Trump Threatens Venezuelan Airspace, D.C. Guard Attack, And Pope Leo 1st Trip

We're live. Welcome back to the LOOPcast. It's Tom, Erika, and Josh. Hope you guys had a great Thanksgiving, and happy Advent. It is the beginning of Advent. Before I get into some of my Advent questions, the show today will be as follows. First, we were talking about top story in the Loop today, Trump sending out a threat over Venezuelan airspace, over true social. I'm not sure where that constitutes. It violates international law. Can you do that?

We're going to get into all the details on that. The fight with Venezuela has been going on. For probably about 30 years. I'll give you a brief history, but we have a lot of military right there on the coast. I see one in three chance of potentially going to war, so we're going to be covering that. The second one was, I'm not sure we missed it over Thanksgiving, there was a really tragic attack. Two National Guardsmen from West Virginia were attacked in D.C., and so we have the status of the victims of the attack, the suspect, and then potential action from the Trump administration after that, so we're going to be covering all angles of that.

And the third is, I think we can reveal it this time, we have someone on the ground in Lebanon with Pope Leo. So, Pope Leo is on his first trip, first international trip. He was in Turkey. He is now in Lebanon. Literally, right now, we're getting, we got a FaceTime from our producer, who usually is on the chat. She, like, a glowing video of all these people just clamoring, super loud outside, very exciting. So, we're going to get into Pope Leo's trip, what it means.

You know, the Ortho Bros might be in trouble here. I know. Because Unity is coming, potentially. I don't know. There's a lot going on here, so it's going to be a great show. Good news, Twilight Zone, of course, as always. But before we get into that, Advent, are there any Advent traditions you guys are on that I should be on? I'm not sure. I'm kind of new to the game as a young family. Well, Erika probably has a few more ideas on this than I would, but the only thing I would remind people about is that You know, as the whole world gets into secular Christmas mode and doing lots of Christmas songs, don't be a Scrooge and yell at people for doing the Christmas songs.

That's what gets them happy. It's still advertising for Jesus and his nativity, you know, and just to try to center... Well, unless it's last Christmas by when. Yeah, exactly. But at least try to, you know, steer the conversation in a more productive way, but like, don't scold them. No one wants to scold. But I would just remind people that Advent actually is also a time of actually So, you know, it's hard because you get these Christmas parties and all this stuff, but try as best as you can to fast.

It's a penitential season of Advent, so that's the only thing I'll just try to remind people of. But don't be a scold. But I like to, you know, in our family, we like to build up to Christmas, and so we don't even have a tree yet, you know, and we'll get a tree eventually, and then we'll wait till St. Lucy's Feast Day.

You know, in the Scandinavian countries, she was associated with light because her feast day on the 13th used to be what the winter solstice was, and that is why the church had her feast day that day, and girls in Scandinavia would put a wreath around their head with candles, walk around like that, you know. So, you know, that is when we start putting lights up around it. So, we start building towards, you know, December 25th, and then we do not throw the tree out on December 26th.

If people do that, again, do not be scolds, but just... Try to encourage them. Hey. Josh, you're a real tree guy, Josh. Um, we usually do a real tree. I mean, I got it in my, just go into my backyard and cut one down. Yeah, I think I'd be disappointed. Your reputation would be tarnished if you were a fake tree guy, I think, at this point.

So, we'll leave it at that. Erika, any Advent tips? Yeah, we just, we do the Advent wreath on our dining room table, so when we gather for meal, we start burning those candles, and the little kids are like, it won't last. Look, well, it's getting too short, and it always lasts, the first candle. Um, we do... You know, we switch up our songs, so we do Family Decade of the Rosary every night, but we switch up the song, we sing at the end, do a little advent, like, Oh Come Divine Messiah, or Come Thou Long Expected Jesus.

So, yeah, switch that up a little bit. Nothing too crazy, but like Josh, we try to be incremental about introducing the Christmas theme. So, we put out the nativity set first Sunday, because the little kids love to play with it, but no baby Jesus. In the nativity set, and the three kings are obviously off on the other side of the living room waiting for Epiphany. My friend in his yard, he's got the nativity scene, and he's got the wise men, and every few days, he moves it closer and closer to the nativity scene.

And the mailman came by one time and goes, I don't think they're going to make it on time. And he goes, they don't make it by December 25th. They don't. January 6th, the Epiphany. Come on, babe. That's awesome. Yeah, but I love Advent. I love this time of year. I love that it's the new year for the church, but it also, yeah, I just love how nature and the liturgical year, they fit together so well at Advent, here in the Northern Hemisphere, obviously.

And I like, yeah, just that the light is coming during this darkest time, and yeah. So, we got a little potential fast. I know that it is. I have heard that before. It gets lost in the mix. It is like a mini Lent. Do you have any recommendations for fasts? Is it just like no meat on Friday thing? What would the traditional approach to Advent be? Well, we have like a family fast, so we give up desserts after dinner. We typically let the kids have a cookie or something four or five days a week after dinner, so we just give that up.

Give up, except on Sunday, of course. The thing about Advent is there are so many feast days that when you are fasting from food, you end up having a feast every other day. It is a mini Lent. It is a mini Lent, so it is really broken up. But yeah, we do that, and we all try and give up one little thing. So, I give up alcohol for Lent, for Advent and Lent. That is cool. Just pick one little thing, but it is mini Lent.

Fasting, yeah. Speaking of the ortho bros, I think they got fasting down, and that is something I think we could definitely reconnect with in the West. That would be great. So, speaking of, so the show today. Venezuela. Venezuela. Top story in the loop for good reason. The Trump administration had a phone call. Trump himself had a phone call with Nicolas Maduro, the current leader. I think he claims he's democratically elected. There's plenty of dispute there. He had a phone call, told him to leave Venezuela immediately before Trump announced that the country's airspace would be closed.

According to reports, the warning was reportedly delivered in a phone call with Caracas and offered guaranteed evacuation for Maduro, his wife, and their son, but only if the dictator agreed to resign on the spot. It looks like he did not agree to this, and we pretty quickly got a Trump Truth social post declaring the airspace above and surrounding Venezuela to be closed in its entirety to all airlines, pilots, drug dealers, and human traffickers. This is his exact quote. To all airlines, pilots, drug dealers, and human traffickers, please consider the airspace above the surrounding Venezuela to be closed in its entirety, all caps at the end of that.

Specific note on that, this is not an official FAA closure. That would require formal regulatory action, but rather unilateral presidential warning, echoes tactics used in past U.S. military campaigns, where such public announcements have preceded airstrikes or enforcement actions. The FAA has separately issued a caution to pilots about heightened military activity in the area.

Advising extreme vigilance. Of course, people love to get on the flight tracker. I think this is like Google Maps or it's a flight tracker app or something like that. So, you know, how effective was this presidential warning? And it looks pretty effective. Here is a map of Venezuela and the surrounding area. No planes. That's planes in other spots.

Yeah, I don't mean to make light of this. I mean, this is really serious. There's broader context. I mean, this has been going on for about 30 years, going to Hugo Chavez, and as of right now, the Trump administration has deployed the USS Gerald R. Ford aircraft carrier strike group, over a dozen warships, and roughly 15,000 troops off of Venezuela's coast.

This follows, of course, the U.S. naval strikes that were very controversial, hitting suspected drug boats in international waters, have reportedly killed at least 80 people at this point. They publicly announced that the CIA has been operating within Venezuela to disrupt trafficking networks, and they have highlighted the reasoning given by the Trump administration broadly has been anti-drug efforts. They talk about Tren de Aragua, Cartel de las Solas, run by elements of Maduro's regime, efforts targeting human trafficking as well. And so, this has been building up for a while.

I don't know. I have somewhat complicated thoughts on this at this point, but it sure looks like I saw odds are saying one in three we might go to war with Venezuela over this. It feels like another regime change war. I'm not sure how this is different than what is going on in the Middle East, in my opinion. If we were to engage in regime change war, maybe Josh would disagree on that. How do you guys feel about this?

Well, I think the biggest difference with the Middle East is that it's in our hemisphere, right? Like, this is solidly on our side, so there's more of an immediate threat, and Josh will remember which doctrine that is. Monroe Doctrine. Right, Monroe Doctrine. Thank you. I knew it was M. Monroe Doctrine. So, it's solidly in our hemisphere. Again, though, I mean, I'm getting sort of uncomfortable flashbacks to the regime changes that we were in. Engaged in the 1970s, 80s in Panama, Guatemala, Honduras.

It's messy. It is not what I voted for. We've covered before how Venezuela acts as a sort of proxy for some of our more global enemies, so China using Venezuela as a parking spot for the fentanyl that is manufactured, although Mexico is much more of a parking spot than Venezuela, so it's like, well, why Venezuela? Why not Mexico?

I am not sure that I even have an opinion yet on this, other than I'm very uncomfortable with the idea of getting boots on the ground, landing troops on the ground into Venezuela. I don't see evidence from the last 60 years that this kind of action has gone well or ended well for the United States, even in our own hemisphere.

Well, I mean, the biggest difference, obviously, you know, you said it too, Erika, like just the geographic, you know, distance. The proximity, right. You know, you're talking hundreds of miles, you know, as opposed to thousands of miles. That's one thing. What happens in the Southern Hemisphere affects us quite obviously. We saw that over the last four years.

As poor people from, you know, countries that were... Well, I mean, I'm not a big fan of the United States causing regime change anywhere, but I'm certainly against it in the Middle East, simply because having like a despot like Muammar Gaddafi or Saddam Hussein, the question is, is the replacement better? And in majority Muslim countries, I would say, chances are, no. Chances are, it would be worse. Then you would have, oh, let us have a democracy. Oh, what? And people who are like, hey, yeah, violence is a great way to solve our problems.

Then you get the Muslim Brotherhood. That is not awesome. So, the question is, in the Southern Hemisphere, Is there a better likelihood that if you got rid of a desk, but that you might actually get, you know, someone who's more aligned with the United States? Like, yeah, there is that possibility. It doesn't mean you necessarily go ahead with it, but at least the possibility is much better than it would be anywhere in the Middle East.

Yeah. I mean, in Argentina, we've seen Javier Millet, if you could get someone like that into a Venezuela. We saw in El Salvador with Bukele, if you get someone like that, if the Trump administration is reading the tea leaves and they're like, okay, the populace of Venezuela, if you give them one shot at an actual fair election, they're going to turn this thing around with a figure like those two men. Maybe that's what they're betting on. I don't know. Even if you were to make that argument, the same argument as...

I mean, we had a color revolution that we caused there, and I would not argue that what's going on there is much any less corrupt than what was going on before. If they're in a better situation than before, I'd argue in many ways, no. So, the last 30 years.

I mean, everything with Ukraine, again, it was like, this is something that should be dealt with by Europe, you know, a long time ago. Right, not America. Because if Ukraine goes to hell, which it has. And people are displaced. They're going to get displaced all throughout Europe, so it should be Europe the one that is writing the checks and having to deal with the sacrifice of everything that's going on there, whereas the United States, with countries like Venezuela, when things go really sour, which they have.

For many years now, we are actually in a spot where we're like dealing with a headache and the fallout, so. Right. Yeah, I think that what frustrates people is the argument, the drug argument does not hold up to even minor scrutiny. I mean, I saw that the.

The president of Honduras was just pardoned, or he's going to pardon him, and he was a major part of trafficking drugs into the country. Yeah. So, it's just like, I just wish that we could be a little bit more honest, because there could be something going on, and maybe they can't be honest about why they're doing it.

Like, if you just look at hard numbers, I mean, they share 17.3% of the global total of oil reserves. Like, hate to be cynical, but that kind of looks like a big reason. Like, would love to get some free oil or have more friendly. Have a more friendly politician in there to get us oil? Like, that could just be the real politic. I don't think it's drugs.

And it feels kind of insulting that the reason would be drugs, that we're going to commit so many military resources there. I don't know. This just feels very, I don't know. I hate to be going back to this, but I did not vote for more wars. I didn't vote for more regime change. I voted for more domestic focus. You need to really make an argument to the American people that somehow benefits us domestically rather than causing the same problem that we've had, as you said, Josh, when you rattle the saber of other countries and you cause problems there with regime change.

Their immigrants move here. Like, we've dealt with all the gang problems here. We've dealt with all the people coming across the border, partially because their situations are bad. I don't see how causing instability intentionally over the last 30 years, you would expect less immigrants to come this way. Like, I don't know. It doesn't matter to me what Venezuela decides to do with their government. If you can get a government in Venezuela that is not, like, psycho-Marxist, then you can actually turn that ship around.

I mean, Venezuela was once a very prosperous country that had great, you know, the people were doing quite well, big middle class, people were doing great, and it all went to hell when they elected Marxists, so. And then when we tried to oust the Marxist, Hugo Chavez, that kind of backfired, too. Right, and then we get Nicolas Maduro, and then all of our attempts to try to get him out there has just strengthened his results. Like, they get to use the U.S.

as the big boogeyman of like, look, look what they're trying to do to us. That's true. True, exactly. So, I don't know. So, yeah, it's necessary for me to bring up at this point because I unfortunately predict a heightened escalation in military conflict. There's no other way at this point, and so we'll keep you updated on that. Well, I mean, I guess I would agree with you, though. Like, I just wish that, you know, this is the way we've been doing military engagements for the last 60 years, you know, and it's not like the president makes his case to, you know, the Congress, and then Congress debates it, and we say, yeah, let's go to war with Venezuela.

It's just that the president, you know, he says, hey, this is what I'm doing, and he just does it. That's been both parties. I don't like it. Yeah, I completely agree. I mean, this next story with the National Guard, I think, directly relates to how we've handled military affairs and war over the last 30 years. So, a little bit of background here. I'll show the news report of just what we know at this point.

So, over the weekend, November 26, 2025, around 2.15, a targeted ambush-style shooting occurred near the West Metro Station in Washington, D.C., approximately two blocks northwest of the White House. The attack targeted two members of the West Virginia National Guard who were a part of a federal deployment in the city. Pete, the suspect, Ramanullah Lakanwal, a 29-year-old Afghan national, allegedly approached the guardsmen without provocation, fired multiple shots. 10 to 15 total, and was subdued after a brief exchange of gunfire. The incident unfolded in broad daylight and has been described by officials as a horrendous act of violence and potential act of terrorism.

The FBI is leading the investigation with federal charges, including first degree murder pending. A third guardsman who is unarmed assisted in subduing the suspect. President Trump called the attack an act of evil and savage, ordering an additional 500 National Guard troops to D.C. in response. The two victims, Sarah Backstrom and Andrew Wolfe. Sarah Backstrom, 20 years old, unfortunately deceased. Please pray for the repose of her soul. She was shot in the chest and the head and died from her injuries on November 27th.

And then Andrew Wolfe is still in critical condition at this point. Shot multiple times, including in the neck, remains in critical condition, as I said. But really, really sad, really tragic event that happened in broad daylight. I have a little bit more about what we know about the suspect, and yes, it does relate to a lot of our...

Foreign policy operations. So, he immigrated to the U.S. in September 2021. He was born in Khost province, Afghanistan. He was brought in under Operation Allies Welcome. That was a Biden-era program for the Afghan allies. At risk after the U.S. withdrawal, he resettled in Bellingham, Washington, with his wife and five sons. He applied for asylum in December 2024 and was granted it by the Trump administration. So, he applied under the Biden administration and granted asylum under the Trump administration. This is despite prior vetting under Biden.

He served 10-plus years in the Afghan army, including As a GPS tracker specialist in the CIA-backed Zero unit, it was a paramilitary strike force under the Afghan National Directorate of Security in Kandahar province. These units conducted high-risk raids on Taliban targets and were known for their intensity.

I believe that we have a friend, a source, that said that he was greatly disturbed by what he did there, what he saw there. He worked closely with the U.S. Special Forces and the CIA from around 2011 at age 15, undergoing extensive vetting multiple times with no prior red flags noted. A former commander described him as a sporty and jolly character. They're saying potential PTSD at this point. The Afghan suspect in the shooting previously had the CIA.

And they're saying that his mental health and behavioral decline started in around 2023, so this was after he came to the United States, quit his job. In 2024, Ramal has not been functional as a person, father, or provider since March of last year. He quit his job that month. His behavior has changed greatly. Feared suicidal tendencies and spiraling into mania. He would have manic episodes in dark isolation, ignoring his family, reckless drives in family car, nonstop trips for two weeks, including Chicago and Arizona.

Failed to hold steady jobs, learn English, or maintain contact with the Washington State. DSHS. That's the Department of Social and Health Services. Family faced eviction in 2023 for unpaid rent. Children arrived at school unwashed in dirty clothes and malnourished. School raised concerns. The USCRI attempted a March 2024 visit but got no response. Unclear if it was reported to immigration or police. The advocate was stunned by the attack, recalling Lankwalt as playing with his sons. So as a response, the Trump administration and the USCIS.

Halted all Afghan immigration processing indefinitely for vetting review. Trump vowed to permanently pause migration from all third world countries and expand deportations, blaming Biden-era vetting. I see that they're already talking about sending the National Guard all over the country to every city at this point. This is definitely going to be used as an opportunity to send more National Guard presence. I think this is just a really unfortunate—that's what we know at this point.

Yeah. I mean, this just speaks to, first of all, prayers for the repose of the soul. I have a 20-year-old living in D.C. right now, and to think of, we were just walking around there a few weeks ago when we visited her at the Farragut West Station, and it's really shocking to think of this kind of an attack down there.

There are so many breakdowns of responsibility here, as far as this attacker goes. Again, his actions are ultimately his. This is, it's infuriating to read through all the points of contact that people who were supposed to be looking out for him, considering his asylum application, and then finally pushing it through, they had multiple warnings that he had gone off the rails as early as 2023. And, you know, the abandonment of his children, the recklessly driving with his kids in the car, a dark isolation, this This guy should have been, this should have been intercepted, right?

And certainly, asylum should have been a big question mark. Yeah, once again, just breakdown of the system at so many levels. So, I absolutely, this will be used and should be used to slow things down, to shut things down, and to get it right, because this should not have happened.

Yeah, and again, you know, this is a case where, you know, the Biden administration was pushing to have a lot of Afghans come into the country, and Republicans tried to do what they could to stop it, to filibuster it, but a few Republicans got squishy back in 21 or whatever it was, and opened the door, and a lot of them, allowed a lot of them to come in, and it's like, look.

I was living in Washington, D.C., when my city got attacked on 9-11, you know, when I was living there, and, you know, the people responsible for the attacks may have been from Saudi Arabia, maybe they were part of Afghanistan, like, so we decided to go to war or whatever. That doesn't mean that 20 years later, like, let's just allow a lot of people, citizenship in the United States. Why doesn't citizenship Come with it, this idea of sacredness. Oh, well, we owe it to them.

Okay, well, you know, here's a few bucks. Thank you for helping us, but I don't give, you know, like this idea, just let them all in. I'm sorry, you know, like, we have seen over the last 15, 20 years, the problems with just allowing as many people come into our country as possible. If they don't, Respect the rule of law and our culture and traditions. Look what happened with my home state of my native state of Minnesota. Total corruption scheme where a bunch of Somalis were, you know, we mentioned this on the program before, where they were just, you know, stealing millions and millions of dollars, claiming that all their kids were autistic.

And public officials in Minnesota knew about it. But they were afraid to say anything because they'd be called racist, which is the touch of death in Minnesota. You know, again, height of a bunch of Scandinavians, just like I am. They were so petrified, the idea that someone would call you racist.

Toxic empathy is such a problem in our country. Where it's like, you know, we're afraid of what the truth is because someone might smear you. Like, what in the world is going on with our country? You're going to allow our country to go down the toilet. You're going to allow people to come to our country, and they open fire on our men and women in uniform. It's insane. It's toxic. It's insane. And it infuriates me because... I want to be, I want to live in a country that can have a reasonable ability, capacity, and system for welcoming people in, because I do think that a certain level of migration is great.

I think we should be able to offer asylum to people who are truly in need. And, in fact, this story, seeing it, that it shut down the Afghan thing, a friend of mine, a good friend of mine in Michigan has been like a mentor to an Afghan family who was brought in when we evacuated because the dad had been killed serving the United States. We brought over here the mom and five of the seven children. Two of them were lost in the airport as they were making their way to their gate.

So they're here now with five children. They've been here since the withdrawal. And that woman, her husband gave his life to serve our country while our troops were over there. I am glad that we were able to bring her and her five kids who she was able to find and get to the airport on time.

This kind of, the Biden administration's policy, and going farther back even, the policy of letting anyone in at any time and just bring everybody in, it breaks the system for people like that woman, who my friends have mentored for. It breaks it, so we can't do that, right? Now it's causing her application. And, you know, I largely agree with both of your... Sentiments including, like, mass-scale immigration, I don't think it's been successful for any country. But in this case, as a 15-year-old, he was, so I, again, I think most reasonable people look back and think we made a lot of mistakes when it came to Afghanistan.

The entire Middle East operation has been largely a failure, trillions of dollars, lots of death, just a mess. But, we did go there, and we did use Afghan sources. So, this guy clearly put his life on the line for the country, for the United States, to a point where I'm sure his life probably was in danger, like in Afghanistan. So, it's almost like there's so many layers to the mess, but I don't see him as different.

Of course, now knowing what we know about what happened, this is terrible, but he was vetted, he was given asylum twice, and I think that he probably did have, I can't go, I didn't go into the documents, but it sounds like he probably did have legitimate fear for his life or his family's life because of what a mess Afghanistan is right now and how he helped the country in that time. And maybe it's what we asked him to do was crazy.

I was seeing crazy things about the squad he was on, like they kind of operated paramilitary and did some really, you know, you know, like really scary stuff. Tough stuff. So, this is going to be... Yeah, sometimes there's not a good answer on any given... I don't think there is a good answer. Individual problem. I guess it just gets to a larger problem, though. It's like, you know, again, actually, Trump talks about it. He talks about this toxic empathy. He said, you know...

You know, there are a lot of citizens in our country, patriots, who have been, you know, who have been so nice in allowing our country, you know, to bring in people into our country, but it breaks their heart, he basically said. And it's like, you know, and then when we start having discussions about this, like, how many, you know, we have pretty generous social services in our country.

Anyone who goes to school gets free education, so-called free. It is obviously paid for by the taxpayers. We have pretty generous welfare benefits in our country. You know, it's not just the corruption stuff with Somalia. There's just a lot of migrants who come to the country, and they're on the dole, and it's very expensive, and the lefties are saying, oh, no, not a lot of them. Well, if their children are born in the country, then they're already citizens, and so, yes, they're collecting on behalf of them as well, so we do have a big financial burden with this.

It is a tough problem, but I would agree. Along with what Trump is getting at, less foreign engagement in the Middle East, so we don't bring people from Afghanistan, so we don't bring people from Iraq to our country, because those countries don't have generations of understanding of the rule of law.

Peaceful living with each other? I mean, I'm sorry. I just don't want it. I mean, ask anyone in any part of the country, would you rather have in your town 100 Mexicans come into your town or 100 Afghanis?

Everyone, unless they lie, everyone's telling you. I'm starting to ask some uncomfortable questions, because the right thing is to apply that unilaterally, right? Like, there should be a uniform process to come to the United States. I just think, largely, we need a complete immigration shutdown. I think we need to, like, figure out who we are with the people that we have here. It can't be a constant revolving door of the type of people. I don't think there's anything inherent to the IQ or DNA of someone from...

The Middle East, Afghanistan in particular, and then someone in Mexico. I don't think Josh is referring to IQ or DNA, though. I know you're not. I'm making a broader point, because I think the right thing is to have that blanket memorial.

You're going to ask some uncomfortable questions? I think many Afghanis are good people, Christian, you know, grew up in a completely different culture. Do I think that they should come over? No, and I can say the same thing about Mexicans.

What did you say? What percentage of Afghanis are Christians? I believe it is less than 1%. We know about them. We have sent missionaries out there. They are getting pummeled. Why should these people not get entrance? It is less than 1%. Sure, so why should those people not get entrance and say Mexicans or someone else? Well, the reason I would say is Afghanistan. I am saying because Afghanistan, its culture, and it is both legal and it is legal.

Culture, and it is also just the regular culture. There is not a sense of understanding of rights, market economy, all that kind of stuff. Okay, so Mexico is not exactly placid and peaceful, but again, the reason why people would rather have 100 Mexicans come into the country, or certainly 100 Japanese, over 100 Afghanis or 100 Iraqis, is because those places have been kind of...

Crap holes. Trump got into trouble saying it for Haiti. You know, I do care about the country they come from. So, you know, I would say, well, 100 people from Britain. Well, certainly if they're If they're British. If they're actually British for several generations, everyone... Well, no, I mean, you're correctly identifying, like, the UK is basically in crisis, because they have people show up on boats, and they receive the generous social services, and they don't play ball with any of the traditional England, English...

I do have honest questions about, you know, Islam. You know, like... When Islams are a minority in a Christian country, they seem to behave fairly well. When they become a majority in a place, then you start getting, or close to a majority, then you get what Lebanon was in the early 80s, where it gets to be a civil war, and then when they eventually get in control, then the Christians minority are treated not so well. As in Dearborn, right. So, what does that tell you?

Like, they think, you know, It is to, you know, if you have a majority should be able to set whatever rules they want. In our country, we have a tradition for 250 years now where there are certain things that the majority cannot do. Individuals still have freedom of speech, freedom of religion, all that other kind of stuff, the Bill of Rights, that kind of thing. You do not find that in Afghanistan.

Iraq. Now, ask yourself this, Tom. If, for some reason, the United States decided to remove your citizenship, I mean, it is not going to happen, but let us say. It might. And you are given a choice. The federal government says, we will pay for you to be relocated, and we will talk with the government. We have three choices for you. Would you like to go to Afghanistan? Would you like to go to Iraq? Or would you like to go to Japan?

Oh, I mean, I would post up in Tokyo. Obviously. I'd be doing karaoke, for sure. So, my point is, like, you know, again, we like to think of ourselves as an island. We're so individual and all this other kind of stuff, but of course, we are the products of our friends, our neighbors, our teachers, our moms, our dads, you know, our uncles and aunts, and everyone else, like, you know, and so. It does matter. Culture matters, and I just feel like importing people from Somalia, Haiti, Iraq, and Afghanistan, I'd rather not do that anymore.

I feel sympathetic towards those who helped us during war, although... That's not a blank check forever. We should try to be right by them, and just because one person decided to pop off and kill doesn't mean that every single person coming from Afghanistan is a threat, but I don't know. I do wonder if they were properly vetted, and I actually, if we're going to have immigration, I would rather have it from countries, like I said, and it's not even a racial thing.

I mean, I would take people from Korea. I'd take people from Japan. Well, someone made the good point that Japan would not allow it, because they have some of the strictest immigration measures in the world. They allow their people to emigrate out. Well, right, but I would be on a very temporary, strict visa, and I would be shown the door in probably two or three years, and that is the reality of what... Again, if they made an exception for you, you would live there, you would pick that over Afghanistan.

Yeah, yeah, right, of course. There are certain things like... No, I understand. When we have discussions in society, we have to pretend like, oh, well... I want to make sure everyone knows I'm not racist, so I'm going to try to pretend like all things are equal. Haiti is not equal to Japan. Josh, could I bring up, I agree on everything you're saying, but I'm a little bit tired of viewing the United States as this, like, piggy bank, economic piggy bank to be ransacked by the entire world, and it just feels like we have, we have, like, little factions within the country based on your religion, or based on your ethnicity, or if you have none of that.

And you just try to get as much advantage as you can to take care of your own, and you basically live in this like salad-type society where there's no cohesion. We argue every day. It's like there was a while where showing the American flag in your lawn was racist. It's like, how could we possibly have gotten to this place as a country? And I would just say, largely, multiculturalism has failed. Like, I just think it's turned us into this, like, we just loot this place that we have no relation to, and we're just trying to protect our own.

We have these little enclaves that... Have not largely assimilated, and I think it'd be, even if you are okay with certain levels of immigration, I don't know the people that make the argument that it wouldn't even be good to assimilate, or that we don't even have a common ideal in which to work towards, and that's what functional countries have and strive towards, and the people that don't even pretend like that's even supposed to be the point of this whole thing, I feel like are just set up for failure.

Okay, so- And I feel that right now. I feel like we're failing in a lot of ways. I'm not disagreeing really with anything. What you're saying is, I think, and again, I don't mean to take a crap on the boomers again, so work with me on this one, people.

Well, like one of the central mantras of the baby boomer generation, my dad was born in 46, mom in 51. I mean, they are, boom, right there, type A, exhibit A and exhibit B on boomers. And they instilled in this idea that, you know, to quote Fleetwood Mac, go your own way. It was up to you to chart your own path, do whatever you want. Don't feel like you're obligated to do the family business, you know. Frank Sinatra. Yeah, exactly. So, you break the chains of intergenerational kind of cohesion and dependency, codependency, right?

And you are able to scatter like dust in the wind, right? Let us just get every song and let us go. And so, you are told, choose your own path. I remember asking my mom and my dad, what do you think I should do? Asking them for advice, which would be a normal thing a kid would ask their parents, and they were so afraid to try to tip the scale in any way. They were just like, whatever you want to do, whatever you want to do.

My gosh, I am asking you for advice because, I do not know, you gave birth to me. Because I am a kid. You raised me for 18 years. You kind of know me. So, because we had that instilled in our country so much, like this kind of rootless generation, like do whatever you want, and we did become very prosperous.

I think what kind of instilled in people is the next generation after that, Gen X and millennials and all that kind of stuff. We grew a lot of people who didn't have like these generational roots. They weren't necessarily super close to their parents and grandparents, and they just feel like.

They hit the lottery of life. They ended up being born in the United States, where they have a comfortable job and brand new cars every six years, and there is no real massive struggle in life. They just feel like, how can they say no? If you are living in a nice suburb like Canton, Michigan, how can you say no to these poor immigrants in this other country? Come on into this lucky land of the United States, and we will throw you some food, and you will pick yourself up from the bootstraps, and you will become a success story.

We just have not been able to say, Now, hold on a second. It is one thing to make it a nice little story for one person, but you just cannot let in 10 million people over the next decade, plus another 20 million illegally, and just expect everything to be just hunky-dory.

And so, I do feel like we have so many people in this country that just do not have roots generationally, so that they just feel like, oh, well, whatever, let anyone in. Like, you know, it's just, the United States is just a...

A parking lot, it's not really a culture. There's no rootedness. So, that's, I think, the biggest problem. The other song I would add to your little list of anthems there would be Imagine by John Lennon, right? Because you take that, sorry, Josh, I triggered him. But if you add that sort of spiritual vacuity, like there's nothing beyond this life, there's no heaven, there's no borders, there's no countries, there's no peoples.

And you add that to, I did it my way. Yeah, you end up with generational breakdown. You end up with generation after generation. Atomization. Yeah, atomization and all breakdown, which just makes you ripe for what we're experiencing right now. And I think that Trump's reaction to this, like we're going to shut down the Afghan asylum program right now, everything's paused until we can figure out what the heck is going on, is also... Sort of the logical next step if we want to dial this thing back at all and have any hope of reclaiming a sense of a homeland that is America.

The question is, will we be able to do it, or is it too late? We've done this before. We have. We did it in the 1900s. Again, I keep bringing it up. People bring that up as the period of time in which we had the good immigrants or something like that, and I think to blanket say everyone is a good immigrant or a bad immigrant is probably wrong, but that level of immigration, while some good things came, largely brought many problems, including massive organized crime in the country, and so for 40 to 60 years, something like that, we had net zero immigration in the country because it was like, hey, we got to figure out what's going on.

Who do we have here? What is our project? Where are we going? The entire last election cycle was predicated on that concept. It was, here you go, President Trump. We need to shut down what's going on right now, and we need to figure out who we are as a country, and we need to move forward. It's been done before. I hope that it can be done again. I hope it's not too late, but yeah.

We can do it. It has been done before. Look it up. 1900s. There are 40 to 60 years of zero immigration. Oh, from 25 to 65. Again, the Democrats won a big election in 64. What do they do? Mass immigration. They won a big election in 2008. What do they do? Socialists take over of healthcare. Yeah.

Okay, on to good news now. Boy, do we need it. Erika, what do you got? Oh, yeah. This is great news. As someone with a vested interest in the birth industry, this was great news for me. So, this story was in the New York Times, and it's covering, for those of you in the know, C-sections have been on the rise for my entire...

Birthing career, we'll say. So, the last 20 to 30 years. A long time. A long time, people. I've been giving birth. But we have good, and it's become sort of an accepted thing that as we progress medically, we're going to have more surgical births because the line is to women, well, it's perfectly safe. But it has been shown to have both short-term and long-term risks because we're going to have more surgical births. It's surgery, people. But we have hospitals who are figuring out how to slash C-section rates, something that we were told could not be done.

And in fact, it can, using financial and social incentives. And Leah Labresco, Sergeant here, she had a great summary of the New York Times article. A Rochester hospital dropped its C-section rate from 40% of its deliveries to 25%. Over a two-year period, that is fast, by relying on midwives, checklists, and dressing down trigger-happy doctors. Well, that last one caught my attention. So, I looked up, I read in the article.

Rochester General's rate declined steadily and dramatically, reaching 25% in 2023. That drop is among the steepest at the 1,600 hospitals that regularly report cesarean rates to Leapfrog Group, which did the study. Many doctors see rising C-section rates as an intractable problem. Some physicians point to women giving birth at older ages with more complications like obesity and high blood pressure, and they say that extra cesareans are inevitable, but get this. This is what I found out. Physicians in hospitals earn more money when they perform a cesarean, though it often requires less time on the part of the physician.

The average insurance payment to a hospital for a C-section is about $17,000. What? For vaginal delivery, it's just over $11,000. Another element of this story was that they found the time of day at which the woman went into labor also affected when she would have a C-section.

Most C-sections occur in the early evening hours, basically when the doctors want to leave and get home, and they look at this. And they're like, if I just gave her a C-section now, I could be home for dinner and the game, and I would get another $6,000. So, what Rochester did was... Probably more the time at that point, but yeah. Exactly. Rochester General said, okay, fine. We're just going to say all births are the same, whether it's surgical or vaginal. And they started doing little competitions between the doctors.

So, at the staff meetings, they would report and just... Basically, applaud the doctor with the fewest C-sections, and just simple things like that. They've brought down their C-section rate by a whopping 15% over two years, which is super impressive. So, there is hope. There are hospitals that are trying to do the right thing medically, instead of just treating women giving birth. I thought it went down 15 points, not just 15%. Sorry, 15 points. Yeah, that's even more considerable, yeah.

So, that's pretty fun. Good news, it can be done. Sure can. Josh, what do you got? All right, so, I don't know if, can you bleep this? Probably. It's a little bit late for the bleeping at this point.

Well, I can, I mean, I can read. You can read the quote, yeah. Okay, all right, all right, all right. I mean, I did, I did make it. So, Joe Rogan, obviously a very popular podcaster for lots of people, not just the young, angry men like Tom Pagasic, but he was talking. He's not really angry, guys. He said, the scripture is, to me, is what is interesting. It's fascinating. Christianity, he says, it works.

So, I find this fascinating. There are two reasons why he finds Christianity interesting. Number one, just reading the scripture and making sense of it. It seems to gel with his version. You know, it makes sense to the reality of it. Like, it gels. Like, what it says about The cosmos, what it says about human life, that makes sense to him. But here is the other reason that he likes Christianity and the church that he is currently going to with. The people that are Christians that go to this church that I go to, they are the nicest, and then he swears, people you will ever meet.

And he talks about how, like, you go in the parking lot, like, no, you go ahead, you go ahead. They are not rude to each other. And I just found this wonderful, of course, I would encourage everyone. You know, to pray that Joe Rogan might enter in and become a Christian, that would be phenomenal, because he's obviously a very influential voice. It would be a pretty big conversion.

But I just find it awesome that it's not just that he finds that Christianity seems to make sense from a cosmological standpoint, or from a logical standpoint, or just like understanding the human nature, all of those he did kind of agree with, but that he actually, and here's somebody in sort of mainstream culture, I guess, you know, he's very popular, giving credit to Christian witness as a There is a reason why he is liking Christianity and looking into it. We are so used to Christians being dumped on for so many decades, and this is something where it is like, you know what?

Despite everything that is thrown at us by the popular culture, that we are always judgmental, and we are the no-fun club, and we wag our finger at everyone, and all that stuff. Here is an example where somebody very influential is giving serious consideration to Christianity, at least in major part, because he is impressed by the witness of Christians and how they live their lives. So, that is good news. I think that is very good. That is wonderful news. Hey, wait until he meets some martyrs, too.

Today is the Feast of Edmund Campion, one of my favorite martyrs of the English. Rebellion and a martyr under Queen Elizabeth I. So, yeah, Christian witness, man. That is the way to go. I donate good news to Pope Leo going around the world.

You are going to let me give you some good news? Erika, tell me about it. This is a great story. Yeah, go ahead. Oh, man. I have been, I have been, I tried to get off my phone over the weekend, but I could not help myself. The clips of Pope Leo arriving in Turkey and Lebanon are just, they are tearjerker. And this is a cute little one from our... From our producer, who is in Lebanon right now, shout out Selene, the Lebanese mobile carrier called Touch.

They replaced their company name on mobile devices to display, welcome Poplio. It is just, that is so base. Anyway, Turkey and Lebanon. So, what is he doing over there? This is his first international trip, and Poplio chose Turkey and Lebanon to highlight a few priorities of his pontificate, Christian unity. Middle Eastern peace. I also like to think that he chose Turkey because he's the first American Pope, and it was Thanksgiving Day when he arrived in Turkey. I don't know if that's how it works.

I just thought that would be so cool, but also because we are celebrating the 1700th anniversary of the Nicene Creed, which, of course, Yes, was written and agreed upon in Turkey in the cradle, in many ways, of Christian civilization, because Emperor Constantine, of course, made it legal. He called the Council of Nicaea, and we got our creed. It's also the heart of the Great Schism, so it's been 971 years this year since we had that Great Schism over the Filioque Clause.

And people were pointing out when the Pope got there and he was reciting the Nicene Creed with the patriarchs of the East, they did omit the filioque, the father, who proceeds from the father and the son. They did the OG Nicene Creed, which did not include that. If you had to, Cliff notes the filioque beef.

Alright, so the filioque beef was that in the second millennium, so after 1000, churchmen wanted to put in another clause into the Nicene Creed about the Holy Spirit. So, the original said, the Holy Spirit who proceeds from the Father, but they wanted to add, and the Son, that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son. Guys on the eastern side of things, they did not like this, got really upset about it. There was some miscommunication. I mean, it was kind of awkward.

You had to do a three-month journey to get from Rome to Constantinople and back, and there were some nasty players in there as well. So, it wasn't all theological, as most human things are not, but that was the filioque clause that was the final rift. I love that. I can just do that. Erika was the original AI chat GPT. Yeah, if there are any professors of church history listening, I apologize for making that like cliff notes. It is. It is much more storied than that.

The interesting thing, Lebanon, too. So, Lebanon is the only Middle Eastern nation, that is where he is today, where Christians still share in political power. They are a large enough percentage of the population to still have any say in anything. So, that is interesting. The Maronite church in Lebanon, and this is in a big contrast with the church in Turkey, has never been in schism with Rome. It was founded in the 400s.

Fourth century, so that would be the 300s. Thank you, 300s. So, founded in the 300s, never went out of schism with Rome, in part because they were completely geographically isolated from all the craziness with the Orthodox churches. They were just shut up from everyone by the Muslim hordes, and they resumed contact with the Roman Catholic Church only after the Crusades. So, very cool history. But enough about me and my history nerd.

I just, I loved this so much. It's so great. We have this adorable footage here on Catholic Votes Twitter. We can share of Leo arriving. That was the phone thing, Erika. Oh, that was the phone thing? Sorry about that. Here we go. This isn't the Divine Liturgy, is it? Yeah, this one here, the Divine Liturgy, we have Pope Leo. Or which one do you want? Do you want that one or not that one? Yeah, we can do that one. Okay. They're at Divine Liturgy, he and Bartholomew I in Istanbul.

So, there we have him. The incense, I mean, the Orthodox sure can do liturgy. This is really intense, and you have all these guys chanting. Where are the felt banners? I don't understand. I know, no felt banners over there in Constantinople. Kumbaya. Oh, sorry.

He also visited the Blue Mosque. He was welcomed by the Turkish government. They shuffled him over to a tomb somewhere, and then they shuffled him over to the Blue Mosque, and he actually declined. Did you get the exact quote?

Yes, so the imam leans over to him, and he's like, this is the house of Allah. Would you like to say a quick prayer? And the Pope goes... It's okay. And he's like, what turns away? He did it. He's from the Midwest. He's one of us, bro. That's okay. No, thank you. That's all right. It's okay. It's okay. Yeah. We also had a marking at the site of the Council of Nicaea, which is now underwater. So, the Pope did a fly over of the site of Nicaea Council, and then he and the patriarchs of the Orthodox Church recited the creed together, as I mentioned.

But this was a beautiful quote. This is the Archbishop of the Greek Orthodox Church in America, and he said this, In Nicaea, yesterday, the two lungs of Christianity breathed again in unison, if only for a moment, a sign that the Spirit of God still moves where faith and courage meet.

That meeting was not a courtesy, but a confession. A confession that the love of Christ is stronger than habit, that dialogue is holier than silence, and that truth spoken in humility still has power to heal the divisions of a millennium. And I couldn't help but remember John Paul II, the fondest dream of his papacy was that the East and the West would once more be reunited. And wouldn't it be a beautiful thing if... If Leo was now presiding over a movement towards that reunification.

It was never going to happen under Pope John Paul II, because he was Polish. The Russians would have never gone along with it. I mean, I hate to say racism could play a factor, but it does. There wouldn't have been a problem for...

So, Ratzinger as a German, not really a problem, and certainly not a problem for an Italian that ended up being born in Argentina like Pope Francis, but none of that is going to apply. Every time we have one of these encounters, it is like both sides, like, this would be great, this would be great. So, both sides aspire for it. But I would love to see a little bit more of the hard work come together. If they could just do something simple, like the Philo Quay thing, I do not know why, but I am not a theological expert, but could we at least land on one Easter?

That would be a first step. They actually spoke about that in their statement, that this would be a movement towards having a shared Easter next year. So, that would be great. That would be great. It lines up every few years that it is actually the same. It is like, let us do that every time. Come on. Yeah, that would be awesome. I am here for it. I am willing to even go with the Orthodox Easter. You do not have to come over to the Roman Easter.

Let us do theirs. Oh, interesting. I'm willing. It's later, but, you know, whatever. Yeah. So, then he gets to Lebanon. We should just play this. This is like John Paul II level rock star welcome that he got when he landed in Lebanon from the young people. Yeah, it's nuts.

You can hear them screaming, Viva Papa. Yeah, we just blew out your microphone, or your headphones, hopefully. Seriously. That was at Shrine of Our Lady of Lebanon. Yeah, he also visited the Shrine of Saint Charbel, and if you don't know the story of Saint Charbel, you should really go look him up. So, he's a 19th century Maronite monk whose body, when he was known for his holiness, died of old age. His body was exhumed a few months later, and he was incorrupt.

Oh, my gosh. And look at this aerial. So beautiful. And his body was exuding this oil, and that sort of blood-water-oil mixture that some people bottled up, because that's what Catholics do with body fluids from saints. It's just, yep, here's a finger, here's some body fluids. That's what we do. Wow. An amazing, amazing trip.

To a war-torn part of the world, and his address to the Lebanese government was all about peace, and blessed are the peacemakers, and it's time now to have peace in this region. But anytime the Pope goes abroad, I mean, this was just, it was so wonderful. You could see footage of him getting choked up at certain points. Just Bob from Chicago, just a simple little guy from the Midwest. This is amazing.

Wow. But all good news. That's all good news. Appropriately donated. That's amazing. Okay, Josh, try it on. Well, I mean, we talked a lot about cultures and all the different things that are going on in China. Of course, they enacted that crazy one-child policy back in 1980 because they were so petrified of the fact that they would continue to have more and more children, which, you know, you only get worried about having more children if you are a communist country. Well, now… In recent years, they've said, okay, you can have two children.

Okay, now you can even have three children, and it still hasn't changed it because they instilled in this culture for decades that you should only have one kid, and so that's what people ended up just doing, right? Their fertility rate is now down to one.

And the decline just, you know, even it continues, even after, like I said, after it got rid of the one-child policy. If you have a fertility rate of one, you are basically, in China, every generation is going to lose a number of, the amount of people would be like equivalent to a European country. Like, they just are going to get smaller and smaller and smaller and smaller and smaller and smaller.

Things are going to start to unravel. It is going to be a very top-heavy country where there is going to be a lot of people that are old and not that many young people to replace them. I mean, this is going to be a problem all around the world, of course, and the question is, are we going to just have to build a bunch of robots to do the work for things because we are going to have too many old people and enough young people?

That's crazy. Yeah, they dropped numbers from South Korea last week as well. South Korea is down to 0.7 to 0.75 percent, and if you calculate that out for four generations, it means that A group of 100 people could lead to only five descendants in four generations, which, like China... It's not sustainable. It's just not sustainable. Like, the whole... So, China and the Korea is just... You see this disappearing population, and you are right, Josh. At some point, it has got to turn around, and it has got to have a lot less of this go your own way, do your own thing, whatever you want, who cares, and start to think more about what is your legacy, and having more attachment to where you are from, your family.

As my history professor at Hillsdale would tell every class he ever ran into, what is, you know, how do you learn a lot about history? How do you learn a lot about the way people work? It's family, church, and local community, and he would always brag about being from, my dad, he said, was from Phelps, New York, home of the brave, and he would say it in one syllable. I mean, he's just like.

It is like having that pride of place. If you do not have the pride of place, if you do not have that intergenerational kinship and bonds, if everyone is just atomized and they go live in the cities, then having children is an expense, and they do not add anything to the line.

Well, three, four generations later, you're just not going to have a country, or it's going to be a lot less what it is. So, this is just, again, a warning sign, and think about if everyone else is not having children, and you have five, six, seven kids. How much of an outsized influence you will have, you know, within 60 years? Yes. Think of all the Ahern voters out there.

Give me four generations. We'll flip Connecticut, baby. You know, voting, being an engaged citizen, a part of that, I think, you know, those are more souls that can get to heaven. You know what I mean? Yeah, obviously. Yeah, obviously.

Obviously. Beautiful. All right, Erika, I think we need multiple for this. I know. I didn't even do one. Because I kept going through. Wait, you didn't do one? Okay, so you let me do your good news, and you're letting me do your Twilight Zone. Okay, listen, Sylvain is in Lebanon, okay? I had to set up the stream. I had to do some behind-the-scenes stuff, okay? I didn't have time to go troll for good news. I was in Turkey. So, an entire department Twitter account has gone rogue in Minnesota.

Yes. So, the Minnesota, we talked about the Somalis earlier. We talked about it in detail on the last show, if you want to go catch up. The Minnesota Department of Human Service Employees Group on Twitter. So, this is about 400 employees of the Minnesota Department. It's not the agency's account. It's not the agency's account. These are employers that work at the agency. Yes, and there are apparently around 400 of them who are in this account, and they put their name to this.

This group claimed on Twitter, this post got 25 million views over Thanksgiving weekend. They claim that they warned Walz's administration early about the scheme stealing hundreds of millions from childcare, Medicaid, unemployment, food aid, and more, but leaders appointed through personal ties allegedly suppressed reports to avoid Racism accusations. Federal probes have confirmed widespread fraud, particularly among the Somali community, including the $250 million feeding our future scandal and convictions of 59 people for sham companies billing unprovided services. Governor Walz. Has stressed accountability, particularly during his campaign to be Vice President of the United States.

He stressed accountability and transparency and issued a fraud prevention order. Although most prosecutions are federal-led, and his office has not addressed the employee's retaliation claims, they also claimed that he went after whistleblowers from the Minnesota Department of Human Services, who were trying to raise the alarm on, for example, the autism fraud that was going on.

Have paid through the nose up to $1 billion so far because of these fraud schemes under Governor Tim Walz, who then did the circuit over Thanksgiving weekend and said things like, well, oh, wait, did I even do that? Did I get you this one? No, I didn't, but it was amazing. He said the clip of Tim Walz, and they ask, well, do you think you should have done more? And he's like. I think at the time, if we'd had the resources we do today, we could have done more, and that was it.

Huh. No real defense other than. This account is insane. I mean, even back, so I was going back through Kamala Harris. They, like, commented under something she was doing in September 10, 2024. So, I was raised a middle-class kid. I'm the only person on the debate stage tonight who has a plan to lift up the middle-class working people of America, and they comment below, Ms. Harris, please listen to the Minnesota state employees who work every day to deliver the best services to our state and people who expect no less and pay our wages.

Tim Walz has caused Incredible harm to our state and agencies and retaliated against whistleblowers, against fraud, and then they come with their... Google Sheet totaling half a million dollars. Selected Minnesota Fraud and Waste Tracker between 2019. Half a billion there. What? Oh, yeah, that's half a billion.

And that was before Chris Ruffo Googled it on the other 500 billion. They're like, look how much fraud we have. This is from our own state tracker, and nothing is being done about it. Half a billion dollars. And they're like, yeah, we've kind of been on this. And then if you scroll through their account, it's so funny. They have been keeping the receipts, and now they're just swinging at everyone, and it's hilarious. And it's incontrovertible at this point that Tim Walz knew about this.

He was made aware of it. People tried to get to him and tried to have something done during his tenure, and either from incompetence or Maleficent, he just hasn't done anything. Yes, he is running for re-election. Josh, so my question to you.

Will Tim Walz face prosecution and any kind of penalty for this fraud? I don't know if he'd face any, well, sir, I don't think he'll face any prosecution, but the real question could be, will Republicans in Minnesota finally seize this opportunity and field a decent candidate that has a chance of winning a general election campaign and electing a Republican governor there for the first time in many, many, many, many moons?

We'll see. Can they get it together? We shall see. I like handing it to them. Here you go. It's not going to get better than this. Okay. Unbelievable. Minnesota. If Republicans can't win the governor's race in Minnesota after something like this, then, yeah, it's time to put a fork in it. I say that about the land I was born in. Yeah, a reporter asked Trump on Air Force One to respond. Oh, gosh. Do you want to just play that clip from Steve Cortez?

Just, this is, he also had one about them not asking about his MRI. It was just a classic plane exchange with Trump. You don't need this. It's not even a country, because it doesn't function like a country. It's got a name, but it doesn't function like a country. There's something wrong with Walls.

Here's the thing. You could say, it's kind of tacky for him to call Walls retarded, and that's kind of a word we moved away from, but the question I would ask anyone who would object, I would say, okay, are you more offended that Donald Trump used that word retarded to describe Tim Walls, or are you more offended that Well over a billion dollars of hard-earned Minnesota taxpayer money was wasted in an absolute fraud scheme. Like, what is more offensive to you?

It is just worth asking. I am not justifying. Sometimes you say something, whatever. Again, at the end of the day, what really is outrageous here? Yeah. Agreed. All right, we are back at it again. For the week, we've got a good week of shows coming up, but if you'd like to support the show, join the Champions Club, CatholicVote.org slash champions. Thank you so much to our champions listening today.

You can subscribe on YouTube. Got more stuff coming there. Leave us reviews, Apple Podcasts, and Spotify. But above anything else, pray for us. Pray for our producer over in Lebanon right now, having the time of her life. I'm getting FaceTime calls for hanging out with the Pope. It's pretty amazing. So, she's in a pretty awesome situation. Happy for her. So, go ahead. Pray for her. Pray for her safety, and everyone over there, especially Pope Leo's safety. But we'll end in our daily prayer.

In the name of the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen. Lord Jesus, master of both the light and the darkness, send your Holy Spirit upon our preparations for Christmas. We who have so much to do and seek quiet spaces to hear your voice each day. We who are anxious over many things look forward to your coming among us. We who are blessed in so many ways long for the complete joy of your kingdom. We whose hearts are heavy seek the joy of your presence.

We are your people walking in darkness yet seeking the light. To you, we say, come Lord Jesus, amen. In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, amen. St. Thomas, St. Fidelis, our little brother, Lupe, pray for us. Great show, guys. We will catch you again for the Wednesday show. Have a great Monday. See you then. Peace.