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- [00:00]
Sam Stein
Hello, everybody, it's me, Sam Stein, managing editor at the bulk. I'm joined by Andrew Egger, fresh off his vacation, looking rested, tanish.
- [00:09]
Andrew Egger
A lot of SPF 50 last week. Yeah, you got for. You got to preserve the longevity of the skin.
- [00:15]
Unnamed Speaker
Yeah.
- [00:15]
Sam Stein
Well, thank you for that. I appreciate that. For more skincare products, Andrew will do something special after this recording. But for this recording, we are going to be doing a little look at Trump's luncheon at the Faith. What was it? Faith Leaders Luncheon. It was spectacular. It was classically Trump about, I don't know, maybe 2 to 3% of it was faith oriented. Everything else was, was a classic primal stump speech. And we watched it, so you didn't have to. Here's how. I'll just tell the viewers how it went. I saw it, I watched it in 1.75 speed, which is the best way to watch a Trump speech. And I was just blown away at how, I mean, it's become commonplace now, but it was just like no pretense of religion in this thing. It was amazing. It's like anti trans, anti, anti Democrat revealing some weird stuff about the Iran nuclear strike, talking about rich people losing their wives. But I'm going to step back and let you do your riff and I want to hear some of the points you make and maybe we can just sort of play off of each other and decide what the best parts were.
- [01:13]
Andrew Egger
Yeah, the last thing you mentioned is one of the moments, and this is like a long speech. You talked for like 45 minutes. He just kind of bantered and did his bits and they were.
- [01:19]
Sam Stein
That's kind of like normal Trump length at this point.
- [01:22]
Andrew Egger
Definitely, definitely. But, you know, he was just feeling himself. They were all, they were all feeling it. They were having a good time. But that bit you mentioned right at the end was maybe the most striking thing to me, which was talking about, you know, why it was so important to pass the big beautiful bill so that the country wouldn't go into oppression, so that all of the people in the audience, their wives would not divorce them.
- [01:40]
Unnamed Speaker
Get all these things and make the economy strong, or you're going to literally have perhaps a depression where you people, so rich, so beautiful, so nice to look at, will be totally busted. And let's see how long your wife stays with you. You're beautiful. I said to one guy, he's a very, very unattractive man, but he's. He', smart and he's rich. And I said, you better hope we get this thing passed because your wife will Be gone within about two minutes. He, he said, you're right, you know.
- [02:12]
Andrew Egger
Like, like, like you guys, you guys got to keep bringing home the bacon or your wives are leaving you immediately. And they're all laughing it up. And it was such an evocative moment because first of all, let me back up just a little bit. This is a weird sort of event and an unusual and kind of a new thing. And I think a thing that's pretty fitting for, for this Trump White House because they've launched this initiative that's called like the Faith Office, the White House Faith Office. And the idea is like, they've, they've got this thing inside the White House now. He likes to talk so much about how it's inside the White House. So like faith concerns of whatever kind are like, they're like direct pipeline through this office to the President. But this lunch was not like a lunch of like faith leaders. It was not a bunch of like, pastors or members of religious groups or things like that. That this was a bunch of business leaders who donate a lot of money to faith based causes. So it's a different kind of guy, right? It's like, it's not like a lot of bishops, it's like the CEO of Hobby Lobby and people like that.
- [03:05]
Sam Stein
But they are religious figures, right?
- [03:08]
Andrew Egger
And they're business leaders and they absolutely are religious figures. And I think in a certain way they are like more prominent religious figures. Like, this is kind of like the core of the religious base now is not these people who are bringing this like, religious perspective, but these people who are right wingers and they're also religious and they are the ones who this message is actually pitched to. So it's like, it would be kind of weird to have Trump go in and do that kind of banter to like a bunch of strongly committed, like, people of faith, you know what I'm saying?
- [03:37]
Sam Stein
Would it be, would it be weird though, or would it be totally in character?
- [03:40]
Andrew Egger
Billy Graham would not be super into like being told that like his wife was going to leave him if the country, you know, and like the joke.
- [03:47]
Sam Stein
The joke was that if the taxes were allowed, taxes were allowed to expire, they'd have a great depression again. And then people's lives would. Wives would leave them within a matter of weeks because they couldn't maintain their good looks. That was the.
- [04:00]
Andrew Egger
Right, right. Well, and not even that they had good looks, but just that these people were married to them for their money. Right? I mean, and they're all like, ah, you know, like, it's like this weird, like, borscht belt kind of shtick.
- [04:09]
Sam Stein
Oh, it's totally.
- [04:10]
Andrew Egger
But yeah, that was one.
- [04:12]
Sam Stein
Maybe this is my old lib roots. But, like, it was just obviously there was no. I mean, the gender wasn't even, like, in dispute. It was like, it wasn't that your husbands might leave you because there might be rich female CEOs in there. It was just your wives leave your hoot.
- [04:25]
Andrew Egger
Yeah. And there. There were women in the audience. You saw that.
- [04:27]
Sam Stein
Yes, of course.
- [04:28]
Andrew Egger
But, yes, it was obviously pitched to the fellas.
- [04:30]
Sam Stein
So there was that, and then there was the. There's a whole diatribe around trans athletes that I thought was classically faith based. No, it was horrible.
- [04:39]
Unnamed Speaker
And they were swimming and one girl was seriously injured. She looked left and she saw the same girl. She grew up with Kelly in California. Same girls. You know, that young age, they sort of rise to the top. She looked to the right, she saw the same girls, but there was this giant standing right next to her. And he had transitioned. You probably heard this. He had transitioned, and she was. She never seen her before. And when the race was started, he blew by her so fast that she suffered massive wind burn.
- [05:14]
Sam Stein
Do you have any additional thoughts on that one? Because that really was like.
- [05:18]
Andrew Egger
No. He's indistinguishable from the shtick that he'd do anywhere else. Like, it's just like, you know, like, talking about, like, how one swim. It's, like, weird, like, because it's Trump. So it's like, kind of magnetic and, like, weird. Like, there is a charisma. He's a pretty good storyteller, except that the content is insane, where he's, like, talking about how, like, one swimmer is going on and the transformer goes by her so fast she gets wind.
- [05:35]
Sam Stein
There's some joke about, like, wind burns in the swimming pool, which didn't make sense to me. I think it was confusing running and swimming. There's a moment where he talked about Biden and the auto pen, which I guess is topical because Biden gave that interview.
- [05:46]
Unnamed Speaker
We were run by an auto pen, and nobody knows who used it. I think it's one of the biggest scandals the history of our country. We were run by an auto pen. Nobody has any idea who used it, including Biden. He doesn't know.
- [05:57]
Sam Stein
Again, you know exactly what you're. What you're doing when you're switching from old to New Testament. You got to go to Biden in the auto pen. Then he called Dems. I believe the quote is, they're evil people.
- [06:06]
Unnamed Speaker
The Democrat has far fewer their grandstandors. But, you know, the one thing about them, they have bad policy. They're evil people in many ways.
- [06:13]
Sam Stein
What was the context of that one?
- [06:15]
Andrew Egger
It was just totally in passing. Like, it was, he was, he was talking about how Republican members of Congress give him so much grief, which is really funny because, I mean, like, we've never had a Congress that rubber stamps the stuff the President wants ever, like.
- [06:29]
Sam Stein
Finding his grief at this point.
- [06:30]
Andrew Egger
No, it's just such a remarkable little bubble that he's in. But, but yeah, he's like, he's like talking about how, like, Thomas Massie and Rand Paul are, you know, gonna vote.
- [06:39]
Sam Stein
Against the two members.
- [06:40]
Andrew Egger
And what he says is, you know, Democrats don't do that. Democrats never have any fighting. Democrats are never in disarray. And, you know, they're evil people. But at least they all like, get the, get the assignment, are all marching in the same. He's kind of like blowing by. But it's just, it's just so weird that that's like, it's, it's all just so, so in the water now. I mean, like, we're the good guys, they're the evil guys, they're the craven people and the.
- [07:00]
Sam Stein
Yeah, no, I, I know. I, I thought about that for a little bit and I didn't want to, like, get too high minded, but I do think it's worth pausing and just noting, like, this is ostensibly a faith luncheon. He's like, telling people that half the country is evil. And, you know, you kind of think about, well, what if the shoe were on the other foot? We play this exercise all the time, and I don't think it would go over particularly well if Joe Biden had a faith. L. Like, Republicans are evil people. I have a, I have a theory that Fox News might cover that one. He did mention God at one point. The quote I think you highlighted was, you're very much into God in this room.
- [07:37]
Unnamed Speaker
You're very much into God in this room. And that's very nice.
- [07:42]
Andrew Egger
He did say that to them. Yeah. That's always so good. When Trump talks about faith, as in this, like, in theory, like, all these people also see him as a believer. He can, he talks about himself as a believer. But like, anytime he's talking about the experience of faith, it's always like, yeah, that thing you guys get up to, which is so interesting. And he did, you know, he kept, Anytime he would return to his prepared remarks, he would look back down at his sheet and he'd read and there'd be some more lines about God and then he'd look back up and riff, you know, like he always does.
- [08:06]
Sam Stein
There's this interesting thing happening here. I, I think the post had a piece on this. It's worth reflecting on, I think, at this juncture, which is because we're, we're at the one year anniversary, maybe a day past of the attempted assassination of Butler. And there has been this sort of messianic interpretation of what happened that day on the right, where in the retelling it's God did come down and spare Donald Trump's life in that moment allowed him to ever so slightly in the, in the shooter mist. And Trump was recounting this story and today and he was talking about how his sons, who are, are hunters, you know, correctly noted that the shooter was really close and probably shouldn't have missed, but did. And there's this kind of divine interpretation of what happened that day that does animate a lot of the right at this juncture. And I haven't really, like, I don't know if I appreciate it as much, but it does seem to be fairly present in current discourse. And it was certainly today at the luncheon.
- [08:59]
Andrew Egger
Yeah, and that's the only reason that I know that there were even women in the audience. Right. Because that was the moment at which he got a big standing ovation and the camera kind of panned back when he said, you know, I really think God caused that to happen so that he could put me back in this place to make America great again.
- [09:16]
Unnamed Speaker
Well, I believe that and I do, I believe it, that my life was saved by God to really make America great again. I really believe that.
- [09:26]
Andrew Egger
And that was kind of the key moment and the central moment for this audience. And I think, like my point earlier about the change in what is driving sort of like the quote, unquote, religious right, who the kind of leaders are in the religious right as it exists today. It's a very different thing than just a little while ago. I mean, like back in maybe the before times when you're, when you were primarily talking about faith leaders and religious institutions, it was more of a matter of, you know, them imposing like, like having certain policy demands, right, that, that they wanted leaders that were gonna fight hard against abortion or fight against, you know, the LGBT lobby or same sex marriage or, you know, various things, or fight for religious liberty, things like that. And some of that stuff is still present. Trump didn't talk at all about, you know, lgbt, LGBT stuff or abortion in this speech he did talked about liberty a little.
- [10:12]
Sam Stein
He talked about the T's in the LGBT space.
- [10:15]
Andrew Egger
Yeah, that's fair. The T thing is still, is still major and religious liberty is still there. But the primary thing that is driving this is not those issues. The primary thing is this sort of, like, identitarian thing where, like, we are the good guys because we are the Christians, we're the people of faith. The bad guys are over there. We know we're the good guys because God is supernaturally reaching into history to protect our guy here. And, and so that's like the, that's the force that's tying him to these people more so than, like, any particular policies.
- [10:42]
Sam Stein
Let me, let me ask you about that, because you would certainly know more than, than me. I don't know if I don't want to break news to you, but I'm Jewish. But the, the relationship with Trump and, and evangelical rights specifically. But I guess, you know, the religious right more broadly, my interpretation of it is that in 2016, it was very transactional. Right. They thought, well, he can deliver. He's speaking enough of our language and promising enough of our priorities that we can, we can support this man. And certainly the selection of Mike Pence was done to at least assuage concerns. And then you flash forward eight years later, and he runs as arguably the most, you know, muddied, pro muddied abortion candidate in the Republican field. And he also has this thing happen to him where he's now considered. So they don't care about that as much because they've, they've grown to know him and appreciate him. But then he has this near assassination happen and he becomes one of them in a way. And I feel like the relationship has really morphed into something quite different than it was, I don't know, nine years ago.
- [11:49]
Andrew Egger
Yeah, yeah. And it's interesting to, like, try to think about when those various inflection points happened. And for one thing, it's hard to talk about sort of like white Republican evangelicalism as, like, one block. I mean, it's a big, wide, woolly world. It's very anti. Institutional. It's all kind of like decentralized. And especially, you know, the, the more decentralized it is, those are the people who like Trump even more. Trump disproportionately more so. It's like, it's hard to really get a beat on all those people. I'd say there's a couple things. One is that a lot of the people who are transactional at the beginning and like, had, had kind of like thoughts, intention. It's just hard to keep, like contradictory thoughts, intention over a long period of time. Right. You make mental accommodations. You, you, you stop talking so much about the. Well, you know, he's, he's a conflicting person and he, maybe there are these bad things about him, but maybe we need him for these other reasons. And you start leaning into more. Well, maybe his enemies are worse. And then you start to just kind of, it just happens that you gradually come to like him personally more and more while you're living with that. At the same time, there is a new kind of sect. Not really.
- [12:50]
Sam Stein
It's not like Strand.
- [12:52]
Andrew Egger
Yeah. Like a mode of thinking among a lot of these people on the, on the scenes that is explicitly kind of messianic, that really sees him as a figure in history. That's, that's here to like, bring about, you know, like, God's ends on earth and not just in kind of like the normal way that Christians think all rulers are in a certain sense, but like, like, here's the, like, anointed one. And, and I think that at Butler a year ago, it's not like this was a big, it's not like he'd had problems with the evangelicals before that. Right. I mean, he already, he already has the nomination locked up by Butler. There was, there was no evangelical pushback like, like, like at all during the primary. He won Iowa despite the fact that, like, a few of the old kingmakers might have won. It might have preferred for faith based voters to go for Ron DeSantis or something like that. He cleaned him up. He did fine. And he, he was talking in messianic terms at his campaign rallies. He was playing these crazy videos where, like, God picked Trump is like, basically the idea. So God made Trump. I need somebody with arms strong enough to wrestle the deep state and yet gentle enough to deliver his own grandchild. But Butler is, I think, the moment that kind of catalyzes that for really the whole kind of like voting base where this is the way that they all talk now and, and it's been that way ever since.
- [14:01]
Sam Stein
And then you can say what you say at luncheons like this and get away with it because they truly believe. All right, my man, thank you for doing this. I'm so glad that we got in touch with each other before the show to coordinate shirts. I just think that the viewer experience is going to be so much elevated when they decide which one is pink and which one's magenta and why are they dressed like this Andrew, you actually are tan.
- [14:26]
Andrew Egger
You look great. Sam, thank you.
- [14:28]
Sam Stein
I appreciate that. I'm not going to reveal my skin routine. You can, you can do that in a. On a follow up video, Andrew Egger, host of Morning Shots. Me, Sam Stein, managing out of the Bulwark. Thank you guys for watching this. Both appreciate it.