. I'm like 60 Minutes, where they just got rid of Scott Pelley. Hello. I did see you.

There's a lot of... There's a lot of... All the journos online are freaking out. Yeah, it's like the two worst people you know are fighting, like Barry Weiss and Scott Pelley, so I hope no one wins. I like Barry Weiss. She's disruptive. I like it.

She blows things up. Sure does. Okay, this one's my favorite, because I don't know if you've ever seen, like, these news stories in this place, and the formatting is so specific. So, here's the story. You look like me, you sound like me, you're doing the same things that I'm doing. So, I'll read the headline. Dietrich Priest becomes crime-fighting good Samaritan, tackles car thief suspect.

Because why not? Because he's a hero. All right, here we go. Now, by the way, this is my, my parents go to this church, and I know the priest. His prayers tonight after a Detroit priest tackled him when he tried to run from a crime scene. The 18-year-old accused of stealing a car before crashing outside St. Joseph's Shrine on Detroit's east side. Fox 2's Scott Wolchek is live outside the church with a closer look at how the priest got involved. Scott.

Hey, Rup, yeah, you know what? An unlikely situation here, but wow, pretty incredible. So, you can see the church right there. That's St. Joseph's Shrine. Now, we've got a priest here who hails from France. His name is Jean-Baptiste, Reverend Canon Jean-Baptiste Commons. He was in the parking lot there when suddenly he heard tires squeal, bang, a huge crash. The crash was right up here, and he saw a young man, he says. Running towards him along this road right here, who had one shoe on, blood on his face, somebody yelled, stop him, and that is when Jean-Baptiste went into action.

He says that he was able to tackle the suspect onto the ground. Another member of the church here was able to help out as well, and they held this 18-year-old down until the police were able to make that. So, what the heck happened here? Well, police say they had seen this car speeding, tried to initiate a traffic stop. Before that could happen, the crash took place, and so a woman was injured. Thankfully, she is going to be okay, but then the suspect took off running.

They are behind bars tonight. Police do believe that the vehicle was stolen. Take a listen to Jean-Baptiste and how he knew how to spring into action. Grabbed him, put him down. He was resisting a lot, trying to run away, definitely, and so I had to, unfortunately, give him a few punches and hurt my hand a little bit. Nothing major, but making sure that there was no threat, since I didn't know if he had a gun, if he had a weapon. It was definitely, you know, suspicious behavior and probably guilty of the accident.

As soon as I Had the police officers take care of this gentleman, I rushed back to the lady, make sure, you know, if she needed the anointing of the six, or, you know, a blessing or something. I was there, too, with the medics, and she was not very responsive on the air. Her eyes were twinkling a little bit. What did you do later? Like, after all of that happened, just back to normal life?

Yes, I went and had to do my prayers as usual, and have dinner with the community, and... Wow. Just another day. Just another day in the D. Dude, tat that on my chest. Just another day in the D. That was awesome. And this reporter, like, how Polish-American can you get? Steve Wolczak is on the scene, and then you get this, like, round, blonde face, this giant reporter. That was awesome. That was the best clip.

Kenny Collins has single-handedly elevated my opinion of the nation of France with this interview, and his life, because he's amazing. Think about it, Tom. You know, if you're a Catholic priest from France, and you're wearing the full cassock, you're, yeah, you're not the problem.

You're the solution. I love that he, like, come down to the knuckles. He's got bloody knuckles. I cannot speak highly enough of Cannon Cummins. He's the best. The Cannons of St. Joseph are amazing. Shout out to the Institute of Christ the King. Hilarious. This was getting shared around because, like, my mom sings in the choir. Like, this is, like, I've been here. I've been, I've parked all these places. I've shot weddings here. The church is breathtaking. It's a German cathedral from either late 1800s, early 1900s.

And they're turning the whole neighborhood around, so, I mean, there's still some spots like what happened here, but, like, overall. Oh, it's not a nice area for anyone. Yeah, but, I mean, it's getting better. They bought a... Yeah, they bought a plot of land across the way, and I think they're going to turn it into kind of a community living situation, which is fantastic and totally well-deserved.

They actually got, they won a grant. Yeah, they won a grant to refurbish the church because it's a historical piece of art. And so you saw all the scaffolding above, they're working to restore to its original condition. They have a lot of really talented people working on that. Because of the stained glass at that church, it's actually on the National Registry of Historic Places.

Yeah, it's amazing. If anyone gets the chance, again, not a super nice area, they do have security. That was the thing, like, if you go to Mass there, they have a security guard working while Mass is going on, maybe not 24-7, and so we were kind of like, oh, I'm surprised security didn't handle, but... That was outside the sanctuary, though. They didn't need security. They had the cannon. And we did, so we did a Mass, so we shot a wedding there, my wife and I, and the Cannon Cummins said the Mass was friends with a couple.

And afterwards, we were doing some pictures outside, because the area, like, the building's really beautiful, and they have, like, a nice kind of nature area in between two of the buildings, and it's, like, the area kind of, like, super surrounding, not super nice, but anyways, we're doing the pictures, and it was on their list to, like, smoke a celebratory cigar before we went to the next location, and we were like, oh, can it come through? Like, can it?

He's from France. I'm like, I'm for sure this guy has probably smoked a cigarette before, and so we hand him around. He's like, oh yeah, I can do it. I gotta go write my homily. I can't stay too long, but he's like, we got some pictures of him around the circle. It's the best. It's just the best.

Shout out to the Canons. Okay, so let us get on to C-Block now. Surprise for many, Bill Pulte. Pulte, you might recognize from the home building company. Well, that is definitely a regional thing. I do not know if people across the country. Oh, I did. Is it really national? I do not know, but.

I certainly did. I'm not sure. It's pretty big, but Erika, I got all the background. Is he now in charge of all of the intelligence agencies? How does this work? Yeah, so the Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, of course, left. Her husband's very sick, so pray for them.

The Director of National Intelligence position oversees the entire U.S. intelligence community, so that's 18 agencies, including the CIA, the NSA, DIA, NGA, NRO, all the... Alphabet soup and intelligence components of the FBI, State Department, Treasury, and military services. So, that is a lot of intelligence going on, and Bill Pulte, this was a surprise. He has been nominated by President Donald Trump. He is only 37.

But he's already made a pretty big name for himself, a lot of enemies, too, in D.C., and he first built this national profile. For those of you not chronically online, God bless you, but he built this profile on Twitter for doing what he calls social media philanthropy, where he'll find a story and then just throw $30,000 at a person to pay off someone's debt or to help someone with a hospital bill or something like that. Like Oprah, you get a car, you get a car.

Yeah, and you get a car, and you get a car. Major Trump supporter and donor with his family fortune, and yeah, right now, he's overseeing the federal agencies. He's the head of Freddie. Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, the mortgage market, and has been a big pusher. He's pushing Trump's agenda to make those go back to the private sector. And I believe also the innovator behind the 50-year mortgage. I think he is a big supporter of that as well. Basically, all of Trump's crazy housing ideas.

But also, the good thing he did trying to get it so that your rental income counts for your credit history, which I think is a good thing. I'm not a fan of that here, but... Yeah, and he's had the high-profile battles with his family. He's founded his own private equity firm, super rich guy, and he was named Forbes' 30 under 30 in manufacturing and industry in 2014. But all that to say, he has said he has no experience in intelligence, certainly no experience in military service, any of those basic qualifications.

For someone who's expected to coordinate all 18, he will also be the person, if confirmed, who will be delivering Trump his daily presidential brief every morning. He sets the intelligence priorities, and he's tens of billions of dollars in the budget. So he's good at managing millions and millions of dollars. Apparently, he's been effective in achieving his personal goals with that. So there's that. Wouldn't he be doing both?

Yeah, oh yeah, both. You'll be doing both of these? Well, see, here's the hot take, okay? Yeah, give me the hot take. All right, give us the hot take, Josh. What is going on here, Josh? I mean, first of all, I just feel like, you know, right in the immediate aftermath of 9-11, we had two different things that, you know, we did at the bureaucratic level to try to expedite things, because there was a, you know, this massive failure. So, we're like, okay, let's take Secret Service out of the Treasury.

Let's combine and make this Department of Homeland Security to make sure we have security at airports, security at our borders. We transform it from INS to ICE for Immigration and Customs Control. Now it's nice. So, we do all this stuff, and then what they said is, well, we had the failure because we didn't have... The CIA and the FBI and the National Security Agency, they weren't actually communicating well to each other. They're all in their silos. So, you know, it used to be everyone would sort of know who the director of the CIA is.

Now, it's like, who cares? Because now we have this new director of national intelligence, DNI, where all those things will flow together. Well, I get the feeling that... It's not really working out that well. I mean, like, how influential and important is this position? I mean, really? I mean, like, Tulsi apparently had, all she did was go to hearings and stuff like that. Like, you basically are at the top of, you know, you're like a middleman. I mean, not, I guess you're at the top, but it feels like you're more like a middleman.

You're like a coordinator of memos. The rumor that went around was that she was, Dee and I do not invite. Like, she got iced out of all the major conversations, partially because we were saying some more. I mean, it is not even just Tulsi, is what I am saying. Since 9-11, I just feel like this has just been kind of a cul-de-sac. Like, what happens at DNI? Again, you are just getting memos from all the different things, and it feels like it is a redundancy thing.

So, your DNI person says, well, here is what I got from NSA. Here is what I got from the National Security Advisory Council. Here is what I got from the FBI. Here is what I got from... You know, CIA, and everyone's like, well, why don't I just get it from the horse's mouth? Why am I getting it from you? Yeah, I think that there are a lot of problems with the position itself. So, it was created in 2004, like you said, to address this, and it's called director, but the top line of the job description is they're going to facilitate communication among all these agencies, which it is.

It's more of a management position, and you don't actually have the authority to effect meaningful change in any one of them. Like, the DNI, yeah, ODNI can't... Like, fire and hire at the CIA. I think you can make strong recommendations, but you can't hire and fire at the FBI. Those departments still run themselves. You're just the person who's like, oh, hey, by the way, you should read this thing that the CIA discovered. Oh, FBI, like, you should really communicate that cyberware attack to this other way.

So, it's a strange position in that way. When Congress wrote the position, I was looking into it. They didn't actually write any requirements or qualifications that the person nominated should have. They didn't specify any intelligence experience. There's no requirement for military experience. They don't even have to hold security clearance before they're nominated, and they don't need any sort of educational background or even prior government service. So, it really is the president's discretion.

I don't know. Does the whole person just have to go? I would say, if you look back a little bit in the history, what President Nixon had done, he's like, I don't trust the guys at the State Department. I don't trust the CIA or the FBI.

He probably knew about a little of the stuff that happened to Jack Kennedy. He's like, no, I want to bring this internal. So, that was one of the big things that Nixon did, by establishing a National Security Council, and basically having Kissinger, you know, and him, you know. Then you've got... People inside the West Wing that are reporting directly to the President on all these important matters of intelligence, of the military, that kind of stuff, rather than going to the Pentagon, rather than going to Langley, rather than going, you know, the Foggy Bottom, like, you have it in your house, in a sense.

You have it right there, and I just think that is a much better model than these massive bureaucracies where you just have people sending memos and circulating them, you know, a hundred times, well, by that time. Your trade dispute is already over. I mean, come on. So, okay, then let me ask you, do you feel like this move is by protest of like this position shouldn't really exist in its current form? So, I'm just going to put someone that doesn't really have any experience there, just kind of a F you.

That seems kind of like a little bit, I mean, it just feels like a, you know, it's basically accepting the fact that this is just a nothing figurehead role. That's kind of what I'm saying. Okay, and then he would have to get confirmed. I've seen things like John Thune is not, he's been publicly breaking, not a huge fan. Do you think then he just doesn't get confirmed?

We'll see. You know, I think that's a possibility that, you know. He might have trouble. So, we'll see what happens in hearings, because if he does hearings, and he gives answers that are decently adequate, he might be able to pass through, because, you know, it is that Republicans do hold the Senate, but if he fumbles on something... And by answers, you're saying, like, in something he has no... I mean, this is the epitome of, you didn't do the homework, unless he's somehow a national security expert that we're just unaware of.

Kind of a tough ask for someone that has a full-time job. I don't agree with the 50-year mortgage thing, but keep him where he's at. Put some other flunky whatever in this job. I mean, I sort of don't care for it. I mean, I don't think the position should exist, so. Okay, so kind of another burger. Do you...

So, I've seen, kind of reading the tea leaves, I think he went in to mortgage information to allow Trump to go after Letitia James and a couple other people. That's kind of like the attack on him, is that, and why he's kind of unpopular, even within the administration, is he's ruffled feathers, he's done things that maybe are unconventional. He poked Jerome Powell several times, too. He would like nasty memes. Maybe using his office to allow Trump to go after enemies, and that seems to be...

The most important quality for the people that he's... That's kind of the one thing I like him for. Well, okay, there you go. So, it feels like if you've ever observed one of these cabinet meetings, it's honestly, I guess in my opinion, kind of embarrassing. Like, you need to go into the meeting and... Suck up to Trump as much as possible publicly in these cabinet meetings. If you've ever watched them, it's almost a little uncomfortable. Not as embarrassing as a Joe Biden cabinet meeting, which there were only two of, to be fair.

Thank you. Thank you for that. Thank you for that reminder. But again, it's like, just because Joe's were embarrassing doesn't mean that these aren't kind of embarrassing, in my opinion. So, anyway, it just seems like that's the only quality. And I guess kind of outside of this pick, you know...

I guess to me, Josh, I'm curious what you think about this. The first term, looking back, it felt like the problem projected was he took advice on who to fill his cabinet with, and those people were independent actors that weren't loyal to him, weren't loyal to the agenda, and just tried to hurt him at every possible turn. Bill Burr.

John Bolton, you can name them off. So, the approach this time was, we're going to find very photogenic people that are going to be absolutely loyal, podcasters, presenters, news hosts, and we're going to put them in these cabinet positions. The only qualification is they're going to be loyal. Now, I guess you might have more information on the comparison, but if I look at- Loyal, but also that they're able to, scrappy and media savvy. Okay, there you go. But in terms of- Competency, I guess, and maybe the problem is, is once you fall out of favor, you're out.

So, Kristi Noem, Labor Secretary's out, Pam Bondi's out. It doesn't feel like the hope was, well, at least these people are loyal to the agenda, but kind of have experience and savviness to kind of move forward America First goals in the Trump umbrella. And it feels like it's just been, well, the Trump umbrella just means, are you in favor of the president on this given day? And if you're not, I'm going to ruthlessly cut. And we've seen that now with a couple of cabinet members.

Would you share that assessment, or am I missing something? I mean, look, we will see what happens with, you know, this pick, but, you know, being able to be media savvy is helpful, extremely helpful in this age, so I think that is a good thing. I think Trump relies a little bit too much on the loyalist. I mean, Pam Bondi totally sucked up to him, and then she ended up being a total disaster. So, it is like, you know, who cares?

Like, I want competency. Like, that needs to be emphasized. You know, like, yes, be loyal. You know, loyalty to the administration. Yeah, every presidential administration wants their people to be loyal. You know, I think Trump almost wants it to be that they're sycophants, but loyal, telegenic, competent. That's got to be that third component. You know, we want more Rubios in the cabinet and less, you know, Pam Bondi. So, just, I don't know what the hell she did all day. Yeah, Rubio for sure sticks out as the clear like.

Well, Duffy, and we talked about, you know, Doug Burgum at the top of the hour. I mean, you know, there's definitely some seriously competent people in the cabinet, you know, so we just want more of that. Yeah, okay. An emphasis on competence, which would kind of disqualify, you know, Kristi Noem and... Yeah, Cash Patel. Okay, so let's go on to, I thought it was interesting. I want to get your take as some media buffs and some history buffs. Matt Walsh threw this out.

I've been thinking a lot about it. I'm curious, even in the chat, what you guys are thinking on this. Okay, so starting off, one of the big reasons for the current lack of patriotism and pride in our nation's history is that about 40 years ago, our most prominent storytellers in Hollywood just basically stories about American history altogether, unless it has something to do with World War II, civil rights, or slavery. I mean, they just released a movie, and this is true, actually, about the meteorologist who did the weather report for D-Day.

They'll give World War II weathermen their own movies before they tell a story from any other era of American history. The right has attempted to counteract this a little bit, but conservative attempts at American history films and TV shows are invariably hokey and kid-friendly.

The kind of thing you can watch with your grandmother and your five-year-old, and you'll all be equally informed and bored by the experience. We need R-rated, adult-oriented American history stories. Daniel Boone should have his own series. It would be gritty and violent and not for children, but it would also be phenomenally entertaining and put an American legend back on the cultural map.

Excuse me. So to speak. The fact that Daniel Boone hasn't been depicted on screen at all since, like, the 60s is a travesty. Throw a dart at that guy's Wikipedia page, and you'll land in something that could be its own feature-length trilogy. Not wrong. That's just one example. How is there not a great R-rated movie or series about Antietam, or Kit Carson, or the Panama Canal? How does Theodore Roosevelt not have, like, ten movies, different periods of his life? So true.

That was immediately who I thought of. Yeah. To go much farther back to pre-American history, a movie about Cortez's conquest would be tremendous and horrifying and fascinating. And it would introduce into the public consciousness one of the world's most incredible stories that most Americans know next to nothing about, and on and on. The possibilities are literally endless. All of these movies, if they're executed to even a B-plus level, could make hundreds of millions of dollars and transform the culture in a way that what a million podcast monologues never could.

If the right actually wants to reclaim the culture, this is the place to start. I'll leave it there. What do you think? I'm all for it. More stories about American history, and yeah, I started running through my head all of the stories that I would love to see up on the big screen. Obviously, Teddy Roosevelt would make a great character. I want to go back further. I love the colonial, pre-colonial stuff. Oh my gosh, yes. Wait, but we have Bridgerton.

Wait, Bridget. Oh, stop it. Stop. No, you're going to make me throw up. I can't believe you said that. That's in England. It's all fake. Sorry. No, we have these classes. What are you talking about? They're coming out. No, I'm just kidding. Hamilton. Hamilton is super great.

Okay, no, I would love to see, like, I love The Last of the Mohicans. I know it's like, you know, James Fenmore Cooper, great, great novel. The dramatization of that, pretty good, had a few issues. But I also would love to see, you know, the Jesuit fathers, Father Isaac Joke. I mean, that's a story worthy of Hollywood. Father Isaac Joke, he comes over, he goes to a friendly Indian settlement, he starts baptizing, really successful. Hundreds of converts, and he's kidnapped by the Iroquois.

Then they release him, and he goes back to France, and he's like, no, I want to go back to the guys who kidnapped me and chewed half my fingers off, and that's where he's martyred. What an incredible film that would make. We also have so many cool stories. Nobody really knows about King Philip's War that happened in Massachusetts. It was sort of like a precursor of the French and Indian War. Benjamin Church was this... He's a Puritan and just a descendant of the Pilgrims.

He has a little family and a little farm, and somehow he gets pulled into commanding all these armies of the loyal Indians who were friends with the Pilgrims, combined with Pilgrim warriors and militia, and they go into the swamps of Rhode Island. I mean, these were crazy times and stories and so much drama. Benjamin Church. And my last one I would really like to... Let's see from that era.

I would love to see. Rogers Rangers, has anyone heard of them? Like Robert Rogers? Oh my gosh, see, this is the problem, Tom. You would love Robert Rogers and his Rangers, who fought on behalf of the British in the French and Indian War. There is this incredible story where at one battle, he is whittled down to like 57 men up at Lake George, and he is forced to march through the woods of New England. He hits the Connecticut River. They run out of food.

He leaves his men on the side of the Connecticut River, takes a raft. Down the river for like eight days with no food, finally finds a fort and gets it back. Anyway, these guys were amazing. Would make a great story, better than Deliverance, for sure. That's all great, but America. Why don't we, I think someone's doing like Young Washington at maybe Angel or something like that. Yeah, that's coming out next month. And I can't believe that that's the first, is that the first time someone's taking a stab at George Washington in a serious manner?

In a long time. I mean, you make a point, though. I mean, like, Disney, what did they do? They did the movie Pocahontas, right? And they had the Jamestown governor, John Ratcliffe, as like this, you know, villain, this fat, evil guy, right? Well, I mean. He was an English leader in Virginia. He was trying desperately to keep his people from dying from starvation. He came to the Indians, and what did he do? Did he steal their food? Did he kill all the Indians?

No, he offered to buy the corn, because his people were dying, and this is what happens to him. Captain Ratcliffe was seized and brought before Powhatan at his enclosure. There was no sign of Spielman, Savage, or Samuel, who, fearing the worst, had fled. According to Smith, Spalmary had been tipped off by Pocahontas of what would happen, that he would be in peril if he stayed. One of the English soldiers who managed to escape the Indians' attack was hiding in the nearby undergrowth, and it was he who later reported to Percy what happened to Ratcliffe.

A fire was kindling at the foot of a tree. Ratcliffe was stripped of his clothes and tied to the tree. Several women then approached the naked captain. They began to flay his skin with the sharp edges of muscle shells, gently teasing it away from the flesh. Then they sliced through his muscle and sinews to remove the limbs and organs from his body, which were before his face thrown into the fire.

Oh, my gosh. You know, but what did our cultural overlords, you know, do? They made him the villain. They made Pocahontas. They made Pocahontas. It must be like, well, even, Disney's kind of a mess for doing this in many different ways. Pocahontas, I have a problem with the other Indians that obviously killed, you know, John Ratcliffe.

Is there anything sick about the Indians? Well, I mean, the story of the Indians, you know, who came over from Asia, obviously, probably from Alaska or through other boats. I mean, it's not like they started there. I mean, they also were settlers in a way, right? And the relationship the Americans have with, you know, with white Americans as we settled, you know, starting on the East Coast.

The story, the relationship has been kind of, you know. Not like completely one-sided. We had history books 100, 150 years ago, where it was like, white men, good, Indians, bad. But now, we're subjected to movies where it's like, Gosh, we were terrible, from Dances with Wolves to Pocahontas, where white people are supposed to feel really terribly guilty, and the true story is that there were some tribes that were actually amenable to working together and living together with whites, and there were some tribes that were absolutely savage, and there were some white people that were evil, and there were some white people that were willing to work together.

It is not a super obvious thing. You know, it is not always... Cut and dry, like, this team was good, and this team was bad, but we do no service to the truth if we just try to, you know, oh, ignore the evil things that happened. There were savages. But I don't want to sidestep, because isn't this kind of getting to the issue, like, not the issue, but, so Matt Walsh, I think, is doing this historical series where I think he's kind of doing what you just did, where it's like, well, the Indians were complex, and there's these factors going on, and it's not as simple as it's told in the books, but that feels to me kind of like.

Conservative right-wing grievance movie making, like, if we did this? Like, it would actually be interesting if you made... I would not want to do a grievance movie. No. Right. So, what... So, then, the core question is, what American historical periods figures would make compelling, R-rated, you know, high-talent... movies that could be released as blockbusters. To me, he hit it on the head. Well, two, George Washington. I mean, French and Indian War, George Washington, early George Washington, early statesman George Washington would be amazing.

Theodore Roosevelt, literally, throw a dart at any point in his life, fascinating. His young life is interesting. His later life is interesting. The Rough Riders, Spanish-American War, his presidencies, his time as the New York, when he was the... Chief of Police in New York, that was fascinating, how he manipulated the media. Like, you could almost do even kind of a... I agree with Matt's greater point. We're not doing enough about history. I mean, there have been some. I did like Daniel Day-Lewis as Lincoln.

Yeah. That's the only other period I think adequately covered. And you could probably even do more. Like, the Civil War would be the one that gets the attention. Because it's a comic book version of history sometimes, where it's like, okay, let's do World War II because we know Nazi Germany is evil, and we can kind of wink-wink, pretend like the Republicans in this country are somehow Nazis. You know, it just frustrates me. But yeah, there is a ton of stuff, and it's true we should be willing to tell stories.

Like, okay, yes, there were some Black women that were involved with NASA. There was one woman that was a super smart scientist, and she was a super helpful mathematician or whatever. Like, let's not totally embellish the story a little too much on it, but yeah, I think we can tell these stories. But don't be afraid to tell just the good stories, too. Like, there's been too much of an impulse in the age of woke lately to say, Insert all these, well, hey, don't forget about this.

And in the process, we're forgetting to tell the main stories, you know? Like, it would be, I mean, I give credit, like I say, to HBO with a miniseries they did on John Adams. That is fantastic. People should watch that. I love the miniseries. That's why my name is sick, too. The miniseries that was done by... And AMC, they did The Turn. Oh, yeah, dude. That was so good. Washington Spies. You absolutely require, you got to watch that stuff. So, there is some really good stuff.

I love watching Apollo 13. I mean, one of the great movies, you know, successful failure. Don't start, Tom. Yeah, it was a great movie. The Apollo mission was a great, great movie. It's not 11, bro. I'm talking about the great movie. Not 11, bro. 11. Sorry, I meant 11.

But, yeah, so Death by Lightning was awesome, and that was a recent one, too, which I thought was really well done and fun, clearly done by a competent... The other one, I think this is kind of covered in... I would have loved to see more editors on it, but... It was like R+, I must say. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Overall, I liked it. Overall, cool. Cold, cold, cool story.

Yeah, and I like seeing what the old political conventions looked like. It was so fascinating. They just did a great job with that. It took me right into the world. It'd be cool. I just recently learned about, and I think this was covering Hamilton again, not a Hamilton guy, but he had an explosive scandal that ended his political ambitions that I feel they could do a really good job if you did kind of a House of Cards-esque.

Although, I don't think that would necessarily inspire patriotism, but it is an interesting story. You could do a movie just on the election of 1800. Now, there's a guy, Sean Trendy, who I really admire, one of the best political minds out there. He's with Real Clear Politics. He's the guy who wrote the, I thought, just seminal essay on the missing white voter.

I mean, amazing work, and this guy really knows his history, really knows his stuff. He actually wrote recently a story about the last time his son Judson was taking the school bus. Very autistic boy. I mean, it almost sent me to tears. The guy is just a great writer. He released something this week on his assessment of all the different presidents, and I had a large number of agreements with just about everything on the list, and he had some hot takes on there.

That's defensible. I like it. But the one I did have to push back on was he gave John Adams a D, probably principally because, you know, he had signed into law the Alien and Sedition Act, which is pretty noxious stuff. I get that. But the point I make with John Adams, of course, before his presidency, I mean, A+, I mean, he was so influential in rallying the American people for independence. He was one of the three in the committee, you know, Jefferson, Adams, and Franklin, you know, for the...

The Declaration. So, you know, so important in its history, but his presidency had a lot of faults. But I just can't give him that low of a grade. When you think about it, I mean, that was the nastiest election, probably, in presidential history. You know, you have Franz or John Adamson, Thomas Jefferson. TJ, yeah. It was crazy what they were throwing out. You think it's bad now, guys. Just look at a history book. But the most important thing about that election, actually, is how it ended.

And that's why I said you can't give John Adams any grade lower than a C-. You can't. Simply because anyone who... John Adams was the first president of the United States to lose re-election and hand over the reins of the government to a person in another political party. And that cannot be understated. That is the most important thing he did. I mean, they say about Jerry Ford, the most important thing he ever did was pardoning Richard Nixon, which was good for the country, even if the country hated it.

Well, times that by 10. John Adams willfully agreeing to give up power. And that's actually one of the things that, as much as I thought the presidential election of 2020 was probably stolen, definitely stinky. Fowl and all that kind of stuff, I did not like how Donald Trump handled it, even though I feel like he got cheated, and I can understand why he was upset, but I think back to that election of 1800 and how much worse our country would have been if John Adams hadn't done the right thing.

And I think that that's sort of the salutary effect of studying history, is that when we forget these stories, when we forget the richness of what came before us, and we just focus on, like you said, the safe period of history, which is World War II, because there's like the bad guy and the good guy. When we just try and stay safe, which is what Hollywood does, because it wants to make money, and we forget these stories, we become entrapped in our own political moment, and we start to feel like it's never been worse.

There's no hope. It'll never change. Whereas if we could collectively remember these stories, this is what we try and do in our homeschool, all the classical schools try and do this, is there's a real freedom in knowing that throughout human history, we've faced these difficult moments, these tough elections, these nasty groups and infighting of people who should be taking care of us.

And people have risen above that and come through it, for better or for worse, sometimes with some bruises, that that's what we hope to see from our entertainment, Hollywood, literature, and all that, to set us free from this moment of our own. But you could also add to the list of movies, Amistad, a 1997 movie. Amistad is very good. John Quincy Adams was President of the United States, and then after he gets done with his presidential term, he goes back and gets elected to the House of Representatives and rails against...

The evil of slavery for many, many, many years, and one of his men he was mentoring was actually a young congressman from Illinois by the name of Abraham Lincoln, who was actually appointed to a 30-member congressional committee to oversee the funeral of John Quincy Adams, because he literally dies in Congress. So, there's a lot of connections, by the way, all this stuff. It's just kind of neat. Yeah, I was thinking about the history thing. And someone was going back to the, was it the Bicentennial in 73?

The last one? 76. 76. 1976. Yeah, it ends in the year 76. It will always end in a six. Sorry, 76. I just meant to say the 70s. You're just kidding. The point being, the point being like. We feel like we're in this constant state of distress, and like we are in many ways, and it feels we're all divided, everyone's angry, we're arguing, unfulfilled, whatever. And someone went back to 76, and even people are bringing up, so these musicians canceled on the A250 thing.

First off, I've never heard of any of these people. I think maybe Vanilla Ice. First off, not great, and then they also find out, oh, it's going to be super Trump partisan, so we're like, no thanks. And now Trump, of course, is attacking them. And it just feels like kind of a whole bungled thing so far. This could have been an opportunity to not make it partisan, to have a huge party, make to celebrate America, and now Trump's just turning it into a rally, which I think is missing the point.

But the 76 Bicentennial was... During a time when the 70s, I think it was Carter, right? Carter was 76? Was it still? Yeah, Carter was 76. Well, I mean, 1976 was the election, so Carter was not yet elected. Jerry Ford was president.

Jerry Ford was president. We just were getting out of all the upheaval of the 60s, and we're starting to get problems with gas, Watergate, trust in institutions at all-time low, big-time bummer flop, and it probably felt very similar, I'd imagine, to how we probably feel. I think I made a video about that, actually, where the 70s worse. Yeah, people were bombing bathrooms. Throw that in the chat. Crazy. Yeah, throw that one in the chat. It's awesome. Also, I've been totally, after reading this book on the weather underground, I...

I think I just had read the stuff about Malcolm X, where they're like, well. So, maybe this is kind of going with this whole conversation. Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr., both super compelling figures, very influential, and complex in that they had some good elements and some bad elements. I'd say both of them. And it seems to be that Martin Luther King Jr. kind of canonized Saint, even though, you know, terrible personal life, connections with the Communist Party, you know, lots of problems.

But then Malcolm X now is kind of this new emerging, like, oh, we should have listened to him. He wanted black men to be self-respecting, to dress well, to be taken seriously, but of course, he was advocating for a true succession, and I'm going through a lot of his writing now with this Weather Underground book and the Radicals of the 70s. He was very comfortable with killing cops. I almost feel like he's getting too positive of a review now. The man wanted to kill cops.

He was not shy about it. Not good. He wanted people to kill cops all the time. That, of course, is complex because certain elements of like, well, it is good for Black people take accountability and to be self-respecting and to dress well and to become intellectually serious as he was, but the Nation of Islam was a violent, radical group, which, of course, their demise actually was because of their violent practices. They turned on each other and started killing each other, and it is like, well, that is the problem with sin and with killing is once you start, it becomes a – it reminds me a lot of my arguments of why we should not start wars in the Middle East is basically, well, when you become comfortable with that.

Look what you now become, and now, all of a sudden, you start evolving. You brought up a good point, though. I just want to, you know, like, you know, I mean, I was alive, but inside the womb during the centennial year, so I did not get to see it with my own eyes. I was born in February of 77. But... Everyone tells me that there were celebrations everywhere the whole year, not just Independence Day. But, you know, you saw America, you know, celebration 200th anniversary everywhere.

It was massive, and certainly as the summer, it got even bigger, but like, and some people are noting it. It's like, it's just, you know, Trump is, I think, doing his best to try, you know, and sometimes not his best, but he's at least trying to up the ante and celebrate a little bit more, and it feels like he's the only one that's really doing it. It's like, what's going on? Like, just to give an example. Coca-Cola, you know, people are circulating this online.

There's an ad that Coca-Cola did back in 1976 to celebrate America, and it just, it feels like it's a foreign country. Of course, the foreign country is the one. It was a different country. Demographically, it was a different country. Yeah, I mean, a lot more patriotic. I mean, I don't know. You tell me. Did you see it there?

Uncle Sam, dogs, balloons, pretty women, and not... Revolutionary war reenactors everywhere. High-corner hats, drums. I love it. Yeah, in Boston Harbor, they had a big celebration of the tall ships, and so they brought in all these tall ships in 76, and just draped the whole harbor in American flags, and they had all of the 18th and 19th century sailing vessels just filling the harbor, so you really got this visual of what it would have looked like during the time of the Revolution, and the pictures from that are inspiring.

Definitely none of that going on in Boston this year. Have not seen. I know, I feel like the old Ironsides is going to get out of there at some point. Yeah. I hate to make an obvious observation here, but you mentioned it was a different country. It literally was in terms of demographics. Most of the people here were white or some type of European immigrant and African American. There wasn't this mass expansion into immigration from all corners of the world. I mean, even if we just take at face value, low estimate, 15 to 20 million illegal immigrants came to the country between 2020 and 2024.

We also get mass amnesty in many different areas, TPS. Our seller was only 12 years old when that bicentennial year hit. And I'm not as extreme, I guess. I just think what would be best for the country to figure out who we are, to assimilate to a common goal, and have a vision forward, is to just completely shut off immigration functionally to close to zero, to everyone here to be a part of a project, or you can go back. Because all the arguments and fights we're having are people basically favoring their co-ethnics.

In different enclaves in the country, Indians, you know, Israel in this case, many cases, Arabs in terms of Muslims, you look at Dearborn, and like, we just have this all over the country now. Latin American immigrants, we see this all over the place, and again, none of the individuals in here I'm demonizing, but we can't have, how can we have these shared celebrations about cultural heroes that built a country we now occupy and we take part in building if we have people That don't know any of those people, have no intention of learning English or earning, assimilating, to therefore have a common celebration that we would all be excited and proud about.

It's we just, just purely on a demographic level, we don't have that anymore. And then you pair that with what we're talking about with Matt Walsh, the kind of demoralization of the American people, pretty obvious to anyone who attended a public school or have watched mainstream media over the past 10, 15, 20 years, we get this terrible malaise. Where we look around, we're like, I don't even know who's in my state, my country, let alone where we're going.

I think that is probably the key of why it doesn't feel right. I appreciate Josh, you're saying at least there's attempts, but you can't attempt to do something for people that don't share. We always say, what is it, culture before politics? This is the culture element that we all complain about missing, but it's because we're just kind of this salad of, we're not a soup, we're not a melting pot anymore. It's like we're a salad. We have different enclaves. Tom, we're a nation of ideas.

Oh, yes. Oh, yes. Everyone is just an American waiting to be an American. It doesn't matter where in the world they are, as long as they have the ideas. I love the way that Zeal for America 250 kind of took this on, and when we were reading through sort of the vision for the event. Now, there was so much emphasis on the place, how America is a place, and it's a people with a past. I go, you know, alliteration. I love a little alliteration.

It's like my favorite thing. But that there's this emphasis on the physicality. Dare I say, like the sacramentality of what binds people together, and I think that's what you're getting at, is that America has been seen as the land of opportunity, and so people have come here from all over to kind of get their own, right? To get a better life for themselves, to get a better life, and if that's the only driving idea, it's not going to stick, and it's going to end up tearing everyone apart, because they're not coming here to join in the American experiment.

They're coming here to... Take advantage of the fruits of that experiment that have made us the wealthiest nation in human history, and if that's the only thing, and I'm not saying, again, there are individuals who come here for a different reason, and there are people here for legitimate reasons of asylum, for religious freedom, etc., like that, but for the vast majority, it's for material benefit, and that is not going to bind anyone together in a meaningful way that would certainly make you celebrate, oh, all those old guys 250 years ago were like, Put this together.

They weren't even old at the time. They were, like, 30. The young guy is 250 years ago. It's a combo of that, I think, and then, for example, I think, like, Ivanka Trump is building some, like, complex in the Mediterranean, and they're going to move there and live there, like Peter Thiel's moving to Argentina.

We get, like, a lot of these billionaires that... They don't have the same attachment to the country, and they have the freedom of movement because of their wealth and power to just go wherever suits them. Well, they're global oligarchs. Exactly. That is, yeah. You're absolutely correct, and the frustration is, as an American, I have nowhere else to go. I'm not a dual citizen. I don't want to go anywhere else. I can't go to a richer country and go, and I don't want to.

I love my country. I know. I love my country, but I'm going to die here. Yes, yeah, no, it's not just a question of... Not wanting to go somewhere else. As Tom says, it's not having the ability, even if we wanted to. Yeah. No. We don't have a plan B. Like, this is where we live.

Yeah, then we're squeezed from top down of like, you get the global oligarchs that can kind of go to wherever suits their preferences, and then you have immigrants that are maximizing their opportunity to use America as a piggy bank to send back remittances and get a better situation than where they are. It's like the national policy of India, actually, is to send part of a caste that is not friendly with the current to the United States to make money to send back to India.

And I don't mean to just single out India here. There's plenty of different countries all over. I voted for him to bust it up, and that's why the frustration is there. I'm with you, brother. Okay, so Erika, more good news here, actually. CatholicVote kind of adjacent connections win. I saw this news. We titled this internally as great news from the people I saw. Pope Leo names EWTN president. EWTN news president as new prefect of Vatican Dicastery of Communication. Now, it's going to require a little legwork.

I'm not super familiar with Vatican bureaucracy, but I've seen a lot of people say this is great news, and that, what is this? Maria Montserrat Alvarado. Monse. Monse. Monse, again. To her friend. Yeah, Monse. Monse. Monse Zeng. So, why is this great news? Yeah, this is fantastic news. I think, first and foremost, Monse is Just the most, I think, incredibly capable woman. She obviously has lots of experience in communications, EWTN News, and can I just say, what a turnaround for EWTN News.

You might remember five years ago in 2021 on an airplane, Pope Francis compared EWTN to the work of the devil. I distinctly remember that. I mean, this is a little bit of a turnaround right to the top here. And so, yeah, what is the Dicastery? The Dicastery for Communication, Pope Francis. Let's put it together in 2015 to bring together all of the Holy Seas, the various communication entities. There were many. Some of them were carrier pigeons. Some of them were websites from 1991.

But to bring all of this together, you have Vatican News, Vatican Radio, L'Osservatore Romano, My Italian is Terrible, Vatican Media, Vatican Publishing, The Printing Press, all of these, and many more, all together into one Holy Sea press office. And the prefect oversees everything, so it's a mirror, if you will, of the EWTN network in all of their projects, but at the Vatican. The last person to hold the role was one Paolo Ruffini, who you might remember him as well. He was the guy who, at a press conference here, is best known for his defense of Father Mark Ruffinick, who he compared to Caravaggio as an artist with, you know, Dalliances and things like murder, sexual abuse of nuns.

This is just something artists do. So, that was Ruffini, who, again, was responsible for communicating Pope Francis' message to the world through all of these outlets, and chose to use that platform to defend Father Mark Rupnik. So, talk about an upgrade with Monsi here. Not only has she overseen EWTN News and all of the You know, wonderful masses that we know and love, and the voices there. But she, previous to that, worked for 14 years at Beckett Fund here in the United States.

So, talk about religious liberty, having her finger on the pulse of what's going on in the United States, and now internationally through EWTN. Ruffini was the first layperson to be named a prefect at the Vatican. She is the first female laywoman. Well, of course, all laywomen are female. What am I saying? She is the first woman who is a layperson to be appointed to that role. So, very exciting, and my first request is, can we please update the Vatican.va website?

For a start-up business. It is from 1992. I know they tried to update it, and can we stop doing, let's stop doing graphic novels of encyclicals. Did you guys see the graphic novel of the Magnificat Humanitas? It was pretty rough.

So, I'm excited for better communication from the Holy See and the Vatican. Wait, you're telling me that this isn't the most up-to-date website technology we have available? I'm not sure what's going on here, but maybe 2008, they might have. Redone it. I mean, you have to understand, they were stuck in the 90s up until about three years ago, when they upgraded until 2002. So, I mean, we're getting there. Which it is almost a little bit charming. It's kind of a good sign when I see, because it's like, you know what?

They're spending more time praying. They're spending more, hopefully. They're spending more time doing what is supposed to be done. That is an adorable take, Tom. Like, if I see bad websites, I'm like, the food's going to be fantastic here. Yeah.

My take. If they've survived with bad... Technology, the food is going to be incredible. Yeah, but this was an amazing appointment for Pope Leo to make. Just wonderful news. Absolutely. I mean, it reaffirms, again, sort of my thoughts that, you know, this idea that Pope Leo is obviously a far-left guy, just Francis 2.0. Like, no, between what, you know, a lot of, if you're watching what's going on here, and this is the first kind of major, whoa, the appointment of Monse here for this position is incredible.

She's a consummate professional. I had the chance to meet her before. She's just a wonderful woman. Couldn't be more happy for this appointment. She deserves it. Congratulations to her, and congratulations to EWTN for getting lashed out at, I think, obviously, extremely unfairly by Pope Francis. They took their licks, and they just kept going, and this is great to see. My recommendation would be just Give us some different pointers. In general, I like, as I said, I think in the LOOPcast before, I like it that we have a papacy that is transparent, that is open, that is not afraid to talk about the different issues of the day, but I think it just behooves you to not immediately try to respond.

I just don't like... Papal press conferences, period. Like, you know, take it in, take in the controversies. When they ask questions, just be nice, polite, wave, and then sit on it for about, you know, three days, and then go out there and give a speech to the people and mention it there. It gives you the opportunity to really be thoughtful.

Because otherwise, in trying to become transparent, you might inadvertently be going along with corporate media's narrative on how they want the story to go. I think it is just better for you to take control of your own communications, if you are the Pope.

Do it on your time, in your way. Well, the encyclical, I think, is great. I think it's fantastic. That's what I'm saying. Yeah, exactly. And do it in the speech that you gave today to educators. That's the way in which you want to talk about the issues, in your official communications. I think impromptu interviews on airplanes, thumbs down. I think coming out and meeting a group of reporters, I don't like it. I feel like the office of the papacy, the pope, should be a little bit more defined.

Regal. Have you ran this by Brian? Everyone always asks me if I talk to Brian about all this stuff. Everyone always asks, how's Brian? They never ask, how's Josh? Right. Are you getting a little tired of that? I feel like, you know. Josh, we care about you, too. We care about Josh. It's not just Brian. You're not defined by Brian, Josh. You're your own man. You got your own ideas. You got your own influence.

I can see how I did. Yeah, yeah. Well, I just, I wonder if this will, can we get a little movement on Mother Angelica's cause for canonization here? Yeah, I was going to say, shout out Mother Angelica, EWTN. I mean, talk about fruits, though. EWTN, our own Kelsey Reinhart, she did her time at EWTN, and now we have Monsey. Did her time, sounds like prison.

I mean. Well, she worked with Monsey, and, you know, they had, they both did, you know, fantastic job at trying to be able to communicate, you know, we have. We are trying to represent Catholics from all across the country, lots of different ideas and views. They are trying to deliver faithful Catholic news to people all over the world. I mean, editors from several different continents and stuff like that.

So, I think they have done, obviously, they have done a very good job. Love it. Word. Okay, Twilight Zone. Josh, you are up first. All right. Well, give me a second here. Josh Mercer's computer. We're getting a new one today, but... Josh Mercer's computer. Okay, so, speaking of all things... So, Ro Khanna is this, you know, tech congressman who's trying to be, like, a little populist or whatever, and he has a truly outside-the-box idea who Democrats should nominate for president in 2028.

Are you ready for this, guys? Okay. He thinks Democrats should nominate Poblio to run for president. I, what? Dude, do you think the founders would just be rolling around in their graves right now if they found out that Reagan was going to take over? You know who would be even more upset than the founding fathers? I don't know, like 90% of Democratic voters. You want to nominate somebody who's against abortion, against gay marriage, against pornography? Trans surgeries on kids, yeah.

You know, what? What? You know, I guess this, you know, again, this is where he's so happy that the Pope is against the war in Iran that he's willing to be kind of a little crazy. Josh, your girl Kamala, negative three on net favorables of public figures. Not great for your chances.

Wow, look. So, anyway, Twilight Zone. I mean, maybe he was just trying to, you know, do a little rage-baiting online, but that just, you know, of course, that makes me laugh. Of course, the Pope is technically eligible. He would have to renounce the office of the papacy to run. He's not going to do that, obviously. Yeah, that would be tough. Probably not a very hard decision. That would be a definite downgrade, yeah, obviously. Not a very hard decision for him, I don't think.

I also wanted to point out, you know, that was a little in good fun. But the editorial board of the newspaper, the Toronto Globe and Mail, just finally admitted that they totally screwed up by failing to scrutinize those false claims back in 2021 of unmarked graves that were, you know, confirmed. And so, this left-wing journalist was like, oh, you know, hey, got to give them credit for finally coming clean. It's like, no, no, dude, no.

Damage is, church has already been burned over this. Five years later, you know, ooh, good boy, you know. No, I mean, absolutely shameful behavior. Hundreds of churches were burnt to the ground. So many people who just want to go and worship their Lord were terrorized. People were scorned all throughout the entire country of Canada over an absolute farce, a total lie. It was obviously a lie.

But it fed into so much of this white guilt that people wanted to agree with it, and people who feel guilty about their country's origin, we have it in Canada just like in the United States, people feel guilty of their origin, feel guilty that they're white, and they have disembarked themselves from the faith of their fathers because they want to embrace the sexual revolution, so they use this as an opportunity to go, oh my gosh, I'm so much morally superior than my great-grandparents.

You are absolutely reprehensible behavior by the media in Canada, and it was unfortunate that Pope Francis bought into this garbage, too. Again, obvious scrutiny. I mean, hello? Like, what? What are you talking about? No. And it just shows, like, what a fever pitch.

Everything was in the country, 2020, 2021, just a high tide of just garbage. COVID, I don't know if it was just that so many people are crazy because they're cramped up in their houses, but the kind of junk that just passes normal, reprehensible, bad stuff, all because of what, St. George Floyd and all this other stuff. That's a joke, by the way. You're Belinda. Give me a break.

There is a tweet from the Rays in 2020. It is like, now is a good day. Yeah, Breonna Taylor. It is opening day. What were we on, bro? It is opening day. This is 2020. It is opening day, and it is another day to prosecute the guys who went after Breonna Taylor. You are like, what are you doing? That was so crazy. Where are we? Like, was everyone sniffing glue? Like, what is going on? I think so. Yeah. People were doing a lot of jokes.

That was a bad day to have given up sniffing glue. Okay, Erika. Yeah, mine's pretty serious, too. Also international, but touches us at home here. So, the story is just exploding over in the UK. The actual event happened back in December, but police camera footage was released just this week. So, in December, an 18-year-old British boy named Henry Nowak was walking home from a pub, and he walked through a Sikh neighborhood, and he was brutally stabbed by an older man, a 23-year-old Vikram Digwa, who was a Sikh.

And when he was mortally wounded, he was stabbed five times by this. Man who is carrying a ceremonial Sikh knife, and the footage is absolutely, I mean, it is so disturbing, but first we had footage from his own phone, which showed him walking along the street, kind of singing to himself. You see this man come into the video frame, and then you see him again walking away. Novak's clearly trying to record the incident. And you see the knife. So, just a note, carrying knives is now illegal in England because of the rash of stabbings they have had since opening the floodgates of illegal immigrants to just come in on these, or immigrants to come on to the country.

So, only Sikhs are allowed to carry these knives, to carry knives now, because it's part of their religion. So, they get an exemption. Yeah, they're called DEI blades by Nigel Farage. That's insane. Yeah. That is insane. So, he's stabbed by this guy. The Hampshire, then you get into this footage from the police. The police arrive, and Digwa goes up to them before they even get to the boy, Henry, who's lying on the ground, writhing. And he goes up to them, and he says that he called me a Pak, like a Pakistani.

He's a racist, and you can see that Digwa's turban's kind of askew, and he's like, yeah, he tried to grab my turban off. His brother comes out of the house, his mother comes out of the house, and they're saying that this man on the ground, Henry, he did a racist attack on us. So, the officers go over, and they hold him down, and they start cuffing him. He's bleeding out on the pavement, and he's saying, I've been stabbed, I can't breathe.

So, nine times he says, I can't breathe. Does that sound familiar to anyone who lived through 2020? He says, I've been stabbed four times, and the officer leans over and says, don't think you have, mate. He's kind of mocking him. They drag him up, the blood's coming everywhere, and meanwhile, everyone else is standing around saying, he said racist things to us. The mother took the blade and hid it in the house, and the brother was saying, you know, my brother, he's like, he hit me in the eye.

And to me, it's obviously tragic. They read him his rights, and then he dies right there in the ground in front. The last thing he hears is his rights being read to him. The young man, Digwa, he has been sentenced to a minimum 21 years in prison, possible lifetime, but he could be out by the time he's 40-something, 44.

But I did some digging into this, because obviously, the conversation now in England is, there's this two-tiered policing system, and white people are saying that they are subjected to levels of policing that are not applied to immigrants or people with brown skin. Shocker. Shocker. Well, they can't carry knives.

These people can? What? That's the craziest thing I've ever heard. I mean, and you also have the whole stories of the rape gangs going on there as well, so there's this massive outpouring of anger from white Britons right now. Nigel Farage, of course, of the Conservative Party, he's coming out and saying, this is why we need to get rid of labor, so it's this massive political upheaval. But I looked into a little bit about the police training there, because we had this after George...

George Floyd, this anti-racism training that went through all of the police, and the National Police Chiefs Council has said, they said yesterday, that it's going to re-examine and review the language that they use in their anti-racism commitment document called the Police Anti-Racism Commitment, which sets out these broad aims, and it's part of police training. It instructs them to be transparent about their police action and make sure that everyone in policing feels confident. Challenging racism. Now, the document says that they are committed to achieving equality of policing outcomes.

That means that you're not going to treat everyone the same, and you're not going to be colorblind. Because we need equality of outcomes with our policing, quote, producing equality of policing outcomes for people from different ethnic groups by responding to individuals and communities according to their specific needs, circumstances, and experiences, with understanding that these will be racialized and with the aim of reducing harm. So, basically, the police in Britain are told, you will racialize this because you're mostly white. And so, what we're going to do is treat different ethnic groups differently under the law so that we can have equality of outcome.

So, they are actually instructed to do this. We have a police race action plan, which was announced in 2020, published in 2022, and it said that it was following policing's difficult history in its relationship with Black communities, specifically citing the murder of George Floyd, which was an American incident.

And ever since then, British police have been absolutely terrorized, that if they sidestep, if they do anything wrong, the greatest crime in Britain is racism. And if someone shouts racism, that's what you need to prosecute police and arrest, not the person who's bleeding out on the ground, dying.

So, it's just this absolute madness and the deadly anti-racist movement in the police there in Britain. It wasn't even where George Floyd happened. That's crazy. It is. It's a crazy, crazy story, and yeah. This is what happens when you allow people to say, oh, you're racist, and then you just fold and do whatever they want. It's like, no, you got to start saying, I don't care. I think a white boy should be able to walk through any neighborhood in London without being stabbed to death.

Hello? Right. Or we get medical attention to the person who's dying on the ground rather than handcuff them so we can then prosecute the racism, right? Like, these police were so blinded to what was going on in front of their very eyes that this boy just died on the ground. So, we have so much in the Western civilization, we have so much self-loathing that, you know, we persecute and prosecute the white majority instead of, you know, like, wait, what? Like, in this case, it's the...

Like, again, and they're still saying that the victim here is the guy who stabbed, you know, like, give me a break. I mean, yeah, they're going to prosecute him, but like... Well, watching the British Parliament debate yesterday, and I love to watch a good Parliament debate, because, I mean, they just go at it, but the Labour Party, so the more liberal side, the leftist side, they're saying things like, well, this was a terrible tragedy, but we mustn't blame ethnic minorities. We mustn't blame the family.

We mustn't... And you're like, maybe we should just prosecute crime. Like, everyone has the same... Actually, blame the family. The family, in this case, was coming to the rescue of someone. I'm sorry. Like, if one of my children just outright murdered somebody, I'm like, no, I'm sorry. I mean, family bonds are thick, but you don't get to murder people in cold blood. No, uh-uh. Sorry. It's not like a parking ticket I looked the other way. I'm sorry. Speaking of accusations of discriminating against a group of ethnic people trumping over legitimate arguments, I go to Mark Levin and Thomas Massey.

I'm coming with the heat on My Twilight Zone. We got our own version of that. It's called anti-Semitism. It's outrageous that it's leveled against people with legitimate criticisms of a foreign nation, but My Twilight Zone, truly, I mean, truly, Hall of Fame. What's going on? Hall of Fame, Mark Levin tweet here, and again, I don't want to deal in personalities, but Trump is saying go watch his show. He often tweets them out, so this is like a part of, you know, his inner circle, I guess.

So, it starts off pretty good, okay? We will soon celebrate the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, the declaration, in essence, a declaration of war against the most power. Power military force on Earth, the British Empire. The colonists knew that Britain would not tolerate such a declaration of independence, so war was certain to follow. The truth is the war had already begun, but the declaration committed the colonies to join forces and unite against Britain, and every patriot who supported independence literally put their lives and property on the line.

They did this despite the fact that they were the clear underdogs in the war, and nothing short of a miracle would result in the revolutionaries. Winning the war, every delegate who signed that document had signed their own death warrant. Signed so far. Signed so far after a great start. On board.

Okay, now let's get to the next part. Let us remember this when we listen to the debates about whether or not we should defeat the Iranian regime. All the arguments and even excuses against it, despite 47 years of killing and maiming thousands of our fellow countrymen, 47 years of lies and deceit, decades of developing nuclear and missile technology to obliterate our nation, and a far more dangerous and yet diabolical ideological agenda than that of the British monarchy, yet George Washington and the brave founders of our country personally risked everything, ultimately the British forces surrendered, The Iranian regime will never surrender, and they will never abide by a deal any more than they would have abided by a ceasefire.

I am mindful that only some 35% of the colonists supported war with Britain. My view may be similarly be a minority today. I hope not, but if it is, so be it. Okay, you know the saying, all analogies limp? This one is like a quadriplegic. I just, this is...

Oh, man. I mean, I'm not a PC guy, but, you know. Let's just focus on deporting Mark Lillard. It's the second hour. Yeah, so George Washington, I believe famous for saying, I want to avoid foreign entanglements for how it would. He was pretty strategic in how he dealt with the French, who were coming in to help us defeat the British, because he didn't want to owe them things afterwards and saw the problems with that. Pretty clear in the founding about that.

Somehow would have been in favor of defeating the Iranian regime. Now, ironically, if you were to apply this properly, it would be the Iranians. The Iranians originally were frustrated because British Petroleum and the British Empire ran their country, and they overthrew them, in which the United States... We worked with the Brits on that, with the Shah. And we did, and the Iranians overthrew them, they wanted their own national sovereignty, and then we overthrew the Iranian regime at the time, and implanted a Western Shah, almost like the British were punishing the colonists for trying to do their own thing, and then we overthrew that.

So, that would be a more properly applied analogy. I think... When applying this to our nation's 250th birthday and going back to the founding, I would, out of reverence sake, probably avoid trying to prosecute this unpopular award. It's just like the brain mental gymnastics I thought were quite spectacular there. Yeah, no. Neocon Hall of Fame. That being said, speaking of our own accusations of racism, I was accused of all kinds of things after pointing out massive AIPAC spending.

In the Thomas Massey race. And so, the Republican-Jewish coalition comes together, and they had this to say about that race in Kentucky, for anyone curious. Now, if I would have said this, I think I would have been accused of anti-Semitism, but here we go. Over the past few months, the RJC spent more than $5 million to defeat Thomas Massey.

And let me say very clearly tonight, it was a fight worth having, and a victory worth celebrating. When someone repeatedly undermines support for Israel, traffics in isolationism, at a moment of global danger, and refuses to stand with the Jewish state when it matters most, there has to be consequences.

Did anyone catch that? Was this the people of Kentucky that he was talking about that voted him out, or was it a congressman that didn't have adequate support for a foreign nation, will be targeted by the RJC, taken out, have their seat bought by millions of dollars, $5 million in this case, but also from people like Miriam Adelson, whatever. And Thomas Massey is just kind of on a, you know, end of term, like, just going after it, he said. Matt Brooks bragging the Republican-Jewish coalition spent millions to buy a congressional seat in Kentucky, but if you observe the same thing, you're anti-Semitic.

He actually is introducing a bill to stop selling offensive weapons to Israel because a lot of them were used in Gaza. They're now being used online, which is undermining the ceasefire and also massively unpopular with the American people.

So, listen, we had that long conversation about Britain. I would just like to point out, maybe not the same one, but we clearly are having an ideological rift over accusations of racism, over legitimate criticisms. In this case, just saying, hey, I don't want our foreign aid to go to anyone, not just Israel, but then you're going to get attacked by people that will call you anti-Semitic for suggesting it, and then after they defeat you, they'll brag about it and say it was about Israel.

Sorry to be a bummer. That was a bummer, Twilight Zone. That was a bummer, Twilight Zone, but... You almost forget about that issue. You almost never talk about it. Exactly. Yeah. We almost never bring this up. I know Nick from Detroit is thrilled about that one. We just disagree, brother. We just disagree. Both two Detroiters are old Detroiters. Okay, and then... So, we got a good show, gang. We are going to be doing Daily Prayer for America 250 here. Again, you want to join us.

That is coming up here in a couple of weeks. It is going to be awesome. Join the live stream. But yeah, we are going to end today in prayer. In the name of the Father, Son, Holy Spirit. Amen.

Oh, sacred heart of Jesus, king of heaven and earth, I place today my nation, the United States of America, into your heart, pierced for love of us, on the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. I acknowledge that true liberty is your gift, and that our lasting homeland is the eternal kingdom of God. Under the mantle of Our Lady of Guadalupe, patroness of the Americas, and through the intercession of her Immaculate Heart, bless my homeland anew, purify her from sin, and guide her leaders in truth, justice, and peace.

So that she may safeguard all human life, respect the integrity of marriage and the family, and honor the practice of religion. Reign in my home and in my nation, draw every heart into communion with you, that your truth, love, justice, mercy, and peace may triumph in America and throughout the world. Amen. St. Thomas More at St. Fidelis, our Lady of Guadalupe, pray for us. Amen. Good show, gang. We will catch you guys.

On the next one. Erika's got an episode of The Deep coming for you tomorrow. We'll resolve her tech issues. We'll get back after it. Oh, my goodness. And, yeah, we'll catch you guys later. Peace.