Trump Demands "Unconditional Surrender," Oil Spikes, And Off-Ramp? Noem OUT at DHS, And Q&A

I'm live. Welcome back to the LOOPcast. It's Tom, Erika, and Josh. Welcome back. Brought to you by Zeal, of course. Happy to see many of you here live in the chat on Wednesday morning. We have tons of news to go over. The probe going on Wednesday, we got a week full of news to go over and looking ahead here. So, a couple things we're going to be hitting today. We have updates on the Iran war. We have lots of signaling from the president.

You hear the word unconditional surrender coming from True Social. We are now in... Week two? Would this be week two of what is war, or maybe not war, depending on who you ask, from the Department of War? But yes, we're going to do some sober analysis, maybe have some debate, but obviously the most important thing going on in the country right now and globally. Second thing, we have a big switch up at DHS. Interesting, I was seeing some Axios reporting on a change in language, but the biggest change would be the change at the top.

Kristi Noem is no longer the head of DHS. I don't know if you want to call it fired. I don't know if you want to call it... I promoted to the Shield of the Americas. She was shifted, and we now have Mark Wayne Mullen. So I have some information you should know about Mark Wayne. As a kid in the ships, I wish to get that treatment.

Wishful thinking, Josh. Wishful thinking. So I have the details on that move, why that happened, what shifts we're seeing in tone from the president, and in those backdoor meetings. And then also, we have Q&A, as we have promised here.

Some Q&A. We have good news. We have Twilight Zone. It's going to be a great show, but before we get to it, we have our sponsor, Charity Mobile. Shout out to Charity Mobile. Now, more than ever, of course, it's important to do business with companies. We stand with you and your beliefs. Charity Mobile is a pro-life phone company that serves pro-life customers and supports pro-life, pro-family causes. They send 5% of their monthly plan price to your favorite charity, and they have sent millions of dollars to charities over the past 30 years.

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To get started, visit charitymobile.com and use promo code LOOPcast. That's charitymobile.com. Promo code LOOPcast. Thank you, Charity Mobile, for sponsoring today's episode. Eric and Josh, happy to be with you guys on this Wednesday. Erika, if you would like to get into it, what are we looking at right now? Updates on the Iran war.

Right, so we'll start with Trump's unconditional surrender remark, which we got Friday. Everyone's wondering what's the off-ramp here. And he sort of upped the rhetorical ante, I think, with this Truth Social post, which you can pull up there, Tom. Sure.

I just have to do a shout-out, though, first, to our Zeal News team. You guys have been killing it with updates on the war. They're clear. They're concise. If you want to go deeper, they give you links to other sources, but shout-out to the Zeal News team. Just really love you guys. So, on Friday, we got this Truth Social post from President Trump.

Typical Trump. Here we go. There will be no deal with Iran except, all caps, unconditional surrender after that and the selection of a great and acceptable leader as we and many of our wonderful and very brave allies and partners will work tirelessly to bring Iran back from the brink of destruction, making it economically bigger, better, and stronger than ever before. All caps, Iran will have a great future. Make Iran great again. MIGA, or MIGA.

Thank you for your attention to this matter, President Donald J. Trump. And as Pete Hegseth indicated yesterday morning at his briefing with the press, that sort of rhetoric was backed up with U.S. action over the weekend. We had an intensification of strikes over the last few days. He said at the briefing that yesterday was yet again the most intense day, so I think that that's meaning that we keep. Doing more strikes? In Iran, he said, with, quote, the most fighters, the most bombers, the most strikes, intelligence more refined and better than ever.

General Dan Raisenkane, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said that the U.S. has so far, as of yesterday, struck over 5,000 targets. Iranian ballistic missile attacks are down 90 percent. And one-way attack drones from Iran are down 83%. That's just on day 11 of this war.

I mean, those kinds of numbers, just from a military technical point of view, the United States just continues to dominate. So, if one of the goals here is to just demonstrate to the world and to our adversaries, perhaps Russia and China, that you don't mess with the United States, mission being accomplished in that. So… The Iranians have some response. In response to Trump's warnings that Iran not block the Strait of Hormuz, which has been sort of the effective status quo since this began, Ali Larajani, who's the head, who's the only surviving leader at the Supreme National Security Council of Iran, put out an ex-post saying that Trump should, quote, watch out for yourself lest you be eliminated.

So, not exactly like a negotiating stance coming from the remaining Iranians. They also elected a new supreme leader, the mullahs, the son of Ayatollah Khomeini. It is a name you have heard before. Yeah, the son of the guy, son of a gun. I just pulled their announcement, so it is straight from the horse's mouth. In accordance with its religious duty and belief in the presence before the Almighty Lord in today's extraordinary session, they appoint and introduce Ayatollah Sayyed Mojtaba Hassani Ramehi.

Ramehi? Good job. How's my Iranian? Thank you. I'm practically Persian in every way. May God protect him as the third leader of the sacred system of the Islamic Republic of Iran. So, he has not yet been seen in public. Reports are he lost his leg in one of the bombings.

This was the Iranian regime saying, more of the same, certainly not, okay, Americans, why don't you help us select someone you approve of? Well, I guess, why should they? Exactly. This doesn't surprise me at all. This was like the theory that this would just harden them further, I think makes sense. If you look at the Persian people, they've been fooled in negotiations, attacked during them, and then...

Now being told unconditional surrender, which means docile to America and all of their enemies, so it doesn't surprise me at all. Hey, by the way, I'd like to go on the record in favor of conditional. Surrender. This idea that we should always have unconditional surrender that bore from Ulysses S. Grant in the Civil War and carried on through World War II and everywhere. It's like, hey, we're the big dog. Actually, you know what? If I can get you to surrender, I'll give you some conditions.

I'd rather you surrender sooner. Let's negotiate. I don't understand that. I've never really been a fan of that. Yeah, it might be macho tough talk or negotiation tactic, I guess, but... Well, half the time, we end up giving conditions anyway, you know, and we pretend like... As you should, because, I mean, what's the alternative? Of course you should. Yeah, as you should. Yes. Yeah, I guess the... You want the surrender of the guy. That is a very good thing.

Trump was saying in a press conference today, he's like, oh, yeah, I attacked Iran because my son, Jared Kushner, told me, my son-in-law told me that they were going to attack us, and that seems to be what he's going off of, because intelligence didn't say so. The way that they've handled these negotiations, unfortunately, lead me to believe that the Persians are just further entrenched here, and why would you listen to America or the West at this point when they're saying, okay, yeah, maybe we want some conditions, but we kind of need to know if those negotiations were a sham or not.

I guess we don't. There's a lot that we don't know, but if we keep luring them in and then striking them, be like, well, I'm not going to negotiate with you. I wonder if at this point, like a third party. Mediator is necessary to try to reach a solution that doesn't end in nuclear war. Because really, what happened in Japan was unconditional surrender. You dropped two nuclear bombs, and now they're completely docile to the West. They had no defense. And just as a nation, I don't know why you would accept that.

America, I don't think we would accept that, getting rid of all of our weaponry and allowing someone else to run us. So, I guess it's hard to look at this situation and see. We talk about this off-ramp, right? Like, Erika, you're saying on the show, like, where's the off-ramp? Where's the off-ramp? It is kind of getting harder and harder to see that, so maybe there is stuff going on behind the scenes that I am not privy to. Well, no off-ramp other than the total destruction of the current regime, and then the utter devastation that Trump is talking about.

I mean, he talks about lots of different things, though. Yeah. That is the thing. He will have... Hasn't he already had like six or seven positions on this war already? So, like what he had said on Monday was like, hey, maybe this won't last that long. Maybe we're almost done.

You know, the markets, you know, rebounded, and they're like, oh, that'd be great, because it's Sunday night, the price of, you know, the oil on the Asian markets was, you know, shooting up to like $120 a barrel, and, you know, the Dow was expected to drop 1,000 points, and then he gets out there on Monday and goes, ah, maybe it won't take that long, actually, and we're almost kind of done, and then the markets absolutely, totally 180 rebounded. Right. Well, it has happened twice now.

So, that happened over the weekend. It happened on Monday, and then again, when the prices started to creep back up, the energy secretary gets out there, and he is like, oh, we protected two ships. We got two ships through the strait. Within two hours after he made that statement, the prices dropped again by like $30 a barrel, and then they skyrocket back up when the White House took down that post. So, it is like… The volatility of the markets right now, I don't know if you can pull it.

It is a little further down. I think the White House didn't want to announce that they were going to escort every ship through. What is going on is the ships are turning off their transponders as they get across the... The straight. Is it the Politico article, Erika?

No, I have this beautiful volatility chart from the Cabasey letter. It's way, way, way down. We'll get there. We'll get there. I got it. I can show it. All right, sweet. Yeah, it's just like crazy to watch this. I hope it's the right one. Yeah, let me see. I think I got it. Up and down. But just again, like the price of oil is responding almost by the minute to different rumors. To actual statements from the United States and from Iran, from China.

It's just, it's really wild to watch. The other thing with the Strait of Hormuz, just to back it up a little bit, too. Really interesting. So, of course, this is the Strait of Hormuz. It's like, I think at its smallest distance, it's just 21 miles across. And the Iranian military, it's basically its last remaining asset with which it can wage wars to threaten to just shut the Strait down.

And it's really the only thing of consequence that they seem to have left. So, on March 2nd, just to give sort of the story here, on March 2nd, this senior IGRC guy, he declares that the strait is completely closed to all shipping except with allies, which would be Russia and China. That announcement came the same day the United States confirmed it destroyed all 11 Iranian warships in the Gulf of Oman. And then that pattern continued. Iran announced another move on the Strait of Hormuz.

They're going to send in drones. The United States and Israel, they respond by eliminating their drone capacity in the region. Then they tried to mine the Strait yesterday, and the United States sank 16 mine-laying vessels that were moving into position to do that. And so, it's this crazy back and forth over the Strait of Hormuz.

Interesting story. I was listening to a podcast about shipping and maritime insurance policies. I mean, yeah, the rabbit holes that the war brings up. Let's get into it. Terrible. Okay. Lloyds of London. So, Lloyds of London. Josh, do you know the history of Lloyds of London? I do. Yeah. Do you want me to tell it, or do you want to tell it? No, you go ahead. Okay, okay. So... Back in the days of the three-masted ships, right? Britain is starting to be the empire.

There is this coffee shop, which probably was more like a tea shop because it is England, but they have this coffee shop in London called Lloyd's of London, and the ship owners would go there and start chatting about like, oh, I lost this ship, or I am worried about this, or I have these ships going out, and they start like backing each other, right? They start offering each other insurance on, okay, if your ships make it back, you pay me this.

If they don't make it back, I cover you, right? And that's how Lloyds of London, at the beginning of the British Empire, they become, they have almost a monopoly on maritime insurance at this point. Because they're so good at it. They're so good at it, and very, very wealthy at this point. So, the insurance premiums from Lloyds of London just skyrocket when we go into Iran because of the Strait of Hormuz. And, yeah, in fact, we saw three ships were struck by Iran in the last few days.

Pictures are terrible. It's really scary. The Trump administration decided to offer a challenge or perhaps an alternative to Lloyd's of London. The step ahead of it was that Lloyd's said they're not going to cover any ships going through the Straits. Yeah, so America's like, why don't we start our own? And so they launched a $20 billion maritime reinsurance program on Friday.

To stabilize shipping. And so, it's just funny that the global reshifting of maritime insurance... They pay for that? So, is that just $20 billion out of our pocket taxpayers to go cover that? Yeah, but we get a cut if the ships make it, man. Okay, so they do pay. They would pay part in that program. That's the idea, right? Yeah. Interesting. Very interesting. That would be a massive, like, hundreds of years of British dominance in the market just gone.

Anyway, that was my little digression. If you want to get briefly into the casualties at this point, I almost feel like last show. I said that I would mention, but I don't think that I did enough justice. One of the concerns, of course. For Americans, it is casualties. Well, just to give it clear, real quick, though, like Lloyd's in London reiterates that it is now open for business. That is hitting the wires a few hours ago, so I think they are trying to get back into it.

Okay. Yeah, so based on the willingness to start this war, and the tolerance for American casualties, I think was basically zero, and that was across the board. So, at this point, what are we looking at? At this point, we're not. Pretty much. Low single digits. Very low. Yes, Josh.

I looked at the polling. Yes, it was. Or would you be willing to go with zero? I mean, zero is just not true. All right, let's split hairs over that, I guess. Come on. Are you serious? Yes, I will. All right, low single digits.

The polling was whether or not it is worth going to war if we lose American soldiers, American casualties. It was in the low single digits. Great. Not zero. Thank you. Go ahead, Erika. Yeah, so we can go into the polling as well, but before that, over the weekend, we did have our seventh fatality. The seventh U.S. service member, 26-year-old Sergeant Benjamin Pennington of Kentucky, may he rest in peace, died from his injuries in the same attack that gave us the other six casualties who we mentioned last week of the war so far.

We also have about 180 Americans have been wounded as a result of Iranian retaliatory attacks, eight of them gravely. So, a lot of them have surface wounds, you know, cuts, scrapes, bruises, but eight of them are in grave condition. So, that's where we stand right now. To your point, Tom, the New York Times came out with this interesting poll just late last night, early this morning.

Comparing the past US conflicts and American support for US military invention. And if you pull up that, it's fascinating. The Iran War, so this particular conflict, is the lowest since World War II in terms of American approval on the first day of the conflict. So, World War II, obviously, 97%. We've just been hit by Pearl Harbor. No surprise there. The Afghan War, 92%. Again, no big surprise. We've just been hit at 9-11. We spent a year sort of adjudicating how we would respond, American people, all behind the Afghan war, the Gulf War, which that was like one of my first memories is that particular war, 82%, and all the way up.

Even Libya, with Obama, scored higher in the approval polling than this war. So, Libya got 47% under Obama, and Trump is looking at 41% public approval. On the first days of the conflict. So, real uphill battle here. Of course, if you drill down and it's like MAGA voters owner, only you get higher support, Dems much less. Yes, Josh. Well, and I'm not of that 41%. I don't support this. So, that was the only point I was trying to make about when you say near zero.

I mean, obviously, at the beginning of this conflict, there was at least 41% of Americans like, well, they just have a sort of, I would say, a default setting of supporting military action when the president calls for it. You can say that's a good idea or not, but that's just kind of where Americans are. That number will probably... Things start to dip if the number of fatalities goes up, and as the weeks drag on. If it drags on. Yeah, and I have had to reconcile my own position with this, because there was that, Ross did that interview with Kurt Mills, the head of the American Conservative.

They inherited Pat Buchanan's organization, and he also was pressing Kurt on this, of You say that people don't support this, but there's polling showing that 80% of Republicans supported this action, and that the anti-war stance, they like to smear it as isolationist, you know, whenever you don't support something, is actually still fairly popular in the right. And I've had some conversations after that episode we did last week. I'm like, I just...

I think that I'm realizing that I didn't have the same memories of Iran that someone that maybe is 50-plus would have because they watched Beirut, they watched the embassy, they see Iran as this global villain, always been a global villain, in a particularly dishonorable way. And my, you know, political consciousness, I came to thinking about politics more after failed Middle Eastern theater, you know, one, two, three, four, five, six. And so, I see that through the lens of, this has all the same conditions of, in my opinion, those failed Middle Eastern theaters that have made us poorer, not safer, has not made the world more stable, and so I think that's why I had such a strong, you know, I think this is a really big mistake, just going to war again in the Middle East.

And then, especially with the sovereignty question with Israel really frustrated me. Marco Rubio coming out and saying, we did this because Israel is going to strike, is not an acceptable answer for me in terms of American sovereignty. But... I think that I do now understand the perspective of maybe a more legacy Republican voter that had a different experience with Iran. It was just never really on my consciousness ever to think of Iran as kind of a villain. So, I think I just have sincere disagreements there, but it is interesting to see- Yeah, you have to remember, in the 1980s, it was a beautiful time.

We had Iran and Iraq fighting each other. Yeah, right, and yeah, exactly. Let them fight. Yeah, exactly. We've kind of entered the fray. Right. We have entered the fray at this point. I think also frustrating, too, I just know many of those people that have already died are National Guardsmen from the Midwest, and I see the most strident War with Iran people, Lindsey Graham, Ted Cruz, etc., they are not sending their sons to war. The D.C. elite class are not sending their sons to war.

It is my friends. These are my people from the Midwest that are, unfortunately, in harm's way. I think that really frustrates me, but I think I'm coming to terms with the fact that I'm a bit more out of step of maybe a traditional Republican voter, and I'm trying to think about ways to get my perspective across to help understand, and on behalf of, you know, who we're talking about. I think we have this underreported story here, Erika, about Lebanon at this point.

You know, really heartbreaking to see that a Catholic priest just died in these strikes, and someone that we know internally, our producer actually knows. And so, kind of confused about that at this point. Why are we seeing double-tap attacks? Why are we seeing white phosphorus in the air in Lebanon, which seems unrelated? I know Hezbollah has started strikes there, but of course, set off by the fact that we hit Iran. So, Zeal did a good job, if you want to get into that, Erika.

Yeah, you know that maybe Israel is overstepping the bounds of our expectations. When Lindsey Graham gets on talk shows over the weekend and says, you know, Israel's great, but We need a little bit of, you know, step back. I forget his exact words, but he was basically saying that Israel needs to get back in line with the United States. Wait, Lindsey Graham was telling... Israel to take a beat and slow the roll and be less hawkish? When was that? No, he just said that.

Direct quote, I'm with Israel. I will be with Israel until our dying day. That was going to be my try. All right, I got to go find the quote, but it was on the talk shows over the weekend. Here we go. Go ahead, go ahead. I don't believe.

Forget it. I'm not with you. I'm with Israel. I will be with Israel to our dying day. They're the best ally we could hope for. So, we have a commander-in-chief in President Trump, who I think is Ronald Reagan plus, plus, plus. I just don't think it's acceptable for an American senator to ever say that. You know why? It's funny, though. Greatest ally. Some people would say someone like Canada would be our greatest ally, and why would we offend Canada by saying we should make it its 51st state?

Well, you know why we would never? Make Israel, Israel would never want to be our 51st state? Yeah, I know. Because they already have more than two senators. Oh, Josh, thank you for that. This is the best show ever. You get a little, like, dad joke in the middle. Oh, gosh, thank you for that. You did that, man. You did that. Yeah, but let's get back up to Lebanon. So, basically, since the start of the war, Israel has been carrying out these strikes on Hezbollah, which is one of the proxy terrorist organizations backed by the Iranian regime in southern Lebanon, specifically in Beirut's Beirut's southern suburbs and the Bekaa Valley.

So, the conflict has triggered widespread displacement. The UN reports that now it's over 700,000 people across Lebanon have been forced from their homes. Over 300 have now been killed. One of them, a Maronite Catholic priest, Father Pierre al-Rahi. He was killed when an Israeli tank shell struck a home in the Christian-majority village of Kalaya, hopefully I'm pronouncing that right, Selim, located a few miles from the Israeli border.

So, Hezbollah, the report that we're getting from people who know people on the ground, Hezbollah had reportedly entered and occupied abandoned homes in this village, which is what they do when, you know, people are displaced in Lebanon. The Lebanese army apparently just isn't a thing. They don't participate in this. Not sure what's going on there, but They occupied these abandoned homes, and that drew Israeli fire into the village. Father al-Rahi had reportedly gone to one of these homes to try and figure out what was going on and evict the terrorists when the strike occurred.

And like you said, Tom, from what we're hearing on the ground, it was that double tap. There was a strike. Father went in to see what was happening. Israelis struck again, and that's when he was killed. Many prayers for the people of Lebanon. Of course, our Holy Father was just there a few months ago. So was our producer, by the way. I know. So she was there, and you can give your two cents, Celine, and then I can read it out, but she just said the energy.

I remember watching some of the videos from there was off the charts. I mean, hurt your ears, decibel levels. People were so excited to have the Holy Father there, and the Holy Father, of course, is weighed in on this, of course. Advocating for peace, and someone in the chat is talking about this too. It's almost hard for the American mind to wrap.

Your mind around what's going on in Lebanon, or if you just, your homeland was in a war zone at all times. And so, it's easy for us to sit here and go through statistics and talk about strategy and be cold-blooded because there's no, you know, missiles flying over my home in Indiana.

But for the Lebanese, the reality is, for the Lebanese Christians, is they have just lived in constant warfare for years and years and years and years. And the reality is, it's also not so simple. Like, they don't like Hezbollah. They also don't like the Israeli aggression. That is, you know, killing Marianite priests, but the reality is, it's almost hard, because you want to just latch onto a side, right? Like, one side's good, one side's bad, but of course, the reality of war is, we're seeing all of these casualties happen in places like Lebanon that weren't even really involved in the first place, and of course, the people that die are civilians.

And even the case that I'd like to bring up, too, and I actually had it in my good news, because I really liked Senator Kennedy's take on this. There's reports coming out, and again, we all want to litigate this, and we want to get it right, but that... An Iranian girl's school, elementary girl's school, was hit by a Tomahawk missile, and there was only young girls there, and I think they might have been young girls of the generals or whatever else, but I think it killed almost 200 kids, and basically, I would hope.

That no American would ever make that decision on purpose. No American that has a button. You know, I've done some research into this. There's many layers of approval that go into targeteers, and so I just, I don't think so. But again, I guess I can't know. But, it is important to the American people, for legitimacy's sake, for morality's sake, to be up front with the American people about what actually happened there. If it was a mistake, come out and say it was a mistake, apologize for it, because if you delve into that territory where you're just, I'm not going to apologize for anything no matter how atrocious it is, what does that do to the soul of the nation?

What does that do to recruiting efforts? What does that do to war support? What does that do to, yeah, just the personal soul of people involved? And I actually really appreciate it, and maybe I'll play this a little bit early. It's my good news. Senator Kennedy spoke on it. There's reporters pushing Trump on it, and he actually backed down. I think he blamed Iran at first, but there now is footage out there showing that it was a Tomahawk missile. So anyway, again, I don't want to be too hard on anyone right now.

It's just a truly tragic human event, regardless of where you are. So I'll play Senator Kennedy one on CNN. You actually talked to NBC News last night about that strike on the girls' school, and you said it was terrible, we made a mistake, I'm just so sorry that it happened. Why did you feel like it was important to say that? Because I think it's the truth. I mean, we're investigating, but I'm not going to hide behind that.

I think it was a terrible, terrible mistake. The investigation may prove me wrong. I hope so. The kids are still dead, but I think it was a horrible, horrible mistake. I wish it hadn't happened. I am sorry it happened. I can assure you it was not intentional. That is the sort of thing Russia does. We don't do that.

Well, but, you know, I don't see any other possible explanation, and when you make a mistake, you ought to admit it. Most people understand no one's perfect, but I don't think our men and women who are fighting for us did it intentionally. I'll never believe that. Fair enough. So, speaking of the men and women, correct.

I thought that was classy, as tragic as it is, but... Yeah, war is hell. Yeah. What was the rest of that quote? War is hell, and if it were not, we would love it too much, I think. Gosh. Right? Yeah. Time to come to Sherman. That's actually good, yeah. Yeah. He was a smart guy. For sure. Okay, so, Erika, zoom me out for a second here. Because I just want to really establish, like, I'm just not jingoistic in the terms of, like, hype edits.

This is so great. Like, war is hell. I have a much more of a view of, say, All Quiet on the Western Front was, like, very formative for me. So, that's where I'm coming from. And then also, as a Catholic, just thinking about the suffering and death for people in that region, even not involved. So, I just want to set that as a backdrop to anything we say, because I didn't hit it enough on Monday, or last Wednesday. So, zoom out.

What are we seeing from... Rivals now, China, Russia, how involved have they been? What are we expecting from them? Yeah, so China is, what I'll say, navigating the war from both sides. I think the best description I've seen. China, of course, relies on about 40% of its oil imports through the Strait of Hormuz. They have some pipelines through Russia that they're now opening up the spigots on, for sure. And they also apparently have been stockpiling strategic reserves. For just such an event such as this.

They are also calling for a ceasefire, and they are pressuring Iran to negotiate to reopen the strait, because they really do need that oil lifeline to continue to do what they've been doing. Trump is set to travel to China at the end of this month, so March 31st through April 2nd, to meet with Xi Jinping, although there's no official confirmation from Beijing so far, apparently. So, the White House is like, yeah, we're going. China's like, maybe. We don't know. But Trump also made a comment in his discussion of the Strait of Hormuz.

He was saying, well, the U.S. military is going to keep it open for China, and I hope they see this as a nice favor. So, there's a lot of jockeying here and signaling to China. Yeah, they weren't involved, but they're feeling the pressure.

We're going to have a bigger presence in the Straits, and we're not going to prevent China from doing ships. A little credit for it, because, like, if you do that, that would be bad news. But what frustrates me about the Strategic Reserve, so we did actually announce today, our government did, that we're going to be releasing millions of barrels of oil for Strategic Reserve to try to help. regulate the price spikes that we're getting on oil this week, but it is just worth noting.

That President Trump had, you know, like, the Democrats are like, why aren't they doing it? A few days ago, the Democrats were like, why isn't Trump doing this? This is why we have the reserve. Oh, really? Oh, that's so sweet. Because Donald Trump asked a year ago for a bunch of money to fill up the reserves when the price was really cheap, and you, Chuck Schumer and Senate Democrats, stripped it from the bill, reduced it way, way, way, way down to practically hardly anything at all.

And so, we would have had the opportunity to restore it, because what did Biden do? Biden released the reserves just to have prices go down. There was no emergency. There was no conflict, right. There was no, like, you know, catastrophic event that caused it. He just wanted lower prices.

And so, he had dropped the reserves way, way, way, way low, and Trump has spent, you know, every month building that up. And he actually tried to build it up much faster, but the Senate Democrats opposed the funding. Last year, to restore it to a much faster, I mean, it just, you can't even... It's so maddening. It's idiotic, you know? Yes. This is also a strategic oil reserve as if, like, we actually were attacked, like our country.

Say again. So, we are now dipping into our strategic oil preserves, say that we have set aside for if we get attacked. No, it's not set aside if we get attacked. It's set aside for emergencies where you'd have a massive spike in the cost of oil. It happens if there's an embargo, if a ship gets stuck in the Strait of Hormuz or whatever. Remember the Suez Canal? Any kind of thing like that would be an opportunity to say, you know what, maybe we should dip into this to try to make sure that Americans don't experience a massive spike.

We have the facilities necessary to stockpile millions of barrels of oil precisely for moments like this where we have with Iran, but the reserves are just a lot less than they could be because, you know, we didn't fill them up when the price was low a year ago, and it's Senate Democrats who are howling. They called it a bailout for big oil. I mean, that just drives me crazy. I mean, it's like, I get having a little, you know, going on the talk shows and having all these hyperboles and stuff like that, but like, let's just not be stupid.

But the Democrats drive me kind of crazy because, like, for exactly the same reason what we have with the TSA. They're opposed to what we're doing on immigration. Is that the next one? We got to wait? Wait. Hold it. It drives me crazy. So, all I can picture when I'm, like, thinking of these strategic reserves that we did not refill.

Because of whatever, with the Democrats, all I can picture in my mind is that empty water reservoir above Los Angeles when the fires hit, and they just start burning down. And it's the same thing. You're like, this was not about the people at all. This was about you and your puny little political games.

So, let's politicize that. And rich Democrats can then flee these deep blue states that do asinine things. Which they're doing. Howard Schultz, the CEO of Starbucks, he's gone. We just announced today. Because he can afford it. Yeah, right. Leave in Seattle. Yeah. All right. Well, to put a cap on the Iran discussion, the big question right now is, what's the exit strategy? What's the end game? People on every side, people who, commentators who think this was a great idea, commentators who think this was the worst idea, everyone seems to come together to agree that the strategy has to be to force the regime to the table or just destroy the regime.

Before a prolonged, protracted war sets in, and so the question then, of course, becomes, can the war end quickly? What does that look like? Will it drag on? Steve Cortez had a little clip. I don't know if we want to go ahead and play. Steve? Would you like to take? Yeah. Yeah, I thought it was good. Mercer wants to share it. On the so-called ex- Patriots, the ruling class gets everything wrong, the so-called experts, particularly when it comes to war. All of them clamor for President Trump to continue to persist in this war until there is regime change in Tehran.

And there's agreement from Lindsey Graham, all the way to a lot of Democrats, to people like John Bolton. The reality, though, as expressed by very volatile financial markets, is that this is a terrible time for the United States to engage in regime change and in massive Middle East wars. Now, it appears, there's contradictory statements, but it appears that the Trump White House is pivoting hard and saying that we're about to wrap this war up. That has calmed financial markets for now, but more importantly, in terms of Main Street.

Prosperity, and in terms of winning elections in November, the focus has to be on affordability here, on domestic issues, sovereignty in this country, in the United States. So, do not listen to these power brokers and to the supposed knowing people, to the supposed experts, when they tell you that we must continue to pursue disastrous wars overseas, as the political class of the United States has advised for decades. America first. is very different and about realism and restraint and prioritizing our people here in our.

I agree, Steve, although I'm concerned that Condoleezza Rice was spotted. Yeah, ostensibly over, you know, collegiate sports, but it doesn't hurt. It's an amazing time. Yeah, the whole college sports thing is going on, yeah. Oh, my gosh. Oh, man. But the bottom line, we seem to have a kind of strategic dilemma here, if I could, like, put it into two options. So, we have that the United States, like Trump administration, America really only wins the war if it ends quickly. And decisively, and we don't just have more of the same from like Ayatollah 2.0, but Iran is in the position of they win the longer they can drag it out.

They just like Viet Cong style, like by simply not losing, right? And so, you have this sort of like strategic dilemma that Trump is faced with right now. So, I want Steve to be right. I want to believe that the administration is preparing this like rapid exit off ramp. I believe that is Trump's Preference. Given what he said and the way that he's been signaling in very roundabout, loop-de-loop ways with all caps, that seems to be what he wants as well.

If nothing else, for pragmatic reasons. But, yeah, what remains to be seen is, can the Iranians just continue to lob a drone here and there and hide and cut and dodge? I think, unfortunately, the answer is yes, and the only way to stop that would be to put boots on the ground. So, it does feel like a...

Like, whatever can get Trump to feel like he's a winner and to get the heck out of here is what I would like. Yes. Yeah. 100%. And that, actually, I think there's been some unity there on, if you want to go back to the polls, like most people. I wouldn't say everyone. Again, Josh, thank you for the correction. Because there are some people that are just like, as long as it takes, throw everything you got at them. I mean, look at our senators right now.

But it's... I don't, it's hard to overstate how much of a catastrophe this would be if we do put boots on the ground. Yes. As in, like, over. It might just be over if we put boots on the ground there. Iran's a massive country. There's 92 million people. I think, ironically, the people that hated the mountainous, and I don't even know how we would enter. Like, we would have to enter through a port in Israel, probably.

Israel's ports have been bombed at this point, so even just entering would be a nightmare. I guess you could, like, parachute people in or whatever, but again, these are people, these are Americans we're talking about, like, American blood and treasure. And then, yeah, frustrating, too, is, like, well, if your thing is cost of living...

Maybe we shouldn't set the global oil market on fire and then also spend billions of dollars. It's probably going to end up being in the trillions on this military action, which of course comes back to us in the form of inflation. I just don't want anyone to be naive about this. This is going to inflate the dollar. In order to pay for this, they're going to have to print money to pay for it. It's the same thing that happened in the Middle East.

The quicker he gets out, the more I can encourage from, you know, hopefully, Josh, from your lips to God's ears, we need to get out. We need to get out as fast as possible. That would be nice. Sure would. Okay, let's go B-block. Josh, I want to hear you rip some Democrats, I guess, but first we got to talk about, Chrissy Noem is out at DHS. Now, everyone is asking the question, why? I think this clip.

You know, of course, they're going to give a different official answer, but, you know, from a lot of the whispers behind the scenes, it was this clip that I think did it. I will play it. Senator Kennedy again, center of this. The president approved ahead of time you spending $220 million.

Running TV ads across the country in which you are featured prominently. Yes, sir. We went through the legal processes. Did it correct? Did the president know you were going to do this? Yes. He did? Yes. Okay. And one thing, Senator, I think would be helpful to know is how effective that communications has been. Well, they were effective in your name recognition. I mean, I personally just... No.

I mean, to me, it puts the president in a terribly awkward spot, and I'm not saying you're not telling the truth. It's just hard for me to believe. Do you have it? And what exactly is he referring to, Pogo? He is referring to a very specific commercial that cost $200 million.

Commercial? I will be playing. Ad campaign. Said ad campaign. Not just one ad. Tell me if there's anything you recognize prominently featured in this advertisement. Okay. Why do I love these wide open spaces? They remind me of why our forefathers came here. Not just for its beauty, but for the freedom only America provides. I'm Kristi Noem.

From the cowboys who tamed the West, to the titans who built our cities, to the dreamers who chased the impossible, America has always rewarded vision and grit. Our greatness calls people to us for a chance to prosper, to live how they choose, to become part of something special.

Anyone who searches for freedom can always find a home here, but that freedom is a precious thing, and we defend it vigorously. You cross the border illegally, we'll find you. Break our laws, we'll punish you. Harm American citizens, there will be consequences. But if you come here the right way, your American dream can be as big as these endless skies. From President Trump and me, welcome home.

Oh. If you go to the opening shot. Yep. At the beginning again. Sure. How is that $220 million? Oh, look at that. A horse's ass and a horse. Oh, gosh. Mercer. Mercer's had enough. He's done. The filters are off. The whispers, let's just say, Trump has publicly denied that he approved this, telling Reuters he never knew anything about it, was unaware, he grew furious, and reportedly called Kennedy afterwards. Sources described Trump as mad as a murder hornet and not a happy cowboy.

Very appropriate, considering the ad. Over that he saw her a shifting blame responsibility to him, crossing a key loyalty deadline in the White House. Hold on, hold on. Sure. Sources, because he had a conversation with the Senator John Kennedy, who is so eloquent at giving us sound clips, and then we hear this, sources describe Trump as mad as a murder hornet. Yeah, I wonder what, I think we need a source on that one. Who could possibly be a murder hornet?

Yeah. He was mad as a murder hornet. And, to be fair, some other things were, frustration had been brewing for months, okay, and some things that you might remember. Aggressive immigration crackdown, high-profile Minneapolis enforcement surge, the killing of Renee Goode and Alex Preddy, Nome's quick labeling as one as a domestic terrorist before investigations, plus her responses to incidents, drew bipartisan backlash and calls for resignation from some Republicans, allegations of self-promotion and mismanagement at DHS, if you remember. She took the pictures in front of Seacott, all dialed up.

Yeah. And then there's also just like the other TSA ads that she would have broadcast at airports all across the country. So, everyone's traveling. They've seen very much prominently featured her a ton. And some airports are like, we're not even going to air this. This looks like a campaign ad for you. Because it is. Yeah. For those wondering, I mean, but you got to think like, who is looking at that and being like, yes, I want that as my next president.

You know what I mean? Like, do you just reach a level of delusion or you're just like, I'm in this position, I need to promote this. It's hard as possible now. Like, no one was thinking that, right? The thing is, every time, like, you know, you enter into, like, a state, you know, you're driving in Illinois, and it's like, it says, you know, Pritzker, J.B. Pritzker, governor, really big. And it's like, it's kind of shameless, but it's at least, well, I'm just, I happen to be the governor.

This is, what Kristi Noem was doing was, like, a thousand times worse. So, on the nose, like, an obvious ad, campaign ad. And, in fact, they didn't even take out, like... If you're going to show President Trump, don't show him wearing his campaign hat, you know, because, like, you notice when he made the address on Iran, he had a white hat that said USA. It didn't say, make America great again. It didn't say 45-47, which is like a nod to him running for president, all that kind of stuff.

You know, she didn't make that, or whoever put this ad together didn't seem to care about any of that. I think there was controversy about the contractors, too. All that money, or a lot of that money, was paid to an address that didn't have anything there, and it was in the D.C. area, and money went to one of her friends, and so it was just pretty on-its-face corruption at the highest level. And someone was like, how could this cost $200 million?

You're clearly not familiar with the D.C. way of living, okay? I don't think Simon could have done better for a million dollars. A million? We could have done better for $20,000. Are you kidding me? Shout out, Simon. You're awesome. Now, at least DHS is trying to get rid of the special jet she ordered, you know, like all this stuff. Oh, my gosh, man. I can't stand it. And if you go back, you go back. I mean, there was like the leadership split.

It was either the Holman way or it was the Lewandowski and Noam way, and they won. They won within the agency and started purging people. And so, you know, sure enough. Well, now they're lost. Now Tom Holman's in charge again. But we got a replacement, Tom. We did. Who do we have to replace Kristi Noem? MMA, Mark Wayne Mullen, 5-0 in MMA fights. So, some of the reasons people think that he was chosen, one of Trump's fiercest defenders in the Senate and a personal friend.

He also campaigned as a surrogate for Trump during the 2024 election, focusing on outreach to Native American voters. Mullen is a member of the Cherokee Nation. Interesting fun fact. Very, very cool. He also co-sponsored the Lake and Riley Act and advocated for ending incentives related to birthright citizenship, and then, of course, combative style and loyalty, described as a MAGA warrior. He did fight in MMA. He represented Oklahoma in the House for about 10 years, switched over to the Senate in a special election, and so you get that shift, but you also get- What were you saying?

Willing to fight? I mean, remember this- The congressional hearing with the Teamsters president, where you almost got in a fist fight. Oh, that was him? That's him? Yes. Well. That, unfortunately, is a mark of yes. Like, we want someone that can literally fight. No, it gets funny, Tom, because the president of the Teamsters actually has, you know, made amends, and he's now endorsed Mullins to be, you know, the Homeland Secretary. Oh, really? Yeah. See, and this is why we need to bring back duels.

Back when we were back in the country, people would settle their differences, and then they'd just get back to being boys. It's like having a fist fight in middle school. You have it out, and then you're like, okay, let's get back to it. Yeah. Yeah.

Let's see. Of history, Josh. I learned that Alexander Hamilton never ran for president, and the reason that he did was because of an affair that he had. Do you remember the name of the papers that he published? Well, I'm trying to understand what you said. Hamilton published or Burr did? Hamilton. Hamilton wrote it. It was a memoir, and then it got published out by other people.

I'm so embarrassed. I can't remember. Okay. I got one on the history heads. It is known as the Reynolds Affair. The Reynolds Affair. Do you want me to do the rap? It was salacious. I have never seen Hamilton, the musical, so I didn't know. And then I was like, this is spicy, paying off a 23-year-old while you're the third most powerful man in the world. I do not. My kids are not allowed to watch the second act because it's very spicy.

It is prominently featured in Hamilton. Oh, yeah. Well, I mean, it's sort of like the turning point in Hamilton's rise to power is that he has this sordid affair, and then, yeah, anyway, I digress because I get really excited about that. Yeah, so affairs and corruption, unfortunately, go way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way back. But notably, so there's a shift in tone. So, I saw this Axios reporting. It was kind of backed up in a backhand way by the administration.

White House tells House Republicans to stop talking about mass deportations. The White House Deputy Chief of Staff. James Blair privately urged House Republicans on Tuesday to stop emphasizing mass deportations. Instead, folks are messaging on removing violent criminals, according to a source in the closed door briefing. Mass deportations, of course, were central to the GOP's 2024 campaign message. Nearly half, 49% of Americans, say Trump's mass deportation campaign is too aggressive, including one in five voters who backed the president in 2024. That is from a poll taken in January.

Uh, he, yeah, so they're, they're shifting the blame and then Trump himself, of course, like a lot of people saw this and were frustrated. Uh, I'll play the clip. He's opened up those many countries opened up their prisons and dropped them into the United States. Those are the people we're getting out. And we have a lot of heart. They said, you got to lighten up on this. We have a lot of heart for people. They came in illegally, but they're Good people, and they're working now on farms, and they're working in luncheonettes and hotels and all, and we're looking to get the criminals out right now, the criminals, and I think it's very important.

I mean, every once in a while, you see a story, we take somebody. They should be out because they came in illegally, so in theory, they should be, but we're focused on the murderers. The drug dealers, the mentally insane. We have a lot of mentally insane killers. I mean, you can't even talk to them. It would be nice if you could have a little reason, but you can't even reason. These are seriously ill people. You have a couple of countries where they were loaded up.

Their mental institutions and insane asylums were loaded to the gills. They're empty now, but they're filling up because we're bringing them all back. We know where they came from. And every country accepts them. You know, under Biden, they wouldn't take, they had so little respect that they'd bring them there, and they wouldn't take them. They'd say, get the hell out of here. They would be bringing a plane in to land in a country. So, there you have it. Well, I mean, is it rhetorically smart to emphasize You know, the deportations, like he's saying right now, is it better to sound like that?

Rhetorically, Democrats feel like they have an edge if they frame the Trump administration as being in favor of mass, mass deportations, just sending everyone out, whereas Trump is like, I'm focusing on the criminals, the murderers, and they're insane. And then you get conservatives saying, I thought you were going to do mass deportations.

Well, I think his point has been to focus primarily, obviously, on those people who have committed additional violent crimes, but then they're also working on all these other things, like just yesterday, the Small Business Administration issued that rule saying we're not going to be doing any loans to people who are foreign nationals or in the country illegally, like things you thought would have happened a long time ago should have never happened.

And so, we're doing all these other things that make it so that if you're in the country illegally, you're just going to self-deport, and that's the ideal that Trump administration would prefer people to do that. With regards to this person, I mean, supposedly, a person that's affiliated with the Trump White House did tell that to House Republicans. That's what Axios says. Not affiliated. He's the...

He's official. I mean, let me go find that. A White House Deputy Chief of Staff. Yeah, according to Axios, which I always hold with a grain of salt, but I would say this. Senator Mike Lee said, no one has told me that.

And I won't comply if they do. So, he didn't think the story added up much. I mean, it's Axios. So, you know, it's like, did it happen? Maybe it did, maybe it didn't. Yeah, it's true, although now everyone's kind of frustrated. So, if I could just get to the core frustrations is, it seems easier to strike for countries, you know, that people can't point out on a map than actually deport people at any scale in America, finish building the wall. And of course, like the money we're using on that could be used towards finishing the wall, could be used towards mass deportations.

And it just feels like the flip-flop now, or the perceived flip-flop of, well, we're not really going to do mass deportations. We're going to do these things. I know there are good things going on behind the scenes in terms of small business administration and things like that. But if you look at the hard numbers, like the DHS has stopped really promoting or posting any of their hard numbers from what they've deported. The numbers do seem kind of low based on reports.

Some are saying lower than Obama, but again, people then fight over the specifics of it. I think somewhere around 500,000 to 600,000 is the number as of 2026, and I think that might be a core frustration of the people that put Trump into office was, well, we didn't say we want deportations. Only for these small, subsected people. If you're saying that you can get cheap labor for hotels, that, of course, are jobs that could go toward to Americans, and we have record youth unemployment rates at this point, and people are concerned about AI.

That's all going to replace us. So, again, it just feels like misplaced emphasis. Again, it just seems easier to take such drastic actions overseas than to actually push the ball up the hill and do the hard work on the home front.

I think, like, kinetically, yeah. Right, yeah, and I think the frustrations are totally valid. Kinetically, yeah, it's easier to just load up the airplanes and go strike, you know, and obviously, all kinds of commentators are accusing the Trump administration of, oh, like, we'll go bomb Iran so that we don't have to talk about Epstein. I think Whoopi Goldberg said it was so that we don't have to talk about Savannah Guthrie's mother anymore. I mean, of course, okay. All these things. But at the same time, just to point out that in terms of the deportation, like the hard numbers that we got from the end-of-year report for 2025, the report from Homeland Security was, DHS, ironically, was that two and a half million illegals had...

...left the United States in under a year of the Trump administration. So, that's 1.9 million had self-deported. 600,000 were forcibly removed. And those kinds of numbers, like, I would love to double that this year, but I'm really not seeing that that's going to happen. And like you said, Tom, I think the frustration is this feeling, this pressured feeling, too, of like the midterms are looming. We're probably going to be looking at impeachment hearings, endless hearings from Congress. If we lose the House, if we lose the Senate, we're looking at sort of like the last two years of the Trump administration with his arm tied behind his back.

We also have those last two years being like campaigns for 2028. And so, actually getting the work done, it feels to me like there's this enormous pressure on 2026 that I just... Getting our eye off the ball when it comes to deportation seems it is not going to happen, but that is my concern.

Yeah, and Josh, DHS is shut down currently, or at least partially. Partially shut down as of March 11th. Of course, immigration enforcement is funded all the way through 2029, so the Democrats are so upset with immigration that they are forestalling passing of an appropriations bill for the rest of DHS, which means TSA.

You know, does all the security at most of the airports. Those people are now working without pay. And it's just insane. It's like, first of all, I recall that I've said before that we should use user fees on ticket prices to pay for this.

They, that even if there's any government shutdown of any kind, that we still have TSA, you know, employees funded. If we're going to have this kind of security, pay for it without having to rely on these congressional games, which is stupid. Yeah. Yeah, this line is insane. Like, if you go to, it's out in the parking garage.

Oh, wait times are averaging three to five hours in security lines at some of the major airports. I think Houston Hobby was one of the worst in the country with five-hour wait times. Crazy. So, this is like really hurting average Americans. I bet it's better in the Beltway. Bro.

Well. Well, actually, no. Tom said that there's a line, hours line of cars outside waiting. So, yeah. So, I. Reagan is probably fine, though. Let's check on Reagan. Thanks. Awesome. And, okay, so we do have a quick clip of, like, Democrats now reconsidering, of course, because TSA is affecting us all. So, maybe they do specific carve-outs where it's like, okay, we refund or re-agree to some stipulation where we fund TSA, but we don't fund the other parts we find controversial, which I think is probably inevitable.

But, Josh, one thing I want to get your take on. The SAVE Act, okay? The SAVE Act, and let's just do a quick primer on the SAVE Act. We talk about it all the time, okay? It aims to enhance election integrity by requiring proof of U.S. citizenship for voter registration in federal elections and adding stricter voter identification rules. Things like we require a U.S. passport, a birth certificate, certain military records, or real ID compliant identification indicating citizenship. And other specific items, like certain travel cards, fun fact on that one, but it would amend the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 to prohibit states from accepting or processing voter registration applications for federal elections unless the applicant provides documentary proof of U.S.

citizenship in person. Seems pretty common sense. Yes. Many people have clamored for it. It's an 80-20 issue. Not even controversial. Trump himself really wants it done. The House passed it. People want it done. We're stuck in the Senate, okay? And so, this is what the leadership of the Senate has to say about voting on the SAVE Act.

We don't have the votes either to proceed, get on a talking filibuster, nor to sustain one if we got on it. But that is just a function of math, and there isn't anything I can do about that. I mean, I understand the President's got a passion to see this issue addressed, as we all do. Does he understand that? Well, we have conveyed that to him, but we will continue to make that argument, because I think it is important that everybody understand that this really is about, it is about the votes, it is about the math, and for better or worse, I am the one who has to be the clear-eyed realist about what we can achieve here, and so we will continue to convey that, and I think that we are going to have the fight on the floor.

We are going to vote on this, we are going to put it up, and we will give the Democrats the opportunity to cast their vote on whether or not. They think non-citizens ought to vote in American elections. There's nothing I can do.

He's a clear-eyed realist, Josh. Well, I mean, he is. I mean, like, you have four Republicans that are totally against this, which drives me crazy. Okay, so I always... I almost always give a pass to Susan Collins because she represents a super blue state of Maine. I kind of don't even consider her really a Republican. Whatever. She voted for Kavanaugh, so she's got my gratitude on that pretty much forever. And Lisa Murkowski, that always upsets me. She's from Alaska. Her dad was governor and pointed her to that seat.

She got ousted in a primary, had people write her name in, then she changed the whole system of voting in Alaska to be ranked choice so she could get. Keep getting reelected. I hate her with the passion of a thousand sons. Those two, you kind of, like, never can count on them to do anything, okay? But even if we lost those two, hey, we have 53 Republicans, so that should be 51 left. Well, Tom Tillis, Catholic, by the way, out of North Carolina, who's on his way out the door and has got so much Trump deranged syndrome, he's not in favor of this, I think, just to spite Trump.

And then the senator from Utah, what is going on in Utah? Mike Lee's awesome, but the other senator has always been terrible. First, it was Mitt Romney. Now, it's this guy, John Custis, Curtis to me. He is just terrible. I mean, he's like, he's spiritually a Democrat. I mean, he's a total rhino. So, now you have four Republicans are like, yeah, no, we're not in support of this. So, you have 49 that want it done.

But it is not a majority. So, I mean, when people are upset about this and screaming at John Thune, I am like, okay, I guess, get mad at John Thune, but get mad at Tom Tillis, who is on his way out the door and hopefully will be replaced by, you know, Watley, and get rid of this horrible senator out of… Utah, and replace them with an actual conservative. Can I proffer Tinfoil Tom's take from the Hill?

Hear it out. In my opinion, I know it is a difference of opinion, it's all failure theater. All the dickering for the last three months have been entirely devoted to protecting the worst of the worst in the Senate GOP. 60 votes solves all his problems, exposes no one, doesn't become law, and they can pretend they tried. The true Senate GOP trifecta. In politics, you don't always know the outcome until you force a vote, meaning you might set yourself up to fail.

You're still going to get a vote on kosher. Wait a second. Obviously, it won't get 60 votes, but the whole point is you're going to have some Republicans that won't even vote for it. So, if you get 49 votes in favor of this, it's like, yeah.

If all you have are 49 senators in favor of this, well, actually, with Fetterman, you have 50, maybe, but McConnell is wavering. So, I don't think you're going to actually, even with, I think the math isn't there. So, even with Fetterman, I still think you're at 49.

The idea behind a talkie filibuster is, let's gum up the works, let's take our time, let's force these guys to talk, and then we'll eventually win. My point is, you don't have the actual votes to pass it, even if it was a majority threshold. Right, but Tom also doesn't think that's going to work either, but at least it would force them to work. I get it. Right, and now what's going to happen, as I think he's correctly pointing out, they're going to go instead to a government-controlled takeover bill from Elizabeth Warren and Tim Scott.

You are either for the status quo or oppose it. Every person in DC, especially National Review, who has argued not even to try, are part of the problem. So, it is like, you say we cannot do anything, and then when someone proposes, some liberal proposes an even worse thing, you are like, oh my gosh, look at what these liberals are proposing. We have to oppose that, and then you shield yourself from any responsibility of putting a vote on the floor to see whether or not you are for or against this, and so you get to protect reputations, and then you get to all come together and be like, wow, look at how bad this other thing is.

We cannot do that, and of course, that is going to fail. And then what do we get? Nothing. Which is why it's important that we actually back conservative challengers to people in primaries. Uh-oh. So, I think I sent this to Josh on Slack. I was like, so Trump is going to endorse John Cornyn instead of Ken Paxton, and he said this is a bigger betrayal than going to war with Iran. That was how mad this made Josh on Slack the other day.

So, why? Josh, make it make sense. Okay, so what's going on in the... You know, John Cornyn has been senator from Texas since 2002. He's running for re-election. He spent $100 million to try to preserve his seat. There's two other Republicans that were challenging him, and it came to a head on a primary day. John Cornyn got like 42% of the vote. The other two guys combined got, you know, over 50. But it's a runoff now, and I think it's sometime in May when they had the final vote, and Cornyn now doesn't have any money left.

And he's treading water, but he got just a few more votes than Ken Paxton did, and so John Cornyn was hoping, hey, Trump, endorse me. See, I didn't do so bad. Endorse me, and apparently, Trump was indicating he was going to endorse John Cornyn, the incumbent, against the conservative challenger, Ken Paxton, who, Ken Paxton, Look, both of these guys have their issues. I'm not endorsing either one of them for sainthood, but John Cornyn is a neocon, and he's a lib, and he's a gun control guy, and he's pro-amnesty, so Texas deserves better.

That's all I'm saying. And if someone tells me Ken Paxton isn't great either, I'm like, hey, why don't they both resign, and then we can get someone better in? Paxton would still be an upgrade, even. No question. Trump was on the verge of endorsing John Cornyn when Ken Paxton pulled a rabbit out of his hat. He said, because what Trump had said before in the endorsement, he goes, we need one of these guys to drop out, so we'll just clear the field and make it easier.

And so, Ken Paxton said, the Save America Act is the most important bill the U.S. Senate could ever pass, and I'm committed to helping President Trump. Get it done. I would consider dropping out of this race if Senate leadership agrees to lift the filibuster and pass the Save America Act. Great move. I think this was so much moxie. So much, you know, art of the deal that Donald Trump couldn't help but smile, and this apparently was the difference from preventing Trump.

He held back and did not endorse John Cornyn, I think precisely because of this kind of moxie. What has happened since then? John Cornyn has suddenly Ken Paxson supports the talking filibuster, and now he wants action on the SAVE Act. Wow. And so, Ken Paxson is like, this is awesome. We're going to turn around. In 24 hours, I've made him more conservative than he has in the last 20 years. I mean, Ken Paxson is eating John Cornyn's lunch. I have changed my mind.

I am a big man. It takes a big man to admit their mistakes. I am that big man. I am now going to. Oh, man, John Corno was even trying to make fun of Ken Paxton before. He's like, calling Ken Paxton, he's like, you know, you're the rooster thinking you're the one that gets the sun to raise. And it's like, no, bro, actually, your analogy is falling, because you actually did do the job you wanted to. Yeah, got it. Unbelievable.

All right, Kay, can we get into some good news after our frustrations with the Senate? Yeah, since we have a longer show, I'm just going to make everyone watch two and a half minutes, because this will make you cry. So, get your coffee and your honey next.

Here we go. Beautiful story. Surrounded by friends and family on his birthday, this 10-year-old was on cloud nine. But as you'll soon see, his bliss hasn't come easy. Back in 2022, that boy, named True, needed a heart procedure. He was under the care of social services at the time, and the day of the surgery, for whatever reason, he was just dropped off here at Children's Nebraska. Anesthesiologist Amy Beethy found him in pre-op. He was just sitting there all alone. So, he's there for a major procedure, and there's no adult with him at all?

No adult with him at all. Why were you there by yourself? I have no idea. Did you know why you were there? The procedure lasted about seven hours, and through it all, Dr. Beethy says she just kept staring at the sweet face of the poor boy, who at that moment had no mom or dad or stable home life.

And that's when Amy decided that even though she already had six kids, she just had to take in this seventh. After I dropped True off in recovery, I called my husband, and I just said, we need to have a talk. When we get home, I need you to have an open mind.

Ryan says he was a little hesitant at first. But it didn't take long to hear what was needed, and it just felt right. A year and a half later, their adoption was complete. So, yeah, that's how the story goes. But it's not how the story ends.

Up until that point, True had been living with five other siblings in that same unstable home environment. Amy knew she and Ryan couldn't adopt all of them, so the good doctor decided to do the next best thing. First, she got her sister and her husband to agree to adopt Tylynn. Then, her sister-in-law and her husband took Tyra. And finally, she got a co-worker and her husband to make Malia and Takari part of their family.

There was one left, and then I went back to my husband. And that's how Lainey got adopted, too. And all of this because of a doctor who believed that saving lives wasn't just her day job, who advocated for the voiceless and recruited a village to make six lives better for many birthdays to come.

Steve Hartman, on the road, in Omaha, Nebraska. I watched this with Todd, and I was like, he said, next time you tell me to sit down and have an open mind, it's going to come to my head. Wasn't that awesome? Oh, man. Faith and humanity restored.

Yeah. Shout out to Nebraska, man. I love Nebraska. Faith and humanity restored. Josh, do you have one? I do. Michigan State Representative Karen Witsett, a Democrat, made an announcement. She says, I will not be seeking re-election for this office, and I will not be running for any office ever again. This is not a political calculation. It is a spiritual calculation. For me, it is impossible to be a faithful follower of Jesus Christ while remaining a member of the Democratic Party as it exists today.

I cannot reconcile that platform with Scripture. She said, I have compromised my relationship with Jesus for too long, and I'm grateful God did not give up on me. He gave me time to repent, turn, and be fully devoted to him.

Whoa. Whoa. That's intense. So, thank you, Karen. That is a Karen I do like. Oh, we are also restoring the Karen reputation, the proper respect of the Karen name. Reclaim Karen. I love it. That is crazy. Make Karen's great again.

Did you go into any more detail? But I thought James Tallarico told me that it was possible to be a Republican and be a follower of Jesus Christ. Didn't he also say God was non-binary? He did. Well, I mean, this lawmaker herself, she said, you know, she's trying not to be.

Super judgmental and in people's faces, she goes, I don't have a heaven or hell to put anyone in. Only God does, but I do have God's unwavering word to stand on, and I can no longer compromise it to fit a party platform or to please people. Okay, I have a little more detail in here. We say there's no such thing as black and black crime, but in my view, abortion is exactly that. We wonder why there are no good men. Too many were aborted, and we have emasculated many of the men who are still here.

We cannot destroy life and then act shocked when our families and neighborhoods suffer the consequences. And she also said, that conviction includes the issues I cannot reconcile with Scripture, abortion, the normalization of the gay lifestyle, and the push to redefine gender.

Wow. That is amazing. Good for this lady. Shout out, Karen. She is awesome. Yeah, I love that, too. What kind of person, actually, would like to stay in office, actually? Yeah, exactly. I guess that is the tough thing. If you ran for re-election, girl, I would donate to you. No, that is the tough thing. That actually really is the tough thing, because in order for you to be a proper representative, you constantly have to reconcile with. Your conscience and updated information and your beliefs, and it's just hard when you see people like this, which, you know, I have no reason to believe this is not sincere.

Leave, because they're no longer in the political arena anymore. It's like people always opine, oh, we don't have any good members of Congress anymore. We don't have any good politicians anymore. And I guess the problem is precisely this. If you have moral conviction, Republican or Democrat, and something goes against your conscience, it's like, do you just leave? Do you wash your hands? Sometimes you got to quit and bring attention to it. And then maybe down the road, a few years later, people go, no, wait a minute now.

Uh, maybe she was right, you know, so we got to call attention to it as you can. It's good. I mean, the better thing is she knew she couldn't continue voting, you know, this way. She's like, no, I can't do it. God bless her for it. Wow. Good for her. That is respect. Uh, mine was Senator Kennedy being measured and, uh, on the war issue, but, uh, side good news. I just got back from the Chicagoland area. For Time Across America, I spent two days working in the waste industry.

So, I was thinking about this, we were thinking about developing the episode concept. First off, incredible Catholic family in the Chicagoland area, like super well-known. Their dad started a garbage company, and they all grew up working for their dad, like from a really young age, always in the shop, always getting their hands dirty, and they have all kind of grown up and embraced that. And one of the guys, shout out Aaron, 22 years old, runs a port-a-potty business. They have hundreds of porta-potties, and he is the epitome of the American dream, getting after it.

I mean, we were up at like 5 in the morning, 5.30 in the morning, hopping in the truck, prepping it all, getting out there, working with employees. Yes, I did get to get hands-on experience cleaning porta-potties. That was electric. But talk about restoring. We're thinking about the Time Across America series. A couple more are going to come out here that are actually highlighting different professions.

And it just really is... The one question we kept asking all the brothers, is the American dream still alive? Yes. Yes, it is still alive. Just bought a house. Paid off the truck. If you want to work hard and you want to do things other people don't want to do, it is there for you if you want to take it. So, just the infectious energy of these guys, working hard, growing families, so much respect for their father and closest to their families.

I was just really, felt very blessed to get to experience it, get to film it, hopefully could share a good story with you guys. So, Time Across America, you look up Time Across America, it's over on YouTube. Yeah, I watched the fishing episode, ice fishing. Yeah, we all sat down and watched that. Good times. Have you ever gone ice fishing, Josh? Of course, with my dad and my brother. Yeah, of course. Not as many times as I would have liked to have done it, but I remember when I was 22 years old or whatever, I said to my dad, hey, why don't we go out on the ice fishing?

Jake and I will go, and my dad was like, he was six years old, and it was Christmas. His eyes lit up, and he was so excited to go with us again, and that's fun. But yeah, you do need to actually check your lure for bait, yeah. Yes. Yeah. Well, no, I did have lure on it, but it got snatched off by a pike, theoretically.

That's pretty awesome. But, yeah. Hard to catch without a hook, bro. Well, it's crazy how many different of these stories, like, we've done. We've done plumbing and, like, the trades, farming, ice fishing, now garbage. And then we're going out to California and racing dirt bikes and surfing. And the one through line through all of this is I am just.

I guess it doesn't shock me, but there's the culture, there's the events, like American culture, but the through line through all of it is family, and in every case, it was like, why are you out here? Why are you out here? Oh, my dad taught me how to fish. These are our best memories. We trade stories all the time. This is our way of getting together. This is our way of connecting. These are like why we love where we live, and it was the same with all of them.

Same with garbage, same with farming. There's family connections there, and so I think we're really kind of scraping the surface on something. Fantastic with that. All the people I've gone to see, we go through these stories, how frustrating the Senate is, how frustrating war is, and it was such a nice break to just get on the lowest possible level. People aren't looking for attention, but they are opening up their lives for us to go see. It's really incredible. So, super grateful for these opportunities.

Shout out to Simon. He's the man. He films. He's the editor. Would not be able to do it without him. So, go check that out, Time Across America. Really enjoyed that. Farming is going to come out next week on YouTube, but it's already available on Zeal. So, if you want to go to zeal.co and shows and go check it out, you can do so. So, okay, let's do Ask Me Anything Now or Q&A chat, if you guys want to throw some in there.

Go ahead and throw them in there. We can maybe pick some out if we got time. So, I got a question specifically for me, but I actually am curious, Eric and Josh, kind of growing up in different generations, what the answer would be for you. What elements in your upbringing, such as type of parish, education, restrictions, interesting, friends, et cetera, would you say helped you keep the faith through childhood into adulthood? That is a great question. Perfect for me.

It is a great question. I love telling this story because it really is responsible. Whether you love it or hate it, that is why I am who I am today. So, I grew up in the Metro Detroit area, and I started out at a very... I wouldn't say ill-willed, but very green carpet parish. Went to Mass on Sunday, didn't really understand it. Not a ton of activities that really solidified the faith there, and I don't want to really talk too bad about it, but it just wasn't, say, like a hub that was really evangelizing or reaching next generation.

So, we went to this place called Catholic Family Land. It is the corniest name of all time, and as a 12-year-old, I was not thrilled. I was like, my mom found it on the internet. And I thought it was a scam. Like, I thought it wasn't even going to be real. First off, we got lost trying to get there, and Jen was like, Mom, you only found this on the internet, and that's your only experience. It's not real. That's hilarious. It might not be real.

So, we were all frustrated until we showed up, and of course, it was fantastic, so I'd like to give a huge shout out to the Apostolate for Family Consecration. They do fantastic work. And so, we went to this thing called the Family Fest, where you're there for a week with your family, and there's, like, hundreds of families that all come, and you stay in cabins, or you bring a camper.

And it... The days are structured great because you'd have mass in the morning, and then there'd be some type of age-appropriate thing going on afterwards. So, for the little kids, there's fun stuff. For the adults, there's formation spiritual talks. They'd bring in different speakers. And then in the afternoon, it was all playtime. And so, we had massive sports tournaments, which was like speaking right to my soul as a young man who played a lot of sports.

We'd have very, very competitive sports tournaments. And then, of course, I think like after dinner, a lot of times they do a rosary and then some type of like... Family event afterwards, and then at night, you could go off to the teen group or whatever, and fantastic, fantastic. It changed a lot. So, from that, we got introduced to a church in our hometown.

And, I don't know if I want to dox anyone, so I'm not going to say what church, but it's in Sterling Heights area in Michigan, and they were, the people there were like, you have to come to this church, it's fantastic, and from that, I got introduced there, and that was where there was the really robust altar service program, so I got introduced through a retreat to the Detroit Seminary, major seminary, for young men, and they're like, oh, we have a lot of these guys altar served, and so you came in, and we'd have 40 plus altar servers amass, And there was a hierarchy structure, like you had to earn your black cassock, black cassock and elb, as opposed to the people who didn't graduate yet were just in elbs.

And I was so mad about that at the time because my older brother was always tall, so he automatically got into the black elb, or sorry, the black cassock and white, and then I had to be white elb because I'm a short king. So, the only reason he got that, so he didn't have to go through any of the process, he didn't have to learn the Our Father in Latin, he didn't have to do anything, just got right in there because he was too tall.

That was a formative event for me. But it was the Ultra Server program. I met my closest friends I still keep in contact with today. Through that program, the church became the social nucleus of my life, even though I was in public school at the time. And then I switched over to a classical hybrid to where I would be at school for two days, and then I was out for the other three days. So, that allowed me to take part in Grace Debate.

Shout out to Grace Debate, a homeschool debate program. We'd go all over, compete in debate tournaments. Pretty awesome. And then, the center of all of it was the sacraments, and so I think before anything else, I got exposed to Eucharistic Adoration, Sacrament of Confession, and I really developed a deep reverence, and I noticed the importance for it in my life, and so I think as I've gotten older, I've now always had that as a foundation to come back to, of just living a sacramental life.

Whether I had problems or challenges, I could always come back to that, and so I think that was key for me progressing in my spiritual journey, or just my adulthood, marriage, everything. And then, through that, I got introduced to Ave Maria University.

Used a lot of people from my church, unsurprisingly, went to Ave Maria University, and then it all just got taken to a whole other level there. Grew in my faith, met my wife, was intellectually challenged, no question, fantastic politics and economics department, and loved my time there, really just solidified everything.

Oh, restrictions. Restrictions is an interesting point, because we talked about it on the show, where actually, if you have strict parents, it shows that there's love there, and oh my gosh, I'm almost going to probably tear up a little bit thinking about my parents, because in hindsight, especially as I have young kids, So, almost all of their decisions were for, so obvious to me now, for our best interests. And they very early made the decisions to forego really intense travel sports, or trying to get social status or something like that, higher paying jobs even, to keep our family together.

And the goal was always, how do I get my kids into heaven? Not how do I get my kids into elite university A, B, C. Part of the reason to help fund me going to Ave Maria University was so that I would meet a spouse there, and I did, and I am grateful for that spouse. I would have probably had a much harder time had that not happened. And so, there was restrictions as a young kid, but they never... So, they didn't feel like it, I guess.

I was never like a rebellious kid, but they showed that they cared about me through their actions, no question, and it's just so obvious now. Maybe I didn't understand it or appreciate it as much at the time, but if I were now, so I'm now looking at my children and trying to replicate that experience, and I think the key to that was to have the church be the social nucleus.

And have it not be anchored in sports or school or anything else, because now it's just taken for granted. I always come back to that now. No, I agree. The parish has got to be the anchor, not just 55 minutes on a Sunday. It's got to be more. Yeah, we were there all the time, and so, yeah, I got to give a huge... I look back and so clearly see divine providence in the situations I was put in. And then it was just looking back, me being open to accepting God's grace and God's will, and all the times that I really went astray or did something, it was me closing myself off to that.

And so, yeah, I'm just honestly, above anything else, really grateful to God, grateful to the people in my life. I really recognize the body of Christ. I don't know. Hopefully, that was a good answer, but I'm really just grateful for all that. So, I don't know. I don't know if that was a common experience for you guys. You guys had different... I mean, you guys are raising kids now, so... What elements in my upbringings at the parish level helped me keep my faith through childhood into adulthood?

I lost my faith. Yeah. I was an atheist for three years because the catechesis at my parish was so terrible, I thought this was all foolish. I mean, as somebody said, the indictment of Catholicism in the 1980s is that it was much more prevalent at most parishes that they would have bingo. Rather than Eucharistic adoration, and that is absolutely the case. In fact, I refer to the place I went to as childhood as St. Bingo's because of that, because it's just such a joke.

It's an ugly, drab, concrete, brutalist architecture. The faith was so arid and dry and dull and boring, and I get there, and the person who's teaching religious education was like, and the problem with this country is individualism, and I'm like, what in the world are you talking about? Just like lights out, like someone who hated, you know, the sort of, you know, rambunctious individualism of, you know, that founded this country. I mean, I was just like this, everything you're signaling to everything, like you feel, you know, you love your country, if you're patriotic, this church isn't for you.

And of course, I grew up in the western suburbs of Minneapolis. You know, we had a massive church scandal, massive control of, and this always bugs me, we get the worst gays in our church. Like, you know, you'd think with all the gays we have, you would have better fashion sense, but no, felt banners. It's like, what? I don't understand this.

But, you know, someone who's, you know, like, masculine in nature. The Catholic Church of the late 1980s and all through the 90s was about as feminine and anti-masculine. It was an absolute turnoff. Yeah, I'm doing research right now for a deep episode. It should come out next week on the recovation of the churches, specifically church architecture, but what's really striking me about the recovation of the physical worship space and the Felt Banners green carpet, all that you're describing, Josh, is that it's more of a sacramental sign of a real spiritual and moral recovation.

As well, and it's, I mean, this is like dark stuff. I was like, oh, I'll do a nice fluffy one on, you know, how churches were kind of whitewashed, and now we're bringing them back. This is, no, this is like deep, dark stuff going on here.

The sinister plot to make churches ugly. Look at the chat. You know, I was an atheist for 25 years, so I feel you, Josh. Yeah, I mean, I get it. Another person who left the faith and their daughter going to Abbey, we brought them back. I mean, I get it. So cool.

So, and actually, I want to give a big shout out to all the lay people, from Scott Hahn to Patrick Madrid, who worked their tails off for decades to provide really good, authentic Catholic apologetics. Well, true soul lifesavers that brought a lot of people back, and me, indirectly. It is not like I stumbled on something. It was indirectly, the people who were influenced by those guys.

When they get to heaven, there is going to be a lot of thanks for what they did, those guys. Shout out to Jimmy Akin, too. I feel like the New Age, it is kind of like, oh, he has been at it forever, right? But his approach to it speaks to my conspiracy theorist heart. He touches everything. There is room in the Catholic Church for a conspiracy theorist. Yes, the people that are correct six months too early. That is Jimmy Akin's apostolate.

I love Jimmy Akin. He's just the best. I just love listening to him. He's like, there's no inhibitions with him. He's so chill. He needs to trim the beard a little. No, no, don't change. I think that's part of the appeal, though. Yeah. Okay, Erika. Well, no, Erika, did you have anything you wanted to say on that? No, I just want to respond to one comment in the chat that just popped up, though, about the concerns that you'll hear from people about sheltering children too much, and that, you know, well, that's one of the dangers of homeschooling, is that children will be too sheltered from the world.

They won't be able to, like, handle it when they actually enter the quote-unquote real world. When they're adults or something. And not to diminish those concerns, because obviously any approach to parenting can have extreme outcomes, but I would say that if you're looking at sort of the cultural consensus on raising children, for far too long, the emphasis has been on permissiveness, child-led parenting, and we see the consequences of this. Including, especially I would say, this like, well, we have to give screens to children so that they'll know how to use computers when they're adults, and we see the devastating consequences of screens.

Jonathan Haidt is like killing it right now on the talk circuit, just explaining what this like screens and education has done to the kids. So, I would say that looking at the fruits of this long period of very permissive parenting, Structures and this openness to whatever the kid wants, we should perhaps err now on the side of slightly more restrictive, less permissive, to try and bring back some of the fruits of good parenting.

Can homeschooling or saying, well, our kids are going to be primarily socialized in the parish setting, could that be too sheltering? I would say, yes, it could be, but if I'm going to have to take a bet on how I'm raising my kids, I'm going to err on the side of restrictiveness.

When you talk about raising small children, the impressions that are made upon them in those early years, and even up through, I think studies show that most people leave the faith in junior high or early high school, if they're going to leave the faith as adults, that sheltering a child during those years in the sense of Keeping, giving them the tools that they will need when their faith is challenged as adults, if that requires some sheltering, which I think it does, then 100% I'm going to shelter my kids.

I think it'll make them stronger in the end, so. I think about it more as incubating. Yeah, exactly. It's a greenhouse of... They say, oh, you're in a bubble. Like, you're in a Catholic bubble. They're going to leave the Catholic bubble, and then when they leave it, they're just going to be destroyed because they're not prepared or whatever. I've never, I've really never bought that argument. I mean, obviously, there's extremes to everything. The bubble's the world. The bubble's the world. Well, sure, but there are circumstances where if you don't prepare them well, I've seen it in my community where there's a lot of people who are homeschooled, and then as soon as they get their first taste of freedom, they go off the deep end, and they are kind of lost.

Oh, definitely. For many decades, and so I would just say there are ways to make sure that you're prepared. Like, I think part of it is, like, you can't look at your kids as if, like, You know, I truly have to create like a, you know, an iron dome around them. Right. Like, no, I mean, you still need, you know, you need to inoculate them against the dangers of the world, but you can't be so isolationist and not prepare them for anything.

So, I mean, there is a fine line. You've got to be understanding of it, and you've got to, and don't be so tepid. It's like, you know, You continue to pray for their souls even after they leave the nest, but you need to make sure that they're prepared. I have a story. I have a quick story.

Go for it. Maybe applying to this. So, there was a time where I think we started homeschooling or something. I think it was 16. Maybe it was 15 or 16. I can't remember. 15. And I really wanted to get my driver's license and get a job. I was really like, I need to get, like, I was just, I need to get it. I got to get out of here. We got to start getting things going. We got to start making money.

And my mom finally gave me permission or whatever, and within a week, I had a driver's license and a job. And the job that I got was working at a landscaping company during the year because I was partially homeschooled, so I could do it partially during the week. And then in the summer, we did it.

I guess I would go against the bubble. It's like, oh, we need to kind of pre-plan where he's going to work, and we got to vet everyone to make sure they're fine. I will confirm to everyone here, they were pure landscapers. Salty language. And I actually really love those people. I have a big affinity for blue-collar workers. That's why I love being with the boys in the garbage industry, because in some ways, I appreciate their honesty. They're not holding anything back, even if it is salty, even if it is unseemly.

I have no doubt they're being completely honest with me, and it taught me the value of hard work. What you see is what you get. Exactly. It taught me the value of hard work. I saw those people, and while I kind of laughed at them, I knew I didn't want to be that. It wasn't like I saw them like, yes, this is what I want to do. I'm like, in many ways, I don't want to be 39-year-olds and making these kind of jokes.

I think what you're saying, that story, that's the beauty of the greenhouse approach to parenting is that with any plant that you raise in a greenhouse, if you want to transform it, you want to transform it, you want to transform it, you want to transform it. Once the soil is warmed up, you have to put it through this hardening-off period, right, where you'll leave it out for a couple hours one day, bring it back in the greenhouse, you'll leave it out for a few more hours the next day, and on and on until the plant is ready to survive in the actual outdoor garden.

Man, I would hate to hear that. Yeah, there you go. That's such a good analogy, and Josh dropped that. Thanks, Josh. You totally derailed me. No, but when you allow them as they get older to have these experiences, like for one of my children, we decided to let her go to the parish confirmation class last year, and let me tell you, she was shocked to be like, wait, other 15-year-olds are atheists, and they're going to a confirmation class, and it was really...

Awesome, because then she would come home, and we would talk it through, have a little therapy session. I remember one of my job that was like your equivalent of landscaping was being a bus girl at a local restaurant, and then bussing at a bar. And man, did I learn a lot, but I was still living at home, and the weight of my time was with my parents, who could kind of like, all right, how'd it go? And allowing those kinds of experiences.

Yeah, I think that... I think that there's that. New Erika Lord-John, better not know that. Erika at the bar, that is funny to think about. Yeah, it was great. Guy told me to go ask the bartender for sex on a beach, and I just didn't. I was 15. I didn't know what was going on. That person should be behind. I don't know. Maybe he's messing with you. Yeah, he was creeps. Yeah, I don't like that at all. Don't like that at all.

Josh, do you want to dip into Jeremy Carl, or do you want to move? He's a good guy. He was nominated to be Assistant Secretary of State for International Organization Affairs, and apparently, he just withdrew his nomination, even though I think he'd be a great candidate. But it became clear that, again, that Utah liberal I'm telling you about, Senator John Curtis, had basically put a hold on it and said he was going to do everything he could to derail this guy and prevent him from getting the...

And so, Jeremy Carl did the noble thing to Rubio and to Trump and just said, you know, it's not tenable. I'll take myself out of consideration. It's too bad. It would have been great. It would have been a great service to our country and working in the State Department again.

I am not reserving my hatred for John Thune. I am reserving my hatred for those guys who are from states that you would think would be pretty solidly conservative. Well, what is going on with the Mormons there in Utah, man? Yeah, come on, guys. That's kind of a perennial question.

Okay, Twilight Zone now. Wait, I just have a question. Okay, this is a roller coaster. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. It's a question in the chat. Somebody asked me, could you touch alcohol at 15 at the restaurant? It was rural New Hampshire in 1996.

I'm not saying it was legal. I'm saying it's what we did. Yeah. Times have changed, for sure. Oh, okay. All right, sorry, Josh. Didn't mean to jump on you there. No, that's okay. This one is a bit of a roller coaster to go on with me, but hear me out on this one.

There is, and if there's kids listening, this is time to turn it off so the kids don't have to hear this kind of stuff. It's just, it's the reality here on the way it goes. But... There is a famous, apparently, strip club in Atlanta that is very important for the rap scene, apparently.

You know, like, why do I care about this? Oh, and they also have, you know, great, you know, lemon pepper chicken, blah, blah, blah, boring. The Atlanta Hawks decided they were going to partner with this strip club in a promotional thing for their basketball game.

And a Catholic NBA basketball player named Luke Cornett, I hope I pronounced his name correctly, with the Spurs, he said he waited a few days to see if anyone would actually challenge this, and no one said anything, and he's like, he finally goes public and says, what? Why on earth are we doing this? And he said, he came out strongly and said, Let me get the exact quote from him. I mean, kudos to him for doing this. Shout out Luke Cornett.

Yeah, seriously. No, exactly, and of course, now it is not loading. I have the Medium. Are you talking about the Medium article? If you got that quote, go ahead and read it, because mine is... This week, the Atlanta Hawks announced a special one-night collaboration to celebrate the city's iconic cultural institution, Magic City. I will not be there for Time Across America. During the team's home game against Orlando on Monday, March 16th, in its press release, the Hawks failed to acknowledge that this place is, as the business itself boasts, Atlanta's premier strip club.

Given this fact, I would like to respectfully ask the Atlanta Hawks to cancel this promotional night with Magic City. The NBA should desire to protect and esteem women, many of whom work diligently every day to make this the best basketball league in the world. We should promote an atmosphere that is protective and respectful of the daughters, wives, sisters, mothers, and partners that we know and love. Allowing this night to go forward without protest would reflect poorly on us as an NBA community, specifically in being complicit in the potential objectification and mistreatment of women in our society.

Regardless of how a woman finds her way into the adult entertainment industry, many in this space experience abuse, harassment, and violence to which they should never be subjective. Subjected. Right, so a major kudos to this, and I just can't, you know, I want to give a major tip of the cap to Luke Cornett for calling attention to this. It shouldn't have required it. Like, why would the Atlanta Hawks even consider this?

Thank the good Lord that the NBA pulled the plug on this and said, no, you're not doing that. No way. The Atlanta Hawks actually still wanted to do this. So, if there's any NBA fans out there, do not support the Atlanta Hawks. They don't deserve your money. They're still upset that the NBA decided against this. But here's the thing. Inevitably, you get this discussion of cancel culture. So, Tim Miller, who used to work for Jeb Bush, And now he's with the bulwark.

He is a super, super, super lefty and major Trump derangement syndrome. He goes, guys, I thought we all agreed we weren't going to back into this stuff anymore. So, he's saying, like, you know, we're not doing the cancel culture stuff anymore, as if this is just a normal cancel culture thing. And of all people, who calls out Tim Miller but Nancy Pelosi's daughter? He says, Christine Pelosi's like, guys, we never agreed to do pro sports promos with strip clubs, but if you think it's cool to dress kids with bulwark, that's what the magazine works for, with bulwark-themed strip club merch, by all means, you do you.

So, Christine Pelosi called him out. And then Tim points back. He's like, no, we're playing strip club with drag queen story hour. And this tweet could have been sent by Ron DeSantis. And so I just, I've, he's so close. He's so close to getting it.

Like actually both are unacceptable for people under 18. Your terms are acceptable. If we could get rid of both, that would be awesome. But I just, I just love it. And so I have to commend Tim Rice for, for making this analysis.

He says. You know, the bulwark, Tim Miller. Tim Miller says Nancy Pelosi's daughter isn't woke enough because she opposes the NBA strip club night. It's not a sentence I ever thought I'd have to write, but doing so makes me so happy. Here we are.

And yet, here we are. Didn't he run Jeb Bush's campaign? Yeah, yeah, he worked for Jeb Bush. Jeb. You wonder, how is it that a businessman could come down the escalator in 2015 and go through the entire Republican establishment like, you know, a prairie fire?

Well, Jim Miller is part and parcel for why he was able to do that. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure. All right. Anyway, shout out. Lemon Pepper Wings. Shout out Luke Cornett, for real, King. Former Celtic. Okay, Erika, what are we going to do? All right. I have a setup as well, and it turns into You Don't Hate the Media Enough segment. So, here we go. New York City, we had some protests on Saturday. These are ongoing protests outside of Gracie Mansion.

There's, you know, I guess we're white supremacists, the way that Mamdani's talking about them, saying that we hate Mamdani and we don't want Muslims in New York. But these protests attracted two young men, Amir Balat and Ibrahim Kayyumi.

Your average white American names. Were they trying to set this up as if white kids did this? No, no, no. They're targeting the white kids. Wait, just let me finish. They attempted to detonate shrapnel-filled improvised explosive devices. I don't know if you want to play this clip up here, Todd. I just told you, Todd, what does that mean? All right, so here we go. So, they're outside of this. The hardest pick of all time. Yeah, we got the greatest cop shot of the 2020s.

That is objectively a six out of five. This guy going after the parents. Yeah, but then you get the amazing black and white still of the cops. So, shout out to the police. It goes hard. But their targets were these NYPD officers and the group of anti-Islamic protesters.

Due to incompetent engineering, thank God, the bombs only gave off smoke and flames. They did not explode. According to federal prosecutors, the suspects shouted Allahu Akbar and said that they were inspired by ISIS in their official statement. So, they're Lutherans? Yeah, from Pennsylvania, it turns out. They're boys from Pennsylvania. They are facing federal terrorism charges, among others. But we get this headline. From CNN, to describe the incident. So, the one you put in the doc got deleted, so I don't know if it got changed.

It did. They deleted it. The internet lives forever. The internet lives forever, and the way that CNN put it originally, let's see if we can get the ratio. I wonder if I can get the original, because that was the adjusted one, right?

See, they got to make it as big as they deleted it. Yeah, it was basically, it said, two white teenagers from Pennsylvania allegedly throw a bomb. It was obviously intended to... Ah, yes. Do you got it, Tom? Tom, you can't be doing that.

Get to the end of the second hour. Yeah, two Pennsylvania teenagers cross the New York City... Yeah, I got it. You got it? There it is. Two Pennsylvania teenagers crossed into New York City Saturday morning for what could have been a normal day enjoying the city during abnormally warm weather. But in less than an hour, their lives would drastically change as the pair would be arrested for throwing homemade bombs during an anti-Muslim protest outside the mayor's home. And later on, someone else wrote, their visit to the city took a tragic and dark turn.

And you think, yeah, if I drove into New York City with an improvised explosive device, I would kind of expect my day to take a tragic and dark turn. CNN comes out with this, like, non-apology. This was, like, five hours later. A post regarding the two individuals arrested for throwing homemade bombs outside of Gracie Mansion failed to reflect the gravity of the incident, thereby breaching the editorial standards we require. It has therefore been deleted, hence our scramble that you just saw.

Say what you will about Constantine Kissin, Tom. I thought he nailed it on the head with this response, which was absolutely ratioed to the CNN apology. Constantine wrote, It did not fail to reflect the gravity of the situation. It failed to accurately communicate who was responsible, who the intended victims were, and where the blame for the attempted terrorist attack lay. In other words, you didn't accidentally downplay the seriousness of it. You deliberately misrepresented what happened to conceal the truth from the public.

Mic drop. Is there any news? Is there, like, any news outlet at this point that isn't doing this? I mean, was there a time when this wasn't happening? I guess zeal is our last bastion of not insanely framing news events for one way or the other, but, yeah, it just makes it, the whole thing is. The whole thing was crazy, including the white liberal counter-protester who was at the event. So, if you pull up this one, the video goes viral where Walter Masterson, so he was a counter-protester who was protesting the protesters who were protesting Mamdani, if you followed me on that.

And he's in the middle of, he gets a shot. I know. He has his shot. He's raising his hand. He says, as a born and raised New Yorker, we welcome everyone in this city. The video of the bomber, the guy runs, leapfrogs over this man, Walter Masterson, throws the bomb, and then Walter Masterson's left kind of like scrambling. He came out later to insist that, actually, if you scroll up, Tom, that shows the video. He came out later, Walter did, to say, I stand by, everyone is welcome in New York City.

The same guy. He was literally like the fulcrum of the throwing of the bomb, and he's like. No, I still think everyone's welcome in the city. Is this a direct quote from him or Walker Percy? Oh, no. She's saying he has his Walker Percy moment. Is this a quote from the guy, the protester guy? Yeah, that's him. I can't lie. It kind of goes hard. I am rascal, hero, craven, brave, treacherous, loyal, and... Oh, no, I'm sorry. That's Walker Percy. I was going to say.

That's Walker Percy. I didn't know he was capable of that. No, he's not. It is leaving us confused. There is like a protest, or the counter-protest of the protest, and the people that threw the bombs didn't throw the bombs, or they were trying to... CNN came through and... It is enough to make you want to sit down and sing Kumbaya. Yeah, I mean, like, and by the way, it is not just CNN. I mean, a lot of these media outlets covering the same event were going out of their way to, like, not, you know, like, NBC New York was like, the men arrested for the suspicious devices.

Okay, thank you. Counter-protesters? I mean, it's just like... What is going on, man? And there's other... Intentionally, use the passive voice, because they don't want to say Islamist guys were throwing a bomb. And this idea that... All this stuff. It just gets back to the point where the main job of the mainstream media is to, as David Burge says, cover the news with a pillow. Yes.

Well played, well played. Okay, my final one, please, I hope someone in the administration, oh, let's put it up. I hope someone in the administration is listening to this. Maybe I thought this would be sick when I was 14, but they're sharing actual footage from the war.

You want to see me do it again? You want to see me do it again? You want to see me do it again? Yeah. Let's have a talk about this. Yeah, that's a nice one. You know, I imagine I could go back and find some pretty ridiculous war propaganda back in the day.

This is stupid, and, like, does not treat— Wake up, Daddy Shum. Welcome home, son. Strength and honor. Strength and honor. What will you do without freedom? Mavericks in battle. Which, ironically, this probably actually was a propaganda film to set up the- Fordo. Yeah, Fordo. Midnight Hammer. Literally, if you go back and watch it, it is exactly it.

Mixing in this kind of stuff with actual war footage is- Dumb. It's juvenile. It does not treat war with the gravity it should be treated with. Ostensibly, those strikes killed many people, as we saw some of them actually hit unintended targets, such as girl schools. Even if you did hit combatants and killed them, that is a solemn achievement.

It's not something to go, rah, rah, rah, rah, awesome, look at these hilarious clips of us blowing people up. That, of course, doesn't treat war with the seriousness of gravity that it needs to be, and it riles up all the wrong people. And if you go through, I mean, 64 million views, just about everyone who has any shred of humanity in them, this is insane and tasteless. And then you get the people that are just going to cheer this on because it's like, oh, this is sick.

Vast majority of people are seeing this and are like, this is outrageous in the worst way. So, if we could just stop doing these, that would be great. I thought it was kind of unseemly during the ICE raids, too, and I think that was a known Lewandowski initiative.

Like, even though we're deporting people, it is unfortunate that we have to do it. It's still a tragedy, right? It's still a tragedy. Like, it's not something to be fired up about, and we should have cool, even-hand, like an even-handedly approach to it. And I just hate this. It just feels like you're, I don't know. Maybe you could say something more poetic about it. Instantly, I saw this and I was disgusted. Right. Even though I support our troops and want them to succeed, American troops always, they're of course the best among us, sacrificing and putting harm's way by the people pulling the strings, who I have much less respect for often.

But I'll never disrespect the people putting themselves in harm's way and sacrificing for our country. So, it just feels like the wrong approach to all this, and I talked to now a few guys who served in the military, and they're like, we think this is stupid too. Like, even though we had to go, I don't think anyone there is... I'm excited about taking life. And the people that are, a little bit off in the head. But it's a solemn thing. And I just think it's the wrong approach.

So, if we could stop making those, I'd be sick. That's what I got. And then the other one, I showed Lindsey Graham already. That makes me angry. And then, here's the thing. Let me just, I really, I don't know who Ted Cruz thinks he's running against. But I'll play this.

But in a college classroom, I'm a lot less certain. And it is being spread by loud voices, the most consequential of whom is Tucker Carlson. I believe Tucker Carlson is the single most dangerous demagogue in this country. Whoa, now.

Do we just, like, say things? Is that what we do? We just say stuff? Well, he's running against a podcaster currently for president, and then I think Logan Hall put it nicely on Twitter. It would be nice if the GOP devoted even 1% of the time and energy to standing up for the interests of normal legacy Americans as they do for stuff like this. I agree. That'd be great.

Although, I think the one person's comment I saw on this, I forget who it was, is like, this is, of course, an inevitable clip we will save for when he endorses Tucker Carlson for president in 2032. Josh, is Ted Cruz running in 2028?

I have friends who assure me that he's absolutely not. Oh, interesting. Yeah, so I don't know. That's going to be a crazy primary. Let's just really hate Tucker Carlson. Will Tucker Carlson run for president in 28? You know, I've been thinking that he might, just to try to, you know, he's got nothing to lose, and only, you know, prestige to gain, and just throw bombs. Totally.

Only winning all day. Little Trump-esque. I don't think there's any denying he is the voice of the, like, America first right. No question. He has a huge audience. Biggest, probably. He does have a big audience. No, I mean, of course. And, you know, he's like Trump in 2015. He's got nothing to lose. It's like, you know, why not? Just get out there and just say whatever you want. So, I mean, I still think it's, you know, it's Vance or Rubio's, you know.

Yeah, Kelshi, I think this morning, Rubio jumped in the top, but I don't think he escapes, you know, ownership for the war. So, I guess it depends on how this all goes. But finally, I will, I will, this, if we were, we'd listen to this, this will just soothe us at the end.

Pat Buchanan. Uncontrolled immigration threatens to deconstruct the nation we grew up in and convert it into a conglomeration of peoples with almost nothing in common, not history, heroes, language, culture, faith, or ancestors. Balkanization beckons. Yeah. Pat Buchanan. Precisely, because what happens is you end up like what's going on in Britain right now, where they just announced that they're going to remove Churchill from their... That was my other Twilight Zone. Not only are they removing Churchill, they're removing Jane Austen, everyone except, though, the queen on one of them, I think, the former queen, deceased now.

And they just disbanded the House of Lords. The hereditary peers are no longer balkanization. Full swing. And I do not desire that for America. No. But it sure feels like small percentages of the population that really would like to bomb other countries based on old blood feuds is dominating the discourse right now. And it would be nice for Ted Cruz to represent the people of Texas, not people in different countries. And it feels like we have so many senators now that, when's the last time you heard Lindsey Graham talk about South Carolina, except outside of how do we bomb Iran as quick as possible?

It feels like they've totally lost the plot. And I think it is kind of a result of this. Like, we just were litigating feuds overseas instead of solving problems at home. Well, you know, we will have one, no one will be, no senator will be more conservative over the next 70 days than John Cornyn as he tries to do his best to be the one.

Oh, man. Okay, cool. Good show, gang. Ending daily prayer. We got daily prayer for America 250 by Cardinal Burke. In the name of the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen. O 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 Guadalupe, patroness of the Americas, and through the intercession of her Immaculate Heart, bless my homeland anew, purify her from sin, and guide her leaders in truth, justice, and peace. So that she may safeguard all human life, respect the integrity of marriage and the family, and honor the practice of religion, reign in my home and in my nation, draw every heart into communion with you, that your truth, love, justice, mercy, and peace may triumph in America and throughout the world.

Amen. St. Thomas More, St. Fidelis, Arlego de Lupe, pray for us. Father, Son, Holy Spirit, Amen. Good show, gang. Hey, quick plug, quick plug. We have Father Gregory Pine is on the deep tomorrow at 4 p.m. Eastern, so be sure to tune in and learn how to tame your tongue. I learned a few things. And speaking of Cardinal Burke, we got a big thing going on at his big shrine to Our Lady of Guadalupe and La Crosse coming up in June.

So, go to CatholicVote, go to Zeal, find out more about that. It's pretty cool stuff. Yeah, do we have a link? Let's toss it in there. You can just go to CatholicVote.org. Oh, is it on CatholicVote or Zeal, or is it on both? If you go to CatholicVote.org, you can see the news story. CatholicVote launches Zeal for America 250, patriotic pro-campaign, and there is going to be more information in the days coming ahead.

The whole gang will be there. A special event will be held June 13th in Wisconsin. Come hang out with us. We'll be there. I got it. Did Selene toss it in there? It's going to be sweet. It's going to be sweet. Okay, there it is. Check it out. Maybe we'll see you there, and we'll see you later. Peace, guys.