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It's Monday, November 17, 2025. I'm Albert Mohler, and this is the Briefing, a daily analysis of news and events from a Christian worldview. Just really big headlines over the weekend. And even as the weekend was approaching, there's some big stories we knew were just going to get bigger. One of them is about Jeffrey Epstein. More on that in just a moment. First, we're gonna talk about President Trump and the scandal at the BBC. That's the British Broadcasting Cor. Now, the BBC is almost 100 years old. It is in many ways kind of the gold standard when you think of the emergence of major media in the whole world. And the BBC World Service, as it was known, was actually a representation of the British Empire. And the BBC came right out of the Empire. Empire was even in the original name of the organization. And the BBC, the British Broadcasting Corporation, became a major voice for freedom, for dignity, for news, and major shaping factor in Western civilization in the 20th century. It was just about essential, for instance, in the period of the Second World War and the aftermath of the Second World War. And the BBC World Service, along with other big global broadcasters, and that would include from Germany, Radio Deutsche Welle and others in the United States, the Voice of America. But the BBC was far larger in its influence, partly because it had all of the structure of the old British Empire to draw upon. When I was a teenager, I thought the BBC was almost magical as a news source. And in order to get the BBC when I was a teenager, you had to have shortwave radio. And I did have a shortwave radio. I was one of those kids. And I listened to international news on the shortwave radio. It's part of what got me addicted to trying to follow these issues and to understand the worldview of these issues. And so I'd get the BBC on a shortwave broadcast from London. This is the BBC. It was just authoritative news. And in so many ways, the BBC did set a gold standard, along with some of the American commercial networks like CBS and NBC. At the same time, this is something that Christians need to understand. The closer you get to that elite broadcasting or that elite media class, the more liberal the worldview becomes. And that's not just to say about politics, as in left and right. It is that it is profoundly that, but it's more than that. For example, one of the defenses you've heard in recent days in the BBC is that they have conservatives within the organization. But that largely means people who have identified with the Conservative Party. And I'll just say that in Britain on moral issues, that's not very conservative. And it's on many of these issues, you understand, the left really has predominated in terms of the influence. But let's go back to the controversy at hand. The controversy really broke when the Telegraph, which is a major conservative news source in London, did a huge investigative report making very clear, documenting the fact, and even using the report by a skilled investigator to demonstrate that the BBC, in one of its major broadcasts, had misrepresented statements made by President Donald Trump. This goes back to January of 2021, after the presidential election, the January 6 protests and all the rest. They used the address that was given that morning, January 6, 2021, by President Trump, and they took statements that he made, separated by 50 minutes in the actual comments by the president, separated by 50 minutes, and they put them together as if the president had outright called his supporters towards rebellion. That is not a fair representation of what the President said. And at that point, of course, in the final days of his first term, there's plenty of controversy about January 6th, but this is a controversy not about what the President said, but what the BBC presented him to say, which is not what he said. Now, it is very important to understand that a part of what Christians need to observe is a media ecology, and a part of that ecolog is left to right, more liberal and more conservative. So the BBC is its government, it's big government and its elite. But there are other news sources there in Britain, and that includes major newspapers such as the Telegraph, which is one of the more conservative newspapers. And the Telegraph evidently got wind of what the BBC might have done, and they again worked with investigators and others. They really presented a report that was impeccable. It's impossible for the BBC to refute. They demonstrated right down to detailed second by second analysis what the BBC producers had done, and heads would have to roll. But one of the things that became very evident, for example, the New York Times running a major investigative report in the aftermath. They didn't break the story, but they are dealing with the story. And one of the things they have pointed to is the fact that the BBC's board basically fumbled the ball in every way. For one thing, they knew what the Telegraph was about to report, and yet they decided to kind of withhold what their response was going to be until they thought the issue through. Evidently, some of them believe they could even keep the story still quiet. Well, that was foolish. The whole thing blew up and the BBC looks at this is one of the big issues. You know, if you're going to be seen as either incompetent or evil. You know, go with incompetent rather than evil. But the worst scenario is to be found both incompetent and evil. And in this kind of situation, that's pretty much the way things happen within a short amount of time. Tim Davy, who's the very head of the BBC, its director general, and also Deborah Turnus, who was the head of the news programming, both of them resigned, and they resigned understanding that the scandal was going to have to produce major resignations. But, you know, there's some really fascinating stuff behind this. Number one, this was a deliberate effort to delegitimize the American President and to put words in his mouth. And by the way, they were his own words. But it shows you how the Christian worldview reminds us that you have to understand statements as they were actually made. So it's not fair to take a sentence here and a sentence 50 minutes later and splice them together as if they were said back to back. That turns the truth into a lie. And that's exactly what the BBC did. And we now know they didn't do it just once. It wasn't just one program. It became something of a meme, so to speak, that was picked up and used in other programming as well. And of course, there was no acknowledgement of what had been done. It was presented as if this is exactly what the President said and how he said it. And that makes it one of the most egregious journalistic errors imaginable. And it's hard to believe that the BBC ever thought it could get away with this. But, you know, that investigative report is actually a blockbuster in many ways. There were two other big issues that caught my eye. One of them has to do with anti Israel bias, a pro Palestinian, even pro Hamas bias. At one point, it turned out that some of the BBC news programming had featured, for example, a teenage boy. And they presented this teenage boy, Palestinian boy, as kind of an example of, say, every man or every kid in Palestine, of course, given the challenges of Israel's war against Hamas. But what wasn't acknowledged, and this is just astounding, it wasn't even acknowledged, is that the father of this teenage boy was actually a major figure in the leadership of Hamas, a terrorist organization. So you look at that and you say, who in the world would think you could get away with that? The answer is the BBC. The BBC was also faulted in this report on the transgender issue as basically presenting only one side of the argument. And so this tells US a lot about how media organizations work, especially the most elite of them. But there's another angle to the BBC that Americans in particular need to understand, and that is that the BBC is paid for by a tax on the British people. The British people are actually billed for the BBC, and the basis of the billing has to do with whether you receive any kind of radio or television signal. That basically means, of course, every house. And if you do not pay, then that's a legal bill. It's kind of like not paying your income taxes. And, you know, that's just a really bad system now. It produces a Cadillac of an organization, but as we've seen, it's an organization that lost its way. And it's one thing to have liberal media. It's another thing for the citizens of a country to have to pay for it with monies confiscated from them by what's effectively a tax. So I would just kind of underline this for conservatives, especially Christian conservatives in the United States, although this would apply elsewhere. But in the United States, we need to understand that. One of the important things I think the Trump administration has done is to end federal tax subsidies for public broadcasting. And I think there's good reason for that. I think the idea of a government broadcaster is just not a good idea. But turn it around and understand how offended we should be if we found out that one of the most influential news organizations, which, by the way, was taxed by monies confiscated from us. That's the situation with the BBC in Britain, and then was used for this kind of outright misrepresentation and ideological bias. At least in the United States, there should be a level playing field where the New York Times is a very liberal newspaper. It's kind of the gold standard, by the way, in terms of journalism, the most influential newspaper in the United States. But you don't have to buy it. You don't have to go to its website. It's a commercial enterprise. The same thing's true with the Wall Street Journal, a far more conservative editorial project. And so you can basically choose your media source and you can evaluate one against the other, none of them being paid for with your tax money. That's a far better situation than with the BBC. It's going to be very interesting to see how the British people respond to this. As I said, the board of the BBC evidently saw this scandal as an existential threat. And, you know, I think in political terms, it might be. And there's another reason for that. And that comes down to the fact that even though the BBC is just really kind of a crown jewel of British culture. The British government is facing real financial constraints, and the British people are about to face a second major tax increase. That might be very hard to take when you're also being taxed for the BBC in the context of a scandal. But for all of us as Christians, this just underlines the fact we have to be very, very careful and very aware as we're engaging with the media. Regardless of the source, regardless of the masthead, we understand that in a fallen world, this kind of thing will happen. We also understand that in this kind of thing, it eventually is going to be known to great embarrassment. That's where the BBC is right now. Now, I want to switch to the controversy about Jeffrey Epstein. And this one's hard to talk about because there's just so much to it. And one of the things I want to mention is that you have a lot of people in the media and elsewhere who say that the big problem right now, especially on the right, but also somewhat on the left, but especially on the right, is that there are people who are trying to build a conspiracy theory out of this. You know, perhaps the philosophical principle of Occam's Razor, it goes back to William of Ockham. And Occam's Razor is, I'll just summarize it, that in most situations, the simplest answer will turn out to be right. So if you ask, you know, how did that dent get in that car and there's another car with a matching dent right beside it, you know, the simplest answer is probably the right one. And that means philosophically you have to defend a more complex argument as necessary. That's a good principle, and it doesn't apply to everything. But it's a good thing to think about. Occam's Razor means you don't come up with a Rube Goldberg chart of how something happened, if there's a real easy explanation for how it happened. So how did the Jeffrey Epstein thing happen? Well, at this point, some kind of conspiracy appears to actually fit Occam's Razor. There's just too much going on here. It had to be known by so many people. At least parts of it were known by so many people over such a long period of time. And with Jeffrey Epstein, you're talking about the fact that he was very clearly already guilty of sex crimes against minors, against young girls long before certain very well established figures in the United States were still having something to do with him. And it's just very hard to explain. Money has to be A part of it. But it's hard really to understand exactly how Jeffrey Epstein made all that money. He made it basically by having very wealthy friends. And he was something of a financial advisor. He had been in the securities business. He set up a kind of a personal house of financial advice and counsel. And, you know, he ended up making mega, mega millions. I mean, he had private islands and houses all over the place and a private jet. And we know that because we know there were prominent people, big names in American politics, who evidently rode on that jet and spent time at those homes. And we also know he was a simply horrifying sex abuser, a molester, a sexual exploiter. He was involved, as we know, with the most unspeakable sex crimes against girls and young women. So who knew what and when and who was having anything to do with him? And obviously, the release of documents, all those emails, and with many, many references, hundreds of references by some media accounts to President Trump. He was not then President Trump, but at some point, even during those emails, he was running for president. The point, by the way, is you have to figure out what to do with this. And there are a lot of powerful people who've been linked to and with Jeffrey Epstein. First of all, we are talking about the President of the United States. What do we do with this? Well, I have to say I hope that as quickly and as definitively as possible, all the truth comes out. And as Christians, we should want the truth to come out in the right way. And I will also say that just as a political calculation, it's hard to believe that there's anything incriminating about the President of the United States, who is, after all, also one of the most controversial human beings, I think, probably who has ever lived. Just thinking about controversy, the Democrats had control of this material. It's hard to believe that if they had control and access to this material, that they would not have used anything they could have used against Donald Trump in the 2024 campaign and before. And so politically, it's rather difficult to understand what could be hidden in there. But again, Occam's Razor, the simplest explanation. There evidently were a lot of people who knew something. There were a lot of people who I think knew enough. They should have had nothing to do with Jeffrey Epstein, ever. And everything that the public has found out about Jeffrey Epstein makes him look. I don't know a good moral vocabulary here, but creepy appears to be an appropriate moral category. Why would anyone want to have anything to do with him? And once you found out that others had concerns. I mean, it's really hard to believe. You have some of the biggest names in American culture. Larry Summers, who's a former Treasury Secretary, former president of Harvard University, he is communicating a major Democratic figure and figure in for instance, the Obama administration. He is very much involved with Jeffrey Epstein. You also have ample documentation, really clear documentation, that during a congressional hearing having to do with Michael Cohen, President Trump's former attorney, you had Jeffrey Epstein having real time conversations with a member of Congress. In this case it is the delegate, the Democratic figure, Stacy Plaskett, who is the delegate from the Virgin Islands. So that's a non voting but nonetheless participating figure in the congressional hearing. And it's really clear. And by the way, some very, very professional news organizations have looked at the video that was available from C span of that hearing and then looked at the emails and you can actually see the delegate looking at her phone at the exact time that Jeffrey Epstein was contacting her. So let's just back up here. I mentioned Occam's Razor. The easiest explanation is probably the right explanation. But in this case, you know, nothing is clear or easy. We need as much information as we can get and it shouldn't be because of prurient or wrongful interest on the part of the people. But let's face it, we're talking about very, very serious issues here. And I don't think the American public will be satisfied until there's a pretty good accounting in terms of that material. It looks like a majority in the House of Representatives is going to vote this week for the government release of that material. It's going to be hard for Republicans not to vote for it. It's going to be hard for Republicans and Democrats alike in the Senate not to vote for it. And so we're going to be in very interesting territory this, this week. And let me just say there could be, there could be good reason for some of this material not being made public. But let me speak about how that could be credibly demonstrated. It would take people inside Congress having representation from both sides and both parties looking at the material and agreeing that for the protection of victims or others, this should not be released. So in other words, it's going to be up to Congress to prove credibility in failing to release something. Again, we should understand there could be a good reason. But if it's a good reason, a good credible reason, it will be agreed to by bipartisan leadership in Congress. I also want to come back and say I think that a bit of moral reductionism and confusion is going on here. So let's just try to make this as nonpolitical as possible. All of these major figures at least had to know how creepy Jeffrey Epstein was. And even if you're not talking about illegal acts with minors, we are talking about the fact that he was evidently very well known for being involved in all kinds of things. Let's just say he shouldn't have been involved with. And I'm not going to go into any more detail in this. It just is something that's going to require some accounting. And you remember that of course, he, by suicide, exited moral accountability. But it is also a reminder that moral accountability is wider than a single individual here. And eventually, eventually, I think the American public is going to effectively demand some kind of accounting for all of this. Again, I'm not looking for any major unexpected disclosure. I think, however, you can detect when the American people say we've had enough of all of this, we need to know the truth. Well, all right. Another big, big story. So another big concern for today is the filibuster. President Trump, during the government shutdown, called upon the United States Senate. Republicans in control of the Senate, bare majority, but majority control, to eliminate the filibuster. And Republicans said they would not do it. They didn't do it. The president called for it. The president's very frustrated with the filibuster. He wants to be rid of it. And it's easy to understand why people get frustrated with the filibuster is because the filibuster gets in your way of doing any in the Senate fast. The filibuster requires a majority, a Super majority, a 3/5 majority vote for almost anything to move forward in the United States Senate. But there's a history behind it. And today at World Opinions, I write a piece very much for keeping the filibuster. Hunter Baker, of very fine mind, the provost at North Greenville University, he writes the opposing piece and it's good natured. But the debate is real. And I take this with great seriousness, as I know Hunter does as well. My title is Keep the Filibuster Rule. Eliminating the minority break in the Senate is the last thing conservatives should want. Okay, so you know, the debate's out there. President Trump is a part of that debate. You also need to know that the main energy for removing the filibusters come from the left wing and the Democratic Party. So just understand that there's a reason why the left wing of the Democratic Party more than anyone else, wants to get rid of the filibuster. And it comes down to the history of the filibuster. The history of the word's not really important. But when both the House and the Senate were young, both had something like a filibuster rule, a member could hold a vote back by continuing to speak. And by the rules of the Senate, the filibuster was originally a member's privilege to keep speaking. And even in an effort to try to time out or exhaust an issue, to prevent the Senate moving towards a vote in more recent years, the filibuster actually doesn't require a speech from a senator, but it does require 60 senators or three fifths of the Senate to approve moving towards a vote. Now, that's an interesting thing because sometimes senators will vote to move legislation to a vote, and then they will vote against the measure. But it is generally the case that when you get cloture, when you get that three fifths vote, then your proposal is going to become law or it's at least going to be passed by the Senate. Okay, so where did that come from? Well, actually, it goes back even to ancient Rome. It goes back to the Roman Republic. It goes back to Cato the Younger, and, by the way, major figure in the history of Rome, Cato the Younger. And, you know, if there was a Cato the Younger, you've got the logic to assume there was also a Cato the Older or the Elder. But in the case of Cato the Younger, he was famous for stalling legislation in the Senate of Rome because the rule was that the Senate could meet until dark, and once darkness fell, all legislation failed. And so Cato the Younger was known for speaking until the sun went down. And then the measure failed. The Senate went home, the senators had dinner, and Cato the Younger felt very satisfied at having blocked bad legislation. He also, by the way, used his power in the Senate to check the power, at least in some ways, of Julius Caesar. Let me just get to the bottom line. Conservatives count on the filibuster, and that is because we want the Senate to slow down legislation. I know there's some conservatives, and that includes right now, President Trump. He's in his second term. He wants to get things done. I am sympathetic with so much of that, but not at the expense of putting the nation vulnerable without the filibuster to a Democratic majority just running wild. And that's exactly what could happen. So that three fifths rule is really important. And so I decided I would do a little math, I would do a little history, and I'm going to share this with you. I made a chart of who's in control of Congress and in control of the White House. And especially I'm interested in the period from the Great Depression and the election of Franklin Delano roosevelt in the 1932 election to the present. Okay, so all you who are interested in that kind of political history, okay, the hot stuff's coming. How many years during that time did Democrats have control over of the House and the Senate and the White House? So we're talking here about basically nine decades. How many of those years did the Democrats have a majority in both houses of Congress? And they controlled the White House. They had the elected president. Thus without the filibuster, they could have done just about anything. 36 of those years, the Democrats were in the absolute driver's seat. The filibuster is one of the very few measures that stopped the legislation the Democrats would have passed. And there are some historical occasions where we would say the filibuster was wrongly used. You say, well, if the Democrats had that kind of control, well, it's 18 Congresses. So, you know, every two years you have a new Congress. This pattern really began with the 73rd Congress that began in 1933. I mentioned that 18 of those Congresses, 36 years, has been Democrats in control of both Houses and the White House. How many years did Republicans have the same pattern of power? 8. Only four of those Congresses had Republican majorities in both Houses and a Republican in the White House, which is to say 18 Congresses. The Democrats could run the table. Republicans only four. I don't think you have to be really good at math to understand that conservatives have a problem here. But there's more to it than that. And that goes back to our constitutional framers. They frame the Constitution intending the Senate, representing all the states equally, to be a break on the House to cool down the passions of the House. The House is energetic and it is to initiate a lot of legislation, including budgetary legislation. But the Senate is supposed to be slow. And this is where conservatives understand if you can't slow down bad legislation, then you're just going to turn the American Congress and add to that a Democratic President of the same party. You're just going to turn that into the British Parliament, where a majority can pass anything it wants. Now, let me just give you one issue to watch here that issues abortion. Now, during many of Those years, again, 18 of those Congresses, and just fast forward to the present. Consider even in the last several decades, how many of those years you've seen Democrats holding majorities in the Senate and in the House and also holding the White House, why didn't they pass comprehensive abortion legislation? It is because of Roe v. Wade, and they didn't think they had to. But now you also have the recognition on the part of Democrats that they should have, by their own logic, passed that legislation. The only thing that would have blocked it would have been the filibuster. Republicans using the filibuster. Without the filibuster, as I say, we would be living in Nancy Pelosi's America. Just get that right. Without the filibuster, we would be living in Nancy Pelosi's America. And Nancy Pelosi knew that, which is why when she was speaker of the House and there was a Democrat majority in the Senate, she called upon the Senate to ditch the filibuster rule because it was impeding all the progress that she and her House colleagues could make. Stalled by conservatives, by Republicans in the Senate using the filibuster. So I just want to say to us that one of the conservative arguments is that slowing things down and sometimes stopping things is the most important thing conservatives can do. And that is because the legislative initiative generally comes from the left, not the right. That's the way this works. William F. Buckley Jr. Famously defined conservatism by saying that the conservative is the man who stands athwart history yelling stop. And the filibuster is one of the rare and most essential ways of crying stop. Conservatives need to understand that we are the ones who truly believe that often crying stop represents progress. But as I said, there are two sides to the argument. You can find it at today's releases of World Opinions. Well, heavy stuff for today, but I hope fun in its own way and lots for all of us to think about. So thanks for listening to the briefing. For more information, go to my website@albertmoeller.com youm can follow me on X or Twitter by going to x.comalbertmohler for information on the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, go to sbts.edu. for information on Boyce College, just go to boycecollege.com I'll meet you again tomorrow for the briefing.