Trump's D.C. Crime Crackdown, Mystery Mansion FULL of Kids, And Personality Shift

Welcome back to Lubecast. Today, it is Tom and Erika. You get Lubecast Lite. We have a fantastic Friday show prepared for you. We got some Trump dates, as I am calling them. Two executive orders yesterday could affect your 401k, and also some action about the crime riddled D.C. hellscape, I believe. I can't remember the exact words that Trump used, but it was pretty crazy, specifically with youth crime. So, some interesting updates on the federal action there in D.C. and disputes over crime statistics.

We have India responding to tariffs in a really interesting way. I got Erika on the case in that one. There is a mystery mansion full of surrogacy children. Yeah. I was discovered, so we're also going to get into that, but of course, we have good news. We have Twilight Zone, all that good stuff. It's going to be a very fun show, so thank you all for joining, especially those here live, 11 a.m. Eastern Time, Monday, Wednesday, Friday. Of course, the show is brought to you by The Loop, every American Catholic's favorite morning newsletter.

If you haven't subscribed, it's time. Go ahead and subscribe. That's where we get all our information from, but without further ado, if you want to leave us a review, that would help us out, but I say we get into it. It's going to be a great show. Erika, how are you feeling this lovely Friday? I'm pumped. I am moments away, hours away from vacation, so.

All right, you got to get it all in the tank before Josh takes over. I know, yeah. So, I'm going to get all my thoughts in today, and then you all can just revel in Josh rants next week. Pogo can revel, too. Well, I'll try my best. I often revel. Here we go. So, first headline today, we have Trump announces federal law enforcement will patrol D.C. The move comes one day after the president threatened to take over the city's police force.

Sounds a little like Gotham City, but It is a little Gotham City in D.C. Oh my gosh, the stats are awful. It's bad. The move comes after we announced it. Here's Caroline Leavitt about it. Washington, D.C. is an amazing city, but it has been plagued by violent crime for far too long.

President Trump has directed an increased presence of federal law enforcement to protect innocent citizens. Starting tonight, there will be no safe harbor for violent criminals in D.C. This actually was somewhat of a follow-up of an executive order earlier, I believe in March, about beautifying D.C. Right. We have this weird situation where D.C. is not a state, so they obviously have a relationship with the federal government, but they retain some control over. You know, there's a mayor, Muriel Bowser, how they conduct their business, and specifically, law enforcement has been in the spotlight, especially after this event.

So, some of you may know him by his nickname, Big Balls, but his actual name, and I think it's worth saying because it was such a crazy incident, is Edward Korostein. And the story here is he was in D.C., not a rough part of D.C., by the way, I believe with a girlfriend. Yeah, it was just above DuPont Circle, so it should have been perfectly safe. Right, should have been is the key word. So, he's with his girlfriend, and there was a group of 10 youths, I think they were saying like 14, 15, and 16-year-olds that came up to him, talked about taking his car.

He shoves his girlfriend into the car and tries to fight off 10 of these kids. Obviously, you see the picture here, beaten, bloody, bruised up, and there was a patrol car that came around and ended up breaking it up. I think they only have gotten three of the 10 kids, but really bad. And this kind of sparked it. It was a true social post from Trump. We got to take care of this issue. What are we doing here? Why is DC so nasty, ugly, crime-rated?

This youth crime is especially prevalent. Muriel Bowser has actually specifically addressed it, I think, with a task force. So, everyone kind of agrees that there's an odd strain of Under 18 crime. A couple different reasons for that, and one thing I want to bring up, too, there's disputes over crime statistics. D.C. is coming out and saying, we've had our lowest, it's 20, 30 percent lower than before, and I personally rely on homicide statistics as more of a reliable indicator of crime because there's a lot of argument right now about crime being reclassified.

So, for example, say assault with a weapon is going to be... downgraded so that it doesn't get caught under certain statistics. The thing with homicides is there's a body, there's a body. You killed somebody, right. So, it's kind of hard to deny that. And so, just some statistics to kind of further prove the problem here. Last year, D.C. ranked fourth on most homicides per capita. That's unfortunately behind my beloved Detroit, but Detroit has a problem too. And then this youth violence problem is especially bad.

The Attorney General to D.C. talks about this often. Half a million cases of youth violence. This is up from 140,000 four years ago. Many are talking about this light sentencing phenomenon, too. Less than 2% of people carrying a pistol without a license went to prison in 2018 and 2022, despite 80% of homicides coming from firearms. So, I don't think even Muriel Bowser has been kind of mum on this, because I think she acknowledges that there's a problem here as well. And so, I thought it was interesting, and this is probably where Joshua chime in, the legal basis for a potential federal takeover in the D.C.

police. Lives in the District of Columbia's Home Rule Act of 1973, which grants D.C. limited self-governance but reserves certain federal powers. A key provision allows President to assume temporary control over MPD under special conditions on an emergency nature deemed necessary for federal purposes. This process is as follows. The President can direct D.C. Mayor to provide MPD services for federal use for an initial 48 hours, and then this control can be extended for up to 30 days with written notification to Congress specifying the reasons.

And duration. So, August 7th, you get that. I believe this morning as well. Yeah, I was watching reports this morning from outside Union Station where most people, like, I've come in and out of there, you know. Dozens and dozens of times, and to the last few years, it's been just, you know, outside the station, covered with vagrancy, smells like pot. This morning, the video footage from the local news stations was just like totally cleared out, police cars parked everywhere. So, something got done in just the last couple of days, for sure.

Someone in the chat mentioned, too, that the issue with the youth violence, with it being 14, 15, 16-year-olds. In these gangs, these kind of roving gangs that Trump alluded to. And that attacked Mr. Big Balls there, is that when they actually get to court, because they're minors, they don't have to be treated as adults. So, a lot of them, instead of going to prison for these offenses, it's aimed at rehabilitation, right? So, there might be some kind of juvenile detention, but it's always aimed at getting them back out into the street.

So, repeat offenses are also sky high in D.C. Yeah, real problem, real terrible, terrible issue. For those curious, like, what did it look like? Police, President Trump, it's not a secret how he feels about violence in the city, and it's resulted in this. We are outside of Union Station this morning because the White House says you can now expect to see more police presence in touristy areas of D.C. In fact, there were several things announced by the White House yesterday. Check it out.

For the next seven days, and potentially longer than that. You can expect to see federal officers in marked units patrolling what the Trump administration is calling high-traffic tourist areas and other hot spots. We are not sure exactly what those hot spots are. The increase in law enforcement presence is supposed to start each night at midnight.

We are talking quite a few agencies here, guys, just to name a few of them. Metro Transit Police, Amtrak Police. U.S. Capitol Police, the DEA, and the FBI. Quite a few. Yeah, and someone else was saying, like, look, any blue city is dealing with this. So, yeah, you think of other cities with the high crime rates right now. New York City, Detroit, Los Angeles, this. And so the question then is, well, The Democratic Party, blue progressivism, has been in control in these places for decades and decades.

Why is the crime so high? Well, there's more people, for sure, but also we think of the last five years and the defund the police movement and the sort of looking at crime as not the perpetrator's fault, but them as victims of a system, right, of a racist system or an oppressive system that causes these, you know, These behaviors that need to be somehow given therapy and sent back out into the community. So, it's a conglomeration of a lot of different things.

Yeah, I mean, I'm all for better initiatives for rehabilitation. You won't catch me against that, but I see especially, this is an odd case where the capital of our nation is not a safe place, even for staffers at the administration. It's so embarrassing to me. I just saw a left-wing commentator went to Japan and was like, wow, my visit to Japan really has made me rethink a lot of things that we struggle with in America. Everyone was so orderly and kind, and there's no weed smells, and I was like, I hate to tell it to you, but there's some reasons for that that include law and order.

Yes, there's a cultural thing there for sure, and then it always cracks me up. You get Gavin Newsom cleared out. LA for Xi Jinping coming through. San Francisco, right, yeah. And again, this goes back into philosophy. It can be done. It can be done. It always has been able to be done, but you're not worthy of having that done for you, especially if you live in our nation's capital. So, this to me, no-brainer, and hopefully... Like, it's just kind of embarrassing on our nation that D.C.

is so dangerous. I have a personal interest in it, too. I have a child studying in D.C. this coming semester, and so I saw this headline. I was like, yes, just get whatever needs to be in there to clean up the streets a little bit more, make it safer, because we should be able to visit our nation's capital. We should be able to go to the monuments and see the sites and visit the historical places. This is our city. It's not Mayor Bowser's city.

It's not BLM's city. Yeah, dare I say. Able to visit any major city in America without feeling like they're being shot? Yeah, I'll start with the Capitol, but eventually, I'd like to get to that point, too. Yeah, that'd be pretty sick. Okay, next one on the Trump days, we're going to keep going through.

Guaranteed fair banking for all Americans. Yes. This is something that we know very personally here at a Catholic organization. So, interesting, they were saying, specifically citing in this executive order, that they suggested that such institutions flag individuals who made transactions related to companies like... Cabela's and Bass Pro Shops, and who made peer-to-peer payments that involve terms like Trump or MAGA.

Yeah, well, this isn't new to people in the conservative world. Basically, what happens is that, you know, JP Morgan, whatever large banking institution says, okay, all of a sudden, we're going to freeze your account. Why is that? Oh, we just deem that it's too risky or whatever. And then there's a long drawn out lawsuit spanning course of years, and maybe you end up winning at the end. But of course, the process is the punishment. And whatever you're trying to do has been frozen for a couple years because you can't access your own funds that you put in this bank.

I was going back through the history on this. We have Christian nonprofit in Memphis, Indigenous Advanced Ministries. We have the Timothy Two Project International, Sam Brownback National Committee for Religious Freedom. The Ruth Institute, I think, was a cornerstone one. That is a Catholic organization defending traditional values, debanked, allegedly for a conservative stance on marriage. Early case cited in 2025 as evidence of ongoing anti-Christian bias. In 2017, Moms for Liberty, another prominent example of this, debanked, and then, of course, Donald Trump himself and the Trump Organization after.

Years and years and years and years and years. I can't imagine how many billions of dollars he's had in the banking system. All of a sudden, hey, we don't want to do business with you anymore, probably because you're running for office. Right. Yeah, no, this is insane. And I think, too, I think back to, we covered this on Wednesday with the representative from Texas who fled to another state because, you know, gerrymandering, it's the end of democracy. And she's like, I'll liken this to the Holocaust.

This is like, they're coming for you. And just that, The absolute parallel universe that she is living in, to be able to say something like this, when this practice has been going on, and this wasn't even necessarily like government persecution of Americans. This is banking systems in the private sector deciding who and who is not worthy of managing their own finances freely. And some people are criticizing this, saying private organizations should be able to do business with whoever they want to.

You guys are all like, oh, Jacques the cake guy doesn't have to bake the cake for the gay people, but the banks have to, like, you know. But the point is that when it comes to something like these giant financial institutions, this is the case that Trump's making, that these huge banking systems, it's essentially an infrastructure, it's about economic freedom for individuals and for... For anyone, it shouldn't matter what your politics are. You should be able to access the infrastructure of the financial system that allows you to participate in free society.

So, I think it's absolutely right. I'm not a libertarian when it comes to this kind of thing at all. Well, part of the problem, too, and there's an economist, Richard Werner, addresses this, too. The ideal situation would be in America, his observation on... Strong economies is that they have tons of local banks, so smaller banks all over the country, as many as possible, because he puts forward the credit creation theory of banking as opposed to fractional reserve or just a store of value, basically saying banks are essential in strong, flourishing, middle-class-type economies because they offer people lines of credit, and without credit, you don't have the opportunity to start a business, to invest in your local community.

And so, the problem is, and there's a lot of incentive to flatten a lot of these smaller banks into larger banks, the one threat that we're addressing here is they could decide who is worthy or not worthy of getting credit in this country, and if they decide that Christians or people of conservative bend are not worthy of said credit, the type of businesses that get created are not friendly to those people. So, it's a much larger issue, and if nothing less than just bringing this to people's attention, like, hey, we're not going to tolerate this, I think this is a huge positive.

Yeah. If a small gesture, but a good gesture, because I mean, I remember when the bankers and, sorry, the Canadian truckers had all of their money frozen, and Van Gogh was going after them and everything like that, and, oh no, but, you know, Trump administration would never go after anything like that. Right, who's the fascist? I'm not.

It depends on the day, apparently. It does. It does depend on the day. So, I thought that was an interesting executive order. The second one involved in this, too, was democratizing access to alternative assets for 401k investments. Now, this one will be a little bit financial. Yeah, you got to walk me through this one. So, it'll be a little bit financial. I thought this one was interesting.

Signed an executive order yesterday instructing the Department of Labor to review its guidance on historically riskier investment markets like private equity, real estate, and crypto for employers and retirement plan administrators. So, it won't impact your retirement account dashboard directly, but it will urge the Labor Department and other government agencies to make it easier for your nest egg to include alternative assets. As of right now, no law prohibits employers and plan sponsors from offering these kinds of assets, but they are required to act as fiduciaries, meaning they have a legal and ethical duty to protect investors.

So, the interesting thing on this is most people's 401ks are extremely conservative, rightfully so, as they're planning for retirement, and because a lot of these people don't want to get sued for being bad fiduciary. Being bad fiduciaries. So, all these new assets are typically stayed away from because they come with higher fees than traditional index funds or public markets, and they offer less transparency, are often reserved for sovereign wealth funds and the super rich. But this is a $2.2 trillion market to tap into.

So, financial advisors are kind of divided on this. Some are happy to have more opportunities for diversification. And others are like, well, I'm just going to do index funds anyway. Like, it's too risky. Many have been calling for this kind of deregulation. I think it's good, just my cursory read, not expert, because I am so suspicious of trusts. That if there's not true competition or alternatives due to dumb regulatory type stuff, it just keeps all the power in the hands of the people before.

So, like a lot of other things, Trump is really a change agent in that regard and opens the doors to a lot of things. I think especially because of the type of persecution his own family has undergone, I've heard Don Jr. talk about all these places I used to bank with and all these places that I used to go for. told me no as soon as my dad ran for office. And this is a family that contributed to the New York City.

Or like you have 20 days to move all your assets out of our stuff. And you're like, what are you talking about? Like we've worked together for 20 years. Right. So that's why the crypto, all the crypto stuff is enticing to me because it breaks the previous barriers of the power holders.

Now, you know, actually crypto is an exciting asset to me in a lot of ways, especially Bitcoin, because I feel like there's less opportunity to actually create inflation. And inflation is just, they're like, oh, we're not going to tax you more, but going out to eat now is going to cost like 50% more than it did four years ago. It's not like I personally have experienced that ever before. Right, the hidden tax. Oh, my gosh. It's crazy how expensive stuff is, especially in the last four years.

It's nuts, yeah. I did one of those TikTok trends or something. I'm not on TikTok, but it is a trend where you go back to 2020 and pull up your Walmart order for 35 items, and then you pull up your Walmart order yesterday.

It's real, guys. It's so depressing. It's like a 125% increase. It's unbelievable, and there's nothing you can do about it. Like, even when we're talking about inflation, it's like, oh, we're targeting 2%, as in 2% growth from where we were every time. So, it's not even like it's going negative.

So, just going to keep going up, and then the question is, do wages keep up? And the answer is no. They have not kept up, so I was like, oh, we're getting squeezed. That's how you get rid of a middle class. So, I don't really know the answer to that, but I'm open to it. I think this is part of the whole deregulation and try something, allow people to try new things. I'm a fan of this as well.

It'll be interesting. I would like to talk to an actual financial advisor, since I don't have enough wealth to manage. I don't have a regular line-in to anyone, but I could probably call the Cunninghams and ask them. What do you think? That's what they got to say.

Okay, Erika. All right. Well, actually, before we get into that, already people in the chat, the chat is clamoring over your latest deep- Oh, yeah. Have more babies before you're ready. Yeah. Of course, a dumb YouTube ad that I went through, but- Super fun. No, this was a really fun one to do because I felt like I got to get a little personal. Go for it. Parents Magazine article on things to consider before having a baby. I saw this exhausting list of must-haves that honestly would scare any sane person away from procreating.

Before you can make that baby, you must research all available artificial technologies in case you can't do it the natural way. Make sure you have at least $22,000 in discretionary spending. Negotiate parental leave because, of course, you also have a necessity. at which you've been working long enough to negotiate anything. Get those mental health checks, because if you're not crazy now, you will be. Enroll in couples therapy, an ounce of prevention being worth a pound of cure. Write out self-care plans for each partner.

Create a discipline plan for the child who's not even conceived yet. Optimize your living space, aka nursery decor. Interview daycares and schools, and maybe even reserve your potential taught space. Research all available artificial birth control options for once the baby arrives, so you can just go through it all again before even thinking about trying for a boy. It's a wonder we have even a 1.2 birth rate per woman. The list goes on. Fact.

It was super fun. I love that one. Good to talk about how kids are great, and I did absolutely zero of those things before we started. I was like, no wonder you got... It's great, yeah. It is funny looking from the other side of the fence on that. It is. I shared a picture of... My daughter smiling from this morning, and me just completely passing on the couch. Yeah, it was a great photo.

Cup of coffee in my hand. The baby was like, good morning, dad. Hello, world. And Tom's like, passed out. That's great. That's parenting. Would not trade it for the world. But that being said, someone left a comment on the video that I was like, that's true. She said, as a mom of five, I get way more sleep than I did as a mom of one and two. Because, like, you're in the thick of it, Pogo. You are in, this is like ground zero.

Everything has been blown up in your life. You've got to go to three, God willing, and then it'll be even worse. Zone defense, yeah. Yeah, zone defense. But then after that, like, you start to have help. The kids get a little more helpful. And yeah, I have seven kids, but I get more sleep. Didn't you have one drop off a cup of coffee this morning? I did, yes. Shout out to my 17-year-old. She surprised me. I was having a hard time, like.

You know, the day before vacation, it's hard to get going, right? Because you're kind of already checked out mentally. So, she went off and bought me coffee and brought it to me without being asked. Fire me up. Fire me up. Mark in the chat, this is after you take 10 years to get engaged.

Oh, gosh. I know. We have a few things backwards. Next deep episode. A few things backwards. How society scares you out of getting engaged and therefore married. Oh, my gosh. Yeah. Erika, so I put your journalism talents to work. India is really digging in on tariffs. I would like to hear all of the details. Okay, the gory details. So, everyone remembers we had Liberation Day, and I was using chat GPT-5 this morning because it just rolled out to try and do this, and I have to say, I had to pull teeth.

I kept putting in Liberation Day, and it came back. It was like, there's no such thing as Liberation Day. What do you mean? Is this some quirky conservative podcaster term? I sent it three links to, like, The New York Times, Trump's liberation day, March 2nd, 2025, he kicks things off with India at 27% reciprocal tariff on a wide swath of Indian goods, autos, pharmaceuticals, IT hardware, machinery, basically targeting everything in March. India, and says, okay, we're going to have these six weeks, 70 days of negotiations, we're going to get to something.

India, unlike some of... Our other partners have not been so willing to come to the table. And so, in the last week, on August 1st, he upped that ante with a 25% tariff across the board, and he flagged it particularly as a penalty for India increasing its Russian oil purchases.

So, India says, we still need this cheap oil to meet the energy needs of our economy. We have over a billion people. It's the most populous country in the world. We have to have this oil. It comes right over the Hindu Kush. But Trump's like, no, you got to stop funding Russia's war on Ukraine. This is ridiculous. So, he escalates it. He does another 50% on the top on Wednesday, specifically on textiles and gems and jewelry. Tariffs surged up to 50% there.

That's $10 billion in business with us. Auto components, smartphones, and pharmaceuticals, with a couple of exemptions for big investments. Apple threw down like, what, $800 billion or something crazy? They were going to invest in, I think he gave them like a gold-plated case or something like that. Yeah, they came to the White House with gold. They were like, oh, Ottoman Trump, we bring you gold.

Please don't tear at me in India. Everyone is coming to the White House with gold, and they're going to use it to plate the new ballroom. All of the coins will be plated in this gold from Apple. But anyway, so India is not happy, but they are digging in. We got this quote from the former envoy to the World Trade Organization, quote, Anjali Prasad said, if we have to take a strong stand, then we must walk out of the bilateral trade negotiations.

So, threats to walk out. There's a big A conference coming up with a trade organization called the Quad, and Trump was set to attend with India, I think it's India, Japan, the United States, and Australia, I think is the fourth one. Doesn't seem like it's going to happen at this point. India called the additional tariffs that dropped on Wednesday unfair, unjustified, and unreasonable, pointing out that it was being punished for doing something, purchasing Russian oil, that other nations have done, did not mention any names, but we think they mean.

China and Turkey. Modi, if you want to pull up this amazing graphic, I've been watching subtitled Indian local news trying to get inside. It's very different from ours, but he said, He's doing this to protect the farmers, and he is ready to pay any price, including a personal political price. He said, the interests of farmers are the top national priority. India will never compromise on the interests of farmers, livestock holders, and fishermen. I know I'll have to pay the price for it personally, but I'm ready to do it for the farmers.

A lot of farmers in India, it's not precisely what's being targeted here by the Trump administration, but that's how he's going to pitch it. Well, the oil, like if oil prices were to go up a lot, it would impact farmers quite a bit. Yeah, exactly. There you go. Thank you. Russia is the source of almost half of the oil imports for India. So, if they stop buying Russian oil, cold turkey, it is going to have massive implications on the entire economy.

Previous India-U.S. relations before this, which has considerably chilled them, have been described mostly as, I would say, friendly but not close. So, considered an ally, they're considered part of our resistance in the region to Chinese encroachment. So, an important ally in that sense, but never chummy. It's not like, oh, they're our greatest ally in the region. Not even close. Who loses? India loses a lot on this. Higher tariffs will probably cut over $86 billion, will cut into $86 billion in exports to the United States by half, as much as half, according to the Global Trade Research Initiative.

The United States is India's biggest trading partner, so from their point of view, massive blow. Exports to the U.S. are 20% of their economy. In India, from our point of view, it's 10th on the list in terms of trade partners and goods from us. So, Trump is in the driver's seat here. India, very upset, digging in their heels. So, it'll be really interesting to see how this plays out in the next couple of days. But the first wave of tariffs went into effect yesterday.

Very interesting. They're feeling it. They're feeling it over there, but they're still buying the Russian oil. And a lot of this is Trump just losing patience with Putin in the way that the Russia-Ukraine war is going, and so really amping it up. We see it in the tariffs on India and other countries that support or buy from Russia. Also seeing it in that really bizarre move last weekend where Trump said, oh, I've moved nuclear submarines into closer positions to Moscow. You're like, oh.

I guess we're getting serious here. Yeah. Yep, buckling down on Russia. Right out there. All right, move me into some international good news. Yes. This was great. So, my good news today is also international. Poland swore in its based president, super Catholic, before he gets, on the day of his swearing in, Polish president, is it Narocki?

I can't say his first name. He makes a pilgrimage to Jasnegora, which is the home of the icon of Our Lady of Czestochowa. This is like the central place of Polish Catholicism. It's a long, long history. This icon has been around for thousands of years. There's a story that it was actually St. Luke painted it on the table boards as he sat and talked to Our Blessed Mother about.

It's hagiography, but it's a long and storied history called the Black Madonna. There is a scar on her cheek, actually, from when invaders into Poland attacked the shrine, slashed her cheek. Still there, you can see it. I actually made a pilgrimage here, my husband and I, on our honeymoon, and it's an amazing place, but super symbolic that the new Polish president would begin his presidency here. Very JP2 vibes going on. And there's a really neat mass video, too. They had a holy mass, and of course, no one does Western liturgy like the Poles.

Poland is so sick. Yeah, like, look at the flags. This is medieval. This is what medieval Europe would have looked like, with the color, and it's beautiful. Less electric lighting, but... Yeah, and all of the anti-white Christian nationalists went berserk. They're like, Poland has fallen. If you thought Sweeney was back. Poland has rediscovered its identity. Let's go.

Wait, okay, this is going to sound dumb because I've known and appreciated. There are no dumb questions, Pogo, because Josh isn't here. Why is Poland so Catholic again? Why is Poland so Catholic? Okay, so... So, Polans, I'm going to get the dates wrong, and people are just going to kill me. So, Queen Jadwiga was sort of like, she's the saint, and she's a saint. She's buried in Krakow. I'm going to find out what year she was. Thank you very much. So, the Poles are, yes.

So, she reigned in the 1300s, and she was the first woman crowned as the monarch of Poland. She and her husband really solidified Roman Catholicism there. Because Poland is unique among Eastern European countries in terms of not having a church that either went national, like the Ukrainian church, or Russian or Greek Orthodox, right?

So, Poland, I mean, just a history of great saints, of union with Rome. The Dominicans have a very long history there, and of course, the Dominicans being very connected with Rome. But also, I think it's a nation of martyrs, right? It is right between Germany and Russia. It has been run over time and time again, and so when the Poles, as they are being conquered and freed and conquered and freed through the last 1,500 years of history, what they had to hold on to in terms of their culture and their national identity was their faith.

So, Catholicism was the constant thread for them as governments are changing and armies are coming across. They're being devastated again and again. It's a history of suffering, but in that suffering, really digging into Catholicism as the root of their national identity. So, that would be my short answer. That's awesome. Love to see it. Love it. Shout out to my Poles. I love Polish churches. I think they're gorgeous. They're super. They're so beautiful, and yeah, if anyone can ever get to Poland and make that pilgrimage, walk from Krakow to Czestochowa.

It's life-changing. It's very beautiful. I would love to. Tom in the wild. Tom in the wild. I'm going to pull one. Okay. My good news is we found a new way to explain to cosmopolitan liberals why mass migration is a bad idea.

So, what's your take? Every transplant should have to volunteer somewhere. 100% agree. I like that. Everyone should volunteer, but transplants need to put down roots. They need to get to know their community. Are you a transplant? Yes. And you volunteer? Yes. I volunteer for Big Brothers Weeks this year. Me too. Not to brag. I did it for the first five years. You were a big? Isn't it so fun to be a big? Yes. We actually need a lot of more bigs right now.

Actually, this is great because transplants have a bad reputation. Right. We need to clean up our reputation. I feel like I'm taking so much. I'd like to give some back. That's what I'm saying, is that it's like, okay, you moved to New York. You think New York is the best city in the world. Name one thing you've ever done to make it that way. Except for pay taxes. Except for pay taxes, but if the only thing you're contributing is your taxes, you are ultimately a loser.

I like it. I can do this. I think this is a fantastic idea. So, wait, what's a transplant? Is that like code speak for something? Does that just mean illegal migrant or migrant? No, no, no, no, no, no. Okay, so it's a little bit of background of this video. I can't stop laughing at it. Give me the Gen Z lingo, please. This is a show that actually Kamala Harris performed so poorly on that they could not release the episode, but it's called Subway Takes, and it's this guy with a subway car and just interviews people and says, what's your take?

And so, this lady, Macy. Her take was that in order, if you're a transplant. So, the way, basically, this tweet says, trying to explain to a rootless, cosmopolitan liberal why mass immigration is bad by rebranding it as, quote, transplants causing gentrification by displaying legacy, displacing legacy residents. It's the new, it's like we have an in. We can now understand, we can explain to someone why maybe people would be frustrated if people, and then she's like, oh, if you only pay taxes, you're a loser.

We have people in this country that don't pay taxes. Right, or what if you don't even pay taxes? You don't even pay taxes. I'm like, I don't want to. First off, let me just get this out of the way. Okay. People that immigrate to this country legally, and they do contribute to their communities. Again, I'm not demonizing all immigrants, but I would just like to especially pick a bone with the people that say no one is illegal.

Everyone basically has a God-given right to live in this country and to not pay taxes and not be a part of anything. You can just come. And you can do whatever you want, because it's the land of the free, because aren't we all immigrants, right? And therefore, you can get cities that are in all Arabic or in all Spanish, and there's no attempts to actually take part in what was the American culture that made this place a place you'd want to immigrate to.

And we're seeing examples, say, Mexico City now, very frustrated as well, that you have rich people coming there and expecting them to speak English, not attempting to learn Spanish, not taking part in the local community, not taking part in the culture. And that's exciting. Acceptable, right? For everywhere except America, apparently. And the only way to get through to these kind of people that have these beliefs, or at least post them online, is to explain it in the form of a transplant to New York City.

We've found it. We've got her in. Gentrifying transplants. Listen, everything she said I think is fantastic advice. I think it should apply to America and to other cities as well. So, it's just common sense. I would like to get rid of all the rhetoric saying you should come here at any time for any reason, and anyone that stops that. I love this, and this is the art of rhetoric, because understood rightly, this isn't just trying to manipulate her, trying to get her to show her how stupid she is, but it's to find the in.

What can she identify with, and what does she love, what does she hate, and then try to translate it into those. I love this. This is a great in. That's why I have it in the good news, not Twilight Zone. I think this is fantastic. I know. We're getting through to people. This is good. We're getting through. That was good news. Thank you. Let's do it. Okay, C Block, Erika, I don't even know where to begin with this article.

Yeah. There was a mansion in L.A. 22 babies were discovered in? Yeah, so this is in the, like, I told you so kind of category. People were like, oh, you're so, you're always preaching slippery slope, and, you know, you guys just need to settle down, and surrogacy is just a way to build families, right? It's not a big deal. IVF is just a great way to build families, and it's all about, you know, poor people who just can't have, so we should all pay for it.

Okay, this is what we're talking about with Slippery Slope. This story actually dropped in May, and it is just now getting noticed by mainstream media on like page seven. Whereas it should have been top story in May, but here we go. Police were investigating a suspected child abuse case at this huge Arcadia mansion outside of LA, and they found 15 children under age three. In this mansion, six more children were later discovered at other locations throughout the L.A. area. This is the couple who are the parents.

Of all 22 children, that's Sylvia Zhang on the right, she's 38, and Guizhuan 65, and the birth certificates, it's all legal, they are the parents. Now, how did they get to 22 children when they only got married two years ago?

They were born across the United States from different surrogates. Here is a picture of the legal mother with one of the surrogate mothers. She is saying goodbye to the child she carried for nine months. Zhang, Sylvia, the mother, she created this organization called Mark Surrogacy, and they would go on Facebook and recruit women from all over the United States and pay them to carry babies conceived through egg sperm donation. And they would tell the women that these babies were going to families where there was one or no children.

Sylvia would say that she was infertile, although she'd already had children, and they paid tens of thousands of dollars to these women. And here you can see the post on Facebook from Mark Surrogacy's page. All right, one example.

January 2024, a woman named Kayla Elliott, who's profiled in the story, she was contacted by Mark's surrogacy via the Facebook group, and she checked them out. It seemed like the public filings were all in place in California, and Zhang was the manager, and so Elliott was sent a parent profile that said a couple was seeking surrogacy because they had one daughter, but were unable to conceive again after 10 attempts. They wanted to hire her to bear a child for them, which is just, even saying that out loud, is disgusting.

It turned out to be a surrogacy scam. Investigators say it involved people from around the country carrying embryos for the couple all at the same time. Elliot gave birth. She gave the child over and then realizes it's a scam. Now that baby is in foster care in California, and Elliot, the birth mother, is fighting to gain custody of that baby so she can now raise it. herself. She's been talking to the FBI, the Los Angeles field office, and it's, yeah. I'm sorry.

So, they profiled one of these women. What did she think it was getting into this? Yeah. So, she was told that this was going to a couple that had contracted with Mark's surrogacy, and they had one child, but they wanted a second child, and they were unable to conceive themselves after 10 tries. So, they were hiring a surrogate to bear them a child. So, she wasn't told that it was the Asian couple that... No. In fact, it was the Asian couple who was taking the child.

And it was all done legally, because there's almost... No regulation of the surrogacy industry. So, that child is legally the child in California. So, did they bust up? How did they end up in foster care, though? Because didn't this Asian couple, they just wanted to, they claimed. They just wanted a large family. Right. So, how did they end up in foster care? So, they ended up in, because of child welfare concerns, there was a call to the police saying, hey, there's a lot of babies there, and we think we've seen some weird behavior with the nannies.

So, they go in. They have children who are malnourished, obviously ill-treated. They see security camera footage of nannies shaking the babies or slapping the children, and so they take the kids out of there. But again, There is no legal recourse for these children other than they were abused by their legal parents because this industry is so sick and messed up. So, now they're all in foster care. So, is the Asian couple being charged by CPS? They were under arrest. They were under arrest for four days, but they were actually released without charges.

The nannies were the ones who were implicated in the child issues. Are these American citizens, by the way? That is, so they both moved here from China at different times. I was unable to verify their immigration status. My goodness. Yeah, it is crazy. Not only that, but there are women. A Chinese-born man and woman living in a mansion that said they were the parents of 22 children, but yeah, I guess to your point, they...

They were born all over the U.S. Yes. One after another. And there were still, at the time that this was exposed, there were still multiple women pregnant with more children for them. Oh, my gosh. Yeah. So, the investigation, this is from the police. The investigation is ongoing. Possible child abuse and trafficking charges pending. But again, this was May, and they're still out there on the loose. This was...

What would you possibly do at 24? Babies under the age of three? Hire nannies. Hire nannies, I guess, but isn't this textbook trafficking? It is. Their contention is that they had no intention of selling the children. Well, yeah, I guess. I bet they're going to say that to try to avoid getting... This is, like, hard to wrap my mind around. But this highlighting, of course, that there's no safeguards to something like this happening. It is absolutely highlighting that, because, again, everything was done legally.

There could be some kind of business fraud. Like, they said one thing about the profiles for the women on Facebook, so maybe they can have a business fraud and shut down Mark's surrogacy. But in terms of what happens to the kids... Legally, they are the children of these two people. Can we, like, Al Capone them, you know? Like, get them on, like, a tax charge or something? I mean, this is... Yeah. That's why I'm thinking business fraud. But again, like, this cannot go on.

Surrogacy has to be stopped. Something's got to happen, man. Years ago, like, it's yesterday. It needs to be just shut down. Yeah, it was... What? I mean, like, we, look, can we all just, we call it, like, it's child trafficking.

Yes. Yeah, even if you're not selling the children, if you're, if you're procuring 24 children under the age of three for yourself through, by buying them and growing them. Okay, so, so the, the reasons in which one would, would use surrogacy, one, if you're like a celebrity and you don't want to ruin, like, you want to have, yeah, it's cosmetic reasons, which is. Insane and terrible, and commodifies the mom, too, who is carrying the insane, terrible, dystopian. Oh, don't get me started.

Two, people that can't, by nature, be fertile, who then end up with a kid because they feel entitled to it. Gay couples. Right. So, also terrible. Yeah. And then the third would be this type of trafficking operation. Yeah. In what scenario would surrogacy ever be actually... Acceptable. Yeah, the most...

Sympathetic case scenario that I've seen, that you'll see on, actually, I've been on several surrogacy websites this morning trying to understand, like, how is this not trafficking in their minds? Oh, Tom's gone. The most sympathetic that I can come up with is if, for some reason, a woman's body, like, could not survive pregnancy or childbirth, she and her husband want to have a biological child, and so they do IVF. A surrogate bears the child because the woman just for some reason cannot do pregnancy and childbirth.

She has a blood clotting disorder. That would be the most sympathetic case that I was able to come up with in trying to understand what is the mentality here. But always, always there is the assumption that if you want to have a child, you have a right to that child. That is always the baseline assumption. And that is simply not true. No one has a right to any child. No one has a... I'm all for solving the birth problem here in this country, in the West.

This is not how I want to do it. This is not. Manufacturing babies to be orphans is not solving the birth problem. No. No, thank you. Great. No. Absolutely not. And people are all mad at Trump for, they're saying he betrayed him on IVF, like, because I don't think they're pushing for Medicaid to cover.

I think that was the latest I saw. Yeah, so there were rumors. Yeah, we covered this on Monday with Tom, because he kind of has Tom McCluskey, of course, the good-looking one. Tinfoil. He has like an inset. Tinfoil Tom. Happy birthday, by the way. It was his birthday yesterday. Yeah, August 3 says Tom, happy birthday. And he was saying that the rumors coming out of the Washington Post are definitely unconfirmed that Trump is walking away. We'll probably learn more in September.

Sure hope so, because it obviously leads to stuff like this. I mean, how could we ever? Yep, case in point. Case in point. And don't let anyone ever tell you that you're crazy for being like, what if gay marriage led to throuples, or what if doing IVF led to child trafficking and surrogacy? Because it's happening, people. It's not a slippery slope, fear-mongering, tinfoil Tom conspiracy theory. Yeah, it's almost as if it is a slippery slope, and there's things that we shouldn't be doing for the betterment of society.

And individuals. Yeah. Okay, Erika, Twilight Zone, what you got? Okay. So, when did The Passion of the Christ come out? I think it was the year I got married, right? So, it was like 2020, no, 2003, so this was a while ago. We're talking over 20 years of waiting, and we had The Passion of the Christ, and now Mel Gibson has set a date for himself.

The resurrection of the Christ. Two parts. So, we have got Easter Sunday, 2027 will be part one, and Ascension Thursday, 2027. So, he now has a deadline. Am I enthusiastic? I am cautiously enthusiastic, because it has been a while, and Mel is known for making promises and not meeting deadlines.

Wouldn't this be cool? This would be, I want to see what he's come up with. Listen, I now have developed a particular attachment to The Chosen, so is there, like, beef now? Like, do I have to pick a side, and who's going to be prepared? I don't think so. I think we can just be fired up on everyone, right? Yeah, I think we can be fired up for everybody. I don't see, I have never seen Jim Caviezel as, like, a competitor with Jonathan Rumi.

It's kind of like saying, okay, like, is Caravaggio... A competitor with, I'm trying to think of an artist who would be comparable with, like, 2000s TV shows. This is a very Erika analogy. Yeah. We need, like, a sports analogy that would make sense. Mel Gibson is painting Caravaggios. Dallas Jenkins is painting... I won't go there. I'm going to get in trouble for what I'm doing. You better chill out.

I'm going to get in big trouble. Oh, man. We love the chosen man. Listen, listen. All good portrayals of Jesus in Medium, I'm for, for sure. Oh, and then Marcus brings up a great point in the chat. Mel has fallen prey to the whole part one, part two thing.

Yeah. Just make it one. Exactly. It's like if you can't get it done in two hours, like breaking it up into the part one portion. Or, be honest enough to make it a limited series. Like, I actually don't have a problem with a limited series. I love limited series. If you advertise as such, just say, hey, we couldn't get it all in one, we're going to do a limited series, it's going to be six parts, or whatever. Yeah. The two, the movie, movie, no.

I'm out on it. You got to tell it in like an hour, in each part, and then... Yeah, I hate that. Yeah, no, I think part of the art form is the time limitation. Like, you got to get it done. Come on, Mel. Then again, who am I to criticize Mel Gibson?

That's totally a fair point. Braveheart, the Patriot, and I'm like, you know. I think you could. Totally a fair point. Maybe I should just back off on Mel. Totally, yeah. Maybe we chill out on Mel. He's so funny in interviews, though. Oh, I love watching him.

If nothing else, an entertaining interview, you know what I mean? Not known for being shy, which I love. He just shoots it out there. Wait, Mel Gibson was not involved in Lord of the Rings. No. Okay. No. Oh, Lord of the Rings had three parts, though, but in Lord of the Rings, the way that Peter Jackson did Lord of the Rings, I would not see it as three parts of one movie. I would see it as they each correspond to one book, right, because we have the three books.

So, Lord of the Rings, slightly different. Yeah. Mark. Talking to Mark. Yeah, this is where I say the line, I've never seen Lord of the Rings, and that always makes people angry, and so therefore, I keep saying it and refuse to watch because it makes people mad. Which is funny, though, because in the next episode of The Deep next week, so if you're not subscribed to LOOPcast, you need to subscribe right now so you don't miss this one, we talk about Sam and Frodo, and is all male friendship gay?

Who? Sam, no, you brought up Sam and Frodo. Don't give me that. No, no, no, no, wait. No, you're like teasing the crowd. Wait, no, it's because I just knew they were short kings. They are short kings. They're very short. So, that's what I knew. Tom's a hobbit. I don't know if I go that far. That's something Josh would say. Josh is gone. Maybe you're bringing that kind of energy. I have a good one. I thought a very interesting study was done by this guy.

Well, actually, no. I'm not sure if he did the study. It was an Understanding America study, maybe it was, but the guy who posted it was John Byrne Murdoch over the Financial Times. It is a question about are personalities changing over the course of, I believe he has 2012 to 2024, and a couple of the things that were highlighted in this study were conscientiousness, neuroticism, agreeableness, and extroversion over different age groups. So, they had age 60 plus. All the way down to 16 to 39, and I think I went through his definition of conscientiousness was dependability, I believe.

It was dependability and one other thing, and I think follow-through, essentially, long-term goals over short-term goals, and for those in the video, you can kind of see here. But conscientiousness, particularly for 16 to 39-year-olds, has not fared well from 2012 to 2024, down quite significantly. I believe under 30% here now in 2024. Neuroticism, on the other hand, is way up for my cohort, 16 to 39, way, way up than it was in 2012. Agreeableness, down pretty significantly, not as significantly, but down for my cohort.

And then, extroversion down for every group, 2012 to 2014. And I was really interested, going through this study, his argument is that the internet, this is around the introduction of the internet. In that we are essentially in an attention economy, and the attention economy has brought us social media, the internet, everything like that, of people constantly fighting for our attention. And so, it makes it harder for people to make Decisions for the long-term, on long-term goals, other than the short-term goals, I think he brought up the example now with AI going to be accelerating that.

So, for example, how you use ChatGPT matters. If you use ChatGPT, say, hey, I want you to be a tutor to help me to learn French better, basically. Okay, could be good. But then there's going to be a cohort of people that said, write my essay in French and pass it forward. That would be a good example of people choosing to be conscientious versus not conscientious. And I think about this often, about how, like, I watch certain people, how they act on Twitter, or X, whatever you want to call it, and I know some of these people in real life, and just how the medium impacts how they act and talk, and it turns them into, at least public perception, someone I know them not to be.

And so, I actually think... There is something really to this study about the mediums that we engage in constantly, their financial incentives are to keep us there as much as possible, and then to lead us down the most extreme versions of what we want, and or what they think that we want. Right. And so, you get that with agreeableness down, neuroticism up, I think is directly a product of...

Because we don't engage in shared spaces, whether that be physical, but also in terms of media, online, we often aren't even operating off the same facts, because you get pushed down, you know, whatever extreme facts you want to have. And some of, I'm not even saying the facts are wrong in certain cases, but it makes you aware of things you wouldn't be aware of before. I think in some cases, good, because it's destroying certain ...conceptions that were just false before, and I'm always for the truth, but I think this all happening at the same time without actual physical spaces to engage in, just because extroversion down everywhere, I think COVID, huge part of that, but then it's just easier to be in digital spaces.

I saw there was another article basically blaming Gen Z for the fall of Vegas, and I thought that was hysterical. This is why I love Gen Z. Hey, if you bring down Vegas. Vegas used to be awesome. I was like, I'm sure that has nothing to do with the fact that Vegas is insanely expensive right now, and it's not the same as it used to be, and there's also gambling on everyone's phone now that they can do from anywhere. So, they're just not going to fly out to Vegas, and I think this is actually a good thing.

But anyway, Eric, I was curious if you had any thoughts on this study. Yeah. No, no. I think all of this is... Yeah, I was feeling it. Like, if I think of this in terms of my own, you know, I'm on the green line, so I'm a little, I'm not as like. You know, nosedive in terms of conscientiousness, but I think looking back the last 10 years of my life and my own engagement with the digital world and social media and being on screens, you know, I can also kind of feel those personality traits change in me, and it happens on a really micro scale, too, just day to day, a day when I'm on my phone constantly.

It's like an inertia just sets in, and you just... The more you do it, the more you do it. I do become more irritable. I'm not as likely to put it down by the end of the day and suddenly be really extroverted, especially with my kids. So, watching that just on a micro level totally tracks with this. I was really interested. I dug a little deeper into the conscientiousness thing with the young people.

A lot of the traits that go with conscientiousness that you mentioned, this was about self-description that they elicited from the young people. So, it was like, do you feel, on a scale of 1 to 10, do you strongly agree or strongly disagree? You're a person who makes plans and follows through, and that's where we said no one sees themselves as that kind of person in that youngest cohort. Perseveres until finished, and they don't see themselves that way. Is easily distracted. Yes, I am.

Can be careless. Yes, I can be careless. So, I found it really interesting, especially that a lot of this was self-reported and self-diagnosis, and how we see ourselves interacting with the world. It's a terrible two-punch on that point, because simultaneously, all your time is being sucked into algorithm feeds, and then at the same time, what are those algorithm feeds feeding you? They're feeding you people more successful than you. Or, I don't know, maybe it's just the way that I see it.

I don't know. I don't know. I don't More accomplished than you. So, your self-perception of your follow-through, of course, is going to be bad, because that is all you see is people that actually follow through, and they are doing things that maybe you want to do, but you are spending all your time in the same place, and they are doing things to try to keep you there. So, it is a really nasty one-two punch. I am not surprised. The algorithm is a nasty thing, right?

It feeds into whatever your preconceived notions are, or what your read on the world is. It is going to keep like... Compounding that, because it says, oh, you just broke up with a boyfriend, and you're really down on men. So, you click on one influencer who's saying, yeah, men suck, we don't need men, and then it feeds you two more, and you're like, yeah, yeah. The way that it's designed is to suck you deeper into whatever morass you are. This is why education is so important.

We make education, again, about making free men and women, not about qualifying kids for XYZ job or getting all the internships to get into Harvard to get the credentials and all that. It has to be about growing men and women who are able to see the algorithm for what it is, to see their own behavior, and pull back from those destructive behaviors and interactions with social media. And they're not going to be able to do that if they've just been primed for propaganda through education their whole life.

I'd be curious if you were to apply spirituality to this, like people that would report having a regular prayer life, how they would fare on this. To me, this is a lot of... You know, matrix-type stuff, and people are reporting that they feel like they're in a matrix of some kind. Yeah, but it's not real. If you're actually consistently taking time to pray, you leave that matrix by design, elevate your mind to God.

And then also, so you made the video about having kids before you're ready. I can tell you one way to pretty quickly get out of whatever matrix you've got going on. A newborn baby. Have a kid, man. That is a lot of touching grass and other true nature things. Yeah, by design.

So true. And then, I don't know, yeah, with doing this, the cool thing about it is I talk to you and Josh in the way that I would talk to you elsewhere, and it is kind of like coming back from my own little matrix where I found my stuff, and I am just like, what did you guys see? And then you are like, no, no, no, I got this life experience, I got this, and I am like, okay, that is interesting, the kind of temperament I got going on.

Try to take the best out of it and leave the worst. Yeah, I totally see that, too, here, because I love, with the two of you, how you're from a different generation. You have a totally different coming-out-of-young-dad kind of thing, and then Josh is older. He has a lot more experience with politics. Anyway, I think talking to more people who are real people is a great way to get red-pilled out of the matrix. But, yeah, we watched... Last night, with the teenagers, we watched Sam Altman's sort of like presentation on ChatGPT 5.

On 5, yeah. Yeah, and I mean... It was so scripted. Does any dude look more like the Antichrist than Samuel? I was like, why are we doing it this way? This is so not conversational or anything. My favorite dude, though, one of the guys, I think he was from maybe Germany, or he had a cool accent, but instead of reading off the teleprompter, he had clearly just memorized what he wanted to say, except he had bullet points written on his hand right here, and so every few seconds, he would look down at his hand.

I felt like I was back in 90s high school. This is what we did. Before chatting with you, you could write your essays. You just wrote it on your hand. That guy is not in The Matrix. I'll listen to that one. You get smudged on your, yeah, that's a good one. Yeah, yeah, don't get too sweaty. Smudge your notes. But I didn't want to leave us depressed. I found a fun one. Right, okay. Give us a good one. So, there was, I don't know if you're familiar with Seattle's mascot, the Kraken, and the hockey team took a fly fishing trip to Alaska with this mascot, and anytime my mascots are doing anything, and it's funny, that's my favorite.

What is your favorite type of contest? What the internet's for. So... Oh, yeah, I know that mascot. Here's the Kraken. An actual bear. Oh, my gosh. I was chasing a Kraken. Yo, there's so many... Okay, there's so many Elvis's that kill me, bro.

He's in... The bear thinks it's seafood. It's like... The mascot is in Dumb Waiters. Which is a hilarious, underrated element of this. He's in the flight mission with the team. He's in Dumb Waiters. He's being chased by a real bear. Oh my gosh. Now, what did you think being a Kraken meant in going to Alaska? Vibes? Papers? Essays? No, this is real life. This is Alaska. This is touching grass, man. You hear a soft, like, oh, no. Oh, no. No one was hurt.

I want to say, if someone got hurt, this wouldn't be as funny. We wouldn't have played it, yeah. The Kraken is okay, I believe. Oh, my gosh. I really hope so. I think I saw people saying he's okay. I guess you never know. Matrix and all that. Is the bear okay? Hysterical.

Yeah, I don't know, man. No word on the bear. Alaska is a wild place. I know. I really want to go to Alaska. It's like going to a foreign country, but it's still America, too. That's always a perk. It's like, hey, do you like the night? What if we just did that for three days? Yeah. Or do you like daytime? Three days. Salmon for you. Do you like grizzly bears? I love salmon. For you. And I do love grizzly bears, just not that close to me.

Shout out to the Alaska listeners, if we have anyone from Alaska. I respect you on a serious level. Okay, good show, guys. LOOPcast Light, you know how we do when Josh isn't around. Yeah. I think he can't stay out of the chat, which is amazing. Wait, is Josh here? He said he's driving through the Upper Peninsula. Oh, my gosh. So, hopefully, he's not encountering any grizzly bears. I don't think there's any. There's no bears up in the UP, I don't think.

He should be all right. Josh is probably the scariest thing. I'm pretty sure they have bears. Josh is the scariest thing in the UP. So, he'll be all right. But thanks for joining us today. If you want to help us out, join the Champions Club. Best way to support us, CatholicVote.org slash champions. Go check out Erika's The Deep episode. Love those monologues. We're going to keep them coming. And pray for us. Today, we have, I believe this is the St. Joseph work prayer composed by Pope Pius X, Beast.

So, we're going to end with that prayer and send you guys off to a great weekend. Father, Son, Holy Spirit. Amen. O glorious St. Joseph, model of all those who are devoted to labor, obtain for me the grace to work in a spirit of penance for the expiation of my many sins, to work conscientiously, putting the call of duty above my natural inclinations, to work with thankfulness and joy, considering it an honor to employ and develop by means of labor the gifts received from God, to work with order, peace, moderation, and patience, never shrinking from the weariness and trials, to work above all with purity of intention and detachment from self, Keeping unceasingly before my eyes death and the account that I must give of time lost, talents unused, good omitted, and vain complacency in success, so fatal to the work of God.

All for Jesus, all through Mary, all after that example, O Patriarch St. Joseph, such shall be my motto in life and in death. Amen. Father, Son, Holy Spirit, Amen, St. Thomas More, St. Tarsisius, or sorry, St. Fidelis, St. Tarsisius, my confirmation saint, fun fact, and Our Lady Guadalupe, pray for us. Have a great weekend, guys. Erika, have a great vacation. We are going to be back, ready to rock on Monday with another good show. See you then. Peace.