Elon Musk and JD Vance Want You to Breed. A Lot.

Summary

Reveal Podcast: "Elon Musk and JD Vance Want You to Breed. A Lot." Release Date: June 28, 2025

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Introduction to the Pronatalist Movement

In this episode of Reveal, host Al Letsie delves into the burgeoning pronatalist movement—a coalition of tech magnates and traditional religious conservatives advocating for increased birth rates. The movement's alarm stems from declining global and domestic birth rates, which its proponents argue could lead to demographic and economic collapse.

Notable Quote:

“If people don't have more children, civilization is going to crumble.”
— Simone Collins [00:27]

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Tech Leaders Embrace Pronatalism

Tech visionaries like Elon Musk are at the forefront of this movement, driven by a desire to expand the human population with intelligent and resilient individuals. Musk himself, with his 14 children, exemplifies the personal commitment many in tech are making towards this cause.

Notable Quote:

“The end game for people like Musk is to multiply the number of humans on Earth and even the universe with smart people who can live longer.”
— David Remnick [01:17]

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The Collinses: Pioneers of Tech Pronatalism

Simone and Malcolm Collins have emerged as prominent figures within the pronatalist movement. Both come from tech and finance backgrounds, with Simone previously directing Dialog, a social club linked to PayPal’s Peter Thiel, and Malcolm having a history in venture capital.

Notable Quote:

“We're often known as the face of the pronatalist movement, or the very least the tech pronatalist movement.”
— Simone Collins [03:23]

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Natal Con: A Convergence of Tech and Tradition

The Collinses organized Natal Con in Austin, Texas, a conference aimed at strategizing ways to boost birth rates. The event saw collaboration between tech entrepreneurs and traditionalists, discussing innovations like IVF and genetic screening to produce "designer babies."

Notable Quote:

“We must reverse the collapse of birth rates.”
— Natal Con Speaker [13:43]

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Pronatalism and Eugenics: A Troubling Alliance

The movement's alliance with eugenics raises ethical concerns. Some attendees advocate for genetic enhancements to optimize the human race, blurring the lines between progressive technological interventions and regressive eugenic ideologies.

Notable Quote:

“Their friends in high places include titans of Silicon Valley and leaders at the highest levels of government.”
— Al Letsie [22:09]

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Political Backing and Policy Proposals

Prominent political figures like JD Vance support the pronatalist agenda. The Trump administration has hinted at policies such as a "Trump savings account for babies" and medals for large families, echoing historical eugenic programs.

Notable Quote:

“It's a deal with the devil.”
— Simone Collins [48:07]

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Interview with Reverend Rob Schenck: From Christian Nationalism to Redemption

In a poignant segment, Reverend Rob Schenck, a former leader in the Christian nationalist movement, reflects on his role in shaping American politics towards conservative values. Schenck discusses his efforts to influence Supreme Court Justices and the eventual realization of the movement's detrimental impact, leading to his departure and commitment to dismantling the very apparatus he once helped build.

Notable Quotes:

“I helped build the ramp that Trump took to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.”
— Rob Schenck [49:21]

“I see [Trump] as the antithesis of everything Jesus stood for.”
— Rob Schenck [47:00]

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Conclusion: The Implications of a Pronatalist Future

The pronatalist movement represents a significant and concerning shift, merging technological ambitions with traditionalist ideologies to influence societal norms and policies. As tech leaders and conservatives collaborate, the potential for far-reaching changes in family structures, governmental policies, and ethical standards looms large.

Notable Quote:

“They are hoping to parlay those relationships to change both policy and culture, to influence people's choices about how to make a family, choices about whether to have babies and how many to have.”
— Al Letsie [22:09]

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Final Thoughts

This episode of Reveal sheds light on a complex and multifaceted movement that intertwines technology, economics, and traditional values to address demographic challenges. Through investigative reporting and in-depth interviews, the podcast exposes the motivations, strategies, and potential consequences of the pronatalist agenda.

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Produced by The Center for Investigative Reporting and PRX. For more stories like this, visit revealnews.org/learn.

Transcript

[Al Edson]

This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance.

[Kierra Butler]

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[Al Edson]

Well, with the name your price tool from Progressive, you can find options that fit your budget and potentially lower your bills. Try [e-mail], progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates. Price and coverage match limited by state law. Not available in all states.

[Kierra Butler]

Right now, we are living through some of the most tumultuous political times our.

[David Remnick]

Country has ever known. I'm David Remnick, and each week on the New Yorker Radio Hour, I'll try to make sense of what's happening alongside.

[Kierra Butler]

Politicians and thinkers like Cory Booker, Nancy.

[David Remnick]

Pelosi, Liz Cheney, Tim Waltz, Ketanji Brown Jackson, Newt Gingrich, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

[Kierra Butler]

Charlemagne, tha God, and so many more. That's all in the New Yorker Radio Hour.

[David Remnick]

Wherever you listen to podcasts from the center for Investigative Reporting and prx. This is Reveal. I'm Al Letsie. I'll be known as the fertilization president.

[Al Edson]

That that's okay.

[David Remnick]

That's not bad. President Trump seems to be listening to people calling for Americans to have more babies. People like Elon Musk.

[Kierra Butler]

I can't emphasize this enough. If people don't have more children, civilization is going to crumble.

[Al Edson]

Mark my words.

[David Remnick]

Musk, of course, is making his own contribution with at least 14 kids. But he's not the only rich, influential tech leader who wants to drive up the birth rate. The end game for people like Musk is to multiply the number of humans on Earth and and even the universe with smart people who can live longer. It all seems very science fictiony. And look, I love sci fi, I'm a comic book nerd. But as it turns out, these techno futurist people are starting to make some headway. And they found another group to work with. Religious folks who've always thought of themselves as pro life. Together they call themselves pronatalists. My colleague Kiara Butler has been writing about these pronatalists for Mother Jones. Hey, Kira.

[Al Edson]

Hey, Al.

[David Remnick]

So, Kira, what's the connection between big tech and pronatalism? Why are people in the tech world suddenly so interested in babies?

[Al Edson]

Well, there's an economic component to this. These are folks who are kind of libertarian in their thinking. Like they really believe in the power of the free market. And honestly, there's a way in which more babies means more consumers, more customers, greater economic growth. There's also a contingent in the prenatalism movement of people who believe that we should be having as many babies as possible so we can figure out how we can optimize the human race. And this subset of people from the tech right is interested in this project, sort of like it's a big, like, science experiment. They're interested in figuring out how do you make the smartest human, how do you make the strongest human?

[David Remnick]

You've been doing some reporting on some of the people at the forefront of this movement. Tell me about the couple that have been getting a lot of press lately, the Collinses. They seem to have figured out a way to make this cause grab headlines.

[Al Edson]

Oh, yeah. So I'd been reading about this movement for a really long time, But I think the first people that I spoke to who strongly identified like themselves as pronatalists were Simone and Malcolm Collins.

[David Remnick]

Hello, I'm Malcolm Collins.

[Kierra Butler]

This is my wife, Simone Collins. We're often known as the face of the a pronatalist movement, or the very least the tech pronatalist movement.

[Al Edson]

Hi, I'm Simone. I'm Malcolm's wife. And we do absolutely everything together. Malcolm is like this very loud, very extroverted salesman kind of guy. And Simone, well, she's taken lately to wearing like a handmaid's tail. Get up, Simone. I can't help but notice your outfit. You're wearing kind of a bonnet and like a jumper over, like a peasant blouse. And it's a little bit of an unusual outfit. I started wearing these when I could no longer wear Siberian snowsuits from Etsy during the winter in our house because it's really cold and I can't fit into them while I'm pregnant. Simone is currently pregnant with her fifth, and she said that she's going to keep having babies until she's no longer physically able to do so. She said she's willing to die in childbirth for the prenatalist cause.

[David Remnick]

Wow.

[Kierra Butler]

Yeah.

[Al Edson]

She calls herself a technopuritan, kind of a nod to the fashions of colonial Protestants who you could say were some of the country's first prenatalists. But she also has these like, chunky glasses. So it's some combination of like hipster intellectual and somebody out of the crucible. I kind of was wondering whether you were like, trolling me with a handmaid's tale. A little bit, yeah.

[David Remnick]

A little bit.

[Al Edson]

No. You understand trolls, like multiple things can be true at one time. The Collins's are all about attracting attention, and they've been really successful.

[David Remnick]

What's the Collins tech background?

[Al Edson]

They basically come from a tech and finance background. Simone was the director of a group called Dialog. It's an exclusive social club for close acquaintances of the PayPal titan, Peter Thiel, who's also a vocal pronatalist. Malcolm used to work in venture capital. And the story they tell is that he was working for a firm in South Korea where the birth rate is very low. And as part of his job, his company asked him to do some financial modeling about the future.

[Kierra Butler]

And one of partners at my firm came to me as a director of strategy and they were like, okay, so sort of plot where the Korean economy is going to be in 50 to 100 years, you know, what's going to be the cool technology? What are the trends going to be? And so I go back to him and I was like, so there's not going to be an economy in 50 or 100 years.

[Al Edson]

And that experience, according to him, is what set him on this path. South Korea is one of the most well known examples of places with low birth rates, but it's really happening across the world. Overall, the world's population is still rising, but there are many countries where there just aren't enough people being born to replace the number who are dying. And what makes us really worried about demographic collapse is there's just a lot of vulnerable people who are going to be left high and dry if countries don't figure this out.

[David Remnick]

Is that happening in the United States? I mean, are we headed for demographic collapse?

[Al Edson]

So it's not as dramatic as it is in some other countries, but US birth rates are falling too. So in 25 years, almost a quarter of Americans are going to be over 65. But in some parts of Europe and Asia, the population is aging even faster. Hong Kong is one example. Hungary is another. And actually in Hungary, they have passed a few policies aimed at encouraging people to have more babies. And it almost worked, but now not so much.

[David Remnick]

So what are pronatalists that you talk to trying to do to get people to have more babies?

[Al Edson]

Well, they got together recently in Texas to try to come up with some answers. So I went to Austin where they were having this conference to see what it was all about.

[David Remnick]

So a techno futurist conference that is there to encourage people to have more babies.

[Al Edson]

Something like that.

[David Remnick]

So did you come back with a baby?

[Al Edson]

Oh my God, no. Been there, done that. But I did come back with some pretty interesting information.

[David Remnick]

All right, let's hear.

[Al Edson]

Turned out that Malcolm and Simone and I would all be in Austin on the same weekend for the pronatalism conference, Natal Con. They planned a cocktail party the week of the conference to host some of Their friends from the tech world. Some of them worked for different companies that specialized in innovating fertility. I wanted to meet these people, so I asked if I could come to the party.

[David Remnick]

Hello.

[Al Edson]

It is wonderful to see you guys.

[David Remnick]

Malcolm.

[Kierra Butler]

Nice to see you, Malcolm.

[Al Edson]

The party's at a fancy apartment, a penthouse, that the Collinses are borrowing for the night. I'm one of the first guests. It feels informal. Simone is dumping chips in a bowl. She's in her techno puritan outfit. The bonnet, the jumper, the chunky glasses, the whole nine yards. And she's carrying her baby on her back. The little girl's name is industry Americus.

[Kierra Butler]

We have beers if you want. You can get light beers, real beers, champagne, wine.

[Al Edson]

As more people walk in, the Collinses work the room. At one point, a small group starts talking about designer babies and the ethics of gene editing. The Collinses have not done that, but they do use IVF and send their embryos to a company that claims it can screen for traits like depression, anxiety, and also intelligence. Simone says any parent who has health care would want this for their child. Malcolm says it's no different from parents who screen for genetic mutations that cause cancer or cystic fibrosis in their kids.

[Kierra Butler]

A lot of people who've had major depressive disorder don't want to have kids because they don't want their kids to have it. And that's like, super common.

[Al Edson]

Some of the people at this party have their own pronatalism related businesses, like one that's trying to offer gene editing for embryos. The idea is to improve humanity, and another way to do that is to have more smart people like them breed with other people like them. That's something I hear from one of the guests.

[David Remnick]

Now, I was into pronatalism for a long time to try to convince people to have more kids and complain about how like, you want there to be people like you in the world, but you're not having any kids, so people like you are gonna die out, you know?

[Al Edson]

This is Patri Friedman, an early Google employee, friend of the Collinses, and grandson of the famous economist Milton Friedman.

[David Remnick]

I just happen to be into a lot of different weird ideas, including this one.

[Al Edson]

I was curious about why Patry was interested in this weird idea in particular. The work he does doesn't have anything to do with making babies. He runs Pronomos Capital. It's a company that supports businesses that are trying to form startup cities and nations, deregulated zones for governments to do whatever they want. He recently got back from one of those places called Prospera. It's a new city in Honduras that offers medical tourism. He had some work done.

[David Remnick]

I've done three things so far.

[Al Edson]

I had my mouth bacteria replaced so.

[David Remnick]

I'll never get cavities.

[Al Edson]

I have a chip in my hand.

[David Remnick]

That unlocks my Tesla and has my business card on it.

[Al Edson]

Whoa.

[David Remnick]

And I had gene therapy that substantially increased my cardio performance.

[Al Edson]

Prospera is one of his projects, and he told me later that it reflects his philosophy that these new zones, governments, should be run like businesses.

[Kierra Butler]

If you think of government as a.

[David Remnick]

Business, then babies are its future citizens, its future customers, where its tax revenue is going to come from. And so having the government subsidize population growth, from a business perspective, it makes all the sense in the world.

[Al Edson]

He says, without more people to support our economy, who will take care of the elderly? But also, and this is key for tech pronatalists like Patri, we won't have enough innovation.

[David Remnick]

I think that a lot of our wealth comes from our global population and the specialization and trade that that enables. And population crashes mean as a species, we're going to be poorer and have fewer resources to, you know, deal with the catastrophic threats.

[Al Edson]

So the more ideas, like, the more people we have on the planet, the more brilliance there will be.

[David Remnick]

I'm on Team Humanity and more humans. Sounds great.

[Al Edson]

The day after the cocktail party, I make my way over to the campus of UT Austin, where the conference is. But I'm not sure if I'm going to get in. I had asked for a press pass a few months in advance, but my request was denied. So I tried registering as an attendee. Denied again. I thought maybe if I pleaded my case in person, I'd get in. So I follow a group of journalists checking in. But when I walk up to the press table and say my name, someone with the conference walks over to me and says, I have to leave. Hi there.

[Kierra Butler]

Hi.

[Al Edson]

I'm a journalist with. No, you need to leave. Oh, well, I can. No, you need to leave, But I can be. No, actually, we've reserved this entire area. This is. This is Kira Bell area. It's actually not. It's the main conference organizer, Kevin Dolan. I've never met Kevin before, but he had shared my name to the people at the registration table, who then told him I was here. She's not an approved journalist. She's not supposed to be here. We're actually having her expelled. Not expelled. I'm just going to be downstairs where I'm allowed to be. Yeah, I was kind of surprised I couldn't get in considering there were so many reporters who did. But I did manage to meet some conference goers hanging out at the hotel.

[David Remnick]

I'm just kind of here idea collecting. I think the decline in birth rates will have significant economic and social consequences.

[Al Edson]

Attendees are also here for community. These are people who want to have a bunch of kids and are hoping to meet other people who want the same. Some of them come from more religious groups and are more traditional or trad. And these people have always considered themselves prenatalists. There was even a matchmaking session for singles looking for a partner to have a lot of kids with. I heard later that most of the people who attended were men. I was still curious about how exactly the people gathered here thought the rest of us could be persuaded to have more babies. So I got recordings of a lot of the speakers.

[Kierra Butler]

We must reverse the collapse of birth rates.

[Al Edson]

Speakers proposed solutions like giving out government incentives.

[Kierra Butler]

Let's get a bigger child tax credit. Let's get some cool eos. Let's do all this stuff.

[Al Edson]

Building more housing.

[David Remnick]

Single family homes are associated with much higher fertility.

[Al Edson]

Then came the tech solutions. A lot of people in this room imagine a future where everyone does ivf, but not everyone was on board. I am a Catholic and therefore I am not a huge fan of ivf. There was disagreement between the tech speakers and the trad religious speakers about some fundamental stuff like gender roles, who should be having a family and when life begins. I'm told by all the tech geniuses around me that we are soon getting IVF for everyone. Surrogate mills, embryonic genetic editing, and factory baby farms filled with matrix style artificial wombs and more. I can't wait to but between the trads and the texts, there was also a lot of common ground. Many of the speakers leaned conservative with libertarian values, and together they saw themselves as a coalition. The left has no answer or solution right now. There's no point in listening to them or talking to them. It's us. It's the tech right and the trads blaming falling fertility rates on liberal ideology. Liberal feminism has mostly backfired. And ultimately wanting to create a culture for their kids and their grandkids that reflects their own values. One speaker suggested parents should be able to cast proxy votes on behalf of their children for elections and thus recalibrate the entire political center of our nation around the family. They're blunt about the kind of world they want, and speakers like alt right activist Jack Posobec see pronatalism as fundamental to their existence.

[Kierra Butler]

We're not going anywhere. This is a war, and Natalism is our sword and shield, and we will not abandon the front lines.

[Al Edson]

I wrote a story about my weekend with this new generation of pronatalists, A strange bedfellow situation of techies and religious trads who've come together around this issue. And right after my piece ran, the conference organizer, Kevin Dolan called me. He wanted to talk about why he kicked me out. Okay, so can we talk briefly about that? Do we have time to talk about that? I would love to talk about that. Kevin told me he had denied my attempts to buy a ticket and flagged my name because he thought the publication I write for, Mother Jones, was going to slander his friends. But then he read the story I actually wrote, and he thought it was fair. And then I sort of felt a little bad about the way that I had dismissed your request. And so I reached out and he agreed to talk to me about how he came to be the guy running a pronatalism conference. He leans more trad. He's Mormon and has six kids with a seventh on the way. And he tells me part of the reason he became a pronatalist was after watching Tucker Carlson's TV special, the End of Men, the decline of manhood, of virility, of physical health, all of which.

[Kierra Butler]

Together threatened to doom our civilization.

[Al Edson]

And that was very focused on, like, the. The biological component of it. So, like, declining sperm counts and declining fertility. And that got Kevin thinking about why it was that men were not interested in starting families. Kevin says Tucker attributes this to men being less masculine, not as virile. So maybe that was part of the reason that the birth rate was declining. And I was like, well, this is. This is a really. This is a bigger issue than just the medical side of it. One of the things Kevin did to address this issue for men was start a fraternity called Exit. This was after he got fired from his job in 2021 for posting racist, homophobic, and anti semitic content on Twitter. Kevin says Exit has since become a place for men to create entrepreneurial opportunities for themselves. He says they're doing this because they feel oppressed by emasculating corporate work culture, a culture he blames for why guys have low sperm counts and fewer babies. These corporate jobs where they live only to push papers and obey their managers instead of facing danger to protect their families. I would analogize it to breeding in captivity. When he described the problem that he sees with American office culture, he made a comparison to pandas. I Guess pandas in captivity have trouble breeding. What if we just gave the pandas some extra kibble? Like, would they breed if they had extra kibble? And it's like, I don't actually think kibble's the problem. It's a spiritual thing. It's a deep thing. It's about meaning, and it's about. It's about what's worth doing. When it comes to the goals of the pronatalist movement, Kevin sees an ally in the Trump administration.

[Kierra Butler]

So let me say very simply, I want more babies in the United States of America.

[Al Edson]

That's Vice President J.D. vance at the March for Life rally in January 2025. And he's a good poster child for this new era of pronatalism. He's a recent convert to Catholicism and someone with connections to Silicon Valley. Kevin is a fan. You can imagine playing Xbox with him and our first millennial in the. In the White House. So far, the Trump administration hasn't made major policy changes meant to encourage childbearing. But the White House has talked about creating a Trump savings account for babies and about a medal for women who have six or more children. The medal thing makes some people uneasy. Motherhood medals were offered in Nazi Germany with a clear goal of breeding more babies from the superior race. Back in 2023, Kevin was asked about eugenicism on a podcast called the Jolly Heretic. So I think that the pronatalist and the eugenic positions are very much. They're not in opposition. They're very much aligned. So I asked him about that. I guess maybe the trickiest part of all of this to talk about is the eugenics part. And that's been something that you have been accused of, and you've been accused of being a eugenicist, of wanting to, you know, breed a superior race.

[Kierra Butler]

Sure.

[Al Edson]

And, you know, like, you're giggling about it, but. So I. It is silly. I just. It's silly. Okay, go on. So I asked him about something I'd seen on his substack that talked about groups of people that could be genetically eradicated or replaced if they don't have more babies. So that's a description, not a prescription, to be clear, that's, in fact, that I regard as kind of a warning to the people who are not having kids. He told me that he wants everyone to have more kids, even the liberals and progressives whose views he disagrees with. Kevin tells me that his kids are what drive this work for him. He wants them to grow up in a culture where there's Something more waiting for them than an emasculating office job. He wants the woke culture to get out of the way. And if everybody won't get out of the way, well, he says it makes him think of a quote from Tucker Carlson, which he paraphrases, where he said, I don't worship capitalism, I worship God. And it's just a system. And if your system makes it impossible for me to raise a family, then I'm happy to set your system on fire. After spending time among the pronatalists, here's the idea I came away with. This movement is kind of a crucible where techs and trads mix and mingle, forming alliances and sharing ideas. Those ideas might seem outlandish. Handing out medals to mothers of big families, building new alternative societies, thinking of government as a business and citizens as consumers. But they're not just spitballing. Their friends in high places include titans of Silicon Valley and leaders at the highest levels of government. They are hoping to parlay those relationships to change both policy and culture, to influence people's choices about how to make a family, choices about whether to have babies and how many to have.

[David Remnick]

That story was reported by Mother Jones national correspondent Kierra Butler and produced by Reveal's Steven Rascone. Before techies got involved with the pronatalism movement, it was mostly religious conservatives who were pushing Americans to have more babies, sometimes through campaigns of fear.

[Kierra Butler]

I would have fundraisers who raised millions and millions of dollars who would tell me we need more fear and more anger.

[David Remnick]

When we come back, I talk with one of the former architects of the religious nationalist movement about his multi decade plan to repeal abortion rights and push the American government to the right. You're listening to reveal. Hey, this is Michael Montgomery, a producer and reporter at Reveal, and I'm talking to our genuine fans out there. You never miss an episode. Maybe you're rocking the T shirt right now. You know who you are.

[Kierra Butler]

Well, the show you love is nonprofit.

[Al Edson]

And listener supported, which means we need fans like you to become members.

[Kierra Butler]

Just text the word give to 88857 Reveal.

[David Remnick]

That's 888-577-3832 or visit revealnews.org donate a.

[Kierra Butler]

Gift of any amount says you care about this show.

[David Remnick]

From the center for Investigative Reporting and prx, this is Reveal. I'm Al Edson. We just heard how tech bros are advocating for larger families, aligning themselves with traditionalists who have long pushed so called family values. My next guest, Reverend Rob Schenck, was an OG traditionalist. He was a leader in the Christian nationalist movement and. And spent decades getting close to powerful lawmakers and Supreme Court justices trying to influence American laws and policies and push them to the right. And he was extremely successful until eventually Rob had a change of heart and converted out of the movement. I invited him onto the show to reflect on his work paving the way for the political right. I started our conversation by asking about his early career as a minister.

[Kierra Butler]

My first ministry assignment, I took a job as a residential counselor for a home for recovering heroin addicts. And I lived with them, bunked with them. And that was a very, very meaningful, wonderful experience for me. I developed deep bonds with. It was an all male program. So these were all young men. And from there I went on to do Christian humanitarian relief work in Mexico. So that was my whole orientation until the mid-1980s. It was then that I was introduced to a very different permutation of Christianity, a highly politicized one. And that would lead to what I call a second conversion in my life, which was not for the good.

[David Remnick]

What was it about the teaching of the politicized version of Christianity? The politicized and I think it's fair to say, right wing version of Christianity. What was it about it that attracted you away from doing the work that you were already doing?

[Kierra Butler]

I'm gonna say in a very amateur way, was kind of ego. It was pride. As I look back on it now, you know, I took my seat at the table of national evangelical leadership. You know, I was kind of one of those young bucks coming up. You know, I was gaining quite a platform and, you know, preaching to very large congregations, speaking at very big national and even international conventions and so forth. And as a result of that, I was invited into some pretty influential spaces in the evangelical subculture. And one of those was the national association of Evangelicals, where Ronald Reagan became the first sitting president to address. Someone asked me whether I was aware of all the people out there who were praying for the president.

[Al Edson]

And I had to say, yes, I am.

[Kierra Butler]

I felt it. I believe in intercessionary prayer. But I couldn't help but say to that questioner after he'd asked the question, or at least say to them, that.

[Al Edson]

If sometimes when he was praying, he.

[Kierra Butler]

Got a busy signal, it was just.

[Al Edson]

Me in there ahead of him.

[Kierra Butler]

And that was in appreciation for our support for him, which had been cultivated by figures like Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson and others who had marshaled evangelical support for Reagan and the Republican Party. When I. When I was first born again into the Christian community. The vast majority of people I knew were Democrats, they weren't Republicans, and they were very pro labor, they were very pro women's rights. They were very much for social safety nets and so forth. In fact, I cast my first presidential vote at age 18 for Jimmy Carter.

[David Remnick]

Yeah.

[Kierra Butler]

And why? Because he seemed to exemplify all the attributes that Jesus espoused in his mission and ministry.

[David Remnick]

So I was very young when Jimmy Carter was elected. He was the first president that I can remember knowing who the president was. But years later, looking back or whatever, I saw this clip of Jimmy Carter making a presidential conversation with the country. And basically he was telling America that we were headed down the wrong path, that we were just gonna become consumers and that we weren't caring for each other and so forth and so on.

[Kierra Butler]

The threat is nearly invisible in ordinary ways.

[Al Edson]

It is a crisis of confidence.

[Kierra Butler]

It is a crisis that strikes at.

[Al Edson]

The very heart and soul and spirit.

[Kierra Butler]

Of our national will. We can see this crisis in the.

[Al Edson]

Growing doubt about the meaning of our own lives and in the loss of a unity.

[David Remnick]

And Ronald Reagan was telling everybody, it's morning in America and everything you've done is great and fine and you're good and you're great, and it feels like Christianity, well, the version of Christianity that you were a part of took that and said, yes, we are great, and followed down that path.

[Kierra Butler]

Wow. Wow. Al, today you're like my pastor, because you're really helping me to clarify even my own reflections on that period and what was going on. The overall effect, I think, was to eventually utterly corrupt the message and to turn the movement from a people centered movement to a political enterprise, and one that became much more concerned about wielding power and influence than it was caring for souls.

[David Remnick]

So that leads me to my next question, which is about a painful chapter in your life. You were a part of the National Pro Life Religious Council, which had a close relationship with Norma McCorvey, otherwise known as Jane Roe, from the Supreme Court case, Roe v. Wade.

[Kierra Butler]

Yeah, yeah.

[David Remnick]

In 1973, the court ruled on the case, saying the Constitution generally protected a woman's right to have an abortion. Can you talk to me about your relationship with Norma?

[Kierra Butler]

Yeah. I really came to love Norma. She was the real Jane Roe in the famous or infamous Roe v. Wade case. And Norma was a very complicated person, had lived a very rough, very difficult life. She had been sexually abused as a young teenager. She had been remanded to a girl's home, as they used to call them. So her whole life was all about survival. And when she became the famous anonymous Jane Roe, it only complicated her life more. So by the time I met her, she had come out as a convert to the anti abortion movement. She was identified with the pro choice movement for a number of years, but met a colleague of mine, a street preacher, who baptized her in a backyard swimming pool. And she came out on a public stage. I brought her to Washington dc. It's difficult to even tell this part of the story because Norma's gone now. She's passed on and I can't ask her forgiveness for this, but I used her, as many did. She became a trophy for the anti abortion pro life movement that I was very much part of in leadership. And, you know, she was rewarded. She was, you know, rewarded financially. She was given big audiences. You know, she was feted and celebrated. And we knew, for example, that she was secretly in a same sex romantic relationship, in fact, a long term romantic partnership with a woman. And that was of course unacceptable in my world. So we kept that quiet. We hushed it up. We told her not to talk about it, to keep it a secret, that that was nobody's business but her own. But we were managing her image for our movement and I see that as another kind of abuse.

[David Remnick]

Staying on the topic of abortion, years ago you worked with or were part of Operation Rescue. That time around, the issue of abortion became extremely volatile. As in like abortion doctors were arguing with anti abortion activists. You yourself got into like several heated arguments with people like, from your vantage point, you are trying to save lives, infant lives. From their vantage point, they are trying to protect a woman's right to decide what to do with their body. Would that be a fair way to look at it?

[Kierra Butler]

Yes. Operation Rescue was one component of that, and it involved blockading clinics. We would block doors to clinics, using our own bodies. We would lay down in driveways to prevent both, you know, medical staff and their patients from entering parking lots and so forth. In some cases, some of our people, I never did this, but some people entered into even procedure rooms and handcuffed themselves to procedure tables. And of course then there had also been a number of years of firebombings, other kinds of damage to clinic properties. And then there was shooting. I would have fundraisers who raised millions and millions of dollars for the organizations I led during some of those years who would tell me, literally they would sit at a conference room table and say to me, we need more fear and more anger. We need to make people more afraid and madder than hell. Yeah, if you give us a lot of fear, we'll raise you a lot of money. You give us a little fear, we'll only raise a little money. More fear. And so you learn to start generating language. Yes, that. That satiates that demand and that brings about predictable results.

[David Remnick]

When we come back, Reverend Rob Schenck talks about how he and other Christian nationalists created a playbook that remade Washington politics.

[Kierra Butler]

I'm afraid I helped build the ramp that Trump took to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

[David Remnick]

You're listening to Reveal.

[Al Edson]

There's a lot going on right now. Mounting economic inequality, threats to democracy, environmental disaster, the sour stench of chaos in the air. I'm Brooke Gladstone, host of WNYC's on the Media. Want to understand the reasons and the meanings of the narratives that led us here and maybe how to head them off at the pass that's on the media specialty.

[David Remnick]

Take a listen wherever you get your podcasts. From the center for Investigative Reporting and prx, this is Reveal. I'm Al Ledson. Today we're featuring a conversation with Reverend Rob Schenck, who spent much of his life doing what he thought was God's work, trying to bend American society and laws towards a Christian nationalist ideology. In his crusade for political power, Rob needed Washington power brokers by his side. So he set out to win hearts.

[Kierra Butler]

And minds in D.C. when I first arrived in Washington in 1994, I saw an immediate opening to begin sitting with members of Congress in the House and in the Senate. It was the year of the Republican revolution, when not only did the Republican Party gain majorities they hadn't had in decades, but there was also an influx of an enormous, relatively, in our thinking, enormous, but certainly a very significant number of evangelicals who were elected to Congress that same year. So I had immediate allies and I went in and the first thing I did was I gave out what we called National Ten Commandments Leadership Awards with these very nice, lovely carved stone and wood plaques with the Ten Commandments displayed on them. And we asked House members and senators to display and obey them. And we did lots of public events together, but mostly worked behind the scenes to craft legislation which began with laws restricting abortion and then restricting personal behavior, reinforcing restrictions on LGBTQ folks and same sex relationships and so forth, anything to stop what we saw as a cavalcade of immorality in our society. But it wasn't enough to do that legislatively because no matter who was in the Congress, what laws were being passed, what president was signing them into law didn't matter because we would come up against the Supreme Court and it would be the brick wall that all of these efforts would eventually meet up against. So we had to get to the Justices and get them to render the strongest possible majority opinions. And even, even when they weren't in the majority, we needed them to render very strong dissenting opinions to kind of set the stage for a future revisiting of those questions.

[David Remnick]

You had a name for it, Operation Higher Court. Tell me about that. What was Operation Higher Court and how did you achieve those goals?

[Kierra Butler]

The whole process was to inject trained, what I called stealth missionaries into the private social circles of particular Justices. We thought of, I thought of, thought of, and my fellows thought of as low hanging fruit because they were already conservative. And so what I did was there's a private society associated with the Court called the Supreme Court Historical Society, which does a lot of good educating the public on the role of the Court. But it's a private non governmental entity which made it more permeable, a lot easier to access than, you know, a highly defended bureaucratic government agency. And it allowed for FaceTime. So I trained some of my wealthier constituents to go in and Garner FaceTime in these small, you know, exclusive invitation only receptions. And it gave them opportunities to introduce themselves and even to hint at some benefits that they might enjoy as a result of palling around with each other. They would mention their luxurious vacation homes and how lovely it was would be for the justice to come with his wife and visit and enjoy the atmosphere. And over time, these couples would entertain the Justices at, you know, high priced restaurants and buy them endless glasses and bottles of very expensive wine and trays of oysters and, you know, giant 40 ounce stakes or whatever they wanted. And they showed him a good time and, and frankly, the Justices enjoyed it very much. And bonds were developed and the conversation always eventually got to the whole point of it. And that was, we need you to render the strongest, most conservative opinions you can from the bench. And eventually we need a majority on this bench that will do the right thing for America and that is return America to its Christian values. And I now live with a lot of regret that we were quite successful in that endeavor.

[David Remnick]

And of course, that success came during Donald Trump's term in office when he appointed three Justices who tilted the Supreme Court more to the right. How did Trump end up hitching his cart to the Christian nationalist movement?

[Kierra Butler]

Yeah, when it comes to Donald Trump. By the time Trump emerged as a choice originally, and then the choice of all my fellow evangelical leadership personalities around the country, I had already started a process of dismantling the frame I had built for my worldview, for my approach to politicized religion. Even the organization that I had built, which was substantial. I mean, we had a headquarters across the street from the Supreme Court. And I had had my own kind of awakening, but it was still contained. But when Trump emerged, it was a bridge too far for me for a couple of reasons. One is because I had grown up in New York State with Donald Trump playing in the headlines continuously almost through my entire life, or at least my conscious life. And when I was in Bible college being trained as a minister, I was in what we call a homiletics class or a preaching instruction, where my instructor said to the class one day in a sermon, you always want to use a real life illustration, if you can pick one to make your point. So he gave an example and he said, let's just say we're talking about what it means to live opposite of Jesus, model and message. Well, you might pick somebody like Donald Trump to illustrate that. So for me, from the very beginning, Donald Trump was the opposite of what it meant to live as a Christian. At one point, I had taken a leave of absence from my work and I was finishing a late in life doctoral degree, and I flew back east to attend a tribute gala for Pat Robertson, one of the luminaries in Christian media. And his guest of honor was Donald Trump, years before he would announce his serious Republican presidential candidacy. So I was troubled by that from the get go. And eventually I would break with my fellows over their choice of Donald Trump as their champion. I found him repugnant. I thought he was a charlatan, a fake, a carnevillian. And I said, I can't go with you on this. So I parted company with my old gang when it came to support for Trump. But when I announced publicly that I was voting for Joe Biden in 2020, for many of my fellows in the evangelical church world, that was the final straw for them, I was gone. I was now banished, ostracized. There was no place for me in their world any longer. So in many ways, I see Trump as a kind of act of idolatry for my movement, that they've literally traded Jesus for Donald Trump. And for me, that's nothing short of apostasy. It's abandoning the faith. I don't think this is the first time, Al, I'm going to say this in a public forum. I don't think you can be a Christian and embrace Donald Trump because I see him as the antithesis of everything Jesus stood for. Everything he modeled, and in my theology, everything he died for.

[David Remnick]

Far be it from me to push back on your assertions, but I think what I have heard in some Christian circles is the idea that he is a flawed vessel, but he will deliver to Christian nationalists what they want. And so a lot of Christian nationalists and a lot of people who maybe don't consider themselves nationalists but just Christian, they hold their nose and vote for him because they are getting exactly what they want. Like, he delivers. I mean, and if you pull back and look at it, he actually delivers better than Bush ever did, better than even Reagan ever did. Like, as far as Republican presidents go, he's delivered on everything that he said that he would give to the Christian right. They got everything they wanted.

[Kierra Butler]

Yeah, my white evangelical fellows have gotten just what they demanded. I agree with you. He has delivered. There was a Faustian bargain made with Donald Trump, and when my fellow said, we want this, he said, I'll give you that. You want the end of Roe v. Wade, I'll give you the end of Roe v. Wade. But you will give me your unqualified support. You will give me religious cover, you will sacralize me. You will sanctify me. You will protect me. That's our deal. I give you the judges and justices you want, and you give me everything I want. And that's the deal we made. And I call that, Al, a deal with the devil.

[David Remnick]

Okay, so last question, and this is a really hard one. Do you think the work that you did created the Runway for or helped create the Runway for what we're seeing now with Trump in Christian conservative circles?

[Kierra Butler]

Yeah, I'm afraid it did. I'm afraid I helped build the ramp that Trump took to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. And that's a very painful reality for me. I don't expect people's sympathy. I don't expect people to feel sorry for me in that it's my just desserts to live with that. But I will tell you one thing. I am taking very, very seriously the task of dismantling that ramp. And I'm trying to do it literally every day. I don't always succeed. I sometimes lapse. But I'm intent on helping to dismantle that apparatus.

[David Remnick]

Rob, thank you so much for being so open and having this conversation with me.

[Kierra Butler]

Well, thank you for giving me the safe space to do that, Al.

[David Remnick]

Rob Schenck wrote about his journey into and out of Christian Christian nationalism in his 2018 book, Costly An Evangelical Minister's Rediscovery of Faith, Hope, and Love. That Interview originally aired as a podcast special and it helped pave the way for what would become our weekly interview show called More to the Story. That's right. Not only can you listen to Reveal right here every week, but we also have more on the Reveal podcast, including Deep Dive Conversations between me and some of the biggest newsmakers of our time. You can find it wherever you get your podcasts. This week's show was produced by Josh Sanburn, Carr McGurk, Allison and Steven Rascon. Steven was also our lead producer. We had editing help from Catherine Winner and editorial support from Maryanne Segadi, Mazak, Artist Cheriscus and Alex Wein. For Fact Check today's show, Victoria Baranetsky is our General counsel. Our production manager is the great Zulema Cobb. Score and sound design by the dynamic duo Jay Breezy, Mr. Jim Briggs and Fernando My Man Yo Aruda. They had help from Julia Haney. Our interim executive producers are Brett Myers and Taki Telenides. Our theme music is by Camarado Lightning. Support for reveals provided by the Reeva and David Logan foundation, the John D. And Catherine T. MacArthur foundation, the Jonathan Logan Family foundation, the Robert Wood Johnson foundation, the park foundation, the Schmidt Family foundation and the Hellman Foundation. Support for Reveal is also provided by you, our listeners. We are a co production of the center for Investigative Reporting in prx. I'm Al Ledson and remember there is always more to the story.

[Kierra Butler]

From prx.