Vanity Fair "Inside The Trump Admin", Viral "Lost Generation" Piece, And New Bishop For NY

We're live. Welcome back to the LOOPcast. This is Tom, Erika, and Josh. Josh is here. He just is. He's out of frame. The LOOPcast is brought to you by The Loop, every Catholic American's favorite morning newsletter. Go subscribe if you haven't. It's going to be a great show today. Josh is back from D.C. Welcome back, Josh. Great to have you back in home turf in Michigan.

We are touching today, apparently, Chief of Staff's Susie Wiles was giving interviews, 11-plus interviews. Do you know who her dad is? No. No. Pat Summerall. The old announcer for football games. Oh, I actually did see that. Yeah, okay, you're right, you're right. She talks about her dad. Well, she was talking in announcer fashion.

So, yeah, she gave these interviews, and then Vanity Fair launched this huge piece, some very questionable photography, let's put it that way, for certain members. As a photographer myself, wild. Wild, yeah. Two pieces. So, we went through it. We have kind of what was going on behind the scenes. It offers quite the insight. Photography Brutal. True. I will just come out and say that. I mean, the press, what is the press secretary, you know, the current press secretary, I think is super cute, and they may just like do a photo, like just zooming in like this, and no one looks that good when you like do a microscope, and I don't know, whatever the last one, it wasn't my style, but some people might find her attractive, and they made her look like a warrior princess.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. And inside baseball, too, that actually wasn't what bugged me. My wife yells at me about this all the time when we do photography. They put people too close to the wall on purpose. Like, if you're a good photographer, you don't put someone up against a wall unless you're trying to make some point, which I think they were in this article. You bring them away from the wall, so there's more separation between your subject and the background nitpick.

Second one is going to be this compact article that got released about the lost generation. The summary of it was that there's intense anti-white men discrimination for millennials. The older generation kind of complied and pulled up the ladder. We now have some commentary from people like Ross Duthat. At this point, we have some commentary from Jeremy, not Jeremy Carl, right? Is it Jeremy Carl? Yes. Yes, Jeremy Carl. I think this has been a conversation ongoing, something that people kind of implicitly understood.

This is the first time we have seen it put to writing with statistics, with anecdotes, and it has really just opened up this massive conversation that we want to take part in as well. First time, but I am going to pick a nit there.

Okay, picking it when we're there. The final is we got an email in from someone about the military chaplaincy situation, which I found really interesting. It added a whole new layer to this, so I'm going to be reading that, and then also we have a new Bishop of New York, so we're going to be going over who that is, Archbishop of New York replacing Timothy Dolan, and so we're going to be covering all that today. It's going to be a great show.

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That's CharityMobile.com, promo code LOOPcast. Thank you, CharityMobile, for sponsoring today's episode. Shall we get to the saga? We shall. Okay, wait, do we have a petition first? We do. We do have a petition. Josh, do you want to roll that one out, actually, to the listeners?

Well, I mean, there's rumors that President Trump this week might consider rescheduling marijuana. We think that would be a disastrous decision. So, if you go to CatholicVote.org, Go to our Action Center. We're going to lay out exactly why we think cannabis is very dangerous, why we think rescheduling this is not good for the common good at all.

You can use our Action Center to give your name and address and petition Donald Trump and let him know, we Catholics do not want this at all. There is a lot of good information there summarizing where we stand on this, but even red states like Massachusetts are starting to backpedal and realize weed is not good. The last thing we need to do is to reschedule marijuana and make it more prevalent. No, this is a bad news. We cannot do this.

We want to try to prevent Donald Trump from making… A misstep here. This would be, I think, a misstep. Absolutely. The traction we got when we covered that, and we covered that late in an episode, and so many comments, so many comments, so many people were like, please, this is so dumb. Everyone hates it. No surprise for our audience, but it was always telling to me what gets the most traction, and this one for sure did. So, glad we can act in that regard.

So, Erika, let's go Vanity Fair. What the heck is going on here? Let's do it. Oh, my gosh. Guys, I mean, I try not to read Vanity Fair, but because I love you, I did. So, Vanity Fair, as we said up top, they put out these two articles, essays, what had deep dives by Chris Whipple, who is a fellow comedicution. He lives about an hour to the east of me. He is a fellow here at Yale University. Great last name. Whipple?

Whipple. Actually, the greatest metaphysics professor I ever had was Amon Senior Whipple. No relation. But anyway, Chris spent, as Tom said, he had 11 interviews with Susie Wiles, who is the White House. The first female chief of staff, which he emphasized multiple times in his write-up. And, well, I'll just read you the paragraph that went viral. Please do. This is from Chris.

One time we spoke while she was doing her laundry in her Washington, D.C. rental. Trump, she told me, has, quote, an alcoholic's personality. Vance's conversion from Never Trumper to MAGA Acolyte, she said, has been, quote, sort of political. The vice president, she added, has been a, quote, conspiracy theorist for a decade, end quote. Russell Vought, vote.

Thank you. Architect of the Notorious Project 2025 and head of the Office of Management and Budget is a, quote, right-wing absolute zealot. When I asked her what she thought of Musk reposting a tweet about public sector workers killing millions under Hitler, Stalin, and Mao, she replied, quote, I think that's when he was microdosing. She says she doesn't have firsthand knowledge.

So, there was a lot there. There was a lot packed into that one paragraph, all of these quotes being between four and five words. So, clearly, they were lifted for much longer conversations. And, yeah, Chris goes on and on about she's the first woman. Yeah, see this, like this photo. Yeah, this is some of the graphics that we know you're watching. What are we doing? In the audio, we have Carolyn Levitt, who is a beautiful 20-something. Like, she is made to look like a gargoyle with this, like, shiny, bad lipstick versus Corinne Jean-Pierre, yeah, looking like a warrior princess from Wakanda or something.

But, yeah, I mean, I actually kind of liked the top graphics, if you want to pull those up again. Those were lovely. Top graphics? Yeah, the top of the whole cabinet assembled there in the front room. Oh, yeah, I had that one first. Everyone's looking a little... Josh, let's test Josh's knowledge. Where did this exact posing and picture take place in previous administration?

You mean when Vanity Fair did a photo spread before of a previous administration? Yes. Same pose, same position, same part of the White House. Oh, I mean, is this, well, I can't believe that this would be, let me look here. My eyesight's not so great. This is a great test. I'm going to be kind of disappointed if you're not up to date on your Vanity Fair history.

I just don't think it's... It's not the oval, right? Is it George W. Bush? It's George W. Bush. Let me find the... I'll find it. Yeah. They recreated it? Yep. I thought you were asking what room it was. No, recreated the George W. Bush photo. I will share that here. Yeah. Well, he's finding that, so of course... Yeah, there you go. Oh, interesting. Yeah, very similar.

Oh, so funny. Well, Vanity Fair can't think of anything new, so they had to just recreate something old. So, I have questions. Yeah, go for it. Susie had a response. Susie had a response. Before we get to that.

Wasn't the whole thing, like, we hate the media, fake news, you know, we're going to get rid of these old legacy outlets, we're going to sue them into oblivion, and we're going to replace them with new media, and yet I find that the chief of staff is talking behind the scenes to Vanity Fair 11 separate times. Kind of casually, like the words that she used, alcoholic personality, I know that she went back and was like, the context of that was, oh, he believes he can do anything, which you're like, okay, well, that's not bad, but then the phrase, alcoholic personality, you would use with a friend, you know what I mean?

Someone that's not going to write a hit piece on you, but in the fact, like, why would you, I'm just confused why you would give this kind of access to. Vanity Fair. Josh, is there a cynical take on this that, because we like the attention, we like the buzz, Trump likes the fight? Why?

Well, I mean, first of all, You know, Susie Wiles referred to President Donald Trump as sort of like an alcoholic, which is interesting, of course, because Trump himself famously has not had a drink. He doesn't drink. He hasn't had any drinks as an adult, you know, and it's because his uncle was a drunk, and he saw firsthand that destruction and never wanted to do any drinking. But the question here is, how did President Trump react when people asked him, well, hey, you're chief of staff.

You know, basically said you resemble like an alcoholic's personality. Trump was not actually offended at all. He said, oh, yeah, no, I mean, I've told us that before, he said. I'm paraphrasing him, but he's like, yeah, no, I mean, I said it was actually kind of a good thing I don't drink, because I might be kind of crazy if I did. You know, I've already got a lot of kinetic energy. I'm already doing a lot of things and stuff like that.

So, I've long said, many times before, he said, if I had alcohol. It's like, okay, so, why would he not be offended? Why would he defend her? This would be a classic case where he could have said, got really angry at an unflattering, potentially unflattering way of looking at him, but why does he come completely to her defense? I have some questions.

I sort of sympathize with the natural conservative response, let's say, embodied by Jesse Kelly, who's like, why are you idiots doing this? Why are you doing these interviews with mainstream media outlets that hate you? I sort of largely agree with that, but then again, what if the true cynical take is that the White House knows this? They know it's going to be an unfettering picture.

Right? So, if you're the White House, why would you say yes to Vanity Fair? Because it would give you an opportunity to lampoon them, because there's no way the Vanity Fair is going to be, like, polished in their approach. It's going to be ham-fisted. It's going to be sloppy, and it's going to be obviously bent against them with these, you know, use of photographs and all that other kind of stuff, and it provides the White House an opportunity to say, oh my gosh, the media is a bunch of fools.

They're out to get us. Look at this distorted thing, because it's a great whipping boy. So, to me, it's like, When people say, I can't believe the White House is so stupid that they got suckered into this. Yeah, no, what if they kind of knew what they were doing? What if they, like, allowed this to happen so they could use them as a whipping boy? Because, like, how many Vanity Fair subscribers can be like, oh, my gosh, I supported the Trump White House before, but now this is just too much.

I can't do this anymore. No, of course not. Yeah, there was no way. There was no way that this was a suckered-in situation. I was talking to Tom before the show. I'm like, they're in the middle of lawsuits, but they win a lawsuit with CNN. They win lawsuits with ABC. They just... Dropped another lawsuit on the BBC. They know exactly what is going to happen when they give multiple interviews to any kind of outlet that's, you know, outside of, I can't even think of one that wouldn't do it, that's in the mainstream.

Maybe Fox. I don't even know at this point with Fox. But there's no way that this was a case of, like, Suzy walking in and being like, you know, maybe this time they'll give me a chance. And, like, there's, these people are too smart. I think this was a case of, she floats, she's approached by Chris. And she goes to Trump, and he's like, hey, hey, hey, hey, go for it, Susie. Yeah, let's go. So, yeah.

Because what they did, everyone's response, Trump, Vance, you know, Rubio, they allowed no public delta between any of them. Exactly. Trump did not attack Susie Wiles. Vance did not attack Susie Wiles. Rubio and all these guys, no. They're like, no, whatever. And even, in fact, the scoop that Rubio gives Vanity Fair is like, yeah, dude, I'm not running in 2028. If J.D. runs, he's the guy, and I'll be the first to support him. I think it's worth playing J.D. Vance's response with the reporter, because he not only responds in lockstep, no daylight between him and Susie Wiles.

But also, he turns it around. I mean, this was like a perfect campaign clip right here. I have to ask a bit of an off-topic question from affordability, because news events do intervene, and that is the interviews that White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles gave to Vanity Fair, in which she's quoted as referring to you as, excuse me, and again, not my words, sir, but a conspiracy theorist of the decade, and described your transformation from a Someone who once opposed President Trump to now his vice president is an act of political expediency, and I would like to give you the chance to respond to that, sir.

Well, first of all, if Susie, like, I will trust what you said. I have not looked at the article. I, of course, have heard about it, but conspiracy theorist, sometimes I am a conspiracy theorist, but I only believe in the conspiracy theories that are true.

Yes. I mean, this is such a perfect setup. And by the way, Susie and I have joked in private and in public about that for a long time. For example, I believed in the crazy conspiracy theory back in 2020 that it was stupid to mask three-year-olds at the height of the COVID pandemic, that we should actually let them develop some language skills.

You know, I believed in this crazy conspiracy theory that the media and the government were covering up the fact that Joe Biden was clearly unable to do the job. And I believed in the conspiracy theory that Joe Biden was trying to throw his political opponents in jail rather than win an argument against his political opponents.

At least on some of these conspiracy theories, it turns out that a conspiracy theory is just something that was true six months before the media admitted it. Yeah, so if anything, that was Susie Wiles passing him the layup, right? Exactly. Okay, so, yeah, that's actually, I get around now to my take, too.

That is what everyone loved about Trump, was kind of an opportunity to throw it back to... Yeah, exactly. People loved... If you go back and watch the highlight tapes of him just dunking on people, everyone loves that. And it gives them cover from a lot of these very unpopular things. Even the fact that J.D. Vance is here speaking, he's back in Pennsylvania because Trump gave a really bad address in Pennsylvania and said the economy is an A++++, affordability is a hoax.

It was just... It was not like... The magic and the problem of Trump is that he weaves, and people in Pennsylvania did not want to hear that the economy was great, it was an A++++, it was a hoax, so they send out JD, who's a lot more calculated, can speak better, can stay on message, and he gets this alley-oop and distraction from the true affordability problems, from the jobs report that just came out, from the stuff that people are actually frustrated about.

I'd say Venezuela is now kind of in the mix. It just gave him a perfect cover to go away from all the actual problems or things that could really hurt. Um, the administration right now, and there's no daylight, and there's no anything, so if anything, this is, yeah, I think Josh is probably closest here, and Epstein, you know, what was going on at the White House, it just gives them cover from all of that. It gets it back on track for, like, why people, like, should have my Oracle coffee mug today.

Yeah, I love it when you two, like, make up. Am I saying this is a good thing that they're doing it? I mean, it's smart politics. I would prefer that they actually just, I don't know, focus on the problems. Yeah, look, if they can get a few easy wins like this, while they get their feet, while they get their legs on the affordability, that's okay by me. Yeah, I'd say so. Okay, do we have anything more other than the bad pictures?

Which is also hilarious. Like, they did one for JD, where it was super close up. I'm like, do you think JD at this point is concerned about people taking unflattering, you know, AI images of him after the... I mean, he has, like, been memed into Oblivion, and has leaned into it, and it is hilarious. So, gotta hand it to him. And, like, every other electrical box had one of the, like, fat JD faces plastered on it. Yeah, it's so funny. He doesn't care anymore, guys.

That's what you've created. He doesn't care. Nah. Okay, now we can toss off the Vanity Fair that I was talking about. This mega viral at this point, it's called The Lost Generation by Jacob Savage. It was posted by Compact.

And Jacob Savage himself, I believe, is one of these, a part of this lost generation. He was a white male millennial that I believe was trying to work in the Hollywood space as a writer. And so, some of this came from his personal reflections. I think he went to Princeton and, you know, impeccable credentials, tried to go over to Hollywood, working his way up, finally was about to get his big break, and then had this experience with discrimination based on him being a white man.

So, they were looking for more diverse. He had this pitch. He was told that people liked it, but there's no room for him in the kind of underling positions to work your way up in Hollywood anymore. The door had been slammed shut. And so, he went and interviewed people across different industries in the same position and heard a lot of the same thing. Particularly, it was Hollywood, academia, and then news. He talks about medicine and medicine as well. He talks a little bit.

He didn't interview him. Right. It was kind of the tangential, like those are the three kind of like cultural, entertainment, news, and then he's like, oh, did people flee those into kind of more institutionalized things like law, medicine, and then he kind of found out the same thing was happening there. So, they just fleed to, I don't know, cryptocurrency, or podcasting, or places where there weren't institutional barriers.

Really? This is a really shocking thesis. I mean, I can go over the time. I'm trying to think about the best way to do this. It was a long piece. I highly recommend you read the entire thing. Like six million views. This thing took off like a rocket. Mega viral. So, he kind of went over the timing of this shift where this, I mean, so, to put it plainly, it was discrimination based on your... And he said this timing kind of happened around the mid-2010s.

He mentioned the hashtag OscarsSoWhite in 2014 and 2015. If you remember, that was when I believe the Oscars that year was like only white people won. So, there became this trend and there needed to be a reckoning. And then post-George Floyd in 2020, that kind of elevated to a whole other level.

Yeah, it touched Hollywood and media. So, he had anecdotal stories, but he also had statistics as well. So, white men dropped from 60% of TV writers in 2011 to 11.9% of lower-level writers to 2024 to 2025. That is from WGA data.

Hiring practices included explicit mandates like women and diverse only on need sheets. Programs like Disney and Sundance fellowships awarded almost no spots to white men in recent years. So, that thing on the need sheet, that is actually in writing discrimination based on race and sex, which should be illegal, but of course, everyone just kind of waved it away. So, academia at elite universities, Harvard, Yale, Berkeley, white men's share of tenure-track humanities positions plummeted. Harvard, 39% in 2014 to 18% in 2023.

Tools like DEI statements, cluster hiring, and equity reviews filtered out white male candidates. And then law, medicine, declines in white male representation in law school matriculants, 31% in 2016 to 25% in 2024. Medical students, 31% in 2014. To 20.5% in 2025, Google workforce nearly half white men in 2014 to less than a third by 2024, and he spoke about this generational divide, which was the part of the thesis people were kind of picking at was he basically placed a lot of this squarely on the shoulders of, it would be Gen X white men established pre-2014, and boomers, who basically kept their positions of power.

But slam the door on the next generation, that would be millennials, and said they kind of acquiesced to a lot of the DEI to protect their positions. Yeah, they sacrificed them to the DEI regime. Right. And I think the broader, he had one thing at the end that I think was kind of the point, which raises some uncomfortable questions. Is the media more trusted now than a decade ago? Is Hollywood making better films and television? Is academia more respected? Have these institutions become stronger since they systematically excluded an entire cohort, or did abandoning meritocracy accelerate their decline?

And then this final line from someone he interviewed was, what troubles me is that a lot of thriving white millennial men have had to follow the Josh Hawley path, where you have to leave liberal America. An old friend, the father of two biracial children, told me, I don't want to do that. Liberal America is my home, but if anyone says this is not the place for you, what are you supposed to do? And throughout the piece, he talked to people that still describe themselves as liberals, not all of them, who were uncomfortable to put their name to paper on their experience being.

discriminated against based on their race and sex who still kind of were like i'm not willing to you know i'm not willing to oppose the people or not willing to say it comfortably but you know my life basically was radically altered because you know things i can't control my race and sex so to me sounds like stockholm syndrome we have to love our abusers because so yeah Erika you know after reading the piece i think all three of us have read the piece at this point we're getting to reactions how did you feel Yeah, I read the whole piece.

I read a couple of different responses to it as well, and I think most impressive to me was the fact that he put hard numbers to the sort of feeling that we've talked around for a couple of years now on the show, and to the experience. I have two younger brothers, just kind of watching their lives play out the way that they have, and recognizing those numbers in my own experience.

I know. So, I was talking with my husband about this, and we really dodged that bullet. We're like the oldest millennials, and so we were looking for work right before it went crazy in the mid-2010s there. So, kind of got in under the wire in terms of these industries that you were talking about. I think that one of the objections that came up from Jeremy Carl, who's been writing about this for decades, like he's been like, hello, guys. Hi, this is going on.

That's why I said he wasn't the first. Yeah, so this is not the first time, but Jeremy Carl has been following this for decades and has been excoriated all through the last 15 years. People in the left and on the liberal media space are like, oh, it's the sin of noticing that Josh was talking about. How dare you notice that this is happening?

And he was like, you know, thank you for noticing and documenting this. But it really is a lost opportunity because Jeremy Savage is, he is pointing to and documenting and railing against this lost generation phenomenon. But he, too, is unwilling to exit the liberal ocean that he swims in, which is the very ideology and the very practices that led to what he's describing, if that makes sense. It's sort of that. So.

Jeremy Carl is saying, you know, it's time for these millennial white boys to man up and be like, no, we reject the liberalism. What's wrong with Josh Hawley? Like, what's wrong with becoming that kind of a man? And saying, no, we're going to rebuild another way. The type of man that would say that this is horrific, un-American, evil. What they're saying is like, oh, if you object to a systemic racism against you as a white man, which other people had to experience decades before.

Instead of, you know, I thought the whole, again, this is what I thought the Civil Rights Act was going to make it the playing field fair, so I thought this was going to be illegal. But it wasn't illegal, huh? How about that? But the Josh Hawley option is to say to leave the blue states and to go to redder states. That's your option. Well, I mean, if it's your ancestral home and you have family there, maybe you don't want to leave.

I mean, I live in a blue state right now, or a purple state, Michigan or whatever. Why would I leave? I want to try to change this to be a red state. So, some of this advice, but this is, by the way, another reason why more people are considering the trades, because it's like, You call a plumber, you do not care if he is a redneck. You want your water, you know, pipe burst. I had a pipe burst just the other night.

I want it fixed. I want someone who knows what he is doing, and I am not going to ask, you know, who do you sleep with, and what color is your skin? But it should be like that for everything, of course. But, can I push back on that briefly, because I hear that, but I do not think the answer is for people that would make phenomenal Hollywood writers or phenomenal lawyers to leave what they're doing to, you know, become a plumber.

Like, that is kind of giving up. I want to make sure you understand, I 1,000% agree with you. Yeah. I do not think it is like, oh, now, white men, you have only blue-collar options available, or you have to move to red enclaves. I thought the whole point of the Civil Rights Act was we are going to treat people fairly. Now, would anyone disagree with me that after the Civil War and up until the 1950s, that period of about 80 years, it was mostly white men who worked in most industries?

I am not saying it is the only ones. But it was dominant. I mean, it was a country at the time was 75% plus white and mostly men that was working. Were there some women working? Yes. Were there minorities working? Yes. I know that. But most of the industries were started by white men. And again, take Rob Reiner as an example. Okay? The guy who just was murdered by his own son. That's terrible. How did he get a break in Hollywood?

Was it pure luck? I mean, the guy was very talented. No question. He made a lot of great movies. But his dad was in the industry. If you have an industry, people tend to bring in their children into the industry. So, like, you know, the idea that suddenly with the Civil Rights Act, you are going to have a pure, you know, blank slate, and that suddenly you are going to have Perfect representation of all colors and races and everything, and sexes, in every industry ever.

Again, it is ideology just trumping experience. It is like, no, what we need to do is eliminate systemic racism and allow people to come into industries. Like, stop pretending. Wait a minute now. I thought everything was going to be perfectly hunky-dory. It is like, no, you still got to work hard, but then we turn the system around, and we turn the system around because of a lot of white guilt, because of, as you mentioned, George Floyd being murdered. Quote, unquote. That is what the newspaper called it, murdered.

It was a cop. It is not murdered. All these lies that are being pushed on people. But I want to show a typical reaction that you get from the intelligentsia. Megan McArdle is actually considered a moderate columnist for the Washington Post, and she said... Well, she is a libertarian, right?

Yeah, left libertarian type. She said, if this reporting is true, true... Hollywood not only violated the Civil Rights Act for years by discriminating against white men, but have been merrily telling the white men this, and writing it down in widely circulated emails in case they ever wanted to file a lawsuit. No words. This is her being shocked at this, right? Shocked. I just have to agree with Christopher Roof on this. A journalist is supposed to notice trends, corruption, and injustice. Any journalist who is only now expressing shock, I can't believe DEI is happening, either lacks the basic observational skills required to do the job or the courage to have spoken up when it mattered.

Kudos to Rufo on that. I agree 100%. Like, how could you not notice this? This is my point. So, this essay will be influential in the sense that it kind of broke a dam. Yeah. And people are like, wow, now we have permission to notice something that we all knew was true.

Conservatives have been talking about this for a long time, for years, and they're like, oh, you're just racist, sexist, you just want to hold on to your power. It's just white supremacy talking. Pop over to Blue Sky, see what they're saying about it. Oh my gosh. Yeah, it reminded me of back in 2015 was when Hamilton dropped. You guys remember the early days of Hamilton? So, the thing that was shocking and transgressive about Hamilton, supposedly, in 2015. Was it the casting call?

For the second iteration of the show said, minorities only. Only people of color need apply. Whites need not apply. Like, it literally said that in the casting call. And for maybe for like six months, it was a story, and people were shocked, and oh my goodness, and it was like, well, this is just art, like, getting back. And I remember thinking at the time, I'm like, why is this the one thing that's actually making the news in terms of this, when it's what's going on?

Behind the scenes, perhaps, or you're just not allowed to talk about it if it's in front of the scenes in every industry. But somehow, Hamilton, because it was art, you were allowed to notice and be shocked, shocked, but then, of course, you had to excuse it because, you know, art.

Oh my gosh, art. You know, as someone else knows, I forget who, like, you know, in the Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves, 1991 movie, Kevin Costner, I remember watching it at 14. I thought, this is so cool! But they had to, like, come up with a really stretched plot device to say, Morgan Freeman from Africa is going to be in the movie, and it's like, I mean, really? You're going to have an African in, like, you know, Robin Hood, Loxley, this time of, you know, this era of film?

And it was such a stretch, but, you know, it's a fun movie, whatever, eat the popcorn, go on. And then now, present day, you get what you say with Hamilton or Netflix, like, oh, we have a black king of England from a thousand years ago. You're like, what? I mean, it's just like absolute.

Malarkey, you know, and we got to push back at this kind of stuff. Yeah, and I liked Ross Douthat's response. It was very thoughtful in the New York Times, of course, very thoughtful, but I really appreciated that he was emphasizing at the end of the piece that now we need political solutions to this. This isn't just going to be a case of, let's tell the young millennial white men to look within themselves and find their masculinity and find their grit, and what did he say?

Like, have faith in God again. Put down your phone. Take the material opportunities before you. And he writes, but the cure for the kind of political pessimism that is specific to young white men doesn't lie exclusively in their inner life. You might get more young male moderates and Reaganites, more bros with a stake in the liberal order and an inoculation against paranoia and pessimism through the simple and, in theory, liberal expedient of just not discriminating against them, meaning that we need actual changes in policy and law to push back on this.

Well, you don't really need any change in the law. You have the 1960s. That's true. We have the law. Well, there's people that make really convincing arguments to repeal that, because it's basically brought about. I mean, if this is what it's going to be used, it only can be used against you, right? It's not an equal playing field after all. Actually, but here's, I guess, my point.

Like, if you're a white guy who got passed over, obviously, I mean, these guys, they talk about it, like, you apply for a thousand jobs, you never get a callback, and it's like, I can't be that bad. Like, what? Like, this doesn't make, it statistically doesn't make any sense. It's documented in this article, yeah. Other than systemic racism against whites and sexism against especially white men. So, here's the question. If you're a white guy. You know, you are applying for some corporate job, let us say, you know, for a Fortune 500 company based in Charlotte, and you want to work for Bank of America or something like that, and you are pretty sure that you got passed up for a job because you are a white guy, and no white guy is getting jobs anymore.

So, I know what I will do. I will sue Bank of America in federal court. I will sue in Charlotte, and you are thinking to yourself, hmm, is this the same place where Judges allow black criminals 15, 16, 17 times and go kill a white girl on a subway train. You think the same justice is going to listen to you saying, I got discriminated against for being a white guy?

Fat chance. By the way, there's zero sympathy on this, and the reason why is because white men dominated all these industries for so many decades, and so there is, I mean, again, I just wish we would acknowledge reality. Is it really the fault of a 25-year-old white man that white men dominated all these industries for so long? First of all, why is it a bad thing? I mean, like, You're starting, the framing is inherently saying that it was a bad thing.

Yes, of course. Why is it bad? Like, it just drives me kind of crazy, but then if... You think it drives you crazy? Yeah. Listen, I've thought a lot about this article because, of course, you know, many of my friends, young white men in this exact, you know, Gen Z, the generation under the ones that really got stiff. Who had to live through, you know, the George Floyd era, which was completely insane. Completely insane. And I think that my theory on why I dodged a lot of this is because I already was in a lot of kind of alternative institutions to begin with.

Like, you know, I was, Regina Chaley Academy is the hybrid homeschool deal. So, I left public school, when did I leave public school? 20... 2014? So, it was like right when a lot of this, like in the article at least, was happening. Left in 2014. Went to a Catholic, you know, Catholic hybrid, so didn't experience really any of that. Then I went to Ave Maria, didn't experience any of that at all. That just wasn't happening at Ave Maria, at least to my knowledge.

And then the first taste that I had with that, though, was I applied for a job, and I had, it was an internship offer that was like hoping to turn into a full-time offer at a market research firm in Michigan.

And I lost that because of a COVID hiring freeze, and then, of course, I came to CatholicVote, which was awesome, and we experienced none of that here, but I was keeping tabs on that company, and I would have lasted two seconds there because immediately, I was seeing diversity statements, pledges of crazy kinds, diversity statements for sex, for race, for anything. It got really crazy, and then, of course, they had all the same quotas.

I was doing things that were unusual, like I was doing cold reach-outs, and I was, so I went really above and beyond even just, like, getting the door. I kind of avoided a lot of the traditional process, and then I ended up here, and then, really, I think What's kind of discounted a little bit in this article, too, is, yes, he talked to liberals, but all of that, he said, they kind of quietly shuffled a lot of the DEI departments in a lot of companies.

They quietly kind of closed, and they've masked it with more language now. It's not as explicit as it was. They call it something different, right? Because Trump came in and smashed it, and Trump ran on smashing that, and people are confused where he got this popularity across the aisle. And this, of course, is why, because we all lived through the craziness, woke era, whatever you want to say. And people maybe really quietly, maybe didn't want to put their name out there saying, but they voted for Trump because they had this experience in the back of their head.

And going forward, you know, we don't want any of this, regardless of whatever your chosen identity is, is going to be privileged over other people or get shielded in different ways. We don't want any of it, partially because I really like Jeremy Carlson. You're nailing this. I highly recommend Jeremy Carlson's book called The Unprotected Class, How Anti-White Racism is Tearing America Apart. Because Jeremy Carlson... himself, I believe he went to Princeton, and of course, kind of had the same expectations as everyone else, and he spoke up about it, but that, I want to read it again.

What troubles me is that a lot of thriving white millennial men have had to follow the Josh Hawley, a conservative center from Missouri who graduated from Stanford and Yale path, where you have to leave liberal America. I don't want to do that. Liberal America is my home, but if everyone says this is not a place for you, what are you supposed to do? I'll tell them what you should do. Be a freaking man. Stand up for himself. That's what he should do.

He should tell the people who discriminated against him for his skin color and sex in no uncertain terms that they are not his people, that they are not doing, what they are doing is deeply immoral and wrong, and if that means getting nasty glares from some blue neighborhood where he walks to get his soy matcha latte, that's the price he has to pay. Sorry, I didn't make the rules. That, of course, is the answer, because I actually don't want to give anyone permission to feel sorry for themselves or to be a victim complex or to kind of mope around in liberal America.

I don't want to... I don't want to ruffle feathers. I don't want to rock the boat. Like, I'm just kind of quietly acquiesced to this great evil. Like, it is evil. It's immoral what was done to people. Be a man. Be a man. Call it out for what it is. It's wrong. It's okay to know the problem, to diagnose the problem, and to be righteously angry at the problem that you were discriminated in this way, but the future is yours. Like, X can air boost from the ashes we shall rise.

Like, I'm not giving anyone permission to feel bad about this. It's fair to be courageous and fight. It's absolutely great, and it's noble. If someone else says, the hell with this, I'm out, I'm going to move somewhere else, I can respect that, too. The thing, what you're saying, though, is very interesting, is that Trump was totally against this, and he got a lot of votes in places that were kind of secret. That's the thing, is there's this ad that was actually not done by Kamala's campaign, but it was this campaign where, like, these two white women were kind of looking at each other and kind of winking.

Oh, gosh, I remember this. As the white men were like, okay, honey, you know what to do, vote for Trump, you know. Yeah, the husbands have a Trump hat on, and the women are like. And then they both quietly vote for Harris, and it was like, wink, wink. We covered it on the show. But the thing is, in fact, it's sort of like the opposite, really, if you think about it. It's a bunch of Blacks and Latinos where their wives are like, ah, this guy's crazy.

We got to vote for Kamala. Oh, yeah, sure, hon. You got it, honey. They all vote for Trump, and there is a lot of shy voters, you know, like girl bosses who have boys that are like, you know what, maybe Trump is not so bad. So, I do think that happened. And Jeremy made a great point in this that I think is worth. He's like, you know, I'm glad that someone's getting around to this, but in reality, this happened to blue-collar white workers when we shipped all our manufacturing jobs over to China.

So, it's done by the same elites in the country that pulled the ladder up on future generations and said, I'm sorry, I'm keeping my position, but I'm going to screw you over systematically, in a way that's wrong. And people now are, like, the ink spilled over the radical young men is so unbelievable to me. We all lived it. Anyone who is paying attention knows.

Well, kudos to Jeremy Carr for shouting it out louder. He was John the Baptist crying in the wilderness and didn't get enough credit for it, and this article might be what finally opens enough people's eyes to make a lot of difference, but, you know. It's good that a lot more people are waking up to this and are able to talk about it. It's like the thing that we all know, but we're allowed to finally notice it and talk about it, but we got to go talk about this all the time.

Yes, but I will say you made this point. I want to make it again. The people that, and I think Barry Weiss is kind of the quintessential example of this, not that anyone I think is taking her seriously right now, there were people that became conservatives two seconds ago, or they left the woke crowd, whatever, while all this discrimination happened for years, for decades, and now they've jumped over because it's kind of cool now, right? Like, what's in vogue? It's kind of being on the right.

It's part of being in the Trump coalition, and they are now trying to set the terms of what we can and can't talk about. As if they somehow are, you know, the vanguard of truth in what's proper discussion, respectfully go pound sand and keep track of the people that were noticeably tone deaf about obvious discrimination against white people. Like, you know, we live this, and if you weren't comfortable enough saying something when the pressure was on, you don't deserve my attention now, and you certainly don't deserve to chart the path forward.

So, that's what I would say, and people are wondering— Why just don't look at her as a general? Like, you can be a foot soldier in this cause. Sure, you can. I'm not saying you can't say it now. I'm not saying it's, you know, when people do come to the light on that, fine.

But I'm just, I refuse to be lectured by people that were so tone deaf on this because it's enraging and it's just as evil. And people are wondering now, it's like, well, because, you know, young white men have spent, you know, the last decade being demonized as the ultimate, young white straight men, may I add, demonized as like the worst evil to the world, right? Worst evil in the world, being told at a young, impressionable age. By popular society, by Hollywood, by the news.

That is why so many of them went gay or trans, because then you could say, I am not an oppressor, I am a victim. Here is a great... Great. Okay, so normal white people are told to reject the natural order of being attracted to women, because if I say I am gay or trans, then... You are a minority, suddenly. Then I am protected class. Again, here is the thing. Why do we celebrate victimhood anyway?

And that's why I'm not giving anyone an excuse to go be a victim or to go demonize other minorities, because, like, what's the lesson you should learn from this? Is that you should not judge people based on their birth, on their race, or anything like that. You should judge them individually on their merits, as God will judge you for one day. But there's two things that really stuck out to me, and you're like, oh, why are men kind of pissed these days?

Number one, Floyd. The demographic shift reshaped not only who told the stories, but which stories got told. After George Floyd's deaths... Andrew's colleague, Lucas, was assigned a piece about why you should never call the police. I remember having to interview one of these abolitionists for a story about how if someone breaks into your car or your home, it's white supremacy to call the cops, even if you need it for an insurance report. That always made me feel gross. I think back on that with a lot of regret.

Yes. And then the other one was about women, not to go off on the ladies here, but... I'm here for it. Everyone has experienced something to this degree. There were endless diversity trainings, a racial climate assessment. At one point, reporters were told that they had to catalog in minute detail the identity characteristics of all their sources. Andrew had been instrumental in forming the union at his company and objected when negotiations shift from the severance pay and parental leave to demands for racial quotas.

They wanted us to do like emergency hires for black people, he said. When questioned on these new priorities, the response was swift. On a Zoom call, women would clap back at something I was saying. An other woman would snap their fingers in the chat below, he recalled. It was this whole subcultural language being introduced wholesale.

Seriously. For anyone who thought that woke ideology was just this sort of phantom idea floating in the air, I think this article blew it out of the water. Or just bumper stickers. Right, it was just bumper stickers and cute little ladies with their machka. No, this blew that out of the water. I was thinking, too, Tom, about your description of your own journey of dodging a lot of this that your generation has been suffering.

I want to go back again to just honoring the people who sat up and noticed what was going on, even starting as far back as the 1980s. I'll shout out to Alan Bloom, Closing of the American Mind, because the institutions that you just listed that you've been blessed to almost be like a refugee in to carry you through. Think of Regina Chaley. You think of Ave Maria University. Even CatholicVote, shout out to Josh Mercer and Brian Birch.

Credit where credit is due. I can't believe they did that. But why did they do it? They did it because they were willing to notice these uncomfortable truths and trends that were evil happening in American society, and they're like, we need to do something about this, and we're going to found these institutions. And that's why it is so important for people. Why should I care about this? This isn't my generation. I have a reason why. Okay. Tell me. And it's like Tom's like, hey, look, I'm in my 20s, so this hits me harder.

I get it because you know. Materially, just more humans that are your age. I get it, but like, brother, the sympathies are all here. The reason why this angers me so much is because what you have done is you systemically discriminated against a lot of white men, millennials and older Gen Z or whatever, right at the time where they need to start climbing up the ladder. Where they need to start getting skills and getting more money and getting that job that leads them to the next job, and then they can build a future.

And so, what then happens, right? They are kind of looking for gig work, and they are underemployed, and they are not… Or even gainfully employed, they're not able to build any kind of wealth system, and they become less attractive to mates. And so, this idea, all these women, like, where all the men are? You cut them off, you HR zombie witches. You castrated them financially. You made it impossible for white men to build wealth, and then you're like, why aren't there any good men out there for me?

Listen, girl boss, you're part of the damn problem. Yeah. Are you humiliating them? If we're talking about fertility crisis, like, give me a break. Yeah, this was the, this got, I think this is at 26 million. This is crazy. It's still going up. Yeah, it's a little riskier. The whole thing about calling DEI economic genocide is that it undersells it. Yes, young white men were systemically excluded from careers during their peak marriage years, but that's just first order effects. Second order, marriage market collapses.

Women date across and up. Men without careers become invisible to the women who think. Who would have married them and disappeared? The eligible bachelor pool shrinks. Third order, fertility crisis. Fewer marriages, fewer children, but it's worse than just men not marrying or having families. The woman who won the DEI lottery got careers instead of families, delayed fertility until it was too late. DEI attacked family formation from both sides, excluding men from provider roles and diverted women from their fertility window. Everyone lost.

Fourth order, psychological. And this one, I actually have talked to guys personally who are going through this. Young men couldn't even name what was happening to them. The same institutions that excluded them told them that they were privileged, that complaining was proof of weakness, so they internalized failure as personal inadequacy rather than systemic rigging, retreated into depression, video games, porn, the symptoms we then pathologized as male failure, the system broke them on purpose, and blamed them for being broken. Fifth, institutional trust gone.

Once you know positions are filled by demographics rather than competence. Every credential becomes suspect, if not a prairie, worthless. Is your doctor qualified or a diversity hire? Your pilot, your engineer. You can't prove any individual is incompetent, but you can't trust any individual is competent either. Medicine skepticism, academic failure, media skepticism, none of this emerged organically. If it was manufactured by the DEI hire, you can't be sure it's qualified to treat you. You'll attack a meritocracy having so many bad effects.

Sixth order, reality becomes unspeakable. Noticing any of this was a fireable offense. Pointing out the obvious, got you called a bigot, deplatformed or fired, pure totalitarian censorship, and the problem couldn't even be acknowledged until now, finally. Men knew they were being cheated, but they couldn't say it. Women sensed something was wrong with men, but couldn't identify it. Relationships poisoned by a dynamic neither party can name. Seventh order, the feedback loop. Fewer eligible men means there's more women competing for a shrinking pool, more women losing the marriage market, more resentment, more men are trash, more support for DEI, fewer eligible men, and the system accelerates itself.

And the worst part is that the DEI is just the economic arm. The same people and institutions push the complete package, toxic masculinity to pathologize male identity, the futurist female as explicit zero-sum framing delusion, believe all women to weaponize trust against men, men are trash to normalize open contempt, a coordinated ideological assault on family formation, and it even had a business model. HR departments exploded, millions of jobs invented to administer the regime, DEI consultants became multi-billion dollar industry, Politicians got voting blocks dependent on racial grievance.

Established boomers kept their positions while their competition was eliminated. The architects knew what they were doing. You don't accidentally build a system that specifically targets men during peak marriage years, tells them they deserve it, makes it unspeakable to complain, attacks their identity as toxic, promotes women into career tracks that burn their fertility, then acts confused when society collapses. If you wanted to suppress the fertility of a specific demographic, engineer the breakdown of trust between the sexes, And make it illegal to notice, the playbook would look exactly like this.

Mm-hmm. So. But, I can say. But, my son has spent the morning writing a term paper on Greek mythology. I can say, you know, I think Josh made that point, and like, I've actually had multiple times, like, at my employment here, where I've actually gotten emotional thinking about it, and I've been thinking about it, and I've been thinking about it, and I've been thinking Well, CatholicVote has always been amazing to me and my family, and so all of this goes, all the people that listen, and all the donors, and you've listened to me evolve for three years on this podcast live, sometimes three years a week, which is crazy.

So, Regina Chaley, Ave Maria, CatholicVote, my personal family, I've had, I think maybe people thought of these institutions, like their job that they'll eventually get, or the university they go to, as kind of proxy mentors. Like, you're going to have someone, you're going to meet someone that will guide you on a path that will lead you towards flourishing and success, and maybe because college has gotten too big, or businesses have gotten too corporate, that doesn't exist as much anymore, but I think it does, like, a little bit.

It does. And they're, of course, super formative years to you, and so because CatholicVote is a smaller organization and Ave Maria is a smaller school, I had many personal mentors that I actually have their phone number I could talk to. I have talked to about very personal things, but they looked at my situation, and they knew, based on my state of goals, that I wanted to have a family, that I wanted to be open to life, and I wanted to live a family life and make enough money to provide for that.

To happen, and it's not easy, of course, today. And so, every step along the way, it was, we're here to support you. We also want you for this. We share these goals for you. It's a beautiful thing, partially because you went through it yourself when you were older, and I guess that's kind of the point of mentorship, is that you have people that want to get you along that path that will lead you to happiness. And so, I think sometimes...

We get, I don't know if I personally get in this, I think I've been more aware of this as I get older, maybe more people do too, that you're like, oh, you pull yourselves up by your bootstraps, and everything is because of your own, you know, you put your head down, you grind it, you self-made man type thing. Your own virtues alone. Exactly, and I'm just, I'm so conscious these days that it was not just me. It was never just me.

Yeah, no man is an island. But all of these mentors along the way made me into who I am today, and I'm really grateful for that. I'm grateful to you, Josh, I'm grateful to all these mentors. And I guess maybe that's the saddest thing I think about sometimes is… So, the collapse of in-person community, like through the internet, the collapse of these kind of tracks that would lead people towards maturity and growth and a good life have kind of been destroyed, and so people are left on islands and didn't receive that same mentorship, and it feels like they were robbed of something that they were owed, and I guess the society that's promised, this liberal society that's promised, and it leads towards, of course, all kinds of crazy things you can't predict, like you could say, Crazy ideology, politically, or crazy whatever.

A lot of anger. A lot of anger. There's a lot of anger and envy, and those are not good things in society. I guess I would just say, you know, like, as you're listening to this stuff, we're talking about, you know, the displacement of people not getting jobs, not getting opportunities, resumes ignored, not even getting a callback, systemic racism against white men. And again, it's just, you know, 10 years ago, you're like, what are you talking about even? How is this even possible?

Yes, it happened. And not to turn this into a commercial, but like, do you think Verizon or AT&T was, you know, doing this kind of garbage? Of course they were. This is why when we come up, we don't mind working with partners like Charity Mobile. It's like, let your money go there. Like, doesn't that make more sense? You don't send your kids to Georgetown.

So, that they'll lose their faith. You send them to like Ave Maria, or to Benedictine, or Franciscan. So, why? Well, wait a minute. No, it might cost me a dollar more for Charity Mobile. Oh, a dollar more. They're not going to be racist. They're not going to be sexist. They're not going to be doing this DEI garbage.

Your dollars are your votes, your ability to do things. Support those things that make sense. You know, you find initiatives in your local area that are making a difference, and you support them, like your local Chesterton Academy or whatever the case is. St. Michael. Whatever it is, do those things. Your dollars matter. And so, just be wise as serpent. What is it again? Wise as serpent? Wise as serpent, innocent as doves. Yeah, I'm grateful, too. My parents were thinking in that framework, Josh.

I actually recently talked to them about this, where, of course, they started considering Regina Chaley, but they both went to public universities, big public universities, and they just foresaw the tea leaves, and they're like, this isn't even a part of the consideration anymore. That was a grace. We need to send you somewhere else, whether that's going to community college or whatever, but also these Newman Guide schools. We need to send you somewhere where you're going to get legitimately formed. And not just kind of sent into the wilderness, and I mean, that decision completely changed my life.

It just, I met my wife there, came into this position here, and then the professors I had at Ave Maria, too, like former Princeton people, you know, they were very impressive in their own right, but they chose to go to Ave Maria because they saw the tea leaves as well, and they're like, I want to be in a place where I can actually teach and not have these kind of external restraints on them, and I benefited from that, too. My good news thing.

Okay, please do. What you got? Good news. Let's have some. Well, the Washington Post story, the Washington... The Post reports, professors are turning to this old-school method to stop AI use on exams. What do you think that old-school thing is?

Blue books? Even more old school. Yes. Oral exams. That's it. I love this so much. I forget we don't even need writing tablets anymore. Back to Socrates. The best part about this, the reaction is like some of them, like Judan Chen, she's a PhD professor at the University of California, San Diego.

She had some thoughts on the article. I just, I kind of find it hilarious. She's like, I admire the spirit. Now, how do we scale up to an upper division undergrad class with 200 students for a midterm and a final? Oh, I am so glad you asked.

Here's the thing. You don't have a class of 200 students! There we go. That's what you do. You don't have 200. If this prohibits mass industrial scale education, oh, bummer. Like, you shouldn't have mass. Hedge funds that teach classes on the side. You're not handing soup here. Like, you're trying to impress young minds. You're trying to actually find out whether they actually know anything.

Gosh. That is why I am bullish on AI for education, because I think it is just going to blow up the existing structure, which is mostly garbage. Like, it is hedge funds that teach some classes on the side with TAs.

Right. And classrooms are way too big, in which people just cheat. Somebody said, in Italy, they have a professor and two assistants, and they have one test at the end, and those three divvy up the students and do 15 minutes each, and they are done within a few hours. Yep.

You know, it can be done. Because actually, my kids go to high school, and now what they've done is a lot less writing assignments because they're like, I'm not so sure it's not AI. It's like, well, if you handwrite it.

If it's an oral exam, it is what it is. You just got to make sure they're not wearing the glasses, like the Clueless glasses. The dating glasses that script your first date. Oh, my gosh. I mean, at some point, you almost got to give them, like, that.

All right. Erika, what do you got? Okay. Well, we have entered my favorite seven days of the year. It is the Oantiphons. They start today, and this is the actual liturgical countdown for Christmas. So, you will notice I have my little sparkly lights now. My kids are blasted. We have got like Christmas music downstairs. They are making cookies, but the Oantiphons. Yeah, look at the light set up here. We will go for it in a minute. Oh, you are checking out my… The light set up.

Yeah. Isn't it awesome? Very festive. Festive. See. My daughters are very proud of me. So, the O antithons are, it is from December 17th to December 23rd, and for those of you who do not know, this is a fun little tidbit about that. If you could pull those up there.

Wait, sorry. This is not the, okay. This is it. But you are going to do the song, right? Well, we have to do the song if we have time. Maybe it is my Twilight Zone. I do not know. So, the acrostic that is formed by the letters, so we have the titles of Jesus, and this is actually also the acrostic that is formed by the letters, so we have the titles of Jesus. So, you have Emmanuel, Rex, Gentium, Oriens, Clavis, David, Radix, Jesse, Adonai, and Sapientia.

So, the Latin names of Christ that we are remembering each of these days in the last few days leading up to Christmas, if you list them backwards here, you see how it makes the words, the Latin words, aero, cross, and aero meaning I will be with you. Cross is tomorrow. So, the Oantiphons are this very fun little wordplay with the titles of Christ, and it's saying, when you get to the last one, it will be Emmanuel. Behold, I will be with you tomorrow.

Cross. I love it. I just love it. I love the Oantiphons. All right, do you want to start out? I love it. Oh, wait, actually, we've got to hit. Sorry, we have a chaplain situation, email and inbox. We do, we do. Okay.

So, I got a great email on the chaplain situation. Essentially, we were concerned about some funding changes to chaplaincy. Timothy Broglio wrote out calling it out, and so I got a very interesting email. It gives me a lot to think about. It says, hi, Tom. Love the show. As a former Hill staffer turned stay-at-home mom of six, you provide banter and inside chatter that often happen with Catholic staffers at the Dubliner in D.C. Josh, are you familiar? The only bar I got kicked out of for a book.

You got kicked off for what? A political opinion. Would you get kicked off of this podcast if you said it? No, we were talking about immigration policy, and the Irishman who was serving me did not appreciate it. That is awesome. A word on the religious support cuts that have been highlighted by Archbishop Broglio and discussed on the recent podcast episode. Her husband is in the military, heavily involved in military chapels for the past 15 years, sometimes key leadership roles. Sadly, the chaplaincy and religious support have devolved into a politically correct, insurmountable bureaucracy rife with fraud, waste, and abuse.

I believe SecWar is going to make major reforms, and this is extremely necessary. Many wonderful, holy Catholic chaplains serve troops but are often left to deal with things like a DRE that isn't even Catholic but won the contract by current rules, a staff of Susan from the parish council type that is out of touch with service members and their young families and takes joy in roadblocking anything productive, there is a general warring between denominations over space and resources, and of course, the horrific reforms made during the Obama and Biden years that essentially made chaplains self-care-promoting therapists.

The finances are generally a train wreck. Service members come and go, but often local retirees are the constant in the military chapels with the amounts to a boomer, takeover, leaving families and service members to look for faithful, more orthodox parishes off installations. I truly believe starting from the ground up is necessary, so I hope this puts some context. Currently stationed for selling. My dad volunteers there.

Oh. Awesome. Trying to keep it vague, but I appreciate that. We won't share the name. Yeah, won't share the name. Shout out to her. That was very helpful. And then Pete Hegseth put out a video, kind of like right after we did that episode, that is giving some clarity to the changes. So, maybe they were listening. I'm here to tell you about a real problem facing our nation's military. It's one you're probably not aware of, but it's a really important one, and it's been going on for far too long.

The weakening of our chaplain corps. You see, chaplains are intended to be the spiritual and moral backbone of our nation's forces. George Washington established the chaplain corps in 1775, one of his first actions as general of the Continental Army.

Congress authorized chaplains for the Navy that very same year. In Washington's general orders, he explained their importance, quote, The blessing and protection of heaven are at all times necessary, but especially so in times of public distress and danger.

For about 200 years, the Chaplain Corps continued its role as the spiritual leader of our service members, serving our men and women in times of hardship and ministering to their souls. But sadly, as part of the ongoing war on warriors, in recent decades, its role has been degraded. In an atmosphere of political correctness and secular humanism, chaplains have been minimized, viewed by many as therapists instead of ministers. Faith and virtue were traded for self-help and self-care. If you need proof, just look at the current Army Spiritual Fitness Guide.

In well over 100 pages, it mentions God one time. That's it. It mentions feelings 11 times. It even mentions playfulness, whatever that is, nine times. There's zero mention of virtue. The guide relies on New Age notions, saying that the soldier's spirit consists of consciousness, creativity, and connection. The guide itself reports that around 82% of the military are religious, yet ironically, it alienates our warfighters of faith by pushing secular humanism. In short, it's unacceptable and unserious, so we're tossing it.

I have a directive right here that I will sign today to eliminate the use of the Army Spiritual Fitness Guide effective immediately. These types of training materials have no place in the war department. Love it, brother. Sounds like, you know, sounds like someone's listening. I voted for that.

I definitely voted for that. Also, yeah, I've got to talk to a few loop casters that are in the military, so I love that we have them that listen. I get some great intel. Actually, I had lunch with one the other day. Shout out to him. Marine. He was laughing about the fitness standards, because the marine fitness standards have never changed, so he's like, well... Clearly the best. I was like, oh, did Hegseth really affect you guys? Like, not at all.

We were always... I was like, awesome. Okay, and then also, briefly, we have a new Archbishop of New York. Where is his name here on the sheet? Does anyone have it? Hicks? Bishop Hicks from Joliet, Illinois. Illinois is on the ascendancy here. Man, shout out to Joliet, Illinois, the birthplace of my father-in-law.

Hopefully, we get some clarity on Sheen, Fulton Sheen, because now you've got the guy who wasn't Joliet and New York City. He could maybe... Let's move it along, people. We might get some finality that way. At least one thing to hope for, I would say, right? Yeah. Okay, so quick background on him. He studied philosophy at Niles College of Loyola University, graduated in 1989, went on to earn a Master of Divinity degree, Doctor of Ministry degree from the University of St.

Mary of the Lake in Mundelein. Shout out, Mundelein. He was ordained a priest in 1994, served at several parishes of the Archdiocese of Chicago. 1999, appointed dean of formation at St. Joseph College Seminary. 2005, Hicks moved to El Salvador, where he spent the next five years as regional director of an orphanage that operates throughout Latin America. So we got like a Chicago, Latin America supremacy situation going on right now.

Upon his return to Chicago, he became the dean of formation at Mundelein Seminary, named Archdiocesan Vicar General 2015 by Blaise Cupich, and then he was ordained an auxiliary bishop of the Archdiocese of Chicago in 2018, and then appointed Bishop of Juliet by Pope Francis in 2020.

So, Kurt, as Bishop of Juliet, he was the chairman of the U.S. CCB's Committee on Clergy, Consecrated Life, and Vocations. People are kind of talking about his closeness to Cardinal Cupich, but those who know his pastoral governments closely emphasize an episcopate marked by not by ideological activism, but by listening youth and the centrality of the Eucharist. He is a young guy, I think. The promotion of adoration of the Most Blessed Sacrament and considerable liturgical reverence. Communities linked to traditional mat and lass have been able to continue their ordinary life without drastic measures.

That was one thing that a lot of people pointed out. And, fun fact, diehard Chicago Cubs fan. So... So, he's going to New York City. That shows a little, you know, going across the aisle, because the Pope himself is a White Sox fan. True. Putting him in New York, that will be interesting. I mean, I agree with Kevin Tierney.

He made a comment. He goes, because all this speculation, there's a lot of conservatives that were kind of freaking out about, oh, it's an accolade of. Supich. Supich. I just don't buy that. I mean, the guy was promoting the TLM. He was doing lots of great stuff in Juliet, so all my reports are like, yeah, this guy seems really good.

And so, Kevin Tierney said, as every Catholic speculates on what the appointment of Hicks will or won't mean as to how Leo intends to govern the church, he goes, I would like to remind people that how the hierarchy governs is not always up to the hierarchy itself.

And that's why I think he says, you know, Rich Raho and Christopher Jolly Hill, who's a Democratic activist, he thinks they're kind of coping a little too hard with this, trying to polish this as a victory, when it doesn't, I mean, like, if I understand this correct.

You're just so, you know, the Catholic left is so happy this guy got pointed there, because he was under Cupich, when in fact, if he was promoting the traditional Latin Mass, and talking about, you know, all the Eucharistic procession, all that kind of adoration, I mean, it sounds like, he sounds like a pretty good.

Pretty solid pick. Pretty good, solid guy. Well, I could tell that Chris Hale was not serious when he was trying to paint Timothy Dolan as somehow like the bastion of conservatism in the American church, he said, because Charlie Kirk was a modern-day St. Paul, was how he was trying to paint him as super conservative, which, hysterical to anyone that actually knows Timothy Dolan.

Well, I mean, you know, Cardinal Dolan would definitely have been... You know, center right amongst the episcopacy, just because there are a lot of, you know, a lot of conservative Catholics in this country who think he's too liberal, quote-unquote, you know, and I think he kind of watered down a little bit against the gay stuff while being in New York City, but overall, you know, Archbishop Dolan, like a lot of the American bishops in the country, are I would say, again, they are not conservative, traditional, or whatever, but they are center-right.

They want the church to move towards the right, as opposed to the leftward slide that we had under Francis the last 12 years. Okay. That is my gut. Josh's take. And it is quite an act to follow with Cardinal Dolan. Very different personalities, but I am excited. I am excited to see what happens. Yeah, I mean, in terms of personalities, Dolan, I mean, you know, he likes to clap and Irish men, he loves a good beer. I was behind him at the, when we had the Eucharistic Congress in Indianapolis, I remember like walking in a huge crowd and I was right behind Timothy Dolan.

I was like, oh, wow. There he is, of course, loud, boisterous. Hard to miss. Hard to miss him. Yeah, impossible to miss. Well, he was the, you know. He was the inspiration for my single greatest viral tweet of all time. Oh, yeah, the dinner, the Al Smith dinner?

Yep. Well, that is what got him branded as this right-wing firebrand because he just attended. Like, that was the thing, right? Yeah, okay. Just a joke. Okay, Josh. Are we doing Twilight Zone now, or what? We are in the Twilight Zone.

Are we? Okay, hold on. Okay, so. You know, all the days get mixed up here. So, I mean, again, you know, the media has just been slammed for the last few years on how they could have missed Joe Biden, you know, because he's basically a walking skeleton.

And so now Jake Tapper has decided, well, here, this is the reason why I'm so hard on Donald Trump's missteps and everything he does where he shows any sign of aging. This is pretty awesome. Oh, boy. We cover it all the time on my show. All the time. And.

I think that is to a large degree because we saw what happened with Biden, and while we covered it, we didn't ask as many questions as we should have at the time, and I think it is a legitimate question for any president of any age, but particularly anybody who is in the range of being an octogenarian, right?

Dude, you've got to hand it to him on that one. You've got to almost give it to him. The sheer audacity of this lie is so impressive. Maybe there's another reason, because you're a Democrat. Maybe that's why you're hard on Republicans and soft on Democrats. Maybe you are full of baloney. No, Josh, you're missing it, dude. This is actually kind of... Kind of well played on his part. Like, well, we missed it somehow, so I'm going to be a little extra, dot my T's, you know what I'm saying, or dot my I's, cross my T's, you know?

But it just goes to show, like, when you want to try to, you know, the desire and the hope is that, you know, as we compete in the marketplace of ideas, as it's called. As it's called, so it's known. Right, or, you know. Well, we surely agree on the same kind of goals. We want greater prosperity. We want more people to succeed. We want, you know, children to thrive, all this kind of stuff. And you're like, and so certainly, you know, when we debate, we're going to, hey, by the way, I noticed you saying this, and that doesn't really jive with what you did before.

You're totally contradicting yourself, and you realize the left. They are ideologues. They're communists. They literally just do not care. If you're like, well, wait a minute now, you're providing cover for Joe Biden when he was like a walking skeleton. So, if Donald Trump tripped a little bit, and then you pretend like he's practically dead and he's too old to be president, you're totally full of crap because you can't even reason with him.

If you expect them to be rational, it's like, no, no, they don't care. They do not care. They do not care, and they're going to make you look like a weirdo for noticing, and so what you have to do is mock the crap out of these people, make fun of them, and this is hilarious, and obviously, don't give them your money. Don't support them. Don't watch the movies. Don't watch their shows. Mock them. Make fun of them.

Word. Erika, I will throw in my lot with yours because it is so good. All right. Speaking of mockery, everyone knows Baby It Is Cold Outside. It has gotten a lot of traction. I mean, it is just, you know, I think it has been described as rapey, and women were up in arms about it. But this group, I think they are in Nashville. They went ahead and rewrote it, and I think they fixed it, Tom. Which, let us stop before we get into that.

What are your serious thoughts on Baby It Is Cold Outside? Because... As much as I'm against all the client counselors, they kind of have a little bit of a point. Look, I'm too busy. I'm too busy listening to the actual, like, good Christmas stuff to need to listen to babies. Okay, I'll just end it. I love the song. You're dodging the question. No, I don't like it. I don't like the song. I don't like it. Josh and I have a strong disagreement on this.

I find it just, like, stupid. And it's not the guy. I'm not so bothered about the guy. Like, that's just how guys are sometimes. But, like... The woman, she's like, eh, I'm like, come on, play it straight, define the relationship, like, I'm going to stay, we're going to make out, or I need to leave now, see you later. Like, I just can't stand it. All right, drop in the chat how we're feeling about baby, it's cold outside. The whole point, though, is that women, there's a reason that women want to at least convey.

I don't want to have a reputation for being a floozy or a tramp or a skank. So, leave. I understand that. So, they've got to say these things. Well, I don't want to cause a scandal or whatever. The whole song is meant to be flirty, of course, and if we want to say, wouldn't it be better if we had a society that the sexual morals were even more strict? That's a fine argument, but overall, to me, the idea behind the song is like, To me, it is just hilarious.

The Erika objection, I have no qualms with. Thank you, Josh. Okay. The qualms I have with is a society where you have WAP song. I mean, okay, this is the point, right? And it's like, we have songs that are porn, and they have a problem with the song. This is not rapey, this is a flirty song, but Guy's like, I want to cuddle with you and flirt with you, and she's like, I got to go home, and whatever. It did give us a great scene in Elf.

It's true. So, anyway. That is where I land on it. That is where I land on it, but here is the remix. Okay. I really can't stay. Okay. I got to go away. That is fine. This evening has been so very nice. Okay, great. Good. I thought it was good, too.

My mother will start to worry. You live with your mom? My father will be pacing the floor. Wait, how old are you? So really, I'd better scurry. The app says you're 29. Well, maybe just a half a drink more. No, you need to get out of my house. I'm freaking out. The neighbors might think. What are they going to think?

Saying what's in this drink. She made the drink. Neighbors, she made the drink. I wish I knew how. What? Oh, my God. To break. No, no, no, this can't be happening. You haven't even put your ass in Uber.

Alexi will be here in two minutes. Please wait outside. It's cute. Oh, the chat hates it. Well, I thought it was. Chat not on it? Well, the chat agrees with me. They're pro. They want the OG. They're pro, baby. It's cold outside.

We love you guys. Chat's voting on the original. Okay, there you go. Oh, yeah. Wait, Erika, do you have any... We're at a new stage of Advent, so we're getting closer to Christmas, so what is the appropriate Christmas music to be listening to at this time? I've already given my thoughts. Yeah, at this time, I am almost no holds barred on the religious Christmas hymns, so I'm like, all the Matt Marr, all that. I'm going to save the more secular stuff until Christmas Day when we're partying really hard, and it just feels more fun.

Isn't that weird? Wait, so what's the wreck? What's the Erika wreck? What does that mean? Right now. Okay, so I gave Alabama Christmas album one, too. Recommendation. Oh, okay. Oh, rec. I think I'm like, what are you talking about?

My recommendations right now, we do like Matt Marr's Advent of Christmas very much in our house, and it has a nice mix of secular and religious. There's this artist called Kate, her name's Kate Rusby. She's actually English, and she has like three Christmas albums at this point. All very fun, and it's more like folk music Christmas, so that's a favorite. But of course, I mean, Handel's Messiah right now, the entire Old Testament, we're just playing that. We're rocking out to Handel.

All day long. Is that not fun enough for you, Tom? He's like, what? I've never listened to any of it. I'm sure it's delightful. I'm sending them to you. Yeah, yeah, I'm sure it's delightful. I mean, I threw out a kind of a, you know, Alabama Christmas is kind of off pasture for a lot of people. It is. It was off pasture for me. Listen, I'm open to... I played it for my six-year-old. I told you. She was doing her schoolwork, and I was playing Alabama Christmas, and I was like, Tom likes this.

Tom likes this, and she looks at me, and she's like... This is terrible. Who likes this? This is not Christmas music. My response was that she's been raised in an East Coast elite home. She's like, Mom, please turn back on Mozart or whatever concerto we were listening to before. This is what the common folk in the middle of America listen to, and I can't stand it. This is the flyover country Christmas, not Eleanor. Yeah. Josh, what are you listening to?

Well, I just like the Christmas crooners, you know? I mean, I'll take Perry Como, you know? Yes, I like Dino. Obviously, Bing Crosby. I mean, all that stuff. You seem like more of a Mariah Carey guy to me. That is weird. The Spotify wrapped age is... Mariah Carey, that is what it mutes for.

I do not like her either. Have we turned on... Was it Michael Buble at the... Yeah, he sang Ave Maria. That was very good. Sometimes I just think about how much money he has made off of that. You know, in fact, I took my family to see Pope Benedict when he was at Yankee Stadium.

And they brought out Harry Connick Jr., and that was kind of cool. I mean, it wasn't Christmastime. He's got pipes. And he said, people ask me if I'm a practicing Catholic. I said, I've been practicing hard, and he went with the keyboard, you know, and everyone was like, ah.

All right, daily prayer. This one's a long one that was in the Slack chat today. I think a lot of it's background. You can call it out. On what? Call an audible. Do something else if you want. Do you got one for me? Any favorite prayers?

I mean, you know. I like the classic. Honestly, like, this week, with all the shootings and the mass everything and the craziness with I've just been pulling out the old Memorare to Our Lady. Go for it. Constantly. Constantly. Do you want to do it, Tom? You got it? No, you do it, girl. Go for it. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, remember, O most gracious Virgin Mary, that never has it been known that anyone who fled to your protection, implored your help, or sought your intercession was left unaided.

Inspired by this confidence, I fly into you, O Virgin of Virgins, and my mother. To you do I come. Before you I stand, sinful and sorrowful. O Mother of the Word Incarnate, despise not my petition, but in your mercy, hear and answer me. Amen. Our Lady of Guadalupe, pray for us. St. Fidelis, pray for us. St. Thomas More, pray for us.

Amen. Great show, guys. We'll hit you with the deep on Thursday, and then we'll have a live show Friday, and then just to prepare, we're going to be taking the entire week of Christmas off, so we will be off. We'll be enjoying Christmas with our families over the year or two, so just want to prepare for that, but until Friday, we'll see you then. Peace.