We're LOSING the War At Home While Fighting One We CAN'T WIN | 8/3/26

Summary

Steve Deace Show Episode Summary

Title: We're LOSING the War At Home While Fighting One We CAN'T WIN
Date: August 3, 2026
Host: Steve Dace (Blaze Podcast Network)
Co-hosts: Todd Erzin, Aaron McIntyre
Guest: Brent Buchanan (President Trump 2024 pollster, Signal Polling)

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Main Theme & Purpose

This episode centers on Steve Dace’s argument that America is diverting resources and attention to unwinnable foreign entanglements (specifically Iran) instead of addressing mounting crises and cultural decay at home. Dace and his co-hosts urge conservatives to “win the war at home,” emphasizing the urgency of domestic battles—cultural, political, economic—while critiquing the lack of resolve, leadership, and focus among American conservatives. Pollster Brent Buchanan joins to provide a sobering, data-driven analysis of the political landscape heading into the midterms.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. DHS & Immigration Policy Confusion

(00:01 - 01:31)

• Aaron McIntyre covers DHS Secretary Mark Wayne Mullen’s controversial National Governors Association appearance—Mullen begged Democratic governors to cooperate on deporting violent criminals, only to double down on social media against amnesty.
• Irony noted: Mullen’s advice to Haitians to "help yourself" if you want more than Temporary Protective Status, showing policy inconsistency.

“You have to make an effort to change. And I can't help you if you can't help yourself.” – Mark Wayne Mullen (reported by Steve Dace, 01:27)

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2. US, Iran, and the Middle East

(02:13 - 04:49, 15:35 - 27:24)

• Reporting on President Trump’s claims the US was on the verge of major strikes against Iran before allies called them off, with Trump hinting at larger “deals.”
• Dace launches into a lengthy critique: The administration is lost in a cycle of starting and aborting conflicts in the Middle East without strategy or achievable objectives.
• He argues the administration is mistakenly trying to “negotiate with demoniacs” (Iran regime) who cannot be trusted.
• Dace sees the situation as unwinnable, citing "15 days to stop Iran" and “30 days to slow the spread of Iran” as failed talking points.

"If I had come on the air the first Monday of April...and said, we're all going to still be doing this the first Monday in August...everyone in their right mind would have called me a black pillar. Right?...Is that not now where we are?" – Steve Dace (15:32)

• Criticism of military hawks: No one ever articulates what “letting the military do its job” with Iran actually means or what the end goal should be.

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3. Urgency of Domestic Decline

(05:12 - 15:35, 22:13 - 25:34)

• Dace transitions from international to domestic concerns:
  • Borrowing rates at a 17-year high, highest credit card delinquencies since 2010.
  • Housing affordability crisis; warnings that mortgage rates could reach 8%.
• Emphasizes the parallel between economic conditions in 2008/2010 and the electoral drubbing the party in power suffered.
• Dace uses personal anecdotes—becoming an empty nester, the ticking clock of his own life—to amplify the moral urgency:

“Time is short. Time is short to make a difference. Time is short to leave a legacy. Time is short to secure the next generation.” – Steve Dace (11:03)

• He fears a collapse of American resolve and priorities, comparing conservatives to a talented sports team that stubbornly refuses to adapt or “run a play-action pass.”
• The WNBA controversy (players and coaches wearing “Trans Kids Belong” shirts, conflict around Sophie Cunningham’s defense of women's sports) seen as a microcosm of cultural decay.

"You are way more threatened by the head coach of a WNBA team than you are Iran. Because what she represents, that level of demonic retardation...is hovering over our entire culture like a sword of Damocles." – Steve Dace (22:12)

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4. Political Landscape: 2026 Midterms

(27:26 - 46:13)

• Countdown: "42 days until early voting begins in Pennsylvania," described as the critical number shaping all calculations.
• Extended data-driven discussion with pollster Brent Buchanan.
  • National polls currently favor Democrats, but due to extreme polarization/redistricting, the real fight is in a small number of swing Congressional districts.
  • Dems could win the House if trends continue, but their own dysfunction is the main GOP asset.
  • Factors: War with Iran is a political liability but can be quickly forgotten if it ends by Labor Day due to short voter attention spans.
  • Biden's public indifference toward the midterms may be a negotiating signal to Iran rather than his actual strategy.
  • Both Buchanan and Dace warn that with the new Democratic legislative majority (potentially as thin as 1-2 seats), progressives will wield power aggressively, with no moderating forces.

"The reason we have to run on those guys suck worse is because they do suck worse. And we don’t have a whole lot of positive things to point to." – Brent Buchanan (42:26)

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5. Strategic Political Takeaways

(45:22 - 47:13)

• To win, Republicans can't just rely on Democrats' radicalism; they must present a compelling alternative (citing 2022 “red wave” that never materialized as a cautionary tale).
• Messaging mishaps—GOP failed by running crime ads in the wrong races in 2022; Dems succeeded with institution-backed "Republicans are fascists" argument.
• Labor Day considered the deadline for exiting the Iran war to avoid midterm disaster.

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6. Ask Me Anything/Listener Q&A Highlights

(51:04 - 94:06, selective highlights)

• Why does Trump let/endorse "RINOs" in Congress?

• Dace is baffled ("I don’t know...just have to assume there’s a piece of information I don’t know"), but theorizes it’s about keeping the “most right-wing” title and fears of delegating power to weak surrogates. (54:05 - 57:32)

• Is a Democrat midterm victory a "bullet to the head," GOP victory "death by a thousand cuts"?

• Dace argues there's no time for long-term lessons or losses; the left’s radicalization means short-term thinking is all that matters. (57:32 - 61:44)

• Should Christians move en masse to change political realities in red states?

• Yes, he says: The US was founded by strategic migration; now, moving to places where conservatives can control infrastructure is vital, rather than “wasting” citizenship in unchangeable blue states. (61:44 - 66:33)

• Interpretation of Judges 21:25 ("every man did what was right in his own eyes")

• Dace says this verse reflects dark times; the key is not form of government but faithfulness. The big danger is rejecting God as king, not just rejecting human kings. (66:39 - 77:21)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “This ain't intramurals, brother. What are we doing here?” – Steve Dace, on the seriousness of the stakes with Iran (22:13)
• “If you don't like what I'm about to share...we're just gonna go cold hard data.” — Steve Dace, on his no-spin midterms analysis (5:11)
• “I’ve even prayed [Iran’s regime] would all be dead. But right now, I’m way more threatened...by the head coach of a WNBA team...what she represents...is hovering over our entire culture like a sword of Damocles.” (22:13)
• “Time is short to make a difference. Time is short to leave a legacy.” (11:03)
• “The hour is very, very short, and they have a team that puts its best out on the field. We have a team that is better, but our locker room is soft.” — Todd Erzin (27:40)
• “Don’t believe me, though. Let’s look at some numbers, shall we?” – Steve Dace’s mantra for following the data, not the narrative (29:41)
• “America is the most talented team ... but it is at risk of becoming… the greatest team that never won the championship ... because we are soft.” — Todd Erzin (94:40)

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Important Segment Timestamps

• 00:01 – 05:12: News roundup: DHS/immigration, Iran, WNBA, economy
• 05:12 – 15:35: Dace’s monologue – urgency, being an empty nester, cultural metaphors
• 15:36 – 27:40: Foreign policy (Iran/quagmire), war at home vs. abroad
• 27:41 – 32:51: Setting up midterms conversation — polarization, early voting in PA
• 33:35 – 46:13: Brent Buchanan: polling data deep-dive, 2026 election outlook
• 46:14 – 50:51: Recap and housekeeping, transition to Ask Me Anything
• 51:12 – 61:44: Listener Q&A: Trump and GOP, political strategy, short-term crisis
• 61:56 – 66:33: Christian migration, state strategies, building resilient “citizenship”
• 66:40 – 77:21: Deep dive: Biblical government, historical lessons
• 78:56 – 94:06: Continued Q&A: culture, storytelling, faith in public square
• 94:07 – End: Closing reflections, team analogies, call to action

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Tone & Style

• Highly urgent, candid, sometimes snarky but ultimately solution-seeking.
• Strong sports analogies used to help cultural and political self-diagnosis (“Monday after the home team lost”; “best team never to win it all”).
• Combines biting criticism of both the left and right with data-driven realism.
• Dace's style: "I want to win," explaining his tough-love approach — he pushes for action without despairing "black-pill" fatalism.
• Several faith-based discussions and biblical analogies, especially as applied to citizenship and activism.

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TAKEAWAY

Steve Dace and team argue the American Right is in existential trouble—not because of Iran or foreign threats, but because of cultural softness, political mis-prioritization, and lack of resolve at home. With polls tightening and domestic institutions decaying, the focus must urgently shift from chasing "unwinnable" foreign battles to re-building on the home front—while there’s still time to act.

Transcript

[Aaron McIntyre]

It's the Steve Day show. And here's what happened while we were away, brought to you by smelling weakness. DHS Secretary Mark Wayne Mullen, whose job description states is his role to manage the border and enforce immigration law, made a lot of people very angry over the weekend at the National Governor's Association's meeting where he begged commies to let him deport rapists and murderers.

[Steve Dace]

What I'm saying is, let me work

[Brent Buchanan]

with you on this stuff. I'm not handling things like maybe the past

[Steve Dace]

secretary had. I'm just saying let's work to get

[Brent Buchanan]

the worst of the worst off the streets and then you won't see me

[Steve Dace]

in your cities and states like you

[Brent Buchanan]

do as much because my presence won't be as big. In fact, you probably won't even see us at all.

[Aaron McIntyre]

Mullen also seemingly offered a blueprint on how Haitians can avoid the temporary part of their temporary protected status.

[Steve Dace]

What I encourage people to do is help yourself.

[Brent Buchanan]

You have to try to go through the system legally. If you came over and you got

[Steve Dace]

temporary protective status and its name itself, it says temporary.

[Brent Buchanan]

Yes, we're ending the temporary protective status because it's temporary. But that doesn't mean that while you're

[Steve Dace]

here under a temporary protective status, you

[Brent Buchanan]

can't try to change your status. You can't. It doesn't mean you can't enroll to

[Steve Dace]

try to become an lpr. That doesn't mean you can't go for a family visa, doesn't mean you have to just stay on TPS status.

[Brent Buchanan]

But you have to make an effort to change. And I can't help you if you can't help yourself.

[Aaron McIntyre]

Mullen, apparently sensing how much he'd bombed the NGA events, later posted on social media, quote, no amnesty for illegal aliens ever. We are a nation of laws. If you are illegally present in the United States of America, you will be detained and deported, period. Later yet in the weekend, Andrew Colvitt, executive producer of the Charlie Kirk show, said he spoke to A source at DHS, saying a new report will show over the past 12 calendar months, over 1.4 million forced deportations have been carried out. And over the past seven days, the daily average deportation numbers hit a new record high. On the topic of Iran, President Trump says US Forces were about to strike Iran's power plants and other infrastructure. But

[Steve Dace]

uae by Qatar and by Iran, we were all set to go just about at this time right now. And it would have been a massive attack. We're all set to go. But when the allies ask to call it off. You got to sort of say, well, let's see. And the reason they asked is I think there's a deal. There's a deal on hormones and then there will be a deal on the nuclear or you might call it the denuclearization.

[Aaron McIntyre]

The WNBA is once again in the headlines, but as usual, not for basketball. All stemming from Indiana Fever player Sophie Cunningham coming out in support of protections for girls sports. One of the co owners of the Seattle WNBA franchise was suspended for berating young women supporters of Cunningham during that team's match with the Indiana Fever. Cunningham's coach Stephanie White was asked whether she thinks dudes should compete in sports against young women.

[Brent Buchanan]

Yeah, I mean, I don't know that

[Steve Dace]

I would say that I'm educated enough

[Todd Erzin]

from a scientific standpoint.

[Aaron McIntyre]

Learning Chinese today, Today's phrase is what does the W and WNBA stand for? Not to be outdone, the Indiana FE traveled to the People's Republic of Minneapolis stand where they were met with even more supporters for Sophie Cunningham. The coach of the Minnesota WNBA team. Cheryl Reeves says those supporters of Cunningham are not being peaceful.

[Steve Dace]

I don't think these demonstrators are not being peaceful. Not that I've seen and I haven't seen all of it. The narrative that I think that is problematic is to suggest that, number one,

[Todd Erzin]

that transgender athletes are the biggest problem in women's sports.

[Aaron McIntyre]

Learning French today, today's Phra what does the W and WNBA stand for? Furthermore, Reeves showed up to the game against the Fever wearing a Trans kids belong T shirt and ESPN absolutely glazed the Minnesota coach.

[Steve Dace]

Just in the aftermath of Sophie Cunningham's recent comments, we actually saw Cheryl and Sophie speaking at center court pre game. And yesterday, Sheryl Reeves spent a lot of time talking at length with the media about this topic. I would encourage anyone to go and listen to Sheryl Reeves comments. Incredibly thoughtful.

[Aaron McIntyre]

Learning Arabic today. Today's phrase is what does the WNWNBA stand for? And finally, the US Is stepping in to help prop up the Japanese yen. The power of that currency has been declining for some time. President Trump explains why the US is helping the land of the rising sun.

[Steve Dace]

We have a good relationship with Japan. We're very strong, very, very strong financially. And they are, you know, they have a weakening Y wanted a little bit of help and we're always there for Japan. Japan's been very good to us with the exception, of course, of Pearl harbor.

[Aaron McIntyre]

And that's what happened while we were away.

[Steve Dace]

It's Monday, right? Crappiest day of the week. Right?

[Todd Erzin]

Okay, okay.

[Steve Dace]

It's Time to have a pretty crappy conversation. Next on the Steve Day Show. And greetings. I don't know if it's a happy Monday or not. Monday. It is.

[Todd Erzin]

Nevertheless, I believe you said crappy two seconds ago.

[Steve Dace]

Indeed I did. I'm Steve Dase. That smart aleck is Todd Erzin. You've already heard from Aaron McIntyre. We're brought to you by our friends over at Patriot Mobile and do what our family did over six years ago, make the switch from a communist company to Patriot Mobile. And you'll never look back because we haven't either. We've never looked back. Fantastic US Based customer service team. Fantastic products that US Based customer service team. By the way, we were out in Alaska, you know, basically to the tip of the hemisphere. Never dawned on me that, you know, might not be the greatest phone network I have that make the switch out there. And a lot of times when you make these kind of trips, somebody call ahead of time, say, hey, I'm going out of my, out of my market. How's this look? Well, turns out the network I was on sucked in Alaska even over the weekend. They were able to make the switch for me. Right. Fantastic customer service team. They're always available to you. They'll make the switch as easy and seamless as possible, customize it to you and your family's needs. Just go to patriotmobile.com steve. Use the promo code, Steve. You'll get started with a free month of [e-mail] Steve. That's patriotmobile.com Steve. Use the code, Steve for that free month of service to get you started. All right, at the bottom of the hour here, part two of the crappy conversation we need to have today. Because if you don't like what I'm about to share with you, we're just gonna, we're just gonna go cold hard data. And so our old buddy Trump 2024 pollster Brent Buchanan is going to be back with us from Signal Polling as we are now heading full, full on into the midterms because 42 days from today, 42 days from today, Pennsylvania will begin the early voting in the United states for the 2026 midterm cycle. 42 days from today. Next hour, it'll be your turn to ask me anything. But this hour, you know, I'm your dad and sometimes dad's got to have tough conversations with the, with the family, right? This is going to be, this is going to be one of those times. I want to share some data with you because again, I'm, I'm a data guy. I'm a truth guy. Borrowing rates in the United States are at their highest since June of 2007. Serious delinquencies with credit card debt at the highest since 2010. What happened to the party in power in 2008, the last time we were at borrowing rates this high? What happened to the party in power in the White House in the 08 election? You got Obama, you got Barack Obama's blitzkrieg. And then Barack Obama was in office the last time we had serious delinquencies with credit card debt that were this frequent. What happened to him in that midterm? He got blitzkriegged by the Tea Party. If you're trying to get a home right now, I sent a text to my oldest daughter and her husband over the weekend and I said, looking at what's going on with the, the bond markets and other markets after the Fed decide, deciding to not raise interest rates. So virtually every other, every other, every other entity determines what your interest rates are. Just decided put on the Thanos gauntlet and said, fine, we'll do this ourselves. And I texted my, my oldest daughter and her husband over the weekend who just, just sold their old home to get into the next home where their growing family now will be able to stay for quite a while in a home of that size. And I said, hey, congratulations, you got in, man. Right at the deadline. Because we, we, we could be looking at the current trajectory, we could be looking at mortgage rates of 8% here in the fourth quarter of this year. So it's time to have a very, I think, crappy conversation. And in many respects this will be like, you know, Mondays were often the best or worst days when I did sports talk radio for a living. Because if the home team was doing well and winning, those were tons of fun shows to get on and do, right? Sure, the phones lit up. People couldn't wait to talk about all the great plays, how excited they were, right? And of course, you end up just re. It's funny how when you go through a season with your favorite team, with every win, every. You recalibrate the end of the season outcome, existential expectations you have. And then with every lose, with every loss, it feels like you'll never win another game the rest of the year kind of a thing, right? And then there were the Mondays after the home team lost. Not nearly as fun. Oh, the phone still lit up. The phone still lit up. But that's when your producers got one hand on the, on the phone mechanism to screen the calls and the other hand on the dump button for fear of what the frustrated and angry callers are going to say once they get on.

[Todd Erzin]

Sports bro is a fickle beast.

[Steve Dace]

Indeed. Indeed. So this is going to be one of those Monday after the, after the weekend conversations when the, the team we're all rooting for here is not doing well. And imagine I am not here to black pill. I'm beyond frustrated with black pillars. We cannot. I just had the last of my kids leave the home yesterday. I watched outside the front window as he, as he carried his stuff down the driveway and drove away every last second. I can't afford a black pill. I mean, if anything, I'm actually thinking more short term, minute by minute now than ever before. I just turned 53 years old. My last kid just left the house. I don't know how you feel, maybe it's different for you still because you got still kids at home regularly. But now, day one of being an empty nester. Just coming off my 53rd birthday, man, I, I can just feel that clock in my head ticking louder than ever before. Time is short. Time is short to make a difference. Time is short to leave a legacy. Time is short to secure the next generation. So I am the opposite of black pilled. If anything, you're going to have to probably deter me from not thinking more about like immediate gratification strategy than ever before.

[Todd Erzin]

Amen.

[Steve Dace]

Because I'm feeling like I'm getting to the end of the race here. I've at least started the third act here, the final, final leg of the relay here. No, I'm, I'm the guy in his, in his man cave and have been this guy before too many times. I'm the guy in his man cave with all the decorations of his favorite team painted in the colors of his favorite team. Watching his favorite team on the big screen just run into loaded boxes, down after down after down for like no yards, screaming from his ma, from his, from his lazy boy. Try a play action pass. Why we just keep running into loaded boxes over and over again, stubbornly. I want to win. So it is very important to me that you take everything I'm about to say in that context because that's, that's my intended context for what I'm going to say next. I want to win. Furthermore, this is way more important than sitting in a man cave on a lazy Saturday watching the favorite team. This is, we're literally playing a game called life right here. Culture, civilization, stuff that actually matters. Stuff where there's not really a grade it's just a pass fail exercise. You won or you lost. Your kids and grandkids rise up and call you blessed for what you left behind or they curse you for what you left behind. So with that in mind, we had another situation over the weekend. I'm gonna do it. This is the big one. Alice Gird your loins even sent out a mass hunker down and get out of the Middle east message to Americans all throughout the region. Well, we think we have a deal. So we're just going to call the whole thing off now. I don't know how many times this is. One estimate I saw. I stopped counting myself because the whole thing just depresses me. One estimate I saw this is the fifth time this has happened. But another estimate I saw said it's the 9th. I don't know and honestly, I don't care. And when Todd, weeks, weeks ago, maybe even months ago, first made this comparison, I internally bristled. But if I had come on the air the first Monday of April, just a couple of weeks into this with Iran, if I had come on the air the first Monday in April and said, we're all going to still be doing this the first Monday in August, fourth months later, four months later, and have no idea how or when we could possibly end this or even win it, everyone in their right mind would have called me a black pillar. Right, right. A panic in. Correct.

[Todd Erzin]

Sure.

[Steve Dace]

But yet, is that not now where we are?

[Todd Erzin]

Right.

[Steve Dace]

That's exactly where we are here on the first Monday in August. So when you first made this comparison months ago, I bristled at this. But now, move over. Make room for the bandwagon. On the bandwagon for not quite as chubby old me. 15 days to stop Iran. 30 days to slow the spread of Iran. Who moves. Here's the number we really need to be concerned about. 42 days. 42 days until early voting begins in Pennsylvania. And then more f. More states will follow suit in the immediate days thereafter. 42 days. That's the real number that matters here. Everything that is transpiring right now is why I was against this from the outset. And again, I'm fine if we were able to kill every last member of the Iranian high command, in fact, I would pop a top. But we were never going to be able. This is a fighting force over a hundred thousand strong. They're absolute zealots. We were never just going to kidnap Maduro in the middle of the night here and have this be over with. We simply cannot afford and don't have the resolve because we cannot afford more Middle east hijinks and adventurism. We were always going to get to the point, and how many times have I said this throughout this entire ordeal? We've come to the point now where we don't have the resolve to do what it takes. And they know this and their resolve is stronger than ours. The president should frankly listen to his own advice. He once famously said, Iran has never won a war but never lost an negotiation. You cannot negotiate with demoniacs. Well, Steve, why were you in favor of the previous deal? Because I, I thought frankly we were getting out. I thought we were just going to claim some kind of paper win, cut our losses and get the hell out of there. I, I didn't think that we really thought we could negotiate with them. Just like I never really thought we were bringing democracy to the Middle east under Bush. I, I, I really thought we were just saying that as a bunch of BS and we were just going to kind of establish a permanent satellite state of America in the Middle east and moving forward in the future. Every time you guys mess with us, you'll just get up the next morning and your shrines a parking lot. How you like them apples? Leave us alone. No, it turned out we really were trying to bring democracy to the Middle East. I never really thought for a second we really thought we could negotiate with them. I just thought we were just getting the hell out. Get whatever you want on paper. See what they do. Get the hell out. And then if they act up, we just do Operation Midnight Hammer a couple more times or however many times it takes. But we have to come home and win the war at home. Now it, it appears we actually think we could really negotiate with these people. I, it blows my mind precisely because they're the demoniacs. We think we can negotiate with them. They will keep no deal. So why are we doing this again? I don't know. Well, Steve, we have to stop Iran from getting a nuclear weapon. Iran has wanted a nuclear weapon the entire time. They will want one the entire time. There is only one way to stop Iran from getting a nuclear weapon. That is to end the current Iranian regime. I see Mike Pence again on Fox News. Single tier, both eyes. We have to let the military do its job in the most forlorn of unibrows. What does that look like? Do you guys know, I keep seeing this talking point. Can someone come to me and articulate what does it look like to make the let the military. You notice that there's never a follow up question either from Boomer, from Boomercon News. There's never. What does that look like? Mr. Vice President, can you lay that out for us? You once in the chair next to the guy that's the commander of the chief of the armed forces. What does finish the job look like? Are we talking about a regime change? What would it take to put such forces on the ground to make that happen? Do we know who would even run the country or rule after the fact? You guys ever see, I'm asking, do you guys ever see these follow up questions ever get asked?

[Todd Erzin]

Not to my knowledge.

[Steve Dace]

Aaron, do you?

[Aaron McIntyre]

No.

[Steve Dace]

Kind of think like they're important questions, right?

[Todd Erzin]

Yes.

[Steve Dace]

It's a nation of 90 million people. You haven't, you have a, you have a whole different civilization in the north called the Kurds. Want their own country. It's still one of the, it's still the largest Shia Muslim country in the world. There's not the same Shia Muslim population There was there 30 years ago, but it is still significant. Then you have a bunch of younger, more secular minded, irreligious types. They're the ones that were protesting this winter in the streets. You have two standing armies. One of them has, before we started this war, over 300,000. That's the Iranian army. The other one, the real zealots, have over a hundred thousand or at least had. We've killed over 90 of their leaders. Which probably indicates then that the Iranian are. The irgc, is probably now running the country now, which means now we actually are dealing with an even more zealot outfit than the Ayatollahs. Imagine Ayatollahs, but like with no political considerations at all. None. And that's who the IRGC is. These are just flat out death merchants. And it's your death that they have in mind. So then what comes after? Does anybody know? Can the grandson of the Shah, who's lived in exile and maybe luxury for decades, can he literally come back and subdue this entire nation? Then okay, what force is loyal to him to subdue it? Oh, we're talking about our forces. No, no, we're not. And we all know this, which is how we were always going to end up here because they know it too. You don't subdue a nation of 90 million people because you're, because you're ruthless. They know it too, and they always knew it. We're not playing ourselves, we're playing them. The team you're playing gets a say in the outcome of the game as well, do they not? Yes, and you may be bigger, taller, faster, stronger, but they still get a say in the game. They. They get to play, too, right? They get the ball, too. They get to see if they can score, too. That's how it works, right?

[Todd Erzin]

Yes.

[Steve Dace]

Yeah. This ain't intramurals, brother. What are we doing here? We cannot afford this. We never could. We couldn't afford this going in. We couldn't afford it during. We certainly can't afford any more of it. I detest Iran. The regime detest it. I'd be fine if they were all dead. I've even prayed for it. But right now, I'm way more threatened, and so is every one of you within the sound of my voice. You are way more threatened by the head coach of a WNBA team than you are Iran. Because what she represents, that level of demonic retardation and an anger to spread it everywhere, that tumor is hovering over our entire culture like a sword of Damocles. And if the fact that these folks, that these lesbos, were handed a trillion dollar golden goose and their response is to basically go guns up and flip it off, if that doesn't once and for all indicate who and what we're up against here at home, here at home, here at home, here at home, here at home, I don't know what will I. I just don't know. At this point, we're at that scene in the Patriot, or Mel Gibson's character says, why would I trade one tyrant a thousand. A thousand miles away for a thousand tyrants one mile away? That's where we are. Why would I trade one terrorist regime thousands of miles away for thousands of domestic terrorists right here on my shores? We have to win the war at home. We have to win the war here. We have to. And let me say this on a personal level. The list of people who have taken on more of the anti Semitism threatening to infest the Right more than me is a short list. The list of non Jews who have done it even shorter. And I'm on it. You think you've got an anti Semitism problem now? Oh, my word. Oh, my word. How about what? We lost every swing district in the midterms because we exhausted whatever political capital we had for coming out of 2024 on fighting alongside Israel in Iran for. For an unachievable objective and a mission that no one really ever understood how was going to be successful in the first place. Holy cow. Do me a favor. Do me a favor. Look at all of your sons under the age of 25 and just look at him and say, nice knowing you. Tell Nick Fuentes I said hi. Holy cow. Holy cow. You think it's tough now? You think they're, you think this, you think this is spreading like wildfire now? Oh my word.

[Todd Erzin]

Oh gosh.

[Steve Dace]

When this time next year. It's just. Who's getting impeached today? Hex Seth Rubio, Trump. Who's on. Who's getting subpoenaed today? Who's getting investigated today? Oh my word. Your young men are looking at 9% interest rates on homes because we're up against Democrats. They're fine tanking the country if they think it'll grant them power. Their worldview is closer to the one we're fighting in Iran than the one we're trying to defend here at home. Hey, sorry, son, sorry. I don't really have any non blue haired, non, you know, non binary beings for you to marry. Can't afford a house and we just gave your job to yet another Indian. But what do you think about the fact that Israel is more safe and secure from Iran? If you don't think that show is not going to be teed up, oh my word. You're going to wish you just had Candace, Owens and Tucker. Everybody with a, everybody with an ounce of ambition and no conviction is going to line up to do those shows. It's going to seem like it's the only show they get done. That's all the algorithm is going to reward. We can't afford this. We never could. We couldn't afford it while we were doing it. We can't afford to do it anymore. Now we're voting in 42 days. 42 days from today. Is Pennsylvania somewhat important state? Yes, kinda might be the most politically important state in the country at the

[Todd Erzin]

moment, frankly, not really a backwater.

[Steve Dace]

That's where it all begins. 42 days. Come home and win the war at home. Gentlemen, your thoughts?

[Todd Erzin]

Yeah. You gave your own version of Isaiah 1:5 there. He said, I don't know what else it's going to take. Where would you yet be struck and talking about me having a covidy feeling about Iran and this coming up right within the context of the Fauci diaries and that hearing and pleading the fifth. And yet this is the, this is the problem with transgenderism as well. We continue to be so comfortable and we don't have any, we didn't have a Covid awakening during COVID and now we don't have the kind of awakenings we need at anywhere else. We just always want things to go away and Steve has been right about a lot of very important things in his career, but he's never been more right than what he just told you right now. The hour is very, very short, and they have a team that puts its best out on the field. We have a team that is better, but our locker room is soft. And sooner or later you get the upstate where they're doing the miracle of ice to us.

[Aaron McIntyre]

Yeah, I think there's a tendency. There's the famous pink locker rooms, visitors locker rooms at Kinnick Stadium, to continue your analogy. You know, it's done for psychological kind of getting the edge, putting people at ease, putting other opposing teams at ease. You know a little bit about this, Steve. You know, Michigan's been upset a couple of times in Kinnick Stadium, except with our teams. We kind of like the pink locker rooms. We kind of like being put at ease. And that's not what's coming for us if we just let things go here. I, I just. As frustrating as it is, as amazing as our military has proven once again to be, I just don't think there's a solution here that's going to end up with the geopolitical outcome that we want. And I think that's been pretty apparent for at least three months now.

[Steve Dace]

Don't believe me, though. Let's look at some numbers, shall we? We'll do that with Brent Buchanan here next. The steve day. I did something the other day I thought I'd never do. I came in with my Kexi box of cookies, and before I even selected one for myself, what did I do?

[Todd Erzin]

Todd, you gave me. Because you know how much my wife and my girls like them.

[Steve Dace]

The first shot I did, I did. That's a big step for me. I think America needs to understand that. Okay.

[Todd Erzin]

I think they have a new favorite, too.

[Steve Dace]

Which one? Which one is it?

[Todd Erzin]

The lemon one.

[Steve Dace]

Oh, is that good?

[Todd Erzin]

That was. And I like.

[Steve Dace]

Sorry, I got too mad last segment. So I gotta. I'm trying to get my voice back. Go ahead.

[Todd Erzin]

I'm not a giant. Giant chocolate guy. I'm not against chocolate, but like, lemon. You've got me. Yeah, that lemon cookie was. Yo.

[Steve Dace]

The Texas sheet cake might be my favorite in the standard box because it's just like, you know, chocolate cake meets a chocolate chip cookie, basically. So, anyway, get your Kexi cookie box right now. The Kexi, the family bakery from right there in Fort Worth. These are all homemade. Tastes like homemade. They're phenomenal. All right, Order yours [e-mail] k e k s I baked right there in Texas, shipped all over America. Kexi.com is where you want to go. That's Kexi.com K E K S I for Kexi.com. all right, 42 days from today, if my math is right, early voting begins in Pennsylvania and then several other states, including some big states. Follow their or soon thereafter. Where are we? What's the what. What do the numbers actually show? It's Monday. We're far enough out now because this is this the other, other thing, too. When you come from the sports talk world like I used to, there's, there's junctures of the season when the fan base is, is. Is willing to have a real blunt heart to heart. Right? They don't want to do that once the game is. The season is underway. But before the season, you can get, like, really blunt because there's some hope still that if you address this stuff now, there's time to fix it. Right. Once the seasons begin, you're like, hold me, okay, and tell me we're gonna win every game when I know better. Right? So we're still. It's the end. It's getting to the end of the preseason, all right? But there's still time to fix some things rather than just accept our fate. So let's bring on our good buddy Brent Buchanan, here from Signal Publisher Polling. He was one of the president's pollsters in 2024. He's a big Auburn guy. He knows a thing or two about crushing sports defeats. So he gets my analogies. Brent, it's good to see you again, brother. How are you? I think he's frozen on us. Is he frozen on us?

[Aaron McIntyre]

Aaron must be efforting to fix this.

[Steve Dace]

If that's not an omen. If that is not an omen, home. Oh, my.

[Todd Erzin]

What are you saying about Mondays?

[Steve Dace]

That better not be an omen. He's frozen. Like. Yeah, we know.

[Todd Erzin]

Worked hard to get him on the show here yesterday. We did.

[Steve Dace]

I mean, like, there's a lot of things that appear to be frozen right now.

[Todd Erzin]

What do you think he's going to say? Do you know? Do you have any guess?

[Steve Dace]

I think he's going to say it's bad, but not as bad as maybe you fear. And it is still fixable.

[Todd Erzin]

All right, well, let's hear it.

[Steve Dace]

Which is. I think he's unfrozen. Is he there? Brett, we got you this time. Yeah.

[Brent Buchanan]

I was saying before my Internet cut out that being an Auburn fan is a character building exercise.

[Steve Dace]

Yes, yes.

[Brent Buchanan]

And it's one of the main reasons I've stuck with them.

[Steve Dace]

It's, I think Paul wrote about it in one of his epistles. It's key to the sanctification process is to be an Auburn fan. I mean, you guys are either winning national championships or going three and nine. That's kind of how Auburn rolls down there, right? It's steady as she goes for a couple decades. Yes, indeed. All right, so I'm not a black pillar. I just watched my last one leave the house last night. I watched him drive all the way down the street. If anything, I am more focused on the immediate future than I ever was before. With that perspective. I'm an empty nester now. All right? But I am concerned. And the analogy I gave the audience as I think this is now the fifth time, the ninth time I've seen both estimates, we were really going to do it this time. Well, we got a deal in place or we're not. Okay. It's kind of feeling like 15 days to flatten Iran, you know, 30 days to slow the spread of Iran and her moves, brother. The number I'm looking at is 42 days until they start voting in Pennsylvania. OK, we, we have got to start focusing here at home and getting some stuff fixed here at home. Am I wrong? What do they, what's the data say?

[Brent Buchanan]

Well, I mean, thank goodness that the Democratic Party is a disaster because if they had their crap together, we'd actually be in trouble. And we'd be in trouble today, not in 42 days. They do lead on the generic ballot currently, but they almost always lead on the generic ballot in a midterm, even the midterms that we win. But we're getting to that point now where they're building enough of a margin that you could say, I can see how we lose the House. However, a national survey means less in determining individual congressional seats than it ever has because of the redistricting that was already done in 2021 and has been redone multiple times in multiple states, both blue states and red states. And so the most important thing is to go look at these individual congressional surveys even more than looking at the national generic ballot, because the national generic ballot includes states like Alabama and West Virginia, which contribute nothing to the congressional margin. And same with Washington state and all the blue voters in California. When you look at the individual congressional seats right now, it's not as bad as you're seeing in the national environment. And I think that's the number one story that's not being told right now. If you only gave me our national poll from this last go around and said you have to determine what's going to happen with congressional control on this, I'd probably tell you the Democrats are going to win. But when I go look under the hood at the individual races that we're involved with and that we have access to, the polling in it is more encouraging for Republicans, but it's mostly built on the fact that the Democrats are just absolute disasters.

[Steve Dace]

So this is an important distinction. Let me help our audience just to further understand and even simplify it all the more. There's just not as many places where both sides can win anymore.

[Todd Erzin]

All right.

[Steve Dace]

And you know, this is the most polarized electoral House map maybe in American history right now. And so the idea that this is going to be like a 40 seat loss like Trump suffered in 2018 or like a 9 seat swing of Senate seats like Obama suffered in 2014, I think it was those margins just really aren't possible right now because of how polarized the country is. And now the district, the redistricted maps, they essentially symbolize that. Now, now I would the only counter I have to that Brent, that's my concern is they're not like us. Right. And especially without Mansion and the Arizona gal whose name escapes me. Cinema. Thank you. Without them now, they're just all Marxists now. And if they have a one or two seat majority, they're going to behave like if we had a 30 seat majority. Like they're, there's no Thom Tillises or John Cornyn's or to negotiate, you know, with over there. But that notwithstanding, we my estimate is maybe 15. What do you think the number is of of truly reversible House seats right now?

[Brent Buchanan]

I think If Democrats won 15 seats, that'd be a really big night for them. And if the Iran wars or the Iran not war, but war is still going on a month and a half from now, I think that's a very likely scenario. And it's not like people are that worried about international affairs. The problem is they're not that worried about Iran as a threat. And so they just see this as this guy told us he was going to end wars and now he's starting this war that it doesn't seem like we're winning and my gas got really expensive in the process. It really is that basic of a thought process which also means that if it were to go away, it would be just as quickly out of the minds of voters and not a key factor in driving the midterm political environment.

[Steve Dace]

All right. That's another key thing to follow up on there because you might have just given us a bit of a window into the soul of the President a little bit. All right, So, I mean, you worked for him in the last election as one of his pollsters, so he's probably the most polling conscience conscious and quoting president we've ever had. He's lived his entire life in media and public relations and PR and that entire world. Do you think that he is essentially banking on the short term attention span that you just mentioned? And if so, what. What does that entail though, right? I mean, you gotta have, you have to have some time for things to roll back. Right. We can't just announce the day before we're really pulling out of Iran this time. Right. So there's some deadline here. Right. So my guess is he probably thinks that that deadline's closer to election day than maybe I'm. I do, but do you see where I'm getting at here? Is that essentially the game that we. That you think he is probably playing, It's.

[Brent Buchanan]

It's gotta be Labor Day, and it has to be Labor Day because of when early voting starts in key states like Georgia and Pennsylvania that have really early early voting. And it's got to be enough time to kind of flush it out of the system with some new issue. What worries me a bit is that he has publicly said that I don't care about the midterm elections. So while he's polling conscious, if he actually does not care about the midterm elections, then he's not making decisions based on how is this going to.

[Steve Dace]

How much of that was just trying to send a signal to the Iranian command, You can't outweigh me here. You see what I'm trying. How much of it do you think was just that level? See, we don't really know.

[Brent Buchanan]

I don't claim to be an international affairs expert.

[Steve Dace]

Yeah. So, okay. I always get concerned when our core argument. When we're the party in power. Right. So when you do this for 20 years now, full time, as I have, you see patterns.

[Todd Erzin]

Right.

[Steve Dace]

You see some things. Doesn't mean that history always repeats itself. It does usually, though, rhyme. All right, so whenever I can't think of an election that we won, Brett, when we were in power and our entire argument was how crazy and bad the other guys were. That works great when you're not in power. Right.

[Brent Buchanan]

But we've never had this Democratic vote.

[Steve Dace]

That's true. That is true. But it always feels like voters always punish us so that just. You're Selling me that because you didn't keep your promises or did stuff you told me you weren't going to do. So we get punished for that every time we try that argument. And that appears to be our argument right now.

[Brent Buchanan]

It is our only argument we have right now unless we can get gas under 3 bucks a gallon and grocery prices actually reversed and not just stalled. All of the things which are incredibly challenging to do in a macroeconomic environment that has been so screwed up for so long and all the fixes require pain. And I think that's part of why Donald Trump is doing what he's doing. And I think there's potentially some truth to what he's saying is I don't care about the midterms because he knows that really hard decisions have to be made economically to actually get us back on track. There is no easy. When we chose not to pop the financial bubble in 2008, we chose where we are today as a country and in our economy. But going back to the how are we going to run against the Democrats? I remind folks that they are literally electing socialists, self avowed in their name, socialists in key seats. Like I think we're going to see in Michigan tomorrow. Where you're going to have in the Michigan.

[Steve Dace]

Oh, mom. Donnie's mom, Donnie Jr. Is going to be the Michigan Democratic Senate nominee.

[Brent Buchanan]

Yeah, he will. And they're going to do it in two congressional seats too. And that's just one state. 60 plus percent of Democrats consider themselves progressive and most of those very progressive. And when you look at who is saying so they're socialists now in surveys or that socialism is a better solution than capitalism. It's all the same voters and the middle hates that. The reason we have to run on those guys suck worse is because they do suck worse. And we don't have a whole lot of positive things to point to. The one big beautiful bill was great policy, but people don't understand it and I think it's actually a waste of money to try to explain it to them.

[Steve Dace]

Hmm. Take me back. Final thing, let's do this. Let's go back to 22. All the trend lines look like a red wave. I was even talking about like a red wedding. Okay. We were, we were all convinced in my industry that when Biden went out there with the red backdrop and did the shake your fist and we're all Nazis, that that was essentially a death knell. And then they pulled out a stunning draw on election night. And frankly, if you take a couple of states like Florida and Iowa off the table.

[Todd Erzin]

They won.

[Steve Dace]

You know, we have this, we have this slight House majority because of the Florida redistricting round 100 DeSantis and then Lee Zeldin's over performance in New York. Otherwise we wouldn't have this House majority we currently have coming out of that election. So is, are there any lessons to be learned there? They, they, they used it successfully. Hey, the other guys are even worse. They're literal Nazis and fascists. They, they, they used it successfully in 22 do. But were they able to just do that because they have institutions we don't have. They have media to push a message. Are the circumstances equivalent or not? What are your thoughts?

[Brent Buchanan]

They are on the inverse. And we have to have the inverse of what Republicans did on the Democrat side. And what Republicans did was run all kinds of messaging that the economy sucks, inflation is crushing us, and Joe Biden caused it in Nevad. We didn't say anything that we're going to do differently. We just simply stated a problem that people already were well aware of and personally experiencing. We also ran tons of crime ads in our federal races when we should have been running the crime ads in our state races and the inflation ads in our federal races and when we got that mixed up too. So we need the Democrats to make the same unforced errors or similar unforced errors when they talk about the economy. And they either offer a socialist vision of it or they don't offer a vision for what they're going to do differently. So we have to have both. We have to have the these people are radical and suck worse on our side like they did in 22. But we also need the Democrats to fumble the messaging and sealing the deal on their side.

[Steve Dace]

Great stuff, Brent. Thank you so much for clearing your schedule. To make this happen at the last minute was vital to the conversation. Brother, good to see you again.

[Brent Buchanan]

Likewise.

[Steve Dace]

All right, take care. I will make sure you guys had plenty of time to react to that. So go.

[Todd Erzin]

Well, you were exactly right when I asked you what you thought he was gonna say. It's. It's bad, but it's not quite as bad. And again, he goes under.

[Steve Dace]

But he gave you a deadline of when it could start getting that bad, which is Labor Day.

[Todd Erzin]

Yeah.

[Steve Dace]

Which is what we said before.

[Todd Erzin]

And he goes under the top line results like you always do to give you why that's happening, why the general data does not match what's going on under the hood locally, at least for now. Again, so that like with everything else, there's there's still time to act on every single front. But the clock ticks, ticks, ticks. What are you prepared to do?

[Aaron McIntyre]

You know, the brutal irony, at least from my perspective, is for all of the years, decades, railing about the swamp. The swamp, the swamp. What is a swamp? It's just a, a large area of stagnant water. Just disgusting. This entire country kind of feels stagnant right now on a lot of different fronts. Malaise, if you will. Just a lot of stagnancy. And it's hard to see in the short term how to wake people up from that. A complacency. Whether it's complacency driven, I don't know. But I'm not sure how to wake people up from that. What I am sure though is that waking people up from that stagnancy probably doesn't involve prolonged, never ending conflicts over, you know, 3,000, 4,000 miles away. That's probably one way to not wake people up. So I don't know, man. Saying that a lot these days, I don't know.

[Steve Dace]

Forty minutes ago, president just came out again. Iranian regime duplicitous.

[Todd Erzin]

Just you can see how people, to Aaron's point, how people. The in and out burger shooting that we didn't even talk about.

[Steve Dace]

Yeah, it's a.

[Todd Erzin]

People used to lament. Gosh, the shooting, the shooting. They just like, there's a hero, he shot back. Anybody else? Like, yes, you, everybody. We must fire back.

[Steve Dace]

If we didn't do this during COVID I probably wouldn't be as concerned. But since there's a precedent that, yes, the President can get lost in the weeds of negotiating against himself at moments like this, I'm concerned. Time to ask me anything next. All right, back here with hour two, live and on demand here on Blaze. Tv, radio and podcast. I'm Steve Dase, who blew a fuse last hour. You can probably hear I'm down. I think I'm down a chord. You're Todders and you're Aaron McIntyre. Let us know what you think about what we think via the stevedace.com inbox by emailing the show steve dace.com that's D E A C E like us on Facebook, me, we and Gab. You can follow me at stevedayshow, NX, Instagram and TikTok. Subscribe to our Rumble channel at Steve Dace and then make sure you subscribe if you're a podcast listener by hitting the subscribe button or just hit the follow button if you're on Apple. That way you know for sure that every time we do a new episode, it's for sure right there in your podcast feed. And then please be one of the tens of thousands to leave us a five star review. We appreciate each and every one of those as we always appreciate it as well when we have a brand new partner here on the program. If you are looking for screen time that your whole family can agree on as a new school year begins, World Watch is a great way to to help your teens stay informed, but without being overwhelmed. It's created specifically for teens. World Watch delivers fact based news from a Christian worldview in just 10 minutes a day. And each episode covers current events, global headlines, human interest stories, fun explainers that help kids understand what's happening in the world. All done with clarity, context and hope. So instead of clickbait sensationalism that's so common in our world today, World Watch gives them a trusted source for current events that sparks curiosity, encourages meaningful conversations and helps teens to develop discernment from a biblical worldview. So whether you're discipling your children at home, teaching in a classroom or gathering around the dinner table, World Watch helps families engage in the news through again, the lens of faith in the biblical worldview. So the best part, you can see the difference for yourself for free with a 30 day trial right now. Get a 30 day trial right now at Worldwatch News slash Steve. Use the promo code Steve to start your free trial today. That's Worldwatch News Steve, promo code Steve. Promo code Steve at Worldwatch News Steve promo code Steve. And you might notice if you're watching on the screen there an interesting name as one of the hosts at World Watch, it's Brian Basham who is the husband of our beloved sister Megan Basham.

[Todd Erzin]

Awesome.

[Steve Dace]

So he's involved in this project as well. Worldwatch News Steve, promo code Steve to get started with a 30 day free trial. All right, are we ready for some Ask Me anything?

[Todd Erzin]

Yeah, I'm not sure after the first hour the, the wisest course of action is to schedule X. Ask me anything. But you did it. So here we are.

[Steve Dace]

Here we go.

[Todd Erzin]

Most of the Jew hate screened out.

[Steve Dace]

Thank you for that. I appreciate it. Because especially now while it, it's, it might be harder next year if we don't change some things. So let's get to it. Aaron, fire away.

[Aaron McIntyre]

Let's start with the Dennis who says, did Joe Biden write his diary on government servers asking for a friend?

[Steve Dace]

Nice. I have nothing to add to add to that. I think that pretty much. Well, the Answer is no. Joe Biden wasn't writing anything on his own and cannot write anything on his own. Can I ask you guys something?

[Todd Erzin]

Look at that picture of him. He looks like a. Like, he's like a 22 year old just ready to take on the world in this next.

[Steve Dace]

That's not the Joe Biden that we saw as president. That looks more like when he was vice president. Thoughts on the left platforming Hunter Biden, like, everywhere. Thoughts on the retconning of Hunter Biden and who the audience, the intended audience is for this.

[Todd Erzin]

Real knows real. I think it has everything to do with what Brent Buchanan was saying about. Thank goodness. The left just absolutely sucks right now. But they are true believers in a very cultish sense. And they just are at the point where they're beyond apologizing for who they want to put out there. I mean, right now there's a literal communist, a failed restaurant worker running for governor in Wisconsin. I mean, they don't, they don't filter.

[Steve Dace]

Aaron, you have a thought on the retconning of Hunter Biden and why there's. The left thinks there's an audience for this, for this.

[Aaron McIntyre]

I don't think this is necessarily intentional. I think this is just Hunter Biden being Hunter Biden

[Todd Erzin]

now.

[Aaron McIntyre]

I don't. I think people want to talk to him because it's like. It's kind of like interviewing somebody in a padded room, except it's out and, you know, out in the open. But I don't think there's any intention here at all.

[Steve Dace]

Okay.

[Todd Erzin]

All right.

[Aaron McIntyre]

If anything, I think this is Hunter Biden seeing. Hey, podcast bro world, I gotcha. I can be like ya.

[Todd Erzin]

There's no scheme, no plan. And look at what they got. The old Joe Biden that they did get in beyond expectation. The red wave didn't happen. I mean, they have pulled off things and they plan on doing it again. They're not gonna just suddenly go back and moderate. They might not win now, but soon they're like, oh, and when we, as you always say, and when we get power, even by one single vote, we will make the blood run in the streets.

[Steve Dace]

Indeed. All right, next question.

[Aaron McIntyre]

Next we go to David, who says, maybe I take you too literally. If Trump is king and has the power to bypass the primary process and pick his successor, why does he not have the power to force the GOP senators to pass the SAVE act or fill in the blank other items on his agenda?

[Steve Dace]

You've not taken me too literally at all, brother. And what you've articulated There's a list of questions I have when I get to eternity, things that I am, I'm just going to need the Lord to do me a solid. I will not be able to achieve eternal rest without knowing a few things. One of the questions on that list is why during the entire decade he was king of the political party, Trump endorsed, forget just, you know, even not getting involved, but flat out endorsed and supported many of these rhinos that have routinely betrayed him, are betraying him now and next year, if they're in the minority and they are not threatened by him because his kingship's about to end, will betray him even more heavily in the future. I, I, I don't know the answer. I've had these conversations with several friends and colleagues over the years. I mean, how many times have the three of us had these conversations on and off the air? I, I, I don't know. You know, I'm not in that inner circle, you know, so I, I don't know the answer. You know, at first I thought maybe during the first go around it was because he thought, perhaps I can cut deals with these guys by giving them, you know, endorsements or giving Mitch McConnell's wife, Elaine Chao, a spot in the administration, things like that, you know, and you kind of, maybe that's an experience. And then you realize that, you know, some people just want to watch the world burn kind of a thing. But then he's just largely endorsed many of these same figures. You know, that. And then I also thought, well, maybe also he's concerned about the caliber of, you know, it was a early, it was a nascent movement, and it was kind of a movement of one of him at first. Right. You know, and then when you start branching off into other people that are going to be the champions, Right. The proxies, the faces of it, are they, and the initial people you attract are, frankly, retards like Marjorie Taylor Greene. I can understand then why you might think, I don't know, that we're mature enough as a movement for me to delegate this off into another realm of people to follow after me. You see what I'm saying?

[Todd Erzin]

Yeah.

[Steve Dace]

But since it's continued on ever since that first term, I don't know. I mean, I really don't know. I don't have a theory. Like, I get why he's been so hard on my buddy Chip Roy. I totally understand that. I don't like it, but I get it. Trump understands that to run the, to be king of the Republican Party, you have to be seen as the most right wing figure in the party. And if you've got Chip attacking you from the right all the time and pointing out that you're not holding, you know, you're not upholding the stuff you promise your voters, I can see why you're threatened by that. Because you can't let Chip brand himself as the most right wing figure in the party because now he's a threat to you. Right. Why did Trump go harder after DeSantis than he did any of the other people that thought about running in 24 or against him or actually did? Because DeSantis was the only candidate capable of attacking him from the right.

[Todd Erzin]

Okay.

[Steve Dace]

And the most right wing figure is who gets to be king. All right, so I, I get that. I have no explanation for you at all as to what happened with all these Rhinos. I, I, I don't know why he supported them. I, I truly don't. I, I don't even, I might have even guesses at this point. I, I just have to assume there's a piece of information. I just simply don't know.

[Aaron McIntyre]

Next, let's go to this from unipartymonger. Do you think if the GOP wins the midterms, it's more death by a thousand cuts and if the Dems win, it's a bullet between the eyes for the country?

[Steve Dace]

I think this kind of thinking, and I used to think along these lines, so I get it, but my own perspective has changed greatly, mainly based off of what you heard Brett Buchanan say about the state of the Democratic Party. I just don't think we're in a position to learn any kind of long term issues. I think we're under a, a code red, culturally. I think long term now is like six months. I mean like 28 is like the absolute furthest I'm capable of thinking out to right now. And, and I don't even do that because much of what I would think about what 28 is going to look like might change in the next six months. I mean, I'm, I am literally living and working and doing this show for really the first time in my career over the last few years. It's the first time I've done this. And just what is the short term immediate prognosis? I don't think you can take any more longer term views. I just don't think they're applicable. I don't think the ecosystem of the right has changed very much. I mean, you can make the same kind of long term views about the American right that you want to like I've said for many times, the, the cake is still being baked the same, the frosting is just zanier. The problem is we're not, we're not the single voice in this process. Right. There's another voice that, and, and they've changed radically. Radically.

[Todd Erzin]

And

[Steve Dace]

I mean I, I, I don't think your enemy, because of who our enemies are. I just don't think you're afforded some kind of long term, take the L now and learn your lesson later. Take the L now. You're just, you're just taking an L. You know, I mean, I hate this. One of the things I started doing in my show from the beginning was, you know, they think in terms of the next generation. We think in terms of the next election. Well, we did enough short term thinking generationally. We did that long enough now that we've made our bed and now we have to sleep in it. We are in a long, we are not in a long term view process in my view. Not everyone I know, not even everyone I like shares that view. And that's probably more than any other reason why, just for example, I'll use my buddy Daniel because, you know, he's got even thicker skin than me, so I know he can take it. Maybe the number one, my guess would be the number one reason why Daniel and I have different perspectives while largely having the exact same analysis and, and, and values is because he can, he thinks it's still possible to see in terms of long term. I, I, I completely do not. I, I think long term is. No is November 3rd of this year.

[Todd Erzin]

Yeah. And that's not just talk. You just walked it very recently with what you did with Zach Lane in that primary election.

[Steve Dace]

Correct.

[Todd Erzin]

This is what, when we, if I

[Steve Dace]

didn't have that view, I would not have risked alienating my own friends by doing what I did for Zach Lane. But because I do, I'm like, we just can't take the L and I'll have to figure those relationships and butthurt out later on. But I, I can't just let my state go without a fight because it might hurt relationships. I wouldn't have done that right even a few years ago.

[Todd Erzin]

I always wonder when people write something like this, where they live, what, what their backyard is like, what options they think they have. Because again, here in Iowa, like I just mentioned, my home state of Wisconsin and what's going on. That state is a border state up north, Minnesota. Everybody knows what's going there. Right here we have the starkness of what could be and what we've had here in one of the red estates in the Union in the last decade. So, yeah, near term, fighting to keep that. Absolutely.

[Steve Dace]

Now, I might be wrong. I can't see the future. I'm not, you know, I'm not a divine being. So all I can do, though, is tell you why I think what I think. So then you can determine what you think about what I think. Okay. But I am thinking more in short term increments than I ever have in my entire career right now.

[Aaron McIntyre]

All right, next up, let's go to this. Brian says, is it time for Christians, in order to form a Christian nation, to start moving en masse to enough states to actually try to have the majority in the House and Senate?

[Steve Dace]

I mean, we've been talking about this for several years. In fact, how I originally met Joel Webbin before he decided on the gospel of anti Semitism, was we got introduced to him, I think, via this topic several years ago. Right, right. Because I completely agree to this take. I mean, you know, I don't understand people who say violence is never the answer when we, we are literally the product of a revolution. I mean, it's, it's the final answer. We should be the last people with our, with our worldview. We should be the last people who try to settle things violently. Okay? But there isn't time that that is an answer. I mean, before our Lord went to a cross, he raised an army of Jews and said, go take Canaan. Okay? When he comes back, when our Jewish Messiah returns, it will be with a robe dipped in blood and is stored in his mouth, okay? Emblazoned with King of Kings and Lord of Lords. So there is a time for some violence. I mean, I do think with our worldview, we should be the last people to wield it. And it should be defensive almost always. But the idea that there's just never a time for it, when it took a. Again, this thing I said the other day, this idea that they just declared their independence and the Brits are like, these are really moving arguments. No, what they had to do for the next six years was just absolute savagery. Now, what's that have to do with your question? Everything. Because even before they were willing to do that, your Christian forefathers had to be willing to strategically move, even form these colonies. So I don't understand fighting for America and saying that violence is never the answer. When our founders, it was the final answer, but it was the answer for them to get their independence. Secondly, the country was founded by people who strategically moved here. It's very possible it might take other people strategically moving to keep it. You know, I mean, unless you're taking complete control of a community like my buddy Jack Hibbs has done in Chino Hills, California there, unless you're doing that, your citizenship is just being wasted in the state of California. I hope Steve Hilton proves me wrong in November. He's frankly gotten further than I thought he was going to a year ago when he first came on this show to talk about it. But I think in the end the worldview of there were close ranks like it did with Spencer Pratt. And he might do a few points better. Maybe he gets like 45 or 46% statewide, which is improvement, but still is nearly a double digit loss. If you're living in Oregon, your citizenship, again, unless you're part of a church or a community like what Jack has done in Chino Hills, California, where you're in almost complete control of the infrastructure, your citizenship there is just being wasted.

[Todd Erzin]

But to talk about this issue in a different way, you just. A light bulb went on my head. What is more likely, Steve Hilton wins in California or Talarico wins in Texas?

[Steve Dace]

Talarico in Texas. I would give Hilton about 25% odds. I'd give Talarico about 40% odds.

[Todd Erzin]

That puts a much finer point on this entire question. Like what is, what are, what are most people who think they're conservatives doing? What do they think they're doing as citizens?

[Steve Dace]

Well, the other problem that Hilton has, again making the comparison between him and Pratt, because they're similar candidates. I mean, they're, they're both outsider people that are media savvy. They're, they're running different styles of candidate candidacies. Okay. I mean, Hilton is, you know, has very much worked the ground. He's done a lot of media, but he's very much worked the ground. Pratt ran a lot of media that then tried to work the ground later. So their styles are different, but they're very much outsiders and that have a reason to run that previous Republicans running for their positions did not have. But the problem that Hilton has, they, if, if, if he ends up doing better again than they thought, they'll just steal it from him. As practice went through, they'll just steal it and you won't have like any. See, again, what would be your recourse? Where would you go so to, to, to what entity would you seek to have your, your grievance heard? They, they control it all, you know, so. Which is why I think more of Us need to be moving to places where we can control it all. So, I mean, we've been making that argument this show for going on like four or five years now, right? So, yeah, I'm completely in favor of it. So, yeah, the country was founded by people who strategically moved here to be free, which means it's very possible it may require now future generations to be willing to strategically move to be free.

[Aaron McIntyre]

Yeah. All right, next up, we go to this lengthy one from Kim.

[Steve Dace]

Oh boy. Okay.

[Aaron McIntyre]

Who says, I watched your interview with Bill Federer. Excellent. Btw, do you understand now after his presentation, that in the old testament, Judges 21:25, where it clearly states in those days there was no king in Israel, every man did that which was right in his own eyes, that this was and is not a negative thing necessarily. It just means that a man was not bound to a king. And as Milton Friedman so well stated, he was free to choose. If he wanted to be a fisherman, he could. A farmer, he could. A rancher, he could. God told Samuel, in fact, what the people would get with a king. Sons drafted into military service to run chariots, serve as horsemen and build weapons of war, daughters put to work as perfumers, cooks and bakers, etcetera, Etc, etcetera. Can we see some of that renowned De Humility and admit that you are wrong about this verse and the related verses, that having a king was a downgrade from what they had without a king, and God told Samuel that by asking for a king they were rejecting God, not Samuel. Will you please address this as a tough priority as you have unintentionally misled people. Thankfully not for nearly as long as severely as John MacArthur and his erroneous Romans 13 take about slavishly obeying tyrants, as you have properly pointed out. I will be watching on Monday, Godspeed with the rest of your good works. By the way, I saw Nefarious over eight times at the theater while it was here in Vegas to get those grosses up and is directly responsible for getting over 12 other people to see it at theaters. Thankful that a sequel is on its way.

[Steve Dace]

Well, thank you. First of all, don't bury the lead. The most important part is the end. So thank you very much for all of that. That was Kim, correct, Kim, So thank you, Kim, for that. Secondly, when have I ever said it was a good thing, unless I'm misreading her email, when have I ever said it was a good thing that the people went to God and asked for a king? Have I ever said that? And you have been. You guys either have worked or listened to this show for 20 years, as far as I'm aware. I've always presented it as. That was the. The. I mean, God said. In fact, I've said this even on the show just recently. God says the same thing to the, to the judge Samuel that he says to, that when Jesus shows up, or God shows up to Paul, then Saul. But he doesn't say, why are you persecuting my people? What does God. What does Jesus say to Saul? Why are you persecuting me? So when Samuel goes, the last great judge of Israel, when he goes to God and says, the people are petitioning me for a king, does God say this is virtually Jesus? Because this is Jesus. Again, says virtually the same thing to Samuel that he says to Saul. The people have not rejected you. My appointed judge, they've rejected me. Says virtually the same thing, right?

[Todd Erzin]

Yes.

[Steve Dace]

Okay, so I've never presented that as a positive. Secondly, God then gives them exactly what they asked for. Much of this period of history, by the way of prophetic history, is where your founders got the idea of, of government by the consent of the governed. Or to quote from John Calvin, when the Lord wants to punish a rebellious people, he gives them wicked rulers. So they demanded a king to be like everybody else. So what did God give them? He gave them exactly what they asked for.

[Todd Erzin]

That's the crucial point. It's not that things were better and then they asked for a bad thing and make things worse. They were doing bad things, living badly, and then collectively made a bad decision.

[Steve Dace]

That's probably correct. This is probably the darkest time prophetically, until they killed their own Messiah. With the possible exception of the remnant in the southern kingdom when it went down into the valley of Ben Hinnon and threw their babies into the fire to Molech. And that inspired the entire book of Jeremiah. So it's at least top three darkest moments in the history of the Jewish people is the book of Judges, the time of the judges. So instead of lamenting and then going to God and praying for repenting and praying for revival, they go to Samuel and say, we, we need a better earthly form to fix us and we want a king like everybody else. So God gave them one. He was tall, he was strapping, he looked like. Well, if you, if human beings were sizing up kings, they probably would have chosen somebody that looked exactly like Saul.

[Todd Erzin]

Right.

[Steve Dace]

And, and by the way, Saul was heroic. We act as if Saul just took over day one and was a total despot. No, he didn't. He was heroic. He did keep the people safe.

[Todd Erzin]

I think he might. He was also vain, shallow, saddest character.

[Steve Dace]

Correct.

[Todd Erzin]

All of scripture.

[Steve Dace]

Correct. He succumbs to his own egotism in the end. And his own. His own lack of self awareness, his own narcissism and his own egotism. Yeah. So then the next time God picks another king and he goes out to this family of a guy named Jesse, who is the grandson of the son that Boaz and Ruth have in the book of Ruth, and he goes out to the outer skirts and he finds this guy named Jesse and his sons, and he says, hey, God has told me to go out here and anoint the next king. And Jesse brings all his sons out, and again, these guys look like they're all from central casting. And the Lord's like, not that one. Not that one, not that one. There must be. I think there's one son missing. And they're like, well, he's kind of the run of the litter, and we've got him out, you know, taking care of the sheep out there, like, well, go get him. So they do. And the Lord said, this is the one. It's basically a kid, right? 11, 12, 13 years old, probably. Guy named David. And then the Lord says to David, you. I. Your throne will be eternal. So later on, when Messiah comes up, it's. It's the. It's Palm Sunday. They're waving the palm branches, right? All right. Hosanna to the son of what? To the son of what? What do the Jewish people say to him? Son of David or the son of man? Both. Son of David, son of man. The throne of David is to be restored. The lion of Judah has returned. See, don't be stuck on the form of government. The form of government is not the problem because that's actually what the Israelites thought. You know, the judges suck. If we just had better humans and made them king, then it would be better, right? The form of government isn't the issue. It's the. It's, it's, it's. It's. The framework of your worship is the issue. It's the form of worship or whatever you're worshiping that's the issue. Throughout God's prophetic history, we see a proto version of a republican form of government with. With Moses and Jethro. And God blesses that. Right. Moses appoints people that are proxies to him, delegations over smaller constituencies of people. Kind of the first time a small r. Republican form of government is introduced. That's where your founders Got that idea, by the way. Right. God blesses that. Right. Then there's a pure theocracy where the, where the priests are in charge. Correct. God blesses that. Right. When they're. When.

[Todd Erzin]

Yes.

[Steve Dace]

All right. Then there are judges, then there are judges, and when. And then there are. And then God will bless that. Then there are kings and God will bless that. So all these different forms of government, what do they have in common? When God blesses them, they're faithful to God.

[Todd Erzin]

Yes. Every one of them can bottom out. This is what you don't seem to correct. And ours, the one with the most independence, that's akin to the one you're talking about. Everyone doing what's right in their own eyes. Not necessarily bad. Okay. But not necessarily good either because that's where we're sprinting right now. That's why we have the WNBA that we just highlighted today. We are bottoming out with that identity.

[Steve Dace]

The, the men who fought, that placed their lives, fortunes and sacred honors. The first big domestic political debate they had after they watched the last redcoat flee the shores. There is, well, who's going to be king or what kind of government we going to have? They debated this amongst themselves. Washington had to refuse to be king. So I would not get married to a form of government. I'd get married to a form of religion. I get married to that because what we're up against is a religion. Going back to the WNBA again, they were handed a know nothing league with no brand, no profit and no reason to watch. They were handed a trillion dollar golden goose and they're like, nah, it was

[Todd Erzin]

a secular miracle and they just spit in correct space.

[Steve Dace]

Correct that. Let me tell you, there's only one thing on this earth that compels our species to that level of devotion, and it's religion. That's why it's vitally important you have the right one man.

[Todd Erzin]

You, when you. Okay, that was cash money. When you tweeted that about something this weekend, I don't remember what it was.

[Steve Dace]

So that's.

[Todd Erzin]

And that.

[Steve Dace]

That's where we are and that's where we've always been. Someone will always rule and something will always be worshiped. It is not that the people asked for a king per se, that they were bad. It's that they refused to obey God as their king and they, they were rebelling against him and wanted human authority instead of him. That's why.

[Aaron McIntyre]

Yeah, I think there are some people who do what's right in their own eyes and maybe unintentionally do what's right in God's eyes. But 100% of people who are not doing what's right in God's eyes are doing what's right in their own eyes. And so I think there's a reason why in scripture and the scripture at hand here did what was right in their own eyes. Why isn't it written down? Why isn't it in scripture? You know, if this is so good, why isn't it said people are doing what was right in God's eyes? That's a very crucial distinction.

[Steve Dace]

Absolutely. And so what did you see when. When. When the priest would not carry out their duties? So the inverse is also true. We've seen. We saw God curse them when they were under priests. We saw the God curse them than when they were under kings. Right.

[Aaron McIntyre]

We.

[Steve Dace]

Same thing when they were under judges. Same thing. Same thing happens. So the priest won't do their job. So now God has to call judges. The judges won't do their job. So. So the people ask for a king. He gives him a vain one, but then later gives him a good one. It's not about the form of government. What's easier to corrupt a single ruler like a king or an entire culture? Well, in the end, our founders thought it was a king. That's why they settled on a republican form of government. But the opposite could also be true, and it has to be. Otherwise you have a fallacy. How do you know if something's a fallacy or not? Or. I mean, in other words, just logically, just, you know, not accurate. Both ends have to be. It has to be. It has to be congruent on both ends. So if it's true that it's easier to keep sanity in a culture because it's easier to corrupt one single person than an entire culture, When. When a majority of a culture becomes corrupted, what's easier to recover? It. Reversing that trend amongst a co. Amongst a mass of the culture or putting a righteous king in charge. That's a debatable point too. It works in the other direction.

[Todd Erzin]

Sure.

[Steve Dace]

What's the state of Florida tell us about that? You have a righteous king there. First of his name. Right. Look at every trend line in the entire state.

[Todd Erzin]

Yeah.

[Steve Dace]

When Ron Desantis nearly lost to a guy who did cocaine off a gay hooker's butt. And now look at the state. It's. It's the beacon of America. So do not get married to a form that's idolatry. All right? Get married to obeying the one true God. Let the form take care of itself. The Steve Day Show. Boy, howdy, man. With all this Fauci news, diary entries and everything else. Just another reminder. As much as you possibly can, take control of your own health. Now that's the key phrase. As much as you possibly can, right? We can't operate on ourselves. Can't prescribe drugs for ourselves, at least not legally. All right? So as much as you possibly can, probably can't X ray yourself, you know, but as much as you can take control of your own health, that's where preventative health comes into play. That's what our friends at Chirp do, right? My wife looked at me when we were in Alaska. She saw me pull out the rolling power mini massager. And Amy's like, you know what? You really do take this thing with you everywhere. I see it every time we take a trip. You got it with you. Yeah. Because it's. It's phenomenal. So then I used it on her shoulder spot. She's like, okay, I'm.

[Todd Erzin]

I've.

[Steve Dace]

I totally get it. So that's just one of the devices and treatments they've got available for you. The rolling power mini massagers. My favorite. Maybe you like the decompression and massage table known as the Chirp contour. That they've got trigger point rollouts, foam rollers, everything you need for preventative health. If you are active and you don't know what the things I just mentioned are, you need to know, all right? Those things will make a big difference in terms of keeping you active and healthy, especially now if you are in your third act now, like I'm embarking upon. So check out what they've got to [e-mail] Steve. Go there and you'll get 10% off your first order. That's gocherp.com Steve for birdie chirp. That's the name of the company. Chirp. Go chirp.com Steve. All right, Aaron, let's continue on.

[Aaron McIntyre]

Next up, we'll go to Anna, who wants to know, is it a sin or wrong for a Christian to write or tell ghost stories?

[Steve Dace]

I think it comes down to who or what is being glorified. Right? I mean, how many Christians feel like Dickens or Christmas Carol is a sinful watch? I don't recall that that's ever been seriously discussed in any period of time that I am aware of. Okay. And. And yet it's filled with ghosts. But the ghosts there serve a purpose. Call it a fictional purpose. Not calling someone to investigate the occult or to investigate Their origins. In fact, we don't really know anything about these ghosts and their origins. And they say some really odd things, particularly the Ghost of Christmas Present. Come and know me, man. Okay? And. And he makes some illusions to, like, numbers of brothers and stuff he has, that maybe these things have meaning, maybe they don't. They've been debated since Dickens wrote it almost 200 years ago. My point being, though, you know why nobody got their panties in a wad about those stories? Because it was very clear that those things were all just literary devices to drive the main character, Ebenezer Scrooge, and then thus the reader to a higher calling. To live better, to be better faithful stewards of the life that God has given you. Makes sense. Same reason we don't debate the use of wizards and Tolkien's Lord of the Rings, because anybody that's done any research into Tolkien or read the Similarian or any of these other works knows very well there's a creator God. They knows very well these things are all. Allegorical. And, I mean, it's very clear that Tolkien's intent was to call people to higher truths than just to investigate the minutia of sorcery. Right? And so it comes down to, what's the motivation for this? Because here's the thing, and let me just tell you, as a guy that is. Is, you know, has a little bit of experience in taking a biblical worldview into the horror, supernatural thriller genre, the question becomes, what? What. Who or what is Is. Is. Are you pointing people to who or what are you pointing people to? Notice that in Nefarious, for example, the demon tells you a little bit about himself. He tells you a lot, though, about you and I. Because the point of Nefarious in the use of that demon was a cautionary tale about our own spiritual conditions and the condition of our culture. Not to glorify the demonic. Makes sense. So I think it comes down to. And. Because your motivation will determine then how gratuitously you will depict such things. And there's a reason why there's no F bombs, no nudity, and no gore. And Nefarious, because the intent of the film was to call people to higher truths, and depicting those things would obviously not glorify those truths. Right. So we didn't put them in there. So it's not. You start always with what. Who's the ultimate. What's the ultimate truth you're trying to point people to? And then that will determine everything. Not just the story you tell, but how you tell it.

[Todd Erzin]

That was a great Answer. But let me refer to how great it was to ask you to answer it in a different way.

[Steve Dace]

Okay.

[Todd Erzin]

Because you didn't exactly go to the, the corners of storytelling and cinema to find examples to help this person out. You went to A Christmas Carol.

[Steve Dace]

Maybe the most translated. Yes, I'm sorry, translated into various story form that any singular story in the history of the English language is Dickens or Christmas Carol. In fact, there's another one coming out this fall. This fall with Johnny Depp again. So.

[Todd Erzin]

Yeah, and, and Lord of the Rings

[Steve Dace]

and Tolkien, maybe the most famous English speaking fiction in the history of our language.

[Todd Erzin]

My point being, the answer, with all due respect, is so obvious that you don't need to come to Steve for the answer. Those two alone are the. So my question is, and I asked this charitably, why on matters like this, because when it comes to Harry Potter, there are people who agree with Aaron about 99% of everything theologically, morally, yet Aaron grew up on Harry Potter. They think it's the equivalent of engaging in witchcraft. But these are the two obvious ones. Why do you think people can't connect the dots?

[Steve Dace]

We took a generation off of theological discipleship. We taught. And I'm gonna, I'm, I'm going to assume most of these kinds of, of cultural calculation questions come from my fellow evangelicals.

[Todd Erzin]

Okay.

[Steve Dace]

And it's because we took a generation off of serious discipleship. And, and, and a lot of the modern evangelical church lacks context. They know Bible verses, but they lack context. Who are what, like there's sola scriptura and then there is solo scriptura. And solo scriptura, by the way, doesn't actually elevate the scriptures all the more. It reduces them, just kind of reducing it to things to memorize. Almost like a spelling bee. But it's a Bible bee. When we're not doing amazing facts, we're doing the word of God. And so therefore context is absolute. King. It's very important to know the historicity of the people. It's very important to know the, the. Because the Bible, while it, it does, while ultimately it, it doesn't just tell us what happened, but what always happens and what will happen again and again in the time that it was written. You can see the writers. Somebody just quoted from the Old Testament with Kings and Chronicles. All right? And the writers are writing in present tense. All right? Oh, by the way, if there's more you want to know about what this king did, here's another work you can go and read to read. That's right there in those works in these last days or in what we're doing right now. So it's vitally important therefore that you know the peoples that it was being written to at the time. And this is an important thing to understand about the scriptures. The scriptures are for us, but they're not about us. They're for us, but they're not about us. Right. Raise your hand if you're a first century Israelite. No. Okay, so the scriptures are for us, but they're not about us. You see what I'm saying? They're for us. They're eternal. It's an, it's, it's an eternal mechanism. The word of God is. But it's not about us. The people that it was written about are to point us to eternal things. Therefore, if it's for us and not about us, it's probably pretty important for us to know the people that it's really about to give us full context of what's really going on here.

[Todd Erzin]

Right.

[Steve Dace]

This has been sorely lacking for a generation. Worldview formation solely lacking for a generation. And maybe it's time that we need to bring back, Receive, Redeem, reject. We haven't done that show in a few years. You know, like I would put Harry Potter for. I don't have a problem at all if someone thinks they don't want to go anywhere near Harry Potter. I don't, I don't share that view. But I, I don't have a problem with someone who, because the, the, the, the higher moral truths of Harry Potter are not as clear or intentional as, as Tolkien. And in fact, the only time that, that J.K. rowling has literally agreed with us on virtually anything that she's ever spoken about publicly is since the training issue came up. Remember how she gave us a retconned? Dumbledore was. Now, now he's been a homo. The whole. Okay, so I, Those gray areas are fine, but we have to understand how to navigate gray areas. Right? And the most important thing about gray areas are if they cause you, if it's a gray area for you run away doesn't mean you have to force everybody else to run away. Like if, if, if, if Harry Potter was a was, was pedophile island, do you think Aaron and Bella would have grown up watching it in their homeschool homes and passing it on to their own children and talking about it on the show? Well, no, because those are clear wrongs. Right?

[Todd Erzin]

Yes.

[Steve Dace]

So you get into gray areas. You know, we had some friends of ours growing when our kids were little that Were also shocked we let our kids watch Harry Potter. Now that family has completely and totally fallen apart, and there's been divorce and the kids are estranged. So just because they had a tighter standard on Harry Potter than we did. Meanwhile, all three of my kids came to family dinner to have Casey's breakfast pizza yesterday at our house. So just because you have a tighter standard on a gray area than somebody else or a looser standard on a gray area than somebody else does not indicate, guarantee any future success with sinful beings with their own, you know, free will and agency whatsoever. All right, Keeping people away from abs, the things that are absolutely evil, though, does have a big say and stuff like that. Does that make sense? But these are things that we've just not been coached to navigate at all. You know, instead, a lot of your pastors of the modern evangelical church wanted to be the next John Piper and Tim Keller. And so they wanted to avoid all of this navigation and. And essentially just have these suburban monasteries where we're just. We're just preaching the fundamentals of the faith. But there's. There's like no rules of engagements, like, no ground rules at all. When. When much of the Bible was written about people who were running perpendicular to culture and the governing structure. All of the time Jesus is on a cross, there's a sign over his head. Everybody remember what it says? King of the Jews.

[Todd Erzin]

Christ, King of the Jews.

[Steve Dace]

Yeah. Now why. Why'd they put it there? Because that's ultimately, in the eyes of Rome, the crime he was guilty of. So first, the Pharisees and Sadducees are like, he is claiming he's our Messiah and we don't agree with his religious teachings. And what's Pilate that say, why the. Why the bleep. Do I care? I'm a. I'm from Rome, and we've got 7,000 gods. Take this mess to Herod or somebody else who cares. I don't. But when they say he's claiming to be another king, well, now Pontius Pilate kind of has to. And then the people say, and we have no king but Caesar. Well, now Pilate would be accused if he doesn't do something, he could be accused of not upholding his own dreaded sovereign. The. The. So this guy's claiming to be a foreign king. When they go backstage, Pilate asks Jesus a question. He says, are you the king of the Jews? In other words, the Jews already have a king, the emperor in Rome. And he's appointed a prefect. Me. And then he's appointed A figurehead king, locally the idiomians of the Herods or the, the, the, the people of Esau. So the reason they put the king of Israel over his head is because the crime for Rome was he was practicing insurrection. He was leading, claiming he was the king and had jurisdiction and not the Roman emperor. This conflict has, I'm sorry, this context, this kind of preaching has been dramatically lacking for the last few decades in American evangelicalism. And it's why we just largely don't know how to navigate the broader, the broader strokes of our faith. And it's why we don't have any evangelical Supreme Court justices. It's why the only evangelical president we ever had was just a soft headed, you know, globalist named George W. Bush. It's, it's just why we're not, we're not taken seriously intellectually in this culture at all as evangelicals because frankly, the evangelical church for this last generation didn't want to be, it wanted to be purpose driven. It wanted to build brands, not kingdoms. It wanted celebrity pastors. You know, it's, it's. What's funny is we got this huge online fight right now that I'm just completely annoyed with, which means I've got everybody mad at me. All right? Because not only do I think it's dumb to be, you know, advocating for Rubio against Vance when there's no chance Rubio is ever going to run against Vance unless Trump tells him to. I've got Vance people that are mad at me that clubbing all the Rubio people at the exact same time. I think the whole thing's a waste of time. Yeah. Here's the thing. If we grab St. Augustine, if the Lord allowed Augustine or Aquinas or some figure like that within the, the history of the, of the church, which at the time when they were in the church was Rome, if he allowed them to come back and just sit down for like 45 minutes with, with Vance and Rubio, once he learned the language and stuff, he would, these guys would each see some of what some of their own teaching, some of it at least might agree not with some, might not agree with some others, but they would at least see some fundamentals of what they taught in their time. Say what you want about Rome. I'm a firm believer in justification by faith. That's why I'm an evangelical. Right. But there's a, there's a legacy there that has been held on to and passed on to its adherents for eons. Modern evangelicals don't even sound like Francis Schaefer did 40 years ago, letting an Augustine being able to find from the 4th century, being able to recognize some of his own teachings in the. What comes out of the mouth of a Rubio or a Vance. So we just know. How will they hear the word if there's no one to teach or preach it to them? We can't rise above our own worldview is my variation of that. Todd. We just have taken a generation off of teaching this to our people and they. They honestly just don't know. They know the word of God in a vacuum. They know that. But in terms of the broader applications of it are. The American evangelical church ran away from broader applications because, see, that's really where you run into problems with the culture. It becomes a war when we get to the broader applications of things. Just keep it to yourselves. Give your sins to Jesus if you want. Stay in your own corner. Stay in your intellectual ghetto. Cool. Oh, wait, you want to be mayor? Oh, wait, you want to start a business? Oh, wait, you want to be president? Oh, well, see, that's where the. That's where you find out there's no such thing as a third way. And. And we chased after a third way that doesn't exist for the last 30 years. And so we've got some ground to make up here. Man. I'm doing what I can on this show. But just one guy. So we're probably gonna have time to be fair to anymore. Aaron. We'll do the rest in the overtime. Maybe.

[Aaron McIntyre]

Probably not.

[Steve Dace]

Okay.

[Aaron McIntyre]

Can I make a quick addendum?

[Steve Dace]

Of course. I was just going to ask if you guys wanted to do that.

[Aaron McIntyre]

So. Not to this one. Kim. The previous question about doing what's right in their own eyes. It's a he. Kim.

[Todd Erzin]

So.

[Steve Dace]

My mistake. Kim. I'm sorry about that.

[Aaron McIntyre]

I think I dropped a she. He also had some other things that he wanted to say, but I think we addressed that pretty, pretty well.

[Steve Dace]

Any final thoughts?

[Todd Erzin]

That was a good show. That was a really good show. I mean, going back to crappy Monday. It's not a crappy Monday if you tell the truth. Told the truth. Okay, we aren't. We are.

[Steve Dace]

But I hope we did so in a way, like, we have to fix this. Not hunker down, fetal position and wait for the shofar to sound.

[Todd Erzin]

America is the most talented team to go back to football analogies that has ever been put on the field. But it is at risk of becoming when we do lists of like, who's the greatest team that never won the championship. Yeah, we're that's what we're going to become because we are soft and we do not want to put in the work, and we do not want to get in the paint and get the dirty rebound. We just want to go out there and look pretty and, you know, have talking points or we're like the red.

[Steve Dace]

Wait a minute. You guys had the guy who was the best pitcher and hitter at the same time, and you traded him for what? And now you're wondering why he didn't win a world series for 75 years? Something like that, right?

[Todd Erzin]

Yeah.

[Steve Dace]

Yeah.

[Aaron McIntyre]

I mean, just to steal from Todd. Get busy living or get busy dying.

[Brent Buchanan]

Who is.

[Aaron McIntyre]

You're stealing that from something else.

[Steve Dace]

Shawshank.

[Aaron McIntyre]

Yeah, Shawshank.

[Todd Erzin]

Yep.

[Aaron McIntyre]

That's the name of the game, and it always has been. We're deluding ourselves to think that it hasn't been.

[Steve Dace]

We're losing right now, but we don't have to be losers. There are things we can do to fix it. That's all I want. That, and that's the intent of today's show, is to say, stop doing what's losing. Back at it again tomorrow. Until then, go hard. Romans 8, 28.