Free Speech Frenzy, Jimmy Kimmel, and Pope Leo’s First Interview

And we're live. Welcome back to LOOPcast, brought to you by every Catholic's favorite morning newsletter, The Loop. If you are not subscribed to The Loop, what are you doing? Get subscribed, because you'll see us. We're on there. You'll see all sorts of great content, but today, your great content is coming to you from your favorite late-night host, Last Man Standing, Tom. Thank you for joining us, Tom McCluskey.

I figured there's openings, late-night openings that I might as well start applying now. Yeah, it seems like there might be a couple. We're going to dig into that. Mercer, how are you doing today? It is a wonderful day. It is a beautiful day, and God's glorious creation. St. Januarius, it's the Feast of St. Januarius. Might get into some liquefied blood. We have updates coming to you from Italy on that. Explain later. What city is that in, actually? Yeah, you go look that up, and we'll get to Januarius in our church corner.

But we also have Jimmy Kimmel, our new free speech martyr, Charlie Kirk moveover. Left-wing violence numbers are, you know. Coming out, it looks like Cato Institute, the ADL, are doubling down on the right-wingers are worse than left-wingers. Nantra, and also Pope Leo XIV, he had his first full-length public interview.

We have some notes on that, update you on what the Pope said. And most sad of all, this is the saddest part today, we are saying farewell to Rosie, our producer. This is her last show. I know, Josh, head and hands, all of us, hearts in our throats. Rosie, we are going to miss you so much.

Yes, everyone. She's made a few appearances here on LOOPcast, and she has judged our snake drafts in the past. A genius judge. Judged them wisely. Mercer always won with Rosie, so Rosie. I mean, two out of three, but yeah. Okay, did Brian Birch win the other one? No, I think you won the first one. Did I win one? Oh, great. Nice. Okay, I don't even remember these. But first, we have some sponsors today. We have Nazareth Organics. It is challenging. To foster healthy and radiant skin in a world of synthetic chemicals and toxins, wouldn't it be nice to find nourishing ingredients from God's own creation, sourcing their ingredients from Israel to Italy to the ancient Zechstein seabed?

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So, I would just highly recommend that. It might be a personal experience. Ask me how I know. Nazareth Organics, thank you so much, and let's dig into it. So, the buzz is... We've entered North Korea. That's what I believe Governor Tim Walz said on MSNBC this morning. Why? Because Jimmy Kimmel was fired from Disney. I want to give you the actual timeline of events here so you can start judging for yourselves and thinking for yourselves. But the funniest part, of course, is that now the left is calling for boycotts of Disney, which is just sort of the cherry on top.

Can we try this? Here's the, yeah. What a dream. What a dream. It is amazing. I mean, Trump is playing them like a maestro, if that's what's happening, but here we go. This is what happened. Monday evening on late night television, which I do not watch, but apparently a couple people still do, Jimmy Kimmel, in his monologue, made some incendiary comments about Charlie Kirk's death and his killer, and I'm just going to let him speak for himself here. So, Simon, can we roll the tape of that?

Jimmy and his last hurrah. We had some new lows over the weekend, with the MAGA gang desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them, and doing everything they can to score political points from it. In between the finger-pointing, there was grieving. On Friday, the White House flew the flags at half-staff, which got some criticism, but on a human level, you can see how hard the president is taking this. my condolences on the loss of your friend charlie kirk may i ask sir personally how are you holding up over the last day and a half sir i think very good and by the way right there you see all the trucks they just started construction of the new ballroom for the white house which is something they've been trying to get as you know for about 150 years and it's going to be a beauty yes all right at the fourth stage of grief you Yeah.

So, of course, the joke is that, you know, Trump deflects this one reporter's, and not, it's just stupid. That's not the end of the world. It's not the end of the world, but where he really got in trouble was saying that the shoot, Charlie Kirk's shooter was. A MAGA. He was a right wing, and that MAGA supporters are trying to deflect from this, which is a vile lie at this point. Every indication we have from everything that's been released by the FBI, by the Utah Justice Department, it's that this kid was an extreme online activist.

He had a trans lover in the furry community, and this is very clearly a lie at this point, and Kimmel should have known better. So, Kimmel goes on, and he shoots off at the mouth. The next day, actually Wednesday at about 2 p.m. I think it's Tuesday, Rosie. The next day at about 2 o'clock, the FCC chairman, Brendan Carr, went on Benny Johnson's podcast, and he publicly condemned Kimmel's remarks, and he called them truly sick, suggested that ABC could be held accountable by the FCC for remarks like this.

And I just want to read exactly what he said. He said, we can do this the easy way or the hard way. These companies can find ways to take action on Kimmel, or there's going to be additional work for the FCC ahead. He continued, they have a license granted by us at the FCC, and that comes with an obligation to operate in the public interest. I think you could certainly see a path forward for suspension over this. The commission could argue Kimmel's remarks were an intentional effort to mislead the American people about a very core fundamental fact.

He said, Disney needs to see some changes here, but the individual licensed stations that are taking their content, it's time for them to step up and say, this garbage isn't something that we think serves the needs of our local communities. So, putting it back on the locals.

It's not just that, though. As somebody has pointed out, there is a reasonable concern. Because you're talking about the dissemination of a false narrative about a political event, right? It's not just that. It's that you're talking about a crime that went down. And so, that is a different category. When you make false statements about a crime on broadcast television, then the broadcast, you're in trouble. You could be on the hook for sharing false information or whatever. So, it's not as much of a pure free speech zone as people think, because the fact of the matter is, and this really does matter, because the fact of the matter is, when something first gets put out, You know, like the Russia hoax thing that we went through a couple years ago.

The first thing that people hear was that, oh, Donald Trump conspired with Russia to promote this whole thing, and it's like you can't unring that bell. People just, they just think it, oh, well, that is what happened. It was all a Russian influence in the election. Russia helped Donald Trump. It does not matter, no matter how much you prove it. Actually, Hillary Clinton was more involved in pushing that. It was not true. It does not matter. People just, the first thing they hear, there is just something about humans.

The first thing we hear, and it was widespread all over the country, permanent, was that this lie. Right. And you can't unshake it. Right. Again. There is that concern about a crime. It's a higher level. When you're talking about a crime and you're pushing false information about a crime, yeah, these stations are liable. Right, right. And I think the FCC chairman was referring to this very specific statute. It's number 73-1217 on broadcast hoaxes, and it says, There is no licensee or permittee of any broadcast station to broadcast false information concerning a crime to Josh's.

If one, the licensing knows the information is false, which is certainly you can make the case for that here in this case. Number two, it is foreseeable that broadcast of the information will cause substantial public harm. And three, broadcast of the information does in fact directly cause substantial public harm. So, I think what he was saying there is this is a case to be made. And in fact, I just want to finish the timeline here and then get into the reactions.

So, that same day, Nexstar, which is the largest television station owner in the United States, they have about 200 stations nationwide, they announced that due to Jimmy Kimmel's comments, they would preempt his show that night and for the foreseeable future. They were going to, they were actually... Here's the actual thing. They said, we strongly object to recent comments made by Mr. Kimmel concerning the killing of Charlie Kirk and will replace the show for the foreseeable future. Next Star, just for full disclosure, they are currently seeking FCC approval for a merger, a $6.2 billion merger with Tegna.

The other broadcast group that was involved in pressuring ABC to fire him was the Sinclair Broadcast Group. They demanded an apology for the family and a donation to Turning Point USA in tribute to Kirk on Friday instead of Kimmel. So, both of these went to ABC, and the report that we got this morning from the New York Times, this was in the Wall Street Journal, and also the Hollywood Reporter, which, strangely enough, I think was the best of the three. uh so a lot of sources they do exactly yeah so hollywood reporter reports that that that afternoon so before he went on on tuesday live kimmel had a phone call with abc in which they asked him to go on and apologize and retract but instead of apologizing he declared that he intended that night in his monologue to double down on his criticism of donald trump and his whole mega narrative that night so They have Jimmy in.

They're like, look, we want to help you out, but you got to retract these statements, and he's like, no, I am standing strong on my principles, because is Jimmy, he's a principled man, if nothing else, right? So, finally, ABC, again, owned by Disney, announced that it will be pulling his show indefinitely. He'd been on the air since 2003.

Which is kind of amazing. Well, not with the late-night show from since 2003, really? Has it been that long? You are correct. Rosie, can you check that date for me, please? And his contract would have been up in May 2026, so he was coming up on that.

I did look it up and tried to compare him to the other most recently canceled late-night show, Colbert. Colbert was doing better than he was at this point. I mean, kind of seems like the guy was... Already on his way out, Colbert was averaging 2.4 million views per week, and Kimmel was 1.8 million. So, he wasn't exactly raking it in anyway, and then he refuses to apologize for the comments.

Well, again, I think it was, he did start out on late night TV and ABC in 2003, so I'm surprised it's been that long. But just to give you a... A feel for it. I think what ended up happening here is ABC, you know, like everyone, right now, all the left is blaming Donald Trump and just influence of FEC and using government to suppress speech. We can get into that discussion in a minute, but I think what that reporting from The Hollywood Reporter kind of really tells us is that the executives at ABC were probably thinking along the same lines as CBS executives.

Colbert. Right. You're paying a ton of money to a person. By the way, what are we talking about here? Jimmy Kimmel is getting about 159,000 people a night, right? Just to give some perspective on this, Jay Leno would get 3.4 to 3.8 million a night. Letterman would average 3 to 3.5 million a night. 159,000?

I mean, we get a really good loop cast, and we're practically rivaling this guy. I mean, this is ridiculous. $159,000? So, there was already pressure on Disney from a lot of these advertisers, like, we're not getting the eyeballs with this guy. What's going on? And so then, he picks a fight and spreads a lie about a crime, which gets them exposure legally from the FCC.

And the Disney executive is like, dude, you've got to go out there and apologize. He's like, no, I'm going to be defiant. It's like, you just gave ABC a gift. They could pull you now for a legitimate reason and not have to worry about you ever again, and your 159,000 people will go onto Twitter and complain. Yes, that was my take, too. I was like, this was just, they were like, oh, we've been wanting to get rid of this guy. His Tron chart's up in May anyway, and we're just going to pull the plug.

He handed it to them. What I think of what sours a lot of this is the FCC getting involved. I really wish Commissioner Carr, and I know I'm a good guy, I wish he had kept his mouth shut, or at least not gone so publicly about it. No, now it's about government censorship instead of about what it really is about, that Jimmy Kimmel is an ass who deserved to be taken off the air, and also that ABC wanted him off the air.

It's a distraction that wasn't necessary. Yes, the FCC should go after ABC and look into this. Remember Alex Jones? Alex Jones was sued for a billion dollars for the exact same thing that Jimmy Kimmel is doing. For misleading people on a crime. All right, Josh. No, no, no, Mercer, before you go off, I just want to read. That is about how the free press took it, right? So, Barry Weiss, you know. Brand new baby righty, I guess. Is she even a righty?

I don't think so. Former lefty. Barry Weiss and her editors said, quote, this is what's known as jawboning, meaning from the FCC. When state actors use threats to inappropriately compel private action, when a network drops high-profile talent hours after the FCC chairman makes a barely veiled threat, then it's no longer just a business decision, it is government coercion. Mercer, thoughts on that reaction? Okay, so let us take a step back for just a second on this. I like doing that. Let us take a step back.

There is a Supreme Court case, Murthy v. Missouri, that was recently decided. This is where the Supreme Court dismissed a lawsuit that claimed the Biden administration violated the First Amendment by putting pressure on social media platforms to remove certain content. I was extremely disappointed that the Supreme Court threw this out, because I'm like, you had agencies of the federal government, like the FBI, that were coordinating with social media companies to remove the The social media posts of private U.S. citizens. Now, here is where I want to ask you about this, right?

So, in this case, this If you're asking me, should we even have an FCC? Do we need such enforcements of this stuff? Should we get rid of all this? I'm interested in having that discussion. Yes, very interested. It is. I'm fascinated by this, but Brad Smith is a former commissioner for the FEC, and he said, I argued with liberals until I was blue in the face that Murray v. Missouri was wrongly decided.

Brendan Carr convinced them in 24 hours. Fascinating. Robbie George is saying much along the same lines as what you just said, and so is Ross Douthat. I'm not agreeing with Robbie George or Ross Douthat, not at all. What does Tom think? Go, Tom.

What I'm thinking is, yes, Commissioner Carr should have gone after them. It's going on a podcast and talking about it is a distraction. Why is that different than an enforcement action? Why would that be different than him sending a letter of information to ABC? He should have sent a letter, because it makes it more entertainment than it does actual legal action, and it gives the bone to the liberals and to the Robbie Georges and all. In the whatever, Weiss or whatever, of saying, oh, this is government censorship, because it is not.

Because I agree with everything discussing that what he did, I think he should be. Oh, your microphone is cutting out. You are breaking up. How about now? You are better. If I'm advising Erika Kirk, I would be taking notes right now of all these people that I would be suing into oblivion once this is done, but that doesn't necessarily mean government action, because I compare it to Pam Bondi coming out and saying about hate crimes, which a lot of conservatives then were like, what?

That was a misstep. It's a smaller misstep. I personally think that Commissioner Carr did a slight misstep, too, but as opposed to the Robbie George stuff and all, this is the time for missteps. I'm okay with some of these missteps, because Right. Because Robbie George is trying to argue, and this wise woman is trying to argue, oh, but now they're going to come after us. And I'm like, I hope they come after me with the FCC or the IRS.

Because it's better than the coming after me with bullets. Yeah. Okay, but I'll excuse the little missteps. Yeah, in fairness, I feel like we should read Robbie George's statement here. So, if you could pull that up, Simon. And he posted this on the 18th. He said, what Jimmy Kimmel suggested to be true, namely that Charlie Kirk's assassin was MAGA, was false. Did he know when he said it that it was false? I don't know. Well, now we know how the reporter said that.

Now we know. Did he have reason to know it was false? Yes, but ideology warps people's heads. I don't think that's an excuse. In any case, we should not want public officials pressuring companies to fire or discipline people for their First Amendment-protected speech, even when it's false. It is simply too great a threat to civil liberty.

Democrats and liberals are saying that now, but with honorable exceptions, they have no credibility. When the shoe was on the other foot during the Biden years, they were not ardent free speech defenders. They did not raise their voices against government officers pressuring media outlets and platforms. Too often, they allowed themselves to become apologists for it. Shame on them. But their hypocrisy does not justify a complacent attitude today for many of us when government officials pressure media outlets on. Those of us who did defend First Amendment principles during the Biden years need to be no less outspoken in defending them today.

We mustn't be hypocrites. It's bad when media disseminates falsehoods, but the way to fight back is by telling the truth, exercising our own free speech rights to condemn the lying and the liars. It is simply unsafe to trust government officials with the power to, in effect, regulate First Amendment protected speech. It is power too easily abused.

I am 100% against Robbie George-ism. The fact of the matter is, okay, does the FCC have legitimate regulatory and licensing authority over the public airways or not? If it does, and conservatives refuse to use it at all, it amounts to a one- One-way street in which the left will use its power to hammer the public airways to move it to the left and further to the left. So, we either use it or we lose it. I would love to lose the FCC.

I would love for it to be gone, but the fact of the matter is, what has happened over the last 20 years is the left uses power. It gains power. It exercises its power, and then when the right gets in there, Nothing, until Trump comes along. It was just nothing. We would just hold the fort, and so you just keep moving to the left. It is not going to work this way. Ultimately, I mean, this just kind of, again, sort of drives me crazy.

Like, if we want to have the only way to change hearts and minds on the left, because what they do, what they believe is, they believe that everything they do is so justified that they can violate every single principle. And until we make them feel the pain of their own medicine, they'll never change their minds. So, like what Brad Smith said, the only time they could get liberals to actually agree with his reasoning behind, you know. What happens next against Biden doing this on social media posts is for Trump and Brandon Carr to have done this, and now the liberals are like, we should never have government making decisions that would cause companies to get rid of people for free speech.

They didn't say a damn thing when Dave Chappelle, Joe Rogan, Megyn Kelly, Tucker Carlson, J.K. Rowling, Gina Carreno, she was on Disney. They didn't say a damn darn thing. And so, only when we exercise the same power that they have exercised do they suddenly get religion on this. Do they suddenly realize, wait a minute now, we need to have free speech. And that is when this is the opportunity to say, okay, do you want to end the FCC? Do you want to get rid of the FCC?

This is how we can do this. But it never happens if we do what Robbie George recommends, which is In his mind, apparently, the worst thing you could ever do is to be a hypocrite, and I kind of think allowing the left to destroy free speech, and then when it comes to our turn, not to make them feel their own medicine, I think that's worse.

Hypocrisy, look, I get it. Logic, the non-contradiction principle. I want a robust First Amendment and free speech, but I'm not going to keep having asymmetrical warfare here while the left is coming for us. Yeah. Okay. They try to put Donald Trump in prison, okay? So, let us have a discussion about, and our biggest free speech advocate was just murdered in cold blood, and they laughed at it. So, like, We really have to let the left feel the pain of the medicine that they've been inflicting on others, and then maybe we can have an actual bipartisan opportunity to say, okay, now that we've both kind of dealt with this pain, how can we actually get to a place of peace?

But we don't get to a place of peace, as Robbie George is saying, by saying, ah, we can't do that. Let's put down our guns. Let's put down our arms. Let's never use any mechanism. I'm saying arms rhetorically. You know, we cannot use the same mechanisms of the bureaucracy that they use.

Yeah. Tom, did you want to add? I am with you 100 percent, and I have been arguing this all week, both privately and publicly with members of Congress and all. I wish he had not gone on the podcast. I think that is just where we might differ.

Um, I want them to go after, and the people I've been arguing with, it's the Senator Langford's favorite of this podcast, and I talked with Mike Pence's staff, and I think Robbie George is there too, and they're going out there. They're using arguments from like 20 or 30 years ago. Yeah, right. It feels like 1990. There's probably, and I know this is going into another segment, but there's problems on both sides.

And I was in a number of meetings this week, and when somebody brought it up, you know, there's problems on both sides, I asked anybody in that room who ever thought about killing one of their opponents, or shooting one of their opponents, just because they disagreed with what they said. And nobody raised their hand, and I go, we're not equal. It's not the same. There is no moral equivalency there. Yeah, and we'll get into that in just a minute with these new reports, but yeah, and I think, too, like, I wanted to make a distinction between the First Amendment rights, like our constitutional free speech rights and our legal free speech rights, and when it was the progressives who put the FCC in place, I believe it was under Johnson.

I saw other people tracing it back to the Kennedy administration. It's back to FDR because of the radio, I believe. All right, well, we'll go with a different name. All the way back. It started with that, I mean. Right, this desire to have the government be able to regulate broadcasting and be sort of like the fact checker of what's going out on the airwaves.

That's the root of it, and like you said, I am all for if this pushes. You know what I would love to see? I would love to see. A Democrat bring a bill to the House to disband the FCC from the Democratic side. If that's what it takes to get deregulation going on there, great. Now, there's those kinds of free speech things. You know, actually, Erika, it came about in 1934, and it was because FDR couldn't regulate newspapers. People will not believe me when I say this.

FDR's main concern He was so frustrated. He gets so angry because of what? All the newspapers across the United States, almost all of them back when he was president, were conservative. It is hard to believe. The vast majority of newspapers in the 1930s were conservative, and that is why FDR was so big on an inheritance tax, so that when the owner of the newspaper, the publisher would pass it on to his kids, he would have to pay a super high tax, so eventually they would just sell it and form a corporation or whatever.

What happens? They would drift further to the left. So, he was like, we need a ministry of truth. We'll call it the NCAA. They couldn't regulate newspapers because of the whole constitution, right? But they could regulate radio. And that is why they brought in the, oh, because radio is licensed, and it is broadcast over the air, and no one owns the air. So, this is the justification to use for it. I think we want to use that tool as aggressively as possible, so that Democrats go, let us get rid of the FCC.

I love it. That would be the best possible outcome. So, there is that element of free speech, but then there is also just sort of like the cultural and moral idea of free speech. And to me, it's working right when these syndicates, when these affiliates are pressured by the people who are actually consuming their product and saying, we don't want to hear this garbage about Charlie Kirk's shooter. We wanted to get this guy off the air. And to me, bringing back some of that cultural pressure and the idea of taboos and the idea of things we just don't say in decent American society, Having that cultural conversation is way more interesting to me, because there should be a level of shame.

There should be the idea that if you're a public figure, someone with even 159,000 people who watch you every night, that you have some kind of responsibility to the truth and decency. And to me, that cultural idea of free speech needs to be a conversation. And the left is just... I've been so used to not having to have that conversation because they've had the monopoly on all of these outlets for so long. They're like, wait, people might not like it when I say things like Charlie Kirk's shooter was really an undercover MAGA operative.

I'm going to get fired for that. To me, that's a great fruit of this, is wake up. Yeah, there's a whole silent majority here in the United States that doesn't like that kind of rhetoric. And you're going to lose your job if you use it, because you should. To me, that's the kind of free speech policing, not by the government, but I'm happy it's happening. It should go both ways, except for the fact that I've been in this business a long time.

And somebody else, I think, put on Twitter, like, if you're conservative or very right-wing, you make a fake account on Twitter and you comment on somebody. But if you're a liberal... Because you don't want to lose your job.

Right. And if you're a liberal, though, you just post and you link it to your Facebook page. They have very free speech. Friend of CatholicVote, and you guys are Facebook friends of mine. I posted some. I normally don't post political stuff on Facebook, because I have a mix of family and everything else. And you have a very cute dog, so you don't need to. That's mostly what I, except I posted an inspiring piece by a friend of Jade Henricks, Catholic Perspective on the Charter.

We love Jade. Shout out. Charter shooting. Exactly. Introduced me to my wife. I have to love the guy. My wife doesn't like him as much anymore, for some reason. I posted this piece, and one of my cousins, same age as me, so we've known each other all our lives, just randomly, because other people were liking it and giving it little hearts and stuff like that, he felt it was appropriate to start saying, well, you know, nobody should die like that, but...

But... Right, and he didn't understand how offensive that was, and I tried to explain it to him first publicly on the wall, and then we were talking privately, and I mean, it is victim shaming. It is like telling a woman you deserve it because of the way you dress. Right, you wear a miniskirt, it's your fault. Love that. And I tried to tell him, like, if you were passing by a cafe and a bunch of people were talking about, say, Robert F.

Kennedy had just been shot, and a bunch of people were sitting around the cafe. They knew one of them, and they were mourning RFK's death. Would you go like, yeah, but you know, he wasn't all that great a guy. Yeah. Would you do that in public? No, and you shouldn't do that on social media either. You know, I just, I want to add to that because, I mean, you've given a more personal example, but I saw this tweet.

This is an anonymous guy, right? Again, this is a whole thing. Dixian Untotten, and he said, when I say I hate libs, I mean they're dumb, but I mean I'd save them from a house fire. When liberals say, be kind, they mean they would be apathetic if my daughter's throat was cut on a bus, and they would cheer if I got publicly executed in front of my children.

We're not the same, and the thing is, like, you kind of half laugh at this gallow humor, but, like, literally it happened, both of these things. I mean, like, Charlie Kirk was murdered right in front of his child, in front of all these people, and they laugh, they cheer, and it's like. What the heck? Yeah, this brings me perfectly to our next segment, but first, we have another sponsor, and I'm really excited about this one today because I just did an interview with an ex-con who is an ex-fraudster and mortgage lawyer, and so I know how important this next sponsor is now.

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And make sure you check out that million-dollar triple lock protection. Details, they are there. When you get there, click the link below and promo code LOOP60. Thank you to Home Title Lock. All right. So, now we come to the sort of narrative of the moment that we're seeing. Time Magazine put out a graphic. It is a nice little pie chart that claims right-wing political violence is more prevalent than left-wing. We have been hearing this for decades, right? Within the article is a shocking pie chart from Cato.

So, this is from the Cato Institute, which said... Which is worth saying, the Cato Institute has never pretended it was conservative, but the Cato Institute is libertarian. So, these are guys who... You know, for the most part, people assume that libertarians are on the, quote, right side of things, so they drastically want to limit the size of government, okay? But, is also extremely socially liberal on, certainly on gay issues and abortion, that they take this... It pretends it's libertarian.

I'm just trying to provide context for people, because Time Magazine is loving it. Oh, Cato, it's not like it's the Southern Poverty Law Center. You can't want the federal government to rewrite what marriage is. Um, and still call yourself, uh, limited government. Yeah. Yeah. Yes. All right. So, we get this pie chart that says since 17, 19, 17, 1975, 391 political murders have been motivated by ideology, with only 65 being left-wing. Um, we also got numbers this week from the ADL, Anti-Defamation League, which is considered sort of like your gold standard for political violence.

And the numbers, again, it looks like they're legit, and it says left-wing violence, very tiny. Right-wing violence, massive. And I went in, I started going through the numbers on the ADL. I went through the heat map on ADL. I started going through.

And it's a little bit fudgy, I have to say. The first thing, as a member of CatholicVote, and we have been tracking hate crimes, vandalism at Catholic churches and pregnancy resource centers, I so far, in about three hours of research, I'm only about 10% through their list. I have seen one.

Of the incidents on our trackers show up in theirs. It is also really interesting. An example like Darrell Brooks and Rodney Hinton are missing from the lists of terrorists. The Las Vegas shooting is not mentioned at all. There are just really strange cases that are not mentioned. No, I just want to get into that. Just a second. And the Daily Caller, of course, came back today.

Going through all these different studies and reports, and we have some interesting data there, but Josh, you want to jump in? Well, real quick, I just want to say, like, it is interesting that they would start it in 1975. Like, if you started it in 1968, you would have been able to include the political murders of MLK, RFK, and then, in starting in 1969, running through 1977, you have a domestic terrorist organization called Weather Underground that committed five bombings on average a day for the entire, you know, Eight years of running, and they're all, you know, communist left-wing people.

So, it's just, to me, it's ironic, like, you started in 1975, as Weather Underground is waning and almost being done, and of course, the reason, as Mark Hemingway said, the reason Weather Underground stopped their bombings is because all these guys got hired as professors in academia. So, they, like, we won. So, you know, the bombings worked. So, like, to me, you're going to do a 40-year span of political terrorism and murders and attacks. And you are going to start it right after the largest domestic terrorist organization had basically put down its arms.

Wow. Wonderful. Wonderful use. I mean, it is like, if you have done it since 2000, you know, the 21st century since 2000, that would make sense. But if you are going to go all the way back to 1975.

Why do 75? That's very fascinating you picked that number. Interesting stuff. Yeah, and I think it's important to equip yourself with the talking points on this, because you hear it so often that, oh, well, left-wing violence is so much less than right-wing violence. And of course, after the Charlie Kirk murder, this is the left scrambling to say, oh, it wasn't us. You guys are so much worse than we are.

And you can go through these. Like I said, Daily Caller has a great rundown. We should put that in the chat. Everyone should read that article that came out just this morning. But they talk about the ADL's methodology, bundling non-political crimes like domestic violence, gang killings, mental health drive murders into right-wing violence. I also went through, and I noticed that on all the anti-Semitic attacks, they only cross-label. The right-wing ones. They don't cross-label the left-wing ones. So, if you sort for anti-Semitic attacks, and you get, say, a hundred of them, and then you decide to sort it into how many of these were left-wing, like pro-Hamas or pro-Palestinian attacks, you get zero, because they don't cross-label them.

And if you sort by right-wing, though, you're going to get all of the neo-Nazis and the Proud Boys, like when they put stickers on telephone poles. It's very... It's just not honest. It is not honest reporting. Same with the Cato study. It only focuses on politically motivated killers who caused one death.

The categories are highly subjective for what they're doing, and all of this is categorization and labeling issues. Yeah, I mean, the question is... Again, you've got to educate yourself on these claims. In talking about Charlie Kirk, people are like, oh, well, there's violence against Democrats, too.

And it's true that Governor Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania is a Democrat, and his house was set on fire, and that's a very serious thing. It's just that it happens to be an absolutely pro-Palestinian leftist who did the fire. So, if a leftist attacks a Democrat, is that right-wing violence? I mean, If it is against the Democrat, then you can put the number there. So, people can do all sorts of fudging with the statistics here, but this idea that even people who call themselves Catholic, like Stephen Great Annas was going on and talking about, oh, it is nowhere, right-wing violence is so much more, and he gave off a list of different people.

He mentions the people that, you know, the two Democrats in Minnesota that were assassinated, and that is horrible, of course. But like, you know, Charlie Kirk, and then the President, you know, he was the former President at the time, Donald Trump was, if he hadn't turned his head at the last second, he would have been murdered right in front of all of our eyes.

So, again, like this idea that it is the same, and you look at the numbers, the polling numbers, the percentage of people on the left who think, you know, an assassination of Donald Trump could be some ways justified.

Like, show me where people said that on the right of Joe Biden or Barack Obama. Yeah, or Kim O'Hara. Give me a break. I mean, it is not the same. The two Minnesota legislators, we do not fully know, I think, the motivation there, except the motivation is believed to be because they voted against giving benefits to illegal immigrants. Right, and the guy you are explaining could have been associated with the Democratic Governor Walz. And just to show how pigs eat from the same trough.

The Cato Institute study relies heavily on ADL, ADL numbers, as well as relying on Southern Poverty Law Center. We all know where their law, I mean, Antifa is a fine group. But, you know, that pesky, the pesky turning point, no, that is a hate group. Right. Well, I actually thank you to President Trump for declaring yesterday that Antifa is actually a domestic terrorist group. There is some good news. That does change things. Finally. Let us go. Yeah, let us do it.

I go to a lot of conservative coalition meetings, and I have requested those who run the meeting that we should no longer invite Cato, because they do not fit in. And I have a lot of friends who are libertarian. I do not consider Cato libertarian. My biggest question would be, who paid them to do this study? And I bet you'd find a lot of similar names, like a Soros or Open Society. Yeah, there's some more digging to do here, for sure.

But that brings us to good news. Antifa is a terrorist organization now. Hello. I have some good news. I'm actually just going to go straight to the most important one. We're going to go to our CatholicVote, Novena 2025, St. Michael the Archangel, and we're coming up on... One of my favorite feasts of the year, St. Michael the Archangel, and we are praying this year together as a CatholicVote family for the renewal of America, and this starts tomorrow, so we're going to throw the link in the chat.

If you have not yet signed up to pray with us for the renewal of our country, for the soul of America, to protect America from evil, make sure that you visit that link today. We already have 64,260 prayers pledged, but we want more. I want over 100,000. I want 150,000. Like, let's go, guys. This is really important. So, St. Michael Novena, it starts tomorrow, and if the last four weeks of the news cycle has said anything to you, it's that we are in a spiritual battle, and we need prayer.

So, check out the Novena today, but we have more good news. Tom. Yeah. Or Josh. Wait, I'm sorry. Josh. I can't read. That's all right, because mine will conflict. That's okay. All right. Okay. Well, hey. Who would have thought that you'd get an article like this from the New York Times, the headline here, What Charlie Kirk Could Mean for the Future of Marriage and Family. Erika Kirk said her husband aspired to revive the American family. Conservative actors wonder if Charlie Kirk's legacy will lend new urgency to White House policy discussions.

So, you know, lots of great quotes in this. Christy Hamrick, Vice President for Media and Policy at Students for Life said, your grandmother said, get married, but Charlie made marriage cool again. I thought that was a good point. I also agree with Brad Wilcox, who's quoted, he said, at a time when voices like Andrew Tate are articulating anti-family views.

Charlie Kirk was a clear counterexample, and it's an example that young men seem to have taken to heart. So, I just thought that was a really good news story. Very nice to see. You know, the New York Times is behind a paywall, so trust me on this one.

Don't buy a subscription. Just trust Josh on this one. You read it, so you don't have to. That's right. That's what I do. I get paid to read the New York Times, so you don't have to. But it was good. You know, every once in a while, you get some good news, even from the paper of record. There you go. There you go. Yeah, and I was listening to Ross Douthat interview.

Ezra Klein over on his Interesting Times podcast. So, there's one good product coming out of the New York Times. Maybe two, if you're a Wordle fan. Wordle's fun. Hey, the boat likes Wordle. I would also recommend Ross's podcast. All right. So, we're going to – oh, wait. We have more good news. We can't stop. Tom, what's up with you?

Well, one, my grandmother was very big on marriage, so much so she did it four times, but I did not talk to Erika beforehand about this, but mine is a little promotional, too. I have good news in relation to CatholicVote. There might be bad news in relation to Tom McCluskey, because for the last couple of days, Kelsey Reinhart has been visiting D.C.

So, it is my time to show off, show off to the new boss, like, hey, let me introduce you to all these people. That you know. They were most off-the-record meetings, so I am like, oh, I need Kelsey to talk to that person in that committee. I look up, and there is Kelsey already talking to that person in that committee. I am like, oh, I want to introduce Kelsey to Congressman Riley Moore, who has been burning it up, a congressman from West Virginia.

I look over, oh, she is already talking to Riley Moore. So, if anybody. So, our new president is killing it. I am not saying she is fitting into D.C., because to me, that is an insult, but she certainly knows the right people to talk to. She knows how to talk to them. My fear is, though, she is going to be like, why do I need you here?

I wonder that also, myself. Why do we need Tom? Because only Tom is willing to actually lose hair and be boots on the ground. Kelsey does not want to leave her mountainous home. The promotional part, though, because I can't tell you about some of these meetings or whatever, and there might even be pitchers. However, if you become a champion, you can get the insider, which I have inside information that will include some of the stories of Kelsey's time in D.C., including some pitchers that some people might find interesting.

You know, I'm glad you mentioned a champion today. You know, we have revived The Insider, and now we're about seven or eight episodes into issues of The Insider. It comes out every Tuesday. We only send it to champions, so you have to be a champion to get The Insider email. That is where I talked a lot about my Poland trip. I talked a little bit about here, but I gave a little bit more details in that.

This last week, I talked about one of the biggest, most important fights that CatholicVote had when the organization was really in its infancy, and it was a very trying time. Again, you have to get the insider to get these inside stories, and like Tom said, there will be one coming up next Tuesday where Kelsey will go through all the stuff that she did in D.C. So, you want to be a champion, go to CatholicVote.org, become a champion, sign up. We're only asking for $10 a month, but hey, if you want to give more than $10, that's okay.

We won't say no. We will use it to advance everything that we're doing. So, thank you so much to everyone who's listening who is already a champion. Yeah, thank you to our champions in the chat. See you, Emily. I see you. That's awesome.

All right, so getting into our church corner here, Pope Leo has given his first full-length interview, and things were said. People were just… Chomping at the bit to claim Pope Leo for their own, or to censure him as just another Francis Schill, or something like that. But we had this interview. Elise Ann Allen has a new biography of the Pope coming out called Leon, as in Spanish for Leo, the 14th citizen of the world. So, Leo the 14th citizen of the world.

That is going to drop. Oh, it is dropping, because today is the 19th. On the 18th, it was available. So, check it out. But in the interview, it was very wide-ranging. He talked about his own background, he talked about his time in Peru, what it's like to be the first American-born Pope, and, of course, Father James Martin was very excited about one segment in particular of the interview, where he was asked about LGBTQ people.

And he was asked about the blessings thing and the fiducia thing. So, he says that he, quote, intends to do as Pope Francis did when he was Pope, and he reemphasized the value of the family as being a man and a woman in solemn commitment, blessed in the sacrament of marriage. And he says, even to say that, I understand some people will take it badly. He said, I would play you the clip. But can I be honest? Whoever showed up with this camera and setup and lighting, like, it is not great production quality.

It was kind of like someone showing up to a wedding with sweatpants on. Like, that's about the equivalent. So, guys, next time you get the first interview with the Pope, like, at least get a camera that I have here for Lucas and, like, a Yeti or something. But anyway, that's why I'm not playing it. I'm reading you his words. Being a man and a woman in song commitment, he says, I understand some people will take that badly. And then he criticized church groups in Northern Europe, hello Germany, who he said are organizing ritual blessings of people who love one another as a way of endorsing same-sex unions.

He said this goes specifically against the document that Pope Francis approved, interesting way of putting it, fiducia supplicans, which basically says, of course we can bless all people, but it can't look like a way of ritualizing some kind of blessing, because that's not what the church does. Teaches. So, he goes on to say that he doesn't want people to be identified. He thinks it's wrong to identify people according to their sexual desires, and he doesn't actually use the term LGBTQ people at all, because he makes it very clear that speaking in this way puts a label on them, and that though church welcomes everyone, he says, todos, todos, todos.

That's what Pope Francis used to say. And that people should not be labeled in this way. Father James Martin gets on and is like, oh, good, look, the Pope is just like Francis. He's just like Francis, and we are hopeful that in the future, the church can change, but that it's not ready to yet. And it was an interesting take on this. I don't know if you all had a chance to read the interview.

But it certainly seems like a little bit of a spin on what Pope Leo actually said. I mean, of course, James, I was always going to spin what the Pope says, but I just can't help but think after this, I mean, I'm not as up in arms, but there's certainly a lot of traditionalists and conservatives who are rightly worried, you know, expressing concerns, and the concerns I'm saying are not wholly unjustified.

It just makes me, again, think of that brilliant article that, Erika, that you pointed out earlier this month that Robert Royal had, and I would just, again, encourage people to go to the Catholic thing. It is Leo. You can just go to Catholic Thing and look at Robert Royal's index of articles, but it's Leo and the Fabius Maximus factor. Fabius Maximus. Right. The idea is that Fabius Maximus is regarded by Virgil in the Aeneid as a really, really good Roman general simply because Not that he had these massive victories, it is that he kept the armies alive and delayed Hannibal from coming in and just destroying everybody.

There is value in that. There is value in delaying, delaying. The idea being that Fabius Maximus is an analogy for the way Pope Leo seems to be handling this issue. Right, so you just kind of hope and delay and delay so that you can. Build up your troops and eventually win the day another, you know, you fight to, what is the term? Live to fight another day. That's it. Or live to die another day. Right, I mean, so in other words, but the question remains is like, how long, you know, as Robert Royal is getting at, how can you, there's a risk in this factor.

In that strategy, be precise. I mean, like the conservatives would love to have had a pope that would go, you know, like on a Wednesday, it would just go, no, homosexuals, it's an abomination against God, and this kind of stuff, and just say it like loud and clear. Homosexual activity is sinful. Yes, I'm sorry. You cannot bless sin. Nothing wrong with a person, per se, of course.

Anyway. The question that gets to you is, but this delay strategy of hopefully using words to give yourself time and address it down the road, hopefully, that is a risky strategy because, look, the entire culture The entertainment culture, the news media culture, most of the West, the United States, we are actually fighting on these issues. Other countries, like Italy, maybe a little bit of fight, going back and forth, but predominantly, the sexual revolution has conquered Western society.

You know, we need to have a strong voice to push back at it, maybe not like in your face necessarily, but this idea of just kind of like delay, delay, and hopefully, you know, who is to say five years from now, four years from now, we are going to be in a better position to push back at this? So, again, I would just recommend that article by Robert Royal. It is called Leo and the Fabius Maximus Factor. It is really, really good.

I have not seen the interview or anything, but I really like your approach to this, Josh, and it reminds me, and I don't want to conflate the Pope and the President, and they both certainly have certain roles, different roles.

But for years, we'd have Republican presidents who would say they're going to fight against these liberal theologies that were being thrown at us, their ideologies in the case of politics, except they really weren't. And if we took one step forward, the other side was taking five or six steps forward.

And that's how we got President Trump, because President Trump was just like, no, this ends now. Right. At least, definitely in Trump point, too. So, okay, your microphone is getting out again. Your mic is going out. And to me, a little better. Because the Pope needs to worry about, just like the Republicans worry about, is you don't want to lose the troops you have. Yeah. And if he does take the slow approach, he is. There's a chance he might lose some of the troops.

Yeah, before you jump in again, Josh, this seems to be his approach, too, which is why I think Robert Royal is so prescient in his diagnosis of the situation. He seemed to take this approach as well with the question of the Latin Mass, with the pre-Vatican II rite, and with China, which also comes up in the interview. And a lot of people were very disturbed last week with the suppression of the Chinese diocese that was loyal to Rome, and the elevation of the diocese that was loyal to the Chinese diocese.

That were approved by the Chinese Communist Party, and seeing that, and in fact, in the interview, Leo confirms, he says, I will continue the policy that the Holy See has followed for some years now, which seems to be referring back to that 2018 document, and he says it's of several predecessors, but it seems, he talks about the Ostpolitik, the choices that have to be made in a realistic way. So, again, reinforcing that idea that he's a pragmatist, he's open to talking about it, But he has discussed this at several levels, and now after two months, I'm trying to get a clearer vision, but I continue the policy of the Holy See with the Chinese government.

And then with the Latin mass, again, it seemed like a very much, I haven't really, he seemed almost disinterested in the question, I have to say. He seems much more interested in ending wars, Gaza, hunger, and tech, honestly, like Elon Musk. So, he seemed much more excited about those things. But with the Latin mass, he said, I've received a number of requests and letters, the question saying, well, what about the Latin mass? And then he says, well, you can say mass in Latin right now.

You can say the Vatican II right in Latin. And then he goes, he kind of laughs, and he's like, obviously, between the Tridentine Mass and the Vatican II Mass, I'm not sure where that's going to go. And the Mass of Paul VI, yeah. Yeah, Mass of Paul VI. It's very complicated. He worries about the process of polarization that has risen around it, and he says, I have not had a chance to really sit down with a group of people. People who are advocating for the Tridentine Rite.

There's an opportunity coming soon, and I'm sure there will be more occasions for that. It seems to me the kind of thing we might address with synodality. So, again, I mean, in other words, like, again, this is what I'm getting at. It's like you're kicking the can down the road a little bit, which you just have been pulled for a couple of months here, so that's actually fine, you know, but at some point, you're going to have to kind of address some of these things and do some things.

That's the whole point, and you're going to have to come to a decision, and so if you use synodality to say, okay, You know, let's allow for, you know, a little bit more, you know, liberalization of the Latin Mass. Allow it to happen more. It's just tough, because you had, you know, Pope Francis was just a very bad pope. He was just aggressive on this issue for the Latin Mass. He was just, like, notoriously just, I mean.

And when it came to the sexual revolution, he would give so many conflicting messages, like, who am I to judge? Like, you are literally the Pope. You're the Vicar of Christ. You should be the one that should judge. I mean, what are you talking about? And so, I just feel like with Francis's pontificate, you know, am I allowed to say that as a Catholic? Can I say it was a bad papacy? I think it was a bad papacy. And I do think there's just a lot of mess to clean up.

I am not saying that I expect every pope has got to be with me 100%. Of course not. You would say things intentionally in a way that were, again, Jesuitical, that would allow everyone to interpret it their own way. That is not helpful, actually. In a day and age when The sexual revolution is absolutely still so dominant from a complete cultural news entertainment standpoint. To have somebody who would like, I don't know, a man of the cloth, who's got a loud microphone, who could talk about, I don't know.

The values of the gospel, and why we think, you know, the sexual evolution is crazy, and it's not a way to lead to human flourishing, and there is a better way, and we love people. Yeah, yes, LGBT, every letter of the alphabet, we love you, but we think that there's a better way. You know, come on, and that's just, I feel like, again, John Paul and Benedict.

Worked so hard to offer, I think, a different way, and they would reform things, and it was made more, and I just feel like a lost decade. Yeah. A reform. Certainly a lot of opportunity for strong statements and evangelization. I would encourage everyone to go and read the whole interview. It's over on, we'll put it in the, there's like six parts now, so it could take a while, or read the book, and I'm sure this will come up again. We're not popesplainers here.

We honor our Holy Father, and we just want to report things as they are. Yes, who are the polarizers? Cigar mode in the chat. That is an excellent Excellent question. One would imagine that people who simply want to adhere to the faith of Jesus Christ would not be the polarizing figures in this controversy. And yes, to Peggy, you do automatically get the insider if you sign up as a champion. It is just automatic. It comes straight to you, along with many prayers of gratitude.

All right, we have the Twilight Zone going straight into it. Josh? All right, so in the aftermath of the political assassination of Charlie Kirk, there was a column printed by a columnist with the Religious News Service, and it was published over at National Catholic Register as well, and this was a column by Phyllis Zagano, and she said, So, she talked about President Trump blaming his political opponents for the assassination of Charlie Kirk. She quotes Trump saying, radical left political violence has hurt too many innocent people and taken too many lives.

It is long past due for Americans and the media to confront the fact that violence and murder are the tragic consequences of demonizing those people you disagree with day after day, year after year. So, Phyllis says, Trump's words are a good reminder that what we hate in others… That we hate in others what we hate most in ourselves. Oh. Ah. Well, I see where this is going. She gets to pin the violence right back on Trump. That's kind of cool. What else did she say?

She said the violent death of 31-year-old Kirk, an evangelical Christian, is not a mystical tragedy. Oh, so brave of you to say that. Thank you. That it creates another opportunity for the U.S. president to angrily blame members of the Democratic Party and others whom he labels the radical left fits well into the agenda of the harshest Catholic commentators.

Who's that? Phyllis, who is that? Take, for example, CatholicVote.org, the nominally Catholic political organization founded by Brian Birch, now the U.S. ambassador to the Vatican, and Joshua Mercer. who remains based in Wisconsin as the organization's podcast host and editor of the daily email newsletter, The Loop.

CatholicVote writers make their voices heard on several known Catholic issues, abortion, pornography, embryonic stem cell research, but it does not appear to embrace other Catholic teachings. Oh, she goes on and on and on. Let me guess. Immigration. Oh, yes. And the concern of the planet and all that other stuff. Oh, I love trees. But here's the key point. She's ascribing to us hatred, right? Donald Trump.

And his Catholic apologists, you know, who are the harshest of Catholic commentators, it's not the hate of the person that took out Charlie Kirk, it's Donald Trump and the Catholic people who like Trump who are the fomentors of hatred in this woman's mind. So, I felt this needed a response.

And who would have thought, you know, today is the day. What day would it be that Josh Mercer would be published at the National Catholic Reporter? Well, today would be that day, folks. What? Oh, yes. No. They accepted it?

So, I will read, since this is the first time I've ever been published by a National Catholic Reporter. It's a good thing I'm sitting down. I know. I'm starting to question your bonafide. I know. Oh, just wait till I get to it.

Responding to Charlie Kirk's assassination, Phyllis Zagano doubles down on division, accusing conservatives like President Trump of fomenting hatred. She then zeroes in. On her real target, Catholics who refuse to reflexively support the liberal line. Trump's reaction to Kirk's death, she claims, is being exploited by the harshest of Catholic commentators, calling me out by name. She cites my appearances on Catholic Votes LOOPcast as evidence of my hatred, adding that my colleagues and I, along with others, on what she condescendingly calls the Catholic right.

...are nominally Catholic, yet she couldn't manage to include a single hateful quote from me. That's because there's nothing for her to use. She notes that I view Black Lives Matter, DEI, and dangerous, soft-on-crime, cashless bail for contributing to the recent murder of Ukrainian immigrant Iryana Zarutska.

Here I stand guilty as charged. North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper's 2020 task force for racial equity in criminal justice reduced the use of cash bail, expanded restorative justice alternatives, and downgraded certain criminal offenses to infractions. DeCarlos Brown, Zarutka's alleged killer, Had 14 prior charges and was recently released without bond. After two brutal and senseless killings, Zagano comes out swinging, not against the perpetrators, but against me and my co-hosts, accusing us of the worst possible motives without engaging any of our arguments in good faith.

If Zagano wants to lower the temperature of political rhetoric, Maybe she should look within. Bam, well done. And I signed it, Josh Mercer, Petoskey, Michigan, because in fact, I'm on the right side of the lake here, folks. We have offices in Wisconsin, Michigan, Indiana, Colorado, and Washington, D.C. I'm in the Michigan office, folks. But we'll let that one slide.

Fact check. That was excellent. Thank you for defending my honor. Appreciate it. Anytime. That's good. And just to remind people, I'm just subbing in, so he was defending Tom McKazix. I don't want to be put in with these guys.

We would never lump you in with us, McCloskey. You are the wind beneath our wings. We couldn't do it without you. Okay, thank you, Josh. That was awesome. My Twilight Zone is our always hoped for miracle. Today is the feast, as I mentioned at the top of the show, of St. Januarius, one of the three days per year.

When the blood of St. Januarius, which is kept in two little glass, I think they're called vials, or they're vials. They're glass vials in Naples, Italy, and they liquefy. This is like dried blood that liquefies. The miracle first took place in 1389, at least as far as we have records, and this year, it liquefied. We were very, very happy about this because it doesn't always liquefy as much as it used to liquefy in Naples, Italy. So, we're going to get to that in a minute.

The miracle does not always happen. And the Nepalese will tell you that when it doesn't happen, it is always because there is some catastrophe just about to occur. So, the most recent times it did not liquefy would be shortly before the outbreak of World War II in Europe, 1939. It did not liquefy in 1943, right before the Germans took over Italy, and it did not liquefy in 2016 or 2020. So, we've had multiple instances of this not happening in recent history.

This year, it did occur. You can see the video there, and just joy all around. There's no scientific explanation for this. It can sometimes take days to actually liquefy, but it's a really cool thing. I love being Catholic. It's just, it's so bodily.

So, happy January's Day. No major catastrophes between now and December. Let's hope so, yes. I mean, Catholicism is a religion of all five-year senses, you know? I love it. Yeah, it's true. It is so true. And yeah, we hope every year there's three days that it liquefies on. Traditionally, the Saturday before the first Sunday in May.

Today is Liturgical Feast Day, and the anniversary of the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 1631. That is December 16th. Kind of a big deal for Naples, right? Yes, we hope to see it again. That was a major deal for Naples. So, happy St. January's Day. Mr. McCluskey, take us home.

Now, I apologize because I was not able to listen to Wednesday. I haven't listened to the end of Wednesday, so have we talked about Dick Durbin? No, we have not spoken of this. We are waiting word back from... Talk about Twilight Zone.

What happened with Dick? Should I talk about something else? No, go for it. Okay. We heard from our friends, people at Illinois Rights to Life, that Dick Durbin, a senator from Illinois, is being honored by the Archdiocese of Illinois.

Of Chicago. Of Chicago, I'm sorry, for his lifetime achievements and lifetime records. Because he's retiring at the end of next year. Yeah, he's retiring. He first got in in 1980. He came in, and for the first nine years, he was pro-life. That is true.

Just like Al Gore was, just like Jesse Jackson during that time was, but then in 1988, there was a big shift. In 1989, Dick Durbin was arguing against abortion on demand. And when he shifted, he shifted hard. He has stood up for not treating babies that are born alive and spoken out on it. He has not stood up for when Catholic churches were being attacked. I could not find anything in his record or him asking Joe Biden's FBI to look into this or to apply the FACE Act or whatever.

I am really not quite sure. And I look forward to seeing the defense from the Archdiocese of why somebody like this should be honored, because he is not still up for anything Catholic in decades. Well, and not only that, but correct me if I'm wrong, his bishop, he is not a Chicago resident. His bishop is properly Paprocki in Springfield. Is that correct?

And if I am not mistaken, he's actually been barred from receiving Holy Communion. In his home diocese. So, for the Archdiocese of Chicago to be like, let's give him a Lifetime Achievement Award seems a little, I don't know, just indecent, among many other adjectives that we could come up with. It's terrible. That is a terrible thing. Yeah, I mean, he has been barred from receiving Holy Communion since 2004.

Oh, my gosh. Because it is a question. It is not like it is a new thing. Like, oh, what? We did not know that? Yeah. It was reaffirmed in 2018. This is what happens when Brian Birch leaves Chicago. I know. Come on.

Ron is gone. He can honor Dick Urban, finally. I don't think that's the problem here. No, it is not. I don't think so. I'm just trying to write the next story for National Catholic Reporter. Ah, there you go. There you go. Yeah. All right. Raise your sons to be better bishops, all you Catholic moms out there. Hand that rocks the cradle.

On that note, let's pray. But first, thank you so much for joining us today, this week. Thank you for everyone who wrote in. Tom Pagasic promises he is responding to all of your emails. If you would like to contact us, you can do so. I need that email in the chat there, Simon, if you could put the email in the chat. So, check that out if you want to contact us about anything. As always, you could best way to support us, Champions Club.

Thank you to everyone who has joined the Champions Club. You keep the lights on for us so much. Thank you to our sponsors as well, Nazareth Organics and Home Title Lock. Also, don't forget that CatholicVote novena, St. Michael novena, starts tomorrow, where two or three are gathered in your name, in his name, there he is in their midst, but I want like 200,000. Forget two or three. Jesus, we're coming at you. 200,000 of us. So, sign up for the novena, but as always, let's end in prayer, and we're going to call on another archangel today.

We've had a lot of sickness in the CatholicVote family lately with diagnoses and people struggling with chronic health conditions. We are praying a prayer of healing. We are going to ask the Archangel Raphael. Do you say Raphael or Raphael out there in the Midwest, Josh? How do you say it?

I say Raphael. Raphael, okay. But I got a statue in the front yard, so. Oh, there you go. Yeah, isn't it like nine feet tall or something? Yeah. Whoa, that is hardcore. Hardcore Raphael. So, we're going to ask him to pray for healing from all ills. In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen. May the Archangel Raphael, called God's Healer, bring consolation and healing to those who are sick, and protect us from all ills. May Raphael, the angelic companion, guide us during all life's journeys, preserve us in peace and tranquility, and at the end of our travels, bring us safely to our eternal home. Amen. St. Thomas More, St. Fidelis, Our Lady of Guadalupe, pray for us, and we will see you on the next LOOPcast. Ciao.